Post-Corona Work Changes in Germany

Thomas Klikauer & Norman Simms

The Coronavirus pandemic has led to many changes in our working life from zoom meetings to interviews at home, to the prevalence of the home office that often is at the kitchen table or in the bedroom. In Germany, the number of people working from home dramatically increased since the Coronavirus pandemic hit from 13% to 33%. Yet many are asking, Will this be a permanent change? Recent polls among German office workers found that most prefer to work 2.9 days per week from home. This is a 3-to-2 split or a whopping 73% of German office workers who prefer the home office, despite some niggling feelings of potentially negatives effects, such as social isolation.

On average, most German office workers favour a split with two to three days home office work or with two to three days in the corporate office. For many years management had been converting corporate offices into so-called open plan spaces. By this means, they squeezed ever more workers into an ever smaller space. With the Coronavirus pandemic, German workers have become increasingly worried about getting infected with Covid-19 in such place. As a consequence, they now prefer the home office.

Overall, 91% of German workers see the changes towards the home office as important. It might indicate the future of work. If 82% of managers also say that these changes are important to them, then the changes are likely to become permanent: the new norm. Most German office workers (88%) regard flexibility between home office and the corporate office as important. Eventually, this will allow for the much trumpeted new norm Work-Life Balance to become reality.

However, significantly more office workers think that these changes are important compared to managers. At the same time, many office workers are also acutely aware that home office work can also means missing out on, as a German worker said, the casual chat at the coffee machine. In fact, 36% say they would miss the personal contact with colleagues, while 46% think there are too many negatives associated with the home office. Before Corvid-19 the digitalization of German office had not progressed very far much in recent years. To express this, Germans use the unpronounceable word of “Digitalisierungsrückstand” or digital backlog. As a consequence, 28% think that they would have problems working from home without having access to important paper files still kept in bulky folders at corporate offices.

So far, for 40% of German workers the move into their home office space means working from the kitchen table, the bedroom or the living-room. Hardly anyone has set aside a specialized room for the home office. Many office workers also fear that a normalization of this situation would change the perception of a defined separation between work and leisure time. Some 46% are worried that this division would lead to an intrusion of work into the private sphere. Surprisingly, many workers below the age of thirty actually prefer the corporate office, the survey shows.

Among small and medium companies, 68% had already introduced some version of home offices, while 36% have only recently started to do so in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. On a simple pro-vs.-contra matrix, 40% of workers in such small and medium companies say that they appreciated a “stress free travel to work”, i.e., not to have to travel at all; and 35% say, the home office gives them more flexibility; while 33% say their work-life balance has improved. On the negative side, though, there is the loss of personal contact with other workers (46% fear this); the loss of casual and informal meetings even when used to organize work (36%); and having no access to paper files (28%).

Meanwhile German managers see three issues that concern them during the Coronavirus pandemic:

• they are unsure how save online connections between the home office and the company are;
• they are concerned about the application of Corona protective measures; and
• they are worried about the motivation of their employees once they have moved into the home office.

With a general move out of the corporate office and into the home office, desk sharing at the remaining corporate office has also become more important. Only 38% say, they use desk sharing, 29% say their company plans to introduce desk sharing while another 33% say this is not planned at all at their workplace. Meanwhile 92% of German workers say they are pleased with working from home despite the fact that this often means the using the kitchen table.

Not unsurprisingly, however, only 9% of workers see their own company as a leader when it comes to the move towards home office work; 41% say they the company is currently moving towards working from home; while 30% say their management has done the first steps towards changing their work organization towards home office work; 11% say this might happen in the future and 9% noted that at their workplace there are no plans to work from home.

When asked, Has the Coronavirus pandemic changed your work organization? More than half, 58% of workers said “yes” and that these changes – towards the home office – will require an adjustment that is not short-term. In other words, the home office will remain part of their working lives. Still 31% said, these changes were merely temporary, while a small percentage, 7% said there is no change at all.

At the head office of an organic supermarket chain Alnatura in the city of Darmstadt, 500 employees – at least those who come to the corporate office – find a modern workplace with desks, stand-up options, sofas, etc. The office of Berlin publisher Suhrkamp gives – despite shelf after shelf of books – a similar impression. Its 135 employees find the workplace rather enticing, even though the home office has quickly become the preferred workplace. German online retailer Otto Otto appears to be very similar. Despite these modern corporate offices, the trend is definitely towards the home office. German managers think there are six key issues to consider when it comes to such an arrangement:

1. Changing work organization in German offices is already happening. It is no longer some distant plan for the future.
2. The Coronavirus pandemic has change the mind of German manager. Most likely they will be more interest in what office workers do rather than being interested where they are.
3. The change from the corporate office to the home office demands, well, an home office at home rather than just a kitchen table.
4. Corporate offices will be smaller in the future as the demand for corporate offices declines while fewer workers will attend such corporate offices in the future.
5. Most home offices will eventually move out of the bedroom or the kitchen to become more professional home offices.
6. The Coronavirus pandemic will not end office work but office work will change rapidly as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, the survey by one of Germany’s most recognized weekly magazines, Der Stern magazines shows that the Coronavirus pandemic has changed German work organization in corporate offices. This is no longer a temporary trend but it will soon be a permanent change. Overall, most German office workers have a 2-to-3 split, employees working either two or three days from home. The rest of the week is done by actually working in corporate offices.

One of the key benefits of the home office is the time workers save when not having to commute to their corporate office. Whether they would have to travel by private car, train or bus, not going to the office is beneficial to the environment and may even help – a little bit – battling the loss of quality time with their families, especially young children. The second advantage of the home office is that eventually work-life balance comes closer to existing rather than being a mere managerial myth.

