\n\tAmericans are a sick people. Among their economic peers they expect to live shorter lives, experience higher rates of chronic disease, and spend more on their care and upkeep. The baseline necessities for maintaining a healthy human body over the course of a lifetime are often a luxury. Nevertheless, one in five Americans lack the ability to take a paid sick day from work if they fall ill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHealth care \u2014 from ease of access to programs like Medicaid to a woman\u2019s ability to access abortion care \u2014 is governed by a patchwork of increasingly complex state-level laws and policies. Sick leave<\/a> is no different.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAcross the private sector and state and local governments, around 26.5 million employees<\/a> do not have access to paid sick time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics released this year. The disparity is concentrated among low-income, part-time, and service industry workers, only about half of whom have access to paid sick days. Among the lowest 10 percent of earners, only 41 percent have paid sick leave, while 94 percent of the top 25 percent of earners have it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere is no federal law guaranteeing what, in most developed countries<\/a>, is an uncontested, uncontroversial workers\u2019 right. In fact, even as voters push to codify sick leave policies into local law, this year alone at least three Republican-controlled states are attempting to roll back leave provisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn Missouri<\/a>, voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum guaranteeing statewide paid sick leave, and an increase to the state\u2019s minimum wage. Shortly after the mandate went into effect, Republicans in the legislature repealed it outright. In Nebraska, Republicans tacked on an amendment<\/a> to a similar law \u2014 also passed by referendum \u2014 that significantly narrowed the pool of businesses covered, and which employees were entitled to the benefit. The amendment also stripped employees of the right to sue over the enforcement of the law. In Alaska, the state\u2019s Republican administration worked to limit the scope<\/a> of its own ballot-approved sick leave law via regulations instituted by the Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFifty-seven percent of the people voted for it<\/a>,\u201d Missouri Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a Democrat, tells Rolling Stone of the state\u2019s referendum. \u201cOne-hundred and nine out of 163 representative districts, which would be a super majority, voted for it. Twenty out of 34 Senate seats voted for it, and six out of eight congressional seats voted for \u2014 so it\u2019s pretty much a mandate.. Republicans overturned that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBeck says Democrats tried to negotiate a way to preserve coverage for as many Missourians as possible, even if it meant limiting what businesses would be subject to the law, only to have the rug pulled out from them at the last moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe got there and \u2026 they reneged on their deal in the middle of the middle of the night,\u201d he adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn an era where politics tend to split the American population down the middle, support for the right to paid sick leave, and other forms of paid medical leave, is an issue that has astronomically high support across the United States. The lawmakers and advocates who spoke to Rolling Stone agreed on one thing: It\u2019s not voters who are pushing for the weakening of leave policies, but business interests and corporate lobbies.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe most vocal group against this was the restaurant industry, which, you know, relies on underpaying workers,\u201d Beck said, adding that the Missouri Chamber of Commerce had also lobbied heavily against the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDawn Huckelbridge, founding director of the advocacy group Paid Leave for All, has been fighting for a federal law guaranteeing paid sick leave since 2019. \u201cThere\u2019s been a bill around [in Congress<\/a>] forever that has never gotten a vote,\u201d she tells Rolling Stone. \u201cI know in the case of paid leave, paid family medical leave, it was largely the Chamber of Commerce that was a big lobbying force against it.\u201d The general argument \u2014 similarly to arguments against increases in the minimum wage and other basic guarantees for working class people \u2014 is that the cost of a few sick days a year would place undue burdens on employers and small businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn states that have passed it, the vast majority of employers do support it,\u201d Huckelbridge adds, pointing to data indicating that paid sick leave policies actually save businesses<\/a> billions of dollars in the long run, and improves health outcomes for individuals and families. \u201cThere\u2019s piles of data that show this is good for business, this is good for public health, and yet in this country, we have refused to take action.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe U.S. had a brief moment of clarity during the Covid-19<\/a> pandemic, when the spread of a deadly, easily transmissible virus sent the national health apparatus into a crisis. During the pandemic, the federal government passed the nation\u2019s first ever<\/a> federal paid sick days and paid family leave policies \u2014 the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) \u2014 which was allowed to expire in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n