January 17, 2023 • 30 mins
On todays episode I have the pleasure of speaking with professor of sociology at Middlebury College and author Jamie McCallum.
Jamie’s latest work titled, Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice, digs deep into the of today’s working class rage and uncovers the unravelling of the nation’s social safety net and regulatory standards.
Essential is an in-depth look into how the Covid -19 pandemic changed the American labor movement and how an unprecedented recognition of a largely invisible and undervalued workforce took place.
Essential, posits that the pandemic revealed the urgent need to improve conditions for American workers, and makes the argument that the lousy jobs held by so many in our country are a liability for everyone.
The Show Notes
Jamie McCallum
https://www.jamiekmccallum.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe Cadwell (00:08):
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show and on today'sepisode, I have the pleasure of
speaking with Professor ofSociology at Middlebury College
and author Jamie McCallum.
Jamie's latest work titled
Essential (00:20):
How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for
Worker Justice digs deep intotoday's working class rage and
uncovers the unraveling of thenation's social safety net and
regulatory standards. Essentialis an in depth look into how the
COVID 19 pandemic changed theAmerican labor movement and how
an unprecedented recognition ofa largely invisible and
(00:42):
undervalued workforce tookplace. Essential posits that the
pandemic revealed an urgent needto improve conditions for
American workers makes theargument that the lousy jobs
held by so many in our countryare a liability for everyone.
(01:03):
After the episode be sure tocheck out the show notes to
learn more about Jamie McCallumand his work
and now on to the show.
(01:28):
Jamie McCallum Welcome back togrip nation.
Jamie McCallum (01:31):
Thank you for having me.
Joe Cadwell (01:32):
Yeah. Thank you so much, Jamie, for taking your
time to come back. I think itwas what a couple of years ago
we had you on talking about yourbook. I remember at the end of
that conversation, I asked ifyou were working on anything
else? And you said, Yes, I am.
The pandemic was just startingoff at that, that the that time
and you've put out a new bookcalled essential. And I was
hoping you could tell us alittle bit more about your new
(01:53):
work, which is now out forpurchase.
Jamie McCallum (01:57):
Yeah, so I was reading that other book worked
over, which came out in 2020.
And it almost raised morequestions than answers. Because
of the state of the economy, thestate of the working life was
was different. So I thought I'lljust write another law. And I
was already interviewing peoplewho were like deemed essential
workers Anyway, before thatphrase became rather popular. So
(02:20):
it started to make sense to tryto think about it more
systematically. I started outglobally. And then I wanted to
focus in on the states. So Iread workers in healthcare,
education, logistics, foodprocessing, retail, whatever
else other essential industries,and crafted a book that was
(02:44):
based upon their interviews andsort of a mountain of other
data.
Joe Cadwell (02:52):
And so what did the data show and then to get into a
little bit further, the book'stitle is essential how the
pandemic transformed the longfight for worker justice. And
the fight for worker justice hasbeen going on for ever. So this
was sort of a pretty big spikein the in the plight of the
(03:14):
workforce, and how did thisspike? Or how did this event go
right for the for the workingmiddle class? And how did it go
wrong?
Jamie McCallum (03:21):
So we think of essential workers as sort of
appearing in 2020, almost ether.
So the book starts out bytalking about the decade before,
essentially, it's the GreatRecession, people are laid off,
they're laid off in recordnumbers, especially middle class
people. And so how do we recoverfrom the Great Recession? The
(03:47):
answer is to weak recovered bycreating low wage, precarious
jobs, and mostly service sectorjobs, you'd have the arrival of
the gig economy, whichessentially began in 2009. The
gig economy requires anunemployed pool of atwill
workers to work at random hoursduring the day. So the Great
(04:09):
Recession sort of has like, it'salmost like kindling for a new
kind of labor force. And it'sessentially, fast forward a
decade later. And it's thosepeople who bore the brunt of the
crisis, either by becomingessential workers themselves, or
by getting fired. And so I sortof jump off at that point in the
(04:30):
first chapter is about those wholost their jobs, and what the
what the implications of thatare early on. People face
destitution. I mean, they facedhomelessness, and they lost
health care in the middle of ahealth crisis. And they lost
their you know, obviouslyincome. Slowly but surely, the
(04:51):
pandemic welfare state began torepair some of that. And you
know, if you talk to me Well,they say, Well, you know, we
only about two or 3 millionworkers lost their health care.
That's true. And it's a smallpercentage. But that that is
only that it was small, because10s of millions of people never
(05:13):
had health care to begin with,right. So you have an essential
labor force that is essentiallyvulnerable, unprotected, almost
not have a union, and almost nothave a cushion to fall back on.
And so it's like what happened,they basically relied on early
on an unemployment assurancesystem, which is, it's a
(05:33):
patchwork of dilapidatedprograms that don't work, or
that are designed, essentiallynot to work. And, and that was
the case until we got pandemicuninsured, unemployment
insurance. And so that's how thebook starts, and then turning
the corner to talking about thepeople for the for the rest of
the book, the people who facedthe workplace,
Joe Cadwell (05:57):
there's a crossroads in your book, and the
crossroads of the essentialworkers, the pandemic, the gig
economy, the people that are,are striving for a better way of
life through better treatment,more, more regular hours, better
pay on the job, and also thisfight for racial justice. That
seems like there was acrossroads of those two events
(06:18):
with George Floyd happening andthe rest. So how did how did
these reinforce each other'scauses? Or did they?
Jamie McCallum (06:25):
Yeah, so that, to me is one of the most
interesting ways the, as thesubtitle suggests, as the
pandemic transformed the labormovement, which was not totally,
by the way, the book I set outto write, like, the publisher
sent me the title at some point.
And I was like, Oh, interesting,you know, this is gonna be the
title of the book. So I betterfigure it out, right? Because
(06:45):
you for that you need an aerialview. And I was very much in
like the day to day I wasthinking about like, march 2020,
for like a year, and whereeveryone else was kept moving
on. And so the pandemictransformed the way people
organized in a couple of keyways. The first one is that the
pandemic working class was sowas so not siloed by occupation,
(07:09):
because there was so many littleessential industries sort of
going on, that they began to seeeach other as sort of class
collaborators rather quickly.
