Rather than attempt to comprehensively map the data, stories, and conditions of all essential workers, this project takes a case study approach, beginning with the most under-represented of essential workers in the Pacific Northwest, those with the least visibility and greatest vulnerability, focusing on specific sectors and individuals to paint a broader portrait of essential worker experiences. Because so many essential workers labor in obscurity, without either fanfare or support, we will focus on some of the most precarious and underrecognized workers: migrant agricultural workers, in-home care workers, and incarcerated firefighters. Each of these fields is under-resourced, under-paid, and under-protected in terms of health and safety. These conditions were true before the COVID-19 pandemic and then the virus arrived and raged through these populations due to the lack of structural protections and the need—both societal and personal—to continue reporting to work. While the idea sparked from the pandemic’s focus on essential work, and the obvious gaps in what kinds of work and workers were celebrated and protected, the vision for what work has and will mean encompass times during, before, and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the pandemic, essential work sectors generally included: food and agriculture; emergency services; transportation, warehouse, and delivery; industrial, commercial, residential facilities and services; health care; government and community-based services; communications and IT; financial sector; energy sector; water and waste management; chemical sector; and critical manufacturing (McNichols and Poydock). Even in the midst of a crisis, these areas need to remain functioning to maintain public safety and the social contract. As a result, they are considered “essential” and are therefore expected to continue during a crisis. 

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the concept of essential work, starting in the first wave of the crisis when grocery store workers and medical professionals found themselves applauded, serenaded from windows, and called heroes for continuing to show up for work. Yet even in that initial phase of the pandemic, other workers continued their in-person work with much less fanfare, particularly workers in home care and in food and agriculture. As the pandemic dragged on, the conversation expanded to include child care labor: in schools, day cares, and the unpaid and often unrecognized labor of family members–particularly working mothers who struggled as never before to balance the demands of work and child care.

USDA (left); USFS, BRIAN BULL/KLCC (right)

A class system quickly emerged (or was merely reinforced) when talking about essential work during the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, essential workers represent 34-43% of the U.S. workforce. They generally earn low wages, have insecure or no benefits, and struggle with the most precarious job security and working conditions of any segment of American labor. Many have limited access to financial, health, legal, and familial support systems. Many essential workers lack workplace protections extended in other sectors or the language skills and cultural knowledge to self-advocate and access available resources (Reid, Ronda-Perez, and Schenker). In the PNW, these conditions are especially dangerous for recent Latinx immigrants from Mexico and Central America who remain undocumented or on migrant-labor visas, and for workers in the carceral system, who have few choices about when and how they labor. During the pandemic, these workers continued to labor in person but without the public praise and often without basic pandemic protections and structural support such as access to PPE, social distancing measures, and paid sick leave.

Data source: PBS News Hour

Many essential workers during the pandemic report feelings of cognitive dissonance or tension as they balanced the call to rise to the historical moment with a lack of social support and respect for the work they do. Astrid Villamil and Suzy D’Enbeau described two “micro-tensions” in the essential workers they interviewed, which they characterize as the “push and pull between work that demands both vulnerability and viability: (a) essential work as instrumental and disposable; and (b) workplace dignity as recognized and transgressed. Taken together, our analysis provides a snapshot of “essential work” during COVID-19, and demonstrates that organizational sustainability and vulnerability are pitted against each other, leaving essential workers with feelings of exhaustion, frustration, and a desire to leave the workforce” (n.p., emphasis mine). Socio-lingust Zachary Jaggers explains a similar phenomenon, with workers feeling like the work was essential while they themselves, the workers, were disposable due to the lack of care for their health and safety. “What some essential workers are feeling is a case … of macrocosmic synecdoche, in which ‘essential’ is only really applying to the ‘work’ part of ‘worker’” (n.p.). The linguistic obfuscation of focusing on “essential workers” causes cognitive dissonance as the actual workers often lacked essential support during the pandemic.

The untenable conditions of low status, essential work during the pandemic led to a phenomenon known as the “great resignation.” According to a 2022 study from the Pew Research Center, workers who have recently resigned most often cite “low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work” as the main reasons for leaving their employment, with 34% of workers without a college degree including the pandemic as among their reasons for choosing to quit. Workers also report increased happiness in the new jobs they have taken on, including better pay and more flexibility. It remains to be seen how conditions for workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent great resignation will reverberate in the years to come.     

Looking to the present and future beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, and its attendant increase in natural disasters and extreme weather, is also affecting essential, invisible workers in the PNW. Outdoor agricultural workers face increasing risks from extreme heat and bad air from wildfires, problems exacerbated by lack of legal protections specifically targeted at agricultural workers (as well as domestic workers). PNW states Washington and Oregon do have laws to protect agricultural workers during periods of extreme heat, while Idaho does not, nor are there any federal laws. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, extreme heat has killed more than 900 U.S. workers and caused serious illness in nearly 80,000 between 1991-2019. The Centers for Disease Control reported in 2008 that farmworkers were 20 times more likely to die from heat-related illness, a number that is easy to assume will increase with the rise in global temperatures. During the record-breaking “heat dome” that covered the PNW in summer 2021, an estimated 800 people died due to heat-related illness in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia in Canada. One who received particular attention was Sebastian Francisco Perez, a farmworker and Guatemalan immigrant who died while working in temperatures above 115 degrees. He was 38.

Agricultural workers in a field outside La Conner, Washington.

Firefighters work under similar threats, as the combination of global warming and poor forest management practices increases the frequency, intensity, and scale of wildfires. Accordingly, we see incarcerated laborers called on more and more to support wildfire mitigation efforts, which has connotations for both racial justice and human rights. Even in a region whiter than the rest of the U.S., the PNW incarcerates Black, Indigenous, and People of Color at higher rates than population demographics overall would suggest. For example, in Oregon Black people make up 2% of the population overall but 9% of the incarcerated, in Washington 5% of the population but 18% of the incarcerated, and in Idaho 1% of the population to 3% of the incarcerated. These racial disparities appear in other minoritized groups as well, making the use of incarcerated labor in response to increasing wildfires one of climate and racial justice. 

Care workers may be less specifically impacted by global warming. However, the population of residents over 65 is projected to nearly double through 2060, with Oregon tracking higher than the national average, which will lead to an increased need for care workers in homes and facilities. Global warming will also lead to increased migration to the region, meaning more people who need care and more who need work. As a population of laborers who are overwhelmingly female (9 in 10 workers), underpaid, and vulnerable to workplace abuse, care for care workers must be prioritized in labor policy going forward. 

Through case studies focused on workers in agriculture, carceral firefighting, and care work, this Atlas will share stories and information on the essential, vulnerable people who shape our region through their under-valued, often invisible labor. Curating these stories will, we intend, be a launchpad to envisioning and planning for a more equitable and sustainable future for all workers.