- Justin Kraemer via Flickr
- Feel better you poor bastard.
TONIGHT: 190,000 workers in Seattle do not have paid sick days—this includes the people who serve you food, give you shots, and bag your groceries. Which means you’re getting sneezed on, and they’re getting fucked.
Paid sick leave is already mandated in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee, but the Seattle Times says it’s unnecessary because nobody goes to work when they’re sick, right? If you know better, come to a forum on paid sick leave sponsored by the Seattle Coalition for a Healthy Workforce tonight from 5:00-7:00 p.m. at the University Christian Church (4731 15th Avenue NE).
Yeah, I had a few jobs that did not offer sick days. Then I furthered my education, built my resume, and got a job that did offer sick days. Problem solved.
@1 does your job keep you out of contact with other people? I think you might still have a problem, that of being served food etc. By sick people who didn’t have the means or desire to do what you did…you prick.
I hope the Stranger doesn’t get sucked in by the one sides shallow Union ploy on this.
Tonight’s event is a campaign kick off and not a forum. Period. No people opposed to this plan have been invited to the discussion.
2nd – this whole campaign is about the UFCW (grocery store union) trying to prove their relevance by getting benefits for non-union grocery store workers. Period. But they aren’t creative enough to think about how to make the rules apply to just grocery store employees so they are proposing them for all food handlers, which included restaurants.
But did anyone ask restaurant employees which benefits they want? No.
Restaurant employees would far rather have health insurance, paid time off (which includes sick days), education matching money, shift meals and higher wages. Mandating sicks days will reduce or keep these other benefits from being offered.
The UFCW is funding former Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis’s new company to lobby and promote this ordinance, along with the EOI, who also brought us the Latte Tax.
Don’t buy into this. There are many progressive restaurant owners who want to offer good benefits to their workers. Because of the way restaurant employees can trade shifts, sick day may not always be the most important benefit to offer.
Stop the paid political hype machine on this one.
@2 – we’ve been able to see in other cities that offering sick days does not decrease the spread of airborne illnesses, nor does it keep people with viruses who are able to spread them from reporting to work (mostly because you can spread something like the flu before you show symptoms).
In SF for example, 90% of restaurant employees still report to work when sick.
In Washington, it’s already illegal to work handling food when sick, food handlers are trained not to, most restaurants discourage this already, and restaurants have a way to allow employees to take sick days without losing their money. Keep in mind, a restaurant employees wage is only about 25% of their pay, so not trading shifts doesn’t usually make sense.
This is especially classic because the Times should know better than anyone that people come to work when they’re sick. Unionized workers at the Times have paid sick leave, but they’re only allowed to actually USE IT up to some very small percentage per year. Then they start getting a series of escalating warnings for their bad behavior. That means that people go in sick, and get everyone else at the office sick, ALL THE TIME.
I would think Health Insurance would be one, two, three in the benefit priority list. The American system of Health-Insurance being tied to your job is disgusting.
How?
And what about the myriad other workers who don’t work food service who still don’t get sick days? I used to work at a doctor’s office that often treated people with compromised immune systems, and I had to go to work sick.
@6,
It’s kind of hard to solve that on a local level.
@7 – employee compensation can only make up so much of a percentage of income before a business starts to lose money. Benefits are part of that calculation. So if you mandate one benefit, business owners will look to lower other parts of the compensation mix. These include wages and other benefits.
So before some do-gooder group like EOI, and a self motivated group like UFCW, start to push this mandate on all employees whether they want the benefit or not, just for their own selfish reasons (like getting members in the case of UFCW or getting paid in the case of EOI and Tim Ceis), we should find out what employees want and need.
It may be the case that some employers should be mandated to offer sick days. But should all? Again, restaurants have their own system of dealing with sick days and it works well, and restaurants offer other benefits other employers don’t (like shift meals and drinks). Before the City Council takes other current and potential benefits and wages away and replaces them with mandated sick days, maybe someone should ask employees what they want.
PS – the only reason this is even being considered by City Council is because of the money unions put into political campaigns. Guaranteed most council members would laugh this proposal out of the room if not for the upcoming election and the threat of organized labor opposing them. Watch this issue get punted to a later date as evidence.
My sister-in-law works as a nutritionist in the cancer ward of a hospital here in Seattle and doesn’t get paid sick leave. She’s a single mother with two kids, so she can’t afford to take much unpaid time, and she also gets harassed by her boss if she tries. Yet she works on the cancer ward, where people are incredibly ill and fragile and at big risk of dying if they get secondary infections.
Those of you against mandating paid sick leave, I sure hope it’s not you or a relative being treated there the next time she or one of her coworkers in a similar situation is forced (both financially and by the expectations of her employer) to come to work regardless of her personal health. Because though she’s incredibly, incredibly conscientious about wearing a mask when she’s ill and washing her hands before/after/during every interaction, not everybody is going to be.
And we wonder why nosocomial infection rates are so high. . .
@11 – so mandate it for hospital workers – or better yet, your sister should join the union at the hospital. But again, where ordinances like the one being proposed are put into effect, people are still working sick, so while it seems like this would help, it actually isn’t.
