Australian university staff and students confront job cuts avalanche

Mike Head

Australian university managements last week announced thousands more redundancies, including forced retrenchments. This poses the urgent necessity for a unified national struggle by university workers and students against the escalating assault on jobs and basic conditions.

Three universities alone—Melbourne’s RMIT University, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Australian National University (ANU)—unveiled a total of nearly 2,900 job losses. That is on top of many thousands of jobs already eliminated by the public universities since March.

Across the country, as is happening globally, governments and university employers are demanding that staff and students pay the price for the disastrous response of the capitalist ruling elites to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now surged to 31 million infections and nearly 1 million deaths.

The initial wave of job cuts for 2020 has become an avalanche for 2021 and beyond. After years of multi-billion dollar funding cuts by one government after another, the pandemic is being exploited to accelerate the pro-business gutting and restructuring of universities.

Never has the need for an all-out fight against this offensive been so great.

But the greatest barrier to this struggle are the university trade unions, which are doing everything they can to prevent a nationwide strike and instead isolate their members at individual universities, while intensifying their partnerships with the managements to facilitate the cuts.

At university after university, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is pleading with vice-chancellors to work more closely with the union to devise means of implementing cutbacks, even as the vice-chancellors sign up to the Liberal-National government’s latest funding cuts and student fee hikes.

RMIT University intends to shed some 1,200 staff, rather than the 355 “voluntary” redundancies it confirmed last month. That is 10 percent of the workforce. Another 345 forced redundancies are proposed and 500 to 600 casual and fixed-term staff will have no work next year.

The NTEU has responded by urging its members to sign a petition to ask the vice-chancellor to “meet and talk with us directly with regard to how the university has been affected by the COVID 19 crisis.”

After asking the vice-chancellor to “provide a real commitment to open governance and financial transparency,” the petition concludes by laying out the readiness of the union to help implement whatever sacrifices are required to keep the university afloat.

“It is our commitment to each other that will see RMIT through this current crisis,” the petition pleads.

The line-up is similar at the ANU, which is planning 215 retrenchments on top of a reported 250 so-called voluntary redundancies. Hundreds of casual and fixed-term staff have also had their contracts ended.

In an email to NTEU members, the union’s Australian Capital Territory division secretary Cathy Day called on management “to be open and transparent about all possible financial options including borrowing, revenue raising and non-salary savings.”

This is in the same vein as the NTEU’s “national framework” offer to the vice-chancellors at the beginning of the pandemic to impose wage cuts of up to 15 percent and still permit the destruction of 18,000 jobs. That offer had to be withdrawn in the face of hostility from university workers, but the NTEU has since only stepped up its efforts to strike similar agreements at individual universities.

UNSW’s declaration that over half of the almost 500 job cuts it flagged in July will be forced redundancies is likely to trigger deep opposition among university workers. So far, the union has made no public response.

Far from calling for unified action to fight the job loss tsunami, however, NTEU national president Alison Barnes merely told the media: “The NTEU cannot understand how the government can just sit idly watching thousands and thousands of jobs disappearing from higher education.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is not sitting idly by. Its “job ready graduates” plan dictates the further transformation of universities into vocational institutions serving the direct needs of big business, while doubling the fees for students in humanities and a range of other courses not considered relevant enough to those profit-driven requirements.

The government also has launched an anti-China witch-hunting inquiry into the universities, tying them into Washington’s military and economic confrontation with China.

The vice-chancellors to which the union is appealing for closer partnerships are now rushing to support the “jobs ready” plan, and urging senators to pass the bill, in the hope of securing a little extra cash in return.

Last week’s announcements take the job losses to a new level.

Already, Melbourne’s Monash University is pressing ahead with 277 “voluntary” redundancies, and Sydney’s Macquarie University has initiated a voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at jettisoning an unspecified number of positions. The University of Sydney had signalled job cuts of up to 30 percent in humanities.

Other full-time losses include up to 500 positions at the University of Technology Sydney, 450 at the University of Melbourne, up to 430 at La Trobe University, 300 at Deakin University, 200 at the University of New England and 100-plus at Charles Sturt University.

More than 200 jobs are to be eliminated at Western Sydney University, up to 200 at Perth’s Murdoch University and “hundreds” at Perth’s Curtin University. At each institution, this follows other cost-cutting attacks such as pay and hiring freezes and higher workload allocations.

Various pseudo-left groups in the NTEU are assisting the union to enforce the cuts. At north Queensland’s James Cook University, the union is formally opposing the deferral of a 2 percent salary increase due this month. That is because the NTEU is asking the management to consult with it to find other means of extracting “sacrifices” from its members.

Speaking to the media, the union’s JCU branch president, Jonathan Strauss, a member of the pseudo-left Socialist Alliance, made this explicit. “Staff are willing to make sacrifices,” he said, “but they need to know that what is being asked of them is necessary and proportional. James Cook simply hasn’t been as badly affected by the loss of international students as CQU or some of the big metropolitan universities.”

This sums up the role of the union and its pseudo-left accessories in dividing workers and students at each university from one another. They are imposing the market-driven program of the supposed “education revolution” introduced by the last Greens-backed Labor government, which compels the public universities to compete with each other for financial survival.

At the same time, all the pseudo-left organisations, such as the Socialist Alternative’s NTEU Fightback, are urging university workers to join and “rebuild” the NTEU. Their perspective is to become the leaders of the NTEU itself, just like their now increasingly discredited predecessors, such as Barnes, who was once a member of the International Socialist Organisation, a forerunner of Socialist Alternative.

In order to reverse this historic assault, university workers and students have to break out of the political and industrial straitjacket of the NTEU and its pseudo-left accomplices. They need to form democratically elected rank-and-file committees of university workers and students, completely independent of the unions, to prosecute a unified industrial and political struggle against all the union-enforced cuts.

That means rejecting the dictates of the capitalist profit system and turning to a socialist perspective based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy.

Lufthansa prepares to double job cuts to nearly 40,000

Gustav Kemper

Lufthansa is considering reducing its current workforce by about 30 percent—or around 40,000 jobs. This is nearly twice as many as the 22,000 job cuts the German airline announced at the end of June. The sale of parts of the company is also imminent, including the catering operation LSG-Sky Chefs and Lufthansa Technik.

According to a report in Manager-Magazin, the increase in job cuts was discussed at a closed meeting of the Lufthansa board held at the holiday home of Group CEO Carsten Spohr in Olbia, Sardinia.

