The expendable worker

See updates and errata through April 19, 2022, at end of post.


Since the novel coronavirus began to spread and when most people were told to stay home whether they still had jobs or not, it’s been hard to miss that so-called “essential” workers, facing shortages of personal protective equipment,[1] were in fact expendable workers.

This, of course, is really nothing new. Capitalism’s roots in slavery[2] reappear in neoliberalism’s view of labor unions as the only monopolies that should be subject to antitrust action,[3] in its notion of “efficiency” being seemingly constrained to reduced labor costs, and in its abuse of workers by employers such as Amazon and Walmart.[4] If, in capitalism, workers are inherently means to rich people’s ends,[5] neoliberalism celebrates the relationship with a “greed is good” mantra that applies only to rich people’s greed—workers’ jobs will be “outsourced” to places where human beings work for less. And less. And less. And less.

“Essential” workers’ jobs are those that can’t be outsourced overseas. They require human beings here. Grocery store shelves must be stocked. Cashiers must collect the money. Medical workers must treat people where they are. Taxi and ride-share drivers must transport people up from where they are.

But with so many jobs outsourced overseas, there is a surplus of people to do what we now recognize as “essential” work.[6] “Essential” workers often have no leverage and Max Weber’s point that market relations inherently privilege whomever has the greater power to say no, and that the benefits and the handicaps that accrue from each transaction are cumulative, making the rich richer and the poor poorer[7] achieves full culmination. And so it is that for a brief time, we noticed that “essential” workers were often the most poorly paid.[8]

If there is one small consolation to living alone, it is that in a time of pandemic, I have no one dear to me to infect. And given my own medical history, it is in fact likely that I will not know if I contract COVID-19. I would be asymptomatic, possibly a carrier.[9] So if, because ride-share driving is so marginal,[10] I had to work because I could not afford not to, there was also the consolation that I could.

And so I have. And as ride-share companies insisted that drivers should wear masks, my mother came through, sewing some that are both attractive and comfortable. I wear them faithfully.

Not all of my passengers do, even now that Uber and Lyft tell passengers that they must. The only reason that has any legitimacy at all is that with the criminalization of Black bodies, “an African American who wears a mask could be considered guilty of a crime.”[11] Probably the most pathetic is that many men view mask-wearing as “effeminate.”[12] But now as infection rates are spiking in some places in the country,[13] there can be no excuses.

There can no longer be an excuse that some people may still be uninformed or misinformed about the need to wear masks or the need for social distancing (see update, July 6, 2020, below). Too much has been said by medical authorities and in the media. People who refuse to comply are expressing a moral preference for the old and the vulnerable to die[14] and for others to be sick. They are choosing to kill, not through negligence, but with malice aforethought, with a moral preference for evil.

Some people still refuse to comply and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where I live and drive, is one of the places seeing a substantial spike, largely because people are making that moral choice for evil.[15] Many cases are being traced to bars.[16] Some kids are even competing to be infected.[17]

A characteristic of the criminally insane is that when they commit a crime they may do so failing to recognize the difference between right and wrong.[18] A characteristic of a psychopath, on the other hand, is that they may choose evil as a means to an end.[19]

My non-compliant passengers are not criminally insane. They are psychopaths.

So I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised that when I report passengers to Uber for not wearing masks, I receive a notification from Uber that the company has received a report that I wasn’t wearing a mask (figure 1).

Fig. 1. Screenshot of Uber notification received by the author, July 3, 2020, taken on July 4.

Uber requires drivers to take a “selfie” with their masks on at the beginning of every day. It does not require the same of passengers. And I have only received these notifications (figure 1) when I reported passengers for not wearing masks, in fact, on the very same days.

Passengers may lose access to the platform. They probably can manage to regain it by various means. I, on the other hand, could lose the only job I can get, even with a Ph.D.[20]

The message here is unmistakable. For all the pretense, passengers may put my life in jeopardy and I may not complain. Not only my job, but my very life is expendable.


Update, July 6, 2020: The cartoon, featuring a large group of people, drinking and not wearing masks (figure 2), reaches me via a Telegraph newsletter.

Fig. 2. Cartoon, apparently by Peter Schrank, via the Times, July 6, 2020, fair use.

Apparently the problem with bars and COVID-19 spikes is not limited to the U.S.[21] or Allegheny County,[22] but is international in scope, at least including Britain.