Finally, there are the all important negatives. Many home office workers miss the daily engagement with co-workers. Worse, and this time it is on the management side on the equation, is the fact that many workers say they do not have access to important files still kept in German manager’s favorite Leitz-Ordner – bulky folders. In other words, the Coronavirus pandemic has put the spotlight on very serious deficiencies in terms of corporate digitalization. Despite selling itself as a technology nation, Germany lags behind other modern European and Asian nations when it comes to digitalizing corporate offices. Once again, German corporate managers have missed the train.

Britain’s queen shields her “embarrassing” wealth from public scrutiny

Richard Tyler

“The British monarchy, hypocritical British conservatism, religiosity, servility, sanctimoniousness—all this is old rags, rubbish, the refuse of centuries which we have no need for whatsoever.”—Leon Trotsky

For decades, Queen Elizabeth has used a secretive procedure to ensure her personal interests are fully considered before legislation is voted on in the UK parliament.

Research by the Guardian reveals that the queen, one of Britain’s wealthiest individuals, has been able to exploit privileges granted her by parliament to have draft laws changed to her financial advantage.

With a private fortune estimated by the Sunday Times at £350 million in 2020, likely an underestimate, and receiving a “Sovereign Grant” worth £85.9 million in 2020–21, she has exercised “Queen’s Consent” over 1,000 times during her reign—her “right” to be consulted over impending legislation and seek changes.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is joined by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and at rear, from left, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during a reception at Buckingham Palace, London to mark the 50th anniversary of the investiture of the Prince of Wales. March 5, 2019 file photo (Dominic Lipinski/Pool via AP, File)

Until the investigation by the Guardian, little was known about the exercise and extent of this prerogative. The most recent example cited by the paper is the Conservative government’s Brexit trade deal with the European Union. Although parliament (via the House of Lords) is informed of the Queen’s Consent to a particular piece of legislation, no explanation is ever given about what this might have involved. The whole business is kept shrouded in secrecy, jealously guarded by the monarch and those who serve her.

Documents in the National Archive uncovered by the Guardian show that such flagrant lobbying has often been used to conceal her private wealth from the public.

Correspondence between the queen’s private lawyer and civil servants responsible to Edward Heath’s Conservative government in 1973 documents how the monarch objected to anything that might reveal her private investments in listed companies. Such disclosure, her lawyer said, “would be embarrassing.”

Following this discrete pressure from the palace, government ministers inserted a clause into a bill supposedly introducing financial “transparency” to prevent the extent of her company shareholdings being exposed to public gaze.

Queen’s or Prince’s Consent—the arcane parliamentary procedure is also extended to the heir to the throne, Prince Charles—requires the monarch’s agreement is secured before parliamentary approval of any legislation that might affect the Crown’s private interests or the royal prerogative. It is described by the House of Commons Library as “one of the most significant elements of the UK’s constitution.”

Legally, if the queen’s or prince’s consent is not given, the bill to which it applies cannot be put to a vote in parliament.

The prerogative powers—such as the declaration of war, signing international treaties and conducting foreign affairs—which formally belong to the monarch, require no parliamentary approval and are mainly exercised by the government through its ministers.

The Crown Estate—lands and holdings in the territories of England, Wales and Northern Ireland within the UK—formally belongs to the queen as “the sovereign’s public estate.” Since 1760, when George III surrendered control of the Estate’s revenues to the Treasury, the monarch was paid a generous annual grant running into millions, known as the “Civil List.” This arrangement was altered in 2012, with the Civil List replaced by a “Sovereign Grant,” calculated as a percentage of the income of the Estate, making the maximisation of such revenues of direct financial interest to the monarch.

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, has sought to influence or change a multiplicity of legislation. This extends from agricultural and fisheries bills—the Crown Estate owns 793,000 hectares of agricultural and forest land, more than half of the UK's foreshore (beaches and coastline), as well as many offshore wind farms because the estate manages the seabed out to a limit of 12 nautical miles.

The Crown Estate also owns some of the capital’s prime real estate. Its central London portfolio includes most of Regent Street and half the property in the St James’s area, including retail, residential and office buildings. Outside London, it commands land containing 14 retail and shopping parks and three shopping centres. Consequently, legislation that has been most subject to Queen’s Consent include various urban development, housing and leasehold reform bills.

The queen’s private land holdings are extensive and include the Duchy of Lancaster, which with £519 million in assets made a £19.2 million profit in 2020. Consisting of land in England and Wales, mostly as rural estates in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire, the duchy comprises 45,550 hectares, making the queen one of the largest recipients of government farming subsidies in England—running to £936,000 last year. This gives her a vested interest in all legislative matters to do with agriculture. The Duchy also includes the Savoy Estate in London, upon which the prestigious Savoy Hotel stands.

Her private estates also contain 10 castles and extensive residences at Balmoral and Sandringham.

Prince’s Consent, which has been exercised at least 275 times between 1970 and 2020, has been used to ensure Charles’ £1 billion Duchy of Cornwall estate has retained full benefits from leasehold properties on the land it owns. As part of exercising his royal consent, specific clauses were introduced into draft legislation granting leaseholders a “right to buy” their homes, for example, denying this to the Prince’s tenants. As a result, the value of their homes constantly diminishes, making resale virtually impossible.

A database of prospective legislation subject to such royal consent drawn up by the Guardian lists over 1,500 parliamentary bills between 1952 and 2020, affecting an average of 22 bills a year. By 2013, just over 3,000 bills had received royal assent, passing them into law.

Given the broad extent of the monarch’s pecuniary interests, the scope for regal intervention in drafting legislation is also very wide.

This includes finance (the queen pays tax); as an employer, e.g., covering pensions and child support; animal welfare, the Crown Estate includes many farms; “justice, social security, race relations and food policy through to obscure rules for car parking charges and hovercraft,” according to the Guardian.

