Every once in a while, events conspire to upend Americans’ views on the economy.

It happened in the 1970s, when postwar confidence in the United States’ industrial might was shattered. Energy shortages, soaring inflation, and relentless foreign competition smashed the view of the American workforce as superior and powerful. Now, though, such thinking may be shifting in the opposite direction. 

A labor shortage of historic proportions, coupled with longer term trends, has allowed workers to win big pay raises this year. From pilots to delivery drivers, union members are getting better contracts. Even nonunion workers are making gains, so that those at the bottom of the pay scale are actually reversing some of the income inequality that has yawned since the 1980s.

“With the tight labor market, we’ve seen this extraordinary phenomena where ordinary workers have been able to get good wage increases,” says Dean Baker, economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a research and public education nonprofit based in Washington. But “they have a long way to go. I mean, we’ll have to make up 40 years of losses.”

The question is whether this era is a rare blip in the economy or an inflection point where low-paid workers begin to make gains relative to higher-paid workers. The economics suggest it’s a blip, which will disappear once unemployment rises and jobs become scarce again. But some labor experts point to longer-term trends that could lead to a historic re-balancing of the labor market between the rich and poor.

SOURCE:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor,

|

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The enthusiasm and hopes among union workers are palpable.

“I can’t believe the raises and benefits,” says Kenny Riley, president of the Charleston, South Carolina, local of the International Longshoremen’s Association. He’s referring to the 32% pay raise and bonus that his union’s West Coast counterpart, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, reportedly negotiated in June with shippers and terminal operators in a tentative six-year contract. (The union hasn’t released details.) Mr. Riley is hoping his union, now in talks with East Coast shippers and operators, can match that increase. “The money is there in the logistical chain, and it’s our time to reap the benefits.”

Nonunion workers are also pushing for change.

One day in July, Marshawna “Shae” Parker took a deep breath, put down the coffeepot in her hand, and walked off her job at a Columbia, South Carolina, Waffle House with a raised fist. “I felt lighter than a feather,” recalls the waitress and 23-year veteran of the restaurant chain. “Walking out ... was a weight lifted.”

Outside, she was cheered by a phalanx of workers at a union so new, it’s not yet officially recognized. They are pushing for better pay, a working air conditioning unit, an end to automatic deduction of shift meals, and more security guards to keep staff safe. But she was a lonely striker. No one else at the restaurant walked off that day. Four fellow strikers weren’t at work at the time of the rally. Three days later, after receiving promises that things would change, Ms. Parker went back to work.

Courtesy of the Union of Southern Service Workers

Marshawna "Shae" Parker (center) joined other Waffle House employees at a Columbia, South Carolina, location in a three-day strike in July. Their demands included better pay and a safer workplace.

Rather than joining existing unions, workers at some of America’s best-known companies have formed their own. Apple, Amazon, Google, and Starbucks employees have all created their own organizations. Sometimes, the members are highly paid workers eager to have their voices heard by management (Google professionals). More often, it’s low-paid employees pushing for better pay and work conditions (Apple store employees, Starbucks baristas, and workers like Ms. Parker at the Union of Southern Service Workers, formed just last year with ambitions far beyond Waffle House). It’s these organizing drives that unions hope will reverse or at least stop their decadeslong decline.

One of the toughest nuts to crack is the South, where states have right-to-work laws. 

That means workers don’t have to join unions or pay union dues, even if a union has organized the workplace. Still, organizing is going on at tire plants in the Carolinas and at Amazon facilities in Georgia, including a protest in East Point, Georgia, on July 26. It came just a day after UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters came to terms on a tentative contract, which workers still must approve.

The Teamsters offered an app where UPS drivers could share concerns up the chain to union bargainers – and the issues went beyond pay to what worker Viviana Gonzales calls “issues of dignity.” One high priority: getting air conditioning in vans, including in Palmdale, California, where Ms. Gonzales often sees temperatures climb into triple digits. 

Ms. Gonzales, a nine-year UPS veteran and a union shop steward, was on the front lines of preparing workers for a possible strike this month – and the self-sacrifices involved in solidarity. 

Mike Blake/Reuters/File

A UPS delivery van is driven along a city street in Garden Grove, California, March 29, 2022. Air conditioning was a priority, alongside higher pay, for union drivers at the company in recent bargaining talks.

Now the walkout won’t be necessary. 

“We are an example of what happens when you are a union, what we can make happen,” Ms. Gonzales says.

