Half of American Fast Food Workers Would Go to Work Sick

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 20, 6:52AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Apparently, Americans are so worried about their jobs that many go to work sick. The trend would not seem to be good for either the sick persons or people who work in proximity to them.

Based on information from a new survey by the Center for Research and Public Policy (CRPP):

According to the survey, 51 percent of employees reported they always or frequently go to work when sick. More than 45 percent said they go to work sick because they can’t afford to lose pay. More than 46 percent said they didn’t want to let their co-workers down by not showing up for a shift. When managers were asked how many employees they thought came to work sick, the majority answered just 18 percent.

Over 20 million U.S. and Canadian frontline food workers grow, process, distribute, cook, and serve the food that is eaten by over 355 million consumers every day. They are the vital link of a complex food system from farm to fork.

What the survey does not tell is the effect on productivity. Presumably sick workers do not match the output of healthy workers overall. And if their illnesses are contagious, the productivity of an entire workplace, or a part of a larger company, may be compromised.

The information also points to the fact that workers believe their bosses presumably would take a sick worker over none at all. At least, for some reason, workers believe that, even if the assumption is not true.

As the CRPP points out, it is the time of year when worker illness should increase: “As the cold and flu season approaches …”

Better to be sick than out of a job.

ALSO READ: 10 Cities Where You Don’t Want to Get Sick

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.