US retail giants shut off pandemic hazard pay to workforce while funneling billions into share buybacks

Ray Coleman

The Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think tank, released a report in November examining how the largest store chains in the United States have cut off critical pay support for workers even as cases of COVID-19 are spiking.

The study, titled “Windfall Profits and Deadly Risks,” examined pandemic hazard pay at Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize (which owns the grocery store chain Giant Foods), Walgreens, CVS Health, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and Dollar General. These 13 companies, ranging from big-box stores to grocery chains to electronics stores and pharmacies, are all among the 20 largest retail companies in the US and collectively employ over six million workers.

They account for more than one third of employment in the US retail sector, which had about 15 million workers in 2019, equal to about one in 10 workers.

Wages in retail were already at or below poverty level before the pandemic. The median starting wage for retail jobs such as cashiers and stock clerks at companies like Kroger and CVS is between $11 and $12 an hour. At the 13 companies examined by Brookings for the report, only Amazon and Costco had a starting wage of $15 or more before the pandemic started. Since the pandemic started, Target and Best Buy have raised their starting pay to $15.

All the companies in the report implemented so-called “hero pay” or “Appreciation Pay” as COVID-19 was beginning to spread, which amounted to an average of only $1.11 an hour over the course of the entire pandemic.

Eight of the 13 companies paid their workers less than $1 an hour extra during the pandemic when spread out over the entire course of March to today. At Albertsons, employees have earned an average of just $0.83 per hour extra when spread out over the course of the pandemic. At CVS Health, hazard pay spread out since March has amounted to a meager $0.21 per hour in additional pay for cashiers and clerks. “Amazon and Walmart could have quadrupled the hazard pay they gave their frontline workers and still earned more profit than the previous year,” the report states.

However, almost every company ended additional hazard pay by early summer as lockdown measures across the country were being relaxed. According to the report, on average, workers have been on the job for 133 days since last receiving hazard pay. The report declares: “The numbers are stark—they paint a picture of most companies prioritizing profits and wealth for shareholders over investments in their employees.”

On average, the companies paid workers hazard pay for only 79 days of the pandemic. When averaged out over the past nine months, the average wage increase was miniscule. Workers received an additional $0.95 an hour at Amazon and $0.63 more at Walmart, about a 6 percent raise.

Almost all of the companies studied phased out their hazard pay by June, however. As the US case numbers continue to escalate into uncharted territory, not one of the 13 companies studied has reinstated hazard pay for frontline workers.

“I started receiving hazard pay when the local government began socially distancing everything,” an Amazon worker in Baltimore told the World Socialist Web Site. “As soon as everyone else started being told to go back to work, Amazon took its hazard pay away ,” he said. The company eliminated its minor pay increases in May, when COVID-19 cases were hovering around 20,000 a day in the United States. For the past several weeks, the United States has reported more than 200,000 cases daily and has surpassed 300,000 deaths from the disease. “I know Amazon can pay us more,” the worker added, concluding that the current conditions at work were “an insult.”

In fact, hazard pay has been cut even as profits boomed. On average, the 13 major retail companies Brookings examined posted $16.9 billion more in profits in 2020 than 2019, a 39 percent rise. Since the pandemic started, the stock prices of these companies have gone up 33 percent. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth has ballooned by over $70 billion, and the Walton family, relatives of the Walmart founder and the richest family in the US, have added $45 billion to their net worth. Amazon and Walmart have posted a combined profit growth of $10.9 billion this year.

Even as they wound down hazard pay, these companies poured billions into share buybacks this year. Ahold Delhaize poured $862 million of its profits into stock repurchases, 50 percent more than what it spent on all COVID-19-related costs in the first three quarters of the year. Nine of the companies studied bought back shares in 2020. After ending hazard pay for its workers, Walmart announced a $500 million share repurchase program.

Kroger, which ended hazard pay in May, spent $211 million in stock buybacks during the second quarter. The grocery chain announced a further $1 billion in stock buybacks in September.

In general, the US retail sector has been performing better-than-expected during the pandemic, being one sector of growth in the market. When states imposed lockdowns closing non-essential businesses during the first wave of the pandemic, large retailers were declared essential businesses and remained open. While around 400,000 small businesses were permanently closed by June, large retailers like Walmart and Amazon possessed dominant e-commerce capabilities that left them positioned to capture the sudden explosion in online shopping as people tried to avoid unnecessary activity outside their homes.

With an influx of demand from changing buying habits during the pandemic, big retail companies have been hiring rapidly. As the Brookings report acknowledges, jobs at these companies have become one of the few avenues for employment in some communities and for workers in the retail sector whose stores have been closed or which have laid off staff.

“This pandemic has made all the problems Kroger has even worse,” a Tennessee Kroger worker told the WSWS. “The stress that we were under before the pandemic is heightened because people keep calling out sick,” he explained. According to a late October report by Occupational Safety and Environmental Medicine, up to 20 percent of all grocery workers have had COVID-19 in the United States.

“The managers and bosses are keeping us workers in the dark,” about the dangers of COVID-19, a Giant worker in Virginia told the WSWS. According to this worker, his managers forced workers to share hand sanitizer, even as the company had “been increasing… profits with special products, including their own brand of hand sanitizer.” He explained: “appreciation bonuses were $277 after tax. Workers are afraid to demand hazard pay” out of fear they would lose their jobs. This worker said his official bargaining representative, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, “never responded” when he asked about hazard pay. The worker explained that he hasn’t heard from the UFCW “in months.”

