These are workers who John Logan, labor historian at San Francisco State University, says are in “essential jobs done by disposable people.”
Low wage workers have been dying in these places and more than half of them don’t have paid sick leave, let alone healthcare benefits.
In fact, many of these workers’ wages are so low they still have to rely on government programs like food stamps and Medicaid to feed their families and provide for their medical care.
But for the “essential” low wage jobs that remain for the foreseeable future, we should support efforts by these workers to unionize so they can bargain collectively for the wages and benefits they deserve, to do the jobs we need to keep our economy running.
Sharon Block of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School said, coronavirus “made workplace conditions of low wage workers relevant to the whole country.”
