Unemployment already at Great Depression levels in Australia

Mike Head

Fearful of social and political unrest, the Australian government is trying to hide the vast levels of joblessness inflicted on the working class over the past month, accelerated by the impact of the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg issued a media release on Tuesday saying Treasury analysis predicted the official unemployment rate would peak at 10 percent in the June quarter of 2020, virtually doubling the 5.1 percent recorded for February. He did not publish the analysis, however.

Even that forecast would indicate immense financial hardship and social distress. It would mean almost 1.4 million people out of work, an all-time record for Australia.

But this figure does not count the now “under-employed” workers, particularly casuals, who have lost most of their paid working hours. And the official statistics are a gross underestimate.

Last month’s Roy Morgan company survey found that unemployment for the second half of March jumped a staggering 1.4 million to 2.4 million (16.8 percent) and under-employment increased 374,000 to 1.52 million (10.6 percent).

In total, a record 3.92 million workers, or 27.4 percent, were either unemployed or under-employed by the end of March.

The queue outside a Centrelink office in Sydney last month

This surge produced Great Depression-style queues outside the government’s Centrelink welfare offices across the country, as laid-off workers lined up to apply for dole payments.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine described it as “the biggest shock to the Australian economy, and workforce, since World War II—well beyond living memory for the vast majority of Australians.”

Today’s official unemployment figures, showing a rise to 5.2 percent, are from mid-March. That was before the belated COVID-19 partial lockdown ordered by federal, state and territory governments deepened the slump that was already underway because of the summer bushfire disaster and the downturn throughout global capitalism.

In Tuesday’s media release, Frydenberg claimed: “The Morrison government’s historic $1,500 fortnightly JobKeeper payment will support millions of Australian jobs as we build a bridge to the other side following the severe economic impact from the coronavirus.”

Except for the $130 billion “JobKeeper” wage subsidy scheme for employers, the treasurer said, the unemployment rate would have been 5 percentage points higher, peaking at around 15 percent.

There is no basis for these claims. Frydenberg said 800,000 businesses, including self-employed sole traders, had registered for the JobKeeper scheme, but provided no statistics on whether employers had kept workers on payrolls as a result.

Asked by a journalist if the government had any record of employers doing so, he gave no answer. Under questioning at a press conference, he stated: “I don’t have a definite number as for what percentage of those people will be stood down and what percentage of those people will continue to work.”

While it is an unprecedented bid to bail out business, the Liberal-National government’s $130 billion scheme was never likely to be sufficient, or take affect quickly enough, to avert mass unemployment.

Not only does the scheme exclude about 1.1 million casual workers and 1.4 million foreign workers on temporary visas, the payments to employers do not start until next month.

Many businesses, particularly smaller ones, will not survive until then. Others, especially big employers, may keep workers on their books but exploit the scheme to slash their wages to $1,500 a fortnight and impose sweeping cuts to conditions, such as leave entitlements and penalty pay rates.

That is the primary purpose of the bailout package, apart from disguising the levels of unemployment. Backed by the Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the legislation pushed through parliament last week amended the Fair Work Act to enable employers to inflict such measures.

At the same time, ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the trade unions had told employers they could “get everything you want” with the cooperation of the unions.

Despite all these efforts to prop up the bankrupt capitalist order, the latest monthly National Australia Bank (NAB) business survey, released on Tuesday, reported that business confidence had plunged to minus 66 points. This was far worse than any other recording since the survey began in 1989 and much deeper than the minus 30 points in 2009.

Such a confidence collapse is another warning sign of evaporating demand, falling investment, corporate bankruptcies and further job losses.

NAB chief economist Alan Oster said: “We expect a recession of unprecedented speed and magnitude for the Australian economy over the next three quarters. This will see a sharp increase in unemployment.”

Referring to the government’s “stimulus” measures, totaling more than $320 billion in handouts, tax concessions, incentives and loans to the corporate elite, Oster said: “Policy makers have made a huge response that we think will be unable to offset the negative prints we will see in economic data in the near term.”

Oster said NAB remained “optimistic” that the government measures would “support a solid recovery once the virus is contained.” That “optimism” is belied by what is happening around the world as the COVD-19 death toll rises.

The government’s efforts to cover up the job carnage were further exposed yesterday when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued dire predictions for global and Australian capitalism.

The IMF forecast the biggest worldwide crash since the 1930s Great Depression, with global output falling by 3 percent in 2020—30 times more than during the 2008–09 economic breakdown.

Because of Australian capitalism’s dependence on raw material exports, tourism and income from international students, the IMF predicted a 6.7 percent drop in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for 2020, the largest fall since the 9.4 percent plunge in 1931.

The devastating joblessness and impoverishment confronting workers and young people in Australia is not just a product of the local coronavirus restrictions. Rather, it demonstrates the vulnerability of Australian capitalism to the global meltdown triggered by the pandemic.

The IMF forecast sharp downturns in all capitalist centres, including the US (-5.9 percent), Europe (-7.5 percent), Canada (-6.2 percent) and the United Kingdom (-6.5 percent). It said China, whose massive stimulus measures in 2008-09 prevented a recession in Australia by boosting iron ore and coal demand, would record growth of just 1.2 percent this year, far below its rates of a decade ago.

The IMF predicted V-shaped rebounds next year, including 6.1 percent in Australia. But that was based on the assumption that governments would end social distancing restrictions in the second half of this year, thus pushing workers back to work.

The fund warned that this “baseline” scenario would be upended if the pandemic lasted longer, leading to extended durations of containment, worsening financial conditions, and further breakdowns of global supply chains.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said its forecasts were highly uncertain. “Many countries now face multiple crises—a health crisis, a financial crisis, and a collapse in commodity prices, which interact in complex ways.”

Well before the bushfire catastrophe and the pandemic, corporate investment was drying up in Australia, and workers also faced falling real wages, soaring rates of casualisation and the highest household debt levels in the world.

