The Unemployment Insurance System is Badly Broken

Dean Baker

The Republicans have been working hard to ensure that the $600 weekly supplement to unemployment insurance benefits, which was put in place as part of the pandemic rescue package, is not extended beyond the current July 31 cutoff. They argue that we need people to return to work.

They do have a point. The supplement is equivalent to pay of $15 an hour for someone working a 40-hour week, and this is in addition to a regular benefit that is typically equal to 40 to 50 percent of workers’ pay. The supplement translates into an even larger hourly pay rate for workers putting in shorter workweeks, which was the case for most laid off workers in the restaurant and retail sectors.

It is hard for employers in traditionally low paying sectors to match these pay rates.  Even those of us who are big proponents of higher minimum wages would not advocate a jump to more than $20 an hour at a point when businesses are crippled by the pandemic.

However, there is also the point that we don’t want workers to have to expose themselves to the coronavirus. That was the reason for the generous supplement. We wanted to make sure that workers, who in many cases were legally prevented from working, did not suffer as a result.

There is an obvious solution here. Suppose we reduce or end the supplement in areas where the pandemic is under control.

This would not be determined by some Trumpian declaration that the pandemic is over, but by solid data. The obvious metric would be positive test rates. Suppose that the supplement was reduced or eliminated in states or counties where the positive test rate is less than 5 percent. (This may not be the right rate.) This would mean that workers going back to work would face relatively little risk of contracting the virus. It would also give states the incentive to conduct vigorous testing programs, as well as other control measures, in order to get their positive rates down.

Our unemployment insurance system is badly broken and it would be desirable to have more generous benefits, and also to focus more on work-sharing, as other countries have done. We can recognize this point and still agree that an arbitrary supplement to all benefits is not the right long-term fix even if it was a very good policy in the pandemic.

Living With Global Warming

Manuel Garcia, Jr

I modeled mathematically the thermal imbalance of our biosphere, which we call global warming, so as to gain my own quantitative understanding of the interplay of the two major effects that give rise to this phenomenon. This is a “toy model,” an abstraction of a very complicated planetary phenomenon that teams of scientists using supercomputers have been laboring for decades to enumerate in its many details, and to predict its likely course into the future.

The result of my model is a formula for the history of the rise of average global surface temperature. The parameters of the model are ratios of various physical quantities that affect the global heat balance. Many of those physical quantities are set by Nature and the laws of physics. A few of those parameters characterize assumptions I made about physical processes, specifically:

+ the degree of increase in Earth’s reflectivity of light because of an increase of cloud cover with an increase of temperature,

+ the degree of decrease in Earth’s reflectivity of light because of a decay of ice cover with an increase of temperature,

+ the rate of increase in Earth’s reflectivity of light because of the steady emission of air pollution particles,

+ the rate of increase of the infrared radiation absorptivity — heat absorptivity — of the atmosphere because of the steady emission of greenhouse gas pollution.

The parameters for the four processes just mentioned were selected so that a calculated temperature rise history from 1910 to 2020 matched the trend of the data for average global surface temperature rise during that period. That average temperature rise was 1°C between 1910 and 2020.

The two major effects involved in the dynamics of the current global heat imbalance are: heating because of the enhanced absorptivity by the atmosphere of outbound infrared radiation — which is heat; and cooling because of the enhanced reflectivity of the atmosphere to inbound sunlight.

The biosphere is in thermal equilibrium — existing at a stable average global temperature — when the rate of absorbed inbound sunlight is matched by the rate of heat radiated out into space.

Heating

Greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere capture a portion of the infrared radiation — heat — rising from the surface of the Earth, and retain it. They are able to do this because the nature of their molecules makes them highly efficient at absorbing infrared radiation. The molecules involved are primarily those of carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor (H2O), and methane (CH4).

This captured heat is then redistributed to the rest of the atmosphere by molecular collisions between the greenhouse gas molecules and the molecules of the major constituents of our air: nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2). The excess atmospheric heat evaporates more seawater, makes more clouds, drives stronger winds and causes more intense rainstorms — such as hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes — and more frequent and severe flooding.

That excess atmospheric heat is gradually absorbed by the oceans, which as a unit is the most massive and heat retentive component of the biosphere. The biosphere encompasses: the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land surface down to a depth of perhaps 10 meters, below which the temperature variations due to the seasons and the weather do not penetrate significantly. The oceans are the “heat battery” of Planet Earth.

The biosphere naturally emits a portion of the greenhouse gases contained in the atmosphere, but humanity has been adding massively to that load, and at an increasing rate since the beginning of the 20th century. So, global warming is an anthropogenic — human caused — effect.

Natural emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols include: evaporation from the surfaces of the oceans to form clouds; the ejection of sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) and ash particles by volcanic eruptions; the rising of smoke from wildfires with their loads of carbon dioxide gas and soot; the rising of windblown dust; and the bubbling up of methane gas from the rotting of organic matter on land and at the ocean bottom.

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases include: carbon dioxide gas (CO2) and soot particles from the combustion of liquid fossil fuels, coal, and biomass; and the emission of organic vapors like: methane from industrialized agriculture, mining, and oil and natural gas drilling; and ozone-depleting gases evaporated from cleaning fluids, solvents, and refrigerants.

Prior to significant anthropogenic emissions, there was a long-term balance between the natural emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and their being rained-out and reabsorbed by the land and ocean surfaces. In particular, carbon dioxide gas is absorbed by green plants, which combine it with water to form sugar — used to supply the metabolic energy for plant growth, and of the animals that feed on plants — in a process called photosynthesis, and which is powered by sunlight.

