Gilchrist Connell – Workplace Relations, Health & Safety Advice

Gilchrist Connell’s workplace relations team provides workplace relations, health & safety advice to numerous corporations and is currently assisting a number of them regarding mandatory vaccinations and other COVID related issues, including:

• whether employers can lawfully implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy across their workforces and assisting with such policies as required;
• whether employers can give lawful and reasonable directions to employees requiring them to obtain a COVID-19 vaccination in order to do their jobs;
• the relevant considerations supporting mandatory vaccination include, amongst other things, whether employees are working at sites where COVID-19 vaccination is mandatory pursuant to government regulation, an employer’s duties under occupational/work health and safety legislation and business considerations; and
• an employer’s obligation to consult with affected staff about implementation of any such policy, in accordance with health and safety legislation and any applicable industrial instruments.

Joel Zyngier is the head of Gilchrist Connell’s Workplace Law practice. He’s happy for any employer to contact him to chat about how he might help with these or other workplace law issues.

Joel commented on the issue of mandatory vaccinations in articles published in the Australian and the Financial Review on 18 August 2021 and was interviewed on the radio.

Gilchrist Connell’s article on the topic can be found here and you can follow Joel on LinkedIn for updates, as they will be publishing more content as things unfold.