This wikipedia article is out of date ("There is no federal or state statutory minimum paid vacation or paid public holidays. Paid leave is at the discretion of the employers to their employees."). Illinois law now mandates paid leave: https://labor.illinois.gov/faqs/paidleavefaq.html
So, the ground is shifting on this in the USA, at least at the state level.
Ppp would have been a perfect time and mechanism to employ mandatory universal sick time; only forgive the loans if employers could post a "bond" showing they had accounted for sick time per employee.
It couldn't, structurally not. In the EU a lot is already harmonized by EU law, but in the US? Congress has been gridlocked for decades now thanks to (predominantly Republican) obstructionism and the states can't be arsed to work on constitutional amendments either.
How about ANY mandatory PTO/Sick time at all?
This pisses me off every time I think of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
I think there are only 5 countries with as little legally mandated leave as the US (aka 0): Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau.