Job cuts mount in German clinics and nursing homes despite the pandemic

Marianne Arens

In many parts of Germany, nursing staff have been working at their limits for over a year now. But now, in the middle of the country’s third wave of the pandemic, doctors, nurses and caregivers are faced with a new threat: clinics are laying off personnel to boost profits. This is a slap in the face of caregivers and nursing staff, for whom this will mean increased workload and even greater stress.

For days now there has been a steady stream of news in the German media about planned layoffs and clinic closures.

In Bremen, the municipal clinic association “Gesundheit Nord” (Geno) is in the process of cutting 440 full-time position. In order to get “in the black,” the Bremen senate coalition of Social Democrats, Left Party and Greens wants to cut more than one in five jobs in the clinic association by 2024.

Striking nursing staff at the Berlin Charité hospital

Bremen’s health senator Claudia Bernhard (Left Party) is also chairwoman of Geno’s supervisory board. She has defended the decision and glossed over the job cuts by claiming that nursing staff are not affected by layoffs. In reality, among those laid off are many nurses currently on temporary and contract work, nurses in their probation period as well as nursing assistants.

In Cologne, the municipal hospitals are to be merged with the university hospital forming a “Charité of the West” in order to save 40 million euro. Several hundred jobs will be eliminated through “synergy effects.” Here, too, it can be assumed that the service sector union Verdi, which claims to be “against compulsory redundancies,” will support the reduction of non-permanent employees, just like the Left Party does in Bremen.

In the city of Bernkastel-Kues on the Moselle river, the Median Group is in the process of closing one of four rehabilitation clinics, initially for two months. Together, the four clinics’ 630 employees care for more than 800 patients. In the last eight years, Median has already cut one in ten jobs in the Kueser Plateau region and closed one of its original five clinics.

For weeks, nursing staff in Bernkastel-Kues have been fighting this exploitation and the reduction in wages. Every Thursday they march through the parks with banners and posters pointing out that they have not received a pay raise in seven years. Not even a promised one-time special pandemic payment of 1500 euro has been disbursed by the Median Group. Many nursing staff now assume that the closure of the rehabilitation clinic is a deliberate lockout and an act of intimidation to forestall a strike in May.

In Ingelheim on the Rhine, a specialized COVID-19 clinic was closed in December, even though it remains sorely needed during the pandemic. But economic consultants at the Bertelsmann Foundation deemed Ingelheim expensive and inefficient. The closure liquidates 190 jobs.

In Göppingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, nursing staff are currently demonstrating against the planned closure of the Helfenstein Clinic. There, 135 jobs are threatened in the medical and nursing fields alone.

Last year, despite the coronavirus pandemic, numerous hospitals were closed. In the state of Saarland, the Marienhausklinik Ottweiler was shuttered. In Bavaria, both the Schön-Klinik in Fürth as well as two hospitals of the Kliniken Nordoberpfalz AG (Waldsassen and Vohenstrauss) were closed. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, two hospitals in the city of Essen were closed including Marienhospital Altenessen and St. Vinzenz in Essen-Stoppenberg.

In the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in addition to the Ingelheim Clinic, the two Loreley Clinics in St. Goar and Oberwesel were closed, just like the Diakonissen Hospital in Lehnin in the state of Brandenburg. Numerous further closures are also expected to follow this year. One example is the hospital in the Dresden city district of Neustadt/Trachau, 97 percent of which will be shuttered.

In almost every case, furious residents have protested the closures, which are always justified by “economic reasons.” Each time, dozens if not hundreds more caregivers are thrown out of their jobs. The program “plusminus” of the German broadcaster ARD said of the wave of clinic closures: “In the shadow of Corona, the dismantling is being driven forward.” It went on to explain, “November’s second hospital bailout is only for clinics with emergency levels 2 and 3 - which are almost exclusively the 400 or so large maximum care providers. The smaller ones will come away empty-handed.”

Primarily the large, private health care groups, such as Fresenius-Helios will survive the crisis. One of the world’s largest hospital groups, Fresenius-Helios is a screaming example of how private hospital chains are enriching themselves during the pandemic at the expense of nursing staff and patients.

In pandemic year 2020, the Fresenius-Helios Group in Germany made a profit of 602 million euro. The company had “weathered the Corona pandemic well,” explained CEO Stephan Sturm at the annual press conference in February 2021, as reported by the ARD magazine FAKT on April 13 in a feature on the Herzzentrum (Heart Centre) Leipzig, which belongs to Fresenius.

Herzzentrum Leipzig generated a net profit of 23 million euro in 2020, an increase of seven million euro or 43 percent compared to the previous year. Despite this, Fresenius is exerting even more pressure on nursing staff in the interests of its shareholders. Profits are expected to grow by a further five to nine percent per year until 2023. To this end, an additional ten percent of physician positions are to be cut and temporary contracts are to be phased out.

FAKT quotes anonymous doctors, who already provide 140 percent of the normal service, as saying: “Many of us already can’t do any more.” And, “We are seen as part of a machine, and the patients as a product. That’s what we’re fighting back against.”

According to the financial paper Handelsblatt, Fresenius is one of the few German companies to belong to the “illustrious circle of dividend aristocrats.” The company’s dividend has climbed steadily for 28 continuous years. The Handelsblatt writes: “The health care group Fresenius has increased its dividend by an average of almost 25 percent over the past ten years. At first glance, the yield of one percent is modest. But the reason for this is a pleasing one: The share price rose rapidly over the same period—from 10 euro to over 90 euro.”

This “pleasing return” is literally being generated from the bones of the nursing staff.

The job cuts are not only affecting hospitals: increasingly the red pen is being applied to senior citizens’ and nursing homes, too. There are several current examples of this from Switzerland. The Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten reported succinctly on the wave of layoffs in nursing homes: “The strain on nursing facilities during the first wave was great. Nursing staff suffered as a result. Now it is going to the other extreme. There is under-occupancy in the homes.” As an example, the report points to layoffs at the Uzwil (St. Gallen) senior centre.

Another example is a retirement home run by the Amalie-Widmer Foundation in Horgen, which has just laid off 45 nursing staff, almost one in six. Sixty percent of nursing homes in Switzerland are complaining of under-occupancy as a result of the pandemic. Quite a few will respond by slashing jobs, an example that Germany will increasingly follow. It is the height of cynicism that nursing positions in homes and hospitals are being cut as a result of the impact of the pandemic last fall and winter.

