Nursing student, photo by
Joshua Mcknight
I was raised by one of the millions of women who then as well as now fill the most essential U.S. jobs, striking now because we hold one out of three jobs deemed essential—many millions in health care.
As the article points out, the “health care industry” comprises not only the millions working in hospitals but what Mignon Duffy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell calls “the care workforce”—all the women who “hold everything together”: caring for the old, the sick, babies and children. Women like the unnamed household helpers you are seeing in the fascinating Mrs. America who made it possible for Phyllis Schlafly and many other women then and now to hold down careers.
We up nine out of ten nurses now working endless hours. We provide the majority of respiratory therapists, and more than two-thirds of the workers at grocery store check-outs. And we are neither recognized or well-compensated; of the 5.8 million people working health care jobs that pay less than thirty thousand a year—not a living wage—half are non-white and 83 percent are women.
Is that why it’s called an industry?
The defining characteristic of industries in the U.S. today is that the workers do not belong to a union. The large and powerful union movement in this country was broken by government and big corporations decades ago. Now of the Democratic presidential candidates, only Elizabeth Warren, who is no longer running, addressed the issue of worker inequality, suggesting that union members should make up 40 percent of corporate boards.
Union busting has been going on forever, it seems, or so long that few people even notice anymore. The Supreme Court’s Lechmere Ruling in 1992 gave companies the power to forbid union organizers from setting foot on their property, forbidding leafletting and conversations with workers at their plants.
When we wonder why minimum wage has stagnated in this country for the past decade, we must look the death of unions.
Why does this matter to me or to the possibly prosperous readers of this post?
Because none of is would ever be able to do the work we do if millions of ill-paid women were not backing us up, at home, at the office, or in the hospitals.
I loved reading this today Sallie.
I remember while making the documentary for PBS Child Care in the Workplace with Ruth Fitzpatrick and Clay Nixon, I was privileged to visit the Striderite shoe factory in Chicago Ill.( Around 1980).
Striderite was one of the first companies to include childcare for it’s workforce which I learned from the incredible older woman guiding us those 2days that it was due to their strong union which had been fought for with a mighty consistent stance and a big workforce of women.
In my meditative movement practice of 5rhythms my body wisdom reminds me my feet walk on the skin of the mother. Feet first… So I certainly celebrate shoes.
Reminded by your offering today that we are not alone and it truly takes all of us in this life together, as now Kentucky Governor Andy reminds us each day at 5pm.
I just hope today and every day breathe dance, with feet or hands moving perhaps writing…to Mavis Staples
Singing….. You’re not alone. A big reminder of this humility for compassion and the due for care givers on this Earth Day 20/20.