Workers Exhaust Paid-Leave Time as Pandemic Stretches On
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What problem does this Money Briefing episode introduce about pandemic paid leave?
Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, October 27th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. The pandemic has not only put a strain on people's finances, but also on their time. Last spring, the U.S. passed paid leave policies, allowing workers, for example, to be at home when their kids' school year ended early. But those time off allotments were quickly used up.
Well, one of the issues with all of these leave programs is that I don't think anybody expected back in March we'd still be in this situation here in the fall.
There's also a lot of confusion surrounding how much time employees are entitled to. In a moment, our reporter Lauren Weber will be here to clear things up and tell us how people are coping once they've exhausted their time off. Plus, you'll meet someone who suffered from COVID-19 and had to deal with time off policies not once, but twice. That's after the break.
Paid leave laws put into effect last spring allowed people affected by COVID-19 to spend time away from work, but many have used up the time allowed while the pandemic stretched on. To talk about this, we're joined by Lauren Weber, who covers workplace issues for The Wall Street Journal. Lauren, thanks for being here.
Which federal paid-leave laws were passed in spring 2020 and what did they aim to cover?
Thanks for having me.
So policies regarding time off from work have always been a little unclear, even before the pandemic, right?
Yeah, there is a real patchwork of programs that employees can use to take time off. Among them are just your regular sick days or vacation days that your employer might provide. There's also short-term disability. If you get sick at work, you can apply for that. Most employees are covered under that, those programs. There's the Unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides time off for family or your own illnesses. And now with COVID, there are new programs that provide for either paid or unpaid leave. And those are programs that were passed in March by Congress, went into effect in April.
So under the plan passed by the government at the start of the pandemic, how much time off are people allowed?
Well, it depends what the issue is. If you or a family member are diagnosed with COVID, you need to take care of that family member. Or if you need to quarantine, generally speaking, you get two weeks of paid leave. And then one thing that was very new in this law was, and the law, by the way, was called leave. Families First Coronavirus Response Act or FFCRA. One thing that was very innovative in it was that it allowed parents to take time off if their children's school had closed or their daycare had closed and they didn't have anywhere else to go. So it provided for two weeks of unpaid leave and then 10 weeks paid at two thirds of your regular pay rate.
Wow. For a lot of people, that's not a lot of money.
So for example, the woman I spoke to who worked at a fast food restaurant, she used that time, but she was only making two-thirds of the $8.50 an hour she normally makes. So not many people can survive on that. I think that was very tough on her finances.
And there are also people who are seeking time off. They're dealing with some very tricky schedules involving their kids going to school.
Well, one of the issues with all of these leave programs is that I don't think anybody expected back in March we'd still be in this situation here in the fall. And so even though, for example, the federal program giving leave for COVID related reasons. allowed for up to 12 weeks for people who had kids in school and the kids were remote and needed somebody to stay home to watch them. Eventually, those 12 weeks were going to run out. Same thing with your own employer's leave that they may be extending to you that have nothing to do with the government programs. So here we are months into the pandemic, and a lot of people have used up what leave they did have available, either paid or unpaid. For example, I spoke to a woman who used the government program.
She took the 12 weeks of leave, part of it in the spring when her son's school first went remote, and then in late summer when his school reopened, but only for remote school.
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