The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred multiple crises in our country including a public health crisis and an economic one.  The need to protect the health of Americans and the need to protect their livelihoods might seem to require disparate approaches.  But, as unlikely as it may seem, we believe that rewriting the rules of how workers can act collectively is a key solution to both. 

Why? COVID-19 poses particular and grave challenges to working people, and, in the context of the pandemic, threats to workers’ health are a threat to public health. As has become painfully obvious, moreover, the costs of the pandemic are being borne disproportionately by low-wage workers, a population made up primarily of workers of color. As they work to keep the economy moving, these workers are being asked to put their lives on the line in ways that are both unacceptable and unnecessary, especially as the country faces the many facets of our nation’s structural racism.