Thousands of sackings at Australian universities

Eric Ludlow

The Group of Eight, comprising Australia’s elite public universities, has projected that 6,700 jobs will be lost at its member universities in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The forecasts indicate that sackings will include 4,400 contract staff and 2,300 permanents and academics.

The job cuts are part of a major assault on university staff and students, being enforced by governments and the trade unions. They are in line with the federal Liberal-National government’s announcement of a further pro-business restructuring of tertiary education last month, and a broader corporate offensive against the entire working class.

Two Group of Eight universities, Monash University in Melbourne and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, this week announced 277 and 493 sackings respectively.

The University of New South Wales (Credit: UNSW promotions)

The so-called “tsunami” of job losses has also already seen purges at smaller universities, with 400 jobs axed at Deakin, 271 at Central Queensland and between 200 and 300 at Wollongong. Universities Australia has previously predicted up to 30,000 positions will be destroyed in the next three years—21,000 over the next 12 months alone—to overcome the expected $16 billion of lost revenue across higher education.

In comments to the media, executives at the elite University of Melbourne and University of Queensland described job losses as “inevitable.” They cited the dramatic fall in international students as a chief cause.

An estimated 120,000 international students, accounting for around 20 percent of total international enrollments at Australian universities, are stuck in their home countries after returning as the pandemic broke out in March. They are unable to return to Australia and resume their studies, as a result of the resurgence of the coronavirus, including as a result of the reckless back-to-work campaign of the Australian federal and state governments.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson said research staff would likely be hit with lay-offs in the next six to nine months. After decades of government spending cuts, funding for research comes largely from revenue generated by grants and international students who have been used as cash cows by universities.

Monash University’s 277 sackings will be implemented by the end of the month, as it seeks to overcome an estimated $300 million shortfall. According to the Australian, 105 of the layoffs will be academic positions, while the rest are in administration.

A Monash spokeswoman told the Australian: “Job losses are an unfortunate result of the COVID-19 global health crisis across many industries.… They will continue to be a reality without further government support in particular for research.”

The spokeswoman pointed to the National Tertiary Education Union’s (NTEU) role in greenlighting job cuts, adding: “Without the [enterprise agreement] variation,” instead of 277 sackings, “this figure would have been 467.” The variation at Monash, approved by the NTEU, included a delay in pay rises, a leave-purchase scheme and a moratorium on bonuses, introduced on the bogus pretext that concessions would save jobs.

The Monash announcement was made a day after the University of New South Wales (UNSW) unveiled the destruction of 493 full-time jobs, accounting for around 7.5 percent of the university’s full-time staff. This will go hand in hand with an overhaul of teaching, including the merger of three separate faculties. The university has already eliminated 115 casual positions since January.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, UNSW is facing a budget shortfall of $370 million as a result of COVID-19.

The NTEU’s UNSW branch president, Sarah Gregson told the paper: “Nobody denies there’s a crisis, but the detail of what’s necessary is difficult. We’re obviously going to challenge every job loss we can.”

Such empty posturing is belied by the fact that the NTEU has played the key role in the attacks on academic staff, engaging in backroom deals with university managements for decades. Gregson’s comments, moreover, demonstrate that the union is merely appealing to management for it to be fully involved in devising and implementing the pro-business restructure.

Following the collapse of its pay-cutting “national framework” with university managements—which was met with revulsion from university workers—the NTEU is redoubling its efforts to help university managements impose cuts in pay, conditions and jobs, pushing through sackings and concessions at campuses across the country.

At the same time, the union is seeking to promote illusions in the big business Labor Party and cover-up its own responsibility for the jobs bloodbath.

NTEU national president Alison Barnes told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that “responsibility for these losses lies squarely with” the Liberal-National Coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Education Minister Dan Tehan.

In reality, Labor governments, with the crucial assistance of the unions, have spearheaded the assault on higher education. This included the introduction of full fees for international students by the Hawke Labor government in the 1980s, and its abolition of free education for domestic students.

In 2013, the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard introduced the largest ever reduction to university funding, which slashed $2.7 billion from the sector.

This offensive has been deepened by successive Liberal-National Coalition governments, including through the announcement last month of plans to more than double fees for humanities and communications students and raise payments for law, economics and commerce by 28 percent.

Dan Tehan told the Australian Financial Review earlier this month that the move is aimed at “encouraging students to tailor their studies to learn the skills that will be in demand in areas of future jobs growth.”

This would serve to “better align the total combined public and private funding for higher education units with contemporary data on the cost of delivering university education.”

In other words, the government is taking the corporatisation and vocationalisation of universities, enforced by Labor and the unions, to its logical conclusion. Education, which has already been gutted, is to be subordinated even more directly to the dictates of big business.

The record demonstrates that university academics, staff and students can only defend jobs and fight for free, high-quality education, through a rebellion against the unions and a complete break with Labor and the political establishment.

The Committee for Public Education and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality call for staff to form independent rank and file committees, to prosecute a genuine industrial and political struggle against all of the sackings and union-enforced concessions.

This is the only means of breaking the isolation imposed by the unions, and mobilising the social power of university workers and students.

New French prime minister Jean Castex calls for stepped-up police repression

Alex Lantier

In a belligerent address to the National Assembly on July 15, Jean Castex presented the policies decided by French President Emmanuel Macron in talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union (EU) institutions. Today, French union officials are to meet Castex in his Matignon Palace residence to publicly integrate themselves into the designing and implementation of these policies.

Castex declared that the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked an “economic crisis of unequaled severity since the end of World War II.” He made clear he would respond by intensifying the policies of austerity and police-state militarism that have defined Macron’s unpopular presidency.

This reflects the political bankruptcy and contempt for working people of not only the Macron government, but the entire ruling class. Approved by a 345-vote majority in the 577-seat Assembly, Castex’s policy speech is setting into motion a collision between the working class and the banks, the state machine and the union bureaucracies, not only in France but across Europe and internationally.

