Wal-Mart Sick Policy Creates Flu 'Threat,' Say Critics

Report: Ill workers are pressured to report for duty

By Nick McMaster, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 5, 2009 5:59 PM CST

(Newser) – WalMart is taking heat for a restrictive policy that critics say pressures sick workers to go to work, swine flu be damned. Employees who take absences for an illness or a child’s illness rack up “points," and four points within a certain period can lead to termination. A workers' rights group blasted the policy in a new report this week. "They live in fear and dread," says the director of the National Labor Committee.

"I do believe Walmart is creating a public health threat by encouraging workers to come to work sick," a Drexel University public health professor tells ABC News. "It is in a position, as a retailer, to create particular exposures for the public.” One employee forced to take a demerit for her daughter's illness agrees: "We're doing everything we can to protect us and the customers, but they don't seem like they want to protect us from our jobs."

[Images (1)]

[Quotes (1)]

A Wal-Mart store. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

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They live in fear and dread. Employees at Walmart have no choice but to get themselves to work, no matter how sick they are.
- Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 18 comments

littleoopie

Nov 7, 2009 2:46 AM CST

The same goes here. I will NOT go into a Wal-Mart. Even if someone gives me a gift card for my kids I give it to someone else in exchange for the cash. On top of the atrocities in the movie I also worked there for 6 months. It was a terrible place to work.

schmidtkoff

Nov 6, 2009 12:25 PM CST

walmart, you are being reallllly stupid and ignorant here. i'm gonna stand in line and exchange money and get a receipt in return from someone who has been sniffling and coughing for x-amount of hours with no handwashing - and you, walmart give them demerit points while i get the flu?

beezysmeezy

Nov 6, 2009 12:21 PM CST

my friend works at a coke/minute maid factory and they do the same thing.

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Wal-Mart Sick Policy Creates Flu 'Threat,' Say Critics