European leftist parties demand support for workers during the capitalist coronavirus crisis

Fighting the virus in Italy

Yesterday we looked at what our governments should be doing to protect workers in the face of the exploding capitalist coronavirus crisis. With several million Canadians and tens of millions of Americans just a couple of paychecks away from being on the verge of bankruptcy and homelessness, or of having to make very hard choices, steps need to be taken immediately so that, unlike in 2008, it is not the people who pay the price of the pandemic while big business gets big bailouts. 

We need rapid, disciplined, socialist solutions to this and we need to pressure our governments to implement them now.

Calls from leftist and workers' parties internationally are mounting for emergency measures to ensure that any actions taken to fight the coronavirus are not at the expense of or on the backs of working people.

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece released a statement that -- in addition to demanding the reopening of hospital beds with proper staffing that were shut down due to austerity and for the provision of  "necessary disinfection and precaution supplies" by the state free of charge -- called for the government to ensure full remuneration and insurance to:

- All workers who are sick.

- Workers who are forced to abstain from work because of the emergency preventive measures.

- Those who are required to take care of a patient or an elderly member of their family.

- Those who are required to stay with their children at home because of the preventive closure of schools and day care centers.

He further demanded an end to all home foreclosures, evictions and utility disconnections due to debt. Koutsoumpas stated the "total cost must be borne by the state itself, the various big business groups and not the workers, the employees in the private and public sector or the self-employed in urban centers and the countryside."

Similarly the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain noted the necessity of protecting workers who need to "care for children and young people affected by the closure of schools". In addition they called for steps like the immediate takeover of private health centers by public services, regularizing and protecting those working in Spain illegally, establishing a central transportation plan "which guarantees the daily disinfection of...transport and the adoption of measures for the protection of personnel",  "mandatory rules, under the supervision of public personnel, for nursing homes and the like" and laws and regulations against speculation.

In Italy, which has been hit especially hard,  Francesca Fornario of the Communist Refoundation Party said that the  "effort of the government and of all of us to prevent the virus from spreading should be matched by an identical effort to prevent the weakest from paying the consequences of the extraordinary measures required by the health emergency."

She also demanded that the "government guarantee all workers the opportunity to stop working without losing their jobs." She called for workers to be allowed to work from home where possible, for worker salaries and incomes to be guaranteed and for protections for precarious workers.

Fornario ends stating that there must be a moratorium on mortgages, rents and taxes as well as a massive investment plan for recovery after the outbreak.

Fortunately the Italian government has, at least temporarily, heeded calls for people to be protected from defaulting on mortgages or being cut off from utilities.

As the Spanish statement warned, "Once again, the business class seeks to socialize the losses that come in times of difficulty after years of privatizing profits."

We cannot allow this to happen anywhere.