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**SEPTEMBER 8, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

The Half-Woke Working Class

****

As employment growth sputters, there has been story after story
celebrating the fact that many working people are telling the boss to
take this job and stuff it. The pandemic has evidently caused scales to
fall from the eyes.

Workers, having experienced life off the job for several months, decided
that grueling work for crap wages wasn't worth it. So they voted with
their feet. Now, in the service sector, employers are having to raise
wages-even above the $15 minimum that we still don't have-to get
workers at all.

It's a heartening story. Or is it?

Look a little deeper, and you realize that in hyper-individualist
America, this is the free-market remedy for lousy jobs and low wages.
When demand (for workers) exceeds supply, prices (wages) must rise.

But these decisions by individual workers are a reflection of class
consciousness that has been only modestly raised. There is not a shred
of solidarity in it.

It's also the case that tens of millions of workers in low-wage jobs,
a paycheck away from destitution, don't have the option of just
quitting. Tens of millions of others don't have the alternative of
working for themselves at home. Try doing that as a nurse, home care
aide, nursing home worker, pre-K teacher, public-school teacher-or
anyone else in the caring economy (except maybe shrink-by-Zoom
therapists).

Though tight labor markets and individual acts of rebellion make a nice
story, raise some wages, and give employers like Walmart and Amazon a
satisfying comeuppance, let's face it: There are only two basic
sources of better wages for all workers-trade unions and government
labor regulation.

Rebuilding the labor movement, and grasping which party supports
regulation of wages and working conditions and the right to organize,
will take more than individual acts of rebellion. It will take raised
political consciousness and solidarity.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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