French public sector workers strike against Macron government attacks

Anthony Torres

Hundreds of thousands of French workers demonstrated on Thursday as part of a nationwide public sector strike to oppose the Emmanuel Macron government’s draft law on the “modernization” of the public sector.

After six months of “yellow vest” protests, all of the unions felt obliged to call for participation in the day of action, fearing they would otherwise lose control of the anti-government protest movement.

Macron has pledged to eliminate 120,000 out of 5.5 million civil service jobs by 2022. The positions eliminated will be replaced by lower-paying contract jobs from the private sector for one-off assignments. Workers will be forced to move between jobs and locations, and work longer hours. Once the reform has been approved by the National Assembly, it will take effect on January 1, 2020.

Over 150 protest demonstrations took place on Thursday. Teachers, customs officers, orderlies, nurses and air traffic controllers were mobilized. Some 110,000 people demonstrated, according to the French government, while the CGT union federation claimed 250,000 participants. There were 3,000 protesters in Marseille (a union source reported), and between 3,300 to 5,300 in Lyon, 3,000 to 4,000 in Lyon, and thousands in Rennes, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Angers, Lille, Strasbourg and Perpignan. In Paris, 30,000 people demonstrated, according to the unions.

The workers who turned out did so despite their strong mistrust of the trade union apparatus, which limited the size of the turnout. Secretary of State Olivier Dussopt estimated the number of strikers in the civil service at 3.3 per cent, in the hospitals at 4 per cent and in the state civil service at 11.4 per cent, with a strong participation by teachers, who are also mobilized against the education “reform.” The education ministry reported 17.6 percent and 11.7 percent striking in primary and secondary schools, respectively.

In Paris, the WSWS spoke with Anita, a retired civil servant who came “to defend the public service, to preserve all the gains that have been won through hard work and for the right to stand together to express our disapproval of the policies that are currently being pursued. There is money, so we have to share it. If there is globalization, we must share globally on a human level, for the happiness of the people in general.”

Anita explained that the fight against social inequality must go through to the ending of capitalist exploitation: “We should all be equal, we are all human beings, women, men, whatever the color, whatever the country. However, decision-makers still want more money, more capital. If they can’t exploit the Western working class, they will look for children in India, everywhere to produce at low cost and fill their pockets.”

The WSWS also interviewed George, who works at the Bobigny Regional Court. “We have tools that work poorly,” he said, “that are not adapted and that make our work more difficult when we are already overloaded.”

He pointed out that “the index point [that determines civil service wages] has been frozen for nine years ... Everything increases except our pay.”

George had no illusions about Macron’s attacks: “He doesn’t care anyway. Macron is financed by the rich, so he doesn’t care about the ‘yellow vests’. He makes and carries out a policy for the rich, for those who financed his campaign. He owes them.”

George indicated he didn’t believe in the current initiative of the unions: “It’s a real problem. I think that ‘social dialogue’ is bullshit. Workers’ unions are being caught up in it and some will go so far as to accept money. They are caught in a trap where social dialogue leads us to believe that we might have common interests with employers, when we see the decline in the rights of employees and the poorest. We must stop pulling the wool over our eyes and return to shorter, more ferocious forms of struggle. The ‘yellow vests’ may be a solution.”

The WSWS spoke to Lucile, a high school teacher, who said that “it is a demonstration that concerns all civil servants, not only teachers, and it is against the breakdown of public service that has been organized since the election of our very dear president. Now it is really becoming something that is really serious. At school there is an ongoing reform that is very serious, especially for high school students. Also in the hospital and in all public services, so they will be aligned with conditions in the private sector.”

Asked about teachers’ strikes in the US in 2018 and 2019, Lucile replied that she “followed the strikes” and saluted their struggle: “Teachers in the United States do not have the same protection as we who are well-protected. I have not followed the teachers’ strikes in Europe, but it is important to make our voice heard now for the European elections.”

“We have the same needs whether in Europe or throughout the world,” she concluded. “That’s it, we can’t give up because that’s what they expect us to do.”

The French government’s attacks on the public service, as well as on pensions, confirm that Macron has no intention of listening to workers’ demands. After six months of “yellow vest” protests, Macron intends to force through and intensify the policies in favor of the rich that have made him the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic. His attitude to the workers has been demonstrated in his deployment of soldiers in Operation Sentinel, with permission to fire on “yellow vest” protesters.

It is essential that workers take their struggles out of the hands of the trade union apparatuses, which negotiate and accept the government’s austerity policies and which have been hostile to the “yellow vests” struggles. The latter have shown in many ways the way forward, by organizing themselves independently of the trade unions. They have faced brutal repression and denunciations in the media.

The unions, which isolated and strangled the railway workers’ strike last year, have no intention of organizing a struggle. Financed to the tune of billions of euros by corporations and the state as part of the “social dialogue,” they are hostile to opposition to Macron’s policy, which threatens their material interests. They announced that the objective of Thursday’s rally was merely “to inform, raise awareness and increase the opposition to this bill.”

Faced with Macron’s obvious intransigence, Jean-Marc Canon of the CGT claimed that “the possibilities of social dialogue with the government have been exhausted.”

In fact, the union apparatuses organized this week’s strike only out of fear of being overwhelmed by the workers. Union officials are nervously watching the rise of workers’ struggles in France and across Europe.

Nurses and nurses’ aides at the Chalon sur Saône hospital have been on strike since Wednesday. The Info.Chalon website explained that the strike was launched independently of the unions. An emergency room doctor described the conditions: “In one year, we have only five days without any patients in the emergency corridors, with sometimes up to 18 patients sleeping in the corridors.”

The unification of the ongoing struggles requires a conscious break with the trade unions and the creation of action committees to coordinate a political struggle against Macron, the European Union and the international financial aristocracy.

Twenty-eight years after the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR, falsely described as the “End of History” and the class struggle by the ideologists of the ruling class, the struggle of the “yellow vests” as well as the public sector workers is part of a resurgence of the class struggle around the world.

Teachers have been mobilized in the US, the UK, Kenya and Poland. Movements of “yellow vests” have also emerged in Portugal, Germany and beyond. Mass movements of workers and youth are aimed at overthrowing military dictatorships in Algeria and Sudan. Faced with the intransigence of the financial aristocracy and the politicians it places in power, only the revolutionary path is open to workers.

Iran conflict intensifies transatlantic tensions

Peter Schwarz

The intensification of sanctions against Iran by the United States has produced sharp transatlantic tensions. In a joint statement, the European Union's foreign policy representative, and the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain condemned the expansion of the sanctions.

“We take note with regret and concern of the decision by the United States not to extend waivers with regards to trade in oil with Iran,” it states. The signatories noted their determination “to enable the continuation of legitimate trade with Iran,” and explicitly appealed to Russia and China “to make their best efforts to pursue the legitimate trade that the agreement allows for, through concrete steps.”

But unlike in 2003, when representatives of the German and French governments publicly declared their opposition to the war in Iraq, and millions of people took to the streets on both sides of the Atlantic to oppose it, the European governments are today doing all in their power to avoid a broader mobilisation against the war danger.

Instead, they are demanding even louder than before more European military rearmament. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius demanded a “European muscle-building programme” to defend Europe against the arbitrariness of the two actors, the US and Iran. “What is thus far lacking is a credible strategy for deterrence or even for a counter-strike, in the finance sector, with the help of trade sanctions, but ultimately also militarily.”

“Deterrence” and a military counter-strike: this is the undisguised language of militarism. Comments like these underscore that the only difference between the Trump administration and the European governments is that the latter are lagging behind in the rearmament race.

Last year, Germany, France, and Britain opposed the US when it unilaterally cancelled the nuclear accord with Iran. They agreed with Iran to continue respecting the accord, and to develop financial and trading mechanisms to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the US.

Above all, they were motivated by their own economic interests in a country with large oil and gas reserves, and a population of around 80 million well-educated people. They view Trump's threats of war against Iran as an attack on their imperialist interests in the region.

However, the attempt to circumvent the US sanctions came to nothing. Faced with the ultimatum of losing access to the US market if they continued to do business with Iran, almost all major European corporations and banks withdrew from Iran.

Washington's latest decision to withdraw the exemptions for China, South Korea, Japan, India, and Turkey, who had been permitted to continue purchasing oil from Iran, only accelerated this trend. The European press commentaries are dominated by anger towards Trump and Europe's lack of power, combined with pledges to rearm and establish Europe as a world power.

Britain's Financial Times complained that the European governments “have few options: however much they are urged by officials, banks and companies cannot operate outside of Washington’s robust sanctions regime. They will not choose Iran over the US. … Mr Trump never gave the accord a chance, even as he has enthusiastically sought a similar deal with North Korea.”

Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger sighed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “It's painful to acknowledge one's own impotence. ... The road to world power is still a long one.”

Daniel Brössler remarked in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the German-American friendship has been “shattered.” “In many cases, the US is no longer an ally, but an opponent against whom alliances must be plotted,” he continued. There remain “many common interests, in Ukraine, for example, in Venezuela and Syria.” But even after Trump, the US will never “return to being the protective power that Germany relied on for so long.” Brössler concluded with the call for Germany to increase its military spending.

Former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD) spoke along similar lines in an interview with Deutschlandfunk. He described it as a problem that the “European Union, ever since it was founded, was never meant to be a world power. Instead we were always supposed to keep out. And we made ourselves comfortable and thought that was good.” Gabriel concluded, “We have to learn to play a role in the world.”

The European opposition to American sanctions and threats of war against Iran is not motivated by any concern over defending Iran against unfair treatment or blackmail, or to prevent a war. This was made clear after Tehran responded to Trump's threats by announcing it would leave the nuclear deal unless the remaining parties to the accord, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and China, implement the nuclear accord within 60 days by lifting sanctions on oil and the banking sector.

The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Britain, and the European Union responded by issuing a statement in which they denounced Iran. “We urgently call upon Iran to comply fully with its obligations under the JCPoA as it has done to date, and refrain from any escalatory steps,” the statement read. It also noted that Iran's compliance with its obligations would be reviewed.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) stated that Germany wants to prevent Iran from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon. “We therefore expect Iran to fully implement the accord, without any deviations.” French Defence Minister Florence Parly announced new sanctions against Iran to be implemented if Tehran violates the accord's provisions. British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt warned of “consequences” if Iran stopped fulfilling its obligations.

Mounting tensions between the major powers, threats and blackmail in foreign policy, and an escalating arms race: all of this recalls the conditions prior to the two world wars of the last century. As was the case then, the threat of war does not arise from the characteristics of one or another political leader, but the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalist society. The struggle for hegemony in the global economy and the attempt to turn mounting social tensions outwards is driving the capitalist states unavoidably towards war.

The danger of a third, nuclear world war can be stopped only by an independent international movement of the working class fighting to overthrow capitalism and for the building of a socialist society.

Fiji authorities suppress May Day protests, arrest locked-out workers

John Braddock

The authoritarian regime of Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama last week banned two May Day protests and arrested over 30 workers and trade union officials, accusing them of breaches of “public order.”

The majority of those arrested were protesting workers who had earlier been locked out by the Fiji Water Authority (FWA). More than 2,000 FWA workers, most of whom were deemed to be “temporary,” had their contracts suddenly terminated and were told to reapply for their jobs. Some 800 workers filed grievance claims against the company for unlawful termination and for their collective agreement to be enforced.

Police quickly moved to arrest locked-out FWA workers who gathered outside the utility’s depots on April 30 and May 1. The Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) said the police removed people from land owned by the National Union of Workers (NUW) and also stopped workers from congregating, even on their own land. Fiji Village reported the authority was working with police to “deal with” the workers.

Organised by the FTUC, the May Day events included a planned nationwide protest on May 3, followed by a march through Nadi on May 4. The FTUC had applied for permits to hold the protests over the national minimum wage, labour law reforms and the right to strike, but cancelled them after permits were denied.

The protests were also timed to coincide with the 52nd annual conference of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which was being hosted by a Pacific island country for the first time. Nearly 3,000 international delegates, including finance ministers, central bank governors and business representatives, met in Nadi over five days, supposedly to discuss issues such as poverty, inequality and climate change.

The government deployed more than 400 police for the duration of the conference. A police spokesman declared they would ensure the meetings would be held without “any major incidents.” Fijian Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum warned people not to use the ADB meeting to “undermine Fiji’s reputation.”

The Fijian Teachers Association (FTA) had earlier received a letter from the secretary of education instructing teachers not to join the protests. FTA president Netani Druavesi said teachers’ rights were protected under the constitution and the letter was “illegal and a threat to the country’s educators.” Eight FTA executive members were questioned by police about the proposed protests.

Police then conducted a number of arrests on May 1. Those detained included FTUC general secretary Felix Anthony, the secretaries of the FTA and nurses’ union and an officer of the NUW. Acting police chief Bitukula Waqanui told the Fiji Times the union officials were detained for “alleged breaches of the law.” The following day, police raided the FTUC headquarters.

After being jailed overnight, the union officials were released without charge. However, 28 FWA workers were detained and appeared in the Lautoka Magistrates Court on May 3, charged with unlawful assembly. A police spokesman told media “the group unlawfully gathered on a piece of land in Lautoka … and refused to disperse when directed to by police.”

The workers were granted bail under tight restrictions, including a 6pm to 6am curfew, and are required to report to the police station every day. They were ordered to surrender their passports, and provide a cash bail bond of $100 each. The workers are due to reappear in court on 24 May for a plea hearing.

The NUW has taken the FWA employment dispute to a tribunal hearing. While the FTUC said it would “not rule out further protests,” the unions are not organizing any industrial action to defend the arrested workers or oppose the layoffs at the authority.

Immediately before the arrests, the FTUC had been in tripartite discussions with the government and business representatives to implement “labour reforms” to meet the requirements of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The government claims it has met all but one of the ILO’s rules, underlining that such measures have nothing to do with defending the rights of the working class.

An ILO spokesman told Radio NZ on May 8 that his organisation was instrumental in negotiating with the Fiji government, “in coordination with the rest of the UN system,” to have Anthony and other union officials released from gaol. The ILO has not however intervened on behalf of the FWA workers.

The sacking and persecution of the FWA workers and ban on the protests again underlines the dictatorial nature of the regime, which rests directly on the military.

The Fiji First Party (FFP) of former coup leader Bainimarama has been in power since 2014, following eight years of military rule. In the 2018 elections, the FFP retained office in a sham contest between two parties run by former military strongmen. The main opposition SODELPA party is led by Sitiveni Rabuka, the instigator of two military coups in 1987.

Worsening social inequality and misery—28 percent of the population lives below the poverty line—as a result of the austerity policies of successive regimes has been accompanied by intimidation of opposition parties, repressive laws and rampant violence by the police and military.

Last month, three New Zealand journalists were arrested as they investigated environmental degradation by a Chinese property developer building a new resort on Malolo Island. The journalists were later released, with the police commissioner claiming that they had been arrested by “a small group of rogue officers.”

The day before the arrests, however, the Fiji Parliamentary Reporters’ Handbook was published, affirming constitutional impediments to a free press, in “the interests of national security, public safety, public order, public morality, public health or the orderly conduct of elections.”

The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, are supporting the anti-democratic actions of the Bainimarama government as they seek to counter the rise of China in the Pacific, which they regard as their own “backyard.”

In a visit to Suva in March, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that NZ will provide Fiji’s military with an upgraded “package of support,” including training with the NZ military, and an “enhanced partnership” between the NZ Police and the Fiji Police Force. These measures will inevitably be used against the working class.

Turkish election authorities order re-vote in Istanbul

Ulas Atesci & Keith Jones

After weeks of disputation, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) has bowed to the demands of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the AKP (Justice and Development Party)-led government and ordered Istanbul’s March 31 mayoral election be re-run on June 23.

Earlier, election authorities had dismissed the AKP’s complaints about election irregularities in Turkey’s largest city and allowed the candidate of the opposition Nation Alliance, the CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu, to be sworn in as Istanbul’s mayor. The Nation Alliance is a coalition between the far-right Good Party and the CHP or Republican People’s Party, the party of the traditional Kemalist capitalist elite that dominated the politics of the Turkish Republic till the turn of the 21st Century.

During the five weeks culminating in Monday’s 7 to 4 YSK ruling annulling the results of the March 31 election, Erdoğan and his AKP advanced a long series of dubious and outright anti-democratic arguments to press for the March 31 Istanbul mayoral election to be set aside. Erdoğan proclaimed, for example, that İmamoğlu’s 14,000 vote margin of victory was immaterial given the number of votes cast.

Ultimately, the YSK justified its decision to cancel the mayoral election on the grounds that some of those who supervised the vote were not, as required by law, civil servants. However, it did not annul the other elections held simultaneously with the vote for mayor, including for the city’s various districts, a majority of which were by won by the AKP-led People’s Alliance.

Only the latest in a long series of authoritarian actions by Erdoğan and his right-wing Islamist populist regime, Monday’s canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election sparked an immediate popular outcry, including large angry spontaneous protests in the streets of Istanbul.

It comes as the 17-year-old AKP national government and the Turkish bourgeoisie and its republic face a confluence of political, economic and geopolitical crises. Turkey’s economy fell into recession in the fall of last year, driving the official unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in the December–February quarter, even as inflation hovered around 20 percent and the lira continued to depreciate significantly.

The economic crisis has been exacerbated by the unraveling of relations between Ankara and Washington, for seven decades the Turkish bourgeoisie’s principal military-security partner. The US and Turkey are at loggerheads on multiple fronts. These include: Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defence system; Washington’s partnering with the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist movement against which the Turkish state has waged a bloody counter-insurgency war in the country’s southeast for the past 35 years; the US sanctions and war preparations against Iran; Washington’s promotion of Israel and Saudi Arabia as its principal Mideast allies; and Washington’s push to exclude Turkey from a significant role in the development of offshore Eastern Mediterranean energy resources.

If Erdoğan and his AKP went to such lengths to overturn their defeat in the Istanbul mayoral election, it is because they calculate they cannot accept divisions within the state apparatus as they seek to negotiate the geopolitical and economic headwinds—a threatened breakdown of the US-Turkish alliance and an eruption of class struggle.

Home to one-fifth of Turkey’s population and responsible for almost a third of the country’s total economic output, Istanbul plays an outsized role in Turkish politics. Erdoğan’s own rise to power began with his election as the city’s mayor in 1994 and he and his supporters have controlled the city’s administration ever since.

The principal target of Erdoğan’s authoritarian measures, including what no doubt were extreme behind the scenes pressures to bully the YSK into ordering the re-vote in Istanbul, is not his capitalist political rivals, but the working class.

Erdoğan and his top ministers have repeatedly pledged to Turkish big business and foreign investors that in the coming months the AKP led government will carry through sweeping economic “reforms”—i.e., social spending cuts and other “pro-market” measures aimed at bolstering the competitive position of Turkish capitalism. In so doing, Erdoğan has frequently drawn attention to the four-year period before Turks next go to the polls, suggesting that this places the government in a strong position to ram through unpopular measures.

As around the world, the past period has seen a growth in working class militancy in Turkey. The March 31 nationwide local elections gave distorted expression to the growing anger against the AKP government. Although the combined vote for the AKP and its electoral ally, the ultra-chauvinist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), narrowly surpassed 50 percent, there was a sharp turn against the ruling bloc in Ankara and the major cities of western Turkey. This was rooted in anger over the increasingly dire economic situation and indicates a major erosion of support for the AKP among the urban poor, whose support it had cultivated through limited social-welfare programs provided by the state and AKP-aligned Islamist charitable foundations.

Significantly, much of the criticism emanating from Turkish big business circles and foreign investors of Erdoğan’s successful push to overturn the outcome of the Istanbul election is that it will delay the government’s promised austerity drive as the AKP will be loath to alienate voters prior to the June 23 re-vote.

