Labor & Employment Law

Lack of Paid Sick Leave Sped Swine Flu Spread

By Mike Hall

In 2009, nearly 26 million workers were likely infected with the H1N1 (swine flu) virus. The spread of the virus may have been aided by lack of paid sick leave, which prompted more than 8 million of those workers to take no time off from work, according to a new study.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) study, “Sick at Work: Infected Employees in the Workplace During the H1N1 Pandemic,” used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It found that workers in industries with no or poorly paid sick day coverage were the most likely to go to work while sick.

Nearly half of all private-sector workers?and 76 percent of low-income workers?have no paid sick leave. Many low-wage workers have jobs that require direct contact with the public, such as in the food service, hospitality and health care industries and in schools.

Robert Drago, Ph.D., professor of Labor Studies and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University and co-author of the study, says:

Work attendance by infected employees is a public health issue due to contagion. Employees who attended work while infected with H1N1 are estimated to have caused the infection of as many as 7 million co-workers.

Last year, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 2460 and S. 1152), which would require businesses with more than 15 employees to provide workers with up to seven paid sick days a year to care for themselves or a sick child or spouse.

During a House hearing on the bill, Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said paid sick leave benefits employers, workers and their families as well as customers and the general public.

Sick workers are not productive ones and by spreading disease in the workplace risk the overall productivity of the business. By providing paid leave for sick workers, worker safety and business productivity can both be enhanced?a win-win for employers.

While we want to encourage workers to make healthy and rational decisions, when they are faced with the choice of staying home sick without pay or going into work sick so they can put food on the table and pay their mortgage, many workers choose to go to work and “tough it out,” putting their co-workers and their customers at risk.

Click here to read the entire report from IWPR.

Don’t forget to check out the AFL-CIO’s pandemic flu site, which includes vital resources for health care workers, firefighters, educators and more. And for more information, visit www.flu.gov.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 16, 2010 (boomark / email).