Despite threat of Delta variant, German government continues reopening policy

Marianne Arens

Although the new Delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in Europe, the German government is downplaying and covering up the danger in order to continue its back-to-work policy.

The Delta variant (B.1.617.2) first emerged in India, where it caused a near-vertical rise in coronavirus numbers and a death toll of nearly 400,000. It has since spread to the UK, where the highly contagious variant has caused a new surge in infection numbers and forced the Johnson government to delay the announced end of coronavirus measures by four weeks.

On Friday, the Portuguese authorities sealed off the capital, Lisbon, for the weekend. “The numbers are increasing very rapidly,” Vitor Almeida, from the crisis unit of the Portuguese Medical Association, told news programme Tagesschau. “The reason is unmistakably also the Delta variant, which is dominant in Lisbon. Hence the government’s decision to set up a security cordon around Lisbon over the weekend.” Almeida regarded the main problem to be in the city’s working class suburbs, where people lived very close together and cannot maintain social distancing.

But what are the German authorities doing to warn the population and take precautions? The answer is nothing. The issue is being systematically pushed into the background and played down. Even in the news about Portugal, Tagesschau was quick to reassure “vacationers from Germany” that the situation in Lisbon meant they would only be affected in “exceptional cases.”

Currently, the European soccer championship is dominating all TV channels and news broadcasts, and the stadiums are being increasingly filled. Together with the constant reports about vacations, tourism and summer events, this conveys a mood that the pandemic is over. In Berlin, the ban on dancing is just being lifted, and up to 250 guests are now allowed at open-air events without masks and social distancing.

Yet the news is anything but reassuring. More and more evidence suggests that the Delta variant is also spreading in Germany.

In Munich, 45 cases of the variant have been officially detected. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reports a doubling of the share of the Delta variant from 3 percent to more than 6 percent of all coronavirus infections, but these figures are already a few days old. In contrast, a southern German laboratory group that has sequenced coronavirus swabs at several sites reports that the highly contagious variant is already responsible for 11 percent of all new SARS-CoV-2 infections in the Munich area.

In Baden-Württemberg, the state health office in Stuttgart warned on Friday that a significant increase had been observed for two weeks. In the Heidenheim district, two school classes and a day care group had to be sent into quarantine after a major outbreak was detected. Evidence of the Delta variant was found in no fewer than 89 infected individuals.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, about 150 students in the neighbouring towns of Soest and Werl were sent into quarantine on Wednesday and Thursday after the Delta variant was detected in four outbreaks. This affected the graduating classes of the secondary school in Soest and an entire elementary school in Werl.

Following a graduation ceremony, “clear contact tracing was no longer possible,” the Soest health department explained. Since May 12, there have been repeated cases of coronavirus in this district, in which the Delta virus was detected. This variant was also detected at an elementary school in Hamburg.

For a long time, doctors and virologists have been urging that the new variant be taken seriously, including Carsten Watzl, secretary-general of the German Society for Immunology (DGfI).

“It is safe to assume that by autumn at the latest, the Delta variant will be the dominant variant in Germany,” Watzl told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper on June 17. He urged the acceleration of the pace of vaccination. What was urgent was the installation of air filters and other structural responses at schools, the immunologist warned. Especially “if a great many children are not vaccinated and the Delta variant comes in the autumn, there is a threat of more outbreaks in schools again.”

What is particularly troubling about the Delta variant is that it also threatens people who have only received one vaccine dose. Only full vaccination with two doses provides some immunity in the case of this variant.

Against the background of this danger, it is particularly alarming that only a small proportion of the population in Germany have had two shots. Just 50 percent have received the first dose, and only 25 percent the second. Thus, many millions of 20- to 50-year-olds, who are particularly active in professional and social life, are still unvaccinated and without any immune protection.

Yet people are being encouraged to act as if the pandemic is over, being sent back to work. Schools and nurseries will reopen without restrictions and the mandatory wearing of masks before the summer vacations.

“When I heard that I was shocked,” said virologist Melanie Brinkmann in an interview with Der Spiegel. “Masks are the least of the evils, after all. We’re in a good starting position: it’s summer, you can open windows in classrooms, incidence rates are low, we have vaccinations, we’re testing.” But instead of proceeding with care, politicians were “again acting impatiently and without a plan.”

The same Spiegel article quotes Dirk Brockmann, from Humboldt University Biology Institute, saying, “We are making the same mistakes again, while we now have the chance to apply intelligent reopening strategies ... Instead, we are now again wildly relaxing everything at once.”

The government is fully aware of the dangers of its unscrupulous actions. Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) said on Friday at a press conference with RKI chief Lothar Wieler that it was “not a question of if, but when the Delta variant will prevail in Germany and throughout continental Europe.” Nevertheless, all politicians in the federal and state governments are continuing their dangerous reopening policy without restriction.

Although daily incidence numbers are just declining, reaching 10.3 per 100,000 on Friday, death rates remain very high; they have been in the range of about a hundred coronavirus deaths per day for days. More than 90,000 people have died from coronavirus in Germany so far, and hundreds of thousands will suffer from its effects for the rest of their lives. At least one in ten infected people struggle with Long Covid.

