Supermarket giants announce vaccine mandates

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths have announced they will mandate COVID-19 vaccines for workers - but some states are so far exempt.

Today, Coles announced that in coming months, it would work to ensure employees in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria were fully vaccinated.

Government health orders in the Northern Territory and Western Australia mean that vaccines will be mandatory for Coles workers there too.

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"As people are able to circulate more freely in NSW, ACT and Victoria, health authorities have warned that COVID case numbers in these states are expected to increase, which also means a higher risk of positive cases visiting our stores," Coles Group CEO Steven Cain said.

"We have encouraged and supported our team members to access vaccinations as soon as they became eligible, to reduce the risk of infection for themselves, their colleagues and their families."

As part of the new requirements, Coles team members in NSW and the ACT must have received at least one vaccination by November 5 and have received a second dose by December 17.

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Workers in Victoria, the NT and Western Australia will need to be vaccinated in line with the public health orders in place for those states.

However, employees in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania are exempt from the mandate, though Coles said it would continue to "encourage" vaccine uptake.

In contrast, Woolworths employees will need to be vaccinated nationwide.

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CEO Brad Banducci said the decision was made after reviewing the "best medical advice".

"We have 170,000 team members across our stores, distribution centres and support offices, and more than 1200 retail stores," he said.

"With each store welcoming an average 20,000 customers a week, a single team member can come into contact with quite literally thousands of people in the course of a normal working week."

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Unless public health orders come into effect sooner, Woolworth's proposed deadline for the full vaccination requirement in the ACT, NSW, NT, Victoria and Western Australia is January 31, 2022, and March 31, 2022, in the other states.

Both companies said employees with legitimate reasons to not get the vaccine would not have to.

And customers will not need to be vaccinated while shopping for essential supplies, either.

Aldi has also announced it will move towards mandating vaccines for its workforce, though no concrete plans are yet in place.

"Our view is that requiring all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the future is the best measure to ensure the health and safety of our teams and our customers," CEO Tom Daunt said.

"We have commenced consultation with all of our employees to gather their input to our proposed safety plans and the best implementation timeline."

Aldi will announce its plan after the consultation period, which is expected to take "a couple of weeks".

"There will be a small proportion of our employees with a valid medical exemption who will be excluded from this policy," Mr Daunt said.

"In these rare instances we will rely on other arrangements to ensure their safety in the workplace."