STOP THE PLATITUDES

Treat Essential Workers Like You Mean It

C

OKAY, LET'S ALL PULL TOGETHER. AGAIN.

Except that once again the workers are being asked to carry the load. Nurses and health care workers are being asked to volunteer, cancel vacation leave, even work unpaid overtime.

Teachers and educational and daycare workers are being sent back to schools with improper PPE, poor ventilation and limited or no rapid testing capacity.

Retail workers are being told to come to work even when they feel sick and risk getting sicker or giving Covid to their fellow workers.

And all workers are being asked to sacrifice their very lives as our political leaders aided and abetted by compliant public health officials unilaterally decided to reduce the isolation period for exposure or a positive test from 10 days to 5. With no scientific basis for the decision.

Let’s be honest. All the new measures that have been introduced have not been to protect workers and their families. We are now more at risk than ever as the most contagious wave of the never-ending virus that has changed our lives and our work.

It’s time to start fighting back for workers. Our loves depend on it. And while we’re at it, let’s pay people what they’re worth. Not what the bosses want to pay.

Let’s make safety first. What PPE and isolation time does science suggest. We should refuse to work without them.

Let’s pay people what they’re worth. Cancel any restrictive public sector legislation that limits the pay or benefits of public sector workers. Pay every essential worker a top-up for the real and present danger that they face during the current pandemic. And put it into law so that it happens automatically every time something like this happens again.

And it will happen again!!

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