Let staff have Covid-19 vaccine jab at work, says Coles

Coles would be prepared to ­vaccinate its 125,000 staff against Covid-19 on site if it were given the go ahead.

Coles chief operations officer Matt Swindells on Thursday. Picture: Aaron Francis

Coles would be prepared to ­vaccinate its 125,000 staff against Covid-19 on site if it were given the go ahead.

Chief operations officer Matt Swindells said the company had this week begun vaccinating staff at distribution centres in hard-hit areas of western Sydney, and an allocation of vaccines had been set aside at Olympic Park for supermarket workers under a deal with the federal government.

Coles has more than 4000 workers at supermarkets and distribution centres in the western Sydney local government areas deemed by the NSW government to be “hot spots”.

Mr Swindells said Coles was providing leave for its workers across the country to get vaccinated if they chose to do so and was encouraging them to go ahead.

“What we are saying to our teams is that we would advise and recommend and endorse vaccinations,” he said.

But he said the company was not making it mandatory.

“It comes down to an individual choice,” he said.

“What we want is to provide the opportunity (for people to get vaccinated) as much as we can.”

Mr Swindells said the company would welcome the opportunity to vaccinate staff at their workplace, including in supermarkets, in the same way as it offered staff flu shots, if it was allowed and there were enough vaccines.

“We have an existing flu ­vaccination program that is accessible for team members,” he said. “I had my flu shot in the local Coles store in Brighton (Melbourne) in May.

“It is a well-run process. It is a familiar process which the team understands.

“The more we can positively explain, with facts, how that ­process works, and the easier we make it for people to make the right decisions and get vac­cinated, the better the uptake will be.”

Mr Swindells, who got vaccinated with AstraZeneca at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, Melbourne, said getting a jab had made him “feel more at ease in interactions with family and colleagues”.

Coles chief executive Steven Cain has also been vaccinated.

Mr Swindells said Coles was not monitoring the number of staff who were getting vaccinated as it was their personal decision. But he said getting more people vaccinated was the way through the pandemic.

“If you look globally, both for business and the communities, it is centred around vaccination,” he said.

He said encouraging vaccinations would become “a growing part of the conversation” in terms of “how we can help” deal with the pandemic.

His comments come as employer groups are talking with the federal government about moving to vaccinating staff on site as a way of accelerating the rollout once more doses are available.

But at the moment they are constrained by a lack of vaccines, with some employers also concerned they may need legal protection in case staff suffer side-effects.

Mr Swindells said there was a “sense of community” in the logistics and distribution industries in western Sydney as they worked their way through the ­issues surrounding the pandemic.