The Delta variant has not eased its death grip on this country but there are already ominous signs of community spread of another highly infectious COVID-19 variant, Omicron.
T&T has had many consecutive days of unwelcome news on the pandemic front, with daily fatality figures in double digits and new infections in the high hundreds. Efforts to reverse vaccine resistance have been ineffective—a situation that is not helped by the pro-choice vaccine stance adopted by trade union leaders.
In their haste to oppose Government’s designation of public sector workplaces as safe zones, they have turned deaf ears to the latest warning from the World Health Organization (WHO) about Omicron which is spreading faster than Delta and causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID-19.
This is a dangerous stance for workers’ representatives of workers, particularly because so many of their members are operating—mostly unvaccinated—on the frontlines of the pandemic.
None of them seems to have seriously considered the level of risk for workers who are eagerly latching on to this pro-choice position on the COVID-19 vaccine, ignoring the fact that at this stage in the global health crisis more than 268 million people have been infected and more than 5.2 million are dead across 196 countries and territories.
Their plan to gather outside the Office of the Prime Minister at White Hall tomorrow morning to protest the safe zone policy for the public sector is pushing the country in the wrong direction. That exercise, spearheaded by the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), will encourage more of the misleading anti-vaccine sentiments and undermine efforts by public health officials to eradicate COVID-19 from T&T.
Even as he declared his fully vaccinated status at a news conference yesterday, JTUM President Ancel Roget strongly condemned the move by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his administration to reduce the level of COVID-19 exposure in public sector workplaces.
He deemed them a dictatorship for what he saw as an attempt to make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory and called for persuasion rather than coercion to be used to change peoples’ minds about the vaccination.
Similar views have been expressed by the Joint Protective Services, T&T Registered Nurses Association (TTRNA) and the Public Services Association—all representing workers whose vaccination rates are abysmally low.
This country’s public health efforts have been severely hampered by widespread dissemination of misinformation and disinformation about the vaccine. The unions’ current posturing bolsters that dangerous trend, heightening the risk for the workers whose interests they claim to be protecting.
Lives and livelihoods will continue to be at risk if COVID-19 gets opportunities to mutate and spread. T&T’s unvaccinated workers and their colleagues are at risk of infection and potentially fatal outcomes if they continue down that slippery pro-choice slope.
Not only health and well-being but employment opportunities and job security are at stake.
Fighting for rights and freedom of choice is one thing but sharing the responsibility for maintaining a safe and healthy workplace must also be considered. Trade unions need to carefully consider the latter.