Celebrating Labor in
a Time of Pandemic
What could be a better time than this particular Labor Day to
contemplate the nature and meaning of labor in modern America – and, of course,
offer the workers our thanks.
When I was a kid, a long time ago, I didn’t
think about workers or labor very much. My dad was a laborer and I always
worked from the time I was in high school on but I just didn’t think much about
it. I guess I always had the image of average men and women going off to work
every day doing regular jobs at factories and folks like carpenters and
plumbers. Working-class people doing things like building the Hoover Dam or the
Interstate highway system and, when I was 21, helped put a man - an American
man - on the moon. Solid, middle class folks.
Certainly we still have many
tradespeople but much of that world is gone now; this is a modern service
economy. Today many of us work from home, attending (Zoom) meetings, creating
spreadsheets and PowerPoints and doing marketing stuff. To our credit we have also
invented such helpful things as Facebook and Twitter. Don’t forget that we
excel at creating Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and the best weapons
in the world too. All (mostly) honest work, no doubt, but not exactly City of
Broad Shoulders or Rosie the Riveter. So, while we are indeed working it just
doesn't SEEM, you know, like actual labor.
Now we have the pandemic that has
killed our parents and grandparents and devastated the livelihoods of millions
of our neighbors. The one thing this economic meltdown has in common with the
past is that it has crushed those at the lower end of labor spectrum. The big
differences this time, however, are the number of people affected and the huge
gap between them and those that are relatively unfazed.
Houses are selling like hot cakes and
the stock market is soaring - Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Google and Target all
have record profits. We are supposedly in the deepest slump since the great
depression yet families in the top 20-30 % of incomes might not even know it (recently confirmed in a survey.) For
the nearly 30 million receiving unemployment compensation and most everyone
else, however, the recession is very real.
Now here’s the irony, many of the same
people who are struggling the most are also those who were deemed “essential”
and have been getting up and going in to work ever since the pandemic struck.
No staying home to do Zoom conferences or creating marketing plans for them! Yup,
it’s the clerk at the grocery store ($12/Hr.) The gig workers delivering food
and hoping for a tip ($12/hr.) There are also the personal care attendants
taking care of grandma and grandpa at the nursing homes that are under siege
from the virus ($14/hr) and hopefully the daycare workers will soon be watching
our kids (for $12/hr.) And don’t forget the many people - mostly immigrants – working
in meat packing plants so we can keep eating our hamburgers and chicken wings ($13/hr.)
Shocked at the pay? You shouldn’t be, in
the last ten years 75% of the jobs created pay less than $24/hr. Got that? More
accurately, the majority of those jobs have been $15/hr or less. And that’s
from the greatest economy in history - Woohoo! One could say there’s not much
fruit for many of our fellow Americans’ labors.
It’s not clear to me how we can
possibly thank these people enough. Every day, they get up and, like
generations of (formerly) middle-class workers, go to work. Among them are all
the other service economy workers in nail salons, yoga studios and yard care.
There are also the thousands of people driving us around in their cars, renting
out bedrooms or selling stuff on eBay. I would gladly acknowledge the
millions of bartenders, restaurant servers and travel industry workers too but
sadly most of those jobs are gone now and most probably forever. Separately, we certainly can’t forget the thousands
of teachers who will be trudging back to classrooms with uncertain covid
conditions.
Obviously, there are
millions of other workers I haven’t mentioned here that work for less than
optimal pay and in some tough work conditions - yet off to work they go. Now here’s
the kicker. Most of these folks have no realistic chance of ever achieving what
was once considered the American dream: buy a house, help the kid through
college, maybe take a nice vacation once in a while and hope to retire before
dying in the harness. (Sorry folks, we traded your future for cheaper TVs and a
stronger stock market.) Yet they get up and go to work every day anyway. Do they go to work happy? Probably not - would you?
So on that note, I say thank you to all workers who
keep the wheels of commerce turning but a special thanks to those of you who
have done so much for so little to keep us all going. I hope you have a
well-deserved day of rest.
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