How Livestock Impacts Ecosystems

George Wuerthner

Livestock production is one of the most ubiquitous human activities around the globe.  It is particularly detrimental to arid lands, and much of the western public lands are arid. Typically most livestock advocates, which also includes far too many conservation organizations, focus on one or two areas where livestock impacts can be mitigated (not eliminated) such as fencing riparian areas to protect water quality or range riders to fend off predators.

But all of these are just halfway measures that ignore a full accounting of the multiple ways that livestock production harms our ecosystems, wildlife, and our planet. They do not address the real issue-does it make sense to use water-loving, slow-moving, domesticated animals to produce protein? There are alternative sources of protein, and certainly better places to do this than the arid lands of the Western U.S.

There have been some excellent reviews of livestock impacts.

Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002) has numerous chapters addressing many aspects of livestock production ecological impacts in the arid West.

Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching by Lynn Jacobs. A classic book that is heavily illustrated. An excellent primer for anyone who is interested in getting acquainted with the issue.

A classic paper is Thomas Fleischner’s Ecological Costs of Livestock Grazing in North America (Fleischner 1994).

Another is Freilich et al. Ecological Effects of Ranching: A Six-Point Critique.

A critical review of Allan Savory Claims by John Carter et al. (2014) is useful.

More recently, a review of global impacts is Livestock’s Long Shadow, which asserts that livestock production is the leading cause of biodiversity loss (FAO 2006).

In 2019 the U.N. updated the earlier report with the IPBES (2019): Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The review finds that Agriculture, particularly livestock grazing, is the single greatest impact on global biodiversity and contributes significant amounts of CO2 to GHG emissions.

Quoting from the report, “Over one-third of the world’s land surface and nearly three-quarters of available freshwater resources are devoted to crop or livestock production {2.1.11}. Crop production occurs on some 12 percent of total ice-free land. Grazing occurs on about 25 percent of total ice-free lands and approximately 70 percent of drylands {2.1.11}. Approximately 25 percent of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions come from land clearing, crop production, and fertilization, with animal-based food contributing 75 percent of that.”

The key findings of the report include:

Livestock production (grazing and feedstock) is the single largest driver of global habitat loss.

Grazing areas for cattle account for about 25% of the world’s ice-free land.

Animal agriculture contributes at least 18% to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Livestock production uses a large portion of freshwater resources.

One-third of the world’s crops are used as feed for livestock production.

Animal-based foods, especially beef, require more water and energy than plant-based foods. This production of crops for animal feed means more greenhouse-gas emissions.

The meat and dairy industries use 83% of farmland but contribute only 18% of food calories.

Farmed animals now account for over 90% of all large land animals.

Producing protein via farmed animals is a very wasteful use of resources. It can take from 10kg to 100kg of plant foods to produce just 1kg of animal products.

The demand for grain-fed meat is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss.

Within the United States, livestock production is a significant land use (see excel chart) NPLGC  has been identified as contributing to these ecological losses and habitat degradation.

Cattle grazing Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona. Photo by George Wuerthner.

KEY IMPACTS OF LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION (NOT JUST GRAZING) UPON THE LAND.

1. Forage competition—the majority of the forage is consumed by livestock, leaving little residual cover or food for native wildlife (Schieltz and Rubenstein. 2016).

2. Livestock compact and trample soils reducing infiltration, creating higher run-off, more flooding and erosion (Kauffman B. and W. C. Krueger. 1984 , Belsky, J.A et al. 1999).

3. Livestock is the major source of non-point water pollution in the West (FAO 2006).

4. Livestock destroys soil biocrusts that bind soils and captures free nitrogen making it available to plant growth, soil crusts and inhibit weed establishment (Zaady E., Eldridge D.J., Bowker M.A. (2016).

5. Livestock is among the chief sources of weed dispersal. Also, the trampling of plants, as well as cropping of desirable plants give weedy species a competitive advantage (Hogan J. P., Phillips C. J. C. (2011).

6. Most of the West’s water is diverted for livestock forage production (i.e. hay). In Montana, 97% of all water removed from streams is used by agriculture (M.R. Cannon and Dave R. Johnson 2000).

7. Livestock can socially displace native species. Elk and other species have been shown to avoid areas actively being grazed by domestic animals (Clegg, Kenneth. 1994).

8. Livestock transmits disease to native, i.e. as in bighorn sheep (Pils and Wilder 2018).

9. Predator and pest control such as the killing of wolves and prairie dogs greatly reduces the ecological integrity of the landscape (Ripple and Beschta 2012).

10. Trampling of riparian areas negatively affects 75-80% of the West’s wildlife species (Kauffman B. and W. C. Krueger 1984).

11. Plant community conversion—grazing can lead to the eventual transformation of a plant community (F. Amiri, Ali Ariapour and S. Fadai).

12. Livestock grazing contributes to increased fire severity by removing grasses allowing tree seedlings to become established, leading to greater tree densities. Livestock has led to the spread of cheat grass—a highly flammable annual grass that increased fire frequency, negatively impacting native grasses and shrubs (Belsky, A.J., and J. L. Gelbard, 2000).

13. Livestock interrupts nutrients cycles (Fleischner 1994)

14. Livestock degrades the aesthetics of the landscape.

15. Forage production and livestock grazing off and on public lands affect native plant communities. There are 1.9 billion acres in the United States outside of Alaska. Agriculture, particularly, livestock production affects more than half of that acreage. There are 408 million acres of agricultural land were in cropland—much of it forage crops to feed to livestock–614 million acres were in pasture and range, 127 million acres were in grazed forestland (Cynthia Nickerson and Allison Borchers 2012).

16. Livestock affects many smaller native species that are seldom on the radar screen of most citizens from snails to frogs (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002).

17. Livestock production is responsible for more endangered species than other land use in the West (Flather et al. 1994).

18. Fences, water development, and other developments used to maintain livestock operations have negative impacts on native species. Fences can block wildlife migration or fence posts may provide perches for birds of prey to attack sage grouse (Jakesa et al. 2018).

