Solidarity 543, 14 April 2020

Supermarket workers organise

Tesco’s response to the pandemic has been unusually clear, and provides a firm starting point for those of us wanting to ensure greater protections on the shop floor now and better pay and conditions when this crisis starts to subside. We’ve been given paid leave to self-isolate up to 14 days, and our vulnerable colleagues (everyone who needs a flu jab, or is pregnant, or over 65) have been given 12 weeks’ paid leave to make sure they stay safe. Gloves, masks, and hand gel should be available to anyone who feels like they need them, and there’s a one-way one-in-one-out system in operation...

Review: First aid for the spirit

CoronaVerses: poems from the pandemic (see here ) is a rapidly pulled together collection in a rapidly changing world. Collected over the course of a week after Janine Booth set up a CoronaVerses Facebook group, it was collated and released in just over a fortnight. In a socially-distanced world this act of creating space for the looser, deeper observation poetry and other creative arts can make to our understanding of our present situation is important. If, like me, your eyes have been glued to the news, this book is a good opportunity to step back and think in a different way. The collection...

What we demand

1. Requisition (in other words, take into emergency public ownership) • private hospitals, as Ireland and Spain have done • the pharmaceutical and medical-supplies industries, so that production can be ramped up in a coordinated way of tests, PPE, ventilators, etc. • high finance, so that the epidemic is not compounded by a snowballing economic slump resulting from an implosion of credit • and other sectors where coordinated mobilisation is necessary. 2. Fight for workers’ control The workers ourselves, taking expert advice, should have a decisive voice in identifying and running what is...

Diary of a Tube worker: "Doing my head in"

“You can sit in the mess room, but only two of you. There is the locker room and then the ticket office. The GLAP (the glass box by the barriers) is your choice if you want to go in there." The supervisors are doing their shift change. M asks if there is anything she should know from D. “I can’t tell you anything, we don’t have the sheets, so not sure who is coming in. But you’ve got T, Jay and S. It’s pretty dead anyway”. A customer comes to the window to ask how to get to Old Street. M asks us “Would essential workers really not know where they are going?”. The tedium of working means many...

Regaining Momentum?

In his final message as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn called on Labour Party members to support Momentum. But Momentum, a Labour left network launched in late 2015 as a continuation of the grass-roots organising for Corbyn’s leadership campaign, is in flux. On 7-8 April, almost simultaneously, the Momentum NCG officers made a statement saying Momentum “cannot continue as it has been” and (vaguely) promising more democracy in Momentum; and other Momentum people launched “Forward Momentum” to “refound” and “democratise” Momentum. The driving force in “Forward Momentum” seems to be people in the...

Clap for migrant carers too

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is asking everyone, on the Thursday 8pm “Clap for Carers”, to remember that many of them are migrants who face NHS charges and have no access to social security. Put up a banner in your window and join us demanding universal healthcare for all and an end to “No Recourse to Public Funds”!

Women's Fightback: workers hit by café and pub shutdown

Young workers and women are likely to be the hardest hit by the coronavirus shutdown of businesses such as restaurants, hotels, pubs and retailers. Low earners are seven times as likely as high earners to work in a business sector that has shut down, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Their analysis found a third of the bottom 10% of earners worked in the worst-hit sectors, against one in 20 (5%) of those in the top 10%. Women are about one-third more likely than men to work in a sector that has been shut down, as they make up the bulk of retail and hospitality workers. One in six...

John Moloney's column

At Trinity House, an HMRC workplace in the north west, a worker was diagnosed with Covid-19. The bosses only moved people from their immediate team. The local union demanded that the building be shut entirely and deep cleaned. Management initially refused, so the union issued an ultimatum, and management agreed to shut the building. We now have an issue with the Passport Office, where the employer wants to bring large number of workers back into the office to do routine work, despite the fact that very little international travel is taking place presently. Obviously we have huge concerns about...

Raab: even worse than Johnson

Boris Johnson's replacement Dominic Raab is even more right-wing and nationalist, and more ideologically committed than the opportunist Johnson. In last year's Conservative leadership election, Raab was, before he was eliminated, the right-wing opposition to Johnson, waving the banner of a No Deal Brexit to Tory members. He advocated linking a No Deal Brexit to a large cut in corporation tax! He has a long history as a right-wing ideologue and campaigner. In 2011, he co-authored a pamphlet, After the Coalition , with four other Tory MPs from the “Free Enterprise Group” – all now central to...

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