Qantas’s indication that it is seriously considering requiring its staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19 highlights the next big challenge for Australia’s employers tackling the pandemic.
Can employers make vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory for staff? Or, to put it another way, given the ease with which one worker with Covid can seriously disrupt a business and spread a potentially lethal illness to other staff and customers, can employers whose staff are dealing with the public afford not to require their staff to be vaccinated when vaccines are widely available?
Qantas boss Alan Joyce has put the issue on the table with his staff, confirming this week that the airline – which has been hit hard by the pandemic and forced to lay off thousands of staff – believes there are good reasons why vaccines should be mandatory for its workers, and surveying them to see what they think.
“We’ve seen that just one Covid-positive employee can inadvertently shut down a freight facility or passenger terminal which can have a big impact on the broader community and economy,” the airline said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Vaccines are proven to be one of the strongest layers of protection against the potentially serious impact of the virus.
“While all the data shows that the risk of Covid transmission on-board aircraft remains low, and there are many safeguards at airports, nothing reduces the risk to health like the vaccines approved for use in Australia.
“That’s critical for our frontline teams who come into contact with thousands of people each day. We understand there are a lot of complicating factors for our people, including access to the vaccine and those who don’t want the vaccine or who still have unanswered questions about it.
“But we need to find a path through these challenges if aviation is to return to normal.”
Qantas’s survey of its staff, whose livelihoods have been endangered by the pandemic, will be interesting.
The ground in Australia has shifted significantly in recent months as the pandemic has escalated in the country’s largest state and broken out again to varying degrees in other states.
Having started the year with the soothing assurances from the Prime Minister that Australia was doing so much better than other countries in handling the pandemic, and that vaccination was “not a race”, the NSW government is now scrambling to get as many of its citizens vaccinated as possible, including year 12 students.
While some people are concerned about vaccinations, which is understandable given the mixed messages from political and health authorities, the rapidly shifting ground in the debate could see – say a year down the track – an employee suing their employer for not providing a safe workplace if an unvaccinated fellow staffer infected them with Covid.
These are difficult times raising sensitive issues for employers and staff, but it is also clear that business cannot sit back and wait for politicians to lead the way in handling Covid.
It was the attitude of political complacency and a persistent lack of a comprehensive national approach to handling the pandemic which has led to the serious problems we now face.
Business needs to play a leading role in the debate, pressing governments for world-class policies in dealing with the pandemic.
Qantas’s preferred option – which is a sensible one – is to call on governments to mandate vaccination for anyone involved in the aviation industry.
As the fallout from the Sydney limousine driver who caught the virus from infected passengers he was transporting from an international flight showed all too painfully, the Covid prevention system is only as good at its weakest link.
Following that incident, the NSW government has made it mandatory for all workers involved in supporting international aviation to be vaccinated.
Governments in South Australia and New Zealand have taken a similar approach.
But as Joyce says, what is needed is a national approach to require all people involved in the airline business to be vaccinated to prevent companies having to deal with “a patchwork of rules between the borders that our people cross multiple times a day”.
The Qantas move follows an announcement in May by Alliance Airlines, which specialises in flights to and from mining sites, that it was making it mandatory for its staff to have both flu and Covid vaccinations.
The issues will vary from company to company.
A business where staffers can largely work from home has a much lower level of urgency.
“The legal ground in Australia for employers to insist that employees be vaccinated remains murky,” employment law expert from the University of Sydney Business School, Dr Giuseppe Carabetta, wrote recently in The Conversation.
As he also warned, “employees who are dismissed for refusing to vaccinate might also argue it amounts to discrimination on prohibited grounds, such as disability or pregnancy, where Covid-19 vaccination may be unsafe or pose medical risks.”
But there may be industries such as aged care, for example, where a tougher line can be takenby employers on vaccinations.
Then there is the sensitive issue of whether employers can provide access to Covid vaccinations at workplaces as many already do with the flu vaccinations.
What is their legal status? Can the federal government give them indemnity?
Business leaders are concerned to do as much as they can to encourage as many in the community to get vaccinated.
There are no easy answers, but as Qantas has indicated, the country needs to find a way through the current challenges if it is to have a hope of returning to anything like normality.
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