Grassroots/Hank Kalet

Which Side Are You On?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on the social order, killing more than a million Americans (and another 5-plus million globally), wreaking havoc on supply chains, causing businesses to close, and jobs to be eliminated.

And yet, perhaps there is a silver lining. The pandemic has underscored the inadequacy of our health and workplace protections, and it has led to a rebirth of labor militancy that could have far-reaching impact.

Workers at Starbucks, Amazon, REI, and other service chains have successfully won union recognition, a first for employees at these companies, and a wave of organizing in academic is threatening to rollback the growth of a Neo-liberal model based on enforced precocity for faculty and staff.

The latest evidence comes from Trader Joe’s, the boutique grocery store. As the New York Times reported, the 85 workers at a Hadley, Mass., store have filed with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, which could make it the “only union at Trader Joe’s, which has more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees nationwide.” Workers are petitioning for an independent union, the paper said, similar to what we have seen at Amazon and Starbucks.

Organizers at the store told the Times that pointed to benefit cuts and “health and safety concerns, many of which were magnified during the pandemic.” While the store reacted aggressively early in the pandemic, imposing strong mask requirements and a cap on customers, as well as allowing for leaves of absence and granting “thank you” bonuses, the store also ended many of these precautions too quickly and without employee input, organizer Tony Falco told the Times.

The tales told by workers in Hadley echo those offered by employees elsewhere in the service sector. About one in 10 workers are considered “contingent” by federal labor officials, though that figure does not include the large number of service workers and educational “adjuncts” like myself. In the academy, the use of contingent faculty has grown to cover about one in three instructors at four-year schools and up to half of instructors at two-year schools. Administrators point to tight budgets and fluctuating enrollment and often say little can be done. They need the flexibility. It’s the same argument we hear from retailers and Amazon.

What flexibility means, however, is the right to treat workers as fungible. The neo-liberal model has altered our economy, shifting much of the cost onto workers. Businesses like Amazon and most food and clothing chains rely on a fluid work force, elevating flexibility and profit above all other values. Workers are cogs, replaceable, part of a “just-in-time” approach to the workplace that leaves us without many protections. Businesses expand and contract “man hours” without much thought to the impact these decisions have beyond their balance sheets. The same goes for most workplace safety rules and benefits. The goal is to minimize spending, which boosts the profit margin, and little else.

But there is a cost beyond these balance sheets, one born by the workers and their families — and by the larger society, which is tasked with providing more and more of the services that used to be associated with full-time, permanent work. The precarity we face as workers creates uncertainty within families and communities — and while some states have robust social safety nets designed to help those who the economy chews up, most states do not and the federal government has allowed words like “welfare” to become pejoratives.

Hence, the apparent growth in organizing among contingent workers. Workers at Amazon and in the retail sector, gig workers, contingent faculty are all seeking the same thing, the same protections. We need a living wage, health care, security. It’s what my union is asking for as we begin negotiations with university administrators. It’s what Amazon workers in Staten Island demanded, what they are demanding at Starbucks, and now at Trader Joe’s.

If we are to claim that work has value, we also must admit that workers have value, that the services that they provide — that we provide — matter.

We are all in this together.

Hank Kalet is a poet and journalist in New Jersey. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41; Instagram, @kaletwrites; See columns at hankkalet.substack.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2022

Populist.com