Last summer 44-year-old Ernest Paschal II was fired from his job at a Walmart in South Carolina while recovering from sepsis. Paschal is paraplegic due to a work injury he sustained at the age of 19 and had his left leg amputated in 2019 due to a medical condition.
Like many US workers living with serious illness, Paschal found some employers have little interest – and almost no incentive – to make accommodations for sick workers.
Nearly one in three US workers with a serious illness either end up losing their jobs or have to change jobs due to their illness. The US is one of only a few countries in the world with no national paid leave.
Last summer on the job, Paschal started feeling nauseated and had trouble remaining conscious, and was sent home from work. He later learned after a doctor visit that he was septic, a life-threatening condition where the body responds over actively to an infection.
While recovering from sepsis, Paschal informed his managers of the illness and recovery, but noticed he was still receiving “attendance points”. At Walmart, workers are subjected to a disciplinary attendance point system where points are given for leaving work early, arriving late, and any absences even if excused with a medical illness. Workers with too many attendance points can miss out on raises, promotions, or be terminated.
“Even if you’re sick, they don’t care,” said Paschal. “It’s unfair the way they treat people.”
Instead of excusing his absences, Paschal said his management referred him to apply for a leave of absence through a third-party company that handles such requests for Walmart employees. The company told him he was not eligible for medical leave and while trying to determine the status of an accommodation request that he filed through Walmart, he found out that Walmart had fired him.
“It’s impacted me tremendously. My kids were just going back to school right before they let me go. I wasn’t able to buy them school clothes or supplies, and then when Christmas came around, I didn’t have money for Christmas,” Paschal added. “I’m disabled and I’m out there trying to actually work to take care of my family, and then not being able to have a job or money to take care of them just crushed me. They just took it away from me for something I had no control over.”
Through A Better Balance, a non-profit worker advocacy group, Paschal filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to challenge his termination, alleging it violated the American Disabilities Act.
A Walmart spokesperson said in an email: “We don’t tolerate discrimination of any kind, and we provide thousands of associates throughout the company with reasonable accommodations as appropriate. Our attendance policy complies with applicable law, and we dispute any allegation it does not. We only recently received the Charge and will review it and respond appropriately.”
A Better Balance has long criticized Walmart, the largest employer in the US, over punishing workers for medical absences through its disciplinary attendance point system and has filed a lawsuit challenging the company’s attendance policy, part of broader efforts to secure Family and Medical Leave and mandated paid leave for all workers in the US.
Currently under the Family and Medical Leave Act, about 40% of all US workers aren’t eligible for unpaid leave and many workers can’t afford to utilize leave because it’s unpaid, with low-income workers disproportionately lacking any access to short-term disability insurance through employers. More than 60% of low-wage US workers have no access to paid sick days on the job.
It took several attempts to get the Family and Medical Leave Act passed in 1993 and the legislation was rewritten to include several compromises, said Sherry Leiwant, co-president of A Better Balance. While the legislation was viewed as an important first step in securing leave for US workers, Leiwant said the act needs to be expanded and modernized in line with the current workforce.
“We really need to modernize the Family and Medical Leave Act, so it really serves everybody in this country. I think there is more of a recognition, especially with so many women in the workforce, that when you have a child, you need to take time off, if you have a serious illness, you should be able to take time off and you shouldn’t have to lose your job to do that,” said Leiwant.
“It makes an incredible difference for a worker who’s having a child, for a worker whose parent is dying, for a worker who has a serious illness that doesn’t want to lose their job, and just wants to take the time they need and then go back to work.”
She cited the fact that many workers are currently left out of the legislation because it only applies to large employers and requires a minimum amount of time at work to be eligible which doesn’t account for workers who work multiple part-time jobs or in industries where turnover is kept high.
In 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic ignited a push for federally mandated paid sick leave to pass as an inclusion with the Build Back Better Act, but the bill never made it through the US Senate.
There are some signs of change at the state level. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have passed paid leave policies, with several other states currently considering paid leave legislation for workers. Efforts remain ongoing to pass a paid leave policy at the federal level and expand the current Family and Medical Leave Act to cover more workers but a national policy change seems unlikely with today’s divided Congress.
“It’s not fair, it’s not right to put American workers in the position of having to choose between their jobs or economic security and taking care of their families or taking care of themselves,” added Leiwant. “Every other economically developed country has a paid family medical leave program where people can take time off and have some pay. It’s so far past time for us to do that in this country.”
