COVID-19 : save the furniture, fight and prepare for after

If for two or three short weeks, the federal and provincial governments have announced and put in place certain measures to help (partially) to workers, unemployed, so as to promote containment, Legault's latest press conferences suggest the end of the honeymoon.

It was to be expected, business as usual, the State will favor the economic interests of their friends the bosses, big investors, the rich, and this to the detriment of workers, as per usual. The CAQ is talking about returning to school as early as early May, while we are far from having “defeated” the pandemic or even from having a vaccine, because we have to do something with the children of workers if we force them to return to work…

Why would it be any different anyway?? It has always been like this. The crisis will simply have had a magnifying glass effect : our conditions were already crap, they will not magically become better.

Limit the damage and claim…

This is why currently, the union environment (and part of the left) should be in “damage limitation and advocacy” mode. Saving furniture with a view to knowing it, the crisis will certainly not prevent bosses from getting rich on the backs of their employees. We just have to look at certain companies and industries where we continue to squeeze returns as if nothing had happened., even more so if we have a workforce that has fewer resources to defend itself (workers with precarious status in particular). 

We need to demand salary increases and improvements in our working conditions more broadly., as in certain businesses it was seen, and especially, arrange so that it is not temporary. Because it is not true that we are going to give 2$ more to supermarket cashiers to better withdraw from them in six months, and. Now is not the time to feel guilty about asking for better conditions or to fall into the nationalist romanticism of Legault Inc.’s “war effort.”

Limit the damage and claim, it also means refusing work. No question of returning to work because our bosses are worried. They don't normally give us more bonuses when things are going well, why then would we put ourselves in danger when we are in the middle of a pandemic? I hope, where I fantasize, teachers' unions which will block these potential returns to class which above all sound like a shit plan…And not just in education, but in the community, in health, in construction, in retail, etc.

…pass messages…

It’s also the time to train and get organized. Quebec does not have a worker or union culture that is transmitted very strongly. At school, we do little or no political education and even less on social struggles. Um, am, It’s time to put some effort into it.. And it will have to come from the base, because anyway, we know it, the deadbeats at the head of the union centers are too attached to the status quo and their privileges to convey more radical ideas.

It's time to send messages, to provide popular education, to agitate our colleagues and to give ourselves the means to do so. Write texts, provide training and workshops, supporting young people in militant learning. Prepare the world to defy the special laws and injunctions that will continue to rain down as soon as we put pressure in the right place.

…and prepare for the aftermath…

And we have to think about what's next, because the nightmare is not going to end with a possible deconfinement (which itself risks being long and progressive, according to the needs of the bosses…). If we are already capable of being alert enough to avoid passing authoritarian or draconian anti-union laws through the ranks (as most states do in times of crisis), we will still be handed a hefty bill as a sacrament.

Nothing new in what follows, but just looking at our social net : if panic grips our hospitals, our CHSLDs (most of them private and more), our CLSCs or our community organizations, It’s because governments have been succeeding one another for decades to put the ax to it.. It is not a sad coincidence that we are not able to test sufficiently, that we leave people on the street in the middle of a pandemic, that we don't have enough equipment. And it’s not a health crisis that will change that, capitalism obliges.

Legault and Co. are already making him soar : it's going to be expensive. It is not true that governments will (era)introduce a capital tax or higher taxes for the richest. Non, after social distancing measures, it will be those of austerity which will be violent, not just a little. We are going to be asked to tighten our belts in bad weather.

And our health system which will have already struggled through the crisis, going to eat another smack. In education it will be the same. The benefit programs we contribute to will not escape this. Health and safety achievements, working conditions, name it, everyone will taste it.

We must therefore prepare to rebuild and strengthen our union movements, social and left. It doesn't happen by snapping your fingers and there will be obstacles. Already as I mentioned above, there will be left-wing “elites” to try to control the mess and the frustration that it will generate. What form will it take?, I do not know. But we better start thinking about it.