Lyttelton Port’s entire workforce has been told to get vaccinated over the weekend or don’t show up to work on Monday 1st November.

The directive was announced by the company’s CEO Roger Gray on Thursday.

The company employees about 620 workers across three sites, Lyttelton Port, CityDepot and MidlandPort.

In August, at least 85 percent of the company’s workers had been vaccinated.

Gray told staff “we don’t know how it’s going to spread or what’s going to happen over the next few weeks, but we need to be prepared, and as a result, we going to implement some temporary measures.”

“We will cancel all external visitors to the port to any location, for any of our three locations, with immediate effect and we will move all of our meetings to Zoom.”

“Secondly, office staff can work from home and we would certainly encourage you to have a discussion with your managers.”

“Lastly, in regards to vaccinations, I’ve made a decision, in order to just give us some breathing space, no unvaccinated staff will be permitted to come back to work with effect from 7am on the first of November, Monday.”

“Now the reason we’re doing this is just to provide that extra level of security and safety to the whole workforce.”

“And it gives people who aren’t vaccinated 72 hours to make that choice, whether or not they want to get vaccinated, or if they don’t, then we’ll need to not let them come into work now that’s not just 1A staff. That’s everybody within the workforce.”

He said of the unions had been consulted on the move.

“This measure is temporary and will remain in place until the outcome of the risk assessment is finalised, staff have been consulted, and we understand the health and safety risk. It applies to all employees of LPC, including corporate and administrative staff, regardless of where they work.”

Last month, Lyttelton​ Port announced it was paying all its employees a $500 bonus after confirming a 16 million profit last year, which was $7.5m ahead of the goal it set in the aftermath of March’s 2020 lockdown.