Our Consumer Choices Affect Our Neighbors
Delivery Drivers, Warehouse Workers, Home Health Aides, Landscapers, and Gig Workers Deserve a Raise and Job Protection
Delivery Drivers, Warehouse Workers, Home Health Aides, Landscapers, and Gig Workers Deserve a Raise and Job Protection
Instacart shoppers, Amazon workers and others have engaged in work stoppages this past week, some long term, some for a single day, but all focused on the ways in which the new-economy companies for whom they work are taking advantage of them, paying them little but expecting them to continue engaging in physically stressful or potentially dangerous work.
We don’t often think of the delivery people and store clerks we interact with everyday as heroes. But they are, in so many senses of the word. And like their counterparts in the health industry, most remain underpaid and overworked even as they are forced to toil in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous conditions.
At Amazon, workers have long reported harsh work conditions — tight control of work pace, limited breaks, repetitive stress injuries — that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis,, which has turned the the month of March into a reprise of the Christmas season. Workers walked out of a Staten Island warehouse in one-day protest, which was met by Amazon firing the organizer and issuing public statements about how much they care for their employees.
Workers at Whole Foods and Instacart also walked out to protest a lack of protective gear and obscenely low pay. Other who work new-economy gig jobs are striking for the same reason.
And, make a no mistake, these are strikes.
The What Next podcast this morning looked at this issue. “What exactly do we owe to the delivery workers at the front lines of the pandemic?”
I, like a lot of Americans, did not spend a lot of time thinking about how these companies work. I use Lyft when I have to, and we leased an AirBnB in Boston two years ago. The convenience and the cost encourage us to use these services without thought, and we too easily use the free-market rationale when concerns are raised about how these gig services affect the taxi or hotel industries.
We used Instacart last week. The woman who did our shopping was exceptional — imagine shopping for someone you don’t know. I talked with her at our door — she stood a good 10 feet away after leaving our groceries in bags near the door. She wore gloves and had a mask around her neck that I assume she wore in the stores. She told me that this gig shopping was her main source of income, told me to have a blessed day and most likely headed back to shop for someone else.
I wish I had a chance to ask her more questions: How much was she earning from this? Who supplied the personal protective equipment? How safe did she feel?
Heidi Carrico, a founder of the Gig Workers Collective, and L.A. Times tech writer Johana Bhuiyan explained on What Next that places like Instacart paid “their “workers next to nothing for their work and usually expected these workers — who they characterize as independent contractors — to provide all of their own equipment, pay for their own gas, and so on.
This is unconscionable, and we are complicit because we view cost and convenience as the most important factors as consumers. This mindset has infected the healthcare industry and academia — I’m an adjunct instructor at three different schools working the classroom version of a gig job.
Home health aids and many who work in nursing homes and other facilities for seniors often work as contractors, as well, with low pay, few benefits, and no job security.
And then there is the case of domestic workers. The Asbury Park Press reported on those in Ocean County, many of whom are undocumented and do not qualify for federal assistance, like the stimulus checks promised by President Trump and Congress. This, says the Press, “heightens pressure on workers to either remain on the job or return to the workforce, even where doing so means heightening their risk of exposure.”
“Until the governor or any other authority bans people from going out, domestic workers will continue working and running risks,” said Reina Axalco, an immigrants’ rights activist and domestic worker, told the Press.
New Labor, which represents many of these low-wage and mostly Latino workers in Lakewood, Newark and New Brunswick, highlighted in its most recent newsletters several work appeared to have contracted the virus — but did not have the money to get tested. These are the folks who have no choice but to work, because not doing so could leave them potentially homeless. Louis Kimmel, New Labor executive director, said in an email that the workers he represents are aware of the Amazon walkout, but remain fearful because of their status.
“The concerns are when we have workers telling us that one or more coworkers test positive for coronavirus and the company keeps operating,” he said via email. “But fear is there; there’ no guarantee necessarily that work is there later, and no stimulus checks, so sometimes people take risks.”
All workers should be able to say “our health comes first and we have the right to a safe workplace and the right to reject work” that makes them feel unsafe, he added.
There has been belated public recognition for front-line responders and medical staff who work directly with those who have contracted COVID-19, but this recognition often takes the form of applause. It is a public pat on the back, a note of thanks, but ultimately empty because many remain underpaid and we continue to argue, or many of us continue to argue, that the infrastructure upgrades a we need in the health system — universal access with a single payer, publicly run hospitals that put the health of patients above profits, drug research that focuses on illness and disease rather than less urgent annoyances. This has to come with better pay for ER doctors and nurses, and for staff at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and rehabilitation facilities.
We are guilty of an intentional ignorance, and have been seemingly forever, buying cheap clothing made in sweatshops, cheap food picked by underpaid migrants, and having others do our shopping for us without asking how they are treated or what they are paid. (We also use technology without thinking about its impacts on our lives and others, without considering how these companies make their money, how much of our personal and business data we are giving away, and so on.)
I want to say “stop using Amazon” and the other tech-driven firms, but that would be hypocritical of me, and it may be too late, in any case, to root out these companies from our economy. As I write this, I am waiting for an Amazon delivery, and I also know that Amazon, Lyft, Instacart, Uber, and other gig jobs are among the only ones available for workers who have been purged during this coronavirus-driven economic collapse.
What I will say, however, is this: Be aware of how your decisions as consumers affect others, especially when we get back to something we can call normal. When you are buying from Amazon, you are not buying from a small, local shop, and you are perpetuating the abuses that Amazon has imposed on its workers and on its “retail partners.”
We won’t be using Instacart going forward (it’s expensive for the user and exploitative for the shopper, and the only one who makes out in this arrangement is Instacart), but I can’t say I won’t be using the other services. I can say, though, that I will attempt to take into account the impact my choices have on others and take more care with my own choices.