The story of grocery’s aggressive low-wage, part-time restructuring is a broader history of the vicious rollbacks of the 1980s and 1990s. But it’s also partly a history of labour bureaucracy and of how a bill had come due. The result was a mostly unchecked assault across the entire industry that decimated the key benefits that characterized grocery work for half a century prior. But the story is still being written.

After the pandemic, the challenge confronting the left is whether it can take advantage of the spaces capitalism has not completely conquered and the contradictions of life under capitalism that have blocked the full integration of working people, to remake the working class into one that has the interest, will, confidence, and capacity to lead a challenge to capitalism.

As unemployment remains high, CERB remains an important way to keep Canadians afloat. We should continue fighting for its survival. But the long-term idea of converting CERB to basic income, both as a policy and strategy for the left, is less a matter of principle and imagining the possible than it is a gamble with conservatives and free market fetishists.

The ideas raised at the recent Courage press conference urge government officials and journalists to consider the importance of essential workers and vulnerable communities, not only during the pandemic, but in Canada’s economic recovery. Only by taking stock of their concerns and demands will Canada be better prepared for future crises.

Free period supplies at the workplace is “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of rectifying an outdated and harmful social ethic that compels individual women to “manage periods at work,” rather than pushing organizations, institutions, and companies to adapt to and support the natural functions of women’s bodies. No more hiding, no more whispering. The time for change is now.

We are entering a period of crisis that is simply without precedent and the course the federal government is pursuing shows a clear intention to ensure that working class people will pay for that crisis, while corporations are cushioned and supported by the state. Unions and communities will have to respond to this with a united fightback against attacks on workers’ rights and public services.

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.

Where is the independent voice for working people in this pandemic? Humanity is battered by both COVID-19 and a deep economic depression. We are not in this together. Canadian workers need a party that speaks for them. This is supposed to be the New Democratic Party. This article reviews the NDP’s actions in Canada and draws the conclusion that we need much better.

The health crisis unfolding around the globe has already had monumental impacts. News media report the pandemic is an unprecedented event. However, casting this crisis as exceptional narrows the focus. While the COVID-19 virus is unprecedented in its transmissibility, the lack of preparedness and inadequate protection for health-care workers is an old story.

The powerless and atomized workforce that the Financial Post would like to take as the model for the future can and must be rejected. Working class solidarity must not merely be nurtured but taken to a whole new level in the struggle for a socially just post-pandemic future shaped by our collective resistance.