Now, as a result of capitalist governments failing or refusing to respond to the COVID-19 danger in time to save thousands of lives, workers have lost their jobs, many cannot pay their rents or mortgages and their lives are threatened by demands from governments and corporations to return to work, regardless of unsafe conditions.

Canada: Thousands of foreign-trained medical staff prevented from assisting in COVID-19 fight

Janet Browning

Across Canada, thousands of foreign-trained doctors and medical staff are being prevented from joining the front-line fight against the COVID-19 pandemic because of the country’s reactionary immigration system.

The numerous, onerous bureaucratic hurdles medical professionals trained in other countries must clear before being allowed to work, including the payment of tens of thousands of dollars for regulatory checks and certificates, has created a ludicrous situation in which highly qualified staff are not being permitted to assist Canada’s overstretched hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities, even as the pandemic surges.

As of yesterday afternoon, there were more than 28,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada, and 1,006 deaths.

In 2018, Canada ranked near the bottom among the 35 OECD countries for the ratio of doctors to citizens, with just 2.8 doctors for every 1,000 people. Only seven countries, including the United States and Mexico, ranked lower. Austria topped the list, with 5.2 doctors per 1,000 people—i.e., nearly double the rate in Canada.

In Ontario alone, there are 13,000 foreign-educated doctors and 6,000 foreign-educated nurses who are not working in their fields, according to HealthForceOntario.

The Alberta Association of International Medical Graduates (AAIMG), which represents 1,000 physicians from 82 countries, says the lengthy Alberta licensing process means many foreign doctors have had to take up jobs in fields unrelated to medicine. Alberta has not relaxed its licensing requirements in the midst of the pandemic, although it would clearly be in the public interest to do so. Many rural communities in Alberta, throughout Canada’s three northern territories, and in remote communities and indigenous reserves across the country lack doctors.

University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy (SPP) research associate Robert Falconer says it can take up to a decade to get a doctor’s licence in Alberta. “When you include the costs of things like tests and books, you’re also looking at around $14,000 to $28,000 per doctor to get re-certified,” he said. In the current situation, doctors are required to get several credential assessments, meaning all transcripts and work history must be submitted to up to four different regulatory bodies for review.

Where attempts have been made to modify this bureaucratic logjam, they have been ad hoc and disorganized.

Last Wednesday, the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons announced that it has fast-tracked a new bylaw to amend the province’s Health Professions Act so that international medical graduates can apply for a supervised associate physician licence to join the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic. The amendment is now in a mandatory two-week review period, and there is no word on when, or if, it will be approved.

Without any public announcement, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) began last month to issue a short-term 30-day licence, called a Supervised Short Duration Certificate, by triggering a provision in existing provincial legislation. Internationally trained medical graduates who have passed their exams to practice in Canada, or have graduated from school in the past two years, can now apply for a supervised 30-day medical licence in Ontario to help fight COVID-19. The short-term licence allows some foreign-trained physicians and domestic medical school graduates to practice under supervision at public hospitals, psychiatric facilities and Crown agencies.

CPSO issued its first licence through the program in mid-March. Those who get a licence can apply to extend it an additional 30 days.

These temporary medical licences are the product of a provision within Ontario’s Medicine Act that has been in place since the early 1990s. The provision exists so that CPSO can issue these temporary licences in situations like pandemics, when there may be a shortage of physicians. In a written statement, CPSO told CBC Toronto it is working to fast-track applications so that physicians can start providing care for patients as quickly as possible.

However, before applying for the licence, applicants must meet four onerous conditions. Applicants must have: graduated from medical school in Canada, the U.S. or a school that was, at the time of graduation, listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools; practiced medicine, graduated medical school or passed Medical Council of Canada exams within the last two years; provided confirmation of employment from one of the approved categories of facilities laid out in the Medicine Act, including public hospitals; and found an identified supervisor who is a licensed practicing physician prepared to act as their supervisor.

Thus far, few doctors have applied, most likely because they are unaware of the program. As of April 3, CPSO had received only 12 applications, and had approved 10 of them. However, the college couldn’t say whether any foreign-trained doctors were among the 10 physicians who were issued temporary licences.

The failure of governments at all levels to effectively mobilize trained medical professionals to help combat the deadliest pandemic in a century provides yet another damning indictment of Canadian capitalism’s utter indifference to human life as the coronavirus spreads. Despite having been warned time and again about the risk of a pandemic, and having had the experience of the SARS outbreak in 2003, no steps were taken in advance to facilitate the integration of foreign-trained doctors and nurses into Canada’s chronically underfunded and understaffed health care system.

This failure will cost lives. Already, estimates suggest that 10 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Ontario are medical staff. As infection figures continue to rise, with the virus ripping through long-term care facilities across the country, the danger remains of the health care system being totally overwhelmed, not least due to a lack of staff.

Federal government epidemiologists project that between 11,000 and 22,000 Canadian lives could be lost over the course of this pandemic, which is the best-case scenario with the strongest control measures remaining in force. If these controls are weakened, or the health care system is overwhelmed, those deaths could well spike to more than 100,000.

In addition to the ruling elite’s negligent response to COVID-19, its refusal to allow foreign-trained medical professionals to practice is a direct product of Canada’s reactionary points-based immigration system. Canada’s immigration regulations, which are among the most stringent in the world, have been praised by the fascistic US President Donald Trump, who held them up as an example of policies he would like to implement.

Last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an agreement with Trump to expand the Safe Third County Agreement to include desperate asylum seekers who enter Canada from the US “irregularly.” In a flagrant violation of international law, they will not be allowed to file an asylum claim in Canada, and will instead be automatically returned to the US and placed in the clutches of Trump’s thugs in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service.

