After seven days of “phase 2”, the dynamics of the Coronavirus epidemic are still very uncertain in Italy; on the one hand, there appears to be a moderate decline in cases nationwide (although deaths are now over 30,000 and the infected more than 80,000) but, on the other, some regions remain exceptions to this, including Lombardy, where the vast majority of infections have been recorded.
“This constant search for increased productivity will promote the spread of the virus”.
17 May 2020, byJohan (pseudonym) works in a factory which makes instruments for the medical sector, but which belongs to the engineering sector. Since the company is rightly considered to be an essential one, he has worked for the past two months. Johan is also an active union activist in the FGTB within his company. Thomas Weyts talked to him last week about how he and his family lived in lockdown, what it meant to be, unlike many other people, physically present every day at his workplace in recent weeks, his vision of politics, what he thinks of the lifting of lockdown and the prospects of the trade union movement in this crisis.
"This would be tantamount to a de facto ban on abortion".
16 May 2020A conversation with Hanna Grzeskiewicz by Carmela Negrete. This interview first appeared in German in junge Welt.
Holding Covid-19 at bay in Venezuela
16 May 2020, byAs of May 15, Venezuela is reporting 455 coronavirus infections and just 10 Covid-19 deaths. However, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants in neighboring Columbia and (especially) Brazil are trapped in pandemic hotspots. Thus far, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has maintained an effective quarantine regime on the border, preventing the contagion’s rapid spread. However, the despreate economic situation, stemming from crippling U.S. sanctions, the collapse in world oil prices, and the regime’s economic mismanagement places a question mark over how long the country can fend off the pandemic.[No Borders News]
Travis Watkins: Fighting General Motors Amid the COVID Pandemic
15 May 2020, byTravis Watkins was and hopefully will be again a mechanic at a General Motors plant in Wyoming, Michigan. He was recently fired for warning his fellow workers that two other workers were suspected of having the Coronavirus and had been removed from the factory. Watkins was employed by Caravan Facility Management, on contract to GM for plant maintenance. The 30 some unit workers were a mix of plant cleaners and skilled trades workers. The Caravan group was one of the units in the plant organized by Local 167 of the United Auto Workers. The unit elected Travis Watkins as their representative to the Local’s E-Board and bargaining committee.
Statement by Anticapitalistas on leaving Podemos
14 May 2020, byOn 28 March, an internal voting process ended in which Anticapitalistas decided to leave Podemos. Seventy-nine per cent of the membership participated; of these 89 per cent voted in favour, 3 per cent against and 7.5 per cent abstained. We decided to wait until today to make this decision public; our priority has been paying attention to the COVID-19 pandemic that is hitting the country hard and fundamentally affects the most vulnerable sectors of the popular classes.
From Invisible to Essential: Worker Struggle in the COVID Pandemic
14 May 2020, byAl Bradbury, Editor of Labor Notes, interviewed by Bill Resnick on 13 May 2020.
The COVID-19 Crisis and the End of the “Low-skilled” Worker
13 May 2020, by ,“One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.” —Martin Luther King
When Bootlicking Overrides Fighting Epidemic
12 May 2020, byThe Wuhan Covid-19 epidemic spread in lightning speed and it has turned into a global pandemic. It was avoidable from the very beginning. There were several weeks to stop it from spreading to the whole country before the “chunyun” – Spring Festival travel rush, which during Chinese New Year 2018 transported 3 billion passengers to and from their home village or town. Yet Beijing had acted too late despite Wuhan municipal government having known about the spread of the virus early on. We (...)