There’s hardly a term that’s become more cringe-inducing, more empty of meaning than “essential workers.”
After two years of a pandemic that has revealed that making workers a priority is not considered essential, it’s natural to feel despondent about the state of the country’s laborers.
Look closer at the labor fights popping up at workplaces across the nation, though, and slivers of hope wiggle through: Unions are building movements that hearken back to the Gilded Age, when organized labor rose to counter the power of wealthy industrialists and the dire state of the working poor. Now, it’s especially important that Congress commit to addressing workers’ frustrations and exacting real consequences for labor injustice.