And that created a pandemiclabor movement, which was
broadly dispersed acrossdifferent industries. So it
wasn't just like a strike waveof education, or a strike wave
(07:32):
and healthcare or whatever. Orteachers, yeah, just teachers,
like there wasn't 2018 2019.
This was far more, you know,bubble percolating up here and
there. And then you had outsidethe movement, you had movements,
like, as you said, Black LivesMatter, using the language of
labor strike for black lives.
(07:52):
The protests that summer werethe largest protests in American
history, like the largest streetprotests in American history.
And to large extent, becausethere is so much overlap between
the black LED essential workermovement, and the black LED,
obviously BLM Movement, whichthere was a lot of overlap. And
(08:13):
I mean, Christian smalls, whowas president of the Amazon
labor union, who was a figureearly on the essential worker
movement was also a notablefigure in BLM. And so it's like
there was all this crosspollination that happened. The
other thing that happened wasthat workers took matters into
their own hands in a way that wedon't typically see in the US
(08:34):
labor movement, which is mostlyled by, like top down labor
unions, about a third of thestrikes or protests are walkouts
and 2020. were led by workerswithout unions, which is crazy.
Like that almost never happens.
Yeah. And so there was onlythere was only eight large
strikes in 2020. If you look atthe official data on the Bureau
(08:54):
of Labor Statistics, you wouldthink that nothing happened,
essentially, like you wouldlook, if you came from space,
you'd be like, oh, there's noproblem. No one's no one's
unhappy. No one's doinganything, you know. But if you
talk to people, and you go outand interview them, you know,
almost by chance, I would callpeople not expecting to talk
(09:15):
about labor activism. And theywould, I would say, How's it
going? Are they big? Oh, therewas a walkout yesterday, but
there was a senator yesterday,or a protest, or people were on
strike for a couple hours or acouple of days. And I was like,
there is nowhere else you foundthis data unless you randomly
call random people. So that'sone interesting part of the book
(09:36):
whereby, like the sort of, youknow, ethnographic or
journalistic methodology reallydoes like illuminate something
that was missed in the officialstatistics. So the bottom up
openness of that labor movement,meant that even unions had no
idea what was going onsometimes, right even like
(09:57):
unions were like What like themeatpacking workers struck? Why
how right like they didn't eventalk to us about it. And I think
some of that bottom up, likegrassroots militancy, helped
give rise to Amazon labor union,and helped give rise to
Starbucks labor organizing,which was in the very beginning,
just wildfire, just like hotshops that didn't really need
(10:21):
unions to lead anyway. So Ithink there's some interesting
moments where the pandemicreally sort of birthed or gave
rise to a spirit of labororganizing that we're seeing
become more popular now.
Joe Cadwell (10:39):
are definitely seems like there's a wave of
unionism washing over thecountry, and that unions are
more favorable now, according tothe polling than they have been
in the last 5060 years. You saidit before, you know, people
were, were just primed and readysort of kindling, you know,
based on the great recession.
And then leading into this thegig economy, the loss of so many
basic fundamentals, such as aset schedule, or health care,
(11:03):
that used to be part of theAmerican dream, for decades and
generations.
Jamie McCallum (11:11):
Well, it was part of it rhetorically, I mean,
the the American dream, in otherwords, ie upward mobility,
intergenerational mobility, diedaround the time I was born,
probably perfect timing, forthat for me. And so since then,
we've had this sort ofbootstraps rhetoric and kind of,
(11:33):
you know, we there's a certainassumption made about the way
that wealth gets generated andtransferred. And it's pretty at
odds with the material reality,if you're going to Denmark, the
American Dream is alive andwell. In other words, you know,
your, your your income, or yourstation in life is not
(11:55):
determined by your parents. Andin America, to some extent,
there is incredible classstickiness, if your parents are
poor or working class, you arefar more likely to be poor and
working class. And so that issomething that obviously we have
to change, the only way tochange or the main way to change
is probably through workerorganizing. I mean, in other
(12:17):
words, the worker was going toput pressure on Biden to put
pressure on who's ever in power,I think we often think that, oh,
we need to pass the ProAct sothat workers can organize, or we
need to pass, you know, card,check neutrality, so that
workers can organize. Andhistory is not favorable to that
(12:39):
view. Like what is far morelikely, is that in order to get
the ProAct, we will have toorganize, like bananas. Like if
you look back at the New Deal,the New Deal, we think of it as
like the liberal dream cometrue. And in fact, it was just a
compromise with the socialists,communists, and Labor Party type
(13:02):
activism, you know, so, and theyand their level of strike
activity and militancy inorganizing far surpasses what we
see today. And so the state willprobably not give us what we
need, we will probably have tocreate a crisis, where the state
is forced to give us the law,which then makes it easier to do
to do stuff.
Joe Cadwell (13:22):
And it seemed like the pendulum had been swinging
in that direction with thepandemic and with the the
essential worker movements andworker rights movements. But,
but over time, and it's been arelatively short time, it seems
like you know, we've lost sortof the upper hand and big
businesses getting back to sortof being big business.
Jamie McCallum (13:41):
Yeah, the pendulum was swinging. I think
we all thought it was swinging.
And then it reached the apex, Iguess if it swing far sooner
than we had wanted. And, youknow, so yeah, the pendulum
swung. It's it. Maybe it'sswinging back a little bit. I
mean, I know I use the pendulummetaphor in the book, too. And
(14:02):
it's useful in some ways, but itgives the impression that like,
it's just a clock thatoccasionally moves as if it's
not being controlled. And ofcourse, like someone's swinging
the pendulum and so for a whileworkers were pushing it and then
at the end, you know, basicallyemployers and state now began
(14:22):
pushing it back doesn't justswing on itself.