The CHP responded to the YSK’s decision to force a re-vote by accusing the government of a “civil coup.” It also called into question the legitimacy of the results of both the April 16, 2017, referendum, which approved constitutional changes vastly increasing the powers of the president, and the June 2018 parliamentary and presidential elections. There were widespread allegations of electoral improprieties in both 2017 and 2018. Notably the Supreme Election Council played a significant role in determining the referendum outcome, which Erdoğan won only narrowly despite severe limits being placed on the opposition campaign due to a state of emergency, when it ruled that it would count ballots that “had not been stamped” by its officials “as valid unless they could be proved fraudulent.”

However, the CHP quickly made clear it would contest the June 23 elections and is determined to channel the opposition to Erdoğan’s anti-democratic actions into establishment channels. Reprising the role it had played in April 2017 when there were widespread protests against the referendum result, the CHP appealed for calm and an end to street demonstrations. Eager to demonstrate to both big business and Erdoğan that the CHP shares their apprehension that anti-government protests could quickly spin out of the establishment’s control, Istanbul’s defrocked mayor Imamoğlu sought to becalm the protests by declaring “everything is going to be all right,” and this soon became the opposition’s mantra.

Much of Turkey’s pseudo-left openly supported the CHP, a right-wing pro-imperialist party, in the March 31 election. Now they are using the canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election to redouble their efforts to subordinate the working class, in the name of the “defence of democracy,” to the Turkish bourgeoisie and in particular that faction most orientated to Washington, NATO and the European Union.

Several pseudo-left groups that stood their own candidates, including the Stalinist Turkish Communist Party (TKP), have already announced they will withdraw in favour of the candidate of the CHP and Good Party’s Nation Alliance, Imamoğlu.

The Kurdish nationalist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which is closely aligned with the illegal PKK, backed the Nation Alliance mayoral candidates in the major cities of western Turkey, although the CHP and Good Party leadership have, if anything, been even more hostile to the recognition of the democratic rights of the Kurds than the AKP.

Sharing the CHP’s more pronounced orientation to Washington and the EU, the HDP will likely endorse Imamoğlu in the re-vote. But an HDP member of Parliament signaled that if Erdoğan was ready to make concessions to the Kurdish bourgeoisie, the AKP could yet garner the HDP’s support. “If you want to win the elections in İstanbul,” HDP MP İmam Tascier told Rudaw, “you have to gain Kurds’ votes... Whoever takes a step to solve the Kurdish question, Kurds [will] vote for it. If AKP do this, they might vote for AKP. If it does not and CHP does, they might for it.”

This horse-trading underscores the right-wing, anti-working class character of all the parties of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie.

The European imperialist powers, which are adamantly opposed to Erdoğan’s attempts to fashion a more independent role for the Turkish bourgeoisie in the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere, were quick to condemn the election commission’s canceling of Imamoğlu’s election win.

The EU demanded the YSK justify its “far-reaching” decision “without delay” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass called the canceling of the election “incomprehensible.”

It is very possible Washington and the EU will join forces to cynically invoke Erdoğan’s authoritarian actions to increase pressure on Ankara to fall more in line with their respective predatory policies.

However to date, the reaction of the Trump administration has been low-key. The State Department did not oppose the call for a rev-ote. It merely noted it was “extraordinary” and urged the re-vote be “free, fair and transparent.”

Behind the scenes high-stakes negotiations between Ankara and Washington are ongoing, with Turkey pressing its claim for the establishment of a buffer zone in north-eastern Syria at the expense of American imperialism’s YPG proxies, and the US threatening Turkey with a massive downgrade in military-security ties, even possible expulsion from NATO, if it doesn’t abandon the S-400 purchase.

The democratic rights of working people can’t be defended by aligning with any faction of the Turkish or Kurdish bourgeoisie. Rather the deepening crisis and fissures within the Turkish bourgeoisie and its state, rooted as they are in the breakdown of world capitalism, must be answered by the development of an independent political movement of the working class, fighting for workers’ power and the perspective of international socialism.

“Unequal Germany”—new study examines regional differences

Elisabeth Zimmermann

In recent years, the poverty report of the Joint Welfare Association and other studies have revealed the extent of the gulf between rich and poor in Germany. A new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), which is close to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), shows another aspect of this: grave regional differences.

On behalf of the FES, experts from the Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research (ILS) in Dortmund investigated the extent of the unequal living conditions in Germany’s 402 districts and district-free cities. The study, presented at the end of April, bears the title: “Unequal Germany—Socio-Economic Disparities Report 2019.”

In contrast to other studies, which mostly examine only one or two criteria, numerous indicators have been used as a basis: How high are the municipalities in debt? What are the incomes and rents? How many old people and children live on social assistance? What are the conditions of the infrastructure, medical care and other services?

On this basis, Germany was divided into five regions:

* Dynamic large and medium-sized cities with a risk of exclusion (22.7 million inhabitants), in which particular groups are prevented from participating fully and equally in economic life. The study cites cities such as Munich and Hamburg, as well as Gera and Frankfurt on the Oder.

* Strong surrounding region (13.7 million inhabitants), which includes the surrounding areas of Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart.

* Solid middle (32.8 million inhabitants). The study includes a large part of West Germany outside the big cities. Typical examples listed are the Odenwald, the Sauerland and Göttingen.

* Rural areas in permanent structural crisis (8.1 million inhabitants). The rural areas in eastern Germany are particularly affected.

* Cities in permanent structural change (5.4 million inhabitants). These include many cities in the Ruhr area such as Duisburg, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, the Saarland and cities in Rhineland-Palatinate.

A key finding of the comprehensive study is that social and economic inequality has consolidated despite economic growth and employment growth in recent years.

And this economic growth is just about to dry up, with forecasts being revised downwards several times in recent months. The intensification of the capitalist economic crisis, the uncertainties associated with Brexit, worsening trade war and technological upheaval are threatening tens of thousands of jobs. The announcement of massive job cuts at Ford, VW, Bayer, Siemens and other corporations are just the beginning.

The FES study notes that more than 13.5 million people in Germany live in regions with severe structural problems. But even in the “dynamic boom regions” the gulf between poor and rich is growing. Here, middle-income people, families with children and pensioners are threatened with poverty. Many are driven out because they can no longer afford the rising rents and cost of living in the growing cities.

The situation has been further aggravated in that since 2017, almost one in five households in receipt of Hartz IV welfare payments do not have their full housing costs recognised and so are virtually pushed below the actual subsistence level.

Furthermore, the study states: “The causes of the structural problems are different. While urbanised regions in the west of the country have to deal with the loss of important old industrial sectors (e.g., mining and heavy industry), the aftermath of German reunification and the subsequent collapse of entire economic sectors and labour markets in the GDR [former East Germany] are felt in the predominantly rural regions of eastern Germany.”