Even before the pandemic, nurses repeatedly protested staffing shortages, but went unheard. Then two waves of pandemic increased the work pressure unspeakably. Many nursing staff were infected with COVID-19 at work.

According to a study by the insurance provider AOK, geriatric care and health care are the two occupational groups most affected by COVID-19. The current twelve-month balance sheet shows that for every 100,000 care workers insured with AOK, 5409 in geriatric care and 5338 in nursing were on sick leave due to a coronavirus infection. This means that more than one in twenty caregivers has experienced moderate to severe COVID-19.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reports that in Germany nearly 82,000 health care workers and nearly 62,000 nursing home workers have contracted COVID-19. About three percent of them had to be hospitalized. The real numbers are far higher. As the RKI itself acknowledges, “it should be taken into account that this information is only available for a subset of COVID-19 cases.”

Many caregivers have paid for their efforts with their lives. The RKI lists 81 cases of staff who died of COVID-19 after working in hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, doctors’ offices, dialysis facilities, or emergency medical services. For employees in nursing facilities, the figure rises to 168 deaths. This means that, according to officially known figures, nearly 250 caregivers in hospitals or nursing homes have died after being infected with the virus. Globally, an average of one health care worker has died from COVID-19 every 30 minutes, according to Amnesty International.

At the same time, tens of thousands of nursing home residents and patients have also died a sad coronavirus death, which many pension funds, one must assume, were none too sad about. And now, the bottom line is that caregivers are being made to pay once again for the pandemic in the form of layoffs and ever greater work stress.

Irish police attack sacked Debenhams workers

Steve James

In a calculated display of class violence, striking Debenhams workers in Dublin, Ireland, were manhandled and arrested late Thursday night as up to 60 Gardaí (police), some in paramilitary gear, dragged four workers, mostly older women, from the loading bay of the store in which many of them had worked for decades.

The workers, part of a group of around 30, were trying to prevent Debenhams liquidator, KPMG, from removing stock from the store where they worked until April last year.

One of the workers, shop steward Jane Crowe, described to RTE what happened, “We were forcibly lifted up. I was carried out. While they were carrying me out my jacket came off over my head, my jumper came off over my head. I was left with no clothes from the waste up and my under garments were broken as well. It was demoralising to be left half naked in front of 50 or 60 Gardaí, as well as the public and colleagues. There was no need for the heavy handedness.” Video footage shared on Twitter showed a clutch of police around one of the workers, while her terrified daughter shouted in protest.

Gardaí attacking workers outside Debenhams Henry street store (Image credit Alice Richardson Twitter/@alrichards0n)

Carmel Redmond, a Debenhams worker for 24 years, expressed deep shock at her experience, “Everything we do is peaceful. When the guards arrived, there were all these Garda vans and some of them were three-deep. We didn’t expect any of this, to be physically removed. It was a bit overwhelming. We just want to keep going with our picket. We have that right.”

The following night Gardaí broke up picket lines outside the company's Tralee store, where workers had been picketing for 380 days to prevent stock removal. Four removal trucks then entered the loading bay. Over previous weeks similar scenes took place in Blanchardstown and Cork.

Despite this state violence ordered by the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition government, the Mandate trade union and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) have refused any measures in the workers defence. 

Mandate, which covers 40,000 retail workers across Ireland, has left its members isolated for more than 12 months, leaving them at the mercies of the Labour Court, the Irish government and the Gardaí.

Gerry Light, Mandate’s General Secretary, issued a statement Friday making clear his union was in the process of ending the dispute. He said of the violent actions by police, “This incident should never have happened. The workers had decided to ballot for a potential resolution to this dispute at 4:30pm yesterday”. While details of Mandate’s agreement with KPMG have not been released, two previous deals were rejected outright by workers.

Debenhams Retail Ireland Ltd collapsed last April at the same time as Debenhams in Britain (nominally a separate company) went into administration. Over 2,000 workers lost their jobs in Ireland, while in Britain 22,000 staff at 142 stores were placed on furlough. The Irish company announced it would not reopen after lockdown, while some UK stores have re-opened temporarily for “fire sales” in the middle of a deadly pandemic, prior to permanent closure.

Although their jobs have already gone, Debenhams staff in Ireland have been on strike since May last year, pursuing redundancy payments under terms previously agreed by the company with Mandate in 2016. Workers at the company's 11 Irish stores are seeking four weeks redundancy pay for every year worked, significantly more than the state redundancy payout.

Repeated protests have been held both online and outside Debenhams stores and at the Dáil Eireann (Irish parliament). In August, 200 demonstrated at the Dublin store. In September, workers briefly occupied stores in Cork and Dublin in response to derisory offers from KPMG, with some workers arrested. KPMG’s “offer”, agreed by Mandate, was reportedly worth a mere €1 million covering all staff. It was also met by protests outside KPMG's offices, with Debenhams in Waterford occupied for five days.

Late last year, the Irish Labour Court rejected demands for better compensation. Labour Court chair Kevin Foley, after talks with Mandate, KPMG, and various government agencies, concluded their 2016 agreement did not apply. Other creditors, mainly the Department of Social Protection and the Revenue Commissioners—who are owed around €18 million—would take precedence. This time, Debenhams workers were offered €3 million to retrain, which they again rejected in a 91 percent vote of 430 workers.

KPMG was granted an injunction last October against anyone obstructing the removal of assets. It is this injunction that was enforced by Gardaí against workers over the last weeks.

The Irish government, the courts, the police, employers and trade unions are doing everything they can to ensure that as little as possible of whatever Debenhams assets remain in Ireland are transferred to the workers. The Irish state is sending a clear message to international capitalism that no obstacle will be placed before Ireland’s status as a lucrative platform for the extraction of surplus value from the working class.

Ireland’s pseudo-left groups, including People Before Profit (PBP), have played a central role in politically straitjacketing the working class throughout the year-long dispute. PBP hailed Debenhams workers’ struggle while systematically blinding them to the isolation imposed by Mandate and the ICTU. PBP has promoted submissiveness to the state, encouraging illusions that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail could be pressured to legislate against asset strippers and other financial parasites represented by KPMG.

Bríd Smith, Solidarity-People Before Profit TD, issued a statement marking one year of the dispute, declaring it would “benefit all workers if promised legislation to implement the Duffy/Cahill report is implemented”.

