British government’s token arts rescue package: A “back-to-work” agenda amid an ongoing catastrophe

Paul Bond

The Johnson government’s £1.57 billion (US$1.98 billion) coronavirus rescue package for the arts, announced this past weekend, is a token and selective effort, aimed at promoting the reopening of businesses while the pandemic rages.

The funding, the first financial recognition of the arts sector since the pandemic began, concentrates on “crown jewel” venues, and its limited local support will not save countless jobs.

Announcing the package, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden admitted, “Sadly, not everyone is going to be able to survive and not every job is going to be protected and, sadly, I have to be honest with you, of course, we will see further redundancies.”

The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton (Photo credit–David Martin)

This is an understatement. The limited financial assistance provided is based on the government’s propaganda claim that the pandemic is in retreat and, sooner rather than later, theatre, dance and music venues will be able to get back to relying on the revenue from audiences.

In reality, venues are being encouraged to open under unsafe conditions that threaten the health of performers, back- and front-stage employees and audiences. Moreover, in the present conditions, many audience members will not return, and the remaining social distancing measures make it all but impossible to earn a profit. Worse still, no sooner will this reckless policy be implemented, to justify the government’s back-to-work drive, than an inevitable spike in cases will mean venues either closing their doors once more or going bankrupt.

The situation for arts bodies has already become desperate. Theatres have gone into administration. Southampton Nuffield has announced its permanent closure.

Waves of redundancies have been announced. Norwich Theatre, which has lost 95 percent of its income, announced a restructuring threatening 113 jobs, more than half its employees. A further 59 employees on zero-hour contracts have been told there is no longer work for them. Manchester’s nationally acclaimed Royal Exchange warned it may lay off up to 65 percent of its permanent staff.

Oliver Dowden (Photo credit–Richard Townshend)

The collapse in booking revenue and refunding cancelled performances had an immediate impact on theatres. Advance ticket sales have collapsed by 92 percent since the onset of the pandemic, and the industry has reportedly lost £330 million with the lockdown.

Producers warned that without support, 70 percent of performing arts companies faced collapse by the end of the year, and more than 1,000 theatres confronted insolvency and permanent closure.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally broke the government’s silence on the question by declaring that arts and culture “make our country great and are the linchpin of our world-beating and fast-growing creative industries.”

The bulk of the package is a £1.15 billion support pot for organisations. Nearly one quarter of this—£270 million—will take the form of loans to be “issued on generous terms.” Institutions will have to apply for support money.

Details are not yet clear, but Dowden has said applicants will be asked to prove how they contribute to wider economic growth. Unless there is a Damascene conversion, London’s prestige arts venues, considered essential to tourism and beloved of the Tories’ own voting constituency, will claim the lion’s share. This seems to be the meaning of the reference to “crown jewel” venues.

The next largest component sum of the package confirms that its purpose is not rescuing institutions but legitimising the wider reopening of the economy. The government has dedicated £120 million of capital investment to “restart construction on cultural infrastructure” and for heritage construction projects in England paused because of the pandemic.

Theatre Royal, Newcastle (Photo credit–Christopher Down)

The remainder of the money is divided regionally, with £100 million specified for English Heritage and national institutions in England. Money has been allocated to the devolved regional administrations: a paltry £97 million for Scotland, £59 million for Wales, and £33 million for Northern Ireland.

This is too little, too late to save many jobs. Birmingham Hippodrome had already announced 130 redundancies. The Theatre Royal Plymouth cut its entire artistic team, 100 out of the venue’s 350 jobs, issuing a statement that it is closed until further notice. The Theatre Royal Newcastle axed 44 of its 89 staff.

The package is intended to accelerate the reopening of venues. This can only mean endangering public health. Theatre producers had said that they needed venues full to 60 percent of capacity for reopening to be financially viable. Under safe social distancing regulations, some venues were looking at only 12 percent of capacity. The situation is even worse for live music venues, where social distancing of any kind is impossible and audiences must be packed in if there is any hope of making money.

Theatre owners and producers are being driven by commercial considerations to downplay the dangers to the safety of actors, staff, and audiences. Julian Bird, chief executive of the Society of London Theatre/UK Theatre, representing theatre owners and managers, insisted “that with the right safety processes in place, we can get back to full audiences in theatres within months.” Andrew Lloyd Webber said he looked forward to “working further with Oliver [Dowden] and the government to get all of Britain’s theatres—both large and small—open as soon as possible.”

Producers are pushing the government for a time frame to enable reopening. This was their main objection to Dowden’s vague five-phase “roadmap” for reopening, announced two weeks ago. Its first two phases—physically distanced rehearsal and training, and physically distanced performance for broadcast and recording—were already possible. Thanks to the latter, some unsubsidised theatres, like the Old Vic, had been able to offer livestreamed performances as a source of income. But this is impossible for most.

Dowden’s other phases were: Outdoor performances with an audience and pilot indoor performances with “a limited distance audience”; outdoor and indoor performances with limited distance audience; and all performances with “a fuller audience” indoors. Those pushing hardest for venues to reopen were demanding “no earlier than” dates for these phases. Johnson has now pledged a timetable later this week.

The combined focus on “crown jewel” institutions and the economic impact of the pandemic means a further intensification of the devastation already wrought by decades of funding cuts.

That the rescue package responded to the demands of theatre producers, not artists, is confirmed by its continued omission of any support for self-employed and freelance workers. They were not included in the initial Job Retention Scheme (JRS) at the end of March, under which the state subsidised 80 percent of the wages of furloughed workers.

Directly employed theatre workers on JRS were at risk anyhow, with Justin Audibert, artistic director at the Unicorn Theatre, warning that the “vital lifeline” of JRS would not prevent closures. Staff at Southampton’s Nuffield Theatres were furloughed, but the venue went into administration in May, as did Leicester’s Haymarket. Southampton’s 86 staff have now been made redundant. The government’s subsequent Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) still left large numbers of entertainment workers uncovered.

In an area of precarious and irregular employment, many of the most vulnerable have been left entirely without support. When the pandemic began, Equity committed £1 million to its Benevolent Fund for members in dire financial straits. The union reported last month that more than £750,000 of this had already been paid out, and that £1 million “will not be enough to see us through this crisis.” Streaming company Netflix has donated £500 million for freelance theatre workers unable to work since March.

That these artists have no place in the rescue package confirms that the arts have no future under capitalism. For the ruling class, the arts are merely a commercial tourist opportunity, a hobby of privilege. The “crown jewel” venues are encouraged as cash cows, while other sectors of the arts are starved of funding and left to die.