None of this has any impact on policymakers. The new variant is not taken as an occasion to publicize the enormous danger of the pandemic, to do everything possible to keep it in check and prevent the spread of new variants. The interests of big business, the banking world and the super-rich take precedence. For them, 2020 was a very good year. According to the latest Global Wealth Report, the number of the world’s super-rich increased by about ten percent to 60,000, and they now own a combined 15 percent of the world’s wealth.

Just how mercilessly the banks and corporations are demanding back-to-work policies from governments is evident from a new proposal by the head of the Institute of the German Economy (IW), Prof. Michael Hüther. His institute has compared hours worked in Germany with those in Switzerland and Sweden. To leverage “dormant growth potential in the German labour market,” Hübner now proposes that blue- and white-collar workers work an average of two hours more per week and take 1.5 weeks less vacation. “There is unused potential in the German labour market,” reads an IW press release dated June 14, 2021.

It is clear that this is also the reason why nurseries and elementary schools must be fully reopened again at all costs. IW head Hüther made this clear in an interview with Bild. “Many women, for example, work part-time involuntarily because there is a lack of nursery places.” He said it was time to remedy the failures of the past and ensure that hundreds of thousands of women could work full-time.

It is also no coincidence that this economic institute compares German working hours with those in Switzerland and Sweden. These are the countries that have been among the most ruthless in enforcing back-to-work policies during the pandemic, causing a higher-than-average number of coronavirus deaths.

The political handling of coronavirus over the past 16 months has made clear that in Germany, as in every capitalist country, a ruthless profits-before-lives policy is being pursued, characterized by a high degree of criminal negligence and systematic cover-ups. This will only change when the working class itself intervenes and takes up the struggle for a workers’ government.

UK inquiry into murder of Daniel Morgan sheds light on police criminality

Julie Hyland

The Independent Panel Investigation into the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan finally reported last week. It has taken almost 35 years, an inquest, a failed trial and four previous investigations/inquiries to get anywhere near the truth of his killing.

The panel was tasked with investigating explosive questions: if police were involved in Morgan’s killing and how; whether police corruption protected those responsible; and if there were corrupt relations between private investigators, police and journalists.

The sign outside the current New Scotland Yard building, located in Victoria, London (Man vyi/Wikipedia)

The report answered “yes” to all of these questions, making its finding of “institutional corruption” an understatement. The report points to systemic criminality—from murder, drug dealing, fencing stolen property and concealing evidence, to stealing and selling information on individuals to the media. It shows that, far from the Metropolitan Police simply being “not honest in their dealings with [Morgan’s family] and the public,” it has been the single greatest obstacle to truth and justice.

The Met’s criminality involves not only Morgan’s murder and a series of botched investigations into it but extends to other high-profile cases, including the racist killing of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, and corrupt relations between police and journalists, particularly at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World.

Morgan was found dead, with an axe embedded in his head, on March 10, 1987, in a pub car park in Sydenham, London. He had founded Southern Investigations with Jonathan Rees. Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery, based at the local Catford, southeast London police station was assigned to the murder case. But Fillery concealed that he had been working unofficially for Southern Investigations.

In April, Rees and brothers Glenn and Garry Vian were arrested on suspicion of murder, and Fillery and two other Catford officers on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. All six were released without charge. That summer, detective constable Alan “Taffy” Holmes, who was said to be working with Morgan to uncover police corruption, was deemed to have committed suicide, in mysterious circumstances.

An inquest into Morgan's death in April 1988 heard allegations that Rees and Morgan had argued, and Rees had told others that friends of his at Catford police station were going to murder Morgan, or help arrange his killing, with Fillery replacing him as partner. Rees denied the allegation, but Fillery later retired from the Met on medical grounds and joined Southern Investigations as business partner.

A covert police inquiry in 1998 uncovered Rees conspiring to plant Class A drugs on a mother in a child custody case and liaising with a Sunday Mirror journalist to access the bank accounts of several members of the Royal family. Rees was jailed for seven years for perverting the course of justice. In 2003, Fillery, who was running the firm during his business partner’s incarceration, was arrested for possession of child pornography, and jailed.

Only due to the persistent efforts of Morgan’s family did Rees, the Vians and Fillery stand trial in 2009. But after almost two years of pre-trial arguments the case collapsed in 2011 when “supergrass” evidence was ruled inadmissible and police claimed to be unable to find relevant files.

In 2011, the Met admitted police corruption was a “factor” in the failed first investigation but nothing more was forthcoming. Public campaigning saw then Home Secretary Theresa May agree to an Independent Panel Investigation into the Morgan case in 2013 but without any statutory powers, including the power to compel witnesses to testify.

What was originally intended to complete in 12 months has taken seven years due to police obstruction. The final documents were only released to the panel in March.

The panel’s investigations also shed further light on the racist murder by up to six white youths of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in Plumstead, southeast London on April 22, 1993. Yet again, the police investigation in this instance amounted to deliberate sabotage. Two of his killers remained at large until 2012, while four others remain free.

