The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is lay­ing bare the per­ils that come with mil­lions of work­ers in the U.S. lack­ing paid sick leave.

Many of these work­ers are employed by some of the nation’s biggest retail, gro­cery, fast food, and hos­pi­tal­i­ty cor­po­ra­tions, which annu­al­ly rake in bil­lions in prof­its. For years, work­ers and orga­niz­ers from these indus­tries have been sound­ing the alarm about the pub­lic health rea­sons we need paid sick time for every­one — let alone that paid sick leave is part of the ​“com­plete wage” that all work­ers deserve as a right.

Now, with the des­per­ate need to con­tain the coro­n­avirus, many voic­es are loud­ly pro­claim­ing the need, right now, to offer paid sick leave to all workers.

For exam­ple, the New York Times ran an edi­to­r­i­al on March 14th declar­ing that, now, ​“the pub­lic inter­est requires employ­ers to aban­don their long­stand­ing resis­tance to paid sick leave.” It reads:

As the new coro­n­avirus spreads across the Unit­ed States, the time has come for restau­rants, retail­ers and oth­er indus­tries that rely on low-wage labor to aban­don their par­si­mo­nious resis­tance to paid sick leave. Com­pa­nies that do not pay sick work­ers to stay home are endan­ger­ing their work­ers, their cus­tomers and the health of the broad­er public.

Using data from the Shift Project, the NYT edi­to­r­i­al mapped out the mil­lions of work­ers, by com­pa­ny, who lack paid sick leave:

Cor­po­ra­tions should pay work­ers to stay home when they are sick. And con­sumers can encour­age them to do so by stay­ing away from com­pa­nies that don’t offer paid sick leave. https://t.co/GLMNrB6M3V

Here, we pro­file a few of the cor­po­ra­tions that for too long have denied their work­ers paid sick leave even as they raked in bil­lions in prof­its. Their own­ers and CEOs hoard mon­ey that could go towards pay­ing the wages of sick work­ers and instead use this to buy expen­sive man­sions and pri­vate planes, and main­tain their sta­tus as some of the wealth­i­est peo­ple in the world.

Many com­pa­nies, includ­ing some we dis­cuss below, in the face of tremen­dous pres­sure, have insti­tut­ed tem­po­rary paid sick leave poli­cies tied sole­ly to the coro­n­avirus. But out of this cri­sis, paid sick leave for all should become the new and per­ma­nent norm — and to make this hap­pen, these are some of the influ­en­tial com­pa­nies and bil­lion­aires who will need to be challenged.

Wal­mart & the retail industry

With 1.5 mil­lion work­ers, Wal­mart is the largest employ­er in the U.S. — and an esti­mat­ed 347,000 work­ers at the com­pa­ny lack paid sick leave.

As a con­trast, it’s worth high­light­ing the sheer wealth of Walmart’s own­ers. The Wal­tons are the rich­est fam­i­ly in the U.S., worth $130 bil­lion.

To put this in per­spec­tive: if you took half the Walton’s wealth — $65 bil­lion — they’d still be one of the top 5 rich­est fam­i­lies in the world.

The oth­er $65 bil­lion? Every one of Walmart’s 1.5 mil­lion U.S. employ­ees could receive over $43,000.

Mean­while, Wal­mart CEO Doug McMil­lon raked in over $68 mil­lion from 2017 to 2019. In 2018, he made 1,188 times more than the company’s medi­an worker.

Because it pays its work­ers pover­ty wages, Wal­mart has been an enor­mous ben­e­fi­cia­ry of back­door sub­si­dies in the form of assis­tance to its under­paid work­ers so they can repro­duce them­selves to labor anoth­er day at Wal­mart. In 2014, exam­ple, one report esti­mat­ed that Wal­mart received around $6.2 bil­lion in sub­si­dies in the form of food stamps, health care, and oth­er gov­ern­ment programs.

And what’s hap­pened when Walmart’s work­ers have tried to bet­ter their lives through col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing? Wal­mart is a noto­ri­ous union buster, alleged­ly shut­ting down entire stores to crush labor activism.

