r/science • u/eastbayted • 2d ago

Health Sick food service workers remain top driver of viral foodborne outbreaks in US

https://www.healio.com/news/gastroenterology/20250331/sick-food-service-workers-remain-top-driver-of-viral-foodborne-outbreaks-in-us
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u/Splash_Attack 2d ago edited 2d ago

as a restaurant worker, this helps a bit, but the primary driver of people working sick in restaurants isn't them not getting paid if they don't

This would not be an issue if there was mandated paid sick leave, because it would be paid.

You might now be thinking "no, you don't understand, these are shift workers" but that's a reflection of poor labour protections in the US. In many other countries statuatory sick pay or whatever the equivalent thing is includes people on zero hour contracts and casual arrangements.

You might think "well they would just retaliate against people who took it" except that using your statuatory sick leave is also protected. So if your employer treats you differently for taking it they are in a world of trouble.

It doesn't perfectly protect against all problems that might arise, but if the US just copy-pasted the sick pay laws from any other common law country whole-cloth it would solve a huge array of problems.

edit: I am illiterate and read "isn't" as "is". I've left the comment as is, but ignore the first paragraph. The bit about protection against retaliation is still valid. It's only possible for managers to apply pressure in that way because of a lack of protection against it, and there is a clear model for the kind of protection needed.

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u/PiotrekDG 2d ago

The dumbest part is that the restaurant owner still most likely loses more productivity overall when a sick employee comes in with a disease and infects their coworkers.

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u/Amberatlast 2d ago

Seriously, every kitchen has you working elbow to elbow with the same people in a stuffy room for hours on end. A cold can rip through a place like that so fast, and none of them have staff to cover two call-outs on the same day.

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u/Rocktopod 2d ago

Not if everyone just comes in and works while sick instead of staying home.

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u/PiotrekDG 2d ago

I mean, that might depend on the role, but presenteeism has negative consequences in general. Just the loss of productivity and mental health burdens might be enough to offset perceived benefits.