Category: Behind the Headlines

The Working Class and Service Industry Workers: The Front Lines of the COVID-19 Economy

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Colby King, COVID-19, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine8 Comments

author photoBy Colby King

As the U.S. responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen quick and dramatic changes to how people work and how our economy functions. I wrote a few days ago about one worker, a migrant laborer, was made to dress as a hand sanitizer dispenser at Saudi Aramco. Since then I have seen stories that highlight the risks and challenges of working in the COVID-19 economy, especially for the working class and service industry workers. As Todd Schoepflin wrote here last week, these are the people “who are working to hold the fabric of society together.”

These dilemmas came into focus for me the other night as I talked with my cousin Randy on the phone. Randy lives in Colorado and works multiple jobs part time, as a lighting designer for theaters in Colorado and driving for a rideshare app. When Governor Polis of Colorado banned gatherings of more than 10 people, it had an obvious impact on Randy’s lighting gigs.

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Together, Alone in the COVID-19 Pandemic

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Cities and Urbanization, COVID-19, Jonathan Wynn, Theory11 Comments

author photoBy Jonathan Wynn

Yesterday I sat on my porch with my family, listening to the across-the-street neighbors sing Yiddish folk songs on their porch. With an accordion and fiddle, they nodded and smiled to people passing by, but no one stopped. We exchanged some waves and the kids yelled out occasionally. We were together in the moment, but also on our own, alone. It’s been a strange few weeks.

While our Everyday Sociology Blog comrades have all been tapping away at different aspects of how the COVID-19 has shaken the structure of our society, I would like to spend a little time on the facet of distancing in this moment.

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Coronavirus: Early Impressions of Sudden Social Change

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, COVID-19, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Todd Schoepflin17 Comments

Todd Schoepflin author photoBy Todd Schoepflin

I can’t believe I was in a classroom less than a week ago. It feels much longer than that. In one of my courses last week, a student started a conversation about Coronavirus. It gave us an opportunity to talk about our various emotions and reactions to an emerging and uncertain situation. In the next class (and final class before spring break recess), I thanked the student and told her I was grateful that she initiated a discussion about a sensitive and difficult subject.

During my office hours on Thursday March 12, two student athletes stopped in to drop off papers that were due. They asked if they could be excused from class due to a team meeting in which they were expecting to find out their athletic season would be canceled. One of my students was visibly upset and fighting back tears. I thanked them for coming by, told them not to worry about missing class, and said I was sorry their season was suddenly ending. I started thinking about all the student athletes who have worked so hard, putting in countless hours at the gym, during practice, in games, only for their pursuits to end unexpectedly. And then I started thinking of students in their senior year who are so close to the finish line and whom are surely excited about a graduation ceremony. But customary rituals like a commencement event are up in the air at colleges nationwide. It’s too early to tell how our lives will continue to be disrupted in ways ranging from minor inconveniences to major emergencies.

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Applying Sociology of Work and Organizations Concepts to the COVID-19 Pandemic

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Colby King, COVID-19, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine1 Comment

author photoBy Colby King

During spring break this past week, I was grading midterm exams from my Sociology of Work and organizations class while also following the news about the spread of COVID-19. Karen Sternheimer wrote the other day about how we can apply the sociological imagination to better understand the ongoing situation with the disease. I also saw ways in which the pandemic vividly illustrates some of the sociological concepts in the exam I was grading.

On March 11, Megha Rajagopalan at BuzzFeed posted a report about how a migrant worker at Saudi Aramco’s headquarters was made to dress as hand sanitizer. Pictures of the worker were shared on Twitter. In the pictures you can see the man is wearing a face mask and gloves, and over his khakis and shirt he is also wearing a box with the words “HAND SANITIZER” at the top and “Office Services” at the bottom (in English) and also an actual hand sanitizer dispenser attached to the front of the box.

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Applying the Sociological Imagination to COVID-19

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, COVID-19, Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine7 Comments

author photoBy Karen Sternheimer

By now you have likely heard of the Novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19. Maybe your school or workplace has shifted online for the time being, or you have noticed a shortage of cold and flu related items at your local store.

