Labor Activism in the Post-Pandemic Period

If we needed you to go to work during the pandemic, despite the dangers, because your job is really important, and it can’t be done via Zoom, you should be making twice what you were making before the pandemic. As Barack Obama put it this morning: “Even before the pandemic turned the world upside-down, it was already clear that we needed real structural change. The vast inequalities created by the new economy are easier to see now, but they existed long before this pandemic hit. Health professionals, teachers, delivery drivers, grocery clerks, cleaners—the people who truly make our economy run—they’ve always been essential. And for years, too many of the people who do the essential work of this country have been underpaid, financially stressed, and given too little support.”

A former student of mine says that the need to compensate essential workers fairly was made glaringly obvious to her yesterday as she reflected upon the difference between her workday and her husband’s workday. She spent her entire day in completely useless back-to-back Zoom meetings. Meanwhile her husband, a nurse who works in a hospital and makes half as much as she does, got home from work totally emotionally exhausted. Almost in shock. She says she’s probably going to quit her job as soon as the pandemic passes. She says it has become disgustingly obvious to her that 90% of these Zoom meetings are just part of some sort of sick self-validation ritual for her coworkers: “If I can keep myself busy with lots of Zoom meetings, then clearly I’m still really important.”

Essential workers are realizing how utterly necessary they are to the functioning of our society. Hence my prediction: In the post-pandemic period, there will be a mighty wave of labor activism from essential workers that will rival those of the late nineteenth century.