The first invocation of Queen’s/King’s Consent was in 1728, when, given the monarch’s extensive maritime interests, George II agreed parliament could debate the suppression of piracy bill.

The guidance for seeking Queen’s Consent is laid out in a 26-page document published by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. This stipulates that such consent is required in cases of the royal prerogative and when the hereditary revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster (belonging to the queen), the Duchy Cornwall (belonging to prince Charles) and the “personal property or personal interests of the Crown” are concerned.

The document states it is not possible to give a “comprehensive catalogue of such prerogatives” but cites over twenty such powers subject to the royal prerogative, including “the ownership of swans and whales,” the “mining of precious metals” and the right to “bona vacantia” (vacant goods), the name given to ownerless property which by law passes to the Crown, among others.

The website of the Royal Family describes the procedure, which gives the monarch and her heir access to draft legislation enjoyed by no other citizen, as a “long-established convention.” It is one the palace would rather not have subjected to public scrutiny, refusing all approaches by the Guardian to shed light on the circumstances under which it has been employed.

When the executioner cut off King Charles I head in 1649, he finally ended absolute monarchy in Britain. Thereafter, power has resided in the hands of parliament, whose pre-eminence had been asserted by the blade of the axe.

This did not change following the brief interlude of the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Since the reign of Charles II, the role of British kings and queens has been as constitutional monarchs, literally crowning a complex network of social and political relations based on overwhelmingly inherited class privilege.

This makes it virtually impossible to significantly reform such ancient royal privileges without running the risk of upsetting the delicate arrangement of “checks and balances” that rely on the pivotal position of the monarch.

Following its revelations, the Guardian has called for an “end [to] the flummery that enables a Queen’s gambit and ministers making moves that suit the monarch.” Its cry is not motivated by any democratic, let alone republican sympathies. Its humble petition is driven by a concern that the present arrangements give rise to a “conflict of interest” which “ultimately damages the standing of the monarchy.”

The obeisance of the formerly “liberal” Guardian again reveals that in present society, there is no constituency within the ruling elite and its media that defends the democratic rights of the majority, the working class, against this feudal relic and the bourgeois order of hereditary privilege it now represents.

South African government puts vaccination programme on hold

Jean Shaoul

Just one week after welcoming the arrival of the first batch of one million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has halted the rollout of the vaccine.

Compounding the political and economic crisis facing his African National Congress (ANC) government, the debacle threatens the political survival of the ANC.

Cyril Ramaphosa (credit: Tasnim News Agency)

The decision follows preliminary studies suggesting that the vaccine offered minimal protection against mild and moderate forms of disease caused by the new B1.351 coronavirus variant (also known as 501.V2) accounting for 90 percent of COVID-19 infections in South Africa. The new variant is now spreading across the world, although many countries lack the capacity to detect the new strain on a systematic basis.

Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s health minister, said that the distribution of the vaccine, scheduled to begin later this month, would be halted pending further studies of its effectiveness against severe cases. South Africa would however continue using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on a trial basis in older healthcare workers in a bid to determine the efficacy of the vaccine until better alternatives and further studies became available.

The interpretation of the results from these preliminary studies is fraught with difficulties, not least because the study, led by South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University, was not reported in a peer-reviewed journal. The number of cases (around 2,000) was low, making it difficult to pinpoint just how effective or not the vaccine might be against the variant. Furthermore, as the participants were relatively young and unlikely to become severely ill, it was impossible for the scientists to determine whether the B1.351/501.V2 variant interfered with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine’s ability to protect against severe Covid-19, hospitalizations, or deaths.

Nevertheless, Oxford University researchers have acknowledged that the vaccine provided “minimal protection” against mild or moderate cases involving the B.1.351 variant and said they were working to produce a new version of the vaccine able to protect against the most dangerous mutations of the B.1.351 variant that would be ready by the autumn.

Andrew Pollard, the chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, stated, “This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected. But, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease.”

Dr John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said Pretoria was right to halt use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine while it investigated further. “The key word is ‘temporary’,” he said. “They should step back and take a look. It’s not a disaster, it is a cautionary measure.”

However, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) regional director in Africa, said it was important to use whatever means were available to keep people out of hospital, particularly given the shortages of oxygen. She explained, “If this variant [of the virus] is not circulating very widely, and even if it is, we are recommending the use of the vaccine with an understanding that it may not be able to stop some cases, particularly mild cases, but it is liable to stop severe cases.”

If confirmed, the reduced efficacy of the vaccine would be a serious setback not only for South Africa but many African countries that are reliant on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being offered at cost price during the pandemic and is easy to store. Nkengasong called it “the backbone” of Africa’s immunisation strategy, with around 500 million doses ordered by the African Union and several hundred million more through Covax, the World Health Organisation’s procurement and distribution facility with the private sector.

Should other vaccines prove to be less effective against this or indeed other new and emerging variants, then the virus will prove even more deadly.

Ramaphosa’s government faces a mounting public health crisis, widespread criticisms of its handling of the pandemic and the vaccination rollout, allegations of corruption over Covid-19 spending, near-daily electricity blackouts and soaring debt amid shrinking coffers.

Like the rest of the continent, South Africa has since November witnessed a second wave of the pandemic. This followed the government’s lifting of the one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, enforced with extreme police brutality, in a bid to stem the fall in corporate profits and the country’s pending insolvency.

According to the country’s official statistics, of the 1.49 million cases, around half have been recorded after December 1. The virus has now killed nearly 48,000 people, nearly half of all the reported 98,162 deaths from the coronavirus in Africa.

The new and more virulent form of COVID-19 has raged across the most populous provinces of the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Gauteng, and is spreading among young people between 15 to 19 years. It has brought South Africa’s healthcare system to the point of collapse, with wards in hospitals and medical centres overflowing with coronavirus patients while exhausted healthcare workers have been forced to cancel leave to tackle the influx of patients.