The Lawrence killing and police “failures” were the subject of a public inquiry in 1998, headed by Sir William Macpherson, which found that these were the result of “institutional racism”. Recommendations on “diversity” training and increasing the recruitment of black and Asian officers concealed police criminality—specifically, allegations that several officers were involved with notorious south London gangster and drug runner, Clifford Norris, father of one of the accused.

A review of “Possible corruption and the role of undercover policing in the Stephen Lawrence case” in 2014 found that intelligence relating to police corruption in the original investigation was not disclosed to the Macpherson inquiry. That report raised potential links between police corruption on the Lawrence and Morgan investigations.

The Lawrence review determined that, from the “limited sources available”, there was “a strong inference that Clifford Norris was a corruptor of police officers and an intimidator of witnesses”. Detective Sergeant John Davidson, who worked on the Lawrence investigation, had a “possible link” with Norris, it suggested, and there was “an enhanced level of suspicion that DS Davidson was corrupt both before and after” his involvement in the case. The corruption included recycling drugs and stolen property.

It concluded that, had this corruption been known, the Macpherson inquiry “might have been driven to the conclusion” that there was more to police failings in the Lawrence investigation “than simply an inappropriate manner and unfortunate unconscious racism.”

The Morgan panel cited Southern Investigations as “a hub of corruption” between serving and retired police officers and the media. Police officers were paid up to £2,000 a time for “sensitive intelligence” regarding celebrities, politicians and royals.

Murdoch’s News of the World was among the most invoiced, reportedly up to “500 times [a] month” between April 1987 and 1989. Rees was prominent in supplying this illegally obtained information to the newspaper, using his police connections.

The rot goes to the top of the Met. The panel criticised former Met commissioner Lord Stevens for taking up employment with Murdoch’s tabloid following his departure from the police. It stated that “the demonstrated links between personnel at the highest levels of the Metropolitan Police and people working for a news organisation linked to criminality associated with the murder of Daniel Morgan, are of serious and legitimate public concern. For senior police officers to take up employment with media outlets or other organisations, whose record involves criminal activity, is profoundly damaging for the reputation of the police service.”

The News of the World, part of Murdoch’s News International group, was closed in 2011 following an outcry over its involvement in phone hacking.

Most damning, panel member Professor Rodney Morgan said the finding of institutional corruption was not used in a historic sense but “in the present tense”.

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick was personally censured by the panel for the years of delays in its receiving requested information, including gaining access to the police national database, Holmes. The panel states that they have “never received any reasonable explanation … by [then] assistant commissioner Dick and her successors” for this obstruction.

It was Dick who, as Gold Commander, oversaw the operation that led to the brutal police killing of innocent Brazilian worker, Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22, 2005. Menezes was shot 11 times by plain clothes police using hollow-point bullets on a London underground train. No police officers were ever charged for his murder, and Dick was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Security and Protection shortly after before becoming Commissioner.

Daniel Morgan’s brother, Alastair, who has led the fight for justice, denounced “police and successive governments” for their failure “to deal effectively with serious police criminality”, and called for Dick's immediate resignation.

Instead, the government and media have closed ranks around the Met. Home Secretary Priti Patel sought to delay publication of the report, demanding it be reviewed by her office prior to release on national security grounds. The Met rejected the panel’s key findings and dismissed calls for Dick’s resignation, while Patel and London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan signaled their “full confidence” in the Commissioner.

Italian artist auctions off invisible sculpture

Erik Schreiber & David Walsh

In May, Italian artist Salvatore Garau sold his “immaterial sculpture” I Am at an auction. The invisible piece of art consists literally of nothing. Even though the work has no material existence, the Art-Rite auction house estimated its value at between €6,000 and €9,000 (that is, between approximately $7,000 and $11,000). During the auction, bidders pushed the price up, and Garau walked away with €15,000 ($18,300).

In exchange for this sum, the buyer—a private Milanese collector—of the putative work, the latest version of the Emperor’s New Clothes, received a certificate of authenticity and the artist’s instructions for displaying the sculpture. Garau stipulated that the work must be exhibited in a private home in an area of approximately five square feet that is free of obstruction. Special lighting and climate control are optional.

How is one to conceive of an invisible sculpture? Garau had a ready pseudo-scientific explanation for Spanish tabloid Diario AS. “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” he said. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”

Salvatore Garau

For those confused by this double-talk, Garau appealed to mysticism. “When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms. After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?”

I Am is not Garau’s first invisible “sculpture.” In February, Garau exhibited Buddha in Contemplation in Milan’s Piazza della Scala. It was allegedly displayed inside a taped square on the cobblestone. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” said Garau.

Laughable as it is, this is the artist’s most pertinent remark about his “work.” Taking this nonsense at face value, Garau has entirely abdicated the artist’s responsibility to communicate something important about the world through his or her art. With I Am, Garau has provided nothing of value, taken the money and forced others to create the ostensible work themselves.

This aesthetic charlatanry belongs on the same historical plane as the rise of financial parasitism generally and most recently, since the onset of the pandemic, the “vast escalation of speculation promoted by the Fed and other central banks,” in the words of a recent WSWS article. “Debt, corporate bonds and other financial assets are what Marx characterised as fictitious capital.” Reflecting these economic and social processes, we now have arrived at highly speculated upon, fully “fictitious art.” As this may suggest, an enormous, unstable asset bubble in art and collectibles presently exists.