Castex made clear that his government intends for workers to bear the full brunt of the crisis. While admitting that it was “the most vulnerable among us” who “were more affected by the pandemic,” he predicted in a matter-of-fact tone that they “will also be the most strongly affected by the economic crisis.” He then announced the accelerated implementation of Macron’s pension cuts, suspended during the COVID-19 confinement after the December-January transport strikes, and numerous policies to strengthen the police.

The class arrogance of the Macron government and the EU policy agenda is staggering. As multiple massive bailouts are adopted—with €1.25 trillion of public funds handed to the banks by the European Central Bank, and hundreds of billions spent by the larger euro zone economies—Castex announced a further €100 billion in supplemental spending. After Macron said on Bastille Day that a million workers would lose their jobs this year, the state is reacting by pouring more public funds into the corporations and the pockets of the super-rich.

The plan includes €40 billion in business subsidies beyond the tens of billions in state bailouts for firms including Renault, Air France and Airbus; €20 billion for ecological renovations; and €38 billion to finance unemployment payments and provide orders to idled factories. Beyond this, Castex proposed to pay just €8 billion for raises to health workers’ salaries, as well as for subsidies to encourage corporations to hire young workers for less than 160 percent of the minimum wage.

Castex stressed that his government would not repeal Macron’s tax cuts for the rich nor increase other taxes on top income brackets. These decisions, which will massively increase social inequality and transfer wealth towards the top of society, are to be financed by a vast increase in public debt levels.

Raising EU bailouts negotiated by Merkel and Macron, Castex declared that his policy would be one of “massive investment based on exceptional support from the European Union, which was not present in the period after the 2008 economic crisis.” He added, “To spend money on transformation is to invest in the future. The short-term part of the debt caused by the crisis, will be held separate from the rest of the debt.”

This plundering of society will inevitably provoke a counteroffensive in the French and European working class. In the last two years, strikes and protests have unfolded not only in France, with the “yellow vests” and this year’s transport strike, but around the world. US teachers and auto strikes last year went hand in hand with mass protests in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Bolivia, Chile and beyond, and 2020 saw a wave of mass wildcat strikes in Italy, America and Brazil to demand social distancing and safety in the factories against COVID-19.

After nearly two years of violent repression of “yellow vests” by French police, the Castex government is preparing a major escalation of police violence against the population and the social opposition his policies will provoke. When Castex turned to describing his domestic policies, a distinctly fascistic picture emerged.

“It is of the greatest urgency to profoundly transform public policy,” he declared. “The greatest error would be to think we should put the state in question. Because the state is France.”

Castex reduced France to the state and, in fact, to the military-police forces on whom his policies of war and domestic repression rely. Demanding a “historic upsurge of our military power,” Castex also hailed the police: “They are the first line of defense of Republican order. I demand that they be given all the material and human resources necessary to conduct their mission, so they can have boots on the ground, and so they can be relieved of administrative paperwork that takes up so much time.”

Denouncing in the same breath Islamist terrorists and social protesters, he hailed “secularism as a cardinal value” to attack Islam and demand stepped-up domestic repression. “No religion, no current of ideas can take over public space or oppose itself to the laws of the Republic,” he declared.

Castex announced his intention to pass a vaguely-worded “law against separatisms” and the creation of “neighborhood judges specially tasked with repressing day-to-day impoliteness.” These judges would issue kangaroo-court rulings of those police charge with a vast number of offenses including “petty delinquency, graffiti, trafficking, and disturbing public order.”

The various other measures Castex proposed to give a “progressive” veneer to his policy—a focus on ecology, cutting payroll taxes to businesses hiring young low-paid workers, one-euro meals in university cafeterias—are designed to avert an explosion of social anger that would swamp the police. However, they do not change anything about the evolution of the French state and of the EU into a distinctly fascistic police-state regime.

Domestic repression is going hand-in-glove with preparation of disastrous imperialist war amid the disintegration of US global hegemony after three decades of Middle East war and the impact of the pandemic in America. This week, as Castex was preparing his speech, the head of the French military general staff, General François Lecointre, gave an interview to Le Monde announcing that the French army is preparing for “major strategic conflict.”

He recalled the confrontation between French and Turkish warships off the Libyan coast and said that a major war would be “different from the wars we are currently fighting—even if combat there is at times of high intensity at a tactical level, with important losses. But it would not necessarily be a high-intensity conflict, in the sense of an entire alliance completely reorganizing itself for a great war. Any scenario is possible.”

Amid the pandemic and its accelerating resurgence in Europe, against the dangers of war, austerity and repression, it is critical to mobilize the working class independently of the unions. They are meeting Castex today, after he called in his speech for “social dialog”to “fuse France together”—that is, for the unions to strangle opposition to austerity policies Castex plans to impose based on empty and fraudulent demands for national unity.

By collaborating with Castex, union officials make clear their class hostility to the workers. These corrupt bureaucracies, financed by the state and corporate management since they lost their dues base decades ago, only work to subordinate workers to the state and the banks. With their allies in the middle class “left populist” parties, they are launching a corporatist collaboration with the financial aristocracy whose violence has no precedent since “legal” union officials were integrated, via the 1941 Labor Charter, into the state machine of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

Since the “yellow vest” movement began on social media, and as independent action committees are established from the US auto industry to Sri Lankan tea plantations, waging an international political struggle is both possible and essential for workers around the world. The only way to stop a health catastrophe and a massive impoverishment of the working class is to mobilize the working class outside the corrupt, national framework of the unions’ “social dialog” in a political struggle against capitalism and war. This demands an international struggle to transfer state power to the independent organs of the working class, overthrowing capitalist relations, and imposing socialist economic planning to overcome the pandemic and social inequality.

Dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts hacked in “coordinated social engineering attack”

Kevin Reed

Dozens of Twitter accounts belonging to prominent US individuals were breached on Wednesday as part of a coordinated attack aimed at scamming the public out of money in the form of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The compromised Twitter accounts—including those of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg and Kanye West, along with the corporate accounts of Apple and Uber—sent tweets starting at around 5:45 p.m. EDT, all with similar messages.

