Germany: Schools and child daycare centres open despite the high risk of infection

Marianne Arens

Most schools and child daycare centres in Germany will resume normal operations in the course of this month. Existing distancing rules, wearing of masks, tests and corona protective measures will no longer apply. Full school openings in all of Germany’s federal states are due to resume without restrictions after the summer holidays at the latest.

This unacknowledged policy of “herd immunity” at the expense of children, education assistants and teachers is playing with fire. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), over 2,500 employees in daycare centres and schools had been infected with COVID-19 by June 9, and seven died—despite the fact that schools were closed shortly after the pandemic broke out. Now the question is posed: what will happen when all schools reopen without any restrictions!

The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site call upon teachers to establish action committees that operate independently of the trade unions in order to protect themselves and their pupils. Similar initiatives have been launched in the UK, Australia and the United States.

School and child daycare workers cannot place any confidence in the German public service workers union, Verdi, or the GEW teacher’s trade union. It is no accident that these unions have been silent during the pandemic. The explanation rests with the parties they support—the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party are ruthlessly enforcing the opening up of schools in those states where they hold power.

The prime mover is the state of Thuringia headed by premier Bodo Ramelow (Left Party). From June 15, kindergartens and schools are to open in the state on a daily basis for all children. All existing contact restrictions no longer apply and are replaced by “recommendations.” A recent report from Thuringia notes that a child daycare teacher in Steinbach-Hallenberg has just been tested positive for COVID-19; nine colleagues and eleven children have been identified as contact persons.

In Thuringia and the CDU-ruled state of Saxony, cinemas, indoor swimming pools, gyms and saunas have been reopened along with schools and daycare centres. This is despite the fact that the coronavirus spreads widely through the air leading to a high risk of infection in closed, shared rooms.

Even teachers and care workers categorised as belonging to high-risk groups are increasingly being brought back to work despite contact with increasing numbers of children—although the respected RKI institute continues to classify the risk of infection for children as “very high.”

“What is happening here is a human experiment,” commented one Twitter user named “Paro” on June 8. “In fact, it’s a criminal procedure. Because school is not voluntary! Students (+ parents + teachers) are being forced to participate in this experiment! Although the dangers to health / life are well known.”

The Social Democrat-Left Party-Green coalition administration in the city-state of Berlin resumed school openings on May 11 and has gradually expanded school attendance. Normal schooling is planned after the summer vacation, i.e., from August 10.

Five coronavirus infections have already been detected on June 8 at a primary school in Berlin-Spandau. Sixteen people were then tested positive the next day. Fifty children and nine teachers have been quarantined, but face-to-face classes are expected to continue. In the meantime, the Berlin district of Neukölln has reported two primary school children with the virus and shortly afterwards nine infected persons.

In addition, due to a lack of medical personnel, thousands of small children attending school for the first time in Berlin will not receive the usual mandatory medical check-up before schools open up in August.

Four out of five teachers are teaching without the most elementary COVID-19 protection, according to a nationwide survey by the education association VBE. Its director Udo Beckmann commented: “Instead of creating an appropriate work environment with enough time for education and training, teachers are being given a bucket to do the cleaning.”

From a thousand teachers surveyed, 29 percent reported that their school had little or no cleaning agents, gloves and disinfectants, and that they had to assist with cleaning. Sixty percent said that the burden is now higher compared to regular school operation.

The treatment of teaching staff in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is particularly cynical. Here, the state government sent kits to 10,000 facilities at the start of daycare centre opening on June 8. Teachers are expected to assemble the masks themselves. Teachers’ comments on the measure on the internet included “incredible,” “disrespectful,” and “really shameful.”

Many teachers tweeted they have “a bad feeling” when they contemplate the complete opening of schools. But “I don’t think anyone cares,” said one of those affected. “It’s just a matter of getting as many parents back to work as possible. Money is the reason why everything should work as it did at the start of the year. Fuck the teachers and education staff.”

Another replies: “Donald-the elephant-Trump trumpets on Twitter: NASDAQ alltime high! And so is it. It doesn’t matter whether a few hundred thousand more people are killed. The main thing is that the economy is up and running.”

Many point out that “parents and children were neither listened to or asked about the schools.” One devoted teacher writes she gets “headache, panic and feels the need to hit her head against the wall.”

New infections are being recorded almost on a daily basis and alarming reports are piling up especially in NRW. A complete day care group (16 children and four teachers) were sent into quarantine June 8 in the city of Bochum after a corona case had been confirmed.

In Wattenscheid, two students also tested positive for COVID-19. A study group consisting of eight students is also in quarantine, but school operations continue. In Ahlen (Münsterland), a primary school child who could have infected an entire school group was reported ill on June 9.

In Hesse, which is governed by a coalition of the Greens and the CDU, the state government wants to send all students back to school before the holidays. The plan is to “check how infection numbers develop in the six weeks of vacation,” said the Hessian Minister of Culture Alexander Lorz (CDU). Regarding the proposal by the virologist Hendrik Streeck to specifically allow more infections, Lorz told the Frankfurter Rundschau: “I find the idea very exciting and am currently thinking about it.”

Very many politicians are putting pressure on teachers and educators to forego distancing restrictions and masks. This was also expressly requested on Tuesday by the chairperson of the Conference of Education Ministers (KMK), Stefanie Hubig (SPD), a lawyer and former head of department in the Justice Ministry headed by Heiko Maas.

In an interview for Radio-Berlin Brandenburg, Hubig emphasised that it is now “important to depart from the distancing rule so we can teach in normal class groups again.” This is what “experts” had advised her to do. She also ruled out “unnecessary, across the board tests, so to speak,” and masks were only an option for older adolescents.

The KMK chair based her proposals on purely economic arguments. The distancing rule means “we can actually only send half a class, sometimes only a third of a class at a time to school while having a teacher to teach them. Then of course rooms and people become scarce.”

Numerous coronavirus cases have occurred at schools in Rhineland-Palatinate, the state in which Stefanie Hubig currently heads the Education Ministry. By June 9 suspected cases of infection were registered at a total of 21 schools. There are currently 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases in eight schools in Trier; many others have been registered in Ludwigshafen and in the region of Rhein-Pfalz.

