The coronavirus has also exposed economic fault lines that were still too easy to ignore in peacetime. Infected food workers and Uber drivers who lack sick days can spread the disease to even the most well-off. “All along they had said, ‘It’s not possible, it’s not possible, it won’t work.’ And suddenly, it’s possible,” said Ms. Jayaraman, also a Future of Work commissioner, who runs the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. When he began organizing in the fields, growers insisted that workers weed with a short-handle hoe, an 18-inch tool known as el cortito that required crippling, stooped labor. Three public college systems that educate almost three million students shut down and went online.

Source: International New York Times March 20, 2020 22:52 UTC