For example, the tweet from Joe Biden said, “I’m giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes.” The tweet from Kanye West included, “giving back to my fans” and the one from Elon Musk said, “feeling greatful [sic].”

Photo taken in October 2019 shows Twitter Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey speaking in New York. (Kyodo via AP Images)

Several hours after the attack, Twitter Support posted a series of tweets saying, “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.

“We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf. We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it.

“Once we became aware of the incident, we immediately locked down the affected accounts and removed Tweets posted by the attackers.”

The initial attempts by Twitter to gain control of the situation failed when the company deleted one round of tweets, and they were rapidly replaced by another series by the hackers, indicating that the corporation had completely lost control of its product.

As part of the assault, the hackers also took over the accounts of prominent cryptocurrency leaders and companies earlier in the day. Once this trial, which began at around 4:00 p.m., proved successful, the hackers moved on to the expanded list of politicians and wealthy business and entertainment celebrities.

Later in the evening Twitter disabled the functionality of other “verified” accounts as it scrambled to contain the breach and prevent the Bitcoin scam from spreading. A verified Twitter user is an account holder of public interest, typically journalists, celebrities, professional athletes, government and political figures or business personalities, with a large number of followers such that their identity has been confirmed as authentic. Verified accounts are indicated by a blue badge with a check mark in it next to their Twitter handle.

The support account tweeted, “You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.” Service was reportedly restored to all accounts by 8:30 p.m.

Screen shot of Twitter administrative tool leaked by hackers as published by Motherboard

According to a report by CBS News, there were a total of 363 transactions on the Bitcoin account linked to the tweets which “received more than $118,000.” Cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase reported that they were tracking scams being shared on Twitter and working to block transactions from its platform to the addresses that were posted. Another exchange called Binance said that so far none of its users sent funds to the hackers, and it was blacklisting accounts associated with the fraudulent tweets.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey commented on the unprecedented hack, “We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”

Of particular interest is Twitter’s revelation that the hackers successfully penetrated the internal accounts of employees and gained access to “internal systems and tools.” According to some reports, access to these tools enabled the hackers to completely bypass account passwords and publish dozens of fake tweets at will.

A report by Vice Motherboard claimed that a Twitter insider was behind the operation, citing two anonymous individuals who said they were the hackers who took over the accounts. The Vice report said, “‘We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,’ one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.”

Motherboard also said that the sources provided screenshots of the tool used to hijack the Twitter accounts. “One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool.”

The screenshot published by Motherboard, with some user details redacted, shows various functions of the Twitter administrative tool, including details about the target user’s account, such as whether it has been suspended, is permanently suspended, or has protected status. Other buttons on the panel include “Bounced,” “Inactive,” “Compromised,” “Trends Blacklist,” “Search Blacklist” and “Read Only.”

While Twitter has so far neither confirmed nor denied the Motherboard report, it did move to remove the tweet which shared the screenshot and suspended the user’s account for 12 hours with a message that says the tweet violated company rules. No explanation has been provided as to the purpose of the features of the internal tool, when they are used and on whom they are used.

While the magnitude and damage of Wednesday’s hack of numerous accounts through access to the internal systems at Twitter is concerning, the revelation that such tools are being deployed within the social media company, if true, are equally if not more important. Why was it so easy for hackers, once they obtained access to the internal administrative dashboard of the Twitter platform, to manipulate within minutes the accounts of dozens of people and publish statements that they never made?

Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the former chief security officer at Facebook, said that the attacks showed a security flaw in Twitter’s service, not by lax security by the people who were targeted. Stamos said there were a range of other theories, but all suggested that the attackers got inside Twitter’s system, rather than stealing the passwords of individual users. “It could have been much worse. We got lucky that this is what they decided to do with their power,” Stamos told the New York Times .

The New York Times also quoted an unnamed American official, who said that hackers gaining access to Twitter accounts was a “scary possibility” in a world where national leaders, sometimes imitating President Donald Trump’s techniques, have adopted Twitter as a primary source of unfiltered communications.

Other US political officials have raised major concerns about the hack, including Senator Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri) who wrote a letter to Dorsey on Wednesday. Hawley wrote, “I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself. As you know, millions of your users rely on your service not just to tweet publicly but also to communicate privately through your direct message service.”

Hawley added, “A successful attack on your system’s servers represents a threat to all of your users’ privacy and data security,” and requested that Dorsey work with the Department of Justice and FBI on the matter. He urged Dorsey to respond to a list of questions, including if the attack threatened the security of President Trump’s account.

Millions of Americans are losing health insurance as joblessness skyrockets

Alex Johnson

Over the course of the past five months, millions of American workers have lost their health insurance as the coronavirus pandemic has ignited a jobs bloodbath and threatened wide layers of the population with destitution.

Ever since mid-March, the United States has seen an exponential spike in joblessness due to the acceleration of the pandemic’s spread. For 15 straight weeks, more than a million people have filed for unemployment insurance. An estimated 32 million Americans are currently receiving federal and state financial aid.

These conditions have produced a health care crisis of unprecedented dimensions as more American workers have been stripped of employer-based insurance at a number higher than any recorded full year of insurance losses. The pandemic has left approximately 5.4 million American workers uninsured between February and May, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonpartisan consumer advocacy group Families USA. Their data found that the number of uninsured during this period was nearly 40 percent higher than the 3.9 million reported at the peak of the great recession of 2008 and 2009.

A health insurance claim form (Credit: Flickr.com, franchise opportunities)

The study released under Families USA found that nearly 46 percent of the coverage losses from the pandemic came in only five states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, and North Carolina. In Texas alone, the number of uninsured rose from 4.3 million to nearly 4.9 million, and three out of every 10 residents in Texas are considered uninsured.