This move, long demanded by the Conservatives, the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) and other right-wing Quebec nationalists was justified on the pretext that the refugee claimants could spread the coronavirus. This standard trope of the right and far-right blithely ignored the fact that Canada’s ruling elite has more than enough resources to provide safe quarantine for incoming refugees, which would have all but eliminated any threat of further infections.

Thousands of UK care home residents dead in COVID-19 pandemic

Robert Stevens

As in every country, the coronavirus virus has ripped through UK care and nursing homes, which house over 430,000 elderly and vulnerable people. Thousands of lives have been lost without being officially recognised.

Elderly care home residents are portrayed as caught up in an “unfolding disaster” and a “silent crisis.” A more apt characterization is the transformation of care homes into killing fields.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson’s Tory government announced that the coronavirus death toll rose by 761 to 12,868. But again, the government did not include care home fatalities due to COVID-19, or the deaths of people who died in their own homes.

The scale of what is being covered up is beginning to emerge.

According to the government, based on Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published Tuesday, 217 people had died in care homes in England and Wales as of April 3. But these figures bear no relationship to reality.

Last week, Care England, representing the largest providers of care homes, estimated that the death toll was in the hundreds, but below 1,000. But its latest estimate, published yesterday, is that care home deaths have reached 1,400.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, at least 2,500 deaths may have occurred in care homes.

According to one estimate by Mike Padgham of the Independent Care Group, which represents care homes and home care providers, the virus may have already taken the lives of at least 4,000 residents.

Reported cases include:

• Burlington Court Care Home in Glasgow, where 16 elderly residents died in just over a week
  
• Oak Springs in Wavertree, Merseyside, where 15 are suspected to have died from COVID-19. Fifty staff members developed symptoms or were unable to work due to underlying health conditions
  
• Finborough Court, a home in Stowmarket, Suffolk, where eight died. Three of the deceased were confirmed COVID-19 victims, while the other five deaths are suspected to be connected to the virus
  
• Castle View Care Home in Dumbarton, where eight residents have died
  
• Hawthorn Green home in Stepney, east London, where seven residents have died
  
• Wren Hall Nursing Home Selston, Nottinghamshire, where 10 residents died of suspected coronavirus over the Easter weekend. Manager Anita Peet said, “We are just having deaths all the time. Are people dispensable? It feels as if people are not worth saving. But that is certainly not how we feel. It’s getting harder and harder every day. We’re fighting a losing battle.”

The government’s refusal to admit the real death toll in homes was demonstrated by Minister for Care Helen Whately, who was asked on the Good Morning Britain TV show to respond to the Independent Care Group’s estimate of at least 4,000 deaths. When she smirked, GMB host Piers Morgan asked, “Why are you laughing?”

Even an audit by the pro-Conservative Daily Mail has found “at least 951 care home deaths from officially confirmed fatalities by care home operators and local authorities or local media reports.”

This week, three of the largest care home operators in Britain revealed that there had been 620 deaths in their homes from COVID-19 in recent weeks. The firms—Four Seasons Health Care, MHA and HC-One—run almost 700 homes between them. But there are 5,500 care home providers and the three firms account for only a small fraction of homes (less than 5 percent).

A clearer picture of the real number of deaths outside hospital was provided by the National Records of Scotland on Wednesday. It announced that 962 deaths had been registered in Scotland with COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate. Of these deaths, 608 were in the past week. Most died in hospital, but the figures show that 38 percent of fatalities were outside hospital.

Some 237 deaths were in care homes (25 percent) and 128 (13 percent) in the home or outside of care. In the week from April 6 to 12, the virus was mentioned in 31 percent of all deaths registered in Scotland. According to Scottish National Party First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, 433 care homes in Scotland—40 percent of all homes—had recorded coronavirus cases.

Scotland’s population is 5.45 million. The UK’s is 66.65 million, suggesting that if the Scottish pattern was repeated, deaths outside hospitals would total from 13,000 to over 16,000.

However, a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine points to evidence from five other European countries—France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Ireland—suggesting that between 42 percent and 57 percent of all COVID-19 deaths happen in care homes.

If one assumes a figure of 50 percent of all coronavirus deaths occurring outside hospital, then the total number of deaths in the UK is around 26,000. The same pattern obtains in other countries, few of which count those who have died outside hospital.

The mass deaths in care and nursing homes is a product of the government’s original plan to allow the entire population to become infected by a virus for which there is no vaccine in order to achieve “herd immunity.” For the ruling elite, the elderly are viewed as a drain on resources and a burden on the further accumulation of personal wealth and profit—with horrifying consequences.

The pro-Tory Daily Telegraph science editor Sarah Knapton wrote what is a staggering indictment of the government on Wednesday, noting that “433,000 older and vulnerable people living in social care have been largely abandoned.”

Knapton states, “On March 3—two days before the first death was recorded in Britain, when just 51 people had tested positive for coronavirus—the Care Provider Alliance issued urgent guidance advising care homes to consider restricting all visits from relatives until the pandemic was over.

“Recognising the danger, the industry body also told homes to restrict the use of new agency staff to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus, and to isolate residents if they were suspected of having it. Yet the Government procrastinated, and it was not until 10 days later [March 13] that official guidance was issued stopping anyone who was ‘generally unwell’ from visiting residents.”

During this period, the government was formulating its herd immunity policy, which was announced on March 12. A lockdown for those over 70 and vulnerable was not imposed by the Tories until March 16, 13 days after the Care Providers Alliance warning.

The lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for residents and staff is another huge factor in the surge of deaths. To make matters worse, elderly patients were sent from hospital to care homes to free up beds, sometimes bringing the coronavirus with them.

A growing number of elderly people in homes, many of whom were rejected for hospital treatment because they were not considered “high priority,” have died alone due to restrictions under the lockdown—particularly in care homes where the virus has taken hold. Relatives have had to say final goodbyes to loved ones through windows or over the phone.

