'When Workers Work Sick, It's Unhealthy for All of Us': New York's Battle for Paid Sick Leave

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http://www.alternet.org/activism/155799/%27when_workers_work_sick%2C_it%27s_unhealthy_for_all_of_us%27%3A_new_york%27s_battle_for_paid_sick_leave/

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At 3am on a November day last year, Eudocio Alvarado, a 58-year-old worker from Mexico, was cleaning the bar in the Brooklyn restaurant where he worked when a piece of heavy furniture fell on his left foot. After a visit to the ER, Alvarado had to call his boss to request sick leave. He was granted two days’ leave, unpaid.

Two days later, Alvarado’s injured foot had grown worse and his doctors told him he would need surgery. When he called his boss from the hospital, he was told to come to work the next day. “If you don’t go to work, you’re going to lose your job,” Alvarado’s boss told him. Unable to go to work the next day, Alvarado lost his job.

Now Alvarado works 81 hours a week at a fresh food market, earning a weekly wage of $380. Tuesdays are his only days off, and he uses them to go to a physical therapist in Coney Island for his recovering foot. He still does not have paid sick leave, and with the wages he makes, he cannot afford to take any time off — not when he’s sick, and not for Christmas, Thanksgiving or any other holiday.

Like Alvarado, Celina Alvarez, an immigrant chef from Mexico, lost her job at a restaurant in Queens after she was hospitalized for four days for a heart problem. Sitting in the Queens office of Make the Road, a non-profit labor advocacy organization, she said what she experienced was not uncommon among workers she knew. For instance, a friend’s hand became disfigured after an accident with hot liquid at work, and she had to continue working despite the injury.