28 Jul 2020

India Caught Between US And China-Russia Duel

Haider Abbas

The events unfolding in terms of military deployment and military exercises by US in South China sea are a  clear sign that any small spark is to lead to triggering a war between US and China as US is slated for its elections where Trump wants to hone a point to US citizens that in order to contain China all the Americans need is a more and more aggressive Trump.  US has already stationed two of its aircraft careers in South China sea, Ronald Reagan and Nimitz, since July 4, 2020, which are engaged into reconnaissance inside the boundary of  China.
China which had been keeping a keen eye on its south sea, since from quite a few years, as US provocations are not that new, in one of its nationalistic, which US calls as a state newspaper, Global Times, had in its editorial called US a ‘Paper-Tiger’ on July 13, 2016, and has now called US as an ‘Alpha-Wolf’ on July 12, 2020, four years hence, as US has now started to fully-arm Japan against China against which China has called for Russia to jointly-work for the challenge thrown by US.  ‘The US State Department on July 9, 2020 had  approved a planned purchase by Japan of 105 F-35 joint strike fighters, including 63 F-35A conventional takeoff and landing aircraft, plus 42 F-35B short takeoff and landing variants. They’re worth US$23 billion. If Japan moves the deal forward, it will become the largest operator of this type of joint strike fighter outside of the US with a total of 147 F-35s. Japan thinks it faces pressure from China and Russia in the Asia-Pacific region as both Beijing and Moscow have developed a more advanced fourth and fifth generation fighter jets. It is a normal choice for Tokyo to purchase F-35s to offset its disadvantage’. In the same editorial China referred US as not a tiger – neither a real one nor a paper one. A tiger doesn’t call for help in a fight. But Washington is a wolf. Wolves always go hunt in group. And as an alpha wolf, it is leading a so-called international coalition with wolf pack tactics’. It may be known that F-35 is a stealth-fighter and the same bombers were used by Israel against Iran to bomb its nuclear  facility on July 3, 2020 as they had remained undetected.
US as a mark of intelligence-gathering is engaged into its tactics all across the whole of South China sea, and Russia in keeping to its promise, on July 11, 2020, intercepted a US reconnaissance spy aircraft which flew over the sea of Japan or what can also be called as international-waters or airspace, and was said to have been close to China’s border, and as  it was heading towards the Russian airspace, the Russian Sukhoi Su-35S and MiG-31 BM intercepted it mid-air and identified it as RC-135 strategic reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force, which made a retreat to move out of Russian airspace.  The aircraft is said to be one of the very powerful US assets as its range service ceiling is more than 5000 kms and Russia informed China about the same making China go on a high alert,  and also, with a plain reminder to US that Russia and China are comrade-in-arms.
This F-35 is what is ‘most-sought-after’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft and China, in a move to balance Rafael Jets supplied to India, has decided to supply its counter-balance to Pakistan its J-31 fighter jet. The Chinese version is also cost effective as it costs 70 million USD, in comparison to F-35 of US which costs 79 million USD and Rafael for 77 million USD. US has however, for long accused China to have stolen its technology to make J-31 and the latest accusation has come from US former national security advisor John Bolton on September 2, 2019. China in yet another move has put an embargo on Lockheed Martin, the gargantuan American defense contractor to sell arms to Taiwan.  It also needs a mention here that more than five years back in 2015, with reference of Edward Snowden, a former US national security agency contractor, The Diplomat , had broken the story that China had whisked-away the US technology to help make its version of its fifth-generation F-35.  Russia too had been into praises for the Chinese effort as Vladimir Barkovsky, chief of the Russian MiG aircraft design bureau, praised the J-31 as a “well done indigenous design”  on May 22, 2014, giving a fillip  to China’s ambitious aviation industry. There are already reports that US offer for its F-35 jets to India may be on the cards provided India cancels its S-400 strategic air-defense system with Russia and also to counter Pakistan in the race to achieve stealth fighter jets.
India is now quite sucked into the duel between US on one side and China-Russia on the other as India had long abandoned the Soviet Bloc and has been into naval-exercises with US, Australia etc in South Chiba sea since around a decade, hence, US now finds it more complacent to blackmail India to its liking. It hasn’t been that long when during the COVID-19 outbreak US had threatened India over the supply of Hydroxycholoroquine on April 7, 2020,  when India had shown some dilly-dally into supplying it to US, and with sanctions on May 21, 2020 if India goes ahead to buy S-400 from Russia, and now on July 16, 2020, India’s prominent security expert Sumit Ganguly, has written in Foreign Policy, a premier US magazine, that in order to fight China US wants India to forget Russia. This is because of the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the Galwan Valley attack of June 15, 2020, in which India lost 20 of its soldiers to China, Indian defense minister Rajnath Singh had visited Moscow and inked a 2.4 billion USD arms deal with Russia, in extension, to what India had already struck for S-400 with Russia last year on November 15, 2019. This purported proposal from US has come, in-between an undeniable fact, that 60 percent of arms arsenal of India is either of Soviet or Russian made . ‘Not surprisingly, India remains reliant on Russia for spare parts and upgrades for a disproportionate segment of its armory’, said the article.
India therefore has been given a message that the dual ‘Love’ which Trump espouses for China and India alike, can thus be re-assuaged if India forgoes Russia, which is too much of a hard task as procuring world-class- weaponry from Russia is pretty much easier than from US where it is subject to Congress scrutiny, and moreover, India has been for around 50 years remained with Soviets, but then, Russia, since the break of Soviet Union, has not shown any inclination to work as a bulwark against China, as what was once vouched by Kremlin in the pre-Gorbachev days.  Plus, adding to it, Russia in the past decade or so had been adrift with Afghan Taliban who are India’s nemesis.  But then, Russia, also has no doubt, helped India into defusing the volatile situation arising with China in the past few months.
India surely has invested too much with US as voices from inside India about India’s nightmare of a two-front war with Pakistan and China as yet to wake-up US are coming hard and clear, but on the contrary John Bolton has already warned India that Trump would not back India in case of a war with China.  Thus, the overall situation has landed India in a real catch-22 position as leaving Russia,  at this juncture at the behest of US,  will also obviously make Russia slide completely towards Pakistan as it has been China in the background which helped Pakistan start to construct its liaison with Russia.  Taking advantage of India in such an insolvable quandary, US is definitely going to throttle down our throat the Lockheed Martin products i.e. F-35.

