Purolator Suspends Employee Vaccine Mandate the Same Day Lawsuit Against Company Is Discontinued

The main Purolator sort plant in Calgary, Alta., on May 9, 2020. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

The courier company Purolator has announced it will suspend its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees, the same day the group behind a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the company filed a notice of discontinuance.

“It’s either propitious or coincidental, but we just filed the discontinuance of that lawsuit yesterday,” said lawyer Leighton Grey of Grey Wowk Spencer LLP, which brought forth the lawsuit against Purolator in 2022.

In a letter released on Thursday, Purolator said its employees will no longer be required to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Purolator said it continues to align its health and safety protocols with the recommendations of its chief medical director, its health and safety risk assessments, and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“Employee health and safety remains our top priority. We will still require all employees to respect our symptom-free environment and not attend work if they are symptomatic,” the company said.

Purolator said all employees who were placed on an unpaid leave of absence due to COVID vaccine mandates are being asked to return to work by May 1. Employees who did not comply with Purolator’s vaccine policy up until that date will not be financially compensated for the time they were on unpaid leave.

The company said that based on feedback from its chief medical director, unvaccinated employees will also no longer be required to undergo rapid testing in order to work.

Back in December 2021, the Canadian government mandated that all employees in federally regulated industries be vaccinated for COVID-19. While Purolator is a private company, as a postal and courier service, it falls under the list of federally regulated industries and workplaces.

Canada Post, which owns a 91 percent stake in Purolator, enacted a mandatory vaccination policy on Oct. 29, 2021, but lifted it on July 6, 2022.

Courtney Reistetter, senior manager of corporate communications at Purolator, said safety protocols were enacted to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on its workplaces and communities. “Through our regular review of these controls, it was decided to lift the vaccination requirement for our employees,” she said.

Reistetter said that no Purolator employees were let go as a result of their vaccination status, and the “vast majority” of its employees across Canada attested to being fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

“A small number of employees who did not attest to being fully vaccinated were placed on an unpaid leave of absence. We are now working directly with these employees to support their efforts to return to work as quickly as possible.”

Group Withdrew Lawsuit Against Purolator

In May 2022, hundreds of unionized and non-unionized Purolator employees laid off because of vaccine mandates attempted to sue the company for hundreds of millions of dollars. The employees argued that the mandates caused “catastrophic” damage and disruption for thousands, and that the company denied all medical and conscience exemptions.

Lawyer Leighton Grey sent the company a cease and desist letter on April 25, 2022, where he argued that the COVID-19 vaccines were experimental, had no long-term safety data, did not stop the spread of the virus, and could cause side effects such as heart inflammation and blood clots.

In response, Purolator counsel Simon-Pierre Paquette said on April 26 that the claims in Grey’s letter were “factually inaccurate” and had “no legal merit.” He added that Purolator’s mandate was enacted in compliance with “all applicable legislation” and that the company would not do away with the policy.

Grey told The Epoch Times that while the lawsuit went ahead, it eventually ran into a “procedural brick wall” because of a series of Supreme Court of Canada decisions that deny plaintiffs access to the courts if they are part of a union. “Based upon our research, we gave the opinion to the Purolator workers that the case was unlikely to succeed,” he said.

Grey said the group decided to file to discontinue their lawsuit against Purolator on April 13, the same day the company announced its decision to suspend its vaccine mandate policy.

The lawyer said Purolator’s decision could have also been influenced by an ongoing Local 31 arbitration against its vaccine mandate policy. “What I’m hearing from some of the Purolator employees that we represent is that it looks like the union that has challenged the vaccine mandate may win,” Grey said.

“I think that rather than have the procedure hearing and risk losing, Purolator just decided to suspend the mandate.”