Many workers around the world are faced with new challenges and hardships as they bear the different burdens of the Coronavirus outbreak. Some have lost jobs and, with little or no savings, face real threats of homelessness or hunger. Others must still work to survive as they have no choice and put themselves at risk. However we must all remember that millions of people must do this - with or without the Coronavirus. Coronavirus is just spreading the misery to more people.

While some retain their jobs and work at home by computer, millions of others are still out on the fields. There is usually little regard shown for their health and safety. In the IWA, we have comrades who live in extreme poverty, picking tea in Bangladesh; we have comrades in different countries in high-rish professions whose bosses do not want to insure them or take measures to improve safety, who live in situations where bosses force people to come to work sick and one must choose between their health or paying rent and buying food. This is the reality for millions of workers – not only in what we consider the poorer parts of the world, but also in rich industrialized regions. And it is exactly against these types of problems – which show a basic disrespect for workers' lives – that we organize every day.

Statement of the CNT-AIT Spain before May Day 2020

“The State protects us”, ”entrepreneurs are the ones who create the wealth”, ‘’we have to protect the welfare state’’, ‘’we are all in the same boat and have to pull together’’. 

We hear things like this from the propaganda channels of those in political or economic power time and again, encouraging and interclass unity of the whole society, seeking a civic consensus that legitimizes its system and its crisis. However, the cyclical crises of the capitalist system in general, and the COVID-19 crisis in particular, demonstrate that the working class is the one that takes society forward, providing health services, transport, care, production and distribution of food. It is the one that creates wealth with its physical and intellectual effort; despite this, the means of production and consumer goods are not at the service of humanity, but are used by the bourgeoisie to enrich themselves, miserably and selfishly, protected and legitimized by the State.

Capitalism is for workers and the planet like a virus for the organism – a system based on the exploitation of one class over the other, in the sexual division of labor and even invisible care. It is a virus that generates violence, inequality, wars, migrations and natural disasters. A virus that when it does not kill us weakens us and pushes us to a precarious life and misery. It is evident that we cannot expect anything from the political class, since its function is to sell us false solutions and serve the ruling class, thus legitimizing social inequalities.

It is well known by anyone who has ever worked in, or been around the social care system, how much employers in that sector try to exploit their staff and just how badly they treat them. Care workers have long felt they are viewed in low regard by both local authorities and the government, until recently being described by both local and national politicians as being ‘low skilled’. This has started to make headlines in the national press and get into the public consciousness and never has it been more apparent than during the current Coronavirus crisis, where employers have shown a complete disregard for the safety of not only their workers, but also for the people who use their services.

Careworkers have shown an unwavering commitment and compassion to the people they support by continuing to travel to work to support them every day despite the risks, with some workers going so far as to move into their places of work, leaving their families behind at home, in order to help shield the people they care for from the virus.

Meanwhile care employers have shown their usual commitment and compassion to their employees by treating them as badly as they possibly can in order to protect profit margins. Most care workers have never been eligible for sick pay and receive only Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) and this has continued during the current crisis.

The authorities finally threw off their democratic mask. By order of the authorities of Moscow and dozens of other regions, residents, under the pretext of the Coronavirus epidemic, are forbidden to leave the apartments in which they live. This means the actual establishment of a totalitarian regime. In Moscow alone, some 15 million of inhabitants of Europe's largest metropolis are under house arrest, like de-facto prisoners.

The unfortunate or daredevils who cannot endure a days-long imprisonment in the four walls of their small cells will be severely punished with anything from giant fines to imprisonment. Some cities have already introduced special permits for leaving the home; in Moscow, a similar "innovation" is being discussed. Methods of total surveillance and control are being introduced, which make us recall the darkest pages of Orwell and dystopian cyberpunk.

The system of public health care in Russia, as in many other countries, was virtually destroyed or greatly weakened by politicians, proteges of the rich, during the "optimizations" of recent decades. It is with this that problems have arisen almost throughout the world with the treatment of not only hundreds of thousands, but even just hundreds of seriously ill people. It is precisely with this situation that the mass panic around the epidemic is associated, which the media and the ruling circles of various countries have demonstrated. They are trying to solve these problems with short-term emergency measures (temporary reprofiling of existing hospitals and sanatoriums, temporary increase in doctors' salaries, temporary investment in health care), without changing the overall socio-economic course pursued in the interests of the largest capitalists and senior officials.