Low-wage workers in service industries without proper medical benefits and sick leave will risk getting sick or spreading the virus For over 30 years, Joyce Barnes has worked as a home healthcare aide in Richmond, Virginia, without any paid sick days. She makes $8.25 an hour and often works through illnesses because she can’t afford to lose income from taking the time off.
“I can’t afford to miss pay so I have gone to work before several times sick as a dog, masked up so my patients wouldn’t catch what I have,” Barnes said. “Every day I pray and I ask God to give me strength that I won’t get sick so I can keep on making it and that’s the way we have to do it.”
Last July, Barnes contracted an illness from one of her patients that caused her a stay in a hospital for over a week. She relied on family members to help with bills to make up for the income she lost from missing work, and still has to make regular monthly payments toward the thousands of dollars of medical debt she accrued, despite having health insurance. Advertisement
“I have a lot of medical debt I have to pay. They had to do a test on my stomach when I was sick. That one test cost me $3,000 and I’m still paying it because I can’t afford to pay everything back,” Barnes added.
As the coronavirus outbreak (Covid-19) has begun to spread through the US, millions of low-wage workers in service industries are left vulnerable due to lack of proper medical benefits and paid sick leave. There are growing concerns that these workers will be extra vulnerable to the disease themselves, or, due to lack of health insurance and poverty, help its spread by continuing to work while ill.
More than 32 million workers in the US have no paid sick days off, and low-wage workers are least likely to have paid sick time. These workers are also significantly less likely to have access to healthcare and medical benefits, making them potentially especially vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak as it spreads.
According to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 69% of low-wage workers, those in the 10th lowest percentile of median wage earners in the US civilian workforce, do not receive paid sick leave benefits.
“Their earnings are low so they can’t afford to take unpaid leave and when they are sick they have to keep working and expose other people in the process,” said Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University.
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Many low-wage workers, such as airport workers, are on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak, yet are left unprotected from contracting the virus or receiving adequate medical treatment.
Leila Benitez, an airplane cabin cleaner at Miami international airport for eight years, has no health insurance or paid sick leave.
“When I finally do take a day off because I’m so sick, I have to pay hundreds of dollars in medical bills to get a doctor’s note,” said Benitez. She often travels to the Dominican Republic, where she is from, to receive medical care because treatment and prescriptions costs a fraction of prices in the US.
“When I’m cleaning the planes, there are bodily fluids, trash, dirty tissues. We don’t get enough time to wash our hands in between planes. The protective gloves are thin, and often don’t fit correctly.”
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