Healthcare worker fights division of “mental” and “manual” work here ♦ Capitalist mandates backfire here ♦
SEATTLE (US), June 2020—Seven thousand healthcare workers and others fill City Hall Plaza to demand racism be declared a public health issue.
Healthcare Worker Fights Division Between “Mental” and “Manual” Work
The healthcare collective of the International Communist Workers’ Party recently discussed the division between mental work and manual work. Health workers from the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa and El Salvador shared their experiences. I remembered an incident that happened a few months ago.
I work as a doctor in a basic primary health care center in El Salvador. Once, while I was working in my office, a child spilled his drink all over the floor. The health care center was full. To avoid adding more work to my co-worker in the cleaning service, I went to the warehouse in the bathroom area where they keep the mops and the floor disinfectant. The Director (my boss) saw me with the mop and disinfectant and asked me, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
When he saw me begin to mop my office, he raised his voice and said: “Let the cleaner do their job, you shouldn’t be doing that!” I answered that I had no problem doing it. He reluctantly let me finish and went back to his office,
I remembered that for me this was normal but other colleagues in the medical sector and even other health workers frowned upon that the “doctors and health chiefs” take a mop and a broom and clean their offices because that’s what cleaning workers are for. There is much work to be done.
The dominant ideology is that of the bourgeoisie: the work of some is worth more than others. They forget how essential the work is of those who maintain health centers in sanitary conditions, including health clinics, healthy homes and hospitals.
More discussions with co-workers and friends intensify our internal contradictions and theirs. This allows new people to step up to fight for communist revolution. Part of this process includes developing social relationships in the factory, the community and the home.
Being a communist in ICWP helps us to socialize and establish links with our co-workers in solidarity and equity. This lays the social basis of our work and advances the fight for communism.
-Comrade in El Salvador
Capitalist Vaccine Mandates Backfire Against Care Home Workers and Elderly Patients
The British government, earlier in the year, announced mandatory covid vaccinations for all care home staff by 11th November. Refusal of workers in this sector to take the vaccine means they will be fired.
The rulers have mishandled this crisis from the beginning. This enforced vaccine roll out by the state will lead to a further crisis affecting care home workers and patients alike. This is a prime example of the class nature of such mandatory vaccines as has been discussed in ‘Red Flag’. Marxism teaches us that the state is not neutral. It always benefits the ruling class and attacks the working class.
Workers in care homes are some of the lowest paid and most undervalued in Britain. Yet their work is vital to elderly and disabled patients. They risked their lives during the pandemic and are overstretched and understaffed. Their wages are only a few pence over the legal minimum. Most have to work un-social hours (outside the hours of 9 to 5) and many receive no sick pay!
The 13% of unvaccinated care home-workers likely fear that vaccine side-effects could result in them being off sick would lead to loss of wages. Even taking time out of work to attend a vaccination clinic would be unpaid!
The government is refusing to back down. Up to 60,000 care workers now face the sack. This would create a massive crisis in the care sector with consequences in the National Health Service (NHS). Some care homes would close, and patients would be sent to those still open or to hospitals, leading to overcrowding. Already many NHS hospitals have run out of beds with surges in seasonal illnesses.
The ruling class’s vaccine enforcement is affecting the low-paid and elderly the most and risking a new health crisis.
In addition, the government last week announced all NHS staff must have the full vaccination by April 2022. The NHS employs around 1.5 million people and if just 10% refused the vaccine 150,000 people would be out of a job! Leading to a massive staffing shortage in the NHS which is already struggling.
While we want to encourage people to get vaccinated, it must be done through comradely persuasion, education, scientific explanation and solidarity with the vulnerable.
-London NHS worker
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