Tue 17 Mar 2020, 10:17 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mic Craig, Labour Party Northern Ireland
“Workers at Amazon’s UK warehouses are being told to work overtime to tackle huge demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, despite government calls to restrict social contact. The GMB union says that workers across at least four different sites were informed that they had to work ‘compulsory overtime’ from Monday.”
The BBC, of course, doesn’t question the law which allows companies like Amazon to force overtime on their employees. “Its the law”, so even when its immorality is being exposed by current events, the mainstream media will not challenge it.
The fact is that the workers are not given a choice as to which clauses in their employment contracts they sign up to. They can’t opt out of the overtime clause. You agree to all of the terms of the contract or you don’t get the job, and the law backs the employers’ right to have it this way!
Many will argue that the trade unions were powerless to prevent such laws being introduced by the Thatcher government, and that they were also unable to force Blair’s New Labour into rescinding these anti-worker laws. If the trade union leaders across all of industry had supported the miners in 1984, this attack on workers and their organisations could have been defeated early on. What we’re seeing today is the legacy of that failure by past union leaders to act in the interests of the working class.
There’s another important issue that is exposed by this coronavirus crisis, and it’s one which could be used to our advantage. When it comes down to it, society can’t function without workers, because capital doesn’t have hands, arms, legs or brain cells. Capital doesn’t feed or clothe people, or provide them with essential items such as medicine, neither does it care for them when they are ill. Only human labour does this! Workers!
Amazon, the BBC tells us near the end of this report, says that it will increase its workers pay by £2/hour. Amazon is not doing this out of empathy for those who have ‘self-isolated’ and need supplies like baby food. No, Amazon is prepared to buy off workers’ safety in order to ensure its continued profits, and even its continued existence.
I could be wrong, but it looks to me as if this is the perfect time for a General Strike.
