Opinion <https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion>
Strike. This Could Be Our Last Stand.
If we can’t get our government to help us now, when will we ever?
Farhad Manjoo <https://www.nytimes.com/by/farhad-manjoo>
ByFarhad Manjoo <https://www.nytimes.com/by/farhad-manjoo>
Opinion Columnist
* NY Times, Sept. 9, 2020,5:00 a.m. ET
*
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Credit...Getty Images
Labor Day hit with an extra knife-twist of cruel irony this year, in an
America that is barely trying to pretend anymore that the plight of tens
of millions of working people merits national concern.
On Friday, the government announceda slowing recovery
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-job-growth-seen-slowing-in-august-unemployment-rate-falling-below-10-idUSKBN25V0FO>from
the job losses and economic shutdown caused by the pandemic.Nearly 14
million Americans <https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm>are
now unemployed, and almost eight million more are euphemistically called
“involuntary part-time,” meaning they would work more if there were
enough work.
In March, as part of a wider stimulus, Congress expanded unemployment
aid by $600 per week, a plan that scholars say may havetemporarily
reduced the nation’s poverty rate
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/coronavirus-poverty.html#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%E2%80%94%20An%20unprecedented%20expansion%20of,measures%20of%20poverty%20to%20fall.>.
As of mid-August, about29 million Americans
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/03/some-881000-people-claimed-jobless-benefits-last-week-labor-market-continues-feel-pain-pandemic/>were
receiving some form of unemployment assistance.
But the $600-per-week bonus ran out in July, and Senate Republicans have
rejected Democrats’ bill to extend the payments. The G.O.P. is now
working on its own more limited plan, thoughseveral Republican senators
are reluctant to support even that
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/08/politics/mitch-mcconnell-gop-skinny-plan/index.html>.
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Inaction may prove disastrous. Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist for
S & P Global,told The Times last week
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/business/economy/jobs-report.html>that
federal aid was meant as a kind of economic bridge through uncertain
times, but, she added, “it looks like the ravine has widened and the
bridge is halfway built, so there are a lot of people stranded.”
Bovino’s image suggests a way out of this mess: Workers should band
together and demand, collectively, a bridge across the ravine.
To put it more plainly: It’s time for a general strike. Actually, it’s
time for a sustained series of strikes, a new movement in which workers
across class and even political divides press not just for more
unemployment aid but, more substantively, a renewed contract for working
in an economy that is increasingly hostile to employees’ health and
well-being.
This may be the American worker’s last stand: If we can’t get our
government to help us now, when will we ever?
The political case for an expanded safety net isdrop-dead obvious
<https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/29/coronavirus-stimulus-voters-support-enhanced-unemployment-cnbcchange-poll-finds.html>.
Through no fault of their own, because their government failed to keep
the nation safe, millions of Americans have lost jobs, they have lost or
may soonlose health coverage
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/coronavirus-health-insurance-trump.html>,
theymay lose housing
<https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/21/893406577/as-protections-expire-millions-of-americans-face-threats-of-eviction>,
and manyare going without food
<https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/nearly-four-in-10-black-hispanic-families-facing-food-insecurity-during-pandemic/>.
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Others are facing threats not just to their livelihoods but their
lives.Schoolteachers
<https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/it-s-not-safe-wayne-county-teachers-urge-district-to-reconsider-opening-schools/19274581/>,college
professors
<https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2020/07/13/college-professors-question-how-safe-campuses-will-be-for-them/>,
restaurant workers,retail workers
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/olivianiland/lululemon-grove-coronavirus-pandemic-california-retail>,
meatpackers and others are being pushed to return to work even though
it’s far from clear that doing so is safe. Millions more are suffering
extreme versions of the Sisyphean task of achieving work-life balance —
the high cost and lack of access to quality child care, for instance,
has become a consuming worry of just about every parent in the nation.
It is well within the grasp of the mighty federal government to
alleviate many of these problems, and economists generally agree that
urgent federal aidwould stimulate wider economic activity
<https://www.epi.org/blog/cutting-off-the-600-boost-to-unemployment-benefits-would-be-both-cruel-and-bad-economics-new-personal-income-data-show-just-how-steep-the-coming-fiscal-cliff-will-be/>,
benefiting even those of us who do feel economically secure. Passing
extra benefits should not be a hard call; in the most terrible economic
climate since the Great Depression, it is just about the least the
government could do.
And yet our political system is in a state of paralysis. Even worse, the
government’s failure to mitigate this suffering is somehow not the main
story of the day — nor even, it seems, a pressing issue in the
presidential election. The speaker of the House’s haircut has gotten
more coverage, recently, than the millions of people looking for work.
Why has the plight of American workers received so little attention?
There are some obvious reasons. For decades, corporations wageda
sustained assault on labor unions
<https://www.streetroots.org/news/2017/06/09/attack-labor-unions-and-why-they-matter>.
The assault has worked.Unions were once
<https://hbr.org/2014/09/what-unions-no-longer-do>a key voice of
political advocacy for low-income Americans; their decline in membership
has left them with far less political power, allowing politicians to
more easily ignore working-class voters.
Yet another factor is the corrosive stratification caused by rising
inequality. American workers across the class spectrum facemany similar
problems
<https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-08-19/pandemic-hurts-countries-dont-value-workers>—
expensive or inaccessible health care, child care, loosening workplace
safety standards, and lax protections against being fired, among other
things.
But intense ideological and class polarization limits our ability to
organize across these divides. For many wealthy Americans,the recession
is all but over
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2020/08/13/recession-is-over-rich-working-class-is-far-recovered/>.
Even with recent dips, the stock market has recovered much of its
losses. Car sales are down — but the cars that are selling aremore
expensive than ever before
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-sales-are-down-almost-20-but-prices-are-setting-records-11599219000>.
Billionaires are doing better than ever.
These stark class divisions mean that wealthy Americans are often
insulated from the plight of the poor. What does it mean to be out of
work or poor in pandemic America? Nearly “one in eight households
doesn’t have enough to eat,”The Times Magazine reported Sunday
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/02/magazine/food-insecurity-hunger-us.html>,
alongside a searing collection of images by Brenda Ann Kenneally, a
journalist who has been traversing the world’s wealthiest country to
document the lives of its hungry multitudes. Our culture is now so
fragmented that it’s possible to live a full life in America blissfully
ignorant of our neighbors going hungry.
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But I’m newly hopeful for change. For much of 2020, the labor movement
has been building momentum. In May, essential workers at Amazon,
Instacart and other e-commerce and delivery companiesstaged a one-day
national strike
<https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/1/21244151/may-day-strike-amazon-instacart-target-success-turnout-fedex-protest-essential-workers-chris-smalls>demanding
better protections and higher pay. In July, thousands of workers from a
range of industries walked off the job in support of theBlack Lives
Matter movement
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/20/strike-for-black-lives/>.
At the other end of the pay scale,professional basketball players got
their league to adopt a number of social-justice initiatives
<https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29759939/nba-announces-playoffs-resume-saturday>after
they went on strike last month to protest racial inequality and police
brutality. Last week,several large unions announced
<https://apnews.com/02da00cb921ec61a69d8a30c9ff56244>they are
considering authorizing work stoppages to push for concrete measures to
address racial injustice.
Strikes won’t solve our problems overnight. But in the long history of
American labor, including in the civil rights movement, walkouts have
been an indispensable political tool, because when they get going,
they’re hard to stop. Strikes bring about economic and social change the
way water channels through canyon rock — forcefully, relentlessly and
with time.
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