“This is the hardest thing that's happened to families in 80 or 90 years … Parents feel abandoned and desperately in trouble right now. Either because, in some cases they don't have enough to eat or they can't make rent, or they've had to cut back on work, or quit work entirely to do childcare, or because they're doing remote learning and it's not going well.” – Justin Ruben, co-founder of ParentsTogether

In 2020, COVID-19 exposed the bitter, everyday reality that families face – struggling to combine work and care – and exposed the U.S.’s threadbare care infrastructure and safety nets. Due to years of under-investment and political choices, this broken care system has taken a toll on individuals’ and families’ economic security, dealt a serious blow to the gains women have made and stalled progress toward gender equity. As the pandemic and economic downturn drag on and disruptions continue, even as vaccines are coming online, families urgently need robust financial relief and long-term investment in care.

The consequences of delaying effective policy solutions are pronounced: Since the onset of the global pandemic, job loss has predominantly affected women with care needs, and the number of residents now living in poverty since May has grown by 8 million. Moreover, schools and 40 percent of all childcare centers around the nation have temporarily or permanently closed, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color, particularly women, endure the worst of the fallout.

Within weeks of the start of the pandemic, the Better Life Lab at New America began hosting a weekly live and interactive podcast called Crisis Conversations to understand what was happening with people navigating failing work and care systems. Participants discussed what needs to change to create a better, fairer new normal once we emerge from the concurrent crises of a public health emergency, an economic downturn, political division, and a racial justice reckoning. We spoke to the people at the frontlines of the pandemic—professional caregivers, parents, and essential workers—to understand the policy interventions people need most. We’re sharing their stories to guide legislative actions, workplace practices, and broader culture changes. Without tangible solutions, millions of families will not only face a long and difficult recovery, accompanied by the potential setback of gender equity, but they will also surely face the next emergency—and there will be others—alone and unsupported, with a nation still unprepared.

New America’s Better Life Lab is pleased to offer the following ideas—drawn from the lives of people contending with a public health crisis and a financial downturn in the midst of the pandemic—for policymakers, public and private sector leaders, and community innovators to use in pursuit of work-family justice and equity across race, gender, and class.

Policy Priorities

• Guarantee Time to Care: Work-Family Justice for All People
  • Paid Sick Leave
  • Paid Family and Medical Leave
  • Paid Annual Leave, or Vacation Days
• Build a Better Care Infrastructure: Support Family and Professional Caregivers
  • Invest in Child Care
  • Invest in Elder Care
• Redesign Work for Remote and Essential Workers and Focus on Equity
  • Support Women of Color, Equity, and Anti-Racist Policies
  • Extend and Improve Unemployment Benefits
  • Protect Essential Workers’ Health and Safety
  • Support Remote and Flexible Work Arrangements and Schedule Control

To best address the policy recommendations offered, Better Life Lab encourages the appointment of a high-level point person or “czar” of care economy priorities as part of the National Economic Council at the White House to oversee the administration’s intergovernmental and interagency activities on the suite of issues focused on care and economic activity, including paid family and medical leave, childcare, and long-term care for older adults and people with disabilities.

The pandemic brought into sharp focus the acute structural inadequacies that families in the United States face when trying to find time to care for themselves and their loved ones. When workers have access to paid time off, children, families, gender equity, and the economy flourish.

Prior to the pandemic, about one-quarter of the U.S. workforce did not have paid sick days at work, and even workers who did were generally provided an average of 5 to 9 days – subject to restrictions on paid sick leave utilization – and may not have been able to access paid sick time to care for a loved one. In response to the pandemic, some employers changed their policies, but most did not. Congress passed a limited emergency paid sick leave policy with limited application. This means that across industries, workers who are denied this benefit worry about their health, whether they’ll lose their jobs after contracting COVID-19 because they have to stay home, or if they’ll infect their family by bringing the virus home from work. During the pandemic, federally mandated paid sick leave directly reduced the number of infections by 400 per day per state in states that did not previously have paid sick time requirements, and U.S. polls show that paid sick leave can also help stimulate the economy and encourage testing.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Extend emergency pandemic-related paid sick leave to workers currently without access

When Congress passed 10 days of emergency paid sick leave for COVID-related health needs in the spring of 2020, some business lobbying organizations and GOP lawmakers pushed to exclude health workers and those who work for companies with more than 500 employees—leaving out tens of millions of front-line essential workers. Soon, even the workers initially covered by emergency paid sick leave are set to lose the benefit when it expires at the end of 2020.

