The pseudoscience behind the right-wing drive to force schools to open (part 2)

Benjamin Mateus

Children and COVID-19: are they contagious?

In the UK study, the authors estimated that the infectivity of children and adolescents was 50 percent compared to adults, though they admit the data is sparse on this question. The CDC has placed the best estimate for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases at 40 percent and infectivity of 75 percent, yet this does not clarify if there is a difference in infectivity among different asymptomatic age groups. The exact value is dependent on multiple variables, but, as other studies have documented, the capacity for children to be vectors for the transmission of the infection had been indirectly established, and they have become a growing component of COVID-19 cases, accounting for over 9 percent of all cases in the US.

It needs to be affirmed that early during the pandemic, the immediate school closures isolated and protected children, and therefore this age group represented a comparatively small proportion of infections. This contributed to illusions that children were impervious to the contagion. However, as the lockdowns were lifted and social interactions became more frequent, the number of infections attributed to children climbed rapidly. It is worrisome that the COVID-19 test positivity rate of children and young adults under the age of 18 is almost twice that of adults, implying that testing among this group is insufficient and infected children most likely represent a larger number than has been reported. What has been reported is that with more infections, the number of hospitalizations among children has also risen.

It was a study published August 7 by the CDC in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that provided the necessary proof of the capacity for children to infect. The report drew media attention during the height of the summer months when an upsurge of infections in the sunbelt states had demonstrated the calamitous character of the initiative to reopen businesses and social venues. At the same time, governors and local officials were strong-arming school districts and teachers to begin readying for in-person classes. The conclusions of the study confirmed what teachers and parents already profoundly feared.

The study was triggered by an outbreak in Georgia. On June 21, some 621 campers and staff members participated in an overnight camp. All attendees had supposedly adhered to the mandate to have documented negative SARS-CoV-2 testing within 12 days before arriving at camp. Though specific preventive measures were enacted, campers did not wear cloth masks, and windows and doors were not opened in cabins to increase ventilation. According to the camp administration, attendees engaged in indoor and outdoor activities that included singing and cheering.

On June 23, a teenage staff member left camp after developing flu-like symptoms. The following day her test confirmed COVID-19 infection. Camp officials began sending children home, and the Georgia Department of Public Health was notified and commenced an investigation on June 25. The camp was closed on June 27.

A total of 597 Georgia residents had attended the camp. The median age of the campers was 12 years, while that of staff members was 17 years. Test results were available for 344 attendees, of which 260, or a staggering 76 percent, were positive. Test results for 253 people were not available.

What surprised the authors most was their finding that the attack rate was highest among those 6 to 10 years of age. The CDC wrote, “Asymptomatic infection was common and potentially contributed to undetected transmission, as has been previously reported. This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission.” This was the most succinct demonstration of the ability for young children to be vectors for the transmission of COVID-19, contradicting the prior view that they were effectively “immune” and considered an insignificant factor in the transmission of the virus.

Around the same time as the publication of the CDC report, a contact tracing study was conducted in the province of Trento, Italy. During March and April, 6,690 contacts were linked to 2,812 cases of COVID-19. Out of these contacts, 890 developed symptoms of COVID-19 for an attack rate of 13.3 percent. Though there were only 14 children with COVID-19 under 15 years of age, 11 of their 49 contacts became secondary cases, for an attack rate of 22.4 percent, the highest rate of any age group.

The authors also reported that nasal swabs submitted to the Charité laboratory in Berlin showed that the viral load in children was similar to adults. They concluded, “This greater risk of spread resulting from contact with an infected child that emerged from our analysis might be explained by the different nature of interactions between adults and children. While the positive adult would be likely to be more adherent with isolation precautions, it may be more difficult to truly isolate children, resulting in continuing contact with parents and siblings. Overall, our data are, therefore in support of a policy of maximum caution with respect to the reopening of children ’ s communities and primary schools. [emphasis added].”

Another study that corroborated the conclusions reached by the Italian research came from South Korea. Overall, the researchers detected COVID-19 in 11.8 percent of all household contacts, but rates were higher for contacts of children than adults. The highest attack rate, 18.6 percent, was among school-aged children 10 to 19. They, however, found it was lowest for those children under the age of 10. These findings led Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota, to state, “I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population. There will be transmission. What we have to do is accept that now and include that in our plans.”

Lastly, a study published in JAMA Pediatrics on July 30 compared viral loads in children and adults at a pediatric tertiary medical center in Chicago, Illinois, and provided the evidence that young symptomatic children had viral loads that were equivalent to or higher than those found in adults. These authors, too, cautioned that young children’s behavioral habits and close interaction in schools and daycare settings would potentially amplify the transmission once restrictions were eased.

Is airborne transmission (aerosolization) the primary route of transmission?

On July 6, in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, lead authors Lidia Morawska, Ph.D., MSc, International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, Queensland University of Technology, and Donald Milton, MD, DrPH, Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, along with 31 contributing authors and 206 signatories, published an open letter titled, “It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of COVID-19 . ” This was an appeal to medical communities and relevant international organizations to recognize the potential for airborne spread of COVID-19, also understood as aerosolization. The World Health Organization has been slow to adopt these recommendations.

Both the CDC and the WHO have emphasized that the spread of the virus to others occurs through two dominant routes—surface contamination and respiratory droplets. The basis for these conceptions can be traced back to the work done by Dr. Charles Chapin, a public health researcher, in his seminal work from 1910, The Sources and Modes of Infection. He wrote in his preface, “We know now that direct contact with the sick, or with healthy carriers of disease germs, is an exceedingly frequent mode of transmission, and that infection by means of the air, or from infected articles, is not nearly as common as was formerly believed.” Lacking technology in the proceeding decades to measure aerosols, his construct for the transmission of diseases dominated among infectious disease experts and epidemiologists until recently and most specifically with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aerosols are like bits of fluid so small they can linger in the air. The human hair is 80 microns and aerosols smaller than 50 microns can spend enough time in the air to be inhaled. By comparison, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is only 0.1 microns, allowing plenty of volume to contain numerous particles. It has also been shown that viruses can survive in these aerosol droplets.

