Between Rights and Retaliation: Precarious Migrant Workers, Paid Sick Leave, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Paid Sick Leave Policies and Precarious Work in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper explores the tension between temporary expansions of Paid Sick Leave (PSL) protections during the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistence of punitive workplace policies that discouraged their use. Focusing on migrant workers in Oregon and Washington’s food processing industry—a sector marked by high-risk working conditions and “essential worker” designations—the study reveals how contradictory labor policies incentivized presenteeism while ostensibly promoting health protections. While federal and state regulations temporarily expanded PSL provisions to some workers to protect public health, these measures were undermined by employer practices that penalized absences and incentivized presenteeism through "essential worker" bonuses. Differential access to PSL, shaped by workers’ positionality and knowledge of their rights, further exacerbated inequalities. Drawing on in-depth interviews with workers across 20+ food processing facilities (2020–2021), the analysis demonstrates how the transient nature of pandemic-era safeguards, coupled with the crisis’s protracted timeline, disproportionately undermined precarious workers’ ability to access PSL. By centering workers’ experiences, the paper illuminates systemic gaps in labor protections that persist beyond the pandemic’s emergency phase, offering critical insights for public policy debates on worker rights, migration, and health equity.

Author

• Lola Loustaunau, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author