Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), Michael An­nisette, is main­tain­ing that it is every in­di­vid­ual’s right to choose to be vac­ci­nat­ed or not.

The NATUC Sec-Gen made the as­ser­tion in a strong­ly word­ed re­lease is­sued to­day, in which he con­demned what he says were at­tempts “to prop­a­gate in the pub­lic do­main that he took the COVID vac­cine” and mis­in­ter­pret views he ex­pressed on the vac­cine it­self, fol­low­ing an in­ter­view he had done re­cent­ly on a tele­vi­sion morn­ing show.

“The right of any in­di­vid­ual to take or not take the Covid vac­cine is a per­son­al choice and in my in­ter­view on the NOW Morn­ing Pro­gramme, I stat­ed that I was not op­posed to vac­cines and that I did in fact have a vac­ci­na­tion card which I use should it be re­quired dur­ing my trav­els,” he says in the re­lease.

The union boss went on to clar­i­fy fur­ther: “How­ev­er, any vac­cine which I may have tak­en in years gone by would have un­der­gone com­pre­hen­sive clin­i­cal tests and tri­als and would have been ap­proved for use as a bona fide vac­cine and not a vac­cine ap­proved for Emer­gency Use Au­tho­ri­sa­tion, since EUAs are ba­si­cal­ly au­tho­ri­sa­tion that is giv­en for ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­pies. At no time did I say that I had tak­en the Covid vac­cine, which at this time is still clas­si­fied as an EUA.”

In the re­lease, Mr An­nisette ad­mits to be­ing ‘vac­cine cau­tious’ and de­ter­mined to ex­er­cise his right to de­ter­mine what goes in­to his body, a right he says which be­longs to every cit­i­zen.

“I wish to make it un­equiv­o­cal­ly clear that I am vac­cine cau­tious and at present I am con­duct­ing a com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion of the whole is­sue of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the var­i­ous Covid ‘vac­cines’,” An­nisette states in his re­lease.

He added: “I re­peat that it is the fun­da­men­tal right of all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­cide what goes in­to their bod­ies. There should be no force, co­erc­ing or sub­terfuge to rail­road cit­i­zens in­to tak­ing the Covid vac­cine.”

Ac­cord­ing to the trade union leader, both the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Health are ob­lig­at­ed, both legal­ly and eth­i­cal­ly, to en­gage in a “col­lab­o­ra­tive de­ci­sion-mak­ing process” that pro­tects in­di­vid­u­als’ rights and re­spects their de­ci­sion to con­sent or not, to vac­ci­nate.

“Con­sent should be clear­ly and freely com­mu­ni­cat­ed. If work­ers agree to an ac­tiv­i­ty un­der pres­sure of in­tim­i­da­tion or threat, that isn't con­sid­ered con­sent be­cause it was not giv­en freely. Con­sent is not con­sent un­less it is in­formed,” he stat­ed.

“At this time there is no labour leg­is­la­tion that speaks to the em­ploy­ers’ right to im­ple­ment any new terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment with­out go­ing through the le­gal uni­ver­sal right to have it cod­i­fied in the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Mr An­nisette ex­plained.

“The em­ploy­er does not have the right to force any work­er to take the vac­cine as a con­di­tion of their con­tin­u­ing to be em­ployed. An in­di­vid­ual’s de­ci­sion to take the vac­cine is a per­son­al choice and a work­er must have all the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for them to make that choice,” he added.