(gentle music) - You can argue no aspect of our lives during the coronavirus pandemic has been changed so profoundly and so permanently as have our work lives.

How we do our work, where we do our work, what we want out of our work.

For the next hour, we'll talk with workers who have grappled with these very questions during the pandemic and come out the other side forever changed.

And we'll also hear government, industry, and labor leaders attempt to put the pandemic experiences of today's workers into a bigger picture context.

I'm John Henry Smith, welcome to Cutline, The State of Work.

♪ Why can't you just let me be If you are watching this, you've no doubt heard it said that the pandemic has spurred a mass exodus from a large number of now difficult to fill jobs around the country.

Folks have taken to calling it, "The Great Resignation."

The bureau of labor statistics says a record 4.5 million people nationwide quit their jobs in November alone.

Now we'll do a deeper dive into the why's behind that number later.

But for now, when you consider US Census Bureau numbers indicating would-be entrepreneurs filed a record 9.8 million new business applications over the first two years of the pandemic, it seems some of the great resigners weren't running from work, but rather running to working for themselves.

We found two such trailblazers living, laboring, and loving in Enfield.

- Hi, I'm Gilmer Olano - Hi, I'm Diana Olano.

- And we're the Olanos family.

- And we're the Olanos family.

2019, I was a cook for a retirement home.

- And I was a lead teacher in a toddler room.

- We were planning to spend the New Year's Miami.

And as we were in the airport, you get to see all the news on all TVs talking about this new virus.

The day that we sign the contract-- - Oh my God, that was-- - The government decide to shut down everything.

And the mortgage company, they call our employers to see if we got laid off or not.

Because it was very prime, when they told us if you got laid off, you're not able to close on the house.

Good thing I didn't get laid off.

I was marked as essential, and my wife was marked as essential as well so, there was a peace of mind on our part.

- In the times of COVID like you get exposed to the virus.

You don't have enough supplies for the children and for yourself.

How do you feel about seeing your husband leaving your house?

Is he coming back or not, during COVID?

So I was worried about him.

- I was aware the nursing homes were ground zero, especially with all the news that you get to see.

(door rattling) It wasn't an issue, but sometimes like you get mentally tired and then... - It was just really scary.

And he was working every day, almost every day.

Like, all day long.

- This is how my business came together.

(gentle music) - I told him no, please don't do that.

Please don't lose your job, please don't.

Don't start with your own business, we're gonna lose... With part-time what are we gonna do?

- She was really scared about how we're gonna pay the mortgage, you know, not having a secure income.

But everything happened so fast, so quick.

Had some tents, small tents.

No big ones compared to the big industries, but the demand was daily.

You know, everybody wanted to celebrate outdoors because that was the mandate, to do everything outdoors, no inside.

So we have to provide tents for like, for the shore families, the bouncy houses - it was every day.

Tent chairs, you know.

And I was able to get a second van, you know, business keep growing.

- He was keep telling me, open your daycare, open your daycare.

I was like, no, no, no, I am so scared.

Should I do that?

So he was my example.

He was my inspiration to do it.

I saw him doing taxes.

I saw him doing all the legal stuff, so he supervised me with that too.

And as I said well, I have to do my stuff.

I think I can do it.

We have the house, we bought it, and we have a great community.

We have a lot of children here too.

And yeah, I did that big step last November.

So I decided to have my own stuff and it keeps growing, thank God.

♪ Three little monkeys sitting in a tree.

♪ ♪ This time Mr. Alligator can't catch me.

♪ - Whoa, I'm gonna be honest with you, I still got a lot of fears.

Everyday is a new battle.

Everyday, especially in the event industry, we've been hit really hard a lot.

And if it wasn't for her daycare right now, I mean, it's her daycare who's paying the mortgage, as I told you, you know.

And I'm really thankful for her because she's really a hardworking woman and I listen to her, and she listen to me, to my advice.

- Mmh mh.

- We love our lifestyle and we love each other.

I mean, it's not perfect, but we make it work.

(Gilmore laughs) - Yup.

- I would certainly not bet against the Olanos doing anything they put their minds to.

We certainly thank them for sharing a bit of their world with us.

Joining us now to talk more about "The Great Resignation" in America, are a couple of experts.

First we have Melissa Swift, she's the leader of transformation services in the US and Canada for Mercer, an international human resources consulting firm.

And we also have with us, Jay Zagorsky, senior lecturer in markets and public policy and law at Boston University.

We thank you so much for your time, and we'll start off.

We just saw this piece with the Olanos.

What do you think?

Were they the perfect example of the great resignation couple?

What were your reactions to that piece?

- Well, you know in many ways they do hit some of the themes that we've seen in our research about the great resignation.

So, you know number one, thinking about some of the industries, right?

Healthcare, in particular.

And other caring professions.

