Essential workers risk their lives to keep our societies running. Don’t just thank them, pay them more

The coronavirus pandemic has shown how much we need those who care for our sick, deliver our food, bring us our packages and take our rubbish away
But acknowledging the difficulty of their work and applauding their efforts is not enough – it’s high time we actually valued them too, says Hari Raj

Hari Raj

Published: 9:00am, 15 Jan 2021

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In between the lockdowns and quarantines, the days and months when time dilated into infinity, and the dawning hope of vaccines, there has been one constant: essential workers.

The term is wide-ranging, encompassing frontline health care workers alongside the people employed in supermarkets and petrol stations, sanitation workers, and those who deliver food and the flood of packages we’ve all ordered online. The inclusion of these previously disparate jobs under a pandemic-induced banner of dire necessity has brought to light a singular truth: so much of the infrastructure of our civilisation is maintained by those paid so very little.

Most hourly pay estimates for delivery workers in Malaysia are in the region of US$4, for example, while supermarket employees in South Korea get around US$9 an hour. With Covid-19 cases still surging and a global roll-out of vaccines expected to be years away, the gap between the importance of these roles and their relatively poor remuneration is both telling and potentially deadly.

A medical worker takes a nasal swab from a woman at a Covid-19 testing centre in Shah Alam, Malaysia, earlier this month. Photo: SOPA Images via ZUMA Wire/DPA

Why don’t people pay more for these services? It’s mostly because there are low barriers to entry, which brings with them lower wages, a greater supply of workers, and a corresponding lack of job security. In Asia, many of these essential workers are migrants, eking out a living to send money to families they may not have seen for years. Most are not paid if they miss a shift, disincentivising the sick from staying at home and adding stress to already precarious working conditions. In South Korea, at least 15 delivery workers died last year, with their families saying extreme overwork had harmed their health.

There’s something profoundly ironic about the space between “essential” and “valued” – it’s the difference between being able to take a day off and losing your job. Or, to many, the difference between life and death.

This is especially the case when the legal minimum wage is as low as around US$1.40 in Malaysia, or US$7.80 in South Korea. When those governments and others around the region announce stimulus packages, surely a financial incentive could be provided to essential workers – opening the door to discussions about raising the minimum wage; providing guaranteed hours, sick leave, and basic contracts; and strengthening unions and labour rights.

At least 15 delivery workers died in South Korea last year from extreme overwork, according to their families. Photo: Nora Tam

After all, it’s not like the uptick in demand for their services has protected them. The International Labour Organization last month said those in lower-skilled jobs – disproportionately women – lost more working hours than higher-paying managerial or professional jobs in the first six months of 2020, while monthly wages stagnated or fell.

In its report, the United Nations agency said the growth in inequality created by Covid-19 “threatens a legacy of poverty and social and economic instability that would be devastating” – but the pandemic has also just exacerbated long-standing inequalities.

Those of us huddling at home are told we are being responsible, that our isolation is saving lives. In countries such as Australia and the Philippines, home to some of the longest lockdowns on the planet, it’s been incredibly hard – but for those of us able to maintain incomes while working from home, it has also been an incredible privilege. We literally pay other human beings to put themselves at risk so we don’t have to, and we don’t pay them all that much. We never have.

People clap to show their appreciation for medical workers fighting the coronavirus in Susono, Japan, last summer. Photo: Kyodo News via AP

We’ve all clapped for essential workers, acts of much-needed solidarity that – if we’re being honest – allowed us to congratulate ourselves in equal measure. There is a real concern that merely acknowledging the danger and difficulty of this work during the pandemic will be seen as sufficient, that a blink’s worth of honour in the public eye is reward enough for those who for so long have toiled invisibly.

But all this feting is rendered meaningless if it is not followed by real change. Governments should institute policies that boost wages and ensure sick leave, and police companies that flout these regulations. Letting essential workers recede into the shadows of our conscience once vaccines have been administered and GDP growth is back on track isn’t just hypocrisy, it’s actually harmful. They have saved large chunks of our way of life over the past year, and in many cases actual lives too. It’s past time to save theirs.