Staying Home: Nice Work If You Can Get It

When it comes to the worldwide spread of the coronavirus, people like Leo Laffitte are on the front lines. Laffitte isn’t a health care provider. He works in facilities at Hartford Public Library and, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Laffitte is one of those workers whose jobs require he be physically present and in close contact with a variety of people, with no opportunity to work remotely, as so many employers have advised their workers to do. (Update: On Friday, the library announced it will close through March 31.)

There is another class of employees whose members are even more vulnerable. While health authorities tell people to stay home if they feel sick in the face of COVID-19, that advice is complicated for low-wage earners, of whom two-thirds are women, or for another overwhelmingly female group of workers such as certified nurse assistants and teaching assistants.

Parents’ Erratic Work Schedules Put Children At Risk

Jesus Manuel Gomez quit his restaurant dishwashing job when he saw the effect his long work days had on his 10-year-old son with special needs. Although he was scheduled to work from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., the Honduran native said through a Spanish-speaking interpreter that he would get out between midnight and 1 a.m. and then still be asleep when his son left for school the next morning. “He takes medication so he can concentrate and gets treatment at school,” Gomez said of his son. “But when I saw what was happening with my schedule, that it was impacting his ability to focus even though he was getting treatment, I only worked there a couple of weeks.” More than one-fourth of the state’s 885,000 hourly employees who potentially face wide swings in work schedules are parents of children under the age of 18, putting their kids at risk for behavioral issues, a newly released report by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth concluded.