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Coronavirus Crisis

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Bosses face wave of workers action across Northern Ireland: Trade unions must coordinate action

In this “post-lockdown” economy most of the developed world is facing the worst labour shortages since the late 1990s. Workers are facing rapidly rising inflation and huge increases in the cost of living beginning to bite into workers’ pay; along with a continuation of over eighteen months of exhausting pandemic working conditions, some outright dangerous. In the face of these crises, workers are increasingly moving to challenge their bosses and are becoming galvanised, at least at a workplace level, to demand increased wages and better working conditions.
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Year one of capitalism’s Covid crisis

Stepping back to assess the damage of the first year of the coronavirus pandemic is sobering. As of March 2021, there have been 123 million confirmed cases and a staggering 2.7 million deaths worldwide. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Chicago city or Manchester being wiped out in the space of a year. If there was any doubt about the ferocity of Covid-19 as a disease, these figures, which are undoubtedly an underestimation and in any case only a snapshot in a rapidly escalating total, speak to its real, unabating threat.

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Covid and capitalism bring health services to breaking point

At the time of writing, the third Covid surge is threatening to overwhelm hospitals, North and South. There are significant differences between the health systems, and they are not alone globally as others have faltered. Under capitalism, health is a commodity. Worldwide, we see public health care systems suffering from lack of funding and increasing marketisation, with deadly consequences for working-class people.