Around the world people are getting sick more often, and staying sick for longer, than before the pandemic began.
Here in so-called canada, our government claims that the COVID-19 public health emergency is over, despite the fact that 1 in 32 people in the country are currently infected, people continue to die from COVID-19, cases of Long COVID continue to rise, and healthcare facilities are suffering from the lack the support for a growing number of patients. As much as the government hopes to ignore these facts, COVID-19 has not disappeared, and is not a “mild virus.”
To illustrate the airborne nature of COVID-19, the virus is often described as “moving like smoke.” Many communities on Turtle Island (so-called North America) are now intimately familiar with how smoke moves through our neighbourhoods thanks to uncontrollable wildfires—in increasing frequency and concentration. What kind of world are we living in, where opening a window represents a choice between becoming infected with a debilitating virus, or developing symptoms from smoke inhalation?
Our now-annual season of rampant wildfires is a symptom of the global climate crisis, which like the COVID-19 public health crisis disproportionately affects Indigenous people and people of colour, with workers in countries in the Global South always paying the biggest price for climate change.
Like the climate crisis, the COVID-19 public health crisis has become just another inconvenient truth that the capitalist class seeks to control and diminish. Despite attempts to stamp out the severity of COVID-19 and the climate crisis, people across the country and the world are feeling the urgency to fight for access to clean air, clean water, and a safe environment to live in.
Our fight for our future—a future with protections from airborne disease and without debilitating pollution—is a fight for clean air. Our fight for disability and climate justice is an intertwined fight against the root causes of mass disablement and environmental destruction.
Why is the government lying?
Although public health departments worldwide have made statements diminishing the impacts of COVID-19, the ultra-wealthy and most privileged groups in society still maintain COVID-19 precautions. Those armed with financial resources and access to information still care about keeping themselves from COVID-19 infection.
In contrast, the overwhelming majority of people have been ushered back to work for the sake of the economy, but at the expense of our health, and in many cases, our lives. We are witnessing the active destabilization of public health, where our populations have been left to struggle with COVID-19 so that business can run as usual. Billionaire-funded think tanks and NGOs were created for the sole purpose of influencing governments to adopt a “herd immunity” approach to the pandemic, in order to protect the profit of a few elites. The influence of these recommendations saw governments drop lockdown measures, stop eviction moratoriums, and protect employers from COVID-19 related lawsuits.
The sacrifice of the everyday people in society continues because capitalist governments value profit over life. Corporations like Delta pressured the American government to shorten official periods of isolation for COVID-19 infections, so that their operations and sales would be less impacted.
In order to keep profits up, most people must continue to work. Threats to our lives, like COVID-19 and the climate crisis, are also threats to the status quo. Why are profits more valuable than our lives? Why are profits more valuable than our planet?
If workers start to question their place within society, and the inherent value we are each denied by the productivity culture of capitalism, it would pose a threat to corporations and governments everywhere. Therefore, it is in the interests of bosses and governments everywhere to trivialize the extent of these crises.
What do we need?
Paid sick days are required for our safety. Vaccinations and masks are far from enough. This is echoed by medical professionals, workers, and businesses, both nationally and globally. Paid sick days are an issue of class, health, racial, gender, disability, and climate justice. Half of us living in so-called canada have no paid sick leave, and this rises to 90% of us making less than $30,000 per year.
Thanks to the strategic organizing of groups such as the BC Federation of Labour and Worker Solidarity Network, in 2022 BC officially legislated five employer-paid sick days. Still, the fight is not yet over, as the federal government has promised ten for federal workers and urged provincial governments to do the same. Paid sick days truly save lives!
We also need an extra set of paid leave for particular public health emergencies that are out of our control, so that workers do not have to pay the price for the climate crisis that is created by billionaires, not by the average worker.
Therefore, we also need paid climate leave, as well as maximum temperature policies so that workers are not forced to continue to do our jobs under extreme heat warnings that can cause exasperated health concerns for disabled people, and even result in death. The urgency of maximum temperature policies increases as a new “hottest year on record” is made every year.
Current labour legislation does not accommodate for the risks of COVID-19 and adverse climate change. In the wake of these crises, workers have reported that they face compromised health and safety at work, lack breaks for hydration, endure deeper precarity during extreme weather events, and that processes around refusing work or using paid sick days are overly complex.
If workers are made to bear the brunt of our society’s “new normal” in coping with COVID-19 and climate-related health and safety issues, then we must fight for a “new normal” in worker protections.
We are more powerful together
The fight for workers’ rights involves a fight against the machine of capitalism to preserve our bodies and minds from a system that seeks to extract as much profit as possible from human life and the lands on this planet. Intrinsically, our fight as workers is connected to the movements for Indigenous sovereignty, Palestinian liberation, and racial justice everywhere. People are not disposable, as much as capitalists seek to declare it so.
The way to build stronger protections for clean air and COVID care is through strategic organizing. Building a strong movement comes from meeting the average person in society where they are at, and finding common ground together. This is why Worker Solidarity Network began the Street Teams initiative. Street teams are a small localized group led by an organizer where you conduct outreach and act as seeds from which collective action may grow.
We need to build support to legislate sustainable cooling systems in the workplace; well-coordinated emergency communication channels; appropriate work-rest cycles; scheduling to minimize heat exposure; at least 15 paid sick days; increases to minimum wage; additional breaks; maximum temperature policies; open work permits for all workers; climate paid leave; and other real long-term solutions for clean air and COVID safety.
If you want to be part of a campaign that is fighting for justice under COVID-19 and the climate crisis, we invite you to be part of our Street Teams organizing efforts on October 8. We will meet at 6:30pm in front of Rio Theatre by Commercial-Broadway Station.
Learn how to talk with fellow workers about their situations, needs, and hopes. Help build the connections from below for a movement that can battle the 1 percent, because climate justice is labour justice!
Image courtesy of James Abbott. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Did you like this article? Help us produce more like it by donating $1, $2, or $5. Donate
