The Irish Republican Socialist Party send our revolutionary greetings and solidarity to workers in Ireland and across the world and especially to our healthcare and care home workers battling on the frontline against covid-19.
We are currently in the midst of a global healthcare pandemic making this, an International Workers Day like no other.
Across the world, workers continue to be at the frontline, putting their own lives at risk, ensuring medical supply lines stay open, lights stay on, food is on our tables and tending to 100,000s of sick and dying at the hands of this wretched disease.
We are also seeing self organised initiatives of entire sections of the community, some even crossing generation old divisions to come together to help our most vulnerable and frontline staff.
So while these recent weeks and months may have appeared to be abnormal, what has remained the same has been the vital role that workers play to ensure our everyday needs our met.
Covid-19 has had a devastating financial impact on capitalism. Yearly profits have been lost for many large corporations, forcing them to selfishly loby governments to prematurely lift lockdown restrictions against medical advice , risking further waves of infection and risking the lives of frontline workers.
When capitalism is in crisis, it is the workers that will pay the price. Large multinational corporations have already signalled their intentions to begin cutting jobs, wages and terms & conditions for millions of workers in order to appease shareholders and boost profit in the coming years.
The line between them and us has never been more clear. While workers are on the frontline ensuring of global survival, the financial elite are behind closed doors plotting and planning ways to increase their wealth.
What this virus has made clear is that us, the workers are not divided by religion, race or ethnicity. We are united across the world under the one common and unified banner.
When covid-19 subsides, we must be ready for the next battle. Economic recession is looming which will inevitably bring on a wave of economic attacks against us.
We ask you, if you already havn’t, to join a trade union and organise in the workplace in preparation.
Throughout this crisis, Stormont and the Dáil have both been again, proven as failed political institutions.
An ill equipped and under funded health and care service has left staff and patients dangerously exposed and lacking basic PPE and medical equipment. Both governments need held to account for these deadly inadequacies.
To think that only a few months ago, we were standing on the picket lines with nurses across the country as they striked for better pay & conditions while the political elite used them as bargaining chips.
This virus has shunned a spotlight on the negative socio-economic and healthcare impact that partition has in Ireland.
Our members continue to be highly active across Ireland, doing everything in our power to help our frontline healthcare and care home workers by providing them with vital PPE while also assisting the most vulnerable in our communities with care packages.
The Irish Republican Socialist Movement will always side and come to the defence of our most vulnerable, the workers and our class in their hour of need. We have proven it in the past and we have proven it today.
We look forward to the day when this virus is over, when we can all be reunited with family, friends and comrades.
Until then, in solidarity with our frontline workers, stay home, stay safe and observe social distancing.
The workers are the slave of the capitalist society, let us rise.
