Essential

Book cover of Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

Book description

How essential workers’ fight for better jobs during the pandemic revolutionized US labor politics

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, essential workers lashed out against low wages, long hours, and safety risks, attracting a level of support unseen in decades. This explosion of labor unrest seemed sudden to many. But Essential reveals…

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Topics

Epidemics

Genres

Political

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Why read it?

1 author picked Essential as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Raina Lipsitz

Author

Sociologist Jamie K. McCallum traces labor actions throughout the coronavirus pandemic and what they revealed about the shocking precarity and poor working conditions frontline workers faced and continue to face.

The book shows how and why the crisis sparked an uptick in labor struggles that’s helping to revitalize the American labor movement today. McCallum’s voice and narrative sensibility are compelling, but what I really love about this book is that it transforms everyday working-class people from abstract category (“essential workers”) to dynamic human characters with agency and power.

From Raina's 3 favorite reads in 2023.