The head of a union representing long-term care workers in Windsor-Essex wants to know what will happen to the workers who said "no" to a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy.
Tullio DiPonti, President of Unifor Local 2458, is asking that question after Ontario's long-term care minister said late last week that a mandate requiring workers in the sector to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is under review.
Paul Calandra says the rule is being looked at as the government reviews all of its sector-specific vaccination policies and other pandemic measures.
DiPonti wants to know what happens to the workers who didn't follow the policy and then filed a greivance after they were terminated or suspended.
"A lot of these employees, that's what happened to them. So what happens to those employees? How do we get them back to work?," he says.
Dr. Kieran Moore, the province's top doctor, has said that he wants to end workplace COVID-19 vaccination policies by March 1, when proof-of-vaccination rules in indoor spaces are also set to end.
Calandra didn't say whether he was aiming for that date to end the mandate.
DiPonti says the mandates were put in place and now they're trying to reverse it.
"Once a genie is out of the bottle, it's out of the bottle. Our members are furious and they're asking us a lot of questions. What happens to me, if this goes through? How do we protect these workers again and how do we get them back to work?," he says.
DiPonti wants to know how these employees will be made whole.
"That's part of the grevience procedure, when we ask how we properly compensate people who were wrongly done by? We don't know how that's going to play out as we have to wait for more answers from this minister," he says.
Workers in long-term care homes are currently required to have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to stay on the job and they have until March 14 to get third shots.
It's the only sector in which Ontario has made COVID-19 vaccination a requirement for employment.
DiPonti says the vast majority of of his membership, over 90 per cent, were vaccinated against COVID-19.