Maximilian Franz, The Daily Record/AP Photo
Forty-two percent of service-sector workers don’t receive paid sick leave, and 70 percent in the bottom tenth of wage earners don’t.
Back in 2009, Senator Edward Kennedy introduced a bill that called for guaranteeing seven paid sick days a year to workers across the United States. Kennedy could not have foreseen the coronavirus epidemic, but in pushing that legislation, he warned, “Everyone is at risk when the people who serve our food, clean our offices and care for our elderly can’t take time off and get well.”
That proposal, which Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, also introduced in the House, went nowhere—largely because corporate lobbyists mounted a fierce effort to block it. They damned it as an “employer mandate,” which they said would interfere with business’s need for flexibility. Their Republican allies in turn condemned the bill as a “‘one size fits all’ government mandate.”
When business lobbyists assail a proposal as an “employer mandate,” that almost invariably means Republican lawmakers will torpedo the idea. Corporate lobbyists framed paid sick leave as a binary issue—corporations, those blessed job creators, versus lefty worker advocates intent on sabotaging the free-enterprise system. Not surprisingly, on paid sick days, as on many other issues, Republicans sided with their corporate allies (and donors) over worker interests, even though one poll found that the American public overwhelmingly supports a paid sick leave law by 85 percent to 14 percent.
In a subsequent fight over paid sick days, one corporate-backed group wrote, “Paid sick leave is a cure worse than the disease.”
Tell that to the families of those who died from the coronavirus. That group, the Employment Policies Institute, added, “These ineffective measures do little more than soothe the consciences of labor activists.”
Even the respected business group the Society for Human Resource Management attacked the call for a paid sick leave law. It argued that such a law was not needed because more than 80 percent of employers offer some form of paid sick leave. But the society’s logic fails me—what about the tens of millions of workers who don’t receive paid sick leave: the fast-food workers, the supermarket cashiers, the wait staffs at restaurants, and many more?
As you may have noticed, the business lobbyists omitted the concerns of the public and public health from their discussion. As a result, we, the world’s wealthiest nation, remain one of the very few advanced economies that don’t have a national law guaranteeing workers paid sick days. (We’re also the only wealthy nation without a national law guaranteeing workers paid parental leave, paid vacation, or universal health coverage.)
In recent days, with Americans alarmed about the coronavirus, many are waking up to this “no sick leave” problem that worker advocates and public-health advocates have long warned would come back to haunt us. Twenty-seven percent of private-sector workers do not receive paid sick leave; 42 percent of service-sector workers don’t and 70 percent in the bottom tenth of wage earners don’t. With the coronavirus epidemic spreading, we should remember that these service workers and low-wage workers include the cashiers who swipe our credit cards before giving them back to us, the counterperson who hands us our food at McDonald’s and Taco Bell, the nursing home worker who cares for our parents, the cook who makes our scrambled eggs at our favorite diner, and the waiter who serves us.
If Donald Trump were serious about safeguarding the nation’s public health, if he were even close to being a champion of workers, he would be shouting and tweeting for Congress to enact paid sick days legislation forthwith. Indeed, it would have been smart for Trump, when pushing for $1 trillion in corporate tax cuts (at a time when corporations were already making record profits) to demand some kind of worker benefit to accompany his largesse to big business. One might have expected the supposed “world’s greatest dealmaker” to tell America’s corporations: “I will give you $1 trillion in tax cuts, but in exchange you must agree to seven days paid sick leave for all employees” (and perhaps paid parental leave, as well). If Trump had done that, he’d look prescient (and it might have improved his all-important approval ratings).
If Donald Trump were serious about safeguarding the nation’s public health, if he were even close to being a champion of workers, he would be shouting and tweeting for Congress to enact paid sick days legislation forthwith.
It is of course laudable that many corporations give their employees paid sick leave, but it’s far less laudable that corporate America blocked the Kennedy-DeLauro proposal and subsequent related proposals because business lobbyists are so accustomed to stomping on anything that they see as a mandate. DeLauro has repeatedly pushed the idea, calling anew this week for a paid sick days law in light of the coronavirus.
As we face an epidemic that could turn into a pandemic, corporate America’s reflexive opposition to a paid sick leave law reveals yet again its selfishness and myopia—one more example of putting profit maximization above all else, including public health. One study of states that enacted laws requiring employers to provide paid sick leave found that statewide flu infections declined by 11 percent in the first year after passage, compared with states that do not have such laws.
Last August, the Business Roundtable, that grouping of CEOs from leading corporations, declared that maximizing profits and shareholder value would no longer be their overriding priority, that they would balance the needs of shareholders with those of employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities. Since then, it has been hard to detect any movement by corporations away from their preoccupation with maximizing profits.
But one thing the Business Roundtable and other corporate groups could do right now to show that they’re serious about moving away from their focus on maximizing profits would be to endorse a paid sick days law. They should call on President Trump and Congress to enact such a law as soon as possible. If and when President Trump signs such legislation, perhaps with a few dozen corporate CEOs standing behind him, the CEOs can declare, “This shows we’re serious (at least sometimes) about moving away (at least somewhat) from our preoccupation with maximizing profits (at least when there’s a pandemic).”