Report Card- One Year of Direct rule in Jammu and Kashmir

Syed Ali Mujtaba

The Forum for Human Rights, an informal group of 21 concerned Indian citizens have come up with a report of the one year direct rule in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The informal group comprises six top level judges of India, six high level bureaucrats, three members from Indian armed forces, two members from human rights organization , one Vice Chancellor, one writer and historian and one journalist,  besides a former member, Group of Interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir.
The report covers the period from August 4, 2019 when the abrogation of Article 370 and creation of two union territories was announced till July 19, 2020, that’s some two weeks before the completion of 12 months period.
The report says the Union government’s action had a disastrous impact on the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The findings of the report are eye opening. The Union government’s action instead of doing any good has brought untold miseries to the people of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The report goes on to say that the Union government has miserably failed on each of the many human development indexes and has led to a near-total alienation of the people in Kashmir valley.
The report raises a serious concern about the social, political and economic, state of affairs. It further points out that certain policies of the government, such as the new domicile rule is abhorred by the people of Kashmir valley.
The report makes numerous recommendations to salvage the deteriorating situation and suggests that as an initial peace-building approach there should be a deliberate attempt for conflict reduction in a phased manner. The report that the 2000-2013 phase should be restored immediately to bring any sanity to the madness that is going on in Kashmir.
Here is a short summary of the findings of the report prepared by the concerned citizens.
Economy: In Jammu and Kashmir, the industries have suffered severe blows, pushing the majority into loan defaults or even closures. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs or have undergone salary deferment or cuts. The new domicile rules of the government have eroded prior employment protections for permanent residents in the newly constituted Union territory.
The report says almost every sector, local and regional industries have suffered huge losses. Companies that are heavily or solely reliant on 4G networks, such as tourism and cottage industries, have been forced out of business due to ill-conceived policy of the government.
Political: There is no elected representative to advocate the interests of the people. Majority of political leaders are put in preventive detention. Those released had to pledge that they would not criticize government actions.
The statutory bodies to which citizens could go to seek redress their grievances virtually have ceased to exist.  All state commissions for human rights, women and child rights, anti-corruption and the right to information remain closed.
Education: The closures of schools and colleges have gravely impaired education. This has added to the trauma of children and parents. The impact of government policy of Kashmir lockdown on education is severe. Schools and colleges have barely functioned for 100 days between 2019 and 2020 (the bulk being pre-August 2019).
After the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the limiting of networks to 2G has made it impossible for online classes to function adequately in the Union territory.  Graduate students and teachers have been unable to participate in conferences or have their papers published, causing willful harm to their careers and violating the rights to education under the Indian constitution.
Healthcare: In the last 11 months of lockdown, closures, barricades, checkpoints and restrictions on mobile telephony and internet connectivity have enormously impacted public health. It has caused acute trauma and stress amongst the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The healthcare system has totally collapsed due to severe restrictions, curfew and roadblocks. The rights of children to live in a stress free environment are deliberately ignored.
Media: The new media policy, which introduces censorship by the Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) in coordination with security agencies, is a death blow to the freedom of the press in Jammu and Kashmir.
The local media has been one of the worst sufferers. They have lost what little independence they had before the imposition of the direct rule. Journalists have been harassed and even booked on charges such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Their content, readership and revenues have suffered a sharp decline. Dozens of journalists have lost their jobs.
Human Rights: The Government’s prioritization of counter-insurgency concerns over human security has led to huge violation of human rights. These include the vitiation of protections such as habeas corpus, prevention of illegal detention and strict restrictions on arrest and detention of children. There is denial of the right to bail and fair and speedy trial. There is misuse of draconian legislation, such as the Public Safety Act (PSA) and the UAPA to stifle dissent. The report documents the numerous human rights violations over civilian populations, children, adults and youth.
Creation of Militarized Zone: The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to notify areas of the Union territory as ‘strategic areas’ that have to be developed by the army. This suggests further expansion of the military presence in the hinterland and border areas of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact the Union territory has a huge number of armed personnel representing occupational armies who maintain peace under the shadow of their guns.
Conclusion: The report concludes with a large number of recommendations. The prominent among them is a complete roll-back of the August 2019 decision and to restore the statehood status to Jammu and Kashmir. The report goes on to recommend that the policy and practices that prevailed from 2000-2013 should be put in place in the erstwhile state. Such measures can alone bring any semblance of normalcy to the beleaguered territory of the country.

Intimidating China is One Thing, Overpowering It, An Absurd Dream!

