Covid-19: Unveiling Digital Division in India

Dhruv Pachauri

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, while getting acquainted with new digital modes of learning, it suddenly struck me hard on listening to the plight of a 15-year-old girl, living in a semi-urban area of India and struggling to learn from Zoom classes on the single smartphone of the family being shared between her and four siblings. Plights of children belonging to marginalized sections of the society dropping out of their schools are common nowadays. Covid-19 pandemic has done something or not but has certainly unveiled the lack of preparedness for adopting digital learning across the globe.

Global Scenario of the Digital Divide

Globally, approximately 31% of students (463 Mn) from pre-primary to upper secondary levels of schooling could not be reached out either due to unavailability of infrastructure/equipment to receive the broadcasted learnings or due to lack of robust policies supporting digital learning. The digital gap intensifies according to the developmental and economical status of the region. More than 45% of students in Africa could not be reached digitally while parts of Asia had nearly a 40% gap in the accessibility of digital learning.

Region-wise inaccessibility to remote learning globally

By magnifying our scope of analysis, we could easily see that the problem of inaccessibility of digital learning is much more with specific segments of the society. Globally, more than 70% of the students unable to access digital learning solutions in the Covid-19 pandemic were either from rural areas or from economically weaker sections of the society.

Students from vulnerable sections have been impacted the most globally

Disparate access to Digital facilities in India

Out of 463 Mn students unable to access remote learning globally, 147 Mn students are from South Asia. India has not been an exception too. More than 320 Mn students and 1.5 Mn schools registered in India saw a transition from offline learning to remote learning. Crores of students in India have been impacted by the inaccessibility of remote learning.

As seen globally, in India also there are few segments of the society being impacted much more than the others. While talking about the availability of the required infrastructure to access the digital instructions, stark differences could be observed between rural and urban regions of India. As per the survey conducted by the NSO just 4% of rural households had access to computers, compared with 23% of urban households. And, just 15% of rural households had internet access as compared to 42% of urban households. Such disparities are not limited to the rural and urban areas but extend to the developed and undeveloped states. Economical welfare of any household determines the access to digital equipment too, thus needless to say that these disparities are extended as per the economical sections of the society.

Lack of digital facilities across rural & urban regions of India

Lack of know-how to use digital facilities across rural India

Lack of digital infrastructure is not the only problem, lack of familiarity with the usage of digital equipment raises one more. Again, the stark differences regarding the digital solutions’ usage familiarity amongst rural and urban areas could not be ignored. Only 9.9% of the population could operate computers in rural areas while 32.4% of the population could operate computers in urban areas. Similar trends are observed in internet usage compatibility. Only 13% of the rural population knows how to use the internet while 37.1% of the urban population is comfortable with using the internet. Lack of familiarity with the usage of digital solutions ultimately leads to less digitally experienced teachers in rural areas when compared to urban areas. Also, students in rural areas are not able to receive guidance from their parents or guardians to use digital facilities.

Private Educational Institutions in India are adapting faster

In India, it has been also observed that private institutions have shown much faster adaptability to the shift in learning style from offline to remote. Apart from IITs & IIMs, Governmental institutions are struggling to adapt to the digital learning era. Also, teachers in private institutions showed faster adaptability to the digital learning system than the teachers in the Governmental institutions. This lack of adaptability shown by Governmental schools and colleges pushes the marginalized students to the new margins.

Impact of Digital Divide on young learners

The lack of accessibility to the current digital learning environment is just not a year wasted but it hints out towards the greater issue. In the world of the digital age, universal and uniform accessibility to digital facilities is of paramount importance. Lack of access to digital facilities pushes the population to the world of disparities and financial distress.

Lack of access to the learning might also push the students to the labor market as deprived students would have spare time to utilize in the cash crunch caused to the marginalized households due to the current pandemic. This increases the chances of children being pushed to the labor market

Uneven distribution of the digital facilities across the country is alarming as this is like ensuring another cycle of financial disparities for the already marginalized sections of the society. Not having access to the digital facilities means that the future generations of the deprived ones have been once again pushed one step behind the fortunate ones.

Short Term & Long-Term fixes to the issue of the Digital Divide in India

Digital learning could be of great use once there is a level playing field across the country. There could be short-term as well as long-term fixes to the issue of the digital divide in India. Short term fixes to the solutions include the increasing reliance on digital facilities such as TV, radio for learning. This would ensure greater accessibility in the deprived sections of the society due to more familiarity with these devices across the country. Such an initiative has been taken by the Ministry of Education of Peru. Other short-term fixes include the usage of digital solutions allowing offline access (Google Suite), distribution of hard copies of the learning materials.

