Everyone Gets Sick. Not Everyone Has Time To Get Better. A Brieng Book On Establishing A Paid Sick Days Standard November 2010 In October, I got very sick with diverticulitis. My doctor put me on bed rest for two weeks. While I was out, my boss hounded me to come back, but I was way too sick. I told him I would be back as soon as I could. I was not receiving sick pay at all. When I did go back to work early, he fired me and told me he needed someone he could count on. I worked for this man for two years. I was shocked. Sometimes things happen and you get sick. How are you to foresee these things? — Heather, Cedar Crest, New Mexico 2 Everyone Gets Sick. Not Everyone Has Time To Get Better. Nearly two in five private sector workers—about forty million people—don’t have a single paid sick day to recover from common, short-term illnesses. Millions more lack paid sick days to care for a sick child. Workers without paid sick days face an impossible choice when illness strikes. Either they go to work sick (or send a sick child to school or daycare)—or they stay home, lose pay, and risk job loss or workplace discipline. Particularly in this economy, many workers simply can’t afford to jeopardize the economic security of their families by staying home. When workers lack access to paid sick days, contagious illnesses spread through our workplaces and schools. Workers without paid sick days are more likely to go to work sick with an illness like the flu and are more likely to send a sick child to school than workers who have paid sick days. As a result, the public’s health is put at risk. Working people shouldn’t be forced to choose between being responsible employees and conscientious community members. A national workplace standard of paid sick days would allow workers to be both. San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee have already passed laws that allow workers citywide to earn paid sick days to recover from a short-term illness, care for a sick family member, or seek routine medical care. And momentum for paid sick days policies is building nationwide and in states and cities across the country. Join us in supporting a national paid sick days standard. 3 I had to work while having bouts of awful bronchitis and walking pneumonia. I got no time off at all even when I was in severe pain, coughing up phlegm or vomiting. Instead I had to act like I wasn’t sick, and keep up the same standards and smiling face…. I couldn’t take unpaid days off from work because I couldn’t afford to do that. I needed the money to pay for things like rent and food. When my quality of work suffered substantially from having to go to work while so sick, I was fired from my job because according to my then-supervisor, I did not create a happy environment for the customers. — Noel, Bellingham, Washington 4 Establishing Paid Sick Days as a Minimum Labor Standard Without a Basic Standard of Paid Sick Days, Millions of Our Nation’s Workers Forgo Pay and Risk Job Loss Simply by Getting Sick. About 40 million workers across the country—from Maine to Washington State—lack the ability to take time away from work when they are ill. Millions more lack sick time that can be used to care for a sick child or family member. Overall, nearly four in ten private sector workers lack access to any paid, job-protected sick time. Among the lowest-wage workers, eight in ten lose income and risk job loss or workplace discipline when they are ill.1 . Getting sick has serious economic consequences for workers and their families. Nearly one quarter of adults in the U.S. (23 percent) report that they have lost a job or have been threatened with job loss for taking time off due to illness or to care for a sick child or relative.2 Nearly one in six (16 percent) report that they or a family member have been fired, disciplined, written up, or threatened with firing or workplace discipline for taking sick time.3 . In this economic climate—where unemployment means months of searching for new work—workers should not have to face the awful choice between caring for their health and keeping their paychecks or jobs. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) does not guarantee workers paid sick days—and neither do any state laws. A labor standard guaranteeing workers the ability to earn paid, job-protected sick days would help ensure that workers don’t have to choose between their health and their economic security. When Workers Don’t Have Paid Sick Days, the Spread of Contagious Illness Jeopardizes Public Health. Public Health Example One: The H1N1 Flu Pandemic . During the peak months of the Fall 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, almost 26 million working people age 18 and older may have been infected with H1N1 flu virus. Overall, 8 million workers went to work sick between September and November 2009 and may have infected up to 7 million of their co-workers.4 . During the height of the H1N1 pandemic, workers with lower rates of access to paid sick days were far more likely than those with higher rates of access to paid sick days to go to work sick and, as a result, the pandemic lasted longer in their workplaces as the virus spread from co-worker to co-worker.5 . Economic pressures and anxiety surely affected workers’ decisions to go to work ill. When asked what problems they would encounter if they had to stay home for seven to ten days due to H1N1, 44 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said that they or a household member would “lose pay and have money problems.”6 . A Centers for Disease Control survey of parents at a Pennsylvania elementary school found that more than one in five (22 percent) had to miss work to stay home with their child during a week-long H1N1-related school closing in 2009—and 40 percent of the parents who stayed home missed an entire work week.7 For parents without paid sick days, that time off work undoubtedly came at a high cost. 1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Employee Benefits in the United States, Table 6: Selected Paid Leave Benefits: Access. March 2010. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm. 2 National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for the Public Welfare Foundation, Paid Sick Days: Attitudes and Experiences. May 2010. http://www.publicwelfare.org/resources/DocFiles/psd2010final.pdf. 3 Ibid. 4 Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Sick at Work: Infected Employees in the Workplace During the H1N1 Pandemic. Feb. 2010. http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/B284sickatwork.pdf. 5 Ibid. 6 Robert J. Blendon et al., Influenza A (H1N1)/Swine Flu Survey III. Harvard Opinion Research Program, Harvard School of Public Health. June 2009. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/files/Swine_Flu_Topline_7.15.09.pdf. 7 Thomas Gift, et al., Household Effects of School Closure During Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, Pennsylvania, USA. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. July 2010. http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/16/8/PDF/09-1827.pdf. 5 Public Health Example Two: A Stomach Virus Outbreak Access to paid sick days matters. Workers who have jobs requiring frequent contact with the public and Adults without access to paid sick days are 1.5 our food are among the least likely to times more likely than adults with paid sick days have job-protected paid time off. to report going to work with a contagious illness Nearly three in four food service like the flu or a viral infection. workers (73 percent) lack access to even a single paid sick day.8 Parents without access to paid sick days are more . The Food and Drug Administration than twice as likely as parents with paid sick days guidelines recommend that workers to send a sick child to school or daycare. with norovirus-related illnesses work on a restricted basis until 24 hours (Source: National Opinion Research Center at the University after symptoms subside.9 Since most of Chicago for the Public Welfare Foundation, Paid Sick Days: food service establishments don’t Attitudes and Experiences, March 2010) offer paid sick time, workers are forced to take unpaid leave or work sick. When a worker at a Chipotle restaurant in Kent, Ohio had no choice but to come to work sick with the norovirus, over 500 people became violently ill. The outbreak cost the Kent community between $130,000 and $300,000.10 . While the Kent Chipotle example is one of the most researched outbreaks in recent years, it is not an isolated incident. Each year, there are approximately 76 million cases of foodborne illness nationwide.11 Without a Paid Sick Days Standard, Health Care Costs Rise. Unnecessary emergency room visits burden our health care system and cost billions of dollars per year. Yet without access to paid sick days, workers have no choice but to use emergency rooms to seek care during non-work hours. Adults without access to paid sick days are twice as likely to report going to a hospital emergency room because of their inability to take time from work to get medical care during regular work hours.12 . Parents without access to paid sick days are five times as likely as parents with paid sick days to report taking a child or another family member to a hospital emergency room—overall, 35 percent of parents without paid sick days have taken a child or family member to an ER because they could not take time off work to get medical care during work hours.13 8 Joint Economic Committee of the U.S.