National Paid Sick Leave: Achieving Universal Worker Coverage
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Smalligan, Jack, author Boyens, Chantel, author
- Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, December 2020
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Until recently, paid sick leave policy in the United States consisted of a patchwork of state and local laws and voluntary employer-provided benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed serious vulnerabilities in this system, particularly for essential workers, workers of color, and working women. Congress responded by enacting the first federal legislation providing emergency paid sick days and paid leave to care for a child whose child care or school was closed for pandemic-related reasons. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) provided temporary paid leave benefits to many workers, benefits that are crucial to protecting public health and supporting economic recovery. Surveys show that the public largely supports expanding access to these benefits.1 Many are now calling for federal legislation to enact permanent paid sick days and paid family and medical leave. Discussions of whether and how to achieve this are intensifying, and state and local governments are increasingly stepping in to enact their own policies. A good deal of evidence supports an expansion of worker access to permanent paid sick leave. Research suggests that access to paid sick leave has important benefits for individuals, public health, the economy, government spending and many employers. Such proposals have been met with concerns from some employers about the potential costs to small businesses. As a result, many proposals limit expansions to medium and large businesses. But a policy that excludes small businesses misses 20 percent or more of the workforce, including many workers who might value the benefits of paid sick leave more than its cost to employers. Further, workers left out are likely to include essential workers, workers of color, working women, and lower-wage workers. One approach to achieving universal worker coverage while limiting disruptions for small employers is for the federal government to reimburse a portion of employers’ costs of providing paid sick leave. We offer a modified version of the reimbursement mechanism used in FFCRA to allow employers to anticipate their paid sick leave costs and access federal reimbursement more quickly.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (17 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918266200406676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918266200406676