In the long term, it is important to achieve the democratization of access to digital solutions. The Government should focus on providing the required digital facilities to every region of India. To launch BharatNet – to lay down optical fibers across India by 2022 is a welcome step but the Government must ensure last-mile accessibility within the decided timeframe. The Government should also look towards providing financial support to the vulnerable sections of society for buying smartphones, computers. Not only the Government should come forward, but private players should also play a constructive role. Few private players such as Vodafone have come forward to provide financial support to the vulnerable sections of the society for the purchase of digital equipment. With the advent of Jio in India, data/connectivity charges have dipped a lot but private players should consistently focus on providing quality services to these remote areas at affordable prices in the future. Digital learning platforms should also come up with offerings to enhance the inclusion of vulnerable students in the digital learning saga.

Since Covid-19 has already unveiled the digital divide in India, future policy focus should be to bridge the gap rather than ignoring the underlying issue, or else all the claims about India leading the digital inclusion would be big lies.

Impact of pandemic on Child Labour

Swapnil Lohani

Introduction

Over the past nine months, the entire news and social media has been flooded with reports of rising cases of Covid-19 and the impact it has had on India’s economy. Millions of people lost their jobs or were forced to take pay cuts. Migrants were forced to walk hundreds of kilometers back home and economic activity in rural areas came to a halt.

While these visible issues were extensively covered by various news agencies, some other invisible issues remained untouched. One such issue is the effect of Covid-19 pandemic on child labour.

The Pandemic, economic instability and child labour

The last few decades have seen significant progress in the fight against child labour. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has posed a risk of backtracking. Positive trends may fade away, and the problem may even worsen in most places. Therefore, there is an urgent need to acknowledge this aspect of the pandemic’s impact and take urgent action to protect children and their families.

The pandemic has had significant negative impact on the economy. It has led to profound disruptions of supply chains, halts in manufacturing and hence an increased economic insecurity. The very high proportion of workers in the informal economy makes India especially vulnerable to the economic and labour market shocks arising as a result of the pandemic.

The experience of previous epidemics and financial crises also suggest that the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a rise in child labour. During the Ebola pandemic from 2014-2016, large number of children were left vulnerable and child labour in affected areas increased. The global HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s led to a reduced economic growth, in turn impacting children and youth. Many children experienced loss of one or both parents and in the absence of social protection, found themselves head of household and providers for siblings or sick parent. Youth were widely reported to drop out of school and start work at a young age, with no skills or experience. The global financial crisis of 2007-08 also led to a rise in child labour, notably among girls.

The current Coronavirus pandemic has had the following socio-economic impact which threaten the problem of child labor to aggravate.

1. Falling Living Standards – There are millions of people in India living in slums who have been crippled by the pandemic due to informal settlements and inadequate housing. There is still a large population in our country that does not have any social protection. The number of people in extreme poverty has also skyrocketed in this pandemic. With poverty comes child labour as households are forced to use every available resource to survive. Studies have shown that for every 1 percentage increase in poverty there is a 0.7 percentage increase in child labour.
2. Deteriorating employment – As the pandemic is causing an unprecedented drop off in economic activity and working time and as economic contraction reduces opportunities in the labour market, it has pushed more children into hazardous and exploitative work. With falling wages more people in the household are forced to work for sustenance, thus forcing children to work at an early age. In informal sectors like garment manufacturing, flour mills etc., financial pressures on business and employers means exploitation of children as a source of cheap labour. Further, children already working could now be forced to work longer hours and at a lower wage.
3. Rise in informal employment – The current crisis has steered informality through different means. As capital-intensive small enterprises decline and self-employment is growing, risks of child involvement in work is growing. Disruption of domestic and international supply chain has made food supply erratic leading to further job destruction in agriculture and lower incomes for farmers, ultimately contributing to increase in child labour.
4. Credit Crisis – Beyond the current economic crisis lies a looming credit crisis especially in poorer regions. Businesses are not being able to pay debts and hence defaulting. Uncertainty has made investors hesitant to lend. Such a credit crisis has reduced household investment in schooling which can ultimately result in more child labour.
5. Shutting down of schools – The nationwide school closure has affected about 320 million students in primary and secondary schools. It has disproportionately hampered the education of underprivileged children in government schools, with many ending up permanently out of school and into the workforce.

When these and other factors result in losses in household income, expectations that children contribute financially can intensify. More children could be forced into exploitative and hazardous jobs. Those already working may do so for longer hours or under worsening conditions. Gender inequalities may grow more acute within families, with girls expected to perform additional household chores and agricultural work.

The way forward

There is no doubt that the current crisis is dire. At the same time, governments can make choices today that will determine the course and consequences of the pandemic. These choices must include conscious measures to prevent and eliminate child labour. Since potentially dramatic cuts in public spending can aggravate children’s vulnerability to harmful and exploitative forms of work, deliberate choices can be made to mitigate these risks, such as through extended social protection for poor families.