Marilyn Washington, a 71-year-old home health aide in San Antonio, Texas is the breadwinner for her extended family. As one of the many health care workers denied access to emergency paid sick leave by their employers, Washington is in an impossible situation, forced to choose between work and health. She can either provide for her family and potentially expose herself, her relatives, and her clients to a virus that is often deadly for people her age, or she can stay home if she’s feeling unwell only to lose the income that helps pay for basics like groceries and housing. She desperately needs coverage.

“I'm praying that the government looks at us and gives us paid sick leave. They have to understand that we’re putting our lives on the line just like anybody else.” Washington said, “I worry about coming home. What if I got it and gave [the coronavirus] to [my family]…I have to think about all of that when I come home… It leaves a lot of stress on you.” (Crisis Conversations Podcast: “Doing Essential Work in one of the few Countries that Resists Paid Sick Leave”)

Carved out of the federal emergency paid sick leave protections, Cyndi Murray, a veteran Walmart associate of almost 20 years, works on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic and worries constantly. “It’s scary. I worry about taking the virus home. I am worried about the workers that are in the store. I worry about myself, whether or not I will get [it].” (Crisis Conversation Podcast: “Family and Medical Leave in the Time of Coronavirus”)

Long-term Policy Solution: Pass permanent federal legislation to ensure all workers have access to paid sick leave

The COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest public health crisis that guaranteed access to paid sick time would help address. Every day, workers are forced to go to work ill or send a sick child to school; they are forced to forgo preventive health care treatments or to leave an aging parent to fend for themselves at a doctor’s appointment. The United States is the only high-wealth country that does not guarantee paid sick time.

Although some business leaders and those opposed to government intervention say that the cost of a public paid sick leave policy would be too high, the costs of not providing paid sick leave are what this nation can't afford. Brigid Schulte, director of the Better Life Lab, and Jody Heymann, Harvard University professor of health and social behavior, explain that workers who lack access to sick leave are nearly 1.5 times more likely to go to work sick. Sick workers simply aren’t as productive and can spread illness to coworkers. The costs of illness are enormous: Every year, the U.S. loses $15 billion dollars due to foodborne illnesses, and the flu costs the nation about $11 billion dollars a year. This year, normal costs associated with viral illnesses are augmented by pandemic-related contagion. Schulte and Heymann stress that “Amidst a pandemic, the costs of neglect are in the hundreds of billions.”

Richard Gegick, a restaurant worker and organizer weighs the costs of lost wages against the value of his health and even his life. “In my industry, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. Most of us are going to choose to get paid, [rather] than take a day off because we’re sick.” (Crisis Conversations: “The Uncertain Future of Work”)

Joleen Garcia, a community organizer with the Texas Organizing Project, put the struggle of workers and their families into sharp focus: “Without paid sick leave, many of these working families are forcing themselves to go to work, even though they may not feel 100 percent well because [they] can't afford to miss a rent payment.” Though a number of conservative lawmakers have argued that public policies like paid sick days would lead to fraud, or would encourage worker absenteeism, Garcia said this isn’t the case—and evidence backs her up. Referencing the handful of cities and states that have passed paid sick days laws, she said, “Employees really are judicious about when they use their paid sick leave. They oftentimes don't use all of it, and some don't use any at all. They're saving it up for emergencies and they're saving it up for times when they are sick or when they have to take care of their child.” (Crisis Conversations: "Doing Essential Work in One of the few Countries that Resists Paid Sick Leave”)

Heymann, who is also founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center, points out that without a national paid sick leave policy, workplaces remain a major source of disease. She explained, “Just in a regular year, people get many foodborne illnesses, diarrhea, and vomiting. Why? Because somebody in the [food industry] had to go to work sick. Few have paid sick leave; one in five report they had to go to work when they had diarrhea or vomiting. That's usually infectious. It spreads to everything.” (Crisis Conversations: "Doing Essential Work in One of the few Countries that Resists Paid Sick Leave”)

Congress passed an emergency paid leave provision that allows parents with children whose schools or childcare centers have shut down to receive up to 12 weeks of paid leave during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the paid sick leave provision, paid childcare leave expires at the end of 2020. This is far from the comprehensive paid family and medical leave workers in the United States have long needed to care for their own serious health issue, a loved one’s illness or a new child—or, in this pandemic, a child or adult whose usual place of care is closed or whose usual caregiver is unavailable.

