Profits over people: frontline workers during the pandemic

It wasn’t that long ago that the country celebrated frontline workers by banging pots in the evening to thank them for the risks they took doing their jobs during the pandemic. One national survey found that health care workers were the most admired (80%), closely followed by grocery store workers (77%), and delivery drivers (73%). 

Corporate leaders joined in the celebration. Supermarket News quoted Dacona Smith, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Walmart U.S., as saying in April:

We cannot thank and appreciate our associates enough. What they have accomplished in the last few weeks has been amazing to watch and fills everyone at our company with enormous pride. America is getting the chance to see what we’ve always known — that our people truly do make the difference. Let’s all take care of each other out there.

Driven by a desire to burnish their public image, deflect attention from their soaring profits, and attract more workers, many of the country’s leading retailers, including Walmart, proudly announced special pandemic wage increases and bonuses.  But as a report by Brookings points out, although their profits continued to roll in, those special payments didn’t last long.

There are three important takeaways from the report: First, don’t trust corporate PR statements; once people stop paying attention, corporations do what they want.  Second, workers need unions to defend their interests.  Third, there should be some form of federal regulation to ensure workers receive hazard pay during health emergencies like pandemics, similar to the laws requiring time and half for overtime work.

America’s labor crisis

We face a multifacited labor crisis. One of the most important aspects of this crisis is the U.S. economy’s diminishing capacity to provide employment. This development is highlighted in the chart below, which shows the trend in civilian employment over the last thirty years.  Civilian employment includes all individuals who worked at least one hour for a wage or salary, or were self- employed, or were working at least 15 unpaid hours in a family business or on a family farm, during the week including the 12th of the month when surveys are taken.