Podemos silent on Spanish generals’ coup threats

Alejandro López

It is over 48 hours since El País published extracts of a letter signed by 73 retired officers, appealing to King Felipe VI to act against the elected Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government. They blame what they call “the social-communist government” for “the decomposition of national unity.”

It comes weeks after 39 retired Air Force commanders sent a similarly incendiary letter to both the European Parliament and the king. The letter asserted that the PSOE-Podemos government is overseeing the “annihilation of our democracy,” and assured the king of their “deep loyalty” to him.

While sections of the military are all but openly discussing a coup to install a dictatorship aimed against the working class, the “Left Populist” Podemos party has remained deafeningly silent. The government’s only official public reaction was that of Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Margarita Robles, who intervened to defend the king in yesterday’s budget debate in parliament. Her intervention was loudly applauded from the Podemos bench.

Robles said: “The head of state belongs to everyone, not to some who with certain letters implicate the king.” The letters’ signatories, she said, “are not doing what they have to do as public servants or defending the values that characterise the military and military family.”

That is, the PSOE-Podemos government is passing over in silence the fact that sections of the officer corps are discussing a coup. Instead, they aim to protect the king’s reputation, even though the king has neither disavowed the letter nor explained why the Royal House had previously not disclosed the letters.

Robles did not announce any investigation of the letters’ signatories, their links with potential coup plotters among active-duty officers, or the extent of fascist sentiment in the army. Instead, she extended her “recognition” to retired generals who are now parliamentarians of the fascist Vox party. Calling their fascist politics “a legitimate option,” she claimed that they are defending what “they think are the interests of the citizens. My gratitude goes to them even though we are so distant.”

The PSOE-Podemos government’s applause for Vox, whose leaders have hailed the bloodstained fascist dictatorship of general Francisco Franco, exposes its own reactionary role. The PSOE and Podemos are far more afraid of explosive opposition to their policies building up on their left among workers and youth, than they are about far-right coup plots against their own government.

This applies to an entire layer of political satellites of Podemos who are silent on the officers’ coup threats. The Pabloite Anticapitalistas, which left Podemos barely six months ago, has said nothing on the issue on its online paper Poder Popular or its online magazine Viento Sur. Revolutionary Left, the Spanish affiliate of the Committee for a Workers’ International, which works in Podemos, issued no statement.

Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (Workers’ Revolutionary Current), the Spanish section of the Morenoite Trotskyist Fraction—Fourth International (FT-CI), has published a dozen articles in the past two days on the Spanish national edition of its online daily Izquierda Diario. However, not a single one of these articles on Izquierda Diario even refers to the generals’ letter.

Spanish soldiers of the Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan (Wikimedia Commons)

They are silent because, while they technically remain outside Podemos, they are a barely-disguised wing of the PSOE-Podemos government. Rooted in the affluent middle class, they hope to benefit from close integration into the capitalist state machine and work to suppress left-wing opposition among workers.

Podemos recently joined the commission that is distributing €140 billion in European Union (EU) bailout funds to the banks and corporations. It is implementing the EU’s “herd immunity” policy on Covid-19 that has led to over 1.5 million infections and over 65,000 deaths in Spain alone, while claiming “there is no money” for a scientific fight against the virus. More broadly, it is continuing EU austerity, while showering the armed forces with billions of euros in military spending increases.

Moreover, Deputy Prime Minister and Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias also sits on the Intelligence Affairs Commission, the body that directs the activities of Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI).

As such, Iglesias receives regular reports from officials spying on all forms of political opposition in Spain. As El Confidencial recently reported, the CNI receives a report every 15 days from its Digital Observatory, which monitors thousands of web sites and social media for “disinformation,” especially sites opposed to capitalism, the Spanish government, NATO and the EU.

The PSOE-Podemos government has used this information ruthlessly against left-wing opposition. Podemos joined the PSOE government just after the PSOE ordered a brutal police crackdown on mass protests by workers and youth against the jailing of Catalan nationalist political prisoners. At the outset of the pandemic this year, it sent police to assault steelworkers striking for the right to shelter at home to avoid infection.

Against far-right generals discussing a coup, however, Podemos has taken no public action. In 2018, over 1,000 retired top officers, including 62 former generals, signed a manifesto hailing Franco. A year later, retired Army Chief of Staff General Fulgencio Coll Bucher, a leading Vox member, wrote a piece in the right-wing daily El Mundo calling for the army to oust the PSOE. In September, a Vox-backed military protest to raise soldiers’ wages and conditions marched through Madrid, for the first time since the Franco era.

The last thing Podemos wants to do is to alert workers to fascist conspiracies within the army. They are terrified that an event which brought together the mounting discontent among workers and youth at the official handling of the pandemic and austerity, with the anti-fascist traditions of the European working class could lead to a political radicalization of the working class aimed against them.

They are consciously opposed to discussion of Francoism and the danger of a coup by Francoite elements in the Spanish ruling class. In a 2015 discussion with “post-Marxist” writer Chantal Mouffe, published in the book Podemos in the name of the people, Podemos co-founder Iñigo Errejón opposed discussing the lessons of Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War and of working class struggles against the Francoite regime:

“I don’t think many people would be interested in such a critique, and it is not very productive in political terms, either. Quite possibly at some point we will have to start a historiographical discussion, but I don’t think that a revised form of nostalgia—let’s say, moving away from the melancholy of the loser—is ever productive.”

