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a name="1"> The Need to Enforce Rights Accountability Is a Serious Concern for Workers
Workers reject this state of affairs and are insisting that open public discussion take place in which the causes and solutions of the problems are put on the table and publicly examined. They do not accept so-called inquiries being used as instruments to block the people from having a decisive say in all the affairs that affect them. It is absurd to claim that frontline workers who keep the health care system functioning against all odds and at great sacrifices for themselves should be deprived of decision-making power in the system. The same thing applies to all sectors in which workers keep producing goods and services that allow society to function in this terrible time of crisis. This is why workers are firmly opposing the "business as usual" dictate of the ruling elite, the "going back to normal" because that "normal" was precisely what made the crisis much worse and much more difficult to overcome and is threatening to make the situation even worse than it is. Workers' Forum is putting its pages at the disposal of the workers to make their voices heard, to smash the silence on their conditions and on their struggle for their rights and for the rights of all, and to open the path to solving the crises that are erupting in a way which favours the people.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
Workers are
seriously concerned about the lack of accountability on the part of
governments at all levels for what is happening to the people. There
can be no doubt that decisions that governments have taken and are
taking have created the conditions for the dramatic and tragic impact
of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and safety of
the people. Thirty years of anti-social offensive in health care and
social services -- with massive cutbacks, increased privatization,
further concentration of decision-making power in ministerial hands and
the marginalization and exclusion of the experience and opinions and
demands of frontline workers, have wrecked the capacity of the health
care system to face the COVID-19 pandemic. The tragedy at Northwood
Manor in Nova Scotia is one such example. When governments establish
inquiries and commissions to look into the tragedies that are
happening, they are doing so behind closed doors so as to ensure that
they do not look into the heart of the matter. Such inquires consider
the first-hand experience, proposals and opinions and the voice of
frontline workers as an impediment to their aim which is to hold onto
the power to make all the decisions not in the interest of the people
but in the service of narrow private interests.