Cooling

About 30% of the sunlight incident on the Earth is reflected back into space. This light reflectivity by Planet Earth is called the albedo. Droplets of water in the atmosphere — often condensing around particles of soot, ash or dust — form into clouds, which are very efficient light reflectors, and are responsible for 24% of Earth’s reflectivity.

The other 6% of the Earth’s albedo is due to the overall light reflectivity of the surface of the Earth, which is the combined effect of reflections from the surfaces of the ice caps, oceans and lands. The rejection of a portion of the inbound solar light energy is a cooling effect.

The Earth’s albedo increases with a rise in the average global surface temperature, and with an increase in the load of aerosols in the atmosphere. Higher average temperature enhances evaporation and atmospheric humidity, creating more reflective cloud cover. A larger load of aerosols provides a greater number of light scattering particles to interfere with the influx of sunlight.

Aerosols tend to fall out and rain out of the atmosphere within a short period of weeks to months. So their contribution to the albedo — and thus to global cooling or “global dimming” — would be short-lived were they not being continuously replenished in the atmosphere by natural processes like the rainwater cycle, volcanic eruptions and wildfires; and by anthropogenic emissions of gas and aerosol pollution from the industrialized activities of civilization.

Despite the slightly greater cooling effect of Earth’s albedo being increased by the introduction of anthropogenic pollution that scatters light, the biosphere is steadily warming because the greenhouse gases also included in that anthropogenic pollution have the dominating influence.

The only way to slow global warming is to reduce — and ideally eliminate — anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gas and aerosol pollution.

Temperature History, Past and Future

Figure 1 shows the average global surface temperature rise, relative to the temperature in 1910, for the 110 years between 1910 and 2020. This calculated history matches the trend of the observational data. The temperature rise shown in Figure 1 is 1°C. The Earth in 1910 was experiencing a spatially and temporally averaged global surface temperature that I take to have been 13.75°C (56.75°F). The Earth in 2020 is experiencing a spatially and temporally averaged global surface temperature that I take to be 14.75°C (58.55°F).

Figure 1: Average Global Surface Temperature Rise between 1910 and 2020 (°C of temperature rise vs. relative time in years)

Figure 2 shows the average global surface temperature rise, relative to the temperature in 1910, for the 210 years between 1910 and 2120. Obviously, the temperature history beyond 2020 is a projection, and it is based on a continuation of the same conditions — which are reflected in a constancy of the parametric values used in my model calculation for between 1910 and 2020 — beyond 2020 for another 100 years. This is a projection of the consequences of “business as usual.”

Figure 2: Average Global Surface Temperature Rise between 1910 and 2120 (°C of temperature rise vs. relative time in years).

Three points to be observed in Figure 2 are the temperature rises of:

1.5°C (2.7°F) by 2047 (in 27 years),

2.0°C (3.6°F) by 2070 (in 50 years),

3.2°C (5.76°F) by 2120 (in 100 years).

A temperature rise of 2°C has been declared as the must-never-exceed “redline” on our global thermometer because it is seen by the widest range of climate scientists, earth scientists, biologists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists, as a threshold beyond which the Earth’s climate would run away to conditions inimicable to human and non-human habitability and survival, without any possibility of alteration by human restraint or human action.

A temperature rise of 1.5°C has been declared as the realistic upper limit humanity could allow itself to tolerate if it still wished to slow the rate of subsequent global warming, by the drastic reduction of its anthropogenic emissions of atmospheric greenhouse gas and aerosol pollution.

Responsiveness of Earth’s Climate System

By my calculation, if magically all emissions of greenhouse gases and pollution grit ceased immediately today, it would take a minimum of 9,000 to 11,000 years for the excess 1°C in the biosphere to dissipate and thus return Earth to the climate we had for 10,000 years up to about 1910. The actual recovery time could be much longer. [This estimate is based on the thermal diffusivity of seawater.]

Because the Earth’s biosphere and its climate are immense systems with immense inertia, Earth’s recognition of our hypothetically abrupt cessation of greenhouse gas emitting, and Earth’s reaction to that cessation with a climatic response — a slowing of global warming — could take over 200 years to become noticeable. [This estimate is based on my calculated e^-1 exponential decay time of 240 years.]

The timescales of the planetary processes whose interactions produce climate are much longer than those of individual human attentiveness or of current societal preoccupations.

How Should We Respond?

The physics is clear, whether reflected by my simple analytical toy model, or by the immensely intricate state-of-the-art supercomputer numerical models by the many climate science institutes.

How global warming — as a complex of interrelated physical phenomena — will affect us can be estimated by climate scientists from their models. What we should do about the present and anticipated effects of global warming remains an open question that is beyond physics, and whose answer rests entirely on human choice.

What aspects of human and non-human life do we consider essential to protect and preserve? What degree of commitment are we willing to make to strategies for the continuation of civilization that require an equitable sharing of the new burdens imposed on human activity by increases of global temperature? In short, what kind of people do we want to be as we all live out our lives in a globally warming world?

It is easy to imagine many utopian or dystopian responses to global warming. We — as a species — are completely free to choose the type of cooperative or uncooperative collective future that we wish to inhabit, for as long as Planet Earth allows us to enjoy its hospitality.

British Leaders Have No Idea How Bad Slavery Was

Patrick Cockburn

Conservative leaders snigger at protesters seeking the removal of statues memorialising those whose fortunes came from the exploitation of slaves.

The leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, implied facetiously this week that such demands are on a par with seeking to knock down Stonehenge on the grounds that it once could have been the site of human sacrifice. He was speaking in response to a puerile question from the Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne – who got into trouble last year for blacking his face – suggesting that a measure be introduced to remove “all remaining trace that there was a Roman civilisation in this island”.

