Business Insider SA reports that the CCMA has ruled that under the right circumstances someone who refused a Covid-19 vaccine could be fairly retrenched without being paid any severance.

Baroque Medical, a company that sells specialised medical products, implemented a policy of mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations. An employee refused to comply, citing "medical, personal and religious reasons". She did not substantiate the medical objection, and the CCMA rejected her personal and religious reasons. The CCMA accepted the company's basis for demanding vaccinations from staff, saying it dealt with hospitals and medical practitioners. The company’s risk assessment made it apparent that a mandatory vaccination policy had to be imposed. The employee who refused to be vaccinated did not challenge that policy, or the procedural fairness of her dismissal. But the process had not been substantially fair, she said, because alternatives to retrenchment had not been properly considered. An employee did not have to be offered a different post altogether before being retrenched, the CCMA said, but could by long-standing precedent be offered the same position under different conditions. In this case, the company offered the employee her job with a change of conditions, namely that she had to be vaccinated. She refused, without good reason. And that meant she fell under retrenchment rules for those who unreasonably refused alternative employment – and so were not entitled to severance pay.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard compiled by Phillip de Wet at Business Insider SA

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