This is a sugar-coated description of the wiping out of the formerly nationalised industry in the GDR by Western capitalist corporations with the help of the Treuhand privatisation agency and the former Stalinist bureaucracy. They destroyed millions of jobs, while enriching themselves obscenely.

The study notes that child poverty is a problem in almost all major cities and their surrounding areas. “Very high values of 25 to nearly 40 percent in the Ruhr area, Bremen, Berlin and in some East German cities indicate that here large parts of the population experience poverty and also encounter further social disadvantages during their lives,” the report states.

Elsewhere, the report notes: “For example, the risk of poverty for children and older citizens is a general problem in large cities. The extreme values between the dynamic large and medium cities with risk of exclusion and the urban regions in the ongoing structural change are not far apart (child poverty: Halle on the Saale with 31.9 percent; and Gelsenkirchen with 39.5 percent; poverty in old age: Frankfurt am Main with 8.8 percent; and Offenbach am Main with 8.9 percent).”

The FES study also provides empirical data on life expectancy, health, education and other areas. But it says nothing about the causes of this development and the intensification of social inequality: the capitalist profit system.

As with a similar study from 2015, this study’s authors want to submit policy suggestions for “equal living conditions in Germany,” an objective that is also in the federal government coalition agreement, concluded by the Christian Democrats and SPD.

One of their proposals is that federal and state governments finance highly indebted municipalities with debt cuts, subject to strict conditions. Yet, it is precisely this policy that has led to the catastrophic financial situation in many over-indebted communities.

It recalls the EU’s austerity policy in Greece, where billions in credits were used to rescue the banks, with German banks benefiting in particular. Millions of workers paid for it with the loss of their jobs, massive cuts in wages and pensions, and the destruction of the health system. A social catastrophe was unleashed that had never been seen outside wartime, and this catastrophe continues.

The extent of the concentration of wealth and poverty in Germany is clear from a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). According to this, the 45 richest households in Germany possess as much wealth as some 20 million households of the poorer half of the population. The figures on which this study is based date from 2014. Social polarisation has continued to increase since that time.

This development is the result of a dramatic redistribution of social wealth from the bottom upwards—itself an international phenomenon. This did not simply fall from the sky, but is the result of the policies pursued by all governments over the last decades.

In Germany, with the introduction of Hartz IV, the SPD-Green Party government created a huge low-wage sector with insecure jobs, which has contributed significantly to the widening social polarisation. The subsequent governments under Angela Merkel have followed suit, and now the grand coalition is preparing further sharp attacks on the working class to finance the rapid rearmament of the German military.

Netanyahu agrees a ceasefire with Hamas—for now

Jean Shaoul

Israel ended its weekend bombardment of Gaza, the most ferocious flareup since the 2014 war, after agreeing to yet another Egyptian-brokered ceasefire reached on Monday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to facilitate Qatar’s transfer of funds to Gaza and to ease Israel’s blockade in return for a distancing of Gaza’s protests from the border and an end to nightly riots and the launching of incendiary balloons into southern Israel. This was essentially the same terms it had agreed just six weeks ago. It was Israel’s failure to deliver that had led to this latest clash. But three days after the ceasefire, Ha ’ aretz was warning that Gaza was still waiting for Israel to implement measures to ease the blockade.

Netanyahu authorised the massive assault on Gaza in response to rockets launched from Gaza that killed two Israelis, following Israel’s tightening of restrictions on Gaza’s fishing limits. His decision came just days after being sworn into Israel’s new parliament following the victory of his far-right bloc in last month’s elections. It was the necessary down-payment to ensure that his about-to-be formed ultra-nationalist coalition will protect him from corruption charges and a hefty prison sentence. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the most powerful military in the region, launched more than 150 aerial strikes and shelled at least 200 sites in the tiny Palestinian enclave, targeting multi-storey residential buildings, mosques, shops and media institutions. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency was in one of the buildings destroyed.

Israel sealed off access to Gaza’s territorial waters and closed all its land entrances to prevent anyone from leaving or entering Gaza, only allowing in fuel for the territory’s sole power plant.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the 27 Palestinians killed in the shortest and most violent attack in recent years included at least 14 civilians, with the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirming that two pregnant women and three infants were killed by Israeli strikes. Another 154 Palestinians were wounded.

Israel, for its part, suffered the loss of four civilians, the first casualties since 2014, as more than 700 rockets were launched from Gaza. While some of the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, most landed without causing damage or injury.

Netanyahu boasted, “In the past two days, we’ve renewed the policy of assassinating senior terrorists,” referring to the targeted assassination of Hamed Ahmad Abed al-Khoudari on Sunday, the first such killing in four years. “We’ve killed dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and we toppled terror towers,” he added, referring to the IDF’s destruction of entire apartment buildings that destroyed or damaged more than 830 homes and left more than 350 Palestinians homeless.

“The campaign is not over and requires patience and judgment. We are preparing to continue,” he threatened, indicating that a resumption of aerial bombing, if not an outright invasion, might resume at any time.

Netanyahu came under ferocious attack from his right-wing coalition partners who were virulently opposed to the ceasefire. Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Union of Right-Wing Parties who is angling to become Israel’s next minister of justice, said, “We should have killed 700 terrorists”—one for every rocket fired from Gaza.

This was from a man whose party agreed to an electoral alliance, brokered by Netanyahu, with the fascist and anti-Arab terrorist Jewish Power, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries and a ban on intermarriage between Jews and Arabs. The precursor to Jewish Power, Kahane’s Kach Party, was banned as a terrorist organization.

Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff and head of the Blue and White coalition that sought to unseat Netanyahu as prime minister, excoriated the ceasefire as “another surrender to the blackmail of Hamas and terrorist organizations.”

Gantz had launched his campaign with a video boasting about how many Palestinians had been killed under his command during the 2012 and 2014 wars against Gaza. This merchant of death faces a civil lawsuit for killing six Gazan residents on July 20, 2014.

Netanyahu also came under fire from a rival within his own Likud Party, Gideon Saar, who said, “Timed intervals between rounds of violence directed at Israel and its citizens are getting shorter, while Gaza’s terror organizations are getting stronger. The round of fighting has been delayed rather than prevented.”

Netanyahu, for his part, was determined to bring the hostilities to an end before the events held May 8 and 9 to mark Israel’s Memorial Day, “Independence Day,” which Palestinians mark as the Nakba (Catastrophe), and the Eurovision Song Contest, which Tel Aviv is hosting May 14-18. The latter is already proving to be a commercial disaster, with tickets sales and hotel bookings down on forecasts, despite heavy promotion and subsidies.

According to the daily Ha ’ aretz, Israeli military officials had warned politicians “that if significant steps are not taken to implement understandings with Hamas [to ease the blockade], the group controlling the Gaza Strip will struggle to prevent other organizations in the coastal enclave from acting against Israel,” a reference to Islamic Jihad. Yet despite the warnings, “there has not been an increase in aid or goods going into the Strip.”