But the arts are more than just big-name venues. Large-scale successes are only the most visible part of a network of arts that requires support and maintenance. The rescue package demonstrates that the present social order cannot and will not do this. It also shows a reckless willingness to expose even its favoured artists to the dangers of a virulent pandemic in pursuit of a quick buck.

What is behind the New Zealand health minister’s resignation?

Tom Peters

David Clark announced his resignation as health minister on July 2, following weeks of escalating media criticism of his role in New Zealand’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The resignation appears contradictory: New Zealand’s Labour Party-led coalition government has been hailed in the media internationally for its response to the pandemic, which is presented as a model for other countries. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last month declared the country free from community transmission of COVID-19 and the government lifted all social distancing restrictions. Clark has claimed the country is “the envy of the world.”

The reality, however, is that New Zealand’s health system is severely run-down due to decades of austerity, leaving the country highly vulnerable should there be new outbreaks of coronavirus.

Clark’s resignation follows serious bungles at hotels serving as quarantine facilities for people returning from overseas. Healthcare officials admitted on June 24 that 51 people had been allowed to leave quarantine earlier than the mandated two-week period, without being tested for the virus.

Mismanagement of quarantine hotels has contributed to a resurgence of coronavirus in Melbourne, Australia, and there are well-founded fears that a similar outbreak could occur in New Zealand. The Ardern government reacted to the breaches by placing the quarantine hotels, currently housing around 5,000 people, under military control.

Clark was widely denounced in the media after he denied responsibility for the debacle and sought to place the blame entirely on the director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

The health minister had previously offered to resign in April after going on a bike ride in breach of the country’s lockdown rules. Ardern decided to retain Clark, arguing it would be too disruptive to dismiss him in the middle of the pandemic.

The prime minister changed her position last week. Clark told a media conference he was stepping down because “my continuation in the role is distracting from the government’s overall response to COVID-19.” There is no obvious replacement for Clark and Education Minister Chris Hipkins has temporarily taken on the health portfolio.

The government’s immediate goal was to scapegoat Clark for the quarantine failures, ahead of the Labour Party’s conference last weekend where Ardern launched her campaign for re-election. The minister’s hasty removal, however, points to deeper instability within the government and the wider political establishment.

The ruling class is undoubtedly concerned about rising class tensions and opposition to the entire political establishment, particularly among young people. Last month tens of thousands of New Zealanders protested against police violence, in solidarity with the movement sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the US.

The Labour Party recently polled at 50 percent, down from 59 percent in May. Its support could quickly evaporate if there is a resurgence of COVID-19. Significantly, Bloomfield indicated on July 1 that if there are new outbreaks, the government will implement localised lockdowns, similar to the largely inadequate measures imposed in parts of Australia. Big business opposes any return to a full nationwide lockdown.

Opposition National Party leader Todd Muller has described the government as “shambolic” and said Ardern should have sacked Clark earlier. National, however, is in turmoil following a leadership change in May.

The party’s former deputy leader Paula Bennett has announced she intends to resign from politics. National MP Hamish Walker was stripped of his portfolios this week after he admitted to leaking private information about the whereabouts of COVID-19 patients in an attempt to embarrass the government.

Labour and National are both widely reviled as parties of big business. Labour received just 36.9 percent of the votes in 2017 and was only able to form a government with the support of the Greens and the right-wing nationalist NZ First.

Workers and young people are shifting further to the left of all these parties under the impact of the pandemic and the economic crisis. Tens of thousands of people have been made redundant and unemployment has risen from 4 to over 7 percent.

The government appears to have concluded that Clark is incapable of dealing with the struggles that will inevitably erupt in the health sector. He is deeply despised among healthcare workers for his role in enforcing austerity over the past two years.

In 2018, more than 30,000 hospital nurses and healthcare assistants went on strike against an effective pay freeze and gross under-staffing. The next year, thousands of doctors, midwives, ambulance paramedics and other healthcare workers also took industrial action.

In response to the nurses’ strike, Clark claimed that the government could not afford to immediately fix the crisis in the healthcare system. The NZ Nurses Organisation (NZNO) played the critical role in pushing through a sellout deal, despite widespread opposition from its members.

Further inroads are being made in the midst of the pandemic. On June 24, St John Ambulance, which provides ambulance services for most of the country, announced it was considering up to 100 job cuts due to a funding shortfall.

Health workers are seeking a way to fight back. More than 3,400 general practice nurses, administrators and receptionists are preparing to strike for two hours on July 23. The nurses are seeking pay parity with hospital nurses, who can receive around $7,700 more per year with the same level of experience.

The Ardern government, like every government in the world, has responded to the pandemic by handing billions of dollars over to the financial markets and big business. Corporations which have received bailouts and subsidies are ruthlessly restructuring through mass layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on working conditions.

The government is also spending billions on upgrading the military in order to integrate it into US and Australian war preparations against China.

The next government, whoever leads it, will be confronted with increasingly explosive class struggles against war and social inequality.

Australia: Woolworths to slash more than 1,300 warehousing jobs

Patrick Davies

Australia’s largest supermarket chain Woolworths announced late last month that it will slash 1,350 jobs as it automates and relocates its warehouse operations in Sydney and Melbourne.

A new pair of automated distribution centres will be constructed at Moorebank in Sydney meaning the closure of existing facilities in Minchinbury and Yennora in Sydney and Mulgrave in Melbourne. Workers have been told that many of them will be made redundant when the new centres become operational in 2025.

None of the 1,300 employees have been guaranteed redeployment at the Moorebank facilities. They will require just 650 workers and will be fitted out with $700–$780 million of technology and robotics designed to automate much of the warehousing processes. Woolworths has indicated it has set aside $176 million to cover redundancies.

Woolworths warehouse workers from Melbourne in 2015

While workers face a future of uncertainty, the retail giant said it expected full year earnings before interest and tax to be in the range of $3.2 billion to $3.25 billion, down from $3.9 billion last year.

Like other major corporations, Woolworths is using the pandemic and the resulting economic downturn to accelerate a pro-business restructuring involving the elimination of jobs and the slashing of working conditions.

Last year, before the COVID-19 crisis, Woolworths had already announced the closure of 30 Big W stores, many in regional cities. Associated distribution centres were also shuttered, resulting in the destruction of 1,000 positions.

The United Workers Union (UWU), which covers the Sydney warehouses, has not organised any political action or campaign to protect workers’ jobs.

A UWU representative official labelled the latest cuts as “particularly heartless given the back-breaking work our members did to support Woolworths through COVID and make them massive profits.”

