As the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 ravages the country, putting kids out of school and forcing workers to isolate at home, companies are cutting down paid leave benefits, forcing Americans to either take a pay cut or come to work sick.

Paid leave advocates are calling out the growing sick leave crisis — one that could be alleviated by action from Congress granting emergency paid leave protections for workers infected with COVID.

Senior Democrats included four weeks of paid family and sick leave in the Build Back Better proposal.

In the last two weeks, some of the country’s biggest employers — Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens and CVS — reduced paid leave benefits after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that those with asymptomatic COVID could end their isolation after just five days (as long as they still wear masks).

Walmart halved paid leave benefits, going from two weeks to one.

Are you a worker whose paid leave benefits just got cut.

“It’s completely backwards that so many workers have to make these impossible choices during a COVID-19 surge like the one we’re experiencing—and it makes our fight to pass a national paid sick leave policy all the more urgent,” Sen.

These companies, while slashing paid leave and having no universal and fully comprehensive paid family and medical leave, are consistently putting profits above people.”.

Paid leave advocates are trying to draw a red line when it comes to these proposals: “If they are talking about business relief and if they are talking about spending money to get masks and antivirals to people, they also need to include paid leave,” Shabo said.

Less than half — roughly 42% — of workers in the United States have access to paid medical leave.