Stay alert to tory lies about PPE, testing and deaths

Fight back!

The Socialist issue 1086

The Socialist issue 1086   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

  • PPE and testing for all
  • No return to work unless safety can be guaranteed
  • Workers’ and trade union control of workplace safety
  • Collective workplace action to enforce safety
  • Socialist planning, not capitalist market chaos

On Sunday 10 May Boris Johnson tells construction, manufacturing, and other workers in England who can’t work from home, to get on their bike and go to work. Two days later, we’re told that working-class men in blue-collar jobs are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than the population as a whole.

The Tories are sending workers to their deaths to safeguard the profits of their big business backers.

Over 100 health workers have died. Many of those could have lived if they had had adequate PPE. Over 30 bus drivers have been killed by the virus because the bus companies put profit before lives. In fact, during this pandemic it’s even more dangerous to be a bus driver than it is to be a doctor!

If we go to the park we have to stay two metres apart, but social distancing can go out of the window on the factory floor, the building site, and the office, so that the capitalist economy can keep going and the profits rolling in.

It’s OK for workers to be jammed together on the tube and public transport, putting their lives and those of transport workers at risk, because the wealth of a minority is more important than the health of the majority.

Who cares if nursery and primary school children become mass spreaders of coronavirus? The most important thing is getting them into the classroom so their parents can go back to work for the bosses.

Without social distancing, PPE, mass testing and tracing, and other safety measures in place, the Tories are giving a licence to kill.

Yes, we have to stay alert. Alert to how the Tories and the bosses will try to make us pay for this crisis with our lives and our livelihoods.

That means organising in the trade unions and in the workplaces to fight for the health and safety of all workers, and to defend our incomes and our jobs. And it means fighting for a socialist system where profit is not the driving motive, and the needs of society come first.