Older Workers on the COVID-19-Frontlines without Paid Sick Leave

ABSTRACT

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has left many workers around the world – workers in food distribution, truckers, janitors, and home and personal health care workers – deeply concerned about contracting the virus from exposure at work. In particular, older workers in frontline occupations are vulnerable to illness and to the deadly and debilitating effects of COVID-19, especially with inadequate protective gear and inadequate sick leave. In the absence of strong unions, which ensure that employers provide workers with accurate information, robust training, adequate equipment, and paid leave in the event of quarantines or illness, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for additional legislation to shore up worker protections and provide paid sick leave.

KEYWORDS:

• Older workers
• COVID19
• unions
• paid sick leave
• employee benefits

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has left food distribution, transportation, janitorial, and home and personal health care workers around the world deeply concerned about their risk of contracting disease through exposure at work. In the United States, older people in the front lines providing essential services and fighting COVID-19 are in a particularly bad situation because they are much more likely to work than older adults in other nations (Ghilarducci & Novello, 2017). In addition, older workers constitute a larger share of the workforce in some frontline industries than they do in the workforce as a whole (Blewett et al., 2019).

As we adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic we are finding that some workers are particularly vulnerable to the financial and logistical hardships of stay-at-home orders and other restrictions. These include low-income workers in grocery stores, bars and restaurants, parents who must now educate young children or share workspaces and computers with older children, and those in medical, service, retail, and transportation jobs. But older workers in frontline occupations face particular risks. Research shows that older workers are more vulnerable to illness and to the deadly and debilitating effects of COVID-19 (Riou et al., 2020). They are also vulnerable socio-economically. Historically, unions have tried to ensure that employers provide workers accurate information, robust training, adequate equipment, and paid leave in the event of quarantines or illness, but their influence has declined: only 13 percent of older workers were union members in 2019 (Flood et al., 2020).

This perspective highlights the comparative dearth of paid sick leave among older frontline workers in the COVID-19 crisis. Congress passed a comprehensive stimulus bill in the third week of March 2020, the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act. (2020). However, this legislation is lacking in several respects given the challenges faced by older workers on the frontlines, including insufficient worker protection and paid sick leave.

Paid sick leave and frontline older workers in COVID–19

Paid sick leave is critical to the health of older workers and to the public more generally. To determine which workers have access to paid sick leave, U.S. researchers must look to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The fact that the CDC, which is charged with monitoring the nation’s public’s health, keeps some of the best numbers on paid sick leave underlines the importance of paid sick leave to public health.

Older workers have less access to paid sick days than younger workers. In 2018, 40% of workers aged 50 years and older lacked paid sick days, compared to 38% of workers under age 50 (see Table 1). Forty percent is a considerable share of the older working population, especially given the relatively high proportion of older workers who work in the health, personal care, and distribution infrastructure industries. Paid sick days are particularly uncommon in certain jobs requiring frequent contact with patients, which can have important public health implications. Indeed, 50% of older workers in healthcare support occupations (which include home health aides, occupational and physical therapist assistants and others) do not have paid sick days according to authors’ calculations from the CDC data.

Table 1. Many frontline workers (old and young) do not have access to paid sick leave: selected occupations by age and paid sick leave access, 2018.

Select Frontline Occupations	Number of Older Workers (Age 50 and Over)	Share of Older Workers (Age 50 and Over)	Share of Older Workers without Paid Sick Leave	Share of Younger Workers (Age 18–49) without Paid Sick Leave
Healthcare Support Occupations	1,088,156	29%	50%	40%
Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations	2,107,540	42%	58%	65%
Transportation and Material Moving Occupations	3,294,852	34%	52%	50%
Total Employed	51,393,546	33%	40%	38%

Source: Author’s calculations from CDC 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)

Notes: Sample includes individuals who reported being employed (18 years and older). Access to paid sick leave rates are calculated for employed individuals who responded yes or no to the following question:““Do you have paid sick leave on your main job or business””

Paid sick days bring multiple benefits to employers, workers, and their families. The public health benefits of paid sick days coverage are substantial, including safer work environments and reduced spread of illness (especially during pandemics). The U.S. is an outlier in providing paid sick leave, which poses a particular health risk to the nation. Many workers cannot afford to take time off if they become ill; moreover, they may fear losing their jobs if they do so. Consequently, they report to work, which can exacerbate their illness or spread disease to others.