During an internal online question and answer session Tuesday, Spohr announced that 28,000 jobs would be cut. Although the airline has received nine billion euros in state aid, the planned reduction of the group’s fleet by 100 aircraft together with their respective crews is not sufficient, he said. A decision is to be taken next week after a meeting of the supervisory board, where shareholders sit alongside union officials.

The different unions at the airline have collaborated closely with the board over the past months, seeking to outdo each other with savings proposals, including agreeing to massive wage cuts, job cuts, part-time contracts for older employees and further reductions. Union officials sought to justify their actions by claiming the concessions would “save” jobs. However, the concessions only encouraged Spohr to tighten the screws further.

In June, the cabin crew union, UFO, collaborated with the Lufthansa board on a plan to cut a “surplus of 26,000 jobs.” On Deutschlandfunk radio, UFO executive Daniel Flohr declared that a job cut of that magnitude was not a surprise and was based on “comprehensible calculations.” Lufthansa had been presented with proposals for savings “on a silver platter,” by the union, Flohr said, and in return, the union had received a promise to “avoid compulsory redundancies.”

UFO accepted wage concessions amounting to more than half a billion euros and allegedly received an assurance of four years’ protection against dismissals in return. Now the necessary “renegotiations” are already being discussed, and an industry news service, aero.de, reports that the contract can be terminated unilaterally in the case of poor business performance.

Meanwhile, UFO managing director Nicoley Baublies complained that there have been no more talks on the details of the transitional arrangements and severance pay since the contract was signed because the employer had “gone into hiding.” At the LH subsidiaries Germanwings and SunExpress Germany, 1,500 flight attendants are now facing dismissal.

The Verdi trade union, with 35,000 ground worker members at the airline—has offered concessions worth 600 million euros. This was too little, said Lufthansa, which broke off talks saying the concessions represented only an 8 percent reduction in personnel costs, when a 20 percent cut was needed.

After the negotiations broke down, Lufthansa terminated 80 agreements on part-time work for older employees at the Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Nuremberg and Stuttgart sites. Mira Neumaier, who is conducting the negotiations for Verdi, described the terminations as “morally subterranean.”

The pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit offered a 45 percent cut in salaries, which, with some 5,000 pilots, amounts to savings of €350 million.

The concessions made by the unions have also encouraged Lufthansa to escalate its attacks on the working conditions of flight crews.

The company is setting up a new business unit called “Ocean” to compete in long-haul flights to tourist destinations because the number of passengers in the “quality leisure segment” is growing faster than those of business flights due to the pandemic. Lufthansa is in the process of securing an Air Operator Certificate (AOC) for the new unit, which will not operate under its own brand and will compete with the established holiday airlines Condor and Tui.

Ocean is scheduled to start its first flights from Munich and Frankfurt in spring 2021. In line with the Swiss subsidiary Edelweiss, which belongs to the Lufthansa group, employees will be paid far below the level of the Lufthansa collective agreement. Also, the employment contracts will be fixed term.

Until these new crews are recruited, flights will be operated by staff of the SunExpress and Cityline subsidiaries. After that, crews “will then be able to reapply on their own routes at significantly worse conditions and may also only hope for a temporary job,” Markus Wahl, president of the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), said.

While the unions are collaborating closely with the executive board on job and wage cuts, splitting the workforce into temporary and permanent workers, normal and low-paid workers, and older and younger workers, there is growing anger and a willingness to fight among flight crews. Many employees are looking on social media for a perspective, where discussions are developing.

Aviation workers must break with the bankrupt unions and build independent action committees that unite workers across borders to fight to defend jobs and wages. The crisis in the aviation industry cannot be solved on a capitalist basis. It requires a socialist perspective. The corporations must be expropriated and transformed into democratically controlled public bodies that serve the needs of society, not profit.

UK unions use “consultative” strike ballots to suppress class struggle

Barry Mason & Robert Stevens

The “consultative” or indicative ballot is becoming the trade union bureaucracy’s weapon of choice in avoiding strikes and maintaining their role as partners with the employers.

Legally, the bureaucracy can hold such ballots at any time under their own rules. Most importantly, the unions are required by law to hold a further legal ballot if they wish to proceed with any industrial action. The consultative ballot never implies action being taken, even if a massive vote in favour is returned.

The “Industrial Action Handbook” of the largest public sector union, Unison, states that in relation to “lawful industrial action… when all your preparations have been completed to ensure we have an accurate ballot register, it will normally take a minimum of 6 weeks from the date upon which we give notice of the ballot to the employer to the first possible day of action.”

It then stresses, “Remember also that no actual industrial action can be authorised or take place on the basis of a consultative ballot.”

Consultative ballots have been used by the unions for several decades, but as resistance and anger among workers mounts during the pandemic—after a decade of relentless and unprecedented attacks on living standards—their use by the bureaucracy is becoming ever more frequent and the norm.

As it was working to sell out 50,000 lecturers and other university staff during a national strike over pension at 64 institutions, the University College Union wrote in an internal document, in March 2018, “The current practice in UCU is that, where possible, branches are asked to run a consultative ballot prior to a formal ballot and that this forms part of the evidence the nationally-elected officers consider when they consider whether to approve the ballot or not.”

Centrica, the owner of UK energy supplier, British Gas, posted a £1 billion loss in 2019. To overcome its financial difficulties the company plans a massive restructuring, cutting 5,000 out of its 20,000 workforce. It also plans to simplify the range of work contracts across the industry. Centrica has announced it would be prepared to use a section 188 notice if unable to negotiate the changes it wants. Under a section 188 notice the company can sack and reinstate its employees on different terms and conditions.

The GMB union, which has 10,000 members working for British Gas, duly organised a consultative ballot. The result was announced on August 19. On a turnout of two thirds, British Gas and P H Jones employees (a heating installation subsidiary of British Gas) voted 95 percent in favour of industrial action.

The GMB notice of the ballot result then called on the Centrica Board to “wake up and smell the gas,” adding, “British Gas was an historically proud British institution—but Centrica’s beleaguered management are betraying a once great brand—and their entire workforce.”

Noting concessions already made and seeking to get the company to negotiate, GMB National Secretary Justin Bowden pleaded, “GMB members have spoken loud and clear in delivering their verdict, now it’s time for the company to listen and get real.”

On September 11, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) announced the result of a consultative ballot of specialist replacement planning engineers (RPE’s) working for Openreach, an arm of British Telecom (BT). Openreach is responsible for maintaining the cabinets, cables, ducts and exchanges, which make up the network of phone and broadband connections throughout the UK. The CWU members voted by a 90 percent majority on a more than 90 percent turnout to be “willing to take part in official industrial action consisting of a strike.”

