Action4Canada - October 06, 2021


Employment Lawyer on Vax Mandates

Topics
Vaccine Mandates and employment law
Hosted by
Tanya Gaw
Mentioned
Lior Samfirou
Elderly man thrown to the ground and arrested VaxPass - It's really to create an Incentive

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

166.08

Word count

777

Sentence count

51


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The pressure is on to vaccinate, and the list of companies choosing to mandate vaccines for staff seems to be growing every day, raising concerns and questions about workers' rights. Employment lawyer Lior Samfirou joins Candice and Jasmine to discuss the implications of mandatory vaccines in the workplace.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 With the Delta variant circulating and cases rising, the pressure is on to vaccinate.
00:00:05.480 And the list of companies choosing to mandate vaccines for staff seems to be growing every day,
00:00:11.020 raising concerns and questions about workers' rights.
00:00:14.600 Employment lawyer Lior Samfirou joins us now for another segment of Work What's Next.
00:00:19.980 Good morning, Lior. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:22.100 Good morning, Candice.
00:00:23.340 So we have the MLSC, the TTC, and even some banks, just to name a few,
00:00:28.400 coming out with vaccine mandates, some would say even ultimatums for staff.
00:00:33.860 It kind of feels like we're in uncharted waters here when it comes to vaccine mandating in the workplace
00:00:39.080 and with these workplaces figuring things out as they go.
00:00:42.420 Are you concerned by all of this?
00:00:45.140 Well, I think a lot of these employers that are doing this, you mentioned just a few,
00:00:50.200 are under the assumption that this is legal, that this is something that they can do.
00:00:54.380 But there are some significant concerns with the legality of imposing vaccines.
00:00:59.800 In most cases, for private enterprises, it's still not legal.
00:01:03.860 It could be a human rights violation to impose a vaccine.
00:01:06.980 And a lot of these employers are potentially doing it simply thinking,
00:01:10.760 well, we're going to do it regardless of the legal liability.
00:01:13.680 But there is that liability.
00:01:14.900 Another liability that these employers will have is if they do let employees go
00:01:19.800 because they did not get vaccinated, they'll have to pay them severance,
00:01:23.560 potentially as much as two years paid.
00:01:26.100 And I don't think that's something these businesses are taking into account in consideration.
00:01:30.060 So it's not as simple as simply saying we've decided to vaccinate everyone
00:01:34.340 and you have to be vaccinated in order to work here.
00:01:37.560 So the TTC union, representing about 12,000 of TTC staff,
00:01:44.060 was pretty swift in coming out and saying that they would fight these mandates,
00:01:49.380 requiring vaccines, rather.
00:01:53.120 Do they have a leg to stand on?
00:01:55.320 Is this something unions can fight and win?
00:01:59.280 I do believe that they can.
00:02:01.260 And I think that the likelihood of succeeding is actually quite good.
00:02:04.500 It is potentially a human rights violation to require a medical procedure
00:02:09.740 and also to distinguish as between people with COVID and without COVID.
00:02:13.680 So I think the union may well be successful and potentially private individuals,
00:02:18.380 non-unionized individuals who choose to challenge the mandatory vaccine policy
00:02:23.640 that their employer imposes may be successful at the human rights tribunal
00:02:27.900 or in the courts in challenging those policies.
00:02:30.740 And again, a lot of employers are doing it despite that risk.
00:02:34.500 Thinking that perhaps this is for the better public good,
00:02:37.840 but it does come with significant legal liability.
00:02:42.220 Okay.
00:02:42.540 So the province has also come out with a mandate around vaccines.
00:02:45.740 Does their policy actually change anything?
00:02:49.160 In other words, can staff be fired if they choose not to get vaccinated?
00:02:54.400 So the province called this a mandatory vaccine policy,
00:02:58.140 but what's important to remember is that it's not mandatory vaccine.
00:03:01.180 It's a mandatory policy.
00:03:03.360 In other words, employers are required to have a policy about vaccines,
00:03:06.400 but they still cannot choose to implement vaccines as mandatory or else.
00:03:12.020 The only thing the province is requiring employers to do
00:03:14.520 is if you're not going to have employees that are vaccinated,
00:03:17.660 they have to undergo regular tests.
00:03:20.180 So that does not allow employers to implement mandatory vaccine policies,
00:03:25.820 to have vaccines as a cross-the-board requirement,
00:03:28.820 and that liability still exists.
00:03:31.040 It would have been very easy for the provincial government to say,
00:03:34.040 you have to have vaccines in certain industries or else you cannot have employees.
00:03:39.000 They've chosen not to do that.
00:03:40.820 And as of right now, employers in public sector,
00:03:44.780 employers in the healthcare sector or in other sectors
00:03:47.400 still cannot unilaterally choose to impose vaccines.
00:03:50.860 And finally, you've also been getting questions from clients over work performance issues.
00:03:57.580 So can an employer terminate for cause due to performance issues?
00:04:02.340 Keep in mind that a termination for cause means you're let go without any compensation,
00:04:07.020 and that is considered the capital punishment of the employment relationship.
00:04:11.120 It's reserved for the worst offenders.
00:04:13.320 So the fact that you may have done something wrong or even a few things wrong
00:04:16.680 does not mean you can be let go for cause without compensation.
00:04:20.420 Only if you've done something terrible,
00:04:22.220 and usually if the employer has warned you in advance,
00:04:25.140 can then you be terminated for cause.
00:04:27.180 Otherwise, that's a wrongful dismissal.
00:04:30.240 Can then you be terminated for cause.
00:04:32.540 Otherwise, that's a wrongful dismissal.
00:04:35.160 Okay, lots of insight as always.
00:04:37.520 Thank you again.
00:04:38.180 That is Lior Samfiru, employment lawyer.