On Wednesday, the government made a show of allowing relatives to see a loved one in person. In response, MHA, a charitable provider of care homes, made clear: “There is nothing stopping relatives saying goodbye in care homes now as long as they have sufficient PPE… So this goes back to the problem of there not being sufficient PPE for the staff, never mind families.”

French President Macron announces a premature end to quarantine in the interests of the financial elite

Alex Lantier

French president Emmanuel Macron delivered a televised address on Monday night to defend his government’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic. Macron also announced an end date to the nationwide quarantine, without providing any health-based justification for doing so.

Across Europe, governments are compelling workers to return to work in the midst of an epidemic. In Spain and Austria, workers’ anger has erupted on social media in the face of return-to-work orders imposed by the trade unions, even as thousands of new coronavirus cases are reported each day. The British and Spanish governments openly declare that a majority of the population will have to catch the disease, in the hope that the survivors develop an immunity allowing them to continue to work.

Macron had already raised the need to return to the job, which would sustain the hundreds of billions of euros that the central banks and government are pouring into the financial markets. His speech Monday fell within the same basic framework. Without specifying what change in the situation would allow a safe ending of the quarantine, the president ordered a return to work, delaying it until May 11.

A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron's televised speech, Monday April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

Workers cannot trust the “president of the rich” with such a life-and-death question. A general quarantine was adopted in Europe only after a wave of strikes in Italy that spread to France, Spain, Great Britain and beyond. The question is posed of a movement of the working class to impose a rational, planned and scientific response to the pandemic on a global scale.

While an Odoxa poll indicates that 70 percent of the population do not trust the government, and that 88 percent think the quarantine should have begun earlier, Macron began his speech this week with congratulations to his own government. He praised himself for the fact that “the hospitals have been able to treat all those who were presented to them.”

In fact, the hospitals, on which Macron imposed austerity spending cuts immediately prior to the pandemic, were able to treat everyone only because they admitted a fraction of the most serious cases. Most patients were told to treat themselves at home; an unknown number of older patients died in retirement homes. The current 50 percent increase in the mortality rate among French people in their homes appears to reflect the death of non-hospitalized coronavirus patients.

The lack of masks and anti-bacterial gels in France, and of gloves and coats for nurses and healthcare workers, has worsened the pandemic that has killed 119,000 people internationally and over 15,000 in France. More than 6,000 nurses have been infected in France, while seven doctors and nine health staff have died. Hundreds of doctors have filed suit against Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and former Minister of Solidarity and Health Agnès Buzyn, which threatens the two officials with two-year prison sentences.

Macron referred in passing to these disasters before minimizing them as “misfirings.” With breathtaking indifference, the French president added: “We will draw all the necessary lessons in the appropriate time.”

The time to secure the required supplies of medical treatments and equipment is not in the vague future, but in the here and now.

Thousands of people across Europe and elsewhere are dying every day, even as Macron announced the end of the quarantine and the reopening of all schools in less than four weeks’ time, with the return of tertiary students delayed until the summer. He did not explain why elementary and secondary schools, as much key transmission mechanisms for the virus as the universities, should reopen, besides the obvious fact that this would be necessary to allow the students’ parents to get back to work and produce profits for business. Macron said that the reopening of schools would be “prepared with the social partners,” the trade unions.

Nonetheless, Macron indicated that the May 11 return was not assured, criticizing the so-called strategy of “collective immunity” advocated in Berlin and London. Instead of adopting this strategy and coldly allowing a majority of the population to become infected with the disease, Macron proposed betting on a coronavirus vaccine.

“Today, according to preliminary data that will soon be improved,” the president argued, “a very small minority of the French population has contracted COVID-19. This means that we are far from what specialists call collective immunity, the point at which the virus stops spreading of its own accord because enough of us have already contracted it. The most talented researchers in the world are working on this problem now—and France is internationally recognized in this field.”

This raises questions to which Macron gave no answer. He stated that the development of a vaccine would take “many months”—12 to 18, according to scientists. But he was silent on what should be done between May 11 and when that vaccine might be available.

Above all, Macron did not explain his attitude toward the strategy of “collective immunity.” Even assuming a mortality rate of one percent, allowing 70 percent of the population to become infected would lead to half a million deaths in France, and hundreds of millions internationally.

The fear of a social explosion in France and internationally is a decisive factor—although rarely referred to—in Macron’s policy. Terrified by two years of “yellow vest” protests and shaken by stoppages in the automotive industry and at Amazon in Europe and America, he chose for the moment not to adopt openly the same quasi-genocidal policy as elsewhere on the continent.

The risk of having to re-impose a quarantine following a renewed outbreak of the virus—a possibility that he briefly referred to—no doubt played a role. Nonetheless, there is no fundamental difference between the policy of Macron and that of Boris Johnson in Britain or Angela Merkel in Germany. All want to send workers back to work, without safe conditions, in order to boost the profits of the financial elite.

Macron hypocritically sought to soften this brutal class reality, declaring that “Our country depends entirely on men and women that our economy repays so little,” before invoking the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, “Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.” “These words,” Macron continued, “are imposed upon us today,” adding into the bargain that a portion of the debt of African countries would be cancelled.

Workers cannot have any confidence in these empty promises. Macron is discredited by years of austerity and war, in addition to his catastrophic response to the coronavirus pandemic. This crisis has demonstrated that social distinctions based on class inequality play a disastrous and even fatal role in the world today. Macron is known as a ruthless and bloody defender of the financial elite. He is now negotiating with the business federation and the unions to impose a slashing of paid leave and unpaid overtime.

The working class must decide the conditions for any end to the quarantine, in complete independence from the parties and unions that collaborate with Macron. Through the formation of independent rank-and-file workplace and neighborhood committees, workers can fight for a safe end to the quarantine, which would necessarily involve no return to work for non-essential production, safe conditions for all workers in industries that are essential to fight the virus and guaranteed protection of all—including prisoners and refugees.