The union, however, has pledged to provide unspecified assistance to help workers move “on to other sectors,” signalling that it will enforce the sackings.

Woolworths generates its enormous profits on the back of its highly exploited casual employees, who make up almost half the workforce. This is a result of decades of union-brokered Enterprise Agreements (EAs) that have suppressed wages and cut conditions.

Successive EAs struck with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), and other unions in the supermarket sector, have imposed pay rates below minimum award levels. As a result, up to 250,000 workers, many of them casual, have been underpaid billions of dollars in the supermarket, retail and fast food sectors over the last several years.

The company’s ruthless drive for profits, facilitated by the unions, has recently been showcased in one of the largest instances of underpayment to workers in Australia.

Last October, Woolworths reported itself to Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman, an essentially toothless agency created in 2009, which assesses complaints or breaches of workplace laws.

The company claimed to have “discovered” that it had underpaid 5,700 staff by as much as $300 million, during the implementation of a previous enterprise agreement. Significantly, the admission only came after revelations that a number of major Australian retailers had been underpaying staff. Woolworths went to the ombudsman in an effort to prevent a more detailed scrutiny of its practices.

On the same day Woolworths announced the current round of job cuts, it admitted to a blowout of at least $90 million in the cost of its back-pay for workers in its hotel division who had been underpaid in 2018 and 2019. This brought the company’s total liabilities to $390 million. Last month’s revelation was the second time this figure was revised up.

The UWU and the SDA, along with the union bureaucracy as a whole, is doing everything it can to prevent opposition emerging from workers.

The unions have backed federal and state government handouts to employers over the past months, worth as much as $250 billion, along with loans to shore up banks and large businesses.

Woolworths responded to the current crisis by rapidly standing down thousands of workers across its hospitality division. The latest job cuts are further proof that the government stepped in to protect the profits of major corporations, while facilitating a further offensive against jobs, wages and conditions.

The unions are playing the central role in this onslaught.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) will collaborate in talks with Woolworths, which has publicly called for cuts to after-hours penalty pay rates, on the fraudulent pretext that this will “create jobs.”

This is part of a broader integration of the unions into company and government frameworks. In May, the ACTU announced that it would join tripartite talks with big business and the government to plan a vast pro-business overhaul of industrial relations and workplace conditions.

ACTU chief Sally McManus has been hailed by Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter as his “BFF” (best friend forever) for approving the cutting of overtime pay and shift restrictions for millions of fast food, hospitality and clerical workers since the pandemic began.

Logistics workers at Woolworths and elsewhere must draw the necessary conclusions. The unions are thoroughly corporatised entities that function as an industrial police force of governments and big business.

What is required is the building of independent organisations of struggle, including rank-and-file committees, to organise a genuine industrial and political fight in defence of all jobs at Woolworths and across the board.

Such committees face important political issues. Under capitalism, the automation of the logistics and manufacturing process serves to further concentrate wealth in the hands of a tiny few, while workers are thrown into poverty or are forced to settle for lower paid insecure jobs. Monopolistic corporations, such as Woolworths are further entrenched, expanding their market share.

Automation, however, has the potential to free workers from labourious and dangerous tasks. The resulting increase in productivity could be used to shorten the working week with no loss in pay and to ensure the provision of decent food and supplies to all.

This, however, requires the reorganisation of society to meet human need, not private profit. That means the fight for a workers’ government that would implement socialist policies, including placing the corporations and the banks under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.

Riots in Ethiopia over assassination of Oromi singer/activist Hachalu Hundessa

Jean Shaoul

At least 239 people have been killed in riots in the capital Addis Ababa and other Ethiopian towns and cities at the hands of the police or in inter-ethnic fighting. The police yesterday broke the death toll down to 215 civilians, nine police officers and five militia members. More than 3,500 arrests were reported.

Days of riots were triggered by the killing on June 29th by unknown assailants of the popular Oromian musician, activist, and former political prisoner, Hachalu Hundessa. One of the deadliest episodes since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in April 2018, promising to end authoritarian rule, highlights the highly unstable situation in a country lauded for the highest economic growth rate in Africa, averaging 10.5 percent a year between 2004 and 2018.

In Addis Ababa, cars and petrol stations were burnt, shops and businesses looted and vandalised and homes and banks robbed. At least 10 people were killed in angry clashes with the police and many more were injured. Similar clashes took place throughout Oromia, the largest of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically based regions that has suffered persecution under previous governments drawn from non-Oromo groups.

In Harar, in the east of the country, demonstrators tore down a statue of royal prince Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the father of Haile Selassie—the monarch and US ally who ruled Ethiopia until he was overthrown by a military coup in March 1974.

Abiy responded by deploying troops to put down the riots, shutting down the internet and arresting around 2,000 people. These included journalists accused of inciting violence and a leading opposition politician Jawar Mohammed, also an Oromo and former ally turned opponent of Abiy.

Hundessa has led protests against Abiy, who is also Oromian. Abiy was quick to offer his condolences, saying that the assassins’ aim was not just to kill Hachalu, “but through him to kill Ethiopia.” But few accepted his pose of sympathy as genuine.

Hachalu’s assassination sparked solidarity protests among Ethiopian diaspora communities in the US and the UK, where 100 demonstrators carrying the Oromo flag smashed the statue of Hailie Selassie in a Wimbledon park in London.

Oromia saw a wave of protests from 2014 to 2017 over deteriorating social and economic conditions and anger over land seized from their long-time Oromo owners and handed over to overseas companies—often from the Gulf and China, for infrastructure and export-orientated agribusiness. Land that once produced food in a country synonymous with droughts, famine, and locust swarms, now produces flowers, coffee, palm oil, and other cash crops for European and Asian markets.

Abiy rose to prominence as a leader of the Oromo resistance movement, exploiting popular anger over this land grab and famously making use of Hachalu’s political songs to help his campaigns.

On coming to power with the pledge of ending the despotism long associated with Ethiopian governments, he released tens of thousands of political prisoners and ended the internet blackout imposed by the previous government of Hailemariam Desalegn.

He lifted a ban on several political parties, some of which had been designated “terrorist” groups, paving the way for the leaders of the banned groups to return to Ethiopia. He also ended the 20-year long war with neighbouring Eritrea and sacked over 100 generals and other high officers, mostly from the Tigray ethnic group that had dominated the previous regime.

This sparked fierce opposition within the military, both from officers who resented the military’s loss of political power and from those who viewed as an attack on the Tigray people, and led to last year’s abortive coup. Viewed as collectively responsible for the crimes of the previous regime, hundreds of thousands of Tigray have been driven from their homes and are living in internally displaced people’s camps due to racist violence since Abiy became prime minister.

