Profits soar as global crash intensifies social crisis in Australia

Mike Head

Data released this week confirmed that Australia—like the rest of the world—has been plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and with much deeper cuts to jobs, wages and working class living standards still to come.

The economy shrank by 7 percent in the three months to June 30, following a 0.3 percent drop in the March quarter. That is many times worse than during the global financial crisis of 2008–09. More than one million people have been thrown out of work already, accompanied by the greatest cut to wages since World War II.

Nothing comparable has been inflicted on workers since the 1930s, when output plunged by 17.1 percent from 1929 to 1932 and joblessness reached at least 20 percent of the labour force.

Workers line up outside a Centrelink office in Melbourne [Credit: @LordSedgwick, Twitter]

Currently, unemployment is officially 7.5 percent and is expected to rise to about 10 percent by year’s end. But the government itself admits that the real rate of joblessness is already above 11 percent. That is around 20 percent if under-employment is counted.

Another 3.5 million workers are still not counted as jobless because they depend on the JobKeeper wage subsidies being paid to their employers. More than a million of these workers will be cut off JobKeeper by December, according to the government’s estimates.

If not for unprecedented government business bailout packages and high prices for iron ore exports, the crash would have been bigger. The private sector economy contracted by 12 percent.

None of these figures yet register the further economic slide in the current September quarter because of the COVID-19 resurgence in the key industrial state of Victoria that resulted from the premature, corporate-driven, lifting of safety restrictions nationally in June.

While total wages fell a record 2.5 percent in the June quarter, seasonally adjusted gross company profits soared by 15 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This points to the further restructuring of class relations in favour of the wealthy elite that is already well underway.

Alongside the impoverishment of wide layers of the working class, especially the young and the most poorly-paid workers, the financial aristocracy is reaping the benefits of the crash and demanding even more in terms of tax cuts and attacks on working conditions.

An immense social disaster is looming as the government slashes the levels of the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments that have barely kept millions of working class households alive since March.

On Wednesday, the same day that the recession statistics were released, the Labor Party opposition joined hands with the Liberal-National government to push through parliament legislation to allow the already paltry payments to be cut from September 28.

JobKeeper wage subsidies will be reduced from $750 a week—about the level of the minimum wage—to $500 a week by January, while the $550-a-week JobSeeker unemployment benefits could be halved by then, taking them back to sub-poverty levels.

This month also will see the start of the lifting of moratoriums on mortgage repayments and tenant evictions, as well as an end to a permission introduced early in the pandemic for businesses to trade while insolvent. Millions of working class and small business households face financial ruin and homelessness. Australia’s household debt levels—about double annual incomes—are among the highest in the world.

Already, the data shows that household consumption fell by a record 12.1 percent in the June quarter, driven by a record 9.8 percent cut in hours worked. At the same time, the household savings ratio jumped from 6 percent to 19.8 percent. Fearing for the future of their jobs and livelihoods, people tried to pay down debt or put money aside for what lies ahead.

In a particularly disturbing sign of social distress, household expenditure on health services decreased 25.6 percent through the year to June. That is, people either put off medical treatment because of cost or due to fear of infection as the pandemic hit health care workers and aged care facilities.

The wages “share” of national income fell below 50 percent for the first time since the 1950s, accelerating a decline that has continued since the 1970s and further fueling soaring social inequality.

“Average non-farm compensation per employee” actually increased by 3.3 percent in the June quarter, while total wages fell by 2.5 percent. That is because the greatest losses are being imposed on low-paid and casualised workers, not highly-rewarded corporate executives.

Adding to the social divide, many major companies enjoyed bonanzas from multi-billion dollar handouts. Others profiteered from the pandemic-triggered crash by ruthlessly cutting jobs and wages, or by cashing in on higher sales of equipment needed for working at home.

Subsidies via the JobKeeper and “Boosting Cash Flow for Employers” programs totaled $52 billion in the June quarter. Other COVID-19 related subsidies, including those made by state governments, added another $3.6 billion. These are by far the largest business handouts in Australia’s history, dwarfing those made during the 2008–09 crash.

Construction employers were among the highest JobKeeper recipients, obtaining nearly $3.5 billion despite virtually all building sites being kept open. They also received more than $2.5 billion in cash flow boost payments.

Employers in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services received about the same, followed closely behind by those in Health Care and Social Assistance, Accommodation and Food Services, and Retail. In many cases, large firms continued to receive hefty payments despite making increased profits as a direct result.

As in the US, big business is benefiting also from record low interest rates on loans supplied by the central bank. Just before the recession statistics were published, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it would pump another $110 billion of “stimulus” into the economy through support for cheap loans, more than doubling its cash injections to $200 billion.

Regardless of these subsidies, corporate investment plunged—another indicator of a deeper crash to come. Private capital expenditure dropped by 6.9 percent, despite a small lift in the mining sector due to higher iron ore and gold prices. Investment in housing fell by 7.3 percent.

Ludicrously, the government and the corporate media tried to put a gloss on the June quarter crash by saying it was not as bad as comparable countries. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said gross domestic product fell by 20.4 percent in the UK, 13.8 percent in France, 11.5 percent in Canada, 10.1 percent in Germany and 9.1 percent in the US.

As in the Great Depression, however, the economic and social crisis in Australia is inextricably bound up with the global breakdown. Australian capitalism depends heavily on exports of raw materials, mainly to China, and foreign investment, primarily from the US.

The pandemic is not simply a biological event. Worldwide, its impact has been catastrophic because of years of cuts to medical research and healthcare, followed by indifferent and incompetent government COVID-19 responses and a homicidal rush to “reopen” economies.

The only response of the ruling class is to ratchet up its decades-long assault on working class conditions. Frydenberg confirmed that the government will use its delayed October 6 annual budget to fast-track personal income tax cuts, which will overwhelmingly benefit high-income recipients. It will also boost business investment subsidies, while trying to impose further “industrial relations reform”—that is, deeper cuts to workers’ wages and conditions.

Behind the scenes, the trade unions are collaborating with the government and employers in five “working groups” on industrial relations and other measures to boost economic output at the expense of workers. These groups are due to report this month also, underscoring the role of the unions and the Labor Party in propping up Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government and enforcing the attacks being inflicted on the working class.

Brazilian governor suspended for COVID-19 emergency contracts fraud

Miguel Andrade

On August 28, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel, was suspended from office for 180 days by Justice Benedito Gonçalves of the Brazilian high court in connection with alleged kickbacks on contracts between the state government and private service providers.