The UPS contract is eye-opening because, even though the union hasn’t officially released the terms, details that have leaked out suggest it is heavily weighted toward helping the lowest-paid drivers, the part-timers.

The tentative contract reportedly gives all workers an immediate pay boost of $2.75 an hour, hikes the minimum starting pay for part-time drivers by 30%, and moves thousands of shift workers into full-time employment. In March, Delta Air Lines pilots approved a contract locking in a 34% raise – a move that has since been matched by other major airlines.

Besides seeking better pay and job protections, union autoworkers are also negotiating to eliminate tiered wages, which allows companies to pay newer workers less than what longtime workers earn. Their contracts with major automakers expire next month.

Obviously, pilots and autoworkers don’t inhabit the bottom of the pay scale. Yet historically, their gains have spilled over into the pay scales of nonunion companies. The contract wins and the organizing pushes, along with other trends, suggest the possibility that a sea change is at hand for lower-paid workers.

Fong/AP/File

Hundreds of striking air traffic controllers, some with their family members, applaud speakers during a meeting of union members in Los Angeles, Aug. 5, 1981. The Reagan administration said it would fire illegally striking controllers who defied the president’s work-or-be-fired order.

Ever since the 1980s, globalization, automation, and anti-union administrations have put blue-collar workers on the defensive. Corporations moved factories abroad or automated them. After the Reagan administration took on striking air traffic controllers – and won – employers have taken a tougher stance against unions. The results were predictable. 

Factories closed. Jobs moved overseas. Unions dwindled in their reach and power. In 1983, 1 in 6 private sector workers belonged to a union; as of last year, the ratio was only 1 in 16. And the rich-poor income gap, which some economists attribute largely to unions’ decline, grew to levels not seen since before World War II.

Now, however, some of those trends are reversing. And the economic assumptions of the past 40 years no longer appear to apply. For example:

Assumption No. 1: Globalization is decimating the blue-collar workforce.

That’s no longer true in strategic industries such as semiconductors and green power. Worried about U.S. dependence on China, the government is subsidizing companies to bring chip production back to America. A decade ago, conservatives and trade activists would have decried such a move as protectionism. Now, the move has bipartisan support because of the growing strategic competition with China. Corporations, also anxious to diversify away from China after the pandemic disrupted their supply chains, are opening factories in other countries or bringing them back home.

The Biden White House, perhaps the most labor-friendly administration since Franklin Roosevelt’s, has pushed through legislation that is also giving alternative energy a huge boost – promising still more blue-collar jobs. 

Assumption No. 2: Technology has made white-collar workers, especially so-called creatives, the winners in this economy.

While automation displaced factory workers for decades, its latest incarnation in the form of artificial intelligence now generally poses a greater concern for white-collar workers than blue-collar ones. Even if AI begins to steal jobs away, employees involved in physical labor and consumer-facing service work appear to be somewhat insulated. 

This year’s bargaining sessions tell the story. The mere threat of a strike won longshoremen, UPS drivers, and other blue-collar workers big pay raises. The 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, by contrast, have been on strike since May. Last month, the actors union joined them on the picket line. It’s the first time the two have jointly struck the studios since 1960 and the most closely watched labor action of the year. Almost 3 in 4 Americans say they’re aware of the strike, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released Aug. 3. Among the issues are revenues from web streaming and the use of AI to generate actors’ likenesses.

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Union actors and screenwriters picket outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, July 31, 2023. Unlike the efforts of airline pilots and UPS drivers, their effort to reach a new contract has dragged on.

“This won’t be a career anymore,” says Adam Conover, a member of the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee, walking the picket line in front of Netflix studios in Los Angeles last month. “If we don’t win this now, we won’t have careers to go back to in five years because they’ll have eliminated the writers room, they’ll have scanned everybody into AI and be stealing their likenesses instead of [using] real actors. ... They’ll put comedy-variety writers like me on a day rate. We’ll go from a 13-week guarantee to a day rate.”

Assumption No. 3: The rich are getting richer while the poor fall behind.

Actually, at least since the Great Recession, workers at the bottom end of the income ladder have seen their pay rise by percentages that outpace those in the middle or even those at the top, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of this reversal in the 2010s can be explained by state actions to raise minimum wages, according to Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-author of a study on income trends released in March. Since 2014, 30 states have effectively raised their minimum-wage law, says the Economic Policy Institute.