These demands require a struggle for socialism and against capitalism and the European Union, for the bringing down of Macron and the establishment of a workers’ government.

Steep fall in US economy and worse is to come

Nick Beams

Data from the US Commerce Department and the Fed released yesterday show that the American economy entered a steep decline in March with still worse to come this month.

Retail sales, in seasonally-adjusted terms, fell by 8.7 percent from a month earlier, the biggest such fall since records began in 1992. Sales at clothing stores were down by more than 50 percent.

The percentage decline in spending on motor vehicles, furniture and electronics was in the double digits, the Commerce Department reported.

An empty parking lot is seen as retail stores are closed, Wednesday, April 15, 2020, in Whitestown, Indiana. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Figures released by the Fed showed that industrial production, including manufacturing, mining, oil and natural gas production, dropped by a seasonally-adjusted 5.4 percent. This was the biggest monthly decline since 1946 when US industry was switching from war production.

In an indication of the collapse of economic confidence, the National Association of Home Builders reported that its housing market index for April had fallen to 30 from 72 the previous month. A level of 50 indicates neither expansion nor contraction.

The Fed’s “beige book,” based on anecdotal evidence from businesses around the country, said US economic activity had “contracted sharply and abruptly” and companies expected conditions to worsen with further job cuts. Over the past month almost 17 million workers have registered for unemployment benefit.

Any notion there will be a rapid recovery once the immediate effects of the pandemic pass—and there is no indication of that as the US death toll continues to rise—is being dispelled.

The senior economist at Oxford Economics, Lydia Boussour, said the drop in retail sales was “just the beginning of the consumer pull-back.”

“Plummeting consumer confidence, collapsing employment, and lockdown restrictions have compounded into an extraordinary and multi-faceted shock to consumer spending and brought the economy’s main engine to a sudden halt.”

Manufacturing output fell by 6.3 percent. The largest decline was in the production of motor vehicles and parts, which fell 28 percent, while the production of business equipment dropped 8.6 percent.

Oxford Economics issued a note to clients yesterday warning that factory activity would fall even further this month. “We anticipate industrial production will shrink by nearly 15 percent from peak to trough,” it said.

In a further indication that worse is to come, the Empire State manufacturing survey, which measures business confidence in New York, fell to minus 78.2 this month. This far exceeds its previous low of minus 34.3 recorded in February 2009 in the midst of the global financial crisis.

“The message is that it will be a brutal spring quarter for the economy,” Joshua Shapiro, an economist at the consulting firm MFR, told the Financial Times .

He said while there would a bounce back when the economy reopened, “returning to the levels of activity that prevailed pre-crisis is going to take a long time, and indeed probably will be measured in years for the most affected sectors.”

Craig Johnson, the president of the retail consulting firm Customer Growth Partners, told the Wall Street Journal the March decline was “literally unprecedented.” But April would the “cruelest month” because it was only in mid-March that the closure of large retail outlets began.

The International Monetary Fund has warned in its latest economic outlook that the world is entering the most significant contraction since the Great Depression, expected to amount to at least $9 trillion over 2020 and 2021. This is equivalent to the economic output of Germany and Japan combined. It has forecast that the US economy will shrink by 5.9 percent this year.

One of the clearest expressions of the crash now underway in the global economy is the crisis in the oil industry. Despite an agreement earlier this week by major oil producers to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day, its price has continued to fall.

The executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol, said: “The oil industry is experiencing a shock like no other its history.”

With oil prices now down to as low as $20 a barrel, many firms are facing bankruptcy, particularly in the US.

Whiting Petroleum filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of the month. Many of the US shale-oil producers that sprung up in the last decade, as oil prices rose, are certain to follow.

Rystad Energy has said that at $30 a barrel more than 70 US oil and gas producers would have problems meeting interest payments on their debts this year. At $20 a barrel for crude this would rise to about 140 companies.

In its monthly oil report, the IEA said demand in April would drop by 29 million barrels a day, equivalent to 29 percent of global oil consumption in 2019.

It said the global economy was “under pressure in ways not seen since the Great Depression” as businesses failed and unemployment rose, with activity in the transport sector falling “dramatically almost everywhere.”

One oil trader told the Wall Street Journal that if you bought a cargo today “you are not sure you will ever find a buyer for it because everyone has too much oil.” He expected that in a couple of weeks oil markets would become “dysfunctional.”

But amid the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the misery for billions of workers around the world, there is money to be made… big money.

Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported on a London investment fund that had made a total of $2.6 billion in trades during March. More than $800 million came from trades in derivatives based on market volatility with a further $1.8 billion resulting from trades in share market, gold and credit derivatives.

The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has increased his wealth by $24 billion this year, taking his total fortune to more than $138.5 billion.

His former wife MacKenzie Bezos, who was left with a 4 percent share in Amazon as a result of her divorce settlement, has seen her net worth climb by $8.2 billion this year to $45.3 billion.

As a result of the increase in online shopping, shares in Amazon have been rising and jumped by 5.3 percent on Tuesday.

Bloomberg reported that while the wealth of the world’s 500 richest people in its Billionaires Index had taken an initial hit, it had surged by 20 percent since March 23.

The official mantra is “we’re all in this together.” But as one financial analyst told the news agency, the wealth gap “is only going to get wider with what’s going on now.”

Outrage grows as Amazon workers die for Bezos’ profits

Nick Barrickman

Amazon workers across the United States are outraged at news that an Amazon employee working in Hawthorne, California died last month from COVID-19 and that workers only now were being informed of it.

The lives of Amazon, United Parcel Service, United States Postal Service, FedEx and other essential logistics workers are being sacrificed for corporate profit. Nothing demonstrates this more than the news that the personal fortune of Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos grew by $24 billion during the first three months of 2020, primarily due to the rush of business the company saw as millions were forced to shelter in place as a pandemic swept the planet.