A presentation by Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez, professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Fellow of the American Association for Aerosol Research, summarized evidence in favor of and against various routes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

Specifically, he notes that indoor settings are the dominant location for infections. Super-spreading events where the growth factor (R0) of the virus can be as high as 20 occurred in restaurants, choir rehearsals, churches, etc. Poor ventilation aids in transmission. SARS-CoV-1, influenza, and MERS all transmit via aerosol. Viruses stay infective in aerosol forms. Dr. Jimenez writes, “COVID-19 is likely a lower-contagiousness aerosol-driven disease. It infects best at close proximity, also at the room-scale if we ‘help it along’ (indoors, low ventilation, long time, no masks). And it has trouble infecting at long range.”

A compelling case study from January published by the Chinese CDC involved a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, where a person with COVID-19 infected members from three families sitting at neighboring tables. None of the waiters or 68 patrons at the remaining 15 tables became infected. A video record of the day in question annotated the location of infected individuals. Using experimental tracer gas measurements and computational fluid-dynamic simulations, the study concluded that the air currents created by the air conditioning units blew virus-laden aerosols from the infected person to the nearby tables.

Earlier in the month, in a study from the University of Florida, a team of virologists and aerosol scientists were able to prove that respiratory droplets from COVID-19 patients contained the infectious virus. Live viruses were collected from seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with the virus. The sequences of the viral genetics from the aerosols matched that of newly admitted symptomatic patients to their rooms.

Both the Harvard T.H. Chan Schools of Public Health and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task Force have provided guidelines for updating school buildings and their heating and air conditioning units to ensure a typical classroom’s air is exchanged at least four to six times each hour. This includes designs for modification of rooms with window fans, central air purifiers and MERV13 HVAC filters that can remove a large portion of the airborne particles.

However, according to a report published by the US Government Accountability Office in June, more than “half of the public school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their school … an estimated 41 percent of districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in at least half their schools, representing about 36,000 schools nationwide.”

Additional areas of concern raised by the report in their national survey from August to October 2019 include improving security (92 percent), expanding access to technology (87 percent), and monitoring health hazards (78 percent). In other words, even without COVID-19, public schools across the nation have significant needs for funding to bring them up to necessary standards.

Conclusion

The tenets of public health have been proven time and time again. Social distancing, the wearing of face masks that are correctly and tightly fitted, hand-washing, cleaning surfaces, and proper ventilation and air exchange: all these practices can protect people from becoming infected or passing an infection to others.

More importantly, community spread can be mitigated through the establishment of a public health infrastructure that can efficiently and expeditiously test suspects and quickly trace and isolate contacts. The break in the transmission of the disease is the essential factor in bringing the virus under control. Additionally, those infected need to be isolated and provided medical observation, care, and treatment. This is the first pandemic in which human society has at its disposal the technological and scientific capacity to halt the virus.

Offsetting this, however, is the fundamental relationship between the community and the local, state, and federal governments whose primary job is the security and wellbeing of the citizens. In the present instant, the utter failure on the part of the political establishment is not that they are inept, stupid, or unable to comprehend scientific data (although that may describe some).

Rather, the political system and government administration work as directed by definite socioeconomic pressures that compel them to assure the health of the economy, i.e., the super-rich and giant corporations, at any cost. Behind the inability to ramp up testing, the utter failure to build a cadre of contact tracers, the never-ending changes in policy and guidelines, each worse than the one before, amount to the state asserting a policy of herd immunity for the sake of the financial markets. Teachers, parents, and all workers have the science behind them, but they must act on it and assert their own interests, preparing to conduct a general strike against the murderous policy of the state.

Qantas eliminates over 2,000 ground crew jobs

Terry Cook

In yet another major destruction of its workers’ jobs, Australia’s former government-owned airline Qantas announced last week that it will outsource ground crew work, including baggage handling, aircraft cleaning and bus services, at airports across the country at the cost of 2,500 permanent jobs.

The federal government is bailing out Qantas as it exploits the COVID-19 pandemic to try to impose a further brutal restructuring. Since March, the company has already received $248 million from aviation-specific government support schemes and $267 million through the government’s JobKeeper scheme, which was supposed to keep employees on the books.

The affected airports include Australia’s busiest—Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide—as well as terminals in larger regional centres such as Canberra, Darwin, Cairns and Alice Springs.

Qantas will outsource some 2,050 jobs, while its low-cost carrier Jetstar will outsource 370. Even before the latest restructure, Jetstar had outsourced ground crew roles at 17 terminals.

The new round of job shedding is on top of 6,000 direct job cuts announced by Qantas in June. The company is gutting its 29,000-strong workforce as part of the drive to slash costs by $15 billion over three years and then $1 billion annually after 2023. Some 4,000 of these jobs will be axed before the end of this month.

Qantas domestic CEO Andrew David said he realised the decision to outsource ground operations “would be tough” for the affected workers, many of whom were among the 15,000 Qantas workers stood down in April without pay or on enforced leave.

For all this feigned sympathy, workers’ lives are being ripped apart to maintain shareholder values and fund exorbitant executive remuneration packages. David himself received a $3.5 million pay packet last year, as did Qantas’s CEO of international operations Tino La Spina, while Jetstar chief executive Gareth Evans pocketed $4 million.

Qantas Group’s chief executive Alan Joyce, whose tenure with the airline has been extended to at least 2023, while thousands of workers lose theirs, received a staggering near $24 million.

The workers discarded under the company’s ground operations outsourcing plan will be required to reapply for their positions and negotiate new work agreements with whichever body-hire companies secure the contracts via a cut-throat bidding process. The successful bidders will no doubt take advantage of the growing pool of jobless airline workers to severely cut wages and working conditions.

Backed by one government after another, Qantas has been eliminating jobs, including by out-sourcing, for years. In 2018, the company offloaded its subsidiaries Snap Fresh and Q Catering, which had a 1,200 in-house workforce, to the Emirates Group’s data catering, cargo and ground handling entity. This resulted in a loss of workers’ conditions including a superannuation benefits scheme.

