Business community and activist divided on workplace vaccine mandates

Corporate Barbados has condemned a call by activist Winston Clarke to boycott businesses that mandate COVID-19 vaccination of their workers.

President of the Barbados Employers’ Confederation (BEC) Sheena Mayers-Granville on Thursday sought to defend the actions of those businesses, suggesting they are not seeking to harm but to heal.

“The business community’s intention is not to create a divide in Barbados. While I know the debate on vaccine requirement has been raging over the past weeks, at the core of the matter is an attempt by businesses to keep their workers safe,” Mayers-Granville told Barbados TODAY.

The BEC spokesperson further argued that it is not in the interests of any business to do anything which would cause them to lose staff, money or customers.

“No business benefits financially by pursuing measures along the lines of vaccination and testing; implementing those policies, they don’t benefit financially, but it is a pursuit to try to keep their workplaces and their workers as healthy as possible in the midst of a public health crisis,” she declared.

The leader of the employers’ representative body also suggested that the Labour Department should be allowed to continue handling the ongoing controversy following its intervention in the case in which Richard Ashby, Chief Executive Officer of Hill Milling and Lionel C. Hill Supermarket group of companies, instructed staff not to enter the premises without a vaccine certificate.

Ashby had also given the only remaining unvaccinated employee until Thursday to submit a certificate or be terminated. He was not available late Thursday to say if the worker had complied.

The Chief Labour Officer Claudette Hope-Greenidge had “strongly” advised Ashby to withdraw a memo which told the 98 staff members of the two businesses not to come to work unless they could present the vaccine document, while at the same time directing them to collect their final pay check if they failed to adhere to that.

The BEC president said: “That individual clearly would have complained to the Labour Department for the Labour Department to write to them because otherwise the Labour Department would not have intervened, and therefore, let the channels that be handle it.”

Weighing in on the boycott call, Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Anthony Branker urged the protesters to let the authorities do their job.

“I think there is a legal process that can be had; and I think that what we should be doing is allowing the legal process to take its course if that is the route that persons want to take; but at this point in time, I do not support a call for boycotting of any business at this point in time,” Branker told Barbados TODAY.

Clarke, the coordinator of the Steering Committee for the Barbados Concerned Citizens Against Mandated and Coerced Vaccinations took to social media on Wednesday to urge “all those who care for their fellow Barbadians” to stop doing business with Hill Milling or Hill Supermarket.

Clarke, who identifies with the Muslim faith, has proposed that the boycott should initially be carried out on Friday, the holiest day of the week in Islam, and on Saturday.

“We are asking all Barbadians, those who care for their fellow Barbadians; those who care about their wellbeing and their right to be able to enjoy life, who like themselves, to desist from doing any business with Hill Milling or Hill Supermarket on the 8th and 9th of this month,” the activist declared.

“Specifically, we are asking to boycott them continuously; them and their products; but we are asking specifically, because we will be out there boycotting these places.”

He also warned other businesses that mandate workers to take the injection are to be targeted as well “as the weeks go on, on a daily basis and on a regular basis”.

Clarke said Barbadians need to let the “guilty” companies know that they mean businesses and that they cannot “bully and intimidate and force and threaten people with the loss of their livelihood and to put a roof over their heads and take care of their children and pay their bills, just for an injection”.

Minister of Labour Colin Jordan issued a statement on October 1 telling employers that no law currently requires an employee to be vaccinated to keep their jobs.

Jordan said workers are protected by the Employment (Prevention of Discrimination) Act which, among other things, prohibits discrimination on the grounds of a person’s medical condition.

(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)