UPS announces 12,000 layoffs as corporate job cutting accelerates

Tom Hall

On Tuesday morning, the same day the company reported it made billions in profits last year, UPS announced plans to lay off 12,000 workers across its global operations. The move is the latest in an accelerating global jobs massacre by giant corporations, including the destruction of thousands of jobs in the US auto industry over the past month.

More layoffs were also announced in the tech industry, which has been a particular focal point for cuts. Paypal announced Tuesday it intends to cut 2,500 jobs, roughly 9 percent of its total workforce, Bloomberg reported yesterday. Microsoft also announced 1,900 job cuts last week, mostly in its newly-acquired Activision Blizzard gaming subsidiary. According to website layoffs.fyi, over 25,000 tech jobs have been eliminated in the first month of the year, after more than 260,000 in 2023.

A UPS spokesperson told NBC News that three-quarters of the cuts would take place in the first half of the year, but added that they would not affect unionized workers. Bloomberg reported that the cuts would be centered on management employees. Remote work options would also be ended for those who remain.

But hours later, workers posted to Facebook that the day shift sort at the company’s Baltimore hub was being ended. A flyer announcing a membership meeting to discuss the cuts was posted by Teamsters Local 355.

The Baltimore hub is at least the third major UPS facility to eliminate its day sort shift in recent weeks, following the Centennial ground hub in Louisville, Kentucky and the 81st Street hub in Indianapolis, Indiana. The day sort shift was also briefly eliminated last year at a warehouse in Portland, Oregon.

Even if the company’s claims that the layoffs are limited to management is taken at face value, this only means that cuts affecting warehouse workers and drivers, who are under the Teamsters union, are in addition to the 12,000 announced Tuesday.

A key mechanism through which management is carrying out layoffs, both at UPS and and throughout the economy, is by leveraging automation and other emerging technologies to replace or eliminate vast sections of the workforce. UPS plans to triple its use of robotics over the course of this year. In November, it opened its new Velocity hub in Louisville, which can process 350,000 packages a day using 3,000 robots and only 200 workers.

Earlier this month, the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee issued a statement on the layoffs, which explained “The jobs of nearly 200,000 part-timers at UPS are at risk. This is not something coming down the pike. It is here, it is happening now, and we have to organize ourselves now to fight it.” It proposed a “counter-campaign” based on actions organized by workers independently of the Teamsters bureaucracy, and in alliance with workers in other industries where mass layoffs are taking place.

“We are not against new technology, which could and should be used to make our lives easier instead of throwing us out on the street,” the statement said. “Instead of costing us our jobs, the huge efficiencies promised by automation should be used to reduce the length of our work schedule, while increasing our total take-home pay.”

Teamsters executives knew these layoffs were coming but said nothing, while presenting last summer’s contract as a major victory. In fact, it was a sellout that has prepared the way for the current layoffs, against which the contract contains no restrictions. Now, it is maintaining a guilty silence on the layoffs. As of this writing, neither the national union nor General President Sean O’Brien have even acknowledged them. This only underscores the fact that workers can only fight against the layoffs through a rebellion against the union apparatus.

Tuesday’s announcement sparked outrage from UPS workers. “Not even six months into the contract and we quickly found out how weak this contract is,” one told the WSWS. “[In other words]: Profitable but not as profitable as we’d like,” another said on Reddit.

Record profits shored up by massive layoffs

The layoffs were announced as UPS released in its 2023 earnings, which showed the company made $9.9 billion in adjusted operating profits off of $91 billion in revenue last year, both near the record highs set in 2022. In a prepared statement dripping with hypocrisy, CEO Carol Tomé thanked UPS workers for making this possible: “I want to thank UPSers for providing the best on-time performance of any carrier for the sixth year in a row.” The company then showed its “thanks” by firing a large chunk of them.

The layoffs are part of a class policy spearheaded by Washington. For the past two years, the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates with the stated purpose of increasing unemployment in order to beat back demands by workers for higher wages. The union bureaucracy, by limiting or preventing strikes and enforcing contracts with substandard wage increases, has played a key role in this policy.

In December 2023, US corporations carried out 1,616 million “layoffs and discharges,” according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is an increase of 141,000 from December 2022. The 149,000 “separations” last month occurred in the transportation, warehousing and utilities sector, an increase of 39 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, the number of workers who quit their jobs dropped to the lowest level since the start of 2021, ABC News reported.

