Let's Talk About Essential Employees

This morning, at 11:16 am, pandemic time, the power went off.  It is a windy, grey, rainy day and I’m hoping that it is only a felled tree.  The sirens that we are hearing whisper of other possibilities.  I pray that is not the case.  I can imagine the complications that such an emergency provides now with all first responders having to wear gloves and masks—if not full bodies Tyvek suits.  You don’t know what the person in the wrecked vehicle has and you don’t know what you may be passing to them.  Just as the pandemic has changed the rest of the sociological strata—our old ‘normal’—so it has changed, I imagine, how first responders go about their work of saving lives. 

Essential workers of any kind—are precisely that—essential.  I’m saying right here and right now $15.00 an hour for minimum wage needs to happen.  Also, the title, “Minimum Wage” should be changed to “Essential Salary”.  The person flipping burgers and serving us at the drive through is putting their life on the line doing so.  Here in NJ, the person pumping your gas is doing the same.  The cashier at the grocery store—yes, her too.  ALL of them deserve medals.  All of them deserve a livable wage.  When this is over there will be a concerted effort to forget that these days happened.  These ESSENTIAL EMPLOYEES should not be forgotten.

“How would we pay for all these people getting a living wage?”

How can’t we, after this globally shared experience.  These essential workers put everything—their safety, their family’s safety—all of it, on the line every day just by showing up to work.  I’ll go further, if it were not for these essential employees showing up society itself would collapse.  If you think a toilet paper shortage is bad, consider grocery stores being boarded up and closed.  Suddenly, the comforts that we take for granted, we can’t take for granted anymore.  $15.00 an hour is the right thing to do.  

But, not to ignore your original question, hypothetical questioner, how about this.  I work in a cube farm, in a rented floor, in a rented building.  That building requires electricity, water, heat, and upkeep.  That’s a LOT of money going out and for what—a mailing address?  A post office box could accomplish the same for a pittance of the price it takes to keep the lights on in my building.  This quarantine has illustrated that, in all actuality, half of the workforce across the nation could work from home and accomplish the same amount of work.  For both public and private organizations, in the new world order, this is a money saving, viable option.  Suddenly, you are not paying rent, electricity, water, sewer, heat, cooling, and upkeep.  Suddenly, you’re saving money just by having your people work at home.  Suddenly, you have enough to pay essential employees serving their communities $15.00 an hour.

You’re welcome, America. 

Speaking of essential employees and medals—I’m predicting that TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year will be Essential Employees.  It has to be.  The doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the linemen (who are mobilizing right now to get our electricity up and running again. …I’m running on my laptop battery for this section of the journal), the cashiers, the fire responders, police, truck drivers, people who stock shelves—ALL of them.  They deserve that title, Person of the Year. 

So, @TIME Magazine, what do you say? 

It’s 12:15 and the power just came on.  Thank you, linemen from Atlantic City Electric.  You are essential, not only for electricity but for a functioning version of whatever, ‘normal’ used to be.  You and a host of other essential employees at this unique moment in our history are doing what you do, what you’ve always done—holding everything together.

Thank you.