Protecting health during COVID-19 and beyond: A global examination of paid sick leave design in 193 countries*

Abstract

Well-designed paid sick leave is critical to ensure workers stay home when sick to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious pathogens, both when the economy is open and during an economic shutdown. To assess whether paid sick leave is available in countries around the world, we created and analysed a database of legislative guarantees of paid leave for personal illness in 193 UN member states. Original labour and social security legislation and global information on social security systems for each country were obtained and analysed by a multilingual research team using a common coding framework. While strong models exist across low-middle-and high-income countries, critical gaps that jeopardise health and economic security remain. 27% of countries do not guarantee paid sick leave from the first day of illness, essential to encouraging workers to stay home when they are sick and prevent spread. 58% of countries do not have explicit provisions to ensure selfemployed and gig economy workers have access to paid sick leave benefits. Comprehensive paid sick leave policies that cover all workers are urgently needed if we are to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and be ready to respond to threats from new pathogens. ARTICLE HISTORY

Assessing the effect of socio-economic features of low-income communities and COVID-19 related cases: An empirical study of New York City

“…In addition, due to the problem of low English language proficiency, employers should provide multilingual booklets that contain details about COVID-19 and its preventive measures to their employees and encourage them to go through those materials before each shift to ensure that all employees are on the same page in helping fight the virus. Moreover, the US is among one of the countries that do not provide paid sick leave from the very first day of sickness (Heymann et al, 2020), with 54% of Latinx workers and 38% of black workers not qualified for paid sick leave (National Partnership for Women & Families, n.d.). Therefore, paid sick leave due to Covid-19 infection and exposure should be made available for all the workers.…”

COVID-19 and Sick Leave: An Analysis of the Ibermutua Cohort of Over 1,651,305 Spanish Workers in the First Trimester of 2020

“…Sick leave (SL) is a complex indicator of the working population's well-being and also a predictor for health consequences and mortality (6,7). Moreover, if paid sick leave is guaranteed from the 1st day of illness, it encourage workers to stay at home preventing the spread of virus infection (8).…”

Awareness and use of (emergency) sick leave: US employees’ unaddressed sick leave needs in a global pandemic

“…Further, we study who was at the highest risk of unaddressed sick leave needs. The United States is one of the few developed countries without universal sick leave coverage; working sick is an ongoing problem reinforcing the spread of COVID-19 ( 4 – 6 ). In line with previous studies, we show that access to paid sick leave reduces unaddressed sick leave needs ( 7 – 9 ).…”