Errejón insisted that discussing a perspective and strategy for the working class to defeat fascism was of no particular relevance to contemporary Spain. Talking about the Spanish Civil War, he said,

“scares the elderly, and doesn’t mean much to the young, as it happened a long time ago. While we’re clear on what side we’d take in such an argument, we also know that nostalgia doesn’t win battles, but that defeats unfortunately build defeat. This is not an appeal to bury the whole subject, it’s an appeal to fight within the terms of the time.”

In fact, the danger of a fascist coup targeting mounting working class anger at social inequality, austerity and “herd immunity” policies is very much part of contemporary politics. The lessons of the 1930s are of burning actuality. These are first and foremost the necessity to mobilize the working class independently of the union bureaucracy and reactionary petty-bourgeois parties like Podemos, and to build a revolutionary political leadership in the working class to lead the struggle against capitalism and authoritarian rule.

Health care workers in the US speak out: “We have PTSD”

Bryan Dyne

By early Wednesday, the number of men, women and children currently hospitalized from COVID-19 will surpass 100,000. Even during the dip in reporting caused by the Thanksgiving holiday, the number of daily coronavirus cases never fell below 160,000. The cumulative total since the beginning of the pandemic now exceeds 14.1 million cases in the US alone. Similarly, for deaths caused by COVID-19, at least 1,500 lives are lost each day, with a cumulative death toll of more than 276,000.

Such mass death is reflected internationally. An average of more than 570,000 cases are reported each day with more than 10,000 deaths. The overall total now stands at 64.1 million cases and 1.48 million deaths worldwide. Projections currently estimate another 400,000 deaths by the end of December and a near doubling of coronavirus deaths to 2.75 million by March.

Such numbers, however, do not always paint the most complete portrait of the human toll of the pandemic. Hospital workers in particular fear an oncoming “tidal wave” of new cases in the wake of the immense amount of travel surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday. Hospital workers in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans to reopen schools with no medical justification, and New Jersey recently spoke to the WSWS and described the steadily worsening pandemic on the front lines. Their names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

EMT Giselle Dorgalli, second from right, looks at a monitor while performing chest compression on a patient who tested positive for coronavirus in the emergency room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Sam works at a medium-sized regional hospital in New Jersey, less than an hour’s drive from New York City. “Basically, we have seen a dramatic rise in coronavirus patients in the last couple of weeks,” he said. “Before, we were down to single digits. In a matter of two to three weeks, we got back up to 80 or so patients. They just brought in two freezer trucks because the morgue can’t keep up. They’re inundated like back in the spring. Basically, the hospital is trying to figure out where to park the trucks so they’re not so visible to the community.

“On the units, we are making preparations because things are back to where they were in the spring,” Sam said. “Back in the spring, 17 out of the 20 units were all for COVID-19. At the other hospital where I pick up shifts there were only two ‘clean’ units during the worst of it. Right now, the intensive care units are filling up fast and they are starting to designate other units for COVID-19 patients. So, what we have to do now is convert the [post anesthesia care units] into ‘clean’ units to compensate for all of the other units being designated for the coronavirus.”

Sam continued, explaining, “Just like in the spring, we are anticipating an end to all elective surgeries. So, what we’re going to have to do is use those units for non-COVID patients.

“They’re also reorganizing nursing staff to prioritize,” he said. “Last week they activated the proning and positioning teams again as well. These are the teams that lay patients on their stomach, which we learned in the spring helps them breath better when they are on ventilators. Basically, about 4 or 5 people come in to turn the patient onto their stomach because they are sedated. If the patient is not sedated, the positioning team comes in and helps the patient move into positions that help with breathing. This is a big help and really important for coronavirus patients, but it takes a lot of staff.”

Alex works at a hospital in New York City, where new cases and hospitalizations have doubled over the past month. “We have been preparing and definitely what you are hearing on the news is not the half of it. It’s a lot worse than what they are saying in city hospitals,” Alex said. “You know from the calls that go out all day. They’re more frequent. And there is the same kind of reorganization going on with the units and we are seeing them fill up again too. At my hospital, we can’t even eat lunch in the cafeteria anymore. They set up a tent outside of emergency, so we eat outside.”

Asked whether the hospitals had enough personal protective equipment for the ongoing and oncoming surge, Alex responded, “We already have to ration. In the spring, it was the wild west because whenever there is a shortage people are going to be scared and think about themselves, protecting themselves and their families.”

Sam then noted, “I work at two hospitals, so it’s uneven. At one hospital, we have to reuse N95s three days and they sanitize them. We are already seeing shortages and the last time they got those duck bill ones to replace the N95s but those don’t always fit properly.”

Both workers also spoke on the harsh toll the resurgence of the pandemic in their areas has had on the morale of health care workers, after months of it being relatively suppressed. “Look, basically nurses have been calling out sick a lot more,” Sam said. “We can’t take it. It’s like you know what is coming and you don’t know what else to do. We have PTSD. A lot of staff are being called in for double shifts again so that just adds to the stress and then you have your family to think about too.”

Alex had similar experiences: “At my hospital they put together this team to talk to us because of the stress and the mental health issues with nurses and all the staff. People are like, ‘this is happening again,’ and it is scary. My friend was crying the other day because she had three people die during one shift.”

