NATIONAL Cabinet's decision to allow education and childcare sector workers who are close contacts to avoid isolation and return to work after providing a negative rapid antigen test could have "disastrous consequences".
Independent Education Union Australia NSW/ACT Branch acting secretary Pam Smith said the union had "very significant concerns" about the decision, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Thursday.
A close contact is anyone who has spent four or more hours with a confirmed case in a household or household-like setting.
"It could have some disastrous consequences for schools and result in more school closures and disruptions, the opposite of its supposed intention," Ms Smith said.
"Staff on the isolation exempt list can go to work if they don't have symptoms - well that means our IEU members in schools could be required to work knowing that either they're a close contact and then could potentially infect others, or that they're working with close contacts and could become infected and carry the illness to their own families... potentially this could put workers and families and workplaces and communities at greater risk of spreading the infection."
She said schools would have community members who were considered vulnerable and varying vaccination coverage among students.
Mr Morrison said the country could face up to 10 per cent absenteeism from the workforce and this could rise to up to 15 per cent if schools didn't open.
"The government seems to think the economy comes first, our argument would be that safe and healthy families and communities and workplaces, they are a prerequisite to a healthy economy," she said.
Ms Smith said the union had questions about RATs and noted they were only a point-in-time test.
"If they are seen as the entry point to return to work... then there has to be very readily accessible and free tests," she said.
"Who is going to provide these tests, are employers going to provide tests, is the government going to distribute the tests? Are they going to be done at home and at whose cost, are they going to be done in a school setting?
"At the moment tests are in very short supply, there has been price hikes and price gouging and all of those issues need to be resolved before there could be any consideration of any return to work of people who are close contacts.
"We think it's fraught with a number of practical issues but also it's a risky public health measure."
Mr Morrison said plans would be released next week about the return to school.
Australian Education Union federal president Correna Haythorpe said he should have delivered a national plan by now.
"Today all the Prime Minister provided was an announcement that there would be another announcement, delivered within a frame that says schools must be open to provide a babysitting service for the broader workforce," she said, adding this was "deeply offensive" for educators.
She said AEU members who felt vulnerable as a close contact or worried about the potential risk to others should not go into schools.