The same politicians who pump hundreds of billions of euros of so-called “Corona aid” into the vaults of the big banks and leading companies see no need to equip schools with the measures needed to combat the coronavirus, a massive increase in teaching staff and investing in better, healthier schools to protect teachers, educators and children.

All of the propaganda that children are basically immune to the virus has long been refuted by scientific studies. The Charité virologist Christian Drosten, who has been vilely slandered by the Bild tabloid and other right-wing agitators, stands by the results of his research: children carry an equally high viral load as adults and are therefore both contagious and endangered. The researchers concluded for schools and daycare centres: “The unrestricted opening of these facilities should be carefully monitored with the help of preventive diagnostic tests.”

This, however, is what is particularly lacking. The VBE survey mentioned earlier in this article notes that 74 percent of respondents said they would welcome voluntary tests. Very often, those with cold symptoms are not even tested. Only one in three teachers confirmed that persons with a fever and coughing symptoms in their facility were actually tested for the coronavirus, while 40 percent said methods of treatment varied depending upon the attending physician. This bears no relation to the proposals made by WHO and Drosten for non-symptomatic, comprehensive and regularly repeated tests.

This means that a new wave of the corona pandemic is practically inevitable. In Israel, school openings led to a new flare-up of the virus in just three weeks. In a short period of time over 300 new COVID-19 cases were recorded. The Israeli government responded by closing all schools.

In Germany, kindergarten teachers, teaching staff and pupils are undergoing a crucial experience. This cannot be separated from the global protests following the police murder of George Floyd. They are learning first-hand that all politicians—including those from the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party—are more committed to the profit system than to people’s lives. Like thousands of workers in the auto industry, at Amazon or in the meat industry, teachers and educators are being forced into “normal operations,” which were anything but normal even before the corona pandemic.

As far as schools are concerned, the KMK chairwoman Stefanie Hubig also recommended that the shortage of teachers be compensated by substitute teachers and those with no training as teachers. This makes clear that German politicians are determined to return to the status quo, characterised by overly large classes, neglected schools and a shortage of teachers. These conditions have led to massive social inequality. The pandemic is now turning the already existing crisis into a catastrophe.

With its hospitals overwhelmed, Delhi emerging as India’s coronavirus epicentre

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Hospitals in Delhi, India’s national capital territory, are on the verge of collapse amid a rapid increase in coronavirus infections. With the regional government expecting total infections to explode to over half a million by the end of July, horror stories of dead bodies being abandoned in hospital wards and hallways are already emerging.

Total COVID-19 infections in Delhi reached 41,182 yesterday, after a third successive day of more than 2,000 cases, while the death toll rose to 1,327.

Both figures are likely gross underestimates. Three municipal corporations of Delhi, which maintain the records on cremations and burials at the six designated sites for COVID-19-related deaths, have said that as of June 11 last rites on 2,098 bodies had been performed as per the COVID-19 protocol.

As hospitals fill to capacity, the government is desperately seeking makeshift solutions to cope with the coming wave of COVID-19 patients. Stadiums, wedding halls and hotels are being filled with hospital beds. But it remains entirely unclear where the medical staff will come from to work in these facilities, nor how they will be equipped to provide intensive care and incubate patients. Ambarish Satwik, a vascular surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, pointed to the chronic shortage of medical workers, telling the BBC, “You need new infrastructure, you need to ramp up capacity, not just evacuate patients and create COVID wards.”

With a population of 22 million people, Delhi is India’s largest urban agglomeration and capital city. Many people in adjacent rural states, like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, visit Delhi for medical treatment due to the disastrous state of medical facilities in their native states. However, on June 7, as Delhi’s caseload began to rapidly increase and repeated stories of people dying of COVID-19 after being unable to gain admittance to a hospital emerged, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP—Common Man's Party) announced a ban on non-Delhi residents being admitted to the Capital Territories’ public and private hospitals.

After a public outcry against this reactionary order, Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, an appointee of India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, reversed it, saying authorities must ensure non-Delhi residents can still access treatment.

But the AAP continues to defend its exclusivist proposal. On June 9, state deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia cited as justification unreleased government projections that he said showed that COVID-19 cases in Delhi are likely to reach 550,000 by the end of July, meaning the state will need at least 15,000 beds to tackle the situation.

If this projection is realized, Delhi will see a 13-fold increase in COVID-19 cases over the coming six weeks, and by the end of next month will have more infections than currently does India or indeed all but two countries in the world.

Kejriwal has made clear that even with the prospect of Delhi potentially becoming the world epicentre of the pandemic and the threat of tens of thousands of deaths, nothing will be done to slow the spread of the virus. “Many people are speculating whether another lockdown in Delhi is being planned,” he tweeted Monday. “There are no such plans.”

After an all-party meeting Monday, convened by Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man, authorities pledged they will increase testing capacity in Delhi to 18,000 tests per day over the next five days.

For weeks, authorities in Delhi had stubbornly refused to ratchet up testing, even as the ratio of positive tests rose to over 30 percent of all tests carried out on several days. Last week, Delhi was performing 4,000-5,000 tests per day and refusing tests to people who were asymptomatic, rendering any serious contact-tracing effort impossible.

This is part of an all-India problem. According to India Spend, as of 9 AM June 12, India had tested 5.4 million people, 0.4 percent of its total 1.3 billion population. “This is the lowest testing per capita among the worst (COVID-19) affected countries, as per Our World in Data,” the web portal notes.

Home Minister Shah has also promised to provide 500 railway coaches equipped with “all facilities” to “overcome the shortage of beds” for COVID-19 patients in Delhi.

Last Friday, India's Supreme Court termed the situation in Delhi “horrific,” and said the treatment provided COVID-19 patients was “worse than (that given to) animals.” Taking suo moto notice of the reports of “mishandling” of COVID-19-infected corpses, India's highest court also stated, “Please see the deplorable conditions of people in hospitals; dead bodies are lying in the ward, dead bodies are found in the garbage.”

The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, S.K. Kaul and M.R. Shah issued notice to the state governments of Delhi, Maharashtra—the country's worst affected state—West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu over their “management” of the COVID-19 situation.

