The Pandemic Changed Paid Sick Leave Policies, But Not For Everyone

Starting next week, Starbucks workers will no longer have access to expanded paid sick leave that the company rolled out for COVID-19 illness, isolation, and vaccination. Going forward, employees will have to use whatever accrued sick time and vacation time they have to cover missed days should they fall sick with the virus—unless the state or city in which they work requires COVID-19 pay. The coffee chain may be the latest large U.S. company to scrap its more generous sick-leave policies, but it’s hardly the first. When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its quarantine and isolation guidance from 10 to five days late last year, for example, several major employers including Walmart and Amazon pulled back the amount of paid time off employees could take for COVID-19-related absences. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] At the same time, however, state and local governments across the U.S. are enacting laws to ensure that companies operating in their jurisdictions provide workers with access to a minimum amount of paid sick leave. The question now is whether sick leave will become more widespread in a post-pandemic era, or largely revert back to pre-pandemic norms. Americans’ spotty access to paid sick leave When the pandemic hit the world in early 2020, the U.S. was the only one among 22 highly economically developed countries without guaranteed paid sick time, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Resear...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news