19. Getting at the true costs of livestock production is nearly impossible. The real ecological costs are uncountable, and even the public taxpayer costs are obscured (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002).

Unifor sells out militant Newfoundland Dominion grocery strike

Carl Bronski

The bitter 12-week strike of 1,400 Dominion grocery workers at 11 stores across Newfoundland ended Friday with Unifor announcing the strikers had ratified a new four-year contract. Unifor has refused to release the vote count, a clear sign that significant opposition to the sellout deal was registered.

Speaking with CBC, Chris Macdonald, assistant to Unifor President Jerry Dias, conceded, “Our members are feeling disappointed. This is not the deal that they wanted and this isn’t the reason why they went on strike.”

The new contract is virtually the same as a Unifor-endorsed tentative agreement that the workers overwhelmingly rejected last August.

Unifor President Jerry Dias at a September 22 press conference.

Back-dated to October 2019, the new contract provides a paltry pay increase of $1.35 spread over four years. But only full-time workers and part-timers with more than five years seniority will receive the full $1.35. In a further insult, Dominion management “threw in” a store gift card. Most workers will receive cards worth just $50 or $100, with the few high seniority full-time staff receiving $500 cards.

The Dominion workers had not received a contractual pay increase since early 2018. In early June, after just three months, the grocer eliminated a $2.00 per hour “emergency bonus” introduced to keep workers on the job during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A major issue in the strike was the company’s years-long assault on full-time jobs. Under the new agreement, only 22 of the more than 60 full-time positions eliminated in 2019 will be restored.

When the strike began, 83 percent of the Dominion workforce was made up of low-wage part-time employees with no or minimal benefits. Fully three-quarters of the workers made less than $14.00 per hour, with a majority of the part-timers labouring at or just above the then provincial poverty-level minimum wage of $11.65 (since raised by the province to $12.15).

Dominion is one of the many holdings of the giant Loblaws conglomerate. Loblaws and its subsidiaries are Canada’s largest retailer, employing 200,000 workers. Its owner, Galen Weston Sr., has a fortune in excess of C$13 billion.

Striking Dominion workers. (Photo credit: Unifor)

Loblaws is raking in huge profits on the backs of its low-paid, precariously-employed workforce. It recorded a $162 million increase in second-quarter net profits and bumped it up another 7 percent in the third quarter. Profits so far this year total nearly half a billion dollars and are expected to double by year’s end.

Given this shameless profiteering in the midst of a global health crisis and the vast wealth at Loblaw’s disposal, there is no question an appeal for job action in support of the striking Dominion workers would have won powerful support among workers across Canada—beginning with the hundreds of thousands of supermarket workers, including many at other Loblaws outlets, whose contracts have or will soon expire.

But such a working class counteroffensive was precisely what Unifor was determined to prevent. A close ally of the federal Liberal government, Dias and the Unifor apparatus have responded to the pandemic and the eruption of the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s by deepening their anti-worker corporatist partnership with big business and the state.

That is why the union recommended an employer-dictated agreement last August, and why it refused to mobilize grocery workers across the country in support of the strike and a joint struggle against the retail food giants.

The well-heeled Unifor bureaucrats tried to cover their treacherous actions with a few brief and ineffectual publicity stunts, including a never realized threat to launch a national “boycott” of Loblaws. They immediately kowtowed to the anti-worker court injunctions and police violence that was employed against the strikers after they tried to disrupt Loblaws’ Newfoundland distribution network.

Unifor is now trying to claim it had nothing to do with the strikers’ isolation and the strike’s defeat. “Ultimately,” MacDonald told CBC, “they had an employer who refused to budge … essentially threatening many more months back on the picket line.”

The reality is that Unifor ran the strike into the ground. It softened the strikers up by isolating their struggle, then begged Loblaws to present workers essentially the same rotten offer they had voted down 12 weeks earlier.

The union exploited a reactionary court ruling to advance this agenda. When a judge ruled that it was illegal for pickets to block company shipments to and from its central warehouse, but permitted ineffectual information pickets, local Unifor president Carolyn Wrice hailed the ruling as a “victory.” “You got to love it,” she said. “It’s given us an opportunity to say to the company, ‘Look, come back. We want to get this done and over with.’” In other words, having made clear the union would order the strikers to comply with a court ruling aimed at barring all but token picketing, Wrice signalled to the company that Unifor now believed the strikers could be prevailed upon to grudgingly ratify a sellout contract.

A post from one worker revealed how the union pressured workers at her worksite to accept the company offer. Unifor official Chris MacDonald told the workers “it’s costing them around $500,000 for us to be out on strike a week. He said that basically with a strike the end game is to get better than what we had, but the company has said right from the start they aren’t going to give us anything regarding sick days or better pay. He said that it would be different if the company was run in Newfoundland, but as far as the company is concerned we’re just a blip on their radar.”

Another Dominion worker wrote, “I thought a ratification vote happens when a union and company reach a tentative agreement. That did not happen, not even close. It seems like our union is giving up and Loblaws is getting what they want. It’s time for Unifor to pull all union workers from Loblaws across Canada, now is the time. Don’t say it’s not legal. Loblaws don’t play fair, neither should we.”

As the World Socialist Web Site previously wrote in an article widely read by workers in Newfoundland and across Canada, “Although it represents tens of thousands of grocery workers across the country who confront similarly miserable working conditions, the union has done nothing to mobilize them in support of the strikers. Nor did it called on other unions, like the United Food and Commercial Workers, which also represents tens of thousands of grocery clerks, to support their fight. Instead, Unifor has isolated the militant Dominion workers on small picket lines, with the occasional visit from a regional or national official to boost morale.

“This is not a question of union incompetence, but of a deliberate policy aimed at smothering any working class movement against low wages, social inequality, and the fabulous enrichment of the super-rich like Weston. Unifor and the rest of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy are determined to block any social opposition among working people that could disrupt its corporatist partnership with the big business federal Liberal government and the heads of corporate Canada.”