What’s more, this temporary and incomplete paid leave provision of the pandemic relief package excludes large businesses with more than 500 employees and allows small businesses with fewer than 50 employees to deny childcare leave to their workers. This provision especially hurts women of color who have school-age children and must continue working due to financial constraints that are more dire than their white counterparts’. Women of color disproportionately receive lower wages and have less access to employer-provided leave—and, in the case of Black women, are more likely to be the sole income earners as head of their households.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Ensure all workers have time to care for their families during the pandemic through emergency paid family and medical leave

Kelly Newman is an attorney, primary breadwinner for her family and mother of six who qualified for emergency paid family leave because her children’s schools had closed. Newman is also a new mother. Since the emergency leave policy doesn’t cover maternity or parental leave to recover from childbirth or bond with an infant, Newman considered herself lucky that the emergency leave—indirectly—gave her the time she needed to care for her newborn infant. Having paid leave at such a crucial moment helped her family weather the beginning of the pandemic. Still, she empathized with the many caregivers and fellow mothers who were excluded from the paid leave provision included in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act: “I feel this excruciating sense of loss for my sisters who don’t get to participate in this program…when we live in a nation that has the means to provide for them.” (Crisis Conversations: “To Have and to Have Not — Family Leave in the Pandemic”)

Khushbu Shah, editor in chief of The Fuller Project recalled, “[One of our reporters] spoke to a mother of two, an essential worker at a fast food restaurant, who was making this impossible decision to leave her children in daycare, where one of them had contracted coronavirus…Her family relied on her money from her job at Wendy’s. She had to make an impossible decision…If she quit, how would she pay the bills?” (Crisis Conversations: “Working Pregnant in the Time of COVID”)

Long-term Policy Solution: Enact a permanent, comprehensive, universal and inclusive paid family and medical leave policy for all working people

It’s not just parents of newborn or newly adopted infants who need paid time off from work to give care, as some proposed legislation by GOP lawmakers envision. It’s also those who care for adults, for children with special needs and other loved ones with chronic conditions. In the United States, there are 53 million adult caregivers. Karen Lindsey Marshall, director of advocacy and engagement at the National Alliance for Caregiving, explained that “61 percent of caregivers are in the workforce. They're doing all of these things while they're also trying to stay employed. There's no wonder that caregiving has a huge impact on an individual's personal health, their mental health, as well as their financial health.” (Crisis Conversations: “Family Caregiving”)

The United States is an outlier among the global community when it comes to offering workers paid annual leave: It doesn’t. That’s part of the reason why Americans clock among the longest work hours of the advanced economies. Annual leave, or vacation days, help workers reduce stress, prevent burnout, and leads to a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce. Yet one in four workers, most of whom earn lower wages, have no access to paid vacation days at all. All workers should have the benefit of paid time off, not only for emergency care and medical purposes, but also for rest, leisure, and time to connect with their families and communities, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to exacerbate worker anxiety.

Long-term Policy Solution: Pass a national policy guaranteeing paid annual leave so all workers have access to rest and leisure time

Even in a pandemic, paid time off for leisure allows workers space to plan long-term needs and step outside the constant rush. Uyhun Ung, senior associate at ideas42, a nonprofit that uses behavioral science to solve complex social problems, told us, “It’s important to take vacation…in order to be innovative and creative, and think big picture, and longer-term…to see those things, you have to have a little bit of space… It’s really hard to do that when you’re zeroed-in, in the day-to-day, and trying to churn through all those emails, or just running from one meeting to the next.” (Crisis Conversations Podcast: “Will COVID Kill Work-Life Balance?”)

Research has shown how paid annual leave helps people manage stress and mental health, which benefits workers, their families and businesses. Lynne Curran, senior vice president of human resources at Accion, a nonprofit dedicated to global financial inclusion, shared, “[During the pandemic] from one day to the next, there [is] no such thing as work-life balance. You’re working, surrounded by your family, you’re taking care of your family, trying to pay attention to work. Work-life balance went out the window…. Especially during the pandemic, if people aren’t taking a break they’re not going to be able to function at the same level … you can't be as productive if you’re that exhausted and that stressed out.” (Crisis Conversations Podcast: “Will COVID Kill Work-Life Balance?”)

A healthy care economy—one that supports a healthy paid economy—requires that workers and families have access to high-quality, affordable childcare, paid leave, adequate financial resources, and workplace policies that offer flexibility in time, manner, and place of work, as well as stable and predictable schedules. A healthy care economy also requires a paid professional care workforce that has decent, dignified, and well-paying work that enables them and their families to thrive. Even before the pandemic, the infrastructure for a healthy care economy was broken, and right now many parents and guardians still can’t afford consistent and high quality care. In many states, infant care is more expensive than in-state college tuition, and for many lower-income and rural families living in childcare deserts, finding quality care is difficult. On top of the lack of affordability and accessibility, most care workers earn poverty wages. Nationwide, the median wage for childcare workers is $11.65 per hour and home care workers are paid $12.15 per hour. There is a clear need for public policy intervention to create a robust care infrastructure that guarantees high quality, affordable care to all families and livable wages to care educators and care workers.

