May 1st: International Workers’ Day

May 1st – International Workers’ Day
Youth United against Capitalism and Coronavirus!
Defeating the Bolsonaro-Mourão government and organizing the workers!

The Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-19) outbreak deepens the systemic crisis of capitalism. The bourgeois offensive upon workers, that can be seen on every capitalist country, dismantled the public health systems and social security even more for the battle that they are facing right now. While we see countries with central planning, like China, Cuba and Vietnam, having great success in fighting the virus (Vietnam holds no deaths from the disease), the capitalist countries, independently from who governs them, are having great difficulties. Social distancing, necessary quarantine policies, as well as the guarantee of payment of wages and benefit rights, are against the wishes of the bourgeois by employing the workforce of proletariat and continuing to expropriate its surplus labour, at the expense of any respect for human life.
In Brazil, the situation’s still dramatic. With a neart total of eighty thousand cases and over five thousand deaths officially reported (underreporting estimatives points that the number can be 10 times over the reported cases), the outbreak hit strongly a country that has had its public health system extremely attacked in recent years, when it’s worth noticing the approval of the Constitutional Amendment 95, under Michel Temer’s government, that imposed a freeze of investments in the areas of education and health systems for 20 years.
Bolsonaro and Mourão’s government, compromised until the end with the interests of the bourgeoisie, aims to misinform the population and pressure workers to get back to their jobs – through declarations of the President, as well as through the whimsy quantity approved to aid the informal workers, autonomous and unemployed, and delays on conceding the aid. With no objective conditions of surviving and paying their bills, many workers are already asking for the flexibilization of the quarantine, supported by several right-wing parties and politicians, as expressed, for example, in the group of State Governors.
The situation of the working youth is even more complex. The last decades held great attacks against union movements in the country, whether by their direct enemies, the patronage, or by their naive detractors, that utilized the union machine as a way to lessen class struggles, thus, separating the new generations from the conscious and organized struggle. As a result of this process, today the largest part of young workers don’t know about unions or have any contact with them. There’s also a large part of the youth working informally, through app companies and other new ways of exploration, that for not having proper legal recognition, don’t have a union that represents them.
Some categories have been specially impacted:
– Young Healthcare Workers: many interns, residents and young medical doctors are working intensely on the struggle against the coronavirus. However, lacking adequate working conditions, Individual Protection Equipment (IPE), formal work contracts and even residency scholarships and wages are suffering from delays and cuts in various localities of Brazil, as we have been denouncing in testimonies in our means of communication and social networks.
– Young Informal Workers: workers of digital platforms (apps), young people mostly, also don’t have any support from these companies due to the lack of formal employment relationship. They aren’t given any IPE and are directly in contact with the population on a daily basis. Besides, the companies are letting go of many workers, that only have the application as a source of income, without any explanation, totally arbitrary.
– Young Retail Workers: also in retail, there is a huge amount of young workers earning extremely low wages and being exposed, as the horror show seen in Campina Grande (PB), where retailers forced their employees to “demonstrate” for the opening of the stores (under penalty of expulsion), are the kind of harassment that the bosses of the sector are imposing on this category.
– Interns in general: this is one of the most attacked categories, mainly due to the ease in terminating these types of contract. Public and private organs are massively cutting wages, putting young people in the streets, with any means of sustenance (also because they have no unemployment insurance), and others are giving “unpaid vacations”, that are in effect the undue suspension of the employment contract.
Another strong impact, felt by all those categories above and many others, are layoffs, work hours reducing and suspensions of contracts. Several companies are letting go of workers in the thousands, as is the case with Havan, owned by Luciano Hang (capitalist openly in favor of the Bolsonaro government), which laid off two thousand workers on Holy Week. The criminal provisional measure (MP 936/2020), promulgated by the Bolsonaro-Mourão government, also eases reduction of work hours and contract suspensions, with the social security system dealing with those expenses. Even so, some companies ignore even Bolsonaro’s MP and force their employees to work with suspended contracts, under the penalty of dismissal if they refuse.
What we see is the structural impossibility of the ruling class to defend whatever measures to contain the virus, putting the lives of the brazilian population at risk. The solution that involves a fall on profit rates clashes with its exploratory interests and will not have its support. President Bolsonaro himself, aligning with his disrespect for the live of workers, declared in an interview on Tuesday, April 28, when asked about the escalade of the virus on the country, said: “So what? I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? I’m ‘Messiah’ (making reference to his last name, Messias), but I don’t do miracles”. Therefore, we warn that those who, at the moment, indicate their militants to demand “good sense” of Bolsonaro and the others, are mistaken. We can expect nothing from this government.
So, the only solution are the independent measures of the working class. It is the resume of organization and unity of workers through a program of rupture with capitalism, by its self-organization on the tools of the class struggle. As pointed out on the declaration of the Central Committee of the Brazilian Communist Party:
“On the struggle for the overcome of the present crisis on the marks of the interests of the working class, we support the initiatives of formation of solidarity brigades and the construction of popular committees. Self-organization of the workers, with the strengthening of associations and popular movements, of the student entities and class unions, are the necessary conditions to prepare the popular counteroffensive capable of defeating the ultra liberal government and construct the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist alternative in Brazil.”
This independence, is also the reason why we denounce the farse built by the union centrals (controlled by uncompromised sectors with the struggle of the workers): on International Workers Day, a live stream will be put up with many famous figures from our political scene. Alongside these “left” figures, such as Lula (Workers Party/PT) and Flávio Dino (Communist Party of Brazil/PCdoB), will be speaking to the workers, in their day, declared enemies of our interests, such as Rodrigo Maia (Democrats/DEM), president of National Congress and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Social Democratic Party of Brasil/PSDB) ex-president of Brazil. These figures, supporters of measures like the privatization of the state companies and the Social Security Reform, has as a landmark of their politician careers the attacks against workers and the youth and the only reason to put them on a stage would be to denounce them to the eyes of all working class.
So, as we will not agree with the enemies of the workers (even with their so-called “opposition” to Bolsonaro) and reinforce the calling of the Brazilian Communist Party for Red May 1st – International Workers Day on social networks and digital platforms. We will have an intense participation on the networks, with a schedule that begins at 8:30am, with the “Unitary and Classist International Workers Day”, organized by the Forum of Unionist, Popular and Youth for Social Rights and Democratic Freedom; followed from 1 pm to 8 pm with the Red May 1st – International Workers Day; and resumes with the Red Friday, at 8:30pm, in which we will debate the Cuba situation, the blockade and the fight against the coronavirus.
Beyond the punctual agitation of May 1st – International Workers Day, we call for all youth workers that watch daily the dismantle of their rights and the vertiginous fall of the quality of life of the working class, to become organized in the lines of the Communist Youth Union. It’s sure we live in hard times, but we don’t have to stay forever at our own luck. In its 92 years, the UJC has always been on the side of young students and workers, for the construction of a dignified life and today, more than ever, we reinforce our historical compromise with our class. Cheers to the struggle of the working youth!
MAY 1st INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY: DAY OF STRUGGLE AGAINST CAPITALISM!
DEFEAT BOLSONARO AND MOURÃO!
IN DEFENSE OF THE WORKING CLASS’ RIGHTS AND DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM!
FOR POPULAR POWER IN THE DIRECTION OF SOCIALISM!