Garau is prospering while artists in the United States alone have lost an estimated average of $34,000 each, and hundreds of millions collectively, in creativity-based income since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Italian artist (born in 1953) did not emerge out of thin air (although “thin air” seems to be very much his stock-in-trade). His “work” has some connection to the tradition of Conceptual Art, a trend that emerged in the mid-1960s. Conceptual Art rejected the traditional art object, in the words of critic Roberta Smith, in favor of “a vast and unruly range of information, subjects and concerns not easily contained within a single object, but more appropriately conveyed by written proposals, photographs, documents, charts, maps, film and video, by the artists’ use of their own bodies, and, above all, by language itself.”

The claim was made that in Conceptual Art the idea behind a work now took precedence over questions of material, technical skill and aesthetics. The idea is everything, and “the execution is a perfunctory affair,” in the words of Sol LeWitt, one of conceptual art’s earliest theorists and practitioners.

But art had always been based on ideas. What seemed to be new, or more pronounced here, following on the empty efforts of Andy Warhol and the Pop Artists, was a thoroughgoing “relinquishing [of] the expressive potentialities of painting and sculpture,” in the words of British critic Peter Fuller. Conceptual Art codified and legitimized the artists’ worshiping of the accomplished social and aesthetic fact. Despite their radical pretensions, the Conceptual Artists displayed tremendous passivity in the face of existing realities, including advertising, the media and official information distribution.

Roberta Smith cites the remarks of Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner made toward the end of the 1960s. “Art that imposes conditions—human or otherwise—on the receiver for its appreciation in my eyes constitutes aesthetic fascism.” She continued, “Weiner did not care if his ‘Statements,’ succinctly phrased Process-type proposals, … were executed by himself, by someone else or not at all; that was the decision of the ‘receiver’ of the work. … And Douglas Huebler, who was one of the first artists specifically called Conceptual, along with Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and Robert Barry, wrote in 1968, ‘The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more. I prefer, simply, to state the existence of things in terms of time and space.’”

This sort of comment reflected the disorientation and degeneration of the artistic intelligentsia, overwhelmed by tumultuous events, having been cut off from genuine left-wing thought, or consciously rejecting it, and deeply distant from wide layers of the population.

Instead of sculptures or paintings, Conceptual artists produced documents and photographs that recorded their investigations or symbolic interventions. They viewed these documents as mere evidence; the supposed idea was the work itself. Other artists, such as Barry and Yoko Ono, exhibited or published instructions for creating work.

Conceptual Art claimed to be anti-establishment. And no doubt there was a certain sincerity in the rejection of the work as a commodity that could be exchanged on the market. Weiner, for example, explicitly sought to create work that could not be sold, but that anyone could “own.” Many Conceptual artists also attempted to question the authority of the gallery or museum to endow work with the status of art. However, this “democratic” stance was far less significant in the long term than the refusal—or inability—of the artists to honestly confront and criticize in artistic terms, in concrete, convincing imagery, the world around them.

In this context, the refusal to create a work of art that could become a commodity was as much a gesture of despair as one of rebellion, and, in all too many cases, an all too easily “marketable despair.” On the whole, Conceptual Art accelerated the diminution of the artist’s critical presence, and, despite its superficially rebellious aspects, represented a further withdrawal from the fray.

The emergence of postmodernism in the late 1970s and beyond only deepened the problems and made a portion of the artists more cynical or confused.

Garau claims to have begun “a new, small, authentic revolution” with his invisible sculptures. The sale of I Am does seem to represent a new development in Conceptual Art. He has embraced the dematerialized art object and the commodification of art simultaneously. Like a financial speculator, he has realized a profit without creating any value. At a time when art institutions have lost billions of dollars and artists are struggling to survive, Garau’s intellectual fraudulence, as well as the fraudulence of wide portions of the art world, stands out in full relief.

McVitie's issues 472 redundancy notices in Glasgow plant

Steve James

Redundancy notices issued to the 472 McVitie’s workers based at the McVitie’s plant in Tollcross, Glasgow show that the McVitie’s owner Pladis intends to proceed rapidly with running down and closing the aging factory.

The HR1 notices issued by the company authorise management to begin shedding workers after 45 days. Pladis have said they intend to fully close the site by 2022. According to the GMB Scotland trade union, the first redundancies will take place at the end of this year.

The McVities biscuit factory in Tollcross, Glasgow (credit: WSWS media)

The notices demonstrate the company’s contempt both for the workforce and the over 54,000 people who have signed a petition, rapidly organised by groups of McVitie’s workers, against the factory’s closure.

The HR1s also expose the Action Group of the Unite and GMB trade unions, Glasgow City Council, local enterprise agencies and the Scottish government, as a hopeless diversion and a fraud. Their aim is to tie McVitie’s workers to a strategy based on appealing to Pladis and its profit margins while suppressing fundamental class issues.