The strike in Newfoundland had the potential to trigger a working class upsurge. The valiant strikers had the heart-felt support of working class Newfoundlanders across the province. It was the first grocery contract dispute in Canada since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the coming year, 2,400 other Loblaw operations across the country will see the expiration of their collective agreements.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government imposes internet censorship

Alice Summers

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has advanced plans to censor the internet across Spain.

The “Procedure for Intervention against Disinformation,” approved last month by Spain’s National Security Council (CSN) and published this month in the Official State Gazette (BOE), allows the state to monitor and suppress internet content under the pretext of combating “fake news” and “foreign intervention.”

The document makes legal provision for constant state surveillance of social media platforms and the media more broadly to detect “disinformation” and give a “political response” to such campaigns, including retaliatory measures if there is supposedly foreign involvement. The government will counter “disinformation” by pushing its own communication campaigns and also suppress oppositional views.

Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks after signing an agreement with Spain's caretaker prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

The new protocol is a dangerous attack on freedom of speech with grave implications for the democratic right to access and use the internet freely. It gives the Spanish state complete decision-making power to determine what does or does not constitute “fake news,” without any involvement from journalists or public oversight.

A Permanent Commission will operate the censorship apparatus; it will be coordinated by the Secretary of State for Communication and directed by the National Security Department, with the aim of “ensuring inter-ministerial coordination in the area of disinformation.” Members of the committee will come from the Foreign Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (National Intelligence Agency, CNI), among others.

Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias sits on the board of the Intelligence Affairs Commission, which directs and supervises the activities of the CNI spy agency. The “left populist” Podemos party will thus play a leading role in implementing the attacks on democratic rights.

The protocol establishes four levels of activity for the system, ranging from monitoring the internet to detect, analyse and track the activity of disinformation campaigns at the lowest level, through to the launching of a “political response” by the CSN if the campaign can be attributed to a “third State.” Final stages could include diplomatic action against the foreign power, complaints filed with international bodies, or more aggressive retaliatory measures.

The new protocol bases itself on the claim that attempts by external forces to influence public opinion within a state constitute acts of aggression. This is particularly the case during election cycles, the document states, which are “ever more threatened by the deliberate, large-scale and systematic spread of disinformation that seeks to influence society with self-serving and spurious aims.”

Although the document does not name those who are supposedly guilty of conducting such disinformation campaigns, these charges of foreign election meddling are clearly aimed at Russia. This is only the latest attempt by the Spanish bourgeoisie to blame systemic political crises on “Russian meddling.” Similar claims of interference were made about the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.

Only last month, Spanish paramilitary police made ludicrous claims that Russia had planned to invade Catalonia in support of the secessionists, alleging without evidence that the Kremlin offered Carles Puigdemont—the former Catalan premier now living in exile in Belgium—ten thousand soldiers to deploy across the region.

El País, a daily closely aligned with the ruling PSOE, used false claims that Russian interference had been “proven” in the 2016 US presidential elections and the 2017 Brexit referendum in the UK to justify the Internet crackdown in Spain.

This continued peddling of anti-Russian propaganda by the state, actively supported by bourgeois media, poses immense dangers to the working class. Claims of “Russian disinformation” will be used to discredit and suppress online content opposing the official narrative, as well as providing a potential casus belli for war with a nuclear-armed power in response to potentially imaginary acts of “aggression.”

The new protocol updates and makes public anti-disinformation legislation which has been in place since March 2019—passed under the premiership of PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez—the details of which were never shared publicly. These measures are based on an action plan put forward by the European Union in December 2018 and will be carried out in close collaboration with the EU.

The protocol gives a legal stamp of approval to censorship measures now underway in Spain for a number of years—particularly since the 2017 Catalan referendum, when Popular Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government launched a vast campaign to monitor and censor social media in order to detect supposed secessionist “disinformation.”

While Podemos nominally opposed the PP’s attempts to enshrine these reactionary measures into law in 2018, accusing the then government of trying to create an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” two years later, they are at the forefront of attempts to suppress freedom of speech. At the end of October, the Spanish Congress of Deputies passed a motion, put forward by Podemos. It obliges the government to adopt measures to prevent the spread of “hate speech” on social media by imposing its monitoring and immediate removal.

Podemos’ proposal would put in place mechanisms to facilitate denunciations of this content by internet users and would require operators of internet platforms to remove posts which “incite hate” within 24 hours, or within one hour if the target is a minor. Internet operators would also be required to store this content and provide it to the authorities for investigation.

While Podemos tries to give its reactionary policies a progressive veneer of opposition to hate speech, the ultimate target of its moves to censor the internet is the working class. As unrest grows in Spain and internationally in response to governments’ homicidal handling on the COVID-19 pandemic—exacerbating unemployment, lack of access to health care, and poverty—Podemos is stepping up efforts to silence domestic political opposition. It aims to prevent the outbreak of mass demonstrations and strikes against its own murderous policy.

Appearing before the Spanish congress, Podemos declared that the pandemic had created a “growing polarisation” in public opinion, reflected online.

Podemos claimed that the pandemic is being “instrumentalised for ideological purposes,” which poses the risk of digital “lynchings.” This implies that legitimate criticisms of Podemos itself and its coalition partner, the PSOE, for their criminal policies on the COVID-19 pandemic are in fact attempts to intimidate and “lynch” bourgeois politicians and should therefore be suppressed.

Global press organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the new protocol as an attack on freedom of expression. RSF Spain president Alfonso Armada said: “We deplore the fact that a such a loosely-worded document constitutes the basis of an initiative to combat disinformation. All over the world, we condemn laws that are supposed to combat fake news and which, in reality, are designed to erode press freedom by means of a deliberate ambiguity.”

In response to such criticisms, the Federation of Spanish Journalist Associations and the Madrid Press Association, as well as from right-wing parties fraudulently posturing as defenders of democratic rights, the PSOE-Podemos government issued a statement. It tried to cover over the reactionary nature of the PSOE-Podemos legislation.

