Workers need to organize, fight for jobs, health care
https://themilitant.com/2020/12/26/workers-need-to-organize-fight-for-jobs-health-care/
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 85/No. 1
January 4, 2021
Health care workers at Stroger hospital in Chicago during one-day strike
by 1,500 workers at Cook County facilities Dec. 22. Nurses, health
workers have gone on strike across the country.
MILITANT/DAN FEIN
Health care workers at Stroger hospital in Chicago during one-day strike
by 1,500 workers at Cook County facilities Dec. 22. Nurses, health
workers have gone on strike across the country.
After refusing for months to pass any relief measures for working
people, Congress adopted a package of short-lived handouts to
small-business owners, some government services and to some of the
spiraling numbers of workers thrown out of their jobs.
The measures provide neither benefits for as long as workers need them,
nor any steps to expand hiring. This guarantees that the burden of
today’s economic, social and health crisis will continue falling
heaviest on workers’ shoulders.
The package adopted Dec. 20 provides a one-time “stimulus” check for
$600, and $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement to those who
qualify for benefits, for up to 16 weeks only. Some 12 million working
people were set to lose their benefits at the end of December. Millions
of undocumented workers who are thrown out of work will go without any
benefits. The relief package also includes copious subsidies to the
owners of U.S. airlines and other bosses, dressed up as “payroll
assistance.”
The moratorium on evictions, ignored in practice by many landlords, will
be extended only until the end of January. Over 6 million adults could
face eviction or foreclosure in coming months, according to a Census
Bureau survey.
For the week ending Dec. 11, new jobless claims reached the highest
level since September, with just under a million filing new claims, as
government lockdowns force restaurants, bars and other small businesses
to close. Millions are unemployed, and many more who’ve been without
work for months are no longer even counted.
Cut workweek, with no cut in pay!
“Workers and our unions need to fight for unemployment benefits to all
those thrown out of work, set at union scale and available for as long
as workers need them, not one-time payments,” said Rachele Fruit,
Socialist Workers Party candidate in the special Jan. 5 election for
U.S. Senate from Georgia.
Top: over 400 members of United Steelworkers union went on strike Dec.
16 at Constellium aluminium plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Bosses are
demanding concessions on safety, seniority, scheduling and health care.
Constellium has 25 plants worldwide. Above: poultry workers walked off
the job at nonunion George’s plant in Springdale, Arkansas, Dec. 8, to
protest crowded conditions, lack of safety and low pay. George’s, one of
10 biggest poultry producers in U.S., received government waiver in
April to kill and process 175 birds per minute.
TOP: DEANDRIA TURNER; ABOVE: FACING SOUTH/OLIVIA PASCHAL
Top: over 400 members of United Steelworkers union went on strike Dec.
16 at Constellium aluminium plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Bosses are
demanding concessions on safety, seniority, scheduling and health care.
Constellium has 25 plants worldwide. Above: poultry workers walked off
the job at nonunion George’s plant in Springdale, Arkansas, Dec. 8, to
protest crowded conditions, lack of safety and low pay. George’s, one of
10 biggest poultry producers in U.S., received government waiver in
April to kill and process 175 birds per minute.
“My party says our unions need to fight for shortening the workweek with
no cut in pay to prevent more layoffs,” Fruit said. “We call for a
government-funded public works program at union scale to create millions
of jobs building hospitals, schools, housing and other things workers need.
“Above all, workers need to be back at work,” Fruit said. “That is the
one place where we can join together and stand up to the employers’
drive to make us pay for their crisis. This is the cornerstone for
rebuilding the labor movement.
“Workers at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse in Alabama are setting an
example, fighting for better pay, working conditions and representation
by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union,” Fruit said. The
National Labor Relations Board ruled Dec. 15 that workers there will
hold a unionization vote.
“Their fight merits the backing of all workers,” she said. Establishing
a union at Bessemer will boost the confidence of workers everywhere,
including at Walmart, Amazon’s main competitor.
Unlike these giant retailers, who are raking in profits and have
cornered even greater market share during the pandemic, small businesses
are going under in record numbers. The government’s Paycheck Protection
Program, resurrected in the new bill, is slated to make $285 billion in
loans to small-business owners. But loans come due, and tens of
thousands of restaurants and other small shops have already closed.
The pandemic continues to spread and hospitalization rates mount. People
needing emergency care were shunted into tents at the Corona Regional
Medical Center in Los Angeles, as the hospital’s emergency room is
overflowing. For-profit health industry bosses did next to nothing to
prepare for this inevitable second wave.
This has led to strikes and protests by nurses and other workers at
hospitals across the country, including a one-day strike at Chicago’s
Stroger Hospital of Cook County Dec. 22.
Nursing home bosses continue to pack residents into overcrowded and
understaffed facilities. And they bar family members from coming to
visit and help care for them. One report shows that 25% of all COVID
deaths in New York in the five weeks leading up to Nov. 29 were in
nursing homes, despite the fact that residents are less than 0.5% of the
state’s population.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s response to rising hospitalization rates
was to blame workers for not being careful enough and then threaten an
even more restrictive shutdown of commerce, travel and jobs after Christmas.
For-profit vaccine rollout
The federal government is doing nothing to marshal its immense resources
to accelerate production of the vaccines and distribute and dispense
them. Instead, it’s relying on capitalist owners of the pharmaceutical
industry, Walgreens, CVS, UPS and FedEx. The biggest medical supply
middleman in the U.S., McKesson Corp., got the contract to move the
Moderna vaccine. They take the vaccine from the for-profit producers to
airport hubs for for-profit delivery by UPS and FedEx. For this, they
get $746 million.
CVS and Walgreen bosses have been contracted to give the shots to staff
and residents in the country’s nursing homes. But they don’t have nearly
enough staff to do this. So, as the New York Times reported Dec. 22,
they’re in a “hiring frenzy” to take on tens of thousands of new people
with little experience.
In the first week of immunization only an estimated 128,000 people got
the vaccine. The big majority of working people will wait many months.
The COVID-19 immunization program will be a windfall for the owners of
the two main capitalist monopolies that manufacture these vaccines.
Moderna bosses got billions in government research grants, while Pfizer
benefited from massive advance orders. After haggling with authorities
over the price of its vaccine, Pfizer may reap up to a 60% profit margin
on each shot.
And these pharmaceutical monopolies are fighting to protect their
patents. The World Trade Organization put off until March discussion on
proposals from the Indian and South African governments to allow
production of generic versions of the vaccine.
The dog-eat-dog capitalist system is the root of the crisis working
people face today.
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Ala. Amazon workers win right to vote to have a union
ATLANTA — Despite objections from Amazon, the National Labor Relations
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Ohio protest: ‘Prosecute cop who killed Casey Goodson’
Give gov’t ‘stimulus’ payout to the ‘Militant’!
1 in 5 workers behind bars suffer COVID in US prisons
On the Picket Line
Thousands of Ukrainian miners strike over pay, conditions
Moroccan workers end sit-in at mine after bosses agree to talks
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George H. Smith “It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain,
emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how
comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on
the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands,
on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his
reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is
good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there
is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through
reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is
destructive to human life.” ― George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God