Have you ever bought groceries from a checker with the sniffles? If so, you\u2019re probably not alone. In fact, many food retail employees can\u2019t afford to miss work\u00a0when they\u2019re under the weather. Many\u00a0don\u2019t have medical coverage and few can cover lost wages when taking unexpected time off.<\/p>\n
Janifer Suber, a clerk at Vons\u2014a Los Angeles-based division of Safeway, Inc. with over 300 stores nationwide\u2014says employees at her store often take matters into their own hands when a co-worker is sick. She recalls one instance when an employee had a stomach virus that had gotten so bad she missed several days of work, but only after co-workers had pooled their money to cover the co-pay for the doctor\u2019s visit and the lost paycheck.<\/span><\/p>\n As Suber sees it, the lack of health coverage for food retail workers is also a public health issue. \u201cBecause you\u2019re sick, you could pass on whatever you have to customers and other employees and that\u2019s a chain reaction,\u201d she warns. To consumers, she points out, \u201cThis affects your family. You\u2019re going to take something that you shouldn\u2019t take home to your kids, to your wife.\u201d<\/p>\n When food retail companies refuse to pay workers adequately, it\u2019s not just their colleagues who have to fill in the gaps. Taxpayers must also\u00a0make up the difference<\/a>\u00a0to ensure their neighbors can get by. According to a new report called\u00a0Shelved: How Wages and Working Conditions for California\u2019s Food Retail Workers Have Declined as the Industry has Thrived\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(PDF), 36 percent of California\u2019s food retail workers receive public assistance to meet basic needs, costing the state $662 million annually.<\/p>\n The report points out the cruel irony: \u201cWorkers who sell food in California, the largest producer of food in the U.S., are twice as likely as the general populace to be unable to afford sufficient quantities of the food they sell or the healthy kinds of food their families need, despite the financial health of the food retail industry.\u201d<\/p>\n