A Company Is Giving $500 Bonuses to Farm Workers Who Get a Covid Vaccine
The idea comes from Bolthouse Farms CEO Jeff Dunn. He’s offering his 1,800 full time employees at his California company $500 for getting vaccinated. According to NBC10 Dunn explains his offer as “incenting people to get vaccinated was clearly the right thing to do and sent the right message.” Currently 1,000 of his his 1,800 employees have been vaccinated.
Like the farms here in SWFL, Bolthouse Farms staff is roughly 80% Hispanic. Studies have shown that Latinos are twice as likely to get the COVID and three times more likely to be hospitalized from it. These numbers are from the CDC .
Distrust in the medical community has led many to shun the vaccine for fear of long term health effects. $500 is a lot of money for a farm worker and Bolthouse is hoping that this step can help.
The WSJ reports that Bolthouse Farms “had an extremely low Covid-19 positive incident rate” but has had one employee die from coronavirus. Bolthouse also has facilities in Arizona, Washington and Illinois and is working on vaccinating those employees as well.
Vaccination Commitment! In a quest for operations normalcy @BolthouseFarms CEO @ChiefCarrot gives $500 cash bonus to full-time workers who get COVID-19 vaccinations. https://t.co/KuHFusRcts #vaccinate
— Ivy Cohen Corp Comm (@IvyCohen) March 23, 2021