Despite Abiy’s promise to end ethnic discrimination, ethnic violence has increased, with a growing danger of still bloodier ethnic violence. In addition to the attacks on the Tigray, nearly one million ethnic Gedeos have been forced to flee their homes in West Guji. In both cases, the attackers belong to Oromo militias.

The sale of land has also continued, under conditions where 80 percent of Ethiopia’s 104 million people are dependent upon the land for their subsistence and at least 25 percent of the population ekes out an existence on less than $2 a day.

Abiy’s liberalisation of Ethiopia’s labour laws and plans to sell state assets, including Ethiopian Airlines—Africa’s largest and most profitable—telecoms, electricity and transportation, along with manufacturing, hotels and some agricultural sectors, to overseas companies, has secured Washington’s approval. It has agreed to invest $5 billion in Ethiopia through its International Development Finance Corporation, as well as greenlighting a $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund programme, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to counter Chinese influence in the country.

But within Ethiopia itself, the euphoria that accompanied Abiy’s rise to power has long since evaporated as the security forces continue to suppress armed groups and inter-communal violence in parts of the Amhara and Oromia regions with brutal force, including extrajudicial executions and torture.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International, the release of political prisoners and the plans for elections, now postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has coincided with politicians stirring up ethnic and religious strife in a bid to mobilise support, sparking inter-communal violence and armed attacks in several regional states. The federal government has responded by setting up security command posts to coordinate the operations of the military, police, and local militia.

The report documents a series of alleged abuses in Oromia, where security forces are waging a campaign against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the breakaway armed wing of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)—an opposition party that pursued military struggle before its return to Ethiopia to pursue a peaceful agenda in 2018. According to the report, security forces have detained at least 10,000 people suspected of supporting or working for the OLA in rounds of mass detention, starting in January 2019.

As the coronavirus spread internationally, and with just 22 ventilators dedicated to treating severe cases in the entire country, Abiy’s government decided it could not afford a lockdown and instead relied on public messaging. It did not immediately stop direct flights from China, but imposed temperature checks at Addis’s international airport. The authorities claim the first case came from Japan, with others coming later, mainly from Europe.

Arkebe Oqubay, a senior minister and Abiy’s special adviser, said, “This is not a disease you fight by ventilators or intensive care units,” adding, “90 percent of the solution is hand washing and social distancing. The only way we can play and win is if we focus on prevention.”

Abiy then declared a state of emergency and suspended the elections that were scheduled for August and part of his pledge to bring democracy to the country. He cited the coronavirus pandemic as the reason without setting a new date for elections. Abiy had been expected to face strong opposition from many ethnically based parties.

While Ethiopia has avoided the worst of the pandemic, having officially recorded around 8,500 cases and, depending on sources, a handful of deaths, the economic consequences have been dire. Its horticulture and agricultural sectors have been decimated, largely because of the precipitous fall in the number of international flights on which its exports depend. Income from tourism and remittances from Ethiopians working in the Middle East have collapsed.

Abiy has sought to deflect tensions outwards, focusing on the dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the $4.8 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The GERD is Africa’s largest dam on the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile provides 80 percent of the waters of the River Nile on which the two downstream countries depend.

Ethiopia has thus far rejected an agreement and concessions to resolve Egypt and Sudan’s fears over the adequacy of their water supply. Next month, Ethiopia is to start storing water in the vast reservoir, as the prelude to generating 6,000 megawatts of electricity to supply Ethiopia and the wider region.

Germany: Automaker Opel cuts company pensions

Marianne Arens

The Opel Group and its parent company PSA want to make significant cuts in company pensions. A “fundamental modernisation” was necessary, Opel head of personnel Ralph Wangemann told employees on June 5. These cuts are part of a slice-and-dice tactic that has been in place for years, with the help of the IG Metall union, whereby management is passing on the costs of the coronavirus pandemic, e-mobility and digitalization to the workers.

In the last three years since the French PSA group bought Opel and Vauxhall from General Motors, this tactic has already destroyed 4,000 jobs at Opel’s German plants alone. Out of over 19,000 at the time PSA took control, only 15,000 jobs remain.

The reduction in company pensions has been threatening ever since the takeover by PSA. At that time, GM agreed to finance most of the current company pensions, while the Opel board promised to guarantee the pension level in the future.

It is said that these company pensions have been maintained at the level of a five percent annual growth rate for 16 years, although interest rates are generally much lower today. Such a growth rate is “significantly above the market standard,” according to the letter from the head of personnel. Like other companies (for example, printing press manufacturer Heidelberg or Lufthansa), Opel is no longer prepared to continue providing these contributions for future Opel retirees. While shareholders can enjoy the booming stock markets, workers are expected to cope with lower pensions and poverty in old age.

IG Metall and the general works council reacted to the announcement by the Opel board in their usual way. On June 9, they distributed a flyer at plants with the headline, “Hands off Opel retirement benefits.” Several media outlets claimed new head of the works council, Uwe Baum, was against the cuts, which allegedly had not been agreed upon.

In reality, this reaction is part of a well-known game with each side playing their allotted role. Workers’ anger is to be prevented from taking the form of real industrial action. Significantly, the works council’s flyer already states that “the cost of pensions has already fallen considerably in recent years as a result of the reduction of thousands of jobs.” IG Metall and the works council have systematically collaborated in organizing this reduction.

Initially, temporary workers, workers on fixed-term contracts, and those working via sub-contracts were laid off. In January, the board of directors and union representatives agreed on a further massive cutback at the company. Since then, apprentice training, the transmission plant in Rüsselsheim with over 200 employees and other parts of the company have also been scheduled for closure. The research and development centre, part of which went to the developer Segula, is being systematically reduced. Thousands of other jobs are threatened.

The cuts at Opel are part of a huge upheaval in the entire automotive industry. BMW is about to cut 16,000 jobs. At Daimler, the works council itself has announced that tens of thousands of jobs will be cut. In France, Renault has announced a cut of 15,000 jobs worldwide. And these are just a few examples.

In 2004, when company pensions were introduced in their present form, there were still 63,000 jobs at Opel across Europe, more than half of which have since been destroyed. Several plants, including Antwerp and Bochum, have long since closed. And everything went ahead with the blessing of IG Metall and the works councils.

