Kaine leading push to reinstate emergency paid sick and family leave

Sen. Tim Kaine is urging President Biden and congressional leaders to reinstate and expand emergency paid sick and family caregiving leave in the FY22 funding bill or future COVID-19 relief packages.

The effort, led by Kaine and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and 13 of their Senate colleagues, comes on the 29th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and an uptick in COVID-19 cases at the beginning of 2022.

The United States is among the few developed countries that do not have a national paid sick, family, or medical leave policy. Paid sick days and paid family and medical leave are critical to helping ensure the economic security of working families and stymie the spread of coronavirus.

“To provide support to workers and businesses during the early days of the pandemic, Congress, in the bipartisan Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, enacted guaranteed paid sick and caregiving leave, but it expired at the end of 2020 and only applied to business with fewer than 500 workers,” said the lawmakers. “Congress should build on the success of the FFCRA’s guaranteed emergency paid family caregiving and sick leave to help ensure that workers can isolate, quarantine, be treated, and get vaccinated for COVID-19; care for a loved one who is ill with COVID-19; and care for and supervise children who cannot attend in-person school or child care.”

The FFCRA program’s benefits gave approximately 22 million workers nationwide the option to stay home while sick without losing a paycheck or their job, and prevented approximately 15,000 COVID-19 cases per day nationwide. During the recent surge of the Omicron variant between late December 2021 and early January 2022, approximately 8.8 million Americans were unable to work due to illness or the need to care for someone who was sick, and an additional 5.3 million stayed home to care for a child who did not have access to child care.

Nearly eight in ten working Americans lack access to comprehensive paid leave and too many have been forced to choose between a paycheck and caring for themselves or a loved one.

Throughout the pandemic, women have been disproportionately affected by job losses. According to the National Women’s Law Center, women accounted for nearly 60% of the 4.2 million jobs lost between February 2020 and October 2021, with many forced to leave due to family considerations or because they work in some of the hardest hit sectors of our economy. These women, and particularly women of color, are also more likely to be employed in roles that lack paid sick leave and the ability to work from home.

This letter is also signed by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Tina Smith (D-MN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV).

Full text of the letter can be found here.