THE ESSENTIAL WORKERS' REVOLT

In 1902 thousands of coal miners showed Americans that crucial work was often low-paid and dangerous, helping forge a new kind of social contract. Could it happen again today?

- Susan Berfield

In the weeks since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in America, the country has come to redefine essential work and to appreciate that essential often means vulnerable. We’ve watched the people who pack online orders, stock grocery stores, and deliver takeout assume unprecedented risk, often for low pay in unsafe working conditions. Some who’ve protested have been silenced; some who’ve carried on have been infected.

We’ve also seen evidence, though, that in a collective (and profit-threatening) emergency, the big companies that employ essential workers will, under duress, raise wages and offer paid sick leave. The government will find the money to give many families at least $1,200, no application necessary. And at seven every night, we cheer.

But will the country remember its newly essential workers once the social and economic shock wears off? That hopeful and haunting question will be on many people’s minds leading up to the presidential election in November, and in the months after. Covid capitalism could see the country extend the privileges of the wealthy, of monopolistic corporations, of the insured, of anyone who’s had the luxury of keeping their jobs while working from home. Or it could see the country finally rewrite its increasingly one-sided social contract.