Toronto ends mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for city workers

The city is also offering to reinstate hundreds of workers fired for breaching the mandate -- but one a paramedic says ‘there’s a lot of healing to be done.’

Thestar.com
Nov. 9, 2022
David Rider

Scarlett Martyn, a longtime Toronto paramedic fired by the city for failing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, isn’t sure she wants her old job back.

“None of us will ever feel the same about the city again,” Martyn said Tuesday after the city announced that its vaccine requirement for city staff will end Dec. 1 -- and it offered to to reinstate about 350 unionized employees terminated last January.

“I think there’s a lot of healing to be done -- these employees aren’t jumping up and down and saying ‘Yay, you’ll have us back,’” said Martyn, who unsuccessfully argued that natural immunity from having had COVID-19 sufficiently protected her fellow paramedics and members of the public.

“I think we’re all feeling a little slighted. It was ushered in in a brutal fashion. A lot of us moved on to other jobs and bought our pensions out -- I have no idea how to sort out this mess.”

Mayor John Tory announced the vaccinate-or-be-terminated policy for the city’s roughly 32,000 employees in August 2021. He said the city had to set an example for other employers and help end the pandemic by getting the vaccination rate as high as possible.

In a news release Tuesday, the city said that as of Dec. 1, “mandatory vaccination is no longer required for city staff, volunteers and contractors ...

“Now, with more than 90 per cent of the public and 99 per cent of city staff with at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the science and public health guidance and medical expert advice no longer supports the need for a policy that requires mandatory vaccination.”

Also, the city said, “based on recent arbitration and negotiations with (city) unions,” city staff terminated for not getting vaccinated, or for failing to disclose their status will be offered reinstatement.

They will be on unpaid leave at first. Those who can prove they are vaccinated will be able to start working now. The remainder will be able to return to work on Dec. 1 when the vaccination mandate officially ends.

In August a labour arbitrator ruled that the city’s mandatory vaccination policy for firefighters was reasonable in its attempt to limit COVID-19 spread, but unreasonable in how it was applied. The city firing more than a dozen firefighters, rather than taking less drastic steps to protect their colleagues and members of the public, was deemed unfair.

CUPE Local 416 and CUPE Local 79, the inside and outside workers’ unions representing most of the city’s unionized workforce, separately grieved the mandatory-vaccination policy as a violation of their collective agreements.

An arbitrator’s decision on the Local 416 grievance is expected as early as this week, with a decision on Local 79’s grievance coming later. Representatives for both unions did not respond to the Star’s request for comment Tuesday.

Meanwhile, unions representing TTC employees are appealing the mandate. In a statement Tuesday, the TTC said it’s aware of the city ending its requirement and is engaging with five unions representing transit workers “as a courtesy to discuss the future of our mandatory vaccination policy going forward.

“Reinstating employees who were terminated for being non-compliant with the policy is under consideration,” the TTC said, with a decision to be announced in the “near future.”