Even prior to the pandemic, the U.S. care infrastructure was in crisis. Not one state does cost, quality, and availability well—on average, married couples spend 10 percent of their income, and single parents pay 34 percent of their income, on childcare. Despite the high costs, childcare workers earn poverty wages. High quality care is hard to find, and childcare deserts impact communities across the country.

During the pandemic, childcare providers and teachers have had to make impossible trade-offs between staying open—risking their and their families’ health—or shutting down and risking their financial security. Nearly half of all surveyed childcare providers reported that, without additional support, they would have to close their doors permanently. The pandemic’s devastating impact on the care system threatens not only the livelihood of care providers—many of whom are women, women of color, and immigrants—but the economic security and labor force participation primarily of women, who have disproportionately reduced work hours or been forced out of work because of the lack of care—potentially setting their progress in the workplace back an entire generation. The childcare economy needs significant public financial investment so that families, businesses, communities, children, and those who care for them are healthy and thrive as well.

Congress included $3 billion in the first pandemic relief bailout package in March to send to states in Child Care Development Block Grants, targeted at helping the very poor. Though advocates, economists, and others called for at least a $50 billion immediate infusion during the crisis—and the House passed such a provision—the Senate and Trump administration had not taken any action as of early December. “Child care is a critical piece of our economic infrastructure, just like roads and bridges, allowing parents to work if they choose,” the economists wrote. “A major federal investment to stabilize child care programs will ensure greater parental employment, save roughly one hundred thousand small businesses, and contribute to a more efficient economic recovery.”

Justin Ruben, co-founder of ParentsTogether and a parent himself, discussed the child care challenges parents are facing alone while managing work during the pandemic. “This is the hardest thing that's happened to families in 80 or 90 years, right? Absolutely parents feel abandoned and desperately in trouble right now. Either because, in some cases they don’t have enough to eat or they can’t make rent, or they’ve had to cut back on work, or quit work entirely to do childcare, or because they're doing remote learning and it's not going well…” Ruben explained that personal economic and childcare problems drives parents to the polls, “[W]e did a survey last week on the election…Of the parents that we surveyed, 95 percent said they were going to vote, and 36 percent of them said that the pandemic and the economic crisis have made them more likely to vote.” (Crisis Conversations: “A Parents’ Movement?”)

Adriana Garcia was furloughed at the salon where she worked because of the pandemic. As a mother of four and a social justice advocate, Garcia explained that her stress levels have been sky high as she tries to manage remote learning for her children. Now, more than ever, we as a society need to recognize and value the care work that has for so long been invisible and undervalued: “We have to raise awareness that this is not okay and that our children are the future. We’re investing our lives and raising these little people to be the next generation. So we should take care of our daycare workers, our teachers, all these people that we trust our babies with for hours and hours.” (Crisis Conversations: “Childcare Reckoning”)

Immediate Pandemic Response: Provide immediate support and funding for professional caregivers, centers, and providers

Before the pandemic, things were already difficult for childcare providers —they had low pay, not many benefits, and little support. “Now with this crisis, imagine how hard it is for a provider…we are working very closely with parents [and] with the community,” shared Patricia Moran, owner of Creative Learning Center, a family home childcare center in San Jose, California. Although Moran applied for a Paycheck Protection Program loan for her small business, she, like so many small businesses, didn’t get any help. Still, she chose to stay open for parents who were deemed essential workers and needed a safe place to leave their children while they continued working. Moran had seen the needs of “the parents, single moms, [and] children.” Like many care providers, Moran also experienced difficulty accessing cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE), stretching her already thin resources even thinner: “We were trying to find cleaning supplies and food for these kids in this crisis…working with the health departments and state governments to keep our children safe.” (Crisis Conversations: “Is our childcare system nearing its breaking point?”)

Rashonda Anderson, a lead child care teacher in Binghamton, N.Y. who is struggling to balance her work, education, and caring for her own school-age daughter told us she finally decided to leave the job she loves—even after going back to school and going into debt for a degree in early education—because, with the low pay, she can’t make the finances work for her family: “I decided to change career paths because financially, I’ll be able to provide my daughter more and have health benefits…[which] I don't have right now.… I just know that I just want more for myself and my daughter.” (Crisis Conversations: “Is our childcare system nearing its breaking point?”)

Long-term Policy Solutions: Invest in designing, creating and maintaining a robust, easily accessible, affordable, high-quality child care infrastructure with decent and dignified work for care educators and providers

Kari McCraken, a mother of five, had the opportunity to resume her position after months of being furloughed due to the pandemic. Although she loved her job and wanted to return to work, a lack of childcare meant that she would have no place to leave her children. In the end, because she couldn’t access childcare and did not qualify for emergency paid leave—her employer had been exempted from the emergency provision—she was pushed out of the workforce: “I loved the company. I loved my job. I was so excited to still have a job…[but] then it hit me once I started calling around for child care that this is not possible. Our childcare centers were operating around 15 to 20 percent capacity which means there was was no hope if you were someone new coming in.” (Crisis Conversations: "Setting Working Moms Back a Generation?")

