Precariat, corona virus and pandemic

During the recent floods that brought chaos to Belo Horizonte last January, one image caused a stir: a delivery driver working "with" iFood, in the middle of the flood, with water up to his knees, going to make a delivery. He had no choice since he is an "entrepreneur" and only gets paid when he works. The courts have already ruled that there is no employment relationship between food delivery apps – iFood, Uber Eats, and others – and the delivery drivers. In a decision by the Labor Court of São Paulo, a judge stated that there is "absence of an employment relationship due to the lack of fulfillment of the necessary requirements." And what are the necessary requirements for an employment relationship? There are five: subordination (the employee must follow the employer's orders), regularity (the service must be continuous and with an expectation of continuity between employer and employee), remuneration (the employee provides a service to the employer and receives payment for it), personal service (occurs when a worker cannot be easily replaced by another), and being a natural person (the employee cannot be a legal entity). In the case of iFood and Uber Eats delivery drivers – and what about Faria Lima delivery drivers? – subordination is not established because the "autonomous entrepreneur" is "free" to choose which deliveries they will make without being punished for it, thus negating subordination. Furthermore, habitual work is not established because the delivery driver can "freely" choose their working hours, the means by which they will work, and when they will work, thus negating habitual work. Since there is neither subordination nor habitual work, the judge of the Labor Court understood that there is no employment relationship. Therefore, according to his "free will," the delivery driver Wesley Muniz, photographed in the flood, decided on his own to make the delivery. 

This would be the justification for the neoliberal discourse that calls the unemployed "entrepreneurs." According to the changes in Brazilian labor laws implemented according to neoliberal precepts, the employment relationship occurs between equals and places in social interaction someone who wants to hire labor and someone who, on equal footing, wants to sell their labor. This is a great fallacy because those who sell their labor are forced to sell it to survive. Just like them, thousands of others want to sell their labor to the few who want to buy it and who, because of this, can reduce the value of labor.

In reality, Wesley risked contracting leptospirosis, being swept away by the floodwaters, or being swallowed by a sinkhole when making the delivery, because he only gets paid for completed deliveries. The harsh life of the precarious worker doesn't allow him the luxury of not working. The pay is meager, and to manage to save something that allows him to rise a little above slave labor and/or absolute misery, he has to work many hours with almost no rest.

This harsh working relationship, where the "employer"—and we've already seen that iFood and Uber Eats cannot be considered employers—maximizes its profits by exploiting the absolute surplus value of a worker who has no labor rights, is very well addressed in the film. You were not here (Sorry we missed you, 2019) by British filmmaker Ken Loach, known for his political films, among which Land and freedom (Land and Freedom, 1995 e Me, Daniel Blake (I, Daniel Blake, 2016). You were not here This film explores the difficult relationship between a precarious worker and his family, as he is constantly absent from home due to his work. The opening sequence of this film begins with a dialogue that aptly illustrates the fragility of the relationship between an unemployed skilled worker in a desperate situation who accepts precarious work and an "employer" who is very comfortable exploiting the worker because he knows there is a huge army of unemployed people and, sooner or later, someone even more desperate will accept the degrading working conditions he proposes. The dialogue begins with the worker, formerly a skilled construction worker, listing an endless number of specialized tasks he is capable of performing. The "employer," whose uniform shows he is not the owner of the company, asks him why he quit his job, and he replies that he quit because he was tired of doing what he was doing and because his coworkers were lazy, and that he prefers to work for himself. The "employer" then asks him if he has received unemployment benefits, and he replies that he has dignity and would rather go hungry than receive unemployment benefits. The "employer" retorts, saying that the worker is "one of our own." And continues: "Let's make things clear. We didn't hire you, you boarded. We call this..." "You don't work for us, you work with us. You don't drive for us, you perform services. There are no contracts, no performance targets. You have to follow the rules. There is no salary, only commissions for services rendered. Is that clear?" To which the worker replies "yes, yes, that's fine" and thanks him.

