Family Values @ Work Statement on the CARES Act

Today, Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of Family Values @ Work, a network of 27 state coalitions fighting for paid sick and safe days, paid family and medical leave insurance and other policies that value families at work, released this statement on the passage of the CARES Act:

As the nation’s workers  make extraordinary sacrifices to deal with this pandemic, we are glad to see many political leaders demanding accountability for payouts to the wealthiest corporations and more meaningful help for working families. The CARES Act offers strong support for small businesses, expands unemployment insurance benefits in critical ways and allocates funding to better resource our health care system. 

At the same time, we are in a crisis of caring, and the CARES Act falls short of what American workers and families need to make it through this public health emergency, by not:

• Ensuring people have access to paid sick and caregiving leave for diagnosis, quarantine and recovery for themselves and those who need their care; 
• Expanding the reasons for using paid family and medical leave; 
• Removing the exemptions on companies of 500 or more and having those companies cover the costs of paid sick time and paid leave themselves; 
• Ensuring that people can use paid leave for self-care and family care as well as for quarantines and school closures; 
• Guaranteeing that workers using paid sick days to care for a sick child or other family member would receive 100 percent wage replacement, not just two-thirds.

In addition, this new legislation adds language to permit exemption of federal government employees from paid sick time and paid family leave provisions. 

Despite these shortcomings, we commend Congress on reforming the unemployment insurance program to cover most workers regardless of size of employer or status as self-employed and gig workers.

Congress must go further, to ensure every working person, regardless of the size of their employer or their employment status, has the fully paid time they need to care for themselves and their loved ones. We need them to invest at least $50 billion in childcare, to shore up parents, caregivers and the child care sector overall, especially its workforce. Protections are urgently needed for undocumented workers. And this pandemic has made clear the need for permanent sick time and paid family and medical leave insurance legislation for all, enabling everyone to heal and care for those they love.

The FV@W network will continue to organize for these changes while we work to ensure that states implement the benefits established in these COVID-19 response bills and workers know how to access them.