OWSD Elsevier Foundation Awards 2021 for Early-Career Women Scientists in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 30th September 2020

Eligible Countries: 

• Africa: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Dem. Rep. Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• Arab Region: Djibouti, Palestine (West Bank & Gaza Strip), Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen.
• Asia and the Pacific: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Lao People’s Dem. Rep., Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
• Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay.

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: Launched by The Elsevier Foundation, TWAS and OWSD, the Awards reward and encourage women working and living in developing countries in the early stages of their scientific careers. Awardees must have made a demonstrable impact on the research environment both at a regional and international level and have often overcome great challenges to achieve research excellence.
Nominations are invited from senior academics, including OWSD members, TWAS Fellows, ICTP visiting scientists and staff, national science academies, national research councils and heads of departments/universities both in developing and developed countries.

Type: Award, Research

Eligibility: The applicant must be a female scientist who has received her PhD within the previous ten years. The eligible subject fields for the 2020 awards include:

• Civil engineering
• Electrical engineering, electronic engineering
• Telecommunications/information engineering / Software engineering
• Computer science
• Mechanical engineering
• Chemical engineering
• Materials engineering
• Medical engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Environmental biotechnology
• Industrial biotechnology
• Nano technology

In addition, the applicant must have lived and worked in one of the following science and technology lagging countries above for at least 5 of the last 15 years:
Please note that an applicant, at the time of application, must NOT have an active research grant or fellowship with The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) or have already submitted an application for a TWAS programme within the same given year. Only one application per year is possible across all TWAS and OWSD programmes. Applicants will not be eligible to visit another institution in that year under the TWAS Visiting Professor programmes. An exception is made only for the head of an institution who invites an external scholar to share his/her expertise under the TWAS Visiting Professor programmes; she may still apply for another programme.

Selection Criteria: Applications will be judged in terms of:

• Scientific merit (eg. quality of publications)
• International and regional impact (eg. invitations to present or chair at meetings; organization or participation on workshops; collaborations with scientists from other countries; national or regional awards received)
• Capacity building – local, national and regional (eg. evidence of running MSc or PhD training programmes; developing and providing resources for students and young researchers; mentoring activities).

Evidence of innovation will be considered favourably.

Number of Awardees: 5 Awards. One woman is awarded for each of five regions in the developing world: Latin America and the Caribbean; East and South-East Asia and the Pacific; the Arab region; Central and South Asia; and Sub-Saharan Africa (see the list of countries in Africa above)

Value of Award:

• Cash prize of USD 5,000.
• All-expenses-paid trip to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, which will take place on 13-16 February 2020 in Seattle.

The 5 awards will be distributed as follows: one for each of the four regions of the developing world, plus an additional ¨floating” award for an outstanding candidate from any of these regions.

Duration of Award: Not stated

How to Apply: Applications are invited from women scientists from the eligible developing countries and they must be made online.
Applications must include:

• Candidate’s curriculum vitae
• Full list of publications
• At least one (preferably two) reference letter(s)
• Endorsement statement from a senior academic scientist (e.g. OWSD members, TWAS Fellows, visiting scientists and staff of The International Centre for Theoretical Physics – ICTP, national science academies, national research councils and heads of departments/universities, both in developing and developed countries).

Please note that the endorser cannot also be a referee.

Visit Awards Webpage for details

British Ecological Society (BES) Grants 2021 for Ecologists in Africa

Application Deadline: 7th September 2020 at 17:00 (BST).

Offered Annually? Twice in a Year

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: This grant provides support for ecologists in Africa to carry out innovative ecological research. We recognise that ecologists in Africa face unique challenges in carrying out research; our grant is designed support you to develop your skills, experience and knowledge base as well as making connections with ecologists in the developed world. We support excellent ecological science in Africa by funding services and equipment.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: Applicants should:

• be a scientist and a citizen of a country in Africa or its associated islands, that is a ‘low-income economy’ or ‘lower-middle-income economy’ according to the World Bank categorisation
• have at least an MSc or equivalent degree
• be working for a university or research institution in Africa (including field centres, NGOs, museums etc.) that provides basic research facilities
• carry out the research in a country in Africa or its associated islands

Selection Criteria: 

• The application will be judged by a panel of reviewers on the basis of your personal qualifications, the scientific excellence, novelty and feasibility of the proposal, and the academic and non-academic impact of the planned research.
• You should demonstrate that you have made connections with ecologists in a developed country that can provide advice during the proposed project. If international travel is part of the application, you should demonstrate close links with those they propose to visit.
• Funding is available for any area of ecological science excluding research focused solely on agriculture, forestry and bioprospecting. Please note that neither purely descriptive work nor studies that might be considered incremental will be funded.
• The proposed project could be part of an existing programme but the application should be for a clearly defined piece of research. Researchers must also show how their research will have a wider impact beyond academia.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The maximum value of a grant is £8,000 for research.
• An additional sum up to £2,000 may be requested to fund travel to help you develop connections with other ecologists outside your usual peer group.
• Travel funds are available to spend time working with ecologists in developed countries where facilities and experience will help you on return to your own institution.
• Successful applicants also receive two years of free BES membership and free online access to our journals.

Duration/Timeline of Program: The proposed work must be completed within 18 months.

Apply Online

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Important Notes: Applicants are only able to submit one grant application per round, across all grant schemes.

India Both Internally And Externally Strained

Haider Abbas

As if the Chabahar debacle was not enough, as Iran scrapped its deal with India and instead entered into a 400 billion USD deal with China,  that Iran has also now decided to keep India ‘out’ from Gas Field Right Exploration by saying that India would be involved ‘appropriately’ at some later stage.   Bad news for India.  One thing however is for sure that US would do everything to scuttle the Iran-China deal the same way it has done to spoilsport CPEC.

Another bad news is that US has announced five of its military bases to have been closed i.e. Helmand, Uruzgan, Paktika and Laghman provinces in Afghanistan , this systematic  withdrawal is now into its 136th day after the Afghan Taliban and US had agreed to sign an accord in Doha in Feb 2020. But, the issue of prisoners-swap between Afghan Taliban and US installed Ashraf Ghani government still remains a vexed thorn as Ghani has refused to release 600 Taliban fighters , which was also a part of the accord that Ghani government would release 5000 Taliban prisoners and that Taliban would release 1000 prisoners, this is being seen as a ploy to make US remain still in Afghanistan, this news came on July 9 and only four days later Taliban staged a huge attack on Afghanistan intelligence office in Aybak killing 11.

