Why paid sick leaves matters

(NBC) - Taking time off when sick became a matter of life and death during the pandemic, and yet some companies are still refusing to offer paid sick leave to their workers.

The issue came to a head during the recent railroad workers' contract negotiations.

Pay wasn't the problem.

It was, however, a fight over sick time.

So why is paid sick leave still so controversial?

What a George Mason University Economist says

"I do think that the COVID 19 pandemic provided an example, or a case study of where paid sick leave policy may have been helpful to the economy, to workers, and to public health. My name is Catherine Maclean. I am an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University."

Maclean says first off when it comes to highly developed countries, we're just one of two where employers are not required to offer paid sick leave.

And while that benefit does exist, it's not equally available to all workers.

Workers have access to some form of paid sick leave

"Jobs in the management, business and financial occupations. About 96% of those workers have access to some form of paid sick leave through their employer. If we look to something like service occupations, it's about 65%. And if you look across the wage distribution, if we look at the highest 10% of wage jobs, again, it's about 96% of those workers that have access to paid sick leave through their employer. Also, if you look at the other end of the spectrum, the lowest 10% of wages, it's about 40% of workers that have access to paid sick leave."

What Maclean's team discovered

Maclean's team studied the impact of the paid sick time mandate.

Their findings suggest that workers who could take a paid sick day, did, and stayed home to recover.

"They were more likely to display higher patterns of staying at home, which we interpret as a proxy of self-quarantining, meeting family responsibilities during times of school closures, staying home with children, so on and so forth, than counties that were less exposed."

And in areas where workers took time off to recover, the rate of COVID infections dropped.

"This study found that this policy was associated with substantial reductions in confirmed COVID 19 cases. To me, that is evidence that this policy did achieve its objectives."

Too expensive to implement

But some industries say mandatory paid sick time is too expensive to implement and that workers will abuse the system.

Maclean says those claims cannot be supported by data.

"The cost is potentially not that large, about $0.21 per hour. I think that these are reasonable concerns to have. But when we look at the data and when we look at how these policies have been devised, we don't find evidence that there's misuse of the benefit."