On the same day as Justice Gonçalves’ decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court (STF) authorized Rio de Janeiro’s State Parliament to proceed with Witzel’s impeachment trial. The trial had begun in early June, with a 69–1 authorization vote, and was later suspended by STF President Dias Toffoli during Moraes’ recess period. The impeachment trial is now expected to proceed swiftly, and permanently remove Witzel from office next week.

At the center of the investigations are payments to several private service providers to build and operate field hospitals and other health infrastructure to treat COVID-19 patients in the state.

Field hospital at Rio’s Maracanã stadium [Credit: Agencia Brasil]

Brazil currently has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, trailing only the United States, with more than 4 million cases and 126,000 deaths, and an average of more than 40,000 new cases and roughly a thousand deaths every day.

These figures are a direct result of the long-standing social abyss that defines every aspect of life in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular, where 22 percent of the population live in so-called favelas or slums.

The payments under investigation were made under emergency legislation enacted in March to allow the fast-tracking of public bids. The most prominent contract, worth almost a billion reais (US$125 million), was granted to a so-called “Social Organization,” Labas, which also runs a field hospital and other health facilities in São Paulo. Labas was hired to build seven field hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, but only one was opened before the state government terminated the company’s contract in early June, after an investigation that implicated Governor Witzel had begun.

“Social Organizations” are companies constituted in Brazil with the goal of managing privatized public infrastructure and are ubiquitous across cities and states. The investigations now implicating Witzel started with schemes that dated from his predecessor, Sergio Cabral, currently serving a 282-year sentence after 13 guilty verdicts for corruption.

Witzel has been charged with being part of a scheme coordinated by well known businessman Mario Peixoto, suspected of funneling 500 million reais (US$70 million) out of fraudulent contracts since 2012, and one of the controllers of Labas. Witzel’s ties with Peixoto were initially raised during the 2018 election campaign. Prosecutors suspected that payments made by Peixoto to Witzel’s wife, a lawyer, were in fact a cover for kickbacks.

While the supreme court initially denied prosecutors’ request for Witzel’s arrest, it did authorize the arrest of the president of Witzel’s Social Christian Party, Minister Everaldo, as a key player in the scheme.

Minister Everaldo came to national prominence in 2016 for baptizing then-congressman and now President Jair Bolsonaro in the Jordan River, a fashion for moneyed Evangelicals in Brazil.

Witzel’s suspension from office and the impeachment trial underscore the deep crisis gripping the Brazilian ruling class, massively intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed the bankruptcy of the whole ruling establishment.

While Congress, including the Workers Party (PT)-led opposition, voted to bail out the financial markets with an unprecedented injection of 17 percent of the country’s GDP, a bare 15 percent of that money was directed to the so-called emergency relief of US$ 100, the only income standing between tens of millions of Brazilians and poverty. That relief has now been cut in half, as governors and mayors of every party push for a homicidal return to schools, and the ruling class piles pressure upon the unemployed to accept a return to work under conditions of a full-blown spread of the pandemic.

Witzel is one of a number of governors and officials facing similar charges. Four of his last five predecessors as governor of Rio have been convicted and sentenced on corruption charges.

The state of Rio de Janeiro became, from the beginning of the 21st century and the rise to national power of the Workers Party (PT), the center of a series of federally-sponsored infrastructure projects and poverty and violence-reduction schemes. The PT allied itself with the Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and other old bourgeois-nationalist forces which retained their strength in Rio de Janeiro from the period when it was Brazil’s capital, promising to reverse the city’s decades-long social decay.

The city hosted the 2007 Pan-American games, and then was chosen to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. In 2014, it hosted several games, including the final match, of the Soccer World Cup in the iconic Maracanã stadium—turned into a field hospital during the initial months of the spread of the pandemic in Brazil.

The state also became a center of the industry that developed around the exploitation of newly-discovered “pre-salt” deep-sea oil fields, and suffered the worst crisis of any Brazilian state with the end of the China-fueled commodity boom in the middle of the decade.

The state is also the political base of the fascist Jair Bolsonaro. Witzel was initially elected as one of his key allies, along with São Paulo governor João Doria. Both promoted the same ultra-right law and order policies, giving the most fascistic elements within the murderous state police forces a blank check to carry out mass killings. In Rio de Janeiro, this resulted in a 14 percent rise in deaths caused by the police, to 881 last year alone. These police killings now account for 30 percent of the total number of homicides in the state.

Witzel’s Social Christian Party had been one of the foremost supporters of a Bolsonaro presidency, which motivated stunts like the Bolsonaro’s baptism by Minister Everaldo in 2016. Rio de Janeiro is also Bolsonaro’s main political base, from which he was elected seven times to the House, serving 28 years as a representative before the 2018 elections.

With the beginning of the pandemic, however, both Doria and Witzel distanced themselves from Bolsonaro’s blanket denial that COVID-19 posed any threat. They feigned concern for the spread of the disease, imposing partial quarantines in Sao Paulo and Rio that have now been almost totally lifted. Doria’s and Witzel’s distancing themselves from Bolsonaro in March came as the Brazilian president faced mounting opposition to his far-right policies, and also as corruption scandals began to engulf the president himself, with Rio state prosecutors charging that his son, Flávio, took part in corruption schemes as a Rio state legislator.

The investigation into Flávio’s corruption schemes uncovered links between Bolsonaro’s family and far-right Rio vigilante groups known as militias, and especially the “Crime Office” gang, suspected of murdering Rio de Janeiro city councilor Marielle Franco of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) in 2018.

India-China border tensions flare anew, posing threat of catastrophic military conflict

Deepal Jayasekera

The four-month-old border crisis between nuclear-armed India and China has escalated sharply in recent days, posing the danger of a military conflict that could have catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and the world.

New Delhi and Beijing have accused each other of violating their de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), on the night of August 29–30, in the remote Himalayan region where Indian-held Ladakh meets Chinese-held Aksai Chin.

India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which is presiding over a COVID-19-triggered health and socioeconomic disaster, has been especially bellicose. Shortly before last weekend’s confrontation on the shores of Pangong Tso lake, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, declared that India had a viable “military option to deal with transgressions by the Chinese Army in Ladakh … if talks at the military and the diplomatic level fail.”