Writing on the Supreme Court's hearing, Bar and Bench, India's legal news website, noted that the court referred to an India TV news report aired on June 10 documenting the deplorable state of hospital wards in Delhi. “Dead bodies were found in the ward, lobby and waiting area, patients had no oxygen support, and no saline drips were shown with the bed,” the TV report observed. The particular hospital referred to is the Delhi government-run 2,000-bed Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) hospital, which was turned into a COVID-19 hospital by the government.

These outrageous conditions are the product of the authorities’ utter failure to provide basic equipment and supplies to overstretched and overworked medical staff. The Times of India quoted one doctor at LNJP as saying, “We don't have enough orderlies … in the absence of attendants, these orderlies have to take the patients to the washroom, shift them and sometimes even give them medicines while they are wearing PPE suits.” The doctor also said that six to eight people are dying every day at the hospital.

In many hospital wards, oxygen support is provided by cylinders. Explaining the risk involved in this process, another doctor said, “In case of cylinders, it is difficult to control the oxygen flow. Also, if a cylinder is exhausted, replacing it takes time because currently there is a manpower shortage and the orderlies who have to get them take time to (get in and out of) their PPE.”

Many medical workers, including doctors, have not received their wages for the past three months. NewsClick reported on Saturday that resident doctors at two municipal hospitals, Delhi- Kasturba Hospital and Hindu Rao Hospital, threatened last Friday to resort to mass resignations if their pending salaries are not released within a week.

Health care staff at the All India Institute of Medical Science started a series of protests and agitations beginning June 1 for a number of demands. These include the implementation of uniform four-hour duty with PPE in COVID areas, a uniform rotation policy between COVID and non-COVID areas, and the establishment of a proper feedback system for health care workers.

In the midst of this horrific crisis, the BJP central government, which controls the Delhi police, is mounting a legal vendetta against students who played a prominent role in mass protests against Modi’s anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act after its adoption last December. Several have been arrested, jailed and charged under India’s draconian anti-terrorism laws, threatening them with lengthy prison terms and ensnaring them in a legal process in which key judicial protections are set aside.

The terrible situation developing in Delhi highlights the utter failure of both the state and central governments in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Without any warning or preparation, the Modi government imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 25, ultimately extended till May 3l, that has had a calamitous economic impact on working people. At the same time, as underscored by the rapid spread of COVID-19 cases—India now has more than 330,000 confirmed cases and 9,500 deaths—it did little to dent the pandemic’s spread. This is because the government failed to organize mass testing and contact tracing and to invest massive resources in India’s ramshackle health care system.

Delhi’s ruling AAP, despite its initial populist pretentions to be a party of a “new type,” is a right-wing capitalist party that has increasingly adapted to the BJP and its Hindu supremacist agenda. Formed in 2013 by leaders of Delhi's 2011-12 anticorruption protests, it first came to power following the 2013 Legislative Assembly elections with the backing of the Congress.

Thanks to the pro-business policies of the BJP, Congress, and the AAP, Delhi, according to the ninth edition of the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, is home to 30 of India's 137 dollar billionaires. The collective wealth of these individuals is around US$76 billion. Needless to say, neither the BJP national government nor the AAP Delhi government has any intention of using any of these vast resources to tackle the desperate health care and social crisis triggered by the pandemic.

Supreme Court rules that employers cannot fire workers because of sexual orientation or self-identity

John Burton

The US Supreme Court ruled 6–3 yesterday that Title VII of the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Act prohibits employers, both governments and private businesses, from terminating workers because of sexual orientation or gender self-identification.

The ruling, long sought by advocates for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers, was opposed by the Trump administration, which seeks to mobilize its neo-fascistic base through appeals to homophobia and religious backwardness. Of the estimated eight million LGBT workers in the United States, the ruling will directly affect the substantial number employed in states that are presently without laws prohibiting LGBT discrimination.

In another action announced Monday morning, the Supreme Court denied multiple petitions for review of “qualified immunity,” a judicially invented doctrine that in many egregious cases prevents police officers from being sued for excessive force and other misconduct. Because the petitions were pending for several months, many observers expected one or more to be granted. Instead the Supreme Court denied them all.

Until recently an esoteric legal issue, qualified immunity has catapulted into public consciousness following the George Floyd murder. For the last several years, as Supreme Court and lower court decisions have become more outrageous in their protection of police abuse, qualified immunity has come under relentless criticism. Recently, federal legislation has been introduced to limit or eliminate the defense altogether, but the proposed bill faces an uncertain future.

The Supreme Court also elected to deny several petitions that sought review of various lower court rulings concerning local ordinances regulating the possession, carrying and display of firearms. Trump and his ultra-right supporters were seeking rulings that expanded the Second Amendment, but the court majority declined to weigh in.

Finally, in a direct rebuke to the Trump administration, the Supreme Court denied a review of a lower court ruling that upheld provisions of a California “sanctuary” law that limits local and state law enforcement collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.

Probably the biggest surprise for most court observers was the identity of the associate justice who wrote the opinion in favor of LGBT rights, Bostock v. Clayton County. Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, held that “an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” referring to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the four so-called liberal associate justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote an angry, petulant, and almost interminable 54-page dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas, to which Alito attached another 50-plus pages of appendices. Brett Kavanaugh dissented separately, striking a more conciliatory tone. The 172 total pages that comprised the ruling made it so bulky that downloads following the 10:00 a.m. announcement temporarily froze the Supreme Court website, and no hard copies were available for the first round of commentary because of COVID-19 measures.

Gorsuch’s written opinion affirmed that Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination “because of ... race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” embraces claims rooted in sexual orientation and gender self-identification. Yet Gorsuch had virtually nothing to say in defense of the democratic right under attack. There is no reference in his opinion to the democratic rights of workers to socialize outside of the workplace with whomever they choose, free from economic coercion by reactionary cretins and religious zealots who seek to impose backward and outdated concepts of “morality.”

The last time the Supreme Court ruled on LGBT rights was five years ago, when conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, the “swing” vote before his retirement in 2018, established the right to same-sex marriage. Kennedy analyzed the institution of marriage within its historical development, describing the new rule as essential to “correct inequalities” that had accumulated over decades, and in ringing terms explain why such a ruling was necessary to vindicate “precepts of liberty and equality under the Constitution.”