This dialogue and Wesley Muniz's situation clearly illustrate the new labor relations that neoliberals cynically defend, claiming they occur between free individuals who, on equal footing, decide to establish a free labor relationship where either party can break the relationship whenever they wish. The worker needs to work every day, as many hours as possible, to earn enough to ensure the reproduction of their labor power. This makes them vulnerable in several aspects, including their health. And this is where a problem arises in these times of the coronavirus pandemic.

News disseminated by mainstream media reports that the coronavirus spreads rapidly and is highly lethal, and this information is what most of the population retains and accepts as the only truth, largely thanks to images of people wearing masks in the streets and fights over food in supermarkets, which help to cause fear and panic, used by governments to blackmail the population. In Brazil, Finance Minister Paulo Guedes never tires of threatening the population, conditioning the fight against the coronavirus on the approval of reforms that will further worsen the living conditions of Brazilian workers.

Doctors and scientists claim that this virus is much less lethal than others that have terrified the world's population in the 21st century, such as Ebola and H1N1. But this information is not being retained by the population. The irresponsible president of the Republic, the boorish Jair Bolsonaro, stated in live, He claimed that the danger of the virus is being "overblown" by the irresponsible press, but stated this while wearing a mask for protection. What this image conveys is that if he, the President of the Republic who enjoys a series of privileges, is wearing a mask, it's because the risk is high and everyone is susceptible to the virus.

Combating the disease requires good nutrition, rest, and isolation. Precarious workers, without the right to paid weekly rest and without pre-established working hours, do not eat healthily, do not rest, and have to interact with many people during their exhausting workday. Their work puts their lives at risk, as well as the lives of those who come into contact with them. This worker is subjected to an exhausting work routine that harms their health and affects their immune system. On the other hand, rest and isolation would mean that the precarious worker should remain at home while the risk of contagion remains. For them, however, not going to work means not having money to survive. And so they go, the precarious worker, to work; there go the thousands of iFood and Uber Eats delivery drivers, with no other option, making deliveries, exposing themselves and those they come into contact with to the risk of contagion by the coronavirus. But it is not only the precarious workers who are at risk. Mail carriers, for example, handle packages and letters from areas where the coronavirus is widespread and also come into contact with many people during their workday. Like precarious and other non-precarious workers, mail carriers can also become vectors of the virus.

The new capitalist relations of production presuppose a State that does not invest in social policies aimed at workers and instead directs the money that would be invested in them to finance big capital. In this current crisis, the Trump administration announced $200 billion in aid to rescue American companies. Three days later, the German government announced "unlimited aid" to German companies to overcome the economic crisis. No measures to generate jobs or to provide money to workers so they can stay home and protect themselves from the virus. No measures to lower the price of medicines and hygiene products, but many measures aimed at freeing up money to improve the mechanisms of capital concentration and the precarization of labor—does anyone doubt that this will be the final result of this crisis of capitalism? It results from the dismantling of the State, cuts in the budget and public investments, the deregulation of labor and labor laws, and governments are not proposing any measures to reverse these mistakes.

The fact is that the virus is hitting Brazil at a time when the country is being governed by cognitively impoverished and subservient imperialist puppets. It would be interesting for the left to unite and call a general strike for March 18th, taking advantage of the fact that one of the recommendations to combat the spread of the coronavirus is to avoid crowds and stay home. Stop production until the Bolsonaro government falls. It would also be important to create mutual aid groups that would contribute to the creation of measures that would allow all workers, especially those in precarious employment, to stay home without hardship. Among the demands of this strike, in addition to #OutWithBolsonaro and #GeneralElectionsNow, are the end of the investment cap, more funds for the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system), hiring more healthcare professionals, more funds for education and research, public policies for income distribution, emergency measures to create jobs, an end to privatizations, and the re-nationalization of all companies that have been privatized since 2016.

This crisis of globalized capitalism, intensified by the coronavirus, weakens capitalism and the ideological discourse that sustains it. It could become a great opportunity for the establishment of new production and labor relations that contribute to ending the exploitation of workers. However, social movements and workers are not at a level of organization that allows them to assume political leadership in the current situation. It is possible that new events – the deepening of the crisis? – could change this situation and favor the emergence of this leadership.