Ramaphosa in December announced a series of measures aimed at curtailing freedom of movement and social behaviour, some of which have now been lifted. This is despite the number of new cases and deaths, although lower than last month’s peak, still being around the level of the first peak in July. Ramaphosa himself has warned of “an ever-present danger of a resurgence.”

Amid mounting anger over the much-delayed vaccine rollout, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, co-chair of the country’s ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, insisted that South Africa’s goal of vaccinating about two-thirds of the country’s 60 million population by the end of 2021 would not be affected. The government plans to roll out the Janssen vaccine, made by Johnson & Johnson, which reported to have a 57 percent efficacy rate against the new variant, although it has not yet been given regulatory approval.

Ramaphosa, the billionaire and former trade union leader who was elected president in 2017 has overseen an escalating transfer of wealth from the working class to the top layers of society. The pandemic has exacerbated South Africa’s already serious economic recession that has hammered the mining—as demand and prices for the country’s minerals fell—and manufacturing sectors.

The first lockdown led to more than two million workers losing their jobs, adding to the 30 percent already unemployed before the pandemic and the 50 percent of young people between the ages of 15-24 without work. It forced five to six million people (15 percent of adults), mainly manual workers, to leave the townships and go back to their home villages. Many households ran out of money for food, doubling the rate prevailing in 2017. The government’s special grant, set up to help those without social security, expired last month. Unemployment for the last quarter of last year is expected to exceed the 43 percent, which includes those who have given up looking for jobs, recorded in the previous quarter.

The central bank is expecting the economy to grow by 3.6 percent this year and 2.4 percent next year, following a massive 16.4 percent fall in GDP over the period of the first lockdown, the sharpest decline since the Great Depression. But this belies the gravity of the crisis. It comes on top of a years-long decline in GDP per capita as growth failed to keep pace with the increasing population and inequality soared.

South Africa has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. The top 20 percent of the population take more than 68 percent of income. Income per capita in Gauteng—the main economic province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria—is almost twice that in mostly rural provinces like Limpopo and Eastern Cape.

The government’s budget deficit for 2020-21 is expected to reach 15.7 percent of GDP, with more than a fifth of the budget going to servicing debt. Just 10 days of borrowing is equivalent to the $1.3 billion cost of the entire vaccination programme.

Italy: An all-party government against the working class

Peter Schwarz

President Sergio Mattarella swore in Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his cabinet on Saturday. In the record time of one-and-a-half weeks, the former head of the European Central Bank has put together a government that includes all parties of national importance, in addition to eight so-called experts or technocrats, making a total of 15 ministers.

Handover of government from Giuseppe Conte to Mario Draghi (Image: governo.it/CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 IT)

Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star-Movement (M5S), Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the social democratic Democrats (PD) and their offshoots Liberi e Uguali and Italia Viva, which had been bitterly at loggerheads in recent years, are now united at the cabinet table.

The only exception is Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. The party, which stands in the tradition of Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement, now becomes the leading Italian opposition party. It had won only 4.4 percent of the vote in the last general election in 2018 but was already at 17 percent in the polls before the recent government crisis.

What brings the quarrelling parties together is their hostility to the working class. Italy is in a deep economic crisis and on the verge of a social explosion. The country’s economic output has slumped by 9 percent in the past year, public debt has reached a new record of 160 percent of GDP, unemployment and poverty are on the rise and the coronavirus pandemic has killed over 93,000 people.

Under these conditions, all parties are uniting behind a head of government who embodies the interests of finance capital like no other. As head of the European Central Bank (2011–2019), Draghi was responsible for policies that flooded the financial markets with trillions of euros while decimating the living standards of the working class in Greece, Spain, Italy and other countries through austerity dictates.

Draghi’s main task as head of government is now to “modernise” the Italian economy and administration—i.e., to grind down all the social rights, achievements and securities that his predecessors have not yet destroyed. The devastating consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and the €209 billion that the European Union has promised Italy as Coronavirus Aid serve as leverage.

The previous government of Giuseppe Conte had broken down over the dispute about these funds. Draghi now has 60 days to present an investment programme to the EU so that they can be disbursed. He has largely given himself a free hand to do so. He negotiated with the parties individually behind closed doors without informing the public of the outcome, appointing the ministers, including those from the parties, himself. According to media reports, party headquarters remained in the dark about Draghi’s list of ministers until the very end. He filled key portfolios with non-party confidants from the business community.

For example, Daniele Franco, the director-general of the Italian Central Bank, will be the new finance minister. As chief accountant at the Ministry of Finance, Franco had ensured budgetary discipline from 2013 to 2018. At the head of a new “super-ministry for ecological change,” which Draghi created at the request of the M5S, is the physicist Roberto Cingolani, who was previously head of the technological innovation department at the Italian aerospace group Leonardo. And the Ministry of Innovation went to former Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao.

Draghi filled the Justice Ministry with the former president of the Constitutional Court, Marta Cartabia, who is supposed to speed up the Italian justice system. The non-party Luciana Lamorgese, a former top official and prefect of several Italian provinces who already held this post in the last government, remains interior minister.

Several other former ministers also remain in office. Roberto Speranza (Liberi e Uguali), for example, under whose responsibility 2.7 million Italians were infected with coronavirus, continues to lead the Health Ministry. Lorenzo Guerini (PD) remains defence minister and Luigi Di Maio (M5S) foreign minister.

Di Maio’s retention in office is seen as a concession to M5S, which accounts for almost a third of MPs. The party had won the 2018 parliamentary election with a campaign against the political elites embodied by Draghi. In the meantime, however, it is only running at 15 percent in the polls. It only agreed to participate in government last Thursday in a membership referendum after internal disputes.

