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Workers and the Virus: Radical Lessons from Italy in the Age of COVID-19

Details: Published on Thursday, 19 March 2020 03:40; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2025 ... March 19, 2020
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Workers and the Virus: Radical Lessons from Italy in the Age of COVID-19

Alessandro Delfanti, Beatrice Busi and Erika Biddle

In the face of the mounting coronavirus crisis, we need to start asking a crucial question: who pays for the lockdown? The last three weeks have taught some hard lessons to Italian workers. Indeed, workers have been shouldering the bulk of the crisis. This applies to workers in all sectors, and even more intensely with activities related to care. If the right to work safely cannot be guaranteed, all nonessential activities must be shut down.

Workers should not be forced to choose between their health and their livelihood. Yet Italian workers are losing their jobs, putting their loved ones at risk, protesting workplace health and safety conditions, and even self-organizing to make up for the lack of state intervention. In this article, we try to document the main takeaways from the early weeks of the Italian crisis, hoping these will be useful resources for workers in other countries currently moving toward an intensified crisis.

It's easy to feel invincible

Details: Published on Thursday, 19 March 2020 03:02; Written by editor

It's easy to feel invincible r1 ...

People are stepping up

Details: Published on Wednesday, 18 November 2020 13:22; Written by editor

Stop TD funding climate chaos

Details: Published on Wednesday, 18 March 2020 05:18; Written by editor

Though most of us are focused on how to deal with the huge impacts of COVID-19, it's still business as usual for TD bank.

TD is pouring billions into fossil fuel projects.

We have a shareholder proposal that would make sure TD is getting its money out of the fossil fuel industry.

Will you email your pension fund manager today to support this important proposal?

Send an email

TD bank is financing the climate crisis. As the 8th largest funder of fossil fuel projects in the world, it dumps billions every year into fossil fuel projects, including pipelines and tarsands mines

But did you know that your retirement savings could help make TD change its ways and be part of the solution to stopping climate change?

That’s because if you have a pension, including CPP or QPP, superannuation or mutual fund it’s probably invested in TD and that means you have the power to force TD to stop financing climate catastrophe.

We submitted a powerful...

Barred from Striking, Airline Food Workers Sit Down in Traffic

Details: Published on Wednesday, 18 March 2020 00:26; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2024 ... March 18, 2020
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Barred from Striking, Airline Food Workers Sit Down in Traffic

David Bacon

Melieni Cruz, who helps prepare the meals passengers eat on airplanes, went thousands of dollars into debt because she couldn’t pay her soaring medical bills. "When the doctor found cysts on my ovaries, I had to save for a year to afford the procedure, and my cysts got bigger and more painful the whole time," she said as she picketed the terminal at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

Cruz works for LSG Sky Chefs, and her union, UNITE HERE Local 2, has been trying to renegotiate the contract that covers her and 1,500 other workers. The cost of healthcare premiums and wages are the big sticking points in bargaining. Medicare for All would certainly take Cruz’s healthcare costs off the bargaining table, and ensure that she gets treatment without having to endure a year in pain to save enough money for it.

That’s an important reason why Local 2 endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party Nominee, who campaigned for Medicare...

CFSC during these challenging times

Details: Published on Tuesday, 17 March 2020 06:06; Written by editor

Download this newsletter in PDF.

Dear Friends,

During these challenging times we wanted to reach out and update you on life at CFSC. Ontario is now in a state of emergency, and with our head office in downtown Toronto, currently we are operating remotely, with all staff working from home. CFSC staff will not travel until further notice. We are available, and our work is ongoing. Please contact any staff member via their email address, or if it is a general enquiry, please email . We do check the office phone regularly, so if you need to speak with someone, feel free to leave us a message and someone will return your call asap.

We encourage you to be mindful of misinformation on the coronavirus that may be circulating. Please see the federal government’s website for information and updates.

Read more: CFSC during these challenging times

The Insanity of Making Sick People Work

Details: Published on Tuesday, 17 March 2020 05:04; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2023 ... March 17, 2020
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The Insanity of Making Sick People Work

Mark Bergfeld

Coronavirus is putting extra burdens on workers, from health professionals to low-paid cleaning staff at the front line of combating infection. Yet many of these same workers don’t even have the right to sick pay -- meaning they’ll feel compelled to work even if it risks spreading the virus.

