Paid Sick Leave Is a Civil Rights Issue, Too
All workers need the ability to earn paid sick days so they can take leave from their jobs to care for themselves or their loved ones when they are sick or injured. The coronavirus pandemic has made the need for this basic right — guaranteed to workers in other wealthy nations but not here in the United States — clearer than ever.
Paid sick leave is more than a workers’ rights issue. It’s also a civil rights issue.
Lawyers, engineers, and others in the higher-paying “professional” class are far more likely than frontline, lower-income workers to have access to paid sick leave, the American Civil Liberties Union recently noted. They’re also more likely to be able to work from home during the pandemic, putting them at far less risk of contracting COVID-19.
And they’re more likely to be white.
Due to long-standing structural inequities and intentional discrimination, lower-income workers are more likely to be Black or Brown — and more likely to work on the front lines of the pandemic. Yet only half of those in the lowest-paid quarter of the workforce have access to paid sick leave. About one in two Latino workers and one in three Black workers …
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