COVID-19 has forced us to recognize that teachers, nurses, and countless other essential workers go above and beyond. We’ve witnessed the ways they take on risks and make sacrifices the rest of us would not willingly accept. Implicit in our outpouring of thanks is an acknowledgement that they are bearing a disproportionate burden. We might be left wondering whether essential workers have really suffered an injustice, though; whether they’ve really been unfairly taken advantage of. The answer is a resounding yes, while the explanation of how is more difficult to pin down. But, identifying how matters for developing a sensitivity and apt response to this injustice.
During this crisis the problem has been that, in failing to prepare adequately for this crisis, institutions and those with the power to shape them relied on those essential workers to pick up the slack, trusting they would do so because of their caring about others. There was a standing presumption that essential workers would continue to perform the work critical to keeping our society afloat, even when it involved life-threatening risks for themselves and loved ones. And what was this presumption implicitly predicated upon? The belief that our essential workers will continue to show up because they care; they care about their patients, they care about their students, they care about those more vulnerable to the virus, and they care about supporting their communities.
Essential workers have been disrespected, have had their dignity undermined, because of their vulnerability arising from caring. They have been subjected to care exploitation.
By caring I mean the feeling one has in paying attention to and worrying about another, becoming invested in their well-being and desiring to help them flourish. In the COVID-19 crisis this feeling has manifested in many ways, including but not limited to wearing a mask, providing medical care for individuals that become ill, not going home to family after exposure, simultaneously educating students both online and in-person, trying to support others by making sure there is food on the grocery store shelves, and constantly sanitizing spaces. And this feeling of caring about others that so many of our essential workers have, which drives them to take up what we recognize as heroic tasks, is a vulnerability, making them susceptible to being disrespected.
Importantly, vulnerability needn’t be understood as a weakness or lack; a flaw in one’s armor. Instead, in the context of care, vulnerability is a type of openness to others. Not only can openness be the opening of oneself up to others so that others are aware of one’s situation, but it can also be allowing oneself to be affected by others. Sometimes, vulnerability as both types of openness is required for success, like when one realizes that they need support because they cannot flourish independently. Other times, like when one cares about another, vulnerability occurs by allowing oneself to be affected by another – becoming invested in their own well-being. We cannot care about others without being vulnerable in this way, and while I remain neutral as to whether care is at the core of morality or the ultimate solution to our socio-political problems, I follow others in the care ethics tradition by understanding care as a virtue. I similarly take vulnerability as openness to be a virtue.
Unfortunately, vulnerability as openness is a double-edged sword, or as Lisa Tessman puts it, a burdened virtue. Burdened virtues are those “virtues that have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer’s own flourishing.” By being open, a caring individual can have their own flourishing strongly negatively impacted as a result of having their dignity undermined – of having their care, which openness is essential to, exploited. Openness makes a caring individual susceptible to exploitation precisely because one is invested in the flourishing of another – affected by another – and so feels the need to aid in their flourishing.
Care exploitation occurs when a party is called to aid, where the call to aid is made with the presumption that they will do whatever task and incur whatever risk is required to care for others, and not choose to do otherwise. I’m using “call to aid” as a term of art to refer to instances where one makes this problematic presumption and it shapes their actions in some way. A call to aid is morally objectionable and ultimately exploitative because the motivating presumption is disrespectful. The presumption is disrespectful – undermining the caring essential workers’ dignity – because it fails to recognize them as capable of self-authorship, capable of exercising their own agency. Calls are made in an attempt to write someone else’s story for them for one’s own advantage, and are distinct from simply asking another if they’d be willing to do something; when one simply asks, one is open to the possibility that the caring individual may choose to do otherwise.Essential workers are vulnerable to calls to aid others because of their caring, and in issuing the call, this vulnerability has been taken advantage of. And this advantage is ultimately unfair – exploitative – because they are being strategized against for an advantage by disrespecting them on the basis of their vulnerability arising from caring.