In July 2012, Qantas sold off its Sydney-based Cairns and Riverside catering facilities, which employed 370 people, to Gate Gourmet, a company notorious for a mass sacking at its Heathrow, UK operations in 2005 during a work agreement dispute.

Previous Qantas restructurings included the destruction of 5,000 full-time jobs, the imposition of an 18-month wage freeze and the slashing of working conditions.

Now Qantas, like airlines across the globe, is utilising the pandemic to bring forward even more ruthless cost-cutting measures that were in the pipeline well before COVID-19.

Qantas’s outsourcing of ground operations came after CEO Joyce claimed the airline had registered a net financial year after-tax loss of $1.9 billion. He used this to justify further job cuts.

In reality, the loss featured a $1.2 billion write-down of part of the company’s fleet, currently in storage. Excluding such one-off costs, Qantas remained in the black with a reported profit of $124 million.

Moreover, when Joyce announced the 6,000 job cuts in June he admitted that the carrier had $5 billion in capital. He said it could “survive even under current restrictions” but declared: “I don’t want to continue to burn through cash.”

Over the three years to June 2020, Qantas had amassed $4.43 billion in profits, mainly through its ruthless restructurings.

The assault on the Qantas workforce was spearheaded by the grounding of the airline’s entire fleet in 2011, under the last Labor government, during a work contract dispute to impose an agreement slashing jobs and conditions.

The airline unions then agreed to enforce the company’s demands during closed-door arbitrated negotiations overseen by the Labor government’s Fair Work industrial tribunal.

That betrayal ensured the airline unions maintained their role as an industrial police force to contain workers’ opposition and retain their place at the negotiation table to broker further regressive work agreements.

Despite some token criticism, the airline unions have again signaled that they will do nothing to oppose the latest Qantas job cuts. Instead, they are calling for even more government financial handouts to the airlines.

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Michele O’Neil pleaded with the Liberal-National government to “act immediately to put in place an aviation industry support plan.”

Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to personally intervene over a “misuse of taxpayers’ money” in relation to Qantas’s JobKeeper wage subsidies.

But as the JobKeeper bonanza for Qantas and other major employers demonstrates, the wage subsidy scheme was never a package designed to support the millions of workers hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic. It is a corporate handout aimed at propping up big business, attacking the wages and conditions of workers, and disguising the devastating unemployment crisis confronting the working class.

Riots spread across working class districts in the Netherlands

Harm Zonderland & Parwini Zora

Last month, amid the unfolding social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, riots broke out in some of the most impoverished working class neighbourhoods of major Dutch cities .

The riots started in the Schilderswijk district of The Hague, a neighbourhood devastated by increasing social misery, shunned by the media and subjected to continual police harassment. A heavily immigrant area, Schilderswijk faces high unemployment and—as in poorer working class areas in cities across Europe—is increasingly dependent on food banks and dwindling social benefits due to the impact of the pandemic.

According to official reports, roughly one hundred rioters, mostly youth who organised on social media platforms, threw rocks and fireworks at riot police for several consecutive nights, allegedly opened up fire hydrants due to the heat wave, and set dumpsters and bus stops on fire.

The riots quickly spread to the working class neighbourhoods of Kanaleneiland and Overvecht in Utrecht. Amersfoort and Rotterdam followed after, where youth were under heavy surveillance and were forcibly dispersed by Mobiele Eenheid (ME) riot police units invoking emergency decrees. According to a Deutsche Welle news report, dozens were detained in The Hague alone by heavily armed police.

The riots were a particularly sharp expression of mounting working class anger and discontent at the extreme social polarization and growing unemployment during the pandemic. Between August 12 and 18, the Markteffect research agency carried out a survey that found more than 40 percent of respondents reporting no confidence in the government and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM). In March, this figure was only 15 percent.

The growing working class anger and social conflict has provoked a vicious outpouring of hatred in the press. De Volkskrant published a report under the headline “The Schilderswijk riots over nothing, against everything,” claiming that the “easy answer” as to why the riots broke out is simply “boredom.”

It continued, “Before Summer the youth were stuck for long in their little rooms, because the schools were closed. The customary holiday to Morocco is cancelled, so are most festivals and other events. It is searing hot, everybody takes to the streets, where there is not much to do. Then bring your own ‘entertainment.’”

As the riots continued and spread to other cities, the Schilderswijk residents, who are largely of foreign descent, were increasingly subjected to right-wing slanders in the press. Moroccan workers in particular were singled out and scapegoated as part of a vicious xenophobic campaign to create a right-wing consensus for tougher police-state measures to secure “Law and Order.”

According to De Telegraaf, Paul Andersson Toussaint, a right-wing columnist, told the paper: “Law and order must be re-introduced. … Talking does not help, and the soft Dutch approach of talking and involving community leaders has to stop. You have to draw the line and say—to here but no further. The criminal macho culture has to go. There is nothing racist about that.”

The events also provoked comments from Geert Wilders of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) who has for years been railing against workers of Moroccan descent, claiming there is a ‘Moroccan-problem’ in the Netherlands. Wilders infamously once whipped up an audience to chant ‘less, less’ when he asked whether there should be more or less Moroccans in the Netherlands.

In response to the riots, Wilders tweeted: “Also in Utrecht, Kanaleneiland, the criminal Moroccans rule. Why is the army not deployed? Make PVV the largest party in 2021, and I will expel all the criminal scum from our country, including their families. All of them.”

In a not very dissimilar vain, The Hague city council member Kavish Partiman, of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), gave voice to the increasingly official stance embracing the agenda of the far right. He said, “Cuts in subsidies and benefits to the households where these troublemakers live might be an option. If the parents cannot teach norms and values to their children, perhaps we should forcefully remind them of the norms and values that apply in our society.”

Many politicians, from the parliament to the local council, have since lined up to blurt out their alignment with the far right and call for a tougher crackdown on riots and severe punishments for arrested “troublemakers.”

In fact, the pandemic has exposed before millions of people in the Netherlands and internationally the criminal negligence and political indifference of the ruling elite. This is what truly lies behind the urban youth rebellions: decades of “polder model” austerity, slashing essential health and social services to the bone, diminishing the social position of the working class.