Taj Hashmi

At the end of the Cold War in 1990, we all heaved a big sigh of relief, as the two superpowers didn’t destroy themselves and the world! What was seemingly “inevitable” – the Third World War – didn’t take place. Despite having some major military conflicts and proxy wars between the Western and Communist blocs – the Korean, Vietnam, Cambodian, and Afghan Wars – both Washington and Moscow restrained themselves from going all the way to a total, decisive war against each other.
In the above backdrop, is it too much to assume that the Sino-Indian Cold War will go the old way? Possibly “no” is the most appropriate answer! China will possibly get away with what it wants from India in Ladakh, and further south, India’s Arunachal Pradesh, if not any other territory eventually! Can we hope the escalating tension between the two nuclear-armed nations, their friends and surrogates will tread the path of détente, and eventually to durable peace? Unfortunately, we are getting mixed signals! Hence the questions, if the US and its surrogates want to punish China; or they just want to intimidate the superpower by verbal threats and naval exercises in its backwater! Actually, the US and their Indo-Pacific and North Atlantic allies have been very nervous about the “impending rise” of China as the most powerful nation on earth, militarily and economically. However, they can do very little or nothing about it!
Early this month, two US aircraft carriers, the USS Nimitz – the largest in the world – and the USS Ronald Reagan, conducted joint operations to demonstrate “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, as if that has become an issue between China and any Indo-Pacific littoral nation, or countries well-beyond the vast region! Indian warships, including destroyers, frigates and submarines as well as aircraft from both the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) and the Eastern Naval Command (ENC) headquartered at Visakhapatnam took part in the exercise. While the PASSEX (passing exercise) between the US and Indian navies were impressive, so was the Chinese mega naval air force live-fire drill in the South China Sea, in the wake of the PASSEX. In a way, the PASSEX was an attempt to intimidate China, a warning to hands-off Ladakh and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea! By the way, the exercise was first of its kind since 2012. Meanwhile, the US has been persistently challenging Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.
There couldn’t be another more sensible explanation to the purpose of the recent joint Indo-US naval exercise in the Indian Ocean, than what an analyst has put in the following manner: “While the US keeps pricking Beijing in the South China Sea …. With China being the common adversary, India and the US are conducting joint naval drills, thus sending a loud and clear message to Beijing – a possible military alliance between Washington and New Delhi against China”. Yet another analyst believes, “where territorial disputes have flared between China and its smaller neighbors, the United States has rejected China’s territorial claims as ‘unlawful’.”
I believe that the US, which until recently used to be the “only superpower” in the world, has – not-so-subtly – challenged China’s territorial claims across the Himalayas. And that, the escalating border dispute between China and India will push New Delhi to build closer strategic ties with Washington, and eventually with Australia and Japan. This, however, will be an end in itself! “So what!” could be the shortest and most appropriate appraisal of the whole thing, military exercises, and closer strategic ties between India and the US, and India and the latter’s surrogates in the Indo-Pacific region.
There’re reasons to believe that these exercises and military pacts, à la NATO, Warsaw Pact, CENTO, SEATO, and their likes during the Cold War years will be ONLY remembered as human endeavors to deescalate tensions between superpowers, not as military pacts to invade each other! Thus all these military exercises and alliances (existing and emerging ones) won’t play any decisive role in determining China’s future course of action across the Himalayas or in the South China Sea, let alone cow China into “behaving” in accordance with how the US, India, Japan, Australia and their allies define the expression vis-a-vis China’s territorial claims and designs in Asia.
We may learn important lessons from the history of the Cold War, especially with regard to the usefulness/uselessness of military alliances and exercises. They didn’t work at every front. Despite NATO, SEATO, and CENTO, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Afghanistan, among others, defied US hegemony and fought against US/Western interests and won. Didn’t China annex parts of its disputed territory from India in 1962? All the pro-Western military pacts and all their military exercises failed to intimidate or retrain China from what it wanted to do. The West with all its nukes didn’t dare to invade a non-nuclear, poor, and famine-stricken China in 1962. What the US and its allies couldn’t do against China of 1962, why on earth anybody should even pay any heed to proposed US-led new military alliances and the latest Indo-US military exercise in the Indian Ocean as deterrents to Chinese designs? China today is the second most powerful nation, economically and militarily. While the US spends more than $600 billion on defense, China spends more than $200 billion on its armed forces. Not a paltry amount on the PPP basis!
While China continues pressuring India at the LAC across the Himalayas, claiming far more “Indian” territories than ever before, there’s no reason to believe China will stop at Ladakh! What the British bequeathed to India in 1947, didn’t belong to what’s India today, in its entirety. As tiny Nepal has historical claims over chunks of Indian territories in Bihar, West Bengal and elsewhere in northeastern India, so has China legitimate, historical claims of “Indian” territories too. So, irrespective of what the US and its surrogates say about China, and threaten the newly emerging superpower, calling it an “aggressor and expansionist” doesn’t matter at the end of the day. China will get away with what it wants to, out of India. It’s only a question of time!
One, however, believes that NO attempt to encircle, let alone intimidate and overpower China would work. China no longer solely depends on the Strait of Malacca for its imported oil to reach its Harbors in the South China Sea. It has Russia, a big oil producer, in good terms in the North. Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea in friendly Pakistan is linked to China via the Karakorum Highway. And, why on earth Japan and Australia, and most importantly the US, let alone Vietnam, would confront China militarily? None of these countries are even indirectly facing any Chinese aggressive design. And all of them have been trading with China. Trading partners don’t fight each other. Since ALL wars were/are TRADE WARS, including the Crusades, destabilizing China economically wouldn’t only adversely affect the country, but all its trading partners, including the US, India, Japan, and Australia.
Meanwhile, even if China decides to settle its border disputes with India, even with full military force, the countries which from time to time display their arsenal, would never use them! The US and its Indo-Pacific allies would challenge China militarily only at the cost of great economic loss by snapping all economic/ trading ties with China, which would be mutually destructive. And any such confrontation would lead to the free flow of nuclear-armed ICBMs from land and sea. And the “friends of India” would go for the Third World War for the sake of Ladakh or Arunachal Pradesh in India! I don’t think so.
Meanwhile, China is developing a powerful military base in Pakistan. China is also making headway – out of all the places to an Indian surrogate state – into Bangladesh. It has already got Nepal on its side! So, those who think the US and its allies in the East or West will be able to intimidate China can’t be taken seriously. Then again, possibly intimidating China is one thing, but overpowering it militarily or economically requires altogether a different ball game for Washington and its allies. Meanwhile, India doesn’t matter at all, either militarily or economically, to China vis-à-vis its not-so-hidden designs across the Himalayas!

WISAG ground services slashes hundreds of jobs at Berlin Tegel Airport

Gustav Kemper & Wolfgang Weber

News of the destruction of about 800 jobs at WISAG Ground Services Tegel hit like lightning two weeks ago. This represents more than half of all ground services jobs at Tegel and Schoenefeld airports.
At the works meeting, which took place last Friday in a hangar at Tegel airport, the company announced it had gone into voluntary insolvency. This means July wages would only be paid as part of the insolvency proceedings and 350 employees would be laid off. In the next two months, they would still receive their wages, then it would be the end of the line for everyone at Tegel Airport. Only a small, hand-picked group of about 60 foremen and more highly qualified employees would be taken over to Schoenefeld.
The temporary workers, who are losing or have already lost their jobs, even independently of the insolvency proceedings, and whose number is probably over 400, were not mentioned at all.
The news came as a real hammer blow. The vicious treatment of these workers, who carry out heavy manual labour at the airport under great time pressure—passenger processing, baggage loading, apron work when refueling the aircraft, marshaling the aircraft, ground transport, etc.—cannot be underestimated.
WISAG ground services at work in Tegel (Photo: WSWS)
Voluntary insolvency is a special legal procedure that allows WISAG to circumvent contractually agreed redundancy measures worth some €14 million. It also means reducing the period of notice from seven to three months. The attacks on the workforce are not being planned by an insolvency administrator but by the company itself. In the end, they will be given a judicial stamp so that everything can be mercilessly enforced with the authority of the courts and state power.
Most of those affected, around 75 percent, receive wages in the lowest income groups, E1 to E4, which corresponds to an hourly wage of between €11.10 and €13.20. For full-time employment, this amounts to around €1,600 to at most €2,000 gross per month.
Anyone who has been working in airport ground services for 20 or 30 years, and therefore earns a little more and perhaps still has a claim to a company pension or a better social plan, also loses everything.
The Verdi trade union had already prepared itself for the job cuts in 2018 during the closure of Tegel, and had agreed to the departure of the old employees with a severance payment as part of a social plan. Under this agreement, the severance payment amounted to up to 15 months’ salary. As a result of the insolvency, this will now be reduced to a maximum of 2.5 months’ salary. One of WISAG's main objectives is to get rid of these people and their claims to a social plan and a company pension.
The situation is even worse for those working part-time and bringing home at most between €1,000 and €1,300 (net) per month. Quite a few are dependent on having their wages supplemented by housing benefit or Hartz-IV welfare payments at the JobCenter. They will receive almost no unemployment benefit and be entirely dependent on Hartz-IV payments. Especially single women are affected by this.
Most ground service employees are employed on temporary contracts or by subcontractors, often coming from eastern or southeastern European countries. They usually earn less than €10 an hour and have to pay €300 for shared accommodation.
These foreign temporary workers were the first victims of earlier job cuts. “They were laid off long ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic,” Thomas N., who works for WISAG Aviation in Berlin, told the WSWS. “The Romanians were gone within an hour.” German temporary workers will also be dismissed at short notice based on the collective bargaining agreement for temporary workers.
But those remaining are also affected. Since March, they have been on short-time work, receiving just 60 or 67 percent of their salary. In addition, WISAG simply suspended the recently signed collective agreement when the pandemic measures began. This agreement was itself lousy: an in-house collective agreement that only provided for a wage increase of €400 spread over three years.
The first instalment of €150 had been agreed for last March. Thomas N. reports, “With the pandemic as the reason, even that was simply cancelled. As justification, Verdi secretary Enrico Rümker claimed that WISAG would pay the wage increase twice next year. This is all nonsense!”