We've seen, you know, in our data it shows that folks in those professions are much, much more likely to be thinking about resigning.

And I think it's an interesting distinction because when you think about a profession like healthcare, versus let's say, kind of different kinds of knowledge work or you know, things that can be mostly done remotely, there's a fundamental distinction of fed up versus burnt out.

And in healthcare you really see fundamentally fed up and that's where okay, I'm gonna go make that really bold life change and do something completely different as opposed to burnt out well, maybe I'll go get kind of another similar job.

- I wanna focus a little bit more on the numbers.

We're talking right now about 4.5 million people just in November alone resigning.

In the media, they call it "The Great Resignation."

And while that couple was an excellent example of people who are quitting, I think "The Great Resignation," it's a little bit overstated for a couple of reasons.

More and more people in the workforce, means more and more people that could potentially quit.

So we don't really wanna focus on these absolute numbers.

Because the economy's growing, we're always gonna be breaking new records.

We really wanna focus on the percentage.

And the percentage in November, it was just 3% of all workers.

Back in April, it was 2.8%.

Not really much different, 2.8% to 3%.

And the media?

I wasn't being invited on TV shows back in April to talk about "The Great Resignation," you know?

(John Henry Smith laughing) - So we've been tracking at Mercer for decades, what percentage of people are thinking about resigning?

And at any given point, it's around 30%.

Which is exactly where it is in our data right now.

I mean, it's not... You know, from our vantage point where we're looking at kind of psychologically where people are at, that part hasn't changed.

It's where we see the discrepancies are different sectors, different ethnic groups, different genders.

That's where we start to see you know, kinda some interesting movements.

- I completely agree.

It's really a lot of low wage jobs.

And it's not only low wage jobs, but it's both geographic, and it's by age.

So it's a lot of young workers, people who are my age, sorry, late middle age, almost ready for retirement.

We're not retiring.

We're not quitting in droves.

- We see the same in our data, that workers below about 60,000 a year were much more likely to be thinking about quitting than those above 60,000 a year.

And again you get that kind of the burnt out, fed up distinction because we also looked at what are those workers missing?

What are their unmet needs?

And when you look at the overall population, it's you know, sort of my physical wellness, my mental health, I need purpose in my work, right?

When you look at those low wage workers, it's, I can't cover my bills, I'm in debt.

It's this very concrete kind of psychological overhang of not being able to make ends meet.

And really, kind of living at more of a subsistence level than we picture populations making $50,000 a year, you know, living at.

And I think that's a fed up moment.

That's I have not been kind of had basic financial wellness for a long time.

And now's the moment when I act on it.

- You know, one of the things that our couple touched on was the idea of childcare.

Diana told us a story about how she has a friend who pays more for childcare than she pays for living expenses for...

I can't remember if it was a rental or a mortgage that her friend was paying, but they pay more for childcare than they pay for their house.

In that situation, how dire is that situation for the state of work right now as you see it, Melissa?

- Yeah, well, we've really seen how childcare operates as a link in the chain.

Because that is some of where these shortages are being driven out of is we've finally seen how the dominoes fall, right?

Let's say, school is closed, okay I don't have access to childcare.

When school is closed then I can't come into work, then that my job's not happening, so someone else's job can't happen.

We've never really seen that domino effect play out in the same way.

And I think that, that's gonna be kind of an exciting revelation is okay, well, we need to plug this childcare hole, and fundamentally maybe we need to look at the women in the workforce.

I think a lot of us feel like we pay to work, right?

And there's something wrong with that paradigm.

- If you are a boss, if you are an employer, and you're faced with high quit rates, I think what Melissa is saying and what the research bears out, is it's not just about raising pay.

It's also about providing a nice work environment, providing a place where you feel that you're going to be contributing, that you're making a difference, that you have some of the benefits that help you do your job, like childcare.

So dealing with "The Great Resignation," whether it's great, or it's not so great, we have relatively high quit rates in this country.

And one of the ways of lowering those quit rates is making workers feel a little bit better about their job, making them feel that they're important instead of just being abused.

- Well, I mean, I think that a lot of companies have made, months ago, certain assumptions about where we would be in the pandemic, and now the "O" word, Omicron, has reared its ugly head.

What are you all seeing in terms of how that has recalibrated, not just immediate plans, but even the thought of making, you know, 12-month, 18-month plans not knowing what the new variant after Omicron is going to be?

- So, Omicron is a classic example.

Why do we see high quit rates in restaurants?

Because as you said earlier, a lot of restaurant workers get paid by tips.

Well, you're not gonna get any tips if everyone's scared of Omicron and no one's going out to a restaurant tonight.

So depending on how we are in the COVID cycle, whether COVID is high or COVID is low, you can actually have lots of people providing you tips or very few people providing you tips.