“This is not surprising, he is capitalizing off of this crisis, INSANE!!,” wrote an Amazon worker to the International Amazon Workers Voice. “To add to this, we are ‘essential’ and that means we are less like trash [to the company]. [Bezos] should be arrested along with his cronies for conspiracy to commit murder... CRIMINAL!!”

The news of Bezos profiting while workers die exposes the lie in his open letter last month when the multi-billionaire boss told his poorly paid workers, “We are in this together.”

“I heard about [the death] but didn’t realize that this had happened so many weeks ago,” said an Amazon worker in Baltimore’s BWI-2 facility. “This corporation benefits its stockholders. It’s not designed for safety. It’s all about product, product, product! Numbers, numbers, numbers!

“The company is adding a third and fourth tier [to its employee pay scale],” the worker added, saying this was a “carrot” to entice workers to believe “it’s not so bad, I’m sweating blood, sweat and tears but it’s alright.”

“Production costs and operation costs do not equal the cost of a human life,” they concluded.

The company informed its BWI-2 employees on Wednesday of a COVID-19 case at the facility. Speaking of previous incidents, the worker said, “About two weeks ago, I came in to work and there was a news crew reporting on site about a suspected case at the facility. Management told us it was a mistake.” A few days later, however, the company admitted that a case had occurred and that workers would be fired for speaking to the press about it.

The company was fearful of more rank-and-file opposition forming at its facilities, because “at this point, the protests on Staten Island were going on,” the worker noted. In New York, these protests against unsafe job conditions resulted in the victimization of Chris Smalls who led a walkout.

Last month, the Amazon CEO caught public backlash after news coverage revealed that the company had set up a coronavirus relief fund for its employees. Bezos, with personal wealth now of $138 billion, donated $25 million, asking the public to donate the rest to meet the healthcare needs of the company’s nearly 800,000 employees.

“How is your company worth over a TRILLION dollars and you want the public to donate to an employee relief fund?! As if Amazon can’t pay their employees themselves,” wrote one poster on Twitter in response to Amazon’s request that the public “make a voluntary donation to the fund.”

Another worker at the CLT4 facility in South Carolina told the International Amazon Workers Voice that three workers tested positive there. Despite that, the worker said, the distribution plant was staying open. Summing up the position of the company, the worker told IAWV that management said, “We know we know we have folks that have tested positive [for the coronavirus] here, but we have asked them and those they worked closely with to stay home. The temperature checks and masks we hand out upon entrance to the facility ensure we’re doing everything to keep our workers safe during this time,” she reported.

Another worker, speaking under the condition of anonymity, explained the miserable state of safety protocols at their facility. “At my location, they have temperature checks, they’ve ended the staff meetings and now they allow cell phones” so workers can check up on their family members and respond to emergencies. “But hand sanitizer, which is difficult to find in large buildings, is just for show. The self-serve dispensers they set up ran out in one day and haven’t been refilled since.”

As for hand washing, “in my building, which has four floors, you have a full-service bathroom on only two of them, while the other two floors have portable hand washing stations set up in different corners.” All of this might sound very convenient and efficient, she said, but there is a catch, “The portable stations have soap and hand towels, but no water.”

“I’ve seen people using their own bottled water to rinse themselves off. Some people bring their soapy hands over to the [drinking] water area, and wash their hands there, with the soap and germs splashing the area” where workers fill up their drinking cups.

In addition to the hand-rinsing going on at drinking fountains, the worker said there was no such thing as social distancing at the two-person portable sinks. “Amazon tells us they’ll fire us if we break social distancing. They break it all the time. We’ve lost some soldiers due to this,” they said.

Last week, CNBC reported that Amazon was informing its employees that if they broke “social distancing rules, they could face disciplinary action,” including termination.

“I spoke Human Resources today and there are no protocols in place for the ‘social distancing patrols’” Amazon now uses to keep workers from congregating too close. “They’re picking and choosing who to write up [so they can] kick out people that rock the boat. They’re now working with their legal department to get something on paper,” because the company is firing people due to infractions, the worker said.

Another worker from Baltimore told the IAWV that they see management “breaking social distancing all the time. The only time it is really enforced is when you are walking through the main area” of the building lobby. “In back, it’s not being enforced,” they said.

“We have a system where workers are being relied on to push out goods to the American people, yet these same workers are risking their lives to do this work with minimal hazard pay, minimum [personal protective gear], etc.” another worker from New Jersey told the IAWV. “Most of [us] have little choice to go in or not because Amazon will not pay for time off unless you are sick with the virus. If that happens you will not have enough money to deal with the costs that come with this virus.”

“This while Bezos, who continues to be praised for donating an extremely small percentage of his wealth to charities helping with this pandemic. He is making record profits, along with his shareholders. Systemic change is required to change the system to benefit workers and not punish them,” the worker concluded.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos cashes in on coronavirus pandemic, adding $24 billion to his fortune

Jacob Crosse

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent millions of workers and their families, already scraping to survive, into a financial tailspin from which many will never recover. However, for the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, the pandemic has been a financial bonanza, sending Amazon shares, and Bezos’ personal net worth, soaring.

At the close of the trading day on the stock market Wednesday, shares of the online retail giant were trading at $2,307, up from a year-to-date low of $1,676 on March 12, just over a month ago.

While Amazon workers are risking their lives in contaminated factories and protesting against the lack of basic safety equipment (at least 74 Amazon facilities have reported workers infected with the virus), and workers are being fired for speaking out, the market value of Amazon has climbed above $1.1 trillion, slightly below the $1.22 trillion 2019 gross domestic product of Mexico.

Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)

For Bezos, this translates into a year-to-date jump of $23.6 billion in his personal net wealth, bringing his fortune to more than $138.5 billion. His ex-wife MacKenzie, with her 4 percent stake in the company, has seen her net worth more than quintuple, from $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion according to Bloomberg.

