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How to Rescue the Economy and Help Black Workers at the Same Time

Since March, more than 50 million workers have filed for unemployment. This recession, borne out of a pandemic rather than a financial bubble, is different from the last. It’s also different in that it is occurring in the midst of national and international outrage against repeated state violence directed at Black bodies.

A “paycheck guarantee,” a proven relief strategy that has been effective around the world, could stem the economic hemorrhaging facing the country. This policy would help everyone — from workers facing mass unemployment to local businesses that are struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic and eventual recovery.

But it would also do something else: It would naturally direct the most help to those who need it most — Black workers.

In the midst of a pandemic that is killing Black people at more than twice the rate that it’s killing white people, Black workers are facing mass unemployment or in danger on the front lines. The U.S. can and must put Black workers first in its Covid-19 response. By doing so, we can provide effective relief that boosts the economy for everyone.

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Under a paycheck guarantee program, sometimes called “wage support,” the federal government steps in and pays workers directly while requiring their employers to keep them on the payroll. Workers would get paid, and stay connected to their jobs and benefits, even while social distancing at home.

If this sounds radical, it’s not. Germany, Denmark, Australia, and France have all put similar programs in place, and they work. Workers stay employed, businesses stay afloat and mass layoffs are averted. In Germany, the unemployment rate rose just 1.1 percent from March to July — while in the United States, unemployment surged nearly seven times as much.

Here in the United States, a paycheck guarantee would not only help stem mass layoffs, it would help address the profoundly racialized impact of the Covid-19 crisis: more than half of Black adults are currently unemployed. Eighty percent of Black workers don’t have the option to work from home, and Black workers are much more likely to work in the retail and service-sector jobs, like restaurants and hotels, that expose them to the virus with greater risk.

Here’s how a paycheck guarantee would work: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has proposed a simple program in which the government would directly cover up to $90,000 in pay for workers until the end of the economic crisis. Every worker at a business bleeding revenue because of the pandemic would qualify. Workers can quickly get back on the payroll and reconnect to benefits like health insurance — and no one would be required to go in to work until it was safe to do so. Similar legislation was also introduced in the Senate by Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Here are some of the ways a paycheck guarantee would rescue the economy and also lend a hand to Black workers:

A paycheck guarantee would help save an economy in free fall. This is especially urgent for Black workers who are feeling the cost of inaction. Congress passed critical, temporary improvements to the unemployment insurance program, but they expired at the end of July due to Republicans’ unwillingness to extend the crucial benefit.

A paycheck guarantee is much better for workers than unemployment insurance. This spring, less than half of unemployed workers were able to get unemployment insurance payments, and Black workers were even less likely. A paycheck guarantee removes these hurdles and ensures all workers a steady income, even when states and cities inevitably need to shut down again. (And unlike the flawed SBA Paycheck Protection Program, it would be accessible to all Black-owned businesses.)

A paycheck guarantee can also help prevent another so-called jobless “recovery.” Displacing workers in a contracting economy risks condemning them, especially Black workers, to long-term unemployment. Years after the official end of the Great Recession, more than 12 million remained unemployed — a disproportionate share were Black workers. This pattern is already repeating itself. As white unemployment rates started to trickle down last month, the Black unemployment rate continued to rise. This is an old story: In a recession, Black workers are often devalued as the “first fired, last hired.”

A paycheck guarantee allows displaced workers to return to retain their health care benefits. Black workers already had inadequate health care coverage before the pandemic, with high deductibles and premiums if they were covered at all. But now, nearly 27 million Americans, along with their jobs, are losing their employer-based health insurance. While we fight for "Medicare for All," we must prevent Black workers who have health coverage from losing it.

The idea of a paycheck guarantee is popular. A recent survey found overwhelming support for the Paycheck Recovery Act from registered voters across all parties and all races. Voters supported a paycheck guarantee by a 60-point margin, with 77 percent of Black voters and 75 percent of white voters supporting it. While Democrats were more likely to support the proposal, nearly 70 percent of Republicans did, too.

We need to make sure state and local governments can reopen when it’s safe, and shut back down if cases spike. What we don’t need is the heightened risk shouldered by Black workers, who often have little choice but to work during a pandemic in order to keep their families fed and sheltered.

As the national chorus of chants that Black Lives Matter grows louder, it’s time to move beyond a political economy that sorts and devalues a class of workers based on something as cursory as their race. If Black lives matter, we can’t allow the financial stability of millions of Black families to be needlessly eroded by economic policies that disadvantage Black workers. If Black lives matter, we must find a way to make “last hired, first fired” obsolete by guaranteeing all payroll jobs survive the pandemic. If Black lives matter, exposing Black workers to disparate displacement and sending them back to work before it’s safe is immoral.

If Black lives matter, this is the time to start making the kind of economic policy choices — like a paycheck guarantee — that show that we mean it.