Statement on COVID-safe workplaces

While exceptions will need to be made for those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons or other legally recognised exemptions, NTEU believes all people who set foot on a campus should be vaccinated.

This includes students, the workforce and others. Our collective health and safety is best achieved by a collective response.

NTEU believes the requirements for vaccination should be determined by public health orders, not individual employers. For universities to reopen safely, we need a national plan.

NTEU calls on the Federal Education Minister to immediately convene a group representing unions, university management, peak student organisations and the State, Territory and Federal governments supported by expert input from medical and public health officials. This group should be tasked with expeditiously drafting a nationally consistent reopening plan for the nation’s universities.

NTEU supports expert health advice about the vital importance of vaccination as the most effective pathway to overcome the pandemic. Being vaccinated is the best way for us to save lives and protect our society and economy.

We encourage all staff in higher education to follow the health advice, speak to a doctor, and get vaccinated as soon as possible, where possible.

Individual employers should:

• Encourage staff and students to receive vaccination as there is clear evidence that persuasion is more effective than coercion. Vaccine hesitant staff should be supported and encouraged to persuade them of the benefits of vaccination.

• Provide a safe workplace. They should enthusiastically embrace public health advice and work proactively in consultation with staff and their unions to minimise the threat of COVID. At a minimum this requires an audit of all workplaces for appropriate ventilation, capacity for social distancing, adherence to mask and sanitation requirements, and review use of open plan offices and hot-desk workstations.

• Encourage and facilitate working from home for those employees with medical conditions that render them unable to be vaccinated and/or more susceptible to COVID, and those employees who have caring responsibilities or co-habit with those who are similarly at risk.

• Take all reasonable measures to ensure that the employment rights of those who are unable to be vaccinated are protected. Any NTEU member who believes their employment rights are jeopardised by the requirement to be vaccinated should contact the Union for advice.

• Provide paid vaccination, testing, isolation and quarantine leave for all staff, particularly casuals, who may not have paid sick leave.

The NTEU will not support any employer actions that do not involve genuine consultation with the Union.

On present settings we are likely to have ad hoc arrangements determined by local university managers. A situation where some universities introduce a vaccination mandate and others don’t is inequitable, unwise, unsafe, and confusing.

NTEU will also pursue a consensus statement with Universities Australia that explicitly recognises the proven link between public health and economic security. ◆