It said: “The objective [of the protocol] is to avoid foreign interference in matters of national interest as well as to detect campaigns promoted from outside which could damage the national interest in our country.” It stressed the supposed necessity of increasing “electoral integrity” and claimed that the new measures do not target “fake news” but “disinformation campaigns.”

The distinction is bogus. In reality, this protocol is a part of a broader turn in the Spanish ruling class towards police-state rule. It exposes yet again the “left populist” parties of the affluent upper-middle class like Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and their affiliates across Europe, who, once in government, have enthusiastically implemented policies of austerity, militarism and attacks on democratic rights indistinguishable from those of the right-wing.

Macron government opposes full lock-down as coronavirus deaths climb

Will Morrow

Hundreds of people are continuing to die every day in France as tens of thousands of new coronavirus infections are being reported.

Another 302 people died in hospitals on Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 44,548 since the beginning of the pandemic. Approximately two thirds (30,785 people) have died in hospitals, and almost 13,379 in aged care homes and other social service providers, where the virus is continuing to circulate.

On Saturday, a staggering 932 new deaths were recorded, approximately half of them from uncounted deaths in aged care facilities over the previous four days. Daily deaths in France have averaged over 500 throughout the past week, equivalent to roughly 2,500 per day in a country the size of the United States.

French soldiers discuss inside the military field hospital built in Mulhouse, eastern France, to treat coronavirus patients (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

Another 27, 228 cases were recorded yesterday, though the count is always lower due to reduced reporting on Sundays. On Saturday, more than 33,000 people tested positive for the virus. While these represent a reduction from the peak of more than 60,000 daily cases a week ago, likely due to the impact of limited lock-down restrictions from the beginning of November, the virus is continuing to spread rapidly through the population. Within the next 24 hours, the country will surpass two million total cases, the fourth highest in the world.

The hospitals in many regions are at or approaching breaking point. Last Thursday, hospitalizations surpassed the maximum reached during the height of the first wave of the virus in April. The total number of people hospitalized now stands at 33,081. Another 270 people went into intensive care units yesterday, bringing the total to 4,896.

Up-to-date coronavirus case numbers from retirement homes are not readily available, indicating that the extent of the spread is still unknown.

The hospitalization totals are particularly concentrated in the Île-de-France region around Paris, and in Lyon. In Île-de-France, the portion of occupied ICU beds increased from 92.7 percent last week to 99.7 percent as of Friday.

Other critical surgeries are being cancelled or postponed to free space for coronavirus patients. In Lyon, France Info reported yesterday that nurses in the neurosurgery department have created place for 16 beds for coronavirus patients. “These are people with serious respiratory problems, such as we rarely see in the surgical department. Some of them have died… It’s an atmosphere of permanent crisis,” Pascale, a nurse of 19 years, told the news outlet.

The massive and rising death toll was not inevitable. The Macron government deliberately prepared the way for a second wave of the virus with its reopening policies aimed at protecting the profits of French corporations. As early as July, the World Health Organization was already warning that a new second wave could be seen in Europe. Prime Minister Castex insisted that a new lockdown as in March and April would “stop the spread of the virus, of course, but from an economic and social standpoint it’s a disaster.” In other words, nothing could be done that would impinge upon the profit interests of the super-rich.

Even as hundreds of deaths occur each day, the Macron government has rejected the closure of schools and non-essential workplaces. Thousands of teachers have struck in the past two weeks to demand social distancing measures. Schools are packed with anywhere up to 35 students in a classroom, with up to 500 students in canteens, and public transportation at standing room only.

The government is consciously working to conceal the impact of its school openings on the spread of the virus. On November 6, the government’s official count of infected students was 3,528. Over the same period, official statistics from the public health agency revealed that more than 25,000 young people under 19 years old had tested positive. The government made no attempt to explain the contradiction between these figures. Last Friday, the government revised upwards its figure of positive students to more than 12,000, including more than 2,500 who tested positive in only the previous 24 hours.

The maintenance of open schools is intended solely to ensure that parents can continue to go to work while their children are in classrooms.

The Macron administration is not attempting to prevent all coronavirus infections and deaths, but only limit the extent of deaths and hospital breakdown to a point that can be maintained without threatening an explosion of anger and opposition in the working class. That is to say, Macron is pursuing a policy of “herd immunity” in all but name.

In announcing the limited lock-down of restaurants, cafés and some retail at the beginning of the month, Macron stated that the best-case scenario target was for the virus to infect 5,000 people every day. In a press conference last Thursday, Castex maintained this goal, and insisted that no further lock-down measures would be announced.

This is despite the latest indications that an effective vaccine is likely to be completed and available in the course of 2021. Last Monday, pharmaceutical company Pfizer revealed that its trial had been 90 percent effective in preventing the contraction of the virus. As the WSWS explained in its Perspective column published November 10, the development “makes all the more necessary urgent measures to contain the spread of the virus and save lives until a vaccine is widely available.”

In an interview with Le Monde on Saturday, Castex insisted that the likely availability of a virus would have no impact on the government’s response. Castex stated that the government’s policy was still based on the principle of “living with the virus for a long period,” and “as long as we don’t have a vaccine, we must give a perspective for the rules of the game.”

This is the rationale for the government’s policy of keeping schools and non-essential workplaces open, deliberately allowing the virus to spread, and ensuring that thousands will die unnecessarily before a vaccine is available.

Johnson government in meltdown after Biden US election victory

Robert Stevens

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government is in meltdown as the Brexit crisis reaches its endgame and the Tories prepare to end the limited one-month national lockdown put in place on November 5.

Every political calculation of Johnson’s is being ripped asunder by the victory of the Democratic Party’s Joe Biden in the US presidential election. The UK prime minister’s entire Brexit strategy was largely reliant on the continued occupation of the White House by the pro-Brexit Donald Trump.