 

Additionally, the government needs to focus on the following points:

1. Guarantee access to credit to poor households
2. Create decent jobs for adults to make up for the job losses
3. Ensure every child’s access to education
4. Strengthen labour administration and enforcement
5. Protect the health and safety of workers
6. Fund and treat social service workers ass essential

 

Making the right socioeconomic and child protection policy choices will safeguard families and their children during the immediate crisis. It will also yield lasting benefits. Ensuring decent employment and safe return-to-work policies for adults, and safe reopening of schools for children are of paramount importance. So are further adapting and strengthening child protection systems and social services, and social protection measures, such as cash transfers. For low-income families, these are the fundamentals to meet basic needs without resorting to child labour or other harmful practices that put children at risk.

Cracks Appear in Peru’s Neoliberal Agriculture

Yanis Iqbal

Farm workers in various regions of Peru- such as Ica, Viru La Libertad and Piurahad – went on a strike in the first week of December, 2020, blocking the strategic Pan-American motorway to demand wage increases, basic social security benefits and the repeal of the decades-old Agrarian Promotion Law, enacted in 2000, as a mechanism to bolster the bourgeoisie’s power in the agro-export sector. The law benefits agro-export corporations in two ways. Firstly, it cuts the corporate tax rate by 30 to 15%, making the government lose out on more than $1 million in tax revenue. Agrokasa, Beta and Miranda are some of the companies benefitting from such hefty income tax cuts.

Secondly, the law authorizes the hiring of personnel for the agricultural industry through intermediary companies. These third-party contractors avoid statutory labor regulations and pay workers extremely low wages. Farm workers complain they are paid about $10 for a 12-14 hour workday. They also don’t receive benefits given to other workers, including annual bonuses and vacations.

Despite its partisan attitude towards the capitalists, the reactionary law was extended until 2031 by the government of Martín Vizcarra. Mobilizations and strikes ensued this decision, with the state deploying police violence to quell mass anger. On December 3, 2020, Peru’s National Police officers shot dead young farmer Jorge Muñoz during a peaceful protest called by farmworkers in Viru city, La Libertad Department. “The police disrupted the march with tear gas and gunshots. My son was hit in the head with a pellet,” the young man’s father said. The next day, President Francisco Sagasti sent a bill to congress to repeal the law in the face of the five days of protests, and it passed by a vote of 114 in favor, two against and seven abstentions.

The Withdrawal of the State

Peru’s current agrarian crisis is historically situated in the authoritarian neoliberal model implemented by former President Alberto Fujimori. Popularly known as “Fujishock”, these economic reforms advanced a structural agenda of ever-deepening precarity for the people. Beginning in 1991, the Fujimori administration opened all sectors of the Peruvian economy to foreign direct investment (FDI) and lifted restrictions on profit remittances. The government offered tax-stability packages for foreign investors for terms of ten to fifteen years and implemented wide-ranging privatization programs that eliminated competition from state-owned and domestic firms. If that was not enough, the government ratified bilateral and multilateral investment-guarantee treaties, such as the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) convention and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) accords.

In the agrarian sector, Fujimori’s neoliberal restructuring entailed the closing of the agrarian bank, the cancellation of all forms of subsidies to farmers, the shutting down of the agrarian reform office and the bureau responsible for peasant communities. The Rice Trading Company (ECASA) and the National Supply Marketing Company (ENCI) – two integral institutions of the agricultural state apparatus – were also abolished. While the former established legal monopoly over the trading of rice – a key staple in the Peruvian diet – thus, ensuring rice producers an above-market return on their crop, the latter controlled imports of food and fertilizer.

The liquidation of ENCI and ECASA heavily impacted specific sectors. ENCI, for instance, had been the only institution that was allowed to import milk and its disappearance removed a source of support to the local dairy industry; as imports surged in the early 1990s (principally from New Zealand, but also Australia, the United States and Poland) the livelihood of smaller-scale producers were ruined in areas like Cajamarca and Arequipa. The abolition of ECASA liberalized the market in rice, removing an institution which had maintained prices artificially high for the benefit of producers.

The unleashing of deregulatory market forces led to the championing of individual over collective land rights since fragmentation consolidates profit-maximizing behavior. State farms were privatized and support withdrawn from production cooperatives and other group farming activities that were favored under the earlier state-led developmental model. The 1995 Land Law abolished the upper limits on personal landholding and allowed the state to sell land currently in public ownership. Privatization included the parceling and possible renting or selling of land previously held collectively by indigenous and peasant communities.

Agro-export Industrialization

Towards the end of 1990s, the structure of agricultural production began changing, with a notable increase in the share of tradable goods (such as rice, hard maize, wheat, soya, sugar, milk etc.) and a decline in the proportion of non-tradables (such as potato, quinua and other Andean grains). Policy under Fujimori tended to benefit larger-scale producers oriented primarily towards agro-industry and foreign markets. This was done mainly through the reduction of protective tariffs and the maintenance of an overvalued exchange rate. Both of these measures created a difficult environment for producers of tradable goods who found themselves increasingly subjected to competition from cheap food imports.

