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Business Times reports that organised business is bracing itself this year for an increase in legal action from employees opposed to mandatory Covid-19 vaccines and from staff who feel their companies have not done enough to protect them from the unvaccinated.
Discovery, Old Mutual and Sanlam are some of the companies that have begun mandatory vaccinations, but Business For SA (B4SA) chair Martin Kingston believes there will “undoubtedly” be court action by those who lose their jobs because they have not been vaccinated and do not have legitimate exemptions. “If people do start to lose their jobs, there will undoubtedly be legal action. Although it is unhelpful in one respect, in another respect it may be very useful in that it will clarify the legal status,” commented Kingston. He added that it was also possible SA would “see legal action from those who are at work and are infected because their employers haven’t taken adequate care, in their view, of the workplace to limit them from getting infected”. B4SA and Business Unity SA (Busa) are waiting for a high court declaratory order to give legal certainty on companies’ rights to require vaccinations. It is expected sometime in the first quarter of the year. According to Kingston, all the companies with vaccine mandates, starting with Discovery, “are very focused on persuading everybody on the merits of the case, the benefits of vaccination and the risks attached to both the individual and institution and fellow workers of not being vaccinated. If those people cannot be persuaded, then I have no doubt that the likes of Discovery will take appropriate action through due process. All of the companies we are associated with are behaving very responsibly about going down that particular route.” Busa CEO Cas Coovadia hopes there will be minimal job losses, saying that often the effect of companies such as Discovery announcing mandatory vaccine policies is a “rush to get vaccinated”.
Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Nick Wilson at BL Premium (subscriber access only)
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