Morrisons has announced that from 1 October 2021 (the date by which the government states all adults will have had the opportunity to be double vaccinated), it will no longer pay full sick pay for "pinged" staff who have chosen not to be vaccinated. However, the cut in sick pay will not apply to those who have not in fact had the chance to have both vaccine doses or to those who have had COVID-19 symptoms.

 

Unite suggests that Morrisons' decision, which is intended to encourage vaccine uptake while also mitigating the "biblical costs" of the pandemic, will raise human rights and ethical issues and give rise to discrimination claims.  The counter view to Unite's position would be that, in fact, employers were not ever obliged to pay full contractual sick pay to an employee who had to isolate (but who was not actually sick) though many employers have opted to do so throughout the pandemic, so as to encourage employees to isolate and stay away from the workplace when they needed to do so.  For many businesses, the practice of treating and paying for non-sick isolation as sickness absence has come at a huge cost and will have to end somewhere:  that Morrisons have been so public in announcing their position does not mean that they are the only employer who will take this stance (and indeed many employers already have).   

Inevitably, the debate turns to the ethics of treating vaccinated and non-vaccinated staff differently - a topic which will no doubt keep employment lawyers busy for some time yet...