In the case of Dollar General, Brookings wrote, “The company could have given its frontline workers COVID-19 bonuses worth 10 times the amount it gave them in the spring and still have earned more profit than the previous year.” In the second quarter of 2020, Dollar General spent eight times as much money on stock repurchases than it did on pandemic compensation for frontline workers. Most recently, the company announced that it would be buying back $2.5 billion worth of stock by the end of fiscal 2021, which is 14 times the amount it committed to workers in the form of pandemic compensation.

NLRB says Google illegally spied on and fired workers in 2019

Kevin Reed

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a consolidated complaint on December 2 accusing Google of violating US labor laws by “interfering with, restraining, and coercing” the “protected, concerted activities” of a group of employees who were organizing and participating in workplace activism in late 2019.

The partially redacted complaint states that managers and representatives of Google’s Global Investigations department took the illegal measures against the employees—including electronically surveilling and interrogating, threatening, disciplining and firing them—at thecompany’s facility in the San Francisco area between September and December 2019.

Googleplex is the corporate headquarters of Google and its parent company Alphabet in Mountain View, California

The submission, entitled “Order Consolidating Cases, Consolidated Complaint and Notice of Hearing,” brings together six prior NLRB complaints against Google, three of which were filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the AFL-CIO, in order to “avoid unnecessary costs or delays.” The hearing date has been set for April 21, 2021 before an administrative law judge in San Francisco.

The complaint was signed and submitted by Jill H. Coffman, Regional Director of NLRB Region 20, and spells out the specific illegal actions taken by the company and their dates of occurrence. According to Alan Hyde, a labor law expert at Rutgers Law School in Newark, the company will likely settle the case. Hyde told the New York Times, “Google is not very popular in Washington right now with either Republicans or Democrats.”

However, company spokesperson Jennifer Rodstrom told the Times, “We’re confident in our decision and legal position. Actions undertaken by the employees at issue were a serious violation of our policies and an unacceptable breach of a trusted responsibility.”

Although some of the victimized employees’ names are redacted, the document contains the names of three Google employees who have been publicly identified previously in media coverage of the incidents. Two managers who are accused of violating the employees’ rights are named, while the identities of nine others are concealed.

The complaint states that on September 3, 2019, and “at various times thereafter,” Google management “virtually surveilled employees protected concerted activities by, on numerous occasions, viewing an employee slide production in support of the HCL union drive.” HCL America Inc is a subsidiary of the global company HCL Technologies based in India.

The firm was contracting 80 tech employees to Google at its Bakery Square facility in Pittsburgh. The tech workers voted to unionize on September 24, 2019 and affiliated with the United Steel Workers, an AFL-CIO union.

The complaint goes on to state that on November 13, 2019 employees were interrogated by members of Google’s Global Investigations department “about their protected concerted activities by asking them about their access of employees’ calendars and MemeGen Takedown Documents.” The interrogations were apparently trying to find out if the employees were accessing a company-wide calendar and the internal communications tool at Google known as MemeGen for the purposes of organizing their legally protected activities.

In a meeting with employees on December 18, 2019, Director of Detection and Response, Heather Atkins, and other Google management personnel “threatened employees with unspecified reprisals by requiring employees to raise workplace concerns through official channels including Code of Conduct alias or go/my-concerns.”

The document then explains that Google’s Data Classification Policy was utilized and enforced “selectively and disparately by applying it against employees who engaged in protected, concerted activities.” Among these was the implementation of a “Calendar Access rule prohibiting employees from accessing other employees’ calendars without a business purpose.”

The NLRB states that the purpose of the rule is “to discourage its employees from forming, joining, assisting a union or engaging in other protected, concerted activities.” At this point, Google went on an offensive against several employees who were engaged in “concerted activities with other employees for the purposes of mutual aid and protection” by posting workplace concerns on MemeGen and accessing the calendars of others.

Then, on November 6, 2019, Google employees Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland were placed on administrative leave for “accessing calendars and documents regarding the MemeGen Takedown Process” and, on November 25, Google fired Berland.

According to news reports Berland was targeted because he had researched the relationship between Google and IRI Consultants, a firm known for aggressive antiunion efforts, and used the internal calendar platform to learn about meetings between the companies.

The company also put employee Katherine Spiers on administrative leave on November 25, 2019 and fired her on December 13 for writing computer code for a pop-up message. Spiers’ pop-up message “would automatically appear when an employee visited Respondent’s Community Guidelines and other web pages” and told the employees about an earlier NLRB case against Google.

Significantly, other unnamed employees had also been disciplined and fired by Google, but the NLRB complaint does not take up their cases and does not consider these actions to be a violation of employee rights.

As explained here on the World Socialist Web Site at the time of the firings of Rivers and Berland, the assault by Google on the rights of employees is connected with the growth of political activism and opposition by the staff to the company’s collaboration with the US military in Project Maven in 2018.

A statement released by Berland on the NLRB action said, “This complaint makes clear that workers have the right to speak to issues of ethical business and the composition of management. This is a significant finding at a time when we’re seeing the power of a handful of tech billionaires consolidate control over our lives and our society. Workers have the right to speak out about and organize, as the NLRB is affirming, but we also know that we should not, and cannot, cleave off ethical concerns about the role management wants to play in that society.”

While Berland has taken a courageous stand against Google and deserves the support of the entire working class, Google employees and other sections of tech workers must be warned about the role of the NLRB and the AFL-CIO in this conflict. That an entire year has gone by since the firing of Berland, Rivers and Spiers—not to mention the fact that the other workers who were caught up in the conspiracy by Google to purge the company of activists have been left high and dry—is an indication that the intervention of the official American unions and the NLRB is to sidetrack and bury in endless litigation the struggle of Google workers.

