Covid at Work

We know Covid is costing employers time and money from absences. You'd think they'd actually want to prevent it to avoid lawsuits too! 

h/t Hayley for these quotes pulled from this precedent-setting case:

"An employment section of the Lima High Court declared Covid-19 as an occupational disease applicable to all types of workers, not just healthcare professionals. . . . A school, business or organisation that allows a Covid-positive employee to remain at work is almost certainly breaching its obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Failing to have policies/procedures to prevent this is also likely to be a breach."

And from Pantéa Javidan, JD, PhD:

"Rationale in this case can be applied in other context with similar labor protections and anti-discrimination laws. It helps when a country's high court respects international legal standards. The case relates to a worker's estate which filed a lawsuit against their former employer, claiming that the worker contracted Covid-19 during their employment and died from it. The court rules in favor of the worker's estate and based its decision on recommendations and conventions from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO)." 

And, in a related case from the UK:

"Long Covid is estimated to affect more than 1 million people in the UK but remains relatively poorly understood, with no way of predicting who will contract Long Covid, how the symptoms will present themselves or how long they will last. . . . What is often more problematic operationally is planning for those employees whose symptoms are fluctuating, meaning sickness absences may be for shorter but more frequent, sporadic periods."

It goes on to explain that Long Covid legally counts as a disability after an employee charged his employer with disability discrimination for firing him for taking too many sick days. 

"What does that mean in practice? Does an employer have to treat an employee differently if they have a disability? Put simply, yes they do. Employers have a positive duty to consider reasonable adjustments where they know, or ought reasonably to have known, that an individual is disabled and must not behave in a way which places the employee at a disadvantage because of their disability."

This is true in schools, as well. We have a legal obligation to accommodate disabilities. What I would like to see, however, is a legal obligation to accommodate anyone trying to avoid a disability from getting Covid in the first place!!