Robbie Sequeira | Stateline.org (TNS)

In her first few months as a Minnesota state legislator in 2021, state Rep. Kaela Berg often wondered: “What the hell am I doing here?”

A single mother and flight attendant without a college degree or prior political experience, Berg now had a seat at the legislative table, shaping policy decisions in her home state.

As she ran against a former two-term Republican representative — a commercial real estate agent — she also was struggling for housing and living in a friend’s basement.

“I’m living in [her] basement, running for office, and the pandemic hits,” said Berg. “I went from three jobs to one. … I found that while I can pay my bills, I can’t qualify for a new apartment because you have to show two or three times the rent and I can’t do that.”

While it was gratifying to receive support from working families in her district, her transition to state policymaker felt overwhelming.

“I had the worst case of impostor syndrome,” Berg, a member of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said in an interview. “I’m thinking, ‘Who do I think I am? I’m a working flight attendant. I don’t have a college degree. Why did I let somebody talk me into this?’”

Minnesota state Rep. Kaela Berg. Berg, a single mother and flight attendant without a college degree, is one of the few state lawmakers across the nation who qualify as “working class,” according to recent research. (Minnesota House of Representatives/TNS)

Berg is a rarity in politics: a working-class state legislator.

Just 116 of the nearly 7,400 state legislators in the United States come from working-class backgrounds, according to a biennial study conducted by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, political scientists at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago, respectively.

The researchers define legislators as “working class” if they currently or last worked in manual labor, service industry, clerical or labor union jobs. They found that 1.6% of state lawmakers meet that definition, compared with 50% of U.S. workers. Only about 2% of Democrats and 1% of Republicans qualified as working class.

Ten states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — have no working-class state lawmakers.

The dearth of working-class legislators raises concerns that economic challenges such as wage stagnation and the rising cost of living will get short shrift in state capitols.

Working-class politicians are more likely to have personally experienced economic hardship, so they are more interested in policies to mitigate it, Carnes said. And they often propose solutions that differ from those put forward by colleagues who aren’t working class, even if it means diverging from party doctrine.

“State legislatures make consequential decisions, and if you have an entire economic class of people that are not in the room when policy decisions are being made, that’s going to tilt the kind of problems politicians pay attention to,” said Carnes. “It also dictates the kinds of solutions they consider against the interests of whoever’s out of the room.”

Working-class representation in state legislatures has always been low, he noted, but the most recent count is even lower than it was two years ago, when the percentage was about 1.8%.

The state legislature with the highest percentage of working-class lawmakers is Alaska, with 5% — that’s three of 60 lawmakers. Maine has the highest total number of working-class legislators, eight of 151 legislators, with a transportation worker and a bartender among the ranks.

Nate Roberts is a longtime electrician who won a seat in the Idaho legislature. The Democrat is among the small number of working-class lawmakers around the country. (Idaho Legislature/TNS)

Working-class issues

After a 32-year career as an electrician, Democratic state Rep. Nate Roberts was part of a new wave of first-time Idaho lawmakers entering office in 2023.

Roberts knew that it wasn’t just his relative political inexperience that separated him from the rest of his colleagues.

He also was one of the only state lawmakers who had worked a union job. And during his first few weeks in office, he was shocked by how rarely issues such as wage theft, low pay and housing affordability had been talked about in committee meetings.

“That’s when I realized that the only person that’s going to advocate for working-class people is a working-class person,” he told Stateline. “When I moved from state to state working different jobs, I realized how differently states were influenced when it came to policies for working people.”

Roberts learned the power of unions as a journeyman — and fighting to increase worker protections has become his life, he said.

Idaho is one of 26 so-called right-to-work states, where no person can be forced, as a condition of employment, to join a union. Such laws limit unions’ bargaining power.

Roberts would like Idaho to follow the lead of Michigan, which in 2023 became the first state in decades to repeal a right-to-work law. That is unlikely in Idaho, given the state’s conservative political orientation. But Roberts also is pushing to update Idaho’s child labor laws, which were enacted in 1907 and have been superseded by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Roberts said his experience as a laborer in his younger years has emboldened him to speak out against legislation such as a Senate bill that would repeal limits on the number of hours and how late in the day a child under the age of 16 can work.

“I’m still shocked when I get pushback for going against these bills, particularly ones that I feel regress our child labor laws,” said Roberts. “I’ve experienced it. We need to not only protect our kids, but we also need to protect our workers.”

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The political climate is far different in Minnesota, where the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has controlled the governor’s office, the state House and the state Senate since January 2023. Last year, the state enacted a major package of labor-friendly laws.

Minnesota also passed a slew of tenant-landlord laws, with protections favoring the state’s renters.

Berg said the backgrounds of working-class legislators like herself can inform statehouse conversations, even if lawmakers with different backgrounds support pro-labor policies.

