Coronavirus Highlights The Need For Paid Sick Leave In The US: 'Working While Sick'
'Coronavirus Highlights Need For Paid Sick Leave In The US,' by Karen Scott, The Conversation, Truthout, Feb. 5, 2020.
The new coronavirus has spread rapidly around the globe since its discovery late last year in China. It has now infected more than 20,000 people worldwide and killed over 400, prompting travel bans, citywide quarantines and mass hysteria.
To combat its spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has offered some seemingly straightforward advice: “Stay home when you are sick.” That’s easier said than done for the tens of millions of workers in the United States who don’t have paid sick days or who operate in a “tough-it-out” workplace culture. This gap is a big problem when a disease like the coronavirus can be spread with as little as a cough. As someone who researches work, I’ve been wondering: Do these workplace norms and policies help our companies cope with a contagious virus — or do they accelerate its spread?
- Working While Sick
The U.S. is one of only two Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries that do not universally guarantee paid leave for sick workers. And 39 states leave it up to employers, meaning that approximately 1 in 3 workers in the U.S. have zero paid sick days. Sure, there is the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which offers job protections for taking time for certain health reasons. Yet these protections only cover a subset of employees, with stipulations around job tenure and employer size. Importantly, the act does not cover illnesses such as the flu — even in a pandemic — unless complications arise.
These conditions create a near-guarantee that workers will defy public health warnings and trudge into their workplaces, regardless of symptoms. In this way, a manageable health crisis can spiral out of control. We saw this happen during the last outbreak of H1N1 swine flu in 2009. One estimate found that at least 3 in 10 workers in the private sector did not take time off from work when sick with the virus, which led to up to seven million additional infections and may have extended the outbreak. The CDC blames H1N1 and related complications for 12,469 deaths in the United States in 2009 and 2010.
- People wear medical masks out of concern over the coronavirus at JFK Airport on Jan. 31, 2020, in New York City.
- On the Front Lines
It’s particularly concerning that those who are more likely to go into work when sick are service workers, since their jobs are usually impossible to do from home. Fewer than half of service workers have any paid sick days, and the proportion declines with pay. These are the people who prepare food in restaurants, take care of the young, sick and elderly, and keep workplaces clean. Many also play a vital role in maintaining public health as the first line of defense against contagion. Yet that role is undermined by their lack of access to policies that allow and encourage them to stay home when they are sick.
Norovirus, for example, is the leading cause of food poisoning in the United States, infecting at least 20 million Americans a year. And yet, the CDC has found that 1 in 5 food service workers say they work “while sick with vomiting or diarrhea,” in direct contradiction of guidelines...
More, https://truthout.org/articles/coronavirus-highlights-need-for-paid-sick-leave-in-the-us/
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