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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.18, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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When the biggest snowstorm in nearly 50 years batters the Eastern Seaboard, naturally it's big news.
And so the bourgeois media are full of human-interest tales--heartwarming stories of good neighbors and wrenching ones about hearts giving out in mid-shovel.
But there are other stories. You can find them by viewing the storm from the vantage point of the class struggle between workers and bosses, which not even acts of nature can suspend.
Take the Long Island Rail Road in New York. Early on Jan. 8, local radio and television stations broadcast a message on behalf of LIRR management.
Hundreds of miles of track and train stations had to be cleared. So able-bodied young adults with snow shovels were invited to report to either the Mineola or Valley Stream station on Long Island.
They would be hired for four- or eight-hour shifts. They would be paid $12 an hour.
Trains weren't running. Streets were impassible. Even walking was very hard, in the face of gale-force winds and driving snow, with five-foot drifts in places.
So those who turned up to do the cold, hard work of shoveling must be desperate for a job.
Thousands did.
According to broadcast reports later that evening, LIRR bosses had to turn away thousands more.
The shoveling was done. And the shovelers were unemployed again.
Up and down the East Coast, for millions of workers who do have jobs, the good news was that they got the day off because of the weather.
For how many, though, is the bad news that they won't get paid?
Most workers, even in New York, the most unionized state in the country, are not represented by unions. If there's no union contract forcing the bosses to pay workers for weather cancellations--without taking it from their vacation or sick days--there is no guarantee workers won't lose a day's pay.
A day at home watching the lovely snow fall is no day at the beach if you spend it worrying about how to pay the bills.
Workers World spoke to a nurse-midwife who works at a busy maternity ward in a big New York hospital. She, like many other health-care workers, reported to work even though she wasn't scheduled.
The snowstorm posed a big problem. The midwife says the problem can be traced to health-care cutbacks.
Most insurance coverage, including Medicaid, now requires hospitals to discharge new mothers and their babies 24 hours after birth unless there are medical complications. It's cheaper that way.
Many health-care practitioners are unhappy about this, arguing that another day's rest for mothers and another day's medical supervision for newborns would be healthier. On Jan. 8, this turned into a practical problem.
The city was snowbound. But the maternity hospitals were as busy as ever--going into labor is not an elective procedure. More mothers-to-be kept arriving.
Because bed space in the maternity ward is limited, with 24-hour turnover the rule, there was no place to keep the mothers and babies and still have room for the next round of deliveries. But how could hospitals discharge the women with newborns when there was no way to get them home?
As the storm abated, hospital staffs were coping with the problem. And new parents were worrying that insurance companies wouldn't pay for the extra day in the hospital.
So even an act of nature fits into the class struggle. Now, as everyone digs out, the class of workers and the oppressed could make some righteous demands of the other side.
Like the mayors and governors who leapt in front of television cameras to demonstrate their hands-on involvement in responding to the storm. Why don't they also issue executive orders requiring all employers to pay workers for the snow day?
And the president. He could declare a state of emergency and order a free second day's post-partum care.
While he's at it, he might as well open the CIA warehouse that, according to a Dec. 13 White House news release, has been "filled with bamboo snowshoes that had been gathering dust since 1947." Distribute the snowshoes to the people of the East Coast. It would be the first good to ever come from the murderous spy agency.
[Editor's note: Although the writer didn't make it to the WW office on Jan. 8--she was snowbound at home in Queens-- she won't be docked.]
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