Workers under threat from capitalism and Covid – Trade unions must act

Socialist Party Scotland editorial statement

The horrific consequences of the decisions taken, and not taken, by the UK and Scottish governments on Covid-19 have been laid bare this week. Both the Office of National Statistics and the National Records of Scotland reports were unambiguous. The UK and Scotland’s fatality rate from the virus are amongst the highest in the world. 

Moreover, the UK-wide figures are way below the real death toll. The Times and the Financial Times newspapers have estimated a more realistic total of 60,000 – rather than the 40,000 so far reported. In Scotland, NRS say 3,213 people have now died with Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate. 

The NRS report also highlighted, as Socialist Party Scotland has emphasised many times before, that it is the working class who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. The poorest communities of Scotland are seeing fatality rates from Covid two and a half times greater than the most affluent areas. 

Predictably, the top ten council areas impacted include West Dunbartonshire, Dundee, Glasgow and Inverclyde, parts of Scotland with the highest poverty and deprivation levels. This comes on the back of the ONS figures for England and Wales that showed that manual workers were twice as likely to die from the virus. 

Based on reported deaths from coronavirus per 100,000 of the population, Scotland has a fatality rate of 59. This contrasts with Denmark 9, Ireland 31, Norway 4.3 and Germany 9.5. The key reasons for the stark differences are the delay in responding to the pandemic by both the Tory and SNP-led governments. 

The lockdown began on March 23, but mass gatherings had been allowed until March 16 – more than two weeks after the first case of Covid in Scotland had been detected. Lockdown was implemented as an emergency measure after both governments and their scientific advisors had earlier adopted a policy of allowing the virus to spread, in a ‘controlled’ way, to achieve so-called herd immunity. 

Reported by the BBC this week, a University of Edinburgh epidemiological study found that if Scotland had gone into lockdown two weeks earlier, on March 9, the death rate would have been 80% lower – saving 2,000 lives.

Chronic absence of sufficient PPE, lack of NHS capacity and a complete inability to test and track the population were also decisive factors, leaving lockdown as the only option for governments that were asleep at the wheel. This failure was made by a decade of cuts to NHS and public services by both Tory, Labour and SNP politicians. 

Care homes 

Nowhere has the lack of PPE and testing been more devastatingly seen than in care homes. Half of all deaths in Scotland have been in this setting. The moving of patients from hospitals into care in the early stages of the pandemic, without testing, helped set off a deadly time bomb. As did the refusal to systematically test care home workers, or to provide them with sufficient PPE. 

Time and time again care workers have spoken out over fears that they were spreading the virus into homes. This week, for example, Channel Four News spoke to staff in a private care home in Uddingston, where 22 residents have died. Run by the UK’s largest care company, HC-One, workers explained that even after the deaths none of them had been tested. Never mind the weekly or twice a week test that should be guaranteed for all social care and health workers as unions are demanding.

The Scottish government said on May 1 – six weeks into lockdown – all staff should be tested in a home if there has been a confirmed case. Yet it’s clear this has not happened. Why were all workers not tested from day one of the pandemic, regardless of whether a confirmed case was in a home? The reason is obvious – there was no capacity to carry out this basic health and safety measure. A damning condemnation of both the Scottish government and private care home employers.

As of this week, HC-One with 300 UK care homes had tested only one in six of their staff and one in three of their residents for Covid. The Scottish government have been trying to shift the blame for the care home scandal onto private providers and vice versa. Yet the SNP have allowed this sector to remain overwhelmingly in the hands of the private sector vultures all the way through their 13 year domination of the Scottish parliament. 

The nationalisation of the care sector under democratic working class control is essential, and must be fought for by the trade union movement as a matter of urgency. 

Johnson gambles with workers’ lives

With the highest death rate in the world, Boris Johnson has announced that workers in England, in many sectors of the economy, should go back to work. Johnson is playing Russian roulette with the lives of the working class. With crowded trains and buses, and with many profit-hungry bosses uninterested in social distancing and PPE, the trade union and workers’ movement must respond to this outrage.

There can be no going back to work until a full trade union inspection of every workplace has taken place to ensure full compliance with health and safety measures. 

As the Socialist Party England and Wales wrote in the editorial of the Socialist this week: “Our starting point is clear – unless the unions and their members say a workplace is safe, it isn’t. That means no return to work until the necessary safety standards are met. And that should be on 100% pay. There must be no dilution of the two-metre social distancing, with clear floor markings and safe capacity in all factory floors, offices, buses and trains…Sufficient PPE complying with NHS safety standards, regular testing, ample hand sanitisers and washroom facilities – if these are not available, work should stop on full pay. Workers should be advised to meet collectively (complying with social distancing). If they decide that their workplace is unsafe, they should decide together not to work, citing Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.”

This approach applies to Scotland as much as it does to the rest of Britain. Nicola Sturgeon has, along with the Northern Ireland and Wales devolved administrations, kept the lockdown in place. While Johnson is more openly reflecting the pressure of the capitalist class to kick start the economy as quickly as possible, the SNP leadership have adopted a more cautious approach, fearing the consequences should the unwinding of the lockdown happen too quickly.

