Should Idaho Employees Be Compensated For Getting Vaccinated?

As the COVID-19 vaccine begins to rollout out for more and more essential workers, employers across the nation are creating initiatives to encourage their employees to get vaccinated.

The president of Chobani, which employees roughly 900 Idahoans, announced that all of the company's employees will be compensated six hours of work pay if they decide to get the COVID-19 vaccine. If you do the math, that ends up be around an extra $114 boost to the average Chobani employee's next paycheck! It's definitely a nice incentive. It also makes it that much easier for workers to get their shots by eliminating the potentially-tough decision of choosing between earning their wages and protecting their well-being.

Peter McGuinness, President and COO of Chobani, said this is an effort to further protect its employees by putting them first which is the company's whole philosophy. He told Idaho News 6, "For us, this is just the right responsible thing to do for your employees. We want to encourage people. We don't want to mandate vaccines, but for those who want to get vaccinated, we wanted to enable that we wanted to incentivize that and facilitate that."

Obviously, most companies will not make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for their employees. That's a whole other discussion. This vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel though and it is the key to restoring normalcy back to our lives and back to the economy- which is another reason why businesses may strongly encourage vaccinations for their employees.

But there is sort of a virtuous dilemma that companies are facing in situations like this where their values are being tested and projected to the forefront. Should more companies being doing this? I personally support the sentiment. Companies such as Chobani for example not only talk the "our employees matter" talk, but they walk the walk.