After the evacuation of its coronavirus-hit passengers, the Princess Diamond cruise ship needed thorough cleaning. An Australian contractor won the tender and duly sent its cleaners a text message offering a "great opportunity" for a week’s work. The workers in question were school cleaners, inexperienced in dealing with such hazardous conditions. But given their low wages, the promised $5,000 to $6,000 for a week was bound to appeal.

Fortunately, the United Workers Union wasn’t ready to stand for management’s careless attitude. They held protests at company headquarters and urged cleaners not to accept the job. The working hours and working conditions remained anything but transparent -- and the cleaners hadn’t received specific training. The workers...

Coronavirus vaccine

Details: Published on Monday, 16 March 2020 16:02; Written by editor

Wow 141,201 people have already signed this petition to make Coronavirus testing and treatment free -- and now Trump is trying to get exclusive ownership over a vaccine developed by a German company! This is outrageous -- the vaccine should be free and available to everyone who needs it! Sign and share this petition widely.

One notorious Big Pharma firm is already positioning itself to make billions off of Coronavirus fear. This is a time for global safety, not profit -- let's build a massive call to make any Coronovirus testing and treatment free, worldwide. When enough join we'll make the CEO famous by putting his face on billboards and hounding him everywhere he goes until he agrees to our demand:

Sign the urgent petition

179,256 cases, 7,067 deaths -- and Coronavirus is just...

Safety Is Not Negotiable for Anyone -- Including Healthcare Workers

Details: Published on Monday, 16 March 2020 01:16; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2022 ... March 16, 2020
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Safety Is Not Negotiable for Anyone -- Including Healthcare Workers

The following is a joint statement issued March 13 by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Unifor, the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

As labour organizations representing close to a million healthcare workers, we are calling for the Public Health Agency of Canada and all provincial public health offices to protect healthcare workers and their patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also urging decision-makers to adhere to the precautionary principle, which calls for reasonable safeguards when a virus is clouded in scientific uncertainty.

Our healthcare system is already running over capacity; we simply cannot afford to erode staffing levels any further if healthcare workers become sick and self-quarantine. It is therefore imperative that we protect healthcare workers so that they can continue to provide safe and effective care.

To health ministers and health employers, we say: this responsibility lies...

Urgent - Coronavirus in Italy

Details: Published on Sunday, 15 March 2020 01:34; Written by editor

"The war has literally exploded and the battles are uninterrupted day and night."

That’s the desperate plea from a doctor on the frontline of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak. Nurses are exhausted, scrambling for ventilators and critical supplies in the hope of halting this pandemic.

Meanwhile, corporations look at this humanitarian crisis with dollar signs in their eyes.

From refusing to pay sick leave to hiking up prices on vital defences -- corporations have run wild. And we’re paying the price.

The virus will advance without mercy if we let corporations get away with trying to make a quick buck out of it. So right now, you and I urgently need to fight for free and accessible testing, treatment, and vaccines for everyone.

Please, can you donate to help fight against coronavirus?

If you’ve saved your payment information with SumOfUs, your donation will go through immediately:

Donate CA$97 now Read more: Urgent - Coronavirus in Italy

Socialist Feminist Cabaret 2020

Details: Published on Sunday, 15 March 2020 01:18; Written by editor

LeftStreamed — Recorded in Toronto, 29 February 2020

Socialist Feminist Cabaret 2020

Performances by:

The Rise Up Feminist Jazz Band
Songs of Chilean Resistance

MC’ed by Sue Findlay and Nithya Nagarajan.

Click here to view presentation

Share on Facebook

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PBI hosts human rights lawyer in Canada!

Details: Published on Wednesday, 18 November 2020 13:22; Written by editor

Is a Democratic Biopolitics Possible?

Details: Published on Saturday, 14 March 2020 03:20; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2021 ... March 14, 2020
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Is a Democratic Biopolitics Possible?

Panagiotis Sotiris

Giorgio Agamben’s recent intervention ("The Invention of an Epidemic") which characterizes the measures implemented in response to the Covid-19 pandemic as an exercise in the biopolitics of the "state of exception" has sparked an important debate on how to think of biopolitics.

The very notion of biopolitics, as it was formulated by Michel Foucault, has been a very important contribution to our understanding the changes associated with the passage to capitalist modernity, especially in regards to the ways that power and coercion are exercised. From power as a right of life and death that the sovereign holds, we pass to power as an attempt to guarantee the health (and productivity) of populations. This led to an expansion without precedent of all forms of state intervention and coercion. From compulsory vaccinations, to bans on smoking in public spaces, the notion of biopolitics has been used in many instances as the key to understand the political and ideological dimensions of health policies.

