Standard Bank wants to re-hire staff it fired for refusing to comply with its now scrapped mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy, a workplace health and safety regime it repealed last week after union threats to challenge the policy in court.

BusinessLIVE reports that it has also stopped all workplace incapacity hearings for unvaccinated staff, who are now being welcomed back to work, the bank said in a statement on Friday.

Unvaccinated employees are also no longer required to undergo PCR or rapid antigen tests before they can access Standard Bank premises.

‘Unfortunately, there are a number of unvaccinated employees that we parted company with, after they declined the alternative of testing which had been offered to them,’ Standard Bank SA CEO Lungisa Fuzile said.

‘Following the withdrawal of the (mandatory vaccination) policy, we are engaging with these colleagues to explore re-employment opportunities, as we feel strongly that this is the right thing to do.’

Standard Bank withdrew its mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy on Monday, just three days after finance union Sasbo, which represents about 73 000 members in the financial services sector, vowed to fight the policy after at least 40 of its members were dismissed by the bank for non-compliance.

A day after Standard Bank scrapped its mandatory vaccination policy, Cosatu announced that it too would be challenging mandatory Covid-19 vaccination at a ‘national, policy level’.

Full BusinessLIVE report