COLUMNS

Commentary: Essential workers are essentially ignored during COVID pandemic

Shaelyn Frost
Guest Columnist

The COVID-19 pandemic has done a fantastic job of exposing the flaws in our society and breaking down systems we took for granted before everything shut down in March of 2020.

Essential workers had to risk their health and the health of their families to take care of us, but many of them went without the support and praise they deserved. Undoubtedly healthcare workers were, and continue to be, the superheroes of the pandemic, but I want to talk about the unsung saviors.

Shaelyn Frost

Without the postal workers, the delivery drivers, the public transit workers, or the grocery store workers, our society would not have survived even the first week of pandemic lockdown.

I have worked for a local grocery store for nearly seven years and I can say for a fact that the way we treat our essential workers in NH and in the US as a whole is absolutely atrocious. Most of my co-workers have one or more chronic health problems and almost all of them have families to support. I know cancer survivors and diabetics who worked through the pandemic, very literally risking their lives to keep our shelves stocked and keep our communities fed. They had to deal with unprecedented product shortages and empty shelves. They handled the unending harassment and frustration from customers that came with these struggles with grace and patience.

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Grocery store workers are in close contact with hundreds of people in our communities all day, every day. For these essential jobs, it is impossible to work from home. Other jobs, like teachers and office workers, have the option of working in safety remotely, isolating and quarantining to keep themselves safe; the same cannot be said of frontline workers. It is absolutely shocking to me that my company cut hazard pay (which was only about a dollar per hour) before summer 2020 and has failed to increase compensation to reflect the stressors of working through the chaos of these past two years. My coworkers and I are not alone in this, many companies have long since stopped providing hazard pay, even as cases surge and regulations begin to creep back in. Essential workers need protections and higher wages.

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I am incredibly lucky; I am a recent college graduate who lives with my parents, and my part-time position allows me to work the hours I choose. If I decided that the health risks were too great, I would be able to go on a leave of absence like I did at the beginning of the pandemic. Most do not have this luxury; almost all of my co-workers have families to provide for, a task that is about to become even more difficult with the ending of the child tax credit program. If you don’t come to work, you don’t get paid, and very few have the privilege of being able to survive without an income. In failing to raise the minimum wage and secure workers health benefits at the state level, New Hampshire is telling the very workers who have proven to be essential during this ongoing crisis that they are not important enough to the economic and physical recovery of our state to be granted the basic human decency of a living wage and health care during a pandemic.

If the state does not step up to secure these rights, we must pass them federally. We still have hope of passing the Build Back Better bill, which will extend premium assistance through the ACA, ensure paid leave for employees, and extend the child tax credit that so many have come to rely on in these past six months. NH can do better by our essential workers, and we need to start now.

Shaelyn Frost, 24, from Dover, graduated from UNH in May 2021 with dual majors in French and International Affairs. She is currently working customer service at a local grocery chain, where she has worked since July 2015.