Management told us that unless we are dead, we have to come to work. One retail worker told The Shift Project that showing any signs of COVID-19 was not enough to justify staying at home and being safe. The Shift Project gathers data about working conditions for 25 million people employed in the US service sector. Willie B. Thomas/Getty Images
More than 878,000 deaths have been reported in the US since the beginning of the Pandemic. Workers in the service industry were already in a precarious position before the COVID-19 crisis hit, without the safety net of sick pay if they became ill. According to Bureau of Labor data, 41% of service-sector employees are denied sick pay.
Professor Harknett is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California San Francisco and co-founding of The Shift Project.
The status quo for most of this workforce is the lack of paid sick leave. Harknett said that if you skip work, you're foregoing pay at a minimum, and jeopardizing your job, as well.
An employee at a large pharmacy chain who asked not to be identified for fear of losing her job told Insider that she tested positive for COVID-19 and had a baby around the same time. Her manager insisted that she come to work because no one else could. She was allowed to take sick leave after threatening to resign.
"Devastated doesn't even sum up how I felt." She said that she thought she was working with a company that cared about health.
A woman clutches her stomach.
She said that it was more important for them to have someone cover her closing shift. I was not ok emotionally and physically.
The employee works part-time and cares for her child. Her husband is unable to work from home because he works full time.
I wasn't asking for any special treatment. She said she wanted to get some time to heal and be in a better state of mind.
Nearly two-thirds of workers who reported being sick said they worked through the illness, according to a Shift Project survey. Money worries and not wanting to let down coworkers were the top reasons people worked while sick, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A night auditor at a hotel in Michigan told Insider that he was forced to go into work while he was positive for COVID-19, and that his employer had given up on safety protocols for staff.
The hotel reception is wearing a facemask.
The employee said he came in early one day to take over the shift from a colleague who thought they had Covid-19. While they both wore masks and were attentive, he believes he had already caught the virus from his coworker but had not started presenting symptoms.
He tested positive two days after he was in contact with his colleague. He was told to come back after just five days even though he was positive for the virus. He was told by the manager that there wasn't enough workers to cover shifts if people were sick.
Employers are understaffed because they are trying to reduce labor costs. Harknett said there isn't a norm of sufficient staffing.
A court case in California took up the issue of a company that prioritized the interests of the business over the health of their workers. The California Court of Appeals ruled in January that Matilde Ek and her three daughters could file a lawsuit against her employer, See's Candies, for failing to ensure safety in the workplace.
Ek's husband, Arturo, 72, died after catching the virus.
Ek, who worked at a packing plant in California, claimed that employees complained to their supervisors about the working conditions.
The defendants should have known that their failure to take appropriate and necessary mitigation measures would increase the known and foreseeable risk that their workers would become infections in the course and scope of their work.
The US labor market has been affected by the Great Resignation. The CEO of the hiring platform SmartRecruiters told Insider that people are no longer willing to work with poor working conditions because of the Pandemic.
Some of the lowest paid workers in the country are in the leisure and hotel industries. The chart is for Madison Hoff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has data.
In the most recent month for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data, 4.5 million workers quit their jobs, led by low-wage workers, with a record-breaking 1 million leisure and hospitality workers leaving their jobs.
Kevin Reuning, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University, believes that service-sector staff are often seen by employers as replaceable vessels for providing labor, not as people with vulnerabilities.
Maribel Cornejo, a McDonald's worker and leader with the Fight for $15 in Houston, is hoping that this will change as the workplace changes because of the Pandemic.
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