Robert Reich to 'essential workers': When this is over, go on strike
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It’s the second time the same FedEx driver has delivered a large box of wine to my doorstep. Only this time, as I thanked him from behind my screen storm door, he wasn’t looking particularly happy. He was in a hurry and he quickly laid the box down, jumpiRobert Reich to 'essential workers': When this is over, go on strike
It’s the second time the same FedEx driver has delivered a large box of wine to my doorstep. Only this time, as I thanked him from behind my screen storm door, he wasn’t looking particularly happy. He was in a hurry and he quickly laid the box down, jumping back into his truck to continue down the street to his next delivery. Like other workers this country has deemed “essential” to maintain a semblance of normality and satisfy our seemingly bottomless appetites for patently non-essential goods such as my wine, my son’s sunglasses, and my wife’s paperback books, he was doing his job delivering these and other items to my doorstep not out of any sense of selfless heroism, but because he has to pay the rent. I have no idea what working conditions he has to deal with back at the distribution center where he and others loaded my wine into his truck. I have no idea how far apart the people who received my wine from California and sorted it among the 10,000 other packages being delivered that day were made to stand, or what kind of protective gear they were provided. I do know that, like a disproportionate number of so-called “essential” employees making life bearable for me during this pandemic that they are probably Latinx or African American, just like the young woman at the Rite-Aid pharmacy this morning where I picked up some Windex and Diet Dr. Pepper for my wife, and just like the woman who helped me yesterday at the grocery store when the self-checkout scanner refused to believe I had properly bagged my vegetables. And I know that all of these people stand a far greater chance of dying in the next two weeks than I do. Read more