Employers can reward workers for getting Covid-19 vaccine, lawyer says

Employers who want to motivate their employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19, can legally do so by giving them a vaccination bonus. "In terms of employment law, there are no clauses that would prohibit this," senior lawyer of employment law Pascal Besselink of DAS told BNR.

"You don't see any legal obstacles to such a vaccination bonus. The moment you make that agreement, there are no records. It doesn't violate the GDPR as long as you don't register it," said Besselink. Privacy laws dictate that whether or not an employee was vaccinated must not be noted on their files.

Legal aid provider ARAG also said that it is permitted under employment law to reward employees who got vaccinated. Though ARAG representative Sandra Bonestroo argued that it was "highly questionable" whether an employer should decide to do that in practice.

"Vaccination should be the choice of an employee, because of a financial incentive he can make the wrong decision, for example, if a specialist advises a sick employee not to get vaccinated," said Bonestroo.

"In the end, it’s a matter of paying attention to the privacy issue and taking the moral aspect into account," Besselink concluded.