Alison Griffin, a single mother and senior vice president for Whiteboard Advisors, strives to balance working full time and supervising her school-age children who need assistance with distance learning: “It’s just me and my boys...I’m helping with homework while on five to six hours of calls…There isn’t anybody else who can pitch in…in the pre-pandemic era I would rely on friends and family, or I would pay a sitter. I can’t have anyone else in the house to help me with those things right now.” (Crisis Conversations: “Parenting Alone in the Time of COVID-19”)

Nahsis Davis, a nurse practitioner, became a single mother to three young children through the foster care system just as the pandemic hit. When daycares began closing, Davis had to scramble to find childcare and wasn’t able to take time off due to an unsympathetic work environment. She shared, “My job itself is not that helpful or understanding. I didn’t cause this pandemic… and I need time off for these kids because I have no one to watch them. [And] that's been a huge nightmare. Money-wise it’s been very tight…I have more than one mouth to feed and milk is not free out there, neither are the [daycare] services, obviously.” (Crisis Conversations: “Parenting Alone in the Time of COVID-19”)

Personal and home health aides are the fastest growing occupation in the United States. The work they do is essential to the growing population of seniors as well as those in need of long-term care, especially now in the midst of a pandemic. Yet despite this, home health aides earn poverty level wages with few labor protections.

Families that care for aging adults and people with disabilities face difficult financial compromises. AARP released data that found family caregivers spend about 20 percent of their income on caregiving activities, amounting to about $7,000 per year in out-of-pocket expenses. Funding elder care programs that allow people to receive care at home, rather than in a nursing home, saves money and improves the quality of life for those in need of care, as shown by Washington state’s Health Home program, which saved Medicare more than $107 million over three years.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Support home health workers who care for older adults and people with disabilities throughout this pandemic

Jennifer Olsen, executive director of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving, noted, “Caregivers have often been some of the most resilient and creative problem solvers in this country. I actually think there’s a moment to say, ‘Well, we could learn so much from the way caregivers adapt to challenges.’” (Crisis Conversations: Family Caregiving)

Marilyn Washington, the home health aide in San Antonio, Texas from earlier, had to use her own money to buy PPE because her agency didn’t supply it. She shared, “They don’t give us a mask…they don’t even give [us] gloves. But I made sure I had gloves. I went and bought myself two boxes and hand sanitizer.” (Crisis Conversations: Doing Essential Work in One of the few Countries that Resists Paid Sick Leave”)

Brittany Williams works as a home health care worker in Seattle, Wash., which has passed support for professional elder and home health care workers through public-private partnership, and she is an active member of SEIU 775. The agency she works for stepped up. She said, “[We] get a full PPE bag, which consists of face masks, hand sanitizers, bar soap, paper towels, [and] disinfecting spray to clean down surfaces.” (Crisis Conversations: “For Elder-Care Workers in the Pandemic, One State (Mostly) Gets It Right”)

Long-term Policy Solutions: Support professional and family caregivers and their need to combine work and caring for themselves or loved ones

Through the innovative partnership of the state of Washington, private businesses, and her union, Williams is paid a decent wage. She has benefits like health care, paid time off, retirement savings, professional development, and a path to advancement. Quality of care has also improved. More people receive care in their homes, rather than in expensive and inadequate nursing homes, and are healthier, which means less public spending.

“In Washington state, they realized that caregivers are essential a long time ago,” Williams said. Her mother, a home health aide in Arkansas, makes $11 an hour. “I’m a third generation caregiver and my mom and grandma do the same job in Arkansas, where there are no unions for caregivers. Up here, we won a starting wage of $15 for caregivers, they don't have that. We have health insurance for caregivers, they don’t have that. We have a retirement plan and provide our caregivers with a free pair of shoes. These are things that caregivers in Arkansas don’t get.” (Crisis Conversations: “For Elder-Care Workers in the Pandemic, One State (Mostly) Gets It Right”)

Twenty-nine year old Jessica Mills of Georgia has been caring for her mother, who has dementia, for the past 10 years. Due to the increasing weight of her caregiving responsibilities, Mills has had to drop out of college, leave the labor force, and rely upon savings to keep her family afloat: “We’ve been very fortunate to be able to [care for my mom from home] so far, but my dad had to go into early retirement. I worked as long as I could part time until her needs [required] care 24/7 care. Neither one of us can work now. Even with hospice nurses coming in a couple times of the week, a lot of the care still falls on us.” Continuing, Mills says, “I haven’t been working in the past two years, and we were lucky enough to have savings that have gotten us through; unfortunately, [that’s] not going to last much longer. I have been looking into starting school again online and I’m looking into getting back into the workforce in whatever way possible.” (Crisis Conversations: “Family Caregiving”)