On July 15, Openreach unilaterally declared its intention to get rid of the role of RPE—and instead “promote” them to a level E management role. This would mean a reduction in leave, sick pay, an increase in the working week by a minimum of 1.5 hours and no entitlement to remain in the defined benefits pension scheme. They would also lose their right to be represented by the CWU. They were given 28 days to sign up to the changed role.

After only a few RPEs had signed up to the new role, Openreach decided not to push acceptance of the management role and allowed them to remain on their previous grade but insisted the new job description should apply. A CWU press release ends, “I would hope that by now Openreach senior management will be aware of the expressions of dismay, helplessness and even despair made by so many of our members in their letters to line managers—and no decent employer can afford to ignore this type of painfully honest feedback—nor the anger that is reflected in this ballot result.

“The company must listen to what its repayment planners are saying, get back round the table and resolve this matter—or be under no illusions that the whole of the CWU will be behind our members to help deliver the right outcome.”

Rank-and-file members of the union would without a doubt support their co-workers. But the CWU’s record demonstrates that the union leadership will “be behind” management. In June, responding to BT’s plans to cut the number of workplace sites by 90 percent on top of previously announced job cuts of 13,000, the WSWS explained “the main concern of the CWU is to prove to BT it can be continue to be relied on to help smoothly implement the upcoming attacks.”

The WSWS noted a CWU statement which declared, “Calling on management to stop pouring petrol on a fire that threatens to burn out of control if more compulsory redundancy notices are served in the coming weeks, [CWU deputy general secretary] Andy [Kerr] concludes: ‘This is not a fight that the CWU has brought on—in fact we’ve done everything we possibly can to avert it by identifying practical solutions that can and do exist’.”

In its plea to management to deepen collaboration, the CWU bureaucrats boasted that their previous partnership had seen no significant industrial action at BT in response to job cuts and attacks on conditions over a 30-year period.

In March this year, the CWU shelved a near 95 percent majority vote for strike action by over 100,000 postal workers, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

In August, the UK’s largest union, Unite, held two consultative ballots of London bus workers at Arriva and Metroline garages. Workers, angered as the COVID-19 crisis has taken the lives of 33 bus workers, voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action in the consultative ballots. Some depots voted unanimously to strike. All these votes are being sat on by the union bureaucracy, who intend to do nothing.

The latest use of a consultative ballot to stifle the class struggle is in the dispute of around 500 bus drivers in Manchester with the Go North West company. The company is seeking to fire the entire the workforce and reemploy them on inferior conditions. The ballot result showed 94 percent in favour of industrial action. Unite opposed industrial action, and instead has organised an “international campaign” based on appealing to “stakeholders, partners and associates” of the Go Ahead group (who own Go North West) to resolve the dispute. A Unite official stated that local management were causing “an unnecessary conflict” and pleaded for the firm to “get around the negotiating table.”

When the Johnson government began pushing its homicidal back to work campaign in May, it was the trade unions that played the key role in quashing opposition in the working class. The union bureaucracy worked as a de facto partner of the government and the employers. The working class must draw the necessary conclusions from this and decades of experience and break with these pro-capitalist, nationalist organisations and turn to the formation of rank-and-file, fighting organisations in every workplace.

UK firms awarded billions in NHS/government contracts amid failure of COVID-19 testing system

Julie Hyland

The pandemic is being used as a cover for privatisation of what remains of the National Health Service (NHS).

Tens of thousands are being exposed to COVID-19, forced into unsafe workplaces, schools and universities. The global pandemic has now claimed the lives of more than 963,000. According to heavily massaged official figures in the UK, 41,777 have died and 394,257 have been infected.

With cases rising exponentially, many are unable to get tested and the Conservative government has said it will begin restricting tests and require those attending Accident & Emergency departments to book in advance.

This abject failure is not primarily a result of incompetence, though this plays a role. Billions in public revenue is being outsourced to private corporations and their shareholders. This has further fragmented an already austerity-weakened NHS, preventing working people and their families from accessing vital health provision.

A National Health Service hospital (source: Wikipedia Commons)

The spotlight necessarily falls on Tory connections and profiteering, but this conspiracy stretches across the spectrum of official politics. It is politically buttressed by the Labour Party, capitalist media and the trade unions who are fully conversant with all that is taking place.

The plunder of public health assets and funds began immediately with the lockdown in March, when the government suspended regulations requiring it to advertise for new contracts over £100,000, using emergency measures.

The exact value and extent of the resulting contracts is unknown, with many Freedom of Information requests refused. What details have leaked out indicate that billions are being transferred to the private sector, including consultancy firms and hedge funds, while public health care provision is grinding to a halt.

By August approximately £56 million had been handed over to at least 16 consultancy firms, including Deloitte, McKinsey and PWC, many with links to Tory ministers and advisers.

According to OpenDemocracy, on March 30, one week after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown, “a Deloitte crisis cell was established in the Cabinet Office to deal with PPE [personal protective equipment] procurement ...”

Deloitte was the favoured beneficiary, but McKinsey consultants were awarded a £563,000 contract to “advise” on the scrapping of Public Health England and its replacement by a new National Institute for Health, effective from Friday. It is headed by Tory Baroness Dido Harding, a Tory peer and a former McKinsey consultant.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

NHS Nightingale under construction. Credit: MoD

Hundreds of front-line health staff―denied adequate protection―died in the first COVID-19 spike, and thousands in hospitals and care homes. This was despite the government awarding contracts of at least £15 billion for PPE. The Good Law Project has said that among the top awards were contracts to “companies specialising in pest control [Pestfix], a confectionery wholesaler [Clandeboye Agencies] and an opaque private fund [Ayanda] owned through a tax haven.”

More recently, Byline Times revealed that approximately £150 million worth of the masks supplied by Ayanda Capital “aren’t fit for use in the NHS” and “The other £100 million of masks, meanwhile, were reportedly still undergoing tests at the beginning of August.”

The site also reported that a £122 million contract for the supply of gowns was awarded to PPE Medpro Limited on June 25, less than two months after the firm was incorporated. Medpro’s founding directors, Anthony Page and Voirrey Coole, work in private trust and wealth management. “The Government has also shelled out £364 million on full-body ‘coveralls’—but has delivered just 432,000 of these items for use in health and social care services. This amounts to £840 per bodysuit.”

Testing has been almost entirely handed over to private sector operators, with contracts to develop and manage testing sites nationally handed to Deloitte, Serco, Boots, G4S, amongst others, with Amazon supplying logistics.

