Employers at the Heart of COVID-19 Protection Efforts

Recently, an NBC News national poll found that employers were the most credible sources of information specific to COVID-19. Poll participants were asked to fill in the blank in a simple question: “In general, you trust what _____ has said about the coronavirus?” The group that ranked the highest was “your employer.”

This poll validates the Grower-Shipper Association’s (GSA) approach in creating employer-driven programs to protect essential workers from serious illness from COVID-19.

Whether it is securing and distributing hard-to-find PPE and rapid tests, education, creation of a model multi-state quarantined housing program, and development of mass vaccination clinics, employers were at the center of all GSA programs.

Why employers? Despite what is often portrayed, the evidence supports that there’s trust. If your supervisor explains there is safe housing arranged for you, without red tape and needless delay, and that they can help you access that housing, the chances of using it is high. Same thing with vaccines.

The NBC poll results affirmed this stating that people are more likely to trust who they know directly or people with whom they have direct contact.

While all GSA programs had exceptional support, whether in the form of providing medical observation through the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System or the Regional Center for Border Health in Yuma, or through the administration of vaccines supplied by the federal government in partnership with Clinica De Salud Del Valle De Salinas, access to services were furnished through employers.

Today, we can look back on GSA’s predominate role in securing and distributing over three million masks, administering 60,000+ vaccines through our Clinica and Regional Center partnerships and providing 50,000+ tests. But it is the employers’ dedication to implementation and use that’s been the key to helping minimize and prevent serious illness among farm workers.

And, GSA and ag employers continue to evolve, refine and improve these programs and remain vigilant just as the pandemic evolves and persists.

Undoubtedly, the evidence of employer commitment and employee trust doesn’t fit the narrative portrayed by some. But the results reveal otherwise.