Paid Sick Time Saves Lives, Jobs

New Wisconsin Study Affirms Importance of Public Policies

COVID-19 continues to devastate Wisconsin and the country—but it didn’t have to be this way. 

Twelve and a half years ago, 9to5, Voces de la Frontera, and dozens of other groups organized a ballot initiative to win paid sick days in Milwaukee. They won with nearly 70 percent of the vote, and won again in court when corporate lobbies sued, only to have their win stolen by a hostile Wisconsin legislature. 

But even then, those groups—and workers across the country—knew what this pandemic spotlights: As Chineva Smith, Senior Organizer at 9to5 Wisconsin, put it, “Our lives are interdependent. Each of us is only as healthy as the person who prepares and serves our food, drives our children’s school bus, delivers our packages, cares for our loved ones with a chronic illness or disability. We all benefit from paid sick time for all.”

Today in Wisconsin, over 600,000 workers lack access to paid sick days. When they are exposed or infected with COVID-19, they face a hazardous choice: work while sick and expose others or stay home and lose their pay—or even their job. 

Recently, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute took a look at policies that could address the impact of COVID-19 spread, including paid sick days. Their new report, Healthy Wisconsin, Thriving Workforce, showed that:

• Paid sick days could significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Wisconsin by as many as 10,000 cases per month, saving 75 lives per month.
• Expanding workers’ compensation laws to strengthen coverage when certain sectors are exposed to COVID-19 in the workplace could decrease workplace transmission.
• Providing direct payments to gig workers, undocumented immigrants, and other workers could also decrease workplace transmission.

At a January 27, 2021, press call with 9to5, Voces de la Frontera and Family Values @ Work, Jonathan Heller, Senior Health Equity Fellow at PHI and co-author of the report, said: “Decades of research have shown that access to paid sick leave has a wide variety of significant positive impacts on health, from reduced emergency room usage to reduced spread of food-borne illness through restaurants and gastrointestinal disease through nursing homes. Paid sick leave is a vital policy when trying to control a pandemic.”

“Controlling the pandemic and reopening the economy both depend on protecting workers,” said Heller.

“The health of the public and the health of the economy are intertwined. We are a stronger, thriving Wisconsin when everyone has what they need to be safe and well, and these policies would help get us there.”

The report’s findings correlate with research from October 2020, which showed that emergency paid sick days led to an average decrease of 56% of new COVID-19 cases per day in states that previously had no paid sick days policy. 

Many workers first got access to COVID paid sick days when Congress took action early in this pandemic via the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, or FFCRA. FFCRA provided paid sick days for COVID-related illness, quarantine, or family care, while giving businesses a way to recoup worker pay through tax credits. It was a huge help for covered workers and small businesses. The FFCRA included another important policy: 10 additional weeks of emergency paid leave to care for a child whose school or child care was closed because of the pandemic.  

But, as Ellen Bravo, strategic advisor for Family Values @ Work, pointed out, “FFCRA left up to 106 million workers out in the cold: people who work for a company with 500 or more employees, plus health care workers and emergency responders. And if your COVID didn’t disappear after two weeks, there was no relief.”

Fortunately, the new administration is introducing the Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan that ensures all employers provide paid sick days for COVID, and includes all workers who need time to heal from COVID or care for a loved one—a measure as important as the vaccine for stopping the virus. 

In addition to these emergency measures, we need permanent policies. As Bravo put it, “Babies and cancer and heart attacks didn’t take a vacation during this pandemic.” Soon Congress will be considering the FAMILY Act, to make it affordable for families to welcome a new child or care for a serious personal or family illness. 

This is the moment for major investment in families’ health and economic security so that money starts flowing through our communities again and we can recover from the economic devastation of the last ten months. We urge people across the country to contact Congress by texting paidleave (one word) to 844-955-2880 to share these findings and the urgency of immediate action.