For more than a half century, the AFL-CIO and NLRB have partnered together with employers and corporations to isolate, strangle and demoralize workers who have taken up the most elementary forms of class struggle in defense of wages, benefits, working conditions and basic rights in the workplace. Time and again, the AFL-CIO has called on workers to put their faith in appeals to the NLRB and courts. The outcome of such appeals has always been bitter defeat and demoralization.

School students in Germany protest and enforce online teaching to combat coronavirus infection

Gregor Link

In response to the German government’s murderous coronavirus policy, which puts profits before health and lives, students and pupils in Germany are taking the fight against the pandemic into their own hands. Many school student initiatives are preparing strikes and protests and in the city of Bremen pupils from two high schools, with the support of teaching staff, have taken emergency action to combat the disease and save lives. The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Meret Göhring, who attends the Leibnizplatz high school in Bremen.

A chalkboard reads 'It's Corona Time' in an empty class room of a high school in Frankfurt, Germany, March 13, 2020 (AP Photo/Michael Probst, file)

“Our secondary level 2 has been on strike since Tuesday evening,” she said. “As a student council, we worked closely with teachers to ensure that pupils could attend face-to-face classes on a voluntary basis only for the last three days. With this measure we managed to cut the number of classroom contacts by almost half.

“We knew the teaching faculty was behind us and also had encouragement and the unofficial support of the upper school leadership. Teachers in our upper school have been digitally streaming their classes via Zoom. That initially took place on Wednesday without approval until the upper school administration officially stated in the afternoon that no absences could be logged if pupils attended class online from their homes.”

In Frankfurt, where the head of the health department is publicly downplaying the pandemic, 300 students took part in a school strike last week and held a rally in the city centre to demand safe education. The protest adhered to the prevailing coronavirus prevention requirements.

The Hesse state student initiative unverantwortlich.org (irresponsible.org), which has published photo statements from students, also organised a school strike on Friday. In a social media post, the group had called on all students not to go to class and instead participate in an online rally, which took place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“It’s all about profits and allowing parents to continue going to work,” explained moderator Ronja. “We are being told that economic interests are more important than the well-being of the people. Lufthansa is laying off 50,000 staff and still receives €9 billion. At the same time, there is supposedly no money for air filtration systems in classrooms.”

In Bremen, there have already been several strikes and protests: “For weeks, students and teachers have been demanding smaller learning groups to reduce the risk of infection,” writes Bremen’s Kurt-Schumacher-Allee (KSA) high school on its website. “The student body of our upper school is committed to achieving this.”

In consultation with the school administration, the pupils’ council has organised alternating classes throughout the upper school for the past two weeks. Speaking to a Bremen regional magazine Buten un binnen, one teacher, Desiree Baumann, said teaching staff were “very grateful to the students for this action”—many teachers were “pleased with the initiative” due to the risk of infection in what were often run-down and dilapidated classrooms. The school’s principal Christian Sauter said he was “impressed by the breadth of the pupils’ ideas and responsibility.” He thought the pupils’ intervention was “terrific.”

As Meret reports, the mood among teachers has also quickly reached boiling point: “The teachers are 99 percent behind us students. As soon as you approach them outside of the context of the classroom, they open up and one realises we’re all on the same page. But we cannot openly confirm the backing from teachers by name because they could get in trouble with the school board.”

In fact, school authorities have reacted with open hostility to the pupils’ intervention, which has met with the support, admiration and gratitude of teachers and principals. Bremen’s education senator, Claudia Bogedan (SPD), for example, let it be known that half-size groups would be introduced only after the infection rate exceeded 200 (per 100,000 persons) and a quarter of the class was already in quarantine. “Blanket” alternate teaching, Bogedan told the press, was “disproportionate given the current incidence figures.” The seven-day infection rate in Bremen is currently 108, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). This is more than double the threshold the RKI and WHO set in spring to identify Europe-wide COVID hotspots.

“The school authorities are completely opposed to it (i.e., alternate teaching to reduce class sizes) and the closure of schools is out of the question,” Meret declared. In the case of the Lloyd Gymnasium in Bremerhaven, the authorities went so far as to politically intervene and counter the independent initiative undertaken by pupils. Luca Lennox Püchel, a member of a pupils’ initiative in Bremerhaven, told Buten un Binnen that the pupils’ council had worked out and decided on similar measures but that the school authorities had insisted on maintaining compulsory attendance. It was “incomprehensible,” declared the pupils’ representative, that “a magistrate cancels a student action in a press release without talking to us first.”

The arrogant reaction of the authorities expresses their fear of the growing resistance on the part of pupils, students, teachers and workers in Germany and throughout Europe. In Bremerhaven, around 200 pupils at Lloyd Gymnasium enforced a day of home teaching earlier this month. Previously, in another strike action, about 700 students at the Carl von Ossietzky school boycotted face-to-face classes.

At the same time, the very same authorities are sabotaging measures for remote teaching: “Because we still haven’t received the iPads promised by the school authorities, many students are forced to continue going to school. Class examinations are continuing. There are cases where we have to write four tests per week. I myself have had to write exams continuously for four hours.” All of this, he said, is taking place under the permanent risk of contagion and freezing temperatures in classrooms with open windows.

“The prevailing polices show no consideration for pupils and their families,” says Lennart (17) from Achim, near Bremen. Lennart is in the 12th grade at the Cato Bontjes van Beek Gymnasium. “We are in attendance every day with the whole school, although the infection rate in our district is almost 200,” he reports. “The fact that in-person classes just keep going under these conditions is mind-boggling. Learning is only partially the focus. Mainly, it’s about putting pupils somewhere so their parents can go back to work.”

