National paid sick day and paid sick leave policies are compared in 22 countries ranked highly in terms of economic and human development. The authors calculate the financial support available to workers facing two different kinds of health problems: a case of the flu that requires missing 5 days of work, and a cancer treatment that requires 50 days of absence. Only 3 countries--the United States, Canada, and Japan--have no national policy requiring employers to provide paid sick days for workers who need to miss 5 days of work to recover from the flu. Eleven countries guarantee workers earning the national median wage full pay for all 5 days. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, the full-time equivalent benefits are more generous for low-wage workers than for workers earning the national median. The United States is the only country that does not provide paid sick leave for a worker undergoing a 50-day cancer treatment. Luxembourg and Norway provide 50 full-time equivalent working days of leave, while New Zealand provides the least, at 5 days. In 6 countries, paid sick leave benefits are more generous for low-wage workers than for median-wage workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that union membership and confidence in organized labor are positively associated with voice, insecure workers are less likely to speak up than secure workers as confidence in organized labor increases. Last, we find that insecure nonstandard workers are less likely to use voice than their secure counterparts.

Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social and economic forces affecting service delivery, these new technologies have transformed the labor that acts as the backbone to the industry-namely frontline service work performed by housekeepers, front desk staff, line cooks and others. We describe the context for recent technological adoption, with particular emphasis on algorithmic management applications. Through this work, we identify gaps in existing literature and highlight areas in need of further research in the domains of worker-centered technology development. Our analysis highlights how technologies such as algorithmic management shape roles and tasks in the high-touch service sector. We outline how harms produced through automation are often due to a lack of attention to non-management stakeholders. We then describe an opportunity space for researchers and practitioners to elicit worker participation at all stages of technology adoption, and offer methods for centering workers, increasing transparency, and accounting for the context of use through holistic implementation and training strategies.

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