The IDF has been discussing a broader military campaign in Gaza in the coming months that would have devastating consequences.

A 2017 document, published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, also warned that without a significant change to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Hamas, the bourgeois clerical group that emerged out of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and controls Gaza after winning the 2006 elections, was in danger of being outmaneuvered by more extreme forces. Last March, Hamas faced down protesters angry over new taxes and their abysmal living conditions in the Strip, which will soon become uninhabitable.

Israel confronts, not only the consequences of Gaza’s economic and social collapse, but also the crisis engulfing President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). This stems in large part from Netanyahu’s decision to stop the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues because of its stipends to the families of those accused of terrorist activities against Israel, a cut of some $138 million. Abbas is responding by refusing all tax monies owed to the PA, $100 million a month, in order to precipitate a crisis and secure international aid. As a result, he has been unable to pay PA workers their full salaries.

A further factor in Abbas's calculations is the expected launching of US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” to be announced in June, that will provoke a furious backlash from Palestinian workers. Extensive leaks make clear that what the US envisages is not a Palestinian state alongside Israel but some sort of “autonomous” rule in disconnected bits of PA territory to be funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf petro-monarchs.

Without substantial economic aid, the PA is staring into the abyss. Unable to fund its institutions, Abbas faces the prospect of mass protests by workers whose livelihoods depend upon the PA and who reject the US plan. While Qatar has agreed to send $300 million to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and $150 million to the besieged Gaza Strip, after the ceasefire was announced on Monday, this is a drop in the ocean.

Two weeks ago, Nikolay Mladenov, the UN’s envoy to the Middle East, stated that without measures to resolve the PA’s economic crisis, the situation could escalate into major violence threatening the existence of the PA and the stability of the entire Middle East.

Venezuela tensions mount after arrest of coup leader

Bill Van Auken

Washington has stepped up threats of military intervention in Venezuela following moves by the Maduro government to arrest a group of right-wing politicians in the National Assembly who participated actively in the abortive April 30 coup called by the US puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

On Wednesday night, agents of Venezuela’s SEBIN internal security agency arrested the vice president of the National Assembly, Edgar Zambrano. Zambrano is the leader of the right-wing Democratic Action (AD) party, whose last elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, directed the repression that led to as many as 3,000 deaths during the 1989 popular uprising known as the caracazo and was subsequently impeached for corruption. Zambrano was leaving a meeting at the AD headquarters when he was surrounded by security agents.

After he refused orders to get out of his car, the police brought in a tow truck which towed him and his car to jail. He reportedly had US $9,000 on his person at the time of his arrest.

He and several other National Assembly deputies have been charged by the country’s Supreme Court with treason, conspiracy, civil rebellion and other crimes in connection with the April 30 events, which were initiated by Guaidó, who posted a video of himself and the leader of his far-right, US-funded Voluntad Popular party, Leopoldo Lopez, who had escaped house arrest, and a few dozen armed men in uniform.

On April 30, Guaidó and Lopez appealed to the Venezuelan military to rise up and overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro. In the course of the day, it became clear that the coup had no significant support either within the military or the civilian population. Soldiers who had been brought to the event under false pretenses turned themselves in, and an appeal by Guaidó to the population to storm the La Carlota air base in eastern Caracas failed miserably, while provoking violent clashes in which five people lost their lives.

Zambrano and others were photographed and filmed at the site where the coup leaders sought to gather support, a highway overpass in the Altamira section of the capital. They are seen trying to persuade soldiers to join in an attack on the base and standing with civilians who mounted heavy machine guns on the overpass, apparently preparing for a massacre.

Others named by the court have sought to flee. Richard Blanco of the Alianza Bravo Pueblo, a minor right-wing party that split from the AD, sought refuge in the residency of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas. Two other deputies charged in relation to the coup, Mariela Magallanes and Americo De Grazia, entered the Italian embassy seeking protection from arrest.

Meanwhile, Maduro has announced the dismissal of dozens of Venezuelan military personnel who had been involved in the coup attempt. The most senior among them was the chief of the SEBIN internal security force, Gen. Manuel Figuera. Five lieutenant colonels, four majors, four captains, six lieutenants and 35 sergeants were also arrested.

Some 25 of these military personnel sought refuge in the embassy of Brazil, whose fascistic president, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, has provided enthusiastic support for Washington’s regime-change operation.

Leopoldo Lopez, who was convicted for inciting violence in the so-called La Salida (Exit) demonstrations which were launched in 2014 in an attempt to force out the government after the right-wing opposition had lost both presidential and municipal elections, has been granted protection by the Spanish embassy, which has allowed him to continue issuing calls for Maduro’s overthrow.

The initial attempts by the Maduro government and its judicial system to hold accountable those responsible for the attempted coup of April 30 have evoked howls of protest from Washington, the European Union and the United Nations.

Washington issued a statement in the name of its “virtual embassy” in Venezuela, denouncing the detention of Zambrano as “illegal and inexcusable” and warning that there would be “consequences,” without specifying what form they would take.

The European Union called the arrest “another flagrant violation” of Venezuela’s constitution and a “politically motivated action aimed at silencing the National Assembly.”

And the United Nations human rights office demanded the “immediate release” of Zambrano and demanded that the Maduro government “cease the attacks” on the National Assembly and its members.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called attention to the grotesque hypocrisy of these denunciations, declaring that those who were leaping to the defense of the coup organizers were complicit in the coup. He pointed out that in the countries whose governments were condemning Caracas, “sedition and military rebellion also constitute grave crimes.”

Arreaza in particular blasted the UN human rights office for failing to condemn the attempted coup of April 30 and defending the impunity of its organizers. “Is it the case that military coups are organized in defense of human rights?” he asked.

What would be the reaction of the US government if a group of politicians and a handful of soldiers called for an assault on Andrews Air Base outside of Washington and set up machinegun positions on a Highway 495 overpass? One can safely assume that such an incident would produce far more bloodshed than the clashes in Caracas, and that the perpetrators would have been prosecuted on treason, sedition and terrorism charges.

Meanwhile both Washington and Guaidó—whom the Maduro government has yet to charge, no doubt fearing his arrest could provoke a US attack—are continuing to encourage a revolt by the military to topple the Venezuelan president.

US Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech delivered on Tuesday to the annual Conference of the Americas held by the US State Department made a point of announcing that sanctions imposed just three months earlier on the now renegade commander of SEBIN, General Figuera, had been lifted “in recognition of his recent actions in support of democracy and the rule of law” and urged others “follow the example” set by Figuera.

Figuera, a veteran commander of Venezuela’s National Guard, a unit used in the repression of struggles of the working class in Venezuela, is an unlikely champion of “democracy.”

