Building back better? Not yet! Covid and the US working class since the vaccines

It would be easy to think that we’re well on the way to putting the nightmare of Covid behind us. 22% of the population has had one dose of the vaccine, with 12% having had both. The national positivity rate is down to 4.7%. Each night the TV news shows mass vaccination centers at work. Fauci’s avuncular calm has replaced Trump’s malignant turmoil. The commentators tell us that with Covid rates declining, the economy is bound to improve. However, for large parts of the working class, we are by no means out of the woods. The purpose of this article is to look at some of the ways the effects of the massive disruption to the economy are still being felt.

Loss of ground during the pandemic

Statisticians at the AP-NORC research center recently conducted an important study. The results show the very difficult situation facing many workers.

53% of people report that their family income has gone down during the pandemic.
30% say that their current income is less than it was before the pandemic started.
44% say that the virus situation is still having a financial impact on them.
25% have been unable to pay at least one bill.
11% report missing at least one housing bill.

There are two main reasons for this working class income loss. The first is the decline in the number of paid hours of work. 31% of people surveyed by AP-NORC say that at least one person in their household was scheduled to work fewer hours during the past year. This figure increases to 40% for workers under 30 years old.

Layoffs are the second main cause of this situation. 25% in the survey said that there had been at least one layoff in their household. As always in this country, the situation for Black and Latinx workers is worse. The figure is 29% for Blacks and a staggering 38% for Latinx. 9.5 million jobs have been lost during the pandemic.

Will the lost jobs come back?

The pandemic will not just be a particularly long “normal” period of layoffs in which the jobs generally come back and life returns to normal. The most commonly cited figure is that 30% of the jobs lost will never come back. Economists Stephen Davis, Jose Maria Barrero, and Nick Bloom put the figure much higher at 32-42%. McKinsey &Co. see 4.3 million jobs lost in consumer and food service alone.

Now, of course, all these figures are just future projections. Many factors will affect the final outcome. How long will the pandemic last? How wide spread is working from home going to be? How much will consumer habits in travel, entertainment, and eating out change? Covid specific factors have to been integrated into a general economic analysis that takes into account the booms and slumps of the capitalist system. However, it seems clear that post-Covid “scarring” is going to have a serious effect on employment.

Situation in factories and warehouses

Workers have a lot of lost ground to make up financially. Ground also has been lost in terms of health and safety. This is particularly true for protection from Covid in large industrial type workplaces. Warehouse Workers for Justice has produced an important report on this issue. The report focuses on just one state, Illinois, which alone has seen 207 Covid outbreaks in this type of workplace.

Perhaps the most telling part of the report is the results of the worker survey.

65% said that someone in their workplace had contracted Covid.
85% reported that when their employer was presented with worker Covid concerns, the employer took no action, took inadequate action, or retaliated against the workers who raised the concerns.
61% told of no sick or quarantine pay.
83% of those who had been sick with Covid received neither sick pay or government assistance.

These figures show how bad conditions have become in factory type settings. A number of steps will be necessary to turn this situation around. Extensive retooling will be needed to install social distancing and anticontamination equipment. This may well involve changes to spacing on the production lines and conveyor belts. This is the employer’s responsibility, regardless of cost.

The union and workplace safety committees should have the right to stop work if the necessary safeguards are not in place. The employers must provide PPE, sick pay, health care, and safety training. These measures are needed to stop the reopening of the economy creating another surge of the virus.

Gig and precarious workers

One might have thought that at least one section of the working class, gig workers, had done better during 2020. Hasn’t there been a “pivot to delivery”? Aren’t we living in the world of DoorDash, Instacart, and Amazon Prime? Hasn’t the Covid-caused explosion in home delivery helped gig workers? The answer is a resounding “no.”

The problem is that the surge of such a large number of workers desperate to make a living in this sector has served to strengthen the hand of the employers. For example, in many ride sharing services, drivers compete with one another to offer a potential passenger the lowest rate for a journey. As more drivers compete, the pressure to offer a lower bid increases. The workers are then in a race to the bottom against one another.

Increased demand for gig type services has not led to a corresponding improvement in workers wages and conditions. Here are a few examples that make this point. Lyft recently ordered that drivers with newer cars would have a Rewards points reduction of 10%. Why? Lyft maintained that riders would want to be in newer cars; therefore, drivers of new cars would be getting more passengers and money! For many app-based drivers, employer provided insurance only begins the moment the passenger steps foot in the car. Therefore, if a driver is in route to pick up a passenger and is hit by another car, there’s no insurance. Many drivers feel that the employers are not trying to help drivers who are faced with violent crime. For example, there are calls for Uber to increase App verification procedures to help prevent assaults on drivers and car jackings. Social distancing has been a nightmare for ride sharing drivers during the pandemic as they are squeezed into small spaces with the passengers.

Drivers are not the only precarious workers in a difficult situation at the moment. A recent Chicago Jobs with Justice Workers Rights Board meeting heard from a hair stylist. She explained to the meeting that there is often no base salary and stylists are only paid when there is a customer, even though they have to remain in the salon the entire work shift. Therefore, daily earnings can be minimal. This type of life is daily reality for many working people.

Conclusion

The examples that have been presented in this article lead to a clear conclusion. The US working class is still in a very difficult situation. That class is going to have to fight to improve its life. Socialists intend to take their place in that fight.