Joe Cadwell (14:41):
So the the essential workers, we talk about
people being essential and theessential ness of these workers
seems to have faded away,whereas the labor movement
setting now after, you know, andagain, the pandemic is still
here. It's not gone away, butour attitudes towards a pandemic
have definitely waned what Arewe stronger? Now after coming
(15:01):
out of this? Or we were weweren't, we take a step back.
What is your take on this,Jamie?
Jamie McCallum (15:06):
I mean, it's tough to know how to. Obviously,
the question you're asking islike, how do you measure power.
So one way to think about it islike, workers are in some ways
better off than they were beforethe pandemic. None of this is to
say the pandemic has silverlining or something, I mean,
5000 healthcare workers losttheir lives, who would not have
(15:29):
died otherwise, hundreds of1000s were sick and suffer from
long COVID. We don't even knowhow many workers and other
essential industries diedbecause we didn't count them,
because we didn't care enough tocollect that data. But, you
know, the Cares Act and theAmerican rescue plan to
dramatically reduce poverty. Andthey dramatically added money to
(15:53):
workers bank accounts, and theyreduced the count the debt
indebtedness of Americans. Solike, all those things are
basically good. You know, wehave a greater understanding now
that like, we need paid sickleave, and whatever, whether we
get it or not, is one thing, butlike, at least it's sort of in
the mainstream. But power doesnot come from the so called
(16:16):
objective conditions. And Ithink organizationally, the
labor movement isn't a time oftransition, like some of the
bottom up unionism that we aresort of excited to talk about
now, really does like challengeunion officialdom. And it
doesn't integrate seamlesslywith the labor movement. Some of
(16:39):
the major unions were staunchopponents of vaccine mandates in
health care. Like that's a badpolicy, you know, in a lot of
health care. B, a lot of people,a lot of Americans looked at
them. And we're like, thesepeople are backwards. They're
from another era, you know, andI think so some of that
contributed to that sort ofclassical anti unionism that we
all know and love or know andhate. However, also unions kept
(17:03):
people alive during thepandemic. I mean, you know, I
did research with a number ofother scholars during that time
that showed that in unionizednursing homes, resident
mortality was prettydramatically reduced when you
had a union of their workerinfection rates were
dramatically reduced. Teachschools became safer, like from
(17:24):
COVID outbreaks and infectionrates, when people had unions
when teachers had unions. Sothere's, I think, a number of
different ways in which the, thelabor movement has come out, you
know, different, but notnecessarily, like, stronger or
weaker. So I know it's kind ofa, basically a cop out answer to
(17:46):
that question. But I do think italso has the benefit of being
right. And I think the extent towhich it's stronger, will be
decided, you know, by whether ornot these new insurgent
movements can have, like apositive net effect on the rest
of the movement.
Joe Cadwell (18:06):
Right. And again, when we talk about essential
workers, we talk about unions,we talk about groups of like
minded people coming together topush back against some of the
grievances they have with theiremployers. You know, the
employers are not always justthe local folks, when we're
talking about pushing againstthe greater tide it is the large
(18:26):
corporations, how did they farethe billionaires in our in our
country that sort of control thethe economic progress, if you
will, of our of our nation? Howdid they fare,
Jamie McCallum (18:37):
there's no tears for billionaires these days, I
believe there's always do well,in the worst of times, the best
of times, somehow, miraculously,we got more of them. That's one
way to measure. I don't rememberhow many more it's in the first
chapter of the book about, youknow, we've added X number of
billionaires to our ranks and,and X number of people without
(18:59):
health care. For a couple ofmonths, that was a very bad
situation. You know, there weresome of the tax breaks that were
passed to ease was for themiddle class, or larger for
people in the upper class.
Joe Cadwell (19:15):
So who didn't really need those tax breaks?
What, who didn't need those taxbreaks?
Jamie McCallum (19:20):
We don't, who don't need them and should
actually be taxed at a higherrate, frankly. And so it's like,
we weren't upset as much becausemiddle class and working class
people were getting a betterdeal than normal. So it was sort
of like, we sort of turned ablind eye when Yeah, these other
people were also getting abetter deal, in a way. And so
that, you know, did expand thegeneral measure of economic
(19:42):
inequality that we have.
However, I will say thatcorporations probably had a net
negative, like, publicperception problem. And if you
look at data that shows thisresearch Jim Aaron Aaron
Sojourner did a great projectwhere he measured essentially,
(20:03):
public's perception ofcorporations, like at a record
all time, low, and publicperceptions of unions that are
record all time high. And sothat that difference is an
important part of the picture. Ithink, I mean, to really dumb it
down, like people began to getreally pissed off at
(20:25):
corporations and bosses, andreally sort of have greater
affection for workers. That doesnot translate into policy. It
doesn't translate into anything,actually, unless we can take
advantage of it. But it's like,nonetheless, a data point that
we use when we talk topolicymakers.
Joe Cadwell (20:42):
Absolutely. So speaking of taking advantage of
it, what what steps should we belooking at now to capitalize to
keep whatever momentum we dohave at the present moment for
the labor movement movingforward?
Jamie McCallum (20:54):
Well, there was a time in 2021, or the entire
year, where the number of, youknow, election petitions filed
at the NLRB was significant.
Like, I think it was up by twothirds, about 66% increase in
people wanting to join unions,the NLRB cannot even keep up.
(21:16):
Like they can't even process thepetitions, you know, in the old
MLK is all slogan that Justicedelayed is justice denied is
true. And so we need to makesure that people who want to
union can get one right now,soon. And that will take
probably sanctioning Amazon andStarbucks to force them to come
(21:39):
to the table, which will behard, but is doable. The other
thing we need to do, is to makeit easier for everybody else to
do that. And that does mean, youknow, like, despite what I said,
you know, before that means somesort of complimentary labor
(22:00):
organizing and policymaking fromthe top. Right. You know, we are
in desperate need of labor lawreform, we haven't had it in 90
years, essentially. And we'vechanged it, it's just not been
in the right direction. So weneed to reform it in the other
(22:22):
direction, essentially,interaction that supports
workers.