The flippancy of the exchange shows that both men feel that slavery happened a long time ago and does not stand out in history as a particularly horrendous crime, and that the demonstrations against those who benefited from it amount to a passing fad that need not be taken seriously.

They could not be more wrong. Does Rees-Mogg, who tends to wear his religious convictions on his sleeve, have an equally dismissive attitude towards the crucifixion, which is, after all, a well-attested murder of an innocent man by torture committed by a colonial oppressor 2,000 years ago?

It is the tendency of fervent Brexiteers like Rees-Mogg and Swayne to be ignorant not only of the history of other countries, but of the real history of their own. The campaign to remove the statue of Henry Dundas in Edinburgh may seem to be a time-wasting and eccentric excursion into obscure historical alleyways. In fact, it raises the veil on one of the grimiest corners of British history, which is the military campaign fought by Britain on behalf of slave owners in the 1790s to crush the great slave revolt in Haiti, (then called Saint-Domingue) ignited by the French Revolution. The British Army lost 45,000 out of 90,000 troops sent in this war, largely as a result of yellow fever and the fierce resistance of the former slaves. Casualties were heavier than all the British wars against Napoleonic France.

The episode was largely omitted from British history books. Unsurprisingly, countries, like individuals, focus on their virtues and successes and like to forget their crimes and defeats. What Rees-Mogg and Swayne are really saying is that the crime of slavery is not so gross that the virtues of those who perpetrated and benefited from it should not be celebrated, whereas the attempts to memorialise their atrocities get short shrift.

The description of what slavers did as “atrocities” is not an exaggeration. Appreciation of the savage reality of slavery is clouded among white populations by films like Gone with the Wind which emphasise sentimental attachments between master and slave. One way to understand what it was really like is to recall how Isis enslaved the Yazidis in northern Iraq and Syria in 2014, murdering men, women and children and selling thousands of women into sexual slavery.

Terrified women held in Isis jails waited to be raped and sold to the highest bidder. “The first 12 hours of capture were filled with sharply mounting terror,” says a UN report on what happened in one jail. “The selection of any girl was accompanied by screaming as she was forcibly pulled from the room, with her mother and any other women who tried to keep hold of her being brutally beaten by [Isis] fighters. [Yazidi] women and girls began to scratch and bloody themselves in an attempt to make themselves unattractive to potential buyers.” The reference comes from With Ash on Their Faces: Yezidi Women and the Islamic State by Cathy Otten.

Isis did not behave very differently from the slave traders and plantation owners in the West Indies and the US in the 18th century. The best-informed guide to what life was like on a slave plantation in the Caribbean at that time are the books written by James Ramsay, an Anglican clergymen and former navy surgeon who worked as a doctor for 19 years in the plantations on the British-ruled islands of St Kitts and Nevis. Finally forced to leave by the plantation owners because of his evident sympathy for the slaves – he let them worship in his church – he retired to Kent to describe his experiences.

Ramsay records the endless round of punishments inflicted on the slave to force them to work cutting sugar cane for 16 hours or more a day. He says that an experienced slave driver could use a cart whip “to cut out flakes of skin and flesh with every stroke”. When a surgeon refused to amputate the limb of a slave as a punishment, a cooper’s adze was used to sever it “and the wretch then left to bleed to death, without any attention or dressing”.

As in Isis-held Iraq and Syria, sexual slavery was a common feature of plantation life. Ramsay says that slave women were “sacrificed to the lust of white men; in some instances, their own fathers”. He adds that white women on the plantations, presumably members of the family of the owner, would hire out their maid servants as prostitutes. Contrary to the romantic cinematic image, the real life Scarlett O’Hara might have been paying for her ball dress with money gained from the rape of her maids.

One does not have to spend long in the US or the Caribbean without discovering that the deep wells of hatred and fear created by slavery have not disappeared over the years. In the US, this is reinforced by the legacy of the Civil War which still divides the country to an extraordinary extent, underpinning racism and de facto segregation. More surprising is the fact that in the years since black people supposedly won civil rights in the 1960s, the rest of America has become more like the South in its political culture than vice versa. President Johnson had promised not just “equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and a result”, but the results never came.

President Trump differs from other recent presidents in being a fairly open racist and supporter of violence by a militarised police force. Protesters are denounced as “terrorist” much as they are in Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka and other authoritarian states. Once the US was the sheet anchor stabilising governments and regimes, but now it is the turmoil in the US that is sending waves of instability across the world. This is not the way it worked in the 1960s. As Britain slides out of the EU under a right-wing government it will have nowhere else to turn but the US and potentially share in its turbulence. Quips about Stonehenge and the Roman Empire show how far the ruling party in Britain is from understanding that it is only experiencing the first tremors from the US meltdown.

New India : Hotbed for Islamophobia, Jihadophobia and Anti Muslim pogroms

Shah Hussain

India is now being seen as a hotbed of hatred, nescience, Hindutva Fascism, Islamophobia and deep rooted Anti-Muslim pogroms. Having the history of crimes against Muslims right from it’s existence- the largest minority in the country, the recent past has witnessed a record high upheaval in the dissemination of Hate propaganda and Islamophobia egged on by the ruling party itself. Glorified by the Hindutva Fascism, the party stands as an offshoot of the RSS ideologue, which is a kingpin of Indian Hindutva – Nationalism Industry. Muslims have been witnessing heinous crimes being committed against them (The worst in any country, apart from few others).

Horrible Crimes

It all took a new turn with the horrific Mob lynching- the premeditated extrajudicial killings, even on the mere suspicions and falsified reasons. The quint in it’s report of ‘India’s lynching files’ reports 113 killings since 2015 , due to mob violence, of which majority of the victims are Muslims ( Other’s being mostly Dalits – Another endangered group). In many cases, Muslims were forced to eat pork, their beards were trimmed, beaten to the pulp, molested and bruised with injuries. Muslims encountering abuse, bullying, attack on faith, allegations, accusations, propaganda, seems a routine exercise now.

