[lbo-talk] The Swine Flu Scare and the Healthy Families Act

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue May 5 16:34:42 PDT 2009


[After all the slightly hysterical attempts to use pandemics as a hook for political activism, this one seems actually pretty sound. A pandemic certainly might happen someday, and whadayano, it's yet another thing where a decent welfare state is the sine non qua.]

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/sick-leave/

April 30, 2009, 9:00 pm New York Times Blog

A Sick Situation Judith Warner

Early this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

recommended that anyone with flu symptoms stay home from work or

school.

President Obama reiterated that advice at his press conference on

Wednesday night. "If you are sick, stay home," he said. "If your

child is sick, keep them out of school."

"I know it sounds trivial," the president said, after asking

families to start taking other "very sensible precautions" like

washing hands and covering up during coughs. "But it makes a huge

difference."

The president's admonition to the sick to stay home didn't sound

trivial to Silvia Del Valle, a 42-year-old restaurant worker in

Miami.

It sounded impossible.

When I spoke to her Thursday morning, Del Valle was sick in bed with

a cough and a fever. Was she planning to go to work, I asked her,

Obama's press conference still fresh in my mind.

"Yes," she said. "I need to go. Because if I don't go, I lose my

job."

Del Valle's not alone. Nearly half of all private sector workers in

our country - more than 59 million people - have no paid sick time

at all. The problem is particularly acute among women, low-wage

workers - more than three-quarters of whom have no paid sick days -

and part-timers.

Food service employees are the least likely to have access to sick

leave. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, only

14 percent of the people serving and handling food in restaurants

can stay home from work when they're coughing and sneezing, without

fear of losing their jobs. José Oliva, the policy coordinator for

the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, told me

that among the food service employees he normally counsels - many of

whom, like Del Valle, speak poor English and earn well below the

minimum wage for tipped employees - only about one percent can stay

home sick without the fear of losing pay or even their jobs.

Del Valle has been working in Miami-area restaurants for seven

years. She currently works nine hours a night for a flat fee of $30,

and sends much of those earnings home to her parents and teenage

daughter in Argentina.

Had she ever had the right to a paid sick day, I asked her.

"Not in this country," she said.

Had she ever had any benefits?

"Never in this country," she answered.

"Never in this country" is the sort of phrase that ought, in our

country, to be paired with concepts like "unaffordable health care"

or "lack of maternity leave" or "lack of ability to stay home in

case of pandemic." Instead, thanks to business groups, it has long

applied to any workplace policy that could bring substantial quality

of life improvements - including basic job security - to American

families.

Not only do a strong majority of people who work outside of

government, white collar and union jobs now lack the right to take

care of themselves and protect their coworkers when they fall ill, a

whopping 70 percent of all workers lack paid time off to care for a

sick child. This means that the school closings that are now

multiplying as swine flu spreads run the risk of bringing financial

catastrophe to many families. Eighty thousand students in the Fort

Worth school system started staying home this week and may be out of

school until at least May 8th. Schools in New York, Illinois,

Wisconsin and California are closing, too.

The Forth Worth school superintendent asked employers to be flexible

with employees who need to stay home with their kids. But with so

many jobs lost, and so many now on the line, how far do families

want to go in testing their employers' flexibility?

For single-parent homes, or for families that depend on two incomes,

"This could be the beginning of a spiral into economic disaster,"

says Debra L. Ness, the president of the National Partnership for

Women and Families. "People can't just cavalierly put their jobs or

paychecks at risk."

There has never been any genuine financial justification for denying

workers some number of paid sick days; productivity studies have

long shown that paid leave policies are good for businesses. The

opposition is only based on knee-jerk free-market social Darwinism -

the kind of thinking that's driven social policy in our country for

the better part of 30 years, and helped pitch us right into our

current economic abyss.

Our workplace policies have long been unsuited for our times. "We

operate as though there's a caregiver at home. It's as though we

were stuck back in time," Ness said. And they've never looked more

anachronistic than today, with more and more families forced to live

on one income, and a possible pandemic in the making.

The Healthy Families Act, which would grant most workers seven paid

sick days a year to care for themselves or sick family members, is

soon to be re-introduced in Congress. I think it's fair to say that

it's an idea whose time has come.

President Obama has repeatedly said we need to remember that crises

offer opportunity. If the swine flu outbreak forces lawmakers, at

long last, to give workers and families some of the protections that

they need, perhaps this crisis will, on some level, turn out to have

a silver lining, too.

* Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company



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