Such conditions are emerging across the country. Alabama, for example, reported 1,785 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday, up from 1,422 the week before. Commenting on the sharp spike in hospitalizations to the Montgomery Advertiser, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo from the University of Alabama at Birmingham said, “This is a really, really scary inflection point. … Our health care workforce is continuing to work valiantly and struggling very hard. One of the things that keeps me up at night, among many, is if we’re going to have enough people to actually take care of what I think might be a tidal wave of patients in the next month. We haven’t seen the effect of Thanksgiving travel and socialization.

“We start to see cases, we start to see hospitalizations rise, and then we start to see deaths about three weeks later,” she said. “The fear is we have this constant level of surge, we see this spike right now, and now we’re going into the holiday season. We could really be in a situation in two to three weeks that compromises our ability to provide health care. I don’t want to undersell that, to underemphasize that. We’ve been cautious not to use alarmist terminology, to be scientifically accurate in our communications. But I think this is a time where we need to start thinking about tidal wave imagery, tsunami imagery.”

The coronavirus pandemic and the case for expropriating the financial oligarchy

Eric London

The month of November was record setting in the spread of the pandemic. Seventeen million people tested positive for the coronavirus worldwide and over 272,000 died of the virus this month, almost equal to the total number of soldiers killed in World War I’s deadliest battle, the five-month Battle of the Somme.

While billions of people prepare for a winter of hardship and disease, the global stock markets are celebrating their best month in 33 years, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting 30,000 for the first time in November.

As the deaths pile up in every country, the ruling class has taken advantage of the pandemic to orchestrate an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich.

According to a recent survey by the non-profit Save the Children, 75 percent of households worldwide reported income loss since the beginning of the pandemic. Extending these percentages to the world population, that means 5.25 billion people are substantially poorer in November than they were in January. Of these, 1.05 billion people lost 100 percent of their income, 1.7 billion people lost over 75 percent of their income, and another 1.7 billion people lost between 56 and 75 percent of their income.

Share of world population reporting no receipt of government support (Credit: Save the Children)

The same survey reported that 3.7 billion people, or 70 percent of respondents who suffered economic loss, had not received any government support.

The degree of social immiseration represented in these figures is almost unfathomable. Ninety percent of respondents in the survey said they have reduced access to health care compared with a year ago. Almost two-thirds of respondents—equaling 4.3 billion people if the figures are accurate—are having difficulty providing their families with basic food staples.

Over 25 percent of parents say their children do not have any learning materials at all for distanced learning—not even a single textbook or reading book. Save the Children estimates “conservatively” that 10 million poor children will never return to school when the pandemic is over because long-term poverty will force them to work instead of study. Rates of teen pregnancy and family violence are increasing.

Workers in the “wealthier” countries are by no means spared from the devastation. According to US Labor Department data, there are now more high paying jobs than there were in January, while there are 25 percent fewer jobs that pay under $15 an hour. Official figures still put the total unemployed at over 10 million.

This money did not “disappear,” it was funneled into the bank accounts of the super-rich.

The bipartisan CARES Act transferred on average $1.6 million each to 43,000 wealthy Americans whose income was already over $1 million—a total $135 billion handout to those who did not need it.

Fiscal stimulus 2009 and 2020 (Credit: World Economic Forum)

The major imperialist countries provided a total of $10 trillion in fiscal stimulus to support the banks and corporations this year, already massively outpacing the size of the bank bailouts of 2008–2009. In the US, this year’s corporate bailout amounted to over 12 percent of GDP, double the 2009 bailout, which cost less than 6 percent of GDP. In Japan, Germany, Australia, the UK, Canada and France, governments similarly doubled, tripled or quadrupled the size of the bailout.

This has made the rich obscenely richer. According to a November report from Inequality.org, “Between March 18—the rough start of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—and October 13, the total wealth of 644 US billionaires increased from $2.95 trillion to $3.88 trillion, a rise of 31.6 percent.”

The wealth of the 10 richest people increased by $141 billion over this period, or by $46,850 each minute!

So much for the claim, repeated in every language by capitalist politicians from right to so-called left, that “there is no money” to provide the world working class with food, full income, health care and books.

It is a glaring contradiction, inherent in capitalism, that such obscene wealth is generated by corporations like Amazon and Microsoft that make use of the most advanced technologies and logistical systems known to man.

These transnational corporations, which tower over most governments in terms of power and ability, possess knowledge and tools that represent the pinnacle of human ingenuity, determination and innovation, the product of thousands of years of scientific and social development.

These innovations hold the key to the coronavirus crisis, if only they were used to save lives instead of exploit for profit!

In 1880, Friedrich Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that socialism “presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination … by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.”

Engels continued: “The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties—this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here.”

Freeing the productive forces from the constraints of the capitalist for-profit system and expropriating the wealth of the rich are urgent and immediate necessities, required to combat the pandemic and save millions of lives.

There are roughly 230,000 people who qualify as “Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals,” whose wealth is over $30 million. Combined, this richest .0003 percent of the population has roughly $35.5 trillion. In addition, the world’s 10 largest stock markets contain corporations with a combined market value of $71.6 trillion.

This massive sum of hoarded wealth must be used to provide $4,000 per month for five months for every single adult on the planet, enough to cover the full income of workers during lockdowns until the vaccine is produced in sufficient quantities to be made available to the whole world. No worker or small proprietor should be forced to chose between death by starvation and death by the coronavirus.

The resources hoarded by the rich must be used to immediately hire and train nurses and build additional hospital space on demand. In the world’s “richest” countries, hospitals are overrun and patients forced to die in the hallways. It is the height of capitalist irrationality that Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, which serves the impoverished working class on the city’s South Side, is slated for closure in the coming months because it cannot turn a profit in the midst of the pandemic.

