‘Making a virtue’ of going ill to work – reflections on the necessity of everyday workplace ‘suffering’

Resumé

How much pain should an employee be prepared to accept when carrying out her job? Are symptoms of illness at work sufficient reason to take sick leave, or simply a normal condition of everyday life that you have to put up with (even if this means suffering pain or discomfort while carrying out your job)? The answer, this paper argues, depends among other things on social class, and more specifically on the extent to which members of different
classes feel it ‘necessary’ to turn up for work even when ill. For some, going ill to work is preferable to taking sick leave because the consequences of doing the latter will be severe. Bourdieu’s notion of ‘making a virtue of necessity’ helps explain why manual workers take a more restrictive view of when it is legitimate to take sick leave than professionals, who are more liable to look at the question purely theoretically.