Essential Workers

Description

Ian Gough:

"One aspect of the economy thrown into revolutionary relief is the nature of economic value – what activities have value, are essential or critical to survival, prosperity and justice in some way, and what are wasteful or destructive.

This was brought home to me by a mundane list published by the UK government on March 19th, 2020: Guidance for schools, childcare providers, colleges and local authorities in England on maintaining educational provision. It listed those groups of essential workers whose children would be entitled to continuing educational provision after the shutdown of schools, preschools and colleges. In so doing it set out the sectors of the economy ‘critical to the COVID-19 response’. The list is pasted into the last column of the table below. The sectors extend way beyond health and care or emergency services. They include farmers, supermarket staff, workers in water, electricity, gas and oil, teachers, telecommunication workers, transport staff, workers in law and justice, religious staff, social security staff and retail banking staff.

It is the first official list of essential occupations since the Schedule of Reserved Occupations (Provisional) published in January 1939, and much revised during the course of the Second World War. There are differences of course between the two lists, such as the prominence of munitions workers in 1939. Another noticeable difference is the absence of industrial and manufacturing workers in the 2020 list – a reflection of the tremendous de-industrialisation of the UK economy and the export of supply chains to China and the rest of the world. Reserved occupations in 1939 included a vast supply chain of colliers, foundry workers, toolmakers, machinists, shipbuilders, engineers, railwaymen, bargemen and even tree fellers. (My father was excluded from national service as an engineering fitter in Stevenage.) But there are many parallels: farmers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and so on.

These essential sectors covered a similar proportion of the working population. Around five million men (and it was designed for men to begin with) were in scheduled occupations in 1940, and around seven million adults are covered by the 2020 list, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies , equivalent to around 22% of the total labour force.

Identifying essential workers in this way has been anathema to conventional neo-classical economic theory, where any activity is deemed valuable or productive if it is remunerated, whatever its social value or disvalue." (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/times-climate-breakdown-how-do-we-value-what-matters/)