Why essential work is essentially forced labor (with Suresh Naidu)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What became known as “essential work” during the pandemic was really just forced labor, according to labor market economist Suresh Naidu. He shares employers' secret tricks for manipulating the labor market and explains how powerless most workers have become as a result. This episode was originally released in September 2020. Suresh Naidu is a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Columbia University as well as a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Twitter: @snaidunl ‘Essential’ workers are just forced laborers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/21/essential-workers-pay-wages-safety-unemployment Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, pitchfork economics listeners. I'm Ashley, one of the producers here at the show.
0:04.0	We're taking a break this summer, which means no new episodes, but in the meantime,
0:08.2	we're re-releasing some of our favorite past episodes.
0:11.7	Like this one, from September 2020 with labor market economist Suresh Naidu.
0:16.6	He outlines the hidden tricks of the course of labor market and explains how it's affected,
0:21.5	quote-unquote, essential workers during the pandemic.
0:25.0	Don't forget to follow the show on Apple's Spotify or wherever you listen,
0:28.1	and please leave us a five-star rating or review.
0:32.3	The bottom dropped out of the labor market for low and middle-income workers.
0:38.6	A long time ago, it's just that the pandemic made it even clearer.
0:43.6	So you can't go to your employer and say, hey, if you don't give me a raise,
0:47.9	I'm going to quit because the employer knows that there's no place for you to go.
0:51.6	So is that sense in having no other options but to work that you were forced labor?
1:03.6	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle,
1:06.8	this is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what
1:12.6	and why.
1:13.5	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
1:22.5	I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:29.8	So Nick, I think there's been kind of a theme, an inadvertent theme to our podcast
1:36.0	the past few weeks.
1:37.6	Yeah, the demise of worker power and the massive accumulation of both legal,
1:46.0	political, and economic power at the top that defines American life today.
	...

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