In her government statement Wednesday, Merkel reiterated that closing schools was out of the question for the German government. Referring to “global contexts” and “economic power relations in the world” that were being refashioned in the wake of the pandemic, she threatened, “We have drawn the conclusion from the experience of last spring: we will do everything in our power to keep day-care centres and schools open. We will do everything we can to keep nurseries and schools open.”

In their conference call on Sunday, the German chancellor and the state premiers decided not to close a single company outside the retail sector despite the dramatic situation. All that was left was a request to the corporate leaders to extend any company vacations. There will also be no unified school closures. So that workers can continue to go to the factories to increase the profits of the rich, only those children for whom this is “possible” are to stay at home. All others are to be able to continue to be cared for in school and day-care centres.

Under the circumstances, Lennart said, comprehensive emergency measures were vital: “I can only support the strikes against in-person teaching. Schools must be closed and opportunities for online teaching expanded. Too many lives are at stake.”

As Meret points out, it is of utmost importance that pupils organise independently. “Politicians are simply unwilling to do what is in our interests—so we have to do it ourselves,” Meret concludes. “With our pupils’ strike, we have achieved more protection against infection with a few hours of preparation than all of the measures taken by Bremen’s politicians in recent months. No one will stand up for us pupils other than ourselves. This is a conclusion reached by more and more people.”

Uniting all students in the fight for safe education, Meret said, showed enormous potential: “But our strike also shows that it is possible if we stand together. If all pupils stayed home for a few days, it would send a very strong signal.”

India moves to strengthen strategic relations with Sri Lanka and the Maldives

Rohantha De Silva

India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval visited Colombo late last month to participate in a Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation meeting. Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, Major General (Rtd.) Kamal Gunaratne, represented Sri Lanka, and Mariya Didi, the Minister of Defence, represented the Maldives at the meeting.

Revived after six years, the gathering, which involved India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, further highlights the Modi government’s efforts to strengthen strategic relations with its smaller neighbours.

India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval at the Pentagon in 2017 (Wikimedia)

New Delhi’s moves take place under conditions where its strategic rival China is courting Colombo. Sri Lanka has become another focal point in the geopolitical struggle between India and the US, on one side, and China, on the other.

The main aim of Doval’s visit was to encourage maritime cooperation in order to counter Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean region. Sri Lanka and the Maldives are strategically located adjacent to crucial sea lanes in the Indian Ocean.

The trilateral meeting discussed maritime cooperation on “domain awareness,” humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and joint military exercises. The Sri Lanka Defence Ministry will coordinate all maritime security projects. The meeting also decided to establish a deputy-level working group that would meet biannually.

Since President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih came to power in 2018, the Maldives government has functioned as a proxy of New Delhi and Washington. New Delhi is now working to bring Colombo into line with US and Indian geo-political ambitions.

Washington has stepped up its activities in South Asia to strengthen its military and strategic partnerships against China.

In October, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Sri Lanka and Maldives, following his trip to India with then US Defence Secretary Mark Esper. In November, India held the 2020 Malabar joint naval exercises with the US, Japan and Australia.

With the blessing of India, the US and Maldives signed the “Framework for U.S. Department of Defense-Maldives Ministry of Defence Defense and Security Relationship” agreement on September 10.

Under this deal, the two countries will “deepen engagement and cooperation in support of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean,” including military-to-military dialogue at senior level and joint activity. Stripped of the diplomatic jargon, Maldives is now integrated into Washington’s war plans against China.

Last month’s Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation meeting was also used to further cement relations between Colombo and New Delhi on other key issues.

A Sri Lankan presidential statement on November 28 declared that the discussions were “highly fruitful” but provided no clear details. The Citizen, an Indian website, reported on November 30 that President Rajapakse was keen to honor the Memorandum of Cooperation on the Eastern Container Terminal (ECT) signed in May last year.

The long-pending tri-nation project—involving Sri Lanka, Japan and India—to develop and run the strategically located facility at Colombo port is due to commence. Under the agreement a Terminal Operations Company (TOC) is to be established to conduct all operations. Sri Lanka would retain a 51 percent ownership, with the other joint venture partners holding the remaining 49 percent.

With between 70 and 80 percent of Colombo port traffic involving Indian transshipment, it is critical for New Delhi to have a foothold in Colombo port. The Chinese-owned Colombo International Container Terminal (CICI) is involved in the ECT.

The original ECT development proposal by India was announced in 2016 by then Sri Lankan Minister of Ports Arjuna Ranatunga, but was scuttled by President Maithripala Sirisena. Fifteen joint venture projects, with memoranda of understandings, were signed in 2017 and are still pending, raising concerns in New Delhi.

Rajapakse and Doval have reportedly agreed to the expeditious development of infrastructure projects with Indian assistance. Reeling under a growing foreign debt crisis, Rajapakse has called for increased investments, not loans, and is seeking financial assistance from Beijing, a point of contention with Washington and New Delhi.

During his visit, Doval also agreed to build low-cost housing, having already constructed some in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking North and East, and the central tea plantation areas.

Sri Lanka has boosted its political, military and economic relations with India in the past few months. On October 24, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse held their first online bilateral summit. While Colombo requested a delay in debt repayments and a $US1 billion currency swap arrangement, Modi was non-committal.

During his trip, Doval held an unscheduled meeting with Tamil National Alliance leader R. Sampanthan. According to the Citizen website, Sampanthan raised the Sri Lankan government’s intention to abolish or weaken the provincial councils, which are central to the TNA’s push for greater devolution.

The website reported that Doval and Sampanthan discussed economic development in the North and East but that they wanted talks on the provincial councils kept under wraps, because they did not want the issue “to come between the two countries.”

While the provincial councils, which were part of the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord, do not address the oppression of the island's Tamil minority, they regard any concessions to the Tamil elite as a “betrayal” by sections of the Colombo ruling elite, including the military hierarchy.