For the 37 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, 23 percent of workers that were laid off became uninsured. This percentage jumps to 43 percent in the 13 states that did not expand Medicaid, including Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. It’s worth noting that both Texas and Florida are experiencing massive surges of COVID-19 infections as a result of the reckless and premature reopening plans prosecuted by the political establishment.

Families USA also discovered that five states have experienced increases in the number of uninsured adults that exceeded 40 percent. In Massachusetts, one of the hardest hit states, the number of uninsured rose by 93 percent after business shutdowns and lockdown measures were imposed, which accelerated the massive joblessness and removal from employer-based coverage. Massachusetts has been one of the most significant hotspots for the spread of the coronavirus since mid-March, with confirmed cases currently standing at 112,000 and nearly 9,000 deaths.

The report identifies eight states where 20 percent or more of adults are without health insurance: Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina and North Carolina. Of these states, all except Oklahoma are among the 15 states that are experiencing the highest spike in COVID-19 cases.

In addition to this analysis, Families USA notes that this situation has worsened given the fact there is no federal relief program in place that could reverse the harrowing conditions workers and their families face. This neglect, they acknowledge, is the conscious policy of both capitalist parties, which are well aware of the connection between insurance and improved health outcomes, financial security, and economic recovery.

Even though official data won’t be released until 2021 when the federal government produces its report on health insurance enrollments for the previous year, current numbers from medical journals and scientific studies in the US estimate that 16 percent of US adults, or 1 in 7, are without any health insurance at all.

Authors of the Families USA research study borrowed data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and raised alarm in their published paper on the high rates of individuals without health insurance, stressing that this “is particularly problematic during a pandemic involving a highly infectious, deadly disease, especially in states that are allowing residents to be in closer personal contact by attempting to reopen their economies” adding that these are “often the same states that are now experiencing significant spikes in COVID-19 infection rates.”

Health scientists and medical professionals have cited the health dangers that the population faces not just due to the unabated spread of the virus from the ruling class’ homicidal back-to-work agenda, but also the harmful consequences of delays in diagnosis and treatment because of lack of insurance for individuals and communities.

Diseases such as cancer and heart ailments “are more likely to worsen until hospitalization is required or treatment becomes ineffective.” The researchers continue by noting “losing health insurance thus makes permanent health problems—and even early death—significantly more likely for conditions unrelated to COVID-19.” These are forcing families that are already under significant economic strain to decide between paying for critical medical treatment out of pocket or buying other essential necessities.

In early May, the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) conducted an analysis that included workers who lost Employer-Sponsored Insurance (ESI), and the potential consequences for those who lost dependent coverage due to a family member losing a job and ESI benefits. That study estimated that nearly 27 million people, including relatives and spouses, signed on to a worker’s ESI could potentially become uninsured in the oncoming months.

KFF noted that some individuals who otherwise lose ESI are able to retain job-based coverage by switching to a plan offered to a family member. This is only viable for a very small portion of people, 1.6 million, who have another source of coverage in their family beyond their own loss of insurance. Even with this maneuver, it’s incredibly unlikely in the US for someone to find adequate healthcare coverage, if any at all. Data from the US Census Bureau indicates that 27.5 million Americans had no health insurance in 2018.

Those who are losing coverage would face unsustainable costs if they are struck with COVID-19, which has sent most of the seriously ill to Intensive Care Units for weeks and some even months. The average cost to treat a person with the novel coronavirus can range up to $30,000, according to a released in April by America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group of insurers.

US drug overdose deaths soared to record highs in 2019

Genevieve Leigh

Drug deaths in America rose to record numbers in 2019 and are continuing to climb with 2020 on track to see even more overdose deaths. According to preliminary data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, a staggering increase of 5 percent from 2018.

To put this number in perspective, drug overdoses claimed more lives in 2019 than the peak yearly death totals ever recorded for car accidents, guns or AIDS. The sheer volume of deaths from drug overdoses has become so devastating in recent years that it has lowered the overall life expectancy in the US.

Experts predict that this deadly trend will only get worse in the coming year. Preliminary data covering 40 percent of the US population collected by the New York Times shows that so far in 2020, drug deaths have risen an average of 13 percent. In New Jersey, overdose deaths in the first half of 2020 were 17 percent higher than in 2019. In Colorado, deaths were up by 30 percent through March. Even more shocking numbers were reported in large counties across the country with Los Angeles, California showing a 35 percent spike and 32 percent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Times ’ analysis suggests that if this trend continues for the rest of the year it will be the sharpest increase in annual drug deaths since 2016.

While there is no doubt that the social and economic pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic will have devastating consequences in 2020 in terms of overdose deaths and increase drug abuse, several leading public health experts have noted that the rise in deaths in 2020 was well underway before the pandemic began in the US, and certainly before the stay-at-home orders were put into place.

In other words, the pandemic is going to dramatically worsen an already horrific situation.

Dan Ciccarone, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, explained it to the New York Times as such: “Covid just makes [the crisis of drug overdoses] a bit worse” but “it’s a small wave riding on top of a tsunami that continues to devastate.”

Experts believe that one factor in the increase in deaths stems from the proliferation of fentanyl, a synthetic pain killer, and the deadliest opioid available. Since 2014, the US has seen a dramatic increase in the prevalence of fentanyl and its cousin, carfentanil. These drugs are extremely lethal. Less than half a teaspoon of pure fentanyl is enough to kill 10 people. Carfentanil, which is used as an elephant tranquilizer, is 5,000 times stronger than heroin. For a human, an amount of carfentanil equal to a few grains of salt can be a lethal dose.

Fentanyl had been confined mostly to New England and other parts of the eastern US since 2014. Generally, fentanyl was found in powdered heroin. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, however, increasing numbers of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl have been found in California, Arizona, and other Western states. Deaths involving fentanyl accounted for 36,500 overdose deaths in 2019. Deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine also are rising.