Pence’s speech included preposterous claims that the Maduro government had entered a pact with Iran to bring Hezbollah “terrorists” into Venezuela and from there dispatch them throughout the hemisphere. The claim seemed aimed at joining the two major arenas of US threats of war into one, justifying attacks on both Iran and Venezuela. The vice president likewise denounced Russia for using its trade and political ties with Venezuela to gain “a foothold in this hemisphere.”

Pence summed up by declaring: “The United States of America will continue to exert all diplomatic and economic pressure to bring about a peaceful transition of democracy in Venezuela. But to those who continue to oppress the good people of Venezuela, know this: All options are on the table.”

The only “military option” that he announced in the speech was the US Navy’s deployment next month of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, to countries bordering Venezuela next month, ostensibly to provide aid to Venezuelan migrants.

Discussions are underway within the Trump administration on far more aggressive forms of US military intervention. These reportedly include dispatching US military units, including special forces troops, to neighboring countries, first and foremost Colombia, and the deployment of a naval armada off the Venezuelan coast in a show of force.

US Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, issued a call on Wednesday for the US to mount a naval blockade of Cuba to enforce the sanctions against the export of Venezuelan oil decreed by the Trump administration. Scott called last week for the US to send troops to Colombia to break through barriers on the Venezuelan border to force through “humanitarian aid.”

All of these proposals, which pose the threat of a bloodbath and a potential confrontation between the US and nuclear-armed Russia, express the mounting frustration in Washington over the failure of the regime-change operation centered upon Guaidó to produce the desired results. The Venezuelan military has thus far failed to turn against Maduro, and the broader masses of Venezuelans, however much they are hostile to the Maduro government, see in the right-wing CIA-trained opposition an enemy in service of US imperialism and the country’s traditional ruling oligarchy.

Under these conditions, the threat of a direct US military intervention to assert Washington’s control over Venezuela and its oil reserves, the largest on the planet, only continues to grow.

Papua New Guinea government faces no-confidence vote

John Braddock

Opposition MPs in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are preparing to move a no-confidence motion in an attempt to remove Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. The People’s National Congress (PNC)-led government is disintegrating in the wake of a series of high-profile resignations.

The 26 opposition parliamentarians or MPs have allied with two dozen MPs who quit O’Neill’s coalition in the past two weeks and are offering to accommodate other government members. A successful vote in the 111-seat parliament will require the support of 56 MPs.

Lobbying intensified over the weekend, with the opposed camps gathering at hotels on either side of Port Moresby, each announcing they had the numbers to secure a majority. Some 1,000 extra police are being deployed in the capital.

The government won a procedural vote on Tuesday, by 59 votes to 50, to adjourn parliament until May 28, giving O’Neill more time to consolidate support. The no-confidence motion has to be vetted by a parliamentary committee to check that it meets legal requirements before being tabled.

The opposition has named James Marape, a former O’Neill ally, as their choice for prime minister. Marape’s sudden resignation as finance minister last month, citing a “lack of trust” between the two, sparked the defections.

Shifting allegiances within the country’s unstable and corrupt political establishment are not unusual. Nevertheless, the current groundswell of desertions is the most significant in O’Neill’s nearly eight years in office and takes place amid widespread popular hostility to all the parliamentary parties.

On May 3, the latest tranche of nine MPs resigned from O’Neill’s PNC. It included three cabinet ministers, Health Minister Puka Temu, Defence Minister Solan Mirisim, and Forestry Minister Douglas Tomuriesa. Six other government MPs joined them in a press conference last Friday announcing their decision to resign.

This followed the resignations of eight PNC parliamentarians the previous week. Radio NZ reported that at a PNC caucus meeting O’Neill was urged to resign but he refused. Meanwhile, the PNC’s main coalition partner, the Pangu Pati, has all but collapsed, with at least half its MPs opposed to party leader Sam Basil and defecting to the opposition.

O’Neill’s government is widely regarded as illegitimate. In the 2017 election he won a second five-year term in an undemocratic and disputed poll, with a significantly decreased majority. The election was mired in bribery and corruption, ballot rigging and the wholesale omission of names from the electoral roll.

Ongoing turmoil is an expression of explosive social tensions produced by the government’s austerity policies imposed in response to the country’s economic crisis, worsened by the collapse in global energy prices. Following protests by students and workers, the government has increasingly turned to police-state measures.

The current crisis has erupted over a new $US16 billion natural gas contract. Former Prime Minister Mekere Morauta has denounced the deal signed last month with French company Total, as a potential “disaster” for PNG.

Mekere contends that O’Neill hijacked the approval process, putting government finances and landowner interests at risk. Mekere claimed O’Neill shut out the State Negotiating Team and the Department of Petroleum, meaning the gas agreement was largely the work of private companies.

Mekere said this risks royalties and development levies not being paid, as happened with the $US19 billion ExxonMobil LNG project. Further, billions of kina (the PNG currency) worth of concessions and exemptions were given away, Mekere claimed, in line with the demands of project partners.

The deal also fails to meet laws on the supply of gas for the domestic market. The agreement provides for a maximum of 5 percent of gas from the project for domestic purposes but the government’s Natural Gas and National Energy policies call for 15 percent, the former PM said.

There is deep popular dissatisfaction over the failure of the massive gas projects to produce any benefits for the population. Landowners in the Highlands region have been waiting years for royalties, levies and dividends owed them.

In February 2017, more than 1,000 protesters gathered at the ExxonMobil site to demand overdue payments, estimated at over 1 billion kina ($US256 million). In response, the government intensified a police-military operation, involving 300 personnel, to protect the company’s operations.

A 2018 report by Australian academic Paul Flanagan, “Double or Nothing: the Broken Economic Promises of PNG LNG,” declared the projects have been a disaster for PNG’s people. The impoverished population would have been better off “on almost every measure of economic welfare” without the ExxonMobil deal, the report concluded.

The litany of economic failures included lower than expected GDP gains, which “focused on the largely foreign-owned resource sector.” Meagre government earnings from the project saw revenue, predicted to be around 1.4 billion Kina ($US590 million) per year in 2016 come in at less than K0.5 billion.

Intensifying the political crisis, a court ruling in Singapore on April 5 dealt a blow to a challenge by O’Neill to one of Mekere’s initiatives as prime minister. The court rejected legal action to wrest control of the Singapore-based PNG Sustainable Development Program (SDP), which holds an estimated $US1.4 billion.

Earnings from the SDP’s shareholding in the formerly BHP-owned Ok Tedi gold mine are meant to fund community development. O’Neill wants more direct control over the SDP’s billions. Claiming that the SDP is being run in a “highly unsatisfactory manner” and that it has failed to benefit local people, he has vowed to continue the legal fight.