India’s increasingly aggressive stance against China has been encouraged at every point by Washington, which is working to exploit the geopolitical rivalry between India and China to further integrate New Delhi into its military-strategic offensive against Beijing.

Even before the border dispute erupted into a violent clash in the Galwan Valley on the night of June 15, which left dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers dead, the Trump White House and senior Congressional Democrats had demonstratively intruded into the dispute, labelling Beijing the “aggressor.”

Since then, Washington has repeatedly tied the Indo-Chinese border dispute to the US-incited South China Sea conflict, citing both as examples of Chinese aggression and key reasons why it must dramatically escalate its anti-China offensive.

Both India and China now have tens of thousands of troops, warplanes and tanks forward deployed at bases and camps near the LAC, whose exact location is itself in dispute at numerous points along their roughly 3,480-kilometer (2,160-mile) border.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently called the tense situation at the border “surely the most serious situation” since the month-long 1962 Sino-Indian border war. In making this assessment, Jaishankar noted that “the quantum of forces currently deployed by both sides at the LAC is … unprecedented.”

According to media reports, India has deployed three additional army divisions, comprising about 60,000-70,000 troops, in eastern Ladakh (which borders Aksai Chin), raising its total troop strength in the region to 80,000-90,000. More than 120 main battle tanks have also been positioned at strategic points. Newly purchased US-made lightweight howitzers, as well as various missile batteries, have also been deployed. China has similarly poured large numbers of troops, artillery, planes and missiles into the border area.

In a statement issued last Monday, India’s Ministry of Defence asserted that “pre-emptive” action by its troops on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso lake on the night of August 29 had prevented Chinese troops from securing a strategic position on the Indian side of the LAC. Its statement went on to repeat New Delhi’s position that the onus is on Beijing to deescalate the months-long crisis.

Underscoring that a military clash between India and China could rapidly involve other regional and great powers, New Delhi has accused Pakistan, a close ally of Beijing, of taking advantage of the war tensions with China, to escalate pressure on Indian-held Kashmir.

Yesterday, Chief of Defence Staff Rawat vowed that India is prepared for the possibility of a “two-front” war against China along its northern border and Pakistan in the northwest.

“Should any threat develop along our northern borders,” Rawat told a meeting of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), “Pakistan could take advantage of that … and therefore we have taken adequate precautions to ensure that any such misadventure by Pakistan is thwarted… In fact, they may suffer heavy losses.” Pakistan, against which India has fought three declared wars and the Modi government has twice ordered provocative and illegal “surgical strikes,” is also a nuclear-weapons state.

Beijing has angrily rejected New Delhi’s claims that its troops violated the LAC last weekend and has accused India of responsibility for the ratcheting up of the border crisis and war tensions.

A Chinese Foreign Minister spokesperson told a press conference Wednesday, that India’s claim that it “pre-empted” Chinese aggression is in fact evidence that it was the one who had violated the LAC. “In China,” said Hua Chunying, “we have a saying about a guilty mind protesting conspicuously he’s innocent. That is what India did. It shows that the Indian troops illegally crossed the line in provocation and unilaterally changed the status quo and broke the two sides’ agreement and consensus.”

Meanwhile, the state-owned Global Times issued a stern, threatening warning to New Delhi in an editorial published Wednesday. “ China,” it declared, “is an immovable neighbour and much stronger than India. The two countries are suitable to be partners in seeking common development. But if New Delhi wants to label Beijing its long-term strategic rival, it needs to be prepared to pay a huge cost. In the meantime, it will never manage to get one more inch of land at China-India border areas.”

The reference to “strategic rival” is a pointed reference to US imperialism’s drive to harness New Delhi to its strategic agenda and transform India into a “frontline” state in its reckless, incendiary confrontation with Beijing.

Speaking at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum conclave the same day that New Delhi levelled its latest charge of Chinese “aggression,” US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun called for a NATO-style Indo-Pacific alliance to counter China, adding that India is critical to US domination of the region. “So as important as I’d like to think the United States is to this strategy,” said Biegun, “it’s not going to be successful for us without India also standing side by side.”

Publicly, Foreign Minister Jaishankar and the BJP government maintain that India will not become a treaty ally of Washington so as to preserve its “strategic autonomy.”

The reality, however, is that Modi—continuing on the path blazed by the previous Congress Party-led government, which forged an Indo-US “global strategic partnership” in 2005—has integrated India ever more completely into the US strategic offensive against China, in pursuit of the Indian ruling elite’s own predatory ambitions.

This has included opening Indian air bases and ports to routine use by US warplanes and warships, and establishing a web of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security partnerships with the US and its most important Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

According to Indian government sources, India will join the other members of the Quad—a US-led military security “dialogue” consisting of India, Japan and Australia—in signing a new intelligence-sharing agreement at a forthcoming meeting of the Quad. That meeting, likely later this month, will reportedly be timed to coincide with the annual joint meeting of the US and Indian foreign and defence ministers. New Delhi is also expected to invite Australia to join the US and Japan as a regular participant in the annual Indian-sponsored international naval exercise, Malabar.

In what was an unprecedented message to Beijing from Washington and New Delhi as to the closeness of their ties, they arranged an impromptu naval “passage” exercise when a US naval battle group led by the USS Nimitz, the Pentagon’s biggest aircraft carrier, passed near India on July 20–21. Highlighting the exercise’s significance, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper tweeted, “The strength of US navy aircraft carriers includes the friendships they build.”

The Modi government, abetted by the corporate media and the opposition parties, is using the border crisis with China to whip up a bellicose atmosphere so as to divert attention away from the catastrophic social crisis—India is now leading the world in new COVID 19 cases, and its economy contracted by 23.9 percent between April and June—and so as to push politics further right.

In this the Congress Party is playing a particularly foul role. Throughout the current border crisis, it has attacked Modi and the BJP from the right, accusing them of failing to aggressively oppose China. In a statement issued on Monday, Congress spokesman Randip Surjewala said: “Every few days there are attempts on India’s sovereignty and news of China’s aggression is coming to the fore. They are attacking on our country and capturing our land, but where is the Modi government?”

The catastrophic fate of Belgium’s elderly in the coronavirus pandemic

Jacques Valentin

An article published last month in the New York Times paints a chilling picture of the abandonment of medical care for residents in retirement homes in Belgium throughout the coronavirus epidemic. It led to a national mortality rate of 853 deaths per million inhabitants, which remained the highest level in the world until it was recently overtaken by Peru (871).