Joe Cadwell (22:41):
So before we before we move on, is there anything
else, Jamie that, you know, wewe may have passed over that
you'd like to reinforce with thelisteners,
Jamie McCallum (22:50):
I mean, we typically think of COVID being
sort of synonymous with thepandemic. And I disagree that
COVID is a disease and it's aproblem and we need to deal with
it, whatever. The pandemic was,like, a social event that was
(23:11):
that that we experienced,because of all kinds of other
factors. And I think theenduring lie of the pandemic was
that it created this crisis. Andin fact, what it did was really
like illuminate our pre existingvulnerabilities and weaknesses
and social fault lines, and itexacerbated them. And books like
(23:36):
mine tries to have a happyending, essentially, an ending
where workers are Ascendance andblah, blah, blah. That's only
that's sort of part of thestory, the real. One of the
other reality is that we learnnothing from the pandemic,
actually. And we learn nothingat our own peril. And we
(23:57):
transmit that lack ofunderstanding and that failure
into the future. And so like,you know, my main thing I'm
always harping on to people islike, if you want better nursing
care, like if you want yourselfin however many years to have
better nursing care, like youhave to vote for people who are
(24:19):
going to provide nurses havebetter care, whether that means
union activism or policymaking.
Like the working conditions ofthe essential working class, are
our living conditions. Andpeople often think that like,
oh, we screw essential workerslike, No, we higher profits will
trickle down. No, it doesn't. Itspreads risk. And it literally
(24:40):
spreads disease. It makes ussick, like literally. And so our
fortunes as human beings aretied to the fortunes of the of
the lowest paid among us, thepeople who are who will be
taking care of us in the middleof a crisis and we want those
people to have good jobs. So inother words, it is, you know,
(25:00):
that all expression and injuryto one is the injury to all has
is like literally true. Like thepandemic made sure that it's,
it's not just a slogan, it'strue. And we have to make sure
that that is our reality. And sodoing whatever we can to
contribute to that, in our ownsmall way is part of our civic
obligation.
Joe Cadwell (25:22):
Absolutely. And I think reading your book is a
good way to get yourselfeducated on the matters that
that have transpired. And thematters, the issues that are
ahead of us after someone readsyour book, would you? Is there
something you'd like them totake away?
Jamie McCallum (25:35):
My hope is that people do two things. They read
the book, and they begin torealize that like workplace
organizing is important. And sogetting involved with that, in
some capacity is reallyimportant. The other thing I
hope people take away is thatdig deeper, it's sort of like an
introduction to a criticalperspective on American
(25:59):
political economy. So, you know,readers that are already versed
in that will get thatperspective and, and, you know,
it will deepen theirunderstanding of it. People who
aren't familiar with thatperspective, will read more and
broaden their interest and beginto look up what's going on in
the footnotes, like stuff likethat, like it will open a door
(26:19):
to a window where there's somuch more to read, know and
understand. Right. And so Iwrote the book for a general
audience hoping that it performsthat sort of tool function.
Joe Cadwell (26:30):
All right, well, I thought it was a fantastic read.
And I really appreciate youbeing on the show today. Where
can people go, Jamie to find outmore about you and your work?
Jamie McCallum (26:40):
I'm pretty findable online, you can google
my name and usually get to mywebsite or my Twitter or my
whatever Twitter is at Jamie KayMcCallum. But feel free to email
me via my website, which ispublicly accessible. And I'm
happy to talk to any of yourlisteners who want to chat more.
Joe Cadwell (27:00):
All right. Well, thank you so much. Again, my
guest today has been JamieMcCallum author of Essential:
how the pandemic transformed thelong fight for worker justice.
Jamie, thank you so much fortaking your time to be on the
show.
Jamie McCallum (27:11):
Thanks so much for having me, Joe.
Joe Cadwell (27:15):
I guess today has been authored Jamie McCallum. To
find out more about Jamie andhis work, be sure to check out
the show notes for this episode,or by visiting the grit nation
website at www grit nationpodcast.com. Till next time,
this is Joe Cadwell, thankingyou for wanting to know more
today than you did yesterday.
Jamie McCallum (27:34):
But those other things are actually what they
care about, like they care aboutnot being killed by an airborne
virus at work when the next onearrives. Because the next one
is, is arriving. Right. And wejust covered 30 to 3200, new
coronaviruses a year. One ofthose is bad. You know, and you
know, when it makes the zoonoticleap to human beings from wild
(28:00):
animals. It's just Yeah, it'sinevitable. So we want to make
sure that like when thathappens, like OSHA has a
standard on airborne infectiousdiseases, which is does not have
yet, we will make sure thateveryone has six weeks paid sick
leave, which they don't havenow, right? We want to make sure
(28:21):
that like we're not we don'tlive in like a barbarian
backwater. And we compete withour peers to have the best jobs
in the world. And right now, weare on par with like, you know,
Trinidad and Tobago, Laos, a fewAfrican countries, no one's ever
heard of, for places that offerthat don't offer paid sick
(28:41):
leave, that don't offer acertain amount of time time off.
We are a bottom feeder in thatin that world.
Joe Cadwell (28:47):
Okay. Can you reframe that, again, because
this, this is an importantpoint, I think for a lot of
people to get, you know, intheir heads, that arguably the
most wealthy nation in the inthe history of mankind cannot
provide basic health care forits citizens. Well, if you look
at
Jamie McCallum (29:06):
I'm actually typing my, into my book now to
see where I say this, like youget it, right. If you look at
for example, how much thecountry spends on health care
and the health outcomes of itsresidents. Like, you can imagine
a two by two table. Sure, theUnited States is almost alone in
the bottom sell in that we spendthe most and get the least any
(29:28):
person that walks into thesituation blind and say, oh,
there's four possibilities, likespend little get little spend a
lot get little that kind ofthing. Sure. No one would ever
choose ours. Like it's the worsta lot. Again, little IFRS is the
least is the least commonoption, or the least preferable
one. And that's
Joe Cadwell (29:48):
not saying that we don't have good health care.
It's just the abundance of thehealthcare, the equity of the
health care across the generalpopulation, and the fact that it
is so expensive in comparison toother nations.
