Americans Got a Taste of Paid Leave. Will They Get It for Real?

Vicki Shabo was quoted in The Nation about the prospects for permanent federal paid leave legislation and workers' experiences with emergency COVID paid leave:

Lawmakers acted with urgency. “From the outset, policymakers agreed in a bipartisan fashion that paid sick and family leave was a necessary component of addressing the public health crisis and the care crisis,” said Vicki Shabo, senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy at the New America foundation. It was a notable shift. “When a crisis hits this isn’t a political issue, this isn’t a partisan issue,” Huckelbridge said. “That in itself shows there was a clear recognition that this was a hole in our system.”

It also helped the public recognize the same thing. “It’s on the agenda in a way that it wasn’t before,” Shabo said. “The taste of this has created a new awareness that this is something government can do.”