Forza Italia, which sat in opposition for 10 years, fills three ministerial posts in the new cabinet. An important role falls to Renato Brunetta, who is responsible for public administration and is to thoroughly restructure it by cutting jobs. He already held this post under Silvio Berlusconi.

Draghi’s arrival in government has been welcomed by European governments. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote, “Italy and Germany are working together for a strong, united Europe and for multilateralism that offers a better future for our youth.” France’s leader Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter that France and Italy were now working together to build a stronger and more united Europe.

In Italy, it was mainly the supposedly left-wing parties that cheered. PD leader Nicola Zingaretti wrote on Facebook that his party supported the government “with loyalty and conviction.”

That the PD is forming a joint government with the far-right and hysterically xenophobic Lega and the gangster Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia marks a new stage in the decline of this party, which emerged from the Stalinist Communist Party 30 years ago. It shows that there is no political line on the right that it will not cross.

The anti-working class policies of the Draghi government will inevitably lead to a further sharpening of social antagonisms. Given the right-wing policies of the PD and its pseudo-left satellites, there is a danger that right-wing demagogues and fascists will profit from the growing despair. Lega and Fratelli d’Italia are already at 40 percent in the polls.

Hundreds of thousands of renters at risk of losing their homes throughout the US Midwest

Cole Michaels

There is a growing eviction crisis throughout the Midwest and across the United States with hundreds of thousands of people at risk of losing their homes. Despite a federal eviction moratorium, which is good through March 31, landlords are using alternative methods of forcing people out of rental units, such as locking them out of their homes or moving their belongings outside their dwelling. These illegal tactics make clear the toothless character of the moratorium.

Person packing an apartment (Image credit: Twenty20.com)

The inability to pay rent is directly tied to mass unemployment that has scourged the country since March, brought on by the pandemic. The nationwide unemployment rate for January 2021 was initially reported to be 6.7 percent, but Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell confessed on February 10 that the true rate was nearly 10 percent. Large numbers of unemployed workers had been miscounted as employed. The United States lost 227,000 jobs in December and recorded a gain of only 49,000 in January.

The federal moratorium, along with state and local measures do not include any provisions for rent forgiveness, meaning that overdue payments continue to pile up putting renters who are able to remain in their homes further and further in the hole as the economic crisis drags on.

“It is only a half-measure,” Robert “Bobby” Penner of the Milwaukee Autonomous Tenants Union (MATU) told the Wisconsin Examiner. “Rent forgiveness and cancellation need to be on the agenda. People are accumulating thousands of dollars in back rent right now that they will be unable to pay without major government intervention when the eviction moratorium is finally allowed to expire.”

During the week of January 18, 108,808 initial unemployment claims were filed in Illinois. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment increased and non-farm jobs decreased in all Illinois metropolitan areas in 2020. The largest unemployment increases were in the Chicago (8.7 percent), Decatur (8.2 percent) and Springfield (6.3 percent) metro areas. The state unemployment rate in December 2020 was 7.5 percent. The state’s economic recovery is the second worst in the nation, only behind Kansas.

The Chicago-based Metropolitan Tenants Organization has gotten over 500 calls since March concerning landlords locking out tenants. Even before the pandemic, Chicago rent prices were increasing at alarming rates, increasing the pressure on workers living in the city. “We already knew [housing] was a crisis pre-COVID because rents were skyrocketing. This is a pot ready to burst. We need to make sure we have the system to make sure people in our community have support,” Sara Heymann of affordable housing advocacy group Little Village Unete explained to the Chicago Sun-Times.

A report published by Loyola University Chicago and the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing estimated that as many as 21,000 evictions could have been filed in the city in January if the federal moratorium had not been put into place. That is more potential evictions in one month than all that were filed in Chicago in 2019, at 18,200. The Illinois Housing Development Authority could only assist 45,600 out of 79,000 applicants for rental assistance.

At the beginning of this month, Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency’s benefits website crashed. Claimants were redirected to a waiting area page when they entered their login information, which did not forward to the benefits page. Over 770 evictions have been filed in Lansing’s 54A District Court. State eviction assistance funding has been depleted, restricting aid agencies’ ability to help people unable to afford rent. Assistant director of Housing Services Mid Michigan Christie Harry told the Lansing State Journal, “We are anxiously awaiting more eviction prevention funding. Of course, there are talks about money coming in the future, but I don’t know when that will be and how much.”

A report by the National Anti-Eviction Project at Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights revealed that Minnesota would be facing 13,330 evictions if the federal eviction moratorium is allowed to expire.

The state of Missouri is demanding that unemployment benefits recipients pay back millions of dollars. Recent reports state that 46,000 people had been “overpaid” $150 million in funds.

Missouri residents who have received letters demanding repayment of unemployment benefits are speaking out to the media. Daphne Lindsey Thomas was paid unemployment benefits for five months when the state claimed she had been overpaid. “To try to figure out how to pay $10,000 back right now, it’s impossible,” she told KMOV4. Thomas expressed disbelief at the callousness of the state, “I just don’t believe, why would they give to you and then take it away?” Missouri governor Mike Parson has refused to issue waivers for people forced to repay benefits.

Evictions are still happening throughout the city of St. Louis despite there being a local eviction moratorium. Mary Sounders is being evicted due to a recent divorce; the courts have not decided which party gets to stay in the house. She told KMOV4 about her impending eviction, “Financially it’s ruined me, mentally it’s messed me up and physically I’m just drained.” On emptying her home, “How can you pack a house that you’ve lived in for four - five years in seven days? You can’t, it’s impossible.” Other methods of eviction include commercial cases, court-ordered evictions due to civil disputes, and incidents where properties are allegedly damaged by the resident.