Very soon Taliban who are in control of around 75% of Afghanistan are going to be embroiled into a bloody conflict with Ghani government and Mullah Abdul Ghani Biradar is all set to be the next Amir-ul-Momineen  i.e. head of the state, all geared up to set up a Shariah government in Afghanistan.   The political scenarios unfolding in Afghanistan suggests that the Taliban are keeping Mullah Omer son of Mullah Yaqoob in a low-profile and the Haqqanis are also silent.  Outside Afghanistan,  Turkish President Erdogan has long been playing host to them and is considered a friend to Taliban who reciprocated by setting free four Turkish engineers kidnapped in Afghanistan, something which was announced by Erdogan himself. Russia against whom Taliban had waged a war is now supportive of Taliban and has been arming them against US, something which was once done by US against Soviets ,  and as once China armed Vietnam against US,  today US is arming Vietnam against China.  There is never a one-way traffic in International relations.  What matters here is that both Russia and China have been into deft diplomacy by hosting dialogues with Taliban and it is here where India does not seem to be even a distant third.  It is leant that Turkey has resumed its air-flights with Kabul.

There was once when India was playing the shots as Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani were a regular feature in New Delhi, and very successfully India was able to keep Taliban ‘at bay’ particularly after the Sep 11 attack in US, and thereafter, when US decided to settle-everything with Taliban, with help from Pakistan, to finally lead to a rubble in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and a war looming over Iran with the exception in the rise of Israel.  But, India has not exploited all its avenues, as it does have a ‘Trump-Card’, as when things would tend to ‘spill-out’, India would deploy its battery of Deobandi Ulemas to make Taliban shun their designs over India , as was once elaborated by NIA Chief Ajit Doval in an address way back on August 18, 2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYRuk8H5M9E) .   This is despite, the  Modi government which has since May 2019, made every Muslim ‘scurry’ as the very citizenship of a Muslim, no matter living for centuries in India,  has been put to question, through CAA/NPR/NPA, which obviously led to nationwide protests and worldwide condemnation. If COVID-19 virus had not broken-out by March 2020, millions of Muslims were to have been put to microscope and  unending queues of  hapless Muslims were to have become the order of the day.

The Modi government internally has had a pretty tough-time but externally it is faced with a very potential threat from across the Himalayas.  Since May China and India are head-to-head involved in Ladakh where India has lost 20 of its soldiers and all the routine talks i.e. diplomatic, political and military have as yet yielded no result.  All the defence minister Rajnath Singh, while visiting Ladakh on July 17, after Modi had visited on July 3,  could say was “ No country in the world can touch or occupy even an inch of India’s territory, ” alongside CDS Bipin Rawat and army chief MM Naravane and that he cannot ‘guarantee’ how the dispute would be resolved, thus, a signal that the deadlock is to continue at least until the snowfall begins or very soon a limited war is coming.

The chips in India are down which relies heavily on US support. The skeptics would research later that in fact the Indian war with China is much to the maneuvering of US as it was Trump who had on July 22, 2019 attributed to Modi to have sought his mediation for a solution in Kashmir, which India denied, and again reiterated it on  August 2, 2019, leaving Modi with a wide choice to annul the Article 370 and make it a level-playing ground with Pakistan, but what turned-out to be a surprise is that China made India to focus primarily on Pakistan to produce the Ladakh nemesis.  Now China has sought claim over Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan as well. Perhaps, this ironic ‘ not an inch’ dialogue finds its resonance in the words of Chinese Premier Xi Jinping who had in 2018 said it to US defense secretary James Mattis that China would not lose even an inch of territory left behind by its ancestors, on June 28, 2018.

 India surely should have heeded to China which is determined to pin India down and on the contrary POTUS has yet again given a conflicting statement that he loves India and China alike and would do everything to see them to make peace.  There is a brimming bloodbath ominously placed around India-China and Trump is into merrymaking.  Modi perhaps invested too much into Trump, remember his latest Howdy Modi  in Houston on Sep 23, 2019 and Trump in Gujarat  on Feb 24, 2020. How would Trump fair, in this growing conflict, particularly in the middle of US elections, is going to be a sagacious saga to unfold.

But, whatever be the outcome, I make a reference to one of my previous articles, written five days after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, that the move would alter the politics, both internal and external in India, for the next fifty years to come.

Oligarchs of Mainstream Mass Media in Service of Capitalism

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

In early 15th century Europe, news used to be political, economic, military and diplomatic messages of the ruling classes. There was no mass media. It was often the voices of the businessmen and ruling elites circulated within their own networks. The revolutionary upheavals and democratisation of society during 19th century led to the growth of mass media. People used mass media to fight against all forms of exploitation, injustices and inequalities. The mass media has also played momentous role during the struggle against feudalism, colonialism and apartheid. Mass media is vital in the growth of liberal, secular, democratic, progressive and scientific ideals in the society. Therefore, it is the historic responsibility of mass media to report on realities of everyday life and consider fact as sacred in professional journalism. Yellow journalism is no journalism. But idealism and principles are dead within mainstream capitalist media.

From the early 20th century onwards, the mass media is not only manufacturing consent but also works as an agency of the ruling and non-ruling elites to hide alternatives from the masses. The old world of yellow journalism is transformed into news and opinions for sale in a post truth world. It spreads fake news, misrepresents everyday realities, twists facts and shapes opinions like a marketing or advertisement industry. The mainstream media works as a propaganda machine for the people with money and power. The uncritical reporting and ruling class biases are obsequious. There is limited space for debates and disagreements in the media today. The editorial pages and opinion pieces are sponsored by the market forces that is concomitant with the requirements of neoliberal capitalism and its governance models. The essence of neoliberal capitalism and its affiliated media is to create domesticated and uncritical mass audience and destroy critical voices representing people. The idea is to create mass produce social, cultural and political values that accepts the dominance of illegitimate authority and power. It is the market monopoly that controls the media today. The market monopolies are controlled by oligarchs of mass media. There are six companies (Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, Fox, CBS and Viacom), which control almost all 90% media in USA and other parts of the world.

The National Amusements is a multinational media conglomerate owned by Sumner Redstone and Shari Redstone. These two people control more than 170 networks, reaching out to more than 700 million people in more than 160 countries with the help of a company called the Viacom. It is one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. It controls print, electronics and internet media outlets. It also controls movies, video games, TV shows, and many other creative industries like music. These companies shape public taste in culture, consumption and voting behaviour.

The Walt Disney Company is known as Disney, which controls hundreds of media and entertainment outlets. It is one of the leading multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate which played a major role in shaping capitalism with American dreams. It helped to transform the need-based society into a desire-based society with the help of its advertisement and animation industry. It has promoted a culture of self-gratifying fantasies of individualism. It is also responsible for producing popular cultural narratives for the naturalisation and normalisation of American and global capitalism.

