One study demonstrated that the presence of a meatpacking plant in a county relative to another without one “increased per capita Covid-19 infection rates by 110 percent. The study estimated that 334,000 Covid infections in the United States were attributable to beef, pork and chicken processing plants.”
Close quarters and inadequate ventilation mean someone else’s shitty job can be hazardous to your health as well, writes Terri Gerstein, a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute.
Inadequate staffing ratios in hospitals contribute to increased infection rates for patients, Gerstein writes in the New York Times:
A study published this year found, on the other hand, that increased minimum wages reduced inspection violations, adverse health conditions, and mortality among nursing home residents, by decreasing turnover and improving continuity of care. And during the pandemic, researchers found that unionized nursing homes had lower Covid-19 mortality rates than those without unions.
Out on the highways, the low pay of truck drivers and long hours they work to earn more has created real dangers. In 2019, 5,005 people were killed and 159,000 injured in crashes involving large trucks.
Rules allowing drivers to work long hours without adequate rest mean that when “truck drivers are underpaid and overworked, it’s bad for them and also bad for us.”
Researchers have found interesting connections between poor working conditions and seemingly unrelated social problems. For example, most people don’t think of the opioids crisis as a labor-related issue, but research has shown a connection between occupations with high workplace injury rates, like construction, and opioid overdose fatalities. (People get injured on the job; lacking sick days, they take opioids so they can work through the pain.)
At the same time, improved working conditions are correlated with a number of seemingly unrelated social benefits, from a reduction in the incidence of low-birth weight babies to a decrease in suicide rates. Unionization has been shown to increase civic participation, reduce the racial wealth gap and lessen racial resentment among white workers.
Perhaps the reporting community should promote this message in all those red-state diners they frequent.
“We should care about workers’ rights as a matter of social justice and basic humanity,” Gerstein argues. “When new laws are considered, labor shouldn’t be seen as one more special interest group.” Everyone holds a stake in improved working conditions and a stable economy.
What holds everyone back is how tight a grip avarice, cutthroat capitalism, and “the monetize-everything-you-have economy” has on our culture. Having a decent-paying job that contributes to us all and breeds self-respect is laudable. But it is in no way how we measure worth anymore. How much income any activity can bring has become the measure if its worth in this society, even if it’s making money with money to little social benefit. Metastasized capitalism is exploitive capitalism and needs to be brought to heel. The economy should serve people. not the other way around. But that’s not how it works today.