The cries and pleads of a Muslim laborer Afrazul continues to haunt, who was axed by a Hindu fanatic and later on burnt to the ashes, and even made his 14 year old nephew film the grotesque act. The gruesome murder, that should have sent shivers down everyone’s spines, however proved opposite. The Hindu Brigade not only celebrated the murderer’s heartless bravery, but also declared him as a Hero combating Love Jihad – the vendetta being used, since many years as a weapon to instigate hate and crime against Muslims. What constitutes the saddest part is that how many times, on earth, have you heard about these horror criminals, not being convicted and still roaming free. This testifies the degree of freehandedness given to the criminals and real agendum of the country’s ruler ship. The recent Anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment bill is another testimony to the country’s agenda of eliminating Muslims, thus paving it’s way towards becoming a full-blown Hindu Nation. With Muslims, showing open resistance and raising their voices, loudly than ever, repeated the infamous Gujrat Riots 2002, once again in the shape of Delhi Riots 2020 thus resulting in deaths, injuries, and loss of properties. What remains aftermath is the fear and macabre of being a Muslim, in a communalist society.

Politicians cum Islamophobes

There has never been the dearth of Hooliganism in Indian politics. Rather it’s a Crime Factory, with politicians having horrible accusations and crime history associated with them thus, adding badges to their already criminal honors. Anti Muslim rhetoric, hate propagandas, rabble rousing, instigating communalistic violence, fetches them votes and fetches them key positions and above all, earns them the labels of patriotism, Nationalism and saviors of Hindutva. The ruling Party’s key member Dr Subramanian Swami is a well known Islamophobe who blatantly claims that Muslims and Islam are a threat to any country, including India. In his recent interview, he openly disdained Muslims and asserted that more than 30% Muslim population in a country will put it in danger.

The trend of Hate Speeches by politicians, against Muslims in particular has gone up in the last decade, at an alarming rate. The Chief Minister of one of the states blatantly called for digging out dead Muslim women from their graves and raping them. Umpteen number of politicians, every passing day, speak ill of Muslims publicly and passes derogatory remarks about Islam. It’s the government’s insouciance towards Muslims, which if not officially, but surely gives green signal to it’s members to ridicule Muslims and thereby promote Islamophobia.

India’s Mainstream Media : The Modern Day Radio Rwanda

Being considered as the fourth pillar of democracy, albeit acting otherwise, the country’s mainstream media, has been leaving no stone unturned to promote Islamophobia and spew venom against the Muslims. Although with the exceptions, the chaw bacon journalists, circumventing all the levels of professionalism, round the clock, keep on screaming on TV and Social media to defame Muslims, in innovative ways. Over a period of time, with the help of right wing politicians, the Media has devised various nomenclatures of Jihad, which according to them, Muslims have waged against Hindus. This includes “ Love Jihad, Population Jihad and Land Jihad “, which they consider Hard forms of Jihad. The soft forms include “History Jihad, Economic Jihad and History Jihad.” Such ludicrous journalism jargons gains continuous support and appreciation from the ruling party’s leaders as well as the self proclaimed nationalists. The brigade led by the Mainstream media is a typical example of “Radio Rwanda”. Radio Rwanda disseminated Hate Propaganda which resulted in the genocide of almost one million people in 1994. Catalyzing the flames of hatred, the political leaders including influential ones as well as the party’s IT cell, with the help of far right workers can always be seen preaching hate and violence, exclusively against Muslims.

Corona Jihad

While the newly coined term, Zameen jihad alleging Muslims of occupying land, was in the news, the Coronavirus pandemic reached India. With the Covid 19 entering India, it seems though as Muslims were less suffering in this country. The Islamophobes could not take a break from their vendettas, even during this “Struggle for survival” times. The whole world including India is on the lockdown but Islamophobia could never be stopped. “Corona Jihad” hit the stands all across the country . One of the Muslim religious organizations, functioning all over the world was accused of spreading Covid 19 , thus calling it “ Corona Jihad”. This new fallacy was based on the gatherings conducted at the organization’s Centre based in a Delhi Mosque. Although various evidences circulated on the social media platforms and media outlets suggested that the allegations were out of context and distorted. The country’s radio Rwanda, joined by the keyboard nationalists and far right politicians has waged yet another war on Social media, instigating warranted violence and hate crimes against Muslims across the country, which does not seem ending, anytime soon.

New Zealand government lifts all COVID-19 restrictions

Tom Peters

The New Zealand government lifted all remaining COVID-19 social distancing measures on June 9, allowing workplaces and public facilities to operate without taking any special precautions. Limits on crowd sizes have also been removed.

On June 8, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government reported that there were no active cases of COVID-19 in the country. New Zealand has recorded 22 deaths from the coronavirus, and another 1,482 cases of people who have recovered. No new cases have been detected since May 22.

Ardern’s Labour Party-led government is being widely hailed in the international media for having “eliminated” the virus, in contrast countries such as the US where governments are forcing a return to work even as cases continue to soar.

In an article for the Conversation, public health experts Michael Baker and Nick Wilson said modeling by the Universities of Otago and Auckland shows there is more than 95 percent likelihood that there is no virus left in New Zealand.

The only way to be certain that the virus is stamped out, however, would be mass testing of the population. Although the government is encouraging people with mild symptoms to be tested, scientists internationally estimate as many as half of all COVID-19 carriers are asymptomatic. New Zealand has tested only about 6 percent of its population (312,648 people). At present there are only enough test kits for another 296,667 people, according to the Ministry of Health.