The Time Warner is known as the Warner Media LLC, which is another largest mass media and entertainment conglomerate. This conglomerate has used individual privacy data for its financial gain and played a major role in destroying net neutrality.   The Comcast is another largest media and entertainment conglomerate, which played a major role in shaping American and world politics. It has huge budget for political lobbing and it funds electoral campaigns in the name of universal political action. It traps consumers with its political projects and propaganda. This media corporation is opposed to universal media access. The News Corporation is owned by media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who controls media and publication outlets in five continents.  The News Corporation is known as the predatory capitalist media, which destroys media diversity and democracy. It upholds the power of the capitalist market. Similarly, the Sony Corporation is another leading multinational conglomerate which controls largest music, entertainment and video game business. These media corporations uphold the voices of the capitalist class and suppress the interests of the working-class masses.

The large media corporations are threat to the democratic and liberal values of the societies across the globe. In pursuit for profit, the mainstream mass media has formed its alliances with reactionary religious, nationalist, undemocratic, illiberal and fascist forces across the globe. It negates every founding principles of mass media. These media corporations and their affiliates promote a culture of no alternative to capitalism in politics, economy, society and culture. These forces hide the economic, social and cultural realities of everyday lives within capitalism and promotes capitalist myth. Facts are no longer the foundation of journalistic analysis. It all about spreading falsehood of market forces by spreading consumer culture as only culture where individuals can realise their free choices. These media houses are responsible for transforming citizens as mere customers in a society driven by profit. In this way, mass media destroys the society based on solidarity, love, share and care by celebrating unabashed hedonistic individualism. Mass alienation is the net outcome of capitalism led corporate mass media.

It is imperative for people to detox themselves from the propaganda machines of the governing elites and find their own alternatives. It is time to reclaim the founding principles of mass media by representing the predicaments of the masses. The masses can organise themselves to create cooperative media organisations to uphold their voices and represent their interests while promoting liberal, democratic, secular and scientific ethos in the society. This is only possible when people can control their own narratives by establishing people’s media free from corporate cultures. Vox Populi, Vox Dei is the only alternative to defeat the toxic culture of capitalism and its mass media, which destroys lives, livelihoods of the masses. It serves power and tame voices of people. The powerful mass movement can crumble the palaces of media moguls and their oligarchic empire of propaganda and profit. The cooperative media owned by people is the only alternative to uphold Vox Populi.

A Plan for Social and Ecological Justice

Roy Morrison

The death of John Lewis is a reminder that power concedes nothing without a struggle and that social and ecological justice is a consequence of generational efforts.

Building a fair, just, and prosperous ecological future, rooted in social and ecological justice means fundamental change of how we treat one another, how we govern, how we work, how we protect and restore the living world.

What John Lewis saw in the economic and social and public health crises arising in the time of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd unleashing a global multi-racial and multi-ethic movement for justice was the latest incarnation of his injunction to make “good trouble”. But, sadly this unfolded in the midst of a financial bailout largely of the rich as billions pouring into Wall Street as the stock market prospered while tens of millions lost their jobs as Main St. suffered, and the worst effects of a pandemic are borne by the poor, by people of color, by essential workers.

For the election of Joe Biden to mean an epochal turn toward social and ecological justice cannot be a return to business as usual BT(before Trump). This means the transformation of institutions, organizations, and businesses to follow new mandates established bylaw, by regulation, by custom to pursue ecological ends and justice.

A market system must make economic growth mean ecological improvement, not ecological pillage while pursuing as an imperative of ecological and social justice. A failure to successfully fight for justice will ultimately undermine any ecological hope as the poor struggle desperately for survival. Justice denied also means the continuing growth of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few.

Six Steps for a Transformative Green and Just Future

First, the United States with China, India, and the OECD nations lead efforts for an accelerated global energy transformation from fossil fuel and nuclear power to renewable resources and green hydrogen. This is a paradigmatic example of economic growth meaning ecological improvement. Carbon emissions, pollution, depletion and ecological damage are slashed. Trillions are productively invested in renewable economic growth and job creation. Fossil fuel and nuclear workers are retrained for good-paying jobs in the green economy. Renewable resources are phased in year by year, and fossil fuel and nukes are phased on a strict yearly schedule.

The United States partners with the word’s industrial powers in global efforts which will include financial and technological assistance to poor nations for ecological transformation.

Second, the price system must send clear signals for sustainability. Sustainable goods must become cheaper, more profitable and gain market share. This can be accomplished by an ecological value-added tax on all goods and services. The more sustainable, the lower the tax. Such a taxation system will inevitably help lead to a convergence on the sustainable for almost all goods and services in pursuit of profit. Ecological taxes combined with a wealth tax will replace income taxes.

Third, in order to finance an ecological and just transformation, instead of raising taxes, we can great trillions of wealth by valuing and monetizing sustainability starting with the ecological value of displacement metric tons of carbon dioxide by renewables. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has found the value of displacing of one metric ton of carbon dioxide (2204 pounds) is equal to $100.

We can create a new regulatory asset, the Sustainability Credit (SC)valued at $100 for each metric ton of carbon dioxide displaced by renewable energy. SCs to be managed as part of the Federal Reserve System, and by other central banks. We don’t need carbon taxes to raise prices on working people and the poor.

Sustainability Credits (SCs) will be monetized as paid-in capital and as cash on the balance sheet of a Green Bank or Bank of the Commons. The thirty-three billion tons (gigatons) of annual carbon dioxide emissions can result in creation eventually of hundreds of trillions as in paid-in capital and cash on the books of green banks to be used for investment in future renewables.

A gigaton of carbon displacement means $100 billion in sustainability credits on the books of a green bank who must loan this money for further renewable energy investment. The common magic of bank financing, $100 billion in paid-in capital, and cash means loans of 900 billion in further renewable development that each year produces more Sustainability Credits that monetized. Investment from SCs can encompass both ecological transformation and social justice such as a $1,000 a month basic income grant for all.

The fifty trillion-dollar investment estimated by J.P.Morgan for a global renewable transformation from 2020-2050 can be easily produced by Sustainability Credits as the new gold-based on sustainable ecological value. around the world.

Fourth, the ecological transformation must be pursued not just in energy, but in agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, and an industrial ecology driven by the pursuit of zero pollution and zero waste. All outputs of one process are captured and used as inputs by other processes. The ecological value added tax sends strong economic incentives for such conduct that can be similarly financed through the generation of Sustainability Credits.

Fifth, is a global convergence on a living wage and common sustainable standards for carbon generation and carbon sequestration. Globally there must a convergence on common sustainable norms for emissions and carbon sequestration that leads to atmospheric carbon below 300 ppm, to preindustrial levels.

