Instacart Leads Debate Over Gig Economy Employee Vaccine Eligibility

COVID-19 vaccine

How much has grocery shopping changed since the pandemic started? There’s plenty of data from the consumer side as they have flocked to digital-first options. Less obvious are the changes that have had to be endured by grocery workers. This has been brought to the fore recently as a result of the surge in coronavirus cases in Southern California, and by a special request by Instacart to move its shoppers, who are part-time workers, to the front of the vaccine line.

The part-time worker angle has been debated for about a month as many companies including Uber and Lyft have petitioned government officials to skip the line. For grocery workers, who are deemed in the “essential” retail category, relief has been slow in coming. But on Monday (Jan. 11), New York State became the first to act on behalf of them. New York’s vaccine eligibility pool has been expanded to include grocery store workers, among other groups, according to the state’s Department of Health. New York City grocery workers can now schedule appointments online or by phone to get vaccinated at one of the city’s designated vaccine hubs. Other groups now eligible for the vaccine include public transit staff, first responders and any New Yorker over the age of 75. It was not clear in the announcement whether or not Instacart or other gig workers are part of the grouping.

Vaccine distribution in the U.S. has been a rocky road from a logistical point of view over the last several weeks, leaving essential workers in other states who remain necessary on the frontlines of the global pandemic wondering when exactly their turn will arrive.

“It’s overwhelming to us. The stories leave all of us weeping,” John Grant told the Sacramento Bee. “We’ve never had to make calls to workers who survived their husband’s death or their wife’s.”

Grant is president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, the union representing  thousands of Los Angeles-area grocery employees, many hundreds of whom have been sickened in workplace outbreaks as the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has surged.

Those workers, according to reports, are demanding many things — hazard pay, better and more thorough cleaning in stores, more readily available PPE supplies and more access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

And while unions are actively advocating for their members, increasing employers are joining in the push. The latest to join the lengthening list, according to reports in Axios, is Instacart, which has begun lobbying public health authorities to include its workers as part of the essential workers who will get early access to COVID-19 vaccines. Instacart joins Uber, Lyft and DoorDash in making similar requests for their workers to be granted essential worker status for the purposes of getting the vaccine.

The situation, however, is complicated by the fact that gig workers have unusual legal status as independent contractors, not employees. There is no question that these workers have been instrumental in helping consumers digitize their lives during the pandemic by providing delivery services that allow many consumers to avoid physical locations, nor that they have not faced COVID-19 infection or even death as a result of their work.

The challenge, however, is that independent contractor status means they lack the same benefits and protections as full-time employees like health insurance, sick leave, family leave, disability or workers’ compensation. Their status also means technically they all work for themselves, making vaccine distribution a whole lot harder.

Boosting vaccination in those segments, PYMNTS survey data indicates, is needed. Gig workers, according to the data, are majority millennials and bridge millennials, though that is shifting as the gig economy becomes more popular among demographic sets and Generation Z consumers are increasingly coming of age. And millennials, according to PYMNTS are a demographic set where vaccination needs a bit of a boost, as almost a quarter of bridge millennials are not interested in getting the vaccine. Interest in getting vaccinated is highest among older generations, with 46.5 percent of baby boomers and seniors very or extremely likely to get vaccinated. Nearly a third of millennials and bridge millennials express the same level of interest in getting vaccinated, in comparison.

But as PYMNTs has also observed, mandatory vaccination requirements by employers do have some fairly strong power to boost intention toward inoculation.

And boosting intention is critical if the vaccine is to do its work. Vaccines work because they synthetically create herd immunity within human populations by making a large swath of people immune to the disease such that the virus can no longer spread.

To achieve herd immunity with 90+ percent effective vaccine approximately 80 percent of the U.S. population would have to show up to get the vaccine. As of early November, according to PYMNTS data, only  38.4 percent were planning on getting the vaccine while 23.7 percent of respondents told PYMNTS they weren’t sure. Even if both those groups get vaccines, that is only 75 percent of the way to the 80 percent vaccination rate necessary for the COVID-19 vaccine to provide herd immunity.

Consumers need persuading, and what remains to be seen is whether the 38.4 percent not planning on a vaccine would rapidly switch their answer from a hard no to a grudging yes if their ability to return to work depends on it.

It might not be enough to change everyone’s mind — but from the point of view of upping vaccination and getting the world back to normal, it doesn’t have to. And gig workers, statistically less likely to want it in many cases and highly exposed to the virus? Looks like a very good place to start.

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