How Verdi works with WISAG

When WISAG announced the job cuts two weeks ago, Verdi expressed its “surprise” in a press release and called for “talks” with the employer.
The surprise could not have been that great. After all, numerous trade union secretaries and works council members belonging to Verdi—such as the Verdi district chief for Frankfurt, Roswitha Haus—occupy well-paid positions on the supervisory board of the WISAG holding company AVECO or—such as Enrico Rümker, Holger Rößler and Jens Gröger—on the supervisory board of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH. There, too, 400 employees will be laid off. The union secretaries and works council representatives are closely enmeshed with the company.
For example, one day before the works meeting, in a press release, Verdi proposed the establishment of a “transfer company,” in which dismissed employees would be “parked” for a year.
Such transfer or employment companies were invented by the unions in the 1980s to break the resistance of steelworkers to mass dismissals. In the early 1990s, the unions then used them to suppress industrial action against the closure of hundreds of factories in former East Germany. They offer no protection against unemployment and poverty in old age but serve as marshalling yards for such outcomes. They have proved so efficient that their regulation as a state-sponsored measure was included in the Social Security Code in 1998.
Today, Verdi no longer even pretends to oppose the redundancies, but openly supports WISAG’s mass redundancy plans by proposing a transfer company as an accompanying measure. One reason for this is it fears that even a hollow protest demonstration could slip out of its control and become the trigger for major spontaneous industrial action.
This fear is justified. For many years, Berlin airport employees can thank an unholy alliance of the trade unions and state governments under the Social Democrats (SPD), Left Party and the Greens for their ever-worsening working conditions, speed-ups and lower wages.
A milestone was reached in 2003 when the SPD-Left Party Senate (state executive) withdrew from the federal public service wage agreement, which at the time also applied to airport service company GlobeGround, and which was still owned by the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. This was the green light for the wage dumping spiral that then followed.
Four years later, Verdi organised a “reduction collective agreement.” Under the threat of otherwise imminent insolvency, employees were forced to forgo a fifth of their salary. This made the company attractive to WISAG for takeover and it was fully privatised in 2008. As a reward for his efforts, Ingo Kronsfoth, then head of the Verdi specialist group for air transport, became a managing director at WISAG.
This opened the way for the special WISAG system of wage dumping. The entire company of Frankfurt Social Democrat Claus Wisser operates according to the same principle: the brutal exploitation of low-wage labour, finely thought out and carefully coordinated and organized with the trade unions Verdi, IG Metall and IG BAU. Even according to trade union data, wages in 2012 were on average 30 percent below the level before privatisation.
In addition to WISAG ground services, the building and room cleaning crews of Facility Service GmbH and the pool of temporary workers (for the automotive industry) of WISAG Industrie Service Holding GmbH are also part of the network of subsidiaries of the WISAG corporation, which employs a total of over 51,000 people. In cooperation with subcontractors, they ensure that all those from the army of temporary workers can be transferred in good time to another WISAG company before otherwise acquiring a legal entitlement to permanent employment after two years of service in the same company.

The sell-out of the 2017 strike

A further milestone in the attacks on ground service workers was Verdi’s ending of the massive strike for a nationwide collective agreement and wage increases in 2017. Almost 99 percent of union members had voted for an indefinite strike, but the union simply called off the strike after three days, even though the employers had made no concessions whatsoever.
While the union leaders were still loudly proclaiming to the outside world that the national collective agreement was an “objective,” they had long since begun to arrange in-house contracts with minimal increases behind closed doors at one airport after another. This was also the case in Berlin. The result of the negotiations was sharply condemned by most workers and rejected in the subsequent vote, especially since it meant only a minimal pay increase. The union did not contest this, simply signing the collective agreement anyway.
The result is today’s appalling working conditions and wage levels for employees at Berlin airports. The insolvency is now intended to ensure that profit margins for WISAG continue to climb thanks to low wages at the new BER airport, scheduled to start operations on October 31.
What this means for the families of those dismissed, both permanent and temporary workers, can easily be calculated. The shocking results of a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation recently became known: 21.3 percent of all children and young people under 18 grow up in Germany in poverty and precarious circumstances, half of them in families of those receiving Hartz IV benefits. WISAG and similar corporations and their stooges in the unions and political parties are the authors and profiteers of these conditions.
The mass dismissals that have now been announced have also been prepared for a long time. Two years ago, Verdi had already concluded a collective agreement on a social plan for the closure of Tegel. The coronavirus pandemic and the closure of Tegel airport, planned for the end of October, are now being used as an excuse to get rid of workers in the higher income groups and to exploit the remaining workforce even more.
These attacks are part of a global class war against workers in all industries. In Germany, the closures, mass layoffs and wage cuts in aviation, automotive, engineering, tourism and other industries are taking on proportions that even exceed those of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
While the population is being driven into unemployment and poverty, the corporations, banks and speculators receive billions from the state. Billions are cut in education, schools and infrastructure and used for military rearmament. It is high time to take up the fight against these attacks of the capitalists and their government!
The unions are on the side of the companies and defend the capitalist system. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) therefore advocates the establishment of action committees in aviation which take the defence of jobs and wages into their own hands, coordinate them nationwide and unite them with the struggle of workers in other branches of industry in Germany and other countries of Europe and internationally.
This struggle must be conducted based on a socialist programme. Billionaires and millionaires like Claus Wisser and their corporations, banks and real estate companies must be expropriated without compensation, their companies placed under the democratic control of the working class. Only by freeing society from the dictates of the profit interests of a tiny rich minority and by reorganising it based on the needs of the working population can the right to work and a decent income be ensured.

Germany’s “voluntary military service”: Government recruits for army deployments at home and abroad

