Lockdown Tales: Workers Charter (c/o the Socialist Party of England and Wales)

Today's entry features the Workers Charter, authored by the Socialist Party of England and Wales. I fully agree with these demands. We must settle for nothing less because if we don't capitalism and its adherents will proliferate like weeds, returning to try and claim what they think is theirs. They will scapegoat whomever they can for this crisis. Unlike the banking crisis they cannot blame Labour. The Tories are alone here, but with the aid of the vile media (complicit in much of their conduct) they will seek to scapegoat the working class: people walking their dogs, people working in 'non essential' services, even doctors (for daring to call out the Tories - you watch).

There is nowhere for them to turn, they are caught in a hall of mirrors now and must be kept there. Facing their own shame and ineptitude, exposing this wretched system for what it has done - and would do again. Already we see business and capitalists seeking to exploit the situation: look at Amazon. While covid ferments (I've no doubt) in the pressure cooker warehouse environments, workers will be exploited as consumer society turns to Amazon to provide for them. They know this and so we must show solidarity with workers. Get what you need if you must, there's no shame in that (I'm going to have to), but be aware of how Amazon wants to benefit from this. Crisis is capitalism and crisis is opportunity in capitalism. That's part of hte shock doctrine of course.

Labour crowns its new leader this weekend, assuming anyone remembers the leadership contest. It's likely that Keir Starmer will win. A dyed in the wool centrist and man of the establishment. His politics offer nothing. Meanwhile his opponent, Rebecca Long Bailey is seen as the Corbyn candidate. But she has very little to offer. Labour are irrelevant now. It's up to us. It doesn't matter which of them wins, they will become marginalised, small, and ultimately inconsequential. More importantly they will become ineffective. Whatever happens, the Corbyn supporters will become increasingly disillusioned and leave. A husk will remain, compliant to the needs of the state, only with a softer glove than the iron fist of the Tories.

What this means for the working class is an ipportunity to meet crisis-riddled capitalism with a vigorous new, or reinvigorated, movement. The chance for the angry exploited working class, currently locked down or struggling (or both) to express that anger en masse. As it should be, on the streets.

National Health Service

• Emergency increase in funding for the NHS and for social care
• Adequate protection for all front-line workers
• NHS to take over private healthcare facilities and staff, and any other private facilities necessary for care, quarantine, and supplies. No compensation to the private fat cats
• Emergency training of NHS staff to deal with the coronavirus crisis
• Resources to be mobilised from government and big-business sources so that anyone with flu or cold-like symptoms has the right to a free coronavirus test with results available within hours, as has been the case in South Korea and some other countries. Requisition private testing and analysis facilities
• Increase production to meet the urgent need for more protective and medical equipment, including ventilators and virus testing. Convert production where necessary, under the democratic control of workers in those industries and in the wider workforce
• Reverse privatisation in the NHS, remove the privateers and cancel all the estimated £50 billion annual PFI payments
• Nationalise the big pharmaceutical companies to guarantee research, production and supply of medicines, vaccines and treatments
• Suspend fees for overseas NHS patients - treat all patients for free without the need to register to control the spread. Scrap prescription charges

Pay and benefits

• Work or full pay. Workers, especially those on low pay, can’t afford to lose 20% of their income. Any worker who has to self-isolate or cannot go to work should receive full pay from day one and not be forced to take annual leave. Pay should be paid directly to the worker not via the employer
• Increase benefits to the level of the national minimum wage. No delay in the payment of benefits
• Increase the minimum wage immediately to at least £12 an hour, £15 in London
• Workers who follow health advice to be absent from work to avoid potential spread should be excluded from any attendance-management procedures
• Open the books of any company threatening redundancies or closure, to inspection by the workforce and trade unions
• To defend workers' jobs and incomes, industries should be nationalised under democratic workers' control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need

Public services and housing

• Emergency funding to take on more workers in essential services. Resources to protect workers, patients, and service users
• Councils to coordinate a local response. Scrap existing cuts budgets. Councils to use reserves and borrowing powers to fund necessary jobs and services
• 24 hour helpline for vulnerable and elderly people forced to self-isolate. Community and trade union control over local distribution of food, medicines and other supplies
• Workload demands must be reduced and time made available to prioritise protecting the health, safety and welfare of staff and service users. Workers asked to work from home must be supplied with adequate equipment and performance monitoring should be scrapped
• No school to be expected to remain open unless they have staffing levels and sufficient cleaning, testing and hand-washing provision to control the spread of infection. No to any removal of statutory class size limits
• If schools close, all staff must receive full pay. Quality childcare for vulnerable families and children of essential workers must be organised under the democratic control of education and care workers, with adequate protection for all. Emergency local authority provision of meals to children normally in receipt of free school meals under community and trade union control
• Nobody should lose their home because of coronavirus. Mortgage and rent payments should be suspended. Government funds for democratically controlled local authority hardship funds for landlords in genuine need
• Councils to take over empty homes to house the homeless and those in inadequate housing. Hotels to be used to provide emergency accommodation
• Funding for 24 hour helplines and emergency accommodation for victims of domestic violence
• No action to be taken for non-payment of utilities. Free broadband for all

Trade union and workers' action

• Trade unions to establish an all-union health and safety committee in every workplace to agree joint actions required to guarantee safety
• For the Trade Union Congress and the unions, the biggest voluntary national organisation with over six million members across the country, to prepare to lead national coordinated strike action to protect people should necessary health and safety measures not be taken
• Democratic trade union oversight over any government or private sector emergency measures taken to contain the virus, such as restrictions on public assemblies or strikes and supermarket supply rationing
• No profiteering. Prices to be controlled by democratically elected committees of workers and consumers
• No erosion of workers' right to organise, including the democratic functioning of trade unions and parties
• No trust in the Tories and other pro-capitalist politicians who are responsible for the crisis in the NHS and other public services to deal with the coronavirus crisis. For a mass workers' party, drawing together workers, young people, socialists and activists from workplaces and community, environmental, anti-racist and anti-cuts campaigns, to provide a fighting political alternative to the pro-big business parties
• The resources are there to deal with the crisis. Introduce an immediate 50% levy on the hoarded £750 billion lying idle in the bank accounts of big business
• The capitalist market system that prioritises profit and is based on competition cannot keep society safe. We need a democratic socialist plan of production and distribution to meet the needs of the majority in society. Take into public ownership the banks, financial institutions and the top 150 companies that dominate the British economy and run them under the democratic control and management of working-class people so that we can make the decisions about what is needed. Compensation to be paid only on the basis of proven need.
• For international socialist cooperation

(source here)