Community Services and Housing announce mandatory vaccination timeframes - Public Service Association

Community Services and Housing announce mandatory vaccination timeframes

Members would be aware of the Deputy Secretaries’ update distributed last Thursday regarding timeframes for vaccination requirements for Community Services and Housing (CS & Housing) staff.

This direction follows the risk assessment process conducted by CS & Housing, as required by the relevant Department of Premier and Cabinet Circular. You can view that Circular HERE.

Your representatives on the group have stressed that keeping members safe from COVID-19 needs to be much more than a direction to staff to get vaccinated.

With the Department now finalising this direction, the PSA believes it is time to focus on a holistic assessment of how we work in this new era.

The PSA has already identified that access and egress through public areas at offices, ventilation, open-plan office layouts and many other facets of traditional office life need to be assessed as part of this process and your representatives will pursue these.

The Deputy Secretaries have set out the below preliminary details:

  • The assessment for CS & Housing staff has determined that all staff must be vaccinated against COVID-19 who:
  1. work at or from a community services centre, housing office, or co-located site
  2. conduct or may be called upon to conduct home visits or otherwise visit public housing sites
  3. work or may be called upon to work in a residential service such as the Sherwood Program
  4. undertake or may be called upon to undertake client facing work or work with other staff members who do so
  5. work within the Restrictive Practices Team.
  • Staff will need to have obtained a first dose by 25 October 2021 and a second dose by 17 January 2022 to continue attending the workplace.
  • There are medical reasons that will prevent some staff from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. These staff will need to provide medical evidence in the form of a contraindication certificate in the form approved by the Chief Health Officer that indicates they are not able to get vaccinated.

The PSA will be involved in consultation on the associated policy which will guide the process for implementing this direction. Matters for consultation will include:

  • The process for seeking any exemptions to the direction
  • The process for storage of and access to medical information
  • Support for workers reporting access problems
  • The process for non-compliance with the direction

Vaccination and the workplace

The PSA has previously distributed a bulletin regarding mandatory vaccinations in the workplace. You can view that bulletin in full HERE.

PSA members’ survey

The PSA’s most recent survey on workplace attitudes to vaccination was completed by 12,832 members over three days (30 August-2 September).

75.24 per cent of respondents agreed vaccines should be mandatory for “workplaces that have a high level of interaction with the public”. While 8.74 per cent of respondents were neutral on the subject, 4.4 per cent disagreed and 11.61 per cent strongly disagreed with mandatory vaccinations in such workplaces. You can view the PSA bulletin regarding the results in full HERE.

Lawful and reasonable directions

A lawful direction is one that is within the scope of employment and involves no unlawfulness. What is reasonable is influenced, among other things, by the contents of statutory duties in occupational health and safety legislation. In the context of determining whether a direction to receive a vaccination is reasonable, a case-by-case analysis is appropriate, which would include:

  • Consideration of the nature of the work the relevant employee does
  • The availability of vaccines to that person
  • Their suitability for any available vaccination
  • The risks of transmission associated with the work (including the vulnerability of particular persons they might work with)
  • How those risks would be reduced by vaccination
  • How much time is given to comply with any direction
  • Whether costs or losses caused by complying with the direction would be met
  • The amount of community transmission of the virus at the time the direction is issued.

Work Health and Safety

A PCBU (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking) has a duty of care to make sure their employees, and other people (including inmates), are safe in the workplace.

Section 28 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 requires workers to:

(c) comply, so far as the worker is reasonably able, with any reasonable instruction that is given by the person conducting the business or undertaking to allow the person to comply with this Act, and

(d) co-operate with any reasonable policy or procedure of the person conducting the business or undertaking relating to health or safety at the workplace that has been notified to workers.

The Act also defines what is reasonably practicable in ensuring health and safety.

In this Act, reasonably practicable, in relation to a duty to ensure health and safety, means that which is, or was at a particular time, reasonably able to be done in relation to ensuring health and safety, taking into account and weighing up all relevant matters including:

(a) the likelihood of the hazard or the risk concerned occurring, and

(b) the degree of harm that might result from the hazard or the risk, and

(c) what the person concerned knows, or ought reasonably to know, about:

(i) the hazard or the risk, and

(ii) ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, and

(d) the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk, and

(e) after assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, the cost associated with available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, including whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk.

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