Johannes Stern

Germany’s grand coalition government plans to introduce a “new voluntary military service” from next April. The announcement was made by Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) at a press conference last Thursday at the Bendlerblock, one of the Defence Ministry’s official sites.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who appeared alongside the deputy inspector general of the army, Markus Laubenthal, and Peter Tauber (CDU), the state secretary in the Defence Ministry, left no doubt about the fact that the new military service was part of a comprehensive militarisation of society. It has two key goals: a major deployment of the army domestically, and the recruitment of new soldiers for external wars.
The new military service with the slogan “Your year for Germany” is “an option for men and women, whether they be young or old, who want to become engaged for Germany,” asserted Kramp-Karrenbauer. It takes up “the issues we’ve been thinking about for some time, specifically building a strong bridge between the concept of protection on the home front and the concept of the military reserve.”
Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Chancellor Angela Merkel at a swearing in ceremony for new soldiers in Berlin (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
In a programme lasting seven months, an initial contingent of 1,000 recruits will be trained. During this time, they will make “initial contact with their future unit, the so-called RSU companies, the regional security and support units for homeland protection.” This will be followed by “a six-year long service as a reservist in an area close to home, which will in practice be the RSU closest to their home.”
In other words: the regional security and support units, which have been part of the territorial reserves since 2012 and are commanded by the state military command structures in each German state, will be significantly strengthened and transformed into rapid and permanently deployable fighting units. This has nothing to do with disaster response or providing a “helping hand” during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the goal is the defence of the capitalist state and its institutions.
“It’s about protecting critical infrastructure, not just in the army, but other things too,” said Tauber. It provides “the opportunity to train young people specifically for security tasks for six years, and not just in the general reserves, but to solidly anchor them in a company, in their state or region.”
The “military advantage” is that in an operational situation “you don’t have to start with a general call to the reserves...to engage.” Instead, “we have appropriate companies ready to deploy,” he continued.
In the context of current developments in the US, where Trump is mobilising paramilitary units against protesters, and of German history, this must be taken as a serious warning. Among the victims of the German military’s terrorism were revolutionary workers and their leaders, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were murdered by far-right Freikorps forces in January 1919.
Today, the German military is seething with right-wing extremist networks plotting a violent putsch and the murder of political opponents. In a noteworthy development, a Defence Ministry employee responsible for social media was removed from the social media team on the same day as the announcement of the new military service programme because of his right-wing extremist views.
This did not produce any change in course from the Defence Ministry. On the contrary, the army’s recruitment campaigns are directed towards right-wing elements. The new “homeland protection” is “a tremendous opportunity for young people who feel obliged to serve their army and their country, and bound to their homeland, and who want to fill an important gap in the armed forces,” said Tauber.
Among right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis, the phrase “homeland protection” is a code word. For example, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which was responsible for the deaths of nine immigrants, recruited its members from the so-called “Thuringia Homeland Protection” force.
A major consideration in the creation of homeland protection units domestically is the preparation of soldiers for external wars. “The young people who enter the service will receive military training and participate in exercises with the reserves,” added Tauber.
The main task is to “recruit for the wide variety of tasks” the army has, on the basis of “the strategy of the reserves, the doctrine of the army, and its capacity profile. For that, we need men and women. Active serving soldiers can’t manage it alone.”
An examination of the strategic papers referred to by Tauber gives a sense of the wide-ranging plans for militarisation being prepared behind the backs of the population. The “doctrine” openly declares that after its horrific crimes in two world wars, the German military is preparing for another major war.
The main purpose of the German army’s new policy doctrine adopted in 2018 was to prepare all military and civilian structures for war. “Plans must be made for rapid strike and follow-up capabilities for a very large operation,” stated the doctrine. “They must be effectual in a hybrid conflict as it develops and escalates across the full spectrum of its effects, in all its dimensions, in a joint, multi-national armed force, and in all types of operations. At the beginning of a very large, high-intensity operation, a huge deployment of readily available forces and equipment is necessary. Provisions to regenerate the personnel and material will be required.”
The new military service is a component of this mad drive towards rearmament and war. “All six areas of military organisation are currently working together on strengthening the territorial structures,” Gen. Laubenthal told the press conference.
“With the implementation of its strategy,” the army assumes “that the reinforcements will also have a quantitative impact.” He pointed to “synergy benefits in other areas, in the air force, navy and army, where they want similar training programmes.” However, all of this is merely “the beginning.”
Kramp-Karrenbauer made clear towards the end of the press conference that she would like to follow up the voluntary military service with the reintroduction of compulsory military service. It is well known that she is “a supporter of compulsory military service,” she said. It is now time “to have a political debate about that.”
She not only enjoys the backing of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for this strategy, but also the Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary military commissioner, Eva Högl. Earlier this month, Högl described the ending of compulsory military service in 2011 as a “huge mistake.”

Mass protests continue in Russian Far East

Clara Weiss

Between 50,000 to 100,000 people took part this past weekend in protests in Khabarovsk, Russia. The city of 600,000 on the Russian-Chinese border is the capital of the Khabarovsk region, which has 1.34 million inhabitants.
The demonstrations, the largest in the area’s history, began on July 11 after the region’s governor, Sergei Furgal, was arrested by the Russian secret service FSB and flown to Moscow. He has been charged with involvement in the murder of several local businessmen in 2004 and 2005.
Furgal is a businessman himself and politician of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR). For two decades, the LDPR, which promotes Russian chauvinism and anti-immigrant sentiment in an effort to contain social discontent, has formed part of the nominal opposition to the Putin regime. De facto, however, it supports all of the Kremlin’s main policies. Furgal was elected over his rival from the ruling United Russia party in 2018.
The governor was arrested just days after a national referendum on a series of amendments that enshrined far-right values in the Russian constitution and significantly strengthened the power of the Russian president over local authorities. Khabarovsk was one of two regions where the amendments were overwhelmingly rejected.
A rally in Khabarovsk on July 18
Anti-Kremlin protesters demanded that Furgal be tried in Khabarovsk and not in Moscow. Many carried signs saying, “I am Furgal,” “Freedom for Furgal” and “Putin, you have lost my confidence.” They chanted slogans, such as “Putin resign,” “This is our region,” “We hate Moscow,” “Shame on the Kremlin!”, “Russia, wake up!” and “We are the ones in power!” Many were carrying Russian flags and the blue-green-white flags of the Khabarovsk region. According to reports, protesters were drawn from different social layers, including businessmen, the middle class, and workers.
Speaking to journalists, demonstrators expressed anger over inequality and the federal government’s infringement upon regional authorities and laws. Irina Lukasheva, a 56-year-old vendor, told the New York Times: “There will be a revolution. What did our grandfathers fight for? Not for poverty or for the oligarchs sitting over there in the Kremlin.”
Another resident told the Deutsche Welle, “We hate Moscow. This hate began with the prohibition on cars that had the steering wheel on the right, which we used to be allowed to import cheaply from Japan. Now we have to pay high tariffs. Ever since this ban on cheap Japanese cars, the levels of popular support for the central government have gone down."
Businessmen from small- and medium-sized enterprises indicated that they were struggling to develop their companies because of federal laws that favor national companies in fishing and timber, in particular.
So far, police have not cracked down on protesters in Khabarovsk. One demonstrator told the German public broadcaster ARD that most law enforcement officers voted for Furgal and likely sympathized with the protests.
Political analyst Ilya Grashenkov told Deutsche Welle, “These are protests against Moscow and against the heavy pressure that the Kremlin traditionally exerts on local politicians. Local elites fear for their livelihoods, and in this case, they’re showing solidarity with common people, who feel betrayed.” He stated that the outcome could be a “putsch in the Kremlin” organized by “disloyal elites.”
The Kremlin has been scrambling to respond to the protests. Last Monday, Putin appointed Mikhail Degtyarev, also from the LDPR, as acting governor. In one of his first statements, Degtyarev declared that “people don’t have enough money to live” and that his administration would try to regulate prices for utilities, which many inhabitants of Khabarovsk cannot afford.
Social discontent and anger over the Kremlin’s antidemocratic constitutional amendments are factors driving the protests, which are occurring under conditions in which the Russian oligarchy, like its counterparts elsewhere, has forced through a premature reopening of the economy even as the coronavirus continues to rip through the population.
With over 811,000 infections, Russia has the fourth highest number of cases in the world. Millions have either lost their jobs or are forced to work shortened hours and thus lose a substantial portion of their meager income. Hospitals have been devastated by the pandemic.
Warring factions of Russia’s ruling oligarchy seek to channel these sentiments into the dead-end of regionalism and nationalism. This is precisely the goal of pro-US opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been supporting the Khabarovsk protests and long advocated greater regional autonomy for Russia’s 80 regions. The LDPR, Furgal’s party, too has a history of building alliances with regional elites that seek greater independence from Moscow. Such forces have been deliberately fostered by US imperialism with the aim of further destabilizing the Putin regime from the right.
In the 1990s, conflicts within the rising oligarchy over the control of state assets and raw materials often took regionalist forms, especially in energy-rich regions like the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. The possibility of a secession of these regions has long been a topic of open discussion.
From its inception, a central aim of the Putin regime was to subordinate regional elites to federal control to prevent a breakup of the Russian Federation. However, as the economic and social crisis has deepened and the pressure of imperialism has increased in recent years, conflicts between Moscow and regional authorities have acquired a renewed intensity.
Russia is marred by huge regional disparities. While Moscow and a handful of regions with vast oil and gas resources, such as the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region, now have gross domestic products (GDP) that are equivalent to the Netherlands and Singapore respectively, other regions, especially in the North Caucasus, have GDPs that are closer to that of Congo or Honduras.
By contrast, the Russian Far East is home to some of the worst-off regions in the country, with poverty levels that can be as high as double the national average. While Khabarovsk is not among the poorest areas, it has recently been hammered by mass layoffs. And the region has the highest rate of depopulation among the areas that make up Russia’s Far East. A World Bank report from 2018 stated that “[t]he sheer scale, scope, and starkness of spatial disparities in Russia are startling by any standard.”
Any progressive challenge to the Putin regime must oppose the regionalism and nationalism that are fostered by the ruling elites and encouraged by US imperialism. To defend its social and democratic rights, the Russian working class must come to the fore as a unified and independent social and political force, and align itself with the millions of workers around the world that are now entering into struggle against capitalism.

