Workers Collapse Easily - Capitalism Needs A Little Push

Over the last three weeks I have witnessed five times how exhausted people performing physical work in the streets have either collapsed or needed medical attention. With temperatures around 35 degrees, the Ministry of Labour has been politely reminding bosses that, if they want, it would be nice of them to reduce working hours, especially for people doing physical work or exposed to the sun. They speak of the dangers of working in such conditions and noted a drastic increase in workers taken to hospital. The most common complaints are of heart problems, sun stroke, respiratory problems and general fatigue.

Travelling around the city, it is absolutely astounding to see the amount of people subject to hard physical work in the sun. As the city insists on carrying things like road works out in the summer, you see dozens of brigades in the middle of the street. The National Stadium construction fell behind schedule during the winter, so there is no time to lose and no chance to take a break for the workers. Repair and general maintainance? No better time to work than the summer!

The majority of the people working out in the sun are in some way linked to municipal contracts. We can be sure some businesspeople are getting awfully rich off our public money - but the people working on these contracts tend to be amongst the worst paid in the city. Members of ZSP have brought this issue up with the city before - but they do not care. Once they have farmed out some contract to the winner of a public tender (very often the local politicians' buddies or family), they see no relationship between the city and the contractor's employees and feel no obligation to even check if the working conditions are legal.

Such is the situation with some of the city's landscapers who, as it turns out, work up to 240 hours a month, do not get the statutory minimum and don't even have their wages written in their contracts.

These workers have already stood up to the bosses twice before but are now having trouble organizing against work in the heat. The bosses tend to tell the workers that if they are not physically up to it, they should consider getting another type of job. And of course the cruel reality of it is that most are NOT up to it, but have no other job to turn to.

How I wish that I could witness capitalism collapsing instead of some workers. But unfortunately, it will not collapse without some serious rupture.