Jamie McCallum (30:00):
Right, there are some places where people enjoy
decent health outcomes. But a,it should not be. That phrase I
just said should not exist.
Like, you know some people, someplaces like that's not what we
should be doing. It's just sucha no brainer. When you look at
all our peer countries that theydo it better for less is like
(30:20):
from a purely capitalisticstandpoint. universal health
care is a bargain.
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show and on today'sepisode, I have the pleasure of
speaking with Professor ofSociology at Middlebury College
and author Jamie McCallum.
Jamie's latest work titled
Essential (00:20):
How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for
Worker Justice digs deep intotoday's working class rage and
uncovers the unraveling of thenation's social safety net and
regulatory standards. Essentialis an in depth look into how the
COVID 19 pandemic changed theAmerican labor movement and how
an unprecedented recognition ofa largely invisible and
(00:42):
undervalued workforce tookplace. Essential posits that the
pandemic revealed an urgent needto improve conditions for
American workers makes theargument that the lousy jobs
held by so many in our countryare a liability for everyone.
(01:03):
After the episode be sure tocheck out the show notes to
learn more about Jamie McCallumand his work
and now on to the show.
(01:28):
Jamie McCallum Welcome back togrip nation.
Jamie McCallum (01:31):
Thank you for having me.
Joe Cadwell (01:32):
Yeah. Thank you so much, Jamie, for taking your
time to come back. I think itwas what a couple of years ago
we had you on talking about yourbook. I remember at the end of
that conversation, I asked ifyou were working on anything
else? And you said, Yes, I am.
The pandemic was just startingoff at that, that the that time
and you've put out a new bookcalled essential. And I was
hoping you could tell us alittle bit more about your new
(01:53):
work, which is now out forpurchase.
Jamie McCallum (01:57):
Yeah, so I was reading that other book worked
over, which came out in 2020.
And it almost raised morequestions than answers. Because
of the state of the economy, thestate of the working life was
was different. So I thought I'lljust write another law. And I
was already interviewing peoplewho were like deemed essential
workers Anyway, before thatphrase became rather popular. So
(02:20):
it started to make sense to tryto think about it more
systematically. I started outglobally. And then I wanted to
focus in on the states. So Iread workers in healthcare,
education, logistics, foodprocessing, retail, whatever
else other essential industries,and crafted a book that was
(02:44):
based upon their interviews andsort of a mountain of other
data.
Joe Cadwell (02:52):
And so what did the data show and then to get into a
little bit further, the book'stitle is essential how the
pandemic transformed the longfight for worker justice. And
the fight for worker justice hasbeen going on for ever. So this
was sort of a pretty big spikein the in the plight of the
(03:14):
workforce, and how did thisspike? Or how did this event go
right for the for the workingmiddle class? And how did it go
wrong?
Jamie McCallum (03:21):
So we think of essential workers as sort of
appearing in 2020, almost ether.
So the book starts out bytalking about the decade before,
essentially, it's the GreatRecession, people are laid off,
they're laid off in recordnumbers, especially middle class
people. And so how do we recoverfrom the Great Recession? The
(03:47):
answer is to weak recovered bycreating low wage, precarious
jobs, and mostly service sectorjobs, you'd have the arrival of
the gig economy, whichessentially began in 2009. The
gig economy requires anunemployed pool of atwill
workers to work at random hoursduring the day. So the Great
(04:09):
Recession sort of has like, it'salmost like kindling for a new
kind of labor force. And it'sessentially, fast forward a
decade later. And it's thosepeople who bore the brunt of the
crisis, either by becomingessential workers themselves, or
by getting fired. And so I sortof jump off at that point in the
(04:30):
first chapter is about those wholost their jobs, and what the
what the implications of thatare early on. People face
destitution. I mean, they facedhomelessness, and they lost
health care in the middle of ahealth crisis. And they lost
their you know, obviouslyincome. Slowly but surely, the
(04:51):
pandemic welfare state began torepair some of that. And you
know, if you talk to me Well,they say, Well, you know, we
only about two or 3 millionworkers lost their health care.
That's true. And it's a smallpercentage. But that that is
only that it was small, because10s of millions of people never
(05:13):
had health care to begin with,right. So you have an essential
labor force that is essentiallyvulnerable, unprotected, almost
not have a union, and almost nothave a cushion to fall back on.
And so it's like what happened,they basically relied on early
on an unemployment assurancesystem, which is, it's a
(05:33):
patchwork of dilapidatedprograms that don't work, or
that are designed, essentiallynot to work. And, and that was
the case until we got pandemicuninsured, unemployment
insurance. And so that's how thebook starts, and then turning
the corner to talking about thepeople for the for the rest of
the book, the people who facedthe workplace,
Joe Cadwell (05:57):
there's a crossroads in your book, and the
crossroads of the essentialworkers, the pandemic, the gig
economy, the people that are,are striving for a better way of
life through better treatment,more, more regular hours, better
pay on the job, and also thisfight for racial justice. That
seems like there was acrossroads of those two events
(06:18):
with George Floyd happening andthe rest. So how did how did
these reinforce each other'scauses? Or did they?
Jamie McCallum (06:25):
Yeah, so that, to me is one of the most
interesting ways the, as thesubtitle suggests, as the
pandemic transformed the labormovement, which was not totally,
by the way, the book I set outto write, like, the publisher
sent me the title at some point.
And I was like, Oh, interesting,you know, this is gonna be the
title of the book. So I betterfigure it out, right? Because
(06:45):
you for that you need an aerialview. And I was very much in
like the day to day I wasthinking about like, march 2020,
for like a year, and whereeveryone else was kept moving
on. And so the pandemictransformed the way people
organized in a couple of keyways. The first one is that the
pandemic working class was sowas so not siloed by occupation,
(07:09):
because there was so many littleessential industries sort of
going on, that they began to seeeach other as sort of class
collaborators rather quickly.
And that created a pandemiclabor movement, which was
broadly dispersed acrossdifferent industries. So it
wasn't just like a strike waveof education, or a strike wave
(07:32):
and healthcare or whatever. Orteachers, yeah, just teachers,
like there wasn't 2018 2019.