The disintegration of locally produced staples was additionally advanced through the dispossession of land and the restriction of proper water supply and credit to small-scale producers. To take an example, in 1989, Supreme Decree 037-89-AG, issued by President Garcia, signaled the transfer of water management in Peru from the state to private water user boards known as Junta de Usuarios (Users Board). In 1990, Fujimori continued this process, issuing Supreme Decree 003-90-AG, which allowed Juntas to collect agricultural water for the management of irrigation systems. The most important Juntas de Usuarios are controlled by agri-businesses and agro-export companies which regulate water services for their own class interests.

As a result of an amalgam of agrarian strategies implemented by the Peruvian state, domestic production of food crops has wholly collapsed. Imports of agricultural goods averaged $488 million in the period between 1986 and 1990, rising to $687 million in 1991–1995, and reaching $1035 million in 1996– 1999. In volume terms food imports rose from 1.6 million tons (1986–1990) to 2.1 million tons (1991–1995) and 2.8 million tons (1996–1999). Peru’s average annual agricultural trade balance, which until 1980 had been consistently in surplus, registered deficits of $216 million in 1986–1990, $383 million in 1991–1995 and $346 million in 1996–1999.

The Escalation of Class Struggle

With the pandemic-induced deterioration of economic conditions in Peru, the internal ruptures of the agricultural sector are being nakedly exposed. In the years between 2008 and 2018, there were considerably more individuals employed in agriculture than in the mining, communication, and finance sectors together. In spite of being the most labor-absorbing sector, agriculture is also the one where super-exploitation, accumulation through dispossession and permanent primitive accumulation have by and large prevailed. These inhumane features of the agricultural sector have been constantly criticized by the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA) – an organization which has highlighted the government’s prioritizing of agribusiness and called for recovering ancestral practices and land security. A groundswell of opposition against the ruling elite’s brutal policies will keep increasing as the masses confront the effects of a pandemic exacerbated by a pre-existing capitalist framework.

Coding or Crayoning for Small Kids?

Anirudh Agarwal

 “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”

– Albert Einstein

Coding is a short reference to the use of programming languages to provide lengthy sets of instructions for a computer to perform specific tasks. The continuous lines of text written behind the fancy looking websites and apps are what constitute as code for the application. The idea of the programming language being very similar to human languages like English or French has been debated a long time. While learning English or French, a student learns to talk and recite as well as write while people communicating with them immediately understand any mistakes and make corrections. However, a computer language cannot be spoken, its only written and doesn’t talk about real world objects like apples, oranges or clouds. The ‘objects’ in code have a completely different connotation. If a single comma (,) also goes out of place, the computer is not smart enough to spell check or be able to correct you, it’ll only reply with an error. Now imagine a long set of instructions and the countless errors the computer can throw, that testing for errors is actually a full-time IT job role.

Small kids and coding

Recently, the country has seen a growing trend where parents are having their small kids as old as 6 years learn coding through online platforms. The idea of coding is painted in such bright light while the reality is far from it. Coding is not a world filled with colours, robot designs, and games. It’s rather the opposite of it, where it writes colours as 6 digit numbers, pictures as another set of defined words and is devoid of any real world creativity. The advertisements circling around how kids could become millionaire CEOs after learning to code and misleading quotes from top CEOs like Sundar Pichai, Bill Gates, etc. are taken out of context to fuel the peer pressure to learn coding.

Presently, small kids are already subjected to tuitions and coaching with parents trying their best to get their kids to learn as many things as possible, just so their kid wouldn’t be left behind in this imaginary race against others. Sumantini Dhuru, a film director, social activist and ardent promoter of the Avehi Abacus Project (which creates educational material to help students understand the link between their different subjects); says she is hardly surprised by this. With India being the largest education market and on the boom of technology, companies are going to drive the young generation to make profits especially on the shoulder of parents who are highly aspirational. She agrees that parents feel that Coding is something their kids need to learn early or they might miss the train. Many academicians believe that early education should be more open-ended and interactive, before kids can grow up to become “experts” in any field. Magaret Leary, chair and director of curriculum at the National Cyberwatch Centre is stated to say that studies have shown that every 2 years, 60% of technical skills become obsolete, which means that programming language learnt at the age of 5 or 6 will essentially be of no use by the time the child is at 20.

The Fear of missing out (FOMO)

The fear of missing out on the technological revolution by not participating in coding is completely misplaced. For kids to be successful in a technology world, they should rather think more creatively, innovatively and expansively. Saying coding jobs are the most in-demand jobs is a bit of a misleading statement. Even within IT sector there are many different kinds of jobs. One who are just involved in testing, some roles are actually maintenance crew given that software glitches and problems happen all the time with the clients using the software, while only some are actually writing a part of a new software. In India, contrary to the popular belief, sales and marketing jobs are the most in-demand and not IT jobs according to a survey conducted by ManpowerGroup India in early 2020. Recently, Pradeep Poonia, an engineer who had gone on to criticize the ed-tech startup WhiteHarJr.’s marketing tactics calling it a Ponzi scheme. Byju’s WhiteHatJr. aims to provide coaching of coding to kids aged 6-14 and Poonia claims that the much advertised Wolf Gupta, who is a 13-year old kid that learnt AI and got a job at Google for some crore rupee package is completely bogus. The ASCI has asked Byju’s owned coding startup to take down its some of its advertisements against complaints that they made fake and misleading claims. The marketing message is again intended to induce fear among parents that their kid might miss out on something revolutionary.