Notably, many of these workers are in rapidly graying crucial care and service professions that involve close contact with others; often, people who are themselves highly vulnerable to illness. Older workers constitute a significant proportion of those working in crucial care and service professions, although 33% of U.S. workers are over age 50. About 29% of workers in healthcare-support occupations are over 50 years old, as are a large (42%) of building, grounds cleaning, and maintenance workers. Need an Amazon delivery, or a shipment of hospital supplies? Thirty-four percent of transportation and material moving workers are over age 50.

Even more worrisome for our public health infrastructure is the fact that a large proportion of older workers also provides unpaid care to other older individuals. In 2019, 28% of older workers reported that they have provided unpaid care during the past three months (Hofferth et al., 2018), care that can include a broad range of activities, including assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, or toileting, or help with tasks such as cooking, shopping, or managing finances. The average age of spousal caregivers is 62.3 (AARP, 2015). In short, older caregivers are taking care of even older people. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, that means that high-risk workers are often taking care of even higher-risk individuals.

But the perils of not having access to paid sick leave are not limited to older individuals’ own access to sick leave. Many millennials still live with their parents (Vespa, 2017) and do not have access to sick leave. Without paid leave they put their elderly parents and grandparents at risk of getting ill.

We need paid sick leave and earned income tax credit policies to help older workers in the midst of the COVID–19 crisis

Besides maintaining basic hygiene by adequately investing in public health systems, what else can be done to minimize the impact of the virus on older workers in key support jobs? We argue for the following: requiring paid sick leave, using the tax code for progressive stimulus, and providing additional safety net protection.

Require paid sick leave: improve the stimulus package and move on to a permanent fix

The lack of paid sick leave for older workers on the front lines will hurt public health. It is bad for the worker, who may try to work through an illness, and it is bad for any other individuals who contract the illness because a sick person is showing up for work, further spreading disease. Ideally, the COVID-19 response legislation would have permanently required employers to allow every worker to earn paid sick leave of, say, 14 days for any reason, not just due to a particular virus. But the current legislation does not go this far. It expires at the end of 2020 and is limited in scope: it only provides paid sick leave to those who are quarantined or who are seeking a medical diagnosis for COVID-19 symptoms. Moreover, it exempts large employers like Walmart and Amazon, which is a major shortcoming when large employers employ more than half of the workforce, and these large employers are particularly active during the pandemic.

Use the tax code for progressive stimulus

One way of protecting older workers and stimulating the economy is to utilize the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), although this would have had limited impact during the early 2020 coronavirus crisis because tax filing was extended only 90 days to accommodate late filers. However, it would not be surprising if expanding the EITC comes back to the table, because the tax code is a great place to embed a stimulus: such an action would be quick, timely, temporary, and targeted. As tax-day looms, the EITC can put money in the pockets of low wage workers who have the highest propensity to spend, helping boost demand and mitigate the coming recession. But the EITC is a mixed bag for older workers. Childless workers above 65 years old or below 25 years of age are ineligible to receive the credit. Thus, the effect of the EITC would differ between two people who do exactly the same work: the ineligible worker would receive less income because they would not qualify for a supplement from the federal government (Farmand, 2019).

Workers also need health and safety protection, especially older workers

The virus–stimulus legislation did not include the protective equipment called for by worker advocates, an outcome that might have been avoided had worker protections been stronger. Historically, the most effective advocates for worker safety have been unions (Weil, 1991). Without unions, older workers are not likely to have the means to require an employer to provide protective gear. Legislation for older worker union representation is needed as one path to ensure the provision of health and safety protection. In the absence of union advocacy, Congress could take steps to impose higher health and safety standards for all workers and bypass the union pathway to provide the large proportion of older workers on the frontlines advocacy for more protection.

Conclusion

Older workers constitute a significant proportion of those working in crucial care and service professions but are much more susceptible than younger workers to becoming seriously ill from COVID-19. Despite this fact, 40% of older workers have no paid sick leave. Moreover, a significant number of older people are unpaid caregivers, thus risking exposing even higher risk individuals to the virus should the worker become sick. Protecting older workers on the job and providing paid sick leave is thus critical to maintaining and improving both their own health and the public health during the coronavirus pandemic. Over the longer run, expanding paid sick leave and worker health and safety protections would work swiftly to mitigate the effects of future pandemics. At the same time, effective wage subsidies and union protection would lessen the impact of future recessions as workers age. Both approaches are needed for an effective economic response to public health disaster and to an ordinary economic recession.

Key Points

• Older workers are at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus; they disproportionately work in areas of high exposure to COVID-19 and over one-fourth provide unpaid eldercare.

• Older workers are more susceptible than younger workers to becoming seriously ill by COVID-19; 40% of older workers do not have access to paid sickleave.

• Federal legislation should mandate paid sick leave for all workers for public health improvement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.