The real root of the problem is not primarily a question of the prevalence of drugs. Rather, it is the expression of a profound social illness. The depth of despair which an individual often feels when succumbing to drug abuse is the consequence of inequality, poverty, unemployment, and a general feeling of hopelessness that afflicts broad sections of the population. At its root, it is the product of an economic and political system that leaves those most severely impacted by the social crisis to fend for themselves.

Perhaps nowhere has this reality been more blatantly displayed as in the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millions of workers have had their lives upended and their livelihoods destroyed. Millions remain unemployed or underemployed. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions more, do not know if their jobs will be secure next month or even next year. Workers do not know how they will put food on the table for their families in the coming weeks, or if they will be able to pay their rent or mortgages. Devastating scenes of workers lined up for hours to get tests, hospital ICU beds over capacity, and nurses and doctors worked to exhaustion have left so many in precarious situations, with few public resources, and a profound sense of despair.

On top of the impact of these events on the social and political outlook of broad sections of the population, there have also been many practical impediments for those already struggling with addiction.

For thousands of people who are struggling with addiction, the isolation of quarantine places them under extraordinary danger. Using drugs alone is much more dangerous than doing so with others since there is no one around to call a hospital or to revive you with Naloxone if needed. On top of this, many in-person treatment options—including group counseling sessions and residential treatment centers—have been shuttered, leaving many without the medical and emotional support on which they rely.

Substance use and abuse also increase the risk of both infection and a negative prognosis with COVID-19. The effect of opioids on the immune system has been extensively studied. Those using opioids chronically or therapeutically have been shown to have both slower and weaker immune responses.

There is no doubt that the current crisis will intensify the on-going drug epidemic in the US in profound ways. The measures required to confront the drug crisis in the US cannot be carried out without a frontal attack on the wealth of the corporate and financial elite and its stranglehold on the entire economic and political system.

As tens of thousands die from drugs this year, and hundreds of thousands die from the pandemic, the ruling class has conspired to dump trillions of dollars into the stock market to keep Wall Street afloat and conjure up new ways to amass ever-greater fortunes. No faith can be put in representatives of either bourgeois parties to address the prevailing ills of the capitalist system, including drug abuse.

US retail bankruptcies and closures accelerate during COVID-19 pandemic

Trévon Austin

The economic catastrophe spurred by the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate the lives of millions of workers. A combination of falling consumer demand and mandated store closings presents retailers with challenges they may collapse under. The pandemic marks a bleak turn of events for the retail industry in the United States, which already faced severe troubles prior to the spread of COVID-19.

Analysts from Coresight Research, which collects data on retail closures, predicted that about a quarter of malls in the US would permanently close within the next three to five years. A report in June found that as many as 25,000 stores could shutter their doors in 2020 alone. Closures on this scale would be almost three times as many closures recorded in 2019.

Experts state that high-end malls with luxury retail tenants are in the best shape to withstand the downturn due to higher profit margins. However, malls with less affluent clientele and more vacancies are facing a high risk of closure.

According to CoStar Group, which tracks real estate, nearly 500 of the 1,793 enclosed shopping malls in the US are at risk because of their location or dependence on office workers or tourism for traffic. Even before the economic impact of the pandemic hit, the mall vacancy rates were at the highest level recorded in two decades, with 9.7 percent of storefronts empty in January, according to Reis Moody’s Analytics.

The uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 across the country leads experts to believe the damage could be more extensive. In an interview with USA Today, Coresight CEO Deborah Weinswig stated that the percentage of malls closing could rise to as much as 50 percent “if we can’t stop the bleeding.”

A small number of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that offer essential services of some kind, including Walmart, Target, Kroger, and Home Depot, have flourished during the pandemic. However, department stores and apparel retailers, which are concentrated in malls, have been struggling. Major retailers such as J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers, and J. Crew have already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year. The companies have stated that they intend to restructure to cut debt and become more sustainable.

However, this process includes shuttering hundreds of stores, throwing thousands of workers out of their jobs in the middle of the pandemic. J.C. Penney alone plans to close 242 stores. Most of the retailers that have filed bankruptcy faced challenges before the pandemic, including J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, and J. Crew had already been loaded up with billions of dollars in debt.

The failure of larger retailers like J.C. Penney threatens to exacerbate the problems facing malls. Not only do the larger chains attract more customers, but also many malls have clauses in their leases which allow smaller stores to leave if an anchor disappears.

Retailers have already announced closures impacting more than 80 million square feet of real estate in 2020 so far, compared to 114 million in all of 2019. In 2019, 17 major retailers filed for bankruptcy—including Payless, Gymboree and Charming Charlie—but at least 21 have already filed for bankruptcy this year.

The companies that have announced closings and restructurings this year include:

• Modell's Sporting Goods: Founded in 1889, the company plans to liquidate its 134 stores.
  
• RTW Retailwinds: The owner of the women’s apparel chain New York & Co., along with Fashion to Figure, and HappyxNature brands, plans to close many or all of its stores and sell its e-commerce unit.
  
• Lucky Brand: The company will close about a dozen stores and plans to sell itself for $140 million.
  
• Brooks Brothers: In business for over 200 years, the oldest men’s clothing store in the United States plans to permanently close 51 locations and is actively searching for a buyer.
  
• Muji USA: The US subsidiary of the Japanese-based retailer that sells minimalist home goods and apparel will trim its physical footprint and promote online sales.
  
• J. Crew: The company filed for bankruptcy with more than $1.7 billion in debt.
  
• GNC: Operating since 1935, the health product retailer plans to close up to 1,200 stores and to reorganize under lender ownership or sell itself to its largest shareholder.
  
• Pier 1: The homeware retailer announced plans in May to liquidate all 450 of its remaining stores.
  
• Sur La Table: The kitchenware retailer announced plans to close 51 stores with an acquisition bid from a private equity firm.
  
• True Religion: The company closed 87 locations before the pandemic, and this year’s bankruptcy is its second since 2017.
  
• Neiman Marcus: With $4 billion in debt, up to 29 of the company’s 57 stores could close.
  