Missouri’s unemployment rate increased by 1.3 percentage points to 5.8 percent in December. The increase is attributed to 70,000 people reentering the labor force throughout the year. Only those who are actively looking for work are counted in labor statistics. Currently, Missouri’s total labor pool is 25,000 people below the December 2019 rate of 3.1 million. The Missouri legislature is discussing a bill that will bar residents from suing companies, school districts and government employers over the impact of being exposed to COVID-19 at work.

In St. Louis City and St. Louis County, nearly 5,000 evictions have been filed since mid-March. Some of these have been settled through payment, but many are tied up in the courts due to local eviction moratoriums. A hotline set up by the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council to help those facing eviction received over 400 calls by the end of 2020. It also takes calls about landlords locking out tenants, which increased from once a month to once a week last year.

Ohio’s unemployment rate fell from 5.7 percent in November to 5.5 percent in December. A staggering number of jobs in the state were lost over the past year: Cleveland lost 91,700 jobs, Columbus lost 70,500 jobs, and Cincinnati lost 51,500 jobs. Columbus-area nonprofit Columbus Legal Aid saw an increase in requests for aid in 2020 to 2,838, up from 2,527 in 2019. Ohio’s unemployment benefits system is insecure to the point that 796,000 out of 1.4 million 2020 pandemic assistance claims were flagged for possible fraud.

Hundreds of thousands of Indiana residents have not been paid their federal unemployment benefits since the end of 2020. The Indiana Department of Workforce Development temporarily stopped doling out benefits due to a purported lack of federal guidance on how to implement extended federal benefits. Indiana had the sixth highest rate of unemployment out of the twelve Midwest states in December.

Wisconsin saw unemployment rates as high as 15 percent in some counties in April 2020 before subsiding. The city of Milwaukee had 8.3 percent unemployment in December, Janesville had 5.5 percent, and Beloit had 5.9 percent. The state as a whole had 5.5 percent unemployment in December.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development is reviewing its antiquated benefits system. DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek said at a press briefing on January 27, “I had heard anecdotally about the antiquated systems, but I have to admit, I truly did not understand what DWD was dealing with until I got here.” Claimants are complaining about going months without receiving applied-for federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits. It is estimated that fixing the COBOL-based computer system—originally rolled out in the 1970s—would take 3-5 years and cost up to $90 million.

More than 1,300 eviction filings went through Milwaukee metropolitan area courts in August 2020.

Nebraska had nearly 20,000 fewer jobs in December 2020 than December 2019. The Lincoln Journal Star reported on the eviction troubles of 52-year-old Heide Massato, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and her 25 year-old daughter. When they were forced to move from the duplex they were staying in after their landlord’s death into an apartment in July 2020, they consolidated their bank accounts to keep better track of their finances. The consolidation caused a glitch where Massato’s $750 disability check and her $950 Social Security widow’s benefit check failed to deposit for August. It took two months for the checks to be deposited. The apartment managers demanded that the family pay $3,141.91 in back rent in full immediately. The company filed eviction proceedings in court in December that were finalized on the end of the month. Massato and her daughter currently rely on the generosity of local friends to get by. With poor credit and the eviction on their records, finding a place to rent in the future will be difficult.

Renters are now being told that in order to invoke the federal eviction moratorium, they must present their landlord with a signed declaration stating their inability to pay rent. “I thought it was like a blanket coverage that would stop eviction,” said Massato. Lincoln Commission on Human Rights director Mindy Rush Chipman explained to the Journal Star, “There’s a misconception that people are protected right now because we’re in a global pandemic and people have heard the word ‘moratorium.’ In reality, the moratorium only protects certain types of eviction proceedings, and the tenant has to know the declaration is required.”

The state of Kansas shut down its unemployment system on the weekend of January 30 to stop thousands of alleged fraud cases, meaning delayed benefit payments for existing claimants and the inability of new claimants to file for benefits.

The Iowa Workforce Development department is also pausing PEUC and PUA benefits payments to claimants until it upgrades its unemployment systems. Those who were receiving benefits on or before December 27, 2020 will continue to get them, while those who applied or exhausted their state benefits after that date will not receive assistance.

State Republican parties close ranks behind Trump

Jacob Crosse

In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s February 13 acquittal in his second impeachment trial, state Republican parties have reaffirmed their allegiance to the would-be dictator.

Emboldened by the Democrats’ feckless impeachment trial, which shielded Trump’s Republican co-conspirators in Congress as well as his abettors in the military, the police and on Wall Street, state Republican parties are advancing motions to punish those few Republican lawmakers who voted for Trump’s impeachment or Senate conviction.

Virginia Sen. Amanda Chase and Republican gubernatorial candidate, speaks from her desk at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Ryan M. Kelly)

Out of the 57 senators who voted to convict, only seven were Republicans, resulting in acquittal since conviction requires a two-thirds margin, or 67 votes. Almost all of the seven Republicans who voted against Trump are facing censure by their state parties.

In North Carolina, the state party met Monday night to formally censure Senator Richard Burr. Burr, who has generally backed Trump, was among the 46 Republican senators who voted earlier in the five-day trial to quash the proceedings on the legally specious grounds that it is unconstitutional to impeach and convict a president who is no longer in office. Nevertheless, on Saturday he joined six other Republicans to cast a “guilty” vote against the ex-president.

State party chairman Michael Whatley condemned Burr’s vote, calling it “shocking and disappointing.” Burr has already indicated that he will not seek reelection in 2022, leading to speculation that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a native of North Carolina and wife of Eric Trump, will run for Burr’s seat.

In Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday that a draft is circulating among state Republicans seeking to censure Mitt Romney for his “guilty” vote. Indicative of the far-right forces that control much of the party apparatus, the petition asserts that Romney “appears to be an agent for the Establishment Deep State.”

On Saturday, immediately following the conclusion of the Senate trial, the Louisiana GOP censured Senator Bill Cassidy after he voted to convict Trump. The Louisiana party issued a statement announcing the censure vote and stating: “We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Sen. Cassidy to convict former President Trump.”

