https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/childcare-worker-sacked-for-refusing-flu-vaccine-loses-legal-appeal-20210421-p57l37.html Fair Work upheld the decision made by Good Start Early Learning to fire the child care worker who refused to get a flu vaccination. Good. People who work with vulnerable or at risk people, should have to be vaccinated in order to do so. Same goes with those who work in aged care.

I understand your point but I always feel uncomfortable about demanding that some of the lowest paid groups of workers in the community agree to a medical intervention that most workers are not required to have. Anyone working directly with the public or for a large organisation is likely to have some sort of contact with people who may be vulnerable in the course of their work. I am absolutely in favour of vaccinations but if we won’t tolerate mandatory flu shots for lawyers, accountants and public servants, then it’s reasonable to feel at least a bit squeamish about demanding it of child care workers. I consider aged care to be a bit different since I think mandatory vaccines are reasonable for health care workers and it’s consistent with the requirements for nurses. Are flu vaccines mandatory for public school teachers?

PuddingPlease I consider aged care to be a bit different since I think mandatory vaccines are reasonable for health care workers and it’s consistent with the requirements for nurses. What difference do you see in the nature of work for aged care workers vs child care workers that would justify mandatory vaccines for the former and not latter?

I think they running a risky game They say these sectors crying out for staff, when you start making flu vax mandatory you start making the willing to work pile smaller. If it was mandatory for retail, I’d quit and sit on the dole for mental health risk of me getting a vaccination

CallMeAl Aged care workers operate in a clinical setting, most aged care facilities house people who are unable to remain in their home because they require ongoing medical care and treatment due to ongoing disability and ill health. I accept that children are typically more vulnerable to illness than adults but many, many workers work around children daily without this being a requirement. After posting before, I googled and as far as I can tell, there is no requirement for primary school teachers to be vaccinated for anything in any state in Australia. Allowing private companies to sack a long-standing worker for refusing something that the state is not even willing to demand of its foundation teachers feels wrong to me. Even when I agree that people should absolutely get their flu shots.

PuddingPlease I can see the premise from a distance that they sound like different categories, but if I look in detail both look like caring activities in close quarters to vulnerable individuals where the work is likely to involve lots of dealing with bodily fluids, feeding, etc. I’m not sure what other ‘medical’ care is provided in aged care homes and whether it involves say needles and intravenous type stuff which would be a different category again (but I’d have hoped that would be done by nurses not aged care workers). But from my very limited knowledge of what I imagine aged care by non nurses involves, I’d have thought it involves pretty similar work and proximity that childcare does, with a roughly equivalent population in terms of vulnerability. Teaching has much more distance. At our school at least, it wouldn’t involve any bum wiping, any feeding, pretty limited exposure to bodily expulsions (not sure who cleans up when a kid throws up), but I wouldn’t consider it a similar category at all. Nor would I consider school children at a similar vulnerability level to babies or the elderly.

Vaccination isn’t strictly mandatory for nurses with NSW but someone who refuses might be redeployed to a low risk area or unable to work with high risk patients. If none of that can be accommodated and they don’t have a medical reason for refusing then they can be sacked. I think the combination of the child care centre’s inability to redeploy the staff member to a low-risk area, children being a high-risk group for catching and spreading the flu and the staff member having vaguely woo-woo reasons for refusal is what’s led them to this.

i’m in 2 minds about this too - i’m probably more in favour of the decision - she works with kids who are (or can be) vulnerable - a flu vax is really therefore just an extension of her overall duty of care to the kids she cares for. But OTOH, it does seem like an overreach. It will be interesting to see if this happens too with Covid. I’m not in any eligible group yet, so i haven’t had it, i will though of course when my turn comes. but, i’m not going to lie, the bad press the AZ vaccine is getting is making me nervous - and i know all the arguments - but yeh, i’m nervous. seems there’s less chance of catching covid (here) than there is of developing the blood clot (and no I’m not on the Pill either).

I’m the same about the Covid vax. My very elderly parents were both scheduled to get it last week but couldn’t because their doctor ( who is too bloody elderly himself to still be working clearly) gave them their flu shot a few days before. The nurse saw that on their notes luckily and said she would call to reschedule but hasn’t yet. I’m quite glad. That poor woman on the Central Coast who died at 48yo has completely freaked me out. Also, I just recently turned 50 so will be given the AZ one , I don’t understand what magic happened to make it not ok one month but ok the next. 48 is pretty bloody close to 50 ( she wouldn’t have got it now, but she was so close to the cutoff).

CallMeAl A lot of the care provided in nursing home facilities is for management of ongoing health issues, as far as I am aware this is even more true for high-care patients. Providing pureed food for people unable to chew, thickened fluids to people who can easily choke on plain water and care for people managing things like colostomy bags and incontinence are all medical necessities. Whether this care is provided specifically by the aged care worker or not is mostly irrelevant, the person is extremely unwell and requires full-time medical care, this makes the environment the equivalent to a hospital setting in my view and so additional requirements are probably justified. Many, many people work closely with children with no requirements like this. I understand the point you are making about primary school teachers and the level of contact with children but the flip side is that a music teacher may interact with 300 students in a week, where most child care workers would have a group many times smaller. Every one of those 300 students has a family including, no doubt, many kinder classes worth of babies and toddlers. I can’t see any worthwhile distinction between the two except that public school teachers are employed by the state government and have a powerful union and childcare workers do not. I think if this woman had been hired recently I would be less concerned but she had been in a senior role for 10+ years with the company before this became an issue. Allowing private companies to lay off long term staff when the actual risk their decision poses is negligible seems like a serious erosion of workers rights to me. A childcare centre is not a sterile environment after all, the kids aren’t required to have flu shots and are far more likely to spread germs and illness amongst each other than the staff in the normal course of events.

Mandatory Vaccination