21-03-2025
Lawmakers shouldn't undermine Missouri's voter-approved paid sick leave law
Daniel Tucker, a leader with the Missouri Workers Center, teaches chants customized to an initiative petition to raise the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave outside of the Secretary of State's office building in Jefferson City in May 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
In health care, we know the cost of a lack of access to care, we see the daily impacts people suffer from.
We frequently see patients with illnesses that have progressed beyond simple interventions. We often wish we could have seen them sooner.
When Missouri voted overwhelmingly in November to pass Proposition A, this was the right step in securing workers paid sick leave and granting them the ability to prioritize their health.
But now, some business interests and politicians in Missouri are working to undermine voters and roll back these advances. That is short sighted.
No one wakes up in the morning planning to get sick. Yet getting sick is a fact of life.
For individuals who have jobs with paid sick time or who can afford unpaid time off work, this is not a problem. But for the millions of Americans who struggle economically and do not have access to paid sick leave there is no choice: they must come to work sick in order to get their paycheck.
In fact, a survey revealed nearly 70% make this unsettling choice. They expose their coworkers and the public to potential illness not because they want to, but because they have no other option. Providing all workers paid sick leave, as Proposition A did, is crucial to fixing this injustice.
A healthy workforce is a productive workforce. In fact, even employers of the late 1800s understood this concept.
The origins of health insurance were from rail, granite and maritime employers who understood that compensation for lost wages during periods of illness was crucial to maintaining their workforce.
Access to paid sick leave is a proven winner for the workplace.
The data continue to support this conjecture, even in the 21st century economy. Supporting workers during periods of illness reduces worker turnover which has been estimated to save employers between 25% to 200% of annual salary of departing worker. It has also been shown to improve work productivity of the individual as well as well as their team and reducing workplace injuries.
Those with paid sick leave are 28% less likely to have workplace injuries.
Paid sick leave is also a winner for the public at large.
A nursing home study found that respiratory infection and gastrointestinal infection outbreaks were nearly 40% lower in nursing homes that offered paid sick leave to employees, increasing safety of residents. If the U.S. had enacted a national paid sick leave law, estimates from the 2009 influenza pandemic are that 7 million cases of the flu and over 1,000 deaths could have been avoided.
While many employers have argued that access to paid sick leave would be abused, a recent study found that controlling for worker and work characteristics, workers with paid sick leave were away from work on average 1.1 days more per year. With this increase came huge economic benefits for employers. The study estimated that universal access to paid sick leave would reduce spread of workplace contagious infections by 5.86% leading to a conservative estimate in cost savings of 630 million to 1.88 billion.
Per 2019 U.S. Census Bureau poverty data, 13.2% or 786,330 Missourians live at or below federal poverty level. which is less than $13,000 for a single person or less than $27,000 for a family of four.
The largest portion of those living at poverty are in southeast Missouri.
Public assistance like Medicaid, food stamps and others have cutoffs at various levels of income. For example, the supplemental nutrition assistance program cuts off at 100% of the federal poverty level, while Medicaid cuts off at 138%.
The vast majority of Missouri Medicaid and SNAP recipients work more than 40 hours a week, and despite all this still on average 38% of Missourians stated they had to make tough decisions between buying food or purchasing necessary medications.
This underscores that for too long Missourians have been underpaid for the labor they provide and have not been able to earn a fair livable wage. People want to work, but that drive for productivity should not come at the cost of the health of employees. Workers deserve to be treated with dignity.
Proposition A provided critical health benefits while economically uplifting Missourians.
