All Woolworths staff and most Coles employees need to be vaccinated as Aldi flags similar jab policy

About 170,000 Woolworths staff and most Coles employees will need to be fully vaccinated, as Aldi flags a similar jab policy.

Retail giants Woolworths and Coles are moving to a full vaccination policy, as Aldi flags it is likely to follow suit. Picture: Nikki Short

Australia’s supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles will make the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory for staff whether they are on the check-outs, in office jobs or distribution centres, as German budget retailer Aldi flags it is likely to do the same.

Woolworths’ 170,000 workers and tens of thousands of Coles employees across Victoria, NSW and the ACT will face a mandatory vaccine policy.

Woolworths, one of Australia’s largest private sector employers and the biggest supermarket chain, said its full vaccination requirement in NSW, ACT, Victoria, NT, and WA will be January 31 and the end of March in the other states, unless public health orders come into effect sooner.

The move represents one of the nation’s biggest single employers to move to a full vaccination policy across its workforce.

The retail giant has already been vaccinating workers on site for some time and so far, more than 12,000 Woolworths team members have received vaccination doses in these clinics.

Woolworths said it would “engage” with staff and others who visited its sites about the specifics of the plan. This would include allowances for legitimate medical and religious exemptions.

Staunch rival Coles has unveiled a similar vaccine policy for its own workers, covering check-out staff to backroom and distribution employees that will make the vaccine mandatory in Victoria, NSW and the ACT.

Coles workers must have their second Covid-19 vaccine by November 26 in Victoria and by December 17 in NSW and ACT. Existing state government health orders require Coles team members in the Northern Territory and Coles supermarket team members in Western Australia to be vaccinated in order to work.

Coles employs about 120,000 workers across Australia. In each state where Coles team members are required to vaccinate as a condition of work, either as a result of government health orders or as part of Coles’ updated Covid safety measures, Coles intends to maintain this requirement as an ongoing policy.

Woolworths, which operates the largest network of supermarkets across the country as well as general merchandise chain Big W, said the policy was intended to strengthen its workplace health and safety settings as the nation moves to the next phase of the pandemic and various states and territories begin removing Covid-19 restrictions.

While some companies have decided at this stage to make the vaccine mandatory for only customer-facing staff, Woolworths has decided it will apply a group-wide policy and cover all Australian team members.

About a third of Woolworths’ Australian workforce is already subject to state issued health orders, which require either full or partial vaccination in order to work.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci said with 170,000 staff across stores, distribution centres and offices the company had a clear obligation to provide the safest possible workplace and ensure its essential role in the food supply business was maintained.

“With each store welcoming an average 20,000 customers a week, a single team member can come into contact with quite literally thousands of people in the course of a normal working week,” he said.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci. Picture: John Feder

“As we enter the next phase of the pandemic and learn to live with Covid-19, we need to strengthen our workplace safety settings and vaccinations are clearly a key part of this.”

Mr Banducci, who revealed last year that his healthcare-worker daughter had tested positive to Covid-19, said the company would engage with team members about the vaccination roadmap.

“Importantly, we have been listening to our team members. With states and territories at different levels of vaccination uptake and availability, we will engage with them further on our road map and implement a sensible and pragmatic time frame for the requirement to come into effect.”

Woolworths said it would also engage with others who regularly visited its workplaces, to understand any practical and individual issues about the vaccination requirement with the full policy expected to be out in November.

Coles boss Steven Cain said providing a safe environment for team members and customers had been Coles’ top priority throughout the pandemic.

“We have worked hand in hand with health authorities and adopted their recommended safety measures, allowing us to keep our 120,000-plus team members and millions of customers safe,” he said.

“As people are able to circulate more freely in NSW, ACT and Victoria, health authorities have warned that Covid case numbers in these states are expected to increase, which also means a higher risk of positive cases visiting our stores.”

Coles said it would continue to work with health authorities and team members to strongly encourage the uptake of vaccination in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, where vaccination is not currently required as a condition of work.

Woolworths chief medical officer Dr Rob McCartney said the decision came after reviewing medical evidence.

“The medical evidence is clear — vaccination is the best protection against Covid-19 for our team members. A vaccinated team member is far less likely to get Covid, much less likely to pass it on, and also significantly less likely to become seriously ill.

“There is a clear and compelling case for a vaccination requirement to provide the safest possible work environment for all our team members. This is particularly important as restrictions ease and we see higher rates of transmission.”

Following Woolworths and Coles’ jab announcements on Thursday, Aldi said moving to compulsory Covid-19 vaccination for its workforce was “the future” and that it would begin consultations with its staff to achieve this goal.

Aldi’s local boss Tom Daunt said the health advice was clear: vaccinated employees are less likely to contract Covid-19 than unvaccinated employees, and vaccinated employees are also less likely to pass Covid-19 on to colleagues or customers.

“With these factors in mind, our view is that requiring all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in the future is the best measure to ensure the health and safety of our teams and our customers.

“We have commenced consultation with all of our employees to gather their input to our proposed safety plans and the best implementation timeline. Following this consultation and consideration of the feedback provided, we will announce our plans to all employees. We expect this process to take a couple of weeks.”

Coles boss Steven Cain says providing a safe environment for team members and customers has been Coles’ top priority. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Mr Daunt said there will be a small proportion of employees with a valid medical exemption who will be excluded from this policy.

“In these rare instances we will rely on other arrangements to ensure their safety in the workplace.”

Woolworths has been strongly encouraging its team members to get vaccinated since the beginning of the national rollout and offers paid leave for frontline team members to access vaccination bookings and has also established vaccine clinics at its distribution centres and closed Big W stores.

It is the latest large Australian corporate to enforce the Covid-19 vaccine for all staff.

Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank recently became the latest employers to make it mandatory for their staff to be fully vaccinated and followed similar decisions by companies such as airlines Qantas and Virgin and fruit cannery company SPC.

Telco giant Telstra is mandating the vaccine for frontline workers.

Earlier this month, consulting and professional services firm Deloitte Australia said it will require all employees be vaccinated to enter company offices by the start of next year, becoming the first of the big four professional services firms to implement a partial vaccine mandate.

Mining giant BHP has made Covid-19 vaccines compulsory at all its sites by January.