In this Global Labour Column blog post, Senior Lecturer Karin Astrid Siegmann argues that despite the growing appreciation of so-called essential workers, many are still underpaid and unappreciated.
A new hero has emerged in the wake of measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus: the essential worker.
A global crisis like the one we are facing now raises our awareness about how essential care and food are for human flourishing. The underlying logic is very simple: essential workers are life-making rather than product- or profit-making. Care and food workers therefore top the list of occupations whose work is critical to the COVID-19 response that many governments have published.
Yet, while essential workers keep the cogs of societies oiled and turning, most of them remain underpaid and underappreciated.
Read the full post - From clapping for essential workers to revaluing them
- Assistant professor
