The National Employers Association of SA (Neasa) has launched another attack on the government over its support for mandatory workplace Covid-19 vaccination policies, asking the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to scrap the Department of Labour’s code of practice for managing exposure.

Though the government does not require its own employees to be vaccinated, it has created a regulatory framework that nudges employers to introduce mandatory vaccination policies, Neasa said.

A Business Day report says the latest code of good practice for managing exposure to SARS-Cov-2 in the workplace was released by Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi on 24 June.

It replaced a February version and differed only in that it was issued by Nedlac in terms of section 203 (1) of the Labour Relations Act, which allows the organisation to prepare and issue codes of good practice.

Neasa, which has taken legal action against the first code before, has now asked the High Court to declare the latest version unlawful and unconstitutional and set it aside.

It argues Nedlac does not have the power to issue codes that essentially are regulations, amounting to legislative action that is the preserve of Parliament.

Mandatory vaccination policies are infringements on numerous constitutional rights, and the current Covid-19 vaccines do not create a safer workplace because they do not stop infection or transmission of the disease, said Neasa CEO Gerhard Papenfus.

The acting DG for labour policy and industrial relations, Thembinkosi Mkalipi, said the government would oppose Neasa’s latest attempt to strike down the code.

Full Business Day report