Dying to Work: Oʻahu Hotel Workers’ Efforts at Well-being in the Face of  Autoimmune Capitalism
Channel: Rich Rath
Date: 2022-12-31

Sept. 27 2022, a talk by Richard Rath and Monisha Das Gupta.

This presentation examines the deadly rush to reopen tourism in Hawaiʻi during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of workers in the hospitality industry. We foreground the radical care enacted by the members of the hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE! Local 5. The organizers produced expert knowledge about pandemic-conscious public health-oriented workplace safety measures. State and industry actors’ systematic exclusion of this expert knowledge from plans to reopen tourism, and their appropriation of the carework on reopening endangered the very workers central to its operation. Using a biological metaphor, we call this autophagy "autoimmune capitalism," a new phase thrown into stark relief by the pandemic. As hotels become financial instruments, corporate, state, and lobbying sectors no longer recognize the workers as integral to profit-generation in capitalism. 

You can get a closer look at all the images, charts, and graphics here: 
http://udigix.net/esgallery/index.php?/category/5

To find out more, our article "Dying to Work: Oʻahu Hotel Workers’ Efforts at Well-being in the Face of Autoimmune Capitalism" was just published as part of a special issue on Immunocapitalism and Capitalist Immunities of the Anthropology of Work Review (43:2 https://doi.org/10.1111/awr.12243).