Apart from the Maldives and Sri Lanka, New Delhi has also increased its activities in Nepal, a country that has developed closer relations with China during the last few years.

On October 21, Kumar Goel, chief of the Indian external intelligence agency, Research & Analysis Wing, made a two-day trip to Nepal. This was followed by Indian army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane’s visit to Nepal for three days on November 4, and on November 26, Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Sharing visited Kathmandu for two days of talks.

India is a strategic partner of the US, and also part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, (QUAD) with the US, Japan, and Australia. This anti-China military alliance has hardened in recent times and is working for joint military planning and action against China.

The belligerent stand of Washington against China has greatly increased the danger of an eruption of military conflict between the two-nuclear armed powers.

Biden’s choice for US trade representative signals anti-China stance

Peter Symonds

In his choice of US trade representative, President-elect Joe Biden has made clear that he will continue the aggressive anti-China confrontation launched by the Obama administration a decade ago and stepped up under Trump. While the appointee is responsible for US trade policy internationally, Biden’s nomination of Katherine Tai last Friday targeted China in particular.

In justifying his decision, Biden praised Tai’s record as “the chief trade enforcer against unfair trade practices by China, which will be a key priority in the Biden-Harris administration.” He highlighted her role as the chief legal counsel for the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) between 2011 and 2014, where she marshaled international support, including from the EU, Japan and Australia, against Chinese limits on the export of rare earths.

Katherine Tai (Photo: Inter-American Dialogue/Flickr)

China imposed a ban on the export of rare earths to Japan in 2010 amid sharp tensions over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islets in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Tokyo but claimed by both countries. The conflict was exacerbated by the Obama administration’s belligerent stance towards Beijing, which was made explicit in its “pivot to Asia” announced in November 2011. China’s export restrictions on rare earths were later extended to the US and Europe, then dropped in 2015 after an adverse WTO ruling.

A Hong Kong-based trade lawyer Benjamin Kostrzewa, who worked on the WTO rare earths case with Tai, described her as “having an iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach.”

Biden said Tai would work closely with his economic, national security and foreign policy officials. “She understands that we need … to be considerably more strategic than we’ve been in how we trade, and that makes us all stronger, how we’re made stronger by trade,” he declared.

Tai, whose parents were born in China and raised her in Taiwan, is closely connected to the Democrats and currently serves as the chief trade lawyer for the ways and means committee in the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives. She has been part of the push by the military establishment to ensure key supply chains are based in the US.

Tai has not just been active on trade issues. She has also been involved in recent months in mobilising Democratic Party support for the escalating US propaganda campaign over alleged Chinese human rights abuses of Muslim Uyghurs in the western province of Xinjiang.

As vice-president, Biden played an active role in the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia—a determined across-the-board diplomatic, economic and military strategy aimed at undermining China and preventing it from threatening the global hegemony of US imperialism. Under Obama, the US military refocused 60 percent of naval and air assets to the Indo-Pacific and drew up its AirSea Battle strategy for war with China.

As part of these war plans, the Obama administration strengthened military alliances, strategic partnerships and basing arrangements throughout Asia and deliberately aggravated dangerous hot spots including on the Korean Peninsula and in Indo-China. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton transformed what had been longstanding maritime disputes in the South China Sea between Beijing and its neighbours into a major international flashpoint, further inflamed by the provocative dispatch of US warships into Chinese-claimed waters.

On the economic front, Obama pushed the formation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade and investment bloc that deliberately excluded China and was held up as the “gold standard” in particular for protecting US intellectual property rights. Trump immediately ditched the TPP on assuming office and replaced it with aggressive “America First” trade war policies that targeted China, but also affected US allies in Europe and Asia.

Biden has already indicated that he will not immediately wind back Trump’s punitive tariffs of up to 25 percent on $370 billion worth of Chinese products exported to the US, or take action to change the Phase 1 trade agreement reached by Trump this year that commits China to buying an additional $200 billion in US goods and services in 2020–21. In an interview earlier this month in the New York Times, Biden declared: “I’m not going to make any immediate moves, and the same applies to the tariffs. I’m not going to prejudice my options.”

Biden said his main priority was going to be to marshal US allies in Europe and Asia and on that basis to “develop a coherent strategy.” His goal, he declared, “would be to pursue trade policies that actually produce progress on China’s abusive practices—that’s stealing intellectual property, dumping products, illegal subsidies to corporations” and forcing “tech transfers” from American companies to their Chinese counterparts.

These unsubstantiated allegations against China highlight the central concern in the American ruling class—that China will not simply function as a huge cheap labour platform for American corporations, but will challenge US domination in hi-tech areas that are critical to the maintenance of its economic and strategic global supremacy. Trump has already taken action in the name of “national security” to attempt to undermine Chinese hi-tech rivals such as Huawei. Biden is signaling that he will accelerate the US economic offensive in hi-tech.

Biden indicated last month that he intends to invest $300 billion in research and development and other areas to ensure that American corporations are not eclipsed by China or any other rival. In his New York Times interview, Biden declared: “I want to make sure we’re going to fight like hell by investing in America first,” before listing energy, biotech, advanced materials and artificial intelligence as areas for large-scale government investment in research.

Biden stated his determination to maintain US global dominance in an essay entitled “Why America Must Lead Again; Rescuing US Foreign Policy After Trump” in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs.

“The Biden foreign policy agenda will place the United States back at the head of the table, in a position to work with its allies and partners to mobilize collective action on global threats. The world does not organize itself… If we continue his [Trump’s] abdication of that responsibility, then one of two things will happen: either someone else will take the United States’ place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values, or no one will, and chaos will ensue.”