• Art Van Furniture: All of the company’s stores were closed with liquidation sales announced in March, putting 3,000 workers suddenly out of a job.

First-time jobless claims in US top 1 million for 17th straight week

Jessica Goldstein

First-time official jobless claims in the US dropped to 1.3 million for the week ending July 11, according to the US Department of Labor in its weekly unemployment insurance claims report released Thursday. Though a decrease of 10,000 from the revised level of the previous week, the numbers demonstrate a state of deep economic crisis for US capitalism, with the past week being the 17th in a row in which new applications for unemployment reached over 1 million.

The official new jobless claims very likely represent an undercount. The official numbers reflect only those claims filed through state unemployment offices and do not include 928,488 applications filed through the temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance federal relief program, placing the unadjusted first-time application filings at 2.43 million for the second week of July.

Official unemployment in the US still stands in the double-digits at 11.9 percent, somewhat higher than the official figure for June at 11.1 percent. Although lower than the unemployment rates in April and May, 14.4 percent and 13 percent respectively, more US workers are out of work than at the peak of unemployment during the last recession at 10.6 percent in January 2010, following the 2008 Wall Street crash.

First-time applications for unemployment are used as a rough gauge of layoffs. Economists are not so exuberant about the slight drop, as the real number of new claims outpaced predictions of 1.24 million new applications for July. Furthermore, economists are warning that the decrease is likely to be only temporary and workers can expect to face higher unemployment in the coming months due to the scaling back of economic reopening by many US states following a major upsurge in new daily case counts of COVID-19.

Continued claims for US unemployment benefits rose on an unadjusted basis by more than 838,000 to 17.3 million over the past week. The real unemployment numbers in the US are also very likely undercounted as official numbers do not include workers out of work who are not eligible for state or federal unemployment assistance for any reason, including having hours drastically scaled back, or undocumented workers who have lost their jobs in the United States.

According to MarketWatch, Florida, Georgia and California saw the highest new unemployment claims over the past week, a reversal from the week prior in which all three states recorded decreases in the number of new unemployment claims filed, which suggests a strong relationship between the tumultuous roller-coaster of unemployment for workers and the premature reopening of the states’ economies by Democratic and Republican officials.

The US recorded 72,063 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, with 37 US states reporting a rising number of new reported cases, causing several state officials to move back on the reopening of restaurants, bars, salons, gyms and other businesses that opened in the past month. In some states, such as Michigan and Ohio, Democratic and Republican officials have hinted at scaling back other key industries such as manufacturing that were deemed “essential,” which state governments recklessly reopened before lockdowns formally ended and played a major role in the increasing number of cases in the United States over the following weeks.

With or without the massive surge in cases, the possibility of an increase in real unemployment numbers in the following weeks remained. Many of the jobs created month-over-month in May and June were those brought back by small businesses forced to close under state lockdowns through loans granted by the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which covered only eight weeks of wages and other expenses, and their expiration was expected to usher in a new round of layoffs.

In addition to the announcement of 61,000 planned layoffs in the US airline industry in the past week, several other corporations, such as motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, have also announced plans to lay off workers in the US and around the world this year. Dozens of corporate bankruptcies announced since the pandemic took hold in the US in March will also result in job cuts.

The $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit for US workers is set to end at the end of July, with the potential to throw millions of workers out of their homes, increasing food insecurity and making medical care farther out of reach during a public health crisis.

In spite of the relentless spread of the pandemic in the US due to the hasty decisions to reopen state economies, Wall Street profits continued to climb over the past week. While the wealth of the capitalist class has risen during the course of the pandemic, the working class is given no relief and faces rising unemployment and increased danger of infection.

In the wake of rising unemployment and the ending of inadequate temporary benefits, state governments acting on behalf of big business interests will use economic blackmail to force workers back into unsafe workplaces. This is a trend repeated throughout the world—in Latin America, Asia and Europe—revealing the true nature of the global capitalist system, which has no answer but to sacrifice the lives of the working class for the profits of a few.

Outbreak of COVID-19 at Pretty Little Thing distribution centre in Sheffield, UK

Tony Robson

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” — Honore de Balzac

A total of 28 workers have tested positive with COVID-19 so far at the Sheffield distribution centre in South Yorkshire of Pretty Little Thing (PLT).

PLT is a subsidiary of the Boohoo Group, the fast fashion online retailer heavily implicated in the sweat shop conditions prevalent in the Leicester textile industry, which has served as a vector for spreading the virus and a contributory factor in the local lockdown of the city.

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the Sheffield distribution depot, which employs more than 1,000 workers and is operated by Clipper logistics, demonstrates that the highly exploitative and unsafe practices of the Boohoo Group extend across the supply and distribution network.

Umar Kamani at the Clipper warehouse in Sheffield (umarkamani Instagram)

While textile workers in Leicester work in ramshackle workshops and are paid around £4 an hour, less than half the national minimum wage of £8.72, the distribution of the goods they manufacture takes place in state-of-the art warehouses like PLT’s Sheffield depot. Here, workers are paid barely above the national minimum wage and work 12-hour shifts, while having to meet draconian productivity targets. The billionaire owner of Boohoo, Mahmud Kamani, is ranked among the richest 1,000 people in the UK. Pretty Little Thing was founded in 2012 by his sons, Umar and Adam Kamani, and 66 percent of the company was acquired by Boohoo for £3.3 million in 2016.

The sweat shop conditions in the Leicester garment industry have been described as an open secret. The same is true of the warehouse and distribution centres of PLT and other major companies, such as JD Sports, Sports Direct, ASOS and Amazon. Long before the pandemic, the sector had achieved notoriety status for unsafe and unhygienic working conditions, low pay and casual employment.

PLT workers had warned as far back as March that the distribution centre was “a breeding ground for the virus”. Anonymously, they spoke to major media outlets and referred to the lack of social distancing and facilities to wash their hands. They complained of having just four soap dispensers in a 650,000 square foot warehouse, the size of 15 football pitches, and having to conduct their work in 4-foot-wide aisles, while trying to socially distance.