The SNP leadership is also more sensitive to the pressure of the working class than the traditional bourgeois Tory party – who themselves are split on the issue. In particular, the electoral base of the SNP is drawn primarily from working-class communities in Scotland. Sturgeon is also a far more skilful politician than the bumbling, error-prone Johnson. 

At no time has the SNP, much to its disappointment, been a party that has directly represented the interests of the majority of the capitalist class in Scotland. While maintaining its pro-capitalist character, as has been seen during this crisis, the nationalist leadership are able to tack and weave, including striking rhetorical blows against the Tories, and even on occasion big business. Ian Blackford, for example, attacked Johnson yesterday during prime minister’s questions for “having a total disregard for workers’ interests”. Nevertheless, “four nation” unity has been the main strategy of the SNP during the crisis – which has left the Sturgeon leadership exposed over their handling of Covid. 

Test and trace

The Scottish government have failed to put in place the test, track and isolate strategy which is essential for a successful exit from lockdown. The position will be reviewed again by the Scottish government at the end of May. Nevertheless, the trade unions must go on the offensive in Scotland and make clear that only under trade union say so and when safe can working resume. 

Even the Tories are split on how quickly to re-open the economy – with a wing dreading a massive revolt by the working class if a new upsurge of deaths were the result. But the reality is that Johnson’s actions and those of the Tory government are a finished recipe for a new spike in infections and deaths. Germany, China and South Korea have all seen a rise in infection rates as they try to emerge from crisis. This raises the likelihood of lockdowns being reimposed if there is not sufficient testing and tracing in place. 

Expressing this anxiety, the World Health Organisation’s director, Dr Mick Ryan, warned on May 13 that the world is about to enter a “vicious cycle” of “public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster followed by economic disaster”. 

On test and trace, he said:“If that virus transmission accelerates and you don’t have the systems to detect it, it will be days or weeks before you know something has gone wrong”

The incapacity of the SNP-led government to put in place the widespread testing needed is rooted in their austerity-laden, pro-capitalist policies. As we commented in a recent statement: “To emerge from lockdown using test, track and isolate would require an estimated 2% of the population to be tested at a rate of 15,500 per day. This is significantly more than can currently be done and is a key reason as to why the Scottish government is delaying an emergence from lockdown until further expanding of capacity is achieved.

“A democratic socialist government would utilise planned testing and contact tracing managed by key workers without the repressive measures used in China. This would be linked with an economic plan to take the major levers of the economy under democratic workers’ control and public ownership, with compensation only paid for proven need.”

Harry Burns, the former chief medical officer in Scotland, criticised the failed Scottish government approach recently: “I would have been in line with the WHO thinking on this: test, test, test, trace and isolate.”

Economic crisis

The economic consequences of the Covid-19 catastrophe are devastating. There was an economic contraction of almost 6% in GDP in March for the UK. April and May could see a figure of three of four times that level. Last week, the IMF warned that their forecast for a 3% global drop in GDP now looked “optimistic”. The now mythical V-shape bounce back from the economic collapse is a pipe-dream. 

OECD general secretary, Angel Gurría, summed up that organisations pessimism for the capitalist economy: “I am not convinced that we are going to have a V-shaped recovery….I think it will be more like a U…When you are thinking about the recovery, we don’t know whether it is going to be 2021 or 2022.”

Mass unemployment – 36 million workers have applied for unemployment in the US in the last eight weeks alone – will grow dramatically as the furlough period ends, possibly from the end of July if employers are asked to contribute to the costs and use that as an excuse to sack workers.

The capitalist class are using all of their weapons, in particular massive state intervention to try and avoid a devastating collapse. In Britain alone, the state deficit is likely to rise to £500 billion by the end of the year.

But the capitalist class will also attempt to take advantage of the crisis in every way it can, above all by trying to restore its profits by attacking the wages and conditions of the working-class majority, not least by trying to force them to work in unsafe conditions. And, after the pandemic, seeking to carry out further attacks on the working class. Indeed local authorities are reporting unprecedented pressures on their budgets that could lead to massive attempted cuts. 

It is to the trade union movement that workers are and will look to defend them in this situation. There has been a surge in union membership during the current pandemic. A workers’ movement ‘council of war’ is urgently needed to organise a struggle to fight back against the bosses’ offensive. If the TUC and STUC refuses to act, the left trade union leaders should take the initiative.

There has to be a massive campaign to demand PPE and testing for all, no return to work unless safety measures can be guaranteed with full pay for all, and workers’ and trade union control of workplace safety. It should also call for nationalisation under workers’ control and management, with no compensation to the fat cats, of the privatised care sector and any company threatening mass job losses.

What is urgently needed is a mass party that stands intransigently in defence of the working class, arguing for socialist policies rather than the SNP, Labour and some trade union leaders calls for unity between big business and workers.

That means the trade unions in Scotland helping to forge a new mass workers’ party to fight for socialism and an end to the multiple crises that capitalism brings for working-class people.