The announcement, on July 12, of an obligatory vaccination for hospital staff,
shook their unions. The positions taken have been vague at the level of thefederations, heterogeneous at the local level, plunging colleagues and unionmembers into disarray. This great failure calls for many questioning.Revolutionary trade unionists have their say. ---- It all started with a lack ofa clear union position on vaccination. This is the starting point for furtherconfusion. If the demand for the lifting of patents was easily adopted within thetrade union federations, support for the vaccination campaign was not clearlystated, or lip service. Blame it on the summer break ? No. Remember that thepandemic has lasted since December 2019 and that the vaccination of professionalshad been mentioned for several months. So we shouldn't have been taken aback.This delay illustrates the absence of any real debate in hospital unionism on thehealth issues themselves. If the psychiatry sector, in particular in SUD,succeeds in producing a quality reflection on nursing practice, general careseems to lack spaces allowing for the emergence of a trade union analysis on "theprofession" and care.Yet it is around this that many discussions and daily indignation revolve withinthe services. Claims on the profession and on the health system largely irrigatedthe fight to emergencies in 2019 [1].If trade unionism wants to change society, it cannot be confined to a role ofindividual assistance and the formulation of a few unambiguous demands. Carryingout union action without thinking about the object of the employees' work is adead end.The importance of the transmitter in public healthHospitalists, like the population, have wondered about new vaccines and inparticular messenger RNA. In public health policies, the originator of themessage has great importance on how information is received.The combined communication of a government that breaks the hospital and hospitalmanagement that mistreat agents on a daily basis is counterproductive. Especiallysince it is threat-based, and swept aside expressed doubts with an arrogantprescriptive posture.The anti-vaccine position of some colleagues can be shocking, but proves that wemust deconstruct the view on hospital staff, who are neither obscurantists norexamples of sanitary good sense. Through all of the hospital's professions, theyillustrate the state of our social class, in its relationship to science orsocial struggles. It is not simply a question of a lack of scientific training,as some doctors have said, but of the trust placed in the transmitter of thepublic health message.The mistrust is real and does not come from nowhere, the trauma linked to theprevious lies is still palpable. Even if the phenomenon is in many marginalhospitals it will continue in some the trauma of having been vaccinated under duress.We are the first to be dismayed that mistrust of the government and hospitalmanagement is expressed in this way. But feeding it or trying to take advantageof it is a demagogic error.cc Romani / Social movement photo librarySee beyond "who comes to the local"Too many union sections operate without a clear line. The positions are cobbledtogether according to the agents who come knocking on duty, and who are notnecessarily representative of what the hospital staff as a whole think.Local union teams, taking advantage of the backwardness of the federations, wenteasy by adopting a confused, even vaccino-skeptical speech.To justify itself, the concept of "local self-government" has once again beenmisguided. We have seen SUD officials like CGT make confused, freewheelingspeeches in the media. Trade unionists who compromise themselves in this way goagainst our class interests. There are accounts to be asked for and, fortunately,the SUD-Santé-Social federation did so by calling on two departmental unions.For vaccination, against the arbitrariness of the bossesMore generally, the struggle unionism has missed the opportunity to become,itself, the transmitter of a public health message. A revolutionary tradeunionist position should have been to assert that regardless of employer andstate logic, defending our social class means getting vaccinated. Gettingvaccinated because it is not dangerous and on the contrary it saves the lives ofour people. Because yes we are much more fragile. Vaccination is an act ofsolidarity with our people, which is why it must be massive and accessible to all.Like some left-wing parties, too many unions have remained on the lookout, to thedetriment of what should make sense for everyone.Parasitized by the words of certain opportunist "trade unionists", criticalanalyzes could not be heard. For example our denunciation of the hypocrisy whichconsists in accusing hospital agents for nosocomial infections, by omitting thelack of material resources, the lack of time, overloaded services ...Affirming our line of provaccination means being clear about our desire to defendour colleagues. Thus it was necessary to provide information on the risksincurred by non-vaccination, and to deny rumors about alleged legal remedies.cc Romani / Social movement photo libraryAgainst repressionBeing clear on this in no way prevents us from fighting against layoffs, againstintimidation by agents by telephone. All the more so as zealous managementsuspended or threatened to do so agents who had had the misfortune to send theirvaccination certification late, or even simply had the wrong email address.This episode confirmed our desire for a class struggle unionism, actor in itsplace of intervention of the "double task" endorsed by the Amiens Charter:immediate demands and social transformation. One like the other cannot be builtby sailing by sight, without a clear guideline, according to what seems to be thezeitgeist. It is urgent to ideologically rearm our trade union organizations.Libertarian health unionistsTo validate[1]"Emergency strike: The return of strike coordination?» , LibertarianAlternative, July-August 2019.https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Vaccination-Apres-la-confusion-il-faut-une-ligne-syndicale-claire_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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