1. On the plane of registered wage labor, that labor traditionally defined as productive, the category of essential labor gave rise to a dispute over its definition. In Argentina, workers of certain companies, for example, those producing alcoholic beverages, snack foods, and oil pipes, claimed they were not essential in a dispute with employers who would not let them stop their work; see Victoria Basualdo and Pablo Peláez, “Conflicto laboral en la pandemia del COVID-19 en Argentina: desafíos de fuentes, metodología y conceptualización,” Economía y Tecnología de FLACSO, 2020 https://www.flacso.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Procesos-de-conflictividad-laboral-COVID-19-V-Basualdo-y-P-Pelaez.pdf. In Chile and Brazil, that same battle was directly connected to the delay and reluctance of the governments to declare a quarantine. The British American Tobacco Company of Chile, to cite an illustrative case, was vindicated as essential production, even while registering a high level of infection among its workers. Which sectors were included in the category of essential became a sort of test of companies’ power to lobby, to confront measures obligating them to not lay off workers, as a way of receiving state subsidies to pay wages, and even to force concessions on wage cuts in the agreements between unions and employers in a “peaceful context.” A second moment is characterized by registered waged workers, categorized as essential, demanding improved safety and health conditions in their workplaces, thus translating that essentialness into terms of rights and protections. This demand was particularly notable in the unions of health care and supermarket workers.