Of the 35 “data processor” bodies involved in NHS Track and Trace, just four are NHS organisations. Dr. David Wrigley, deputy chair of the British Medical Association, told the Huffington Post, “NHS Test and Trace—despite its name—is not an NHS service, it’s a largely outsourced programme that sees numerous private companies given billions of pounds to run testing sites, process samples and manage contact tracing call centres.”

The £800,000 contract for the queue-management system used on the COVID testing site is run by US-based ACF Technologies.

The public health network has also been largely bypassed for laboratory testing. In April, the green light was given to a Deloitte-run project for the first private sector Lighthouse labs, which include pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. Professor Alan McNally, of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at Birmingham University, who was involved in the first lab in Birmingham, said it was clear “infectious disease diagnostics were going down a privatised route.”

The government’s much vaunted “Nightingale Hospitals,” seven in total built in record time at the end of March, also provided a multimillion-pound boon for private companies. With KPMG as project manager, the main contracts were awarded to CFES, Integrated Health Projects, Interserve, Kier, BAM Construction and Tolent Construction. Despite costing at least £220 million, they were not fit for purpose, lacking intensive care provision. Just two admitted any patients and all were subsequently mothballed.

The cleaning contract for these hospitals was handed to the facilities management corporation ISS, whose chair is Labour Party peer, Lord Charles Allen of Kensington. ISS cleaners at Lewisham Hospital, London took strike action at the height of the first coronavirus peak because their meagre wages were not paid on time.

Also in March, the government requisitioned the capacity of most UK private hospitals, supposedly for the pandemic and essential surgery. In return, the government met the operating costs of private groups including BMI/Circle Healthcare, Spire Healthcare and Care UK at the cost of an estimated £125 million a week. Barely anyone was treated. From November, it is report that these private hospitals will be paid up to £10 billion over the next four years to “relieve waiting lists.” But the deal only delivers 700 extra doctors, as most private hospitals rely on NHS consultants.

The largest intended privatisation is Johnson’s recently announced £100 billion-plus expansion of the national coronavirus testing programme, “Operation Moonshot.” Deloitte has been awarded the contract to deliver more than half of the project, involving eight “workstreams.”

The programme has been widely ridiculed as being truly out of this world, and the government has already scaled back its boast of being able to test 10 million a day, to 4 million, while pushing back the target delivery date to February.

It is big business that is laughing all the way to the bank, as the cost of underperformance will be borne by working people. Private firms involved in the original test and trace farrago were protected against financial penalties for non-delivery by specific clauses written into their contracts.

Combustible insulation used on Grenfell Tower was sold at a heavy discount to building company

Charles Hixson

The Celotex RS5000 insulation—found by Phase 1 of the Grenfell Inquiry as “more likely than not” to have contributed to the spread of the 2017 inferno—was sold to construction company Harley Facades at a 47.5 percent discount.

The 660 sheets purchased for £45,804 represented the first Celotex product approved for use on buildings above 18 metres but should only have been utilised with a non-combustible cement fibre cladding. During an Inquiry second phase hearing last week, Harley design manager Daniel Anketell-Jones claimed he was unaware of the discount, and remained unsure whether the reduction had come from Celotex through construction products supplier SIG.

The admission came on the second of three days of testimony by Anketell-Jones, in a week dedicated to investigating the role of Harley in the disaster. The fatal use of a more dangerous cladding may have been generated by a pricing error by Harley estimator Mike Albiston. Last Monday, the Inquiry heard that Albiston had omitted several items in his initial estimates for the Reynobond aluminium composite material (ACM). When compared with the zinc-based Proteus HR cladding system, this meant that use of the Reynobond product would save just £376,000 rather than the £576,000 as costed by Albiston.

He later explained to construction company Rydon—the lead contractor which oversaw the entire “refurbishment” of Grenfell—and Harley management that the £200,000 shortfall could be reduced to £162,750 if the project switched to “cassette” panels. These can be hung on hidden rails and have a far worse performance (three grades lower) than face-fixed panels which use rivets to bolt them into place. Albiston claimed he did not know that the Reynobond ACM was more combustible than cassettes. But he agreed that Harley’s commercial manager Mark Harris’s email to Rydon’s Simon Lawrence that “our preference would be cassette for a lot of reasons,” referred to financial savings.

The previous week, the Inquiry learned that Rydon commercial manager Zak Maynard had been well aware that the £200,000 in savings that resulted from the error would be pocketed by the company. When asked by lead counsel for the inquiry, Richard Millett QC, if the finances were then organised so that the error would be absorbed by Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), then responsible for managing Grenfell Tower, Maynard admitted, “Potentially, yes.”

Rydon estimator Katie Bachellier had asked him whether Rydon could go “50/50 with Harley” on the savings, “as it was their cock-up.” Maynard wrote later, “First part of the battle, now we will agree to give them 10 per cent of the savings back and we are quids in!!” He told the inquiry that this referred to reducing Harley’s savings share to 10 percent so Rydon could enlarge its profit, but claimed, “I was joking in that bit.”

When Daniel Anketell-Jones testified later that same afternoon, it became clear immediately that his so-called “expertise” also had serious limitations. In its bid for the contract, Harley falsified his CV, listing skills he did not have, as well as two projects he never worked on. He had just begun a master’s degree in facade engineering at the University of Bath in late 2014 or early 2015. Despite his position as design manager, he claimed it was not his job to judge products for technical compliance. He explained that responsibility for this had fallen to the previous manager Graham Hackley, who had not been replaced after he left the company.

At no point in his work for Harley did he claim to be qualified to assess technical performance. He did not know the distinction between “Class 0” rated materials and the higher qualification of “limited combustibility,” nor the difference between a fire stop and a cavity barrier. “I don’t think I was made the technical manager until the end of 2015, beginning of 2016 perhaps. I hadn’t had any training in that area yet.”

Anketell-Jones admitted in his testimony that he had erased all his computer files relating to his work at Harley after an agreement to keep the device after leaving the firm. He insisted “this would mainly have been emails,” although documents, design drawings and calculations would also have disappeared. He said he assumed all his work would be retained on the Harley server, and denied he had any role in removing files from the company’s internal systems.

Inquiry counsel Kate Grange continued to press Anketell-Jones on his fire safety knowledge, pointing out his attendance at a day-long conference run by the Centre for Windows and Cladding Technology (CWCT). This included a talk on “fire testing experiences,” with sections on “fire testing for facades,” “incidents” and “mechanics of external fire spread.” He claimed not remembering anything about it. “I think I might have been there and not concentrating because it wasn’t what I was trained in and not part of my remit.”

