I shop therefore we are
By: Carin-Isabel Knoop
Tags: Values, Shopping, Equity, Ethics, Changemaker

We spent the last four months being told that the most important thing was to vote yet we vote all the time. We can make about 50,000 decisions a day — many of them related to what we buy, and what we watch, read and share online. All the companies we choose to support with our resources and attention shape the world we live in.

As we end this year and for 2021, let’s resolve to use this economic voting power for good to bankroll companies and organizations that live their principles and treat workers and respect the environment.

Espoused theories versus theories in practice

In the early 1990s, Harvard Professor Chris Argyris helped us distinguish between espoused theory and theory-in-use, and understand how we justify our actions and prevent ourselves from evolving. Espoused theories are how we profess to want to act (ethically, sustainably); theories-in use reflect how we behave in practice.

Many of the conversations we have to resolve these tensions are with ourselves. When the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, we all resolved to get off Facebook. None of us really did.

Today, as Covid exacerbates inequality and forces us to confront how our most essential workers are treated, we have the opportunity to change the next few years simply through our choices. Let’s take it this time.

Words are not values

Half a century ago, civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez called for us to value those we now explicitly call essential. That everyone’s labor — sanitation workers, grocers, delivery drivers, teachers, nursing assistants — is essential for our society to survive.

Throughout the pandemic, many companies, from retailers to tech giants, glorified their frontline workers as “heroes” with sentimental social media postings, thanking them for their heroic bravery. But in the meantime, they also rolled back some policies designed to keep those “heroes” safe during this pandemic, such as the hazard pay, even though coronavirus deaths are reaching records highs, and have limited benefits and their ability to organize.

For example, a million front-line health care workers, risking their lives to treat our relatives in hospitals full of Covid-19, lack their own health coverage. The median pay for a nursing assistant is $14.25 an hour. Forty-seven percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides aren’t offered a single day of paid sick leave. The pain is extreme when we don’t even have a single day off to see our parents in their final days. How can we pretend that our rank in a company should determine whether we have time to grieve the loss of a spouse or a child?

We saw many companies and universities enable employees to take Juneteenth as a day off to “reflect on racial justice.” Great idea. But there was one big issue: for the large majority of frontline workers, taking a day off is not an option. They are working in fulfillment operations, packing, and delivering products to millions of consumers. “What does a black shirt do for anybody in terms of social justice?” said a retailer’s contract driver. Better pay, she added, it would do far more, namely “would cut down the pre-existing condition that is poverty.”

Being our word

During this holiday shopping season, and as we set New Year’s Resolutions, we face a longer-term question. Do we want to drive further inequity in our society and continue to shop and browse as usual? Or do we want to seize this moment to promote socioeconomic and racial equity for all? As we may care for our “fair trade” coffee, we may also care about looking more closely to which companies that truly reward all their workers.

It is on us. It is our economic and moral vote. We need to be honest with ourselves and ask whether we want to continue to shop according to a consumption habit that for decades furthered our society’s inequities, or whether we want to emerge from this crisis with a society which recognizes the infinite value of each human person — regardless of job title.

Below are a few ideas and resources to help you reflect on your values and goals as a conscious consumer — not just of goods and services that we pay for but of “free” ones such as social media. These are just a start. And of course the best source of information are employees themselves. Please let us and others know what you learn.

Authors: Carin-Isabel Knoop and Bahia El Oddi

Photo credit: Ellen Feldman * elfel8@icloud.com * www.ellenfeldman.net * www.WeWhoMarch.org

How to make your consumption votes count