Even if New Zealand is free from the virus, Baker and Wilson warned that with the pandemic continuing to rage throughout the world, New Zealand remains at risk of a second wave.

Businesses are demanding that New Zealand reopen its border with Australia, where state governments are lifting restrictions and reopening schools even though the virus has not been suppressed. The Ardern government has already appeased businesses by lifting lockdown restrictions in April and May earlier than public health experts recommended, in order to send people back to work.

To prepare for future outbreaks, Wilson and Baker pleaded for “an urgent overhaul of the health system, including the establishment of a new national public health agency for disease prevention and control.” They also called for the mandatory use of facemasks on public transport and airlines.

Wilson told Radio NZ on June 10 that New Zealand’s contact-tracing systems were “way behind” countries like Taiwan or South Korea. “We’re reliant on manual tracing systems and a pretty low-quality app,” he said. He called for a royal commission of inquiry into the pandemic and an “upgrade” to public health services “which have been run down for decades.”

The health system would be quickly swamped if another outbreak is not contained. The New Zealand Herald reported on May 28 that the country’s 12 regional public health units, which are responsible for disease control, have an annual budget of $440 million, which is $80 million less than 10 years ago.

A letter to Ardern signed by 50 public health experts, dated May 4, states that “the COVID-19 response has exposed an extremely concerning reality—that there is a massive and hugely problematic shortfall in New Zealand’s public health investment.”

A stock take of hospital infrastructure released this week found that $14 billion is needed over the next decade to fix problems with buildings including operating theatres, intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency departments. Dozens of buildings are in “poor” or “very poor” condition. Six out of 10 ICUs assessed did not have up-to-standard negative pressure rooms, used to isolate COVID-19 patients. Some rooms had doors with inadequate seals.

The media reported on June 12 that St John Ambulance service, which is funded through charitable donations and partially by the government, is in severe financial trouble. Chief executive Peter Bradley told staff the service needed to save $30 million and “as part of this we will need to cut back on staff numbers.”

Nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers held nationwide strikes in 2018 and 2019, with demands, including an increase in staffing levels, to alleviate the extreme pressure on hospitals. These struggles were sold out by the trade union bureaucracy, which echoed the Ardern government’s claims that there was no money to immediately address the crisis.

The 2018 nurses’ strike, for instance, ended with a deal valued at just $500 million, including a meagre 3 percent pay increase and no significant staff increase.

The same government responded to the pandemic by handing out more than $11 billion, so far, to businesses in the form of subsidies, not counting tax concessions and loans. The Reserve Bank has agreed to spend up to $60 billion on quantitative easing: printing money to buy financial assets and prop up the markets and the wealth of the super-rich.

The government has begun an advertising campaign calling on the public to “unite for the recovery” from COVID-19, including by “buying Kiwi-made goods” to “help get our businesses and communities humming.” Ardern has described New Zealanders as a “team of five million.”

Contrary to this nationalist propaganda, the country is deeply divided and social inequality is soaring. The ruling class is using the pandemic and the economic crisis to restructure class relations, with major attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions.

Mass redundancies are continuing. In the past week, The Warehouse retail chain announced six store closures and up to 1,080 job cuts—after receiving $67 million in wage subsidies from the government.

Air New Zealand, which is majority-owned by the government and has access to a $900 million government loan, warned that it may slash a further 2,000 jobs, on top of 4,000 already confirmed.

The Association of Consulting Engineers estimates that 2,000 highly skilled consultants (15 percent of the workforce) could lose their jobs, largely due to councils and government agencies cutting spending.

TVNZ, the state-owned broadcaster, has announced plans for up to 90 layoffs, following similar announcements by private media companies. Event Cinemas has so far cut 60 jobs nationwide. Vodafone estimates it will axe more than 100 positions.

More attacks are looming. The OECD estimates that New Zealand’s gross domestic product will shrink by 8.9 percent this year or 10 percent if there is a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Its economic outlook report, released this month, predicts “a surge in unemployment” when the government’s wage subsidy scheme expires in August.

Parents speak out against rushed re-opening of schools in Australia

Sue Phillips & Kaye Tucker

Despite widespread concerns among parents and teachers, and repeated COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, the “national cabinet” formed by the Australian federal, state and territory governments has pushed most students back into face-to-face classes.

As is occurring internationally, these governments—Liberal-National and Labor alike—have rushed to reopen schools in order to fully open up the economy for corporate profit, placing the health and lives of teachers, parents and students at risk.

The national cabinet claims that social distancing is not necessary in schools and students are “low” risk of infection, despite admitting that reopening schools could result in further coronavirus clusters.

Teacher trade unions have backed and welcomed the return to classrooms, saying it will “bring stability” to teachers, principals and education support staff. The complicity of the unions has left parents to express their concerns through social media, establishing Facebook pages and petitions.

Under conditions where widespread testing is not being conducted, the governments and unions do not know the level of community infection but that has not prevented them from railroading students and teachers back into classes.

Last week in Britain, the Conservative government of Boris Johnson was forced to drop its plans to have all primary children back in school within the next four weeks. The temporary retreat is the result of millions of parents and educators opposing the government, in defiance of the education trade unions.

The reopening of schools in the two most populous Australian states, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, has already resulted in multiple primary and secondary students testing positive to COVID-19, forcing temporary school closures.

Today, a third Victoria primary school in two days closed. Strathmore Primary School, in Melbourne’s inner-north, was shut for cleaning and contact tracing after a student became the fifth in the state to test positive for the coronavirus this week.

Yesterday, the Andrews state Labor government announced two such closures. Pakenham Springs primary school in Melbourne’s southeast, reported two students from the same family testing positive, so it would shut for 24 hours. St Dominic’s, a Roman Catholic school at Broadmeadows, in the city’s north said it would close for three days and all students who attended on June 2-3 should be tested for COVID-19.

