On this page: Hospital Workers here ♦ El Salvador-No to Bosses’ Elections here ♦
San Salvador, September 2020—They say that we’re essential and they treat us like we’re disposable
Hospital Workers Refuse to Be Sacrificed on the Altar of Profits
“Uh-uh. That’s not happening!” said a New Jersey (USA) hospital worker at a work meeting. The hospital administrators were trying to push an unsafe procedure on the assembled healthcare technicians. The bosses wanted workers to accept using surgical masks with face shields. These workers had to be very near patients to perform necessary medical procedures.
Face shields with surgical masks do not provide adequate protection from small particles. Hospital administrators try to push this method because it’s cheaper and available.
The N95 mask would maximize protection for healthcare workers and patients but under capitalist heath care N95 masks are not stockpiled. There is always a shortage of the safest method.
Big and small struggles like this are occurring all around the world. Sometimes they provide partial relief for a short time, but the overall trend during the pandemic is in the opposite direction. Healthcare workers are being sacrificed on the altar of profits.
It has become clear that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot be trusted. Some in the bosses’ media blame “political” influence, but that is only a part of the story. Hospitals and the healthcare industry have started a full-on campaign to avoid safety measures that would cost real money, like widespread use of effective air filtration systems.
Hospital Infectious Disease departments are also complicit. They always try to get workers to accept the least safe method of protection.
The latest CDC flip-flop centers around the scientific proof that the pandemic spreads thru aerosol droplets in the air. Some CDC employees knew this and for a few short hours this warning was posted on the organization’s website. Soon, it was taken down.
The workers in this New Jersey hospital were right that face shields without N95 masks would not protect workers and patients. Similarly, aerosol spread made the plexiglass barriers during the vice-presidential debate next to useless.
The New Jersey technicians got N95 masks, but had to wear the same one for a week. Adeline Fagan, a 28-year-old resident OB-GYN in Houston, died of COVID-19 after wearing the same “N95 [mask] for weeks and weeks, if not months and months” according to her sister.
Internationally, all healthcare workers are forced to use N95 masks for longer periods than are safe. Eventually, they provide inadequate protection because the seal comes loose.
The next time the hospital bosses try to force unsafe practices upon us, let’s answer “Uh-Uh! That’s not happening. We need a new healthcare system, a communist healthcare system dedicated to the needs of the working class, not profits.”
—New Jersey Healthcare worker
Health Care Workers in New York
El Salvador: No to Capitalist Electoral Parties—Build ICWP Collectives
“You can’t give complete control of the Assembly to a power-obsessed madman,” a student and health worker said. “What choice do we have then? For which party should we vote?” he asked.
“We have no electoral choice,” answered our comrade of ICWP. “We should abstain from voting, that’s what we have to do.”
This discussion took place within the context of studying a report on money laundering by President Nayib Bukele and his most intimate circle of friends and officials, together with one of the top leaders of the FMLN party, José Luis Merino. This group was established by ex-president Antonio Saca of the ARENA party. They are accused of laundering three billion dollars throughout the whole last decade through Alba Petróleos and PDV Caribe in complicity with the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
Bukele is the new leader of the Salvadoran right wing. Their objective is to gain a majority in the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly to run the state’s policy for their interests and those of the members of the bourgeoisie who finance them.
The electoral right wing won’t solve this health and economic disaster of the current Bukele government. El Salvador’s debt of almost 93% of GDP is a debt that all the workers in the country and the future generations will pay. All for the benefit of a small group of bosses.
This discussion leads us to reflect on the urgency of the revolutionary alternative for the working class. We must urgently stop the vicious cycle of crisis and debt into which the bourgeoisie has plunged us in this country and in the whole world.
It’s essential to open spaces for discussion to share the real political alternative for the working class. To discuss communist ideology, bringing information about the alternative and the choice of revolution which is reflected in Red Flag.
The political task is great. The social, economic and political situation of the working class makes it urgent. We need more political discussion and more dissemination of Red Flag. Our duty is to move the struggle from the social networks to our workplaces.
Many lives are in danger when we denounce the bosses’ system. Therefore, the task is to build more unity with the International Communist Workers’ Party. The communist cells will be the support and guide so that those who feel overwhelmed by the capitalist system can find respite and relief from the economic situation they face. The capitalist management of the Covid 19 crisis has caused this situation.
The communist cells of the ICWP serve as a link between the party and the workers, to make the struggle for communism more militant, intelligent, united, and critical and self-critical.
Giving part of one’s life for the welfare of others is one of the noblest tasks that communists in the world decide to take on.
—Comrades in El Salvador
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