Gorsuch on the other hand, authored a poorly reasoned opinion based solely on what the justice discerned to be “the ordinary public meaning” of the words “because of ... sex,” relying on the “originalist” or “textualist” approach of Antonin Scalia, the ultra-right justice whose death created the vacancy Trump ultimately appointed Gorsuch to fill. The decision was deliberately constructed in a manner that would not open any doors to future arguments that federal civil-rights laws and the Constitution should be construed in the light of contemporary standards of justice and decency.

Perhaps as a result of its author’s decision to adapt “originalism” for the purpose of defending rather than constricting democratic rights, Gorsuch’s approach comes off throughout the opinion as formal and stilted. He begins with the premise that the word “sex,” as used in Title VII, refers to the biological characteristics with which an individual is born, not to sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch concludes, however, that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex ... If the employer fires the male employee for no reason other than the fact he is attracted to men, the employer discriminates against him for traits or actions it tolerates in his female colleague”—that is attraction to men.

Gorsuch’s reading of Title VII in a manner that protects LGBT rights enraged Alito, who wrote: “The Court attempts to pass off its decision as the inevitable product of the textualist school of statutory interpretation championed by our late colleague Justice Scalia, but no one should be fooled. The Court’s opinion is like a pirate ship. It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated––the theory that courts should ‘update’ old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.”

To support an argument that the drafters of the 1964 Federal Civil-Rights Act did not intend to protect sexual orientation or gender identity from on-the-job discrimination, Alito cited the prevalence of anti-sodomy laws along with standards in the then applicable American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”—standards discontinued in 1973—that labeled same-sex attraction a “sexual deviation” and a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”

In other words, Alito dredged up filthy prejudices that existed over a half century ago, abandoned as the result of scientific and cultural advances, to argue that the landmark civil-rights statute enacted during that era necessarily incorporates those prejudices. Inverting the democratic content of Title VII itself, Alito warned: “The position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.”

Discerning the reasons underlying this bitter division on LGBT rights among the five right-wing justices that typically form the Supreme Court majority is necessarily somewhat speculative, as justices generally do not discuss the inner workings of the high court.

Chief Justice Roberts, however, is widely viewed as primarily concerned with protecting the Supreme Court’s political standing and credibility, and may well fear that a provocatively anti-gay and pro-bigotry decision, under the conditions of the present political upheaval over police violence, would be pouring gasoline on the fire.

Conscious of recent shifts in public opinion—polls show that 83 percent of the population, including 74 percent of Republicans, oppose firing workers because of their sexual orientation—Roberts no doubt assigned the opinion to Gorsuch with instructions to make this grudging concession on the narrowest possible grounds.

More litigation will likely follow because the decision explicitly reserves for later determination whether the Constitution allows an employer to fire an LGBT worker on the ground of the employer’s purported religious beliefs.

Coronavirus pandemic in Poland: Silesian miners sacrificed for profit

Bartosz Wyspianski & Martin Nowak

The Polish mining region in the Silesian voivodeship has been the biggest hotspot of the coronavirus pandemic in Poland for months. Nearly every day, almost half of the new infections in Poland can be found in Silesia. For example, on June 13, 209 of 440 new infections were in Silesia, 82 of them were miners. The day before, 120 miners had been diagnosed with the COVID-19.

Poland is the fifth largest brown coal and the tenth largest black coal producer in the world. About 100,000 jobs are directly related to coal mining, of which about 60,000 are underground.

The mining region, rich in tradition, is one of the strategic pillars of the Polish economy and is an economic core region due to the industrial region of Upper Silesia (Górnośląski Okręg Przemysłowy, GOP), which is historically linked to it. Almost 3 million people live in the GOP, which is more than in the capital Warsaw.

But it is not only the population density that makes Silesia susceptible to the pandemic. Due to the approximately 80 percent coal-based energy supply, the Polish population suffers from enormous environmental pollution. Officially, around 44,000 people die every year from air pollution—a direct result of outdated technology in both industrial incineration plants and private heating systems. People with pre-existing conditions or previous lung damage are known to be particularly at risk for COVID-19.

Miners leave the shaft after a shift underground at Wujek coal mine in Katowice (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Responsibility for the rapid spread of the virus in the region lies with the government and the trade unions. Although the first reports of infection in Silesian mines were as early as the beginning of April, and a nationwide curfew was in place, work in the mines continued. Government and companies publicly denied there was any danger of infection underground.

Today, the more than 5,600 infected miners make up almost one-fifth of all those infected in Poland. The Silesian voivodeship, the main coal mining area, stands out clearly on the Polish infection map, with currently 10,682 confirmed cases and 260 deaths. In total, Poland has currently reported 29,329 infected and 1,247 deaths from COVID-19. The number of new infections in Poland reached well over 3,000 in the last seven days.

Due to the high level of environmental pollution, on the one hand, and the high infection rates, on the other, the region is now referred to in the media as the Polish Wuhan.

This is accompanied by speculation as to whether the region should be completely sealed off by the army. The government in Warsaw has denied this several times, “but rumours don’t fall from the sky,” the vice mayor of Ruda Śląska, Krzysztof Mejer, commented in an interview with broadcaster Deutsche Welle .

In mid-May, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki travelled to Silesia and declared, “The situation is under control and in hand.” At the same time, during May, all exit restrictions were lifted, and schools and day-care centres reopened.

Two weeks later, the number of infected miners doubled. At the same time, Morawiecki announced a consolidation of the mining industry. This means that the 100,000 or so workers who depend on coal mining face the threat of wage losses, increased exploitation, or job losses in addition to the health risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

With approximately 5,400 per 1 million inhabitants, Poland has carried out significantly fewer tests than most other EU states. “If it had been decided earlier to carry out tests on a large scale, this level of infection would not have occurred,” according to Andrzej Sośnierz, a former head of the National Health Office (NFZ). For a long time, the miners and inhabitants of Silesia had also warned in vain of possible infections and an epidemic in the mines.

The miners are already exposed to many dangers under normal circumstances: high temperatures, poor oxygen supply and dusty air increase the danger of illness. Explosive gases and often dilapidated technology increase the risk of accidents. Only 3 percent of the miners working in underground mining reach the age of 80, while on average in Poland about 15 percent of miners reach the age of 80.

In return, they earn only 2,000 to 4,000 złoty net (€500 to €1,000) monthly, with additional premiums for meeting production targets and a 13th month’s salary bonus. This corresponds approximately to the average wage in the country.