The World Socialist Web Site has shown how closely the unions work with the corporations and how lavishly they are financed in Germany by the large companies and the state through the supervisory boards and the union’s own Hans Böckler Foundation. The WSWS proposes that workers form action committees independent of IG Metall and fight together internationally. At several American Fiat Chrysler plants, car workers have already set up such committees to protect themselves from COVID-19.

However, the reaction of IG Metall to the coronavirus pandemic is completely different. It has worked out the so-called “safety procedures” under which Opel employees have already had to work again for three weeks. Even before the pandemic, it officially waived wage demands for this year out of consideration for “national economic interests.” IG Metall even accepts that the employers’ association Gesamtmetall symbolically depicts the union alongside the employers in a video showing how, as part of a national team, it is helping Germany to win against foreign competition.

In fact, it is the Opel group that best demonstrates that workers can only succeed in a joint international struggle. Parent company PSA presented its new merger with Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) to shareholders on June 25. PSA boss Carlos Tavares depicts this merger, upon which the EU competition commission wants to decide by October 22, as a panacea for all the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

With the merger, PSA and FCA want to create the fourth largest car company in the world. This will include Opel, Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Maserati. Together, these companies have well over 400,000 employees. Only VW (with 670,000 employees), Renault-Nissan (450,000) and Toyota (370,000) have larger sales.

These four largest car companies in the world alone employ almost two million people. This shows that car workers could develop tremendous strength in defence of health and life if they were not prevented from doing so by the nationalist and pro-business trade unions.

The amalgamation with FCA will bring new attacks on Opel workers. According to the merger announcement, the two companies plan to achieve annual “synergies” of over €3.7 billion, which will inevitably be at the expense of jobs and workers’ social achievements.

OECD pushes for cuts in assistance for jobless

Nick Beams

The latest economic and employment report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED), comprising 37 of the world’s major economies, is notable for two features.

It details some of the severe effects of the economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly its impact on lower-paid and younger workers, and sets out measures it believes governments should start to use to carry out a restructuring of wages and working arrangements as historically high unemployment continues.

Pointing to the employment effects of the pandemic, it notes that “up to 10 times fewer hours were worked in some countries, compared with the first months of the 2008 financial crisis.”

It warns that the jobs crisis risks turning into a social crisis, as in the sectors of the economy most affected up to half of all workers have part-time or temporary contracts or are self-employed.

It describes the numbers as “stark” and its projections as “bleak.”

Even if a second wave of infections is avoided, it projects a 6 percent annual decline in global GDP for 2020 and an OECD-wide unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent at the end of 2020.

By 2021, real income per capita in the majority of OECD countries will have fallen back to the levels of 2016. If there is a second wave, arriving in late 2020 with the onset of the northern winter, real per capita income would fall to 2013 levels.

Even though lockdowns and other measures were adopted only in the second half of March, first quarter growth “plummeted,” with projections for the second quarter pointing to a “further dramatic fall.”

“Between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, GDP is projected to have collapsed by about 15 percent on average across the OECD, reaching -23 percent in Spain, -22 percent in France and -21 percent in Italy and the United Kingdom.”

The report says the main impact of the economic collapse has been on lower-paid workers in essential industries and young people.

“The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have not fallen with equal severity on all shoulders. Existing vulnerabilities have been exposed, and inequalities entrenched.”

The report points to the fact that higher paid workers are more likely to be able to work from home and therefore avoid both some of the health dangers and the loss of income.

But significantly, it does not point to the most egregious expression of inequality. This is the rise of the stock market—Wall Street market capitalisation has increased by around $7.1 trillion since the middle of March, enabling some of its leading representatives such as Amazon owner Jeff Bezos to increase their wealth by as much as $25 billion.

And the financial oligarchs are pushing for this massive redistribution of wealth to be further accelerated through the provision of still more money by the Fed and other central banks.

The conclusion of JPMorgan Chase, in a recent note reported by Bloomberg, is that there has to be “more debt, more liquidity, more asset reflation.” The largest US bank forecasts that world debt will increase by $16 trillion this year to reach a record high of $200 trillion.

The OECD report says those most affected in the initial phase of the crisis were so-called “frontline workers,” who put their health at risk to ensure the continuation of essential services during lockdowns, but who were more likely to earn low wages.

These included health care workers, cashiers, production and food processing workers, janitors, maintenance workers and truck drivers. Low earners were also more likely to be employed in jobs affected by the shutdown. In the UK, “employees in the bottom decile of weekly earnings are about seven times as likely to work in shut down sectors as those in the top earning decile.”

Young people are among the hardest hit. This year’s graduates, sometimes referred to as the “Class of Corona,” are leaving schools and universities “with poor chances of finding employment or work experience,” and they will be adversely affected for a long period, as the experience of the last decade shows.

The report notes that many of their peers are experiencing a “second heavy crisis” in their short careers.

“During the global financial crisis, across the OECD, almost one in ten jobs held by under 30-year olds were destroyed and the recovery was very slow, particularly for the disadvantaged. It took a decade, until 2017, before youth unemployment returned to its pre-crisis levels and the impact on the incidence of non-employment, low-pay and underemployment lasted longer still.”

The other central feature of the report, beyond its outline of the effects of the crisis, is its advocacy of the withdrawal of the limited support measures provided by governments for those made jobless. This is couched in language aimed at trying to cover up its real meaning.

For example, after noting the provision of emergency support, it says that policymakers will “need to modify the composition and characteristics of their support packages, targeting support where it is needed most, and encouraging a return to work where possible.”

What this means in practice is withdrawing or reducing emergency unemployment relief and other support measures to force workers to accept jobs at lower pay.

This push is set out in a number of places. The report speaks of the need to tailor jobs and wage subsidy schemes so as to ensure “sufficiently strong incentives for firms to move off support, and for workers to move into viable jobs.”

It continues: “This would reduce the pressure on public budgets as well as the risk that job retention schemes” end up “curbing job reallocation towards more viable and productive firms.”

In other words, existing support measures have to be wound back lest they stand in the way of the restructuring of wages and employment conditions downwards. It says that so-called “mutual obligation” requirements that were relaxed or suspended should now be progressively re-established.

What “mutual obligation” means in practice is that unemployed workers must accept whatever job is available, no matter the pay level or the danger to their health, or have their benefits cut off.

The essential content of the report was spelled out more clearly in a Financial Times article basing itself on remarks by the OECD’s director for employment, Stefano Scarpetta. According to the FT, the OECD said it was time to phase out “massive, generalised support” so that “labour markets could adjust to the changing shape of the global labour market.”

That “shape” is already clear: even lower wages beyond the wage stagnation and cuts that ensued after the crisis of 2008, together with stepped-up exploitation.