Then the pandemic hit, which created a worker shortage, especially in low-paid service industries. Wage gains at the bottom accelerated. And they’ve accelerated for all such workers this time, not just those in states with a higher minimum wage. Even after accounting for inflation, low-paid workers have come out ahead in the past three years, while those in the middle and the top have lost ground. 

Such gains in the past three years reversed approximately a quarter of the post-1980 widening of income inequality, according to the study. 

The pandemic not only caused a worker shortage but also changed perspectives.

“What everyone always thought of as the great mass of ‘low-skilled,’ low-wage service [workers], those folks discovered during the pandemic that they’re essential workers,” says Susan Schurman, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “There is a growing demand among workers for a much stronger voice on the job and for American workers. … Really unions are the vehicles through which the average worker or group of workers can get any leverage on the job. There is not another way to do that.”

Whether all these trends amount to a revival of unions’ fortunes remains an open question. Past organizing wins and gains at the bargaining table haven’t triggered a rebound for organized labor. And today’s worker shortage – the longest string of sub-4% joblessness since the late 1960s – may not last. Yes, some demographers warn that declining birthrates could mean a future with fewer workers. But with AI, labor-saving automation could accelerate. And in the near term, as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and slows the economy to fight inflation, the number of job openings has begun to fall. In July, the U.S. notched the slowest job growth since December 2020.

Joshua Bessex/AP/File

Starbucks employees and supporters react as votes are read during a viewing of their union election, Dec. 9, 2021, in Buffalo, New York. About 3% of Starbucks stores are currently unionized, according to the company.

The contract wins “are definitely real gains,” Ruth Milkman, a sociologist and head of the labor studies department at the City University of New York, writes in an email. But “they may reflect the tight labor market ... as much as anything else.” In the case of UPS, they also reflect the threat of losing market share in a strike, she adds.

Historically, union workers have proved to be the one labor group that can, at times, push against chill economic winds. But labor economists aren’t at all sure that they can do it now when their leverage is limited to a few highly organized sectors of the economy.

Unions are busy organizing other sectors. Last year, the number of petitions for a union at workplaces and the number of workplace elections won by unions reached a seven-year high. And public approval of unions stands at 71%, according to a Gallup Poll last year, the highest since 1965. 

Despite all this momentum, many newly organized workers have failed so far to win the most important thing: a contract. Many companies are dragging their feet when it comes to bargaining. 

“Obviously, their strategy is this: ‘We will not sign a collective bargaining contract. ... We will wait for the next turn of the economic cycle when there is a recession or something,’” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a historian and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Absent a change in labor laws, which would tilt the advantage back in unions’ favor, a rebound looks unlikely, he says.

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Members of the Air Line Pilots Association International walk an informational picket on behalf of United Airlines pilots at O'Hare International Airport, May 12, 2023, in Chicago. Pilots at several airlines including United have won large pay raises.

“The courts and maybe the Congress and certainly the managerial mindset could shift,” he adds. “When you talk about union upheaval – or other upheavals – usually the elites make concessions because they think concessions are the lesser of two evils. So you think that communism is sweeping the country in 1937? Let’s recognize some unions because there could be a rebellion. And if you think that urban riots are going to progress even more in the ’60s, we’d better offer some civil rights laws.”

From management’s perspective, unions often represent a large – and unnecessary – interference in company-employee communication and problem-solving. “Waffle House is proud of its long record of effectively addressing concerns our Associates report to us,” the company said in a statement to the Monitor. Senior managers have met with workers at the Columbia restaurant. “We’ve already carried out work on most of the issues that were discussed, and we are working on others.”

Generally speaking, employers are not sounding conciliatory, even those who have seen unions organize small parts of their operations.

“The direct relationship we have with our partners [workers] enhances our ability to anticipate and meet our partners needs, provide opportunities for their success, and is fundamental to who we are and to the success of our business,” Starbucks said in a statement to the Monitor. “We respect the right of the 3% of stores that have opted for union representation. ... [But] as a result of the direct employment relationship preferred by nearly 97% of our partners, we continue to work to reinvent and improve the Starbucks experience.”

Ms. Parker, at Waffle House, has noticed a change since her mini-strike. “My coworkers, some of them have been very against what I did. And the atmosphere among managers is very different now, I’ll leave it at that,” she says. “But everybody is paycheck to paycheck, and the cost of living is high. ... I’m going to keep pushing.”