The police crackdown on the protests reflects the calculations of the political strategists of the ruling class, that they must prepare for an eruption of working class opposition. Ever since 2018, there have been consistent waves of strikes in the Netherlands and internationally. Political consciousness is rapidly changing amid growing anger against social inequality, and the ruling elite itself feels ever more isolated and desperate.

Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus, who has denounced the riots as “anti-social,” warned that the riots not only involved youth. “I also see guys aged 30 or 40 walking amongst them,” he added.

The minister is set to speak with the mayors of cities hit by the riots, to determine if the national state could offer more “assistance,” including access to its whopping €6.3 billion police budget. That budget has been raised significantly since 2018. This translates to autocratic police-state forms of rule, more mass surveillance, emergency decrees, illegal arrests and summary prosecutions, and plans for more “integration and cooperation” between the Dutch military and police.

Government reopening campaign leads to COVID-19 surge in Indonesia

Owen Howell

Indonesia’s COVID-19 case numbers are continuing to surge as new daily records were reached on three consecutive days late last week. Saturday witnessed a spike of 3,308 confirmed cases bringing the national positivity rate—the percentage of positive results from all tests—up to more than 15 percent.

Over 2,000 cases have been detected every day for the past week. The virus’s death toll, by far the highest in South East Asia, has risen to nearly 100 fatalities a day, suggesting that infection rates are considerably higher than official figures. In total, data from the health ministry has confirmed 174,796 cases and 7,417 deaths nationwide.

The government believes the recent spike is related to the lifting of mobility limits across the capital city, Jakarta, during public celebrations of Independence Day on August 17 and Islamic New Year on August 20. Jakarta, the country’s initial virus epicentre, saw a record increase on Sunday of 1,114 infections.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan claimed in an online discussion broadcast last Monday via YouTube that the spread of COVID-19 in the capital is “relatively under control.” He presented no evidence, however, to substantiate this vague assertion.

In reality, the rapid spread of the pandemic in Jakarta and across the country is the outcome of the government’s disastrous efforts to reopen the economy, which began in early June. Governor Anies himself has been at the forefront of this back-to-work drive, with utter disregard for the deaths and illnesses that it is resulting in.

On Friday, the Jakarta administration extended partial social restriction measures for the fifth time, to be effective until September 10. The move demonstrates the Indonesian ruling elite’s resistance to imposing a full-scale lockdown, which would necessarily involve a halt to production in most industry sectors.

The reopening of businesses throughout the archipelago has created the conditions for new clusters to emerge. The latest spike has consisted largely of workplace transmissions.

In the Cikarang industrial zone of Bekasi in West Java, at least 88 workers at a factory belonging to automotive spare part manufacturer PT Nippon Oilseal Kogyu tested positive for COVID-19 last week. The company has closed some of its units as a result, according to kompas.com.

Bekasi’s many industrial plants, located outside Jakarta, have recently emerged as new viral hotspots. Over the past two weeks, the local administration announced 242 new cases at an LG Electronics factory, as well as 71 infections at a Suzuki motorcycle plant in the same area.

The city of Depok in West Java experienced a spate of clusters in offices. Local coronavirus taskforce spokesperson Dadang Wihana told Tempo last week that many of those who have been infected: “[W]ork at offices, such as banks and hospitals. New clusters at such offices created new family clusters in Depok.”

The city administration revealed previously that around 60 percent of its residents commute daily to nearby Jakarta for work. Jakarta itself has reported at least 90 office clusters since early June.

The reopening of schools has accompanied the government’s frenzied drive to send workers back on the job. For example, Sragen regency in Central Java is planning to reopen 63 elementary and junior high schools in 20 districts on Monday, despite a surge of 89 new cases within the small area over the last two weeks.

Paediatricians and teachers have openly criticised the reckless and premature reopening, and have called for schools to focus on distanced learning to prevent children from contracting the disease. Education Minister Nadiem Makarim has dismissed these concerns, describing his government’s decision as “bold” but necessary.

The Federation of Indonesian Teachers Associations (FSGI) has received reports of at least 180 teachers and students testing positive. In addition, the Indonesian Pediatricians Association (IDAI) found 60 children have died from the virus, while over 6,000 aged 6 to 17 have contracted the coronavirus.

The government expanded a school reopening policy early last month for schools in COVID-19 “yellow zones,” or supposed moderate-risk areas. When a previous policy in early July allowing schools in “green zones” (low-risk areas) to reopen was in force, the FSGI discovered 79 regions had violated the guidelines. Local authorities have been herding children to school and forcing parents to resume work, even when it defies the nominal official directives.

The true scale of transmission through workplaces and schools has likely not been recorded due to extremely low levels of testing. Indonesia has so far performed over 2.2 million tests, in a population of over 273 million. In other words, only 8,118 tests per million people have been conducted, placing the country’s testing rate (ranked 162nd) among the lowest in the world. By comparison, Singapore has performed 312,870 tests per million people.

Health experts have expressed growing concern over the country’s low testing capacity, urging authorities to adopt an aggressive testing regime, large-scale contact tracing and isolation for those with confirmed infections. Professor Wiku Adisasmito, chair of the national taskforce, admitted that “Indonesia can only achieve 35.6 percent of the World Health Organisation standard.”

The Sydney Morning Herald recently contacted two leading epidemiologists, Pandu Riono and Dicky Budiman, who both estimated the actual number of cases was now more than one million people. If this were true, Indonesia would rank at number four for infections in the world.

Indonesia’s understaffed and under-equipped healthcare system remains under pressure.

The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) revealed on Monday that at least 100 doctors have died from the virus. Among them are distinguished and well-known professionals from Airlangga University’s School of Medicine and Soetomo Hospital in Surabaya, East Java.

IDI Chairman Daeng Fiqih said the association was attempting to coordinate with the national taskforce to ensure the availability of protective equipment in hospitals and health facilities so as to prevent more deaths among health workers. He also urged hospitals to create a work schedule based on preventing fatigue which has made workers more vulnerable to the virus.

The current number of active cases, 41,420, is pushing the medical system to its limits. Last week, IDI spokesperson Halik Malik told the Anadolu Agency that deaths among doctors have increased significantly over the last two months. The majority of the victims were between 28 and 39 years old.