All these schools are in working-class suburbs, as was an earlier cluster of at least 13 cases in Keilor Downs, which triggered the temporary closure of four schools, with more than 100 students and teachers self-isolating.

During past three weeks in NSW, four Sydney schools—Waverley College, Moriah College, Rose Bay primary school and Laguna Street primary school—have been forced to close for cleaning.

The Laguna Street school, in Sydney’s southern suburbs, closed last weekend for 10 days. A staff member had tested positive after being in contact with the majority of school members while infectious. This now means the self-isolation of over 450 students and staff for the next two weeks as well as the consequential impact on all their families.

Last month, Ash Parmar, a parent and president of the Parents and Citizens Committee (P&C) at a primary school in western Sydney, initiated a petition, signed by nearly 10,000 people, demanding that children not be treated as “guinea pigs” for dangerous government policies. Parents, he said, should be able to exercise their rights to protect their children, and called on the state government to keep providing an online learning platform for children not attending face-to-face classes.

One of the signatories explained: “If social distancing is proven to reduce the spreading of virus, then why does the same rule not apply to school classrooms? As if the virus will bypass school children and only target adults, which is obviously not the case. And if social distancing cannot be maintained in the classroom, then the NSW government should think again about their decision to force parents to send their children to school!”

The NSW government’s response has been both threatening and dismissive. Premier Gladys Berejiklian said: “Their children will be marked as absent.” Education Minister Sarah Mitchell insisted that “the pandemic would not be considered an adequate excuse to keep children at home.”

Implicit in their threat that “unexplained absences” of more than three days without a doctor’s certificate would be “followed up,” while not openly stated, was that truancy measures and fines could result.

In response, the petition organisers stated: “We are not asking anyone to change any policy. You are the one who is changing policies on the fly. The policy was that students at home can study through the e-learning platform. We just want that to stay on for a few weeks more till we get through this experiment. Absence codes used were always at the Principal’s discretion, leave it there.”

Since Berejiklian’s statement, parents have posted incidences where student absences were marked as unjustified, even when a doctor’s certificate was provided. Others wrote of the lack of consistency across schools, saying the policy seemed to differ from principal to principal. One parent who has two children at different schools wrote: “One was very understanding, the other not so much. We have a couple of weeks on the doctor’s certificate but not sure how things will go after that.”

Another parent commented: “The NSW premier threatened us if kids are off for 3 days. My kids will be off for 4 days as a protest. I hope other parents do the same, power in numbers. Hopefully the NSW premier goes back to the phased plan, or better yet, just opens a new school online for remote learning for parents that want and can keep kids at home and thereby helping to keep class sizes down.”

The intransigence of the governments, combined with the collaboration of the education unions, has forced parents, like teachers, to seek individual forms of action to protect their children.

Another teacher/parent voiced general distrust of the government’s motivations: “I don’t have faith in the politicians who have made this decision. I don’t have confidence that the school I work in or the other school I send my children to, will be safe for those who attend. I’ve seen the ‘cleaning’ and ‘contact tracing’ first hand. It’s a joke and this decision is driven by politics and greed, not public safety.”

The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) published a statement on May 28 opposing the rushed reopening of school systems in the states and territories where there is community transmission of COVID-19—currently NSW and Victoria. The statement called for the formation of safety action committees to protect the safety and wellbeing of students and staff threatened by the coronavirus pandemic.

This remains an urgent requirement. Rather than turning to individual courses of action to protect children, we urge parents to unite with teachers and other community members to form action committees within every school, independent of the unions and employers, with the aim of intervening to protect school communities.

UK: Johnson opens the economy and guarantees fresh COVID-19 outbreak

Thomas Scripps

All Britain’s non-essential shops reopened yesterday, as Boris Johnson’s government continued its reckless ending of the lockdown. Over a third of small businesses that closed during the pandemic, more than 266,000, had already reopened by the weekend in anticipation.

This is a criminal adventure in service to the financial and corporate elite that will cost thousands of lives. Millions of workers are being forced to travel on public transport and into workplaces without even the most elementary safety provisions being enforced. The UK is still well within the first wave of its coronavirus epidemic, which continues to infect thousands. The lowering of the death toll is entirely due to a lockdown that is now being ended.

The final stage of a wholesale return to work—including pubs, clubs, restaurants, nail bars and beauty salons, possibly as early as July—proceeds under the cover of a largely bogus debate over social distancing.

Business leaders, especially in catering and hospitality, have repeatedly called for the minimum safe distance between people to prevent infection to be reduced from two metres to one. They have seized on research commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggesting that the change would have only a marginal effect on the risk of transmission. This research, however, has been strongly criticised by leading statisticians. The government has put the rule under review, with Chancellor Rishi Sunak insisting ministers and not scientists will decide.

The review is a cosmetic exercise. The decision has already been made by bosses in the hospitality sector—in discussion with backbench Conservative MPs—who are threatening mass firings if the recommended distance is not reduced. It is an open secret in business circles that the government’s formal safety recommendations are for show and that its real position is for a complete abandonment of public health procedures.

Face masks are now finally mandated to be worn on public transport, but nowhere else—outside of medical settings. Social distancing in shops and workplaces is being left up to owners and employers to arrange “where possible.” Deliberately complacent and confusing government messages have encouraged large gatherings of people to take place.

The only real block to the spread of the virus, given the lack of any genuine measures of containment such as testing and tracing, was the national lockdown the government was forced to implement on March 23 due to overwhelming popular hostility towards its murderous policy of “herd immunity.”

