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. But Democrats are frozen on the issue, thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.)s opposition to any long-term, permanent solutions. In the short term, Republicans remain opposed to any emergency mandates that impact businesses.

The vast majority of congressional Democrats support federal paid leave. Senior Democrats included four weeks of paid family and sick leave in the Build Back Better proposal. However, Manchin is blocking the legislations passage, saying he has concerns about its cost and potential fraud. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

So for now, all Democrats can do is decry the companies cutting leave, and hope Manchin changes his mind.

In the last two weeks, some of the countrys 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). The CDC still recommends 10 days of isolation for symptomatic cases.

Walmart halved paid leave benefits , going from two weeks to one. Amazon cut down paid leave for workers to 40 hours.

CVS is providing five days of paid leave for vaccinated employees with COVID and Walgreens is doing the same. Both companies previously offered two weeks of paid leave for infected workers.

We should be putting permanent paid leave at the top of our agenda, Dawn Huckelbridge, director of advocacy group Paid Leave For All, told HuffPost. Instead were negotiating the quarantine time of a deadly virus and allowing big corporations who are blocking Build Back Better to slash their own paid sick leave.

These are the same companies and trade organizations that have spent tons of money to stop Build Back Better, said Vicki Shabo, a paid leave expert at the liberal New America think tank. They also lobbied the CDC to get the guidance changed.

Its completely backwards that so many workers have to make these impossible choices during a COVID-19 surge like the one were experiencingand it makes our fight to pass a national paid sick leave policy all the more urgent, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chair of the Senates committee on labor policy, said.