And that's one of the things we need to think about as a country.

Do we really wanna keep paying many of our workers tips instead of just a straight living wage?

Because tips, basically they take all the uncertainty and push it down onto the worker.

With a straight wage, there's less uncertainty.

You walk in, you do your eight-hour shift, you get paid a certain set amount.

So, part of it is to lower quits, we might wanna think about taking some of our workers who primarily earn their money from tips, and put 'em on a straight wage.

- Going forward, give me a big prediction for where all of this is going.

Jay, we'll start with you.

- I think we're gonna continue to see high quit rates in 2022, but once COVID is completely over or at least goes endemic, I think quit rates are gonna come back down to sort of normal rates.

And those normal rates are still exceptionally high.

And then the big question that I'd like to talk to you about maybe in a year or two, is what can businesses do to lower those very high quit rates?

Because we don't want people quitting all the time.

When people quit, it's expensive, it's emotionally draining, and we have to retrain workers to fill those new jobs or those jobs that were left by quitters.

- Melissa, your thoughts on the big prediction going forward.

- Yeah, I think we're gonna see work change in certain industries.

I think healthcare, manufacturing, you know, possibly restaurants and hospitality, like some big structural foundational changes.

You know, again, a tantamount to what we saw let's say around 1900 when we decided it was no longer okay for machines to kinda lock people's body parts off.

You know, I think we're gonna have another moment like this.

And personally I'm up for it.

- Let's talk white-collar workers.

A whopping 91% of whom recently told national Gallup pollsters they'd like to permanently do at least some of their work remotely.

And let's talk about the companies that employ those workers.

Here in Connecticut, CT Insider reports Pitney Bowes is requiring every employee entering their office space, to be vaccinated and boosted.

The Hartford Current reports, the Hartford Financial Services Group has pushed back a decision to bring employees back to the office from January to, at earliest, February.

That's due to the persistence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.

And the Current also reports Pratt & Whitney is allowing thousands of salaried employees to work from home permanently.

For a closer look at another local company wrestling with how to adjust to COVID, we recently traveled to the offices of Corbin Advisors, in Farmington.

(gentle music) - Coming to Corbin Advisors in the beginning was all about being a small team, a humble team building and growing.

- When I first joined the company, I was employee number two, technically.

So those were very, very early days and very small knit, very, very family oriented.

And we still are today, even though we've grown exponentially, it feels since then.

- You know, we're in a different time period where we have to think differently around how we operate, hygiene, all of that.

- We're not requiring anybody to be in the office, we're all fully remote now.

And we're taking... Mostly in the winter months, colder months where there's escalated cases, we're taking you know, you can make your own judgment approach if you need to come into the office.

Otherwise there's no requirements.

I think people are enjoying that flexibility and appreciative of that.

- So I think as a leader, you have to be a lot more compassionate, you have to be a lot more empathetic, and you have to just understand that these are humans.

(indistinct) - We had just so happened to onboard Zoom a month or a quarter before the pandemic really set in and before all the lockdowns were announced.

So that was just very convenient timing for us to be able to continue to do business, you know, normal course essentially.

- We'll just label this.

- It's just going to look different, and what we see from our research is that the real estate developers are thinking very differently about the spaces now, than they were.

(indistinct chatter) - What I think has changed forever is undoubtedly what we consider an office, and why you have to be there, and what gets done there, and just your working environment overall.

We know we've proven that you don't have to be in a physical office, but yet there's benefits to being together at times when it's right.

So we're reconstructing the workday or the workflow if you will, in a way that I think speaks to efficiency, collaboration, and technology, and just being smart about how we do things.

And not necessarily requiring people logistically to be here or there at the time when they're doing what they need to do.

- We started out in a very tiny cottage in Farmington.

We then moved to the apartment above Webster Bank.

That was a little bit larger where we actually had offices.

And we realized that we needed a larger space and also a space that reflected our brand and who we wanted to be.

When we made the decision to move, it was very interesting in the sense that all of the budgets, all of the contracts, the lease, came to fruition in March of 2020.

And if you can imagine having to make a decision on a multi-million dollar renovation at the time where we didn't know if we were going to have clients, and also with the notion that employees were working from home at this point and starting to really move out and were we ever going to get back into an office setting?

So, I would say that one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make was during that time to move forward with this space, but we put people to work in terms of construction and design during the pandemic when people were out of work in that industry.

So we feel really good about the impact that we had not just on our own company, but really fueling the economy during a crisis.

- I think the hardest thing....

The biggest challenge for us is to maintain the culture when you're not physically together.

And I don't think a lot of people are used to being remote and most of our roles were in-house prior the pandemic.

So, what I think is exciting is that now we do have a bigger opportunity in the world of talent generation and retention, and also to then get used to and adapt to a more flexible, and what I feel will be a more efficient workforce at the end of the day.