Bezos is not an aberration. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has added over $10 billion to his personal fortune in the first four months of the year, while Alice, Jim and Rob Walton, owners of mega-retailer Walmart, have profited fabulously from the pandemic, increasing their personal wealth by $2.9 billion, $2.36 billion and $2.42 billion respectively, without stocking a single shelf or retrieving a cart.

The American financial aristocracy is gorging itself in the midst of scenes of mile-long food lines and mass graves. With the passage of Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar corporate bailout last month, which had the virtually unanimous support of Democratic lawmakers, airline industry executives and private equity, hedge fund and real estate investors (such as Donald Trump) are receiving billions of dollars worth of tax breaks, grants and low-interest loans, at taxpayer expense.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC) of the US Congress issued a report this week revealing that tax provisions were included in the corporate bailout legislation (the CARES Act) allowing millionaires and billionaires who own so-called pass-through companies, including hedge funds and real estate investment firms, to offset losses not just from 2020, but from 2019 and 2018 as well. The owners of pass through companies pay income taxes at the individual rather than the corporate tax rate.

The JTC estimated that the total cost in public funds for this boondoggle for the very wealthy will be $170 billion this year. It said that 82 percent of the tax benefit will go to roughly 43,000 taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. Only three percent will go to taxpayers who earn less than $100,000.

The $170 billion price tag for this handout to the super-rich compares to a measly $100 billion allocated in the legislation for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments. Many hospitals are being financially devastated by the impact of the pandemic and an estimated 2,100 cities across the country are facing huge budget deficits due to lost revenues. The result will be a new wave of hospital closures, layoffs and wage cuts, along with brutal cuts in social services and public employee jobs by state and local governments.

The JTC concluded that the average millionaire filer will receive $1.6 million in tax relief this year alone. The Trump Organization includes hundreds of pass-through entities, as do the businesses controlled by Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, allowing the president and his brood to take in millions of dollars by writing off risky investments from up to two years ago.

What these gifts to the oligarchy have to do with the coronavirus pandemic is a mystery no politician or media pundit has sought to explain.

On Tuesday, the government announced it had reached an agreement with the major airlines under which they will receive $25 billion in grants, again at taxpayer expense. The companies will have to pay back only 30 percent of the money. An additional $25 billion in low-cost loans will be provided to the airlines under a separate program. This looting of the US Treasury for the benefit of airline executives and major investors is being cynically presented as a defense of airline employees.

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, hailed the bailout. He said, “Even though the process was neither easy nor perfect, it is critically important that in the end there are agreements in place that put workers and families first by keeping hundreds of thousands of airline employees … on the payroll during this extremely tumultuous period for the US economy.”

This is a lie. None of the money in the $50 billion bailout of the airlines will go to the workers. It will be used by the airlines to buy time while they prepare a brutal restructuring of their operations to slash jobs, wages and pensions. Already tens of thousands of airline workers have been furloughed, and the bailout deal allows the airlines to consolidate routes.

The only restrictions on the companies that receive the handouts—at this point a total of 10, including the four giants, American, Delta, United and Southwest—is that they put off layoffs until the end of September and refrain from paying out dividends or buying back their own stock until the end of 2021. But even these minor restraints can be waived by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a multi-millionaire former investment banker.

DeFazio went on to say, “I strongly believe what Congress laid out in this provision of the CARES Act—to put workers first—should be the model for any industry-specific relief going forward.” This is nothing less than a call for the bailout of more industries.

The airline bailout was strongly promoted by the airline unions, working in lockstep with the companies. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, attacked the agreement between the Trump administration and the airlines from the right, denouncing the requirement that the companies pay back 30 percent of the handouts.

Between 2014 and 2019, the four largest US airlines—United, American, Southwest and Delta—spent a combined $45 billion buying back their own stock in order to drive up the share price and enrich the top executives and major investors.

Coronavirus toll reaches two million worldwide, nearly 30,000 US dead

Benjamin Mateus & Patrick Martin

The number of people on the planet infected with COVID-19 passed the two million mark on Wednesday, with the pandemic killing nearly 8,000 people in a single day. Half of those were in Europe, still the hardest-hit continent, while the largest single-country death toll was in the United States, some 2,482 people.

Nearly 5,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last two days, but neither the American government nor the corporate media seem to care. At the White House coronavirus press briefing Wednesday, Trump vented his grievances against his political rivals and threatened to shut down Congress, while offering nothing to halt the spread of the infection or save the lives of tens of thousands now under threat.

American network television broadcasts barely even took note of the record death toll on Tuesday, and they said even less when this figure in turn was exceeded on Wednesday. Instead, they reported on the mounting demands (from big business and the ultra-right) to reopen the economy and force workers back to their jobs regardless of the dangers to their health and lives. Meanwhile, the military continues to build field hospitals—not for today’s patients, but to house the far greater numbers still to come.

Hardware store in the Benito Juarez district of Mexico City, Wednesday, April 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

COVID-19 is a global crisis, and the death tolls on a per capita basis are even higher in Italy, Spain, France and Britain than they are in the United States.

On Wednesday the pandemic killed 1,438 people in France, 761 in Britain, 578 in Italy and 557 in Spain, bringing the cumulative death toll in these four countries to 70,492, according to figures posted on WorldoMeter. Britain will reach 100,000 coronavirus cases today, joining France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

One of the hardest-hit countries, in terms of deaths per million people, is Belgium, which has suffered 4,440 deaths, far more than China, which has 100 times as many people. Germany too, portrayed as a comparative “success” in Europe, has lost more of its citizens than China, where the coronavirus first made its appearance last December.

While presently the US accounts for 30 percent of coronavirus cases and Europe for about 50 percent, there is a surge in cases in Brazil, India, Egypt, Indonesia and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These figures only give a glimpse of the potential impact of this 21st century plague when it reaches the poorest countries, with the weakest public health and sanitation systems. The response of the Trump administration, however, is to turn its back on the majority of humanity by halting its funding contribution to the World Health Organization.

