WFTU May Day message and urgent tasks
WFTU May Day message and urgent tasks
As we welcome May Day 2020, the WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions) salutes the workers across the world who keep working to carry life forward and meet the needs of workers and the people, even in the difficult conditions created by the corona pandemic.
Millions of doctors, nurses and other health workers, braving the threat posed by Covid-19, work tirelessly every day to save patients from this pandemic, risking their own health and even their lives in the absence of enough protective equipment and medical supplies. We honour and respect all these health workers. They are front-line fighters bravely leading the war against Covid-19, sacrificing their own needs and comforts. The pandemic has already affected millions and pushed tens of thousands to their deaths. It is notable that it is the public health system, facing collapse for want of funds and subjected to deliberate sabotage by the policies of capitalist governments and to privatisation for the profit of international monopolies, that is the people's refuge and comfort in the powerful fight against the pandemic.
We workers and the public join our voices with those of the health workers. Expressing solidarity with their fight against the pandemic, we demand that the public health sector be strengthened, by strengthening infrastructure and increasing the availability of essential supplies, so that it can meet the people's immediate and long-term needs. The privatisation and commercialisation of health must end. High-quality health services must be made available universally and free through the public sector. Priority must go to the health of workers and the public, not to profit.
We salute the workers in the production and distribution of food and other essentials. It is the labour of workers in supermarkets and in services such as medicine, sanitation and energy that provides everything essential to people's survival.
We condemn the attacks on workers' rights carried out under cover of Covid-19 through dismissals, unpaid or cut wages, longer working hours and restrictions on freedom of association.
The long-term unemployed, uninsured workers, migrants, refugees and others now find themselves unable to secure a livelihood or health care, which will only worsen their health.
Complaints are being raised across the world that in companies producing non-essential goods, the multinational monopolies that own them are making workers work without following disease prevention norms in order to grab more profit. This could make the pandemic spread, as happened in America and in European countries such as Italy.
Even as we face these problems, we will keep putting forward strongly and actively the workers' demands: universal and free health care through the public system, jobs with decent wages, full employment for the unemployed, and fair support and protection for those who cannot work and those affected by diseases including Covid-19. The dismissals and anti-worker measures carried out under cover of the pandemic must certainly be investigated.
We can also see that even at this difficult time, the aggression of the capitalist countries and imperialist powers continues unchecked and greedily, denying workers' demands and plundering the natural and produced wealth that belongs to the people through bloody conflicts and wars to protect their economic interests. The American embargo against the peoples of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, imperialist interventions in Syria, Palestine and Yemen, arms production and trade, and conflicts and clashes all continue.
Speculation in the hygiene and essential supplies needed to fight Covid-19, and the competition among companies to find the vaccine essential for treatment and make huge profits from selling it, are taking on a cut-throat character.
Cuba sent specialist doctors to 14 countries in the grip of the pandemic. Workers in Italy held a one-day general strike in support of doctors and health workers. Across the world, workers have not stayed silent but have taken positions of solidarity with the people in this crisis. Following these examples, we workers and the public raise high workers' internationalism and the solidarity of peoples against capitalist aggression and speculation.
It was the workers of Chicago, who fought and gave their lives for the 8-hour day in 1886, who gave the working class the confidence to keep taking up struggles to win rights.
The international working class, marching on the path of class struggle under the leadership of the WFTU, honours the tradition of struggle the Chicago workers established, and stands committed to carrying forward, in any situation, the struggles to abolish the system of exploitation and win the modern rights of workers. Our supreme goal is the liberation of workers from the barbarism of capitalism.
Our urgent tasks
Against the background of the complex difficulties we face today, all sections, sisters and brothers who are workers, the unemployed, retirees, migrants and refugees, young scientists, indigenous people, women and men, must once again line up in the front ranks of our struggles to end exploitation in society, raising the following urgent demands.
1. All states and governments must provide the funds needed for a universal, comprehensive and free public health system.
2. Withdraw from measures to privatise the strategic health sector.
3. International institutions must stop giving empty greetings and explanations and concentrate on realising their aims.
4. Make a safe vaccine available free to everyone.
5. Ban dismissals.
6. Respect workers' rights to wages and insurance cover.
7. Protect democratic and trade union freedoms.
8. Protect the right to work.
9. Strengthen solidarity between workers and the public, and workers' internationalism.
10. Stop speculation and overcharging.
11. Reject racist and neo-Nazi tendencies.
Dear colleagues,
To honour the WFTU's 75 years of work, let us strengthen class struggles by putting into practice the slogan 'No one should be left alone'. Let the working class stand as one and carry forward the struggles to win our modern rights.
For 75 years the WFTU has been in the front ranks of struggle. It is our duty to continue this, and we will do it.
Long live workers' internationalism.
Long live May Day.
The struggles will continue.