News

This page contains continuously updated details of campaigns, online meetings, educational resources, briefings and guides for taking action during the Covid-19 emergency — by the AWL and others.

The Covid-19 death toll across the USA is now into six figures. Major cities are in flames in protest against the casual killing of black men by police officers and white racist vigilantes.

Workplace activists in Workers' Liberty met via Zoom on Saturday 30 May 2020, for a joint meeting of Workers' Liberty's industrial “fractions”, groups of members in particular industries and sectors.

Workers' Liberty currently has four industrial fractions – school workers; civil servants; higher education workers; and rail workers – and two cross-industrial union fractions – Unison, covering local government and health; and Unite, covering a range of industries and sectors.

Nurse, Unite activist and socialist Mark Boothroyd spoke to Sacha Ismail.

What are the most important things for the left to argue and fight for in this crisis? How does the dominant labour movement response measure up?

Over the next month the left wing Labour group Momentum are holding internal elections in which we will participate and we have already seen agitation focused on damaging AWL candidates and other candidates with whom we have worked. What's going on?

Ruth Cashman, co-secretary of Lambeth Unison and Labour for a Socialist Europe convener, is standing for the Momentum National Coordinating Group after she nominated in the Forward Momentum primaries as part of the Momentum Internationalists slate, but was bureaucratically barred from standing. She sent us this statement.

The brutal murder of George Floyd on 25 May by police in Minnesota has sparked a rebellion by working-class African Americans and anti-racists across the US.

On 25 May, George Floyd, 46, died after being arrested by police outside a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Not just the unelected Dominic Cummings. Boris Johnson should go.

In fact, the whole Tory cabinet should go. But Johnson going would be a good start.

Cummings’ trip to Durham, and Johnson’s endorsement, have disgusted millions who think: we made sacrifices, followed the rules so we didn’t see loved ones who were ill, lonely, dying — and you people don’t bother.

1. Todd Hamer

To the casual observer there is something very odd about what is happening in the National Education Union. For some weeks the NEU leadership has rightly argued that it would be unsafe to reopen schools until there is a lower number of Coronavirus cases making possible tracing and testing (Test 1 of the NEU’s famous 5 Tests).

Just by scanning its founding supporters list, you can see that Momentum Renewal is a version of “continuity Momentum”, supported by the bulk of those responsible for the organisation’s trajectory over the last three and half years.

In some respects MR is almost certainly worse than "continuity". It seems to represent not just the existing Momentum office faction, but a particular wing of it - by and large, the worst wing of it.

Janet Burstall argues the case from an Australian perspective. The same basic ideas are applicable in Britain and elsewhere.

The most optimistic assessment by the Reserve Bank is that it will take a “few years” to reverse “much” (i.e. not all) of the increase in unemployment from the Covid-19 lockdown. The wages vs jobs trade-off debate is back with a vengeance.

New polling commissioned by liberal anti-Brexit campaign Best for Britain and anti-far right campaign Hope Not Hate says 59% expect the Brexit transition period will be extended.

Unfortunately that may be naive. The government is digging in further and further, saying it will not under any circumstances apply for an extension. The deadline for applying is 30 June — less than five weeks. Labour and the unions remain silent at best, with Keir Starmer saying he is “not calling for an extension”.

The education unions are right to say schools should not accept further mass return of pupils until the five tests are met. We should fully support any school workers who will take action on health and safety grounds from 1 June to keep their workplaces open only to vulnerable and key workers’ children.

Coronavirus is intensifying the fault lines in UK higher education, and huge cuts are coming to our universities.

Universities are announcing job cuts and hiring freezes to mitigate the huge predicted loss of income from international students’ fees. Staff on casual, fixed-term or hourly paid contracts will be the hardest hit, and their workloads will be pushed onto permanent staff. Lots is still unclear.

The Conservatives’ Immigration Bill passed its second reading in parliament on 18 May. It will proceed to committee scrutiny, expected to run until 25 June.

The Bill would end free movement with the EU and write a blank cheque for the Home Secretary, who will be able to create a new immigration regime with limited oversight. Plans published so far indicate an extension to EU migrants of the existing regime’s barriers and hostile treatment of “unskilled” (i.e. low-paid) workers. “Guest worker” schemes will facilitate hyper-exploitation and abuse by employers.

The government’s aspiration to partially open schools on 1 June is likely to be largely unrealised. While we all want children back in schools, as soon as safe enough, that is good. Success in resisting unsafe reopening is dependent on union strength on the ground. We must fight for rank-and-file school worker control over the strategy, locally and nationally.

JCB, a big company making mechanical diggers, has sent out letters beginning the consultation legally required when declaring more than 100 redundancies.