Across 11 European countries, these lockdowns are estimated to have saved over 3 million lives. The UK’s failure to implement the policy for just one week after the catastrophic implications of “herd immunity” had been publicly revealed cost around 20,000 lives, according to former government scientific advisor Professor Neil Fergusson. The premature ending of the lockdown will cost untold thousands more.

To disguise this fact, the corporate media have launched a propaganda offensive summoning Britons to do their patriotic duty and visit the high street. Yesterday’s headlines included the Daily Express ’s “Boris: Time to Spend for Our Country,” the Mirror’s and the Daily Mail’s “Shop for Britain” and the i ’s, “High streets sparking back to life.”

This takes place as scientists warn that easing the lockdown under current conditions is almost certain to lead to a resurgence in cases of coronavirus, endangering more lives and throwing away the sacrifices made by workers and their families over three months.

Earlier this month, a group of more than 100 scientists, many working in infectious disease biology and immunology, wrote an open letter to the government, saying, “There is a very high probability that relaxation of lockdown, coupled with a potential breakdown in public trust, will bring us back into a situation where the outbreak is once again out of control.”

They argued that levels of community transmission were still too high and needed to fall further and that “effective test, track and trace capacity” needed to be implemented before any relaxation could be considered.

On Sunday, Hans Kluge, the World Health Organisation’s director for Europe, said the UK was still in a “very active phase of the pandemic.” He cautioned that England should not leave lockdown until the government has a “robust track-and-trace system in place.” The UK’s Test and Trace system’s chief operating officer, Tony Prestedge, has admitted the scheme will not be fully operational until September or October.

Last week, the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies noted that Health Secretary Matt Hancock vastly over-reported the percentage of contacts of infected people found by the Test and Trace system. Hancock claimed 85 percent had been found, but this related only to the contacts of the 5,407 coronavirus cases identified by the government between May 28 and June 3. Data from the Office for National Statistics suggests there were really 23,000 new cases in this period, meaning contacts were only found for 25 percent of newly infected people.

These concerns find no political expression because the Labour Party and the trade unions are co-conspirators with the bloodstained Johnson government—the most right-wing in modern British history.

The Labour Party has been silent on the dangers of the policies being implemented, keeping its promise to work “constructively” and “in the national interest” with the Conservatives. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has focussed his criticisms on the government’s failure to get more children back in schools, which will serve as holding pens while parents are sent back to work.

The trade unions have been engaged in backroom discussions with the government from the first days of the coronavirus crisis. They have kept workers on the job by making all safety concerns a matter of individual responsibility, telling their members not to work if they feel unsafe. They have encouraged workers to place their faith in risk assessments on a workplace-by-workplace basis, knowing full well that the Health and Safety Executive is not carrying out the appropriate inspections.

The only opposition to Johnson’s government that exists is the as yet unorganised opposition of the working class, which finds reflection in the refusal of millions of parents to send their children back to school, in the recent protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder in the United States, and in wildcat strikes and protests across the country. If the criminal policies of the Johnson government are to be resisted and defeated, then this opposition must take up a political perspective that advances the working class’s own independent interests.

The Socialist Equality Party reiterates the call it published on May 27, as part of a world programme developed by the International Committee of the Fourth International, “Build rank-and-file factory and workplace committees to prevent transmission of the COVID-19 virus and save lives!”

We call on workers to form safety committees in their workplaces to ensure work only takes place under genuinely safe conditions, monitored by the workers themselves, advised by scientific and public health experts. These bodies must be independent of the trade unions and reach out to other workers internationally in a fight against the deadly policies of capitalist governments and for a socialist reorganisation of society.

Nurses outraged over US hospital chain bailouts, layoffs and bloated CEO pay

Gary Joad

The 60 wealthiest health care and hospital chains in the United States have compensated their top executives hundreds of millions of dollars while laying off tens of thousands of health care workers throughout the United States in recent weeks according to June 8 article in the New York Times.

The richest hospital combines, some of which used their non-profit status to avoid federal tax obligations, have slashed life-saving services at a time of great health care need in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has funneled billions of dollars to the corporations, monies obtained in the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, Economic Security Act) and signed into law March 27.

One of these hospitals, the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, received a $199 million federal grant this spring, while last year it sat on $7 billion in cash which generated a $1.2 billion investment return, a tidy sum for having paid an investment firm $28 million to manage its largess.

“The bailout of major hospitals completely breaks down this narrative that the hospital CEOs love to promote that ‘we are all in this together,’” a nurse at Cleveland Clinic told the WSWS. “The $199 million they received will never drift down to nurses, nurse assistants, janitors or physical therapists.

“While there haven’t been mass layoffs at Cleveland Clinic as there have at other hospitals, we were told recently that we must use a certain amount of our paid time off by the end of the summer. For some this means that vacations that were scheduled in the fall will have to be cancelled. They explained this policy to us in an email that makes it sound like employees have to do their part and give back.”

The Times examined regulatory, securities and tax documents from 60 health care corporations that received over $15 billion without so much as having to apply for the monies—funds received with almost no strings attached. The swift disbursement occurred virtually overnight for the most powerful health care corporations and tycoons, apparently because industry lobbyists were directly colluding with the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, II and his deputy Eric Hargan in authoring the formulas to pump funds into the already overflowing coffers of the conglomerates.

Seven of the largest health care combines in the US were handed $1.5 billion in bailout funds, while they laid off and furloughed over 30,000 workers. They are Trinity Health, Beaumont Health, and Henry Ford Health in Michigan, SSM Health and Mercy in St. Louis, Missouri, Fairview Health in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Prisma Health in South Carolina.

