Dollar General to pay employees to get COVID-19 vaccine

Dollar General announced on Wednesday that it will give its employees four hours worth of pay to get the COVID-19 vaccine. 

The offer is currently for its frontline workers but the company says it is working with the distribution and transportation teams to make similar accommodations.

"We do not want our employees to have to choose between receiving a vaccine or coming to work, so we are working to remove barriers (e.g., travel time, mileage, child care needs, etc.) by providing frontline hourly team members with a one-time payment equivalent of four (4) hours of regular pay after receiving a completed COVID-19 vaccination and salaried team members with additional store labor hours to accommodate their time away from the store," the announcement on the company website states

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Dollar General is one of the first retailers to offer workers an incentive for getting the vaccine. The retailer has around 157,000 employees. 

"We understand the decision to receive the COVID-19 vaccination is a personal choice, and although we are encouraging employees to take it, we are not requiring them to do so."

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to give a speech Thursday outlining his plan to speed vaccines to more people in the first part of his administration.

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His transition team has vowed to release as many vaccine doses as possible, rather than continuing the Trump administration policy of holding back millions of doses to ensure there would be enough supply to allow those getting the first shot to get a second one.

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