By putting together a package of concessions from the workforce and tax handouts from government revenue, the Action Group hopes to entice Pladis to keep production in Glasgow. This would inevitably come at the expense of workers at another of Pladis’ British production locations, such as Carlisle, Harlesden, Liverpool or Manchester, and the increased exploitation of all workers internationally. One idea floated was of a new factory nearby.

Pladis is clearly not interested. Not nearly enough baubles have been offered to interest the vastly profitable transnational, hence some calibrated outrage from trade union officials.

GMB Scotland organiser David Hume complained of an “act of extreme bad faith on the part of the Pladis managing director David Murray and a gross insult to hundreds of workers and their families who are fighting for their livelihoods and community.” Unite industrial officer Pat McIlvogue complained that Pladis’ stance was a “disgrace” and bemoaned the company’s refusal to “engage with the Action Group established by the Scottish government.”

The bluster is all for show. Pladis’ refusal to pretend to be interested in discussion exposes the bankruptcy of the Action Group strategy of appealing to the company for compromise.

Pladis is a wing of Turkish-owned Yildiz Holding. Yildiz acquired the McVitie’s brand in 2014 when it bought United Biscuits. Pladis was established in 2016 to bring all Yildiz-owned confectionary producers under one umbrella. Besides biscuits, Yildiz produces over 300 brands of chocolate, cakes, chewing gum, frozen food, processed meat and personal care items. The vast company also has venture capital, retail and distribution wings.

Taken together, some 65,000 workers, including 51,000 in Turkey, labour daily in around 80 factories to enrich Yildiz’s private owners. 63 percent of Yildiz Holding is owned by one man, Murat Ulker.

Since Yildiz took over United Biscuits, Ulker’s personal worth has increased from $2.9 billion in 2016 to $6.3 billion. That is, every single Yildiz worker, including those at Tollcross, has over five years donated an average $52,000 (£38,000) to Ulker’s personal enrichment.

Ulker’s obscene personal wealth did not stop the company re-organising $5.5 billion of debts accrued in its expansion drive in 2018 and embarking on a programme of asset sales. One way or another, Tollcross workers’ livelihoods are being sacrificed as part of this process.

The brutal global reality is that McVitie’s workers’ daily efforts, like those of workers in every industry, and in every country, make them part of a vastly complex, globally integrated web of production and distribution in which every company deploys modern technology to maximise profits at their expense. But these same conditions hand workers immense power as an interconnected social force on which all production depends.

The corporations therefore rely on the trade unions to divide workers in every country and every factory and workplace against each other. Their functionaries have degenerated into local gang bosses. The role of Unite or the GMB in Tollcross is to keep “their” factory open by increasing the rates of exploitation in Glasgow and leaving open the prospect of closing another factory in Carlisle, or Belgium, Egypt or Turkey.

The Scottish government and Glasgow City Council, both run by the Scottish National Party (SNP), have the same position. Neither want the factory to close, but both are committed to defending Pladis’ profits. If they cannot offer the company enough concessions to keep the plant, they will set about applying the usual window dressing to its closure—task forces, action groups, employment advice and occasionally some token retraining. This has been seen repeatedly over the decades of sustained industrial destruction in Britain, which in the West of Scotland was particularly intense.

The SNP and the trade unions are assisted in this by pseudo-left groups such as the Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Party Scotland, whose position is that the Scottish government should nationalise the factory if and when Pladis close it. Such an unviable single plant operation would still be in global completion with Pladis and others. The job of ensuring the Tolcross workers’ exploitation would simply be transferred to the Scottish government, until the plant could hopefully be offloaded back to the private sector at some point. This policy serves only to sow divisions in working class by promoting Scottish nationalism, while covering for the collaboration of the trade unions with the companies.

All these organisations are primarily concerned with preventing McVitie’s from becoming a focal point in the class struggle. But this is precisely what is necessary for the Tolcross workers—the popular basis for which is indicated by the 54,000 signatures already garnered by McVitie’s workers.

The precondition for a broader, international struggle is a break with the trade unions and their suppression of workers fundamental interests. We urge McVitie’s workers to consider these questions:

• Why has the Tollcross closure threat been presented as a surprise when it is clear the company has been opposing investment for years?

• Why have Unite and the GMB only called one small demonstration to protest the closure?

• Why is there no ballot for immediate strike action across Pladis plants against the job losses?

• Why have Unite and the GMB not sought to link opposition to the McVitie’s closure with campaigns against the closure of library and community services in Glasgow and around Scotland, or with the many disputes emerging as pandemic support measures come to an end?

Spanish trade unions agree to 3,000 layoffs at BBVA bank

Santiago Guillen

Major Spanish corporations and banks are using the coronavirus crisis to implement long-planned mass redundancies and rationalisation plans even as they reap billions in profits.

In the latest outrageous betrayal by the trade unions, the CCOO and UGT federations have agreed to axe 3,000 jobs at BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. This came just days after workers mounted the first strike in the sector for three decades.

BBVA head offices in Madrid (Álvaro Ibáñez/Flickr)

The BBVA is Spain’s second largest bank after Banco Santander. Listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and the Mexican Stock Exchange, BBVA operates mainly in Spain, South America, North America, Turkey, and Romania. As of December 2020, BBVA's assets amounted to €736 billion, more than the annual GDP of the combined ECOWAS countries covering nearly 400 million people in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Capo Verde, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Togo).