Johnson government’s “hostile environment” for immigrants and asylum seekers wins fascist allies

Robert Stevens & Barry Mason

The Conservative government’s “hostile environment” for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers is leading to a surge in activity by far-right forces.

In response to attempted crossings of the Channel from France to the UK by a few hundred refugees, Boris Johnson’s government has mobilised armed forces as if it were repelling an “invasion.” This involves RAF Atlas A-400M, Shadow R1 and P-8 Poseidon aircraft and Royal Navy vessels.

The government’s filthy xenophobic agenda is amplified by a venal right-wing media. The Daily Mail headlined one piece “Despite drowning of young Sudanese man, the boats from France keep coming,” referring to the tragic death of asylum seeker Abdulfatah Hamdalla last month. It declared, “More than 1,400 migrants have already crossed the Channel in small boats in August alone—a record for a single month—despite there still being 10 days before September.”

In response to Abdulfatah’s death, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she would work with France’s Macron government to strengthen border controls. This week, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that an Army Watchkeeper drone —previously used in Afghanistan—is to fly over the English Channel to monitor migrant boats. The MoD said, “The deployment of Watchkeeper provides further defence support to the Home Office in tackling the increasing number of small boats crossing the English Channel. It will provide a leading surveillance and reconnaissance capability, feeding information back to the Border Force and allowing them to take appropriate action where necessary.”

The Watchkeeper, described as “battle-winning technology,” will be operated in the Channel by the 47th Regiment Royal Artillery.

The deployment of weapons of war against desperate men, women and children crossing the 21-mile stretch is accompanied by a ramping up of deportations of asylum seekers by the Home Office. Official figures show that the Home Office has already spent around £1 million deporting 285 people during the pandemic.

On August 12, a charter flight carrying 14 people destined for France and Germany took off. Those on board had all recently arrived in the UK via the Channel in small boats. This went ahead despite last-minute high court actions and other interventions. Nineteen of the asylum seekers due to be deported, from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Yemen, had their tickets on the flight deferred by the Home Office after intervention by their legal representatives, Duncan Lewis solicitors.

On August 14, an Iranian national who crossed the Channel in a dinghy was deported to the Netherlands. On August 26, the Home Office deported, on a flight to France and Germany, people from Kuwait, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Yemen. The following day, the government was prevented from deporting 23 refugees and asylum seekers on a chartered flight to Spain after courts ordered that legal appeals of those on board must be heard.

The Sun on Sunday, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, editorialised, “It is vital that Priti Patel can protect our borders by deporting illegal immigrants. Delaying tactics by migrant-chasing human rights lawyers are a huge obstacle to this.” It cited a Tory government official who denounced “activist lawyers chasing dinghies to get taxpayers’ cash for keeping illegal immigrants in our country.”

But for social distancing rules stipulating that 20 people can currently be deported on a charter flight, many more would have suffered the same fate. Those being deported face great dangers and in addition their health is being massively imperiled, with the Independent reporting it “understands that there will be no testing for deportees or immigration escorts on departure or arrival, raising concerns that the move could risk spreading COVID-19 between countries.”

So vicious is the “deportation drive” that there have been at least eight suicide attempts in Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport. On August 6, a 41-year-old Yemeni asylum seeker, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah Alhabib, was found dead in a Manchester hotel room where he had been placed by the Home Office. According to a fellow asylum seeker Abdullah was in a state of constant fear of being deported from the UK at any time.

In order to service mass deportations, the notorious Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre has, according to the BBC, “been repurposed to house Channel migrants.” Located near Luton Airport, it can hold up to 400 people in detention.

Even this does not satisfy the media, with the Daily Mail complaining Monday in an article headlined “Deportations are lowest on record” that “The number of illegal immigrants, visa overstayers and foreign criminals booted out of the UK fell by a third last year…”

Joining the government-media offensive is Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing xenophobic Brexit Party. He is fronting a series of YouTube videos, centred on opposing “illegal” immigration under the title, “Nigel Farage investigates.” On August 16, he released a video enthusiastically endorsing Patel’s description of the number of migrants being able to cross the channel as “unacceptable” and “shameful” and backed the use the military and her appointment of former Royal Marine, Dan O’Mahoney, as “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander.”

But Farage complains that Patel’s “tough talk” is not backed by the appropriate action. In another video, Farage, who said he was acting on a “tip-off,” visits the Rivenhall hotel in Patel’s Essex constituency of Whitham. The hotel was being used to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees. The hotel had reopened at the beginning of August after being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is filmed entering the hotel and asking for a room, only to be told it is fully booked until the end of September. Farage tells the camera that his “exposure” could be a “massive embarrassment for Priti Patel.” The video ends with Farage calling for the Tories to get “it sorted” and appealing for “whistle blowers” to contact him.

The Home Office responded to Farage’s witch-hunting by announcing that the placement of asylum seekers at the Rivenhall hotel had been “an error and alternative accommodation would be sought.”

Other far-right layers saw their opportunity. Last week members of the fascist organisation Britain First entered hotels in London, Essex, Birmingham and Warrington in which asylum seekers were being housed. In Warrington, the fascists filmed themselves banging on hotel residents’ doors and demanding to know which country they were from. Clearly terrified, some said they were from countries including Iraq and Sudan. The leader of the group, Paul Golding, filmed himself following a migrant, who had left a hotel in Epping, and demanding to know where he was from. He then proceeds to film the hotel’s windows before staff call the police. Similar provocations are being organised by another fascist outfit, For Britain.

Far-right groups are now reportedly planning a mobilisation on September 5 to “take Dover by force” by blocking roads and ferries. This is the same day that an anti-racist group intend to hold a protest in Dover town centre “to stand in solidarity with refugees and migrants who are seeking sanctuary from war, poverty, persecution or climate catastrophe.”

The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers and young people to demand an end to the systematic brutalisation of immigrants and asylum seekers by the government, the immediate closure of all immigration detention centres and the granting of a right of residence, with full citizenship rights and access to welfare, housing, health care and education, to all those imprisoned in them or forced to endure demeaning stays in hotels that are not fit for purpose.

