Guarantee Time to Care: Work-Family Justice for All People

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?”)