- Well, with us here now to discuss the state of work from the office worker, white-collar employee side of the equation, are a couple of experts.

First, we have Chris DiPentima, he is the president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.

And we also have with us David Lewis, CEO and founder of OperationsInc, the state's largest HR consultancy, with over 140 employees supporting over 1000 clients.

They are based in Norwalk.

Welcome to you both.

Thank you so much for joining us.

First question guys.

We just watched this piece featuring Corbin Advisors, a company based in Farmington, and we saw the measures that they had to take in order to accommodate the pandemic.

Can you just comment on those type of measures.

Are they fairly common from what you've seen so far or are they extraordinary?

- Yeah sure, thanks for having me.

Most of the stuff they're doing has been fairly common in the last well, two years nearly that we've been going through this pandemic.

What's one of the things that's interesting about what they're doing is the additional space.

Obviously that had a financial cost to it.

And I'm sure they've done a great job of weighing the loss potentially of their employees, the inability to bring in new employees.

- I think that to start, most companies are trying to figure out what exactly the new workplace looks like.

How many people really are needed to come physically into an office versus how much they're going to commit to and marry themselves into a remote work relationship with their employees.

And employees are really driving this.

They are asking for, and demanding more flexibility, more ability to be able to work from home.

And with a tight job market, the tightest we've seen in some time, they're in control.

So, you know, hearing companies that are making these accommodations, it's a good strategic move and it's a necessary move in order for them to be able to attract and retain talent.

- Chris, I want to revisit something that David said a few moments ago.

He said something to the effect, and I hope I'm quoting you correctly David, when you said the employees are in control.

I think I got the gist of what you were saying.

Critique that comment, Chris.

I mean, is that the way you see it?

I mean, and if you do for right now, is that a permanent thing or is that something that's transitory?

- We go through cycles how long it will last.

I think it will last a while.

Because there's significant demand going on across the world and certainly across the country and here in Connecticut, our businesses are busier than they've ever been.

And at the same time, they're short staffed.

So it's gonna go on for a while, especially while the supply chain continues to work itself out, trying to figure out when goods will come in and what you'll get is very challenging right now.

So you need to have extra labor on hand to be able to meet the ebbs and flows of the supply chain disruption.

And employers are just not able to get full staff, let alone extra staff on hand.

Most employers we talk to, they're maybe 80% capacity, 90% if they're lucky.

So they're looking for 10 to 20% additional workforce.

And right now they can't find it.

We have about 70,000 job openings in Connecticut right now in a variety of industries, every experience level you can imagine.

So David is absolutely a hundred percent correct.

It is an employee market out there and we're finding compensation isn't the only solution.

You know, people aren't going to jobs just because of compensation.

Because employers have increased compensation, nearly 10% in the last 12 months.

Fringe benefits are up.

They're offering a lot and it's tough to get the talent to come in.

- I think the other thing that's happening is that prior to COVID the CBIA, Connecticut as a whole, our strategy always focused on first and foremost, driving companies into the state to physically locate here.

Because employment required that your company, your employer had to be physically located in the state close proximity to that talent.

Those lines are wiped out now.

Now suddenly you've got people in the state who can be, and are employed in fact, by companies in all 50 states.

Because the geography associated with employment has now completely changed.

If you're going to embrace remote work, then you can employ people pretty much anywhere.

- What's permanent, and what is transitory out of all of the changes that we've seen in the pandemic?

Chris, you first.

- Remote work is certainly something that's gonna be permanent coming out of the pandemic.

The transitory will be whether we pivot those commercial spaces to other commercial tenants.

Do we continue to grow the state's business population so that other businesses move into Connecticut and fill that vacant space?

Or do we see what's happening, as David mentioned in some of the urban areas, a pivot from commercial to residential.

Now what will be really interesting is the economic impact.

Will those residential folks shop with their feet the way commercial folks do?

Will they go to a lunch place and have lunch or breakfast and dinner?

Will they shop at the retail places that exist in our urban areas?

Probably not at the same level as the commercial does because you have a kitchen in your residential area, so you're gonna make yourself your own meals necessarily rather than walking down to the sandwich shop.

So there will be an economic impact.

- I agree.

I think that the remote work aspect for sure is here to stay.

I think on the commercial real estate side, Stamford's been a little bit ahead of the curve; the city I live in, in that, you know, six, seven years ago, you started to see an interesting phenomenon where commercial real estate spaces started to get converted into residential space.

And ever since the development of the south end, that trend has continued.

There seems to be an insatiable appetite for apartment buildings in Stamford.

It's not necessarily affordable housing.

So that's a challenge that we need to figure out a way to meet.

But at the end of the day, I would see more of that trend happening.

See more commercial space converted to residential.

- I saw a headline in a local newspaper around November.