I picked up a couple of passengers yesterday, who were ducking across the county line to an open bar (they’re currently closed in Allegheny County[23]), who insisted that the cause had to be the the anti-racism protests that sprang up in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. I hear shit like that the hospitals are inflating the case counts to get funding. I hear lots of shit.

I have previously commented on a crisis of illegitimate authority, in which because authorities have abused their authority, they are not believed even now when we need to believe them.[24] And the problem is compounded in southwestern Pennsylvania, particularly among the age group of my passengers yesterday, by the collapse of the steel industry.[25] But at some point, when people are dying, you have to draw a line. People are supposed to be adults and part of that entails leaving fantasy behind, even if it means maybe you shouldn’t be going to that fucking bar.

I’m seriously tempted to start asking people who float various conspiracy theories like these whom they’re trying to persuade, me or themselves? Because an awful lot of people would have to be lying for these ‘theories,’ which they’re pulling from their asses, to be true.

Correction, July 8, 2020: I have revised my characterization of psychopaths based on a WebMD article[26] and my characterization of the criminally insane based on a legal definition.[27] Citations have also been added.

Update, July 13, 2020: The New York Times has noticed Allegheny County’s spike in COVID-19 cases:[28]

“I knew we would have a bump,” said [Pittsburgh] Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat. “The question is whether or not it would exceed the numbers that we had seen earlier. It not only exceeded them it doubled and I think tripled them. It wasn’t supposed to do that.”[29]

At the very end of the article, there’s a bit of discussion around the terminology “green phase,”[30] the nomenclature adopted by Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf, and the phase under which restaurants and bars were allowed to open for indoor service:[31]

“To anybody from a 2-year-old to a 100-year-old, ‘green’ means go,” Ms. [Bethany] Hallam said “We went to green and everybody went wild.”

“The world is not green,” she said, “until we have a cure or a vaccine.”[32]

I’ve heard something like this from my passengers. But at this point, I just think people are being psychopaths.[33] Because my observation isn’t so much like a light switch between “yellow” and “green” phase, but rather a gradual diminution of people’s compliance that I saw as traffic steadily increased, people started gathering more and more, and as I wondered how sustainable this lockdown was.

This is not about people misinterpreting the signal. It’s about people using any excuse, really any rationalization, they can find to flout the rules, entirely regardless of the fact that they’re killing people, entirely regardless of the fact that they’re being psychopaths.

As a way of exploring this, suppose I put to you the following question: Would you go to a bar if to do so would kill one or more people?

Your answer would likely be a resounding no. You might even question whether I was a psychopath for entertaining this as an ethical question.

But people in Allegheny County have been going to bars and socializing, defying social distancing requirements and face mask requirements,[34] in full knowledge that to do so will kill people. They are even competing to catch COVID-19.[35] They are pursuing their own ends without regard even to grievous consequences.[36] This is far beyond “selfish,” and to call this anything less than “psychopathy” is to drain the latter word of any meaning.

Update, July 22, 2020: My usual caution about ludicrously low response rates[37] applies to poll results indicating many Amerikkkans think COVID-19 death tolls have been exaggerated.[38] And I simply can’t find it credible that people actually believe this shit. I think they’re desperately trying to persuade themselves.

Update, July 29, 2020: The Washington Post records widespread opposition to wearing masks and notes that being Republican or a Trumpster has something to do with it. But the story really fails to explain the opposition,[39] with an earlier story claiming that “[a]ntipathy to masks is deeply ingrained in American culture, unlike in some Asian countries, where many people wear them whenever they are in public, as protection against bugs and air pollution.”[40]

Bullshit. Where is this history of antipathy to wearing masks? If this antipathy in fact exists, then how the fuck do we explain Halloween? And if it is indeed “cultural,” or as that earlier story suggests, rooted in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan,[41] then why is opposition most prominent among white supremacists and present only among conservatives assholes? The subject hadn’t even come up, probably since the Spanish flu in 1918. Psychopaths have pulled this out of their asses possibly since if we’re going to kill grandma,[42] we’d best get it done quickly—and I do hear suggestions that we should let the coronavirus “sweep through” the population from my passengers, as if “herd immunity” to COVID-19 was a thing[43]—so she isn’t an issue anymore.

