Abstract
Across the world and the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reshape the economy, the labor market, the workplace, and key industries. These arenas are the subjects of this COVID-themed issue of the American Behavioral Scientist. Taken as a whole, the issue casts light on the ways in which the pandemic has made the workplace even more unforgiving than before, sharpened existing disparities across socioeconomic and sociodemographic divides, and aggravated labor market exclusion. The issue begins and ends by examining the experiences of frontline workers in two essential occupations: public transit and trucking. These essential workers have endured many stresses, health and safety issues, and economic challenges during the pandemic as they worked through the tightest lockdowns, keeping society running while many workers stayed out of harm’s way. Other articles in the issue address the intensified precarity faced by different groups including older workers, the long-term unemployed (LTU), and workers in industries hit hard by the pandemic. Shedding light on economic dislocations ensuing from the pandemic, we see that many workers--even those employed in “pandemic-proof” industries—have experienced job insecurity engendered by the pandemic.
The issue begins with “The Death-Based Model of Organizational Learning: Accident, Pandemic, and Workplace Change in New York Public Transit” by Noah McClain. McClain offers a vivid and tragic account of the costs paid by essential frontline workers at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City. According to McClain, these public transportation workers suffered disproportionately high fatality rates during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated by their employer’s penchant for attributing workplace injuries and fatalities to the actions of individual workers. McClain argues that this pattern predates the pandemic. In McClain’s words: “Surely, we should expect for employers to respond to the deaths of employees. Yet the MTA’s pattern of inaction except in the face of certain kinds of death, followed by its encounter with a pandemic, shows the consequence - for all organizations - of a willful ignorance of risks to workers cultivated over decades…” McClain’s study underscores the urgent need for employers to take more organizational responsibility for ensuring safe working conditions during the pandemic and beyond.
From worker safety we turn to the challenges of unemployment in “Networking When Unemployed: Why Long-Term Unemployment Will Likely Persist Long After the Covid-19 Pandemic Recedes" by Ofer Sharone. As Sharone makes clear, the pandemic has made the situation of the LTU even more dire because of the shrunken opportunities for professional networking central to job-searching. At the same time, LTUs report that the pandemic prompts their professional contacts to become increasingly guarded and less responsive, forcing them to work even harder to counteract the stigma attached to long-term unemployment. As Sharone makes clear: “If, as expected, the rate of LTU remains elevated despite an economic recovery, it is likely due foremost to the barrier of employer stigmas, and the bruising and discouraging experiences of LTU jobseekers engaged in networking.” These findings clarify the lived experiences of the LTU in terms of the emotional toll and structural challenges they face, another form of work-related hardship worsened by the pandemic.
Unemployment is also central to “Derailed by the COVID-19 Economy?” by Phyllis Moen, Joseph H. Pedtke, and Sarah Flood. Drawing on nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey, the authors map out trends in labor market participation among older Americans between 50 and 75 years of age. Taking a life course approach, they chart how age, gender, education, and race/ethnicity are implicated in transitions out of and into formal employment. As their research shows, those belonging to less vulnerable sociodemographic and socioeconomic groups have found it easier to return to employment after the initial wave of disruptions in 2020. For instance, their findings reveal that college-educated workers have been more likely to return to formal employment after the dislocations caused by the pandemic’s initial effects. In their words: “...class (education) effects are seen in those who subsequently move from not working to working during the beginning of the recovery period in June and July; those with a college degree move into employment at higher rates than those without a college degree. These protective effects of higher education operate within as well as across race/ethnic disparities.”
The theme of worker adaptation continues with the next article, “Pause, Pivot, and Shift: Responses to Sudden Job Loss” by Heba Gowayed, Ashley Mears, and Nicholas Occhiuto. In this piece, the authors develop a typology of coping strategies on the part of workers who must pause (withdraw permanently or temporarily from the labor market), pivot (adopt a different modality of working), or shift (change occupations) in response to disruptions to their work. The adoption of any one or combination of these strategies varies with workers’ sociodemographic and socioeconomic profiles. Withdrawal from the labor market, for example, cannot be understood without taking into account the experiences of mostly female workers who are disproportionately burdened with caregiving responsibilities. In regards to pivoting, the authors write: “…pivoting, or the creative use of one’s human capital to engage in new forms of labor, requires resources including time, social networks, space, and technological access.” All three forms of worker adaptation, they argue, should be more extensively supported by government policies including Universal Basic Income (UBI), child tax credits, and expanded paid family, medical, and/or caretaking leave.
The exploration of workers’ strategies to weather the occupational storm of the pandemic continues in the next article that focuses on a relatively advantaged group of workers, namely tech workers located on the West Coast. In this interview-based article, entitled “Surviving is Succeeding: How Tech Workers Handle Job Insecurity during COVID-19” by Di Di, the analytic lens turns to well-resourced professionals in a relatively pandemic-resilient industry. As this piece shows, job insecurity has become a pervasive aspect of working during the pandemic, even for these privileged professionals. This pervasive insecurity necessitates particular survival strategies based on the maximization of employability and indispensability to the employer. In Di’s words: “…while the tech industry as a whole was minimally impacted by this pandemic, my findings show that not every tech professional is protected from the experience of job insecurity or has sufficient resources to respond to it.” The findings from this piece demonstrate that this pervasive insecurity prompts workers to respond creatively to newly exigent precarities.
To close the issue, we return to the theme of frontline workers in the article “Trucking in the Era of COVID-19” by Sperry, Schuster, Cotten, Agrawal, Mack, Britt, and Liberman. The research uses interviews and original survey data to disclose the heightened health risks and stresses borne by truckers as essential frontline workers forced to continue working under the adverse conditions of the pandemic. The analysis reveals that the unusually stressful and chaotic conditions of the pandemic have made truckers’ difficult jobs even more challenging for reasons including longer and less predictable work hours, increased health risks, and social isolation. Thus, even though the public has seen trucking more sympathetically during the pandemic, the quality of the jobs “worsened due to closed amenities and decreased social interaction.”
Finally, the issue closes with a special afterword by Steve Viscelli entitled “Policy, Worker Power and the Future of the American Trucker.” This contribution sheds light on the ways in which government policies during the deregulationist decades of the 1970s and 1980s had already undermined the bargaining power of truckers before the pandemic arrived. These policies led to a steady exodus from the industry during the first decades of the 21st century, undermining the industry’s resilience to major disruptions. Viscelli wraps up his piece with a policy recommendation: “Solving ‘labor shortages’ should start with enforcing existing law and improving training programs.”
In closing, the articles in this issue of ABS, “Making Work Work during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” pull back the curtain on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on worker safety, unemployment, challenges to labor market participation, and industry practices. While the full effects of the pandemic are visible even on relatively privileged groups of workers, as the articles have shown, the effects of the pandemic on different classes of workers vary in ways which replicate preexisting inequalities.
While this issue covers many different occupations and segments of the labor market, it is focused on the U.S. context. Going forward, comparative and cross-national research into the effects of the pandemic on the workplace, the labor market, and employment will tell us much about the extent to which the experience of American workers is distinctive and to what extent this experience is common across different countries and contexts. Such research will be critical in charting the next steps to mitigate the impacts of the continuing crisis around the world.