As the European ruling class advocated the criminal policy of allowing the virus to spread and arrive at “herd immunity,” the same policy has been seen in country after country. The deaths of care home residents represent often half or more of the virus’ victims. While the elderly are the most vulnerable to the virus, many deaths would have been avoided if appropriate health measures were put in place.

One of the most shocking elements of the Times’s inquiry was that “the paramedical ambulance crews and hospitals categorically refused on several occasions to administer treatment to the elderly, even though hospital beds were available.”

A typical example was a retirement home in Brussels, where the newspaper reconstructed the evolution of the epidemic. A resident was refused hospitalisation by medical personnel who were responding to repeated requests from her family. The medical team blatantly announced to the patient’s son that his mother was going to die and that was all. She was sedated with morphine, and the nursing staff left. She died eight hours later, while the nation’s intensive care beds were at 55 percent capacity.

These cruel refusals of care have been repeated and continue to be the case everywhere in Belgium. The number of elderly deaths in retirement homes without hospitalisation is enormous in Europe, as in the United States. In many cases, the decision not to hospitalise them could not be justified as the outcome of saturated intensive care units.

The Times writes: “Belgian officials say denying care for the elderly was never their policy. But in the absence of a national strategy, and with regional officials bickering about who was in charge, officials now acknowledge that some hospitals and emergency responders relied on vague advice and guidelines to do just that.” In fact, diverse forms of incompetence and criminal negligence have been observed in all countries affected by the pandemic.

The lack of preparation was felt right at the start of the pandemic, as seen by the absence of personal protective equipment. This encouraged the infection of staff and care home residents. Because sick residents and staff were not frequently tested, conforming with irresponsible official directives that were also in place in France, it was impossible to break the chain of contamination.

In Belgium, as in France, this criminal policy was maintained during the epidemic, even though there were sufficient tests available to cover a wider public.

Retirement homes were not prepared for the epidemic shock. Although they accommodate a particularly vulnerable section of the population, the threat to retirement homes had not been evaluated by the health authorities in risk simulations. As elsewhere, official reports had long referenced their vulnerability to infectious diseases, without any corresponding measures taken to stockpile personal protective equipment (PPE) or establish emergency procedures in collaboration with hospitals.

The Times wrote that “only about a third of European nursing homes had infectious disease teams before the Covid-19 pandemic. Most lacked in-house doctors and many had no arrangements with outside physicians to coordinate care.”

Doctors without Borders (MSF), which typically intervenes in historically oppressed countries during health emergencies, and which normally only intervenes in western Europe to aid the most vulnerable segments of the population such as refugees, was obliged to refocus its Belgian interventions to support retirement homes during the pandemic.

Its intervention in the third week of March lasted three months, covering 135 retirement homes. It presented a report to the authorities: “The observations made are catastrophic. … First of all a damning figure: 64 percent of deaths due to Covid-19 in Belgium are from care homes. That is 6,200 people.” In 2015, there were 130,000 people in Belgian retirement homes.

MSF noted in its report that 4,900 people “died in these establishments, sometimes in atrocious conditions.” The attitude of the authorities forced care homes “to assume the functions of hospitals without any means to do so.” The results were terrible, transforming retirement homes into hospices.

In the absence of reliable medical staff working in partnership with retirement homes, the line of contact that connected retirement homes to family doctors was often broken. Even in the structural composition, “The number of nursing and technical staff, already precarious before the crisis due to general underfunding of the sector” was insufficient. “These factors took their toll on the capacity of retirement homes to handle the epidemic wave in their communities.”

According to MSF, hospital admission refusals occurred at 30 percent of retirement homes where it had assisted.

According to the Times, “During the first weeks of the crisis, nearly two thirds of deaths among retirement home residents occurred in hospital. But as the crisis worsened and the directives of geriatric services started to circulate, this number fell. … Hospitals still had available space. Even at the height of the pandemic, 1,100 out of 2,400 intensive care beds in the country were available, according to Niel Hens, government advisor and professor at Anvers University.”

In the interviews conducted by the Times, hospital directors denied any error or fault, responding with insulting arguments, declaring that nursing-home staff were seeking treatment for terminal patients who only needed to be comforted in the face of death.

Belgium’s National Health Minister, Maggie De Block, refused to be interviewed and did not reply to the Times’s written questions.

The MSF staff were struck by the frequent signs of psychological trauma among personnel; they often gave priority to psychological help at the start of interventions in retirement homes. They report that the conditions were similar to those of war and disaster zones.

The lack of preparation and means of handling the crisis in retirement homes reveals the openly criminal character of official policy towards workers and retirees in Belgium and across Europe. The ruling class has submitted the health care system to decades of permanant financial austerity, particularly targeting the elderly, those whose labour power can no longer be exploited by the capitalist class. The ruling class proceeds with an open contempt for human life.

SUNY Oneonta orders thousands of students to return home after more than 500 test positive for COVID-19

Alex Findijs

On Thursday, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta suspended all on-campus activities after a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 on campus. In a drastic reversal of policy by the university, all classes have been transitioned to online learning for the duration of the semester.

The decision to close the campus by SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras comes just 11 days after the start of classes. As of Thursday night, a staggering 507 people had tested positive for COVID-19, nearly 17 percent of the student body on campus.

Against the direct advice of Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the university has ordered all students living on campus to leave the dorms by Monday and return to their homes. In other words, thousands of students, some of whom may be carrying the virus, will be traveling throughout the county back to their homes, possibly taking the virus with them.

On Monday, Dr. Fauci told NBC’s “Today” show that the absolute worst thing colleges can do during coronavirus outbreaks is to send students home where they may unknowingly spread the virus to new areas of the country.

It should be said in no uncertain terms that the decision by the administration to reopen for in-person learning, under conditions in which the pandemic continues to rage unabated, was reckless and criminal.

The full extent of the consequences caused by this decision is still to be determined.

On top of the fact that hundreds of students have already become ill, it is quite likely that the reopening of SUNY has led to the spread of the virus to the surrounding communities. Now, as thousands of students begin to pack their bags and travel home, there is no doubt that some students will unknowingly be bringing the virus home with them, leading to an increase in outbreaks throughout the country.

The case of SUNY Oneonta is just one example—though a particularly sharp one—of just how disastrous the policy of reopening of schools is to the lives of students, parents, and workers.