Six, law and regulation must redefine fiduciary conduct as the pursuit of ecological economic growth within the context of social and ecological justice as guide for government, institutions, and business. This might also be codified by an ecological constitutional amendment.

These six steps are a recipe for ecological economic growth, for sustainability, peace, and justice. They represent spurs to economic and social action that uses an ecological focused pursuit of profit as incentive for ecological behavior and embraces the imperative for pursuit of social and ecological justice.

This is a recipe for an ecological future that transforms ourself-destructive industrial world order into an ecological civilization. This is a global ecological economic growth strategy that aims to build a bigger pie that is fairly and justly divided, ending poverty and injustice, at the same time healing the global ecosphere. Ecological economic growth and an ecological turn is a means for strengthening our democratic institutions and revitalizing our democracy.

Campaign continues against New Zealand visa processing delays

Tom Peters

There is growing opposition to the New Zealand government’s mistreatment of migrants, including its refusal to process residency applications for tens of thousands of people.

A petition with nearly 4,000 signatures, promoted by the Facebook group Migrants NZ is being presented to parliament this week. It calls on the Labour Party-led government to process more than 15,000 applications for Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) visas, affecting about 30,000 people.

Many have been waiting a year or longer and fear that they may be unable to stay in New Zealand, despite meeting all the relevant criteria and having spent thousands of dollars in fees and other costs. According to the Immigration New Zealand (INZ) website, as of June 30 the department was still allocating applications it received in December 2018 for case officers to begin processing them.

Another petition, promoted by the Pacific Leadership Forum, representing various community organisations, asks the government to “provide pathways for overstayers under compassionate grounds to gain permanent residency in New Zealand.” It has gained more than 10,000 signatures.

On July 12, dozens of migrants attended rallies in Auckland and Wellington. Speaking in Auckland, Green Party candidate Ricardo Menéndez March criticised the visa processing delays and said it was “shameful” that temporary migrant workers who are unemployed cannot access welfare payments.

The Greens, however, are part of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government, which includes Labour and the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party. Like others throughout the world, the government is scapegoating immigrants for job losses in order to divert rising anger among workers over social inequality, particularly as an election approaches on September 19.

Despite NZ First’s unpopularity, Labour and the Greens allow it to exercise considerable power in the coalition. NZ First leader and deputy prime minister Winston Peters has told jobless migrants to “go home.”

Labour has adopted many of NZ First’s anti-immigrant policies, including limiting migrants’ access to superannuation and imposing new class-based immigration restrictions. At NZ First’s conference held last weekend, Peters demanded greater restrictions, including reducing immigration to 15,000 people per year, down from more than 50,000 last year.

The government’s actions are jeopardising migrants’ health and basic human rights. Newsroom reported on July 16 that a group of seasonal agricultural workers from the Solomon Islands had complained to the Labour Inspectorate that they had no food and were going hungry, and allegedly faced bullying from their employer. Pick Hawke’s Bay had reportedly stopped paying them and they couldn’t access welfare.

Anna, who is from Germany and is part of the group Migrants NZ, told the World Socialist Web Site many people waiting for a visa were afraid to criticise the government, or even sign a petition, in case they were “blacklisted.” She continued: “It makes me sad and angry at the same time, how scared people are of the whole system.”

She criticised Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway for failing to explain the SMC residency applications backlog in media interviews. “Recently we started commenting on every single one of his Facebook posts. Especially as Labour’s election campaign slogan is ‘Let’s keep moving,’ we keep suggesting that the queue should keep moving,” she said.

Anna noted that a six-month extension to temporary work visas announced by Lees-Galloway this month did not cover partners and children of visa-holders, who have to apply separately or leave the country. She said the extension was “not so much to benefit the actual visa holders, it’s more to satisfy the business owners,” who needed time to find replacements for migrant workers who could still be forced to leave.

Many SMC applicants have children whose lives are in limbo. The WSWS received a letter from a migrant whose son has finished school and wants to study to become a doctor, but the family can’t afford the extremely high fees charged to non-residents.

They wrote: “It’s too much stress to tell my son that we can’t afford to help him pay the international fee of $35,000 a year for the next six years,” more than double the fee for domestic students. “He had chances of getting a scholarship… but he needs to be a resident in order to apply by early next year. I’m losing all hopes if this queue doesn't move at a faster pace.”

The WSWS also spoke with Angela (not her real name), who moved from South Africa three years ago with her two sons. Angela was recently made redundant from her job as a systems manager and she is looking for a new job.

She submitted her residency application 14 months ago and has heard nothing since. When she applied, the INZ website said the longest waiting time was nine months.

Angela told the WSWS: “I’ll do anything to stay in New Zealand, basically. The way things are going in South Africa, I’d not like to go back [because of] the violence, and the pandemic is just starting. With 57 million people and extreme poverty situations, it’s going to prove disastrous.”

South Africa is the fifth-worst hit country, with 350,879 cases and nearly 5,000 confirmed deaths. “To send people back to countries where there are no healthcare systems, they are exposed, it’s really like a death sentence,” she said.

“What scares me most is that if I had to go back, my 15-year-old son would have to come with me. I wouldn’t be able to look after him, I have nowhere to go. Especially with the pandemic, there’s no way I’d be able to secure a job. I keep saying to people, that would be the end of me. I’ve made this move to New Zealand, quite frankly, not for myself but for the future of my kids.”

Angela said: “A lot of migrants don’t speak up. I know a couple of people working in dreadful circumstances and the employers aren’t nice to them. They keep quiet because of the fear of having to go back to their country.”

She said she understood the government had to take care of its citizens, “but we can also be seen as future citizens... Don’t look at us as migrants, look at us as human beings. We’re all trying to plan our lives, but there’s no assurance. All we’re asking for is to be treated fairly.”

Australian bushfire victims still suffering six months on

Cheryl Crisp

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) recently aired on its flagship program “Four Corners” a revealing segment titled Hard Winter. It outlined the harsh conditions still facing many victims of the bushfires that raged throughout many parts of the country from last July to January.

The fires, in the worst season on record, killed 34 people, including nine firefighters, three of whom were from the US. The Americans had volunteered to combat the firestorm. The estimated death toll from the toxic air that choked Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and adjoining regions for weeks is more than ten times greater.

The fires destroyed almost 6,000 buildings, including 3,094 homes, and burned through 18.6 million hectares of land, which is equivalent to more than half the total landmass of the UK.