It read, "Employers, Not Employees Caused The Great Resignation."

What do you make of that headline?

- When you take a look at all the data you hear that employees are quitting their jobs for two key reasons.

One because their employers are making decisions that are counter to the employees' goals as it relates to work-life balance, and what they want moving forward.

And then fundamentally, around that, is the second piece, which is that employers are not spending enough time talking to their employees, asking them what it is that they want.

And as Chris talked to before, these are cycles that go through, for sure.

And there are times where the employers have far more control because there's far more demand for the jobs that they have available.

Well, we're in the inverse situation right now, and there is no sign in 2022 of that letting up.

That demand seems to be insatiable right now and likely to carry us through the entire year.

If that's the case, then yes, employers need to get in touch with what it is that the employees they have today and the employees they want to have tomorrow are looking for, and figure out how to go ahead and deliver that to the best of their ability.

If employers don't do that, they're gonna find themselves looking for those to fill those open positions for a far longer period than they would like.

And they have in effect caused a lot of that as a result of the focus on returning to pre-COVID normal, versus the focus on dealing with what post-COVID workplace normal looks like.

- Chris.

- The message has been heard loud and clear.

Like David said, you need to talk to your employees, you need to understand what you want.

And the number one investment employers will now make is not in a technology, it's not in capital improvement, it's not in facility, it's in retaining their workers.

What does that mean?

That could be wages, that could be benefits, that could be recreating your workspace so that it's more flexible to allow part-time remote and part-time in office.

I know one manufacturer just redid their facility in East Hartford and they surveyed their employees to find out what were the things that were most important to them.

It was bright light and fresh air.

So each day they funnel out the old air and they put in new air.

Because that's what the employees wanted.

It's listening to those employees and understanding what they want, and then making those investments to retain those employees.

And that's been a paramount shift as a result of the pandemic.

- If there is a "Great Resignation" going on... And I know our friend, Jay Zogorsky of Boston U. takes issue with that term.

If there is a "Great Resignation" going on, the greatest resigners are coming from the low wage hospitality and food service industry.

Which the Bureau of Labor Statistics says hemorrhaged 6.9% of its national workforce in November of 2021 alone.

If they are after more money, average hourly wages for those workers did increase 13.4% in November of 2021, as employers struggled to stay fully staffed.

But as we saw recently, at the northbound I-95 Service Plaza in Darien, low wage workers in "The Great Resignation" might be after more dignity and more security, as much as more money.

- Thank you everyone for coming out today, in this cold, wet morning to heat up working people with our righteous mission.

We're here to celebrate another victory in our fight to improve the lives of more than 800 service plaza workers across Connecticut.

- So, my name is Mario Franco.

(Speaking Spanish) - I have worked here for 27 years.

(Speaking Spanish) - Over my 26 years, excuse me, I have seen a lot of discrimination.

(Speaking Spanish) - A lot of things have happened that only the owners know about that they cover up everything.

- 32.

- BJ.

- 32.

- BJ.

- They ran an efficient night shift at the McDonald's, the flagship fast food outlet in one of the busiest service plazas, and then they heard about new workers being hired.

How would that make you feel?

New workers are being hired and you have this quality, qualified workers with decades of service and expertise and you did not recall them?

Shame on you McDonald's.

- Shame on you.

- Four workers testified before the National Labor Relations Board trial that spanned over three weeks.

The judge had mountains of evidence, but her decision was clear and simple.

As she put it when releasing her decision on December 30th, "Michell's arguments were a mere pretext to cover its scheme; to use the pandemic layoffs as an excuse to terminate the four workers."

Now in the next few weeks, they hope to return to work and to receive the back pay to which they're entitled.

We celebrate their victory.

- McDonald's, Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, Alltown, Sbarro, all the restaurants inside, they pay the salary low.

Equal pay for everybody.

(workers clapping) Wake up.

All workers wake up, because this victory is for everybody, not just for McDonald's.

This pandemic and these things was really difficult for me because I need to put the food on the table for my children, but it's more difficult for me because I have one girl with special needs.

Many disability, not just one thing.

It's really, really, really, really stressful.

- What I think is really incredible in this moment, is that we are seeing workers who understand they took great risks during the pandemic, and they saw corporations get very wealthy.

You know, really gain tremendous profits during the pandemic.

And now workers are saying, "It's not fair that we're not treated better."

- This campaign is not over, until we get justice for these workers.

And what justice looks like, is for them to have the right to organize without fear of being interfered with.

They should be able to freely organize and unionize if that is their choice.

This is America.

This is the State of Connecticut.

And we are not going to tolerate that anymore.

(workers cheering) No more.

No more.

- We have reached out to the GR Michell Company for a comment, they have not yet offered any response.

