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The legislation also provides some compensation for workers who need to take longer leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act — but this too excludes workers at big companies.

And the bill allows the Labor Department to grant hardship exemptions to businesses with fewer than 50 employees. That category includes another 26 percent of the work force, meaning that fully 80 percent of workers may not be able to cash in on Ms. Pelosi’s rhetoric.

Democrats began this process in the right place. The first draft of the coronavirus legislation included a permanent change requiring employers to allow every worker to earn up to seven days of paid sick leave, and a temporary change allowing any worker to take up to 10 days of sick leave during a public health emergency. The final draft includes only a pale shadow of those sensible requirements. The paid sick leave requirement is narrowly focused on the coronavirus; it does not even require paid sick leave during future pandemics — a contemptible signal that political leaders are already committed to not learning the lessons of this one.

Some large employers have announced voluntary grants of paid sick leave for workers affected by the coronavirus. After a Walmart employee in Kentucky tested positive for the coronavirus, the company announced it would provide up to two weeks of paid leave for workers who fall ill or are quarantined because of a confirmed exposure to the virus. Other large employers, including Target, Gap and Wawa, have made similar announcements.

But such voluntary policies are an inadequate substitute for legislation. Many large employers have not announced any changes, many of the policies that have been announced are considerably less generous than the requirements of the House legislation, and employees at those firms can hardly enforce corporate compliance with a news release.

It’s also true that big employers are generally more likely to offer standard sick leave benefits. Roughly 86 percent of workers at big companies get some kind of paid sick leave, according to federal statistics. But few workers in the United States are eligible to take 10 days of paid sick leave. And the low-wage workers who can least afford to stay home without paid leave are precisely the workers who are least likely to qualify for those standard corporate benefits.

Companies should be required to provide paid sick leave to every worker as a standard cost of doing business, and they certainly should be required to do so in the midst of a pandemic.