The possibility of a vaccine further shows that the technological and logistical resources of corporations like Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla must be reallocated to ensure the rapid mass production and dissemination of safe vaccines to all corners of the world, including the most impoverished and difficult to reach.

Accomplishing these urgent tasks requires the mobilization of the working class internationally in a full-frontal attack on the wealth of the world aristocracy. Saving lives requires putting an end to the capitalist system and breaking the stranglehold that the capitalist class operates over all aspects of social and political life.

Mass farmer protest rattles India’s far-right BJP government

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones

An agitation by farmers demanding the repeal of recently adopted agrarian “reform” legislation has become a major political crisis for India’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

Tens of thousands of farmers who police had blocked from entering the Delhi National Capital Territory and bringing their demands to the seat of India’s government late last week have been encamped at Delhi’s borders for the past six days. Their tractors and trucks are blocking several major roads into Delhi from the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and the farmers have vowed to remain until their demands are met.

The farmers are protesting three laws that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP rushed through parliament in September, at the same time as they were attacking workers’ right to strike and gutting restrictions on plant closures and mass layoffs. Long demanded by big business, the IMF and World Bank, the BJP’s agrarian “reform” laws are aimed at strengthening the power of agri-business at the expense of farmers and consumers. They promote contract farming, undermine the government-regulated system of agricultural markets (known as mandis ), and will open the door, farmers fear, to abolishing the Minimum Support Price for certain basic commodities.

The farmers are also demanding the government abandon its proposed Electricity Bill 2020, which would eliminate or greatly reduce subsidized power rates for farmers.

The Narendra Modi-led national government orchestrated a massive security operation last week to prevent the farmers from bringing their protest to India’s capital and largest city and, if possible, from ever reaching Delhi’s borders.

The BJP state government of Uttar Pradesh and the nearby BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh deployed paramilitary forces to block convoys of protesting farmers from approaching the capital. In Haryana, which borders Delhi to the south, west, and north, the BJP-led government was even more aggressive. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar ordered the state’s border with Punjab, one of the principal centres of the protest movement, sealed as of Nov. 25, and invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Code under which all gatherings of more than four people are illegal. Several dozen leaders of farm organizations were taken into “preventive custody” and police were mobilized throughout Haryana to block farmers from traversing the state.

Nevertheless, by Friday, the day that the “Delhi Chalo” (Let us go to Delhi) mobilization was to converge on the capital, tens of thousands of farmers from Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand had reached Delhi’s border near Tigri in the south and Singhu in the north. There they were met by barricades of barbed wire and sand-laden trucks, tear gas and water cannon.

The authorities succeeded in preventing the protest from reaching Delhi. However, their actions have only served to anger the farmers and muster sympathy for them among broad sections of working people across India. According to media reports, the numbers camped at Delhi’s borders have grown to well in excess of 100,000 people. At one border point, the line of protesters reportedly stretches for 30 kilometres (19 miles).

The head of a farmers’ union in Uttar Pradesh who intends to join the agitation later this week told CNN, "We are trying to be wary of COVID but we don't have an option. It is a question of life and death. We are the ones who have provided food, milk, vegetables when the whole country was in lockdown. It is the government who has put us at risk by introducing these laws during COVID."

The Modi government has clearly been rattled by the militancy and determination of the farmers. BJP representatives have oscillated between suggesting that the farmers have been duped by the opposition or are led by treasonous elements. Last week, Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’s IT cell, sought to whip up communal animosity against the protesting farmers, many of whom are Punjabi Sikhs, when he blamed the agitation on Maoists and “Khalsitanis.” The latter is a reference to the reactionary movement to create a separate Sikh state, Khalistan, which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Indian state during the 1970s and 1980s.

Initially the government refused to meet with leaders of the Delhi Chalo protest, which is supported by more than 500 kisan sabhas (peasant unions) and other farm organizations, until the agitation was called off. Later it made talks conditional on the farmers agreeing to move to a large field and fair ground in north Delhi, the Nirankari Samagan Ground. Some accepted the government’s offer. But the vast majority of farmers have refused, arguing that relocating their protest to a field far from the heart of Delhi and where they will be surrounded by security forces would be akin to agreeing to their jailing or kettling.

The government’s greatest fear is that the farmers’ protest will serve to fan growing social opposition within the working class.

The launch of the Delhi Chalo was timed to coincide with the Nov. 26 one-day general strike called by the country’s major central labour federation and supported by numerous independent unions. Tens of millions of workers walked off the job across India to demand the scrapping of the BJP’s “labour” and “agrarian” reforms, a halt to privatisation, and emergency financial support for the hundreds of millions whose meagre incomes have been slashed as a result of the government’s ruinous handling of the pandemic.

On Sunday evening, Home Minister Amit Shah met with Agriculture Minster Narendra Singh Tomar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the crisis. Rajnath Singh’s involvement underscores that the BJP government is preparing to deploy the military and, if need be, use lethal violence to suppress the farmer agitation.

But the BJP recognizes such action could backfire, serving to set India ablaze, and thus is now maneuvering to find “a political solution” to the crisis.

Yesterday, Tomar and the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Pyush Goyal held talks with protest leaders, and a further round of talks has been scheduled for Thursday.