However, in his testimony last Wednesday, it was shown that the design manager was not as clueless about fire risks as he had claimed. In a day focusing on the fire-stopping and installation properties of cavity barriers around the windows, Anketell-Jones again observed, “Each individual person would look after the responsibility on the projects,” and no one existed across the company with the assignment to “think about fire.” But Grange questioned him about an email he sent to stakeholders at the time, claiming, “There is no point of fire stopping; as we all know, the ACM will be gone rather quickly in a fire.” Asked how he squared this observation with earlier comments about his ignorance, Anketell-Jones attributed it to “picking up bits and pieces over the years,” and that he knew from his design training that aluminium would soon melt and fall off the building.

Later that afternoon the expertise of another Harley manager was examined. Kevin Lamb, a freelance draughtsman who had initially been brought in for 41 days’ work, was soon passed off by Harley as “project designer,” despite not being a qualified architect. With a 30-year career that included some cladding experience as well as curtain wall and window assignments, his task was to furnish a drafting service, transferring architect Studio E’s plans into fabrication drawings—allowing the cladding system to be constructed and installed. He assumed Studio E bore responsibility for building regulations compliance. “I was never told I was lead designer. I was told, I was project designer. The first I knew of that was when they [Harley] had some business cards printed up with my name on.”

As Lamb was finishing his explanations at the inquiry, the injustices mounting against the Grenfell bereaved and survivors intensified.

In the US, a court in Pennsylvania dismissed all charges for civil damages brought by Grenfell survivors and bereaved against cladding maker Arconic and insulation manufacturer Celotex, both of whom have headquarters in the US state. The judges ruled all charges should be heard in the UK. Arconic and Celotex witnesses will testify later at the Inquiry regarding the testing and selling of their products, but will not have to worry about legal action in the UK—if any is ever brought—until the entire inquiry finishes and a final report is published; a process which will not be complete for years.

Thousands of tower block residents throughout the UK continue to live in the shadow of death. A House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report published last week found that only a third (155 out of 455) of high-rises with Grenfell-style cladding have had dangerous cladding removed, while people living in the unsafe blocks were “condemned to lives of stress and fear.” Thousands of residents in high-rises continue to complain, years after the Grenfell fire, about paying for the 24-hour “waking watches” patrols that monitor fire danger.

The ruling elite is hoping that the Grenfell tragedy will quietly fade away, chloroformed by a pointless multi-year inquiry and by its determination to ensure the guilty in corporate and political circles evade justice.

The Grenfell community must take matters into their own hands and end collaboration with this sham Inquiry that has no powers of prosecution and has—in alliance with the Tories—ensured that corporations giving testimony are immune from future prosecution! The Socialist Equality Party calls on Grenfell survivors and the bereaved to demand the immediate arrest and criminal prosecution of the guilty parties.

Tens of thousands of Thai protesters call for a new constitution

Owen Howell

Thailand’s student-led protest movement spread to wider layers of the population, when a large demonstration on Saturday night, at Thammasat University in Bangkok, drew tens of thousands of people from around the country.

The protest is thought to be the country’s largest, since the most recent US-backed military coup in 2014, far outdoing the last mass rally on August 16.

The gathering started late on Saturday and continued through the night, into Sunday morning. Organisers estimated the turnout at over 100,000 people, while security forces put the figure at 50,000.

Bangkok’s police department offered a much lower estimate of 18,000 protesters. But police mobilised 10,000 officers to monitor and contain the protest, a sign of escalating social tensions and the looming threat of state repression.

Mass protest on Saturday at Sanam Luang, Bangkok (Credit: @arulprk)

For over two months, university and high school students have staged growing protests against the government of Prayuth Chan-ocha.

The movement’s leaders, including Free Youth and other student groups, have demanded that Prayuth resign and parliament be dissolved, as well as a new constitution and an end to the persecution of government critics.

Prayuth, a former general, orchestrated the 2014 coup and ruled as head of a military junta before becoming Prime Minister in last year’s rigged election.

Protest leaders have also called for reform of the monarchy. Since his ascension to the throne in 2016, King Maha Vajiralongkorn has consolidated control over crown assets and the military.

The United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, a student group that organised the Saturday protest, has previously issued 10 demands to curb the king’s constitutional powers.

Some have called for the abolition of Thailand’s lèse majesté law, which subjects anyone perceived to have insulted the king to a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

The king was not in Thailand on Saturday night and has spent much of his time in Europe, since taking the throne from his late father in 2016.

For weeks in advance, the protest was widely anticipated to draw a large crowd. The date, September 19, was chosen specially to commemorate an earlier military-backed 2006 coup against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire populist who is now in exile.

Among the protesters were many of Thaksin’s “red shirt followers,” who clashed with pro-royal establishment “yellow shirts” a decade ago, before being brutally suppressed by the army, which killed more than 80 people.

The event began when protesters burst through the locked gates of Thammasat University, a historical hotbed of student opposition to the Thai military. The university had earlier refused student leaders permission to hold the rally on campus grounds, announcing the cancellation of all classes and closure of the campus. The nearby Silpakorn University was also closed, due to the rally.

The growing crowd moved to a neighbouring open field, called Sanam Luang, or the “Royal Ground,” where demonstrators listened to speeches for many hours and stayed overnight, despite rain. The field, located in front of Bangkok’s Grand Palace, is traditionally used for royal cremation ceremonies. Protesters declared they would instead name it the “People’s Ground.”

Early Sunday morning, a brass memorial plaque was cemented in the ground, engraved with the words: “At this place, the people have expressed their will: that this country belongs to the people and is not the property of the monarch as has been falsely claimed.” Cheers erupted as the plaque was installed, with people chanting: “Down with feudalism, long live the people.”

The plaque was intended to replace another, which disappeared in 2017, marking the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, in 1932, by the Khana Ratsadon, a coalition of civil and military officers. Student leaders declared that this protest signalled the creation of a new Khana Ratsadon, or “People’s Party.”

The crowd then marched toward Government House, in order to deliver a letter outlining the 10 points for monarchy reform, but were blocked by police-manned control barriers. They turned instead to the Supreme Court, where the letter was submitted to the Privy Council. Police chief Phukphong Phongpetra said on a video broadcast that police would decide how to proceed with the letter.

Parit Chiwarak, a leader of the movement, told crowds: “Today is a historic moment. No matter what happens, I can confirm that Thailand will never be the same again tomorrow.”

Parit encouraged Thai workers to join a general strike, planned for October 14, the anniversary of a mass student-led uprising in 1973 that toppled the military dictatorship of Thanom Kittikachorn.

The working class is becoming increasingly involved in the protest movement. In addition to workers in Bangkok, busloads of protesters arrived from provinces across the country’s north and northeast, particularly Khon Kaen.

