In hospitals and clinics across the city of Chicago, health care workers are fighting back against the capitalist bosses’ racist and sexist attacks on our lives. They are boldly challenging capitalism’s persistent need to prioritize profit over the needs of the working class.
The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed at least 3,000 lives in Chicago. Because of racist inequalities rooted in capitalism, it has been especially devastating to Black and Latin workers, who have made up at least 75 percent of the reported deaths (chicago.gov). Many of these Black and Latin working-class families are also disproportionately affected by gun violence and youth suicides, both of which have seen a drastic uptick this year (Chicago Sun Times, 7/25).
But instead of expanding access and the quality of care, the racist bosses take the opposite approach. They have accepted millions of dollars in handouts from the CARES Act while they threaten to close hospitals, cut back on services for workers who are unemployed or low-income, and impose wage freezes while denying protective gear for those on the front lines.
This deadly assault will continue to be the reality as long as we allow capitalism to exist. Relying on liberal politicians and union misleaders to lead our fightback will only prolong our misery, as these hacks only serve the system’s needs.
More than ever, workers everywhere need to build the struggle to violently overthrow this racist profit system and replace it with a communist society that eliminates money, wages, and social classes. Under communism, we will collectively organize hospitals, clinics and public health based on workers’ needs. To fight for our collective health, we need to join and build the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Workers of the world, unite
Throughout the majority of 2020, there have been a number of battles that have flared up at local health care facilities, which have mobilized thousands of workers. Some of the notable struggles include:
·  Workers at Mount Sinai Hospital on the city’s west side protesting the bosses’ refusal to extend pandemic hazard pay to all employees, as well as a failure to make necessary infrastructure improvements to update failing equipment
Nurses, doctors and supporters fighting to prevent the closing of the Provident Hospital emergency room for an entire month during the Covid-19 surge
Health care workers across the city uniting to march through the Medical District in the wake of the racist kkkop murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, demanding a response from the bosses regarding chronic racist health inequalities
·Hundreds of nurses at Amita St Joseph’s Hospital in Joliet going on strike for over two weeks to protest against racist and sexist harassment by the bosses, who threatened to cut sick pay and freeze wages for new hires
Rallies and car caravans of hundreds to protest the proposed closure of Mercy Hospital in the Bronzeville neighborhood, the city’s oldest hospital which serves mostly Black workers
A strike of thousands of workers at the University of Illinois Hospital (UIH), including nurses, aides, clerical and maintenance workers to demand better staffing, higher pay, and improved safety measures
Members of PLP have enthusiastically supported and even provided leadership to some of these anti-racist fights. We have distributed hundreds of flyers and issues of CHALLENGE newspaper to workers hungry for revolutionary politics.
In every struggle in which we have been involved, we have stressed the racist and sexist nature of how the bosses attack and divide us. We have pushed for our co-workers and friends to see themselves as a united fight against all of capitalism’s attacks, and to organize for communist revolution as the antidote to this poisonous system.
Health care for profit is deadly
Health care systems under capitalism will always be organized as a business to maximize the bosses’ profits. The destructive nature of the pandemic has shone a spotlight on just how inadequate, unequal, and racist the bosses’ infrastructure really is.
Despite many hospitals being part of wealthy systems with assets in the billions, hospitals across the country have been closing at a rate of 30 per year (Bloomberg Business, 8/21/18). The majority of these closures occur in working-class urban and rural areas and have negatively impacted millions of Black, Latin and Asian workers, who increasingly find themselves living in “health care deserts” and are forced to travel longer distances to receive care. In Chicago, life expectancy for neighborhoods on the south and west sides can average thirty years less than wealthier downtown neighborhoods (NBC Chicago, 6/10/19)!
The loss of over half a million hospital beds in the U.S. since 1975 all but guaranteed that when a pandemic hit, capacity would be quickly overrun (Truthout, 3/31). As is the case in all industries under capitalism, from transit to education, the scramble for making short-term profits outweighed any long-term consideration of workers’ safety or development.
On a local level, liberal bosses in Chicago have used decreasing tax revenue as an excuse to cut services and jobs to the publicly-funded Cook County Health System (Chicago Tribune, 8/28). This conveniently overlooks the fact that “progressive” Mayor Lori Lightfoot was willing to fork over $1 billion in tax money to developers just a year ago to build a new luxury neighborhood (WTTW, 9/4/19).
Beware the labor fakers
Many of the struggles against the hospital bosses have been organized by the unions, including Illinois Nurses Association (INA) and SEIU. As communists, we fight to organize within mass worker organizations and understand that strikes can be effective schools for class consciousness and communist politics. However, we must always be on guard to understand and challenge the ways that these liberal capitalist reformers sell out workers and steer the struggle into dead ends.
The INA, who are helping lead the ongoing strike at the University of Illinois Hospital, undoubtedly set the nurses in Joliet up to fail in their struggle (see CHALLENGE, 8/5). Along with SEIU, they are limiting the scope of the struggle to focus on negotiating a new contract. Workers “winning” a new contract isn’t anything to be excited about; the majority of the time the bosses won’t even honor the conditions! Labor contracts only dictate the terms of our exploitation.