The political infighting in ruling circles involves a sordid grab for the control of financial spoils. The only beneficiary of the exploitation of PNG’s vast natural resources has been a layer of business leaders and politicians who operate in the interests of the mainly US- and Australian-based banks and corporations.

The decline in the living standards of ordinary people has been stark. A major recession hit the non-resource sector from 2015. By 2016, household incomes had fallen by 6 percent, employment by 27 percent and spending on government services, including education, health and infrastructure, by 32 percent.

The growing political instability is viewed with alarm by the regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, which have backed O’Neill. PNG is of vital economic and strategic importance to both in their drive to dominate the South West Pacific and counter China’s growing influence.

Local authority funding cuts worsen poverty and social inequality in Scotland

Stephen Alexander

The £11.1 billion budget settlement for Scottish local government, passed earlier this year by the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration in alliance with the Scottish Green Party, is being portrayed as a means of fortifying local finances against austerity measures imposed by successive British Labour and Conservative governments.

It is nothing of the sort.

The funding package ostensibly includes a real-terms spending rise, if £187 million of new revenue raising powers handed to local government this year are included. Councils can now increase council tax by 4.79 percent annually, while the Greens secured additional revenue raising powers via a workplace parking charge and local tourism taxes.

But, contrary to the claims of the SNP and the Greens, recent figures published by Audit Scotland, the official public finance watchdog, estimate that core spending on services across Scotland’s 32 local authorities will decline by 1.5 percent as a result of the 2019/20 budget. This follows a funding cut of 7 percent over the past five years.

Many services are also facing yearly cost increases many times the overall rate of inflation. These include burial plots (20 percent), meals in care homes (5 percent), youth swimming lessons (11 percent), as well as home care (8 percent) and home nursing (8 percent).

Since 2013/14, funding has fallen by more than 10 percent for eight councils, with over half of all local authorities experiencing a budget cut of more than 8 percent, according to Audit Scotland.

Both urban and rural areas are affected.

The remote, rural and island council areas of Eilean Siar (the Outer Hebrides), Shetland, and Argyll and Bute have lost 15.4 percent, 14.1 percent and 13.2 percent, respectively. These areas already suffer high service delivery costs because they are geographically dispersed, with isolated communities. Public finances are also impacted by depopulation.

Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland’s most populous cities, followed closely behind with cuts of 11.4 percent and 10.5 percent.

The cuts are being imposed by councils that are controlled by the SNP, Labour and Conservatives. SNP-Labour controlled Edinburgh City Council has tabled £47 million in spending cuts and tax rises this year, including 200 job cuts. Glasgow’s minority SNP administration is pursuing similar policies to cover a budgetary black hole of £42.2 million.

Part of Glasgow’s budget deficit arose from the council’s recent £500 million settlement of an equal pay dispute, which saw 12,000 workers in predominantly female jobs in care, catering and education support underpaid for more than decade. The council leadership re-mortgaged £548 million in public assets, including museums, concert halls and sports venues, ensuring that the settlement will be clawed back through protracted annual spending cuts to pay off private financiers.

Neighbouring council areas in the Greater Glasgow conurbation have been hit by massive cuts. Inverclyde has lost 10.3 percent of its budget over the past five years, followed by North Lanarkshire (10 percent), West Dunbartonshire (9.8 percent), South Lanarkshire (9.5 percent), Renfrewshire (9 percent), Clackmannanshire (8.4 percent), South Ayrshire (8.4 percent) and East Ayrshire (8.3 percent).

Once the heartland of Scottish industry, the region has borne the brunt of decades of de-industrialisation imposed with cross-party support at both local and national levels of government. It now suffers some of most severe and highly concentrated levels of social deprivation in the UK and across Europe.

In the northeast, Aberdeen City Council, run by the Conservatives in coalition with suspended Labour councillors and various “independents,” has seen its funding fall by nearly 10 percent over the past five years. It intends 200 job cuts as part of £45 million in budget cuts for 2019/20. This follows the elimination of 329 full-time equivalent positions last year.

Council areas in Scotland’s north, including Aberdeen, Highland, Moray, and Argyll and Bute, now have 4,905 fewer full-time jobs than in 2008/9, Aberdeen’s daily the Press and Journal reports. This amounts to a fifth of the workforce at both Aberdeen and Highland councils.

Having cut frontline services to the bone, councils have begun to defund some services entirely. Others are conditional on user fees.

Cultural services have been among the hardest hit in recent years, with £90 million slashed from their budgets. This includes £22 million from libraries, £5 million from museums and galleries, £20 million from sports, and £30 million from public parks and leisure attractions.

Dozens of libraries are now threatened with closure, with as many as 40 percent to be shut in East Dunbartonshire. The impact on literacy levels, social isolation and mental health will be devastating and long lasting, particularly in the poorest areas, where they are often the only means for accessing the Internet and educational resources.

As a recent Audit Scotland report explains:

“Libraries now help people apply for benefits using their computers but a survey by Citizen’s Advice found that people from the most deprived areas were less likely to be able to use a computer than those from the least deprived areas. It also found that of people seeking benefits advice, 25 percent would need help and 27 percent would not be able to manage at all.”

Primary and secondary education, which accounts for approximately 40 percent of local budgets, is now effectively being rationed in state schools.

Subject options for fourth year secondary school pupils have fallen to five or six, whereas students in private schools and a select number of state schools have access to as many as nine. Teachers and parents have warned that many students are dropping art, music and drama, as well as some languages, to focus on core subjects prioritized by employers.

Families also face a growing number of tuition charges, which are already widespread for music lessons and instrument hire. A number of councils are now rolling out fees for revision classes, with East Renfrewshire Council, for instance, charging some families £13.50 per day or £62 a week for exam revision classes over the Easter break.

Scottish councils increased their income from sales, fees and charges by £241 million to £1.3 billion last year. Fees are expected to rise exponentially this year, with just eight councils in the north and northeast expecting revenues of £1 billion for 2018-19. These include exorbitant hikes to daily parking and annual permits, as well as entrance fees for leisure, culture and sports facilities, and inflating childcare costs.

Where user fees are difficult to collect or otherwise impracticable, services are being eliminated entirely. Meals on wheels deliveries for the elderly and disabled, for example, have been discontinued by many councils. But a staggering 50 percent of elderly admissions to hospital exhibit symptoms of undernourishment, according to the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

The growing dependence of councils on local taxes and charges will compound social inequality, leaving services in the poorest areas underfunded and subject to vastly higher charges. The brunt of the new levies will fall disproportionately on the working class, contributing to growing numbers of working poor.

One in five Scots, 1.03 million people, now live in relative poverty, which is calculated at 60 percent less than median income. These government figures include 240,000 children, two-thirds of which are from working households.

At current trends, the proportion of Scottish children trapped in relative poverty will increase from 23 percent in 2018 to a 20-year high of 29 percent by 2023/24, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.