Staff writer Ali Martin contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

Editor’s note: The status of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s tentative six-year contract has been clarified.

In Lusaka, the giant chicken is iconic.

As cars spin around a major traffic circle in Zambia’s capital, they are greeted by a towering statue of a white rooster perched in its grassy center, advertising a local poultry company. So beloved is the chicken that when a Lusaka mayor announced a few years ago that it would be torn down, Zambians put up enough of a fight that he eventually backed off.

So it was a striking sign of the times last month to see the famous chicken painted wearing the uniform of Zambia’s women’s national soccer team, with the words “Go Copper Queens” painted on his portly body.

It was the first time in Zambia’s history that the national team – men or women – had qualified for the soccer World Cup final stages, and a live wire of excitement crackled through the country.

Ryan Lenora Brown

A statue of a white rooster advertising a local poultry company is painted wearing the uniform of Zambia’s women’s national soccer team, with the words "Go Copper Queens," in Lusaka, Zambia. It is the first time in Zambia’s history that the national team – men's or women's – has qualified for the soccer World Cup final stages.

Fans donned the team’s jerseys and clustered in sticky neighborhood taverns for the early morning games, broadcast from Australia and New Zealand. Commentary blared from car radios. At a fancy business hotel, the housekeepers kept the televised games on mute as they cleaned rooms so as not to alert their bosses to their transgression.

“Zambia’s name has just been written on the world map in soccer,” said Delux Sayi, a taxi driver. “It’s a tournament of giants, and it’s a great achievement just to be there.”

But this year the African teams at the Women’s World Cup are no longer content “just to be there.” Three of the continent’s four squads – Nigeria, South Africa, and Morocco – stormed their way into the elimination round, in the process toppling teams long considered better than them, and upsetting the game’s established hierarchies.

Record crowds

“Soccer is everything in South Africa, and these women have made us proud,” said Glady Malubana, a waitress at a restaurant in Soweto, the Johannesburg township that is the pulsing heart of South African soccer. She was watching as her country’s national team, known locally as Banyana Banyana, or “the girls,” battled Italy for a slot in the round of 16 last week.

Carl Recine/Reuters

South Africa fans cheer inside the stadium before the Netherlands vs. South Africa match at the Women’s World Cup in Sydney Aug. 6, 2023.

In the second minute of stoppage time in the second half, the game was still tied 2-2, a result that would knock the South Africans out of the tournament. Then Hildah Magaia threaded a short pass to Chrestinah Thembi Kgatlana, who calmly tapped the ball behind Italy’s goalkeeper. At that moment, no South African team, men’s or women’s, had ever qualified for the knockout stage of a World Cup. Thirteen minutes later, Banyana Banyana did exactly that.

It is a cliché to say women’s soccer has come a long way in the 32 years since the first Women’s World Cup was played in 1991. (In fact, although that tournament would later be known as the first Women’s World Cup, at the time FIFA refused to let it use the World Cup brand. The tournament was instead officially branded as the World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup.)

In those days, Women’s World Cup matches were inexplicably 10 minutes shorter than than men’s, and the eventual champions, the United States, played in hand-me-down jerseys from the country’s men’s team. 

During the 2023 tournament, in contrast, more than 1.4 million fans have already crowded into stadiums in Australia and New Zealand – a record figure.

Tertius Pickard/AP

Nigeria's players watch during a penalty shootout during the Women's World Cup round of 16 soccer match between England and Nigeria in Brisbane, Australia, Aug. 7.

Major professional leagues in Europe, the United States, and China have helped cultivate a new generation of superstars in the women’s game, including African players like Zambia’s Barbra Banda and Nigeria’s Asisat Oshoala.

Unexpected victories, and near misses ...

But women’s teams around the world still struggle to command the same respect as their male counterparts. In the lead-up to this year’s World Cup, for instance, South Africa’s national team boycotted a friendly match with Botswana over a pay dispute; the women were being paid smaller bonuses than the national men’s team, despite better results.

Nigerian players also threatened to boycott their first match after their national federation denied them bonuses.

“I have been very frustrated with the [Nigerian soccer] federation and the lack of support,” Nigerian head coach Randy Waldrum told the “Sounding Off on Soccer” podcast in June. “We have less days than a college preseason to prepare for the World Cup, and it blows my mind.” 

James Elsby/AP

Morocco's Anissa Lahmari (right) and France's Elisa De Almeida battle for the ball during the Women's World Cup soccer match between France and Morocco in Adelaide, Australia, on Tuesday.

