Many employees involved in food preparation do not have paid sick time.
The NLRB began hearing allegations made by six former employees of a Minneapolis-based Jimmy John’s franchise that they were fired in retaliation for attempting to unionize and for calling attention to company policy that doesn’t provide employees with paid sick time.
Although the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for vacations, sick leave or holidays, these benefits may be negotiated between employers and employees. Several State and municipal governments, including Seattle, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Connecticut require employers to give paid sick leave.
In a study published in the Journal of Food Protection, roughly 12 percent of food workers interviewed said they went to work while sick with symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea. Because of the danger of passing infections from sick employees during food handling, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) encourages restaurants to give food workers paid sick leave.
Regardless of paid sick leave policies, the CDC recommends hand washing as a critical step to prevent food-borne illness. GovDocs offers our hand-washing poster, which is perfect for restaurant and food processing industries – plus we offer two hand-washing posters at no charge as part of our flu prevention package.