Scarpetta used more direct language than that used in the report. “We have to allow [labour force] mobility. Some companies will not be viable in the short term and medium term. We have to allow workers to move into new jobs,” he said.

That is, mass unemployment, which the OCED acknowledges is going to persist, is to be used as a battering ram to further drive down wages and working conditions.

US Supreme Court decisions attack separation of church and state and workers’ rights

Ed Hightower

In a pair of 7-2 decisions handed down Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States granted religious and religion-linked institutions unprecedented and unreviewable authority over their employees, undermining the democratic principle of the separation of church and state.

The court’s ruling in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru permits employment discrimination at religious schools, while the ruling in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania deprives women workers at religion-linked institutions—including hospitals—of contraception and family planning services.

Wednesday’s rulings follow another major attack on the separation of church and state this term in Espinoza v. Montana, which sanctioned the use of tax deductible scholarship donations to fund religious schools, further undermining public education.

The facts at issue in Our Lady of Guadalupe School, which consolidated two separate cases by lay teachers at Catholic schools, testify to the anti-working class character of the resulting precedent.

One plaintiff—Kristen Biel—worked as a fifth-grade teacher at St. James School in Los Angeles. Prior to teaching at the Catholic school, she had no formal religious training, such as in a seminary. The school did not require her to be Catholic in order to teach there. She taught English, spelling, reading, literature, mathematics, science and social studies. Her religious duties were limited to telling students when it was time for prayers, though a student led the prayers, and making sure the students were orderly at chapel services.

After Biel advised school administrators of a recent diagnosis of breast cancer and her intention to undergo chemotherapy, the school declined to renew her employment contract for the next school year. She filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination for a disability (cancer) and was allowed to sue St. James School under federal law.

The other plaintiff in Our Lady of Guadalupe School taught at a Catholic school under similar circumstances, the main difference being that she alleged age discrimination when her employment status was downgraded from full- to part-time.

Under existing federal law, religious schools receive some deference in employment discrimination cases that concern leaders of a church or faith. This “ministerial exception” protects churches or other religious organizations in decisions about the hiring and firing of ministers or leading spiritual figures, especially those with theological training. Rabbis, priests, ministers, pastors, Imams would all qualify for the ministerial exception.

Underlying the ministerial exception is the notion that the courts should not second guess internal religious decisions—perhaps firing a priest—that may hinge on interpretation of religious doctrine, dogma or belief. The church itself, so the logic goes, probably knows its own beliefs better than a court of law and stands in a better position to determine if a minister should be hired or fired for failing to conform to the church’s religious beliefs.

According to Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court’s majority, a religious school could designate nearly anyone as a “minister,” and thus claim legal immunity from federal anti-discrimination laws. Notably, one of the plaintiff-teachers deemed to be a “minister ” was not even a Catholic. As a result of this ruling, therefore, the law now sets the bar as to what constitutes a “minister” so low that virtually any employee of a religious school can be stripped of federal anti-discrimination protection.

The same tortured logic that converts a non-Catholic elementary school teacher into a Catholic minister could easily be applied to the school’s custodian, librarian, nurse or cook. Discrimination—whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—can flourish under the fig leaf justification of the free exercise of religion. Employees of religious schools have essentially no job security or legal protection from discrimination.

While a dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, challenges this exception-turned-rule, Justices Steven Breyer (appointed by Bill Clinton) and Elena Kagan (appointed by Barack Obama) joined in Alito’s opinion in full. One could hardly offer better proof of the hollowness of their “liberal” credentials.

Kagan did write a concurring opinion in the second case, Little Sisters, which Breyer joined. That case concerns legal requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) that employer-sponsored health insurance plans cover contraception and other women’s health care needs (known as the contraceptive mandate). Hiding behind the largely inscrutable minutiae of administrative law, Kagan in her opinion upholds the Trump administration’s decision to allow a broad exemption for religion-linked institutions.

She writes: “Sometimes when I squint, I read the law as giving HRSA [Health Resources and Services Administration] discretion over all coverage issues: The agency gets to decide who needs to provide what services to women. At other times, I see the statute [ACA] as putting the agency in charge of only the ‘what’ question, and not the ‘who.’ If I had to, I would of course decide which is the marginally better reading.”

Kagan insists that the legal doctrine of Chevron deference—requiring that a court defer to a government agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute—forces her to affirm the Trump administration’s administrative rules attacking reproductive rights. A working class woman might tell Kagan, “While you ‘squint’ and split hairs, I decide between medicine and groceries.”

In her dissent, Ginsberg cites government estimates that 70,500 to 126,400 women of childbearing age “will experience the disappearance of the contraceptive coverage formerly available to them.” She also points out that the cost of popular IUD (intrauterine device) forms of birth control constitutes nearly a month’s wages for a woman earning the minimum wage. Sotomayor joined in this dissent.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a seething enemy of the separation of church and state, wrote the majority opinion, a fact that bears some political significance in its own right. While his opinion in Little Sisters concerns technicalities of administrative law and statutory interpretation, Thomas’ concurrence in Espinoza just last week speaks more directly to his disdain for the separation of church and state, describing decades of precedent on the fundamental democratic notion as a “trendy disdain for deep religious conviction.”

While the rulings in Our Lady of Guadalupe School and Little Sisters do not so directly discuss the First Amendment of the US Constitution, they trample on it. That old stronghold against tyranny begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

For all their prattle about “originalism” in interpreting the US Constitution, Thomas, Alito and the court’s reactionary majority carve out one exception after another to the “Establishment Clause,” cloaking their dirty work by claiming to protect “free exercise” of religion.

The logic of their jurisprudence tends toward a general religious immunity or exemption from secular law up to and including the Bill of Rights.

Thomas and company speak for powerful, aristocratic interests terrified at the prospect of socialist revolution at a time when class tensions have begun to boil over. Part of restructuring social life to preserve their privileges requires uprooting all remnants of revolutionary democratic consciousness remaining in bourgeois law, for fear that otherwise such heritage “communicates a message that religion is dangerous and in need of policing, which in turn has the effect of tilting society in favor of devaluing religion” to use Thomas’ words.

Put another way, what use does American capitalism have for Enlightenment values—reason, science, equality? Would not medieval virtues—subservience, piety, hierarchy and acceptance of one’s social standing—better serve a ruling class whose opulence would have made kings and noblemen blush?