All the clothing and fast fashion online retailers were authorised by the government to continue operations during the lockdown, refuting the claim that only essential services would function. For some of the most exploited sections of workers the Johnson government’s herd immunity policy was never suspended. Their safety was of no concern compared to the online retailers’ ability to exploit the closure of high street retail to make a killing.

Even with 28 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among employees at PLT, workers’ concerns were dismissed. Public Health England (PHE) and the Labour Party-run local authority inspections team have borrowed from the playbook of the meat processing and food industry, where other outbreaks have occurred. This means whitewashing the companies of any responsibility for spreading the virus and failure to take the most elementary containment measures.

The Clipper warehouse in Sheffield (credit_Twitter @SheffCouncil)

A Yorkshire pub acted with more due diligence, closing after one customer tested positive for the virus, than corporations employing hundreds and thousands reporting bigger outbreaks. It closed for a deep clean and tested all the staff.

A closure and deep clean was not carried out at PLT or its competitor, ASOS in nearby Barnsley. ASOS reported nine confirmed cases of the virus in mid-May among its 2,000 workforce, but along with the local Labour authority refused follow up action. This was also the case at the Cranswick Convenience Foods meat processing plant, where three workers died from COVID-19. Even in the event of workplace fatalities, the Health and Safety Executive has not conducted a site visit and instead carried out its enquiries via email with the company.

The enfeebled nature of the enforcement agencies places a question mark over whether these companies are legally compliant. However, it is clear that workers cannot expect the law to protect them. The essential message is business as usual. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with the profit-making operations of these corporations.

The attempts by the competitors of PLT and Boohoo, such as ASOS, Next and Zoolanda, to distance themselves from the most exploitative practices exposed should be treated with contempt.

The most naked defence of these practices was made by an owner of a garment factory in Leicester, which supplies Boohoo and has been shown to be paying workers below the minimum wage. He told the Daily Mail, “Anyone saying they are paying all their employees the minimum wage in the garment industry is a fraud… It’s a lie because it’s not possible.

“People who come from India or Bulgaria don’t have money, they don’t speak English, but they need money to put food in their bellies. Boohoo is the company that gives us our bread and butter. They are a blessing because without them everyone would go to China and get them made cheaper.”

Pretty Little Thing Clipper recruitment poster at Sheffield’s Winter Garden

Corporate fortunes are squeezed from workers at every stage of the sourcing, production, and distribution process, resulting in a never end race to the bottom. The handful of corporations dominating global ecommerce will benefit from a further concentration of wealth because of the pandemic, as they cull their rivals more dependent on high street retail. This cut-throat process is referred to in the industry as “retail Darwinism.”

In the garment industry and warehouse and distribution network, the super exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers from eastern Europe, Asia and Africa is a key component of this strategy. It goes hand in hand with a broader assault on the working class. The deindustrialisation of the UK represented in areas such as Sheffield and Barnsley through the closure of the steel mills and coal mining has been used to develop a pool of casualised cheap labour.

An article published in the Financial Times in 2019 on the PLT warehouse run by Clipper stated, “Sheffield in South Yorkshire is an ideal location. It has a young population, with unemployment above the national average at more than 4 per cent, and about 60,000 students.”

PLT has marketed itself as a “student friendly” employer, exploiting the need for students to find work and pay their way through university, while accumulating a debt from tuition fees well over £30,000 and living and housing costs.

PLT, Boohoo and ASOS are latter-day robber barons and Labour run councils in Sheffield, Barnsley and Leicester will not intervene against their criminality. Before the pandemic they were hailed as the entrepreneurs responsible for the regeneration of run-down local economies. Now the levels of exploitation on which their wealth depends has proven to be a driver of the pandemic.

The battalions of workers in the garment industry and warehouse and distribution sector remain largely outside of the trade unions. To the extent that the unions exert any influence, it is to demobilise emerging opposition behind calls for the multi-billionaire companies to be “socially responsible”.

During the official lockdown, calls by USDAW and Unite the union for Boohoo, ASOS and JD Sports to furlough their warehouse and distribution staff and pick up the government subsidy were ignored as they exploited the suspension of high street trading to boost their online sales and reap greater profits.

What happens next depends upon the working class. Containment of the virus means ending the single-minded pursuit of profit. How the workplaces are run and organised must not be the prerogative of the corporations.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for the establishment of independent workplace safety committees. PLT workers should demand the closure of the Sheffield depot for the purpose of arranging a deep clean. Universal testing of all workers and their families must be organised. All PLT workers and their families should be able to self-isolate with no loss of wages. PLT must pick up the bill for these basic measures, which it can easily afford from the profits it has amassed.

US posts a one-day high in COVID-19 cases with health systems on the verge of collapse

Benjamin Mateus

With the United States leading the way as the worst-affected country, the number of coronavirus cases and deaths worldwide continues to soar, reaching 14 million infections today, and threatening to reach 600,000 total deaths by tomorrow. Yesterday, 5,736 more people succumbed to COVID-19, according to the Worldometer tracker.

Three countries, Brazil, India and the United States, account for more than 50 percent of all new cases. Yesterday, the United States posted its highest one-day number of new cases with 73,388 and 963 fatalities, approaching 3.7 million cases, with 141,000 deaths.

Almost alone among major countries, the United States has significant sections of its political elite who are acting as open advocates of spreading the virus so that the population will be forced to achieve “herd immunity,” regardless of the cost in human lives.

Cars forming a line for COVID-19 testing in Texas (Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas)

This is the de facto policy of the capitalist ruling classes all over the world. But few have gone as far publicly as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican allied with President Trump, who issued an executive order that combines pigheaded stupidity and criminal indifference to public health. It forbids city governments in his state to require the wearing of masks by people who are out in public places.