On Sunday, Johnson was forced to go into self-isolation after the National Health Service Test and Trace system informed him that he had been in contact with someone who had since tested positive for COVID-19. This was Tory Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, who Johnson spent around 35 minutes with last Thursday. By Monday evening it was revealed five other Tory MPs who were present at the Downing Street meeting with Johnson and Ashfield were also self-isolating. Another five Tory MPs beyond them are likewise in self-isolation.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson joins in the applause on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street in London during the weekly "Clap for our Carers" Thursday, May 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

In April, Johnson nearly died after being hospitalised with COVID-19 and spending three nights in intensive care.

Johnson’s inner circle was blown apart last week, as the pro-European Union (EU) Biden’s victory resulted in the departure from Downing Street of the prime minister’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings and Director of Communications Lee Cain. Cummings was the head of the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum, which Johnson backed, and was then brought into Downing Street after Johnson replaced the pro-Remain Theresa May as party leader and prime minister. Cain was headhunted by Cummings and it was understood that Cain would eventually take on the position of Downing Street Chief of Staff post-Brexit.

The Brexiteers’ strategy was based on the UK reaching a trade deal with the US, under Trump, and using this as leverage in negotiations with the EU. Johnson had no allies for this plan internationally, with the exception of the fascist in the White House.

As a Biden victory looked more and more likely in the run-up to the US elections, Johnson’s government was thrown into crisis. The Times reported in October that Cummings had to make a sharp about-turn, instructing Tory MPs to begin a charm offensive with the pro-EU Biden.

Johnson’s Brexit negotiator Lord Frost continued talks with the EU yesterday, with no sign that any agreement on a post-Brexit trade pact forthcoming. Already this year a number of “deadlines” for an agreement to be made have come and gone, the latest at the end of October. This Thursday’s European Council online summit is touted as the new deadline for a draft deal, even though Brexit is not formally on the agenda.

Any deal must be reached before the end of the post-Brexit transition period on January 1. It requires ratification by the EU and UK parliaments. To enable this, the European parliament has scheduled a vote during the last session of the year, in the week of December 14.

It is widely reported that the departure of Cummings is seen in European ruling circles as proof Johnson is shaping up to conclude some kind of agreement, in order to avoid an economically disastrous “no-deal Brexit”.

Manfred Weber, the head of the conservative parliamentary group in the European Parliament, who is politically close to Angela Merkel, told the BBC, “I see what is happening now in Downing Street. We can see this as a quite chaotic situation where we don’t have any idea what is really the line. I think it’s now time for leadership, having all the developments in America in mind, where London has understood it will be not so easy for Boris Johnson to achieve an easy trade deal. Now it’s time to take responsibility and come to a common understanding.”

Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Greens MEP who sits on the European parliament’s Brexit committee, said that Cummings’s departure was “probably the sign that Johnson has begun his U-turn and will in the end accept EU conditions”.

But ahead of the talks with his EU counterpart Michel Barnier, Frost played down any suggestion of a possible agreement this week. “We also now largely have common draft treaty texts, though significant elements are of course not yet agreed.” Among the areas of disagreement are fishing rights in British waters and “level playing field” conditions for businesses operating in the UK and EU. He added, “We will work to build on these and get an overall agreement if we can. But we may not succeed. Either way, as the Prime Minister Boris Johnson made clear on 16 October, people and businesses must prepare for the change that is coming on 31 December, most of which happens whether there is a deal or not.” He warned that a deal must be “compatible with our sovereignty” and take back control of “our laws, our trade and our waters”.

It is indicative of the crisis overwhelming the Tory government that none of this is particularly different from the strategy advanced by Cummings, yet it is now considered essential that he is no longer running Downing Street given events in the US and the need not to alienate Biden.

Britain and the EU remain at loggerheads over Johnson’s plans to tear up the existing Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. The Conservative government is being threatened with legal action by the European Commission over Johnson’s Internal Market Bill, which aims to use domestic law to overwrite the Withdrawal Agreement. The Bill makes it illegal for the EU to impose controls on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The Irish trade elements were a key component of the deal that took three years to agree and which was signed by Boris Johnson only at the start of this year—allowing the current trade talks to begin.

On Sunday, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney insisted there was "no way" the EU would ratify a free trade agreement and allow the UK to break the previous deal. Coveney told Sky News, “Even if we do get a new trade deal negotiated on both sides, if the British government is determined to continue with their internal market bill, to reintroduce parts of that bill that were removed by the House of Lords this week, then I think this is a deal that won't be ratified by the EU.” To do so “would be breaking international law… So there are real obstacles to getting this deal done."

Last week, the largely pro-EU House of Lords defeated the government by a large majority to amend the bill and remove the offending clauses. Johnson leads a rabidly pro-Brexit parliamentary party and was forced in response to the Lords vote to immediately placate the Brexiteers and pledge to re-insert the clauses.

Whatever happens regarding the Brexit talks, the government is committed to its central programme of defending the interests of the corporations and financial oligarchy and escalating its offensive against the working class. The Financial Times reported Monday that Johnson held talks with Tory Party donors the previous evening and that Johnson assured one of them “that further coronavirus lockdowns could be avoided.”

The FT reported that Cummings/Cain’s departure will see the “dead-cert” return to the Cabinet of the Thatcherite multi-millionaire former city banker, Sajid Javid. Javid was forced to stand down as chancellor in February after being instructed to sack all five of his advisers and replace them with ones recommended by Cummings. Prior to that, Johnson had agreed with Javid that austerity had to be continued, with ministers required “to go through every line of departmental budgets assessing value for money…” and present “radical options” to cut spending.

Johnson’s dysfunctional government is only able to remain in office because it is propped up by the Labour Party and trade unions who are smothering all opposition to it.

They are allowing the government to stagger on despite its own heavily manipulated COVID-19 death tally passing, last week, the grim milestone of 50,000 fatalities—with hundreds more dying on a daily basis. In the week to November 6, an estimated 654,000 people had Covid-19 in the UK, with 12,033 people in hospital by November 10, with 1,010 of them on mechanical ventilation. Much of the transmission is through workplaces, schools, colleges and universities which remain open only due to the collaboration of Labour and the unions.

