The continuing pandemic has exposed all of capitalism’s seams and cracks.
Despite the phantasmatics of cybercapitalism conjuring a smooth conflict-free world of workers parked in front of computers alone at home, people still labor in the material world.
COVID has reorganized labor relations. Some workers have gone on strike. Others have joined “the great resignation,” seeking a better life.
Workers everywhere are thinking about their financial compensation and their working conditions under COVID. And whether their jobs are worth their health and their sanity and their dignity.
Strikes and threats of strikes over working conditions during COVID multiply daily: nurses, nursing home aides, IATSE, graduate students, John Deere, Kellogg, teachers, and on and on across many different sectors.
Workers with means are quitting their jobs to reprioritize what matters in life.
Because they are underpaid and not protected from COVID, front-line workers across a range of industries are fighting back, protesting, arguing, and marching. The gender and racial gaps for essential workers in health care and education amplify inequities.
But hope rises: in some areas, workers are taking back their power with union drives, strikes, and demands for a better work life.