About 15 million people, or 60 percent of the population, were exposed either directly or indirectly to the infernos and 2.9 million people had their property damaged or threatened or had to evacuate. The livelihoods of thousands of people have been affected or destroyed. The blazes destroyed entire eco systems and reportedly killed up to one billion native animals.

Incinerated Cobargo home [Source: ABC-TV “Four Corners”]

Almost 1,000 international firefighters were deployed to assist Australian crews, along with over 6,300 interstate personnel. More than 20 countries provided aid.

The images of thousands of people stranded on beaches while fires burned their towns and villages will be forever etched in the consciousness of millions of people worldwide.

The “Four Corners” report centred on the small town of Cobargo, south of Sydney, which was gutted in a New Year’s Eve fire. Six months on, hundreds of people who lost their homes, and in some cases everything they owned, are still living in tents, caravans or shipping containers in what is now the dead of winter, with temperatures dropping below zero. Some have no running water and are living through handouts of food, clothing and blankets donated by people throughout Australia and internationally.

Despite a reported $500 million raised in donations through charities, agencies and governments, many of the farmers and local residents are yet to have their properties cleared of burnt out debris and the remains of their houses, stockyards, sheds, vehicles and machinery. The Cobargo region has 2,000 burned buildings to be cleared, with more than 32,000 tonnes of material contaminated with asbestos. As of July 3, the fire-gutted main street of Cobargo had only just been cleared.

Hard Winter opened with the delivery of 207 1,000-litre water tanks to be distributed to some of the bushfire victims. For Cathy Healy and Rachel Hatton, like hundreds of others, this means they can have a shower for the first time since New Year’s Eve. They recounted the daily grind of feeding themselves, their animals and trying to keep warm. “It is just so hard… It is ridiculous. I don’t know how we do it honestly,” Healy said.

Trevor and Ronnie Eagles, who used their superannuation to purchase their farm, described the trauma and grief of listening to the cries of their animals they were unable to save as they fled the inferno. They left everything behind and returned to find their home, sheds and machinery destroyed and many of their stock dead.

Ronnie Eagles related their life, five months on, still living in a caravan loaned to them by a neighbour, with no running water, and a hole in the ground as a toilet. The couple traveled into town every few days to shower in the public facilities. They are living on donations provided by a relief centre. Uninsured, they have been deemed ineligible for grants to rebuild their property.

Hard Winter on the ABC’s “Four Corners”

Many of those interviewed were not insured or vastly under-insured, due to the high cost of premiums. One farmer, Warren Salway, whose brother Robert and nephew Patrick perished in the fires, lost more than $1.3 million in infrastructure on his cattle farm. Of the two houses, five sheds, fences, stock yards and 150 cattle burned, only one house and two sheds were insured. Volunteer backpackers were helping rebuild his fences.

Another local, Stephan, whose self-built mud brick house was destroyed, was given just $50,000 from the Red Cross to rebuild and $8,000 from the News South Wales state government for appliances. He also was uninsured.

There is general dismay and disgust at the lack of support from the governments and charities.

According to an ABC report, the three major charities—the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul—collected a total of more than $280 million in bushfire donations but on June 30 still had more than half the funds not distributed to victims. Of the purported $2 billion promised by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, $1 billion had been distributed, with almost half as reimbursements to state governments.

Cobargo became the voice of opposition to Morrison and the Liberal-National government during his visit there on January 2. This followed his rushed return from a secret family holiday in Hawaii during mid-December, while the country burned.

In scenes televised around the world, residents and firefighters refused to shake his hand. They demanded that funding be restored to the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and assistance provided to bushfire victims. Morrison’s holiday only exemplified the contempt and neglect displayed by governments, Liberal-National and Labor Party alike, for decades.

The Liberal-National government ignored increasingly strident warnings by climate scientists and senior firefighters and emergency personnel that the fire season was would be catastrophic due to an ongoing drought and 2019 being the hottest year on record. Despite multiple pleas, Morrison refused to meet with former fire chiefs to develop a plan for the summer.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack described those linking the worsening bushfires to climate change as “inner-city raving lunatics.” Funding cuts to the predominately volunteer firefighting services had left crews with aging and ill-equipped trucks and equipment to combat apocalyptic fires the height of multi-storey buildings.

There was bipartisan support for the government’s program with opposition Labor leader Anthony Albanese declaring: “This isn’t a party-political point here. This is people doing their best. I’m not seeking to politicise this at all.”

This support for the government was in direct contrast to the anger and concern of millions of people, particularly young people, in Australia and internationally. The 2019 climate-change rallies that spanned the globe were, in Australia, attended by the largest per capita crowds in the world.

The experience of Cobargo residents could be told multiple times in towns and regions throughout the country. The government’s contemptuous response to the bushfire threat, driven by the profit interests of the corporate elite, has been replicated in the devastation following the fires.

Driver plunges bus into a Chinese reservoir, killing 21

Lily Zhao

A tragic bus incident that led to the death of 21 people, including the driver, gives a glimpse into the mounting social tensions in China. On July 7, Zhang, a 52-year-old bus driver, deliberately drove his vehicle and its passengers through a roadside guardrail and plunged into the Hongshan Reservoir, located in the city of Anshun, Guizhou in southwest China.

In the video footage of the incident, the dam wall was divided into six traffic lanes, three in each direction. About a minute before the incident, the bus was moving very slowly on the outermost lane, with all five lanes occupied with busy traffic. After about half a minute, the bus came to a halt for ten seconds for no obvious reason. Then, when the traffic on other lanes started to thin out, the bus made a sudden and sharp 90-degree turn, cut through the other five lanes, and plunged into the reservoir.

Even though dozens of people and divers from Guizhou Fire and Rescue Corps searched for passengers in the reservoir, 21 people were killed and another 15 injured.

While this tragedy triggered wide discussions on the internet, the first report on its cause appeared in Caixin, a Chinese news journal. The investigative report into the background of the bus driver indicated that he had deliberately driven the bus into the reservoir.

According to Caixin, the bus driver, Zhang, originally worked in the diesel industry in Anshun before becoming a bus driver. He used to live in housing assigned to him as part of the benefits for workers at state-owned factories—a legacy stemming from the period before capitalist restoration in China. Even though such housing technically belonged to the factories, many workers and their families have been living there for decades and considered the places as their own.

Zhang had been living in factory housing until 2016, when he moved to an apartment that belonged to his sister. On the morning of the incident, Zhang learned that his old home at the diesel factory was being torn down. He hastily went to the site but was not allowed to go inside. Caixin reporters later found out that Zhang’s old house had been completely torn down. At the site, there were only piles of bricks and, buried under them, a TV, a sofa, and a bed.

