Coronavirus crisis: paid sick leave is a start to our collective security as a nation
The coronavirus crisis is disrupting the lives of Americans in ways that most of us could not have imagined just weeks ago. But as someone who was living a nearly perfect life one day, and the next day, at age 32, was diagnosed with ALS, a debilitating disease that would give me a life expectancy of three to four years, I can say with some authority that severe disruption has the potential to bring with it unexpected clarity.
As a lifelong political activist, I have devoted my life to certain progressive social justice policies and I did not expect to find new reasons to fight for them. Human rights, human dignity and personal security have long been the values at the heart of my work. But amid a pandemic, I can now add a new one: our collective security as a nation.
The emergency paid sick leave passed by Democrats in Congress, though severely curtailed in scope by the White House and congressional Republicans, is a much-needed start. It is essential to allow our country’s workers to engage in the quarantine or isolation practices that will prevent the spread of the contagion while knowing they will be able to continue supporting themselves and their families. Forcing workers to choose between their health and their financial wellbeing would not only be cruel to them, it would be disastrous to the public health of our country.
But we should be honest and sober about the modesty and inadequacy of this accomplishment. First, it should not have even been necessary. Guaranteed, universal paid sick leave should have already been a fundamental part of the American social safety net, just as it is in most of the developed world. And second, what was ultimately passed under the carving knife of Republicans was not nearly enough to meet the challenges of this crisis. In fact, the two weeks of paid sick leave guaranteed by this law will not apply to the vast majority of workers. Two gaping loopholes in the bill – one exempting businesses with more than 500 employees, and another exempting ones with fewer than 50 – means that the law will leave an astounding 80% of American workers unassisted. And the law has an expiration date of 31 December, which is far sooner than when scientists and public health officials estimate this crisis will be fully behind us. With these loopholes and shortcomings left in place, our country remains in danger.
That it took a pandemic for Congress to pass this basic benefit, while also requiring it to be watered down so extensively, reveals a grim political reality for our country: that until our political system can find a way to defeat the Republican party’s ideological aversion to the basic and humane social safety nets that exist throughout the modern developed world, we will never be a nation that can fully, competently and swiftly deal with threats to our collective national security.
Whether it is so-called “moderate” Republicans like Susan Collins, who single-handedly stripped $900m from pandemic preparedness funding out of the 2009 stimulus, or the openly rightwing Mitch McConnell, whose veto hangs over any legislation that contains a whiff of providing for the common good, our two-party political system cannot live up to moments of crisis when one party is so dangerously beholden to such an extreme ideology. The UK, whose political system is also dominated by two parties representing the left and the right, recently gave a historic win to the conservative Tory party after it ran on a platform prioritizing the country’s single-payer healthcare system and making unprecedented investments in childcare and education funding. Which makes clear that, in the Republican party, we don’t simply have a conservative party. What we have is a political, historical and moral aberration that threatens our safety and security.
As the saying goes: we should not let a crisis go to waste. Some of our most fundamental, bedrock public programs were a product of immense crises and challenges, social security chief among them. Today, we could not imagine life without it. With the heightened threat coronavirus poses to the elderly, where would we be if social security and Medicare were not guaranteed to them? We must look back on this crisis and say the same of guaranteed paid sick leave, in addition to a raft of social protections that will allow us to weather this challenge: such as expansions of social security and unemployment benefits, new direct payments, moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions, student loan debt cancellations, and decisive steps toward a Medicare for All system that can protect everyone – fully and equally – in a crisis like this. History will be judging us.