Discontent among the urban and rural masses of Thailand has been exacerbated by the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread job lay-offs, a lack of sufficient financial aid, and delayed pension payments for the elderly, have all contributed to the country’s ever-widening social inequality.

Parit also called for people to withdraw their money from the Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), of which the king is the largest shareholder, with a 22 percent stake. “Get all your money out and burn your bank book,” he added. Support for Parit’s demands erupted on Twitter, with the hashtag #แบนSCB (“Ban SCB”) gaining more than 347,000 tweets by Sunday evening.

The military-dominated government’s fear of the growing movement is expressed in its relentless efforts, over recent weeks, to intimidate protesters. At least 61 people have been charged for various offences after taking part in the rallies. Authorities have charged 28 leaders with sedition, while ordering Facebook to block people in Thailand from viewing content that is critical of the monarchy.

On Saturday morning, before the protest, police confiscated 50,000 booklets from student group leaders, containing the monarchy reform demands, reportedly because they wanted to determine if the leaflets contained illegal content. Students had intended to distribute the booklets at the rally.

There have been reports of protesters traveling to Bangkok from northern provinces, such as Lamphun and Phayao, being stopped at police checkpoints on Friday night and having their ID cards photographed by officers.

Parit posted on his Facebook account that musicians from Chiang Mai, who planned to perform at the Bangkok protest, were visited at their homes by police, who told them not to attend.

The next scheduled protest will be held on Thursday in front of Parliament House, to press the demand for amending the current constitution, which was drafted by the military junta.

With Canadian Detroit Three auto contracts set to expire, Unifor rushes to reach concessionary “pattern” settlement

Carl Bronski

With the contracts covering 6,300 production and skilled-trades workers at Ford Canada set to expire tonight, both corporate management and Unifor have stressed their determination to reach an agreement tailored to the company’s interests. Although Unifor President Jerry Dias has been forced to admit that the parties are “far apart” in talks, both Dias and Ford representatives have gone out of their way to praise their cooperation in the negotiations, which are emerging ever more clearly as a conspiracy against autoworkers.

Dias is hoping to trade off further concessions on work rules and, at best, meagre wage and benefit “increases” in exchange for the automaker giving a new product commitment for the threatened Oakville Assembly Plant. The company employs about 4,500 workers there, and an additional 1,600 workers at its two engine facilities in Windsor.

The cornerstone Oakville plant has already experienced almost 1,000 layoffs in just over a year, and is reported to be the Detroit Three plant in Canada most vulnerable to closure in the near future. Industry analysts citing multiple “well-placed sources” have placed a question mark over operations continuing past 2023, when scheduled production runs of the Ford Edge SUV and Lincoln Nautilus are slated to end.

Ford Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley, who will take over as CEO October 1, enthused that talks with Unifor are “going great.” Farley added, “I’ve talked with Mr. Dias and all the political leaders in Canada. It’s a very important negotiation for Ford. We’re working through it now.”

These remarks must be taken as a warning by all autoworkers. Ford has made it absolutely clear that it will only accept a deal that ensures its “global competitiveness.” Under conditions in which all major automakers are laying off tens of thousands of workers internationally to boost corporate profitability and facilitate their transition to electric and autonomous vehicle production, the news that Farley is engaging with “political leaders” can only mean that Ford is in the advanced stages of securing state-backed subsidies to engineer a pro-corporate restructuring of Canada’s auto sector at the expense of autoworkers.

In this, Unifor is a willing partner. Dias informed Ford workers in a recent bargaining update that he picked Ford as the target company in contract talks because it has “a vision closely aligned with our own.” The company’s bargaining team, he gushed, has been “incredibly professional.” In the update, the union stated that negotiations “have proceeded well since Labour Day, with early progress made at the local committee tables, sub-committee tables and master tables.”

Unifor is in full agreement with management that the reactionary multi-tier wage system must continue to be enforced. “Our union approaches the 2020 round of bargaining with a clear mandate from the members to carefully review, assess and further improve on the New Hire Program,” says Unifor’s Bargaining Update #3. In other words, the “New Hire Program”—which was agreed to in 2012 and enables the highly-profitable automakers to pay new hires substantially less for a decade or more for doing the same work—is to remain in place.

A major factor in Unifor’s determination to impose concessions is its push for a three-year contract with Ford, which would synchronize with the next round of United Auto Worker (UAW) contract renewals with the Detroit Three in the United States in 2023. Since they split along national lines in 1985, both Unifor (the former Canadian Auto Workers) and the UAW have pitted workers against each other in a never-ending race to the bottom. They have worked with their “own” corporate managements to “whip-saw” jobs and wages back and forth across borders, while promoting, respectively, Canadian and American nationalism, thereby dividing autoworkers and blocking the emergence of a common struggle against all concessions, job cuts, and plant shutdowns.

Dias’ attempt to synchronize contract years is aimed at taking this fratricidal scramble of each against all to a new stage. Even the pro-company Center for Automotive Research think tank has written that the proposal is pregnant with possibilities for corporate “whip-sawing.” For his part, Ford executive Gary Johnson said that the company will be amenable to such a proposal depending on “how it helps us.”

Despite their close collaboration, the parties may fail to reach a deal by today’s 11:59 PM deadline. In an Automotive News article published Thursday, Dias declared that the union and Ford are “miles apart” on wages, benefits, working conditions and job security. These remarks are no doubt in part meant for public consumption, so that Dias can later claim that union officials “fought hard” to secure the best deal possible.

If Unifor does decide to call a strike, it will not with the aim of mobilizing the power of autoworkers and working people more broadly. Instead, Unifor will use it allow workers to let off steam while it continues its backroom talks with Ford on how to impose further concessions and speed-up.

The last time a strike was called during a Detroit Three bargaining round in Canada was in 1996. On the likelihood of a strike, Ford’s head of manufacturing and labor affairs, Gary Johnson, told Automotive News, “I wouldn’t try to handicap it, but it’s the last thing we want to do. We’re going to do what’s fair to the company and fair to employees, but I’m not expecting a strike. But you never know. Maybe things change and it’s something you do, but that’s not the goal.”

If a deal is reached, Unifor will undoubtedly move as swiftly as possible to have it ratified so that workers have no time to study its rotten contents. Due to social distancing protocols, the contract ratification process this year will be conducted online. The very fact that workers will be unable to meet en masse to discuss any tentative deal makes it all the more urgent that workers demand that any contract presented to them for ratification be made accessible in full at least one week before any vote takes place. Yet despite a petition launched by rank-and-file workers making this very demand (and to date signed by almost 1,800 autoworkers), Dias has refused to even address the issue.