Australian governments impose wage freezes on public sector workers

Mike Head

COVID-19 infections may have been contained to a certain extent in Australia—although new outbreaks are emerging as safety restrictions are recklessly lifted for the sake of corporate profit. But the country is certainly no exception when it comes to the ruling class ramping up its drive to impose on workers the full cost of the deepening global economic breakdown triggered by the pandemic.

After handing hundreds of billions of dollars to big business and high-income recipients via “stimulus packages” and tax cuts, the federal, state and territory governments are inflicting wage freezes or below-inflation “caps” on public sector workers, including frontline health workers and teachers.

Liberal-National Coalition and Labor Party governments alike are exploiting the pandemic to deepen a decades-long attack on working class pay and conditions. Real wages had fallen for six years even before the pandemic, taking the wages share of national income to the lowest level since the 1950s.

Last Friday, the federal Coalition government followed the lead of several state and territory governments, notably the Labor governments in Queensland and the Northern Territory, which have both announced protracted wage freezes.

Ben Morton, an assistant minister to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, unveiled an across-the-board restriction on public sector pay rises. He said pay rises for federal public servants would be kept below the increasingly depressed level of private sector wages.

The new policy caps wages for 150,000 federal workers at the level of the private sector Wage Price Index, replacing the existing 2 percent annual limit. This is on top of what will become a year-long outright wage freeze by next April.

That means a real wage cut for the foreseeable future. In the June quarter of 2020, private sector wages grew by just 0.1 percent, or 0.4 percent annually, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. That is far below the annualised official inflation rate, which was running at 1.6 percent during the September quarter.

The wage-cutting is set to worsen next year. Just days earlier, the government had declared it would cut the JobSeeker unemployment benefit rate to the sub-poverty level of around $51 a day for single adults at the end of December, in a deliberate move to further drive down all wages by forcing millions of jobless workers into low-paid employment.

Friday’s announcement also foreshadowed more cuts to essential social spending, accompanied by the further evisceration of public sector workers’ basic workplace rights and conditions.

The Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy 2020 released by Morton specifies that any, even slight, pay rise must be “affordable and funded from within existing agency budgets, without the redirection of programme funding.” That is, any rise will mean cutting spending.

The policy further dictates that “enterprise agreements and other workplace arrangements are not to contain restrictive work practices, unduly limit flexibility, or otherwise impede workplace reform.” These are code words for scrapping working conditions, ratcheting up workloads and imposing restructuring, inevitably at the expense of jobs.

Over the past seven years, the Coalition government has slashed public sector jobs, intensifying the damaging impact of the previous Labor government’s cuts, which were inflicted via annual “productivity dividends.” As of last month, there were 12,100, or 7.3 percent, less public sector employees than there were in 2013.

In effect, Morton endorsed pay-cutting for all workers, saying the new policy would see federal employees paid “in step with their fellow Australians.” To try to head off workers’ outrage, Morton announced a vague internal review of the now-notorious “performance bonuses” for high-ranking public sector executives.

Far from opposing the lowering of workers’ living standards, the opposition Labor Party’s only criticism was that the move would undercut efforts to stimulate the economy. Shadow finance minister Katy Gallagher pointed to close collaboration with the trade unions to contain workers’ anger. “Labor will work through the implications of this announcement and will consult with the unions which represent the workers who stand to be affected,” she said.

The wage cuts will start to flow through in 2021 as existing department and agency enterprise agreements (EAs) expire. It is now three years since the Community Public Sector Union (CPSU) and other unions finally wore down widespread opposition among federal public servants to the last round of union-negotiated EAs.

These 2017 EAs themselves amounted to a three-year wage freeze, having been delayed since 2014. They also set the current 2 percent annual pay ceiling, designed to keep wage increases below the inflation rate.

Throughout that dispute over the EAs, the unions kept workers divided department-by-department and confined them to limited stoppages and protests. After workers in key departments like the Australian Tax Office rejected union proposals, the unions subjected them to ballot after ballot on offers that contained inconsequential changes, until they finally got votes through.

The CPSU and other unions will do everything they can to again bulldoze over the resistance of workers to the new and even-greater government offensive. CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly echoed the pro-business concerns of the Labor Party. “If the government wants to stimulate the economy and keep consumer spending up, this is not the way to do it,” she pleaded.

The federal government move is part of a bipartisan austerity assault on the working class, with all the country’s governments collaborating in a self-proclaimed “national cabinet” that is seeking to fully reopen the economy, regardless of the global COVID-19 resurgence.

Last week, the New South Wales Coalition government said it would reduce the annual pay rise cap for its 410,000 public sector workers from 2.5 percent to 1.5 percent for the next three financial years. That followed an Industrial Relations Commission ruling that the workers, including nurses, paramedics and teachers, would receive a mere 0.3 percent pay increase this year, not the 2.5 percent that was due on July 1.

Also last week, the Northern Territory Labor government unveiled a four-year pay freeze—an attack it kept well hidden during the territory’s August election. Chief Minister and Treasurer Michael Gunner said the “pause” would save $424 million to help reduce the record debt forecast in his government’s delayed November 9 budget.

Various unions, notably those covering teachers and nurses, accused the government of duplicity for not consulting with them first. Gunner insisted that the unions had been advised of the government’s plans and said he was sure they would negotiate EAs in line with the freeze.

Gunner’s confidence, based on decades of union betrayals, might have been fortified by the agreement struck between the unions and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government in Queensland, which was the first in the land to declare such a pay freeze. In June, in defiance of widespread anger among teachers, nurses and other workers, the unions in Queensland helped that government push through legislation for a freeze, thinly disguised as a two-year “deferral.”

As the WSWS warned in June, the Queensland deal, cynically portrayed as a temporary measure to pay the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic, set “a new precedent for exploiting the health emergency to intensify the ongoing corporate and government attack on the living and working conditions of workers.”