The result of this policy has been massive profits. According to the website Grow & Convert, Fortune 500 companies made a combined $2.9 trillion in profits last year. By far the largest single portion of this, at $1.1 trillion, came in the United States, with China a distant second. US profits in the transportation sector were $73.8 billion. Over two-thirds of that came from the US Postal Service, which is in the midst of a massive restructuring campaign aimed at paving the way for the post office’s eventual privatization.

Union bureaucrats: An instrument of class-war policies

The role of the Teamsters bureaucracy in the layoffs is not simply the product of corruption. O’Brien was installed in 2021 as general president as part of an operation involving the Democratic Party and pseudo-left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. Its purpose was to try to keep control over an angry and militant rank-and-file by presenting O’Brien, a career bureaucrat, as a militant reformer. In reality, his task was to carry out the massive new layoffs which are now underway.

This is part of a national campaign to uphold the authority of the union apparatus. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain was elevated to the top post in a similar fashion, in a fraudulent government-monitored election in which more ballots were marked “undeliverable” in the mail than were actually cast. This was done to cut out the membership as much as possible, and, in particular, to prevent socialist autoworker Will Lehman, running on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy, from gaining a larger hearing. Lehman has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the election irregularities.

Fain and the UAW, after holding a toothless “stand-up strike” affecting only a small number of auto plants, pushed through a contract which has likewise paved the way for massive layoffs in the auto industry. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are expected to be cut in the coming years as the industry moves towards electric vehicles. In recognition of services rendered, Fain was crowned “Labor Leader of the Year” by CNN Business.

Another related role assigned to the union bureaucracy is to prevent the working class from intervening in the massive political crisis in the US, centered on the 2024 election. Fain and the UAW apparatus, which claimed in December to support a ceasefire in the Gaza strip, endorsed Biden last week, while bureaucrats dragged anti-genocide protesters out of the hall. Biden, in accepting the endorsement, gave a warmongering, “America-First” speech, declaring that American workers had to produce “aircraft carriers, tanks or automobiles.” Since then, Fain has made several appearances on television talk shows to stump for Biden.

The Teamsters, meanwhile, have yet to officially endorse a candidate, but have been openly sending out feelers to the fascistic Donald Trump. The layoffs at UPS were announced only a day before a “candidate roundtable” at the Teamsters’ Washington DC headquarters with Trump. O’Brien met with Trump earlier this week at his estate at Mar-a-Lago.

Biden gives green light for retaliation against Iran

Peter Symonds

President Joe Biden walks towards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, October 13, 2023. [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

In the wake of the drone attack in northern Jordan that killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more, President Biden affirmed to reporters yesterday that he had decided on the US retaliatory action. Having blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups” for the deaths, the retaliation could include strikes on such militias anywhere in the Middle East and targets within Iran itself.

Asked by reporters if he blamed Iran for the deaths of the US soldiers, Biden declared that he held Tehran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.” Pressed to say if Iran was directly responsible, he refused to respond, simply declaring “we’ll have that discussion.” Iran has denied any responsibility for the attack.

Well aware that the US-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has transformed the Middle East into a powder keg, Biden played down the potential for regional conflict. “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” he said.

Yet that is exactly what the Biden administration is doing, not only through its political, economic and military support for Israel but its expanding war against Houthi militia in Yemen and strikes in Iraq and Syria. US imperialism is rapidly and recklessly plunging the Middle East into a region-wide war that together with the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine threatens to engulf the world.

While Biden gave no indication of the nature of US retaliation, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One that the US intended to strike the militia groups and degrade their capacity to attack US troops while sending a “strong signal to their backers” in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ominously, he declared that Biden’s order would be a “tiered approach” encompassing “potentially multiple actions.”

Current and former US officials told the Financial Times that the Biden administration would target militia leaders, Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq and assets outside of Iran. “This won’t be a single attack, so there will probably be several rounds. I think it has to be a very robust attack action,” a former senior US military commander in the Middle East said.

Right-wing Republicans, including leading presidential contender Trump, are braying for blood, denouncing Biden’s “weakness” and calling for strikes against Iran, knowing full well that such action would dramatically escalate the simmering war across the Middle East.

