Drawing a line on Jab, Work

Jean Helan Hatch, Nabua, Suva

Employers can draw the line by requesting vaccination for any person in close contact with other persons on the job, easily. It is now too late for squabbling about individual rights in a pandemic that’s in escalation.

I agree these rights are fundamentally important, but as Jon Apted points out, employers have to protect their workplaces for all employees.

Employees must protect their jobs and rights. Employers must make the weighted decision during a pandemic to act to save lives, rather than risk contributing to a super spreader.

No vaccination, no job is a fine choice. And no incrimination for being responsible employers in a pandemic situation either.

It is not ordinary times; there is no comparison to a healthy, normal employable society. Fiji is not in that anymore, right now. Not at all.

Human rights and COVID-safe protocols can therefore be married effectively, and must be governed by firm ethical choices of employers and employees to both take responsibility in a pandemic. And both parties must embrace changes to survive.

Employees still have their choice whether to vaccinate or not, of course: they are freely given this human right under the 2013 constitution.

But our situation and new vaccine contracts will be employed, so it will mean the necessity of vaccinating or become redundant in a job. So long as this is justifiable by employers, which of course it will be in a pandemic spike.

So let’s keep it simple Fiji.

If science and medical expertise and our Government is stipulating we need numbers vaccinated for herd immunity asap, to protect ourselves, then as citizens we need to listen. If employees don’t want to vaccinate, sure, that is one’s free choice, by all means, be free to choose.

But, these ones also can’t expect to impose their free choice on other employees, or expect employers to legally bear the brunt of their personal free choice - when it could contribute to jeopardising or compromising the rest of an entire workforce, or other employees jobs, health, and wellbeing.

Employees must choose with a pandemic in clear view. That is our Fiji reality for some time to come.

No more quibbling.