Markdale-based Chapman’s Ice Cream Vice President says he’ll defend his company and its reputation, “every single day.”
Ashley Chapman says his ice cream company has been getting some hateful mail over the past week, after the company put its vaccination policy into effect which says employees must either be vaccinated or receive rapid testing twice a week in order to be ale to come into work. It also said it would give vaccinated employees a $1 an hour raise.
Chapman says, the company tried to chart a “middle-road between the two sides” but adds, “Now we’re being punished for it.”
He explains, “We didn’t want to be in this conversation, we did not want to be posting our policies and talking about our internal matters with the world and we just thought that this is our business. This has nothing to do with anybody but our company and our employees and suddenly boom, here we are.”
Despite that, he adds, “We’re not afraid to speak our minds. We’re very truthful, very honest and a moral company and to be attacked like this is completely ridiculous, but we’re not about to sit down and take it. We will defend our reputation and our company every single day.”
Chapman explains the company is paying for the rapid tests for each employee, which works out to about $40 a week. He says they decided those who were vaccinated should also get an extra $40 a week saying, “Because really, we’re paying out of the company’s pocket to provide these rapid tests and we’re not providing, obviously these rapid tests to all of our vaccinated employees so we felt that was a little bit unfair. So that’s why we instituted the $1 pay raise.”
Chapman says the backlash started when the company posted a reminder to its employees, who are not unionized, that its vaccine policy was going into effect Sunday, November 21st, saying, “At the same time we posted that we are going to be increasing our wages of all vaccinated employees by a dollar. That happens next Sunday (28th) and one of my employees took a picture of the postings and sent it to an anti-vaxx forum or something, and then from there they started a campaign against Chapman’s Ice Cream.”
“All they needed was just one picture that presented a partial story on their newsfeed and suddenly they’re making threats and saying horrible things about my family and my company and it’s just, really, it’s very sad,” says Chapman.
Chapman says while about 80 out of 850 employees are not fully vaccinated, he says the list is changing daily as more of them receive the shot. He says there are about five employees who are on leave due to their vaccination status, and he believes about three of them are set to return to work next week. “They just really didn’t understand what our real policy was and they didn’t ask questions, they just decided that they weren’t going to address it and we had to send them a letter last week, saying, we’re sorry but unless you do the rapid testing or get vaccinated, you can’t be here.”
“Having three of those come back next week is great. So really it’s two out of 850 that were put on unpaid leave. At any point, these people, if they decided, ‘Okay, I will agree to the rapid testing,’ We could have them back in a heartbeat,” says Chapman.
As for the content of the letters and messages the company has been receiving, he explains, “One guy wished that we all got cancer and died. Several have written how they wish our factory would catch on fire again and burn to the ground.” (The factory suffered a major fire back in 2009).
He says, “You pretty much think of the worst things that you could ever say to a person–in your imagination and it has come through in the last week to Chapman’s Ice Cream.”
Chapman describes much of what he’s gotten in the mail the past week as ‘manifestos.’ He’s received emails and voicemail messages after-hours, “Saying essentially that we’re war criminals and we should be tried. They called my father a Nazi,” says Chapman, whose father David is 78.
Closer to the beginning of the pandemic Chapman’s gave every employee a $2 an hour pandemic pay increase which Chapman says lasted a few months, “Then we decided, ‘You know what? Let’s just make it permanent because everybody’s stressed out, everybody’s afraid to come to work and we really thought we should help motivate our employees for just being loyal to us and coming to work every day.”
Earlier in the pandemic, Chapman’s donated two ultra-low temperature freezers to the vaccination effort. One went to Public Health Grey Bruce and the other went to the Windsor-Essex area.
Chapman says there is a pushback against the call for a boycott, adding, “It’s way more powerful than anything that the anti-vaxxers have bee able to do with their boycott. It’s been a constant steady stream.”
People supporting the company rallied on social media and managed to get #IStandWithChapmans trending, offering positive messages for the ice cream maker under the hashtag.
He says, “People have really reached out and at some point we kind of figured it’s about anywhere from ten to 15 times more good feedback from Canadians than bad.”
In the end he says, “This is pretty disheartening, this entire thing– but at the end of the day it’s going to be positive because the anti-vaxxers will move on to their next target, whoever that might be, and we’ll have just as much, if not more loyalty from all of our customers that appreciate all of the good things that we do.”