The Biden administration has not ruled out a direct attack on Iran or on senior Iranian officials in the Middle East. Indeed, the White House undoubtedly gave the go-ahead for the highly provocative Israeli air raid in December outside Damascus that killed Iranian Brigadier General Sayyed Razi Mousavi—the top adviser inside Syria of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). That was followed by a further Israeli air attack on Damascus earlier this month that killed the IRGC intelligence chief for Syria and his deputy as well as two other IRGC officials.

Israel, again unquestionably with the full support of Washington, is also preparing to expand its war from Gaza and the West Bank into southern Lebanon. Speaking to Israeli reservists on the border with Gaza on Monday, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. The forces close to you, he said, “are leaving the field and moving towards the north, and preparing for what comes next.”

Gallant’s comments are a warning that Israel is planning a dramatic escalation of a conflict with Hezbollah militia in Lebanon that has been underway since its war on Gaza began. Northern Israel already has tens of thousands of regular troops and some 60,000 reservists, an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) official told ABC News last week.

Israeli air raids and artillery barrage attacks inside Lebanon and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli forces in northern Israel have taken place virtually on a daily basis. An estimated 100,000 Israelis have evacuated the country's northern towns while around 76,000 Lebanese living near the border have fled. Hezbollah has reported that 171 of its members have been killed since October 8, while Israel has said that nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed.

Even as the Biden administration uses the deaths of three American soldiers as the pretext for new military aggression in the Middle East, the death toll in Gaza continues to climb in the barbaric Israeli war waged on the Palestinians with the full backing of Washington. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza yesterday, the number of dead since October 7 rose to 26,751 with another 65,636 others wounded. The Israeli army killed 114 and wounded 249 others in the previous 24 hours.

The ministry’s spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qedra reported that Israel was increasing its siege on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip for the second week, placing “150 medical personnel, 450 wounded, and 3,000 displaced people under targeting.” With only enough fuel to keep the hospital’s generators running for two days, Al-Qedra warned that the situation would become even more dire.

Based on reports from the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Al Jazeera yesterday detailed Israeli operations inside the West Bank over the previous 24 hours. These included the killing of three Palestinians inside the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin by Israeli special forces; the bombing of the Al-Farouq Mosque in Khan Younis refugee camp; ongoing raids inside the Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps, where Israeli forces bulldozed roads, water, telecommunication and electricity lines.

The horrors of the Israeli war inside Gaza and the West Bank are a harbinger of the barbarity that Israel, the US and its allies are preparing to inflict on a far wider scale throughout the Middle East. The US targeting of Iran is not the response to the deaths of three American soldiers, but flows from long-held ambitions for American domination of the energy-rich region and the failure of its previous criminal wars in the Middle East to achieve that end.

Gates Millennium Scholars Program 2025

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

Not specified

Tell Me About Gates Millennium Scholars Program:

The Goal:
The goal of the GMS program is to promote academic excellence and to provide an opportunity for outstanding minority students with significant financial need to reach their highest potential by:

Reducing financial barriers for African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American and Hispanic American students with high academic and leadership promise who have significant financial need.

Increasing the representation of these target groups in the disciplines of computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health and the sciences, where these groups are severely underrepresented.

Developing a diversified cadre of future leaders for America by facilitating successful completion of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

Providing seamless support from undergraduate through doctoral programs for students selected as Gates Millennium Scholars entering target disciplines.

The increasing diversity of our society reminds us that all of America’s citizens must have access to opportunity for higher education if our nation is to sustain and advance itself as a global, competitive democracy in the new millennium. The future of our nation’s economy, democracy, and quality of life is dependent upon the preparation of a diverse cadre of leaders who will help build a stronger society. These potential leaders, drawn from groups that have traditionally and historically been denied access to higher education, must receive the support needed to negotiate the pathway to completing a college education.

The Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Program, funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was established in 1999 to provide outstanding African American, American Indian/Alaska Native*, Asian Pacific Islander American**, and Hispanic American students with an opportunity to complete an undergraduate college education in any discipline area of interest. Continuing Gates Millennium Scholars may request funding for a graduate degree program in one of the following discipline areas: computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health or science.

• 1,214,621,474 In Awarded Scholarships from 2000-2018
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Undergraduate

Who Can Apply For Gates Millennium Scholars Program?

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GMS selects 1,000 new Scholars each year

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Money for war but no money for UK’s crumbling schools

Margot Miller

Schools in the UK are not fit for purpose, and many pose a “critical risk to life”. Some have leaking roofs or lack heating and hot water. Others are riddled with asbestos or contain life expired concrete known as RAAC (reinforced aerated concrete), liable to collapse at any time.