Egypt’s el-Sisi approves troop deployment to Libya against Turkish-backed forces

Jean Shaoul

Last week Egypt’s parliament gave its backing to General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s threat to send troops to Libya in support of warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces in Libya. It could lead to a direct clash with Turkey, drawing in the imperialist and regional powers.
Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) controls the east and south of the war-torn country and is backed by Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt. It is fighting to retain control of Sirte against Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj’s United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital Tripoli, which is backed by Turkey, Qatar and Italy.
The division of the country into two rival power centres, Tripoli and Benghazi, is the outcome of the bloody civil war for the control of the country’s energy resources, the richest in Africa. It was precipitated by the NATO-led invasion of Libya and the assassination of long-time ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. It also pits NATO allies, Turkey and Italy, against France.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deployment of military experts—3,500 Syrian mercenaries belonging to rebel Syrian militias and ex-ISIS fighters for wages ranging from $500 to $2,000 a month, as well as armed drones—prevented Haftar’s forces, which had been besieging Tripoli for 14 months, from taking the capital and have pushed back his forces eastwards. Turkey now wants GNA forces to press on to the coastal city of Sirte, close to the main export-orientated oilfields Haftar still controls and take the airbase in Jufra.
Haftar’s withdrawal from the oil region would hand over the country’s main oil facilities to Tripoli.
The Tripoli government condemned Egypt’s decision as “a hostile act and direct interference, amounting to a declaration of war.”
El-Sisi, who seized power in a bloody military coup in 2013, said, “Egypt will not stand idle in the face of any moves that pose a direct threat to the national security, not only the Egyptian and Libyan, but also the Arab, regional and international ones.” In a closed-door session, the House of Representatives unanimously approved “the deployment of the Egyptian armed forces on combat missions outside Egypt’s borders to defend Egyptian national security… against criminal armed militias and foreign terrorist elements.” The deployment would be on a “western front,” meaning Libya.
On Saturday, Egypt’s naval forces took part in joint maritime training exercises with French vessels in the southern Mediterranean, “in preparation for combat missions against hostile forces.” It follows similar exercises in French territorial waters in March 2019, joint air-sea exercises in the Mediterranean Sea in July, and further joint naval exercises in September.
El-Sisi has presented a Turkish-backed GNA attack on Sirte, 1,400 kilometres from Egypt, as a threat to Egypt’s western border and national security. He cited the demand of tribal leaders and politicians from Haftar’s base in the eastern port city of Benghazi for Cairo’s military support “to protect Libyan sovereignty” to provide a fig leaf for Egypt’s intervention.
His move is aimed at securing Egypt’s geostrategic interests in the Levantine Basin in the eastern Mediterranean that contains newly discovered gas fields, of which by far the largest is Egypt’s Zohr field with an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas), with other potential resources in the Nile Delta.
This has made Egypt one of the biggest producers in North Africa and the Middle East, exporting 172.8 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas in 2019. Cairo is also seeking to become a vital link for energy trading between the Middle East, Africa and Europe, with its two large-scale gas export terminals at Iduku and Damietta, the only ones in the eastern Mediterranean, which cool gas into liquids for export by tankers.
But el-Sisi’s plans for Egypt to become an export hub for Europe, after signing an agreement with Cyprus in 2018 to construct a pipeline to its Aphrodite field, have been stymied by Turkey’s November 2019 agreement with the GNA in Tripoli. That agreement, in return for Ankara’s military support, demarcated the maritime borders between the two countries, vastly expanding Turkey’s territorial waters—also claimed by Greece and Cyprus—and denying the claims of Crete, Rhodes and other islands.
Since then, Ankara has expanded its gas exploration efforts to waters claimed by Greece. Last week, a Turkish naval expedition escorting oil-drilling vessels in the Aegean Sea off the Greek island of Kastellórizo nearly escalated into war between Turkey and Greece, both members of the NATO alliance, that were on the verge of war in the 1990s.
On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron upped the ante against Turkey, posting a Facebook message in Greek expressing his “full solidarity with Greece and Cyprus against Turkey’s violation of their sovereign rights,” adding “We must not accept threats to the sea area of an EU member state.”
He has called for sanctions against Turkey over the issue and pulled out of NATO’s planned exercises in the Mediterranean over Ankara’s role in supporting the LNA against Haftar, its proxy in Libya, and allegations that Turkish vessels were harassing its ships.
Macron’s increasingly close military relations with the butcher of Cairo is aimed at securing Egypt as France’s local proxy to provide the necessary boots on the ground to protect Haftar and thus French oil and gas interests against the rival Turkish, Qatari and Italian-backed forces.
For Egypt, the key issue is that the new maritime border blocks the route of its proposed pipeline, gives Ankara an increasing role in the eastern Mediterranean and forces the major powers, Russia, the US and the European Union, to view it as a key player in the region.
Cairo’s hostility to Turkey stems from Erdogan’s warm relations with former President Mohammed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, elected in 2012 after Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign by the Egyptian masses. El-Sisi’s ouster of Mursi, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s support in 2013, blocked Turkey’s efforts to build diplomatic, economic and military relationships with Egypt. Ankara refused to recognize him, viewing his seizure of power as illegal and his regime illegitimate.
El-Sisi’s concern is that Turkey’s presence and support for al-Sarraj’s GNA could consolidate the power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, turning the country into a militant base against Egypt. While Riyadh and Abu Dhabi share Cairo’s antipathy to Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, their purpose in backing Haftar’s LNA is to isolate Qatar, which has close links with Iran and supports the Brotherhood and the GNA in Tripoli.
The eastern Mediterranean, including North Africa, has become the focus of ever widening conflicts, with all the imperialist and regional powers pursuing their own rapacious demands for control over the region’s wealth, resources and transport routes.
El-Sisi’s proposed war against Turkey in Libya is profoundly unpopular with the Egyptian people, who have launched the Arabic hashtag “I did not delegate,” opposing parliament’s authorization for el-Sisi to intervene on the basis of “preserving national security,” calling it an attempt to deflect criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout.
Egypt officially has more than 92,000 cases and 4,606 deaths—the highest in the region—although one government minister has repeatedly warned that the real number could be five or even 10 times higher. According to Baseera, the Egyptian Centre for Public Opinion Research, at least 616,000 people have been infected with the virus.
According to the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, more than 3,000 medical workers have caught the disease and at least 117 doctors have died. In May, it warned that the health care system was on the point of collapse and blamed the government for failing to provide the necessary drugs or beds, adequate personal protective equipment or enough tests for medical workers who came into contact with those known to be infected. The government’s response has been to crackdown on health care workers who dared to criticise the government’s handling of the crisis, with increasing numbers being threatened or detained by the security services.
Even before the pandemic, around a third of the 100 million population were living below the poverty line. According to the country’s statistics agency, more than a quarter of those with a job were not working due to lockdown measures that have condemned millions to destitution, while more than half of those working were on reduced hours or days.
Tourism, which accounts for nearly 5 percent of GDP, has evaporated, while remittances from Egyptians working in the Gulf states have plummeted from the usual $27 billion per year (at least 10 percent of GDP) as foreign workers have been laid off, with many returning to Egypt, adding to the growing numbers of unemployed. Revenues from the newly expanded Suez Canal have fallen due to the world recession.
As its foreign currency reserves fell to just $31 billion, Egypt turned to the International Monetary Fund for a $2.8 billion loan in May to combat COVID-19. It has just received approval for another $5.2 billion loan that will require even greater austerity measures at the expense of the Egyptian working class.
It is these conditions that prompted el-Sisi to approve the recent amendments to Egypt’s emergency laws granting himself and the armed forces additional powers laying the basis for a military dictatorship and banning all political opposition to the domination of the corporate, financial and military elite over economic and political life.

