Opinion: The Coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the value of workers around the world

BY WILSON OWERE 

INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’
DAY 2020 MESSAGE

This year for the first time, workers cannot march for International Workers’ Day, but that will never stop us demonstrating our strength and solidarity. Labor Day 2020 comes at a time when the whole world is battling a coronavirus pandemic. This crisis has shown the country what we have always known – workers both in the informal and formal sectors keep Uganda strong. The President H.E Yoweri Museveni and many others have paid tribute to our health professionals who are fighting on the Covid-19 frontlines to save lives.

I would wish to add sanitary workers, delivery boys and market vendors who work day and night to get the supplies we need. The security personnel are working around the clock to ensure that all government orders on lockdown are strictly complied with. The security personnel are delivering food and nutrients to the poor and needy. There is no better day than this International Labor Day / May Day to thank the workers who have made our lives easier while the world is struggling over the novel Coronavirus.

As NOTU, we have always known the critical role that workers play; the pandemic has just opened the rest of the country’s eyes to this. We must translate this into power.

At NOTU we know that a return to ‘normal’ will not good enough. The workers who today are ensuring lives are saved in hospitals, that the sick can get the medicine they need, and we get the essential services for survival, are also the same workers who for years have been fighting against declining wages, insecure models of employment and worsening working conditions and protections. We CALL FOR THE URGENT PASSING OF THE NSSF AMENDMENT ACT so that workers can get more benefits like Mid term access, unemployment, Medical care and housing for workers.
NSSF must benefit the workers are the owners not the regulator or others.

When this crisis ends, we cannot allow the country to forget the workers who kept people safe, healthy and fed. This May Day, we have to bring to the forefront stories of the critical work that workers do every day. We are calling on the entire NOTU and COFTU family to join with us on social media, to tell our stories.

By telling both these stories, – whether it is a video, a photo or simply sharing your thoughts – we want to highlight the hypocrisy of a system that both depends on workers for its survival, while simultaneously seeking new ways to erode our working conditions and employment. These stories will lay the foundations for campaigning to ensure that workers are not the ones to pay the price for the economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the moment we are in the eye of the storm, but we must take the opportunity that International Workers’ Day gives us to remind ourselves that we will get through this together.

We must pause today to take pride in what we do, celebrate our values, demonstrate meaningful solidarity, and collectively commit to each other to campaign, organise and fight for a new normal that puts the working class first.

Usher Wilson Owere

CHAIRMAN GENERAL

NATIONAL ORGANISATION OF TRADE UNIONS (NOTU) #ILO #OWEREUSHER #Ministryofgenderlabourandsocialdevolpent

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