The Duffy-Cahill report was submitted to the Irish government by Labour Court chairman Kevin Duffy and Senior Counsel Neasa Cahill in 2016 and has gathered dust ever since. It proposed minimal protections for workers in the event of company insolvencies where assets have been “separated” from the operating entity (i.e., where assets have been hidden to protect wealthy shareholders and investors). Its recommendations included a 30-day consultation period with unions prior to redundancies, some redress if no consultation takes place, along with enhanced redundancy payments. Its recommendations have been ignored by successive Irish governments.

Smith claimed the report would have given “some[!] protection” to the Debenhams workers, before complaining that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail “did nothing to implement legislation to facilitate the implementation of the Duffy-Cahill Report”.

People Before Profit advances no independent programme for the working class, such as the fight for expropriation and workers’ control of the banks and corporations. Instead, Smith stated, “We urgently need to reorder the priority of creditors in a liquidation so that workers are at the top of the queue.” PBP’s defence of capitalism was underlined by Richard Boyd Barrett TD. Referencing the bailout of companies during the pandemic, he declared “In these extraordinary times the government has taken extraordinary measures to support businesses, some of whom remain profitable. It must now take similar measures to support workers made redundant in these difficult times.”

As police and strike breakers were being mobilised at Debenhams, Solidarity & Socialist Party TD Mick Barry moved his Companies (Protection of Employees’ Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021 in the Dáil. A brief amendment to the 2014 Companies Act, it seeks “preferential creditor status to employees in collective redundancy situations; to provide for recognition of redundancy payments in a winding up”. It has no chance of being passed. As for the Duffy-Cahill report, when Barry asked its authors in parliament whether their report’s recommendations would have protected Debenhams workers, Cahill and Duffy refused to be drawn.

The government, a coalition of the main bourgeois parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael along with the Green Party, is moving now against the Debenhams workers because of rapidly escalating class tensions in Ireland.

Thousands more jobs in retail and across the Irish economy are threatened. Last September, Ryanair warned that 140,000 aviation jobs are under threat, along with 325,000 in tourism. Carphone Warehouse stores are due to close “with immediate effect” at the cost of 480 jobs. Much of the retail economy is due to open next month in Ireland despite the ongoing threat from COVID-19. 20,000 building workers are also due to recommence work, while Intel's huge Leixlip site outside Dublin has never stopped despite COVID-19 outbreaks. At the time of writing, power workers for ESB Networks are planning two days of strikes this week against privatisation. The company has declared the strike “unlawful”.

Eastern Europe and the Balkans remain coronavirus hotspot

Martin Nowak

In recent months, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans have been particularly badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Across Europe, the number of new daily infections has exceeded 200,000 since March, as high as at the previous peak in November 2020. Before that, the numbers had dropped somewhat due to various uncoordinated national lockdown measures. Over one million people have died from COVID-19 in Europe so far.

Under these conditions, all governments have made it clear they will no longer take any significant containment measures. Hiding behind a patchy rapid testing system and disastrous vaccination campaigns, they are relying on a naked policy of “herd immunity.” Despite incidence figures between 100 and 400 per 100,000, they are keeping schools, day-care centres, shops and businesses open.

CAPTION: Picture from a hospital for the homeless in Budapest, which the right-wing Hungarian government wants to close (AP Photo/Laszlo Balogh)

It is striking that in all Eastern European countries between Estonia and Greece, the seven-day incidence rate for new infections per million is above 200. The worst-affected countries are Croatia (379), Serbia (271), Hungary (262), Poland (253), Slovenia (238) and Estonia (237).

The region also stands out in terms of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Except for Belgium (206), only Eastern Europe and Balkan countries figure in the top 10. The Czech Republic (269) is followed by Hungary (266), Bosnia (245), Montenegro (232), Bulgaria (223), Macedonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Italy (196) and Britain (192) follow, as the European countries with the next highest death rates.

The Eastern European countries all have one thing in common: following the introduction of capitalism three decades ago, their relatively well-functioning health care systems were sacrificed on the altar of profit and ruined.

The Stalinist regimes established after the Second World War repressed the working class and represented the interests of a privileged bureaucracy. However, the socialisation of the economy nevertheless made possible a wide range of basic medical and educational services that went far beyond the level of comparable capitalist countries. In terms of the number of doctors and beds per inhabitant, the economically weaker countries of Eastern Europe were at Western European levels, and thus higher than American and Asian countries.

The destructive role of the Stalinist bureaucracy meant the economic potential of the planned economy was never fully realised. Mismanagement and corruption increased rapidly in later years. Added to this were the insoluble internal contradictions of the Stalinist regimes, which pursued a policy of economic autarky but were nevertheless dependent on the global economy. At the end of the 1980s, the Stalinist apparatchiks running these states finally reacted as Leon Trotsky had predicted in 1936, by introducing capitalist conditions and transforming the former “people’s property” into their own private property.

The oligarchy that emerged in this orgy of self-enrichment has since imposed one “reform” after another for the benefit of the banks and corporations. With entry into the European Union, privatisation and cuts in state spending accelerated further.

Until the 2000s, hospital bed coverage was still above the EU average of 660 beds per 100,000 inhabitants in many former Eastern bloc countries. In Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania it was about one third higher, in the Czech Republic and Lithuania even two thirds. In terms of staffing, however, these countries were already worse off than the European average, which was 390 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants. In Poland, Latvia, Hungary, and Slovenia the corresponding number was less than 300, in Romania only 189.

The EU average for health expenditure as a share of gross domestic product in 2001 was 8.5 percent or $2,230 per inhabitant, whereas in most Eastern European states it was only between four and six percent, or $270 (Romania) and $900 (Hungary). Only Slovenia and the Czech Republic spent $1,200 per inhabitant.

It is therefore not surprising that the statistics on life expectancy tell a clear story. For example, the life expectancy of a new-born child in Eastern Europe is 69 (men) and 79 (women) years, compared to 79 and 84 years in Western Europe. For men with lower educational attainment (and thus lower incomes), life expectancy is four years less than for upper-class men.

Decades of persistent underfunding of hospitals is now making itself felt through chronic staff shortages and outdated equipment. Eastern Europe’s lead in the number of hospital beds as a percentage of the population has now also fallen victim to the cuts, with tens of thousands of beds being axed. The steady population decline, also a result of the ongoing social cuts, somewhat hides the actual decline in the statistics. But if many Eastern European countries are still above the EU average, this is mainly a result of serious cuts throughout European health systems.