The required 45 days consultation will end on 2 July, just after the end of the current phase of the “furlough” scheme under which the government covers 80% of the wages of workers sent home for the lockdown.

JCB plans to cut 950 from its permanent workforce, and 500 agency-worker jobs.

It’s Friday 13 March 2020. The UK has 789 confirmed cases of Covid-19. It is still 10 days away from a national lockdown that will stay in place for seven weeks, effectively shuttering large swathes of society.

And the government has just removed the Foreign Office advice that travellers from Wuhan, Northern Italy, and other “hotspots” for Covid-19 should self-isolate for 14 days on arrival in the UK. The country now has no advice or restrictions on international arrivals to contain the pandemic.

Watch the video of the article on this page:

As workers are encouraged to return to the workplace, as part of the government’s botched and reckless easing of lockdown measures, an urgent discussion is taking place across workplaces and through unions about resisting a lurch back to work in unsafe conditions.

When I worked long ago in a notoriously unhealthy and dangerous steel works, Stanton near Nottingham, we often had disputes about safety.

When I first worked there the plant had the worst industrial accident record in the East Midlands region. Worse than any colliery. Deaths, limbs lost, massive burns, and cancers and lung disease as a result of fume inhalation.

Brazil is now one of the epicentres of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The number of confirmed cases is over 200,000, and deaths over 15,000, making it the fourth largest outbreak in the world.

The still almost-exponentially-increasing number of cases has, however, not been enough to convince Jair Bolsonaro to establish any sort of federal social distancing policy. The president was instead interviewed at a floating barbecue party (!) as the number of deaths reached 10,000.

On Sunday 10 May, in a pre-recorded message, Boris Johnson, stated the government’s desire to open primary schools to all Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils on 1 June. He also said he hoped that Year 10 and Year 12 would be able to get some face to face contact in the near future.

Further guidance from the government then added nursery age children in primary schools to that list.

The 2019 TUC Congress passed a proposal from the Fire Brigades Union for “public ownership of the big banks, which could play a central role in building a sustainable economy, investing in a publicly owned energy sector and creating decent, unionised jobs in the interests of working people”.

Seven demands for the labour movement in the pandemic. Article and short video.

Donate to help Workers' Liberty argue, organise and fight in this crisis and beyond. We are aiming to raise £10,000 by 22 November. See this article for an update progress towards that target, and how to donate.

There is a fight about the future of Labour left organisation Momentum.

A new grouping, Forward Momentum, is in conflict with those who run the Momentum office (which means, in Momentum as currently constituted, run the organisation). The office people seem to be supporting a counter-initiative, Momentum Renewal. Both will run candidates in the imminent National Coordinating Group elections.

Neither grouping presents a clear, concrete, politically adequate or honest line about how Momentum should function, what it should argue for and what it should do.

Labour right-winger Bridget Phillipson, installed by Keir Starmer as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, denounced the 2017 Labour manifesto as “all must have prizes” and “vote Labour and get not the microwave, but the whole kitchen”. Not the 2019 manifesto, even, but the 2017 one.

Fire Brigades Union activist and National Officer Riccardo la Torre spoke to Sacha Ismail.

***

Yesterday we had “Victory in Europe” day, and a lot of nationalism. What are your thoughts on it?

Well, first off I’m angry that workers are dying because they’re at work and aren’t given proper protection, and yet the same “leaders” responsible want us waving Union Jacks.

On 6 May Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome, who returned to her old care job after the Covid-19 crisis hit, was sacked for speaking publicly about PPE shortages in the industry.

She used the burst of publicity to argue not only for workers’ rights and unionisation, but also for “democratic public ownership” of care. Labour movement activists should take up that call.

Nadia wrote in the Guardian:

On 10 May Boris Johnson called on construction and manufacturing bosses to force workers back into workplaces.

Without union agreements for safe working.

Without making PPE supplies adequate even for hospitals, GPs, and care homes, let alone for other workplaces.

Without full isolation pay rights for workers.

We have reported on many other examples, but here are some sent to us by a transport worker and RMT activist.

UK transport workers

BA cabin crew, Covid-19, 2020

Crossrail, 2019

Momentum Internationalists is a platform launched by supporters of Labour for a Socialist Europe to promote left-wing, class-struggle, pro-democracy and internationalist ideas in the big Labour left grouping Momentum as part of the debates around the coming elections for Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG: nominations 28 May to 11 June, voting 16 to 30 June).

During the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the more heartening signs has been how people are demanding that care workers get far more recognition and reward.

The labour movement needs to fight for full public ownership and proper funding of the care sector and for care workers to win radically better pay, conditions, and respect.