“I don’t think there’s enough value in having people with lived experience in the legislature,” Berg said. “When you take someone who … still lives paycheck to paycheck, they are bringing that personal experience to fight for a bill that will impact working families.”

For Wisconsin state Rep. Jenna Jacobson, joining the legislature in 2023 was a lot like “drinking from a fire hose,” she recalled.

One of her policy priorities — expanding aid for free school meals— was influenced by her experience as a schoolkid.

“I was one of the kids on free and reduced lunches growing up. I had the special colored cards because of that,” said Jacobson, a Democrat. “I know so many of our kids who are in a similar spot.”

Barriers abound

For working-class Americans, financial and societal barriers are a major disincentive to pursuing state offices, said Amanda Litman, co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, a progressive organization that recruits candidates for down-ballot races.

A 2021 national survey by Tufts University found that local candidates who experienced poverty in their youth felt especially constrained.

“Structurally, it’s really hard for people who aren’t already rich, or already independently wealthy, have rich partners or rich families to enter politics,” Litman said. “And the gatekeepers at the state level have typically recruited candidates who were safe bets, which is a candidate who can independently raise money.”

The eligibility criteria for statewide office vary greatly by state. Only five states — Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine and Minnesota — allow public financing options for candidates vying for state legislative seats.

Becoming comfortable wielding political power as a working-class person is a transition that can take a while, Indiana Republican state Rep. Peggy Mayfield told Stateline.

Mayfield, who worked as a secretary at the insurance company she and her husband owned together, is now a 12-year veteran in the legislature who knows how to navigate state politics and get bills passed.

But running for office, much less holding state office, is time-consuming and requires sacrifices, she said.

“If I had an employee who came to me and said, ‘I wanna run for office,’ I’m faced with saying, ‘I’m gonna let you off four months a year,’ or make a difficult choice,” said Mayfield, describing how hard it is for many workers who don’t have that privilege. “Running for office itself becomes a full-time job … and for some in the working class it may not make sense to go into politics, if they can pursue more profitable opportunities in the private sector.”

Some states have worked to raise legislative pay, which could entice more working-class people to take a shot at elective office.

Earlier this year, Kansas raised salaries for rank-and-file lawmakers from about $29,000 to $57,000 after some said the lower pay wasn’t enough to live on. Arizona, Kentucky, New Jersey and Vermont are among the states with measures this session that could increase lawmakers’ pay.

New York passed legislation in 2022 that made its lawmakers the highest paid in the country. Pennsylvania has cost-of-living adjustments.

Roberts, the electrician-turned-lawmaker in Idaho, said: “We don’t do this for the pay, and some of us certainly aren’t getting rich off this job. Some of us are making ends meet.

“But we have residents who are also making ends meet, and they rely on us to speak on the issues affecting them, and that’s what keeps you going,” Roberts added.

Lawmakers in Idaho make $19,927, after a pay raise passed in 2022.

Another barrier for would-be working-class lawmakers, Carnes said, is running a viable campaign against more established political candidates. The working class needs infrastructure and coalition-building to compete politically, he said, similar to women candidates who get support from EMILY’s List (a pro-abortion rights group).

“The solution is pretty straightforward,” said Carnes. “If you commit to working-class people and partner with labor unions and political parties on recruiting and training working-class people to run for office — it’s possible you will see more working-class state legislators.”

In Minnesota, Rep. Berg soon realized that her best legislative asset was her ability to vouch for the working experiences of everyday Minnesotans.

A flight attendant for Endeavor Air, Berg has signed on to a bill that, among other provisions, would delete the exemption for air flight crews in the state’s law on employee sick time. Her experience allowed her to confidently explain to legislative peers how the exemption had hurt flight crews.

“Government works best when all types of personal experience are at the legislative table,” Berg said. “I knew that I was uniquely able to speak on issues that my other colleagues never experienced.”

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Amy Maxmen | KFF Health News (TNS)

Four years after hospitals in New York City overflowed with COVID-19 patients, emergency physician Sonya Stokes remains shaken by how unprepared and misguided the American health system was.

Hospital leadership instructed health workers to forgo protective N95 masks in the early months of 2020, as COVID cases mounted. “We were watching patients die,” Stokes said, “and being told we didn’t need a high level of protection from people who were not taking these risks.”

Droves of front-line workers fell sick as they tried to save lives without proper face masks and other protective measures. More than 3,600 died in the first year. “Nurses were going home to their elderly parents, transmitting COVID to their families,” Stokes recalled. “It was awful.”

Across the country, hospital leadership cited advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the limits of airborne transmission. The agency’s early statements backed employers’ insistence that N95 masks, or respirators, were needed only during certain medical procedures conducted at extremely close distances.

Such policies were at odds with doctors’ observations, and they conflicted with advice from scientists who study airborne viral transmission. Their research suggested that people could get COVID after inhaling SARS-CoV-2 viruses suspended in teeny-tiny droplets in the air as infected patients breathed.

But this research was inconvenient at a time when N95s were in short supply and expensive.