Here now to comment on the union victory at the Darien McDonald's and on what it has been like to be a low-wage essential worker during the pandemic, are two people who were at the event you just saw.

They are Rochelle Palache, a district leader for Service Employees International local Union 32BJ, and Ed Hawthorne, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO.

Welcome to you both.

And thank you, to you both.

Ed, what do you hear from your rank and file about some of the conditions that low-wage hourly workers are facing out there?

- They're tired of bosses who work remotely, telling them to show up to work and put themselves and their families at risk by the invisible enemy, that is COVID-19.

And it's not just about low wages, although that does play a very significant role.

Workers are tired of having poor health insurance, little or no retirement, not enough times with their families, extreme, unpredictable understaffing.

People are tired of working on a Monday and Tuesday of next week at certain hours, and then working a completely different schedule the next week.

The bottom line is that every worker should have a safe job, they should make it home safe to their family at the end of the day, and be able to have a predictable schedule so they can have childcare to enable them to go to work.

The pandemic has exposed so much with our economy.

Millions of working people are struggling to survive while wealthy billionaires and big corporations, just like this McDonald's have hoarded even more power and wealth.

- What effect has the pandemic had on organizing efforts?

- It is not easier.

Organizing has actually gotten more difficult in terms of the logistics and getting boots on the ground like we typically do, because of the pandemic.

However, I think the glimmer of hope here is that workers are more energized.

Workers are more fired up than I've ever seen them before.

And so in this moment, the labor movement has an opportunity to garner the energy, the support, the power of workers, 'cause they are doing it on their own even sometimes without a labor organization.

So I think that's the glimmer of hope here.

Is that because of the crisis that has come to a head because of the pandemic, which just made everything that was a challenge and a problem more magnified.

Workers are now finding their own voice.

- What are the lessons the labor movement should take away from what has happened during the pandemic that can be useful going forward, Ed?

- Labor often focuses on, you know, wages, we focus on retirement and healthcare.

But we need to really refocus on safety.

And that's really where unions first formed, was around safe for workplaces.

I've spoken to nurses and retail workers who are crying in the parking lot before going into a workplace because they're not sure if they're gonna catch COVID-19, come home, give it to their family, maybe they're cohabitating with a elderly parent, or somebody who is immunocompromised.

Safety is first and foremost in the workplace, and unions have been at the forefront of that for generations.

Every great stride that we've made in creating a safer workplace, unions have been fighting behind, and we plan to do that again, come this legislative session.

- We've seen strikes at, you name it, Kellogg's.

We've seen nurses in various locations go on strike.

We've seen strikes in low-wage hourly worker situations as well.

I mean, its been so much strike activity in the last year.

How do you all process it?

Rochelle, you first.

- Strike is the ultimate worker tool, right?

It's in our toolbox.

It's a decision that workers take seriously.

And usually it's at that point where they're fed up, they can't take it anymore.

And so if anything, this pandemic has highlighted all the issues, the challenges that workers that have been facing, low-wage workers, workers who are mostly Black and Brown have been facing for years, right?

The income inequality, the lack of resources for housing and education.

And so it comes up to a point where it's a boiling point.

And so you know, our strikers at the rest stops, the service plaza food service workers.

They want a union.

They want better working conditions and so they went out on strike.

Or 1199 healthcare workers, group home workers, they wanted a decent contract, right?

They're fighting for basics.

And it's not being given to them, and so they make that demand in the street, ultimately with a strike.

- Ed, what are your thoughts?

- My thoughts are when I see employers putting up signs that say heroes work here, but then not treating them like heroes.

And then those coworkers watch their coworkers go out sick, and some of them don't come home.

They watch people pass away due to going to work.

And that changes the way a person looks at things.

So as Rochelle said, no worker takes strikes lightly.

It is often the last thing they want to do because it's hard.

It's hard to stand out there.

It's hard to keep that line going.

But sometimes it's the only option they have to make an employer listen.

- You hit the nail on the head.

Heroes, essential workers, those words got thrown around a lot and still are being used a lot during this pandemic.

And our membership are mostly Black and Brown.

They're mostly security and janitorial members, food service, teachers, right?

They were on the front lines, right?

And a majority of our members have not gotten this.

So they've got the recognition in terms of someone calling them heroes, but where is the money behind that?

Where is the recognition, right?

And the recognition of their sacrifice?

We've lost members to COVID-19.

We've lost seven members to COVID-19 in Connecticut that we know of.

Uncountable family members throughout our union, we've lost over 150 members.

And that's people we'll never see again, right?

They're never gonna be at their family get together again.

And so when you call them heroes and then they don't see any hazard pay on the table, they don't see any essential pay or hero pay on the table, it's really a slap in the face.

- Ed, how behind are food service employers?

How behind are they in paying a living wage across Connecticut, and as far as you can tell across this country?