The forced demolition of homes has been widespread in China for decades, causing conflicts and confrontations, sometimes violent and even deadly ones. As part of urbanization in China, the State Council implemented the Regulation on the Dismantlement of Urban Houses on June 13, 2001. This was replaced on January 21, 2011 with Housing expropriation and compensation regulations on state owned land, which controlled the reorganization and re-planning of state-owned land, including the demolition of old residential houses.

House demolitions have sometimes been carried out without any previous notifications to the residents or without previous negotiation of proper compensation, leading to forced displacement and physical confrontations.

Caixin revealed the difficulties that Zhang faced in his life. The state-owned bus company where he worked, the Anshun Public Traffic General Company, combined two privately-run companies. After the merger, all drivers had to sign a new contract. Caixin ’s interviews with bus drivers revealed that their monthly salaries went from about 5,000 RMB ($US715) to 3,000 RMB. After the COVID-19 pandemic, their salaries dropped to 2,000 or even 1,000 RMB per month, barely a living wage.

On July 12, five days after the incident, the police in Anshun announced the result of the official investigation, confirming the driver had intentionally caused the crash and providing further details.

According to the report, Zhang signed an agreement on June 8 with the local Bureau of Housing and Construction to receive 72,542.94 RMB ($10,363) as compensation for his demolished 40-square-meter house at the diesel factory, three times lower than the average price for second-hand housing in the local district. He never claimed this compensation.

Zhang had also been applying for state-owned or collectively-owned housing since June, but his application was not approved. On the morning of the incident, Zhang called the hotline for government service to express his opposition to the demolition of his house as well as the denial of his application for new housing.

During his shift that morning, Zhang sent a voice message to his girlfriend, saying that he was tired of this world. Then, a few minutes before the incident, Zhang took a drink from his bottle, which was later confirmed to be liquor. The police report concluded that Zhang deliberately drove the bus into the reservoir due to “discontent with his life in general and to the demolition of his house.”

What happened to Zhang reflects the plight of millions of workers: deindustrialization, forced displacement, constant inroads into wages and living conditions have been intensified by the pandemic and bureaucratic and often corrupt decisions about housing and other services.

The Chinese Communist Party regime is well aware of this brewing social cauldron. Incapable of resolving the social problems facing working people, it responds with police-state measures and expanding their surveillance apparatus to try to prevent an eruption of social discontent.

On July 9, before any investigation had been completed into crash, the Beijing Public Transportation Group began conducting background checks into all its bus drivers. Phoenix New Media report that this measure was an emergency response to Anshun’s bus incident.

Management intends to identify, follow up on, and monitor all drivers who could “potentially be involved in any conflicts.” What it will not, and cannot do, is provide decent wages, secure jobs, proper housing and other essentials.

Trudeau government failed to enforce COVID-19 protections for migrant farm workers

Janet Browning

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, Canada’s Liberal government has overseen the arrival of 60,000 poorly-paid and highly-exploited migrant workers under Ottawa’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other federal ministers publicly proclaimed that these workers would be safeguarded from COVID-19, the Liberal government suspended even the totally inadequate inspection and enforcement measures in place prior to the pandemic. As a result, close to 1,000 migrant workers have been infected in Ontario alone, and at least three workers, all from Mexico, have died.

For a six-week period after the government, under pressure from agri-business, exempted migrant farm workers from its travel ban, the Liberal government stopped all in-person housing inspections in the agri-food sector. Instead of requiring up-to-date evidence of compliance with newly modified temporary foreign worker program safety rules, the government issued permits to employers allowing them to use migrant farm labour based on three-year-old housing inspection reports. Moreover, the government has admitted that what audits were completed were done remotely.

Federal requirements for employers of temporary foreign workers, updated in April 2020, said that if an agri-food operation couldn’t submit a valid housing inspection report owing to COVID-19, “they must try to provide a satisfactory” report from the previous three years. Even if an employer couldn’t produce a report from the previous three years, the company could still be approved to receive temporary foreign workers “if photos of the accommodation are provided and the employer agrees to submit an updated [report] to ESDC [Employment and Social Development Canada] within the duration of the work permit.”

The Trudeau government’s indifference and negligence toward protecting migrant workers from the ravages of COVID-19 are yet another devastating exposure of its supposed “progressive” character, as well as of the trade bureaucracy which boasts of its close ties and partnership with the Liberals. Upon coming to power in 2015, Trudeau cast himself as a friend of refugees and immigrants, committed to an open and “diverse” Canada. In reality, this was a smokescreen for the Liberals’ enforcement of right-wing policies, including the rearmament of the Canadian military and close collaboration with the Trump administration in its vicious crackdown on immigrants and refugees.

Trudeau’s Liberals, their union allies, and the ruling elite as a whole view migrant workers as an expendable source of profit-making for Canada’s multi-billion dollar agribusiness sector. According to the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agricultural products and agri-foods in the world, with total exports amounting to an estimated $56 billion annually.

The lifeblood of this profitable industry is brutally exploited cheap labour. Migrant workers, who typically come from Mexico and other impoverished Latin American and Caribbean countries, are brought to Canada under the most abysmal conditions, paid a pittance, and confined to inhumane living quarters. In a perverse revival of the “company towns” common in the US and Canada in the late 19th century, migrant workers rely on the same employer who ruthlessly exploits them for their food, accommodation, and even their right to remain in the country. Under such miserable conditions, it is virtually impossible for migrant workers to refuse unsafe work, demand improvements to conditions, or access proper medical treatment if they become infected.

Since March, Employment and Social Development Canada has received 32 COVID-19-related complaints regarding the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Yet not one farm has been found in violation of the pandemic-specific rules that the government claims will protect agricultural workers, even as well over a thousand migrant workers have been infected with COVID-19.

Ottawa’s rules include the requirement that employer-provided accommodations must allow workers to keep a distance of two metres, and employees must be paid for their two-week mandatory quarantine upon arrival in Canada.

The federal government has the authority to penalize employers found to be non-compliant, including through fines of up to $1 million and a ban on accessing labour through the SAWP. However, the actions of the Trudeau government make clear that it has no intention of using these powers, preferring instead to allow the notoriously exploitative agricultural employers to self-regulate. Of the 32 COVID-19-related complaints regarding SAWPs, only eleven have even resulted in government inspections. Of these, only three are complete, with the employers found compliant in all areas.

A Globe and Mail investigation into the COVID-19 outbreaks among migrant farm workers in Ontario published in June exposed that federal government regulations are a dead letter. Migrant workers face overcrowded accommodations, broken toilets and cockroach and bed-bug infested rooms. Sheets and cardboard are used as dividers between bunk beds. Workers also recounted not being fully paid for their initial quarantine.

