SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

As more em­ploy­ers in­tro­duce strict pro­to­cols to treat with un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff mem­bers, three ma­jor trade unions have writ­ten to the coun­try’s busi­ness heads, re­quest­ing a meet­ing with­in one week to dis­cuss vac­ci­na­tion in work­places.

The let­ter, dat­ed Ju­ly 28, was sent to the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (FI­TUN) is­sued a copy of the let­ter and an­nounced they had joined forces to ad­dress the is­sue on be­half of em­ploy­ees.

The let­ter stat­ed, “We write on be­half of the three trade union fed­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­quest an ur­gent meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the is­sue of vac­ci­na­tion in the work­place.”

The let­ter said the is­sue is one of ex­treme im­por­tance and should be ad­dressed through mean­ing­ful di­a­logue.

“As re­spon­si­ble na­tion­al bod­ies, we un­der­stand the chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing in­di­vid­ual, in­sti­tu­tion­al and na­tion­al in­ter­ests.”

The unions have sug­gest­ed that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co­op­er­a­tive Stud­ies fa­cil­i­tate the meet­ing, which they have asked for with­in a week of the let­ter’s re­ceipt. 

The let­ter was signed by NATUC’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette, FI­TUN pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my and JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick.

The lat­est em­ploy­er to man­date un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff to take fort­night­ly PCR tests to prove they are COVID-free was book­store own­er Nigel R Khan.

In an in­ter­nal memo which was leaked on so­cial me­dia, Khan told his staff they were at a height­ened risk to the virus and its vari­ants be­cause of their en­gage­ment with the pub­lic.

“Ef­fec­tive 2 Au­gust 2021, all mem­bers of staff both en­gag­ing with the pub­lic and back line staff are du­ly en­cour­aged to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus or sub­ject them­selves to a Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion (PCR) test every four­teen (14) days, at per­son­al cost.”

The first test­ing pe­ri­od will be 14 days af­ter Au­gust 2, the memo con­firmed.

Staff are al­so man­dat­ed to wear face masks and face shields, prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing and bring their own hand sani­tis­er to keep on them at all times.

There was heavy crit­i­cism for the reg­u­la­tions on so­cial me­dia and the leaked memo came on the heels of an­oth­er leaked memo sent by busi­ness­man and restau­ra­teur Pe­ter George to his staff on Thurs­day.

George out­lined the re­quire­ments for un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff to con­tin­ue their du­ties at his six restau­rants, stat­ing all un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff will be re­quired to pay for and present a neg­a­tive PCR test every two weeks.

How­ev­er, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that em­ploy­ers who man­date their em­ploy­ees to ei­ther get vac­ci­nat­ed or take fort­night­ly PCR tests at their own cost are jus­ti­fied in do­ing so.

An­toine said while em­ploy­ees do have a right to choose whether to get vac­ci­nat­ed, em­ploy­ers al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure they cre­ate a safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for all their staff.

“The thing is, there is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in law for em­ploy­ers to do that - it may well be chal­lenged but there are rea­son­able grounds for them to do so,” An­toine said.

She said in sim­i­lar cas­es ad­ju­di­cat­ed in oth­er parts of the world, work­ers have found them­selves on the los­ing end.

She said if the lo­cal mat­ters were to go to court, she be­lieves the em­ploy­ers’ ac­tions would be found rea­son­able.

An­toine al­so said she sup­ports vac­ci­na­tions and had hoped the coun­try would not have got­ten to a point where reg­u­la­tions such as these have to be en­forced.

“I had hoped that ed­u­ca­tion and per­sua­sion would work, but I ac­tu­al­ly think there is a good chance that if chal­lenged, they (em­ploy­ers) could win this in court - this is what I’ve been say­ing from day one.”

She cit­ed cas­es brought against the State chal­leng­ing the bor­der clo­sure from March 2020 to Ju­ly 16, 2021, which were all won by the State.

She sent out a mes­sage to the em­ploy­ees who may be af­fect­ed by these new poli­cies, say­ing, “You made your choice not to take a vac­cine, there are con­se­quences - the em­ploy­er makes his or her choice as to who they want and how they want to pro­tect oth­ers and you too, then I don’t think it’s un­rea­son­able to say that if you re­al­ly don’t want to take it (the vac­cine), then you must show you are COVID-free.”

Khan’s memo al­so in­cludes a clause ad­dress­ing pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es among staff, stat­ing, “In the event you con­tract COVID-19, your sick leave does not ex­tend to cov­er the virus. This as such shall be treat­ed as NO PAY ab­sence on your records.”

This pol­i­cy, how­ev­er, could spell trou­ble for the book­seller, An­toine said.

“That one I think is prob­a­bly not go­ing to hold wa­ter in a court, I think that one if you are sick, you are sick, we talk about sick leave once you have a med­ical. I don’t think an em­ploy­er could jus­ti­fy if some­one is ac­tu­al­ly ill with COVID, just as they can’t jus­ti­fy any oth­er ill­ness - there is no dif­fer­ence with the ill­ness,” she said.

An­toine said there may be is­sues aris­ing out of manda­to­ry quar­an­tine for the virus that falls with­in a ‘grey’ area of the law. She said T&T’s labour laws al­so need to be up­dat­ed to treat with is­sues ar­riv­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.