Debbi Simmons Harris is a family caregiver in Minnesota who had to stop working to care for her son, Joshua, who has required complex 24-hour medical care for more than two decades. While she and her family are trained to provide care, they must also rely on three nurses to fill the gaps, which has been difficult during the pandemic. Simmons recalled being anxious about the pandemic and “having so many people coming in and out…knowing that every contact that every single person made outside of the home was another risk of exposure for Joshua.” (Crisis Conversations: “Family Caregiving”)

Simmons also shared that while she loves her son and finds joy in caregiving, caring for a family member with chronic illness wears family caregivers down over time. “In addition to the weariness, there is joy in all of this too because it impacts our lives so profoundly. That aspect needs to be shown, too, but there’s a weariness to caregiving over such a long period of time. In addition to the custodial care that we provide, there are days upon days where you're doing high-level nursing assessment and interventions that would be done perhaps in an intensive care environment.” (Crisis Conversations: “Family Caregiving”)

Across the nation, essential workers are putting their and their families’ health at risk to keep medical and childcare centers open and provide groceries and supplies to others during the pandemic, often with little to no workplace protections, sparse benefits, and low wages. Women, and disproportionately women of color, make up the majority of workers deemed essential during the global pandemic. These workers are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. Too often made invisible and treated as low-skill, these workers are truly essential and have kept the economy and those living in lockdown afloat at great cost to themselves and their families. Now is the time to recognize and value essential workers with decent and dignified work, liveable wages, and benefits to ensure that they and their families are economically secure, healthy and able to thrive.

Historically, U.S. policy has marginalized and excluded communities of color from policy support and opportunity because of a long history of structural racism and blatantly racist notions of who deserves support. As a result, women of color in our country experience additional burdens and inequities: white family wealth is seven times greater than Black family wealth and five times more than Hispanic family wealth. Black families face more health disparities, and experience interpersonal and systemic racism that affect all aspects of life. Centering the least advantaged communities in policy making ensures that everyone benefits from the policy, and intersectional policies help address barriers to a fairer and more equitable economy.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Improve access to public and workplace supports, such as paycheck protection, hazard pay, and paid sick leave, particularly for women of color in the workforce

Jocelyn Frye, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, pointed out the need for hazard pay to fairly compensate essential workers, especially women of color, directly exposed to the virus through their work on the frontlines. “Black women and women of color [are] disproportionately in fields like health care. They’re emergency workers. They're nursing assistants. But they’re also the folks who are grocery store workers. They’re the people who essentially provide for the care and feeding of our nation…While they are bearing this economic burden they are also being treated unfairly in terms of how they get paid and in addition to the fact that they are disproportionately in low wage work that lack benefits like paid leave, paid sick days–the very things that people need right now.” (Crisis Conversations: “Calling for a New Bailout — for Women of Color”)

Dominique Derbigny, deputy director at Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap, strengthened the case for extending this benefit to provide a financial safety net to women of color who lack wealth necessary for weathering the economic recession. “Income helps people pay bills and get by, but wealth is really what helps families to get ahead and what helps them to weather economic hardships, such as this recession that we're currently in. [With] $200 of median wealth, there's really very few resources for women of color to draw on if they face a job loss due to this pandemic.” Single Black women have a median wealth of $200, and single Hispanic women’s median wealth is $100, which amounts to less than a penny for every dollar of wealth held by single white men. (Crisis Conversations: “Calling for a New Bailout — for Women of Color”)

Jamie Gloshay, project manager at Roanhorse Consulting and co-founder of Native Women Lead, discussed the challenges facing Native American women during the pandemic. “Two-thirds of [Native American women] are the breadwinners and the breadmakers; we’re the economic stabilizers. A lot of us work in the creative economy. Our businesses may not legally be structured and [may] not know how access the unemployment benefits or the PPP that's available…We did a survey and it showed that 80 percent to 100 percent of [Native American] women-owned businesses in our community and our network said that COVID would completely disrupt their operations and their livelihoods.” (Crisis Conversations: “Calling for a New Bailout — for Women of Color”)

Long-term Policy Solutions: Pay workers fairly. Build diverse, anti-racist cultures at work—with managers and leaders who create cultures where all workers can thrive

Sarah Todd is a senior reporter for Quartz and Quartz at Work and is the author of What an Anti-Racist Workplace Looks Like. Pointing to research findings, she explained, “One of the most effective ways to incentivize people to hire, mentor, or promote diverse staff is to really make [these metrics] something that [we] track and measure….For a manager, that might mean saying, 'Okay, I'm building into your performance review…whether or not you've hired and promoted people of color.” (Crisis Conversations: “Woke at Work?”)