What Wal­mart does mat­ters for every­one else. It is the icon­ic trend­set­ter of cor­po­rate retail in an era of logis­tics, ware­hous­es, and glob­al sup­ply chains.

Like oth­er cor­po­ra­tions, Wal­mart did final­ly announce an ad hoc pol­i­cy of paid sick leave for employ­ees who become infect­ed with the coro­n­avirus or who face quar­an­tine. Work­ers who don’t want to work out of fear of catch­ing or trans­mit­ting coro­n­avirus can stay home — but they won’t be paid.

Wal­mart is the biggest retail and super­mar­ket employ­er that lacks paid sick leave for many work­ers, but far from the only one. Oth­ers include Kroger (with an esti­mat­ed 189,000 work­ers with­out paid sick leave), Tar­get (151,000), Dol­lar Gen­er­al (109,000), and Pub­lix (89,000).

Accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org, Wal­mart has spent at least $23,722,760 in fed­er­al elec­tions since 1990 and $92,645,000 in fed­er­al lob­by­ing since 1998.

Wendy’s & the fast food Industry

Fast food megachain Wendy’s has an esti­mat­ed 133,000 work­ers with­out paid sick leave.

The top own­er of Wendy’s is Tri­an Part­ners, a hedge fund led by bil­lion­aire Nel­son Peltz. Tri­an over­sees $10.9 bil­lion in assets. Peltz is worth $1.6 bil­lion.

Wendy’s is one of Trian’s sig­na­ture port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. Peltz and Tri­an dom­i­nate the board of Wendy’s — Peltz is Wendy’s board chair, Tri­an Pres­i­dent Peter May is vice chair­man, and Peltz’s son Matthew, a Tri­an Part­ner, is a board member.

Peltz lives a lux­u­ri­ous life. He owns a Palm Beach ocean­front estate worth an astound­ing $136.4 mil­lion, mak­ing it one of the most expen­sive res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in the entire country.

The val­ue of Peltz’s estate alone could cov­er over $1,000 to every Wendy’s work­er with­out paid sick leave.

And this is just one of Peltz’s homes that we know of. He also owns a 27-room man­sion in Bed­ford, New York. In 2016, he threw a $2 mil­lion bar mitz­vah par­ty for his son.

Peltz is also a major Trump ally. He recent­ly host­ed the prici­est fundrais­er of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy at his Flori­da estate, and he’s per­son­al­ly donat­ed $85,800 to Trump since 2016.

Mean­while, Wendy’s CEO Todd Pene­gor raked in over $16 mil­lion between 2016 and 2018.

Wendy’s is not the only fast food chain that doesn’t offer paid sick leave to work­ers. Oth­ers include McDonald’s (517,000), Sub­way (180,000), Burg­er King (165,000), Piz­za Hut (156,000), Taco Bell (124,000), Son­ic (92,000), Chick-fil‑A (89,000), KFC (69,000), and others.

On March 19, Wendy’s final­ly announced a tem­po­rary coro­n­avirus-relat­ed paid sick leave pol­i­cy. McDon­alds is also offer­ing 14 paid sick days to employ­ees who require quar­an­tine, though this only applies to cor­po­rate stores, not its fran­chis­es, which make up 90 per­fect of its stores worldwide.

The fast food indus­try lob­by­ists, such as the Nation­al Restau­rant Asso­ci­a­tion, have a long his­to­ry of lob­by­ing against paid sick leave legislation.

Mean­while, the Fight for 15 cam­paign is high­light­ing the des­per­ate need for paid sick leave in light of the coro­n­avirus, while the New York Times post­ed a video, viewed by mil­lions, of a shift man­ag­er from a Kansas City, Mis­souri McDonald’s who dis­cuss­es the incred­i­ble stress­es that come with a lack of paid sick leave.

Flori­da fast-food work­ers are on strike, but doing it from home today instead of a big ral­ly. Work­ers like us need paid sick leave, whether it’s a #coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic or sim­ply hav­ing to take a fam­i­ly mem­ber to the doc­tor. #FightFor15 #Unions­ForAll pic​.twit​ter​.com/​0​q​X​V​W​uOznk — Fight For 15 (@fightfor15) March 12, 2020

https://​plat​form​.twit​ter​.com/​w​i​d​g​e​ts.js

Accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org, Wendy’s has spent at least $4,019,409 in fed­er­al elec­tions since 1990 and $653,500 in fed­er­al lob­by­ing since 2007.

