The vaccines will come from the government, which has the doses but apparently not the capacity to get them quickly into arms. Firms are buying ultra-cold freezers for shots that need such storage. The jabs will be administered by company doctors. Germany has between 15,000 and 20,000 of them , many more than other European Union countries, America or Britain. About one-third of them are employed directly by firms and the rest run practices that serve employers in their area.
“As soon as we get the vaccine, we will get started,” promises Rolf Buch, boss of Vonovia. His firm has already set up centres that will, starting this month, test employees who wish to return to the office for the virus. These venues will be used to vaccinate its 10,000 employees and adult members of their immediate families, in keeping with official guidelines on who gets priority.
German labour law allows companies to give bonuses to workers who get vaccinated for any illness . Such carrots are common in America, where Aldi and Lidl, two big German supermarkets, are offering workers payments of up to $200 to roll up their sleeves. Neither grocer, nor any other big German firm, is currently planning to use such incentives at home, for fear of the controversy this might cause . Still, Mr Buch expects the vast majority of his staff to accept the offer of free shots.
Once Mr Buch is done with Vonovia employees and their families, he is willing to turn the company’s centres over to the general vaccination effort. Other bosses are starting with the broader population. In early December, before the first vaccines were approved for use in the, business folk in Bremen, a city in north-west Germany, launched a campaign to convert an exhibition centre next to the central railway station into a giant vaccination site.
Thanks to the pushiness of Bremer businesspeople, up to 16,000 of their fellow burghers a day will get jabbed from mid-March, more than ten times what the local government had planned. Their goal is to have 70% of the city’s adults inoculated by the end of July, months ahead of the government’s schedule.