Retail workers strike in France as wage cuts and layoffs spread

Will Morrow

Thousands of workers at Castorama, a DIY and home improvement tool and supply retail chain in France, have been engaged in work stoppages for the past week to oppose the company’s refusal to pay thousands of euros in bonuses from the coronavirus pandemic.
Workers at approximately two-thirds of the 100 stores in France took part in work stoppages or protests actions throughout last week. The number of employees involved has not been reported, but the company itself admits that at least 20 percent of staff participated. Castorama employs 11,000 people across France. It is wholly owned by the British group Kingfisher, which also operates stores in Poland and Russia.
The company is using the agreement it signed with the trade unions last year to slash bonuses paid to employees. Previously the bonus was capped according to a workers’ salary over the course of a year, but Castorama is applying it based on the last trimester, during which it was partly closed due to the pandemic. According to the unions, this works out to a cut from €3,600 to €900 for an employee earning just above minimum wage at €1,500 gross per month.
The claim by the French Democratic Labor Federation (CFDT) and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) unions that they are shocked that Castorama is applying the most recent agreement they signed, rather than the meaning “as intended,” is absurd. Workers are familiar with such clauses being routinely inserted into agreements behind their backs by unions and companies in backroom negotiations, allowing them to secretly cut workers’ wages and benefits.
The fact that the company has been able to continue operations at all but one store despite mass opposition among staff to its wage-cutting shows that there is little confidence among workers in the unions, which are nothing more than labor-management partners of the corporations. The union has largely concentrated on holding demoralizing stunts, posting photos of workers holding up signs at stores that remain open.
Castorama is slashing benefits amid record sales since the end of the lock-down. It is using the threat of mass unemployment as a battering ram to cut wages while layoffs and closures spread across the retail sector.
Dozens of retailers have been placed in liquidation. Fashion retailer Camaïeu is in liquidation and may close, threatening 3,900 jobs. The potential buyers have said they would keep at most two thirds of the jobs.
Workers at home furniture supplier Alinéa outlet in Le Mans held a strike on Saturday against the planned closure of the store. The company is in liquidation, and potential buyers due to take control of the company on August 31 are reportedly planning to keep open at most 9 of 28 stores. None of the workers who took strike action belonged to a union, and the action included all the cashiers at the retailer, so that customers could enter the store but not buy anything.
The unions’ central concern is to prevent a movement of the entire working class in France and across Europe against the wave of layoffs and austerity being pursued by the European ruling class. In France, the Macron administration has installed a new government headed by Prime Minister Jean Castex with the task of accelerating the austerity program that it has pursued since coming into office in 2017.
Castex has ruled out any return to a lock-down, regardless of the spread of the virus that has already killed over 30,000 people in France. With daily cases reaching over 1,100 in France last week, compared to a few dozen shortly after the deconfinement on May 11, it is clear that there is a resurgence of the virus. Castex declared on Saturday that a confinement “stops the spread of the virus, of course, but from an economic and social standpoint it’s a disaster.”
In other words, the potential deaths of tens of hundreds of thousands of people cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the profit-making of French corporations.
The Macron government is preparing a €100 billion economic stimulus package to be announced next month that will funnel more wealth into the bank accounts and stock portfolios of the super-rich. Sweeping cuts to pension, unemployment and other social programs are being prepared to fund the corporate handouts. All throughout, Castex is meeting continuously with the unions to organize this assault and attempt to suppress broad opposition to this policy in the working class.
On July 17, the government announced that it was postponing negotiations on its pension reforms with the trade unions until next year, and that it would delay the imposition of cuts to unemployment benefits until next year as well.
This has nothing to do with a change in policy. Castex and Macron have repeatedly stated that they are determined to push through unpopular cuts to the pension system, including the introduction of a points-based pension entitlement that can be used to continually decrease entitlements in line with budgetary requirements.
Castex stated that the postponing of the reforms was necessary because they were particularly “divisive.” The pension reforms triggered mass strikes of railway and other public sector workers at the end of last year. The government is biding its time until it has pushed through more corporate bailouts, and potentially change the form of its budget-cutting.
The unions are hailing the Castex government, fraudulently claiming that it is turning away from austerity, to hide from workers the attacks that Macron and the unions are preparing.
CFDT head Laurent Berger responded to Castex’s July 17 announcement by tweeting that “the CFDT leaves this meeting [with the government] with the conviction that there is a true sincerity on the part of the Prime Minister in his wishes for social dialogue.”
Philippe Martinez, the head of the CGT, stated on France Inter on July 18 that Castex was “direct, and that is good when we have things to tell each other to not beat around the bush. … [Castex] knows the trade unions well, and he has a past that speaks in his favour.”
Castex’s “past” includes overseeing the restructuring of the public healthcare system as an advisor to the right-wing Sarkozy government from 2005 to 2007. He introduced the “Pricing-per-action” model, providing funding to hospitals based on the number of operations performed, which had a devastating impact on the health care system. However, he is known to have favoured pursuing these pro-business policies in close collaboration with the trade unions, which is the union bureaucracy’s central demand.

