Who’s an “Essential” Worker? | #StillCompromising Ep 3
By: Karishma Furtado
Tags: Racial Equity, Racial Justice, Covid 19, Work, St Louis

Who’s an “Essential” Worker? | #StillCompromising Ep. 3

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Episode 3: Who is Essential?

As many of us grow tired of working from home or are left reeling after a furlough or layoff, there is a third group of workers that have received comparatively little attention. While we have rightly applauded the healthcare workers who are on the frontlines of this pandemic, they make up only a fraction of all essential workers. Right next to them, cleaning our hospitals, stocking our grocery store shelves, caring for our children, and collecting our trash, are the other essential workers. The ones it is far easier for all of us, including leaders, policymakers, and COVID-19 response planners to disregard. They’ve always been there. They’ve always been vital: the steady drumbeat of society, keeping things running in the most fundamental of ways.

Now, in the midst of coronavirus and COVID-19, we are asking them to risk their health and well-being, as well as their families’, to keep us safe and (fairly) comfortable. As you might expect if you have been reading this series, essential workers in St. Louis are more likely to be Black, low-income, and uninsured. We can and must ensure their indispensable work for society is met with support, a living wage, and fulfillment of basic needs like safety and access to food if we are going to keep demanding that they endanger their well-being to take care of us.

The Still Compromising Series: In March of 1820, the Missouri Compromise was signed and the state of Missouri was born out of an insistence on the continued systematic subjugation and devaluation of Black lives. In March and April of 2020–200 years later — COVID-19 is revealing that we are still very much grappling with that original sin. The pandemic and its disproportionate effect on Black St. Louisans is pulling back the veil on our broken and inequitable systems. In this series we explore how COVID-19 has laid bare the ways we continue to compromise on our shared values and how we can use this crisis as an opportunity to catalyze Racial Equity. #StillCompromising

A woman operates heavy machinery at a warehouse.

First, Some Semantics (Because Language is Important)

The term “essential worker” doesn’t have a strict definition. It was established by the Department of Homeland Security in response to the pandemic and came with loose guidelines that the federal government left to states and local jurisdictions to interpret. That means there is not a precise way of knowing how many such workers there are out there. Using an approach developed by the New York City Comptroller, extended to the state of New York, and then expanded nationally, we estimated how many essential workers there are in St. Louis City and County, based on Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) data drawn from the 2014–2018 American Community Survey.

“Frontline workers in the St. Louis region are 68% more likely to be Black, 32% more likely to fall below the poverty line, and 12% more likely to be uninsured than non-frontline workers.”

We, along with the authors of those analyses, use the word “frontline” instead of essential, largely because of that ambiguity about the latter term. In some ways, it is also appropriate: these workers are literally closer to the “enemy” of COVID-19. However, we use the word with misgivings because, while it implies heroism, it also has an undercurrent of sacrifice, often at the orders of leaders who aren’t on the proverbial battlefield. By naming that, we hope to call out our local, state, and national labor policies and practices and their tendency to view these individuals as expendable. Instead we advocate for an equitable and inclusive economy that doesn’t treat the exchange of life-sustaining resources as a battlefield with winners, losers, and pawns.

What Does Essential Look Like in St. Louis?

The original approach found that most essential workers fall into six frontline industry groups:

Grocery, Convenience, & Drug Stores;

Public Transit;

Trucking, Warehouse, & Postal Service;

Building Cleaning Services; Health Care; and

Childcare & Social Services.

When we applied these groups in our region, we found that 196,588, or 22%, of the 888,390 workers in the City and County are on the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19.

Who’s on the Frontlines of COVID-19 in St. Louis City & County (interactive view)

In St. Louis City and Count, workers on the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19 are disproportionately Black, uninsured, and low income. Source: Analysis of IPUMS data from the 2014–2018 American Community Survey.

The graphs in this article are interactive! Click the link to track the trends, toggle different views, or download the data.

Overall, frontline workers in the St. Louis region are 68% more likely to be Black, 32% more likely to fall below the poverty line (e.g., a family of four making less than $25,750 per year in 2019), and 12% more likely to be uninsured than non-frontline workers. Even though these disparities are substantial, they mask even worse inequities in some frontline industry groups.

