Solidarity 547, 12 May 2020

In the week ending 9 May, railway industry bosses signalled intentions to go for a unilateral ramping up of services from 11 May, despite no national agreement with the unions being in place to facilitate that. Unions had been negotiating towards an agreement, with a projected date of 18 May in mind for a possible increase in services. Bringing that forward a week could mean many of the safety measures implemented during the pandemic, such as temporary rosters to eliminate non-essential work, could end without new arrangements being put in their place. On the Tube, bosses had insisted there...

The union has commenced discussions with the Cabinet Office on a return-to-work protocol for the entire civil service, but we’re having to fight the managements of individual departments who want to pre-empt that by unilaterally bringing in their own return-to-work plans, prior to a national agreement being in place, or simply pressuring people back to work. The first formal meeting with Cabinet Office will take place this week. Our National Executive Committee will meet to review our position; currently our policy is that home working should continue for all workers who can work from home...

Picture from a strike at The Doctors Laboratory before Covid-19 crisis. Medical couriers transporting Covid-19 samples on behalf of NHS pathology contractor The Doctors Laboratory (TDL) will vote on strike action, in response to the company’s decision to make redundancies during the pandemic, and its failure to address health and safety concerns. The IWGB union — who represent a majority of the 140 medical couriers — issued a notice of strike ballot on 6 May, following TDL’s 1 May announcement of a 30-day consultation aiming to make ten couriers redundant. The strike ballot will run from 13 to...

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 : As an MP, I am financially secure and can afford to speak out over a lack of PPE and testing, and risk getting sacked. Across the country, there is a policy of gagging and enforced silence… the...

The Plague ( La Peste ), written by the French-Algerian Albert Camus in 1947, has, unsurprisingly, undergone a surge in sales in recent months (up 1,000 per cent). It was his best-selling novel, and is considered by some to be an allegory of the wartime occupation of France by the Nazis. It is set in the Algerian port of Oran where, at some unspecified time in the 1940s, there is an outbreak of bubonic plague. The disease spreads rapidly despite the efforts of Doctor Rieux (the main character) and a team of helpers. Eventually, after many months, thousands of deaths and severe quarantine...

On 23 February 2020, a young black man named Ahmaud Arbery was chased and gunned down whilst jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, USA. The two assailants were retired police officer Gregory McMichael and his son Travis. Arbery, a former football player and keen athlete, was out jogging in Satilla Shores, a predominantly white Brunswick neighbourhood, on the morning he was shot. Just that was enough to arouse suspicion and spur a number of 911 calls from residents. Despite the fact Arbery was unarmed and innocent of any crime, the McMichaels claim Arbery was responsible for a string of unreported...

The pdf/ print version carries an abridged version of this article Where now for the Labour Party? Following election defeats and facing environmental and economic crises, many articles are asking what direction Labour should take under its new leader. On the eve of the leadership result, Neal Lawson, director of the Compass lobby group, wrote an article on Open Democracy in which he argued for what he called a new approach. Labour must pursue new "alliances" and "build capacity", he said. It must unite a range of "countervailing forces" that will "transform our country as it comes out of the...

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. Without a track-and-trace policy for the virus even being sketched. Without a sustained drop in infections. Johnson dressed it up as "encouragement" to individuals to go into work. Furloughed workers in construction and manufacturing have not opted out individually. Their sites and...

"FOOD AND INCOME AND HEALTH CARE FOR ALL FOR ALWAYS – SAYS THE EPIDEMIC" - from a lockdown blog by Lindsey Collen, of the socialist group Lalit in Mauritius (27 April 2020) When working class people and their socialist political parties said, for over 100 years, “We want to be sure of food, at the very least,” there was a chorus from the Government, from all the mainstream political parties, from the press, and most loudly from the bosses, that this was impossible. If people have food, they will not work. And they must work. They must work for us. Otherwise the sun will fall out of the sky...

Keir! - In a round of media interviews on 5 May, you were asked about the government's plans for easing the lockdown and bringing workers back to work. While you mentioned that trade unions (“and businesses”, you were sure to add) have concerns about workplace safety, and pressed for the government to be “less vague”, you declined to take a firm stand in favour of workers' rights. Specifically, in this case, you declined to uphold the right not to have to work in unsafe conditions, even though that is actually a right in existing law ("Section 44"), and has been used in this emergency many...