Prior to the outbreak, Ostego County had the lowest infection rate in the state. Now it has seen a jump from at most two positive cases per day to more than twenty. The infection rate in the county has reached 4.5 percent of those tested each day, several times greater than the 0.5 percent positivity rate of August 27.

The explosion of cases at SUNY Oneonta should stand as a sharp warning to colleges and public schools across the country which are preparing to reopen for in-person learning in the coming weeks. It is not possible to reopen schools safely while the pandemic continues to spread across the country. To do so will only lead to a resurgence of the contagion and more death.

Naturally, the SUNY system and the Democratic Party-controlled state government have refused to take responsibility for the catastrophe they created.

SUNY Oneonta President Barbara Jean Morris told the Otsego County Board of Representatives on Wednesday in a remarkable state that: “I don't think our plan actually did fall short.” She went on to say that the high viral load among students meant that “all plans would have broken down.”

What a sordid excuse! Well before the opening of SUNY, there existed an immense body of scientific research showing the centrality of keeping schools closed as part of any plan to contain the pandemic. There was and continues to be scientific data showing a drastic surge of infections among small children and adolescents throughout the course of the pandemic. Just a brief collection includes the following:

• A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA ) in late July concluded that the widespread closure of schools in mid-March saved at least 40,600 lives over a 16-day period and resulted in an estimated 1.37 million fewer infections over a 26-day period in the spring. Those states that closed earliest saw the largest relative reductions in infections and deaths.

• Another JAMA study released around the same time found that babies and young children infected with COVID-19 could carry high viral loads in their throats and airways—up to 100 times the amount of adults.

• The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association released a report on August 3 which documented an extensive compilation of data from states on child COVID-19 cases. It found that while children represented only 8.8 percent of all cases in states reporting cases by age, over 338,982 had tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

• The same report noted that the overall rate for COVID-19 among children is 447 cases per 100,000 in the population. Moreover, 97,078 new child cases were reported from July 16 to July 30, a 40 percent increase from the previous period.

The fact of the matter is that the disaster at SUNY, like many others, was entirely predictable and preventable. Hundreds of schools and universities across the country opened for in-person learning knowing full well the dangers the policy posed to students, teachers, and faculty. They did so under direct orders from the Trump administration and with the full support of the Democratic Party.

This reality is underscored by the fact that SUNY regulations, in coordination with the Democratic state government, do not require any schools to conduct mandatory testing. Of the 64 schools in the SUNY system, only three required coronavirus testing before or upon arrival. SUNY Oneonta only requested that students self-isolate for at least seven days before returning to campus.

This policy is not an oversight or simply poor planning. Cuomo has referred to college students and staff as the “canary in the coal mine.” Now he is utilizing the outbreak in Oneonta to temper the state for the horrors that are about to unfold in public schools.

Cuomo stated during a press conference that “what we're seeing in colleges I think is going to be replicated in K-12.” Referring to the plans of public schools for reopening, he elaborated that “if they are not followed, you will see students get infected, you will see the transmission rate go up, you will see schools close. Some of that is inevitable.”

In other words, Cuomo expects large outbreaks to occur at schools and he accepts this fate as an inevitable outcome. The infections and deaths of thousands of people are of no consequence to the Democratic Governor of New York.

The claim that thousands of people must become infected and potentially die is an outrageous lie. The working class must not accept any amount of infection or any number of deaths as inevitable. The working class and youth are not test subjects or human sacrifices for the profits of capitalists.

Workers and youth must be warned: there exists no constituency within the ruling class that will fight in the interests of workers’ lives and livelihoods.

Students, educators, and school staff must organize together, independently of both big business parties and the corporate-controlled unions to oppose the deadly reopening of schools. The resources are available to provide all educators and students with high-quality technology and educational material for distance learning.

Opposition to school reopenings mounts across Florida as spread of COVID-19 deepens

Matthew Taylor

Opposition to the forced reopening of schools across Florida is building each day, as this policy has already produced over 1,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at dozens of schools. In just the first three days after reopening schools Monday, Hillsborough County School District, which encompasses Tampa, Florida, reported 28 cases involving 23 schools and the district office, bringing the total cases in Hillsborough to 37,821.

More broadly, the spread of COVID-19 continues to deepen throughout the state, with 637,013 confirmed cases and over 11,800 deaths as of September 4. Both figures likely represent only a fraction of the total as a lack of testing and an official misinformation campaign on the part of the right-wing Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the Trump administration have deliberately concealed the true spread of the disease.

On Friday, students in Leon County, home to the state capitol Tallahassee, protested the deadly conditions under which they are being forced to learn.

Announcing their walkout on Facebook, the group of students stated: “During the summer Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released a statewide executive mandate overriding local rule and forcing Florida school boards to open brick and mortar schools in August despite local COVID testing positivity rates and despite Florida remaining one of the top three states for community spread of the coronavirus in the nation.”

The statement added, “Students, teachers, and parents across the state spoke out all summer. Florida Education Association filed a lawsuit that has constantly been tripped up by judges that are playing politics with people's lives.”

The demonstration took place shortly after the Leon County School district confirmed that seven cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed within the first week of reopening schools.

Maddelina Kaji, a senior at Leon High School digitally, told local news station WCTV: “This means so much to me because my grandfather died in April because of coronavirus. So, since then, trying to prevent the spread has been my number one priority and really how I’ve been dealing with that trauma. So that’s why I’m here today. I don’t want anyone else to ever experience what I experienced.”

Florida educators have continued to organize opposition to reopening. In Jacksonville on Tuesday, the Duval County school board was addressed by multiple teachers throughout the district including Bradley Fisher, a member of the newly formed Duval County Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee.

Fisher told the assembled board members, “I think it’s appropriate tonight that the board meeting started with a discussion of how many students are enrolled and how that will affect money. Because clearly that is at the heart of the decision to reopen these schools so unsafely. Dollars and cents before the lives of our children.”

Fisher was referring to a figure presented in Duval County Superintendent Dr. Dianne Green’s opening report. She stated that student enrollment in the county, currently at 108,041, was off by 3,416 students. If those students are not enrolled in classes by mid-October, the district stands to lose $23,376,464 in state funding.

Fisher went on to state the demands issued by the safety committee. He was followed by more local educators who criticized the safety measures in place as grossly inadequate to prevent the spread of the virus, including a science teacher who described the ineffectiveness of desk shields and other token items to contain the aerosolized virus.