“190,000 workers in Seattle do not have paid sick days—this includes the people who serve you food, give you shots, and bag your groceries. Which means you’re getting sneezed on, and they’re getting fucked.”
Wait a minute- Not having paid sick days means you get fucked?
Now why didn’t someone tell me that while I was single?
@9,
You’re right. Employers shouldn’t be mandated to offer any compensation whatsoever.
And unions already have sick days included in their compensation plans. Why should they give a fuck if non-union shops don’t offer the same benefits?
Years and years ago I worked at a couple of hotels at the front desk. And there were many days I went to work, dealt with the public while I was extremely sick. The jobs offered no paid sick time off and only a week of vacation a year (the vacation you couldn’t use until you were with the company for a year)
So yeah, this is something that companies should do and if they won’t they should be mandated to do so.
I own a small restaurant and employ an average group of 20-25 year olds. Let me tell you what happens when they are sick: they call and tell me that they’re not feeling well so they can’t come in, and occasionally, could they possibly work a different shift instead.
Now let me tell you what happens when they are hungover, high, or just feeling lazy that day: they call and tell me that they’re not feeling well so they can’t come in, and occasionally, could they possibly work a different shift instead.
So now I’m going to have to pay people when they don’t feel like coming in AND pay their replacement for that shift? Fuck that nonsense. This city is already difficult enough to do business in. What a bunch of idiots.
@16, et al:
The current proposals have a part-time worker accruing 1 hour of sick pay for every 30-40 hours worked. That’s — less than — an hour per week.
So, at best, an employer would need to pay for a missed shift only once every two months! WAAAAAAAAAHH!!!
@17. Yeah dipshit. And then mulitiply that by the number of employees. I have 10.
@16 – Sounds like you should move. But don’t go to San Francisco – they already have that law. Oddly, restaurants there are still in business.
@18 Don’t blame your shitty business management skills on your workers. Also, how many times do your workers ‘lie’ to you like that? It’s still an at-will employment. Deal, or close shop and move to Phoenix or Huntsville and see if you can hack it there.
@20 I don’t have to “deal” because I don’t think it’s going to pass. I still have a tiny bit of faith that this city council won’t shoot the business community in the head EVERY single time they have the opportunity to do so. #1 is absolutely right. Entry level jobs are supposed to be somewhat crappy. They are supposed to motivate you to improve yourself and move up the ranks of the work force. Good benefits are supposed to be a direct reflection of your value to that company. I could probably afford this, although I figure it’ll cost me about 5k a year, but as a small business owner I don’t need any additional headaches. When an entire shift calls out sick on a sunny Sunday afternoon and I can’t find anyone to replace them, what am I supposed to do then? #20 – you are correct on on one count: if I do end up closing, either voluntarily or otherwise, I won’t be opening another business in this city.
@21 Ok. So it’s an “entry-level” job (the definition varies, in my experience). Then you’ve probably got to accept the cost of employing such low-value labor. That would be reciprocity. Again, do they must call-in a lot AND you magically know they’re lying for you to complain like that.
@21 Isn’t it lovely to get told how to run your business by people who have never actually run a business? Welcome to the Slog!
How about half pay?
I’ve gone to work sick. At disney we got 3 sick days every month that rolled over to the next month for a certain number of months. Non paid if I remember.
Of course I wasn’t a part of the food service but I did have contact with lots of people from all over the world. And I got to touch all of their credit card and dollar bills. Some of the card really needed a cleaning or get replaced. Two of us had to deal with disney world guests who dropped their park tickets in the toilet. We had to reissue their tickets and it was a lot of tickets.
@23 Not telling anyone how to run a business. If someone wants to whine and complain about the fucking cost of business they’ve chosen then they need to stop blaming those who work for them, especially when they admit they don’t place very high value on those workers. They can’t expect that much then and they can still terminate them at will.
@1 Also, forgot about your original comment. Yeah typical “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” bullshit, which certainly doesn’t apply to everyone in every vocation.
It’s funny as you’re criticizing someone for being lazy while you, yourself are being intellectually lazy. I guess education degrees don’t have very stringent standards anyway.
Yeah, I’m not going to apologize for working hard and making smart decisions. Feel free to keep making excuses for everyone that chooses not to do the same. Whatever it takes to makes you feel better about your life, right?
@27 I’m fine with my life for the corporate fiefdom it is. That’s the nature of my situation. I’d venture to say my salary is probably much higher than yours–not bragging–it’s just you probably think I’m a waiter or something. But, no, it doesn’t take being in what you’d no doubt consider “a loser job” to have empathy for people who WON’T graduate from that station in life. That’s just reality that people will stay in jobs like that and won’t “make choices” otherwise. OR consider the precarious economic situation and realize that you’re not far from being there yourself unless you’re worth billions.
“you probably think I’m a waiter or something. But, no, it doesn’t take being in what you’d no doubt consider “a loser job” to have empathy for people who WON’T graduate from that station in life”.
That’s a lot of assumptions you’re making (all wrong!) Pretty hilarious that you got all that from my original statement about self improvement and hard work. But again, whatever makes you feel better about yourself. Sooooo defensive.