But even these wages are subject to constant attacks. Since the introduction of capitalism in Poland, countless mines have been closed. Like Germany’s Ruhrkohle AG and former East German mining companies, the Polish state is directing the process and taking over the costs of the inherited burdens, while the profits are largely privatised.

For example, the Polish state runs the loss-making Polska Grupa Górnicza (PGG), the largest mining company in Europe. With a 55 percent share, the state is also the majority stakeholder of Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa SA (JSW), which went public in 2011 as the largest European coke producer. The costs of closed-down coal mines are, in turn, outsourced to the state Spółka Restrukturyzacji Kopalń SA, which has received around 2 billion złoty in state subsidies over the last 10 years.

Given the poor economic situation of the mining companies and a high production surplus at the beginning of the year, the government had already reduced the miners’ working week to four days in January, which meant a 20 percent wage cut. After several protests and street occupations, a miners’ strike was stalled at the last moment by a compromise between the unions and the government.

The reasons for the surplus at the beginning of the year were the mild winter and the recession of the world economy. The economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic will put this crisis far in the shade.

On May 9, the government and trade unions negotiated a kind of short-time working allowance (Tarcza 4.0) for PGG workers. Inactive miners receive 60 percent of their average wage as part of the government’s coronavirus measures, a sum that forces many to go underground to survive, despite the dangerous conditions.

The companies and the government are still deliberately downplaying the danger of coronavirus. For example, the State Mining Institute (Główny Instytut Górniczyder, GIG) stated that the risk of infection underground is “no greater” than for workers working above ground, in other industries or for any other resident of the Republic of Poland.

In fact, it is impossible for miners to comply with the simplest recommendations of virologists on infection protection. Up to 50 miners travel together in the shaft elevator to the depths. Even with fewer workers, effective protection against infection is not possible due to the narrow conditions. Even when the train travels to the mining site, measures to maintain social distance cannot be adhered to because the workers are crammed into the tightest of spaces in the cars. At the end of the day, workers then shower together.

Although every miner must now produce two negative tests to be allowed to work, the responsible authorities are hopelessly overburdened with the mass tests, even months after the pandemic began.

Many miners complain that even if they had symptoms, they could not reach the testing station. In order not to miss their shift without a valid reason, which could lead to dismissal, they go underground despite the suspicion of infection. Workers that have been tested often do not know when they will receive the results. Others get no information from the health service or the results of their tests are lost.

At the beginning of last week, Prime Minister Morawiecki again declared that everything was under control. On the same day, he announced that from Friday, 10 mines belonging to PGG and two to JSW will be completely closed down for three weeks, with miners supposedly receiving 100 percent pay. Many more pits with hundreds of infected miners are continuing to work.

Both the crisis-ridden PiS government and the trade unions are driven by the fear that the social discontent in this working-class region will find political expression and that under conditions of a worldwide growing protest and strike movement, the class struggle will also break out openly in Poland.

In their appeals to the government, the trade unions warned expressly of this danger. For example, the successor to the Stalinist miners’ union, Związek Zawodowy Górników w Polsce, warned that the PiS government’s coronavirus economic stimulus measures threatened “to exacerbate social problems and cause a sharp increase in unrest.”

Macron announces mass bankruptcies and layoffs as coronavirus restrictions ended

Alex Lantier

In a brief televised address on the COVID-19 pandemic on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron announced that his government would work closely with the trade unions to place the cost of the crisis on the backs of working class. Under conditions of global protests against police violence, two years after the start of the “yellow vests” movement, and after the historic transport strike this winter, Macron refused to make any concessions to demands from the population.

Macron noted that the government had spent €500 billion during the pandemic. This was “justified,” he said, “because of the exceptional circumstances we have just been through. But it is on top of our already existing debt.” He made clear that these massive handouts, which largely financed purchases of toxic securities held by the big banks and to stabilize the largest French corporations, came with no strings attached for any obligation on the part of the financial aristocracy to preserve jobs or economic activity.

On the contrary. France would “experience bankruptcies and multiple redundancy plans due to the global economic downturn,” he said. According to official forecasts, between 800,000 and 1 million workers will lose their jobs, and 40 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in the Ile-de-France region around Paris will go bankrupt in the coming months. This reflects an economic downturn of approximately 10 percent in a year in many countries in Europe and internationally—conditions not seen since the 1930s.

Macron insisted that it was unthinkable to force the ruling class to pay to protect jobs and small business, while French and European authorities are showering public money on the ruling class. “We will not finance this spending by raising taxes,” he said.

This is a declaration of war by the financial aristocracy, in France and throughout Europe and the world, on the working class. It has used the pandemic as a pretext to transfer hundreds of billions of euros to its bank accounts, at the expense of workers and small businesses. While US and European central banks are granting the super-rich trillions, the super-rich display their contempt for the threatened ruin of millions, even as hunger and misery increases in France and Europe.

The modern-day ruling class displays a level of parasitism and contempt unseen since the feudal nobility refused to pay taxes to the États-Généraux before the French Revolution.

This is the source of Macron’s assertion that “We have nothing to be ashamed of with our balance sheet. Tens of thousands of lives have been saved by our choices and actions.” On this basis, Macron announced the mandatory reopening of day-care centres, schools and universities from June 22, the reopening of cafes and restaurants from today, and unrestricted visits to retirement homes.

In fact, the pandemic’s toll is a stain that Macron and his European counterparts will carry forever. By refusing to provide masks to the population, to promptly explain and organize mass testing and social distancing, or to provide the health system and confined workers with the necessary financial resources, these governments have made themselves responsible for a catastrophe.

A few statistics illustrate this fact. In China—a country with 21 times the population of France, where COVID-19 first broke out and which therefore had to improvise treatments and containment methods that were known at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe—there were 4,634 deaths. In France there were more than 29,400. When Macron states that he is not ashamed of his record, it is a testament to his class contempt for the lives of the population.

As for what Macron calls his “choices” to confine workers and set up a testing infrastructure, it was the workers who imposed them on governments, not only in France but throughout Europe and internationally. Faced with waves of strikes in Italy, the United States and Brazil, the European ruling classes felt compelled to order large-scale confinement.