Biden then made absolutely clear who he is talking about. “China represents a special challenge,” he stated, “The United States does need to get tough with China.”

Regardless of who is finally installed in the White House next month, the US economic warfare and military build-up against China will continue apace. Biden is assembling an administration that will be every bit as aggressive in its confrontation with China as that of Trump—a path that is plunging the world towards a catastrophic war.

Macron government authorizes police documentation of political views of French population

Will Morrow

At the beginning of the month, the Macron government quietly released far-reaching changes to its police intelligence guidelines, to facilitate the mass documentation of the political views of the French population.

The changes were enacted via a series of executive decrees published on December 4. They were not accompanied by any press statement or public debate, and were initially revealed only due to an article by the French data and technology blog Next INpact. The decrees significantly enlarge the conditions in which police can create detailed personal files on individuals and the information that these files can contain.

A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron's televised speech, Monday April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

As of November, according to the interior ministry, these police files—which are separate from those maintained by the intelligence agencies—held the detailed personal information of more than 60,000 people across the country.

This is now to be further expanded. Previously, the guidelines referred to the collection and analysis of information about individual “persons.” This has been replaced to include both “physical” and “moral persons”—the latter being a definition in French law for a legal association—as well as “groupings.”

The term “grouping” is so vague that it would undoubtedly encompass large social media groups and protest movements, including the “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, which were organized on Facebook groups of up to 300,000 people. The decree states that data can be collected on “physical persons holding or having held direct and non-fortuitous relations with the [association] or grouping...”

The criteria for who is considered a “risk” has also been expanded. The previous version of the law referred to individuals who threatened “public security.” The new version refers to threats to “public security or the security of the state,” to “the integrity of the territory or to institutions of the Republic,” and to “the fundamental interests of the nation.” The latter is defined separately as including “the major industrial, economic and scientific interests of France” and its “foreign policy.”

The information that police are instructed to document has also been changed. Previously, the law referred to the documentation of the “political, philosophical, religious and trade union activities” of the individual in question. This has been changed to “political opinions, philosophical and religious convictions, or trade union membership.” Police are also to collect the social media activities of those who are targeted.

Significantly, as noted by the liberties defense association Quadrature Du Net, the decree also removed a clause which explicitly precluded the use of the police files for large-scale facial recognition.

The Macron government is building up a police state to suppress the mass opposition in the working class to social inequality, austerity, and the right-wing militarist policies of the political establishment. Last year, the Macron government approved similar changes to the strategic guidelines of the national intelligence and counterterrorism agency, stating that the role of the intelligence agencies is to counter “subversive movements” and “insurrectional violence” in the population.

In 2014, the “National Intelligence Strategy” listed five areas of focus: terrorism, espionage and economic interference, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and organized crime. The new version included a new category, “Anticipation of crises and the risk of major ruptures.” Under the headline “Violent subversion,” it stated that “the growing strength of movements and networks of a subversive character constitutes a factor of crisis that is all the more preoccupying because they are aimed at weakening, and even destroying, the foundations of our democracy and the republican institutions through insurrectional violence.”

These changes underscore the fact that the vast expansion of police powers and evisceration of democratic rights of the population, introduced under the banner of the “War on Terror” over the past two decades, are directed against social opposition in the working class. Speaking last Thursday on France Info, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin declared that the new police documentation rules were required because “opinions and political activities connected to extremist parties, those who call precisely for separation, for revolution, must be known by the intelligence agencies.”

The Socialist Party has criticized the latest changes knowing that its vote would not be required to enforce them. Its spokesman Boris Vallaud called for the law’s withdrawal. But the Socialist Party has played a leading role in building up the police’s powers, enacting a two-year state of emergency beginning in 2015 under Francois Hollande and suspending democratic rights.

A raft of police-state laws are now being pushed forward by Macron. On November 24, the National Assembly passed Macron’s “global security” law, which criminalizes the filming of police officers, among other anti-democratic changes. The day before, police carried out a violent rampage against a peaceful refugee encampment in the center of Paris.

In the face of continuing mass protests, including a demonstration of hundreds of thousands on November 28, Macron has temporarily withdrawn the most controversial article of the law, but has pledged to “re-write” it. Moreover, other changes in the “global security” law, including codifying the use of drones to spy on every person who attends a protest, remain in place.

Pointing to the significance of these simultaneous changes, Quadrature de Net noted in its report, “If, via the global security law, all protesters can be filmed at a protest, and … a large portion of them can be identified via facial recognition technology, the [police filing systems] have already prepared for them a complete system for centralizing all the information concerning them, without this surveillance ever being authorized nor weighed by a judge.”

At the same time, the Macron government is moving to pass its “anti-Separatism” law, renamed to the “respect for the principles of the Republic,” which will provide the state with further powers to dissolve legal associations and organizations, including political parties, on the grounds that they are declared to be hostile to the Republic.

The anti-Separatism law is being brought forward in the context of an extreme-right anti-Muslim campaign throughout the media and the political establishment. In the wake of the terrorist killing of Paris school teacher Samuel Paty last month, Interior Minister Darmanin has announced the closure of over 75 mosques, the dissolution of dozens of Muslim associations, and denounced the presence of halal and other international foods in supermarket aisles. The anti-Muslim campaign is being used to promote and legitimize the neo-fascists, divide the working class along religious lines and justify attacks on the democratic rights of the population.

In France and internationally, bourgeois democracy is rotten and breaking apart. In the United States, Trump continues to defy the results of the presidential election and declare his determination to remain in office. In Germany, the fascistic Alternative for Germany has been elevated to the official opposition in parliament. The response of the ruling class to the growth of strikes and left-wing demonstrations in the working class internationally since 2018 is to turn toward dictatorship.

