Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Hard to Find Good Help for Cheap

On our summer trip around the July 4 holiday, we stopped for lunch at an ordinary local place and noticed how informed the restaurant staff was. Ask a question about ingredients, or how long something would take, and you got a full answer, lots of details. They knew where foods came from, whether the salad dressings were made with olive oil or soybean, and if the beer was brewed locally. We were impressed.

This happened more than once until, farther down the road, we heard a waiter complaining about how many hours he’d worked. And as we wondered why his hours were so long, we realized that the waiter was the owner. His mom was the cook and his wife was the hostess. The kids were washing dishes and his neighbors were pitching in as extra wait-staff. Nobody was particularly happy with the system, but help was impossible to find.

Driving home a week later, we found one of our favorite restaurants was closed. A sign explained that due to the strain of the holiday, everyone was getting time off. “Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for understanding.” We started leaving better tips, being extra grateful, and thinking, “thanks for showing up” when we found a place open.

Next, we saw giant banners on restaurants, promising bonuses and high-dollar wages. $12. $15. $16 per hour. Good news for the wait staff, but what was going on? You probably know the answer — workers have disappeared and now, at long last, the underpaid are in charge. One explanation for the loss of workers is that there’s a malaise that came with a year of self-isolation. Folks that had for years labored at jobs that kept them trapped found ways to stay home.

So will the pandemic end up being good for working folks? The answers will keep researchers busy for years. In particular, traditional womens’ jobs—like waiting tables, teaching school, nursing—have been peculiarly impacted by the pandemic. Some were laid off, some were afraid of carrying a deadly virus home from the workplace, some were overworked to the point of giving up. There is a shortage of hospital workers that’s forcing one employer to recruit nurses from the Philippines. An estimated one in five caregivers has left their jobs.

A spokeswoman at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) estimates that the economy lost 9.5 million jobs over the past year, and women lost an estimated 5.1 million of them. NWLC says that nearly 80% of those jobs were in four industries: leisure and hospitality; education and health; government and retail. As people stopped shopping, retail lost about 362,000 jobs, nearly all held by women.

We hope that the disappeared women are doing OK, but it’s a great pandemic mystery. The government has helped with emergency funds, but jobs provide more than money. Jobs provide companionship, self-worth, and relationships that lead to better jobs. Taking a year off and staying home means a loss of the chance for a better future. This is particularly true for low-wage earners hoping to transition upward to management.

How are they getting by? Many young workers, already in precarious financial positions, moved back home with their parents. Some have been lucky enough to go back to school. I know of two couples that were just building relationships when the pandemic hit. Women in each couple told me they did the math and figured out they and their partners could move in together, live cheaper and have companions during the shut-down. The alternative, dating by Zoom, didn’t seem like much fun. In both these cases, things worked out and they’re in good situations. For others, especially those trapped in bad partnerships, violence may have risen although the numbers are hard to find. Murder rates have definitely gone up in all kinds of communities, but the FBI puts more blame on easy access to guns, rather than impossible relationships.

And, over the past year, more than 2.3 million women stopped looking for jobs and are not included in the unemployment count. By comparison, about 1.8 million men have left the labor force. This statistic always interests me. What are they doing? Retired? Panhandling? Sponging off luckier friends? Where did they go? Some of the vanished workers took early retirement. Others have exhausted savings and wonder if they’ll retire at all or if they’ll end up living in their cars.

For Black women and Latinas, NWLC says that their unemployment rate would be in the double digits if women who’ve left the labor force were counted. Unemployment for black women would be more than 14% and around 13% for Latinas.

The answers to the dilemma are obvious and boring: Provide better child care; pay higher wages. And, oh yeah, when you find someone helpful in a underpaid job, be grateful.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History”. Email: margotmcmillen@ gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2021

Populist.com