The French employers’ organisation openly testified to this fact. “In all industrial sectors, including those where there is no ban on activity from health considerations, there is an extremely brutal change in the attitude of workers,” Patrick Martin, the vice-president of the national employers association, said in March. He had denounced the “over-reaction” of workers to the deadly danger of COVID-19. This meant that corporate management “can no longer continue production because of pressure from workers.”

Terrified by the growth of opposition among workers, the ruling class intends to pursue an authoritarian and violent policy to impose its diktat on workers, the self-employed and small businesses. Macron has therefore given his full support to the police officers in charge of suppressing mass demonstrations over the past two weeks.

In the face of worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, and in France against the killing of Adama Traoré in police custody, Macron was content with a promise to be “tough on racism and anti-Semitism.” This statement is preposterous from a president who at the beginning of his term of office joked about the drowning of refugees off the coast of Mayotte.

On the other hand, Macron, who in November 2018 called the collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain a “great soldier,” as the riot police were preparing to attack the “yellow vests,” reaffirmed his unflinching support for the police. “Nor will we build our future in disorder, without a republican order,” he said. “This order is ensured by the police and gendarmes on our soil,” adding that the police “deserve the support of the government and the recognition of the nation.”

As protests take place around the world against police violence, this underscores the deeper issues facing workers and young people entering into struggle.

The reason Trump sought to deploy the military against the American protests is that the financial aristocracy considers a military dictatorship necessary to impose its criminal and socially destructive policies on the working class. Racist attitudes undoubtedly play a role in police violence. But it is impossible to stop police violence by trying to discredit racist attitudes, because such violence is based on material interests. It is the defence of the privileges of the financial aristocracy against a working class in revolt.

In actions against the “yellow vests,” the police arrested more than 10,000, injured more than 4,400 demonstrators, disemboweled more than 25, ripped off five hands, and killed Zineb Redouane, an elderly woman.

As Macron and the ruling classes around the world prepare to impose massive attacks on workers to bear the cost of the coronavirus corporate handouts, larger class conflicts are brewing internationally. The magazine Opinion recently reported: “While minority groups stayed out of the ‘yellow vests,’ domestic intelligence is concerned about a ‘convergence of de facto struggles between the social and racial crisis’.”

For the time being, democratic and anti-racist slogans predominate in the mobilizations against police violence. The “yellow vests” movement largely avoided explicitly political demands. But the decisive question is not the present state of the consciousness of the workers and young people who have entered into struggle, but the political tasks the nascent international workers’ movement will have to address in response to the attacks by Macron and his international counterparts.

The two-year “yellow vests” movement and Macron’s determination to attack the national pension system make clear that there is nothing to negotiate with Macron. Workers must break from the discredited trade union apparatus, which Macron has welcomed by promising to coordinate his government’s policies with the “social partners.” At the same time, he announced that open-air rallies of more than 10 people would still be banned on the pretext of the pandemic, even as workers are to be forced to work in their hundreds in dangerous and poorly ventilated factories.

In France and throughout Europe, independent groups of “yellow vests,” youth and striking workers exist in neighbourhoods and on social media. The Socialist Equality Party seeks to raise the consciousness of the workers, to establish their independence from political parties and apparatuses of the capitalist class, and to arm workers with a perspective that expresses the objective logic of the struggles to come. These can be victorious only to the extent that they are based upon the building of a mass movement to transfer political power to the working class and the construction of a socialist society.

OECD report points to pandemic’s long-term impact

Nick Beams

Any claims that major economies and the world economy as whole will experience a miraculous V-shaped recovery as restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted should be laid to rest by a report issued by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) earlier this month.

The report makes clear that the pandemic has led to the most severe contraction since the Great Depression and that its effects will be long-lasting. It notes that in a number of key areas of the global economy, notably trade, investment and corporate debt, the pandemic has exacerbated trends that were already clearly evident before it struck.

In a comment on the report, OECD chief economist Laurence Boone said that “economic activity has collapsed across the OECD during shutdown by as much as 20 to 30 percent in some countries, an extraordinary shock.”

In framing its outlook, the OECD, which covers 33 major economies, considers two scenarios: one in which the virus recedes and remains under control, and one where a second wave erupts later this year.

“Both scenarios are sobering,” Boone writes, “as economic activity does not and cannot return to normal under these circumstances.”

The report says that the economic outlook is “exceptionally uncertain.” It states that any recovery will be “hesitant” and could be interrupted by another outbreak “if targeted containment measures, notably test, track and trace” were not put in place or did not prove effective.”

In a “double-hit” scenario, global GDP is projected to decline by 7.1 percent this year, while in a “single-hit,” the contraction will be 6 percent this year, returning to almost pre-crisis levels by the end of 2021.

But even under this latter, relatively optimistic, scenario, “in many advanced economies, the equivalent of five years or more of per capita real income growth could be lost by 2021.”

“The crisis will cast a long shadow over the world and OECD economies,” the report states. “By 2021 it will have taken real income per capita in the majority of OECD economies back to 2013 levels in the double-hit scenario and to 2016 levels in the single-hit scenario.”

Moreover, it may “permanently reduce potential output due to the premature scrapping of capital that is likely to accompany higher bankruptcies” and the adverse long-term effects of high unemployment levels.

The report notes that “stronger international cooperation” is needed to help end the spread of the pandemic more quickly and speed up global economic recovery, as well as to avoid harm to emerging market economies.

“The sharing of knowledge, medical and financial resources, and reducing harmful bans to trade, especially in health care products, are essential to address the challenges brought by the pandemic,” it states.

But the opposite is taking place. Boone notes that the pandemic has accelerated the shift from the “great integration” to the “great fragmentation,” with additional trade and investment restrictions taking place.

This process is not confined to the economic sphere, as the Trump administration and other major powers step up their anti-China campaign, seeking to blame it for the global spread of the virus.

The report notes that the hardest hit areas in terms of employment have been in leisure, entertainment and tourism. But equally significant has been the decline in spending on consumer durables. Global car sales in March and April were down by 37 percent compared to the monthly average for 2019.

Investment spending, one of the crucial drivers for economic growth over the longer term, has also fallen sharply. Production of capital goods in the major advanced economies fell by around 12 percent in the first quarter of 2020. In this case, the pandemic accelerated a trend clearly visible in the latter half of 2019, as investment began to fall.