On the government’s part, the talks are a charade. Big business is adamant that no substantive changes be made to the “reform bills,” and Modi and his chief henchman, Amit Shah, are keenly aware that any retreat would derail their drive to restore the profitability of Indian capitalism through a promised “quantum jump” in “pro-investor” reforms. On Sunday, Modi used his monthly radio address to once again sing the praises of the farm bills that the government rammed through parliament with virtually no debate in September.

The government will use the offer of further talks, perhaps a handful of cosmetic concessions, and veiled threats of repression to try to prevail on the protest leaders to call off the agitation.

It will also seek to exploit the class and political cleavages within the farmer movement and among the rural masses. Many marginal farmers who eke out a livelihood on tiny plots of land are supporting the protest movement. But it is politically led by prosperous farmers with close connections to sections of the political establishment. Moreover, the farm agitation fails to address the crying social needs of the landless peasants and agricultural workers, who constitute the majority and most oppressed section of the rural masses.

Last but not least, the Hindu supremacist BJP will rely on its ruling class political opponents, whom it routinely vilifies as “anti-national,” to help bring the agitation to an end.

All the major opposition parties are claiming to support the agitation for the repeal of the farm bill, and the Congress Party state governments in Punjab and Rajasthan encouraged the Delhi Chalo movement. But the Congress Party, true to its historic role as the premier party of the Indian bourgeois, is now pressing the farm leaders to wind down their agitation.

The Congress Chief Minister in Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh, urged the farmers to accept the government’s “offer” to relocate their protest to the fair ground and hold talks. He is now claiming that the farmers have “already won half the battle” because they have brought “the Union government to the negotiating table.”

Strikes by Kia and GM workers continue in South Korea

Peter Symonds

Thousands of workers in two major auto corporations in South Korea—Kia and GM Korea—have conducted a series of strikes to demand pay increases, improved conditions and job security. The stoppages are part of far broader discontent, anger and unrest among auto workers internationally over job losses, deteriorating conditions and the health threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yesterday, General Motors workers voted down an agreement reached last week between the company and the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) to shut down industrial action. The vote is all the more significant as it took place following a renewed threat in mid-November by Steve Kiefer, president of GM’s international operations, to shut down the company’s operations in South Korea.

The union has been engaged in months of negotiations with GM management that began in July and was finally forced to call a series of partial four-hour stoppages last month at the company’s plants.

A striking GM worker in South Korea last year (Credit: AP photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Central to the demands of workers is for an increase to their basic wage, which has been frozen since 2018. The wage freeze was part of a “rescue” package stitched up by the union, the government and General Motors after it threatened to end its operations in South Korea.

In the current negotiations, the union had demanded a basic monthly pay rise of 120,000 won ($US108) as well as annual performance bonuses of 22 million won and guarantees of continued operations at both GM plants in Bupyeong beyond 2022 when production of existing models ends.

“We are not only striking over wage issues, but also over job security at our No. 2 plant in Bupyeong, which hires about 1,200 workers,” union official Jung Jai-heon told the media. The union also called for some subcontract workers to be hired as full-time staff with pay and benefits to match.

Last week, however, the KMWU dropped the demand for basic pay rate increases and accepted a sell-out agreement that included an annual bonus of just 4 million won, together with promises to invest $190 million in Bupyeong starting next year to keep the plants open. The company dropped its demand to double the length of the contract period from one to two years.

In effect, the union accepted a continuing wage freeze, a reduced bonus and a worthless pledge from the company to continue its operations in Bupyong. As has repeatedly been the experience in country after country, the auto giants—in league with the unions—use the threat to shut their operations to extract concessions from workers and government subsidies, only to turn around and close their doors at a later date.

On November 18, Reuters reported the comments of top GM official Steve Kiefer who complained that GM Korea had lost production of 60,000 vehicles as a result of shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and the partial strikes by workers.

“That’s having a very significant short-term financial impact,” he declared, adding that it was “making the country non-competitive.”

Despite the fact that GM signed a binding agreement in 2018 to keep operating in South Korea for at least 10 years, Kiefer declared that its long-term future in the country was in doubt and canvassed Asian countries, including China, as alternatives. “As of now, we’re losing confidence that we’re going to be able to continue to invest in that country [South Korea], he told Reuters.

Despite the threat, a clear majority of GM workers—53.8 percent of more than 7,000 union members—rejected the agreement reached last week. KMWU bureaucrats are due to meet today to decide on further negotiations and any industrial action.

Under the tentative agreement, GM Korea offered to provide 4 million won ($3,600) per union worker in performance-based pay and bonuses for the year of 2020 instead of unfreezing basic salaries.

As of yesterday, Kia workers were continuing four-hour partial strikes for higher pay and bonuses at the company’s plants in Gwangmyeong and Hwaseong, both near Seoul, and Gwangju, in the south of the country. Four-hour stoppages took place on three days last week.

Like GM workers, Kia workers want an increase in their monthly basic pay. The union is demanding a 120,000 won ($104) rise per person, as well as 30 percent of the company’s annual operating profit to be allocated to performance-based pay, and an extension of the retirement age from 60 to 65.

Similarly, workers are concerned about their jobs. The union is calling for the components required for the manufacture of electric and hydrogen vehicles to take place inside existing Kia plants, rather than at an affiliated parts company, Hyundai Mobis.

Kia, whose profits have been hard hit by closures earlier in the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has failed to reach an agreement with the union.

