Bloomsbury staff must be vaccinated before office return

Publisher Bloomsbury says vaccines will be compulsory for UK staff returning to its offices when they reopen.

The Harry Potter publisher's decision comes as many firms weigh up the necessity of workforce vaccinations.

The government has announced that care home workers in England will be required to have a vaccination or risk losing their jobs.

Almost 42 million people in the UK have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Bloomsbury told The Bookseller magazine, which first reported the story, that it had taken both "medical and scientific advice".

"The simple fact is that this virus is still extremely dangerous."

Bank of America has also confirmed that all of its vaccinated employees can return to the office in early September, as more than 70,000 staff have voluntarily disclosed their vaccine status.

Pimlico Plumbers meanwhile, said it would require compulsory vaccination for staff, with the company having already said it would not hire anybody new who was not vaccinated.

Bloomsbury, which is due to reopen on 19 July, made employees aware of the policy in an email ahead of the second May Bank Holiday weekend.

A spokesperson for the company told The Bookseller that "the wellbeing of our staff has been our overarching concern in all our decisions since the start of the pandemic".

"We recently reported the tragic deaths of two Bloomsbury staff from Covid. We will continue to make our own decisions, conscious of the serious consequences of making the wrong ones.

"Inevitably, not everyone will agree. We accept this and, as with so many decisions in the pandemic, we have to do what we believe is right for the wellbeing of all our staff."

Bloomsbury closed its offices before the government instruction to work from home last year.

"The failure of the government to lockdown earlier is now blamed for thousands of unnecessary deaths and we know we did the right thing," the publisher added.

In March, a poll of 2,000 workers, conducted by employee review website Glassdoor, found more than half thought there should be a requirement for staff to have had a Covid vaccination before they go back to the office.

Of the workers polled, one in seven said they would hand in their notice if they were required to return before all employees had been vaccinated.

The GMB union's legal director, Susan Harris, told the BBC the way to increase vaccine take up among workers was to "educate and reassure them".

"Bullying workers into taking a vaccine they are unsure about is cruel, unfair and a recipe for disaster," she said.

"Any decision on this approach needs full consultation with both employers and workers and is a finely balanced judgement.

"Bosses need to think long and hard before they go down this road - because it contains very real dangers of legal implications."

The CBI business group told the BBC the bar for compulsory vaccination was high and that vaccines were essential to economic recovery.

"There will be few industries where this approach would be appropriate, however in some sectors it could prove necessary," said Matthew Fell, chief policy director at the CBI.

In April, a survey by Arizona State University and the Rockefeller Foundation found that 44% of companies in North America would require vaccinations for workers, while nearly a third said they planned to encourage jabs but wouldn't mandate them.