I strongly disagree with Meredith Kerr’s Nov. 14 letter to the editor (“Roe could be linked to current worker shortage”) and the Press Herald’s decision to publish it.
In just under two years, 761,930 Americans have died from COVID-19. Three million more American workers chose (or were forced) to take early retirement in 2020 than had been forecast to do so based on research from previous years.
America is not only facing this shortage of labor but also is watching, in real time, how business owners and the media are choosing to whine and create conspiracy theories rather than pay people fairly for their labor, now that it is worth more.
When the bubonic plague killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century, it ushered in the end of serfdom and the rise of a cultured and educated middle class – so influential we called it “the Renaissance.” America is not facing a labor shortage as much as it is facing a wage shortage by businesses that are more interested in exploiting workers to pay out shareholder than in paying their fair share in taxes or living wages.
All this to say: Keep my uterus out of the discussion the next time you decide to give a microphone to speculative, baseless, strawman and slippery slope-esque fallacies about how we got to this place.
Elyse Grams
Portland
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