Coronavirus is putting extra burdens on workers, from health professionals to low-paid cleaning staff at the front line of combating infection. Yet many of these same workers don’t even have the right to sick pay – meaning they’ll feel compelled to work even if it risks spreading the virus.

Despite all these positive developments within the union movement, Germany’s mainstream media continues to frame the emerging dialogue between Fridays for Future and the trade union movement in binary terms, as if the defense of jobs will inevitably act against the wider interests of the planet. This is exactly the narrative that unions need to explode.

Land occupations in Andalusia, the Fast Food Forward Thessaloniki, and restaurant strikes at steakhouses across Germany have created new fault lines in the fight over who is to pay the price of the crisis, writes activist Mark Bergfeld.