PROTECT YA NECK!

It's been more than a year since COVID hit the scene hard, and millions have been chomping at the bit to "get back to normal." Back to hooking up with friends. Back to visiting loved ones. Back to places of worship. Back to vacationing. Back to a maskless existence. Back to business.

And especially back to restaurants. Food, drink, and music. Ambience. People have been hankering to ease back into their favorite eatery, and restaurant owners have been aching to get diners back in the joint. Mind you, this is an industry that got slammed by the COVID induced recession. This is an industry whose 2020 earnings were a whopping $240 billion below that which had been forcasted. By the time December 2020 rolled through, over 100,000 restaurants had closed either temporarily or permanently and the number of jobs were 2.5 million below the pre-coronavirus level.

So, again, it's hardly surprising that restuarantuers and their patrons are super hyped about stuff returning to "normal," about capacity limitations finally be lifted,and about empty tables progressively becoming a thing of the past.

But admist the celebratory mood, a wearied cry rings out, a lament that primarily rings out from businessness worried about their "bread" and patrons wanting to get fed. It's splattterd across social media, printed in the nation's leading newspapers, and lodged on the tongues of television pundits. More to the point, business reps--such as the National Restaurant Association and the Chamber of Commerce-- are screaming that unemployment benefits and pandemic assistance is making it too comfortable for people to remain unemployed and causing a worker shortage.

In econo-speak, topping off regular unemployment benefits with an additional $300 bucks is "disincentivizing" folk. Sucking the desire to work right out of their souls. Encouraging them to choose "leisure" over labor. Plucking the pain out of unemployment. Messing with the misery that must accompany joblessness.

What's needed, so the story goes, is some good old shock treatment. What's needed, we're told, is to pull the rug out from under the jobless. Increase the cost of people being too "choosy". Kick up the cost of "sitting it out." Eliminate all pandemic related assistance and chase them back into the labor market.

Incentivize their ass!

As of this very minute, at least 16 states have announced plans to snatch back pandemic assistance as way to push the jobless back into the labor force and thereby resolve the putative labor shortages alledegly cramping the ramping up of business.

One of the 577,000 persons receiving an additional $300 bucks on top of your regular unemployment benefits? That'll be gone.

Belong to that group of 863,000 of gig workers and out of work Uber drivers? You know, those people who were able to receieve assistance under the second stimulus' Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Well, as far as these states are concerned, within the next several weeks, you're toast.

One of 513,000 long-term unemployed still recieving unemployment even though you've been without work longer than a 26 week limit? You're pretty much done.

That's almost 2 million persons who are at serious risk of getting "incentivized" to take whatever employment they can get. Turn your nose up, pay the cost!

Groups like the National Restaurant Association and the Chamber of Commerce are teaming up with conservative politicians and economists to bring the pain. That's their prescription for eliminating the much disussed worker shortgage.

LISTENING TO WORKERS

Some of what we're hearing starts to sound like employer sob stories. Straight up whinning. The constant shaming up restaurant workers. The casting of them as cunning. The suggestion that they're a bunch of scammers who need to be financially threatened to do right. All of this can start to wear on your nerves. At least if does for me.

What to do? How about lending an ear--listening-- to what the workers themselves are saying? We know what employers are saying. Can't escape it. But what would we hear if we foregrounded the voices of those actually giigging in the work place? What could we learn about why restaurants workers are raising up? What it would take for them to return to and possibly stay in the job? What would they tell us about their fears, and the ways in which the pandemic their work environment?

A recent study does just this, and here's some stuff the researchers found:

• 53% of restaurant employees are thinking about raising up and leaving their gigs because of concerns about catching a case of COVID.

• One fifth report haaving actually contracted COVID.

• 74% of employees repport that one or more of their co-workers has contracted COVID.

• 50% said they knews someone who had died from COVID.

• 53% percent say that they are within six feet of an unmasked person at least once during their shift.

The upshot? COVID's got workers shook. They've seen what it can do, both to themselves and others. Their concerns are legitimate and, by extension, ain't nobody trying to sign up for that.

What's more, when workers are allowed to speak--and listened to-- they are absolutely clear about what it'd take to get them to stay put:

• 78% report that a stable, living wage would make them consider remaining at their jobs.

• 49% respond that the provison of paid sick leave would favorably incline them toward remaining

• 41% cited better COVID-19 safety protocols and enforcement

• 44% highlighted the need for health benefits and insurance

See where this is going? Workers want a workplace that recognizes and respect human dignity. Workplaces where employees have full and complete access to the economic rights that workers all over are fighting for. Economic rights like good pay. Economic rights like health care. Economic rights like paid sick leave. Like the right to a safe work environment.

And whatever you do, don't forget this: Restaurant workers have no interest in being responsible for enforcing COVID-19 safety protocols upon customers. Demanding they be on the on site COVID COP exposes them to the ire of uncooperative customers. Customers who don't believe COVID is still a thing. Customers who hold some wacked out and dangerous notion of individual liberty that, in their judgement, exempts them from any sense of responsbility for the health of others around them. Customers who are walking and talking billboards for the most extreme kind of liberatarinism imaginable. They--restaurant workers-- don't want the responsiblity of managing maskholes. Especially for $2.13 per hour plus tips. They know that they'll be the ones to pay the immediate cost in the form of verbal harrassment and reduced, if any, tips.

PROTECT YA NECK

So, I'm not hating on restaurant workers who are contemplating raising up and leaving. Or, ones who have already left and hesistant to return. I'm not worried about the owner as much as I am about the folk working in an industry that remains one of the lowest paid in the nation, and who haven't seen a raise in decades. I'm not joining in the tears being shed by the National Restuarant Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and politicians who are doing their best to shame and force workers back into labor market. I'm not done with that.

What I am--and have long been down with-- is fighting for worker's rights. What I'm down with--and always have been-- is envisioning and enacting strategies and policies that snatch folk out of the mouth of economic precarity. What I'm down with--and always have been-- is upholding and not smearing and shaming people who consistently find themselves with more month than money. People who are caught between slim and none. I'm down with workers doing whatever they have to do to protect their necks. Because one thing that is abudantly clear--at least to me-- is that the interests well being of the least of these is, at most, a secondary thought to far too many of us. This is why we get all this wailing about a putative worker shortage and, in contrast, far too little weeping about the low wages and toxic work environment that far too many resturant workers have to toil within.

A few months ago, the seminal Hip Hop group, Wu-Tang Clan, urged people to continue to exercise caution in the face of COVID. Wash your hands. Wear that mask. Avoid large crowds. Head to the hospital if you experience symptons. Keep your guard up. They urged people to "protect ya neck."

Well, resturant workers need to do whatever they must to protect their lves. To advance and defend their interests. Don't let the shaming seduce you into something you ain't comfortable with. Fight for better wages and safe working conditions. Do what you got to do. Whatever.

Wu-Tang Clan's word are definitely appropo here:

Protect ya neck!

Catch you on the flip side,

Doc Greene