German federal government demands faster destruction of Lufthansa jobs

Ulrich Rippert

In spring of this year, the German airline Lufthansa received government aid to the tune of €9 billion, to the adulation of the unions. However, it quickly became clear that these funds were being used to streamline the company, trimming it for profit at the employees’ expense.

Now the German government is demanding these measures be expanded and the axing of jobs accelerated. Lufthansa is to be made more competitive in relation to other European airlines and prepared for a worldwide trade war. The pandemic is being used to accelerate the implementation of the industrial policy goals set out by the Grand Coalition government of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). This policy was dubbed earlier this year by Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) as the “National Industrial Strategy 2030.”

In its most recent issue, the leading German news magazine Der Spiegelpublished a detailed background article on the matter. Under the headline “Lufthansa nosedives despite billions in aid,” the magazine first reports the dramatic decline in Lufthansa’s passenger count and flight hours. “The numbers are scary: the airline is burning 350 million euro per month. Losses reached 5.6 billion euro in the year to September; 410 of the 763 Lufthansa planes are mothballed on the ground.”

Lufthansa airplanes parked at the Willy Brandt Airport (AP Photo)

The article then quotes from an ostensibly secret Ministry of Economics document. Government officials are said to be dissatisfied with the company management. The board of directors must take much tougher measures, otherwise the company will run out of money in the coming year, it states. The “directive from Berlin” is that the company must “downsize as quickly as possible: fewer planes, fewer employees.” Personnel costs would “eat the company up if nothing is undertaken to prevent it.”

The Spiegel authors write that the government is dissatisfied despite Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr’s announcement of 26,000 job cuts and the ongoing restructuring program, called “Lufthansa-New-Tomorrow,” which includes drastic reductions of jobs in the cities of Bremen, Dresden, Cologne, Leipzig and Nuremberg, including the closure of the Bremen flight school.

So far, these were just “pieces of the mosaic, not yet a real restructuring concept.” Officials and politicians in Berlin are “losing patience with Spohr,” casting doubt on his being “the right man for tough cuts.” “If Lufthansa were flying at 10,000 meters, the trained pilot Spohr would be the right man,” says a “high-ranking government official.” But currently, Lufthansa is only at 2,000 meters, “and the mountain tops are damned close.”

The German government is supporting the demands of major stakeholder Heinz Hermann Thiele, who in March increased his share of Lufthansa to 15 percent and is now calling for a “viable restructuring program ... that’s deserving of its name.” According to Thiele, most important is that costs are immediately and enduringly reduced through “comprehensive job cuts.” At least 30,000 jobs must be cut and as quickly as possible.

Thiele is known for his ruthless capitalist methods. The 79-year-old multi-billionaire, who according to Forbes is one of the 100 richest men in the world with assets of €13 billion, grew his company, Knorr-Bremse, to become the world market leader in brakes for trains and commercial vehicles. He left the employers’ association in 2004. He demands 42-hour workweeks from his employees, seven hours longer than the collective agreements of the metalworking industry allow. He is partial to stashing his billions in tax havens.

Even now Thiele is demanding the dissolution of collective agreements, which he calls out of date and untenable “in light of the catastrophic situation.” Either the executive board and the unions must renegotiate these deals and accept significant reductions in pay and social contributions, “or Lufthansa must terminate the agreements,” he says.

Thiele is “a tough guy,” writes Der Spiegel, but adds, “However, the federal government sees the situation very similarly.”

At the end of the Spiegel article, another approach is suggested, a “radical move” to get rid of all collective agreements and pension costs in one fell stroke: The “protective shield procedure,” an insolvency in self-administration. Der Spiegel writes: “Some influential managers in the aviation group are already playing out what advantages a protective shield procedure would yield: After three months, any employment contract could be terminated. Collective agreements would be null and void.”

This threat is primarily intended to help the unions push through further wage reductions, job cuts and worsened working conditions over the objections of the workforce.

The three trade unions represented in the company already play a key role in making the draconian austerity measures possible. These are the Independent Flight Attendants Organization (UFO), the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) and, of course, Verdi, which has always functioned as the house union at Lufthansa. All three are represented on the Supervisory Board, with Verdi functionary Christine Behle holding the influential and lucrative position of deputy chairwoman of the Supervisory Board.

The trade unions are deeply involved in all strategy debates. Many austerity measures and cutback programs were and are conceived and elaborated directly by the trade union. All three unions agreed to the government’s multi-billion-euro rescue package and even called for rallies in support of it.

The trade unions continue to support the government and criticize the company board around CEO Spohr from the right. They denounce his restructuring concept as insufficiently far-reaching and consistent.

With Christine Behle, who has been a member of the governing SPD for 27 years, Verdi was directly involved in the negotiations with the government on the Lufthansa rescue package. Behle assured the Executive Board and the shareholders that Verdi was prepared to make massive cuts, but that a restructuring concept would have to be presented that would make Lufthansa competitive in the face of the crisis and growing competition on the international market.

In an earlier interview with Der Spiegel, Behle emphasized that the union had always been and continues to be prepared to negotiate and make concessions. “That capacities have to be reduced is an economic decision that is not inherently false.” She firmly rejected strikes and industrial action.

When asked by Der Spiegel whether there was “any chance at all” of “preventing or even striking against large-scale job cuts,” not only at Lufthansa but also at other European airlines, Behle replied: “In such a situation, strikes make no sense.” What is needed is “simply reasonable cooperation.”

The two other unions likewise support the government’s demands for restructuring, trying to outbid each other with savings proposals at the expense of the workforce.

UFO already signed an agreement with Lufthansa this summer to save the company half a billion euros by the end of 2023. Considering the 22,000 cabin employees of the parent company to which the agreement applies, this means an average loss of income of €23,000 over three-and-a-half years.

The savings will be realized by suspending wage increases, shortening working hours with a corresponding reduction in wages, reducing contributions to the company pension scheme and cutting jobs. In addition, there will be “voluntary” measures, such as unpaid leave, further reductions in working hours and early retirement. Those affected will thus lose not only a large portion of their current income, but also their future pension provision.

