In all countries throughout the world, the governments are taking action against the current coronavirus pandemic. They are doing so inconsistently, mainly because of their concern to protect the interests of the employers.
– In many countries, this arrives after years of attacks against national health systems and other public services;
– other will be more strongly as due to the situation of underdevelopment in which they are kept by colonialism they are in worse conditions to face this challenge.
We do not underestimate the pandemic, nor do we think it is a conspiracy, but we shall not uncritically accept any measures for the sake of “national unity”, a delusion with which in this, as in other issues, they want us to forget that the interests of those governing the world are not our own.
Emergency measures must be adopted, and it is fair to claim for their implementation, but it is also true that we should not give into the decisions of the politicians in charge and should rather work together to build a society that does not stand on its head.
For precarious workers they only have unemployment!
While presidents, ministers and other communicators send beautiful messages about the “much needed solidarity”, the employers act… as employers. Their only worry is to maintain the benefits of their shareholders.
Precarious workers are suffering a hive of layoffs.
All throughout the world, the most vulnerable populations will be the most affected by the coronavirus pandemic. They face this situation without home, without employment, and frequently with accessible health systems (hospital, health centres, and so on), either because there never were or because public systems have deteriorated over the years.
Part-time unemployment, teleworking, nursery schools: for whom and how?
Rules – whenever they exist – differ from one country to the next.
– In the case of part-time unemployment, the maintenance of full salaries is not guaranteed.
– Teleworking is not an option for many professionals, and for those for whom it is it entails extraordinary measures to reconcile family and working life that most companies ignore.
The instructions provided by both public and private companies are frequently vague, contradictory and partially inapplicable.
Let’s demand the public authorities what they owe us!
Governmental decisions should be accompanied by certain measures, such as:
• Paid leave and suspension of work activity with the maintenance of full salaries, as a means to prevent the spread of the virus in working places, with the exception of medical supplies factories, pharmaceutical companies and food suppliers.
• Jobs stability for all workers. Not a single dismissal!
• 100% allowance for those in part-time unemployment.
• Approval of all leaves due to the need to care for children, elderly and dependent people.
• In those working places still in operation, we demand that all activities be organised and that preventive measures and means are adopted to prevent contagions, according to the workers’ need and taking into account their opinions, as they are the ones best suited for knowing what is needed.
Unions, as associations of workers in the working places, should be the forum in which proposals are discussed and priorities established.
And let us take over this situation!
This is the time for demanding, for example,
– the nationalisation of all health companies,
– control over medical supplies and their distribution (including masks),
– the establishment of a public agency for drugs, the recovery of jobs destroyed in public hospitals,
– and so on.
In the current situation the following questions seem more pertinent than ever: what it is was those who debate, design, and draft the budgets of hospitals, research, or those in charge of any other fields that are socially useful?
1.430.000 million in dividends for shareholders around the world in 2019
And dividends are only part of the companies’ benefits.
Instead of “helping companies” (actually, their shareholders), as capitalist governments and their technocrats and other supporters of freedom-killing measures do, destroying public services, we must follow a different rational, That of the social movements which, thanks to their struggles, have achieved social protection, national health and research systems – all of which have been capped, attacked and dismantled by subsequent governments –, as well as built and experiment with many other alternatives
Health, education, transport, food, housing… we can jointly provide for our social needs!
Let us stop of this counter-reforms that are destroying our rights!
18 March 2020
International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles (ILNSS)