At the World Cup itself, however, the African teams have seemed unflustered. Nigeria, South Africa, and Morocco all defeated higher-ranked teams to secure their spots in the knockout round. By chance, all three ended up facing off in round of 16 matches against a nation that had once colonized their country – South Africa against the Netherlands, Nigeria against England, and Morocco against France.

Even Zambia, the lowest-ranked team in the tournament at 77th, stormed to a 3-1 victory over 36th-ranked Costa Rica in its final group match.

There were other victories, too – such as Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina becoming the first player in soccer history to wear a hijab during a World Cup match.

When Nigeria was finally eliminated 4-2 on penalty kicks in its round of 16 match against England on Monday, defender Ashleigh Plumptre said she hoped the team’s thunderous performance would help tell a new and different story about African women’s soccer.

“I think everybody counted us out against England,” she said in a post-match interview with The Athletic. Instead, the team came within an inch of unseating the European champions on the world’s largest stage. “We made a statement here,” she added. “We won’t be forgotten for what we’ve done, and this will just be the foundation moving forward.”

Terry Chea/AP/File

Chigozie Nri (left) and Nicholas Legendre work in the laboratory of "cultured meat" startup New Age Meats in San Francisco, Feb. 15, 2019.

Consumers may soon find meat on restaurant menus that has never walked the earth – grown from cell to fillet.

The product, called “cultured” or “cultivated” meat, is reaching more plates. Cultivated chicken has been sold in a Singapore restaurant since 2020, and in June the Department of Agriculture approved the sale of cultured chicken in the United States by two companies. More than 150 businesses worldwide are working to put beef, fish, and pork on the market, too. 

Supporters hope the food will prove more environmentally friendly and protect animal rights, yet concerns linger over costs and feasibility. 

What is cultured meat?

It’s not genetically modified or a plant-based alternative. Some would call this product that tastes, smells, and looks like chicken, real meat, but that raises philosophical questions about what “meat” is. 

Cultured meat begins as a cell from an egg or a piece of traditionally butchered meat. The cells are fed amino acids, vitamins, and other nutrients in a bioreactor. Two to three weeks later, the meat is processed into forms that consumers are familiar with, such as a nugget. 

“I think sometimes people have this idea in their head that the meat they’re eating is grown in a petri dish. That’s not the case,” says Josh Tetrick, CEO of Good Meat, one of the two USDA-approved cultured chicken manufacturers in the U.S. Initial research is in a lab, but the meat is made in a production facility, he says. 

Is cultured meat healthy? 

Both Good Meat and Upside Foods, the other cultured meat company with USDA approval, say that the nutritional profiles of their products are almost identical to conventional meats. 

Upside Foods has made public its own nutrient analysis, evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, which found “somewhat higher levels” of folate and cholesterol and slightly different mineral and metal content than conventional meat. The levels were within the range of those found in other common foods, the report said. Good Meat discloses a few nutritional facts and says on its website that its product is “high in B vitamins.”

Many potential customers seem grossed out by the product, though. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology last year found that 35% of meat eaters and 55% of vegetarians were “too disgusted” by cultured meat to try it. 

Shoppers won’t find cultured chicken on the shelves of grocery stores in the U.S. yet. Instead, the product will first appear in upscale restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. 

What is the impact on animals and the planet? 

By eliminating the rearing and slaughter of animals, cultured meat companies say their product helps reduce animal cruelty. 

“This is the kind of thing that gets moral philosophers like myself excited,” says Josh May, a professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Some people are concerned that maybe [cultured meat] is unnatural,” he says, “but it doesn’t seem any less natural than factory-farmed meat.”

Large-scale meat production has become highly mechanized and profit-driven. The idyllic image of a farmer in overalls tending to humanely treated, well-grazed animals is more a myth than reality. Factory-farmed meat makes up about 99% of the U.S. meat market, according to estimates by animal rights groups.

Cultured meat companies also claim that their product will be better for the environment. Their process uses far less land because there’s no need to house animals or grow their feed. Cultured beef, especially, could reduce the number of cattle on farms – a significant source of methane emissions. 

But there is little expert consensus on cultured meat’s environmental impact. Some research has found that producing cultured meat emits fewer greenhouse gases than farmed meat, but other studies contradicted this. Cultured meat may also require greater energy usage than conventional production. Much of the environmental impact will depend on whether the energy used is renewable and on the efficiency of future production technology.

