Solidarity 546, 5 May 2020

Post walkouts win

At work, postal workers continue to make demands around the provision of PPE, and the implementation of adequate distancing measures at work. The walkouts that have taken place around the country have built up pressure around these demands, and they have largely been achieved in the offices where I work, with PPE being provided and staggered shift times in place to ensure numbers in the workplace don’t exceed levels at which it’s possible to distance safely. We also want to stop delivering junk mail, and prioritise essential personal mail. There was a short walkout at one of the offices I work...

Fallback pay for all

30 million workers in the USA have applied for unemployment benefit since March. 35 million workers are on government-funded furlough schemes in Europe (10 million in Germany, 11.3 million in France). 1.8 million have applied for Universal Credit in Britain, and 700,000 have got advance payments. Signals are also increasing of a new wave of job cuts as the lockdowns ease and creditors start chasing debts.

Behind the talk of "heroes"

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. We have been here before with the government seizing on a semi-spontaneous “heroes” narrative to deflect and silence criticism. It’s what happened in the Iraq war. All polls...

Starmer pitches to the Hindu right

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. Following a meeting with “Labour Friends of India”, which acts as a channel between people in the Labour Party and India’s far-right Hindu nationalist government, Starmer declared that Kashmir is “a matter for the Indian Parliament” and that he wants “even closer business links” and “dialogue” with India. He also wrote to the Hindu nationalist “Hindu Forum of Britain” asking to meet them. For more, see ‘Don’t bend to Modi –...

The birth of the Labour Party and the right to strike

In Solidarity 539 (18 March), I told the story of Labour’s rise and drew lessons for rebuilding independent working-class politics – as opposed to Lib-Lab-type “progressive” politics – today. One aspect I’d like to explore further: how in its first years Labour grew out of, built and led a successful fight to overturn legal anti-strike restrictions and assert workers’ right to strike. That also has lessons for today. Over the second half of the 19th century, trade unions carved out significant space for organising and industrial action - with important legal victories in 1871 and 1875. From...

A zero-hours worker in the pandemic

All right, I admit, I am not a down and out (whatever that's supposed to mean). I still have a roof over my head and some support from social housing key workers. I'm still registered as a person actively pursuing something like full-time employment, and am thus entitled to claim and receive Universal Credit. I'm still officially on the payroll of a number of regional employment agencies. Despite all that, I sense I am not down with (or maybe, up to speed with) the drift and the dynamics of an unfolding state of crisis, ostensibly a medical and public health issue, but manifestly a situation...

Organising in the care sector

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. On the moral level it is one of the most eye-watering injustices of our system that most care workers are paid the £8.74 per hour minimum wage or little more for risking their lives in this pandemic, and often the reward to them and their families is £95.85p per week...

Learning lessons in dark times

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

Lockdown-easing in Germany

Germany's federal states have been gradually easing their pandemic "lockdowns" since some schools were partially reopened in the second half of April. So far as can be seen, daily confirmed cases, outstanding active case numbers, and daily deaths are still falling gradually. The "lockdown" was always more liberal than in Britain. One-third of workplaces went onto "Kurzarbeit" (a scheme where the government pays wages for temporarily laid-off workers), but travel to work went down by 43% in Germany compared to around 65% in Italy, Spain, France, and the UK. German manufacturing has been running...

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