Business leaders unveil plan to vaccinate employees against Covid-19

Australia’s biggest businesses are turning to their seasonal flu vaccine providers to administer Covid-19 jabs to their employees.

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott said the bank was offering its employees time off to be inoculated as well as creating vaccination hubs across its ­buildings.

Australia’s biggest businesses are turning to their seasonal flu vaccine providers to administer Covid-19 jabs to their employees as Sydney faces at least another two weeks of lockdown and Melbourne teeters on a fifth shutdown.

In an effort to avoid more economically and emotionally destructive lockdowns, the major banks and the nation’s largest retailer, Wesfarmers, are offering their ­facilities to create vaccination hubs and accelerate the Covid-19 immunisation program.

It comes as Victoria – which faced 140 days of lockdowns last year – is sweating on another shutdown after the Sydney outbreak crossed the border, infecting six Victorians on Wednesday.

Exposure sites include the Carlton-Geelong AFL match at the MCG on Saturday night and Highpoint shopping centre in Melbourne’s northwest, fuelling fears more Victorians could become infected.

Meanwhile Sydney could remain in lockdown until the end of the month, costing businesses such as Priceline owner Australian Pharmaceutical Industries $1m a week.

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott – who revealed on Wednesday that he had received his first Covid-19 jab – said the bank was offering its employees time off to be inoculated as well as creating vaccination hubs across its ­buildings.

But Mr Elliott said he was not calling for Covid-19 vaccines to become compulsory. “We’re not here to mandate vaccinations, but we’re in the business of facilitating and saying, ‘Hey if you want to, if you’re an employee, and you want to get one, we need to make it easy for you’,” Mr Elliott said.

“That might be giving you time – time off to go and do it on your own, but also it means actually providing on-site facilities. We’ve been working with a provider, working through all the sort of channels you need to go through to say how can we do that. I think we do have a very, very big responsibility to be able to do that.”

Westpac chief executive Peter King agreed, saying: “We continue to work with the government on how we can help to distribute the vaccine through a corporate workplace vaccination program.”

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan said: “Getting more Australians vaccinated is the key to unlocking greater freedoms and a more normal life for all of us.”

Josh Frydenberg had called on big businesses to consider ways to accelerate the government’s Covid immunisation program, following growing resistance among those aged over 50 towards the ­AstraZeneca vaccine after it was linked to rare blood clots.

Mr McEwan said: “We are exploring how we could use our major buildings as hubs so that any of our 31,000 colleagues who still need to be vaccinated can be.

“This could work like our annual flu shot program and we’ve started conversations with our partner on that program about how this could work for Covid-19 vaccinations.

“There is more work to do – the government has asked us to provide an outline of the challenges and opportunities of a corporate program. In the meantime, I encourage anyone who is eligible and wants to get the vaccine to go and do so.”

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan. Picture: Aaron Francis

Mr McEwan has also appealed to NAB staff to use their paid pandemic leave or sick leave to get vaccinated.

Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird forecast the Sydney lockdown to slice 1.4 per cent off GDP in the third quarter, if it goes longer than seven weeks, and the national economy to contract as much as 0.7 per cent over the September quarter.

“The current lockdown of Greater Sydney and the rate of community transmission of Covid-19 poses a significant risk to the economy over (the second half of) 2021,” Mr Aird said.

Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott, who has called for Australians to be immunised since the beginning of the year, said while the company was considering turning its sites into vaccination hubs, it did not mean people would be able to line up for a jab at Bunnings as well as a sausage.

“Bunnings is not in the business of giving vaccinations,” Mr Scott said.

“What I’m saying is that there’s a role for companies that already deal with licensed third-party providers who administer vaccines to potentially explore providing the Covid vaccine. But all this needs to be done in a way that aligns with the government policy and leveraging the expertise of specialist providers.”

The Transport Workers Union called for more vaccine centres and more testing hubs to be “urgently set up” at airports, truck stops, bus depots and taxi stops – “where delivery riders congregate for work”.

“It is not acceptable that we have truck drivers, bus drivers, aviation workers, ride-share drivers, delivery drivers and others sitting waiting in queues at centres overnight and then having to go to work today,” TWU NSW branch secretary Richard Olsen said.

“Many truck drivers and bus drivers out in the regions and doing interstate work don’t even know where they can get tested and if they can do so safely without breaching fatigue rules.

“We are calling for testing hubs in or close to places of work and better consultation when strict rules like this come into place.

“The NSW government must ensure that essential workers are not hampered going about their work and that there is as little stress on them as possible.

“It’s hard enough being out on the frontline during a frightening outbreak of a deadly viral strain while most people can stay at home without having additional burdens placed on them.”

Originally published as Business leaders unveil plan to vaccinate employees against Covid-19