Once one notices it, care exploitation is ubiquitous. It’s not just an institutional phenomenon, but also an interpersonal one that we can recognize in our own homes that has become even more obvious in times like these. Normally those being exploited need something: they’re vulnerable due to historical injustices or bad luck, and they desperately need something we have. But that’s not the case with our essential workers. Rather, they have what our society needs and simply can’t carry on without: the skills and dedication. All things considered, one might think they are the ones with the power in this situation, and thus immune to exploitation. But, their investment in the well-being of others and desire to help them flourish is what had made and continues to make it possible to exploit them. Even if essential workers know they’re being taken advantage of — signaled by things like the lack of personal protective equipment or insufficient compensation — they are still willing to bear the costs so that others are not subjected to injustices, because they care about them.
Where does this leave us in addressing this injustice? Given the explanation in terms of care exploitation, the solution may seem obvious: namely, in order to prevent care exploitation, we should not undermine essential workers’ dignity (disrespect them) by taking advantage of their vulnerability arising from caring. But, this leaves quite a bit up to interpretation; we’re left with little guidance on what it would actually mean to respect them. I believe two things are demanded of us by virtue of our connections with others in institutions and through social structures that exploit care: we must be sensitive to the well-being of essential workers, and support their capacity for self-authorship.
Regardless of one’s degree of connection or power, the baseline is the same: we must move into a stance of solidarity with those essential workers subjected to care exploitation. Solidarity, as Iris Marion Young puts it, is “a relationship among separate and dissimilar actors who decide to stand together for one another.” And caring about others is ultimately at the heart of solidarity; we are required to have a belief about the status of their well-being, and a desire to help them flourish while privileging their perspective. It shouldn’t be surprising that solidarity is the baseline of our responsibility for addressing care exploitation, given that alleviating care exploitation requires being attentive to the well-being and supporting the self-authorship of those we’re standing with. How much we ought to do to stand in solidarity with those subjected to injustices is what increases with the degree of our responsibility.
For those of us that are greatly constrained in our interactions with the institutions that have facilitated and perpetuated care exploitation, our responsibilities realized through standing in solidarity with essential workers will amount to little more than respecting their self-authorship by simply appreciating that they take on these risks from a place of care and, when possible, using one’s vote at the ballot box to support policies that do not undermine their well-being as past policies have. This would mean listening to essential workers and appreciating their perspective on productive legislation, not merely advancing what we independently think is in their best interest. Importantly, it costs nothing to recognize that others are deserving of dignity.
For those with greater responsibility, there are a wide range of possibilities for what one might do in addition to appreciation and voting, which will be contingent upon which responsibilities are the most pressing. Given our current circumstances, alleviating the pressures on essential workers caused by COVID-19 are most urgent to prevent further injustice. To ensure that their well-being is not undermined moving forward, this might include advocating for hazard pay or mental health resources (if they see fit). Once we’ve addressed that, we should move to alleviating the conditions that caused this care exploitation in the first place, which will help us achieve the long-term goal of eliminating care exploitation.
I do not mean to suggest that these are easily achievable. But some steps we might take to support a culture that both creates conditions of self-authorship and a sensitivity to the well-being of essential workers might include contributing to funds that promote their interests and advocate for them on a larger scale, supporting labor unions, volunteering skills – like graphic design or going door-to-door pamphleting – that can advance their cause, marching in solidarity with them at strikes, or calling our elected representatives. If you have the privilege of occupying a space where you can appropriately raise awareness of the systemic mistreatment of essential workers, you should.
Whatever measures you take, it should be for the right reason: to promote respect, and not merely to improve conditions to be more tolerable.
Lavender McKittrick-Sweitzer
Lavender McKittrick-Sweitzer (they/them) is an assistant professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Butler University. They’re an affiliate faculty member in the Race, Gender, & Sexuality Studies (RGSS) program, as well as the Efroymson Diversity Center RGSS faculty fellow. Lav’s area of research is feminist social and political theory, focusing on care theory, exploitation, liberalism, and global justice. More information about Lav’s work can be found at lmsweitzer.com.
