There is a not unreasonable assumption in the conduct of business that there is an advantage in “taking in front before in front takes you.”
As the government has loosened restrictions on at least a few more parts of the economy this week, it has brought to the surface the much-publicised ongoing struggles between those workers willing to be vaccinated and those, holding on to their constitutional rights to decide on intrusions into their physical bodies, who are not willing to. It is therefore not unreasonable to predict some industrial-relations conflict on who gets what job and under what conditions, when full occupancy resumes.
It is happening all over the hemisphere and even if you believe God is a Trini, we are not exempt.
Some of the new issues for which there are no legal or judicial precedents to guide this aspect of “the new normal,” because they are issues that have not arisen before, are the following:
How does the employer set a value on the services of permanent employees who only agree to work if a majority of their co-workers are vaccinated?
How does an employer setting up a business for the first time set a value on new jobs in relation to those who will face public contacts who may or may not be vaccinated, when demanding evidence of vaccination status from customers has no legal authority, at least not in Trinidad and Tobago?
Since vaccination in itself does not prevent the spread of any virus, current or future mutations, how does an employer set a value on employees, already employed, who refuse, as is happening in Barbados, to work alongside people who are vaccinated, as there is a new theory spreading across the Caribbean that the vaccines themselves can spread a viral contamination that destroys natural antibodies?
If an employee, in one of the above instances, refuses to return to work if required to work next to co-workers who are vaccinated (or not vaccinated, as the case may be), can the refusal to work, or to return to work, unless their conditions be met, be regarded as a self-termination of their employment contract if returning to work is required?
If five or more employees band together demanding either that they work in an environment where no one or everyone is vaccinated, can this be regarded as illegal industrial action? Can it be regarded as, to quote the Industrial Relations Act Section 2 (1): “a failure to commence work or a refusal to continue working by reason of the fact that unusual circumstances have arisen that are hazardous or injurious to health or life” – in which case it would not be regarded as illegal industrial action? Are the circumstances really that unusual?
If such action by a number of employees, acting in concert, is therefore defined as: "strike action taken to compel the employer to agree to terms of employment or to comply with any demands by those workers,” to quote the Industrial Relations Act again, will Section 62 (2) of the act, which says: “Nothing in subsection (1) (the part