Such is the state of the school estate in the UK after decades of funding cuts by governments of all political stripes.

Building work underway at one of the affected schools, Abbey Lane Primary in Sheffield, England, September 1, 2023

Last summer the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), declared 700,000 pupils are learning in unsafe schools. At the same time, building companies responsible for maintaining schools or building new ones have fleeced the taxpayer to the tune of billions, given contracts under the Public Finance Initiative (PFI).

The BBC’s Panorama documentary Britain’s crumbling schools, televised last week, visited schools around the country, revealing shocking conditions under which teachers are expected to teach and children to learn. Yet the same teachers are bullied and vilified by government inspectorate Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills). Head teacher Ruth Perry was driven to take her own life in January this year while awaiting publication of an inspection at her school, Caversham Primary.

Assistant head, Jordan Philliskirk, showed Panorama around Scalby Secondary School in Scarborough, one of about 276 schools in the UK found to have RAAC in its structures. Used widely in many public buildings from the 1950s to 1980s as a lightweight and cheap form of concrete, RAAC has a life expectancy of 30 years, after which time it is liable to collapse without warning.

Two thirds of Scalby School’s buildings have been condemned as dangerous because of RAAC. Estimated costs to transport children to a temporary site while the school undergoes remedial work, as well as building costs, come to £1 million. The government will underwrite only some of the cost of the work, leaving the school having to find a staggering £300,000 out of its own budget.

Remedial work on four out of five RAAC schools risks disturbing asbestos. A Sunday Times investigation revealed the use of asbestos has caused 100,000 deaths from cancer the past 40 years. A video diary from a school in Essex described the problem of RAAC combined with asbestos “like a post-apocalyptic world”.

St Peter’s Primary School in Devon is plagued by roof leaks and heating problems. Temporary classrooms from the 1960s have not been replaced. Head teacher, Steve Hitchcock, said the “sheds” among 10,000 temporary classrooms across the UK—are impossible to heat, and in continual need of maintenance encroaching the school budget.

The temperature can drop to 7° Celsius even with heaters on—health and safety regulations stipulate minimum temperature in classrooms of 16° Celsius. Pupil Sebastian says, “It’s really hard to use a pen or pencil when you’ve got your gloves on”.

Another pupil: “It’s so cold you start shivering; your writing goes really wobbly… because our hands are shaking so much.”

Hitchcock explained that four years ago the government surveyed all schools in England and graded them according to their condition. His school was graded A and does not qualify for refurbishment!

The cost for the remedial work to bring schools up to standard has almost doubled from £6 billion to £11 billion, equivalent to the money sent by the UK to pursue war against Russia in Ukraine. The government admits that on average £300,000 is needed for each primary school and £1.5 million for each secondary school in England.

Professor of construction engineering at Loughborough University, Chris Goodier explained to Panorama that because of successive government cuts “the more you fall behind the more you need to catch up.” However, “The big worry is these buildings have children in them, and the more poor these buildings become, you are increasing the risk of a collapse, a fatality, or someone getting hurt.”

In 2015, Russell Scott Primary School in Greater Manchester underwent a £3 million rebuild by British-based multinational construction giant Carillion. It has since suffered faulty heating, ill-fitting windows, and fire doors which are not regulation fire doors.

The school is in a constant battle with the elements—sandbags are a common sight to prevent flooding entering the premises from the playground during heavy rainfall. Head Teacher Steve Marsland explained they even have sewage seeping through floors. He uses a monitor to check for dangerous levels of explosive gas.

Now 65 years of age, Marsland feels he cannot retire until the school is rebuilt. This will cost £10 million and was promised two years ago. “Our staff feel gutted,” he said emotionally.

Panorama cited local Labour Party MP Andrew Gwynne who said that Russell Scott “could swallow up all of that money” earmarked by the government for school repairs “and still need more”.

In 2018, Carillion went into liquidation, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the devastation left in its wake.

PFI contracts were introduced under the John Major-led Conservatives (1990-97) and expanded by Labour under Tony Blair (1997-2007). Private companies built schools, hospitals and roads and were repaid over up to 30 years, robbing the taxpayer. Companies and the banks made huge profits.

According to an NAO report, schools cost 40 percent and a hospital 70 percent more than had they been built by a public body. PFI projects will cost the taxpayer approximately £199 billion by 2040.