- I meet people that are on public assistance that work full-time, and that's not right.

If you work a job and you work full-time, you should be able to support yourself and your family.

- Going to college as long been seen as a tried and true path towards getting a good career and having a good life.

So it's interesting to note that during the pandemic college enrollments have fallen, a lot.

According to a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report released last fall, the number of undergraduate students in college nationwide was down 6.5% compared to two years ago.

That's the largest two-year enrollment drop in the last 50 years.

And the report says, community colleges have had it worse.

With their enrollments dropping a collective 14.1% in that same timeframe.

With their lower tuitions, open enrollment policies, and direct to the workforce centric curricula, community colleges have traditionally helped many a lower income student get a leg up in life.

Now these schools have also been an important path for many an older student wanting a change.

We caught up with one such mid-pandemic, mid-career transitioner at Tunxis Community College in Farmington.

(gentle music) - My name is Chuck Cofrancesco, I'm a 57-year old retired engineer who went back to school, to Tunxis Community College and I'm now a patient care technician for dialysis with the DaVita.

My engineering career was a great one.

Loved my job.

Loved every minute of it.

But I was ready for a change.

I was looking to do something a little bit more people oriented.

So that's what led me to transition out of that.

I was looking towards this next step and who I am.

Throughout my life I've had challenges medically, and I knew what it was like to be on the other side of the bed.

So I'm a people person.

I wanted an opportunity to put that skill to use and be able to help people.

So if you're successful, right?

And we would see to that.

(indistinct) The whole medical anatomy and physiology part of it from high school, always was fascinating.

Even before I went back to school, like I knew the bones, I knew the muscles, I knew the systems.

Because other than sports, yeah, very much interest me.

(indistinct chatter) So what do you have to do?

It started with most of the classes were virtual and then the clinical parts were here in school.

Not being live with my fellow students a hundred percent of the time, didn't really have much effect.

A lot of the teachers had really good techniques of using the discussion board and trying to generate the conversation.

I tended to generate a little bit more conversation than the other students because of who I am.

(gentle music) In almost every class that I was in, I was the elder statesman.

Typically I was the older man in a group of younger women.

What happened was the process was say, slower.

They're reading a resume of a 30-year engineer who now has some medical schooling.

It wasn't until I started getting in front of people, and they got to see who I am and what I was gonna bring to the table that I started getting what I would call significant interviews that led me to DaVita through the email that I'm looking for work, and that's how I got in that direction.

From there, everything about DaVita and me aligned.

In lavenders, typically always the last.

- [Woman] Okay.

- The patients that I'm dealing with in dialysis are choosing life when they walk through that door.

And I am confident that I could help them reach their goals of why they're walking through that door.

DaVita has a great program for getting me ready.

Tunxis Community College has a great program that got me ready to enter the healthcare field and be the best that I could be.

- Well, many thanks to Chuck for allowing us to share his story with you.

Now, we brought you Chuck's story because of the window it offers into at least two work related worlds.

A, the world of medical workers dealing directly with the public during a pandemic, and B, the world of academia as a necessary conduit to a good career.

With me now to talk about Chuck's story and the issues it raises are Kimberly Sandor, the executive director of the Connecticut Nurses Association, and Mark Ojakian, and the former president of Connecticut State Colleges and Universities who, by the way retired from 40 years in state government last year to open up his own consulting business.

Thank you so much for your time, both of you.

Mark, I expected there to be a large number of Chucks, making the best of the workplace upheaval brought on by the pandemic to go back to school and train for something else.

Instead though, community college enrollments have been down around the country for, it seems a couple of years now.

That's according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Did the pandemic bring us to some sort of tipping point where people are considering more seriously, whether higher education is worth the expense or do you see something else at play here?

- Yeah, I don't think folks are looking at higher education in terms of expense right now.

I think what happened is there's been a drop in enrollment year over year, especially at the community colleges because the high school graduation numbers are down, right?

There's less high high school students in the pipeline.

And I think what you see during a pandemic, especially at the community colleges is while there's a need to be retrained or to get education for new opportunities, folks have day-to-day issues they need to deal with, which affect their ability to go to school.

So they might not have a current job.

They might not have daycare, right?

Single mothers who traditionally would go to a community college full or part-time, now in a position of having to stay home and in some cases, educate their children virtually if some public schools go virtually online.

The other thing is there's more students taking advantage of certificate programs, which are not usually counted in enrollment numbers.

So people will go for a six-month certificate, a year certificate, a three-month certificate.

And that isn't really sort of reflected.

I think people have been concerned about their safety and their health.

And so this has kept folks away from going back to school, in the classroom, in the numbers that we would've anticipated.

- Kimberly, I wanna get back to you.

Is the nursing profession getting enough new blood from our institutions of higher learning to keep pace with demand?