Consider the precedents set in Espinoza, Our Lady of Guadalupe School and Little Sisters taken together and their impact on social life: the law of the land now permits that 1) religious schools can supplant secular public schools, 2) the teachers and other employees at religious schools can be fired for virtually any reason and 3) employees of any religious institution must fend for themselves to obtain basic health services.

The rulings represent a judicial counterrevolution running parallel to the social one waged against the working class by the White House, the legislature and the capitalist class as a whole.

Surge in infections gives India third highest COVID-19 cases worldwide

Wasantha Rupasinghe

While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focused on issuing bellicose statements targeting China in the wake of last month’s bloody border clash, the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading across India like wildfire. Each day tens of thousands of new people are being infected by the coronavirus and hundreds are dying.

The uncontrollable surge in COVID-19 cases is a direct result of the Modi government’s adoption of the ruinous “herd immunity” policy, which prioritizes the profit interests of a tiny layer of Indian capitalists over the lives of working people and their families. A recent study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology forecast that if a vaccine remains elusive, India could be recording 287,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by February 2021.

All signs indicate that India is heading toward such a disastrous situation. Its densely populated urban centres, where tens of millions of impoverished workers are crammed into small dwellings without proper sanitation, are highly conducive to the spread of the virus. And the country’s public health care system is in a shambles due to decades of neglect, epitomized by the fact that India’s governments have long devoted just 1.5 percent of GDP or less to health care.

A doctor speaks with a COVID-19 positive patient at an isolation center in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, July 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

On Sunday, India surpassed Russia to become the country with the third-highest number of COVID-19 cases, behind only the US and Brazil. As of Wednesday, according to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare figures, total COVID-19 cases in India rose to 742,417. There were 20,642 cases reported in the previous 24 hours, the fifth consecutive day that COVID-19 cases increased by more than 20,000.

While it took India some 109 days to record its first 100,000 cases, infections increased seven-fold over the next 49 days. Of the 700,000 plus cases, more than 264,000 are considered active. On June 8 or just one month ago, the total number of cases India had recorded since the pandemic began stood at less than 257,000.

According to official figures, 20,642 people have died from COVID-19 in India. The boasts from Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government that India’s death rate is “lower” than other countries are the height of cynicism. India is notorious for undercounting deaths from malnutrition and disease even in normal times.

In recent weeks, several media reports have highlighted contradictory death figures issued by central and state governments. IndiaSpend, which talked to members of death audit committees in the four states with the most COVID-19 cases—Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh—reported on July 1, “No one agreed to share details of how many cases had come before them and how many they had certified as COVID-19 deaths.” This strongly suggests that the actual number of deaths is much higher than the official figures report.

Moreover, with many hospitals overwhelmed by the flood of COVID-19 patients, especially in Delhi and Mumbai, India’s two most populous cities, there are numerous reports of people with other grave health problems being unable to access treatment.

Maharashtra, home to India’s financial hub Mumbai, has continuously been the worst-hit state. It now has 217,121 confirmed cases, more than two and a half times the total number of cases reported by China, where the pandemic began and the coronavirus was first identified.

The total death toll in the state was 9,250 as of Wednesday. Mumbai long ago started putting COVID-19 patients on hospital bed waiting lists due to the lack of beds and personnel.

Despite this dire situation, Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena-led, Congress Party-backed state government allowed hotels and other entities that provide accommodation services and are outside “hot-spot” containment zones to resume operation at 33 percent of capacity as of yesterday.

On Tuesday, COVID-19 cases in Delhi, India’s National Capital Territory (NCT), exceeded the 100,000 mark. As of Wednesday, the number of infections and deaths stood at 102,831 and 3,165 respectively. The NCT had conducted just 620,368 tests on its more than 20 million residents by last Monday.

Responding to sharp criticism and anger over its handling of the pandemic, the Delhi state government launched a blitz 10-day survey of 4 million households to identify infection hotspots. However, due to a lack of staff, which is related to the government’s refusal to provide proper protective equipment for the workers conducting the survey, and confusion among officials regarding the exact protocol on how to deal with infected COVID-19 persons, the survey has been a failure.

Many of India’s Southern states have been forced by a dramatic spike in cases to re-impose lockdown restrictions. The Kerala government announced the extension of the enforcement of the state’s COVID-19 “safety guidelines” by a year, till July 2021. It has mandated the wearing of masks or face coverings in public and social distancing, and imposed a 10,000-rupee fine for anyone who violates the rules. The number of infections in Kerala has risen by almost nine times since May 3, when lockdown restrictions were first eased in the state.

Authorities in Tamil Nadu were forced to return to stricter lockdown measures in Chenai in the middle of last month, but these have been now abandoned. Most factories, offices, and industrial workplaces have been given the go-ahead to operate at 100 percent capacity, with stipulations that a minority of office workers should work from home. The state has witnessed over 4,000 cases a day for the last seven days, and is the second-worst impacted state with 118,594 cases and 1,636 deaths. Five southern states—Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana—now collectively share more than 25 percent of India’s COVID-19 cases, a significant increase from their 17.5 percent share at the beginning of June. The share of total cases occurring within these five states has continued to rise even as the nationwide total has exploded.

As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly shown, Modi’s ill-prepared 10-week lockdown was a health and social disaster. The Modi government failed to use the time to implement mass testing and a comprehensive system of contact tracing, and to strengthen the chronically underfunded health care system. The government also refused to provide basic necessities for the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs and/or were deprived of all income during the lockdown. While the lockdown formally lasted until the end of May, the government began relaxing some restrictions as early as late April to allow manufacturing and other industrial corporations to once again start raking in profits.

Approximately 10 million migrant workers who were forced into overcrowded camps under unhygienic conditions during the lockdown were later returned to their villages without being tested for COVID-19. This resulted in a sharp rise in infections in rural areas, where hospitals and other health care facilities are virtually non-existent.

Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal, with a population of around 14.5 million, recorded 2,600 new cases and over 100 deaths in the last two weeks. ThePrint website reported on July 6, “The city has been struggling to contain its mortality rate (at 6 percent) even as it is running out of hospital beds amid allegations that the administration has been faltering on contact tracing.”

The Modi government’s premature reopening of the economy has led to large numbers of infections among workers across a range of sectors. According to India Today on July 7, as many as 872 employees of the Central Railway and Western Railway, their family members and retired personnel have so far tested positive for coronavirus, and 86 of them have died. In late June, a statement issued by motorcycle manufacturer Bajaj Auto Limited reported that two Bajaj workers who had tested positive for COVID-19 at its Waluij, Maharashtra plant have died. According to a Reuters report some 250 workers at the plant have contracted the virus.

