Emotional Labors: Organizing Long-Term Care Workers in Chicago during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has labeled care workers as "essential," raising questions about the distance between the social lauding of the profession and the felt value by these workers who, in the United States, number many women of color. This paper qualitatively evaluates the content of eleven oral histories and one interview by nurses and nursing assistants to consider whether and how these workers negotiate their marginal identities at individual and collective levels to agitate for change. I merge individual-level identity literature on gendered and racialized approaches to labor with social movement theory about union efficacy and collective power-building. I find that, even as care workers do not invoke their marginal identities as the primary contributing stressor to their experience of work during COVID-19, these workers and the labor unions that represent them emphasize their personal vulnerability to the pandemic's effects yet collective strength in opposition to managerial bodies. The outcomes of this project iterate the need for continued sociological investigation of all types of care workers' experiences of work, as socio-economic stratification within their profession and their lives at large continues.