The “Essential Worker” Logical Fallacy
Employment reform will find better support without this easily-countered argument.
First, Let Me Clarify This
My heart goes out to workers in the hospitals, grocery stores, and auto shops who don’t have the luxury of working from home during these uncertain and dangerous times.
I encourage respect and appreciation for the work people are doing to keep our world surviving during the current pandemic.
Now to my Point
The media and online posts talk about “essential” workers and how their crucial role in earning money for the corporation should be recognized and their compensation should be increased for it. People cite the reforms made after the Bubonic Plague and discuss their hopes that we’ll see a similar advancement in working conditions, wages, and benefits. I, too, hope that we will continue to improve in these areas, but I don’t think citing an employee role as “essential” is the best way to get there.
A Bread-Baking Thought Experiment
Just because a particular system would not function if a certain piece were removed, does not mean that piece is the core, irreplaceable ingredient that exemplifies the overarching purpose of the system as a whole. Indeed, defining a “most important” role is a pretty fruitless endeavor — a conversation will end up forever circling around semantics and circumstances.
At the end of the day, the screws that hold my oven door on are important pieces of the baking system. They help keep the heat in, after-all, and without heat the bread does not bake. They also help me open the door when I put the bread in the oven. Regardless, it’d be absurd if I claim those screws as the most important part of the whole system, simply because the bread would not bake without them. We could argue for hours over what the “most important” piece of the baking process is, but in the end that doesn’t help us improve anything, or justify any change to how we actually go about baking bread. You also couldn’t convince me that all the extra money I earn by selling bread should be spent on buying more screws, cleaning the screws, and general upkeep of the screw.
This analogy doesn’t imply that workers are just inanimate cogs in a corporate machine that should be ignored. They are human beings that deserve to be respected and treated with dignity. I do mean to say that discussions about wages and benefits should not center around how “essential” the employee is. That abstract idea is not and should not be how we distribute the profits of industry. It’s just a bunch of nebulous rhetoric that could just as easily be used against the points you are pushing for. There are more effective routes of logic we should pursue.
A Hypothetically Disgruntled Tarron
For example, lets say I (as a programmer) think I deserve to earn the same wage as everyone above me in the business hierarchy. I justifiably see myself as “essential” because I’m responsible for the actual fulfillment of the contracts our company has sold. Should I delude myself into thinking that I am the most important just because if I didn’t show up to work one day, the end product would not be produced that day and the company doesn’t get paid? That reality can give me some bargaining power, certainly, but that idea must be balanced against the other weightier factors of reality, such as the availability of similar workers, the rarity of my talents, and the cost of substituting me out and replacing me with something else. I have to recognize that the company is in the business of providing certain solutions, and that for right now I’m deemed as a required piece in getting from problem to solution. That’s why I agreed to offer up my services for a specified salary. That agreement doesn’t mean I’m now entitled to my employment. The moment there’s a better way to get from A to B, I’m going to be out of a job. I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m planning on it. That’s why I try to spend a significant amount of time looking ahead, following technological trends, and trying to learn the skills I see as being useful both now as well as in the world we are moving into.
Now, if my company is being dishonest or cruel to me, I’m going to have some serious issues with that. I can protest, rally my coworkers, or even find a different job. I can start campaigns to try to help educate the public about the company’s immoral practices. If I’m being subject to human rights violations, I’m going to have to figure out how to appropriately fight back against that as well. I can also try to declare that they ought to treat me better because I’m “essential”, but that strategy is not going to be effective, despite the validity of my concerns.
A Better Way to Better Work
I think people pushing for higher wages or better benefits do themselves a disservice when they base their platform for reform on the notion of them being the “essential”, or core element of the business. There are so many more powerful (and less logically flawed) reasons why employees should be treated better (in cases where there is mistreatment of employees) as well as why they should progress in wages and benefits (in cases where the employee is providing more value or other wage-determining factors have changed).
To start off your arguments with saying the workers on the floor are the most important pieces of the pencil factory (and thus deserve to profit the most from the factory) is reminiscent of communism-style propaganda about the people deserving to own the means of production, and how Mr. Overweight Top Hat Owner and his greedy cronies are laughing in the upstairs office at the distraught faces of the poor and starving pencil factory workers, all while counting their heavy gold coins. Why give your opponents such an easy argument to counter? Why give them an argument that could also be used to support their side, when they point out that the pencils also don’t get made if any number of other non-employee factors are removed.