Update, August 4, 2020: So my mother sent me a New York Times article reporting that there was opposition to wearing masks in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic[44] similar to what we’re seeing today.[45] There’s still no real explanation for the phenomenon. Which means we’re left with Priya Elan’s claim that somehow masks appear to threaten masculinity: “It seems that in certain circles,” Elan writes, “wearing a mask has been conflated with the kind of archaic, knuckle-dragging rhetoric that casts wearing pink or having a cat on a dating app as effeminate.”[46] Which is to say that being a man somehow means making everyone around you sick. Spare me.

Update, September 24, 2020: Uber seems to be cracking down. My previous bad experience with reporting riders who failed to wear masks[47] was not repeated when I reported some mask-refusing riders in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, who I thought were likely to give me a bad rating anyway because I gave them a lecture about properly wearing masks—one was not covering her nose, the other wasn’t wearing one at all. And Uber has sent an email to both riders and drivers promising that riders who are reported for failing to wear masks will be required to take selfies showing that they’re wearing masks in the future. The threat I had directed at me now clearly applies to them.

My suspicion—Uber has not confirmed this—is that riders had the opportunity to report me for not wearing a mask, when in fact I was, in retaliation because they have longer to rate a driver than the driver has to rate them. Drivers have an opportunity to rate riders at the end of the ride and must do so before they can continue on to another ride. Riders have somewhat longer and I’m guessing that Uber sent notifications that they had been reported for not wearing masks right away, allowing riders who hadn’t already rated their drivers to retaliate. I’m guessing this bug has now been fixed.

One of the challenges I face as a driver who happens to have a Ph.D. in Human Science is of maintaining my academic and intellectual integrity even when it is impolitic to do so. When asked, I must tell the truth as best I can, even when my riders might not approve of my answers. To do otherwise would be to compromise my integrity in the one area of my life where I can point to an actual accomplishment and this is something I cannot do.

This does not mean I say something when I am not asked, although I might, and sometimes do. But if asked, I cannot knowingly misinform.

Update, October 2, 2020: In the previous update (September 24, 2020), I thought a bug allowing riders longer time to rate drivers than drivers have to rate riders, thus allowing riders to retaliate against drivers who report them for not wearing a mask, might have been fixed. My experience now is that riders still have a means to retaliate. And by the way, eating in the car, which I prohibit anyway, requires lowering your mask.

Update, December 20, 2020: I explain neoliberalism’s antipathy to workers in “A piper needs paying.”

Also, the KDKA Television headline implies that the story covers multiple Pittsburgh restaurants defying Governor Tom Wolf’s order forbidding indoor dining but, despite allegedly originating in Washington County, and while it is true that other restaurants are in at least rhetorical defiance,[48] the story is really only about Al’s Cafe in Bethel Park.[49] Bethel Park is in Allegheny County.

The restaurant’s owner, Rod Ambrogi, has previously figured in organizing restauranteur opposition to Wolf’s COVID-19 restrictions, which Wolf simply blew off.[50] Ambrogi claims he’s doing it to support his employees,[51] and while I don’t know what he pays his employees, Pennsylvania’s tipped minimum wage is a mere $2.83 per hour. In general, workers have absorbed all of the risk of their employers’ defiance while seeing little in the way of tips because there haven’t been many customers,[52] especially when social distancing rules are observed, as Ambrogi claims to be doing,[53] limiting the number of tables.

Ambrogi’s comparison of his workers to those in other retail establishments[54] is specious. Diners lower their masks to consume food and beverage. Grocery and other store customers are required to keep their masks on at all times.

I’m having a very hard time swallowing that there have not been more severe consequences for this willful defiance in absolute disregard for health and safety. I think Wolf should be responding to these reports by sending in Pennsylvania State Troopers, jailing the restaurant owners, permanently revoking their licenses, and forbidding them from ever having licenses again.

Of course, given the likely existence of right-wing militia in the area,[55] Wolf might be deciding that discretion is the better part of valor.


Update, May 14, 2021: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now largely confirmed[56] that fully vaccinated people need no longer be concerned about becoming seriously ill with COVID-19,[57] at long last admitting that fully vaccinated folks don’t need masks outdoors or in uncrowded indoor situations.[58]

The new guidance is likely to open the door to confusion, since there is no surefire way for businesses or others to distinguish between those who are fully vaccinated and those who are not.

