Big banks take lead on vaccination
■ Other employers are likely to follow Big Five in mandating vaccines for staff, experts say,
Canada’s biggest financial institutions, which each employ tens of thousands of people across the country, are rolling out mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies, and experts say other employers, large and small, are likely to follow the banks’ lead in the coming days and weeks.
Toronto-Dominion Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal all circulated internal memos Friday announcing they will require employees to be fully vaccinated within about two months. Bank of Nova Scotia also said it was “moving in the direction of making vaccinations mandatory for all Canadian-based employees, and contractors, later in the fall.”
Those moves came after Royal Bank of Canada announced its own mandatory vaccination policy internally Thursday evening, saying it would require employees to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 31 to work “on our premises.”
The banks’ stated policies so far all differ somewhat in the details, with variations in specifics around how employees will share their vaccination status with their employer, whether the policies will apply only to those working on site, and how the banks will deal with workers who remain unvaccinated by the end of October or early November. TD, for instance, said it will impose new requirements, including mandatory rapid testing, for those who have still not been vaccinated or disclosed their status.
But all of the financial players cited public-health concerns and the need to protect healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed — an increasing worry amid the spread of the more contagious Delta variant, despite a large majority of the eligible Canadian population having been vaccinated.
The announcements came after Ottawa said last week that it “expects” employers in federally regulated sectors — such as banks, insurance companies and telecommunications and broadcast companies — to require vaccination policies for their employees.
Michael Wright, co-founder of Toronto employment law firm Wright Henry LLP, said Friday he believes other publicly traded companies as well as smaller firms will look carefully at what the banks are doing as well as recent government announcements, such as Ottawa’s move to require vaccinations among public servants.
“I expect to see more and more of this over the next weeks,” Wright said. “When you consider the number of employees who are affected when all of the banks make this decision, it’s a significant part of the Canadian workforce. I think that ends up impacting and influencing what other employers will consider doing, no question about it.”
Wright noted that the banks are largely non-unionized and said the considerations are slightly different for employers with more unionized workers.
However, he said he believes unions will largely support mandatory vaccination policies, as long as they come with exceptions for those with valid medical reasons to decline. Wright said unions will also want reassurances that employers are not treating mandatory vaccination as a replacement for other protective measures, including the flexibility to work from home.
“Most employees and certainly most unions will view mandatory vaccines as welcome but not the sole answer to the issue. That’s a critical piece,” he said.
“I think these companies are paving the way for apprehensive smaller companies,” said Hena Singh, a partner at Singh Lamarche LLP, adding that it’s safe to assume that the banks received legal opinions on the policies.
She expects that there will eventually be a legal challenge to some aspect of an employer’s policy on mandatory vaccines, and she said a court ruling or arbitration decision would be helpful in confirming that the approach is legal. Until then, however, other companies can see what sort of pushback and public response the banks receive.
“This is new territory,” Singh said. “A lot of smaller companies are sitting with binoculars at the window saying, ‘How’s it going over there?’ And then they’ll follow suit.”
Canada’s major telecoms, Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw, have not yet commented on whether or not they will implement similar policies. National Bank of Canada also said Friday it had no news on a mandatory vaccine policy.
Sun Life Financial Inc. also announced its own mandatory vaccination policy earlier this week.