'There are some that are very disenfranchised… now the non-vaccinated are being welcomed back'
The COVID-19 pandemic might have ended more than 15 months ago, but issues surrounding vaccination continue to challenge health-care workers in British Columbia.
Recently, there has been “negative pushback” from co-workers regarding the return of unvaccinated workers to the health-care sector.
“There are some that are very disenfranchised, a bit, by the fact that now the non-vaccinated are being welcomed back," said Troy Zhoner, representative of B.C.'s Hospital Employees' Union, in a report from the Delta-Optimist.
"[There’s] a lot of negative pushback from employees or members that had got the vaccination, they felt, in order to keep their employment.”
B.C. implemented a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health-care workers when the health crisis was still raging. In March 2023, the provincial government put an end to its COVID-19 vaccination policy for government workers that had been in place since November 2021.
Government stresses ‘importance of vaccination’
Even B.C. Premier David Eby acknowledged the frustration some health-care workers may be feeling, according to the Delta-Optimist report.
However, he said that the province will continue to emphasize the “importance of vaccination for health-care workers to keep patients safe.”
In July, the B.C. government announced that all health-care workers in public health-care facilities must report their immunization for COVID-19 and influenza and their immune status for other critical vaccine-preventable diseases.
“We're putting in place the requirement that all health-care workers declare their vaccination status against a series of potential infections, not just COVID,” said Eby in the report.
“The reason for that is if there's an infection of measles, for example… then we're able to pull unvaccinated health workers and ensure that they're not exposing patients to infectious diseases.”
Terminated healthcare workers
Late in July, B.C.'s Hospital Employees' Union’s Facilities Bargaining Association (FBA) signed a Letter of Understanding with the Health Employers Association of BC (HEABC) outlining how the government’s lifting of the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health-care workers will impact members terminated for not being vaccinated.
In the Letter of Understanding, terminated FBA members – who are rehired by their former employer into either their previous position or hired into a comparable vacancy, or are added to the casual registry – will have their seniority recognized, including the time of termination, as if they were on an unpaid leave.
Their continuous service, in place at the time of termination, which is used to calculate severance allowance (Article 43) and vacation entitlements (Article 28) will also be recognized as if they had been on unpaid leave.
Previously, one worker in Ontario found out that going against his former employer’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate did not only hurt his employment; it also lost him his employment insurance (EI).
