Resurfacing Dignity as a Tool for the Unionization of African American Lower-Tier Workers

I come to the topic of unionization and marginalized African American workers having neither studied unions nor the experiences of African Americans in traditionally unionized labor markets (i.e., construction, transportation, manufacturing, and civil service/government). Instead, my work has largely focused on marginally employed African American men (Young, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2019). These are individuals mostly in their early to mid-20s who have rarely worked more than a few months in a given year. Of those who did so, employment has often been in informal or underground markets. My research is dedicated to extrapolating how these men think about the world of work and work opportunity. Ultimately, much of the conversation with them focuses on their quest for economic security and upward occupational mobility (Young, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2019).

A central concern for these men is the extent to which dignity is cultivated and preserved in the workplace. Unfortunately, it is often minimally, if at all, existent in relation to the kinds of jobs they have held. Closely aligned with this concern is their consistent assessments of what they believe to be the value of the kind of work they have performed (as well as the work they hope to do in the future) and whether such value registers with their employers, customers, or clients. For these men, finding value for their work, either in their minds or the minds of the people they report to and serve, is what would accord them a sense of dignity (Young, 2004).

In the course of their explaining their vision of work and work opportunity, these men occasionally talk about unions (Young, 2004). They regard them as critical for providing benefits and protection at the worksite. Yet, their minimal connection to work prevents them from offering detailed understandings of what unions can do for them. They also offer very little about the process of unionization. This being the case, my most recent research on African American men and women has enabled me to begin considering some potentially crucial connections between the prospect of unionization and the plight of African Americans enmeshed within the lower-tier world of work. The common ground for this connection is the elevation of dignity in the workplace.

Whether and, if so, how people maintain a sense of dignity in their social lives is a relatively new tradition in the sociology of work and occupations as well as sociological inquiry into class relations and class analysis (Budd, 2011; Gini, 2001; Hodson, 2001; Lamont, 2002). Those in low-income circumstances or who work in lower-tier employment sectors regard dignity as a by-product of how they are engaged by co-workers, managers, customers, and clients (Bolton, 2007). Although derived from it, dignity is distinct from the mere material returns derived from work (Hodson, 2001; Lamont, 2002). It is of particular importance for lower-tier workers because they are unable to acquire significant material return from their investment in work.

The Covid crisis provided an opportunity to explore whether certain lower-tier workers might have acquired a greater sense of dignity and value for their work. As the crisis ensued, certain kinds of lower-tier service sector work was defined as indispensable. That work involved stocking shelves and serving customers in supermarkets and food-providing retail establishments; patient and client care in elderly and health care facilities; and in-person custodial service for agencies and businesses. The safety and security of many Americans, and the ability of some to provide higher-end services in health care, medical research, and public safety, was contingent on the performance of this lower-tier service work. Thus, these workers were designated as essential.

This unique moment of potentially increased public recognition for lower-tier essential work offers an opportunity to explore how those who experienced such work might have reimagined themselves as workers, reassessed their goals and objectives concerning such work, and reconsidered their expectations from employers, customers, and clients. That is, the COVID-19 pandemic invites an opportunity to critically consider the extent to which lower-tier essential workers might find greater value in the work that they do, maintain a stronger sense of dignity as a consequence of performing it, and feel more efficacious and striving to secure material and other rewards for doing it.

With this in mind, some quandaries surfaced for me while thinking about the plight of African American lower-tier workers. One was what might new public understanding of the plight of lower-tier African American workers mean for policy intervention on their behalf, or for unionization in particular? Another was what might new understandings of self as valuable mean for a worker's sense of dignity and how might that matter for policy intervention unionization as well? To address these queries, my colleagues at the University of Michigan's Center for Social Solutions and I embarked on a study of African American lower-tier workers who were deemed essential workers during the emergence and most critical phases of the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020–February 2021). This study, The Dignity of Fragile Essential Work in a Pandemic: Perspectives of African American Employees on Race, Respect, and Relations at Work (Young, 2021–2023), involves interviewing African American essential workers who were employed in custodial services, stock servicing in retail establishments, and basic personal care and support to the elderly and the physically challenged. The study addresses whether individuals who are doubly marginalized by their racial background and by their employment status found this time of crisis as central to any changed sensibilities about the value of the work that they performed.

The project was formally designed to explore the following questions:

How might African American lower-tier essential workers believe that Covid-19 has impacted their lifeworlds?

How might the pandemic enable them to develop a new sense of dignity for their work (including whether they believed that more value was assigned to them and the work that they did given that it was defined as essential)?

What regard do they think that employers, managers, customers, and clients had for them immediately after the pandemic surfaced and did their feelings change in the years following its emergence?

This project was fully launched in the past year and is on-going. As of this writing, only about a quarter of the targeted pool of 120 research participants have been interviewed. In fact, much of the particularities concerning race have yet to be fully documented and interpreted. However, what the research has uncovered thus far is the extent to which some African American workers began to think deeply about what it means to be regarded as essential. Accordingly, during the emergence of Covid they began to more seriously regard their value as workers:

Celeste Carson ¹ (grocery store clerk):

When I think of essential workers, I feel that word means that you need me. You need me to provide a service that you can't go without….We can't function without a person at the gas station, we can't function without a person at the grocery store…And that even goes for fast food workers. We can't get that food if a person is not there to do it. So, that's what essential means, it's a need.

