Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, workers at the Nestlé manufacturing plant in Toronto’s west end are facing unfair conditions including part-time pay, pension cuts and precarious employment, and management is unwilling to negotiate a reasonable contract with its employees. As of May 19, more than 470 workers are on indefinite strike after talks between Unifor Local 252 and the chocolate company broke down.

More than one year into a pandemic during which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ personal wealth topped $70 billion, the local public health agency told the company to adopt elementary precautions that should have been enforced when news of the virus broke. Despite “pulling the emergency brake” on the entire province, the ruling elite’s response to underlying and unaddressed issues of worker protection remains inadequate.

Despite trying to “deliver a smile,” Canada Post is inadvertently adding additional stress on postal workers by making them distribute 13.5 million additional pieces of mail—all while ignoring their calls for better health and safety. What workers need from our publicly-owned postal service is economic transformation, not adding millions of pieces of mail to their pick-up points, sorting stations, and delivery routes.

Canada Goose Union is the latest iteration of a movement pushing for unionization among Winnipeg garment workers, calling out the luxury garment maker’s union busting practices, and shining a light on the hypocrisy of majority owner Bain Capital. For all the national pride associated with the “made-in-Canada” product, the company has been majority owned by the Mitt Romney-founded private investment firm since 2013.

The agriculture industry’s anxious calls to re-open borders demonstrate the value of migrant labour, and what workers are really owed. Moreover, this shows the complicity of Canadian governments in propping up questionable capitalist schemes based upon the exploitation of the migrant underclass.

The increasing violence surrounding extractive operations around the world demonstrates the role of mining as capitalism’s ‘commodities fallback’ in the face of unprecedented economic upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the global crisis continues to unfold, the inherent dilemmas of this planet-wrecking system are quickly being unearthed.

Seafaring work is uncertain, demanding and, at times, dangerous. The pandemic has offered paramount, real-time lessons for the labour behind international trade and tourism. Workers deemed disposable steer the world’s flow of wealth, and Filipino overrepresentation in this sector is not accidental.

This pandemic has exposed Canada’s weaknesses and failings—in particular, how it has failed to care for the oldest and most vulnerable among us. Beyond flattening the curve, provincial policies must drastically change towards eliminating the disparities in Canada’s current publicly funded, privately delivered system that provides dysfunctional, two-tiered health care.

The outbreak has been blamed incorrectly on everything other than the employers, from a community conspiracy against authorities to the necessity of workers to carpool. Around 70 percent of workers at the Cargill High River plant, it turns out, are Filipinos; some of whom are recent migrants who were hired through the federal Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) Program.