Overview

How essential workers' fight for better jobs during the pandemic revolutionized US labor politics Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, essential workers lashed out against low wages, long hours, and safety risks, attracting a level of support unseen in decades. This explosion of labor unrest seemed sudden to many. But Essential reveals that American workers had simmered in discontent long before their anger boiled over. Decades of austerity, sociologist Jamie K. McCallum shows, have left frontline workers vulnerable to employer abuse, lacking government protections, and increasingly furious. Through firsthand research conducted as the pandemic unfolded, McCallum traces the evolution of workers' militancy, showing how their struggles for safer workplaces, better pay and health care, and the right to unionize have benefitted all Americans and spurred a radical new phase of the labor movement. This is essential reading for understanding the past, present, and future of the working class.

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9781541619913

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By combining rich storytelling from the front lines of the pandemic and a deep historical lens, Essential brings to life a critical reality: capitalism is quite literally killing us, and only through worker solidarity across our economy can we protect ourselves and advance our future. --Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO

Why the recent surges in union popularity and new organizing all across America? What stake do the rest of us have in these brave workers' success? Jamie McCallum explains how we reached this moment and what the future could hold in an invigorating, urgent book that is, to borrow its title, essential reading. --Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America Essential is a compelling in-depth look into the heroism of the nation's frontline workers during the pandemic. Millions of long-underappreciated workers--supermarket cashiers, warehouse workers, fast-food cooks, meatpacking workers--were suddenly hailed as essential, but at the same time corporate America treated them as expendable and exploitable. Well-researched and highly readable, Essential examines one of the most encouraging developments during the pandemic: many essential workers took to the streets, went on strike, protested and organized to demand better treatment, stronger protections and the respect they deserve. Jamie McCallum voices his hopes that this militancy could have transformed America, but he explains why it fell short--and what still needs to be done to lift America's workers and create a far fairer, less exploitative economy. --Steven Greenhouse, author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor Jamie McCallum goes beyond the cliche that the pandemic revealed the existing faultlines and inequalities of our society. Rather, the dangers and burdens borne by essential workers are reshaping the fabric of social relations, creating new forms of exploitation and struggle. Closely observed and passionately written, Essential is a necessary intervention. --Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Manufacturing and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America By combining rich storytelling from the front lines of the pandemic and a deep historical lens, Essential brings to life a critical reality: capitalism is quite literally killing us, and only through worker solidarity across our economy can we protect ourselves and advance our future. --Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO

Author Information

Jamie K. McCallum is professor of sociology at Middlebury College. He is the author of Worked Over and Global Unions, Local Power, which won the American Sociological Association's prize for the best book on labor. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Mother Jones,  Dissent, and Jacobin. He lives in Weybridge, Vermont.

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