This was far more, you know,bubble percolating up here and
there. And then you had outsidethe movement, you had movements,
like, as you said, Black LivesMatter, using the language of
labor strike for black lives.
(07:52):
The protests that summer werethe largest protests in American
history, like the largest streetprotests in American history.
And to large extent, becausethere is so much overlap between
the black LED essential workermovement, and the black LED,
obviously BLM Movement, whichthere was a lot of overlap. And
(08:13):
I mean, Christian smalls, whowas president of the Amazon
labor union, who was a figureearly on the essential worker
movement was also a notablefigure in BLM. And so it's like
there was all this crosspollination that happened. The
other thing that happened wasthat workers took matters into
their own hands in a way that wedon't typically see in the US
(08:34):
labor movement, which is mostlyled by, like top down labor
unions, about a third of thestrikes or protests are walkouts
and 2020. were led by workerswithout unions, which is crazy.
Like that almost never happens.
Yeah. And so there was onlythere was only eight large
strikes in 2020. If you look atthe official data on the Bureau
(08:54):
of Labor Statistics, you wouldthink that nothing happened,
essentially, like you wouldlook, if you came from space,
you'd be like, oh, there's noproblem. No one's no one's
unhappy. No one's doinganything, you know. But if you
talk to people, and you go outand interview them, you know,
almost by chance, I would callpeople not expecting to talk
(09:15):
about labor activism. And theywould, I would say, How's it
going? Are they big? Oh, therewas a walkout yesterday, but
there was a senator yesterday,or a protest, or people were on
strike for a couple hours or acouple of days. And I was like,
there is nowhere else you foundthis data unless you randomly
call random people. So that'sone interesting part of the book
(09:36):
whereby, like the sort of, youknow, ethnographic or
journalistic methodology reallydoes like illuminate something
that was missed in the officialstatistics. So the bottom up
openness of that labor movement,meant that even unions had no
idea what was going onsometimes, right even like
(09:57):
unions were like What like themeatpacking workers struck? Why
how right like they didn't eventalk to us about it. And I think
some of that bottom up, likegrassroots militancy, helped
give rise to Amazon labor union,and helped give rise to
Starbucks labor organizing,which was in the very beginning,
just wildfire, just like hotshops that didn't really need
(10:21):
unions to lead anyway. So Ithink there's some interesting
moments where the pandemicreally sort of birthed or gave
rise to a spirit of labororganizing that we're seeing
become more popular now.
Joe Cadwell (10:39):
are definitely seems like there's a wave of
unionism washing over thecountry, and that unions are
more favorable now, according tothe polling than they have been
in the last 5060 years. You saidit before, you know, people
were, were just primed and readysort of kindling, you know,
based on the great recession.
And then leading into this thegig economy, the loss of so many
basic fundamentals, such as aset schedule, or health care,
(11:03):
that used to be part of theAmerican dream, for decades and
generations.
Jamie McCallum (11:11):
Well, it was part of it rhetorically, I mean,
the the American dream, in otherwords, ie upward mobility,
intergenerational mobility, diedaround the time I was born,
probably perfect timing, forthat for me. And so since then,
we've had this sort ofbootstraps rhetoric and kind of,
(11:33):
you know, we there's a certainassumption made about the way
that wealth gets generated andtransferred. And it's pretty at
odds with the material reality,if you're going to Denmark, the
American Dream is alive andwell. In other words, you know,
your, your your income, or yourstation in life is not
(11:55):
determined by your parents. Andin America, to some extent,
there is incredible classstickiness, if your parents are
poor or working class, you arefar more likely to be poor and
working class. And so that issomething that obviously we have
to change, the only way tochange or the main way to change
is probably through workerorganizing. I mean, in other
(12:17):
words, the worker was going toput pressure on Biden to put
pressure on who's ever in power,I think we often think that, oh,
we need to pass the ProAct sothat workers can organize, or we
need to pass, you know, card,check neutrality, so that
workers can organize. Andhistory is not favorable to that
(12:39):
view. Like what is far morelikely, is that in order to get
the ProAct, we will have toorganize, like bananas. Like if
you look back at the New Deal,the New Deal, we think of it as
like the liberal dream cometrue. And in fact, it was just a
compromise with the socialists,communists, and Labor Party type
(13:02):
activism, you know, so, and theyand their level of strike
activity and militancy inorganizing far surpasses what we
see today. And so the state willprobably not give us what we
need, we will probably have tocreate a crisis, where the state
is forced to give us the law,which then makes it easier to do
to do stuff.
Joe Cadwell (13:22):
And it seemed like the pendulum had been swinging
in that direction with thepandemic and with the the
essential worker movements andworker rights movements. But,
but over time, and it's been arelatively short time, it seems
like you know, we've lost sortof the upper hand and big
businesses getting back to sortof being big business.
Jamie McCallum (13:41):
Yeah, the pendulum was swinging. I think
we all thought it was swinging.
And then it reached the apex, Iguess if it swing far sooner
than we had wanted. And, youknow, so yeah, the pendulum
swung. It's it. Maybe it'sswinging back a little bit. I
mean, I know I use the pendulummetaphor in the book, too. And
(14:02):
it's useful in some ways, but itgives the impression that like,
it's just a clock thatoccasionally moves as if it's
not being controlled. And ofcourse, like someone's swinging
the pendulum and so for a whileworkers were pushing it and then
at the end, you know, basicallyemployers and state now began
(14:22):
pushing it back doesn't justswing on itself.
Joe Cadwell (14:41):
So the the essential workers, we talk about
people being essential and theessential ness of these workers
seems to have faded away,whereas the labor movement
setting now after, you know, andagain, the pandemic is still
here. It's not gone away, butour attitudes towards a pandemic
have definitely waned what Arewe stronger? Now after coming
(15:01):
out of this? Or we were weweren't, we take a step back.
What is your take on this,Jamie?
Jamie McCallum (15:06):
I mean, it's tough to know how to. Obviously,
the question you're asking islike, how do you measure power.