Experts of any field do not start that young at the age of 6-10. Take surgeons, physicists, astronauts or even lawyers as examples, none of them start out so early. No big lawyer was understanding the legal framework of the constitution being six years old so why should being a software developer be any different. The majority of the successful technological experts did not start so early, yet the few examples of who did are highlighted in the media.

Thinking skills are important, not coding skills

The kids have only a limited bandwidth after their school. In that free time, they can either learn to code or enjoy crayoning, exercising, interact with different people and expand their horizons of thought. Engaging in creative thought activity brings out ideas and shapes their understanding of the world. It builds their ability to think of the world in a different way and identify problems in everyday life that can be solved. Sundar Pichai is not known for his coding skills, he is rather appreciated for his vision of the Google Chrome web browser. Bill Gates may have started coding early, but his vision for Microsoft is what made him successful and not his ability to code windows. Similarly, today we have entrepreneurs, scientists and even software developers thinking about the next frontier because learning to code as Dhuru says is like becoming an electrician. You can fix a light bulb if it goes bad yourself or you could get someone to do it but thinking about the functioning of the bulb or the smartphone is not something enabled by learning to code.

Conclusion

Parents should take a step back and evaluate, what their child is ultimately gaining from this exercise. There are alternate activities that can keep the child engaged like learning a musical instrument or even dancing. Parents should think back to their childhood about all the times spent playing and crayoning, and that would now be deprived from their children in the name of coding. The future is about innovation, not just in technology but actually in thought as all technology we see today are tangible outcomes of ideas. Those ideas are worth millions and not the product. An Iphone today costs about 1 lakh rupees give or take, depending upon the model you choose but the ideas behind making the iphone powers the trillion dollar apple company. Investing in developing moral values in children and engaging them in creative activity will be most beneficial as well as help them have happy childhood memories for life.

More brinksmanship in Brexit talks as deadline extended again

Robert Stevens

The British government and European Union (EU) failed to reach agreement Sunday on a trade deal to follow Britain’s exit from the bloc in less than three weeks, on January 1, 2021.

As talks floundered and the deadline set on Wednesday by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen loomed, both agreed to extend negotiations yet again.

The decision was made in an afternoon phone call yesterday between the two after hours of talks over the weekend in Brussels. Johnson and von der Leyen issued a joint statement reading, “Despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over we think it is responsible at this point to go the extra mile.” It concluded, “We have accordingly mandated our negotiators to continue the talks and to see whether an agreement can even at this late stage be reached.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson briefs members of his Cabinet from his office in Downing Street, after his call with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen after further talks on Brexit (Credit: Andrew Parsons/Flickr)

Earlier Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel came out in support of extending talks.

Following his call with the EC president, Johnson reiterated, “I’m afraid we’re still very far apart on some key things, but where there’s life, there’s hope. We’re going to keep talking to see what we can do… The UK certainly won’t be walking away from the talks.”

In the run up to the extension, both sides stepped up their grandstanding to exert maximum pressure. Various reports stated that progress had been made but sticking points remained on Brussels demands that the UK was unable to accept. On Friday, Johnson said it was “very, very likely” that the talks would end in failure and that the UK was continuing preparations for a “no-deal Brexit” trading on World Trade Organisation terms from next month.

While extending the talks, the EU is seeking to ensure that its 27 member states do not offer the UK any concessions that would replicate EU membership benefits. “According to a diplomatic note seen by the Financial Times ,” the newspaper reported Saturday, “EU member states were warned by Brussels not to do anything that would ease the consequences of a no-deal end to the Brexit transition period on January 1.” “One EU official familiar with the discussion said Brussels was under ‘no illusion’ that a no-deal Brexit would be highly unpredictable, reported the FT, adding that the source said, “Everyone understands there are no guarantees the British come back to the table.”

Last Thursday the EU laid out a series of proposals to the UK that would allow, in the event of a no-deal, airlines to continue flying normal routes between the EU and UK and hauliers to continue to cross the English Channel. The FT reported that the “decision not to include the so-called ‘fifth freedom’—allowing intra-EU airfreight movements”—in the proposals offered to Britain, “and to deny ‘cabotage’ rights that would allow British trucks to make drop-offs around Europe were explicitly designed to keep up the pressures, diplomats were told.”

