"People Don't Want to Work"

When has that ever been true?

The other day I was sitting in a hotel lobby waiting to check-in. I had already approached the desk at 2:30p for a 3pm check-in and was informed that there were no rooms available for check-in until 4pm because the hotel was understaffed. Pleased that the worker was wearing a mask, but frustrated with having to wait even 5 minutes after a 10+ hour drive, I said “thank you” and sat down to wait.

I overheard a 30-ish non-Black woman of color say to the group she was with, seemingly a family of 5 with three girls under 12 years old, that the hotel was understaffed so they would have to wait because even though there are so many jobs available, “people don’t want to work.” I had heard this over and over on Fox and other news outlets, but hearing it repeated throughout my journey by folks, especially people of color, just cut differently. So in this moment of exhaustion, frustration and no filter my inner bell hooks instincts to “talk back” kicked in. I politely (based on my recollection) stated from my seat that nearly 98% of union hospitality workers had been laid off during the pandemic, 1) oftentimes they do not get paid leave or decent health benefits, especially if non-union, and 2) employers are not offering hazard pay so it is too risky for people to take these kind of jobs. I embellished to make my point but 98% of UNITE-HERE union hospitality members were laid off.

The two other adults nodded their heads and looked away; she went on to another topic surely thinking mind your business lady. Well, I’m in labor and support womxn, particularly Black, Brown, and immigrant workers who are often concentrated in these low-wage jobs, so as far as I’m concerned this is my business. My biggest concern was and still is that this narrative of “people don’t want to work” is not only wrong but dangerous, especially in the mouths of women of color.

Especially when so many of these laid off, underpaid, undervalued workers sacrificed so much over the last year including having to sustain their families with food banks, hoping they qualified for stimulus checks and/or unemployment insurance. Immigrants depending on their status, paid taxes but didn’t qualify for stimulus checks. And unless they were members of worker centers where they could access support with utilities, rent and rental protections, interpretation and translated documents, support with groceries and much more many service and care workers were left to fend for themselves.

Look, I have had the privilege of being able to work from home and basically not miss a beat, so it is not lost on me that I am one of many professional workers who emerged from said home offices, vaccinated and ready to hit the road this summer. But what I’m not gonna do is put the burden of understaffing in hotels, restaurants, care (childcare, homecare, domestic work) or other service work on workers of color and neither should you. Tell me, would you return to high-risk environments without workplace protections, a livable wage, decent health coverage if you had a choice?

According to Tanya Wallace-Gobern, Executive Director of the National Black Worker Center…

The nation’s job growth is sluggish not because workers are counting on government checks, but because our political leaders have yet to address the root causes of work shortages during this pandemic, including a childcare crisis and workplaces that are especially unsafe for Black workers and other workers of color.

(see full OpEd here)

Just a year ago, folks were on the streets clapping for “frontline” or “essential” workers for taking care of our communities and loved ones at great risk to themselves and their families. Thank goodness worker leaders and activists clapped back saying that the pandemic revealed widespread inequality and made this work visible…but in need of repair because the working conditions are harmful. But in this moment of “reopening” we need to be careful not to establish high-risk and low-paying work as the norm, especially when women of color are the ones doing the work. There should not be a widespread unchecked assumption that certain workers are expendable or disposable because that leads to policy that normalizes inequality and forces my cousins, aunties, friends and communities back to dangerous workplaces or left to starve. Please remember COVID is still killing us.

Instead of “talking loud” blaming workers, we should be thanking them for their service. Those same laid off hotel workers didn’t just sit at home and wait for “stimmy” checks, many of them travelled across the nation knocking on doors in large numbers with the Take Back 2020 campaign, the wildly successful political mobilization that brought you the PA electoral college votes and ultimately Biden/Harris administration, followed by Georgia’s Warnock/Ossoff victories that gave democrats the Senate majority. Care workers, restaurant workers, hotel workers, Black and immigrant workers, and especially women workers have been putting it all on the line to raise the wage floor in this country since this plantation economy was founded.

They have been organizing, mobilizing, and fighting to pull this loosely threaded democracy together, while some folks try to set flames to it. So I’ll be damned if I’m not going to stand up for these folks now.

Thank a care worker because of their organizing with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, care work is being included in the Biden’s infrastructure bill.

Thank a Black worker because no matter what work we do we endure discrimination to/from and at our workplaces and are more than likely underpaid and overworked and still showing up for ourselves and others.

Thank a woman of color worker, by supporting universal (well paid) childcare, raising the federal minimum wage and with policies that enforce pay equity so she can choose to return to a safe workplace in this “she-cession.”