As the omicron variant sweeps through American communities, many of our workplaces and institutions are grinding to a halt. With nurses, teachers and other essential workers getting ill or quarantining, we are facing disruptions at schools and in hospitals. Some employers are seeking stopgap measures, trying to hire rapidly to fill open jobs, begging for community volunteers to help keep things running and even lowering requirements for substitute teachers to get people into school buildings.

Can this be a moment for workers to demand more from shorthanded employers, whether that be higher pay, more remote work options, hazard bonuses or needed personal protective equipment to lower health risks? And how can gains gleaned in this moment be retained and even surpassed in a post-pandemic future?

Past labor shortages caused by extraordinary circumstances in other places may offer lessons. For example, in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, a labor shortage and strike movement in France created conditions for envisioning transformative change. French workers seized the opportunity to pressure employers as well as the state, ultimately succeeding in changing that nation’s labor code and inspiring a growing youth rebellion against work — led by a group of young veterans who called themselves “Surrealists” — that would aim at even more radical changes.

During World War I, France faced a labor shortage because of the mass mobilization of soldiers...

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