Jennifer Niles (patient attendant in an elderly care facility):

I know that my clients that I care for…it's essential that I help them shower or feed them or give them their medicine…They're (medical personnel) not changing them. They're not helping them with their colostomy bags or feeding them…We're changing them, we're feeding them and showering them. They can't do this without us…We're essential to their life.

Carlos Knight (grocery store clerk and food delivery):

(The COVID crisis) did open my mind indeed to me about how undervalued I felt as essential worker…This pandemic has taught me that…I am more valuable than what society has trained me to believe, and I can do much better than I am.

Undoubtedly, their coming to recognize themselves as more valuable workers did not translate into necessarily feeling more valued in the workplace. This contradiction was indelibly tied to experiencing work during the Covid crisis:

Cristy Ambrose (grocery store clerk):

They could have done a lot better job at protecting us because we were the closest to the customers. Everything that everyone else was touching in the store, we were touching it. And we were all like not even six feet (a part) at the register….I was still working because they weren't giving us any (extra) money for it….I was scared to be at work because I didn't want to get Covid…We worked so closely together, so it's just not even the customers, but my other coworkers…I feel like people were already struggling during the pandemic, but essential workers, we were still working and struggling.

Jennifer Niles:

(If) we have to change a client, how are we supposed to social distance?…That's our job….I know that we're important but I just don't feel valued…Honestly, I love doing caregiving and this is all I've pretty much done. But with this whole Covid thing and how stuff has changed, it makes me feel really burnt out sometimes…I love the feeling of caring for someone that can never repay you… I don't feel it any more. I'm tired before I go to work, ready to get off work before I even get there…But when the pandemic first started, I was essential, so I do feel like we're all little lambs on the chopping block…It's definitely stressful.

Carlos Knight:

I most certainly feel like a sacrificial lamb than an essential employee. They have slowly been chipping away at all the benefits that one has, or one would need during a pandemic, to be safe, to feel safe…(My co-workers and I) feel like we aren't appreciated anymore.

To lower-tier workers, the emotional and financial costs of Covid were especially hard to bear:

Tisha Thompson (grocery store clerk):

I had perfect credit. And so now I'm behind on all my bills, even though I work a job, but it's still like I'm trying to play catch-up. And I'm still facing a hardship. That's adding more stress to me…It didn't happen till 2020. My whole life changed…This wasn't my experience (before the pandemic). I was in a good, safe space.

Carlos Knight:

(As a result of working through the early phase of the Covid crisis) Let's just say there was a lot more alcoholic beverages involved. A lot more marijuana joints….As you spend the day dealing with angry customers, and then you spend the rest of the night sanitizing and cleaning the store, things that were never in your job description before, that you should not have to do. And so you just come home just tired, just defeated…I will say I've discovered the joy of mixed drinks.

This research was designed to provide a racially nuanced perspective on whether and, if so, how workers interpret precisely what dignity means to them in lower-tier work and whether any of its constituent elements has changed, been amplified, or diminished as a result of their working during a pandemic. Admittedly, the story about race needs more space, time, and data in order to be effectively told. It remains, however, that most of these workers stated that because the kind of work they did was often relegated to African Americans (made evident to them by who their coworkers were who shared the same work responsibilities) they considered it to be historically undervalued. Hence, it is especially significant that during the initial phase of Covid they imagined themselves in a better place than had previously been the case. Yet, that feeling soon turned to resignation, because Covid situated them as uniquely vulnerable – both to the pandemic and to the socio-economic ills that were exacerbated by it. They surely could not avoid going to work in person, and they were nervous and despondent about the possible health risks of having to do so. These conditions, rooted in a sense of feeling devalued and threatened in the workplace, undermined any sense of greater dignity being bestowed upon them as essential lower-tier workers during the emergence of Covid.

This brief exposure to the views of such workers invites a particular consideration of the potential for unionization. In stating this, I do not propose that making the connection between unionization, and the people that work in these minimally skilled sectors is easy. Instead, the very objective here is to initiate thought about this possibility by placing issues of dignity and value for work at the forefront of attention. A major part of what drives workers to unionize, aside from a quest to increase the material return on their efforts and other benefits that unions support and protect, is that unionization affirms the dignity they believe should be associated with their work. Accordingly, how workers may or may not connect a sense of dignity to their work experiences is crucial for understanding the possibilities for a broader and more elaborate infusion of unionization into the worlds of lower tier work.

Although focusing exclusively on men, Lamont (2002) argues that there are considerable racial differences and how working-class men regard dignity as a desired trait in their lives. The argument in these pages only scratches the surface in introducing the significance of race for African American lower-tier essential workers. However, if Lamont is correct, notions of dignity have a long-standing place in the lives of African Americans because they have a long-standing relationship with lower-tier work and the tribulations associated with it. Therefore, the potential for unions to approach this segment of the African American population should be rooted in an explicit desire to support their recognition as valuable employees who are worthy of dignity for their work. This is a critical if only a first step along a lengthy pathway of incorporation. Clearly, the provision of fringe benefits and social support matter. Yet, garnering public respect – which is the cultivation of dignity – is crucial as well. This is especially the case for people who seemingly believed that such greater respect may very well have been on its way to being delivered to them during a severe health crisis, while ultimately it was not.