The United States is battling a wave of viruses right now, from RSV to the flu to Covid-19 — and kids especially are bearing the brunt of these illnesses.
But one simple solution can slow the spread: offering paid sick leave to employees, said Molly Weston Williamson, senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. Williamson recently made these comments in an opinion piece published in NBC News.
Nearly a quarter of private sector employees don’t have any paid sick days, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. For low-wage workers, more than 60% don’t have paid sick leave, the Economic Policy Institute found. Additionally, about half of working parents don’t receive pay for taking time off work to care for a sick child, an issue that especially affects low-income working mothers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Parents who don’t have this benefit are almost twice as likely to send a sick child to school or daycare than parents who do.
“When parents don’t have the paid sick leave they need to keep their kids home to care for them and keep them well, they are forced by economic necessity to send sick kids to school or childcare,” Williamson said. “When they do, other kids get sick, and they get teachers and caregivers sick. And most kids and caregivers go home and spread disease to their spouses, to their loved ones, to grandparents in a way that is really compromising our ability to fight back against this public health crisis.”
Currently, 14 states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring paid sick leave, as well as some cities and counties. But there is no federal law. The responsibility to enact change is up to the government, but also employers, Williamson said.
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“I think we’re in a situation where we need those universal rights that can only come from policy, but there’s also a lot of room for employers to step up and to benefit from stepping up by providing these rights now,” she said.
A common misconception about paid sick leave is that it will cost employers, when in reality providing this benefit will save them money down the line, Williamson argues. Workers without paid sick time will likely come into work ill, affecting their productivity and possibly others’ by spreading the disease to coworkers. Employers will also have to deal with increased healthcare costs due to staff getting sicker. Additionally, they’ll have more turnover, as workers without paid sick leave are more likely to quit their jobs than those with the benefit, according to Williamson.
“Fundamentally, when we don’t guarantee paid sick time, we are guaranteeing ourselves a situation where people are going to go to work sick,” Williamson said. “They’re going to send kids to school sick. That is bad for workers, that is bad for employers, that is bad for our economy and that is bad for public health. It means that nationwide, we are losing out economically on billions of dollars each year from the costs of reduced productivity from working sick, from the cost of disease being spread in the workplace, all while employers are bearing higher healthcare costs and higher turnover costs.”
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