What We Learned About Paid Sick Leave in the U.S. From the H1N1 Outbreak

The last time the U.S. experienced a pandemic, advice to working Americans was similar to the message officials are sharing today—stay home.
Similar to today’s COVID-19 outbreak, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic laid bare issues of inequality in the U.S., including disparities in paid sick leave. In 2009, the federal government did not have a federal paid sick leave policy, and it still doesn’t today, forcing U.S. workers to make the impossible choice between financial and personal health. But there are important lessons we can learn from the past, says Keshia Pollack Porter, director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Institute for Health and Social Policy.

“We know that the workers who are most in need are least likely to have access to paid sick leave,” Pollack Porter tells TIME and Retro Report. “It’s overwhelmingly low income workers, workers of color, people who work in small businesses, that just tend not to have access to these types of benefits.”

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Source: TIME: Health - August 3, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jasmine Aguilera Tags: Uncategorized Brief COVID-19 News Desk Source Type: news