Jamie K. McCallum is an author, teacher, and activist, focusing on labor and work issues around the world. He is currently associate professor of sociology at Middlebury College. His work has won scholarly awards and appeared in The Washington Post, Mother Jones, Jacobin, Dissent, In These Times, and other magazines. His next book, Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice, focuses on essential workers’ impact on US labor politics and will be published by Basic Books in late 2022. Follow him on Twitter @jamiekmccallum for infrequent retweets of socialist cat memes.

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

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 that American workers had simmered in discontent long before their anger boiled over.

In Essential, award-winning sociologist Jamie K. McCallum uncovers the deep roots of essential workers’ rage and reveals how their fight for better jobs during the pandemic revolutionized US labor politics. The outbreak of COVID-19 may have thrown American working life into a tumult, but McCallum shows that decades of inequality and austerity had already left essential workers vulnerable to employer abuse, lacking government protections, and increasingly furious. When the pandemic hit, they were primed to revolt.

Through firsthand research conducted as the pandemic unfolded, McCallum tracks the evolution of workers’ militancy, showing how their struggles for safer workplaces, better pay and universal health care, and the right to unionize benefitted all Americans and spurred a radical new phase of the labor movement. In other words, during the pandemic, workers breathed new life into the old slogan: An injury to one is an injury to all.

Combining rigorous research with immersive storytelling, McCallum’s book is essential reading for understanding the past, present, and future of the American working class.