Now, Stokes and many others worry that the CDC is repeating past mistakes as it develops a crucial set of guidelines that hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and other facilities that provide health care will apply to control the spread of infectious diseases. The guidelines update those established nearly two decades ago. They will be used to establish protocols and procedures for years to come.

“This is the foundational document,” said Peg Seminario, an occupational health expert and a former director at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which represents some 12 million active and retired workers. “It becomes gospel for dealing with infectious pathogens.”

Late last year, the committee advising the CDC on the guidelines pushed forward its final draft for the agency’s consideration. Unions, aerosol scientists, and workplace safety experts warned it left room for employers to make unsafe decisions on protection against airborne infections.

“If we applied these draft guidelines at the start of this pandemic, there would have been even less protection than there is now — and it’s pretty bad now,” Seminario said.

In an unusual move in January, the CDC acknowledged the outcry and returned the controversial draft to its committee so that it could clarify points on airborne transmission. The director of the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health asked the group to “make sure that a draft set of recommendations cannot be misread to suggest equivalency between facemasks and NIOSH Approved respirators, which is not scientifically correct.”

The CDC also announced it would expand the range of experts informing their process. Critics had complained that most members of last year’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee represent large hospital systems. And about a third of them had published editorials arguing against masks in various circumstances. For example, committee member Erica Shenoy, the infection control director at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote in May 2020, “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.”

Although critics are glad to see last year’s draft reconsidered, they remain concerned. “The CDC needs to make sure that this guidance doesn’t give employers leeway to prioritize profits over protection,” said Jane Thomason, the lead industrial hygienist at the union National Nurses United.

She’s part of a growing coalition of experts from unions, the American Public Health Association, and other organizations putting together an outside statement on elements that ought to be included in the CDC’s guidelines, such as the importance of air filtration and N95 masks.

But that input may not be taken into consideration.

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The CDC has not publicly announced the names of experts it added this year. It also hasn’t said whether those experts will be able to vote on the committee’s next draft — or merely provide advice. The group has met this year, but members are barred from discussing the proceedings. The CDC did not respond to questions and interview requests from KFF Health News.

A key point of contention in the draft guidance is that it recommends different approaches for airborne viruses that “spread predominantly over short distances” versus those that “spread efficiently over long distances.” In 2020, this logic allowed employers to withhold protective gear from many workers.

For example, medical assistants at a large hospital system in California, Sutter Health, weren’t given N95 masks when they accompanied patients who appeared to have COVID through clinics. After receiving a citation from California’s occupational safety and health agency, Sutter appealed by pointing to the CDC’s statements suggesting that the virus spreads mainly over short distances.

A distinction based on distance reflects a lack of scientific understanding, explained Don Milton, a University of Maryland researcher who specializes in the aerobiology of respiratory viruses. In general, people may be infected by viruses contained in someone’s saliva, snot, or sweat — within droplets too heavy to go far. But people can also inhale viruses riding on teeny-tiny, lighter droplets that travel farther through the air. What matters is which route most often infects people, the concentration of virus-laden droplets, and the consequences of getting exposed to them, Milton said. “By focusing on distance, the CDC will obscure what is known and make bad decisions.”

Front-line workers were acutely aware they were being exposed to high levels of the coronavirus in hospitals and nursing homes. Some have since filed lawsuits, alleging that employers caused illness, distress, and death by failing to provide personal protective equipment.

One class-action suit brought by staff was against Soldiers’ Home, a state-owned veterans’ center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where at least 76 veterans died from COVID and 83 employees were sickened by the coronavirus in early 2020.

“Even at the end of March, when the Home was averaging five deaths a day, the Soldiers’ Home Defendants were still discouraging employees from wearing PPE,” according to the complaint.

It details the experiences of staff members, including a nursing assistant who said six veterans died in her arms. “She remembers that during this time in late March, she always smelled like death. When she went home, she would vomit continuously.”

Researchers have repeatedly criticized the CDC for its reluctance to address airborne transmission during the pandemic. According to a new analysis, “The CDC has only used the words ‘COVID’ and ‘airborne’ together in one tweet, in October 2020, which mentioned the potential for airborne spread.’”

It’s unclear why infection control specialists on the CDC’s committee take a less cautious position on airborne transmission than other experts, industrial hygienist Deborah Gold said. “I think these may be honest beliefs,” she suggested, “reinforced by the fact that respirators triple in price whenever they’re needed.”

Critics fear that if the final guidelines don’t clearly state a need for N95 masks, hospitals won’t adequately stockpile them, paving the way for shortages in a future health emergency. And if the document isn’t revised to emphasize ventilation and air filtration, health facilities won’t invest in upgrades.

“If the CDC doesn’t prioritize the safety of health providers, health systems will err on the side of doing less, especially in an economic downturn,” Stokes said. “The people in charge of these decisions should be the ones forced to take those risks.”

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.