HCA Healthcare, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, saw $7 billion in profits the last two years, with a total wealth of over $36 billion, while the company received approximately $1 billion in CARES funds this late winter. HCA’s CEO Samuel Hazen obtained $26 million in compensation in 2019, and in an effort to deflect public outrage let it be known he was donating the first two months of his annual salary, $237,000, to a fund for compensating stressed company health care workers, or 0.009 percent of his direct pay, stock options and bonuses.

CARES is said to forbid use of the federal funds for compensating health care executives, with the vital exception of bonuses, which are by far management’s wider dollar pipeline in the first place.

While federal officials stood aside and permitted the coronavirus pandemic to penetrate counties across the country, health care workers authored long lists of complaints about HCA and the other health care giants that were all but ignoring requests for adequate work protections for doctors, nurses, nurse assistants, janitors and cleaning personnel.

In May, HCA executives threatened health care staffs with layoffs if they did not agree to pay freezes and other concessions. Dozens of the workers’ complaints noted that the company put the greatest financial stress on the lowest paid employees, such as food workers, cleaners and nursing assistants. Staffs at 19 HCA hospitals filed complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for lack of respiratory masks and the forced reusing of medical gowns.

Celia Yap-Banago, a nurse at an HCA hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, died of COVID-19 in April, and had complained with her colleagues about lack of protective gear. The following month, Rosa Luna died at the HCA hospital in Riverside, California where she cleaned rooms, and after her co-workers had emailed executives with complaints about inadequate and unsafe work protections.

At the same time, HCA management was threatening the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and National Nurses United (NNU) with layoffs of 10 percent of their workforce if they did not press memberships for agreement to wage freezes and abolishment of company pension contributions.

Nursing staffs fought back and held demonstrations at over a dozen HCA hospitals. Kathy Montanino, a nurse treating coronavirus patients at Riverside, told reporters, “We don’t work at a jellybean factory where it’s ok if we make a blue jellybean instead of a red one. We are dealing with peoples’ lives and this company puts profits over patients and their staff.”

A company spokesman Ed Fishbough responded that HCA “provided appropriate PPE, including a universal masking policy … requiring all staff in all areas to wear masks, including N95s in line with CDC guidelines.” When queried about the HCA threats of layoffs, Fishbough claimed that HCA “has not laid off or furloughed a single caregiver due to the pandemic.”

Clearly anticipating strike action, HCA formed still another company to hire replacements, with tentative weekly scab compensations exceeding that of the company’s current work force.

The Times reported that the top five executives in each of the 60 largest companies were paid about $874 million, according to the most recent tax information filed. The corporations that control access to thousands of hospital beds are sitting on billions of dollars.

The giant for-profit and publicly traded Tenet Healthcare based in Dallas, Texas has furloughed 11,000 workers since April and received $345 million in federal grants. CEO Ron Rittenmeyer’s compensation package totals $24 million, of which he reported he was donating 1.5 percent to stressed health care staff.

Providence Health Systems, a Catholic-sponsored non-profit, compensates its CEO Rod Hochman $10 million annually. Hochman announced he was accepting a 50 percent pay cut, constituting less than 20 percent of his compensation package. Hochman’s team has put doctors and nurses on notice for a 10 percent pay cut next month, including staff caring for COVID-19 patients.

Providence, headquartered in Renton, Washington sits on a $12 billion cash reserve and received a $509 million CARES grant. The company administers a Wall Street portfolio profitable enough to garner another billion in a good year via hedge fund investments and in other equity outfits such as the Carlyle Group, which is heavily wired into military procurements. Providence also administers two venture capital funds with assets of over $300 million for cutting edge start-up proposals.

Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minnesota, with an eight-month cash reserve, was handed $170 million in CARES grants while it cut hours and furloughed 23,000 employees, including the initial spokesman for the Times’ report.

St. Louis based Assention Health Care owns 150 hospitals in the US and received a $211 million federal grant while in possession of $15 billion cash.

Unsurprisingly, the CARES granting formula overwhelmingly favored the very richest corporations, based on past Medicare and private insurance revenues. The more they charged and collected in the past, the more they were handed in April, for free.

Not so for the hospitals taking care of the low income, Medicaid and uninsured persons. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) posted study results of CARES disbursement this spring in an analysis of 4,564 hospitals, including 3,242 short-term care facilities and 1,322 so-called critical access hospitals.

The 10 percent richest facilities received CARES grants at a rate of $44,321 per bed while the bottom 10 percent obtained $20,710 per bed. The wealthiest 457 hospitals had less teaching beds, at 10 percent, while the least compensated 457 facilities had 38 percent of beds available for health skills instruction. The richest 457 units had operating margins at 9 percent, and the bottom group of 457, 4.2 percent.

The nurse from Cleveland clinic added:

“Over the past decade or so the pay for hospital CEOs has shot up while the pay for health care workers like nurses has stayed the same or decreased. COVID-19 has exacerbated this process. It’s the same pattern that is happening in other industries, but it is especially sickening, in my opinion, when it happens in an industry like health care that advertises itself as this beacon of health and compassion.

“Most people go into nursing or other health care jobs because they want to help people. They want to ease pain, they want to educate, they want to be there for people during the worst days of their lives. Laying off these workers or forcing then to work in unsafe conditions is criminal, and it is the working class who will pay for this crime.

“Patients will get less attention from nurses who are stretched between six-eight patients or they won’t get physical therapy or speech therapy or other services that are required to make a full recovery. Imagine, you go to the hospital because you’ve had a stroke. Because of a lack of resources, because of masses of laid-off health care workers, you hardly get the help you need.

“You spend most of your day sitting in the hospital bed. Without the proper therapies or guidance or attention, you hardly get any better and maybe you even get worse, developing pressure sores or malnutrition because no one is there to help you eat.”