The teachers were followed by three local doctors who strongly criticized the reopening of schools and called for any further decisions on reopening schools to be guided by genuinely scientific data.

The DeSantis administration has remained intransigent in fighting efforts by educators and students to reverse the reopening of schools. It was reported this week that the governor’s office will spend at least half a million dollars to pay private attorneys to represent the state in its court battle against the Florida Education Association (FEA) and the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, who filed a lawsuit last month challenging Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s July 6 order requiring all schools to be open five days a week for in-person classes at the beginning of the school year. If districts do not comply with the Commissioner’s order, they face the elimination of state funding.

In hearings last week, a Leon County judged sided with the unions and issued a preliminary injunction against the commissioner’s order. However, that order was later blocked by the state court of appeals, which placed a stay on the injunction. In rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim that Corcoran’s order violated the Florida state constitution’s guarantee of safe and secure public schools, the appellate court made the outlandish claim that “Nothing in the emergency order requires any teacher or student to return for in-person instruction at a brick and mortar school.”

DeSantis has also moved to reduce testing in Florida. Earlier this week, DeSantis eliminated the state’s contract with Quest Diagnostics to conduct COVID-19 testing after the company had delayed reporting the results of 75,000 tests to the Florida Department of Health due to a technical error.

Though the individuals who had taken the tests were informed of their results in a timely manner, DeSantis cited the negative impact the newly released figures would have on the state’s COVID-19 Dashboard, which had initially reported 3,773 new cases last Monday, with a 5.9 percent test positivity rate. When the new data is included, the number of new cases more than doubled to 7,643, with a 6.8 percent positivity rate.

Before the contract with Quest was eliminated, the company had conducted approximately 1.4 million tests since the start of the pandemic, roughly 30 percent of the total in Florida. DeSantis is evidently seeking to exploit the company’s recent failure to promptly report test results in order to dramatically reduce overall testing in Florida and facilitate the further reopening of the economy.

The governor’s contempt for the lives of those he represents was displayed earlier this week, when he met with representatives of bars and nightclubs and pledged to lift the ban on their operations soon. DeSantis also lifted the state’s ban on personal visits to nursing homes, a move that will further imperil the state’s most vulnerable population. Approximately 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Florida have occurred among residents 65 or older.

In order to fight back against the thoroughly reactionary DeSantis administration, which is dutifully implementing the policies demanded by Trump and the entire ruling class, the working class must assert its own independent interests by organizing the vast opposition that exists throughout the state and country. The urgent task is to unite across district and state lines through the formation of a network of independent, rank-and-file safety committees.

No confidence can be placed in the FEA and its parent organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which are intimately tied to the Democratic Party and fully support the capitalist system that is responsible for mass deaths and suffering from the pandemic. The legal maneuvers of the FEA—which even if successful would still allow districts to reopen at their discretion—are meant to cover up the fact that they refuse to mobilize their 137,000 members to halt the homicidal drive to reopen schools across Florida.

There is growing sentiment for a broad-based struggle to halt the opening of schools, stop the spread of the pandemic, and save lives. What is required is the building of a conscious leadership to orient educators, parents and students to the broader working class, and to coordinate this struggle on a national and global scale.

NSA surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden ruled illegal by US Ninth Circuit

Kevin Reed

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on Wednesday that ruled illegal the US government surveillance program that collected metadata from every international and domestic phone call and was exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The decision said that the National Security Agency’s bulk phone record collection program “may have violated the Fourth Amendment and did violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (‘FISA’) when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans, including at least one of the defendants.”

Phone call metadata is the information about the calls such as the phone numbers and duration of a call, but not the content of the conversations themselves.

Although the ruling said the surveillance program was against the law, the Ninth Circuit upheld the conviction of four Somali immigrants—who were also US citizens—of providing financial assistance to a “foreign terrorist group.” The ruling states that “suppression is not warranted on the facts of this case” and “we affirm the convictions in all respects” because, “the metadata collection, even if unconstitutional, did not taint the evidence introduced by the government at trial.”

The case against the four Somali men—Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud, and Issa Doreh, of San Diego—began in October 2010 and was based, in part, on recorded phone calls of Moalin that took place in 2007 and 2008. The men were convicted by a jury on February 22, 2013 of giving $10,600 to al-Shabaab, which was identified by the US government as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008.

Significantly, the Ninth Circuit ruling reviews the impact of the Snowden revelations on the convictions of the four men. It states, “Months after the trial, in June 2013, former National Security Agency (‘NSA’) contractor Edward Snowden made public the existence of NSA data collection programs. One such program, conducted under FISA Subchapter IV, involved the bulk collection of phone records, known as telephony metadata, from telecommunications providers.”

The ruling explains that public officials, who were defending the NSA phone call surveillance program in the face of public outrage over the Snowden exposures, boasted about how that “the program had played a role in the government’s investigation” of Moalin. Specifically, then-FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA program had “provided us a telephone number only in San Diego that had indirect contact with an extremist outside the United States.”

This information then led to the defendants’ filing a motion for a new trial on September 5, 2013, arguing that Moalin’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures had been violated. The motion for a new trial also argued that “the government had failed to provide notice of the metadata collection or of any surveillance of Moalin it had conducted under the FISA Amendments Act.”

The lower court denied the motion on November 14, 2013 on the grounds that the “public disclosure of the NSA program adds no new facts to alter the court’s FISA. .. rulings.” The court also ruled that the telephony metadata program did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The defendants appealed this decision to the Ninth Circuit on October 29, 2015.

The bulk phone record collection program was but one of the mass electronic surveillance operations of the NSA and CIA exposed by Edward Snowden. The whistleblower smuggled an estimated 1.7 million documents out of a clandestine NSA facility in Honolulu, Hawaii on micro secure digital cards and shared portions of them with news outlets.

Snowden’s exposures proved that the US government, in cooperation with the so-called Five Eyes partners (UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada), had built a global electronic spying apparatus. The documents showed that this apparatus was not only gathering phone metadata but had electronic surveillance tools that were capturing in real time the email, phone call, text messaging and online browsing activity of anyone, anywhere in the world.

Responding to the court’s opinion, Edward Snowden tweeted, “Seven years ago, as the news declared, I was being charged as a criminal for speaking the truth, I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them. And yet that day has arrived.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of several organizations that supported the appeal, welcomed the court’s ruling. Patrick Toomey, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said, “The ruling makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution. The decision also recognizes that when the government seeks to prosecute a person, it must give notice of the secret surveillance it used to gather its evidence. This protection is a vital one given the proliferation of novel spying tools the government uses today.”