Another longer-term indicator is the fall in global trade. The OECD reports that it is now “contracting sharply,” with a fall of almost 4 percent in the first three months of 2020—that is, prior to the full impact of lockdown measures. International freight traffic by air dropped by 30 percent in April compared to a year earlier.

“Global export orders fell to their lowest levels on record in April and remained exceptionally weak in May, with all countries reporting sizeable declines,” the OECD notes.

As with investment, the pandemic has severely exacerbated what was already an underlying trend that began in the wake of the global financial crisis. In recent years, world trade has risen only marginally faster than the increase in global output, whereas in the years preceding 2008 it was rising at twice the rate of growth in global GDP.

The OECD forecasts that global trade will fall by 11.5 percent in 2020 under a double-hit scenario and by 9.5 percent if there is a single hit.

Its forecast for unemployment also points to the long-lasting effects of the pandemic, with unemployment in the OECD area projected to rise to the highest levels in a quarter of a century and ease only slowly in 2021.

The report states: “The scarring effects from job losses are likely to be felt particularly by younger workers and lower-skilled workers, with attendant risks of many people becoming entrapped in joblessness for an extended period.”

On the financial front, the OECD notes that the pandemic sparked “massive declines in financial asset prices and a spike in volatility, with some markets ceasing to function properly.” There was a collapse in stock markets in many countries of between 30 and 50 percent in the biggest plunge since the 1987 crash.

The market turmoil eased only as a result of the massive intervention by the US and other central banks around the world. But this intervention will have to continue. The OECD asserts that central banks may have to opt for yield curve control in order to keep interest rates down. This is the policy already pursued in Japan, where the central bank essentially buys up government debt in order to maintain a low-interest-regime.

While such a regime boosts stocks, it creates problems in other areas of the economy because a prolonged period of low interest rates will “challenge the solvency of pension funds and insurance companies.”

The OECD adds that while it does not have comprehensive data on the position of non-financial corporations, “the evidence for selected large companies suggests that the negative impact of the collapse in output will be very large.”

Here again, the pandemic struck as underlying weaknesses were starting to emerge, with the OECD noting that at the end of 2019, some 25 percent of firms “did not have enough cash to cover all debt obligations in 2020.”

It states that the “likely rise in corporate insolvencies and bankruptcies” may lead to “negative feedback effects in corporate bond markets,” and notes that a “record amount of [corporate] debt has fallen to junk status in recent months,” that is, rated at below investment-grade.

This could add to “challenges for banks,” especially in Europe, where companies depend more on banks for their financing than in the US. While banks were not the origin of the crisis and have higher liquidity buffers than in 2008, the report says, “they are likely to be affected negatively by increased corporate and household defaults as well as weak demand.”

Studies on COVID-19 antibody response undermine US “herd immunity” policy

Benjamin Mateus

The unstated but nonetheless official US government policy toward coronavirus is “herd immunity”—letting the pandemic rip until so many people have survived the infection that their immunity will block further spread.

This policy is homicidal, in the literal sense of the word. The federal and state governments are allowing tens of millions to be infected by a disease which will kill a large number of them, perhaps millions, rather than undertake the systematic campaign of testing, contact tracing and isolating those infected or exposed, which would halt the spread of the disease before it rages entirely out of control.

After two and a half months of 20,000-plus daily COVID-19 cases, the reopening of the country for business and commerce in violation of the rules set by health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is leading to a resurgence of cases in the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, Arizona and California without attempts to impose new restrictions.

“We can’t shut down the economy again. I think we’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC.

According to a Tucson ICU nurse, writing for a local online paper, Tucson Sentinel, “the second wave in Arizona has hit far worse than the first. We have been balancing around full capacity at all times over the past weeks. COVID-19 is real, despite an insane number of people on social media believing the hoax or that it’s just the flu and people shouldn’t worry. I have never looked around my 100 percent full ICU and genuinely thought that there is the possibility of NO survivors.”

But will herd immunity actually provide the population guaranteed protection? The hypothesis on which the policy is based, one that is essentially unproven, is that those who have the good fortune to survive the infection will develop robust antibodies to prevent second infections. Some recent studies have shed light on this question.

In a recent analysis of 370 individuals with known COVID-19 infections whose serums were held at the New York Blood Center, 96 percent had detectable antibodies to one of the viral proteins. Testing against two other proteins produced by the virus showed 85 and 89 percent of this population had antibodies. Two percent had no detectable antibodies.

Using sophisticated assays, the researchers were also able to quantify the amount of antibody infected individuals produced. As the authors noted, the level of neutralizing antibodies varied over a broad range, with some showing as much as 40,000 times more than others. The concern is that this may correlate with the amount of protection that may be offered, meaning that many people, after surviving COVID-19, will still be susceptible to it again.

Another study conducted in the UK, corroborating the findings in the New York study, noted that up to 8.5 percent of people infected with COVID-19 did not develop antibodies. The study led by researchers at St George’s, University of London and St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had analyzed antibody tests results from 177 patients with previous COVID-19 infections. Those patients that developed antibodies had a stable response for almost two months. Patients having the most severe infections with excessive inflammatory response (mainly those older or with obesity and hypertension) were more likely to develop antibodies, according to the Daily Telegraph. The study suggested that asymptomatic patients are less likely to develop a sustained immune response.

Professor Sanjeev Krishna, corresponding author on the paper, said, “We need to understand how best to interpret the results from these tests to control the spread of the virus, as well as identifying those who may be immune to the disease.”

The immunity to the virus is not as robust as had been hoped by investigators, and no one yet knows what level of neutralizing antibodies are required to offer protection. This has considerable implications for vaccine productions, as vaccine efficacy seems to hinge on the ability to demonstrate consistently high levels of neutralizing antibodies.

The WHO, having fumbled a question on asymptomatic patients during one of their press conferences last week, have clarified their statements with data. They stated that 16 percent of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, but these individuals can still transmit the infection to others. Determining the proportion of the population that is asymptomatic but nonetheless infected and contagious is critical to knowing how the disease is transmitted. Other studies had indicated that 40 percent of coronavirus transmissions have occurred through people who do not display overt symptoms of infection.

