In Medieval Europe, a Pandemic Changed Work Forever. Can It Happen Again?

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/opinion/sunday/covid-plague-work-labor.html

In Medieval Europe, a Pandemic Changed Work Forever. Can It Happen Again?
Feb. 16, 2022
By M.T. Anderson

In the wake of a devastating pandemic, millions of people are dead and many more have had their lives upended. Many of those who survive, worn down by a sense of futility in their work and by the impassable gap between the wealthy and everyone else, refuse to return to their old jobs or quit en masse. Tired of being overworked and underpaid, they feel they deserve a better life.

This could be a story about today, but it is also the pattern that emerged across Europe in the aftermath of one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, the Black Death.

The struggles over wages and the value of labor that defined the post-plague years were in some ways as dramatic as the pandemic itself. Eventually, Europe erupted into violence. Given where we are right now, it’s worth paying attention to the chain of events that led, link by link, from pandemic to panic to bloody uprising.

The Black Death, as we now call it, burned its way across the Eurasian continent from 1347 to 1351. Arab historian Ibn Khaldun recalled with horror, “Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out.’’

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[empedocles]

1. Hmmmm

' . . . In England, for example, around half the population was legally tied to the land in serfdom, forced to labor for their local landlord. But suddenly, these workers seemed to have some bargaining power. No longer were they obligated to put up with unreasonable demands. No longer were their employers able to take them for granted. . . . '

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/opinion/sunday/covid-plague-work-labor.html