BBVA earned €1.32 billion between October and December 2020, its highest quarterly result over the past two years, amid a pandemic that has pauperised billions of workers and ruined small businesses throughout the world. Despite this windfall, in late April BBVA announced its intention to lay off 3,800 workers, 16 percent of the workforce, using a redundancy scheme.

This began the familiar process through which corporations worldwide are sacking tens of thousands of workers.

First, the company announces a redundancy scheme. Then the trade unions cynically posture as indignant and horrified. Claiming it was unexpected, they enter negotiations while calling token protests to let off steam. The company then announces a slightly smaller figure of job losses, allowing the trade unions to claim a victory.

At BBVA the CCOO posted a statement declaring that the proposed redundancies were “unsustainable and scandalous.” Workers “are going to be left without a source of income while senior management maintains and increases millionaire salaries, which does not correspond to the seriousness of the situation.” It then announced, “BBVA’s approach leads us to the path of mobilization.”

On May 10, 6,000 people took part in demonstrations in 15 Spanish cities, followed a week later with another national protest of thousands in 18 cities. The trade unions also organised partial hourly stoppages.

This time, however, few were convinced by such gestures, having seen how the trade unions reached agreements to cut thousands of jobs at CaixaBank (8,291), Santander (3,572), Sabadell (1,800) and Ibercaja (750), without any real fight.

BBVA workers demanded more militant action, so the trade unions reluctantly called a 24-hour strike on June 2. This won immense support with over 70 percent of staff participating. The trade unions did all they could to sabotage a united struggle of workers in defence of jobs. Rather than calling for a united struggle of the 18,000 bank workers facing similar redundancy schemes, CCCOO called for a token 30-minute “strike” at CaixaBank against the dismissal of 8,291 workers. The CCOO and UGT had in fact already agreed to these dismissals weeks before.

Terrified of the threat of unified opposition, the CCOO, UGT and Association of Banking Staff (ACB) agreed to a new redundancy scheme of 2,935 workers, just 800 less than the original figure. This represents 10 percent of the BBVA workforce and the closure of 480 offices.

CCOO described the agreement as “clearly due to the success of the massive strike that occurred throughout Spain.” The UGT stated that “any reduction in the number of people affected is positive.” Now the discussion was about other questions, like compensations and “the establishment of decent exit conditions.”

This attack against bank workers, traditionally a well-paid sector of the working class, will be expanded to slash wages for the entire working class. Tens of thousands of white-collar and blue-collar workers are being forced to pay the price for the €70 billion handed out to the banks after the 2008 crisis and the €140 billion promised to Spain’s banks and corporations from the European Union pandemic bailout funds.

Sensitive to rising opposition to the larger union, the CGT is intervening to play its role as a lightning rod. Specialised in posturing as more radical and combative to suck in disenchanted workers from the larger bureaucracies, it has refused to sign the redundancy scheme while making clear it does not oppose job losses. Its main criticism is that redundancies should be implemented through early retirements and paid leave.

The pseudo-left groups’ “alternative” union has not proposed any plan of struggle, only banging pots and pans on Tuesday.

The CGT meet with the pseudo-leftist Podemos party, the Socialist Party’s (PSOE) main coalition partner in government, to request a legislative change that would prohibit dismissals in companies with benefits. But they know perfectly well that Podemos, which controls the Ministry of Labour, will not change any law and is an avid supporter of these redundancy schemes. Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister of the government, Yolanda Díaz, has shamelessly declared recently, “Companies, in general, have behaved very well during the crisis caused by COVID-19."

During the first months of the year, 29 large companies have announced collective layoffs involving over 35,000 workers. These redundancy schemes have been particularly brutal in the banking sector. Since 2010, the banks in collaboration with the trade unions have carried out a total of 70 collective dismissal processes which have destroyed 100,000 jobs. To give an idea of the magnitude of the figure, this would fill the Camp Nou football stadium in Barcelona or Wembley Stadium in London.

Opposition among workers is mounting against these layoffs. Joan Sierra, head of the financial sector at CCOO, told eldiario.es that workers today “have no trust and concerns [are] growing.” He warned that the banks “should take note of it.” His counterpart in the UGT, Víctor Miravete, said that people now feel “threatened."

The union bureaucracy fears above all the emergence of workers struggles that break out of its control. Internationally, the most significant struggle is currently in the United States, were nearly 3,000 workers at Volvo Trucks New River Valley plant in Dublin, Virginia, are on strike after voting by 90 percent to defeat the second pro-company contract proposal agreed to by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

Switzerland adopts draconian police law

Marianne Arens

The new anti-terror law adopted by Switzerland last weekend is one of the harshest police laws in all of Europe. Its adoption in a referendum highlights the urgency of building a genuine workers’ party in Switzerland that defends as a matter of principle the democratic rights of working people.

The “Federal Law on Police Measures to Combat Terrorism” (PMT) blatantly disregards the principles of the so-called “democratic rule of law.” For example, it flouts the civil-democratic separation of powers because it allows the federal police to intervene against so-called “dangerous persons” even without sufficient evidence for criminal proceedings and without an order from a judge.

