This Labor day comes after some of the most tumultuous years in the
history of the American worker pandemic roller coaster of historically
high unemployment and now quite low unemployment numbers. Tonight
we look at what that means for workers themselves. We invited some
of you over Twitter to tell us if you feel secure in your jobs in
the answers. We saw stress and exhaustion. People who say they are
struggling like this woman who said she is seeking to retire soon
after years under pressure or this
One who said she's carrying more burden than she expected to at this
age.
But others told us they're enjoying working from home and finding
satisfying opportunities to talk about this complicated moment. I'm
joined by Maximilian Alvarez of the Real News network and host of
the working people, Podcasts and Saddam Neely, professor at the Harvard
Business School, focusing on the workers themselves here are too
powerful tweets that we received, a local school worker wrote.
Covid relief has ended. The school is understaffed and overwhelmed.
The stress is unbearable. But a librarian told us even though we
don't eat out much don't travel. I'm more satisfied. I get to play
and experiment. We want to talk about both the good and the bad,
but Maximilian Alvarez, let's start with you and which kinds of workers
are struggling the most right now.
Well, you know, it's hard to say who is struggling the most. But
I think what I really want to underscore for people is that people
are struggling across different industries from many of the same
problems as you mentioned in that tweet I really want to stress for
people. That chronic and deliberate understaffing is probably the
most common complaint that I hear from workers in retail and service.
From education workers were starting a new school year. We have been
hemorrhaging teachers because we've been underpaying under resourcing
them, vilifying them relentlessly in the media, and now we're running
out of teachers. So that is very much a crisis. But it is also happening
in healthcare healthcare has been hemorrhaging staff after 2.5 years
of the pandemic, and we have no real plan to sort of replace all
these lost workers.
You're hearing that now Saddam nearly about understaffing stress
on workers across the board.
Where do we see workers Finding more satisfaction? More flexibility?
You know, that's something you study.
You know, One of the biggest things that came out of the global pandemic
is remote work or remote work Revolution as we've seen. It's the
grandest experiment where people have had the capability to work
from home. And more recently, hybrid work has been introduced
more and more in companies where people have both in person and remote
experiences.
That has increased job satisfaction and extraordinary ways. Increased
productivity increased the ability for people to have work life integration
in ways that we'd never seen in this country since the 19 fifties.
We did get a tweet about that this person wrote. I've seen hiring
policies change.
People to work completely remotely more flexibility. All of these
things have made it possible to hire the best people for the physicians
and better pay too, You know.
Something else we noticed. I want both of you to pay attention to
in. These is sort of talking, especially about unionization
here. Two more personal stories revolving around that first tweet
in this that we had a heating and air conditioning tech right us
that since they joined the union six months ago, quote pay is almost
double and they wrote off finally have a little more room to breathe.
Here is the other. I worked for a major railroad and we are about
to strike.
That person wrote. We worked to the point of exhaustion.
Million Union had been losing workers for some decades now, but but
this speaks to that exhaustion factor. What is this moment right
now? For labor unions. It's a really pivotal moment because again
we have a tight labor market the likes of which we may never see
again In this century, The boomers are retiring out. A lot of people
died or got sick and debilitated.
From Covid. And also as I have mentioned, you know, a lot of industries
have been slashing their workforce. So you know we've been hearing
this. No one wants to work narrative, But in fact, if you hear the
workers side of it, you'll hear folks at Chipotle at Starbucks at
you know, school in Minneapolis or on the class one freight railroads.
You'll hear all of these folks screaming. We don't have enough people.
We can't even hire and retain people because we're being treated
so poorly. A lot of
The country probably doesn't realize that we are closer right now
to a national rail shutdown on the freight railroads than we've been
in my lifetime. And because workers have been run into the ground
and the profit maximizing cost cutting decisions from corporate CEO
has ruined the supply chain and turned what was once a good job into
a miserable experience. It's a real crisis.
So now we've been talking about something that spans different kinds
of work, different stresses and different kinds of satisfaction.
But you've also noticed some gaps in gender and generation That's
happening right now with workers. Can you talk about that?
Absolutely. It's kind of a moment in time where there's fierce divide
between employers and employees, particularly around the return to
office. Those who are leaders of companies often times people of
a certain age have a perception of what the best way of work is,
and oftentimes they prefer the butts and seats, command and control
on the other hand employees who are digital natives who are much
More savvy who can go between the in person and the digital prefer
that disproportionately and so this gap
Is massive, and I actually don't know how it's going to get resolved
unless there's some kind of compromise, particularly from the sides
of leaders because we've been through the biggest lesson of our lifetimes
and well being is another thing that people are thinking about caring
about a lot, a lot of well being issues.
I want to ask both of you as we wrap this up. What do you think is
most misunderstood about workers in America, any kind of workers
and where we're at and, um Saddam nearly. Let's start with you.
They want autonomy. They want control in their lives. They want to
be able to contribute and produce for their organizations in a way
that also works for them from a physical standpoint, from a mental
standpoint from a family standpoint, So the kind of discontent that
we're seeing with the push for return to office is because there's
this loss of control loss of autonomy, loss of integration in their
lives that they so want to maintain.
Six million. Alvaro's
You know, I think that the Covid 19 pandemic supercharged workers
understanding of their own worth because for a brief moment, this
system was forced to admit how much it needs us. And all of us were
able to finally recognized how much we and our fellow workers are
essential. And I think that that has had a lot to do with the growing
labor movement in this country from the unionization wave to the
strikes. We've been seeing to record numbers of people quitting their
jobs, but the backlash has been just as fierce. The boss
Is do not like this worker militancy and they want to put all of
us back into our place. So I think that you were seeing a real struggle
between working people and a system that admits that it values are
labor as essential but not our lives and working. People are pushing
back against that and saying we are worth more and we're going to
fight for it.
Maximilian Alvarez of the Real News Network and the Working People
Podcast and Siddle Neely, Harvard University's business school. Thank
you to you both.