Some voices are calling for slowing down. More than 60 French scientists and learned society members signed an open letter in February cautioning against cultured meat’s sale before further scientific research is available. 

Can companies make enough meat? 

Currently, creators of cultivated meat are limited to making tens of thousands of pounds per year, due to their production capabilities. Large-scale production of hundreds of millions of pounds of meat per year is at least two years off, says Mr. Tetrick of Good Meat. 

Above sheer output, industry leaders want to reach price parity with conventional meat. Neither Good Meat nor Upside Foods has disclosed the price of its product. “Our production costs are still quite high ... and we are not making a profit on anything we sell to restaurants,” a Good Meat spokesperson said in an email. “That will change as we tackle some of the remaining technical and engineering hurdles inherent in large-scale commercial production.”

Proponents claim prices have been falling fast. In 2013, the first cultured meat burger reportedly cost $330,000. More recent estimates range from $11 per pound to just under $29 per pound. This would be before grocery stores and restaurants hike up the price, however. 

Critics are skeptical that cultured meat companies will be able to fulfill their ambitious goals. Businesses face extreme obstacles in everything from cell metabolism and ingredient costs to facility construction and bioreactor design.

Could “lab meat” succeed even if it’s expensive? 

Given a growing consumer consciousness around animal rights and climate change, supporters foresee a future meat market where consumers will choose between different kinds of conventional meat, cultured meat, and plant-based alternatives. People with the financial resources may choose to buy cultured meat or meat from humanely raised animals while lower-cost options remain.

Consumers may reevaluate their dining choices if general meat prices rise due to climate changes, says Dr. May of the University of Alabama. “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing, which is expecting that once you’re a wealthy nation, you eat meat with almost every meal. ... It’s not necessary.”  

Several conventional meat companies have invested in cultured meat. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. invests in Good Meat, and Tyson Foods and Cargill invest in Upside Foods. No conventional meat companies responded to requests for comment.

Approved sale of cultivated chicken in the U.S. is a landmark moment, but not yet a revolution. While cultured meat’s widespread consumption and impact on the economy seem a step closer to reality, scientists, philosophers, and the product’s own manufacturers acknowledge years of work lie ahead. 

Courtesy of Eleanor Todd

Eleanor Todd offers a therapy session over Zoom. Ms. Todd is a part of Colorado Educator Support, a group that provides free mental health services to teachers and other school staff in the state.

In March, a student at a Denver high school shot and wounded two staff members. He died by suicide later that day.

When Cary Pew arrived at the high school to teach a trauma workshop to the faculty and staff, the most common thing he heard was that they didn’t have the capacity to deal with the events. “We don’t have time to think and feel about this. We’ve got standardized tests that we need to get done. We’re just trying to get to the summer,” the teachers told him.

Mr. Pew, who is working toward clinical licensure, would offer validation – and a new perspective.

“I often make the reflection of: ‘Yes. On the one hand, you can’t feel those feelings because you need to survive,’” he says. “‘And on the other hand, you’re numbing yourself. And there may be some negative consequences to that.’”

Mr. Pew is part of Colorado Educator Support, a team of students and professors at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora providing free mental health support to teachers and school staff in the state. 

The group works to fill gaps in traditional mental health services and to offer tailor-made help. Teachers saw their skills and capacity stretched after weeks and months of online lessons during the pandemic – and they are still recovering. For many, access to a sympathetic ear is a key support.

The medical school-to-teachers approach “may not be a traditional way of providing mental health support, but it’s working and easing that burden of access for so many educators,” says Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of Colorado Education Association (CEA), one of the state’s teacher unions.

K-12 staff members, especially teachers, have the highest burnout rate of all U.S. professions. Stressors include low pay, high workload, school violence, pandemic disruptions, and the recent culture wars. A 2022 survey by the Rand Corporation found that more than a quarter of teachers had experienced symptoms of depression. Between February 2020 and May 2022, some 300,000 public school teachers and staff left the field. In Colorado, public schools are “dangerously and unsustainably understaffed,” according to a recent study by CEA. 

Katie McDonagh/Courtesy of Cary Pew

As a part of Colorado Educator Support, Cary Pew provided free therapy sessions to teachers for a year and a half, seeing about four educators a week.

Getting help can be difficult. “There’s such stigma around mental health. And especially as educators, we’re in front of students; there’s sort of this expectation that you’re a perfect person,” says Ms. Baca-Oehlert, a former school counselor who helped get funding from the state for Colorado Educator Support.

