Public sector workers who lost their jobs under the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which came into effect in November 2021, have until the end of January 2026 to return to their jobs with all benefits intact.
Prime Minister Godwin Friday said that his Cabinet and the Public Service Union have begun discussing benefits and payments for those workers, suggesting that the workers would only be paid up to February 2023, when the court first ruled on the matter.
“… they’re entitled to their benefits and to be put back in the position that we’re in at the time when they were fired,” he said.
In November 2021, hundreds of public sector workers lost their jobs for failing to take a COVID-19 jab as the then-Unity Labour Party government had mandated.
The three main labour rights organisations representing public sector workers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines sponsored a lawsuit against the government challenging the mandate.
In March 2023, the High Court ruled that the government’s actions were illegal and that the workers never ceased to hold their jobs.
The government appealed that decision and the Court of Appeal upheld the government’s action in a 2-1 decision in February 2025.
The workers have since received permission to have the London-based Privy Council rule on the matter, and the union’s legal team said it is in the process of filing the case there.
However, long before the court’s initial ruling, the then prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, had urged the workers to return to work, saying they would not lose their pensions and other accrued benefits.
Some workers responded, but others refused to reapply for their jobs, saying that they had not abandoned their jobs, as the government had claimed, and the appeal court later ruled.
In the lead-up to the Nov. 27 general election, the Friday-led then-opposition New Democratic Party, which went on to win the polls 14-1, had promised to reinstate the workers and to pay them the salaries that they had lost as a result of the government’s action.
On Wednesday, the prime minister said on Boom FM that some of the affected workers have since retired.
“And so, all of those persons, we have to look at their situations and make sure that they get what they’re entitled to. And that is something that we’re committed to.
“But it’s not as easy as saying, ‘On Monday, come, and you get a cheque’ or whatever,” he said.
“We have to work these out in an orderly way… Some of them are very individual cases that we look at, and some are categories that we look at. You can deal with them most simply that way, and we don’t just do it by ourselves. They are partners in this.”
The prime minister said that the trade unions have been advocating on behalf of their membership.
“And we have taken their submissions on board, and so we will sit with them and work this out in a fair and just way, the people who suffered under the vaccine mandate.
“Our job is to try to ease it, to make it so that they don’t suffer the indignity that they incurred and that they endured under the last administration, or continue to suffer going forward; we are going to remedy that.”
He said that people have been “so understanding and reasonable”, recognising that they might not be placed into a position immediately as they indicate their interest in returning to work.
“… what you do is you’re putting on record that I want to come back,” the prime minister said.
Friday said that the process has been working seamlessly in the police force.
“And people who go back, they find positions, and they put them back in similar positions to what they were in.”
However, there have been some hiccups in the teacher service and healthcare sector, Friday said, adding that there have been some cases at the community college.
“… but those are things that we are aware of and we are dealing with, because … this is the policy of government.
“… we made a statement, we sent out a directive to the various PSs through the CPO that this is the policy of government. Your job is to facilitate it.
“If you see that there’s something that is unclear, you resolve it to the benefit of the employee because it’s intended to benefit them,” the prime minister said.
“Don’t use any ambiguity to make it apply against the worker. If there’s an ambiguity, it applies in favour of the worker. And that is basically the instruction that we’ve given. And we are going to make sure that this is done.”