European governments end furlough schemes amid jobs massacre

Richard Tyler

The first response of governments in Europe and around the world to the developing coronavirus pandemic was to protect profits and private wealth. Various forms of grants, interest-free loans, and other schemes funneled trillions from the public purse into the accounts of shareholders and the super-rich.

The scale of this state-funded largesse dwarfed even the bailout of the banks following the 2008 crash.

With coronavirus infections spiraling exponentially, and massive public pressure to protect lives by stopping all non-essential production and other social activities, such as keeping schools open, governments belatedly imposed various forms of lockdown. Millions faced the prospect of losing their paycheques. The spectre of mass protests developing that could rapidly careen out of the control of the usual reformist and trade union channels forced the introduction of various measures to provide some degree of income protection.

Furlough schemes were introduced in most Western European countries, providing state finances to subsidise the payrolls of companies who could no longer operate due to the pandemic.

Nevertheless, while multi-billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk saw their already grotesque wealth increase during the pandemic, workers saw their incomes fall, or disappear altogether. Now, with COVID-19 cases approaching 4 million in Europe and over 207,000 deaths, workers are being driven back into unsafe factories, offices and schools so that the flow of profits can be restored and increased. To that end, furlough schemes are either being phased out or the level of support cut back, to provide an economic imperative to return to work.

It is estimated that over the course of pandemic, the wages of more than 40 million workers in Europe were covered by the state. Without these payments, the employers would undoubtedly have fired millions straight away.

In Britain, the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) has covered up to 10 million workers and provided employers 80 percent of gross wages, to a monthly income limit of £2,500. The government’s homicidal back to work agenda has significantly reduced the number of workers on the furlough scheme down to about 12 percent, according to a survey of businesses by the Office for National Statistics.

There was no compulsion for employers to make up the other 20 percent of wages not paid by the JRS, meaning many low-paid workers placed on furlough saw a significant cut in their monthly pay packet. The level of state subsidy was reduced in August and will fall to 70 percent this month and 60 percent from October, with the scheme ceasing altogether from November 1.

In France, 2 million workers remained on the “partial unemployment” scheme in July, down from a high of around 11 million. The level of support has been reduced from 84 percent of net salary, falling to 60 percent in October, although the duration of the scheme has been extended and employers will pay a larger share.

In Spain, temporary furlough scheme payments known as ERTEs, which cover up to 70 percent of salary, are due to expire in September. Between April and May, 3.4 million Spanish workers were furloughed, reducing to 843,000 in August as the Socialist Party/Podemos government pushed the back-to-work drive.

The scheme, already prolonged twice, is due to expire at the end of September. A tripartite meeting between government officials, unions and employers’ organisations is set for September 4 to discuss prolonging it again. Spain will receive some €21.3 billion from the European Union’s recently established SURE (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) towards its “social shield.” There remain some 550,000 Spanish workers left without receiving any benefits or subsidies.

In Italy, the programme paying furloughed workers for up to 18 weeks is to be extended to the end of the year, with a ban on firings. However, the share paid by the employer is set to increase, meaning many companies will simply lay off workers rather than pick up the tab.

In Germany, the system of Kurzarbeit (short-time working) can pay up to 87 percent of net wages. At the height of the lockdown, 10.1 million workers were on furlough, including a third of the workforce in industry. In May, 7 million workers received such payments, with the number falling to 5.6 million in July. The coalition government is extending the programme until the end of 2021.

In the Netherlands, the furlough scheme will expire at the end of September. In Portugal, it ended in most cases in July. Greece has extended its measures to the end of September, but workers only receive a pittance of €534 if they do not work for a month.

Mass unemployment threatens

Governments have paid the wages of private sector employees, with corporations benefiting from the state-funded bailout to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros. The same firms have responded by massively downsizing their workforces. The number of layoffs has steadily risen throughout the course of the pandemic. Employers have been able to use the time to bring forward long-planned restructuring measures that threaten tens of millions of jobs in Europe.

A recent study by the think tank McKinsey Global Institute estimated that 59 million workers in Europe—over a quarter of the entire workforce—are in jobs that are seriously at risk.

“The future of work in Europe” found that the coronavirus crisis had strongly affected Europe’s labour markets, which it says, “may take years for employment to return to its pre-crisis levels.”

According to the authors, the areas most threatened are wholesale and retail (14.6 million), accommodation and food (8.4 million) and a substantial number in manufacturing and construction.

The threat to employment arises not simply from the pandemic, but from longer-term structural changes that have far-reaching consequences. McKinsey lists automation and AI (artificial intelligence) as the two most significant factors that will impact on jobs. The report argues that nearly 70 percent of jobs at risk due to automation are also threatened by COVID-19, which could “accelerate some displacement [a euphemism for mass sackings] once projected to take 10 years.”

Those most likely to lose their employment are low-skilled workers, with 80 percent of jobs at risk (46 million) held by people without a degree.

Christophe Catoir, president in France of recruitment and employment agency Adecco, spoke of a “huge wave of restructuring coming, especially in Germany, France and the United States.” September and October would see an additional 1 million unemployed in France, “not just people on short-term work, but highly skilled people.”

Senior research manager at the EU’s research arm Eurofond, John Hurley, said, “unemployment is going to come home to roost, especially when generous furlough programmes start to ease off.” There is “going to be a shakeout, and it’s going to be fairly ugly.”

The prospect of a jobs massacre was underscored in the comment of Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey, who said it was “unlikely” that many jobs will return after the crisis.

In an August 22 piece, the Economist magazine warned, “Mass unemployment threatens,” in presenting the brutal situation facing British workers. Millions will be thrown onto the dole “as the furlough scheme winds down and the deepest recession for a century hits employment.”

“The official unemployment rate, as of the end of June, was just 3.9%—remarkably low at any time, let alone when GDP had dropped by more than a fifth. America’s June figure was 11.1%. It has stayed low in Britain because of the furlough scheme, under which the government paid 80% of the wages of employees.”

It continued, “Britain produces its unemployment figures with a two-month lag, so nobody knows what the jobless rate is now; but huge redundancies are being announced.”