Balfour Beatty built the Oldham school and sold it on to the Amber Infrastructure group. Maintenance work was subtracted to Equans by site owner Oldham BSF Limited, whose majority shareholder is Amber. So convoluted is the PFI contract that it is nigh impossible for Oldham Council, responsible for providing education locally, to arrange repairs.

Sam Freedman, a former policy advisor to the Department for Education (2010-13) admitted to Panorama the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition made a “big error”—scrapping the Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme. The Tories and Liberals were continuing austerity cuts begun by Labour after the 2008/9 global financial collapse, including Labour’s sanctioning of the trillion pound bailout of the UK’s failed banks. Freedman said, “issues like RAAC would have been picked up earlier” and schools would not be in such a parlous state.

“They [the government] … are choosing to prioritise other things.” The “other things” are a pledge to increase military spending to 3 percent of GDP and huge tax cuts for the rich.

In 2021, the government began a School Rebuilding Programme, declaring it would rebuild 500 schools over the next 10 years. Two years on just four schools have been rebuilt.

According to senior research economist at the Institute of Fiscal Studies Ben Zaranko, “Weak growth and a very high level of spending on debt interest means that reducing debt in the next parliament will be more difficult than in any period since the 1950s.” UK national debt in relation to gross domestic product rose to 104.14 percent in 2023.

Zaranko suggests “difficult decisions” must be made, meaning more cuts in social expenditure. Many local councils, which administer the education budget, are facing bankruptcy.

In a January 25 press release, the National Education Union (NEU) wrote, “The Government’s latest data on school funding shows that 1 in 8 schools were in deficit at the end of the financial year 2022-23… the highest proportion of schools in deficit since at least 2010.”

Hong Kong court liquidates failed Chinese property giant

Nick Beams

After protracted negotiations, aimed at trying to restructure its international debts, the failed Chinese property and real estate giant Evergrande has officially been wound up.

Residential buildings developed by Evergrande in Yuanyang [Photo by Windmemories/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The decision was announced yesterday by a Hong Kong court following the failure of a stay of execution in December to produce a solution which satisfied the company’s international creditors.

Issuing the liquidation order, High Court judge Linda Chan said: “It would be a situation where the court says enough is enough. I consider it appropriate for the court to make a winding-up order against the company, and I so order.”

A restructuring plan, which involved a series of complex negotiations, was on the verge of being agreed to last September but fell through when regulatory authorities failed to grant approval for actions by the company necessary to make it work.

A few days later, Hui Ka Yan, the company’s founder and chair, was placed under “mandatory measures” on suspicion of “illegal crimes.” No details have been released but the issue is believed to involve the transfer of money abroad.

The effect of the court decision is that it allows a liquidator to take control of Evergrande’s assets outside of China. But apart from opening the way for other lawsuits it is not clear what its practical implications will be for the Chinese mainland, where most of the $300 billion worth of Evergrande’s liabilities are located.

Judge Chan rejected a request for another adjournment from the company’s lawyer, who said an immediate liquidation order would affect the value of the company’s offshore assets and its subsidiaries and would be damaging for creditors. But a lawyer for the main group of creditors said the company had not negotiated with them in good faith and the judge agreed.

Rejecting the request for a further adjournment, Judge Chan said Evergrande was “still insolvent” and there was “still no viable restructuring proposal.”

Fergus Saurin, a lead lawyer for the creditors, said he was not surprised at the outcome as it was a product of the company’s “failing to engage with us.”

“There has been a history of last-minute engagement which has gone nowhere. And in the circumstances the company only has itself to blame for being wound up,” he said.

The still unresolved issue is how far the wind-up will go. The Hong Kong ruling could open the way for the liquidator to seize Evergrande assets in mainland China. There is an agreement on insolvency and restructuring. But as the Financial Times (FT) noted, “it is not clear that mainland courts would accept the Hong Kong winding-up order.”

The decision, which will be closely watched, has major implications. There is no precedent for a company the size of Evergrande to be wound up by a Hong Kong court. As an article on Bloomberg noted, “an unfavourable outcome for foreign investors risks exacerbating the acute pessimism toward China as well as undermining Hong Kong’s role as a vital fund-raising centre for the nation’s companies.”

Apart from the immediate issues of the wind-up, there are the longer-term implications for the whole Chinese property and real estate market, which is mired in an ocean of debt.