Conditions got so bad that for two weeks in June, the Mexican government felt compelled to stop migrant farm workers from travelling to Canada. Only after the Trudeau government provided a worthless assurance that conditions would improve did Mexican authorities allow migrant workers enrolled in the SAWP to resume travelling to Canada.

York University Professor Leah Vosko, a Canada research chair whose work focuses on enforcement of employment standards and the precarious immigration status of migrant workers, pointed to a 2018 federally commissioned study on employer-provided accommodations that found a lack of uniformity in housing conditions and oversight. “[P]rior to the pandemic,” she explained, “there were no concrete federal directives around housing capacities, bed size, number of windows and doors, privacy measures, food preparation and storage, [and] sanitation facilities.”

Three workers employed by Scotlynn Group in southern Ontario were among those interviewed for the Globe investigation. The men described deplorable living conditions, ill workers living with healthy ones, and no PPE (personal protective equipment) to guard against the virus. Scott Biddle, president and chief executive of the Scotlynn Group—a North American transportation logistics and farming company with one of the largest vegetable operations in Ontario—told the Globe that the Ontario Ministry of Labour had said their inspectors would likely be on site for two days to investigate the June 22 death of 55 year-old Juan Lopez Chaparro. However, inspectors ended up staying for just two hours. Chaparro was one of 216 migrant workers at the Scotlynn farm, almost all of whom tested positive for the virus.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has repeatedly cited Ministry of Labour inspections and compliance orders as evidence that his government is taking action to protect migrant farm workers. In fact, his government has been trying to keep migrant workers infected with COVID-19 on the job, to the detriment of their own health and that of other workers. In late June, it announced that “positive asymptomatic workers” can “continue working as long as they follow the public health measures in their workplace.”

Ontario’s Labour Ministry says that it conducted 142 field visits in the agri-food sector related to COVID-19 between mid-March and early June. The inspections resulted in a mere 34 COVID-19-related orders to improve conditions.

One migrant farm worker told the Globe that when employers are given advance notice of an inspection, they have time to make conditions appear better than they are. “They’re prepared for the inspection, and usually what they do is show the good lunch room or the part of the facilities that are in good shape,” the worker said.

While the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has issued rhetorical criticisms of the conditions facing migrant workers, the union has nothing to offer workers seeking to fight for decent-paying, secure jobs and health care protection. It has failed to mount any serious struggle against the exploitative SAWP and to win citizenship rights for migrant workers and their families. In fact, the UFCW was intimately involved in consultations with the federal government to ensure that Canada’s agribusiness sector would be able to continue ruthlessly exploiting migrant workers during the pandemic.

In an April 6 press release, the UFCW and the UFCW-sponsored Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA) enthused over the Liberal government’s policy towards migrant workers. The release stated, “Following lobbying efforts by UFCW, the AWA, and community allies, the government has lifted” the temporary ban it imposed on migrant and temporary foreign workers entering the country due to COVID-19, “and has implemented regulations requiring workers arriving in Canada to self-isolate for 14 days.”

For the thousands of migrant workers crammed into hopelessly overcrowded accommodation, such lines must read like a cruel joke. What they reveal is that the union bureaucracy, on the basis of a few token promises by the federal government—promises left completely up to the private companies to implement—“lobbied” for and welcomed the adoption of measures that created the conditions for commercial farms and other large agricultural companies to brutally exploit migrant workers.

Tönnies meat-processing plant in Germany restarted despite ongoing danger from COVID-19

Marianne Arens

On Friday, meat processing started again at the Tönnies plant following the slaughter the previous day of 8,000 pigs in Rheda-Wiedenbrück in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Initially, the local authorities have permitted the processing of up to 10,000 pigs a day. The meat-processing area is where two out of three workers had become infected with COVID-19 until the shutdown on June 20. In the largest coronavirus outbreak in Germany, 1,553 workers tested positive at that time.

This is also a highly dangerous area of work worldwide. In the US alone, more than 30,000 meat packers have been infected and at least 100 have died. Workers conducted a wildcat strike at the JBS beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, on July 10, as reported on the World Socialist Web Site. Two-hundred and eighty-seven workers at the facility had tested positive, and eight have died of COVID-19 so far.

In Rheda-Wiedenbrück, along with the district of Gütersloh where it is located, 244 people are still registered as sick due to the coronavirus and one person is on artificial respiration in the intensive care unit. The danger is by no means over.

Meanwhile, more and more scientists are warning against taking the pandemic lightly and describing it in terms used by the far-right Alternative for Germany as “no worse than flu.” One in five of those infected with COVID-19 faces serious complications, and 5 percent end up being “critical,” which can lead to artificial respiration and easily to death. SARS-CoV-2 can cause complications even after weeks and can lead to severe secondary illnesses.

The new “hygiene concept” at Tönnies, which has now been approved by the authorities, provides for additional Plexiglas walls, new air filters and better controls for the meat-processing staff. However, the main causes that have encouraged the coronavirus outbreak have not been eliminated in any way.

Nothing changes in the hard work and long hours of the precariously employed workers, who have to butcher and pack the animals at freezing temperatures while standing. Conditions are very noisy, necessitating the workers having to shout to make themselves understood. The strenuous work leads to deep breathing in and out, expelling aerosols. It is precisely these harsh conditions that are the best breeding ground for new superspreading events.

The Haller Kreisblatt reports two Polish workers saying that Tönnies had demanded “the hardest physical work” from them. Among other things, they had worked “in the so-called freezer department, dispatching large blocks of meat. Cartons weighing 10 to 30 kilogrammes are loaded there—even overhead and at very high speed. ... Some people can’t stand it for two hours, hardly anyone can manage a year.”

These workers reported a monthly wage of about €1,300 net, from which €150 was deducted for accommodation. They live with eight people in a three-room apartment.

“One of them had coronavirus,” the report goes on to say. “He was not isolated. “He stayed in the shared accommodation.” No one had looked after the patient, not even after repeated calls to a government agency and the ambulance. Finally, the workers were told “that the infected person would only be taken when he coughed up blood. There is supposedly no room in the hospitals.”

The newspaper mentions that the Polish workers were bitter when they saw the sums former Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel had collected as a consultant for owner Clemens Tönnies. From March to May 2020, Gabriel received a flat fee of €10,000 per month and an additional four-figure fee for each day of travel. But the Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and German workers who are risking their lives are waiting in vain for a bonus “for all that has happened to us,” as the worker said.

On television late Wednesday evening, a documentary by ZDF-Zoom highlighted the extent of the exploitation and oppression. The pandemic had cast a glaring spotlight, making the precarious working and living conditions visible to everyone.