The KMWU has already reached a sell-out deal with Kia’s bigger affiliate, Hyundai Motor, to impose a wage freeze on its workforce—only the third time ever that the basic wage of workers at the company has been frozen. The union, which conducted no strikes during the negotiating period, agreed to the wage freeze in return for various bonuses, including company shares and gift certificates.

The KMWU is the largest union within the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The KCTU, which postures as left-wing and militant, has worked to prevent any outbreak of discontent despite widespread attacks on the working class this year under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic. The union has deliberately kept negotiations with the auto companies separate so as to prevent any unified struggle by workers.

At the same time, the KCTU has tacitly accepted the demands of government and big business to impose the burden of the pandemic on workers by agreeing to cut costs to boost profits and “international competitiveness.” The prospect of job losses has been used as a threat to try to bludgeon workers into agreement. The unemployment rate hit 4.5 percent in May—its worst level in over a decade—and in October again jumped to 4.2 percent.

In opposition to the divisive tactics of the union, auto workers need to take matters into their own hands, establish their own rank-and-file committees and seek to unify with other sections of workers in South Korea and internationally. The political basis for such a struggle has to be a socialist program, including placing the auto plants under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class.

Indian Toyota workers continue month-long strike against speedup

Arun Kumar

Over 3,000 workers at two Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM)-owned car assembly plants in Bidadi, about 50 kilometres from Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, are continuing a four-week-long strike in defiance of the state government’s back-to-work order.

The workers have rejected the TKM’s demand to produce about 100,000 cars a month, instead of 80,000, in order to boost its global competitiveness and profits.

TKM has a total workforce of 6,500, of which 3,460 are unionised and work on the assembly line. The remaining employees include supervisors and office staff, many of whom are required to work on the assembly line, under Toyota’s Genchi Genbutsu (go and see for yourself) philosophy, especially to break strikes.

Striking Toyota workers locked out outside the factory

The workers began a sit-in strike on November 9, demanding the reinstatement of a suspended TKM Employees Union (TKMEU) leader Umesh Gowda Alur. He was victimised for raising with the management the workers’ mounting anger over unbearable workloads. The management imposed a lockout the following day, exploiting COVID-19 social distancing guidelines to throw the workers out of the premises. Seeking to intimidate workers, TKM suspended another 39 for supposed “acts of misconduct,” even though the facility had been closed.

Big business is concerned over the strike’s possible spread to other sections of workers who face similar conditions. Karnataka Employers Association president B.C. Prabhakar sent a letter to state Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, demanding repressive measures, including “immediate steps to declare curfew around the premises of TKM, Bidadi,” and “stringent action, including the arrest of troublemakers and also to bar them from entering the Bidadi area.”

The Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Karnataka state government banned the strike, while also demanding an end to the company lockout from November 18. The company seized on the government’s order to force workers back to work under its own speed-up conditions. When that attempt failed due to workers’ opposition, TKM imposed a lockdown again on November 23, with the complicity of the state government.

In an interview with the Times of India, TKM deputy managing director Raju Ketkale called on the state government “to take appropriate action” against the workers. This was a call for repressive measures to force workers to submit to the company’s harsh conditions.

Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site, a striking worker said TKM posted two notices on the company gate wall. One prohibits workers taking their mobile phones to the shop floor. The other “said if any worker after returning to work is tested positive to COVID-19, the company will not take responsibility for his treatment and will not grant paid leave for the curing period.” This reflects management’s callous attitude toward the safety of workers as the coronavirus pandemic spreads throughout the country.

Commenting on the media and government hostility to the strike, the Toyota worker said, “We don’t get any support from the main media. If any media men come, first they go and meet the management and publish whatever it says. They edit workers’ comments before publishing them. Our union leader went to meet and sought the support of the local MLAs [state legislative assembly members] and MPs [national parliament members], but no one came forward to support our cause.”

The worker agreed on the need for an international mobilisation of workers to confront the globally-connected employers’ onslaught against workers. “As you say, not only Toyota workers but millions of workers participated in the November 26 general strike in India. That shows that the vast majority of workers are facing a common problem.”

Even before COVID-19, the global auto industry was in crisis. It has never faced such a slump. Over 230,000 workers lost their jobs in July 2019. Then the pandemic intensified the crash. Moody’s Investors Service told the media that Indian auto sales would decline at least 30 percent in 2020, following a fall of over 40 percent in the seven months to July.

Maruti Suzuki Chairman RC Bhargava laid out the agenda of the corporate elite at an All India Management Association event. He declared: “India has the capability to become a lower cost country than China if the industry and the government work together.” This means that the Indian auto companies must conduct an assault on the jobs, wages and working conditions of workers, backed by brutal government repressive measures.

Bhargava’s own company launched a government-backed vendetta against the determined struggle of thousands of workers at the Maruti Suzuki assembly plant at Manesar in northern state of Haryana against slave labour conditions in 2011-12. As a result, 13 militant workers, including all 12 executive members of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union, an independent union formed by Manesar workers, were sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2017. They were framed up on murder charges.

While TKM workers are confronted with a government-company onslaught, the TKMEU has made no attempt to mobilise the support of other autoworkers. Instead, the union has turned to various parties of the political establishment, which are all committed to defending the profit interests of companies like Toyota.

The TKM workers are involved in a struggle not just against a single ruthless employer, but big business as a whole, its political representatives and the state apparatus. To stop the union leaders isolating their struggle, the TKM strikers must turn to their class brothers and sisters in the auto industry and other sectors throughout India and internationally.