Star­bucks & cof­fee megachains

While mil­lions of cus­tomers get caf­feinat­ed at Star­bucks every­day, tens of thou­sands of its employ­ees reg­u­lar­ly lack paid sick leave.

While Star­bucks has a bet­ter paid sick leave pol­i­cy than most oth­er fast food and cof­fee megachains, an esti­mat­ed 68,000 Star­bucks work­ers still lack paid sick time, accord­ing to the Shift Project.*

More­over, just last year, Star­bucks was forced to pay $176,000 in resti­tu­tion to New York City employ­ees for ille­gal­ly requir­ing work­ers to find replace­ments when they need­ed to use sick leave.

Gaby Del Valle of Vox​.com also report­ed on March 16:

A for­mer Star­bucks employ­ee, who worked as a shift super­vi­sor until last week, said man­age­ment didn’t always adhere to the company’s sick-leave poli­cies. ​“In prac­tice, through the sev­er­al stores I worked at, I encoun­tered a pre­vail­ing cul­ture [that] dis­cour­aged tak­ing sick time,” he said. ​“Dur­ing my last few months, before coro­n­avirus hit, there were numer­ous instances where employ­ees would come into work vis­i­bly sick, afraid of call­ing out because they believed man­age­ment and oth­er staff wouldn’t sup­port them.”

Star­bucks for­mer CEO Howard Schultz, who briefly enter­tained a 2020 pres­i­den­tial run, is worth $3.24 bil­lion as of March 24. Schultz also co-found­ed Maveron Cap­i­tal, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm.

Schultz report­ed­ly owns a $40 mil­lion New York City pent­house, a $33 mil­lion Hawai’i estate, and a lux­u­ri­ous Seat­tle-area home.

Star­bucks work­ers took it upon them­selves to orga­nize for their own safe­ty against the coro­n­avirus. They cre­at­ed a peti­tion cre­at­ed to tem­porar­i­ly close the company’s stores in the face of the pan­dem­ic, which received over 37,000 signatures.

In a peti­tion with over 25K sig­na­tures, Star­bucks employ­ees are call­ing for the com­pa­ny to ​“sus­pend all busi­ness hours, at every loca­tion, while con­tin­u­ing to pay hourly and salary work­ers, dur­ing the spread of the coro­n­avirus.” https://t.co/V11DSpyMml — New York Dai­ly News (@NYDailyNews) March 20, 2020

https://​plat​form​.twit​ter​.com/​w​i​d​g​e​ts.js

The peti­tion declared: ​“Star­bucks should sus­pend all busi­ness hours, at every loca­tion, while con­tin­u­ing to pay hourly and salary work­ers, dur­ing the spread of the coronavirus.”

Days lat­er, Star­bucks announced that it was clos­ing all its cafes and only keep­ing its dri­ve-thrus open. It also announced that all work­ers would be paid for the next 30 days, even if they don’t go to work.

But oth­er attempts by Star­bucks work­ers to bet­ter their own lives have been met by intense hos­til­i­ty from management.

Howard Schultz has been a noto­ri­ous union buster. Ter­ri Ger­stein, Direc­tor of the State and Local Enforce­ment Project at the Har­vard Law School Labor and Work­life Pro­gram, wrote last year:

For one, dur­ing Schultz’s long tenure as CEO, Star­bucks repeat­ed­ly fought against work­ers’ attempts to orga­nize a union. In 2008, for exam­ple, a Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board judge found that the com­pa­ny had ille­gal­ly fired three work­ers for their union activ­i­ties, as well as vio­lat­ed oth­er aspects of the law. Star­bucks work­ers in our coun­try still don’t have a union.

Just last month, a Star­bucks work­er at a store in the Orlan­do air­port was fired for try­ing to orga­nize his fel­low work­ers into a union with UNITE HERE.

Accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org, Star­bucks has spent at least $1,364,482 in fed­er­al elec­tions since 1994 and $11,218,000 in fed­er­al lob­by­ing since 1994.

Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al & the hotel industry

Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al, which is worth $45.3 bil­lion and owns such pres­ti­gious chains as the Ritz-Carl­ton, has 139,000 work­ers cur­rent­ly with­out paid sick leave, accord­ing to the Shift Project.

The Mar­riott fam­i­ly, who found­ed the com­pa­ny in 1927 and remain its top own­ers, were worth near­ly $6 bil­lion as of 2015.

Marriott’s CEO Arne Soren­son has been in his posi­tion since 2012, pre­vi­ous­ly serv­ing as the company’s Pres­i­dent and COO. He’s the company’s first CEO out­side of the Mar­riott family.

Soren­son was pre­vi­ous­ly a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Wal­mart, a com­pa­ny, like Mar­riott, that is noto­ri­ous for leav­ing its work­ers with­out basic pro­tec­tions. Soren­son raked in hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars as a Wamart direc­tor. He also serves on the board of the Brook­ings Institute.

As Marriott’s CEO, Soren­son raked in almost $40 mil­lion in total com­pen­sa­tion between 2016 and 2018 alone and is like­ly worth well beyond that. While Mar­riott has sus­pend­ed or cut his and oth­er senior exec­u­tives’ salaries for the rest of 2020 due to the coro­n­avirus, this will hard­ly make a dent in Sorenson’s net wealth.

In the midst of the cur­rent glob­al pan­dem­ic, Mar­riott has ignored the safe­ty of its work­ers by, as of March 25, fail­ing to pro­vide paid sick leave. Last week the com­pa­ny announced that it would be fur­lough­ing tens of thou­sands of work­ers around the world, leav­ing them with­out pay. Mean­while, hotel and trav­el indus­try lob­by­ing groups, and hotel CEOs that includ­ed the CEOs of Mar­riott and Hilton, met with the White House last week to ask for $250 bil­lion in bailouts to the industry.

UNITE HERE, which rep­re­sents many hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­ers across the nation and has fought for paid sick leave for their Mar­riott work­ers, has said that they might dip into union strike funds to assist laid off and sick work­ers who need assis­tance. Not all Mar­riott work­ers are union­ized, leav­ing many with­out sup­port as this cri­sis continues.

Marriott’s anti-work­er antics are noth­ing new. In 2018, near­ly 8,000 Mar­riott employ­ees in eight cities rep­re­sent­ed by UNITE HERE had to resort to a strike in frus­tra­tion over stalled bar­gain­ing with the com­pa­ny over high­er wages and greater safe­ty mea­sures for employees.

Accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al has spent $18,655,000 on fed­er­al lob­by­ing since 1999 and $8,656,144 on fed­er­al cam­paigns since 1990.

Whole Foods & gro­cery chains

Whole Foods, pur­chased by e‑commerce giant Ama­zon in 2017, fails to pro­vide paid sick leave to an esti­mat­ed 30,000 work­ers, accord­ing to the Shift Project.

Gro­cery store employ­ees have become front-line work­ers in the face of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in the US. Work­ers at Whole Foods and oth­er gro­cery work­ers have been express­ing their frus­tra­tions with the way that indus­try lead­ers are han­dling the cri­sis as stores are flood­ed with shop­pers try­ing to secure pro­vi­sions for shel­ter in place measures.

Gro­cery chains have his­tor­i­cal­ly fought against paid sick leave leg­is­la­tion and now have large swaths of the U.S. work­force at the fore­front of the cri­sis with­out essen­tial ben­e­fits and pro­tec­tions. Kroger gro­cery chain has over 189,000 work­ers work­ing with­out paid sick leave, Pub­lix chain has anoth­er 89,000, Mei­jers has 57,000, and Weg­mans has 43,000, accord­ing to the Shift Project — though some of these chains, includ­ing Whole Foods, have enact­ed tem­po­rary paid sick leave poli­cies only tied to the coronavirus.

Ama­zon made record prof­its of $11.2 bil­lion in 2018 and con­tin­ues its expan­sion. In con­trast, Ama­zon says it paid 1.2 per­cent in fed­er­al tax­es in 2019, while the aver­age Amer­i­can pays 14 per­cent in fed­er­al taxes.