Ireland or France, for example, have halved their bed capacities since 1990 to 300 or 600 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Scandinavian countries such as Sweden or Finland, with their once highly developed social systems, only a fifth of the bed capacities of 1990 remains—220 or 320 beds per 100,000 inhabitants.

The cuts in East and West are closely interrelated. Cutback programmes and austerity measures are dictated by the EU and the major powers that set the tone within it, and these also impose cuts in their own health care systems at the expense of the former Eastern Bloc countries.

For example, without the mass immigration of qualified medical personnel from Eastern Europe, the Western European health system would already have sunk much further because of the permanent pressure to save money. Tens of thousands of well-trained doctors, nurses or caregivers left their home countries in the East with the prospect of a better income and better working conditions in the West. But even at their new workplaces, they are caught in the downward spiral in health systems, whose murderous consequences have been made particularly clear by the pandemic.

Drawing the mortality rate on a map of Europe, the “Iron Curtain” reappears, the S ü ddeutsche Zeitung noted years ago and asked: “So is Europe’s unity failing when it comes to health?” The clear answer is: No, Europe’s health and the unity are failing because of capitalism.

Law enforcement arm of the US Postal Service tracking social media activity

Kevin Reed

The law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service (USPS) has been monitoring the social media activity of the US public and sharing its findings with local, state and federal police agencies and private security firms connected to the state.

The covert surveillance program—known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP)—involves USPS analysts combing through the social media pages and events looking for “inflammatory” posts, according to a March 16, 2021 “Situational Awareness Bulletin” obtained and published by Yahoo News on Wednesday.

The iCOP program has been operating under the direction of the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) and specifically “monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” according to the bulletin, which is marked “law enforcement sensitive.” The document was circulated through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fusion centers, which serve as a “primary conduit” of federal law enforcement information to states and major urban areas as well as “private sector partners” across the US.

United States Postal Service delivery truck in San Francisco residential area. Location: San Francisco, CA. (Image Credit Alexander Marks aomarks / Wikipedia/Public Domain)

The significance of March 20 is that this is the date that two national and international political demonstrations were being planned. One was a far-right anti-vaccine “Worldwide Rally for Freedom” promoted by QAnon groups. The other was a global campaign called “Stop 5G” promoted by radical anti-science groups decrying the alleged harmful effects of radio waves used by the latest generation of wireless networks.

The bulletin included details about both events as they were promoted on social media, including the date that the events were first published on Facebook and the hashtags used on Twitter to promote them. The iCOP report also provides the number of Facebook followers for each as of March 16. It states, “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms.”

The document provides screenshots of both Facebook event pages and says, “Online inflammatory material has been identified, which suggests potential violence may occur; however, there is currently no intelligence to suggest specific threats.” The report says that a “prominent Proud Boys North Carolina based member [name redacted] known as NobleBeard made a comment regarding the event stating it would take place at ‘Every state capital on March 20th.” This information was found on the right-wing platform Parler.

While most of the detailed information in the iCOP bulletin pertains to “inflammatory or violent messages” from participants in the extreme right-wing demonstration who discussed plans to “confront BLM” and “do some serious damage,” the document also states that the “Global Action to Stop 5G” rallies were being held in California, Denver, Virginia and Vermont.

When asked about the iCOP program by Yahoo News, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service responded with boilerplate language saying, “The Internet Covert Operations Program is a function within the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which assesses threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information.” The statement went on, “In order to preserve operational effectiveness, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service does not discuss its protocols, investigative methods, or tools.”

Screen capture of the March 16 Situational Awareness Bulletin from the US Postal Inspection Service [Image Credit: Yahoo News]

Yahoo News also spoke with Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program. She questioned the legal authority of the USPS to monitor social media activity, saying, “If they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, one of President Barack Obama’s advisers involved in reviewing the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks said, “It’s a mystery. I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”

Going back to 2001, with the creation of the Mail Isolation and Control Tracking System (MICT), the USPS can “retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement.” Since that time the USPS has been scanning every piece of mail that is delivered to each mailbox. With the integration of digital technologies into the process, the USPS has been capturing exterior images of letter-size mail and storing these images in a database.

Among the information being captured are names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, and this information is very similar to the email and phone call metadata that was previously being captured and stored as part of the NSA mass surveillance program. The existence of the MICT system was inadvertently revealed on June 7, 2013 when the FBI was discussing an investigation into the ricin-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The program was confirmed by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in an Associated Press interview nine weeks later.

In 2014, the USPS began marketing the MICT system to the public as “Informed Delivery,” a service that enables individuals to view the exterior of the mail arriving in their mailbox before it arrives or before they have a chance to check their mailbox. By 2017 this program had been rolled out to the majority of ZIP codes in the US. Concerns raised by privacy advocates about the surveillance were dismissed with the explanation that the information is only kept for 30 days and the integrity of the data is guaranteed by the USPIS, the very same postal department agency in charge of iCOP.

Given that millions of people have been using end-to-end encryption technologies on their smartphones and computers following the Snowden revelations, the surveillance apparatus has been working on alternative methods of gathering information in violation of basic democratic rights such as AI-based facial recognition cameras and systems located in public and private spaces across the country. The scanning and monitoring of the USPS mail being delivered to homes and businesses is another way to continue such surveillance.

Fraudulently posturing as upholders of democratic rights, 30 House Republicans are calling for a briefing from the USPS about its social media monitoring. Among the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee demanding a hearing by April 28 are those who attempted to block the Congressional certification of the 2020 elections and abetted the January 6 fascist insurrection at the US Capitol, including Representatives Jim Jordan (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Mo Brooks (Alabama).

As with all previous references to “extremism,” the exposure of a social media surveillance operation by the USPS shows that an effort is underway to brand all political opposition and protest as “inflammatory and violent.” While nothing is being done to expose the political, organizational and financial connections between the Republican Party and Donald Trump with fascist groups such as the Proud Boys, Promise Keepers and the Three Percenters militia, the real target of the surveillance and attack on democratic rights is the working class, left-wing and socialist political organizations and individuals.

Although the revelations of USPS spying on the public and the surveillance itself has taken place during the Biden Administration, no statements have been issued by Democrats or by the White House as of this writing.

