Why?

Dying to Work

By Robert Reich

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Most of Europe and all fifty states of the US are in various stages of “reopening.” But why, exactly?

The pandemic is still with us. 

After the first tentative steps to ease the lockdown in Germany – the most successful large European country to halt the spread of the virus thanks to massive testing – the disease has shown signs of spreading faster.

At least Germany is opening slowly and waiting until almost no new cases are occurring there, as is the rest of the EU.  

By contrast, the United States – with the highest death rate and most haphazard response to Covid-19 of any advanced nation – is opening chaotically, each state on its own. 

Some states are lifting restrictions overnight, although relatively few tests for the virus have been conducted. 

Researchers expect the reopenings to cause thousands of additional deaths.

Two weeks after Texas Governor Greg Abbott began reopening the state’s economy, Texas experienced the single-highest rise in cases since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Since Nebraska reopened May 4, Covid-19 cases in Colfax County alone have surged 1,390 percent

Experts warn that Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama and several other places in the South that have rapidly reopened their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks.

Last week, Ford Motor reopened its large North American assembly plants. The following day Ford closed and then reopened its Chicago Assembly plant twice in less than 24 hours after two workers tested positive for Covid-19. Then Ford temporarily shut its Dearborn, Michigan Truck plant after an employee tested positive, then promptly resumed operations.

So why “reopen” so abruptly, when Covid-19 continues to claim lives?

The main reason given is to get the economy moving again. But this begs the question of why an economy exists in the first place, other than to promote the well-being of people within it.

Both Ford plants are vital to its profitability, and Ford’s profitability is important to jobs in the Midwest. But surely the well-being of Ford workers, their families, the people of Chicago and Dearborn and others in the Midwest are more important.  

A related argument is that workers are clamoring to return to their jobs. “People want to get back to work,” Trump has asserted repeatedly since March. Fox News host Sean Hannity claims people are “dying to get back to work,” seemingly unaware of the irony of his words.

Polls suggest otherwise. Americans whose jobs require them to leave home express trepidation about doing so; 60 percent fear exposing their families to COVID-19.

Many Americans must return to work because they need the money, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Rich economies can support their people for years if necessary. During World War II, America shut down most of its economy for nearly four years.

The obstacle right now is a lack of political will to provide such support, at least until enough testing and tracing provide reasonable evidence the pandemic is contained.

Although nearly half of all U.S. households report that they’ve lost employment income since mid-March, the extra jobless benefits enacted by Congress are only now starting to trickle out. Both Trump and Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refuse to extend them beyond July 31, when they’re scheduled to end.

Meanwhile, states are denying benefits to anyone whose company has called them back.

Finally, Trump and his enablers argue that reopening is a matter of “freedom.” He has called on citizens to “liberate” their states from public-health restrictions, and Fox News personalities have decried what they call denials of “basic freedoms.”

Armed protesters have stormed the Michigan state capitol demanding the “freedom” to work. At the Kentucky statehouse, protesters shouted “We want to work!” and “We’re free citizens!”

But the supposed “freedom” to work is a cruel joke when people are forced to choose between putting food on the table or risking their lives. 

It’s the same perverse ideology that put workers in harm’s way in the dawn of the industrial age, when robber barons demanded that workers be “free” to work in dangerous factories twelve hours a day.

In truth, there is no good reason to reopen when the pandemic is still raging – not getting the economy moving again, or workers clamoring to return to work, or the cost of extended income support, or because workers should be “free” to endanger themselves.

Let’s be clear. The pressure to reopen the economy is coming from businesses that want to return to profitability, and from Trump, who wants to run for reelection in an economy that appears to be recovering.

Neither is reason enough.  

Robert Reich's latest book is "THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It," out March 24.
He is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written 17 other books, including the best sellers "Aftershock," "The Work of Nations," "Beyond Outrage," and "The Common Good." He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries "Inequality For All," and "Saving Capitalism," both now streaming on Netflix.