As the FT commented, the ruling “opens a new and unpredictable phase in the collapse of the world’s most indebted property developer.” Since Evergrande first defaulted on its international debts in 2021, a series of companies have gone under.

The Wall Street Journal described it as a “watershed moment for the Chinese real estate industry and fueled a liquidity crisis in the sector,” noting that since then more than 50 developers have defaulted on their debts and thousands of people had lost their jobs.

Real estate and related industries “used to be a major driver for the country’s economic growth and contributed to around a quarter of its gross domestic product” but now it is dragging down the economy and looks like it will continue for years.

“New data on the sector’s 2023 performance showed a desperate picture, and economists say the downturn—now in its fourth year—is about to get worse,” the report continued, citing data which showed that the sales of new homes in China fell by 6 percent last year to a level last seen in 2016.

While the flow-on effects of the Evergrande liquidation are not yet clear, it will no doubt make the efforts of the government to halt a stock market rout more difficult.

Residents walk past a map showing Evergrande development projects in China, at an Evergrande city plaza in Beijing, Sept. 18, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

After previous measures to curb the falls had failed, regulators yesterday announced measures to limit short selling. This is the practice in which market players borrow shares they do not have and sell them in the expectation that their prices will fall, whereupon they buy them at the lower price and return them to the lender, making a profit on the transaction.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets announced that investors who buy shares will not be allowed to lend them out for short selling within a specified lock-up period.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission said the restrictions were intended to “create a fairer market order” and foreshadowed further restrictions on the lending of securities in March.

Last week China’s premier Li Qiang said there would be “more forceful” state support for the market, which is undergoing a steep decline. But after a three-day rally, the market started to fall again on Friday.

The CSI index, which covers the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets, fell 11 percent last year, its third consecutive annual decline, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 14 percent for the year, its fourth consecutive annual fall.

Since reaching their peak in 2021, Hong Kong and mainland markets have lost $6 trillion in value, more than the market value of the Tokyo stock exchange.

The restrictions on short selling are expected to have a very limited impact if they affect the market at all.

As numerous commentators and analysts have pointed out, the main issue is lack of confidence in the direction of the economy.

At the beginning of last year there was a flow of international capital into the Chinese markets in the belief that the lifting of anti-COVID public health measures would provide a boost to the economy. But the uptick was short-lived.

It has been estimated that of the $33 billion which flowed into the market from foreign investors, 90 percent had been withdrawn by the end of the year. Apart from the failure of a sustained upswing to materialise, another contributing factor in the fall of the market was the insolvency of the property developer Country Garden, which had been previously touted as being free of the problems besetting Evergrande.

It is too early to say yet, but the formal liquidation of Evergrande may well add to the fall in the stock markets and set off turbulence in other areas of the financial system as well.

Global automakers in US and Europe slashing thousands more jobs

Jerry White

An autoworker on the assembly line inside the Toledo Jeep plant (Credit: Twitter/@FiatChrysler_NA) [AP Photo]

Thousands of autoworkers in the United States and other countries will be thrown out of work in coming weeks as Stellantis, Ford and other global companies lead an accelerating wave of job cuts across the world economy. 

In Toledo, Ohio, as many as 1,225 Stellantis workers—or nearly a quarter of the workforce at the giant Jeep-manufacturing complex—are scheduled to be laid off starting February 5. Another 2,455 workers will also be laid off at the Detroit Assembly Complex-Mack plant.  The company says the production of Jeep Cherokees at the plant will “temporarily” be reduced from three to two shifts, but there have been repeated threats to eliminate the third shift. 

Earlier this month, 539 supplemental (temporary) employees at Stellantis plants in Detroit and Kokomo, Indiana were fired, and United Auto Workers officials say another 1,600 SEs face the same fate in the next few months, if not sooner. The UAW told these workers they would be rolled over to full-time positions once the new labor agreements were ratified, now they are being fired.

The world’s third largest automaker is also carrying out 600 job cuts at its Mulhouse plant in eastern France, largely affecting contract workers. Another 2,250 Stellantis workers will be temporarily laid off at its Mirafiori plant in Turin, Italy, between February 12 and March 3. 

Ford began laying off 100 workers at the Chicago Assembly Plant this week, with 25 of the lowest seniority workers told not to report to work on Monday. According to UAW Local 551, the layoffs are for three months with the tentative return date on April 29. 