In April, Cockpit offered up annual savings of €350 million in compensation to pilots at Lufthansa, Germanwings, Lufthansa Cargo and Lufthansa Aviation Training. A 45 percent salary cut was on the table. In the meantime, the pilots’ union has negotiated a crisis package with cuts totaling €850 million through June 2022.

We wrote this summer on the WSWS: “The events at Lufthansa unequivocally show the bankruptcy of the unions and their perspective.” This is being demonstrated anew every day.

For decades, the trade unions have subordinated the interests of the workers to the profit interests of the corporations. In Germany and in most other countries, there is no mass layoff or plant closure that does not bear the signature of the unions and their works councils.

At Lufthansa, the unions are now going so far as to support the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs and massive wage and social cuts in the name of “rescuing the company.” They are working closely with the Grand Coalition and supporting the “National Industrial Strategy 2030.” Just like the government and the business associations, the trade unions are of the opinion that both the coronavirus pandemic and the US election must be seen as an opportunity to make German companies competitive and prepare them for global economic war.

The crisis in the aviation industry—as in all other sectors—cannot be addressed on a capitalist basis nor within a national framework. It requires the expropriation of the corporations and their transformation into democratically controlled, public institutions that serve the needs of society rather than profit.

US food banks and homeless shelters struggle to meet record demand ahead of Thanksgiving

Alex Findijs

With the Thanksgiving holiday less than two weeks away, food banks and homeless shelters across the United States are struggling to meet the growing demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Dallas, Texas, thousands of people lined up in their cars in what has been described as the largest mobile food distribution in history. The North Texas Food Banks handed out 7,000 turkeys and 600,000 pounds of food on Saturday. Organizers said it was enough to feed 25,000 people.

The state of Washington has seen the number of people who rely on food banks double from one million to 2.2 million this year. Linda Nageotte, the CEO of Food Lifeline, told the Seattle Times that she expects that “by the end of this year one in five Washingtonians could be facing hunger.”

People line up and check-in for a food giveaway at Harlem's Food Bank For New York City, a community kitchen and food pantry, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The pandemic has also placed an extra burden on food bank workers, who now need to prepare and box food packages together before they can be distributed. It is labor intensive work that is even more difficult during a health crisis. In an attempt to lighten the load on food banks, the Washington National Guard has sent 550 soldiers to 26 distribution sites to help.

In Rochester, New York, the food bank Foodlink is working to feed a line of 50-100 people on any given day. The organization Dimitri House, which operates a food pantry and homeless shelter in Rochester, has had similar issues and has also decided to prepare meals ahead of time and distribute them to families for pick up.

Laurie Prizel, the executive director for Dimitri House, told ABC13 WHAM that “we’re getting a large number of working poor individuals coming through as well, not just the typical somebody on a fixed income trying to survive. It’s people who are holding down two jobs or lost their jobs. We’re saving the average family at least $100 on a Thanksgiving meal, and it’s allowing at least the families to come together.”

Every year, thousands of volunteers in Albany, New York work to feed thousands of people in need. This year, however, the Equinox Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner has found a creative solution to the problem of social distancing. Instead of hosting a large event, the organization raised $100,000 to deliver meals directly to the homes of people in need. To accomplish this the organizers will work with restaurants to purchase and prepare food, enabling them to feed needy people and support local businesses in the process.

In Santa Rosa, California, the Redwood Empire Food Bank has done what it can to keep up with the significantly higher demand than usual. During a normal year, the food bank would hand out around 11 million meals. This year, however, Redwood has already produced 22 million meals.

The wealth disparity in Santa Rosa, 55 miles north of San Francisco, in California’s wine country, has been rising for years, resulting in a poverty rate of 11.5 percent. According to the Census Bureau, the top 5 percent of households make an average of $331,000 a year, with the bottom 20 percent making just $16,000. It is no wonder that food banks in this area would see such high demand for food assistance.

The San Francisco Bay Area has some of the highest levels of income inequality in the country. In San Francisco County the top 5 percent earn an average of more than $800,000 a year while the bottom 20 percent average just over $16,000. The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is currently providing food aid to 55,000 households—nearly double its pre-pandemic total—and is planning to give away 1,000 turkeys to families in need on Thanksgiving.

Similarly, the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley has reported a 53 percent increase in demand in Westchester County, New York. Food shipments used to arrive twice a month, now they come once a week and are still barely keeping up with the need.

Westchester is often mistaken as a wealthy county with pockets of poverty, but it is actually the opposite. Islands of ultra-wealthy neighborhoods inflate the general cost of living, making otherwise typical working class wages barely enough to survive on.

The pandemic has made it especially difficult to operate homeless shelters and offer large communal Thanksgiving meals for the homeless. Restrictive capacity requirements to limit the number of people interacting indoors have forced shelters to limit the amount of beds they can fill.

In many cases, shelters and food aid organizations have moved their events outdoors to compensate for the restrictions on indoor events. In Charlottesville, Virginia, the organization Volunteers from Charlottesville is making “blessing bags” that will include a Thanksgiving meal and materials to help people survive the winter.

After almost canceling the event, the organizers decided to push through and host it outdoors at Washington Park, where they plan to hand out 100 bags the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Albany’s Capital City Rescue Mission in New York has done its best to continue with indoor activities throughout the pandemic. Doing its best to maintain social distancing and mask wearing, the organization has continued sheltering and feeding those in need and expects to feed thousands this holiday season.

The need to provide meals to struggling families and the homeless grows every year, but the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic has placed a demand on charity organizations that can barely be kept up with. Such immense social distress, even as Wall Street soars to record highs and trillions in bailouts have been handed over to the banks and corporations, is a damning indictment of the capitalist system and the two parties who represent it, the Democrats and Republicans.

Without the intervention of the working class to shut down non-essential production and demand full pay for workers to stay home in order to suppress the pandemic, the need will only grow as the ruling class continues to pursue its murderous “herd immunity” policy, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans and pushed millions into poverty.