The law also disregards the principle of personal data protection, allowing police officers to retrieve and exchange “particularly sensitive personal data” amongst themselves. This explicitly includes, among other things, “data on religious and ideological views or activities.”

Striking construction workers block the Mont Blanc bridge in Geneva, October 2018.

The envisaged police measures range from the requirement of regularly reporting to an authority, contact bans, a ban on leaving the country, and passport revocation to up to nine months of house arrest. They can be imposed on juveniles as young as 15 and in some cases on children as young as 12 who are deemed “dangerous persons” in the eyes of the police. For people without a Swiss passport, “deportation detention,” or custody pending deportation, is also provided for. And anyone who disobeys police orders can be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years.

The law is officially justified by the attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office in Paris, France in 2015. It is supposed to give Swiss police the ability to “take preventive action against terrorist threats.” But it defines “terrorist activities” so vaguely that it could readily include unruly youths and social protests. In particular, it could apply to political activists who are explicitly working to change social conditions.

The law states, “Terrorist activity is defined as efforts to influence or change the order of the state by committing or threatening to commit serious crimes or by spreading fear and terror.”

This definition of terrorism is highly problematic and has been sharply criticized by legal experts. These include, for example, Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, who has also vehemently defended Julian Assange. Melzer calls the definition “beyond good and evil,” because it no longer necessarily defines terrorism as a violent crime.

To this end, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Northern Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, also stated in an interview with the Republic newspaper: “This definition of terrorism is used by authoritarian states to suppress opposition.”

In fact, this definition of “terrorist activity” would also fit striking and protesting workers blocking access to their businesses, or angry tenant groups demanding the expropriation of real estate sharks. It could also apply to socialist politicians and labour leaders whose stated goal is to abolish capitalism, since even the statements of these groups could “spread fear and terror” among shareholders, business representatives and state officials.

A committee including the Young Greens, the Jusos (youth organization of the Social Democrats), the Young Green Liberals and the Pirate Party, as well as non-governmental organizations and civil rights initiatives, has launched a referendum against the “arbitrariness paragraph.” As they explain, the law is “an attack on the security of the Swiss population. It suspects and endangers blameless citizens: anyone can be placed under house arrest for up to nine months without having committed a crime…Those affected can only defend themselves by proving that they will never commit a crime in the future. This is simply impossible.”

The Social Democratic Party (SP) issued a “No” slogan. However, it has entirely failed to conduct any public campaign against the law to warn and mobilize the working population. After all, this party holds seats in the government, including the seven-member Federal Council. In this all-party coalition, the SP also works unanimously with the far-right SVP.

The law was approved by 56.6 percent in the vote last Sunday, June 13. Turnout was relatively high by Swiss standards, at 59.5 percent, and all cantons except the City of Basel voted in favour of the new police law.

But what does a voting majority mean in Switzerland? In fact, a total of only 1.85 million, just over one-fifth of the country’s 8.6 million inhabitants, voted in favour of the “Arbitrariness Law.” About 2.2 million inhabitants do not have a Swiss passport. Most importantly, a large segment of the working class has no voting rights at all and could not participate in the referendum. Switzerland has a multinational working class, with Italians, Tamils, Germans, Turks, Bosnians, workers from the Maghreb and others working alongside Swiss workers.

The law clearly expresses a deep-seated fear on the part of the Swiss bourgeoisie and authorities of any stirrings within the working class. Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, but it is heavily dependent on the world economy. Its wealth is profoundly unequally distributed. Social antagonisms are strained to the breaking point, and the pandemic has laid them bare.

The bourgeoisie continues to profit from Switzerland as a banking centre and respectable tax haven, as well as from upscale Alpine tourism. Switzerland also maintains small, highly specialized industries that are, however, particularly dependent on the weal and woe of the EU.

During the pandemic, Switzerland, like Sweden, refused to close businesses and schools. Although the second wave of the pandemic saw a steep rise in the number of infections and deaths, Switzerland was the only Alpine country to allow the ski season to open last winter. Nearly 10,870 COVID-19 patients have died in the pandemic, more than half of them this year alone. No doubt many victims might still be alive had the federal and cantonal governments not so irresponsibly enforced their profit-before-life policies.

The working class is bearing the brunt of the pandemic in two ways: first, those who work in hospitals or nursing homes, for production, in construction, at the supermarket checkout, for the rail system or in restaurants have few options to protect themselves from COVID-19.

At the same time, the working class has been particularly affected by pandemic job losses. According to figures from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, employment figures show a fourth quarter of sharp decline in early 2021, with job cuts last year in manufacturing (-14,000 jobs), construction (-6,000 jobs), and hospitality (-35,000 jobs). Recently the airline Swiss again announced mass layoffs.

With its new, harsh police law, the Swiss bourgeoisie is consciously preparing for an imminent social explosion. The working class must prepare for the same!

Ebrahim Raisi wins Iran’s rigged election presaging repression to secure regime’s survival

Jean Shaoul

Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s chief justice and a prominent conservative connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is set to succeed the centrist President Hassan Rouhani at the end of his two-term limit in August.