Contrary to the predictions of a decline at White House press briefings and official models, the number of new cases continues to rise, and the number of deaths per day in the United States has doubled in only nine days.

At this terrible milestone of two million human beings infected, it is worth reviewing the speed with which the pandemic has spread, and the complete incapacity of capitalist governments in both Europe and the United States, the richest and most technologically advanced societies on the planet, to do anything effective to halt it.

On January 22, WorldoMeter began keeping count of the numbers of cases in the outbreak that had its epicenter in Wuhan. On that day, 580 people harbored the coronavirus virus. Initially dubbed 2019-nCoV, the virus was officially given the name SARS-CoV-2 and the disease associated with it became COVID-19 (Corona Virus 2019).

On January 24, the day Chinese authorities implemented a massive lockdown of Wuhan city and Hubei province, an unprecedented quarantine of a massive geographic area impacting nearly 60 million people, the official count stood at just over one thousand. By this time, the genetic code for the virus had been shared with the world, and a test that could detect the virus had been provided to all countries by the WHO. Six days later, the WHO issued an official notice of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

At the end of January, the number of cases had jumped to over 10,000 with several nations having confirmed imported cases, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, United Arab Emirates, India, Russia, Spain and the United States.

At an international level, scientists, epidemiologists and virologists were engaged in elucidating the nature of this SARS-like coronavirus. Several publications describing clinical experiences with the infection were made available free in online journals.

In practice, there was initially a wide range of national experiences with the virus. The massive lockdown in China, combined with the mobilization of the country’s health care personnel and economic resources—two hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19 were constructed in a matter of days—ultimately seemed to have an impact. The number of cases in Wuhan and Hubei province stabilized, and other parts of China were not greatly affected.

By mid-February, however, reports from Iran suggested the outbreak there had grown out of control. US sanctions thwarted efforts to direct assistance by various governments and international aid groups. In the same period, a cluster of infections associated with a religious sect in South Korea saw a rapid escalation of community transmission leading to an essential lockdown of the city of Daegu. Massive testing and contact tracing were initiated that helped drastically curb the spread.

In March, however, the virus exploded across Europe and the United States. On March 6, the global count surpassed 100,000. On March 9, Italy’s lockdown was extended to the whole nation as the number of cases rapidly escalated, followed by a huge number of deaths of Italian physicians and health care workers. The videos of coffins by the truckload being transported in the dark hours of the night had a profound effect on the consciousness of the world.

The first few cases in the United States, on the west coast, led to the first death near Seattle, Washington, and a cluster of infections at a Seattle-area nursing home. The Trump administration established its coronavirus task force, with Vice President Mike Pence named its head and Dr. Deborah Birx the response coordinator. At this point, the CDC had only performed a few thousand tests, and the White House continued to exude complacency and indifference—Trump was only energized when reports on the epidemic led to a sharp fall in the financial markets.

On March 11, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom formally designated the coronavirus as a pandemic, declaring at a press conference, “In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives.”

On March 13, with total cases in the US at over 2,000, Trump declared a national emergency which granted access to $50 billion in funding for US states and territories. State after state began “shelter in place” policies, first closing schools, then most businesses. Though Trump promised testing capacity would increase, he told those without symptoms, “It’s totally unnecessary. This will pass.”

Only on March 17, during a news conference exactly one month ago today, did Trump finally ask “everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.”

A week later, as the number of cases approached 100,000 in the US, with New York City at the epicenter of the pandemic, came Trump’s infamous statement complaining that the financial cost was more important than stemming the rising death toll. “The cure can’t be worse than the problem itself,” he tweeted.

On April 2, the world passed the threshold of one million cases. The number of deaths had exceeded 50,000 people. Two weeks further on into this global crisis, and both figures have more than doubled.

Throughout this process, while doctors, nurses and other health care workers have labored heroically, through great difficulties and at great risk to their own survival, to save lives, the capitalist governments of Europe and America have been preoccupied with a different problem: how to preserve and even increase the accumulated wealth of the capitalist ruling class, at the expense of the working class, no matter how high the death toll rises.

Future Leaders – African Independent Researchers (FLAIR) Fellowships 2020 for African Researchers

Application Deadline: 27th May 2020 3pm UK time.

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: Each FLAIR Fellowship will be for two years initially and will offer up to £150,000 per year, alongside a programme of support to develop fellows as independent research leaders including training and mentoring, and opportunities to network both regionally and with the UK and to develop international collaborations.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Field of Research: Applications should be within the remit of natural sciences. This includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, agricultural, biological and medical research (excluding clinical and patient-orientated research), and the scientific aspects of archaeology, geography and experimental psychology but excluding economics, social science and humanities research.

Eligibility: You can apply for this scheme if you:

• Are a national of a sub-Saharan African country;
• Hold a PhD by the time you apply;
• Are an early career researcher with a minimum of two years of research experience since completing your PhD and no more than eight years of post-doctoral research experience;
• Wish to hold the fellowship in a research institution in an Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligible sub-Saharan African country;
• Have a clearly defined scientific research proposal focusing on one or more of the Global Challenge areas outlined in the scheme notes.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This scheme provides an award of up to £150,000 per year for two years in the first instance, covering:

• Research Fellow’s salary, up to £45,000 per year.
• Research expenses
  – Research assistance
  – Equipment costs
  – Travel expenses
  – Research consumables
• Institutional overhead, up to £15,000 per year

The scheme also provides a programme of support and development, including:

• Mentoring
• Training courses
• Opportunities for international collaboration
• Networking opportunities regionally and internationally

Duration of Programme: Each FLAIR Fellowship will be for two years initially. Holders may have the opportunity to apply for a renewal for an additional three years.

How to Apply: 

• Applications should be made through the Royal Society’s grant management system Flexi-Grant®.
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details