Despite the disastrous situation unfolding across India, Modi continues to gloat that India is “in a better position compared to many countries of the world.” In his latest address to the nation announcing the further easing of restrictions, referred to as “Unlock-Two,” Modi on June 30 said that the “timely imposition of lockdown … saved lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of lives.”

Modi did not utter a word about the fact that the pandemic is now spreading so rapidly above all due to the abandonment of lockdown measures. Instead, he sought to blame the people themselves for “increasing negligence in personal and social behaviour” which is “a cause of worry.”

Although Modi avoided saying as much, the Indian ruling elite is well aware that the pandemic is spreading out of control and taking a terrible toll on tens of millions of impoverished workers and toilers. Indirectly accepting the disastrous consequences of his policies, Modi said his government has been giving “free ration” to 800 million people for three months and it will continue till November. This “free ration” is nothing but famine-type relief. The Wire revealed on June 4 that around 144.5 million people who are eligible to be provided with grain rations (wheat or rice) under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package did not get their entitlement for the month of May. The figures were based on data released by the central government on June 3.

Global COVID-19 pandemic takes a new upward leap

Benjamin Mateus

The coronavirus pandemic is taking a new, qualitative upward leap, after the period of temporary stabilization which followed the worldwide lockdown. For a time, the pandemic seemed to have stalled in its momentum, with daily new cases staying roughly at 80,000 a day throughout April and May.

In mid-May, when the capitalist bosses found it urgent to resume the extraction of surplus value from the working class, they declared the pandemic effectively over, demanded a return to work, and reopened those factories, warehouses and workplaces that had been closed. With the rapid implementation of this policy, the number of daily COVID-19 infections began to rise again, gaining momentum with each passing week.

Yesterday saw the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide pass 12 million. It took four months, from January until April, to accumulate the first million cases of COVID-19. In just five short days, the world has added another million cases. With over 550,000 deaths globally, the daily fatality rate has been hovering around 5,000, though regional variations indicate some countries, such as Mexico, are doing far worse than others. Two days running, the number of new COVID-19 cases worldwide has surpassed 200,000, with the US alone posting a new one-day high of 61,848 cases, and the daily fatality toll has jumped significantly to 5,500.

There has clearly been a qualitative shift that has impressed and terrified health agencies throughout the world. The World Health Organization’s director-general warned that the pandemic is accelerating. Though it remains possible to stop the transmission of the infection, nations must employ a comprehensive strategy to both contain the virus and prevent deaths. “We have not even reached the peak of the pandemic… the virus is both fast and deadly.” Yet, his words and demeanor were more weighty than usual.

At the WHO press briefing this week, officials were asked about a letter sent to the health agency signed by 239 scientists from around the world calling for the WHO to acknowledge that the virus causing COVID-19 can be spread through airborne transmission.

It has readily been known that transmission of the viral particles released by an infected person when they cough, sneeze or speak is the primary mechanism by which others become infected. Contact with surfaces can also infect others if they touch their eyes, mouth, or nose. This becomes more problematic in closed spaces with poor ventilation where people are forced into proximity with each other. The World Health Organization had been consistent on the message that the primary route of transmission was through large respiratory droplets, which tend to fall quickly after a person produces them. This has been the essence for their guidance to keep one meter or three feet apart (The CDC recommends two meters or six feet.)

In the open letter, authored by Lidia Morawska, professor of the Queensland University of Technology, and Donald K. Milton, professor of Environmental Health at the University of Maryland, that will soon be published in a scientific journal, the 239 signatories make a plea to the medical community and the national and international health agencies to recognize that COVID-19 has the potential for airborne transmission. They wrote, “studies by the signatories and other scientists have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking, and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in the air and pose a risk of exposure at distances beyond 1 to 2 meters from infected individuals.”

These small viral particles that can be as little as five micrometers can travel tens of meters, more than the size of a standard room. The authors cite retrospective data from both SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and MERS that viable airborne particles have been detected when patients exhaled.

Empirical evidence from examination of patients becoming sick at restaurants when they had no direct or indirect contact with the index patient highlight these concerns raised in their letter. The authors write, “There is every reason to expect that SARS-CoV-2 behaves similarly and that transmission via airborne microdroplets, is an important pathway” for infecting others.

The WHO, including other public health agencies, has frequently stated that aerosolization of viral particles only occurs during procedures such as intubating a patient being placed on a ventilator. Though guidance up to now had been focused on hand hygiene and social distancing efforts, such measures are inadequate to prevent airborne transmission, especially in crowded indoor environments that are poorly ventilated.

The authors note that airborne transmission “appears to be the only plausible explanation for several superspreading events investigated which occurred under such conditions.” These include incidents at the seafood market in Wuhan, a church in South Korea, and the Trump political rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which were followed by surges of COVID-19 infections. Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases Monday and another 206 on Tuesday, record-setting numbers for the region.

Though routes of transmission through respiratory droplets and fomites work in parallel with airborne transmission, prevention guidance at present has focused only on the former mechanisms. Regarding advice and recommendations to prevent airborne transmission, the authors write, “Provide sufficient and effective ventilation (supply clean outdoor air, minimize recirculating air) particularly in public buildings, workplace environments, schools, hospitals, and aged care homes. Supplement general ventilation with airborne infection controls such as local exhaust, high-efficiency air filtration, and germicidal ultraviolet lights. Avoid overcrowding, particularly in public transport and public buildings.” The WHO has acknowledged the letter and preceding work and is preparing to establish new guidelines.

The likelihood of airborne transmissions has considerable implications for all countries whose governments are eager to force workers to go back to work, young people to go back to schools, and, in general, demand that the population resume “normal activities.” Airborne transmissions require much more serious infection controls and a concerted effort to ensure the working space is made safe for workers. Autoworkers currently back on shift work, meatpackers, and soon teachers and students put back into cramped and overcrowded classrooms are facing and will face risks to their health and will become potential new vectors of infection as they spread the virus back into their homes and families, and particularly to elderly relatives. It is undoubtedly the working class and the poorest who are and will continue to face the highest burden of the disease.

These new findings demand that workers stop non-essential work immediately and insist that comprehensive public health measures be initiated to mitigate a situation that is spinning out of control. Workers must reach out to independent health agencies and public health officials to enforce stringent airborne transmission precautions to ensure safety at work and at home. Health care must be protected as a vital service for those falling ill, provided free of charge to ensure rapid life-saving treatments are immediately initiated. This requires deliberate intervention by workers independent of the present leadership that includes all the capitalist parties (conservative, liberal and social-democratic) and the unions that act as the appendages of the corporations.