We have to take our own protective measures

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
6 January 2021

Today, the inequalities that already cut life expectancy for the working class in this country (and in fact saw life expectancy falling over the 10 years to 2020), are only amplified by the pandemic.

    It almost goes without saying: poor quality, overcrowded living conditions and working in a key or manual occupation (and security, transport or shopwork...) all lead to a higher risk of death from Covid-19...  This second peak and its “economic” consequences were predicted.  But it says it all that the government did not instruct landlords to suspend evictions (the ban is meant to end in 5 days time) and that it has not reinstated the minimal £20 supplement to Universal Credit - let alone increase it, given the number of workers who’re now without paid work!

    Since February 2020, 819,000 permanent workers have disappeared from company payrolls; there are 2.7m “claimants” and another 8.9m who can’t claim.  Add these up and it makes up almost 25% of the population, now living in poverty.

    The bosses and their politicians, Labour included, have shown time and again that they could not care less for the lives and livelihoods of the workers.  We only have to go back 3 weeks to the closure of the border due to the discovery of the new “British” virus, leaving truck drivers stuck in their cabs for days without toilets, water, food, and with the only help coming from a Sikh charity!  And there is more to come as Brexit kicks in, and kicks us all, to boot!

    With the government’s failures on every front, we are told by Health Secretary Hancock that the Covid vaccine (a “British world-beater”!) is our salvation.  Except that the doses required are not yet manufactured, and when/if they are, new mutations might mean new vaccines would have to be produced...

    So there is no choice for now, except to shut down their economy to contain Covid.  And since the bosses won’t countenance it, this can only be done by the working class, by refusing to carry on exposing itself - both to the coronavirus and to the capitalist virus. And with a view to killing the latter, for good!