NEW YORK (AP) — As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus sweeps across workers nationwide, millions must choose between their health and their pay.
While many companies instituted stronger sick-leave policies at the start of the pandemic, some have since rolled back protections with the arrival of vaccines. Meanwhile, staffing shortages add to the pressure on workers who must decide whether to come to work sick, or whether they can’t afford to stay home.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Daniel Schneider, a public policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “As staff are depleted because people are sick, those who remain at work have extra to do and become even more reluctant to report sick when they themselves fall ill.”
Low-wage workers are especially vulnerable. Eighteen percent? (Oops) 80% of private-sector workers have at least one paid sick day, according to a March survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33% of workers in the bottom 10% of earnings have paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%.
A fall survey of about 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard’s Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65% of workers who reported being sick in the last month still went to work anyway. That’s down from 85% who showed up sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be during a public health crisis. Schneider says this could worsen due to Omicron and ongoing labor shortages.
Furthermore, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely moved during the pandemic: from 50% to 51%, respectively. He also added that many of the surveyed low-income workers don’t even have any emergency savings.
The Associated Press spoke with a worker who started a new job in New Mexico last month and began experiencing symptoms similar to COVID-19 earlier this week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it could jeopardize their job, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for results.
A supervisor called and told the worker that paid sick days would only apply if the test came back positive; if negative, the employee would have to take unpaid leave since they had not accrued enough paid sick days to request sick time.
“I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my coworkers,” the interviewee said, who is still awaiting results and estimates it would cost about $160 a day of lost work if the result comes back negative. “Now I wish I’d gone to work and said nothing.”
Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is cutting pandemic-related paid leave in half, from two weeks to one, after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people