Chinese truck driver driven to suicide by exploitative conditions

Lily Zhao

A 51-year-old long-haul truck driver, Jin Deqiang, committed suicide by drinking pesticide after being unfairly fined 2,000 RMB ($US285) at a freight truck checkpoint in Tangshan, a city in the northern China province of Hebei. His death on April 5 tragically exposes the highly exploitative and harsh working conditions in which millions of long-haul truckers are struggling on a daily basis.

Earlier that day, Jin loaded his freight in the city of Tangshan and entered the checkpoint around 1 p.m. According to the official investigation launched after Jin’s suicide caught widespread public attention, staff at the checkpoint found that the satellite positioning system, BeiDou, on Jin’s truck was offline and asked him to come into the office for further inspection. Instead, Jin left the checkpoint to purchase some pesticide.

When Jin returned, he was told that he would be fined 2,000 RMB according to transportation regulations in Hebei Province. The official investigation especially emphasized that Jin “quickly drank” the pesticide “without any warning” and that there was “no physical clash” between Jin and checkpoint staff.

Trucks waiting at the Hong Kong and Shenzhen border gate in Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China. (Image license: Shutterstock/Joseph Sohm)

The official investigation falsely claimed the tragic suicide of Jin was the result of his personal overreaction. Furthermore, it indicated that none of the state agencies involved should be held responsible.

The official investigation stressed that Jin purchased the pesticide before he was informed of the amount of the fine. What it failed to mention was that faults with the BeiDou positioning system have been a longstanding problem for all truck drivers. It is highly likely that Jin had been fined over the same issue previously and was very aware of the fine awaiting him even before talking to the checkpoint staff.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Transport at the end of last year, nearly 30 percent of the positioning devices on trucks did not pass the quality check. Unstable data upload and connection with the master platform is one of the major problems.

A large number of truck drivers have posted questions online over the years, asking why their positioning system went offline and what to do when they were fined over it. A truck driver from the same hometown as Jin explained in an interview that a disconnection can be caused when entering a satellite blind zone or by hardware issues. He said, if something went wrong with the device’s hardware, the driver was only left with two choices: keep going under the risk of being fined, or return to where the device could be repaired. No truck driver would choose the second option for obvious reasons.

Another truck driver also made clear in a video on social media that it is almost impossible for drivers to know when the positioning system goes offline. In many cases, the screen is still on but the device can not be found on the master platform.

Besides frequent connection issues, this satellite positioning device causes truck drivers many other headaches. For instance, drivers are not allowed to drive more than four hours at a time; police can check their driving activity on this device when pulling them over.

In many cases, however, it is unrealistic to strictly adhere to this regulation. Drivers might be at a location on the highway where there is no nearby service station, or get caught in a traffic jam, or be denied entry into a service station due to overcapacity. Thus, drivers are in constant fear of punishment for ‘fatigue-driving’ that consists of a 200 RMB fine and the deduction of six of their 12 licence points.

Behind these in-truck positioning devices that frequently malfunction stand major financial interests—manufacturers, tech companies and state officials. As early as 2014, truck drivers were legally required to install a position-tracking device. The initial installation usually cost about 2,000 or 3,000 RMB ($285 or $428), and then drivers have to pay a service fee of about 1,000 RMB annually. In China, there are at least 600,000 long-haul truck drivers using this type of positioning system, so the annual service fees alone make for a very lucrative business.

No matter what the device, all are connected to a monopolistic master platform developed by the Beijing ZhongJiaoXingLu Information Technology Company. A portion of the annual service fee paid by each driver eventually goes to this company which made a net profit of more than 1 billion RMB ($154 million) last year.

Moreover, the malfunctioning of positioning devices has been exploited to generate revenues for many freight truck checkpoints across the country through fines. According to the 2014 regulation requiring all trucks to carry a positioning system, drivers will be fined 800 RMB if their device goes offline. If it is vandalized, the fine will range from 2,000 to 5,000 RMB. In the regulation specific to Hebei Province where Jin committed suicide, drivers are fined 2,000 RMB if they have manually turned it off.

The safety regulation might be reasonable, but the poor quality of the devices means Jin and countless other truck drivers are hit with fines that are onerous and unfair. The satellite positioning system is no longer aimed at ensuring safety for truck drivers and the public, but at extracting profits from them at all levels of operation.

The positioning device is only one aspect of the bleak social reality facing truck drivers. In his last words sent in a chat group of fellow truck drivers, Jin said that he chose to commit suicide “not because [his life] is not worth 2,000 RMB, but because [he] wants to speak out for all truck drivers [with his death].”

Jin came from a rural village in Hebei Province and finished only elementary school. Since then, he worked in kiln factories and foundries. About 10 years ago, he entered the long-haul trucking industry. In order to buy a truck that cost about 300,000 RMB ($45,000), he had to take out a loan for a third of that amount, while borrowing more from his relatives and friends.

The driver from the same village as Jin explained that truck drivers usually drive 15 hours a day and cover roughly 5,000 kilometres in 10 days, earning about 15,000 RMB ($2,250) a month. That might sound like a relatively decent wage in China, but a large chunk goes into repaying loans, mileage, fines, tolls, maintenance and the expenses on the road. In Jin’s case, he was also supporting his 70-year-old mother, his wife and three children.

Long-haul trucking also takes its toll in the lives and health of drivers. In 2019, there were 3.7 freight truck related traffic accidents per million kilometres, and the death rate among truck drivers is around 1 percent according to the White Book on Smart Safety in China’s Road Freight Industry.

Moreover, due to the sedentary life, most truck drivers have metabolic diseases. In Jin’s last words, he explained that after 10 years in this industry, he “not only has not made much money, but has also fallen ill everywhere: three health indices [blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids] are dangerously high; there are also issues with my heart.”

Jin’s tragic story is not the only one. On April 12, a truck driver was fined at a checkpoint in the south-eastern province of Guangdong for overloading. He had, however, already passed through five checkpoints without a problem. After his multiple requests to re-weigh the freight were rejected, he resorted to slashing his wrist. Only then did the checkpoint staff re-weigh his freight and let him go without a fine. The checkpoint staff made no attempt to contact a hospital.

One of Jin’s childhood friends commented on his death, “What better choices do the vulnerable have? If they don’t resort to extreme actions, how else can they bring public attention [to their plight]?”

Jin’s suicide attracted a great deal of public attention. The overwhelming sympathy for his plight is an indication that far from workers viewing his death as a result of his personal failings, there is growing social opposition to the capitalist system overseen by the Chinese Communist Party regime.