The ruling elite is preparing for an explosion of social opposition to its criminal response to the pandemic, which has needlessly permitted millions to die, to protect corporate profits that would otherwise be impacted by a prolonged economic lockdown. The response of the working class must be to develop its own struggle for political power, independent of all the capitalist parties, to establish workers’ governments and socialism.

South Korean Kia workers strike again as GM and union push vote on rejected contract

Ben McGrath

Despite the efforts of the trade unions to isolate and end their disputes, autoworkers at KIA and General Motors (GM) in South Korea are still resisting union-company agreements and demanding pay increases, improved conditions and job security.

Workers at Kia Motors launched a partial three day strike on December 9. Workers on both the day and night shifts struck for four hours each at the three Kia plants, located in Gwangmyeong, Hwaseong, and Gwangju.

This is the third industrial action by Kia workers this year, with previous strikes taking place November 25 to 27 and December 1, 2, and 4. Kia and its branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) have held 15 rounds of talks this year.

The Kia workers have demanded a 120,000-won ($US108) monthly wage increase, 30 percent of the company’s operating profit as bonuses, and an extension of the retirement age from 60 to 65.

Kia and the union have reportedly reached agreements on salaries and bonuses, as well as production of electric and hydrogen vehicles in existing Kia plants, rather than at subcontractors like Hyundai Mobis, which are both part of the larger Hyundai Group. However, the two sides have argued over the union’s request for an additional 30 minutes of overtime, which the company has rejected as too costly.

The tentative package is similar to that forced on Hyundai workers in September. Kia intends to freeze wages and instead offer “performance-based” bonuses totaling as much as 150 percent of monthly salaries. Management could find numerous “faults” with workers in order to avoid paying such bonuses. Kia would also offer 1.2 million won per worker as part of a COVID-19 package and 200,000 won in gift certificates.

General Motors Korea and its KMWU branch have agreed to a second tentative contract following workers’ rejection of the first on December 1. Workers were to vote on the new contract on Monday. Partial and sporadic strikes at the auto manufacturer began on October 30.

Workers of GM Korea stage a rally against the U.S. carmaker's plan to close the plant near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Initially, GM Korea offered workers four million won in bonuses for 2020 rather than ending a 2018 wage freeze imposed by the company and the union. With little changed in the new contract, the company and union hope to wear workers down until they ultimately accept company demands. The company said it would drop a lawsuit against the union for damages as a result of strikes and would pay the four million won bonuses by early next year. Workers would also be offered a higher discount rate when purchasing GM cars.

Workers initially demanded a 120,000-won pay increase, 22 million won in bonuses, and guarantees that operations will continue at GM Korea’s No. 2 Bupyeong plant beyond 2022, when production of current models is expected to end. The company promised to maintain production of the Trax SUV and the Malibu sedan at this plant for as long as possible, a pledge that is as empty as it is noncommittal.

GM Korea has three plants in South Korea—two in Bupyeong and one in Changwon—following the closure of a fourth plant at Gunsan in May 2018, which was pushed through with the aid of the KMWU. At that time, GM signed an agreement to maintain production in South Korea until 2028. The company had no intention of honouring this agreement, which included a $750 million government bailout, as it now threatens workers with further plant closures in order to force them to accept an extension of wage freezes. The company has indicated that it is looking to move production to another country, potentially China.

Both GM Korea and Kia clearly feel they are negotiating from positions of power given the complicity of the KMWU, which in September agreed to force through a wage freeze on Hyundai workers for only the third time in the union’s history. As the union has consistently done in the past, it has isolated the negotiations and strikes at the three major auto companies, as well as at smaller auto manufacturers like Ssangyong Motors and Renault Samsung. The unions also restrict industrial action to partial strikes in order to reduce the impact on the companies.

The assault on autoworkers is part of a broader attack on the working class. The government of President Moon Jae-in and his ruling Democratic Party of Korea are seeking to push through revisions to the labour union laws that would bar workers from occupying factories during strikes. The amendments would also extend collective bargaining agreements from two to three years. The bill would ostensibly protect the rights of workers who are fired or unemployed by allowing them to join unions.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which includes the KMWU, has come out in opposition to the revisions, staging rallies to allow workers to let off steam and to give the appearance that it is fighting for workers. Despite growing working class anger as companies have slashed jobs and wages, the KCTU only held its first large-scale rally and strike this year on November 25. It held just two rallies last year and did not stage a demonstration against the Moon Jae-in government, which the KCTU helped elect in May 2017, until November 2018.

The KCTU is demanding the passage of the “Jeon Tae-il Act,” which includes three reforms: allowing workers at companies with less than five employees to join unions, allowing workers in the gig economy to do the same, and holding companies accountable for industrial accidents.

The KCTU’s posturing is entirely fraudulent. It has no problem with laws that would bring an influx of dues-paying members, and it has no intention of waging a genuine struggle against the anti-working class content of the government’s bill. Furthermore, by promoting the Jeon Tae-il Act, the KCTU is attempting to convince workers that by applying enough pressure to the government, Moon and the Democrats will act in the interests of the working class.

In contrast, while the conservative Park Geun-hye was in office from 2013 to 2017, the KCTU regularly held demonstrations demanding her resignation, effectively declaring support for the Democrats and promoting illusions that they would be friendlier to workers’ interests.

Workers however are experiencing the reality that both sections of the South Korean bourgeoisie are defenders of capitalism. Workers instead must turn to their class brothers and sisters throughout the country and internationally to wage a unified struggle against the capitalist profit system.