The magazine cited predictions by the Bank of England that unemployment is set to nearly double to 7.5 percent and around 12 percent by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Other surveys predict unemployment may treble to nearly 15 percent.

It concluded. “Britain will soon have neither a furlough scheme nor generous unemployment benefits. Universal credit [welfare benefit] was increased by just £20 a week at the budget in March. The replacement ratio—the percentage of their previous income that British workers receive from benefits—is among the lowest in the OECD, and lower than in the early 1990s. A rise in unemployment will thus not only be painful for victims, but also suck spending power from the economy.”

Canadian Detroit Big Three autoworkers give strong strike mandate for upcoming contract fight

Carl Bronski

The 17,000 workers employed at the Canadian operations of the Detroit Big Three automakers have voted overwhelmingly to authorize Unifor to launch strike action should a negotiated settlement not be reached by the September 21st contract expiry deadline.

At Ford Canada, workers voted by 96.4 percent to give Unifor a strike mandate. At Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) 98.4 percent of those participating in the online ballot voted in favour, while at General Motors (GM) there was a 95.3 percent “yes” vote.

The massive strike votes underscore that autoworkers are ready to wage a militant struggle to defend their jobs, wages, and working conditions, and overturn the decades of concessions imposed by the corporations with Unifor’s support.

The Detroit Big Three bosses, for their part, are preparing for another round of sweeping attacks, with a number of Canadian plants facing the threat of possible shutdown or job cuts. Ford has announced that there will be no new products for its Oakville assembly plant after the Edge SUV is phased out in 2023. At Fiat-Chrysler’s Brampton assembly facility, Unifor says major investments are needed to retain jobs. Two vehicle models would need to be added at FCA’s Windsor Assembly to rehire the third shift workers, who were laid off earlier this year. Also under threat is FCA’s Etobicoke aluminum casting plant and half of the 1,300 jobs at GM’s St. Catharine’s propulsion and engine facility.

Even before COVID-19 triggered the economic collapse, the Detroit Big Three and the other transnational automakers had launched a major restructuring of auto production worldwide, announcing job cuts and plant closures. They did so with the double aim of boosting their profit margins and outperforming their rivals, above all, in investor returns in order to attract the capital needed to take the lead in the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles.

Now they intend to invoke the pandemic-related sales and profit plunge to intensify their push for speedup and concessions, while slashing hundreds of thousands of auto jobs in North America, Europe, and Asia.

In response, Unifor’s has been to double down on its nationalist-corporatist program. Predicated on the subordination of workers’ interests to investor-profit, this consists of ensuring the Detroit Big Three’s Canadian operations are pumping out profits equal to or greater than those the automakers earn elsewhere, by offering up further concessions and by appealing to the Ontario and Canadian governments to provide them with corporate handouts.

In a statement to the press following last weekend’s strike votes, Unifor President Jerry Dias said the union’s priorities in the contract talks were “job security, product commitments and economic gains for all members.” He continued, “We will continue to push our agenda at the bargaining table but remind government that they have an active role to play in securing our auto industry’s future. A future made in Canada.”

Dias’s stress on a “Made in Canada” solution to the threatened jobs massacre and fresh concession demands is a continuation of the union’s ruinous nationalist strategy, which has pitted autoworkers in Canada, the US and Mexico against each other in competing for “product.” The result has been the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs just in Canada alone over the past three decades, and round after round of concessions, including wage and benefit cuts and the creation of a multitiered workforce.

The overriding concerns of Dias and the other Unifor bureaucrats is not worker “job security” and “economic gains,” but the retention of a highly-exploited, dues-paying base from which to fund the bureaucracy’s lavish salaries and of a close working relationship between Unifor, the automakers, and the federal and provincial governments.

The fact that Unifor and the auto bosses share a common goal of ratcheting up the exploitation of autoworkers to ensure “corporate competitiveness” was underlined by Unifor’s latest bargaining update. Writing like corporate executives plotting to gain market share and boost profits at the expense of their competitors, the union declared, “Despite notable challenges facing the Canadian auto sector, the union believes each of the facilities is viable and, with strategic investments, well equipped for growth in the coming years. The union also signaled its intent to discuss investments in vehicle electrification, to capture a meaningful share of what will be a significant growth market in the years ahead.”

The decades of givebacks and job losses presided over by Unifor and its forerunner, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), reveal the failure of this nationalist, corporatist strategy. The CAW bureaucrats split from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1985, hoping that they could cut separate deals with GM, Ford and Chrysler based on the lower labour costs the automakers enjoyed in Canada due to the cheaper Canadian dollar and the government-funded health care system (Medicare).

The pursuit of this “Canadian advantage” proved disastrous as the UAW imposed deep wage cuts on US autoworkers, and the Detroit-based automakers expanded to Mexico for even cheaper labour. The auto bosses, with the unions’ unyielding support, were then able to use these nationalist divisions to whipsaw jobs and wages across borders in a never-ending race to the bottom. In the process, CAW/Unifor, like the UAW and all the procapitalist trade unions, was transformed into nothing more than junior partners of the corporations and the state.

Whenever the union bureaucrats have persuaded governments to subsidize the “Canadian footprint” of the Detroit Big Three, this financial support has been bound up with sweeping attacks on workers’ wages and working conditions.

Following the 2008 financial crash, the federal Conservative and Ontario Liberal governments handed $13.7 billion over to the auto bosses at General Motors and Chrysler, while extorting wage and benefit concessions from autoworkers. This included the slashing of wages and benefits by 20 percent and the introduction of the notorious two-tier wage system. Since the bailout cash was handed out, thousands more jobs have been cut with entire plants being shuttered in Oshawa, Windsor, and St. Thomas, Ontario.

The current concessions contracts, which were grudgingly ratified by workers in 2016, expire at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, September 21. Early next week Dias is expected to announce which of the three automakers the union has selected as its “target” for negotiating a so-called pattern-settlement. After Monday’s announcement of the results of the strike vote, Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy in Windsor, Ontario told reporters that he is lobbying Dias to select FCA.

