Time for Workers to Act
Humanity's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic
requires
that workers play their leading role in making sure that necessary
measures are implemented to contain the disease and protect the
population and that no one is left to fend for themselves.
Recent weeks have shown definite features of the
workers' response.
Workers and their unions have declared that
fighting the
pandemic is the movement's top priority and unions across the country
have postponed conventions, labour negotiations and strike votes that
were scheduled to take place in the coming weeks and months so as to
concentrate efforts on facing the pandemic.
Workers broadly support the strict comprehensive
measures that the World Health Organization (WHO) has advised to
contain COVID-19 and to protect the
population, including quarantine, testing, contact tracing, social
distancing, and direct population/community mobilization. Workers are
advocating that
governments at every level in Canada must take full responsibility for
implementing the WHO's recommendations responsibly.
 In taking up
their own responsibility, workers are
paying particular attention to the plight of the front-line workers in
the health care system and in all public services, including in public
transportation, so that they remain healthy and able to keep looking
after the people. The issue of these workers being provided with
adequate personal
protective equipment (PPE) is a critical one, as is the issue of taking
time off work if one suspects having been infected with the virus,
without being penalized financially or otherwise. The issue of PPE is
also becoming a major issue in areas of the private sector such as big
retail trade chains, which people shop at in their thousands,
especially to
buy goods that are needed in the conditions of the pandemic.
Workers are tackling the issue of sustaining workers'
livelihood, in conditions where it is affected by their being
quarantined, or without work because of the closure of institutions
that employ people, or cancellation of cultural and other events for
which people are employed on a casual basis and so on.
In this, workers consider that these are all working
people that must be defended and looked after, whatever the specific
conditions they find themselves in, based on the trials and
tribulations of this economy and the neo-liberal wrecking decisions
which have prevailed for more than 20 years, over which the people are
doing their utmost to establish control.
Whether they are migrant workers, unemployed
workers or
workers in the gig economy and so-called self-employed workers,
unionized workers or non unionized workers, or seniors, ways and means
have to be found to make sure that their livelihood is sustained by the
governments and the ruling elite. Everything has to be reviewed in a
creative way to defend and affirm the human quality of all. Already,
news is coming from Quebec that self-employed workers in the cultural
events industry are organizing themselves in an organization that will,
among other things, take up the issue of their livelihood while
cultural events have basically all been cancelled for an undetermined
period.
Press conference at Queen's Park, organized by health care
professionals represented by the Decent Work and Health Network, March
12, 2020, calls for measures to
protect all workers.
This is the time to organize, to make sure that
information
is obtained and distributed as events and announcements of programs by
various levels of governments are happening very quickly, and to make
sure that workers speak out on the claims that need to be made to
humanize the situation by looking after the well-being of all.
Workers' Forum is opening its
pages to this fight
against the pandemic and the concerns, demands and initiatives that
workers are taking to face the pandemic. In this issue of Workers'
Forum, readers will find a series of interviews and
statements from workers and unions on this.
This article was published in
Number 12 - March 18, 2020
Article Link:
Time for Workers to Act
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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