By Emily Brill

Law360 (March 11, 2020, 10:28 PM EDT) -- House Democrats threw full-throated support behind legislation that would provide seven paid sick days for American workers, saying at a hearing Wednesday they hope lawmakers can say "case closed" to debates about the merits of paid leave amid a public health crisis like the coronavirus.

Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., called the U.S.' lack of a paid sick leave policy "simply inexcusable" and said the nation should have learned its lesson after 2009's swine flu pandemic, which killed almost 12,500 Americans.

Citing "deep concerns" about the coronavirus, which received the "pandemic" label Wednesday, Adams said American workers "are particularly vulnerable to this emerging health crisis because the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have access to paid sick leave."

In a sentiment backed by fellow Democrats, Adams called Wednesday's conversation in the House Education & Labor Committee's Workforce Protections Subcommittee "long overdue" and deemed passing the legislation — which offers seven days of paid sick leave to workers a year and an 14 extra days in a public health emergency — a necessity.

The current lack of paid sick leave combined with low wages and minimal job security in the service sector means that workers in restaurants, nursing homes and retail stores often have no choice but to work while sick, hastening the spread of illnesses like flu and the coronavirus, said Sarah Jane Glynn, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, one of four guest speakers at the hearing.

"A policy like this has enormous potential to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus," Glynn told the subcommittee. "The current patchwork of state and local policies that's in place right now is not sufficient to protect workers, and it's vital that Congress works to create a federal floor on paid sick days."

Two of Glynn's fellow experts underscored her point, saying the U.S. need for a paid sick leave policy is "more urgent than ever" now, particularly for low-income workers.

One speaker, Elizabeth Milito of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, opposed the legislation, calling it unnecessarily burdensome for companies.

She also said most small businesses already offer some form of paid time off for workers, but the data she cited to support that was a NFIB poll that required companies to self-report, as Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., pointed out.

Wild questioned Milito's recommendation that the U.S. offer incentives to companies to provide paid sick leave instead of mandating it outright. She said that offering incentives to employers to do right by their workers doesn't always work, citing the results of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's corporate tax rate cut in support of her theory.

That corporate tax rate cut — from 35% to 21% — was billed to Americans as good for workers, because the benefits of their employers' savings would trickle down to them, Wild said.

"What happened instead was we've ended up funding dividends to shareholders and increased executive pay, and we haven't seen that money going back into workers' pockets. So I don't know that incentives to employers are enough," Wild said.

While Democrats rallied behind the sick leave proposal during the hearing, Republicans seemed unwilling to support it. Several expressed outright hostility, with Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., going as far as to accuse Democrats of using the coronavirus for political gain.

"You're trying to use this crisis to get something that's not directly related to it," Byrne said.

Byrne wrote off the legislation as a "partisan bill" and said he saw talks between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the best hope for "an expanded response to the COVID-19 epidemic."

Rep. Ron Wright, R-Texas, also had strong words for Democrats supporting of the bill. He homed in on their characterization of the U.S. as "lagging behind other countries" as the only wealthy industrialized nation without paid sick leave.

"'Lagging behind other countries, lagging behind rest of the world.' The rest of the world is lagging behind the U.S.!" Wright said. "Do we really want to be like Europe? Do we really want to be like South America? Every time we go down this road, with more government mandates, it always sounds great, and there's always a downside, and quite often that downside is an economic downside."

Democrats and Republicans sharply disagreed on the economic impact of a paid sick leave policy, with Democrats saying the policy would ultimately save money by slowing the spread of diseases that could devastate the economy, and Republicans saying the policy would cause billions in lost productivity.

One of the committee's progressive members, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., referred to this debate in her statement on the Healthy Families Act, delivered toward the end of the hearing.

"I can't understand how anyone could continue to argue that paid sick time is unnecessary or a luxury that this country can't afford. Frankly, we cannot afford not to act," Omar said. "I think it's time to consider this case closed."

The legislation — H.R. 6150 and S. 3415 — was introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., last week. Building off the Healthy Families Act, which asks for seven paid sick days for all American workers except those at the smallest businesses, the bill tacks on 14 emergency sick days to use during a public health crisis like the coronavirus.

Murray asked the Senate to hold a vote on the bill Wednesday, but Republicans blocked the bill from coming to the floor. 

In another development Wednesday, the AFL-CIO called on Congress to pass several emergency measures to protect workers from the coronavirus, including paid sick days.

--Editing by Bruce Goldman.

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