Three major public sector unions are challenging federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates for government employees, saying that putting unvaccinated workers on unpaid leave when they could have worked from home is “unjust.”
The Liberal government’s mandatory vaccination policies, introduced on Oct. 6, 2021, required all federal employees to be fully vaccinated with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, including those working remotely. Workers who were unwilling to be fully vaccinated or refuse to disclose their vaccination status would be put on leave without pay.
In late March, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) filed a policy grievance on behalf of public servants who were placed on leave without pay due to these vaccine policies, which “constituted an abuse of management authority” since the remote workers are unlikely to return to physical workplaces in the long term, therefore posing “no reasonable threat to the health and safety of their workplaces,” the group said in a news release….