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is likewise facing a censure vote. The vote was temporarily put on hold due to the debilitating ice storm that blanketed much of the US over the weekend. The measure from the State Central Committee of the Nebraska Republican Party excoriates Sasse for statements he made after the attempted coup of January 6 in which he accused Trump of inciting the riot at the Capitol and of “lying to the American people.”

The measure also condemns Sasse for “defamatory public statements” against Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, both of whom promoted Trump’s lying claims of election fraud and voted to overturn the results of the election after the insurrection at the Capitol.

Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, who has also announced he will not seek reelection, was censured by multiple county GOP committees for voting to convict Trump. Republican committees in Lawrence, Washington, York, and Centre County all voted to censure Toomey over the past week. In a February 13 statement, state GOP chair Lawrence Tabas said the acquittal of Trump was the “constitutionally correct outcome.”

In line with the constant appeals of the Biden administration and the Democrats for “bipartisan unity” with the party of the fascistic ex-president, Tabas concluded his statement by declaring, “I hope that we can now turn our attention to opening our schools…”

In Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported that Maine GOP Chair Demi Kouzounas intends to censure Senator Susan Collins by the end of the month. In an email to party members this past weekend, Kouzounas wrote that “many of you are upset after what happened today as are we.”

The wave of censure motions is a continuation of the consolidation of state Republican parties behind Trump that has followed the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Within days of the attack, several Republican state and county organizations released statements or posted comments on their social media pages either endorsing the coup or denying the role of Trump and his co-conspirators within the party in organizing the insurrection.

In Nevada, Nye County Republican Party Chairman Chris Zimmerman wrote a Facebook post two days after the coup attempt asserting, “Trump will be president for another four years,” and “we will have a new administration made up of a new vice president and cabinet, as the current ones have all made their treason complete.”

The post warned of mass arrests and disruptions in telecommunications systems, and alleged that “we are in a battle for our republic against elites that are attempting the very coup that they are accusing Trump of doing.” Zimmerman justified the letter to local media, telling Fox 5 that there was nothing “seditious” about the letter.

After 10 Republican House members voted to impeach Trump last month, Oregon state Republican Party Chairman Bill Currier released a statement on January 19 “condemning the betrayal” of the Republican representatives who supported impeachment “without any investigation, hearing, shred of due process, and in contradiction to the known and emerging facts.”

John Kraft, chairman of the St. Croix County Republican Party in Wisconsin, took down and then uploaded a newly redesigned version of the county organization’s website after it was discovered by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month that the page advised members to “prepare for war.”

In an archived version of the website dated January 7, Kraft echoed the language of the Boogaloo militia members who plotted to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last year, writing: “We need to start local by eliminating leftist tyrants from all local and County positions in the upcoming April election.”

Two days after the coup attempt, the head of the Texas GOP, Allen West, posed with militia members outside the Texas Capitol on the opening day of the legislature. West has consistently defended Trump and appealed to violent fascists. Last July, he changed the motto of the state party to “We are the Storm”—an overture to the fascistic QAnon conspiracy theory, which uses the phrase to describe the mass execution of Trump’s enemies.

In Michigan, state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who was censured last month by the state party for not “upholding conservative values,” recanted an earlier apology he had made after a video came to light in which he characterized the January 6 coup attempt as a “hoax from day one.”

In tandem with their consolidation behind Trump, Republican state parties are advancing measures to limit voting in the upcoming 2022 election. Central to Trump’s fabricated claims of a “rigged election” was his attack on the use of mail-in and absentee ballots. The use of these ballots increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mail balloting is being targeted in most of the measures being introduced by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

A recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that state legislatures had introduced four times the number of bills meant to restrict voting as had been introduced by this time last year.

As of the first week of February, the Brennan Center found that 33 states had “introduced, prefilled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year,” compared to only 35 last year. “Restrictive bills” include measures that would limit mail voting access, impose stricter voter ID requirements, slash voter registration opportunities or enable more aggressive purging of registered voters from the rolls.

The Republican-controlled legislature in Arizona, a state that went for Trump in 2016 but was won by Biden last November, leads the nation in measures attacking voting rights. It has introduced 19 restrictive bills. It is followed by Pennsylvania with 14, Georgia with 11 and New Hampshire with 10.

Examples of legislation under consideration include Missouri Bill SB 282, which would eliminate COVID-19 as a valid reason for obtaining a mail-in ballot. Similar proposals are under consideration in Arizona, Georgia, North Dakota and Oklahoma.

The Brennan Center found that so far this year, 18 states have advanced 40 measures seeking to impose new or more stringent voter ID requirements, such as accepting only a state ID from the state where one is voting, or requiring voters to mail a photocopy of government ID along with an absentee ballot. Ten states that previously had no voter ID requirement are currently considering legislation to impose one.

In Pennsylvania, where Trump’s efforts to throw out the votes of nearly seven million people failed in the courts, the GOP is seeking to remedy the problem of too many people voting by gerrymandering the state Supreme Court, which is currently in the control of the Democratic Party.

Johnson government plans UK National Health Service “overhaul” to streamline privatisation

Thomas Scripps

The final draft of a government White Paper on the National Health Service (NHS), “Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all”, was leaked to the Health Policy Insight website on February 5. Health Secretary Matt Hancock formally announced the policy in parliament on February 11.

Numerous mainstream media outlets have depicted the plans as a bold reversal of the changes to the NHS introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in 2012 under former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. The Lansley reforms introduced sweeping privatisations in the NHS, mainly through the vehicle of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). These groups, led by GPs, bought services from hospitals and private providers “on behalf of” patients, and were required to put those services out to competitive tender.