Unifor’s contempt for the democratic rights of its members is in keeping with its hostility to all of their basic interests, including the defence of their wages, working conditions, and jobs. As the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter explained in a recent statement, “The alternative is to mobilize autoworkers in Canada, the US, and Mexico in a joint counter-offensive to overturn all concessions and defend all jobs. Such a counter-offensive can be developed only through a political and organizational break with Unifor and the UAW.

“There is an enormous well of rank-and-file anger against the auto bosses and their Unifor accomplices. But if workers are to prevent Unifor from once again running their struggle into the ground and corralling them into voting on a concessionary contract whose true details they have not been allowed to see, they must act now. They must take matters into their own hands by building a network of rank-and-file committees in all Detroit Three and auto industry plants.”

President Trump gives preliminary approval to takeover of TikTok by Oracle and Walmart

Kevin Reed

President Donald Trump gave preliminary approval on Saturday to a proposal by Oracle and Walmart, along with a group of private equity and venture capital investors, to take over the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and create a new US corporation.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said, “I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done that’s great, if they don’t that’s fine too.”

An official statement from the Department of Treasury later said “the transaction is subject to a closing with Oracle and Walmart and necessary documentation and conditions” to be approved by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS).

A smartphone with Tik Tok and WeChat apps. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

The three-sentence Treasury Department statement by spokesperson Monica Crowley also confirmed that the deal involved the creation of a new entity called TikTok Global. The statement also said that “Oracle will be responsible for key technology and security responsibilities to protect all US user data.”

As has been clear since Trump first issued two executive orders on August 6 outlining plans to ban the social media apps TikTok and WeChat, the White House campaign of imperialist bullying, anti-Chinese propaganda and online censorship has nothing to do with protecting “US user data.”

CFIUS has been involved in negotiations with US companies for the takeover of TikTok for months including an earlier offer by Microsoft which was eventually rejected. The new announcement by the Trump administration has not included any reference to how much money is being offered for the ownership of TikTok or if anything is being paid for it at all.

As further details of the US government-brokered deal emerge, it is becoming clearer that the White House is engineering the theft of the massively popular video-sharing app from ByteDance Ltd., the Beijing-based owner of TikTok, by US corporate interests.

A report in the New York Times, based on two anonymous sources familiar with the details of the negotiations, said, “ByteDance and its investors, which include the U.S.-based General Atlantic, Coatue Management and Sequoia Capital, would transfer some of their equity control into TikTok Global.”

The Times report also said that the new firm TikTok Global would have “53 percent American investors” including 20 percent held by Oracle and Walmart and “existing American investments in ByteDance.” Another group of ByteDance investors from Europe will control 11 percent of the company. The remaining 36 percent will be held by Chinese investors, “primarily ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming and its employees.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Oracle would have 12.5 percent and Walmart 7.5 percent ownership in the new TikTok Global.

Reviewing this divvying up between the new owners of TikTok—which has been valued at $50 billion or more—one is reminded of the multi-billion dollar contracts signed with ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and seizure of the country’s oil resources.

The participation of Walmart in the deal—the retail monopoly that has struggled to develop an e-commerce presence that can compete with Amazon—is a noteworthy example of the blatant criminality behind the White House-sponsored TikTok deal.

While Walmart remains that largest US corporation by sales revenue—more than $500 billion annually—it is number 11 on Wall Street with a market value of $383 billion, far behind rival Amazon, with a market value four times that of Walmart at $1.48 trillion.

According to a statement from the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, “This partnership will provide Walmart with an important way for us to expand our reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace, fulfillment and advertising businesses.”

The Walmart statement also revealed that the board of directors of TikTok Global would have five members, four of them being from the US and the fifth presumably being Yiming of ByteDance. The Walmart statement also said, “In addition, we would work toward an initial public offering of the company in the United States within the next year to bring even more ownership to American citizens.”

The emergence of Oracle as the lead US corporate hustler of TikTok is entirely based upon the political connections and personal relationship of the company’s billionaire Executive Chairman Larry Ellison with President Trump. The New York Times reported that Oracle’s top executives worked on the Trump transition team in 2016–17 and “supported his policy initiatives and have donated more than $150,000 to his re-election campaign.”

Both Ellison and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon were on the phone with Trump twice on Friday to work out specifics of the deal. Oracle’s chief executive, Safra Catz, said the company was “100 percent confident” that the new TikTok Global would “deliver a highly secure environment” and ensure data privacy to “TikTok’s American users and users throughout the world.”

Given Ellison’s public endorsement of illegal US government spying on the public as “essential,” no confidence can be placed in the empty promises from Oracle about how the new US-based TikTok entity is going to protect user privacy. Not one shred of evidence was ever presented to prove the claims by US officials that the Chinese government was monitoring or being given access to TikTok user data.

In another significant aspect of the imperialist raiding of TikTok, President Trump announced on Saturday evening that the deal involves “about a $5 billion contribution toward education.” Without going into specifics of where the money would come from or how it would be spent, Trump said, “We’re going to be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youths, and that will be great, that’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for.”

The preliminary approval of the TikTok deal prevented a ban on US downloads of the app on Apple and Android app stores as of 11:59 p.m. on Sunday night. That deadline has been pushed back to September 27 in the event that the Oracle-Walmart plan falls apart.

The Chinese-owned social media platform WeChat was also scheduled to be banned on Sunday evening according to the Commerce Department’s announcement on Friday morning. WeChat has 20 million active US users, many of whom are Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants using the app as their primary means of communicating with family members, friends and business associates.

US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler entered an order on Sunday halting the banning of WeChat and upholding a motion by a group of users opposing the Trump administration’s policy. Judge Beeler blocked the WeChat ban on First Amendment and free speech grounds. She wrote that “there are no viable substitute platforms or apps for the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-American community.”

Who runs the University of Illinois?

Brian Brown & James Martin

Four thousand maintenance, food service and other workers are continuing their strike at the University of Illinois at Chicago to demand adequate staffing levels, equipment to protect them against COVID-19 and wage increases for many workers who make below the city’s minimum wage of $14 an hour.

The UIC workers are engaged in a direct fight against the Democratic Party political machine in Chicago and the powerful corporate and financial interests it defends. In the face of this, the city unions have deliberately isolated the struggle and are seeking to starve workers into accepting a deal, which is in line with the savage austerity measures being prepared by state and local officials.

Last Friday, the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) ended the strike by 800 nurses at the University of Illinois Hospital, claiming it was near an agreement for “small wage increases” and the hiring of 200 nurses. Even if this comes to pass, it will do little to address the nurses’ chief demands for safe staffing levels at one of the largest urban medical centers in the country. At least four nurses have died from COVID-19 at the facility.