Laura Morgan Roberts, professor of practice at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and author of Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience, emphasized the need for moral frameworks around conversations pertaining to workplace equity. Roberts noted that we aren't investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives more heavily “because the status quo continues to benefit those who are already in power, and they don't have the instrumental motivation to do something different in changing that structure and that system.” Roberts continued, “It's only the moral argument that brings out the questions around compassion, equity, and grace that would motivate people to transform a system that is, in fact, working to keep them and their children and their kid's best friends kids in power.” (Crisis Conversations: “Women and Leadership”)

Twenty million people across the United States are receiving unemployment benefits and millions more fear losing their jobs and income. One crucial form of federal relief, the temporary $600 weekly Pandemic Unemployment Compensation supplement, expired July 31. Additional unemployment assistance programs—Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), and Extended Benefits (EB)—will expire on December 26, 2020. The loss of PUA would prove particularly devastating for gig workers, those ineligible for regular unemployment benefits, and caregivers. As the pandemic continues into the new year and workers brace themselves for the unknown, the urgent need for emergency unemployment assistance continues to mount.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Extend emergency unemployment benefits immediately

Latrice Wilson, a payroll supervisor who was furloughed from her job and contends with an auto-immune disorder, relied on the financial relief to help pay for her health insurance and medication. “The $600 was essential to my everyday life…[and] state unemployment benefits do not cover my bills…If they don’t extend the $600, I won’t be able to pay for health insurance…I have always been a saver [and] have an emergency fund…I can take money from there, but that won’t last beyond a few months.” (Crisis Conversations: “Calling for a New Bailout — for Women of Color”)

Caleb Holmes graduated from college in 2019 with a BA in political science. He wanted a job as a paralegal, since his goal was to attend law school. In the meantime, he found part-time work at the mall, where he made $9 per hour. He later added a full-time job at a shoe store in the same mall. On March 16 he heard a rumor that the mall was shutting down. The next day, he was told his stores were closing till the end of the month. After applying for unemployment insurance Holmes noted, “The weekly benefit amount [for me] is only $51 when, according to the website it can go up to $247 per week… I'm kind of caught in a gray zone because like I said, the wages that they've seen have been mainly from that part time job that I got a year ago while I was still full time in college. I graduated, and this is a little unfair as [I'm] someone who goes to work every day, who does what they’re supposed to do. You know, it’s kind of like, where’s my bailout versus bailing out big companies?” (Crisis Conversations: “Living with Layoffs of Pandemic Proportions”)

Long-term Policy Solution: Update platforms and technology to improve access to public policies

Violet Moya is a retail worker in the beauty industry, who despite her search for full-time employment with benefits has only found part-time work with no health insurance. After a mass firing, her experience applying for her state’s unemployment insurance was nothing short of a nightmare. Exasperated, Moya described the process as being “It’s mentally exhausting.” She said, “There’s no way to get through to anyone. In the past two weeks, I called maybe 800 times.” (Crisis Conversations: “Living with Layoffs of Pandemic Proportions”)

Workers in low-paying jobs have limited rights on the job to keep themselves safe and risk negative repercussions when they request better safety equipment, policies, and accommodations for their health. For example, without legislative protections and policies that allow them to take leave without discrimination, many pregnant health care workers are forced to continue working although they are immunocompromised. In the event that they lose their jobs, so many workers find themselves abandoned and fall through the cracks of a weak social social support system.

Immediate Pandemic Response: Update Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations to include every worker in higher-risk work environments due to COVID-19

Dennis Kosuth works as an ER and school registered nurse based in Chicago, and was exposed to patients who tested positive for COVID-19 through his ER work. He commented on how nurses enter the field to care for and help people with their health, yet they face work environments that put their own health at risk, often without many protections: “In the schools, so many of the families that I work with as a nurse, they will have five people in a basement that has one bedroom, and they have a job that doesn't have the sick time. They can't call in sick. They [have to] send their kids to school when they're sick. I think about those things as the reasons why this condition has spread so far so fast in this countries is because we just don't have basic things that most countries have.” (Crisis Conversations: "A new and dangerous enemy — healthcare workers battle coronavirus at work and at home")

Long-term Policy Solution: Expand Labor Protections for Pregnant Workers with fairness legislation during the pandemic and after

