As vaccinations continue across the U.S., some companies offer financial incentives to encourage their workers to get their chance.
Instacart Inc., the grocery delivery service, announced Thursday that it will offer a $ 25 allowance for workers who receive it COVID-19 vaccine. This joins others, including Trader Joe’s and Dollar General, who plan to pay workers extra if they are vaccinated.
“Our goal with the introduction of our new admission to vaccine support is to ensure that Instacart buyers do not currently have to choose between earning income as an essential service provider or being vaccinated,” said Apoorva Mehta, CEO of Instacart, in a statement.
The San Francisco-based Instacart has nearly doubled its staff to nearly 500,000 to meet demand for online grocery stores since the U.S. pandemic erupted last year.
Grocery store chain Trader Joe’s, which has more than 50,000 employees, said on Thursday it would pay its employees two hours per dose to get the vaccine. The company in Monrovia, California, said it would also move on schedules to make sure employees have time to be vaccinated.
Dollar General said Wednesday it will give employees the equivalent of four hours pay if they get the vaccine. Goodlettsville, Tennessee-based retailer, said it employs 157,000 people.
A Vaccine Advice Panel at US Centers for Disease Control voted late last month on recommendations for the distribution of vaccines. The panel said grocery workers, which will include employees of Instacart and Dollar General, should be in the second group to receive shots fired at health care workers and nursing home residents.
It is up to each state to decide how and when to accept the CDC’s recommendations. Some states have already been considered to the second group, which also includes firefighters, police, teachers, correctional workers, postal workers and people aged 75 and over. There are about 50 million people in the group.
Businesses may require employees to receive COVID-19 vaccines as a requirement for employment, even though they must accommodate them for medical or religious reasons, according to the Federal Employment Equity Commission.
The most companies are reluctant to impose such mandates, said Sharon Perley Masling, a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis, who advises clients on workplace issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The emergency of the FDA approval of the vaccine makes it impractical for many businesses to need it, as the shots are not available to most of the population, she said.
Yet Masling said the companies he works with are taking various steps to strongly encourage their employees to be vaccinated, including internal PR campaigns that show top executives who are eligible to get the shots. Other incentives include free child care, paid free time and free delivery of pizza and other gifts, she said.
“It’s good for employees, it’s good for their communities and it’s good to ensure the continuation of business operations,” Masling said.
The push to vaccinate comes amid signs that some people – even health workers – are reluctant to take the shots, contributing to the slowdown in the mass vaccination effort in the United States. Masling said many companies are still trying to figure out how their staff feel about taking the shots, with some sending out internal surveys.
Concerns about side effects
In a survey last month by the Society for Human Resource Management, nearly two-thirds of U.S. employees said they were likely to get the vaccine when it became available. Still, 36% said they are unlikely to be vaccinated, citing the main cause for concern about side effects. SHRM surveyed workers from 529 U.S. households using the AmeriSpeak Omnibus survey, a probability-based panel developed by NORC at the University of Chicago.
According to scientists, the vaccines were carefully tested on tens of thousands and examined by independent experts, and there were no signs of widespread serious side effects from the shots.
Not every company offers incentives. The delivery app DoorDash, another major platform for gig workers, said it had asked the CDC and governors to prioritize delivery workers in the distribution of vaccines. But it does not intend to offer benefits to workers who are vaccinated.
Target Corp. also does not plan to offer incentives, but said it would make the vaccine free and accessible to its 350,000 employees. According to Target, 1,700 of its stores have an on-site CVS pharmacy that will offer the vaccine to staff when available.
Albertsons, a grocery store chain with 2,250 U.S. stores and 300,000 employees, also does not issue financial incentives. Like DoorDash, he is asking state and local authorities to make sure his workers get preference for the vaccine.
A separate SHRM survey last month found that although about two-thirds of U.S. employers intended to encourage employees to be vaccinated, only 3% decided to require it for at least some workers. That may change, as 55% of employers said they were unsure whether they would eventually need it, according to the survey among 955 members of SHRM, an organization of about 300,000 people in human resources.
Bad press
Many large companies have been criticized for treating their employees throughout the pandemic, from poor sick leave policies to poor working conditions. Companies, ranging from meat packaging plants to Amazon, have struggled with absenteeism from workers and outbreaks that have forced temporary closures of their factories and warehouses. There is also a looming debate in Congress over whether employers should be exempted from legal liability related to coronavirus exposure as more of them start recalling their employees to their offices and other workshops.
Public perception provides a strong incentive for businesses to get their workers vaccinated, said Laura Boudreau, a professor of economics at Columbia Business School who specializes in labor law.
“Many of them had to defend their reputation in terms of how they treated their employees throughout the pandemic,” Boudreau said.
Instacart is one of the various companies that work to give preference to vaccines. The company has also faced criticism and unrest over the workers for allegations that it did not do enough to protect its buyers – performance workers who make several trips to grocery stores every day to buy and deliver groceries to people on order the app – who did not receive health insurance from the company or guaranteed paid sick leave.
The company says it has distributed 620,000 free safety packs to its workers, including face masks and hand sanitizers. It introduced a new policy in March to offer 14-day paid leave to gig workers diagnosed with COVID-19 or ordered due to potential exposure to quarantine.