Don’t Make People Choose Between Starving and Infecting People You Absolute Eggs
By Charlotte Swasey and Ethan Winter
About a quarter of Americans currently lack any paid or medical leave. The United States is unique in not guaranteeing this to all of its workers. For those Americans who lack paid sick leave, staying home when they’re sick requires them to lose wages and even risk being fired. The ongoing coronavirus crisis has both underscored and heightened the consequence of this failing as many are compelled out of economic necessity to go to work even if they’re sick.
President Trump has just signed into law legislation that expands access to paid sick and medical leave but coverage remains enormously patchy. As Heather Long lays out in the Washington Post, these benefits are 1) not permanent 2) apply only to workers homebound due to the coronavirus, and 3) quite limited in terms of benefits, providing only “two weeks of paid sick leave at 100 percent of the person’s normal salary, up to $511 per day… [and] up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave at 67 percent of the person’s normal pay, up to $200 per day.” In addition, this legislation excludes a whole host of workers by carving out exemptions for certain categories of businesses, namely larger firms with over 500 employees.
As part of a March survey, Data for Progress sought to test attitudes about this legislation and the topic of paid sick and medical leave more generally. Specifically, we asked voters two questions:
Do you think that companies with over 500 employees should be exempted from legislation mandating paid leave?
And
Do you support making permanent any legislation which mandates paid leave as part of the coronavirus crisis?
What we found is that voters oppose exempting certain categories of workers from being guaranteed paid sick and medical leave by a 35 point margin (17 percent support exemptions, 52 percent oppose). Furthermore, most voters support making an expansion of the paid and medical leave system permanent, backing such a step by a 41 point margin (59 percent support, 18 percent oppose).
Next, we consider support for these two policies just among those who self-identify as Republican. What we find is that while Republicans are overall slightly less enthusiastic about these two policies they remain quite supportive. Specifically, Republicans support eliminating exemptions for businesses of 500 employees or more by a 26 point margin (21 percent support exemptions, 47 percent support oppose exemptions) and also support making permanent any expansions to the paid sick leave system by a 25 point margin (51 percent support, 26 percent oppose). The point is, there’s bipartisan support for addressing the absence of paid sick and medical leave in the United States and making permanent any solution rendered during the current crisis.
In short, without providing workers with money while they’re sick, they’ll continue to try to go to work. Especially now, where so much hinges upon keeping people at home in an effort to flatten the curve, expanding paid sick and medical leave is an essential step and one supported by a majority of voters.
Charlotte Swasey (@charlotteeffect) is the VP of Polling and Data at Data for Progress
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is an analyst for Data for Progress. You can email him at ethan@dataforprogress.org
This survey was fielded from March 18, 2020. It was a survey of 2444 likely voters and weighted to represent the likely electorate.
For rounding purposes, all results conveyed in the charts sum to 100 percentage points and thus may deviate slightly from crosstab data.