07 Senate HELP hearing Fauci SCREENGRAB
Fauci: Reopening early could have 'really serious' consequences
03:08 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Brigid Schulte is a former Washington Post staff writer, director of the Better Life Lab at New America and author of “Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One has the Time.” Jody Heymann is founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center, distinguished professor of public health and of public policy, and past dean of the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. The views expressed here are the authors’. Read more opinion on CNN.

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As the US economy begins to reopen, the top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned of the preventable “suffering and death” that could result if done too hastily. Nonetheless, most states that have started opening their economies are doing so despite failing to meet the Trump administration’s recommended criteria for safely resuming public activity. So, what are workers to do if they are expected to return to work but they feel sick?

Brigid Schulte
Jody Heymann

Paid sick leave is the only way all workers in America can afford to stay home when they are sick and not spread the novel coronavirus to others. Yet, in a report released May 14, the Federal Reserve found that one in five workers still had no paid sick leave in April as the pandemic raged, even after Congress passed an emergency paid sick leave law in March. That’s because Congress exempted large companies – who employ the bulk of the low-wage grocery, retail and delivery workers with no paid sick leave that we’ve come to rely on as “essential.” Seeking to close that gap, House Democrats passed legislation on May 15 to expand sick leave to more workers. Senate Republicans quickly deemed the plan “dead on arrival.”

Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials have sided with the influential business lobby and insist that a national paid sick leave policy is the wrong move now. In a letter to Congress, Neil L. Bradley, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, warned against passing a “federal, one-size-fits-all, permanent leave mandate.” They hold this view even as a number of polls show the vast majority – 85% – of Americans support requiring employers to provide paid sick leave to employees who are ill. The Pew Research Center found 79% of Republicans and 93% of Democrats agree that workers with a serious health condition should be able to take paid leave from work in order to recover.

Yet opponents throw out the same tired arguments to justify inaction in the face of a global pandemic, like zombies awakening from the dead, that they’ve used for years.

The cure may be worse than the disease.”

In 2014, long before President Donald Trump uttered the phrase, the Employment Policies Institute, an organization funded by business and opposed to paid sick leave, minimum wage and other labor policies, used this line to question the economic feasibility when, in the absence of a national policy, activists sought to pass paid sick leave legislation at state level. Some opponents say a paid sick leave policy would hurt the economy.

In 2015, then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said a mandated seven-day sick leave policy would “mean less employment, less jobs.” And, resurrecting the familiar US Chamber of Commerce trope against “one-size-fits-all government mandates,” “Death by a Thousand Mandates” is how Elizabeth Milito of the National Federation of Independent Business described a national paid sick leave policy to House lawmakers in March.

Yet new research on mandatory paid sick leave policies around the world, released this week by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at UCLA, finds that all of the economies that are ranked most competitive, with the exception of the US, guarantee paid sick leave. Nearly two-thirds of high-income countries reduce the burden on businesses by providing funding for six weeks of paid sick leave at least in part through social security systems.

The costs of not providing paid sick leave are what we can’t afford. Workers without paid sick leave are 1.5 times more likely to go to work when ill, reducing productivity and spreading disease. The economic burden of influenza in the US is estimated to cost $11 billion every year, and annually, foodborne illnesses cost $15 billion. Amidst a pandemic, the costs of neglect are in the hundreds of billions.

The slippery slope argument is another that some opponents are turning to, sounding a lot like Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2009 when Democrats attempted to pass a seven-day national paid sick leave policy: “My concern is it would never be just seven days. A year from now it will be 14 days, and then 21.”

Yet even if the US did make several weeks of paid sick leave available permanently, it would not harm the economy. The World Policy Analysis Center Study found that more than three-fourths of countries guarantee at least six weeks of paid sick leave – and the majority of the 10 most competitive economies as ranked by the World Economic Forum have six months or more for serious illness. As a result, individuals and families fare better economically when they face cancer or a serious infectious disease like Covid-19. Strikingly, countries that did not provide paid sick leave from day one were among the hardest hit in the current pandemic, including the United States.

A last zombie justification that stubbornly keeps coming back to life is the notion that voluntary action by business will be sufficient. “We believe that employers should be encouraged to offer paid leave,” but not required to, Lon O’Neil, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, argued during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.

Republicans seized on this much-used business argument to justify exempting large companies from the temporary 10-day emergency paid sick leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, and enabling small businesses to opt out. As a result, tens of millions of American workers have no coverage in the current crisis. No other country, the new analysis found, makes paid sick leave dependent on employer size. All of the 181 countries that guarantee paid sick leave have been able to do so for employees of small, medium and large-scale businesses alike.

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    New research from the Better Life Lab at New America, a nonpartisan think tank, shows the premise that voluntary policies work continues to be false. The lab is tracking more than 80 large exempted employers. Some, like Olive Garden, opted to make their voluntary paid sick leave permanent. Others, like Kroger, Walmart and Dollar General, promised to offer paid sick leave, but issues with the implementation of this policy have been reported. Still others, like Burger King, Subway, Applebee’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, made no promises at all.

    Covid-19 is not the first global pandemic this century. There will inevitably be more. A comprehensive, permanent national paid sick leave policy is essential to protect public health, the economy and respond to threats from emerging pathogens. The public, across party lines, overwhelmingly supports paid sick leave. The evidence for it is incontrovertible. And, as this new study amply demonstrates, we can feasibly cover all workers in America. As the country reopens, it’s time to bury these zombie arguments and rapidly pass a permanent, comprehensive policy. If we don’t, virus spread will accelerate, further closures – which the economy can ill afford – will be inevitable and countless lives will be needlessly lost.

    This article has been updated to correct the name of the Employment Policies Institute. It has also been updated to reflect news developments.