As governments and tech companies tout digital contact tracing as a way out of coronavirus lockdown, many experts and privacy campaigners are expressing scepticism. They worry these systems may do little to help contain outbreaks but could usher in unprecedented mass surveillance. So, what are the issues?

≫ Workers’ control!
≫ Isolation pay for all
≫ Requisition industry for PPE and tests
≫ Union control over workplace assessments

Workers, and our unions, need to get out in front of any discussion or planning by the bosses to begin to reopen workplaces and bring workers back to work.

We need to put in place clear assessments and our own criteria, overseen by union reps with the maximum degree of control for workers, for when it’s safe for work to resume or for workers to return to the workplace.

Workers, and our unions, need to get out in front of any discussion or planning by the bosses to begin to reopen workplaces and bring workers back to work.

The pandemic, and the fall-off in international student fees which will come as a consequence, has tipped an already unsustainable model of university expansion into crisis.

It will speed up marketisation, and bring on cuts harder and faster than they would have come before.

The government has brought forward some payments due to universities to avoid a cash-flow crisis, but as yet has refused to provide extra funding to fill what could be a £1.7bn gap.

The “heroes” narrative about NHS and other essential workers is dangerous. As a nurse on the Panorama programme on PPE said, it has an implication that unnecessary deaths are workers willingly sacrificing themselves. It absolves the government of responsibility.

It also carries an implication that those workers rebelling against these conditions lack the courage of their colleagues who accept risks due to lack of PPE.

The statement calling for Labour and the unions to fight to delay Brexit, promoted by Labour for a Socialist Europe, has now been signed by over 350 party and union activists.

On Tuesday 28 April, Tim Roache, general secretary of the big GMB union, which organises in many different sectors, stepped down, just months after his re-election.

He cited ill-health. On Wednesday, following the circulation of an anonymous letter to press outlets, GMB issued a statement: “GMB received an anonymous letter, last Wednesday, in which a number of allegations have been made about Tim’s conduct whilst he held the office of general secretary.”

Things are dark now for socialists almost everywhere. Nationalism, nativism and violent reaction are on the march across the globe.

Keir Starmer has signalled he intends to ignore Labour’s conference policy against Indian state oppression in Kashmir, as part of attempts to appeal to the Hindu right.

Hannah Pollin-Galay (above right, in the white t-shirt, on a protest she helped organise blocking the entrance to the headquarters of Netanyahu's Likud party) is a supporter of Omdim B'Yachad (Standing Together), a left-wing Arab-Jewish social movement in Israel. She spoke to Daniel Randall from Solidarity.

DR: The formation of a new coalition government is obviously a hugely worrying development in terms of the threat of annexation. What's your assessment of it?

Katrina Faccenda is a Labour Party activist in Edinburgh and Labour candidate for the Scottish parliamentary seat of Edinburgh Northern and Leith. She talked with Sacha Ismail.

This crisis has starkly highlighted all sorts of inequalities and made them glaring. Vulnerable people are now much more vulnerable – people in poverty, women, BAME communities. It’s an indicator not so much of how awful the pandemic is, as how dysfunctional our society was even before.

Woman's Place UK wrote to Workers' Liberty requesting that we publish the letter below. It is a response to an article by Workers' Liberty activist Natalia Cassidy, "Anti-trans feminists blinkered on Tories", and refers to a video by Workers' Liberty activist, Zack Muddle, "Fighting for trans rights in today's labour movement".

“Me and my colleagues in care work are risking our lives for just over £8 an hour… Whether it’s PPE shortages, faulty tests, or low sick pay, key workers are treated like collateral”
Nadia Whittome MP (who has returned to her old job during the crisis)

57% of US university chiefs say they will be cutting jobs in the coming months. Many US universities are expected to shut down altogether.

In Britain, councils say they will face an unpayable £5 billion debt as they move out of the lockdown. Some are already planning cuts, and some are threatening to declare themselves bankrupt.

Workers in some elderly care homes have been told that their jobs may disappear as the lockdown eases, since the homes will have fewer old people to look after.

As the US currently leads the world with nearly one million cases, the death rate is particularly high in New York and New Jersey, and cities like Seattle, where the population is more concentrated and the culture is more cosmopolitan.

The virus has come to rural states, like mine in Vermont, later. The majority of deaths in Vermont have come in nursing homes. The staff in those homes, in this state anyway, are entirely non-union and very low-paid.

Starting with Austria reopening small shops on 14 April, almost all European countries have now begun easing their pandemic lockdowns, or announced plans to do so (Italy from 4 May, France from 11 May).

Iran has reopened the bazaar in Tehran. Schools have restarted in Beijing and Shanghai.

The World Health Organisation, however, has declared that “the worst is yet to come”. Its worry is not so much about a second wave in Europe, as first waves elsewhere.