Resources on the pandemic: analysis and action

As it disproportionately impacts those who were already vulnerable in Canada and beyond, the COVID-19 crisis continues to reveal very clearly the systemic injustices which underlie our societies and our economic systems. 

The crisis has also shown that some things that we have been told are impossible, such as paying grocery workers a living wage and making employment insurance more easily accessible, are more than possible. 

As we live through this pandemic and work to support each other and care for our communities, we invite you to consider the resources below, which offer analysis and action from a worker-centred perspective.

These resources can help us to:

●     better understand the crisis, 

and,

●     strategize about how we can fight for a pandemic recovery that builds a better world where the well-being of the most vulnerable is prioritized. 

List of subjects: 

  1. Strategies for a Just Recovery 
  2. Work and Workers
  3. Climate Justice
  4. Racial Justice
  5. PSAC Regional Health & Safety Resources

1. Strategies for a Just Recovery 

Video: Naomi Klein - Coronavirus Capitalism and How to Beat it (video)

Excellent analysis of the crisis through the lens of “disaster capitalism,” proposing that the recovery is a chance to win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier - if we come together and fight for these victories.

Webinar: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor - How to beat coronavirus capitalism

More than 15,000 people joined this March 26th online teach-in organized by Haymarket Books: “We are in a battle of worldviews that will determine how we ultimately respond to this crisis. We will either be catapulted backward to an even more brutal winner-takes-all system — or this will be a wake-up call to leap to a society in which every life has equal value, and we take care of each other as if our lives depended on it. Because, as it turns out, they do.”

Webinar: Angela Y. Davis and Naomi Klein - Movement Building in the Time of the Coronavirus

Scholars Davis and Klein discuss how we can organize to defend and protect the most vulnerable members of society during the crisis, and why it is essential that we do so. Also features contributions from 4 other racial, social and economic justice movement leaders in the US.

2. Work and Workers

Article: Why the 'invisible workers' cleaning up COVID-19 need better labour protection, The Sunday Edition, CBC

This article discusses how for tens of thousands of people who work as cleaners across this country, this pandemic has meant having to keep showing up for work — for more demanding shifts, and under potentially hazardous working conditions.

Article: Coronavirus is a Labour Crisis and a General Strike May be Next, Vice.com

This article outlines how workers are organizing during the crisis, and why labour organizing is more crucial than ever as millions become unemployed and employers and governments ignore labour rights.  

Resource - Labourstart - COVID-19 page

Regularly updated collection of articles on worker and trade union responses to the pandemic

Resource - Organizing in a Pandemic: Labor Notes Resources, USA

Regularly updated site with news, resources, and analysis from ademocratic labour perspective  

3. Climate Justice

Article - The coronavirus outbreak is part of the climate change crisis, Al Jazeera

This article outlines how the same systems that are causing the COVID-pandemic are also what are causing climate change, and that our responses to COVID-19 need to include climate action

4. Racial justice

Article: COVID-19 May Not Discriminate, but Responses to it Do, The Globe and Mail  

This article discusses the government’s inability to provide support to Indigenous communities within an appropriate time frame during the COVID-19 crisis  

Article: COVID-19 and the Threat of ‘Community Policing’, Briarpatch Magazine

“As society restructures in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, laws designed to punish those who are “endangering public health” will land heavily on marginalized communities” 

5. PSAC Regional Health and Safety Resources

Webinars are being conducted in all of the regions. Find the link to your regions webinar on the regional education page at the links below. For more information on these webinars contact your regional office.

Atlantic:

BC: 

All past and upcoming webinars are available at: http://psacbc.com/topics/health-and-safety

  • Webinar #1: COVID-19 and Workplace Health and Safety Rights
  • Webinar #2: Practical Home Ergonomics
  • Webinar #3: Returning to Work & Covid-19
  • Webinar #4: How to Refuse Dangerous Work 

National Capital Region: 

North: 

Ontario:

Prairies:

Quebec:

University sector:

Topics: 

April 27, 2020
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