Sick Workers Connected to 41 Percent of Food Poisoning Outbreaks, CDC Reports

Or we could just legislate some sanity. 10 days sick and 15 days holiday minimum nationally. But that would make too much sense.

I see it as the few arseholes ruining the system for everyone.

That is to say, there's that arsehole who takes leave by lying about having a flu or typhoid or dysentery or whatever else and he ends up costing the company too much in wasted time and pay. So now everyone has to get a note from someone who will insure their reason for taking leave.

Which is to say, don't blame the doctors nor the honest patients and workers. Blame the few arseholes that ruin everything for the rest of us.

Anecdotally, that reminds me of how back in grade school, a lot of teachers required you to ask their permission to go to the bathroom.

Lest we forget, though, Mary Mallon was an asymptomatic carrier who didn't feel sick, needed to work, and wasn't about to call in sick. In fact she defied forcible and controversial quarantine measures.

So what's an asymptomatic carrier to do in 2023? Wear a mask?

I always get a lot of enjoyment out of people finding creative ways of weaponizing corporate fear of liability in order to make them behave.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence this happened at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Agreement

For example, last Thursday the Supreme Court just ruled that unions can be sued for losses caused by striking https://archive.is/0bYhe

But that is just the last pieces of labor's power getting washed away in the USA. Already things like sympathy strikes, which give labor actual power in Europe, are completely illegal.

The US is just anti-labor and in love with cheap consumables. Combined, we end up with a massive case of haves and have-nots. Vacation, sick leave, retirement accounts, medical care. It’s great if you’re rich (as damn near everybody on this forum is).

My brother in law is an auto mechanic here in the US. My uncle as well, but in Scotland. While they’re overall income is pretty close (solidly middle class) the amount of financial stress in the US is MUCH MUCH higher.

It’s so short-sighted. I’d happily pay another $30k/year or more in taxes for nationalized medical, lower college costs and other things most Europeans have.

My sister is a physical therapist. She has a doctorate. Her work fundamentally involves being close to other people and touching them. This is one of those fields that 10-20 years ago everybody said would be booming and highly lucrative. Her sick time is counted against her vacation time.

We live in a country completely captured by corporations.

Over the years, for better and worse, the interpretation of what powers the federal government are given had expanded dramatically. Even so, compelling paid sick leave at the federal level would need to rely on the interstate commerce clause.

I'm all for paid sick leave, personally, but doing it in a way that actually passes conditional muster and isn't overturned by a court isn't as easy as saying "this is a good thing, why don't we do it?"

[0] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/murder/is-murder-a-federal...

Why should the employer pay for work that isn't being done?

If you rent a car and it doesn't work, would you pay for it?

If you rent an apartment and its unfit for habitation, would you pay for it?

If you go to the store to buy a product and it's not there, would you pay for it?

It's different if the illness is work related, of course. And it's beneficial to society if people can be sick without worrying about losing income, but is that enough to make employers pay for it? And it also doesn't seem like equal pay for equal work if worker A is sick 2 days a year and worker B is sick 20 days a year, they do about the same amount of work on days they attend and get paid the same amount anually.

Of course this relies on being paid enough to be able to forgo some earnings, and not being financialized so hard such that a paycheck has been spent before it's even earned. So it can't scale in popularity due to the economic feedback loop designed to keep real wages low, and the financial system primarily based on debt.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/California-Paid-Sick-Leave.html

Proposed bans on tipping actually went through the courts, with some southern states ruling to ban it. Eventually, the supreme court stepped in, and ensured tipping would be legal.

Anyway, modern labor laws evolved from that mess, so it's not surprising at all that paid time off is discretionary in some states.

Would all be easier with better health-care options and assurances of an improved social-saftey-net.

Lower pay means you may not be able to afford a car. If the public transport in your area is lousy, you'll be late more often.

Lower pay means if you can afford a car, it's more likely to be an old beater, and if it breaks down, and you're not 110% prepared to switch to public transport on a moment's notice, you'll be late or miss work.

Lower pay means a worse living situation. You're more likely to be in an old building, with a crappy landlord, who may not care about the asbestos in the ceiling, or the black mold in the walls, or the bedbugs, and then you're more likely to get sick.

Lower pay means you can't afford good food, which means you're more likely to get sick.

Lower pay means you can't afford regular doctor visits (especially since you're also much less likely to have any sick time—paid or not—in which to go to those visits), which means you're more likely to get sick.

Lower pay makes it much more likely that you're in a high-stress job—one where you're expected to jump for superiors and customers at a moment's notice, and be punished for trying to act like a human being—which means you're more likely to get sick.

Lower pay means you're more likely to be working multiple jobs, and thus getting too little sleep. That makes it more likely that you'll oversleep sometimes and miss your alarm, and be late or miss work.

I daresay I could go on...

Paid sick leave fixes that problem specifically. Otherwise employees will show up even when they have the flu or any other disease in order to get paid and contaminate food.

Clearly you don't want these people to get a better compensation thus incentive not to show up to work when they are sick. This isn't a "social problem", whatever that weasel expression means, this is a compensation problem.

On the other hand, I have been the schmuck who went to work feeling awful and possibly contagious, because sick leave had been lumped in with vacation, and I might need to take some if my child (as happens a lot on introduction to day care) got sick.

Money does fix the social problem of having no money. Penicillin isn't in it as a wonder drug.

Actual terror is not included in many definitions of terrorism.

The direction of the deception is related to the probability investigators are unable to determine if someone working at a restaurant was sick. Which seems slight.