Dina Bakst, co-founder and co-president of A Better Balance, stressed, “Pregnancy discrimination is alive and well in this country and it takes many forms…At the current moment, we're hearing from pregnant workers who are scared to death, frankly, to return to work, especially those in essential jobs…in many instances [they] know that they're returning to an unsafe workplace, but they feel like they have no other choice to continue working.” (Crisis Conversations: “Working Pregnant in the Time of COVID”)

Gabrielle Caverl-McNeal relayed the fears of the young, pregnant women she works with as director of workforce development at New Moms in Chicago, Ill., sharing, “There is this fear: 'If I go into the workplace and they see that I’m pregnant, [will] that put me at a disadvantage for getting this job?' This [fear] that, 'I won't be looked at or considered [for] my skills or my abilities or what I actually bring to the table…[because]…I might have maternity leave or I may have family responsibilities.'”(Crisis Conversations: “Working Pregnant in the Time of COVID”)

The research shows that workers are not the only ones to benefit from more flexibility and control over time, manner, and place of work; their families, as well as businesses, benefit from having healthier and more productive workers who can balance work and care as needed. Front-line and essential workers in particular who cannot work remotely would benefit from policies that allow them more predictable control of their work schedule during and beyond the pandemic.

Create policies to allow workers more flexibility and schedule control

One of the lucky few essential workers whose employer provided adequate and flexible workplace accommodations, Ashley Deutsch, an emergency room doctor at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., recalled, “For me, the emergency department was wonderful in terms of allowing me to take on telehealth for patients who don’t have a primary care physician…I could do that from home…calling back test results…[and] work administratively to help with the policies and procedures…to keep our staff safe.” Deutsch continued, “Both the department and Baystate Medical Center could have pushed back against these accommodations…[and] I would have been forced to go back.” (Crisis Conversations: “Working Pregnant in the Time of COVID”)

Expanded access to telemedicine during the pandemic may be critical to helping women, addressing racial health disparities and creating a more equitable health system in the future, explains Amanda Williams, a physician, OB/GYN, and maternity director for Kaiser Permanente Oakland.

The digital divide, characterized by a broad lack of access to high speed internet, smartphones and other devices, is a real threat to delivering equitable telemedicine. Still Dr. Williams noted that “on the flip side, there can be huge benefits [to telemedicine]. People don’t have to take time off of work and they don’t have to come in and commute and park. They don’t have to find childcare for their children…Trying to work, take care of your children, and see your doctor at the same time is tough…we don’t know which way this is going to go.” Williams continued, “We have to be really conscious every step of the way as we’re designing our care delivery in the telehealth space—what is the impact going to be on marginalized patients and across the race and ethnic divide?” (Crisis Conversations: “The (Virtual?) Future of Medicine?”)

Katie Murray Kleeman, a high school chemistry and Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) teacher in Colorado, was surprised to find that while the transition to remote teaching brought new challenges, it also forced her to learn new skills, be creative and connect with students in a fresh way. “One of the things I learned is how to make short little videos, showing clips to students of how to make organic compounds, for example…so [that] if I do have a student who’s absent or sick or for some reason, not at school, I have those that I’ve uploaded to YouTube [that] I can use as a reference…I've thought it's been really beneficial.” In addition, the new flexibility with Kleeman’s school has allowed her to balance work and care responsibilities during the pandemic. “My mom is living with us…There was a science department meeting that was earlier this morning, but that's the time that I get my mom up and help her to bathe and get dressed and get ready for the day… [so] I was not able to make that meeting. Simply communicating with my coordinator was so great, because then we met separately after that when there was a time. I think people have been much more flexible.” (Crisis Conversations: “The Transformation of Work”)

Families are in desperate need of immediate solutions in the face of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Responding to the pandemic in the immediate crisis, learning from the lessons the pandemic has made so painfully clear, and implementing solutions through permanent national legislation will help protect families’ and individuals’ personal and economic security now and in the future. Family-supportive policies work. There is already immense bipartisan support for families and care and clear demand for solutions that will help workers and families cope with this crisis, allowing all people to thrive at work and at home.

The Better Life Lab team is available to speak with any policymakers or business leaders seeking data, evidence, or narratives to make these policy, practice, and culture changes for work-family justice and ensure equity and better lives for all.

Elevate the Value of Care—
“The main issue here is that we need to start valuing care… What I wanted to shout from the rooftops, is that an hour holding your child's hand in a pediatrician's office is just as valuable to society as an hour in a boardroom. If that's what we can get out of this crazy experience, that we begin to value care in a way we didn't before, then I believe we are set up for a really wonderful reset. I do think that once we value care, then it won't matter who's doing that care, men or women, but it will help us all.”
–Eve Rodsky, Author of Fair Play