And is that new blood coming in as well trained as you would like them to be?

- We have some hospitals that have hired student nurses as patient care techs, to give them more hands on exposure and then work with them to be employed by their institution afterwards.

Institutions are adjusting orientation periods, and skill review at that time.

So they're really getting all the training and skills they need on both ends of that picture to ensure we have a ready to go workforce.

But as far as the number of nurses out there, you know, the pandemic, I think across every industry has really taken its toll on everybody and nursing is not immune to that.

So nurses wear many different hats and we need a lot of them to keep communities healthy.

And right now we're with our stakeholders at the Governor's Workforce Council, to think about funding that's coming into the state and leverage a comprehensive system to really think about how do we bring and produce more nurses in Connecticut.

Right now, we receive 11,000 qualified applications to our nursing programs.

Including those community colleges and state colleges and the wonderful programs at UConn.

That's an amazing amount of people who want to come into nursing and are qualified to be enrolled in a program.

But we don't have seats for them all.

We only have about 2,800 seats.

So we're really looking at how can we maximize the system we have, get more faculty, look at creative clinical placements, so that we can really add to the amount of nurses coming out of our Connecticut higher education system and staying into the state.

As well as how can we support them when they're out there?

Because we need to keep them at the bedside or at least in the profession.

So we're working really hard on some recruitment and retention strategies to address nurse burnout, fatigue, and really get at the root cause of what's creating the shift in turnover so that we can fully support the profession to do the important work they're committed to doing to keep Connecticut safe.

- Mark, I wanna go back to you for a second.

The subject of our story Chuck, an older student.

Will the older students be more the focus of efforts to attract new students as colleges and universities seek more paying customers?

- Now you're absolutely correct.

And I think the focus over the last few years has been to attract more non-traditional students.

So older students.

Students, for example people returning from the military who are looking for new opportunities.

You know, single mothers who now perhaps need to enhance the skills necessary to get better paying jobs.

So the focus has been, and I believe will continue to be on those non-traditional students.

You know, the four-year typical student that you think about from the past for example, when I went to school back in the civil war days.

Those students are still there but because of the demands of the lifestyle that they're living, because of the economic situations that folks find themselves in, they have to work, they have to go to school, they have to take care of families, they have to provide for aging parents, for example.

So there's a whole host of obstacles that get in people's way.

So you're seeing more part-time students, and you're seeing more older students coming into the institutions.

- What do you sense is the general feeling among instructors Mark, and for you, Kimberly, nurses, about the moves management has made to keep them safe on the job?

And what's your sense about their respective job satisfaction levels at this point?

Kimberly, you first.

- I am here to say it's just as important for our healthcare providers as anybody else.

But it's clear that the toll of the pandemic is really throughout society.

When patients are coming to the hospital, they're tired and exhausted too.

They're afraid, but nurses are also afraid.

There is discussions and concerns about workplace violence.

- If I may interrupt.

You mean violence from patients to medical workers?

- Yes.

Yes.

And you know there is understanding that when people are sick they're not at their best.

(Kimberly chuckles) And we certainly appreciate that, but nurses should not have to worry about getting kicked in the belly or get their head hit against a cabinet or even some of the verbal language that is slung at them is really inappropriate.

And it's...

I think the pandemic has just eked into everybody's life in every little place.

So there's just no place to fill that cup again, and it's just exhausting and we need to do better.

And I think those are some places that we could do it.

We also need to think about our nurses' salary and some of the other things that are causing stresses for our nurses and others.

Tuition reimbursement, scholarships, the financial difference between pay in the hospitals with travel agency nurses and floor nurses, and in the public health setting.

All these little things contribute to little bits of tension and things that make work a little bit harder.

- Well, you raised the violence issue a few moments back, and that's certainly something we've seen, goodness gracious, seems like every day on the news on airlines and at your local coffee shop, at the market, and so many other places in society.

Mark, have you...

There've been similar complaints about that in the academic realm?

- No, I think in the academic realm, there's been less of that sort of workplace violence you know, as an issue.

I think overall, faculty, staff, and students when they had to pivot were anxious, were nervous about doing things differently.

And once we returned to the classroom, of course, were concerned about their health and their safety.

I think we did a really good job of working with the governor and his team to put together a reopening plan that was thoughtful, that was based on public health protocols.

And I think overall folks have adapted.

This was something we never envisioned having to do.

But as I remember one day we were in class and the other day we were home.

And so it was a very difficult transition, but everybody did an incredible job of pulling together and with the focus continuing to be on the student, right?

I always talk about students first.

And I think faculty, staff, and administration kept students always in the forefront of every decision that they made.

And now I think there's a blueprint for what happens going forward and that has to pivot, so be it.

- That's our show.

Thank you so much for watching, Cutline: The State of Work.

(gentle music)