BL Premium reports that Cosatu plans to challenge mandatory Covid-19 vaccination at a “national, policy level” and says it wants companies that have dismissed workers for non-compliance with such policies to reinstate them.

Cosatu’s parliamentary co-ordinator, Matthew Parks, indicated on Tuesday that, while the labour federation supported the vaccination mandate against Covid-19, it could not support the dismissal of any workers in a country of 60-million where only about 14-million people were employed. Parks said there was a “diversity of views” among the union affiliates of Cosatu, many of whom regarded mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policies as “polarising”. He added that while it was up to the individual affiliates to take the matter up “on the ground” with various companies or sectors that have instituted mandatory Covid-19 vaccination in the workplace, Cosatu would be lobbying for reinstatement of workers dismissed for non-compliance with mandatory vaccination at a “national, policy level”. In a statement later on Tuesday, Cosatu outlined its position on vaccine mandates in what might be the first major salvo in a broader worker-led war against mandatory workplace vaccination. It said: “Cosatu supports the vaccine rollout programme and ... we believe that education and addressing the fears of workers and society is the best way to persuade people to vaccinate. Threatening and dismissing workers only serves to poison what has already become a very charged and divided debate across the world.” A recent CCMA ruling suggested that mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policies in the workplace might be unlawful.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Garth Theunissen & Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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