• 25
  • March
    2011

People enjoy going out to eat. It should be a relaxing experience to have someone prepare and serve your meal, then do the dishes afterwards. However, if the chef is coughing into your salad or another cook is working to keep nausea at bay while preparing your feast, you may head home feeling sick instead of satisfied.

A study was recently released by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United that illustrated the connection between inadequate compensation for restaurant workers in California and the spread of illnesses.

Most workers in the restaurant industry do not receive paid time off. If they feel sick, they must choose between going into work ill or staying home and not getting paid. Because most of the workers do not make much more than minimum wage, many of them opt to go to work when they are sick.

While we may hope that the people preparing our food have the sense to stay home instead of spreading sickness, that is rarely the case. More than 63 percent of the workers who were surveyed said that they had served or prepared food when they sick.

Unsurprisingly, even more workers said they did not receive paid sick days (87 percent), and 90 percent said they did not receive health insurance. Healthcare is certainly not inexpensive, and many people think they can "tough it out" instead of paying hefty medical bills.

Employers are responsible for making their workplaces are safe for their employees. If individuals were offered a limited number of sick days, employers could help eliminate some of the unnecessary illnesses spreading through restaurants.

Source: TH Online, "Too sick to serve?" Eileen Mozinski Schmidt, 20 March 2011