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Empty town hall square in Esslingen
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
Anyone who makes politics and wants to explain the government's catastrophic strategy in dealing with the pandemic often emphasizes how complicated everything is: the federal government, the states, personal responsibility, the mutants, everything does not really want to fit together and in general: democracy is yes also difficult.
But sometimes everything can also be very simple, you just have to add 1 and 1: Firstly, you know that the third wave of the pandemic will be devastating unless tougher measures to contain it come very quickly, and secondly, you know that the federal government and The state governments with their current positions and arguments are not yet aware of these measures.
But if the hard lockdown doesn't come from above, it has to come from below.
Hard lockdown would mean: all known measures to reduce contacts in the private sector - plus finally and really contact reduction in the field of work.
So: strike where there are still unnecessary contacts.
Margarete Stokowski
Photo:
Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.
She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.
Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" appeared in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.
This was followed in 2018 by »The Last Days of Patriarchy«, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
Large-scale strikes across the country would be the right thing at the moment in many ways: for reasons of reducing contact, for reasons of justice, but of course also as a message to the respective governments.
Even the announcement would help in part, because strikes are not truants, and before you go on strike you have to organize and negotiate - if it is to be legal and you don't want to risk your own job.
Negotiations about better working conditions (in terms of health and money alike) could be successful, with luck.
Of course, there are also illegal strikes, apart from that.
At the moment, a great many working people are still risking their own health and the health of their fellow human beings to protect the profits of their employers because the self-commitment of certain parts of the economy is obviously not working well enough.
What happens in factories, on construction sites, at work meetings, in slaughterhouses, in shipyards, in logistics centers and open-plan offices, what happens in public transport that people need, cannot be adequately controlled as long as employers and managers are not clear be obliged to take protective measures.
Even where the number of people at the individual workstations has been reduced, sometimes too many people meet during the lunch break without a mask.
There are more than enough reports about it.
And even in a semi-occupied multi-person office, the R value without a mask is still 8, which means that one infected person infects eight more.
There is no nationwide mask requirement for such offices.
Politics doesn't listen enough to science and business doesn't listen enough to both, and it doesn't look like that will change on its own.
The main arguments against large-scale strikes are:
1.)
Not everyone can strike, for example doctors because they are needed and civil servants because they are not allowed to.
That's right, but not everyone should go on strike.
But it could be very many.
2.)
One cannot simply strike, because there is a right to strike, but that also means that a strike is only legal and the strikers are only protected from dismissal if the strike was organized in a union, pursues goals that can be regulated and which are permissible under collective bargaining agreements and only can take place after negotiations.
3.)
If everyone goes on strike, everything lies flat here and that harms the economy.
Points 2 and 3 are not really counter-arguments either.
Because - point 2 - the trade union organization, the demands and negotiations, all of that would be feasible.
Corona makes the rich richer and the minimum wage is still a joke, this also applies in the third wave.
So there are enough financial reasons, the health reasons come on top of that with great urgency.
And - point 3 - of course everything would then lie flat, because that is the goal!
The economy in which big capital is not gathered, such as gastronomy and culture, is extremely damaging to the current state of affairs, but the economy in which big capital is located would not perish after a two or three week strike.
There would be short term outages for a few, yes.
But fewer people would get sick and die.
Currently, only 38 percent of Germans consider the measures to contain the pandemic to be appropriate.
More people would like short-term tightening than easing.
Dissatisfaction with the government is growing.
There are calls for a strict lockdown of two to three weeks from scientists, intensive care physicians, political initiatives, individual politicians, there is an online petition that has garnered over 55,000 votes in two days.
The mixture of tiredness, anger and horror at politics is the defining feeling of many people, mixed with the impression that they cannot do anything anymore because the private restrictions have been exhausted to the last.
Last year's self-care tips only seem cynical.
We can all now learn how to bake bread and draw candles and exercise at home, we can also learn how to do a real lockdown ourselves.
All wheels stand still when your unvaccinated arm wants it.