In Gütersloh, 7,000 workers were sent into quarantine for four weeks. Their accommodation and entire housing estates were sealed off with construction fences and guarded by the police. “How did it come to this?” ask the filmmakers.

For one thing, there are his good relations with high society, which enabled master butcher Clemens Tönnies to rise to become a billionaire meat baron, but the programme did not show the whole network of connections. An important link is undoubtedly Liz Mohn, the heiress of the Bertelsmann media conglomerate in Gütersloh and confidante of Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom Tönnies maintains social contacts, along with Siegfried Russwurm, the acting chairman of the supervisory board of Thyssenkrupp and designated president of the BDI (Federation of German Industries), who sits on Tönnies’s advisory board.

Sigmar Gabriel, the former federal economics minister and ex-SPD chairman, is also not mentioned The programme does rightly point out that the rampant use of subcontracting was a result of the labour market “reforms” of the SPD-Green Schröder-Fischer government (1999–2005) and its “Agenda 2010.” On March 14, 2003, Gerhard Schröder, in his capacity as chancellor, announced that his government would “cut state benefits, demand personal responsibility and more personal contribution from each individual.”

However, the documentary did not provide an answer to the highly topical question, how it was that workers were being locked up behind barriers, guarded by police.

The pandemic is enabling a clearer view of the levels of exploitation at Tönnies and the social conditions that underlie them. A thin layer of billionaires at the top of society has enriched itself immeasurably by transforming ever-larger sections of the working class into low-wage slaves, using the police to keep the workers in check.

However, all this can only be understood with reference to the role and complete integration of the supposed “workers’ representatives” in the German trade unions. For years, they have suppressed all resistance by the working class and prevented any alternative to the SPD, Greens and the Left Party from emerging. For decades, they have been cultivating “social partnership” and “industrial peace” with the employers, always under the nationalist motto: “Everything for Germany as an industrial location.”

The result is now evident. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in temporary jobs, contract work, mini-jobs, fixed-term contracts, part-time work, and so on. According to official figures, 7.7 million, at least one-fifth of employees, are slaving away for a cheap wage.

The meat-processing plants are only the tip of the iceberg, and coronavirus outbreaks are not only to be found at Tönnies, but also at Westfleisch, Vion and Müller slaughterhouses, as well as in companies in other sectors. Meanwhile, the Tönnies company, which slaughters 25,000 pigs on peak days at its main plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, is in the process of expanding its other locations in Emsland, Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony-Anhalt.

The confidence of the capitalists that they can get away with anything is shown by the fact that Clemens Tönnies last week claimed recourse from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the four-week compulsory break. In other words, he expects to be financially compensated for the coronavirus outbreak his production caused.

More than 3,300 Arkansas meatpacking workers infected with coronavirus

Cordell Gascoigne

With the United States COVID-19 case count standing at 3.68 million cases, the meat industry in particular is being ravaged by the pandemic. Nine percent of meatpacking workers in 14 states have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

For meatpackers in Arkansas, conditions are even worse. More than 3,300 throughout the state have been infected, according to the Arkansas Department of Health on Monday. At poultry giant Tyson, whose headquarters are located in Springdale, Arkansas, thirteen percent of the workforce has contracted the virus in northwestern Arkansas. Statewide, there were 158 poultry workers hospitalized as of last Friday, and 18 deaths. The overall total for the state is over 32,500 cases and 357 deaths.

Although the largely rural state has barely 3 million inhabitants, it has the second-largest food processing workforce in the nation, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to Tyson, Arkansas also hosts the world headquarters of Walmart, the world’s largest grocer.

The meatpacking workforce, traditionally highly-exploited, includes a large number of immigrants in Arkansas and throughout the country. This vulnerable section of the working class has been especially hard hit. As of mid-June, nearly half the adult cases in Arkansas meatpacking facilities were among Hispanic workers in Benton and Washington counties.

Another 19 percent of adult cases were among people with Marshall Islands ancestry. Since a 1986 “Compact of Free Association” with the US government, Tyson has had a major presence in the former US colony in the central Pacific Ocean. Some 4,300 to 6,000 Marshallese currently live in Washington County, primarily in Springdale.

In northwest Arkansas, 40 percent of Hispanic cases and 28 percent of Marshallese cases were connected to poultry processing facilities.

In addition to Tyson, active cases of coronavirus have been confirmed at more than a dozen poultry facilities across the state, including George’s, Pilgrim’s Pride, Cargill, Butterball and Simmons.

As coronavirus cases continue to soar, a protest of two dozen meatpacking workers took place outside the Arkansas State Capitol building in Little Rock last Wednesday to demand that Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson and meatpacking companies guarantee a safe environment for workers in the midst of the pandemic. The protest was organized by local unions as well as a local group called Venceremos (“we will conquer” in Spanish).

Toney Orr, a field director for United Labor Union, said Tyson offers “incentives” to keep workers on the job, even when sick.

According to Magaly Licolli, co-founder and director of Venceremos, more than 2,300 people have signed a petition demanding the interests and well-being of the workers be adhered to. She concluded, “without government action problems in the poultry industry will continue and so will the spread of the virus.”

But the appeals to corporations and the government will fall on deaf ears. Indeed, the Trump administration has intervened on behalf of the meatpacking companies, signing an executive order in April to keep the plants open. Governor Hutchinson only issued a state-wide mask mandate this past weekend, after months of steadily increasing rates of infection in Arkansas.

A ProPublica report last month detailed extensive stonewalling of public health efforts by the meatpacking companies, including even the timely and accurate reporting of cases in the plants. One Tyson plant in North Carolina sat on its test results for over a week in May until local officials resorted to threatening management with prosecution. As of mid-June, nearly 600 workers at the plant, or one-fifth of the workforce, have been infected.

The companies are also wielding their political clout to block the implementation of basic safety measures. In March, ProPublica notes, Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan wrote a letter to the governor of Nebraska claiming that stay-at-home orders were causing “hysteria.” In a statement dripping with contempt for the working class, Sullivan called social distancing “a nicety that makes sense only for people with laptops.”

The meatpacking unions, such as the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), have played a critical role in beating back opposition among meatpacking workers. After a wildcat strike broke out at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, UFCW Local 7 disavowed the action and declared that it violated the terms of the contract. The local distributed flyers among workers last week denouncing any further stoppages and demanding they stay on the job.

Instead, meatpacking workers must form their own rank-and-file safety committees to fight for a safe environment, including the closure of infected plants. This step has already been taken by autoworkers in Michigan and Ohio, in the aftermath of wildcat strikes in March and early June in defiance of the auto corporations and their agents in the United Auto Workers union.