“Millions of Americans are doing the right thing and getting vaccinated, but essential workers are still forced to play mask police for shoppers who are unvaccinated and refuse to follow local COVID safety measures,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. “Are they now supposed to become the vaccination police?”

[Rochelle] Walensky and [Joe] Biden said people who are not fully vaccinated should continue to wear masks indoors.[59]

In part due to conservative objections,[60] we don’t have vaccine passports. So it’s a real question how, for example, I can be sure the assholes who remove their masks once they’re in my car have been vaccinated. I don’t actually need to worry, because I am fully vaccinated,[61] but I’m still having to wear a mask as an Uber driver all day every day. And I’m assuming it will still be a cold day in hell before I can stop.

Pennsylvania rapidly revised its order on mask-wearing[62] to match the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines relaxing mask requirements for fully vaccinated people,[63] but Pittsburgh area businesses remain uncertain as to how to implement the guidance without a way to know who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t.[64]

There’s simply no alternative here to some form of vaccine passport that can be very rapidly and easily checked. It really is unclear, in the absence of such,[65] how this is supposed to work. And the decision has earned criticism[66] even from at least one expert who has criticized the CDC for excessive caution. In Pennsylvania, the order is paired with Governor Tom Wolf’s promise that once 70 percent of the state’s population is vaccinated, mask restrictions will be lifted,[67] but nationally, Leana Wen argues that the “honor code” in fact removes an incentive to get vaccinated for the many who have been in denial all along.[68]

I haven’t heard from either Uber or Lyft on this and it’s unclear to me when the inside of a car would be considered a “crowded situation.” But it’s sure to be a problem.


Update, April 18, 2022: My guess is that the mask rule struck down by a federal judge (a Donald Trump appointee)[69] is the basis for Uber and Lyft mask requirements.

Uber and Lyft have been requiring both drivers and passengers to wear masks (not necessarily correctly) and have closed the front passenger seat, reducing the passenger capacity of most cars to three (plus the driver).

I have not heard any reaction from either company to this ruling. I’ve had to turn down a number of rides because there were too many passengers. One even attempted to invoke a Google search result for an UberX ride saying that the limit was four passengers. Nope, no dice. Uber directly says three.

But with this ruling,[70] I don’t see it being tenable for drivers to continue to enforce these rules. Passengers do get violent.[71] And as before, passengers can report drivers for not complying with the rules, but really not the other way around.[72]


Update, April 19, 2022: As I anticipated,[73] Uber has dropped masking requirements for passengers and drivers and reopened the front passenger seat.[74] I have not yet heard about Lyft’s reaction to yesterday’s court ruling striking down a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule requiring masks be worn on public transportation.[75]


Update #2, April 19, 2022: This morning, I learned[76] that Uber had dropped the mask requirement for riders and drivers[77] in response to a federal court ruling striking down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule requiring masks on public transportation.[78] I had not learned what Lyft’s response would be, but, quite unsurprisingly, they have also dropped the rule.[79] The front passenger seat has now also been reopened for passenger use on both services.[80]

In response to a question on Twitter,[81] drivers had no say either in the original imposition of these rules or in their withdrawal. The gig economy is a neoliberal’s wet dream. Its very point is an utterly disempowered and desperate work force.

