On the Category of Essential Services

• In Event: The Politics of Emergency

Abstract

Governments worldwide have often employed the category of essential services to regulate the production and distribution of critical services and goods. Roughly speaking, essential services are understood as services whose interruption can significantly harm the population. This category became notoriously more salient during the COVID-19 pandemic as many services and goods were cataloged as essential. From facemask manufacturing and grocery delivery to vaccine production, some workers were classified as "essential." As such, they become subject to specific labor regulations, including limitations or even prohibitions on the right to strike. Even though the category of essential services is commonly and widely used to regulate millions of workers worldwide, normative discussions of the nature and implications of this category are limited.
This article examines the standard definition of essential services through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. These are services whose interruption can cause "serious hardship" to the population (ILO 2006). It argues that this harm-based definition does not adequately consider the potential harms associated with producing those services and puts exclusive emphasis on the harms related to the distribution of services. The production of essential services can involve significant harm to those who produce them. Those harms need to be balanced with the potential interruptions in the production of services. The pandemic showed many situations in which workers were exploited and severely harmed because of the function they were mandated to perform. Thus, the idea that essential service workers should not have a right to strike needs further review. Restrictions to the right to strike should not be the normal consequence of declaring a service as essential. Instead, the right to strike can be a crucial instrument that workers have to counteract different forms of harm to which they can be subjected.

Author

• Cristian Perez-Muñoz, University of Florida