In addition, Ford is cutting two-thirds of the jobs at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) in Dearborn, Michigan, forcing 1,500 workers to transfer to other facilities or take “voluntary” retirements. Production of the F-150 Lightning pickup truck at the facility is being reduced to just one shift.  

At the beginning of the month, General Motors laid off 1,300 workers in Michigan. This included 945 workers at its Orion Assembly plant, north of Detroit, where production of the Chevrolet Bolt is being wound down and retooling to manufacture electric trucks has been delayed until 2025. Another 369 GM workers are being laid off at the Lansing Grand River plant with the ending of Camaro production in December 2023.

The job cutting occurs just months after UAW President Shawn Fain claimed the union had won “record” contracts from the Big Three automakers that “saved” plants and would add jobs. In fact, the UAW-backed deals have paved the way for a massive attack on jobs as the automakers transition to electric vehicles and slash jobs and labor costs to gain a competitive edge in what Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares recently called a “bloodbath.” 

After collaborating with the Biden administration to push through the job-cutting deals, the UAW apparatus endorsed the Democratic president, locking arms with the administration’s program of expanding war abroad and class war at home. 

At the Toledo Assembly Complex, UAW Local 12 officials have kept workers completely in the dark about the next month’s layoffs. In the run up to the contract ratification, local union officials claimed a third shift and new jobs would be added, and all 1,100 supplementals would get permanent jobs. But Stellantis agreed to convert only 900 supplementals at the plant and they will be among the first laid off. Rather than fighting the job cuts, UAW officials are pushing for “rolling” two-month layoffs, which would allow the company to lay off higher paid senior workers first.  

“The union isn’t telling us anything,” Alice, a supplemental worker at the plant for nearly four years told the WSWS. “I’ve filled out the paperwork to get rolled over to full time, but nobody knows who’s going to get it. There are workers here who have been temps for six or seven years. 

“These layoffs have got me stressed out; I might be looking for another job in a few weeks. The union told us we would be rolled over with the new contract but there was a lot of hidden words in the deals. I don’t trust the union anymore. The strike was phony. We were on the picket line for six weeks while the other plants were working. 

“Nothing has changed. A worker right next to me is bringing home a weekly check of $1,300 and I’m getting $700 for doing the same thing. Now, we’re being laid off and the UAW expects us to keep paying dues, even though they never had our backs. It’s like this on every job. Workers all over the world are busting our butts for nothing and everybody is tired of it.” 

“You have these people who have all the money and they are wiping us out,” a recently fired SE at the Indiana Transmission Plant in Kokomo told the WSWS. “They are slithering snakes and I don’t trust any of them,” she said of the company, the UAW apparatus and Biden.

In Kokomo, Stellantis is also planning to close its Tipton Transmission plant, in the first of what could be a wave of plant closures and mass layoffs at transmissions plants in the area as the company begins to buy propulsion systems from Hyundai Transys, Inc., an auto parts subsidiary of South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group. BorgWarner, a major transmission supplier, closed its Kokomo facility earlier this month, permanently laying off the remaining 94 workers at the plant. 

Facing competition from lower priced Tesla and Chinese manufacturers, Swedish EV manufacturer Polestar announced plans to cut 450 jobs globally, or about 15 percent of its total workforce. 

In Canada, parts suppliers are also being hit by retooling for EV production. Martinrea International closed its Fabco Metallic plant in Dresden, Ontario earlier this month, after Stellantis ended production of a previous model of the Jeep Grand Cherokee in Detroit and ended output of the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger in Brampton, Ontario in December, according to Automotive News Canada. 

“This whole place is closing,” Brian Gittens, who worked at the plant for 23 years told the Chatham News, “and there’s nobody here fighting for our jobs or fighting to see if there are other opportunities.” Workers at the plant are ostensibly “represented” by the Unifor union, which also rammed through sellout deals with the Big Three automakers last year. 

In Germany, tens of thousands of jobs are being slashed at VW, Bosch, Continental, ZF and other auto and auto parts suppliers, with the full complicity of the IG Metall union apparatus. 

In addition to the auto industry, mass layoffs are spreading throughout every sector of the US economy. Job cuts are sweeping through newsrooms, including the Los Angeles Times (115 journalists,) Business Insider, Time, and Sports Illustrated, which is laying off all 100 employees and moving to shut down. Staffers at the New York Daily News and Forbes walked out last week to oppose impending cuts. 