To defeat the deepening attack on jobs, wages and basic democratic rights and the accompanying state repression, workers need new organisations, including action committees controlled by rank-and-file workers themselves, and a socialist perspective.

The Indian trade unions are mostly tied to the various capitalist parties, including the Stalinist Communist parties, and to the national framework. Like the unions around the world, they have responded to globalisation by suppressing working class opposition in order to attract foreign investment.

The courage and militancy of struggling workers are not sufficient to defeat this offensive by the global corporations, governments and unions. Workers need a socialist strategy to unify their struggles worldwide against the capitalist profit system.

Bangladesh Boosts Bay of Bengal Blue Economy

Vijay Sakhuja

The stage is set for the development of the deep sea Matarbari Port Development Project (MPDP) in Bangladesh. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has agreed to provide US$ 25.4 million in financial assistance for the project and a Japanese consulting company, Nippon Koei Joint Venture, has been short listed to provide engineering-related services. The MPDP is expected to commence commercial operations in 2026, and would be capable of receiving  8,500 TEU post-Panamax vessels. Plans are also underway to enhance the port’s capacity to 2.8 million TEUs annually by adding more berths in the future. The MPDP emerges in the background of the “Big-B” concept, i.e. Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt, which was announced by Bangladesh and Japan in 2014. The port is being linked with a national highway and the MPDP includes construction of a connecting road.

There are at least two major spinoffs that would accrue to Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal region. First, it will reduce Bangladesh’s “dependence on the feeder vessels to ferry export-import goods from different foreign ports.” Nearly 90 per cent of Bangladesh’s trade is carried onboard ships that operate out of three ports—Chattogram, Mongla and Payra. In 2017-18, Chattogram port accounted for 98.43 per cent of Bangladesh’s seaborne container trade and the balance was moved through Mongla port. Bangladesh relies on major container transshipment ports in Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia for its international containerised trade.

Second, the MPDP potentially provides the much-needed impetus to short sea shipping in the Bay of Bengal. According to Bangladesh’s State Minister for Shipping, Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, the MPDP could develop as a “regional hub of connectivity.” Short sea shipping in the Bay of Bengal region has been high on the regional countries’ agenda and a start has already been made with the commencement of services between Port Blair in India’s Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and Aceh in Sumatra, Indonesia. Similarly, connectivity between Port Blair and Ranong (Thailand) can provide the much-needed impetus to short sea shipping in the Andaman Sea. In this context, it is useful to mention that the Indian government has announced INR 10,000 crore to build a container transshipment hub in the Nicobar Islands. It would involve “container transshipment terminal with the Free Trade Warehousing Zone in South Bay, Great Nicobar Island to provide Indian shippers an alternative to Colombo, Singapore and Port Klang (Malaysia) transshipment ports.”

While the MPDP’s contribution to the Bay of Bengal region’s Blue Economy potential is widely welcomed and acknowledged, it is also necessary to keep in mind the strategic dynamics that have been at play in the region, which remain deeply rooted in the security calculus of the regional countries. Given the dual nature of maritime infrastructure projects, these are often viewed as a security challenge, particularly when such projects involve China. A useful example is the Chinese Belt Road Initiative (BRI), under which several port development projects in the Indian Ocean have attracted strategic concerns. Doraleh (Djibouti), Gwadar (Pakistan) and Hambantota (Sri Lanka) have often been labelled as Chinese naval outposts that facilitate operations by the Chinese Navy. It is not surprising that Chinese assisted port projects in Bangladesh and Myanmar have been a matter of concern for India. Similarly, China’s Kra Canal project—which involves building a channel across south Thailand and can potentially reduce shipping distances by at least 1,000 kilometers—has engendered security concerns in India.

While the tensions between economic opportunities and strategic concerns have been a feature of many of the Bay of Bengal maritime infrastructure plans and projects, a new opportunity has emerged for Bangladesh to lead the regional Blue Economy. The concept of Smart Ports is resonating across the maritime world and according to experts, only ‘smart ports’ will survive where to play roulette online for free. Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Big Data, Autonomous Systems, etc are “up-scaling the efficiency of the maritime connectivity eco-system,” Among the major container ports with which Bangladesh conducts container trade, the Port of Singapore is highly digitalised, and Sri Lanka’s Port of Colombo has taken some initiatives in this direction. It will be useful to explore Industry 4.0 technologies that can be part of the MPDP operations.

In fact, these technologies have a major role to play in the development of Blue Economy and will be critical for marine spatial planning, including port development projects. Bangladesh has positioned Blue Economy as high priority and the political leadership has given it the top position among the drivers for national growth. The next step should be to invest in Industry 4.0 technologies that add to improving efficiency and bring added value to the MPDP and Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal.

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UK Conservative government moves to end national lockdown with Labour Party backing

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government is ending the national lockdown and will vote today to re-introduce the Tier system that will be in place over the Christmas period.

The government is ending a lockdown that, despite its partial character and schools and workplaces remaining open, has cut coronavirus infections cases by a third and under conditions in which infections are still high.

The R (Reproduction) level of the virus has fallen below 1 (to an estimated 0.88) for the first time since August. But any progress made is to be torn up so that corporations can reap profits in the run-up to Christmas, with millions of people being allowed to meet together in family groups over a five day period. In a politically criminal decision that will lead to countless deaths, the government announced that all shops will be allowed to open for 24 hours for the entirely of December and January.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

This is happening even as Imperial College's monthly React survey of 105,000 people between November 13 and 24 found that are still 72,000 infections per day--down from around 100,000 per day at the end of October.