On Saturday, the FT reported, “Although both sides have sounded increasingly pessimistic over the prospects for a deal ahead of the end of Britain’s Brexit transition period on January 1, the talks have narrowed to one main outstanding issue.” Saturday’s negotiations had “centred on trying to accommodate the EU’s demands for a mechanism that would make tariff-free trade dependent on the two sides maintaining a regulatory ‘level playing field.’”

On Sunday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab attacked the demand saying, “I don’t think we want a nuclear style reaction where tariffs go up, where we’re back in the same soap opera or drama every couple of years just because there’s a particular issue in a particular sector.”

In a move underscoring the heightening of tensions between Europe’s major powers, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said that in preparation for no agreement on fishing rights in the ongoing talks, four 80-metre machine gun-armed Royal Navy vessels had been placed on standby to guard British waters from EU trawlers, mainly from France, from January 1. The Daily Express front page headlined, "Gunships to guard our fish”. The Daily Mail’s read, “We’ll Send In Gunboats,” with the accompanying article reading, “In a dramatic ratcheting-up of No Deal contingency planning, Wildcat and Merlin helicopters are also being placed on standby to help with coastal surveillance. And military personnel have been seconded to the Joint Maritime Security Centre to help deal with any clashes in fishing grounds.”

On Sunday Raab continued the offensive over the fishing issue, telling Sky’s Ridge on Sunday show, “The bottom line is actually if we do leave on WTO terms we'll be an independent coastal state. Of course we're going to enforce our waters around fisheries and whatever else. And of course for the French and others, that will mean—you know, forget those outlandish terms that they were asking of us—their fishing industries would have zero access guaranteed.”

He added, “I think the EU is concerned that actually Britain might do rather well once we leave the EU and is worried about the competitive advantage, even on the normal global rules that apply.”

The hardline pose struck by Johnson led to consternation among senior figures in his Conservative government. Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, Tobias Ellwood, a former captain in the Royal Green Jackets infantry regiment, declared, “I think these headlines are absolutely irresponsible. We need to be focusing on what is already in the bag—98 percent of the deal is there, there are three or four outstanding issues.”

While Johnson leads a party with a substantial pro-Brexit majority, with many having no qualms about exiting without a deal, those such as Ellwood are supportive of securing a deal with the EU, echoing majority opinion in business and financial circles that this is vital for their strategic interests.

The opposition Labour Party are pledged that if a deal is struck, they will not oppose it in parliament. On Sunday, a party spokesman said, “The Conservatives promised the British people that they had an oven-ready deal and that they would get Brexit done. The government needs to deliver on that promise, get us the deal and allow us to move on as a country.”

The EU’s fears of the dire implications of a hard-Brexit were outlined Sunday by Spain's foreign minister, Arancha Gonzalez, in an interview with Sky News. Failure to reach a trade deal should be avoided “at all costs,” she warned. “No-deal in the current circumstances would be extremely negative for our economies. And if you go by what economists are saying, and there is plenty of literature on that, the UK would suffer even more than the European Union. We both will suffer, more on the UK side, which I think is something we should try to avoid at all costs.”

Later Sunday, both sides let it be known that talks could go right down to the wire. The FT quoted a “senior British official” stating, “We have time on our side to ratify—we can go up until Christmas.”

US recognizes Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara

Jean Shaoul

President Donald Trump has hailed Morocco’s agreement to begin normalizing relations with Israel in return for US recognition of Morocco’s illegal annexation of the Western Sahara, which Morocco has long demanded.

Ending years of official US support for a UN-brokered resolution of the long-running conflict, Trump tweeted December 10, “Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!”

Separately, he added, “Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations—a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!”

A Polisario tank division, 2012 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The US became the first country to formally recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony with considerable mineral and phosphate deposits, as well as rich Atlantic fisheries and potentially significant offshore oil reserves.

Trump’s tweet follows his recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, seized during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This time he has recognized the annexation of an entire country in defiance of several UN Security Council resolutions.

All three instances constitute flagrant violations of international law, which outlaws the acquisition of territory by force. Such annexations were declared illegal under the Geneva Conventions enacted in the wake of the Second World War to prevent the repetition of actions like those carried out by Germany’s Nazi regime. Trump has thumbed his nose at the entire post-World War II international order and the international rule of law, and signaled that militarism, territorial expansion, and colonialism are the order of the day.

In 1975, Morocco forcibly annexed the vast but sparsely populated territory of Western Sahara in contravention of an International Court of Justice ruling and without consulting the local Sahrawi people. This followed secret talks between Madrid, the occupying power, Rabat and Washington in which Spain agreed to cede control to Morocco. The Polisario Front, the military wing of the self-proclaimed national-bourgeois Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), declared independence for Western Sahara and fought a 16-year war with support from Libya and Algeria against Morocco and Mauritania.

Mauritania also laid claim to part of the territory but withdrew its claims in 1979. The war ended with a 1991 ceasefire, dividing the country, with Morocco holding 80 percent of the territory.