So one way to think about it islike, workers are in some ways
better off than they were beforethe pandemic. None of this is to
say the pandemic has silverlining or something, I mean,
5000 healthcare workers losttheir lives, who would not have
(15:29):
died otherwise, hundreds of1000s were sick and suffer from
long COVID. We don't even knowhow many workers and other
essential industries diedbecause we didn't count them,
because we didn't care enough tocollect that data. But, you
know, the Cares Act and theAmerican rescue plan to
dramatically reduce poverty. Andthey dramatically added money to
(15:53):
workers bank accounts, and theyreduced the count the debt
indebtedness of Americans. Solike, all those things are
basically good. You know, wehave a greater understanding now
that like, we need paid sickleave, and whatever, whether we
get it or not, is one thing, butlike, at least it's sort of in
the mainstream. But power doesnot come from the so called
(16:16):
objective conditions. And Ithink organizationally, the
labor movement isn't a time oftransition, like some of the
bottom up unionism that we aresort of excited to talk about
now, really does like challengeunion officialdom. And it
doesn't integrate seamlesslywith the labor movement. Some of
(16:39):
the major unions were staunchopponents of vaccine mandates in
health care. Like that's a badpolicy, you know, in a lot of
health care. B, a lot of people,a lot of Americans looked at
them. And we're like, thesepeople are backwards. They're
from another era, you know, andI think so some of that
contributed to that sort ofclassical anti unionism that we
all know and love or know andhate. However, also unions kept
(17:03):
people alive during thepandemic. I mean, you know, I
did research with a number ofother scholars during that time
that showed that in unionizednursing homes, resident
mortality was prettydramatically reduced when you
had a union of their workerinfection rates were
dramatically reduced. Teachschools became safer, like from
(17:24):
COVID outbreaks and infectionrates, when people had unions
when teachers had unions. Sothere's, I think, a number of
different ways in which the, thelabor movement has come out, you
know, different, but notnecessarily, like, stronger or
weaker. So I know it's kind ofa, basically a cop out answer to
(17:46):
that question. But I do think italso has the benefit of being
right. And I think the extent towhich it's stronger, will be
decided, you know, by whether ornot these new insurgent
movements can have, like apositive net effect on the rest
of the movement.
Joe Cadwell (18:06):
Right. And again, when we talk about essential
workers, we talk about unions,we talk about groups of like
minded people coming together topush back against some of the
grievances they have with theiremployers. You know, the
employers are not always justthe local folks, when we're
talking about pushing againstthe greater tide it is the large
(18:26):
corporations, how did they farethe billionaires in our in our
country that sort of control thethe economic progress, if you
will, of our of our nation? Howdid they fare,
Jamie McCallum (18:37):
there's no tears for billionaires these days, I
believe there's always do well,in the worst of times, the best
of times, somehow, miraculously,we got more of them. That's one
way to measure. I don't rememberhow many more it's in the first
chapter of the book about, youknow, we've added X number of
billionaires to our ranks and,and X number of people without
(18:59):
health care. For a couple ofmonths, that was a very bad
situation. You know, there weresome of the tax breaks that were
passed to ease was for themiddle class, or larger for
people in the upper class.
Joe Cadwell (19:15):
So who didn't really need those tax breaks?
What, who didn't need those taxbreaks?
Jamie McCallum (19:20):
We don't, who don't need them and should
actually be taxed at a higherrate, frankly. And so it's like,
we weren't upset as much becausemiddle class and working class
people were getting a betterdeal than normal. So it was sort
of like, we sort of turned ablind eye when Yeah, these other
people were also getting abetter deal, in a way. And so
that, you know, did expand thegeneral measure of economic
(19:42):
inequality that we have.
However, I will say thatcorporations probably had a net
negative, like, publicperception problem. And if you
look at data that shows thisresearch Jim Aaron Aaron
Sojourner did a great projectwhere he measured essentially,
(20:03):
public's perception ofcorporations, like at a record
all time, low, and publicperceptions of unions that are
record all time high. And sothat that difference is an
important part of the picture. Ithink, I mean, to really dumb it
down, like people began to getreally pissed off at
(20:25):
corporations and bosses, andreally sort of have greater
affection for workers. That doesnot translate into policy. It
doesn't translate into anything,actually, unless we can take
advantage of it. But it's like,nonetheless, a data point that
we use when we talk topolicymakers.
Joe Cadwell (20:42):
Absolutely. So speaking of taking advantage of
it, what what steps should we belooking at now to capitalize to
keep whatever momentum we dohave at the present moment for
the labor movement movingforward?
Jamie McCallum (20:54):
Well, there was a time in 2021, or the entire
year, where the number of, youknow, election petitions filed
at the NLRB was significant.
Like, I think it was up by twothirds, about 66% increase in
people wanting to join unions,the NLRB cannot even keep up.
(21:16):
Like they can't even process thepetitions, you know, in the old
MLK is all slogan that Justicedelayed is justice denied is
true. And so we need to makesure that people who want to
union can get one right now,soon. And that will take
probably sanctioning Amazon andStarbucks to force them to come
(21:39):
to the table, which will behard, but is doable. The other
thing we need to do, is to makeit easier for everybody else to
do that. And that does mean, youknow, like, despite what I said,
you know, before that means somesort of complimentary labor
(22:00):
organizing and policymaking fromthe top. Right. You know, we are
in desperate need of labor lawreform, we haven't had it in 90
years, essentially. And we'vechanged it, it's just not been
in the right direction. So weneed to reform it in the other
(22:22):
direction, essentially,interaction that supports
workers.