When we remove healthcare workers from the mix, deeper disproportionalities emerge. About 4 out of 10 of these workers are Black compared to 2 out of 10 non-frontline workers. They are nearly 50% more likely to fall below the poverty line and over 40% more likely to be uninsured. The region’s roughly 3,618 public transit workers and 7,557 workers in the building cleaning services industry group are particularly unprotected in terms of compensation and benefits. Nearly one in six transit workers and one in four building cleaners fall below the poverty line. More than one in four building cleaners are uninsured. These most unprotected of frontline workers are also the most likely to be Black.

Frontline Industry Groups in St. Louis City & County: Some Are More Vulnerable Than Others (interactive view)

While overall, frontline workers are more likely to be Black, uninsured, and low wage, some workers within specific frontline industry groups are at even greater risk, especially if they are among the 45% of frontline workers that are not in the healthcare industry group. Source: Analysis of IPUMS data from the 2014–2018 American Community Survey.

Essential All Along

So how did we get here? While the pandemic is new, the critical role these workers play in our economy and society is not. They have always been essential. They have also perennially been undervalued. COVID-19 is simply revealing how systematically unfair our labor practices are. As unions have grown weaker and corporations have grown stronger — using their influence to push for strategic deregulation, the shrinking and privatization of government, and an expansion of corporate rights — we’ve seen wealth and power continue to concentrate.

“The consequences of not moving past this bottom-line orientation in the face of the COVID-19 crisis will be measured not in high turnover rates, but in lives lost.”

The valuing of productivity and economic bottom lines over lives acts as both cause and effect for this steady accumulation of resources over the last 60 years. The biggest losers in this culture are those with little power and influence, who are underpaid and underrecognized. Such a culture is gravely shortsighted, not only from a humanistic perspective. Companies, and economies by extension, do better when they embrace inclusive growth and invest in workers who are valued, well-compensated, and healthy. The consequences of not moving past this bottom-line orientation in the face of the COVID-19 crisis will be measured not in high turnover rates, but in lives lost.

From Peril to Investment: How We Can Leverage COVID-19 to Redefine Our Treatment of Essential Workers

The realities of being an essential worker in the time of COVID-19 are grim. As we are already beginning to see, many of these workers are more likely to contract and die from COVID-19 because of their service, driven in part because of inadequate access to personal protective equipment (PPE), insufficient distancing policies, lack of paid sick leave, and lack of health insurance. The heightened perils faced by this disproportionately Black, low-income group feed directly into racial disparities in COVID case and mortality rates.

Taking Action

So what can we do? There is clear guidance on what local and state officials as well as business owners can do to take better care of essential workers.

The most obvious is to provide free PPE to frontline workers — it’s unconscionable that we even have to say this. Frontline workers — including those beyond the healthcare sector — should also get priority access to testing .

— it’s unconscionable that we even have to say this. Frontline workers — including those beyond the healthcare sector — should also . At the same time, we must guarantee healthcare for all frontline workers through an expansion of Medicaid. We should also subsidize the out-of-pocket costs of COVID-related care (which reports suggest run about $3,000 for non-hospitalized symptomatic cases and about $14,000 for hospitalized patients).

We should also subsidize the out-of-pocket costs of COVID-related care (which reports suggest run about $3,000 for non-hospitalized symptomatic cases and about $14,000 for hospitalized patients). Frontline industries should provide workers with hazard pay and benefits , especially if they are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, and the City, County, and State should subsidize this for small businesses . All employers, with support from the state and local levels as needed, should provide generous sick leave policies . There are federal versions of these recommendations, as well, though state and local leaders shouldn’t wait for action to come from that level, since, in many ways, federal decisions are worsening the situation.

, especially if they are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, and . All . There are federal versions of these recommendations, as well, though state and local leaders shouldn’t wait for action to come from that level, since, in many ways, federal decisions are worsening the situation. At the individual level, we can support frontline workers by advocating for and activating around all of the above and by following public health officials’ recommendations to continue social distancing (even if local elected officials insist we can relax those practices). Taking safety measures, like wearing a mask, that assume we are infectious and protect workers from us will be even more critical as businesses re-open. We can also literally thank them for their sacrifice and for doing work that we’ve long taken for granted.

What all these recommendations ultimately drill down to is this: we must value the lives of essential workers. We need to respect the risks that they are taking on our behalf and do everything we possibly can to protect them and their families. This will cost us resources and status quo “comfort” — of course it will. But their lives are worth it. These are changes that have long been demanded. The Ferguson Commission, for example, called for expanding Medicaid, raising the minimum wage, and protecting the rights of workers to organize. These systems changes were always needed, and we should accelerate them now in response to COVID-19.