Paid sick leave was one of the very first policy issues to surface here in the US when in February it became clear to the public at large that we were facing a pandemic. This was right about the time when I decided to make a new beginning on prospericity, and it felt like paid sick leave would be a perfect issue for a first blog post. After all, even the wealthiest city, or wealthiest country, can’t be truly prosperous if people aren’t able to stay home from work with the flu, much less COVID-19. Maybe, it seemed, this would be the kind of issue where the pandemic could create an opening for forward movement. Maybe this would also be the kind of issue where some “quick takes” from people in other countries could bring some new ideas to the table here in the US.
Since February I have put out some feelers to get an international perspective on paid sick leave, and some of these perspectives are included below. But I’ve also been struck with how much forward movement on the paid sick leave issue has taken place in right here in California over the past several years while my attention has been focused on learning how to be a good middle school math teacher.
California and US programs
For instance, while I was focused exclusively on my classroom, I had failed to register that California passed the innovative Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act in 2014. This act guarantees most California employees the right to one hour of paid sick leave for every thirty hours worked, beginning after the first ninety days of employment. These protections have recently been expanded for essential food service workers, including grocery, restaurant, warehouse, pick up and delivery workers. These essential employees are entitled to up to 80 hours of COVID-19 paid sick leave with cap of $511/day and $5110 in aggregate. For a great fact sheet with detailed information on California paid sick leave, please see this publication written by Kristin Schumacher at the California Budget and Policy Center.
Gains in California still leave big gaps in paid sick leave for essential workers and come against a bleak national picture. Look here for amazing new report by Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett at The Shift Project that uses an innovative survey method based on outreach through Facebook to document the work lives of some 30,000 retail and food service workers at 123 large firms. The Shift Project researchers found that more than half of these workers nationally (55%) lack access to paid sick leave, and that female workers are even more likely than their male counterparts experience this lack. Aside from the basic economic justice implications of this situation, it should be obvious that if already marginal workers feel they must choose between making rent or going to work while sick, most will go to work and risk infecting others. This situation was in no-one’s self-interest even before the COVID pandemic, even those who believe that the market will take care of economic justice on its own.
Another research effort through the Washington DC-based Economic Policy Institute shows the 13 states with paid sick leave laws, but also shows a group of states that have passed shameful “preemption” laws to prevent counties and municipalities from requiring paid sick leave within their own jurisdictions. See the report by Elise Gould and David Cooper here. Municipal paid sick leave laws are another area where California is a leader, including a program in the City of San Francisco established way back in 2006. The rules for San Francisco’s Paid Sick Leave Ordinance were recently revised to address the COVID-19 crisis under the leadership of Mayor London Breed, one of several California elected officials providing hopeful models of leadership in this time of crisis. More information on the San Francisco program can be found here.
With this background in place, I thought it would still be interesting to compare the US situation to some “quick takes” on the situation in other countries. Below are the three perspectives on the paid sick leave issue that rolled in when I made an initial call out to friends (and friends of friends) in other countries. I learned quickly that disentangling the issue I asked about (paid sick leave for small business employees) from issues affecting employees at larger companies, not to mention issues affecting self-employed workers, not to mention the particularities of national health insurance systems, was going to be impossible without embarking on a major investigative research project. But the responses I received were still generous and fascinating, and I eventually I hope to collect more of these international “quick takes.”
International Perspectives
Here are my three international “quick takes” so far:
• Marco, a friend of a friend in Italy, took time out during the worst of the pandemic there to express pride in what he described as the Italian system to defend employees at private companies from “any kind of crisis.” (I was struck with Marco’s choice of the English word “defend,” his unambiguous sense that employees need defending, and the idea that there are inevitably many kinds of crises, not just health-related ones.) Marco noted that employees facing a crisis or layoff in Italy may for a period of time “stay at home with a livelihood” ranging from 50 to 100 percent of salary. According to Marco, “Only a few of those who are fired remain without anything, but even in this case Italy has created a welfare fund.” He also points out that “the unions have fought a lot” for the social protections that exist in Italy. Of course, unions have also “fought a lot” for the more limited social protections we have managed to gain here in the US.
• My nephew’s partner’s father, an Ontario-based construction contractor, reports that in the Canadian construction industry “guys who are out sick for just a few days” don’t get paid. But he also states that government-funded “disability and unemployment programs” exist for workers who are out of a job for a longer period of time. My nephew also left the impression that protections may well be greater in Canada for workers in other sectors, and at large companies.
• A friend of a friend in the UK states that construction workers are also a special case there. “They’re likely self-employed and would have no cover.” In general, however, paid sick leave “is part of a person’s employment contract” in the UK. While this is also true in the US, my UK contact notes that “The key really comes down to how they are employed. If it’s a PAYE (Pay As You Earn) contract they will likely have sick pay that is covered by the employer. If they’re self-employed, the burden falls on them.” More on Pay As You Earn can be found here on the website of a government-sponsored entity called the Money and Advice Service. This service offers “free and impartial money advice,” and strikes me as in itself the kind of basic good government program that an enterprising state or city could adopt here in the US.