All Workers Deserve A Paid Sick Leave Benefit

Even though some businesses provide at least some paid sick leave for their workers, many U.S. businesses do not. This leaves millions of workers without any paid sick leave at all -- something that is not true in any other developed country. This is shameful, and it needs to be remedied immediately!

Here, from abetterbalance.org, are some facts about sick leave:

The United States is the only developed country that does not guarantee paid sick leave for workers.7

Because of this major gap in our federal laws, over 33 million American workers do not have access to a single paid sick day.8

Women, minority, and low-income workers are the least likely to have access to paid sick leave.

• Only 20% of the lowest-paid decile of private-sector workers have access to paid sick leave, compared to 87% of workers in the top-paid decile.9
• Forty-three percent of working mothers—including 54% of Latina mothers and 42% of Black mothers—do not have access to paid sick leave.10
• Only 49% of Hispanic workers have paid sick leave, compared with 61% of the general population.11

Front-line workers also disproportionately lack paid sick leave.

• Overall, workers with high levels of public contact (e.g., those working in the restaurant/service industry, child care professionals) are less likely to have access to paid sick leave.12
• 55% of retail and fast-food workers do not have access to paid sick leave.13

Paid sick leave reduces the spread of contagion.

• Temporary access to paid sick leave in 2020 led to a decrease in 400 COVID-19 cases per day per state without existing paid sick leave requirements during the height of the pandemic.14
• Even before the pandemic, states with paid sick leave requirements saw a 40% decrease in influenza rates.15

Paid sick leave benefits businesses and the economy.

• Paid sick leave reduces worker turnover,16 which results in significant savings for employers. Replacing workers can cost a business the equivalent of 21% of an employee’s annual wage.17
• Paid sick leave leads to fewer workers coming to work with illnesses and health conditions that reduce their productivity—a problem that costs the national economy $207.6 billion per year.18
• Nationally, universal paid sick leave would result in $1.1 billion in annual savings in hospital emergency department costs, including more than $500 million in savings to publicly funded health insurance programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.19

82% of voters—including 72% of Republicans, 79%of Independents, and 93% of Democrats—support a permanent paid sick leave law.