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  2. [2]Sven Beckert, “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2014, https://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/
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[4]Daniel D’Addario, “Amazon is worse than Walmart,” Salon, July 30, 2013, https://www.salon.com/control/2013/07/30/how_amazon_is_worse_than_wal_mart/; Timothy Egan, “The Corporate Daddy,” New York Times, June 19, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/timothy-egan-walmart-starbucks-and-the-fight-against-inequality.html; Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed (New York: Owl, 2001); Josh Eidelson, “Wal-Mart faces warehouse horror allegations and federal Labor Board complaint,” Salon, November 19, 2013, https://www.salon.com/test/2013/11/18/breaking_wal_mart_faces_warehouse_horror_allegations_and_federal_labor_board_complaint/; Josh Eidelson, “Tens of thousands protest, over 100 arrested in Black Friday challenge to Wal-Mart,” Salon, November 30, 2013, https://www.salon.com/test/2013/11/30/tens_of_thousands_protest_over_100_arrested_in_black_friday_challenge_to_wal_mart/; Josh Eidelson, “Finally paying for Wal-Mart’s sins: Wage theft settlement yields millions,” Salon, December 16, 2013, https://www.salon.com/test/2013/12/16/finally_paying_for_wal_marts_sins_wage_theft_settlement_yields_millions/; Josh Eidelson, “Freezing for Wal-Mart: Sub-zero warehouse temperatures spur Indiana work stoppage,” Salon, January 14, 2014, https://www.salon.com/test/2014/01/13/freezing_for_wal_mart_sub_zero_warehouse_temperatures_spur_indiana_work_stoppage/; Josh Eidelson, “Amazon Keeps Unions Out By Keeping Workers in Fear, Says Organizer,” Alternet, January 22, 2014, https://www.alternet.org/2014/01/amazon-keeps-unions-out-keeping-workers-fear-says-organizer/; Nichole Gracely, “‘Being homeless is better than working for Amazon,’” Guardian, November 28, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/28/being-homeless-is-better-than-working-for-amazon; Steven Greenhouse, “The Changing Face of Temporary Employment,” New York Times, August 31, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/upshot/the-changing-face-of-temporary-employment.html; Erin Hatton, “The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy,” New York Times, January 26, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/; Simon Head, “Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers,” Salon, February 23, 2014, https://www.salon.com/control/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/; Paul Jaskunas, “The Tyranny of the Forced Smile,” New York Times, February 14, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/jobs/the-tyranny-of-the-forced-smile.html; Allison Kilkenny, “Ohio Walmart Holds Food Drive For Its Own Employees,” Nation, November 18, 2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/ohio-walmart-holds-food-drive-its-own-employees/; Molly Kinder, “Trump’s State of the Union declared we’re in a ‘blue-collar boom.’ Workers don’t agree,” Brookings, February 6, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/02/05/trumps-state-of-the-union-declared-were-in-a-blue-collar-boom-workers-dont-agree/; Paul Krugman, “The Plight of the Employed,” New York Times, December 24, 2013, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/the-plight-of-the-employed/; Paul Krugman, “The Fear Economy,” New York Times, December 26, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/27/opinion/krugman-the-fear-economy.html; Danielle Kurtzleben, “Read McDonald’s workers’ shocking harassment and discrimination complaints — and why they’re so important,” Vox, January 22, 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/7873661/mcdonalds-lawsuit-harassment-discrimination; Edward McClelland, “You call this a middle class? “I’m trying not to lose my house,’” Salon, March 1, 2014, https://www.salon.com/test/2014/03/01/you_call_this_a_middle_class_i%E2%80%99m_trying_not_to_lose_my_house/; Mac McClelland, “I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave,” Mother Jones, March/April 2012, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor/; Nathaniel Mott, “From Amazon warehouse workers to Google bus drivers, it’s tough working a non-tech job at a tech company,” Pando, October 9, 2014, https://pando.com/2014/10/09/from-amazon-warehouse-workers-to-google-bus-drivers-its-tough-working-a-non-tech-job-at-a-tech-company/; Marc Pilisuk with Jennifer Achord Rountree, Who Benefits From Global Violence and War (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008).; Ari Rabin-Havt, “Wal-Mart flunks its fact-check: The truth behind its sarcastic response to the Times,” Salon, June 25, 2014, https://www.salon.com/control/2014/06/25/walmart_flunks_its_fact_check_the_truth_behind_its_sarcastic_response_to_the_times/; Michael Sainato, “‘I’m not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse,” Guardian, February 5, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse; Alex Seitz-Wald, “Amazon is everything wrong with our new economy,” Salon, July 30, 2013, https://www.salon.com/test/2013/07/30/amazon_is_everything_wrong_with_our_new_economy/; Alana Semuels, “As employers push efficiency, the daily grind wears down workers,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2013, https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-harsh-work-20130407-story.html; Alana Semuels, “How the relationship between employers and workers changed,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2013, https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-apr-07-la-fi-mo-harsh-work-history-20130405-story.html; Alana Semuels, “Tougher workplace makes home life worse too,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2013, https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-apr-07-la-fi-mo-harsh-work-history-20130405-story.html; Spencer Soper, “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse,” Lehigh Valley Morning Call, September 18, 2011, https://www.mcall.com/business/mc-xpm-2011-09-18-mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html; Scott Sernau, Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities in a Global Economy, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2006); Lindsay Wise, “Report: Temp jobs at all-time high in U.S.,” McClatchy, September 2, 2014, https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article24772543.html
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