While this is a rapidly changing situation, we can use this example to help us understand several sociological concepts:

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Housing Insecurity: It’s Not Just for Low Earners

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Karen Sternheimer1 Comment

author photoBy Karen Sternheimer

Housing insecurity, or the difficulty in obtaining and maintaining housing due to its high cost, is something that we hear a lot about in the news. Housing insecurity is the consequence of incomes not keeping pace with the rise in the cost of housing; it’s not just that people can’t manage their money effectively, but that many don’t earn enough to afford the median rent in their communities.

And it’s not just people in low-wage, dead-end jobs that are impacted. A recent strike by graduate students at UC Santa Cruz highlighted the challenges that Ph.D. students face in paying for housing, which one student estimated at 60 to 70 percent of her income, even within university subsidized housing. The students called for a cost of living increase to help offset some of the costs, and had suspended their work grading papers at the end of the fall 2019 quarter.

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Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fight for Equality

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Race and Ethnicity, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Todd Schoepflin4 Comments

Todd SchoepflinBy Todd Schoepflin

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is highly celebrated this time of year, with a national holiday in his name occurring on the third Monday of January, and as a heroic figure recognized during Black History Month in February. We revere King for his incredible “I Have a Dream speech” delivered in August 1963 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. To remember King, I also like to teach my students about some of his other activism and speeches they may not know. It’s a way of appreciating more of what King valued and fought for, and contemplating what else he might have been able to accomplish had his life not tragically been cut short by assassination in 1968 at the age of 39.

It’s fitting that we honor King in the sociology community–he earned a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from Morehouse College where he was president of the sociology club. In sociology courses we learn about racism, injustice, inequality, social change and so many other subjects that King spoke poetically about and worked on while being at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. A summary of his achievements can be viewed at The King Center website, where we can gain understanding about his leadership and Gandhi-inspired philosophy of nonviolent resistance.

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A Strong Economy?                  

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Todd Schoepflin2 Comments

Todd SchoepflinBy Todd Schoepflin

How long does it take you to get to work? Would you drive an hour to get on a bus for a four-hour round trip to make $13.26 an hour?

This is what people are willing to do to travel from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis, Tennessee, to work at FedEx sorting and loading packages (FedEx covers the cost of the bus ride). As explained in this Wall Street Journal article, workers have been recruited in places with high unemployment rates at a time when the national unemployment rate is low. In one example, the $13.26 starting wage was a big improvement compared to the $7.85 hourly wage a person was making at a previous job. These part-time jobs, with some overnight shits, offer health and retirement benefits.

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The 2020 Census: Help Wanted

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Colby King, Statistics and Methods1 Comment

By Colby King

If you study sociology you’ve very likely worked with data from one of the several surveys administered by the US Census Bureau. And while it is not 2020 yet, you might have already seen Census Bureau workers in your neighborhoods, as they have begun to check addresses ahead of next year’s count.

The US Census Bureau and its surveys are important to the discipline of sociology, and this fall I have been encouraging my students to consider applying for a job with the US Census Bureau. While field jobs and career positions with the US Census Bureau are always something sociology students might consider as long-term possibilities, the Bureau is currently recruiting thousands of people for several different temporary jobs in preparation for the 2020 Decennial Census. These temporary jobs include not just census takers, but also clerical positions, as well as a few supervisory and outreach positions. You can apply for all of the 2020 Census jobs through one online application form, which is available here.

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Climate Change and Statistical Inference

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Statistics and Methods4 Comments

author photoBy Dan Lainer-Vos

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Southern California

Have you had the experience of discussing climate change only to be interrupted by a wise chuckle from a person who suggests that our planet has known natural fluctuations in the past and that, therefore, it is possible that the spate of record-breaking temperatures of past decades reflects naturally occurring fluctuation?

The climate-change denier, in such instance, presents him or herself as a hard-nosed skeptic while suggesting that the climate researcher community is hysterical. To an extent, this interaction is the story of climate change debate over the last twenty years—a long drawn out argument that is fed by the very fact that science, including climate science, is built on probabilistic models where absolute certainty is simply not part of the game. Is there a way out this pickle? Thinking about statistical inference, and especially the types of errors that statisticians are concerned with, can shed new light on this debate.

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