Perverting the slogan of “individual freedom,” Kemp explicitly singled out cities like Atlanta, Savannah, Athens and Augusta, whose mask requirements are now rescinded. Kemp upholds the “right” of the “free individual” to contract COVID-19 and then pass it on to friends, relatives, workmates, and people passing by in the street, without imposing the “heavy hand of government” through requiring a simple facemask.

Earlier in the month, over 1,400 health care workers signed a letter warning the governor that the state was ill-prepared to face a surge of new cases. Georgia reported 3,871 new cases on Thursday. At Navicent Health, the largest health care system in the state, a health worker told Georgia Public Broadcast News, “They were lined up along the walls in the ER … when you have to start shipping patients out of state, it's bad. When the hospitals are full, that's when it becomes really dangerous for everybody.”

Not only Georgia, but Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arizona and California are seeing a continuous influx of patients into emergency rooms. Except for California, these states are recording positivity rates in their COVID-19 testing above 15 percent with Arizona at 24 percent. These figures demonstrate that the pandemic is spreading uncontrollably through the population as a consequence of weeks of reopening businesses and encouraging people to resume normal activities and drop their guard against the killer virus.

Alabama's Lieutenant Governor Will Ainsworth publicly rebuked Governor Kay Ivey's statewide mandate to wear masks in public for a month. “The mandate is an overstep that infringes upon the property rights of business owners and the ability of individuals to make their own health decisions,” he declared.

Meanwhile, the number of cases in the state has exploded since the end of June. On Wednesday, Alabama reported its largest single day of deaths from COVID-19 with 47 fatalities. The Alabama Department of Corrections announced the death of two inmates on the same day. Thirty-four inmates have tested positive since July 10. Also, a COVID-19 outbreak at Alabama's largest food bank, serving 35 counties and over 300,000 residents, threatens their operations.

Louisiana reported 2,280 new cases of COVID-19 with 24 deaths. The demand for testing is skyrocketing, and the state is moving to cut back the number of tests available at community testing sites to preserve a critical supply, limiting them to people with COVID-19 symptoms. This is leading to delays in reporting, which many epidemiologists have noted confounds the ability to contact trace.

According to a recent 55-page report released by the Rockefeller Foundation, “America faces an impending disaster. The extraordinary scale of COVID-19 crisis is evident in the growing deaths and economic losses the pandemic has wrought in every state.” The report states that the US needs to reach the ability to perform 30 million tests a week with a turnaround time of 48 hours. Presently, the US is conducting 4.5 million COVID-19 tests a week with many patients having to wait more than seven days to get results. Mara Aspinall, a professor at Arizona State University and co-author of the report, said, “This is just unacceptable because, by the time you get test results back, you've already infected many, many people.”

Many health professionals and public health officials have called for another lockdown to gain breathing room to deal with the growing crisis in earnest. However, the Trump administration and state governors, Democrat and Republican alike, are opposed to such measures. Even in Texas, where the state is facing a collapse of its healthcare infrastructure, Governor Greg Abbott walked back his assertion from last week that “the next step would have to be a lockdown.” He told KRIV-TV in Houston emphatically, “Let me tell you, there is no shutdown coming.”

On July 14, Texas posted a one-day high of 10,751 new cases. On July 15, it also grimly noted 110 new deaths, its highest one-day toll since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile, several hard-hit counties in Texas are bringing in freezer trucks as makeshift morgues. ICUs and hospitals are attempting to find room in their facilities that are brimming with patients. Ambulances are on bypass or have to hold patients in their cabins for several hours before a bed is located for them. Many of these new COVID-19 patients come from low-income populations who have to work with their hands and suffer from chronic diabetes and high blood pressure.

Though the number of cases in Arizona seems to have plateaued, 90 percent of hospital beds are in use, and with the scarcity of resources, there is rationing of medical care. Dr. Murtaza Akhter, an emergency room medicine physician at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, said, “The fear is we are going to have to start sharing ventilators, or we're gonna have to start saying, 'you get a vent, you don't!' I'd be really surprised if, in a couple of weeks, we didn't have to do that.”

Several counties in southern California are also facing shortages of resources for COVID-19 patients. Like his Republican counterparts, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is putting into place half measures, closing some businesses and issuing a statewide mask mandate. Cases in the state of Washington are also on the rise. Since the middle of June, Washington has seen more than 700 new cases each day.

The pandemic’s impact would be multiplied many times over if states go ahead with plans to reopen public school systems in August and September, bringing 50 million children into an environment where they will be unable to social distance and otherwise protect themselves from infection, which will spread to teachers and other school staff, and will go home to parents, grandparents and other caregivers.

President Trump has threatened to cut funding from schools if they don't open. Asked by the press about his response to an Arizona teacher who contracted COVID-19 at a summer school and died, Trump seemed to feel nothing, and reiterated his demand that all schools reopen for five-day, in-person instruction. This is demanded by corporate America, in order to push through the back-to-work drive against the resistance of the working class.

The Democrats seek to profit politically from Trump’s obvious indifference to sickness and death, as well as the sheer incompetence of the White House response, but they represent the same class interests. No prominent Democrat is calling for a second national lockdown to stop the virus transmission and use the opportunity to begin the implementation of a broad public health initiative that would include mass testing, contact tracing and isolation of those who test positive.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, only one in four Americans believes it would be safe to reopen schools this fall, while more than half felt such a move would be dangerous. Forty percent of parents polled said they would probably keep their children home if classes are back in session.

At Monday's World Health Organization briefing, Dr. Mike Ryan replied as follows to a question on school openings, in words that apply most directly to the United States: “The problem we have in some countries right now is that it is very difficult to determine the safety of any environment because there is just so much transmission going on that all potential environments that people mix are essentially problematic … There are real issues in how schools can be reopened safely, but the best and safest way to reopen schools is in the context of low community transmission that has been effectively suppressed by a broad-based comprehensive strategy … Schools are a hugely important part of this. They are a hugely important part of our social, educational architecture. They are the baseline of our civilization, but we can't turn schools into yet another political football in this game.”