Jobs and Sickness

Here’s a scenario: Jack can’t afford health insurance. Jack can barely afford rent. Jack is sick with a sinus infection, but he can still function, so he comes to work anyway because if he doesn’t work enough hours, he won’t be able to make his rent payment. Jack works in a sandwich shop. At this time sinus infections are going around and everyone who works downtown seems to be coming down with one. Jack washes his hands and wears gloves and follows all health code procedures correctly. Yet one cannot deny that he’s a cog in the machine that keeps this cycle of sinus infections spreading.

What are some solutions to this problem?

Here’s an idea: If employees were given state-sponsored sick pay, then Jack wouldn’t have to worry about his rent. The sick pay would have to be state sponsored, rather than employer-sponsored, because if all the local small businesses had to pay sick pay at the same time as paying the wagers of the employees actually working, they wouldn’t be able to afford the labour cost. Now how would one prevent employees who aren’t actually sick from claiming to be sick so that they can get state money while sitting at home being lazy? The obvious control is the requirement of a written doctor’s note. But this brings us back to the problem again – Jack can’t afford insurance, can’t afford to see a doctor, and can’t afford a bus ticket to go to the free clinic on the other side of town because he needs all his money to go towards paying rent. So even with state-sponsored sick pay, there’s no guarantee that sick employees won’t still end up forcing themselves to work while they’re sick because of their financial concerns. Obviously, relegating the responsability for this situation to the government (regardless of federal, state, or local) does not yield a solution to the problem.

To solve this problem, an entirely different relationship between the lower-class workforce and income needs to be created.

Imagine if Jack didn’t have to rely on his low-income full-time job just to barely get by. What if he could do work for his landlord, like painting or mowing lawns or whatever other menial chores the landlord needs to do on his properties? Then Jack could stay home while he was sick, keeping his germs from spreading, and simply inform his landlord, “Hey, I’m sick and not going to work today, so my paycheck won’t be able to cover my rent. Let me know what work I can do for you to make up for it.” Then the money that the landlord saves by not having to pay a professional painter or garden crew etc can be deducted from the amount of rent that Jack owes him.

Think about these scenarios and suggestions. There are still many inherent problems, but to begin improving our society, we need to start moving away from our current relationship to earned income. We need to re-examine all of the economic relationships that compose and constrain our society. More focus on the value of labor, rather than the value of the dollar, will significantly improve the quality of life in lower-class America.