Toronto tenants protest against looming evictions amid COVID-19 crisis

Carl Bronski

Tenants’ organizations disrupted a speech by Toronto Mayor John Tory at a real estate development ribbon-cutting ceremony last week. The protest was part of an ongoing series of actions against a provincial law that will end a moratorium on evictions in Ontario, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
The demonstrators demanded that Tory use his municipal emergency powers for health and safety enforcement to block evictions in the city and prevent police from participating in them. They also pressed the mayor to denounce the Doug Ford-led Ontario Conservative government’s recently passed pro-landlord Bill 184. The protest against Tory and the provincial Conservative government was the latest action by tenants’ groups, which previously mounted a demonstration at the provincial legislature and then marched to the mayor’s $2.4 million condo unit to present a mock eviction notice. Police used pepper spray to push back the protesters.
Passed last week by Ford’s hard-right government, Bill 184 opens the way to restart tenant evictions on August 1, and guts protections for renters formerly embodied in landlord-tenant regulations.
Ford was forced to order a temporary suspension of evictions on March 17 as part of the province’s COVID-19 lockdown. But five days before, his government had already signaled its intent to further skew landlord-tenant relations in favour of the former by introducing Bill 184 into the legislature. Even as the pandemic has ravaged the province, leading to more than 2,750 deaths, passage of Bill 184 has been a government priority.
The enactment of legislation rolling back tenants’ rights foreshadows a coming onslaught against the working class by all levels of government, as the ruling class moves to eviscerate regulatory protections and slash public services, jobs and wages. Their goal is to make workers pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars funnelled into the coffers of the banks and financial oligarchy by the federal Liberal government, the Bank of Canada and other state agencies since the onset of the pandemic.
To this end, Canada’s ruling elite, spearheaded by the Trudeau Liberal government, is enforcing a reckless and criminal back-to-work drive that threatens the lives of tens of thousands of workers.
Ford’s bill transforms the Landlord-Tenant Board (LTB), which adjudicates disputes, into little more than a debt-collection agency. Central to the new law, which the government cynically misnamed the Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, is permission for landlords to obtain legally enforceable and onerous repayment agreements for rent and utility arrears without adjudication before the LTB.
A tenant may refuse such an agreement and appeal to the LTB. However, the resources and legal knowledge and expertise required for such an action are often unattainable for vulnerable tenants. The majority of those in arrears on their rent do not speak English as their first language, are poor or are recently unemployed. Should a tenant sign on to a repayment schedule and subsequently be unable to meet the stipulations demanded by their landlords, eviction orders can immediately be issued without a hearing before the LTB.
In another vindictive move, the Ford government applied the measures in Bill 184 retroactively to March, when the coronavirus lockdown was announced. Hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who lost their jobs or have suffered considerable loss of income due to the pandemic and its economic fallout could thus be targeted by landlords using their new expedited eviction powers.
Recent weeks have also seen protests against Bill 184 in other Ontario cities, including Ottawa and Hamilton. A participant in a recent Hamilton protest told the World Socialist Web Site, “I know people who are living in apartments and month by month are fearful that they may be kicked out and end up on the streets. The shelters are full to overflowing, so they can’t go there. Despite registries that allegedly track scuzzy landlords and report them to government, they get off scot-free and simply do not carry out the maintenance they are expected to do. It’s absolutely shameful. Doug Ford basically has said ‘I don’t care about you tenants. I care about the landlords more and put their needs first.’”
Estimates suggest that Bill 184 will result in over 6,000 evictions from rental units across the province affecting about 15,000 individuals in the coming weeks. In April, rent delinquency rates in Toronto jumped to 10 percent of all tenants—a whopping increase from the average 1 percent rate prior to the pandemic. In April, about 53,000 rental units were in arrears in Toronto, encompassing at least 130,000 people who will now struggle to avoid eviction. These numbers are expected to swell once rent arrears figures for more recent months are tabulated.
Toronto already has an estimated homeless population of 9,000. That figure does not include thousands more precariously living on the couches and floors of friends and family or in their automobiles. As protests erupted against Bill 184, resistance also developed to evictions in the homeless camps in the city’s parks, ravines and underpasses. There are some 43 such encampments across the city.
On July 16, about 20 homeless people camped in Toronto’s Moss Park successfully resisted an eviction order from the municipality, and refused to vacate their makeshift shelters as police descended on the area. The eviction order was issued only 24 hours in advance, violating a bylaw that requires 72 hours’ notice be given. Homeless representatives subsequently filed a case in provincial court arguing that the city’s attacks on homeless camps are unconstitutional.
Homeless shelters are already at capacity in Toronto as the city scrambles to find additional spaces. However, many people living on the streets and in the parks are reluctant to move into shelters, where thefts, onerous and invasive curfews, and the threat of assault and getting infected with coronavirus are part of the daily reality. At least 630 COVID-19 cases have been recorded to date in the city’s shelters.
The sky-high rents in Toronto are the result of a frenzy of real estate speculation over the past 20 years that has enriched a handful of real estate moguls at the expense of renters. In contrast to the growing number of workers struggling to keep afloat, Toronto is a pole of attraction for the super-rich from across the country and internationally. Condo units are bought as an investment or for cash laundering, and often held unoccupied or simply rented out for the seasonal tourist trade. The multi-millions possessed by Mayor Tory and Premier Ford are dwarfed by the wealth of the estimated 27 billionaires who make Toronto their home. Their numbers includes David Thomson of the Thomson Reuters media empire, whose family, with a net worth of $37 billion, is Canada’s richest.
The housing crisis is also the product of the systematic gutting of social housing by both the federal and Ontario governments and all political parties, including the trade union-aligned New Democratic Party (NDP). Going all the way back to the NDP government of Bob Rae in the early 1990s, provincial governments have provided zero funding for public housing, while gutting public spending for social services across the board. Successive governments have slashed corporate and personal income tax rates, and eviscerated labour market regulations, leading to a rapid growth in social inequality as millions of low-paid, precariously employed workers struggle to make ends meet.
Many of the mansions occasionally occupied by Toronto’s millionaires and billionaires overlook the recently demolished homeless encampments in the city’s forested ravines. There are plenty of resources to address the housing needs of the working class, but this requires a class conscious socialist movement aimed at expropriating the corporations and instituting a social and economic system that places people’s needs over the rapacious profit drive of the capitalist class.