Amazon’s own­er and on-and-off again rich­est man on earth, Jeff Bezos is esti­mat­ed to be worth over $115 billion.

Recent­ly, Whole Foods has offered their employ­ees a $2/​hour pay increase through April, which doesn’t even meet the fed­er­al labor rela­tions pro­vi­sions for a 25 per­cent wage increase for employ­ees work­ing under haz­ardous con­di­tions. And Whole Foods still pro­vides no paid sick leave to employ­ees unless they are diag­nosed with COVID-19. Instead, the com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing employ­ees to ​“donate” their paid sick days to employ­ees who need it.

Whole Foods CEO sug­gests employ­ees who are not sick ​“donate” their vaca­tion time to employ­ees who are sick: https://t.co/Aw2gUqEpCD — Jason Koe­bler (@jason_koebler) March 13, 2020

https://​plat​form​.twit​ter​.com/​w​i​d​g​e​ts.js

This all comes after Whole Foods announced that they would be cut­ting med­ical ben­e­fits for part-time work­ers in Sep­tem­ber 2019.

And in 2018 Whole Foods sent store man­agers how-to videos on dis­cour­ag­ing employ­ees from unionizing.

Accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org, Ama­zon has spent $20,857,113 on elec­tions since 1998 and $91,497,031 on lob­by­ing since 2000.

Towards paid sick leave for all work­ers — permanently

Work­ers, many already on the edge of despair and liv­ing pay­check-to-pay­check, are being hit incred­i­bly hard by this cri­sis and pushed deep­er into a state of pre­car­i­ty. Eigh­teen per­cent of work­ers report hav­ing lost jobs or hours since the cri­sis began. The pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of St. Louis Pres­i­dent James Bullard is pre­dict­ing the U.S. unem­ploy­ment could hit 30 per­cent lat­er this year.

At the same time, as Mindy Iss­er writes, this cri­sis is also becom­ing a moment for new gains by work­ers and their com­mu­ni­ties, often through them exert­ing their own power.

New York City teach­ers forced May­or De Bla­sio to shut down city schools by threat­en­ing a sick-out. Autowork­ers have tak­en wild­cat actions to shut down plant pro­duc­tion. Thou­sands of peo­ple signed a peti­tion orga­nized by Philadel­phia library work­ers to close the city’s libraries, with paid leave for employ­ees. Orga­niz­ers across the U.S., from Cal­i­for­nia to Mass­a­chu­setts, have won vic­to­ries to sus­pend evic­tions and util­i­ties shut-offs.

Labor Notes reporter Dan DiMag­gio has also sur­veyed how a range of work­ers — from day­care work­ers in Ore­gon to hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­ers in New Orleans — have fought for sick pay.

As big busi­ness­es and Wall Street firms call for cor­po­rate bailouts and try to find ways to prof­it off of this cri­sis, many will be push­ing in anoth­er direc­tion: orga­nize and build work­ers’ pow­er so that this peri­od of col­lec­tive sac­ri­fice can become a spring­board to advance work­ers’ rights and remake our social safety.

*Update: Since the pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle, the Star­bucks Glob­al Cor­po­rate PR office reached out to say that ​“all employ­ees have access to paid leave, includ­ing sick leave, parental leave, and fam­i­ly leave.” Inde­pen­dent research from the UC Berke­ley Shift Project, fea­tured in a March 14, New York Times edi­to­r­i­al, esti­mates that 68,000 Star­bucks work­ers say they lack access to paid sick leave. Star­bucks claims this find­ing is inaccurate.

Cor­rec­tion: This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly stat­ed that Howard Schultz was CEO of Star­bucks. Schultz is the com­pa­ny’s for­mer CEO, leav­ing the posi­tion in 2017, and today serves as Chair­man Emer­i­tus of the Star­bucks board of direc­tors. As of last year, he remained Star­bucks’ largest indi­vid­ual share­hold­er. Kevin John­son is cur­rent­ly the CEO of Star­bucks.

This piece was first post­ed at Lit­tle­Sis.