For­mer Chair­man of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion (EOC), Lynette See­baran-Suite, said a vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy at the na­tion­al lev­el or the work­place could be de­vel­oped for all em­ploy­ees both cur­rent and new, to man­date vac­ci­na­tion. How­ev­er, she warned, a man­date was not a law and could not force em­ploy­ees to take a vac­cine, but on­ly use “strong per­sua­sive meth­ods,” to en­cour­age them.

Her com­ments came fol­low­ing claims by some work­ers that they were be­ing forced by em­ploy­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed, with the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion and even At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi weigh­ing on the is­sue.

See­ber­an-Suite said if any such pol­i­cy were to be in­tro­duced, the man­date should com­prise three key el­e­ments—ed­u­ca­tion, in­cen­tives, and al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion where gen­uine­ly nec­es­sary.

“It means that you’re go­ing to be try­ing your best to en­cour­age work­ers to take the vac­cine. You can in­cen­tivise them, you can en­gage in pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, you can en­gage in per­sua­sive tech­niques, but you can­not phys­i­cal­ly force them to take a vac­cine or you can­not fire them if they do not take the vac­cine, “she stressed.

This es­pe­cial­ly ap­plied to em­ploy­ees al­ready in the work­place whose terms and con­di­tions did not in­clude such a pol­i­cy.

See­baran-Suite spec­i­fied what should re­quire al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion of an un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ee.

“You may want to make ex­cep­tions for per­sons with gen­uine re­li­gious rea­sons who can­not take vac­cines or peo­ple who have been ad­vised by their doc­tors not to take the vac­cine.”

Such em­ploy­ees she said may have to con­tin­ue work­ing from home or be placed in spe­cif­ic ar­eas in the work­place that would not put oth­er work­ers at risk.

She said, how­ev­er, if these ac­com­mo­da­tions were at a cost to the em­ploy­er, the ba­sis for not be­ing able to take the vac­cine should not be a re­sult of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

“The vac­cines have mi­cro-chips in them, it can’t be that non­sense,” she quipped.

More im­por­tant­ly, she said, em­ploy­ees in the at-risk groups should make it a pri­or­i­ty.

“Peo­ple who have di­a­betes and peo­ple who have non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, they are en­cour­aged to take the vac­cines, be­cause when they do get COVID, they are at greater risk of falling ill.”

Cur­rent­ly, no law in Trinidad and To­ba­go en­forces vac­ci­na­tion in the work­place and See­baran-Suite said it may not be­come one.

“The on­ly way that per­sons can be forced to take a vac­cine is if a law is passed in Par­lia­ment to that ef­fect and that is very, very un­like­ly.”

See­baran-Suite said em­ploy­ers might want to en­gage in ed­u­ca­tion dri­ves and cam­paigns at their work­places to en­cour­age all em­ploy­ees.

DO­MA: What about the fam­i­ly?

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, Gre­go­ry Aboud, said the is­sue of work­place vac­ci­na­tion had placed em­ploy­ers and even the Gov­ern­ment in a per­plex­ing space.

“On one hand we are be­ing lec­tured about peo­ple’s rights and what we can and can­not force them to do vis-à-vis, the vac­cine, but on the oth­er hand, there is no dis­cus­sion tak­ing place about work­place safe­ty,” Aboud queried.

While Aboud un­der­stood peo­ple do have rights, he said it was rather dis­ap­point­ing, that in the face of such a dilem­ma em­ploy­ers were still ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide a safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“Many of those who are con­cerned about peo­ple’s rights should al­so be con­scious of the sci­ence which sug­gests, that un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple are more li­able to take the dis­ease home to their own fam­i­lies.”

He said for­get about what they (un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees) would and would not do in the work­place, as the greater con­cern was the safe­ty of the fam­i­ly unit and there­fore the fam­i­ly unit it­self, should be try­ing to en­cour­age all mem­bers to take the vac­cine.

Stig­ma ver­sus safe­ty

Speak­ing on the is­sue, of stig­ma­ti­sa­tion in the work­place for un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees, the pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT), Ra­jiv Diptee, said it was not a mat­ter of stig­ma, but safe­ty.

“I think it’s very ir­re­spon­si­ble for peo­ple who work in front­line sit­u­a­tions to not take the vac­cine. You are in a high den­si­ty, high move­ment, and high in­ter­ac­tive work­place,” he said.

Diptee who kicked off his as­so­ci­a­tion’s vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve for mem­bers on June 8, be­lieves it was in­evitable that vac­ci­na­tion in the work­place, would be­come a re­quire­ment.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed the Min­is­ter of Labour, Stephen Mc Clashie for com­ment. In re­sponse to our ques­tion about a na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy, Mc Clashie sent this re­sponse via What­sApp.

“An in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pol­i­cy on work­place vac­ci­na­tion has been iden­ti­fied as crit­i­cal and the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, (IRAC), a tri­par­tite plus com­mit­tee, es­tab­lished un­der

Sec­tion 80 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, Chap­ter 88:01, com­menced work to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of a pa­per on the con­sid­er­a­tions sur­round­ing work­place vac­ci­na­tion and will

sub­mit it short­ly.”

He said in de­vel­op­ing such a doc­u­ment it must be recog­nised that like the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, such a pol­i­cy was al­so nov­el and re­quired as­sess­ment of a large vol­ume of new in­for­ma­tion not just from the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions set­ting, but al­so pub­lic health, hu­man rights, and oth­er le­gal con­sid­er­a­tions.

Mc Clashie said the is­sue of stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion, would al­so be ad­dressed in the IRAC’s doc­u­ment.