WORKING LIFE PODCAST: NATIONALIZE PAYROLLS NOW; GIG WORK IS A FANCY NAME FOR EXPLOITATION - a podcast by The Real News Network

Calling people “gig” workers is a subtle trap. “Gig” can sound anywhere from upbeat to just a mundane description. The truth is the “gig” economy is just another way of exploiting people and it’s a dream for all capitalists to have a pool of workers who can be used and abused at the beckon call of a supply chain or a big tech company, at the lowest cost possible. And not a surprise—lots of gig workers are at great risk during the pandemic. I explore the lives of “gig” workers in a conversation with Bama Athreya, an economic policy fellow at the Open Society Foundation and a veteran social movement activist.

The pandemic has put domestic workers at risk. Think of it logically: you can be locked down in a home with your client, essentially enslaved, with nowhere to go and no social distancing space. You could easily be trapped in a home, forced to stay inside because of a curfew, without personal protection equipment. Elizabeth Tang, the General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation, joins me from her perch in Hong Kong to talk about the pandemic threats facing domestic workers.

My rant of the week is simple: we need to nationalize all payrolls. It’s breathtaking how badly the elected leaders of the country are handling the economic fallout of the pandemic, not to mention the medical crisis—it’s a bi-partisan catastrophe, with the worst human in the Senate, the wealthy Mitch McConnell, showing no rush to stop the implosion of millions of peoples’ lives, while Nancy Pelosi refuses to entertain Pramila Jayapal’s fantastic proposal to pay every unemployed person up to $90,000 on an annual basis while the pandemic rages.

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