The barriers aren’t only psychological, she says. “For most teachers, the only available resource is the health care plan through their employer. Some people have to wait two to three months to get treatment. That’s not ideal. Your mental health concerns can’t wait two to three months oftentimes.”

Colorado Educator Support gets most of its clients into their first individual therapy session within a week, says Amy Lopez, the team’s director and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The 3-year-old program serves hundreds of teachers every year through individual sessions, group workshops, and mental health hotline, according to the program’s annual reports. It is funded through the 2023-2024 school year. 

Tim Neubert, executive director of the American Association for Employment in Education, finds Colorado Educator Support “incredibly innovative.”

“I would love to see more universities, more people in the medical community, take an interest in this space,” he says. 

“So much need”

This effort in Colorado is part of a rethinking in recent years around ways mental health support is provided. 

About 30% of U.S. employers either offered or were planning to offer on-site counseling or therapy in 2022, for example, up from 25% at the start of the pandemic.

Colorado Educator Support grew out of the lockdowns. In March 2020, the University of Colorado School of Medicine started a student-operated mental health hotline for the state’s medical workers. By June, however, “health care workers had found their rhythm a little bit, and they weren’t using our hotline in the same way,” says Dr. Lopez, who was then supervising the hotline.

She proposed that the program serve teachers instead. 

“There was just so much need,” she says. “Being the parent of a child who was trying to do remote learning, I could hear what was happening. I could hear that everyone, teachers and kids, were struggling.”

Dr. Lopez’s superior and the groups funding the hotline then – the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Colorado’s Department of Public Health – instantly embraced her idea.

“Within the first week, we had more calls than we had in the previous month,” she says. 

But it turned out that a hotline alone was not enough. Many callers said they needed longer, repeated conversations. So in 2021, the program expanded its services with new funding from the state government. The team – seven to eight graduate students guided by Dr. Lopez and other professionals – began to offer up to five therapy sessions to any teacher who needed them. The weekly, hourlong sessions are scheduled outside of teachers’ work hours, so they don’t need to take time off and find substitutes. And because Colorado Educator Support does not deal with insurance, it’s able to schedule sessions much faster than in typical scenarios, says Dr. Lopez.

Allie Lopez/Courtesy of Colorado Educator Support

Amy Lopez, director of Colorado Educator Support and an assistant professor of psychiatry, answers a teacher’s texts regarding mental health.

In a 2021-2022 client survey by Colorado Educator Support, 85% of respondents reported that they would recommend the therapy sessions to others. “The counselor I worked with was a wonderful listener,” one wrote. “Thank you for these services, they came to me at a perfect time in my life,” wrote another. 

It’s a “win-win situation” for the teachers and the psychiatry students, who need to fulfill clinical work hours to obtain licensure, says Mr. Pew, who provided support sessions for 18 months. 

While student therapists may have less experience than professionals, most teachers do not present severe issues, Dr. Lopez says. And for educators who do need prolonged treatment, the five support sessions can serve as a bridge to fill the wait time for traditional therapy. 

Not struggling alone

One benefit of a program that targets teachers specifically is that the staff gets better at validating their clients’ experiences – a key aspect of therapy, according to Mr. Pew.  

“The more I work with educators, the more certain themes develop that a lot of them are struggling with,” says Eleanor Todd, who has a master’s degree in social work and has been with Colorado Educator Support for two years. “And I think it’s really powerful to be able to validate to them that they are not alone in that struggle.”

Given the limited number of therapy sessions allotted to a teacher, the support work is often solution-focused. Instead of “handing [teachers] a tool,” the goal, says Mr. Pew, is to “have teachers search through their own toolbox and find the tools they want to use.”

One of the most common comments he gets from teachers is that they have low energy, he says. “Our first approach is to validate that: ‘Of course, it makes sense that you feel that way.’ After that, you ask the solution-focused question: ‘How are you managing to cope with that to the degree that you are?’”

“It’s really a strength-based approach,” says Ms. Todd. For her, it’s crucial to go into her work “with as much respect as possible.”

“People really have the right and the expertise to guide their lives,” she adds. 

She felt the effect she had when a teacher who struggled with anxiety thanked her. “I still see the bait that anxiety dangles for me,” Ms. Todd recalls her saying. ”But I’ve learned that I don’t have to take the bait.”