The struggles of South Korean autoworkers are part of the broader discontent, anger and unrest among their fellow workers internationally over job losses, deteriorating conditions and the health threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sweden’s “herd immunity” policy produces disaster

Bryan Dyne

The “herd immunity” policy pursued by the Swedish government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has produced a catastrophe. With Sweden’s hospitals overflowing and the bodies piling up in morgues, its neighbors Norway and Denmark have offered to step in with emergency aid.

Patient in an Intensive Care Unit (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The region of Stockholm, Sweden’s largest city, warned that its intensive care units were at 99 percent capacity, rendering the region’s medical system unable to cope with new serious cases of COVID-19. Sweden is experiencing the textbook definition of a mass-casualty event, with its hospitals totally overwhelmed and unable to deal with an influx of new cases, raising the danger of a massive increase in deaths.

Sweden’s response to the pandemic, which involved allowing schools and businesses to stay open while most of the world enacted lockdowns in March, was hailed as a model by all sections of the US and European political establishment. But now the country’s policy stands exposed as a recipe for death on a massive scale.

More than 7,500 people have died of COVID-19 in Sweden, a country of just 10 million people. Though Sweden has just two-thirds the combined population of its neighbors Norway and Denmark, it has four times as many deaths. Adjusted for population, Sweden’s death rate is nearly five times higher than that of Denmark and nearly 10 times higher than Norway. There are now on average more than 5,000 cases a day reported in the country as a whole, including 1,500 in Stockholm alone.

This disaster is the result of the deliberate policy of allowing the pandemic to spread freely, dubbed “herd immunity” by its proponents, which was pioneered in Sweden and then implemented throughout much of the world.

While the Swedish government has denied that it was deliberately allowing the pandemic to spread, the country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, admitted in private emails that an explicit goal of his policy of keeping schools open was to ensure that a broader section of the population becomes infected. He suggested in March that it would be a good thing if the virus swept “like a storm over Sweden and infect basically everyone in one or two months.”

Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people (Source: Our World in Data)

This “Swedish model” was advocated by all three of the leading US newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post —as well as much of the international press and presented a model of how to “balance” the preservation of human life against the needs of the economy.

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demanded in late April that everyone must “adapt to the coronavirus—by design—the way Sweden is attempting to do.” Stockholm’s goal is “herd immunity through exposure,” he continued.

The Washington Post published an editorial in May suggesting that Sweden made “the right call” by not locking down during its first wave and that it is an “example worth emulating.”

Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine granted a lengthy interview to Johann Carlson, general director of Sweden’s Public Health Agency, to claim that “closing schools is excessive.” The following weeks saw an editorial in Britain’s Financial Times, “Sweden chooses a third way on coronavirus,” and an article in the US policy journal Foreign Affairs, “Sweden’s coronavirus strategy will soon be the world’s.”

Given the enormous, and almost uniformly positive, coverage of the “Swedish Model” in the US and international press, this policy was no doubt worked out in collaboration with the United States and other countries.

In other words, Sweden became a test case for the implementation of policies that would soon be rolled out around the world. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have needlessly lost their lives.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made clear in March that his government would let families “lose loved ones before their time” as a solution to the coronavirus pandemic. He was joined by US President Donald Trump, who led the campaign, implemented by Democratic and Republican governors throughout the country, to end partial lockdowns and open schools and workplaces.

Such methods are now the norm internationally. In Brazil (6.8 million cases, 181,000 deaths), fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the coronavirus as the “little flu.” In India (9.8 million cases, 143,000 deaths), the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expecting that half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion will be infected by this coming February. In Mexico (1.2 million cases, 113,00 deaths), President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) rarely wears masks in public and constantly minimizes the danger of the pandemic.

In the United States (16.6 million cases, 306,000 deaths), President-elect Joseph Biden has made clear that schools and businesses will stay open under his administration, no matter how bad the pandemic may become.

The end result has been a year of mass death. There are now more than 72.5 million reported coronavirus cases worldwide and at least 1.61 million deaths. The figures, moreover, are a known underestimate, with “excess death” figures showing death tolls in some regions that are 50 percent higher than official reports.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote last week:

The normalization of death arises from the decision, rooted in class interests, to treat “economic health” and “human life” as comparable phenomena, with the former prioritized over the latter. Once the legitimacy of the comparison and prioritization is accepted—as it is by the political establishment, the oligarchs and the media—mass death is viewed as unavoidable.

It is from this awful calculus that the slogan emerges, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

Such are the calculations of the ruling elite. In the eyes of the billions of people around the world that have had to face the horror of the coronavirus pandemic, however, the ideas of “herd immunity” are totally discredited.

America’s media establishment claimed that Sweden’s model presented an “alternative” to measures meant to contain the disease, because these measures were deemed unacceptable by the ruling class.

The Socialist Equality Party advances the following demands:

• The immediate shutdown of all production at nonessential workplaces and schools. While public health experts have warned, correctly, that traveling during the pandemic poses massive risks, the fact is that factories and schools are just as dangerous as airports. And yet the outbreaks at workplaces and schools are systematically covered up and ignored.
  
  
• The provision of a monthly income to all families to guarantee a decent standard of living until a return to work is possible. The provision of relief to small businesses, at an amount sufficient to maintain the economic viability of the enterprise and the wages and salaries of its employees until its operations can be resumed.
  
  
• The allocation of trillions of dollars to accelerate the production and distribution of vaccines free of charge and to expand the public health infrastructure, including for testing and contact tracing.

The only social force capable of such an effort is the international working class. Workers in Sweden must unite with their class allies in India, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and in every country to stop the senseless and preventable sacrifice of millions of lives and replace the current reactionary and murderous capitalist order and replacing it with socialism.