Under the new legislation, CCGs will be replaced by Integrated Care Systems, and the competitive tender system will be altered—the White Paper refers to “eliminat[ing] the need for competitive tendering where it adds limited or no value.” Hancock will be returned powers handed to the independent body NHS England in 2012.

Nursing staff in an NHS hospital (credit: WSWS media)

These changes have been widely spun as a step against privatisation in the NHS. The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg declared that the “proposed changes mark a pretty big move away—at least in emphasis—from the use of competition and the private sector.” Sky News reported that they would “slim down the role of private providers in the health service” and the Guardian asserted they would “be warmly welcomed as rolling back the increasing privatisation of care seen in recent years.” The i newspaper ran the headline, “NHS reforms could reduce role for private sector in health service”.

Behind the paywalls of the Times and the Telegraph, however, the ruling class discusses the reality. “The private sector will not, as some reports suggest, face banishment from the health service,” writes Telegraph columnist Nick Timothy. Rather, a planned “removal of fixed price tariffs might see more private provision if companies can offer better prices.”

The Times is more forthcoming. On February 10, Whitehall Editor Chris Smyth wrote, “NHS shake-up offers patients more private choice”. He explains, “Private health companies unhappy at being shut out of health service contracts will also be told to take the NHS to court under reforms to outsourcing due this week as part of new legislation.”

According to a consultation on the new rules for competition in the NHS, seen by the Times, a “valuable ongoing role” will be played by the private sector. Instead of putting every service out to tender, NHS chiefs will be able to continue with a provider or select one which is clearly most qualified without going through the competitive process. “If providers are unhappy with how contracts have been handed out,” the Times reports, “the [White] paper says ‘judicial review will be available’ to them.”

The private sector already hauls in billions in NHS contracts every year. In 2018/19, NHS commissioners spent £9.2 billion on private sector services—7.3 percent of the Department of Health and Social Care budget. Another £4.5 billion was spent that year on services provided by voluntary or not-for-profit organisations. A further £1.3 billion was spent on services from “non-NHS organisations” and £271 million on outsourcing services to other providers.

Healthcare thinktank the Kings Fund notes that if spending on primary care services such as GPs, opticians, dentists and pharmacies is included, approximately 25 percent of NHS spending goes to the private sector.

This process has been dramatically accelerated during the pandemic, with billions of pounds worth of contracts handed to private companies to manage healthcare staff, run testing and contact tracing programmes and provide personal protective equipment—all of which has been a disaster. The bulk of these contracts were handed out without any tendering process and several billion pounds worth of them awarded to friends and donors to the Tory party and its ministers.

The White Paper formalises this process of privatisation and outright cronyism. As Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick write in the British Medical Journal, “the proposals consolidate the market paradigm that the 2012 act strengthened and which the government has favoured during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The “core of the disastrous Lansley reforms remain in place,” including “no duty on the government to provide key services throughout England to everybody”, “commercial contracts and the purchaser-provider split still the basis for delivering services” and “foundation trusts still able to receive 49 percent of their income from outside the NHS”.

Pollock and Roderick explain that there is nothing in the legislation to prevent private companies serving on the boards of the new Integrated Care Systems. The White Paper states that ICS bodies will “delegate significantly… to provider collaboratives,” which are “clearly open to multinational private companies and monopoly power”. The “opportunity, for example, for private companies to be either or both members of the ICS NHS body, and commissioned to provide services, is obvious.”

Other avenues of privatisation are also widened. Smyth’s Times article reveals, “People waiting for routine care will be able to choose treatment from any company that meets NHS standards and prices as the health service struggles to reduce waiting lists that have grown sharply during the pandemic.” The new legislation will remove “unnecessary hurdles” put in the way by health chiefs and allow patients “to choose treatment from any company registered by the Care Quality Commission that is competent to carry it out and meets NHS prices.”

Investors Chronicle assures its readers that while, “On the surface, these proposals may seem like a blow to the private sector… the vast majority of this private sector outsourcing has not come through the clinical commissioning group bidding process.”

The removal of the tender process “is therefore unlikely to stymie post-pandemic opportunities in the private sector. In fact, with NHS England under sole control of a health minister who desperately needs to clear the backlog of overdue operations and prevent criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic, private sector outsourcing could actually be on the rise.”

For private healthcare company Spire, the author explains as an example, “The majority of its public sector revenues come through the e-referrals process, where GPs can book patients into Spire hospitals directly where their treatment will be covered by the NHS.”

The White Paper therefore utilises the crisis created by the government’s criminal handling of the pandemic as a spur for increased privatisation. Nearly 225,000 people have now waited more than a year for routine hospital treatment, the highest level in 12 years and up from around 2,000 throughout 2019. There are 4.5 million people on the waiting list in total. A letter from the NHS Confederation to Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns that patients can expect to wait over a year for some treatments for “some years”.

The government see this not as a health crisis, but as a market opportunity.

Nothing in the White Paper addresses the crippling shortages in the health and social care sectors. There are currently more than 87,000 staff vacancies in the NHS and the workforce is suffering from the enormous physical and psychological pressure of the pandemic. The NHS maintenance backlog bill increased by 40 percent last year to £9 billion. Social care is a privatised mess. This already strained system will now be placed under the additional pressures of patient backlogs, an unprecedented mental health crisis, and the impact of “Long Covid”.

That broad swathes of the media have done little more than raise an eyebrow at the timing of the reforms in the middle of a pandemic is an indication of the sharp rightward lurch of the ruling class. There is no section of the elite which opposes the continued privatisation and underfunding of the NHS.

Responding to Hancock’s announcement, Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth meekly urged Johnson to “explain why a reorganisation in the midst of the biggest crisis the NHS has ever faced is his pressing priority”. He asked Hancock to answer the question, “how will this reorganisation and power grab improve patient care?” Hancock was able to respond, “I will take that as cautious support.”