Irrespective of which company Dias chooses to begin negotiations with, it is clear that if the Unifor bureaucracy remains in control, there will be nothing adversarial about them. Rather, the bargaining process will develop as a conspiracy against the 17,000 autoworkers. In a May interview with Automotive News Canada previewing the contract negotiations, Dias all but ruled out strike action, declaring that if “after months and months and months of reduced volume based on the pandemic” things are “starting to get back to a resemblance of where they were pre-crisis, no one is going to want a disruption. And I mean nobody, both the workers and the automakers.”

There is widespread rank-and-file opposition to the corporatist, nationalist strategy advanced by Dias and his fellow bureaucrats. Some 1,400 workers at auto plants across Ontario have signed a petition demanding that the union release any agreement in full, well in advance of ratification votes. This expresses the deep distrust felt by the rank and file towards the bureaucracy, which is well-practiced at smuggling major concessions into contracts behind the backs of workers by leaving them out of the self-serving “highlights” brochures handed out at ratification votes.

The task facing autoworkers is to transform this latent opposition into an organized rebellion against Unifor and its reactionary procorporate policy. To do this, autoworkers must organize rank-and-file action committees to seize control of the contract struggle from the union and mount a worker-led counteroffensive to overturn concessions, and guarantee decent-paying and secure jobs for all.

Such a struggle must be based on an international strategy aimed at mobilizing autoworkers across North America and around the globe in a common struggle in defence of all workers’ jobs and against all concessions.

Without a doubt, an appeal from Canadian autoworkers for a joint struggle would win immediate support from autoworkers in Mexico, who last year mounted a wave of wildcat strikes in opposition to the pro-company unions, and in the United States, where a network of rank-and-file safety committees has been organized in opposition to the corrupt UAW. Autoworkers set up these committees to combat the life-threatening conditions in the plants produced by the reckless back-to-work drive mounted by the companies, with the UAW’s support, amid the ongoing pandemic.

With over 2,600 COVID-19 cases at more than 750 US colleges, campus opposition erupts

Chase Lawrence

A catastrophe is unfolding at colleges and universities across the US as millions of students, teachers, and staff are being forced to return to campuses for in-person learning amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic. According to real-time information gathered by the New York Times at least 26,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported at over 750 campuses, with at least 64 deaths since they began reopening for the fall semester.

As many experts had warned, the reckless reopening of colleges and universities has led to a spike in cases on campuses and in college towns. The majority of these new cases have occurred within the past month alone.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, which has a student population of 22,000, has the most cases recorded of any college campus, with 972 cases recorded, amounting to roughly four percent of the student population. Before opening, the university had claimed that an expansion of “in-house” university-owned testing, combined with rudimentary tracking and mask wearing would prevent an outbreak. The outcome of the Alabama “experiment” has proven to be a complete disaster for the university and for the state as a whole, which is now one of the leading coronavirus hot spots.

Beardshear Hall at Iowa State University (Credit: Wikipedia)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which reopened on August 14, held in-person classes for a week before being forced to go online. It currently has the second most cases, with 835 recorded. UNCCH reopened residence halls at full capacity, which the CDC warned was the “highest risk” model for dorm reopening. This is following outbreaks during summer sports practices, where 37 players and staff tested positive for the virus.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has seen 448 new cases.

The University of Arkansas now has 151 new confirmed cases, following the reopening of in-person classes on August 24. In late July, the university announced that a mere 28 percent of classes would be held online, with the vast majority being in-person.

Adrian College, a small private liberal arts college south of Detroit, reported Monday that a staggering 6.5 percent of its 2,235 students and staff have tested positive for the virus after reopening on August 24 with face-to-face classes.

Despite major outbreaks, many of these schools are still resisting pressure from students, parents, and workers to switch to online learning.

Iowa State University in Ames, according to the NYT data, has the highest transmission rate in the country, with a 28 percent positive test rate. Despite this staggering fact, the university president sent an email to staff and students, on the heels of the NYT report, reassuring everyone that the disease is “under control,” adding that the “appearance” of spread is just due to a large portion of those tested being positive. This explanation ignores completely the simple fact that there are now 500 more cases at the university than there were a week ago. The president also stated that there is no plan to close the university or move to entirely online classes.

Kent State is following a similar model. The university announced Monday that all university-sponsored events, meetings, and gatherings of more than 10 people on campus would now be required to be held virtually. This announcement comes after 12 new coronavirus cases were reported for the week beginning August 24. However, the university says this development will not affect in-person classes, which will continue as planned.

As startling as these statistics are, in all likelihood the reported figures on campus outbreaks represent a fraction of the actual number of cases. Many universities are not required to publicly report their confirmed cases. Furthermore, the majority of schools do not possess the capacity to adequately test students, staff, and faculty on a regular basis.

In addition to the deliberate efforts by the White House to tamper with numbers by decreasing testing, there have also been efforts on the state level to conceal confirmed COVID-19 cases on college campuses.

Bridge, a Michigan nonprofit, nonpartisan news site, reported Tuesday that Michigan is concealing information related to new infections. In mid-August, the state acknowledged that only 14 COVID-19 outbreaks had occurred or were ongoing at schools and universities. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has refused calls to release details, such as the names of schools where the coronavirus has spread. The only details released were on the “region,” which fails to name schools. She has also deliberately concealed information on outbreaks in longterm care facilities, only releasing the names of facilities after immense pressure following hundreds of nursing home deaths.

Resistance to these reckless policies is growing by the day among students, faculty, and workers. Students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham staged a mass “die-in” protest against the reopening before the beginning of classes. Students at the University of Georgia, University of Arizona, and other campuses have held similar protests. There are countless student petitions circulating with tens of thousands of signatures on the internet against in-person teaching. And there have been numerous petitions, such as at Texas A&M University, where faculty and staff have signed open letters protesting the administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Last month, the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was formed as a national network to unify the struggles of teachers, school employees, parents, and students independently of the unions and to prepare for a national strike to halt the unsafe opening of schools. A local rank-and-file committee has been established in Duval County, Florida, and more are being set up in a growing number of states and districts across the country. The Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, urge students, faculty, parents, and others to join this committee and take up the fight to stop the reckless drive to reopen schools.