In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors explained that transmissibility of the infections is linked to a high level of SARS-CoV-2 that is shed in the upper respiratory tract, including by those who are considered pre-symptomatic. In a skilled nursing facility in Washington state, a symptomatic health worker tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus by PCR testing, leading to a facility-wide screening on March 13 and then March 20. Among 76 residents at the facility, 48 (63 percent) had positive tests, of whom 27 were essentially asymptomatic.

However, 24 of the 27 asymptomatic individuals would go on to develop symptoms over the next four days. Seventeen of these 24 patients had viable virus cultured up to six days before they developed symptoms. Of note, 26 percent of all the residents who tested positive subsequently died. The authors wrote, “symptom-based screening alone failed to detect a high proportion of infectious cases and was not enough to control transmission in this setting.”

These small studies highlight the difficulty in using symptom-based strategies to control the transmission of the virus and demonstrate the rapid transmission of the virus once it insinuates itself in locations like nursing facilities, crowded markets, political rallies, choir rehearsals at church, and, of course, large factories.

Recently, the city of Wuhan in China conducted an aggressive campaign to test the entire population over the course of several days, finding several hundred asymptomatic patients. Mass testing of residents of nursing facilities and other congregated populations such as hospitals, mental health facilities and prisons becomes an essential component of a public health strategy to contain the virus.

It is critical that workers at Ford, GM and FCA, or meatpackers, industrial workers in general, demand a much more robust and comprehensive strategy to ensure safe work environments.

The CDC has asserted in its guidelines that “asymptomatic transmission enhances the need to scale up the capacity for widespread testing and thorough contact tracing to detect asymptomatic infections, interrupt undetected transmission chains, and further bend the curve downward.”

But the public health infrastructure in the US is a hollowed-out shell without the resources to carry out such a project. It is not that the resources do not exist in American society. If even a fraction of the trillions of dollars of public funds diverted into the financial markets had been set aside instead for public health, the necessary infrastructure to stem the infection could be set up in a matter of weeks.

The failure to make such an effort is not a mistake or an oversight, but a coldly calculated policy to let countless numbers of elderly and infirm people die, since they are no longer able to produce profits for the financial elite, while forcing large numbers of people of working age back into the factories and other workplaces at terrible risk to their health and lives. It is a deliberate “culling” of the proletarian “herd,” as far as the capitalists are concerned.

Alfred Friendly Press Partners Fellowship 2020 for Journalists from Developing Countries

Application Deadlines: 

• General & Daniel Pearl Fellowships: 31st August 2020
• TRACE Investigative Reporting Fellowship: 16th September 2020

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Missouri School of Journalism and U.S. newsrooms, USA

About the Award: The Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships are aimed at providing fellows with experience in reporting, writing and editing that will enhance future professional performance; transferring knowledge gained during the program to colleagues at home; and fostering ties between journalists in the United States and other countries.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible, candidates must be:

• Early-career professional journalists from developing countries with proficiency in English
• 25-35 years old
• have at least three years of experience as a journalist at a print, online or broadcast media outlet.
• Participants who work as staff reporters in their host newsrooms are required to develop training plans that they implement when they return to their home newsrooms. ​

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: Fellows receive travel, health insurance and basic living expenses.

Duration of Program: 6 months.The ​all-inclusive ​fellowship starts in mid-March and ends in early September.

How to Apply: 
General Fellowship: Click here to apply
Daniel Pearl Fellowship: Click here to apply
TRACE Investigative Reporting Fellowship: Click here to apply

Visit Programme Webpage for details

L’Oréal-UNESCO Maghreb Fellowships 2020 for African Women in Science

Application Deadline: 31st July 2020

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Fields of Award:

• Sciences of Life: Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Physiology, Biotechnology, Ecology and Chemistry.
• Sciences of matter: such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, information sciences, earth and universe sciences.

About the Award: The Maghreb Fellowships L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science aim at promoting the participation of young women in science. This program determines and rewards young talented female researchers in the following fields (Biology, Biochemistry, Gene@cs, Physiology, Biotechnology, Ecology and Chemistry applied to life). Like those of Sciences of the matter (such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, information sciences, earth and universe sciences).
Founded in 2007, the L’Oréal-UNESCO Fellowships aim to distinguish young female researchers for the quality of their works and to encourage them to pursue a brilliant career in science. The fellowship is within the framework of a partnership between the L’Oréal Foundation and the National Boards for UNESCO in the 4 previously-named countries.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Eligible for the fellowship applicants who are:

• Applying for a PhD or a post-doctoral fellowship.
• Not working permanently in 2020.
• Working on your PhD or having obtained it and willing to pursue research in one of the fields cited above
• African, working in one of the 4 countries listed above
• Being aged at most 35 years at the closing date of the call for applications which is 31st July 2020.

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria of the applicants as established by the jury are the following:

• Excellence of the applicant’s academic portfolio (including number, quality and impact of their publications, conference presentations, patents …).
• The scientific quality of the research project.
• The innovative and promising character of their research works (relevant, original, unique…) and its implementation in science.
• The socio-economic impact of the project/ research.
• The path of the candidate (career…).

Scholarships must be devoted exclusively to the promotion and development of research and should in no way substitute the responsibilities of laboratory towards its researchers (Displacement, work tools, equipment, and participation in congress…).
Scholarships are neither renewable nor combined with other research grants.

Number of Awards: 5

Value of Award: 10 000 €. Cost of traveling and accommodation for Fellows non-residents in Morocco will be provided by the L’Oréal Maroc.

How to Apply: Applications can only be made through the online platform: www.fwis.fr by the applicants themselves.
An application is considered complete when it contains all of the following parts, in English or in French:
• A detailed resume (Curriculum Vitae) filled directly in the website www.fwis.fr.
• Copies of diplomas obtained starting from the BS.
• A copy of an official transcript of undergraduate and graduate studies.
• A detailed abstract / description of the research project of a maximum 2 pages
• Including research projects in progress
• A suggested project of the grant’s use supporting the application and inclusive to some budgetary indications
• The list of publications and patents.
• Recommendation letters from supervisor and / or director of the scientific institute or school where the thesis has been carried.
• Letter of acceptance from the host laboratory for post-doctoral studies.
Incomplete applications or those received after the deadline as well as applications that do not fulfill the above conditions will not be considered.

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details