As for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) whose members are still on strike at the hospital and other UIC facilities, the union has not even provided them with strike pay, although SEIU Local 73 took in $16.7 million in dues last year and handed over $1 million to Democratic Toni Preckwinkle’s failed bid for mayor in 2018.

The isolation of the strike must be broken, and the fight expanded. This means setting up a rank-and-file strike committee to demand adequate strike pay to sustain a real fight and to mobilize the working class throughout the city and state—teachers, workers at Ford, Amazon, UPS and other manufacturing and logistic companies—to defend the UIC workers.

The UIC Board

In the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, workers are fighting a cabal of corporate titans, finance capital and Democratic Party politicians. The following is a selection of political profiles of the members of the UI board.

Governor J.B. Pritzker

Illinois Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker has a net worth of $3.4 billion dollars. Pritzker is an heir to the Hyatt hotel family fortune, which extracted vast wealth by squeezing hotel workers into poverty and forcing many of them to go on strike in 2018. Pritzker is an ex officio member of the Board of Trustees but is a leading figure in shaping its policies, including the recent increase of university tuition by 1.8 percent.

The Democratic Party, which controls Illinois politics, is at the forefront of the attacks on the living standards of the working class over multiple administrations. Last week, Pritzker ordered Illinois state agencies to prepare for a “nightmare scenario” with budget cuts of 5 to 10 percent if the state does not receive adequate federal aid.

Pritzker also reopened the state prematurely and now universities across the state are seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases. Pritzker’s policies are not fundamentally different from Trump, who recently proclaimed that the virus must rip through the population.

Donald J. Edwards, chairman of the board

Donald J. Edwards, chairman of the Board of Trustees, was appointed in 2017 by former Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and then reappointed by Pritzker in 2019. Edwards is a Democrat and the CEO of Flexpoint Ford LLC, a $4 billion-plus private equity firm with a portfolio of investments in financial services and health care.

Edwards worked with former Governor Rauner at GTCR, a private-equity company, before founding his own firm. GTCR managed millions of pension funds of state employees in Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and other states.

Edwards was also a top donor to former Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former investment banker and chief of staff in the Obama administration. Emanuel left office widely hated by workers for his attacks on teachers and social services and coverup of the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

Kareem Dale

Kareem Dale, a Democrat, currently serves as the director and senior counsel of Discover Financial Services. Under President Obama, Dale, who is blind, served as special assistant to the president for disability policy, which was the highest-ranking position on disability ever created.

Dale coordinated the outreach and support for the appointments of Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who were part of the unanimous 2017 Supreme Court ruling to allow portions of Trump’s anti-immigrant travel ban. Before his appointment by President Obama, Dale worked over seven years as an attorney focusing on commercial litigation.

Ramon Cepeda

Ramon Cepeda is The Northern Trust Company’s senior vice president and managing director since 2007. Cepeda leads both the commercial real estate and professional services teams, which are responsible for providing capital and services to high net worth families and individuals investing in commercial real estate.

Cepeda is a member of the UI board’s executive committee. According to the University of Illinois bylaws, “the executive meets on call of the chair or of any two members for the transaction of business that is urgent and cannot be postponed until the next regular meeting of the full board. The Executive Committee has all the powers of the Board of Trustees.”

Patricia Brown Holmes

Patricia Brown Holmes, a Democrat, is also a member of the Board’s executive committee. Holmes began her career as a prosecutor. In 1997, Holmes became an associate judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Currently, Holmes is managing director of the law firm Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP.

Holmes focuses her practice within high-stakes commercial litigating, white-collar crime, and other legal counseling. In 2009, Holmes argued in front of the Supreme Court in the case Black v United States where she successfully defended an executive at the company Hollinger International Inc. against charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and tax fraud.

In her role, Holmes has successfully defended countless multibillion-dollar companies against liability, fraud, and negligence cases. She was one of the leading lawyers who defended actor Jussie Smollett and has been a trusted partner to corporations and executives, defending top companies such as American Airlines, Amazon, etc.

Dr. Stuart C. King

Dr. Stuart C. King, a Republican, is a trained medical professional with a specialty in pain management. Dr. King was appointed in 2015 by Governor Bruce Rauner. He is the head of the Department of Spine and Pain Management at Christie Clinic, located in Champaign, Illinois. He is the chair of the University Healthcare System committee, which oversees the hospital and health sciences colleges administration and financial management. King, no doubt, plays a role in enforcing the low pay of health care workers at the UI hospital system.

Ricardo Estrada

Ricardo Estrada, a Democrat, was reappointed in 2019 by Pritzker. He previously served on the Board between 2011 and 2017. He was then appointed to the Cook County Hospital and Health System’s board. Estrada is currently the CEO of the nonprofit Metropolitan Family Services.

Jill B. Smart

Jill B. Smart is the Chief Human Resource Officer at Accenture, a multinational Fortune Global 500 company. Currently, she is the president of The National Academy of Human Resources and a board member of EPAM Systems, AlixPartners and HireRight. Smart was head of human resources during the time Accenture underwent numerous layoffs.

Smart is a member of the University Healthcare System board that oversees the hospital administration. Smart has an estimated net worth of $30.6 million, largely from her EPAM systems stock ownership.

Avijit Ghosh

Dr. Avijit Ghosh was appointed as permanent vice president, chief financial officer, and comptroller of the University of Illinois system. Ghosh served as the CEO of the University of Illinois Hospitals and Clinics at UIC.

During his time as CEO, the hospital saw its overall funding reduced. As chief financial officer, Ghosh briefed the board of trustees about the financial losses from COVID-19 and the expected loss the university would incur. At the same meeting, the board moved to limit refunds for UI students taking remote-only courses.

Edward L. McMillan

Edward L. McMillan, a Republican, was appointed in 2009. He is the CEO of McMillan LLC, a construction services firm, and is also the chairman of Illinois Ventures LLC, a venture capitalist firm that specializes in healthcare and technology. McMillan has a net worth of over $1.6 million.

These are the corporate and political figures who are conducting the attack on nurses, university staff and students. They are similar to the University of Michigan Board of Regents, who sought an injunction to break the strike by 1,200 grad student instructors, and then relied on the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to isolate and shut down the strike. Throughout the country, the rush to reopen the college campuses is being driven entirely by financial considerations, no matter how many students and college workers get sick and die.

To fight for their interests, nurses and university workers must take matters into their own hands and form rank-and-file strike committees, independent of the unions, to link up with the growing opposition of the working class across the country and internationally against the subordination of human life to corporate profit.