In the first four weeks of 2024, nearly 25,000 tech workers were laid off, according to layoffs.fyi, at Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, Salesforce and scores of other companies. This follows the slashing of 260,000 tech jobs last year, the worst since the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s. Ebay announced it will slash another 1,000 jobs this year, after cutting 500 in 2023. 

“There is a herding effect in tech,” Jeff Shulman, a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, told NPR. “The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices, so these companies see no reason to stop … it’s the new normal.”

Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) Fully-Funded PhD Scholarships 2025

Application Deadlines:

• 1st June 2024 for January 2025 intake
• 1st December 2024 for July 2025 intake.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore

Eligible Field of Study: Research areas under the PhD Programme fall broadly under two categories:

• Biomedical Sciences; and
• Physical Science and Engineering.

About SINGA Scholarship: The Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) is a collaboration between the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to offer PhD training to be carried out in English at your chosen lab at A*STAR Research Institutes, NUS or NTU. Students will be supervised by distinguished and world-renowned researchers in these labs. Upon successful completion, students will be conferred a PhD degree by either NUS or NTU.

Type: PhD, Research

Eligibility and Selection Criteria for SINGA:

• Open for application to all international graduates with a passion for research and excellent academic results
• Good skills in written and spoken English
• Good reports from academic referees

The above eligibility criteria are not exhaustive.

Number of Scholarships: up to 240

Value of SINGA Scholarship: The award provides support for up to 4 years of PhD studies including:

• Tuition fees
• Monthly stipend of S$2,000, which will be increased to S$2,500 after the passing of the Qualifying Examination
• One-time airfare grant of up to S$1,500*
• One-time settling-in allowance of S$1,000*

* Subject to terms and conditions

Duration of Scholarship: For 4 years

How to Apply: 

If you need more Information about this scholarship, visit the Scholarship Webpage

Singapore International Foundation (SIF) Young Social Entrepreneurs Program 2024

Application Deadline: 2nd February 2024

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Singapore

About the Award: Through the YSE programme, participants will learn from and interact with leading social entrepreneurs, business professionals and other youth who are keen on social innovation, while expanding their networks for potential collaborations for good.

The YSE programme seeks to inspire, equip and enable youth of different nationalities to embark on social enterprises (SEs) in Singapore and beyond. If you have a social enterprise idea, we want to help you make it happen!

Type: Entrepreneurship, Training

Eligibility: We welcome passionate young changemakers and entrepreneurs of any nationality who have innovative business ideas that address a social need. Join now if you:

• Have a viable business proposition that addresses a social issue
• Are a committed individual or have a team (with up to 3 members who can join the programme)
• Are between 18 to 30 years old (open to all nationalities)

Value of Award:

• Admitted participants will attend a 4-day YSE Workshop held in March 2024 in Singapore, and pitch for a chance to be shortlisted into the YSE Programme, which includes a mentorship scheme; overseas study visit and an opportunity to pitch for funding.
• Participants based overseas are responsible for covering their own airfares and accommodation to attend the 4-day workshop in Singapore from March 2020. Meals and transport during the workshop will be provided by SIF. You will need to pay for transport cost to the assembly venue each morning and back to your accommodation each night. Overseas participants will need to cover your own airport transfers.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Ecosystem – Join an international ecosystem of changemakers including like-minded individuals, corporates, practitioners and successful entrepreneurs
• Mentorship – Gain access to industry experts and professionals for mentorship
• Overseas Study Visits – Embark on overseas study visit to gain insights
• Grants – Develop your social enterprise with up to SGD$ 20,000 in grants!

How to Apply: Please submit your team’s details through the online application form HERE. Applicants would need to attach the following documents in the form:

• Business Plan Overview – click here to download the template
  • Business Summary Guidelines
  • Business Model Canvas Template
• Group/Individual Photo
• SE Logo (if available)
• Any Supporting Documents (optional)

Please note that SIF may contact you to conduct for clarifications and/or updates where needed. We strongly advise you to submit your application as early as possible so that we have ample time to assist you where necessary.

Before filling up the online application form, it is important to go through the requirements and read FAQs. Submission is only considered completed if you have provided all required information.

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: Singapore International Foundation (SIF)

Important Notes: Please note that the SIF may contact you to conduct phone interviews for clarifications and/or updates where needed. We therefore strongly advise that you submit your application as early as possible so that we have ample time to assist you.