At the same time it has...

SEA March Events

Details: Published on Friday, 13 March 2020 16:36; Written by editor

SEA March Events r1 ...

Urgent: Coronavirus in Italy

Details: Published on Friday, 13 March 2020 04:38; Written by editor

Doctors in Italy are sending emotional appeals to the world -- their hospitals have turned into war zones in the fight against coronavirus.

We urgently need to slow the spread of the disease and fight for free treatment and vaccines for all.

Can you chip in CA$97 to fight coronavirus and help protect those most vulnerable?

If you’ve saved your payment information with SumOfUs, your donation will go through immediately:

Donate CA$97 now Donate CA$145 now Donate CA$193 now Donate another amount...

Donald Trump Is Using the Coronavirus Crisis to Attack Social Security

Details: Published on Friday, 13 March 2020 03:04; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2020 ... March 13, 2020
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Donald Trump Is Using the Coronavirus Crisis to Attack Social Security

Nancy J. Altman

Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the payroll contribution rate is a stealth attack on Social Security. Even if the proposal were to replace Social Security’s dedicated revenue with deficit-funded general revenue, the proposal would undermine this vital program.

The proposal is a Trojan horse. It appears to be a gift, in the form of middle-class tax relief, but would, in the long run, lead to the destruction of working Americans’ fundamental economic security. While the goal of the proposal is stated in terms of fiscal stimulus, its most important impact, if not its intent, is to do what opponents of Social Security have been unable to do -- end Social Security as we know it.

The supposed purpose of a reduction in payroll contributions is to address the coronavirus crisis. Tax cuts do not meaningfully address the coronavirus, or even the resulting market panic. We do want to ensure that people have the cash they need while they face...

Coronavirus

Details: Published on Thursday, 12 March 2020 14:02; Written by editor

Sign the urgent petition

129,589 cases, 4,749 deaths -- and Coronavirus is just getting started.

But while the world waits in fear, Big Pharma is hoping to get rich. Pharmaceutical giant Gilead has already seen their stock soar by $12 billion. It would be great if they find a vaccine, but this is a company notorious for price gouging -- they charge up to $2000 for a month of their HIV drug!

Treatment and testing can't just be for the...

A jolly good scoop

Details: Published on Thursday, 12 March 2020 07:02; Written by editor

A jolly good scoop r1 ...

Inoculating Against Globalization: Coronavirus and the Search for Alternatives

Details: Published on Thursday, 12 March 2020 00:32; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2019 ... March 12, 2020
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Inoculating Against Globalization:
Coronavirus and the Search for Alternatives

Sam Gindin

Social developments constantly surprise. The latest anxieties over the economic contradictions of extreme globalization haven’t been triggered by a trade war, inter-imperial rivalry, a financial meltdown or riots in the streets. They’ve rather been sparked by an apparently non-economic and contingent event: the coronavirus outbreak. As precautionary measures send workers home in a place few of us have ever heard of and the ramifications shut workplaces in places most of us never knew were connected, a business panic has set in. Grown men (and women) stare in horror at stock market screens and the business press fretfully anticipates an imminent recession.

Yet a deeper fear lurks in business circles. Has globalization plateaued? Might the further spread of the virus "put globalization into reverse?" Some main-stream journalists have even suggested that a slowdown in hyper-globalization "may not be a bad thing, given the sometimes absurd and dangerous dimensions it took on." Others are more cataclysmic, asking, as one headline does, whether the spread of...

'We will not run'

Details: Published on Wednesday, 11 March 2020 07:28; Written by editor

Woman on stage with a megaphone
The Aurat March on March 8 in Karachi, Pakistan. Photo: Aurat March Karachi

Sunday was International Women’s Day, and despite coronavirus restrictions in some countries many women took to the streets elsewhere in spectacular marches around the world to demand gender equality. To mark the day in this Fossil Free News, we’re naming and celebrating powerful women in the climate justice struggle.

Behind every victory – including all the wins pouring in over the past few weeks – women organizers are building strong movements with leadership, strategy, and compassion.

Take Raya Ahmed from Lamu, Kenya, who fought to stop a coal plant that would’ve devastated the coastal community. She spoke to us about women’s stewardship of nature, and resilience in the face of threats from climate impacts and displacement from fossil fuel infrastructure. Watch the video interview:

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