On Work and Disaster

The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic and social disruption that it precipitated have brought increased attention to the intersections of disaster studies and labor and working-class history. This historiographical essay lays out four places where disaster intersects with work: first, all disasters are workplace disasters for somebody; second, disasters create labor; third, disasters can reveal what always existed about labor, class relations, and working-class life; and fourth, disasters can remake living and working conditions by providing new grounds to contest them.