In 1991, the UN mission to Western Sahara was established to resolve the dispute via negotiations and organize a referendum on the territory’s future—to remain a part of Morocco, become an autonomous province or become independent. It dragged on for decades without ever holding a referendum, leaving the territory under the de facto control of Morocco.

Since then, there have been several UN Security Council resolutions supporting Western Sahara’s self-determination. In 2007, Morocco announced its Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara that proposed making Western Sahara a semi-autonomous region under Morocco’s sovereignty, which the Polisario rejected in favor of a referendum for an “independent Sahrawi state” in Western Sahara. The UN mission’s mandate was renewed by the Security Council less than six weeks ago on October 30, with US support.

Last month, fighting broke out between Moroccan military forces and the Polisario after Rabat sent troops to reopen a highway linking Morocco, the Western Sahara and Mauritania that was occupied by protesters. This brought an end to the 1991 ceasefire—a move that had the potential to lead to a renewed outbreak of hostilities with Algeria, which has supported the Polisario and is home to 175,000 Sahrawi refugees.

While Algeria adopted a relatively muted stance over the outbreak of hostilities, Prime Minister Abdulaziz Djerad has denounced Trump’s decision, saying it was designed to destabilize his country, which borders the Sahel that has become a powder keg after the US and European-led wars in Libya and Mali.

The African Union—which 30 years ago recognized Sahrawi independence, prompting Morocco to leave the organization until rejoining recently—adopted a notably disinterested stance on Rabat’s military operation, merely calling for restraint. Several Gulf Arab states publicly backed Morocco.

Hours after Trump’s tweeting of US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, including the Polisario-controlled areas of the territory, Washington announced a $1 billion arms sale to Morocco including the sale of at least four large aerial drones and precision guided weapons.

The announcement of the normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco, reportedly brokered by the United Arab Emirates, comes after over six decades of backroom talks between the two countries on issues ranging from trade and security to intelligence-sharing. In the 1950s, King Hassan II permitted the mass emigration of Jews to Israel—Moroccan Jews now form one of the largest Jewish communities in Israel—and bought weaponry and surveillance technology from Israel. Morocco also shared intelligence with Israel, to the extent that in 1965 the king sought Mossad’s help in locating and disposing of the anti-monarchist, nationalist leader Mehdi Ben Barka, whose tortured body was never found.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s announcement as “another great light of peace,” predicting “a very warm peace” given Israel’s longstanding relations with Morocco. At pains to keep his Blue and White coalition partners out of the discussions, who only heard the news from US officials, he is seeking to bolster his position in the face of criminal proceedings, a disintegrating coalition, and potentially fresh elections.

King Mohammed VI, who controls much of Morocco’s economy and its wealth through a complex web of companies, speaks for the Moroccan elite at the expense of the broad mass of its largely youthful population, with social discontent over unemployment and poverty rising. It is this that determines his orientation towards US imperialism and the Gulf petro-monarchies.

Trump’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara was the quid pro quo for Morocco’s formal recognition of Israel, following the path laid by the UAE, Bahrain—a de facto colony of Saudi Arabia—and Sudan. Like Bahrain, Morocco, which has had close relations with Saudi Arabia and sent troops to support its war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, will have received a green light from Riyadh.

Notwithstanding King Mohammed VI’s call to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas professing the contrary, another Arab regime has very publicly signaled that the Palestinian issue is no longer of any consequence. Saudi Arabia’s Arab Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League in 2002, that made normalization of relations with Israel dependent upon its full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, the so-called “two state solution,” is a dead letter.

The fate of the Palestinians, which for decades defined the Arab states’ attitude towards the Zionist state, has been unceremoniously dumped.

The agreements have nothing to do with peace—none of the four states that have agreed to normalize relations with Israel have ever been at war with the country. They are bound up with the Trump administration’s broad anti-Iranian axis, being formed in preparation for a potentially catastrophic war aimed at regime-change in Tehran, rolling back Chinese and Russian influence in the region and reinforcing US hegemony over the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa. Morocco severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2018, accusing it of backing the Polisario.

To this end, Trump has offered the necessary bribes and sweeteners: F35 fighter jets for the UAE, US protection for Bahrain, and the removal of Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism that will enable the country’s rulers to access international finance.

Open schools and businesses in Germany are leading to record infections and mass death

Marianne Arens

The coronavirus pandemic has long run out of control in Germany. New record numbers are being reported daily. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported the second consecutive daily record, with almost 30,000 new infections registered in 24 hours. Also, almost 600 COVID-19 patients died again in one day. This brings the total number of deaths to 21,000, and another 10,000 could be added by the end of the year. About 4,400 coronavirus patients are fighting for their lives in intensive care units.

A pupil drives by a subway train in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

With these explosive figures, Germany has catapulted to the top of the European infection rankings. In terms of daily infection figures, it now ranks ahead of France, Britain and Italy. In Europe, 446,000 people have died of COVID-19 so far, which is more than a quarter of the almost 1.6 million coronavirus deaths globally. Twenty million people worldwide are currently fighting the SARS-CoV-2 lung disease, and 70 million have been infected since the beginning of the pandemic.