The ruling by the Ninth Circuit regarding the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata—a program the government claims as of 2015 is no longer in use, but which is but the “tip of the iceberg” of unconstitutional surveillance activities of US intelligence—raises many more questions than it answers. While the Ninth Circuit opinion most definitely does not indicate that the US courts are now going on the offensive against the undemocratic practices of the surveillance state, the decision does point to ongoing divisions within the ruling establishment over US intelligence matters.

It should be pointed out as an important political fact that none of the US courts involved in the case of Moalin and his associates questioned the role of US imperialism in Somalia. While all of the courts supported the claims that Somali defendants were supporting “terrorism,” the Ninth Circuit Court ruling states, “In March 2008, the United States designated al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization. A key figure in al-Shabaab, Aden Hashi Ayrow, was killed in a U.S. missile strike on May 1, 2008.”

In any case, during his podcast on Thursday, right-wing Representative Matt Gaetz (Republican from Florida) called for President Trump to pardon Snowden, saying, “As of today, the case has never been stronger, that Edward Snowden deserves a pardon from President Trump,” adding, “If it were not for Snowden, we might not know today that our own government was engaged in an activity that now a federal appellate court has deemed illegal.”

Gaetz also said that pardoning Snowden would be a good political move for Trump because Libertarians in key swing states would support the president if he did so.

At the same time, those sections of the US political establishment with close ties to US intelligence, including Attorney General William Barr who said he was “vehemently opposed” to a pardon for Snowden, consider the whistleblower a “traitor” who should be brought back to the US and executed.

Both Democrats and Republicans, as well as the corporate media, ferociously attacked the idea floated by President Trump that he was taking “a good look at” pardoning Snowden. For example, a right-wing publication founded by Bill Kristol called TheBulwark.com, wrote on August 20, “The prospect of a presidential pardon for Snowden, whose revelations about the National Security Agency’s foreign and domestic surveillance techniques were disclosed at his personal whim rather than through democratic audit, is a befitting offering from a chief executive whose flagrant criminality and contempt for the democratic process will be his most enduring legacy.”

Washington slaps sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor

Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new round of sanctions Wednesday, personally targeting the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, for daring to proceed with an investigation into war crimes committed by US military forces and intelligence agents in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the “war on terror.”

The sanctions, which are the sort typically reserved for alleged terrorists or drug traffickers, are also being imposed against Phakiso Mochochoko, head of the ICC’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division and a senior aide to the prosecutor.

Judges of the International Criminal Court

After years of blocking the prosecution, on the grounds that the pursuit of the case would be fruitless because of the refusal of Washington and its puppet regime in Kabul to cooperate, an ICC panel of judges ruled in March that Bensouda could proceed with the probe.

The Trump administration responded in June with an executive order imposing punitive sanctions, including freezing assets and imposing travel restrictions, not only against Bensouda and other ICC officials, but their family members as well.

Pompeo gave no reason for this latest escalation of the attacks on the court, outside of the charge that “they continue to target Americans.”

The US secretary of state, who acts as Washington’s lead bully boy in all such threats against international institutions and US rivals, warned that “Individuals and entities that continue to materially support those individuals risk exposure to sanctions as well.” This threat would potentially penalize anyone turning to the ICC over war crimes and human rights abuses, or anyone supporting prosecution of such crimes, in any country in the world.

Washington has treated the ICC with unconcealed hostility since its founding in 2002. Not only refusing to recognize the court’s jurisdiction, it directly threatened it with retaliation against any attempt to hold US officials or personnel accountable for the criminal acts of militarism that have killed and maimed millions across the Middle East over the past three decades.

With overwhelming bipartisan support, Congress passed legislation in 2002 cynically referred to in Washington circles as the “Hague invasion act,” named for the Dutch city where the ICC is headquartered. It authorized the use of military force to free any US citizen or citizen of a US-allied country held by the court for trial.

In a Fox News interview Wednesday night, Pompeo described the ICC as “a group of political hacks in The Hague, a place that is threatening our kids who served in Afghanistan, our young men and women who served and fought there.” He said that Washington would not allow “a rogue court with lawyers that are frankly corrupt and political” to “prosecute Americans who engaged in America’s fight for freedom in Afghanistan.”

This “fight for freedom in Afghanistan” has directly claimed the lives of at least 175,000 Afghans, while leading to many more indirect deaths, leaving many more maimed and displacing millions. The two-decade-long dirty colonial-style war has seen indiscriminate US bombings, death squad night raids and the rampant brutality exposed in the operations of the so-called Kill Team operating in the US Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade, systematically murdering civilians and mutilating their bodies, taking fingers and parts of their skulls as “trophies.”

Among the charges that are being investigated by the ICC prosecutors relating to this “fight for freedom” are those based on evidence that US personnel “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” against detainees in Afghanistan.

The court has ruled that the nexus of this evidence allows the prosecutor to pursue similar charges related to US “black sites” where detainees were tortured and killed, including in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. It could also extend to the infamous US torture center in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, where US military torturers were reassigned after operating in Afghanistan.

While the US does not recognize the court, Afghanistan formally did so, giving the ICC jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed on its soil, including by citizens of other countries.

For all of Pompeo’s bluster about protecting “our kids,” Washington’s real concern is that the ICC investigation will implicate officials at the highest levels of government, given the involvement of the White House, the Justice Department and the Defense Department in authorizing US war crimes in Afghanistan under the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. No one has ever been held accountable for these crimes.

The US puppet regime in Afghanistan has also sought to block the ICC prosecution, claiming that it is conducting its own investigations of war crimes. This is absurd on its face as it has granted a blanket amnesty to its own war criminals and signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the US government fore-swearing any prosecution of crimes committed by US occupation forces. Washington has demanded similar guarantees from governments all over the world where US troops are deployed.

The latest round of sanctions against the ICC prosecutor and her aide drew a sharp rebuke from the Court, which called the action “unprecedented.” In a statement, the ICC said that they represented “serious attacks” on the rule of law and “another attempt to interfere with the Court’s judicial and prosecutorial independence and crucial work to address grave crimes of concern to the international community.”

The European Union also condemned the action as an attempt “to undermine the international system of criminal justice by hindering the work of its core institutions.” Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, told the media, “We are standing by the ICC and we are not happy to see steps which are going against the activities of the ICC.”