Fire at COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad kills at least 82 people

Jean Shaoul

After an accident caused an oxygen tank to explode, eyewitness accounts and video clips of the terrible scenes of the fire at the hospital treating COVID-19 patients have provoked shock and anger throughout Iraq. A hashtag demanding Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi be sacked was soon trending on Twitter.

Saturday’s fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital, an intensive care facility dedicated to COVID-19 patients in the Diyala Bridge neighbourhood, one of Baghdad’s poorer districts in the southeast of the city, has killed at least 82 people and injured 110. At least 28 patients with severe symptoms of the virus who were on ventilators were among the dead.

This tragedy is but the latest horrific example of the devastating impact of decades of sanctions, illegal invasions, occupations and the deliberate stoking of a sectarian civil war orchestrated and led by successive US administrations that have reduced a once prosperous country, with one of the most advanced health and social infrastructures in the Arab world, to utter poverty and degradation.

Mourners pray near the coffins of coronavirus patients that were killed in a hospital fire, during their funeral at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq, Sunday, April 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil)

To this day, Iraq suffers from political violence, kidnappings and extortion at the hands of numerous militias, while accidents resulting from neglect and decrepit infrastructure have compounded the plight of the Iraqi people. In 2019, to cite but one example, at least 90 people drowned when an overloaded ferry carrying families on an outing sank in the Tigris River in the northern city of Mosul.

The World Socialist Web Site has described the consequences of Washington’s onslaught on the Iraqi people as “sociocide,” the deliberate destruction of the entire infrastructure of a modern civilization (See: “The US war and occupation of Iraq—the murder of a society”).

The blaze spread rapidly because without smoke detectors, sprinkler system or fire hoses, “the hospital had no fire protection system, and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products,” said Maj. Gen. Khadim Bohan, the head of Iraq’s civil defence forces. He told the state-run Iraqiya TV, “If there had been smoke detectors, the situation would have been totally different.”

Officials said that some of the victims were older patients on ventilators who could not move from their beds when the fire started. Reuters news agency quoted an eyewitness as saying that patients and medical workers had jumped out of second-story windows to escape the flames.

One eyewitness, who was visiting his brother when the fire broke out, said people were jumping out of the windows as the flames spread throughout the COVID-19 unit. “In the beginning, there was an explosion. ... The fire spread, like fuel. ... The smoke reached my brother. My brother is sick. I took my brother out to the street, next to the checkpoint. Then I came (back) and went up from there to the last floor, that did not burn. I found a girl suffocating, about 19 years old, she was suffocating, she was about to die,” said Ahmed Zaki. He added, “I took her on my shoulders, and I ran down. People were jumping. ... Doctors fell on the cars. Everyone was jumping. And I kept going up from there, got people and came down again.”

The fire has been widely attributed to negligence and Iraq’s rampant corruption, with Ali al-Bayati, a member of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, holding the health ministry responsible for the blaze and accusing it of failing to cooperate with investigators. He told the Middle East Eye website, “I think the responsibility of the incident is on the Ministry of Health, as we have evidence that most hospitals have no occupational safety or firefighting facilities, and it is not the first case in such an institution.” He added, the fire was “a crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions and instead of being treated, perished in flames.”

The blaze took place amid a second surge of the pandemic, with more than 1,000,000 officially recorded cases, a daily average of about 8,000 cases and more than 15,200 deaths, the highest of any Arab country. This has overwhelmed Iraq’s chronically under-resourced public hospitals, which even under normal conditions are unable to cope, to the extent that patients who can often prefer to get their own oxygen cylinders for treatment at home.

Like its counterparts around the world, Iraq’s venal government has put profits before lives and done little to either restrict the spread of the virus or provide a social safety net for workers, the majority of whom work in the informal sector as day labourers. It has blamed the resurgent infection rates on ordinary Iraqis for disregarding coronavirus precautions. Last month, the government began its vaccination programme, having received just 650,000 doses for its 40 million people, mostly donated by China or through the World Health Organisation’s COVAX programme, with some 275,000 people having received at least one dose, according to health ministry officials.

On Sunday, amid fears that riots would break out, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held an emergency meeting at the headquarters of the Baghdad Operations Command, which coordinates Iraqi security forces. He declared three days of mourning after ordering an investigation into the fire and later firing several hospital officials and suspending the health minister pending investigations. However, Kadhimi’s pledge to carry out an inquiry and bring those responsible to justice are just empty words. The Iraqi people are still waiting for his promised investigation into those responsible for the deaths of more than 600 protesters in October 2019 to be named, let alone tried and punished.

Kadhimi is sitting atop a social powder keg, and he knows it. Unemployment, already high before the pandemic, has worsened, with at least 36 percent of the people and almost 50 percent of young people officially reported as unemployed. The average 18 year old has had just 6.2 years of schooling, although only four years in terms of actual educational achievement due to the disastrous state of the country’s education system, once one of the best in the Arab world. Some 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school. In conflict-affected areas, almost all school-aged children are missing out on an education.

Basic services, such as a regular electricity supply in the world’s third largest oil exporter and clean water, are a chimera. Poverty rates are soaring, with 16 million people living below the poverty line, as food prices soar. Cooking oil has risen to 2,500 dinars a bottle, up from 1,500 dinars, while imported foodstuffs have become more expensive because of the recent currency devaluation.

With the collapse in oil prices, the government, which is dependent on oil for almost 90 percent of its revenues and requires prices of at least $60 a barrel to survive, faces bankruptcy. It needs $5 billion a month—nearly twice its current revenues—just to cover the salaries of public sector workers, a key form of patronage for the various sectarian-based parties. This is one of the reasons why Baghdad has signed a deal with China to get a cash advance on future oil sales.

Iraq’s Parliament recently passed a 2021 budget aimed at securing Washington’s support for a loan from the International Monetary Fund. The budget formalises the recent currency devaluation, outlines a revised framework for oil and revenue sharing between the federal government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil and projects a record-setting deficit, along with cuts in salary benefits that can in some cases serve to double workers’ paltry wages.

This, combined with the devaluation that is in effect a savage wage cut, is a massive assault on the Iraqi working class. The budget’s passage prompted daily protests by hundreds of young unemployed graduates outside the Nassiriya oil refinery, demanding jobs and halting production, causing fuel shortages across Dhi Qar province.