The scale of this “winter of death” confirms all warnings of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the World Socialist Web Site. Already in the spring, we called on workers to form rank-and-file safety committees to take protection from the pandemic into their own hands independently of the trade unions. Long before the beginning of the autumn semester, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), the WSWS and the IYSSE youth and student organization called on students, teachers, educators and parents to take action for their own protection and that of their children.

“By returning to face-to-face teaching amidst rising infection rates, governments of all stripes are putting the health and lives of countless teachers, students and parents at risk,” we wrote in our August 14 statement titled “Stop school openings! Prepare for a general strike!” We predicted: “The mass deaths of teachers, parents and even students will be condoned in order to force workers back to work and secure the profits of the rich.”

This warning has been tragically confirmed.

On Thursday, Lothar H. Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute called the spread of the coronavirus infection throughout the population “alarming.” There are now about twice as many outbreaks in nursing homes and homes for the elderly as in the spring. The measures officially ordered so far are wholly insufficient, he said. The number of deaths would continue to rise in the coming weeks, Wieler confirmed, and more and more intensive care units will reach their limits.

This was confirmed two days ago when the University Hospital of Augsburg halted all admissions for non-urgent treatment. The hospital was at full capacity with 163 COVID-19 patients, 33 of them in intensive care, the medical director of the hospital, Michael Beyer, told the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (BR). A doctor from the University Hospital pointed out that now, considerably more young patients were having to fight for their lives. “They are around 30, around 40, have no pre-existing conditions whatsoever and sometimes conduct this fight unsuccessfully.”

The unsafe opening of schools after the summer vacations has played a decisive role in the spread of the pandemic. Numerous serious scientific studies now prove this. Most recently, a large-scale study commissioned by the Austrian Ministry of Education clearly showed that schoolchildren are infected practically as frequently as adults. Since the autumn of 2020, the study has observed around 14,800 school children aged between 6 and 15 years and compared them with 1,200 teachers in terms of SARS-CoV-2. The only difference, the study found, was that children show fewer symptoms. As a result, coronavirus infection was less frequently detected in them. Nevertheless, children could pass on the virus to other social layers with devastating consequences.

This was also confirmed by a research group at the Karlsruhe University KIT. The group investigated the effectiveness of various measures to contain the pandemic in the spring. Like other researchers in Vienna and Oxford, this group concluded that “a significant effect” could be observed following school closures. The sooner schools were closed in the spring, the more the effect of falling case numbers became apparent, as Dr. Niklas Kühl, head of the research institute in Karlsruhe, explained. “If we had waited one day longer in the spring in Germany before closing schools, this would have meant 125,000 additional infections, according to our analyses, and closure seven days later, even 400,000 additional cases.”

These findings have been known for a long time. However, the positions of the scientists are being suppressed and they are put under pressure, so they do not speak about their results too loudly. Christian Drosten, head of virology at the Charité hospital in Berlin, pointed this out on December 8 in his coronavirus update on broadcaster NDR. There was a “basic climate” among scientists, he said, which consisted of the following: “You simply cannot say what it is like anymore because otherwise you will be burned, put in a corner, attacked in the media and, unfortunately, also by some voices within the scientific community ... This basic mood has already spread among many people. And I know from many of my colleagues that in the last few weeks they have had the feeling: better not say anything, there will only be trouble.”

The pressure placed on scientists is part of the campaign to keep schools and businesses open, which has been accompanied from the outset by countless unscientific studies, open lies in statements by corrupt experts. The refrain is: the economy must continue to run and make profits under all circumstances.

Given the catastrophic effects, resistance to this policy is growing. At dozens of schools, students have gone on strike or joined protests. According to broadcaster ZDF’s political barometer, on Thursday, 73 percent of all respondents were in favour of a lockdown as in the spring, during which schools, day-care centres and businesses would also be closed. A clear majority is also of the opinion that the measures taken by the German government “did not go far enough.”

When the same politicians who have sacrificed human lives for months on the altar of profit now announce “tough measures,” they are only trying to bring this overwhelming opposition under control. The measures adopted so far are not even remotely capable of preventing the catastrophe.

Instead of the immediate closure of schools, day-care centres, and non-essential businesses, they are merely discussing an extension of school vacations and placing further restrictions on private contacts, which most people have reduced to a minimum anyway. Even the closure of shopping centres is only being considered in a few German states before the holidays in order not to jeopardize the profitable Christmas trade.

“This winter of death in Europe shows the bankruptcy of capitalism. If hundreds of thousands of lives are to be saved, the working class must intervene independently into political life in opposition to the social system that has led to this horrific disaster by blocking a rational, scientific policy,” the WSWS wrote yesterday in a perspective, calling for building “a network of independent action committees to prepare a Europe-wide general strike to enforce the closure of schools and non-essential industries.”

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.