Joe Cadwell (22:41):
So before we before we move on, is there anything
else, Jamie that, you know, wewe may have passed over that
you'd like to reinforce with thelisteners,
Jamie McCallum (22:50):
I mean, we typically think of COVID being
sort of synonymous with thepandemic. And I disagree that
COVID is a disease and it's aproblem and we need to deal with
it, whatever. The pandemic was,like, a social event that was
(23:11):
that that we experienced,because of all kinds of other
factors. And I think theenduring lie of the pandemic was
that it created this crisis. Andin fact, what it did was really
like illuminate our pre existingvulnerabilities and weaknesses
and social fault lines, and itexacerbated them. And books like
(23:36):
mine tries to have a happyending, essentially, an ending
where workers are Ascendance andblah, blah, blah. That's only
that's sort of part of thestory, the real. One of the
other reality is that we learnnothing from the pandemic,
actually. And we learn nothingat our own peril. And we
(23:57):
transmit that lack ofunderstanding and that failure
into the future. And so like,you know, my main thing I'm
always harping on to people islike, if you want better nursing
care, like if you want yourselfin however many years to have
better nursing care, like youhave to vote for people who are
(24:19):
going to provide nurses havebetter care, whether that means
union activism or policymaking.
Like the working conditions ofthe essential working class, are
our living conditions. Andpeople often think that like,
oh, we screw essential workerslike, No, we higher profits will
trickle down. No, it doesn't. Itspreads risk. And it literally
(24:40):
spreads disease. It makes ussick, like literally. And so our
fortunes as human beings aretied to the fortunes of the of
the lowest paid among us, thepeople who are who will be
taking care of us in the middleof a crisis and we want those
people to have good jobs. So inother words, it is, you know,
(25:00):
that all expression and injuryto one is the injury to all has
is like literally true. Like thepandemic made sure that it's,
it's not just a slogan, it'strue. And we have to make sure
that that is our reality. And sodoing whatever we can to
contribute to that, in our ownsmall way is part of our civic
obligation.
Joe Cadwell (25:22):
Absolutely. And I think reading your book is a
good way to get yourselfeducated on the matters that
that have transpired. And thematters, the issues that are
ahead of us after someone readsyour book, would you? Is there
something you'd like them totake away?
Jamie McCallum (25:35):
My hope is that people do two things. They read
the book, and they begin torealize that like workplace
organizing is important. And sogetting involved with that, in
some capacity is reallyimportant. The other thing I
hope people take away is thatdig deeper, it's sort of like an
introduction to a criticalperspective on American
(25:59):
political economy. So, you know,readers that are already versed
in that will get thatperspective and, and, you know,
it will deepen theirunderstanding of it. People who
aren't familiar with thatperspective, will read more and
broaden their interest and beginto look up what's going on in
the footnotes, like stuff likethat, like it will open a door
(26:19):
to a window where there's somuch more to read, know and
understand. Right. And so Iwrote the book for a general
audience hoping that it performsthat sort of tool function.
Joe Cadwell (26:30):
All right, well, I thought it was a fantastic read.
And I really appreciate youbeing on the show today. Where
can people go, Jamie to find outmore about you and your work?
Jamie McCallum (26:40):
I'm pretty findable online, you can google
my name and usually get to mywebsite or my Twitter or my
whatever Twitter is at Jamie KayMcCallum. But feel free to email
me via my website, which ispublicly accessible. And I'm
happy to talk to any of yourlisteners who want to chat more.
Joe Cadwell (27:00):
All right. Well, thank you so much. Again, my
guest today has been JamieMcCallum author of Essential:
how the pandemic transformed thelong fight for worker justice.
Jamie, thank you so much fortaking your time to be on the
show.
Jamie McCallum (27:11):
Thanks so much for having me, Joe.
Joe Cadwell (27:15):
I guess today has been authored Jamie McCallum. To
find out more about Jamie andhis work, be sure to check out
the show notes for this episode,or by visiting the grit nation
website at www grit nationpodcast.com. Till next time,
this is Joe Cadwell, thankingyou for wanting to know more
today than you did yesterday.
Jamie McCallum (27:34):
But those other things are actually what they
care about, like they care aboutnot being killed by an airborne
virus at work when the next onearrives. Because the next one
is, is arriving. Right. And wejust covered 30 to 3200, new
coronaviruses a year. One ofthose is bad. You know, and you
know, when it makes the zoonoticleap to human beings from wild
(28:00):
animals. It's just Yeah, it'sinevitable. So we want to make
sure that like when thathappens, like OSHA has a
standard on airborne infectiousdiseases, which is does not have
yet, we will make sure thateveryone has six weeks paid sick
leave, which they don't havenow, right? We want to make sure
(28:21):
that like we're not we don'tlive in like a barbarian
backwater. And we compete withour peers to have the best jobs
in the world. And right now, weare on par with like, you know,
Trinidad and Tobago, Laos, a fewAfrican countries, no one's ever
heard of, for places that offerthat don't offer paid sick
(28:41):
leave, that don't offer acertain amount of time time off.
We are a bottom feeder in thatin that world.
Joe Cadwell (28:47):
Okay. Can you reframe that, again, because
this, this is an importantpoint, I think for a lot of
people to get, you know, intheir heads, that arguably the
most wealthy nation in the inthe history of mankind cannot
provide basic health care forits citizens. Well, if you look
at
Jamie McCallum (29:06):
I'm actually typing my, into my book now to
see where I say this, like youget it, right. If you look at
for example, how much thecountry spends on health care
and the health outcomes of itsresidents. Like, you can imagine
a two by two table. Sure, theUnited States is almost alone in
the bottom sell in that we spendthe most and get the least any
(29:28):
person that walks into thesituation blind and say, oh,
there's four possibilities, likespend little get little spend a
lot get little that kind ofthing. Sure. No one would ever
choose ours. Like it's the worsta lot. Again, little IFRS is the
least is the least commonoption, or the least preferable
one. And that's
Joe Cadwell (29:48):
not saying that we don't have good health care.
It's just the abundance of thehealthcare, the equity of the
health care across the generalpopulation, and the fact that it
is so expensive in comparison toother nations.
Jamie McCallum (30:00):
Right, there are some places where people enjoy
decent health outcomes. But a,it should not be. That phrase I
just said should not exist.
Like, you know some people, someplaces like that's not what we
should be doing. It's just sucha no brainer. When you look at
all our peer countries that theydo it better for less is like
(30:20):
from a purely capitalisticstandpoint. universal health
care is a bargain.
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