Viruses, waitresses, and a new order

The Black Death which struck Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, killing anywhere from one-quarter to three-quarters of the population in whole regions, was certainly one of the great disasters of European history.  Scholars have long recognized, however, that this ill wind did blow some good.  At least in England, the labor shortage resulting from the massive depopulation, along with the disruption of the economy, sharply changed the relations between the powerful and the formerly powerless.  Peasants who had formerly been little better than slaves now found themselves in such demand that they were able to sell their labor to the highest bidder, simply leaving in search of a better offer if their local landowners refused to change with the times.  Laws were passed to restore the old feudal arrangements, but were unenforceable in the face of the new economic reality.  The later part of the fourteenth century saw a substantial rise in the standard of living of the poorest.

It's starting to look as if the covid-19 pandemic, on a more modest scale, may have an analogous effect in the US.  Before, millions of Americans in bottom-tier jobs worked under grossly exploitative conditions for a minimum wage barely half of what's typical among developed countries (or, for tipped workers, even less), subject to ever-more intrusive monitoring, pressure to work at inhuman speed, and the risk of being fired or disciplined for taking time off sick or similarly outrageous reasons.  The pandemic initially made these workers' lot even worse -- millions of jobs were eliminated, and for those that remained, conditions grew more dangerous as bosses flouted basic precautions to protect workers from the new disease.  Hapless floor employees were regularly forced to deal with anti-maskers' belligerent assholery, while waitresses suffered decreasing tips and increasing sexual harassment by customers, doubtless a function of what type of people most often dismissed covid-19 and continued going out.

But the pandemic also brought higher unemployment benefits (for many), a series of "economic impact payments" (for practically all), a new child tax credit, more help with health-insurance costs, etc.  Perhaps equally significant, it seems to have brought a greater awareness of the raw deal such workers had been getting.  Now that restaurants and other customer-service-intensive businesses are re-opening, expecting workers to come back to the same shitty working conditions (actually worse, since the covid-19 danger is far from gone) for the same shitty wages, many are finding few takers.  A couple of samples of the types of sentiment I've seen widely expressed:

Predictably, in an echo of the fourteenth century, some Republican state governments are trying to cut off federal unemployment-benefit supplements in an effort to force the serfs back into their traditional bondage.  In reality, getting people back to work isn't that simple, and cutting benefits will weaken the consumer-spending boom which is really driving the economic recovery.  Bullying and scolding are, so far, not enough to drive people back into underpaid jobs which are now not only miserable but actually dangerous.  This is all the more true given that Democrats hold the presidency through at least January 2025 and Congress probably through at least January 2023.  While the drive to bring the US minimum wage closer to developed-country norms has stalled for now, that issue is still far from dead, and there are other measures a willing government can take to help.

For white-collar office jobs, too, things have changed.  The old model of dragging everybody into an office to do jobs that were basically being done on the internet anyway has been technologically obsolete for at least a decade, but little progress was made in transitioning to a work-from-home model due to management conservatism and desire to maintain tight control and supervision.  The pandemic forced along the change that should have happened long ago.  Everyone has now seen that such jobs can be done from home just as well and often more productively.  Employees have had a year free from the misery of commuting, the idiocy of dress codes, and the harassment of petty, nitpicky office rules and policies which were inescapable because the boss was right there in the workplace with you.  Survey after survey has shown that large majorities of office workers want to keep working from home after the pandemic is over.

Many upper-tier managers seem to think they can force everybody back into offices as if nothing has changed, hiding anxiety about the erosion of their control-freakery behind a squid-ink cloud of "teamwork" and ineffable magic of face-to-face conversations in hallways.  I have been doing that kind of work myself for over thirty years, and that stuff is horseshit, and we all know it's horseshit, and they know we know it's horseshit, and it's not going to fly.  The balance of power has shifted.  For months I've been barraged with e-mails from employment agencies I used to work with, trying to interest me in this or that job despite my repeatedly telling them I already had a job which I wasn't interested in leaving -- and I'm almost at retirement age, hardly the most desirable employee profile.  The post-pandemic boom will only increase the competition for workers.  Employers who don't offer work-from-home will find themselves at a real disadvantage in that competition.  Even if some do manage to force their workers back to the office, every minute spent stuck in traffic will now be accompanied by the knowledge that the hassle is an unnecessary one forced on them by management for no good reason.  Good luck with "employee morale" when every work day starts and ends with that.

I've long believed that the political left in the Western world has somewhat lost its way, getting distracted from its focus on class struggle due to identity politics and differences between the cultural values of the working class and the college-educated.  If the pandemic has awakened a greater level of self-awareness in workers and given them a lever to force changes in the way things are, the Democrats in the US must be ready to support them in every way possible -- and, in so doing, may find their soul as a party again.