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.  

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Decades of austerity, sociologist Jamie K. McCallum shows, have left frontline workers vulnerable to employer abuse, lacking government protections, and increasingly furious. Through firsthand research conducted as the pandemic unfolded, McCallum traces the evolution of workers’ militancy, showing how their struggles for safer workplaces, better pay and health care, and the right to unionize have benefited all Americans and spurred a radical new phase of the labor movement. This is essential reading for understanding the past, present, and future of the working class. 

About the speakers

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.

Esteban Kelly is the Executive Director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and has offered visionary leadership and creative strategy in economic democracy and co-op movements for over twenty years. He is a co-founder and worker-owner of AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance), a worker co-op that builds capacity for social justice movements and projects through intersectional training, consulting and facilitation.

About the book

“This book shows us without a doubt that labor struggles are racial justice struggles. Most importantly, Essential is a call to action: we need increased workplace militancy to challenge capitalism. As workers, our labor—and our ability to withhold it—is our power.”—Chris Smalls, president and founder, Amazon Labor Union 

“A powerful case for the imperative of radical reform.”—Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Poor People’s Movements  

“McCallum goes beyond the cliche that the pandemic revealed the existing faultlines and inequalities of our society. Rather, the dangers and burdens borne by ‘essential workers’ are reshaping the fabric of social relations, creating new forms of exploitation and struggle. Closely observed and passionately written, Essential is a necessary intervention.”—Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift 

“By combining rich storytelling from the front lines of the pandemic and a deep historical lens, Essential brings to life a critical reality: Capitalism is quite literally killing us, and only through worker solidarity across our economy can we protect ourselves and advance our future.”—Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO 

“Essential tells the gripping, deeply researched story of how millions were able to organize for change during the crisis...showing how worker power can help build us a better world."—Bhaskar Sunkara, author of The Socialist Manifesto 

"Interweaving deeply affecting personal stories with whip-smart structural analysis, this is a revealing diagnosis of America’s ills and an invigorating call for change.”—Publishers Weekly 

“A thoughtful consideration of work and the workaday world that brings the class struggle to the fore."—Kirkus 

“Essential is a compelling, in-depth look into the heroism of the nation’s frontline workers during the pandemic…McCallum voices his hopes that this militancy could have transformed America, but he explains why it fell short—and what still needs to be done to lift America’s workers and create a far fairer, less exploitative economy.”—Steven Greenhouse, author of Beaten Down, Worked Up 

“An invigorating, urgent book that is, to borrow its title, essential reading.”—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains