TfNSW Mandatory Vaccination policy

This update applies ONLY to workers still employed by STA.

It took a while, but the RTBU has secured confirmation from Transdev/John Holland that the company will NOT be enforcing the TfNSW policy of mandatory vaccination on transferring employees when they take over Region 9 in the east.

This means that those people who have not been vaccinated are confirmed now to have a job to go to, and won’t be sacked before the transfer of business. The company has said that they will do a Risk Assessment of their own after they take over but the union is confident that without the government playing politics with things, we can get a much better hearing for these workers.

Now that employment has been secured for the near term the issue of payment can be addressed. Today the RTBU wrote to TfNSW demanding that employees currently at home due to this policy are paid their normal wages and back-paid for what they have missed out on.

This is off the back of cases being run the Fair Work Commission by other Unions. There are multiple cases afoot in the FWC including by the RTBU but the ETU and CEPU cases came on first. In those cases it was argued that the dispute (like ours in the IRC) means that the Status Quo should be preserved. That means work should continue as it did before the dispute was lodged, which is before those employees who are not fully vaccinated were told to stay at home without pay. This is NOT a decision about the merits of the Policy itself; that has to be fought at a Hearing.

It remains the position of the RTBU that there are a combination of other control measures that can be used to ensure a safe workplace for everyone.

Now that Novavax has been approved, Transport will accept people who want to have that vaccine to comply with the policy. We are still waiting for Transport to give us information about that application process. It should be included in next week’s update.