On Thursday 13 January 2022, National Cabinet made amendments to the current COVID isolation rules that potentially apply to you and your workplace.

Up until that decision, persons defined at the already downgraded category of ‘close contacts’, those who share a household with a positive COVID case, were required to self-isolate for an already reduced six days.

The latest amendments to this rule mean workers from certain industries are exempt from this obligation.

It does require these persons to undertake a rapid test every two days – a ludicrous ask in the current circumstances due to restricted availability of the test kits.

Some of the categories of Health, Welfare, Care and Support include housing, vulnerable people, homelessness and crisis support. This has the potential to impact PSA members working in child protection, housing, strategy policy and commissioning, corporate and more.

The Department has advised the PSA that there are NO CHANGES to the isolation rules at this time. Senior Departmental Officers are considering the amendments and how they would impact the department. If there is a decision made to change the current arrangements, DCJ will consult with the PSA before implementing them.

PSA members encourages to stay vigilant – log incident reports if put at risk

The PSA commends the Department for giving careful consideration to this issue rather than leaping in. The PSA would have grave concerns regarding the removal of the requirement to isolate and the workplace health and safety of our members. A completely foreseeable outcome is that more of your colleagues would inadvertently come to work carrying COVID and transmit it to co-workers, and in turn their close contacts, and so on.

The PSA encourages members to put in incident reports where they have been put at risk because of COVID-19, whether this has been because of inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE), or being forced to attend work while a close contact.

Lax rules won’t reduce worker absenteeism

These new rules appear to be attempting to address the labour shortages in some industries not through increased availability of PPE, vaccines and testing, but by attempting to stoically ignore COVID’s existence.

The PSA has little confidence that these lax rules will reduce worker absenteeism. In fact, they may do the reverse, as they come after a successive weakening of our isolation requirements that now put your workplaces at the frontline not of just service delivery but of transmission.

This is a minimum standard set by National Cabinet and does not have to be adopted by an employer. Your union will write to your employer advocating it has better infection controls in place than what is being recommended. This is for the protection of all our members, their families and the members of the community you may come in contact with during your duties.

Reminder to members: sick/personal/FACS leave for covid

As your union we remind you that if you are a close contact at home, in that someone in your household has been diagnosed with COVID, you are entitled to access your sick/personal leave in order to provide care for them.

Workplace health and safety is always paramount. And at a time when a pandemic is ripping through our community, never has it been more so.