The Anti-Union Virus Inside the Emergency Powers: Lessons for Workers
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- Published on Sunday, 26 April 2020 01:14
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2073 ... April 26, 2020
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The Anti-Union Virus Inside the Emergency Powers: Lessons for Workers
Harry Glasbeek and Eric Tucker
While the Covid virus weakens immune systems, it fortifies the anti-union animus of right-wing governments.
When it was clear that there was no way the coronavirus was going to exempt Ontario from its ravages, Ontario had to react. The problem was that, even though Toronto had been one of the epicentres of the SARS epidemic, years of neoliberalism had created a deplorable state of unpreparedness. There were fewer hospital beds per capita than ever. Ontario had slipped to having the lowest number of beds per capita in Canada and had no stockpiles of personal protective equipment. After SARS, an effort had been made to stock some equipment but when it reached its use-by date, in true neoliberal fashion, the government decided not to replace it. The rationale? In the unlikely event the equipment would ever be needed, it would be more efficient to rely on just-in-time supply from far away countries with cheap labour. Now governments and health providers... compete fiercely with everyone in the advanced world for essential equipment, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), testing tools, and ventilators. And people die.
The health system, enfeebled and lacking the specific resources needed, had to be beaten into shape, co-ordinated, made flexible and supple. Government had to step in. It made sense. The Doug Ford government in Ontario gave itself extraordinary powers to do so. As it did so, it also gave full rein to the anti-working-class ideology that imbues the Ford government and all other right-wing Canadian governments.