Even Washington’s closest European ally, the British government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, felt compelled to issue a tepid criticism, with a spokesman saying, “The UK regrets the measures taken by the US against ICC employees. These officials must be able to carry out their work independently and impartially, without fear of sanction.” London itself could face charges before the ICC for war crimes committed by its forces in Iraq.

Until now, the International Criminal Court has confined its investigations largely to Africa, which accounts for virtually all of those indicted or arrested by the court since its founding nearly two decades ago.

That the US now confronts the possibility of being hauled before the dock has infuriated not only the Trump administration, but the American ruling establishment as a whole. Washington has repeatedly made clear that its militarist aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere will not be bound by the Geneva Conventions or any other form of international law against war crimes.

The vicious response to the ICC probe is an expression of Washington’s escalating pursuit of its predatory aims by means of unilateral military force—including against its so-called “great power” rivals. The deepening crisis of US capitalism has only made it more reliant on war crimes to defend its interests against threats both at home and abroad.

Germany’s trade unions and municipalities prepare to slash wages of public service workers

Peter Schwarz

Not long ago, politicians from all of Germany’s main political parties were gushing in their praise for nurses, teachers, bus drivers, sanitation workers and other public service employees, who have carried out vital social services during the Corona pandemic under massive stress and enormous dangers, while receiving miserable wages. At the end of March, the German parliament (Bundestag) even gave a standing ovation to these workers at the suggestion of its president, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Five months later, the same parties are in the process of fleecing public sector employees once again, and are being actively supported by the main public service union, Verdi.

Warning strike in Darmstadt during Verdi’s 2018 bargaining round

Contract bargaining for the 2.5 million municipal and federal employees began in Potsdam on September 1. As is the usual practice, the first meeting served to survey the terrain and generate a lot of empty noise. Two further rounds of negotiations are planned for September 19–20 and October 22–23.

Verdi’s demands, even if measured against the usual modest standards of the union, are minimal, and guarantee the further impoverishment of public workers. Verdi, which also negotiates on behalf of smaller unions, such as the teachers’ union GEW and the police union, is demanding a 4.8 percent pay hike, or at least €150 more per month, together with a reduction in working hours in the east of the country by one hour, to match the 39-hour week worked in the west.

This is significantly less than Verdi’s initial demand in the last round of contract bargaining two and a half years ago and, as then, the union has no intention of realising its demand.

In 2018, Verdi demanded 6 percent more pay for a period of 12 months and a minimum increase of €200. The union was responding to the explosive mood among public sector employees who, after years of wage stagnation, had carried the main burden of the multi-billion-euro bank bailout following the 2008 financial crisis and the government’s “black zero” (i.e., no new debts) policy. Along with low wages, which barely covered daily living costs (particularly in large cities with exploding rents), workers were struggling with dilapidated buildings and facilities and did large amounts of overtime due to a chronic shortage of personnel with all the attendant stress.

To diffuse anger, Verdi organised a series of toothless limited strikes and protests at the time, in which tens of thousands took part. The contract then signed by the union amounted to a slap in the face for all public sector workers.

On paper, the contract referred to 7.5 percent more pay—but this increase was distributed in several stages over a period of 30 months! Converted to an annual rate the increase barely covered inflation. The increase was also distributed very unevenly. Preference was given above all to well-paid specialists who can earn much more in the private sector. Lower wage groups, however, failed to obtain the €200 that Verdi had originally demanded as an immediate increase—even after the 30 months had passed.

The fact that Verdi is now entering contract negotiations with an even lower demand indicates that far more extensive attacks on public sector employees have already been worked out in backroom talks. As was the case after the 2008 financial crisis, public service workers are expected to reimburse the billions pumped into the major corporations and money markets by the German government and European Central Bank in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief negotiator for municipal employers left no doubt about this. “Actually, we should cut salaries in view of the difficult situation,” the mayor of Lüneburg, Ulrich Mägde (SPD), told the FAZ newspaper. He added he did not want to go so far, but declared that “the demands of the unions are completely exaggerated and there is nothing to distribute.” He also stated that a reduction of working hours in the east of the country from 40 to 39 hours was “unacceptable.”

Reinhard Sager, president of the municipal umbrella organisation, Deutscher Landkreistag, urged the unions to abandon their demands. It would be irresponsible, he said, to demand billions in times of tax shortfalls and crisis packages.

For its part, Verdi signaled its support. “We understand the environment,” said Christine Behle, who is responsible for public services on the union’s executive. “But we don’t want employees to be left behind either,” she added cautiously.

Verdi boss Frank Werneke made clear in Potsdam that the union was ruling out industrial action in the current round of contract talks. “I am not threatening with strikes” and “we do not want any escalation,” he assured, as long as “employers present a constructive offer at a very early stage.”

Verdi had gone so far as to propose delaying the contract negotiations by several months in exchange for a one-off payment, which would have further reduce the size of the pay increase. But municipal employers rejected the offer.

One year ago, Werneke a Social Democrat, replaced Green Party member Frank Bsirske as the head of Verdi. Under Bsirske’s leadership, Verdi had played a major role in imposing wage and job cuts in the public sector, the catastrophic consequences of which have become so apparent in the coronavirus crisis. More than any other bureaucrat, Bsirske embodies the transformation of unions from reformist workers organisations into company managers who suppress the class struggle and discipline workers. Werneke, who served as Bsirskes’ deputy for 17 years, is ensuring that this policy continues in a seamless fashion.

The public service contract bargaining comes as class antagonisms are intensifying enormously in Germany and around the world. By opening up schools without effective protective measures and boosting production, governments are putting countless lives at risk to ensure increased profits for the big corporations and banks. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake in the auto, engineering and supply industries, not to mention the mass loss of jobs in the country’s service and cultural sectors.

There is growing resistance among workers, teachers, parents and students to these inhumane policies. In their attempts to resist, however, those affected come up against a wall of resistance from all of the parties represented in the Bundestag as well as from the unions. They are all determined to defend the interests of the “economy,” i.e., the fortunes of the rich elites at the expense of the needs of the majority.

The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers in all sectors to build a network of action committees, independent of the unions, to prepare a general strike against the opening up of schools and the policies of the ruling class. The public service contract bargaining round should be used to advance this initiative. Verdi must not be allowed to once again stab public service workers in the back.