Hundreds of deaths are still being reported daily, with the 205 announced Monday taking the total to almost 60,000. The government tally is manipulated, with a host of other estimates from reliable sources estimating the true number of fatalities at well above 70,000.

According to the government’s own figures nearly 16,000 hospital beds are filled with COVID-19 patients, not far off the peak in April of almost 20,000. Nearly a third of England’s hospital trusts have exceeded their first-wave peak of Covid patients undergoing treatment, according to analysis published by the Guardian. National Health Service (NHS) trusts in South Somerset and Devon “treated more than twice as many Covid patients on at least one day last week as they did at the peak of the first wave in spring.”

Any new surge in infections, the only possible result of ending the national lockdown, threatens to quickly overwhelm the NHS.

That is why the government is doing everything to claim that the NHS is able to cope and has plenty of spare capacity. On Sunday Tory MP John Redwood tweeted, “Why not open and staff all the Nightingale hospital capacity they need for CV 19 cases and get the rest of the NHS back to full capacity for everything else? No need to scare us with the idea the NHS will not cope.”

His tweet was met with a barrage of denunciations from the public, pointing out that there are not enough staff to run the NHS at full capacity, let alone the seven Nightingale field hospitals if they were reopened. Sky News journalist Mark Austin felt compelled to reply, “Staffed by who exactly? Last I heard there are 28,000 NHS staff off with Covid, isolating or off because children sent back from school. Where are the highly trained ICU nurses going to come from?”

The crisis at just one NHS trust over the weekend exposes the government as liars. On Saturday, the critical care unit at Royal Stoke University Hospital was forced to increase its alert level, as 38 of its 322 Covid patients were placed on ventilators—meaning that it had just seven spares. The hospital was forced to reach an agreement with NHS trusts in Birmingham and Coventry and Warwickshire to transfer critically-ill patients and the situation is being reviewed daily. Stoke had warned before declaring the major incident that it was already facing "unprecedented pressures" as Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire reported a further 374 infections in the 24 hours before the crisis.

The biggest refutation of government justifications to end lockdown is the fact that 99 percent of the UK’s population are to be placed into the top two “High” and “Very High” tiers, with 55 million people remain banned from mixing with other households indoors until the five day Christmas exemption. Around 23 million people across 21 local authorities, including substantial parts of the north of England and the Midlands, are in tier three. Most of the population, including London, and the Liverpool city region will be in tier two. Only largely rural Cornwall and low population areas of the Isle of Wight and Isles of Scilly will be under Tier 1.

That the virus is still a major threat is entirely the result of the government homicidal herd immunity policy. As a result of the spring national lockdown, including schools being closed for months, before everything was disastrously reopened allowing the virus to again spread out of control, the number of patients being treated in hospital for COVID-19 fell to as low as 740 nationally on September 11.

A substantial section of Tory MPs in the 70 plus strong COVID Research Group (CRG) oppose further Tier restrictions and have threatened to vote against new measures today, unless substantial concessions are given them by Johnson. The CRG said up to 100 of the Tories overall 364 MPs could rebel.

In response, over the weekend the prime minister sent the CRG a letter insisting that the new measures had a “sunset” expiry date of February 3. Johnson also pledged that all tier allocations would be reviewed on December 16. The government plans that a Cabinet Office committee chaired by Johnson will “take the final decision on tier allocations”. These will be announced on Dec 17 and come into force on Dec 19.

A separate letter was sent to reassure CRG leaders Mark Harper and Steve Baker.

MPs would be given a further vote on whether restrictions could be extended in January. Sections of the CRG are insisting that a vote on whether to renew must come soon after Christmas, with one Tory MP, Nus Ghani, telling the Sun newspaper, “These restrictions must only last for four weeks. There must be another vote in early January because I refuse to lock my constituency into such severe restrictions and throw away the key for two whole months.”

The CRG demanded that Johnson publish assessments of the health, economic and societal impacts of the virus, which the government agreed to.

The right-wing Daily Mail editorialised Monday, “End tyranny of tiers”, declaring, “These blanket restrictions have pushed the whole economy to the edge of an abyss. To drag it back… Johnson must loosen the shackles now. Fine words must be followed by radical action.”

The profit lust of the ruling elite was summed up in the pro-Labour Party Daily Mirror ’ s banner headline Monday, “Go shop for Britain".

The article cited the British Independent Retailers Association declaring, "It's the most important December ever for retailers.” Representatives of big business spoke out to denounce further Tier restrictions, as the Centre for Economics and Business Research claimed it would cost the economy £900 million a day. Pizza Express chairman Luke Johnson asked on the BBC’s Newsnight, "Where is the cost-benefit analysis of the lockdowns? … A lot of these businesses are hanging by a thread. Pubs didn’t even shut during the blitz in the second world war. And yet we are destroying the industry, with thousands of jobs.”

With a Tory rebellion likely whatever concessions Johnson makes, the government is reliant on the support of the Labour Party to get its agenda through. Tory Environment Secretary George Eustice said that the situation was a “national emergency” and “Like all these things, it will depend on what other parties do, yes. It will depend on what the Labour party choose to do… it’s not the time really for any political party to play political games.” Labour said Monday evening that it will not oppose Johnson "in the national interest" and will abstain in the vote. 

Labour’s collusion in this crime extended to the demand that the government should suspend peak rail fares over the Christmas period in anticipation of a surge in demand, as people travel to see families and friends.