The Imperialist War in Yemen

Yanis Iqbal

During a House hearing held on April 21, 2021, US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking grossly misrepresented the imperialist war in the country. He remarked: “With regard to the Republic of Yemen Government, President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi remains the legitimate leader of Yemen. He was chosen in the last election held before the war, and UN Security Council Resolution 2216 recognizes his legitimacy as President.”

Illegitimate Leader

Hadi is an illegitimate leader and his claim to the presidency is tenuous. Following the 2011 Yemeni uprising, the internationally-backed Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative facilitated authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s exit from office and Hadi’s ascent, with the latter’s mandate of a two-year transitional term affirmed in a one-candidate “election” in 2012. Hadi subsequently oversaw the nearly year-long National Dialogue Conference, which was meant to bring Yemen’s various factions to a consensus on how to address the country’s most pressing issues.

He then overstepped his mandate and halted the transition by implementing neoliberal reforms and attempting to impose a six-region federation of Yemen designed to weaken resistance groups. Hadi’s two-year term was extended for one year in 2014. Following the Houthi forces’ invasion of the capital in September of that year, Hadi’s flight south and eventually to Riyadh, and the neo-colonial military intervention in March 2015, his term as president became indefinite and unaccountable to the Yemeni people.

UNSC Resolution 2216 of April 2015, which established an arms embargo, demanded Houthi withdrawal from the cities and the handover of their weapons, allowed cash-rich Saudis and Emiratis – backed by the world’s most powerful states – to wage a brutal war against the poorest country in the region. All this was done under the pretext of reinstating the “legitimate,” “recognized” government of Hadi.

With the entry of the Saudi-led coalition into the war in 2015, attacks on infrastructure, energy, agriculture, fisheries and health care greatly accelerated. Yemenis are dependent on the import of food, fuel, medicine and other basic commodities through a small number of ports and airports. Imported food accounts for 70% of household consumption and 90% of wheat consumed, with fuel imports not meeting even half of domestic needs.

The Saudi-led coalition has periodically closed major airports and ports, limiting imports and driving up the costs of food and fuel. The coalition-led blockade has also led to rapid price increases for fuel, water and food, a lack of adequate medical supplies and the collapse of many private-sector businesses. The conflict exacerbated an already difficult prewar situation, in which much of the population lacked secure access to food, 70% lacked access to safe water and 40% had no access to health care. Hadi – a “legitimate” leader – supports this destruction of his country.

Prolonged Conflict

While commenting on the Houthis’ attack on Marib – the last governorate under the control of the Hadi regime – Lenderking said, “We must ask ourselves: are the Houthis seriously interested in peace if they continue to advance on a city where they have faced such heavy opposition, especially in the light of the March 22 Saudi announcement proposing an easing of restrictions on Hudaydah Port and Sana’a Airport and a comprehensive, nationwide ceasefire?” The March 22 truce plan proposed by Saudi Arabia was not an exceptional display of sympathy, as Lenderking would want us to believe.

The initiative fell short of the Houthis’ demand for a complete lifting of the blockade on Sana’a airport and Hodeida port. “Saudi Arabia must declare an end to the aggression and lift the blockade completely, but putting forward ideas that have been discussed for over a year is nothing new,” said spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam. “We expected that Saudi Arabia would announce an end to the blockade of ports and airports and an initiative to allow in 14 ships that are held by the coalition.”

Inability to arrive at an equitable peace plan is representative of the discomfort of Western powers and their allies with an anti-imperialist force like Houthis. Positioned at the center of east-west trade routes traversing the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, Yemen is a key battleground for the towns, ports, military bases and shipping lanes that will underpin global power in the coming decades. In their desire to perpetuate global hegemony, imperialist powers have ensnared Yemen in a prolonged conflict.

Fractures among the coalition forces soon emerged across the southern governorates, as clashes continued between Saudi-backed Hadi forces and United Arab Emirates (UAE)-supported Southern Resistance Forces affiliated with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), which seeks autonomy for the south. Various political militias, with affiliations to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslim Brotherhood and various tribal leaderships, also hold territory. The Yemen war has thus become an increasingly protracted and regionalized conflict in which local militias, regional powers and outside forces pursue conflicting interests that have precluded a political settlement.

By June 2020, Yemen was roughly divided into five zones of control: the northern highlands under largely Houthi rule; government-controlled areas of Marib, al-Jawf, northern Hadramawt, al-Mahra, Shebwa, Abyan and Taiz city; STC-dominated city of Aden and surrounding areas; coastal Hadramawt, aligned with local authorities; districts along the Red Sea coast headed by Tareq Saleh, Saleh’s nephew . These forces are financed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia and are made up largely of former members of the Republican Guard. In addition, Salafi, tribal and other militias exert de facto control in many areas and are likely to resist the recentralization of authority under any new national government.

The Houthi-led movement declares that its military is inspired by the tactics and tenacity of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front in the 1960-75 war. Having frustrated the coalition’s expectations of a swift and decisive victory against one of the poorest countries in the world, the Houthis have succeeded in trapping Saudi Arabia and its backers in their own Vietnam War. The only sensible option left for the imperialist powers is to leave Yemen and allow the country to embark on a path of sovereign development.

Billionaires’ European Super League proposal shelved amid mass opposition from football fans

Robert Stevens

The proposal this week by a group of billionaires to inaugurate a breakaway football European Super League (ESL), rapidly shelved due to protests from fans, is a case study in how capitalism distorts and degrades everything it touches.

Rumours grew last week that a select group of Europe’s richest clubs were set to establish a lucrative new league, after at least three years of discussion. The clubs decided they had not wrested enough financial concessions from European football’s governing body, UEFA, and would no longer play in its premier European club competition, the Champions League.

The ESL clubs officially announced late Sunday that they had signed a binding agreement and that a new competition would be formed. The clubs involved were Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid from Spain’s La Liga; Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur from the UK’s Premier League; and Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan from Italy’s Serie A.

A protest banner against the proposed Super League reading “Super Greed” is seen outside Liverpool's Anfield Stadium after the collapse of English involvement in the proposed new league, Liverpool, England. April 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Jon Super, FILE)

This met with an immediate backlash on social media and in demonstrations outside football stadiums by supporters. Popular opposition was joined by opposition from UEFA and world body FIFA, which have much to lose by the ESL scheme. The proposals for the new league rapidly collapsed, with nearly all the ESL clubs withdrawing by Tuesday evening.

