Essential Workers, Essential Pay

As the United States careens through this COVID-19 Pandemic, let us note as many "essential workers" - the ones keeping us alive in some form or another - as we can.

Emergency Medical Technicians (the ambulance crews)
Police Officers (first responders to any crisis situation)
Fire Fighters (also trained for medical responses)
Nurses across the board
Doctors in hospitals, walk-in clinics, ERs, Intensive Care units
Anybody working in the hospital hot zones, from janitors to accountants
City and County Electricians
City and County Water and Sewage crews
Grocery store clerks and managers
Auto repair / Roadside assistance crews
Food delivery people
Food caterers making food for school children and their families
Employees at drive-thru and storefront restaurants still making food for carry-out / delivery
Postal workers / Shipping handlers
Local manufacturers adjusting their assembly lines to create masks, ventilators, and sanitizers
National Guard reservists deployed to crisis areas
The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard personnel working under pandemic conditions (especially those caught onboard ships hit by COVID)

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

You wanna know how many of those people are being asked to work above and beyond the call of duty, especially in conditions that will expose them to potentially sick people? Nearly all of them, in public places or in tight gatherings of co-workers.

You wanna know many of them are going to be able to afford this month's rent, for those whose landlords won't temporarily waive the payments during these uncertain times? You know how many are still swamped with bills, or paying for loved ones forced to stay at home to reduce the risks of spreading the virus (or worse, with loved ones who've lost their jobs and are stuck in a collapsing job market)?

You realize how many of them barely live above the costs of living already? Half of those careers I've listed at the top of this article are made up of Part-Time employees, who have no guaranteed health care benefits, no pension plans, no leave time for personal or sick days.

For all the ESSENTIAL WORK those workers provide, we sure as hell don't pay them like they're essential.

That should change.

Congress, we need better wages for everybody. We need to guarantee health care benefits for Part-Timers. We need to guarantee personal and sick leave days for everybody.

We need to do these things for the ones who are going to make it out alive from this crisis, in honor of those who won't.

Twisted Sick Little Fu...

For one thing, Rick "Words Not Usable In Front of Children" Scott vetoed a bill that would have sped up the process to determine a person's mental state to stand trial - which would have freed up a sizable number of people languishing for too long a time in our overcrowded justice system.

Second, Rick "Ha Ha Workers Suck On It" Scott signed into law a bill that would block local and county governments from even voting on requiring companies to provide paid sick leave to their employees.

One of the benefits of employment that I've had since being in the workforce since 1994 has been paid sick leave, which had gone a long way towards giving me time to shake off fevers, pneumonia, minor injuries and other health issues that would have made me a liability at work.  Without sick leave as a benefit, how many employers are now gonna cut back on that... forcing their sick employees to stay at work, spreading germs to fellow employees and customers; and failing at certain functions because, gosh, they can't take time off to heal broken bones or busted ankles?  How much is it gonna cost businesses in the long run with lost work hours from sick or wounded employees or drastic downturn in customers due to unhealthy environs?

As God is my witness, I will never understand why anyone outside of CEO ranks making under $60,000 a year should ever vote Republican within the next 40 years.  These guys are completely against decent workplace rules, decent pay, decent benefits...  I can't understand why anyone concerned with workplace safety and decent treatment of employees could have ever voted for these guys over the last 20 years.  Between killing off our pensions and killing off our healthcare benefits, the modern Republicans have been the biggest disaster to the American middle class since the 1950s.

The Difference Between a Recession and a Depression

The truism is that when your neighbors lose their jobs, it's a recession: when YOU lose your job, it's a depression.

The last 5 years, however, has kind of skewed that joke.  Which really isn't all that funny when you consider the hell you and your neighbors are going through trying to find solid work.

The normal turn-around on losing a job and finding a new one tended to be less than six months (if you couldn't find anything in six months you were looking in the wrong places).  This prolonged economic downturn, however, saw a turn-around rate averaging a year, maybe more.  I personally knew of fellow unemployed who were struggling to find even part-time employ (no benefits, not enough income) for more than a year.

I personally struggled to find full-time employment for more than 4 years.  Part-time work came and went and was hard to find (and keep): for all of 2011 I had no employment at all.  And I was putting in for five to ten jobs a week.  The simple reason was that there were few jobs being created in the first place... with each new opening getting swarmed with 60 to 150 applicants within two days of the posting.  I once handed my resume to an HR person speaking at the Career Center for a position that my research background fit to a tee that the HR person mentioned just opened the day before... only to have her tell me she'd already gotten 75 applicants for that spot.

So, from where I was sitting - where my family was coping along with me, doing what they could to help out, and all the burdens they've had to bear - this Great Recession felt like a Depression.

This is a very long-winded setup for the good news.  I finally found a full-time job.  They really liked my resume: they really liked me.  I'll be doing what I like: helping people find books and research materials and getting into computer usage.

I would joke - and I have, elsewhere - that our long national nightmare... is over.  Except, well, it's not over.

We're still a nation mired in a jobless economic recovery.  Unemployment may be hovering around 7.9 percent (official number: the unofficial unemployment numbers are always a lot worse... and always more accurate) which is better than the 10 percent and worse that it had been at the deepest part of the 2009 valley, but that's not normal.  Unemployment should ever be around 4 percent for the economy to be chugging along just fine: an unemployment rate of 2 percent is a strong economy.

We need more action from government to spur businesses to use their profits to grow and hire on more people.  We need to stop the wave of cutbacks in the public sector which is hurting that job sector: if our states, counties, and federal government weren't cutting back on their workforce, the unemployment rate would be a full percent less than it is now.  We need a jobs bill.

Meantime, to all my fellow job-seekers.  I may be employed but I stand with you.  Good luck finding work.  Really good luck to you all.