Jab for job threat
Apted: Employers can make vaccination mandatory for certain work
DEBATE on an individual’s right to choose whether or not to get the jab has put the spotlight on the subject of vaccination and the law.
As a result, The Fiji Times approached well-known Suva employment lawyer Jon Apted to shed some light on the issue.
He said under the law no one could be forced to undergo vaccination without a court order.
However, employers have their own obligations, including to protect the health of their employees and others who come to their places of business, he added. Mr Apted said there would be situations where vaccination was a genuine occupational qualification and became part of a job description.
In such a case, he said, an employer may be able to make an unvaccinated person redundant. But at the same time, he said, employers must always try to accommodate an employee’s wish not to be vaccinated, as long as the worker does not pose any risk to anyone in the work premises.
WELL-KNOWN Suva employment lawyer Jon Apted says under the 2013 Constitution, no person can be vaccinated against their will without a court order.
However, he says, in the workplace, an individual’s right not to be vaccinated has to be balanced against the rights of others.
“The Constitution gives everyone other rights such as the right to life, the right to health, as well as to fair labour practices,” Mr Apted said in response to queries from this newspaper.
“Employers have legal obligations to protect those rights as well, and to provide their workers and others who come to the workplace with a safe place of work and a safe system of work.”
Mr Apted said that in his view, vaccination could not be simply “made compulsory across the country”. Nor could “just make it a blanket rule for all their workers”.
“Employers can make it mandatory that certain kinds of work that involve a risk of transmitting COVID to others can only be done by vaccinated workers,” he said.
“However, they can only do this if it is a reasonable requirement for that work, based on proper information about the risks with and without vaccination and if there is no other alternative way of protecting the others.”
Mr Apted said that employers “need to be able to justify the requirement as a ‘genuine occupational qualification’ or have some other ‘genuine justification’ for the requirement”.
For example, he said, those employed in care-giving in aged-care facilities, frontline workers for airlines and those who worked at the border and hospitals might be required to get vaccinated.