The owner of an ice cream company that's giving vaccine employees a pay raise says he's been bombarded with emails from anti-vaxxers.
Chapman's, a Canadian ice cream company, started giving workers a pay raise last week.
The owner of the company told the radio station that he had been sent "hate packages" in the mail after the policy was implemented.
He said that his father got a message from a person who told him he was a Nazi and should be convicted of war crimes.
Chapman told The Globe and Mail that the company had received a lot of negative comments on their Facebook group.
Chapman said that one e-mail asked why they were using segregation tactics. The exact words were: 'Kudos on implementing Nazi-ism into our modern day.'
The Globe and Mail reported that a photo of Chapman's vaccine policy had been spread in anti-vaccine groups on social media, with some people urging a boycott of the brand.
Chapman said that news coverage of the backlash led to emails, phone calls, and social-media posts from people praising the pay raise and encouraging other companies to introduce similar incentives for vaccine workers.
The ratio of good comments to bad comments has gone up, according to Chapman. He said that the company's sales had not been affected by the boycott and that Americans had been asking where they could buy ice cream.
Chapman told the radio station that before introducing the pay raise, he had been paying for unvaccinated staff to get two COVID-19 tests a week, which cost around 40 Canadian dollars per person.
He told the radio station that it felt like we were treating the unvaccinated better than the vaccine. We said, 'You know what?' Let's try and be fair to both sides.
Chapman said that around 100 of his employees aren't fully unvaccinated. He said he expected the figure to decrease as more staff members get their first and second shots.
Government data shows that 78.2% of Canadians have had at least one dose of the vaccine.
Some governments are rolling out similar policies as more and more companies mandate vaccines for their employees.
People are required to be fully vaccined to visit some indoor venues in Ontario. If police in Toronto don't provide proof of full vaccine by the end of November, they will be placed on leave.
In the US, President Joe Biden is requiring all companies with more than 100 employees to have a vaccine.
