John Lewis have said they will give staff full sick pay regardless of their Covid vaccination status after a recent uproar over companies refusing full pay if their workers are not fully jabbed.
Andrew Murphy, John Lewis's group operations director, said that the company do not "believe it's right" to treat jabbed and unjabbed workers differently.
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Last week, high-street retailers such as Next and Ikea came under scrutiny after saying that un-jabbed workers would not receive full sick pay if they had to isolate due to Covid, introducing sickness policies that differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated employees.
In a blogpost on LinkedIn, Murphy informed their 70,000-strong workforce: "We’re not going to make any change of this type." He added: "We just don’t believe it’s right to create a link between a partner’s vaccination status and the pay they receive."
He said the company – which is owned by its employees, called partners, who receive an annual profit share – was "hugely supportive of the UK vaccination programme" and had given staff time off to get their jabs.
"We cast no judgement on the decisions of any other organisation; in fact we’ve enjoyed how united businesses – retailers especially – have been in the face of these huge corporate and societal challenges," Murphy said.
"However, when life increasingly seems to present opportunities to create division – and with hopes rising that the pandemic phase of Covid may be coming to an end – we’re confident that this is the right approach for us."
Current rules across the whole of the UK stipulate different self-isolation periods depending on the vaccination status of the infected person. Unvaccinated people must self-isolate for ten days, whilst this does not apply to those who have received two doses and a booster jab.
Unvaccinated workers at Next and Ikea are only eligible for statutory sick pay – which is set at £96.35 a week – during their 10 days of isolation, unless there are mitigating circumstances. This compares with weekly pay of more than £400 before tax for an average store worker at Ikea.
The supermarket chain Morrisons announced in September that it was cutting sick pay during self-isolation for its unvaccinated workers, as part of a move to cut its pandemic-related costs.