At the first Premier League match played after the announcement, between Leeds United and Liverpool at Leeds’s Elland Road home, hundreds of fans denounced the move. At Liverpool’s Anfield stadium, fans placed banners on its gates reading, “Shame on you” and “Super Greed”. Fans at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium held up a banner reading, “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich”.

Leading players at all the ESL clubs spoke out against the move. Former Manchester United player and leading pundit Gary Neville, in a video that went viral and was seen by millions, called for the English clubs involved to be relegated from the Premier League.

Clubs not part of the project were unanimously opposed, with the Premier League threatening to expel the six British ESL clubs from the most lucrative and watched football competition globally. Had the move gone forward, broadcasting revenues would have been diverted to the historically more successful ESL clubs who have fan bases globally of billions. Many professional clubs, even in top leagues, would have been threatened with going under.

Protests by fans continued even after the ESL proposal collapsed. Many demanded that billionaire owners not be allowed to control clubs as their playthings.

The ESL proposal was aimed at replacing the existing Champions League format of professional football in Europe. It was designed to allow the ESL’s founding clubs to hoover up the revenues available in the world’s biggest sport. In the words of one board member of one of the Premier League’s six clubs, “UEFA as a governing body are not listening to the clubs and are monopolising competitive football. The reality is the Champions League doesn't realise anywhere near as much revenue as it could.”

He added, “The Champions League is not a commercial success. There are ways we could change that, but UEFA simply refuse to relinquish any control."

The majority of the ESL clubs already carry massive debts and the pandemic has wiped out revenue streams worth billions, with stadiums kept empty for the last year. According to Deloitte, Europe’s top 20 earning clubs have lost an estimated more than €2 billion.

The ESL was to have been underwritten in a debt-financing deal by the giant US bank JPMorgan Chase, which would provide an “infrastructure grant” of up to €3.25 billion to be shared among the league’s founding 15 clubs (from £89 million per club to £310 million). The ESL “anticipated that a further three clubs”, thought to be Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund from Germany and France’s Paris Saint-Germain, would join the league.

On top of this, the clubs would share 32.5 percent of all revenue, with a further 32.5 percent split between the 15 and five extra clubs that will qualify to join them in the competition each season. According to ESL documents, the clubs could expect to share around €4 billion every season just in broadcasting revenues. Champions League broadcast and commercial revenue, before expenditure, currently totals €3.2 billion. The clubs would have rights to show four matches a season via their own digital platforms across the world.

The ESL also planned to pay a one-off special fee of at least €60 million to Real Madrid and Barcelona for their role in heading the breakaway. Florentino Pérez, the billionaire president of Real Madrid, was declared chairman of the new league.

The backing of the project by Wall Street was no coincidence given the ownership of a significant number of the breakaway clubs by US billionaires, including three of the UK Premier League’s six clubs who were to be founders. The US owners also have major stakes in US sports.

Liverpool is owned by John Henry, who also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and Boston Globe newspaper. Manchester United is owned by the Glazer family which also own the National Football League’s (NFL) Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Arsenal is owned by Stan Kroenke, who also owns the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and the Denver Nuggets basketball franchise. AC Milan is owned by Elliott Management Corporation (EMC), founded by billionaire Paul Singer. EMC is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates L.P. and Elliott International Limited.

These figures intervened to end the merit based “pyramid” structure operated by Europe’s domestic leagues and the UEFA Champions League to ensure that the founding clubs would have guaranteed European football every year—and guaranteed massive revenue streams. Just five teams would qualify annually, with the other 15 holding a permanent slot. At present, qualification for the Champions League can be achieved by any club based on a high league placing in their domestic league.

The proposals mirror the “closed” set up in the US National Football League and National Basketball Association where the concept of promotion and relegation does not exist. The Financial Times, which saw the ESL’s documents, noted, “The model is closer in design to North American sports leagues such as the National Basketball Association and National Football League, in which franchises strike joint commercial agreements, and use collective bargaining agreements with players and other measures to level the playing field.”

The ESL clubs committed to “positive trailing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation and net profit”, reported the newspaper.

To prioritise profits, the ESL planned to set spending limits. The FT reported, “ESL clubs have committed to using only 55 percent of their revenues on ‘sport spending’, such as player salaries, transfer and agent fees, according to people familiar with the terms. European clubs typically spend 70 to 80 percent of their income on footballers’ wages alone.”

The Spanish clubs went as far as to demand tax payment changes, with the ESL clubs agreeing a “tax equalisation” clause so that “income tax on salaries shall be normalised and calculated at a rate of 45 per cent”, reported the FT. “This would ensure clubs in Spain, where footballers pay a higher top rate of tax than in Italy or England, are not at a competitive disadvantage when the spending limits are assessed.”

The corporate interests in control of the ESL clubs misjudged the popular mood and were taken by surprise by the backlash against their proposals—a reflection of the growing anger against the parasitic billionaire oligarchy and the capitalist system which sustains it. But they remain determined to press ahead. Perez declared on Thursday, after nine of the 12 founding teams had withdrawn, “We're going to continue working… the project is on standby.”

Plans for a Super League are not an aberration. It, or something like it, is the logical next step in a sport increasingly dominated by giant corporate and financial interests. The conflict between UEFA and FIFA on the one hand and the ESL founder owners on the other is a competition between two business models, each designed to ensure the lion’s share of revenues for the top clubs.

The Champions League, replacing the European Cup in 1992, was meant to ensure Europe’s leading clubs were able to secure most of the available broadcasting and commercial revenue. In a move towards what the ESL clubs want, UEFA this week adopted a new post-2024 Champions League format. The new system will see, for the first time, a number of clubs qualifying not on the basis of their league standing but in large part on their previous record of qualification.

As for the statements of Prime Minister Boris Johnson against the ESL, anyone who thinks this body-and-soul defender of wealth and privilege has suddenly discovered an opposition to big corporations is deluding themselves. As head of a virulently nationalist government, Johnson’s actions are based entirely on a weighing up of the political costs and benefits of intervening as the champion of the “national game”.

Whatever agreement these parties come to it will not consider the interests of the fans for a moment. The organisations these fans support, at this level of the sport, are essentially corporate entities controlled in turn by yet larger corporations. The inexorable and increasingly grotesque commercialisation of “the beautiful game” will continue as long as all social life is held at the mercy of a fabulously rich oligarchy.