Friday’s elections put the hardline or principalist faction in control of all branches of the state apparatus, reflecting the bourgeois clerical regime’s ever-increasing reliance on the IRGC, which also controls much of the economy, to suppress the Iranian working class and ensure its survival.

The election victory comes in the wake of Rouhani’s failed gambit of staking all on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal with US and European imperialism that failed to deliver the promised economic benefits—and amid talks aimed at reviving the deal in Vienna.

Ebrahim Raisi Mehr (credit: News Agency, via Wikimedia Commons)

The accord was not a treaty but an “executive agreement”, because President Barack Obama could not have secured a two-thirds majority in the US Senate. This enabled his successor, President Donald Trump, to unilaterally abandon the Accord in 2018 and reimpose and add more crippling sanctions on Iran’s oil exports. These cost the country at least $200 billion as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to destabilise the country.

Rouhani and the reformist and centrist factions around him have placed the full burden of the sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic on the working class. The pandemic has had its most deadly impact in the Middle East on Iran, with nearly 83,000 people dead, according to the widely discredited official figures, thanks to US sanctions that have gutted the country’s healthcare system, as well as the venal criminality of the Iranian bourgeoisie that has devastated the lives of the Iranian people. The value of the rial has plummeted, leading to an annual inflation rate of nearly 50 percent, hours-long electricity blackouts and a poverty rate of 50 percent, with nearly half the population, 20 million people, living in extreme poverty.

Rouhani’s lethal crackdown on the protests over a rise in gas prices in 2019-20 in which at least 1,500 were killed exposed the reformists and moderates’ agenda as no less reactionary than that of the principalist faction.

The 60-year-old Raisi, who lost to Rouhani in the 2017 elections, fought the election on an anti-corruption platform, an empty slogan that played on decades of bitter experiences with Iran’s elite, while advancing a socially conservative program. His victory, with around 18 million of the 28.9 million ballots cast, or 62 percent of the vote, equates to just one third of those eligible to vote, hardly a ringing endorsement of his legitimacy or that of the regime.

Mohsen Rezaee, a former IRGC commander in chief, won around 3.4 million votes. Abdolnasser Hemmati, the former central bank governor from Iran’s moderate reformist wing, came third with around 2.4 million votes. The fourth candidate, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, won around 1 million votes. There were some 3.7 million “white” ballots, cast without any candidate’s name written in, protesting the lack of candidates who represented their views.

Just under 50 percent of Iran’s 59 million eligible voters from a population of 84 million cast their ballots, after voting closed early Saturday morning following the government’s extension to the balloting to accommodate “crowding” at several polling places. This was the lowest turnout since the 1979 revolution that ended the rule of Washington’s client, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Raisi’s victory was always assured, given that the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog, had only approved conservative candidates aligned with the 81-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the IRGC, rejecting all but seven of the nearly 600 candidates who had put their names forward.

The 12-member council, six of whom were chosen by Khamenei, disqualified prominent political figures such as Ali Larijani, a former speaker of the parliament who was expected to be Raisi’s main rival; current vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, closely aligned with Rouhani; and Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Such was the disquiet about the blatant rigging of the election that Khamenei acknowledged that it had been a mistake to eliminate some of the disqualified candidates, although he had earlier rejected Rouhani’s request to intervene against the removal of Larijani and Jahangiri’s names from the approved list.

This left Hemmati, who had to stand down as head of Iran’s central bank, to run as Raisi’s main moderate challenger. Days before the election, Mohsen Mehralizadeh, a former provincial governor and vice president from the moderate reformist faction, stood aside in a bid to boost votes for Hemmati. Former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and hardline legislator Alireza Zakani dropped out to consolidate the hardline vote behind Raisi, leaving just four candidates in the race. The reformist faction threatened to mount a boycott because of the exclusion of all their candidates, a campaign that was only partially successful.

Raisi, who wears a black turban identifying him in Shiite tradition as a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad, is seen as a likely successor to the Supreme Leader. He will be Iran’s first serving president sanctioned by the US government before even entering office.

Raisi was sanctioned by the Trump administration in November 2019, along with eight other officials close to Khamenei, for his role as Tehran’s deputy prosecutor general in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Most of those executed were members of the Mujahideen al-Khalq, the Communist Party and other regime opponents. The sanctions also relate to his role as the senior prosecutor and chief judiciary during the lethal crackdowns on antigovernment protests in 2009, 2017 and 2019. According to human rights groups, at least 7,000 protesters were arrested, tortured and sentenced to harsh prison terms by the Raisi-led judiciary following the 2019 protests.

American sanctions against Raisi, as well as most of the other 1,600 imposed by Trump, are based not on the 2015 nuclear deal but on America’s counterterrorism laws, for the explicit purpose of preventing an incoming president from canceling them as part of a return to the nuclear deal. While President Joe Biden has lifted a handful of sanctions as a goodwill gesture, he will need congressional legislation to remove most. Raisi’s victory takes place amid the ongoing talks in Vienna to revive the deal and lift the crushing US sanctions on Iran that all factions of the ruling elite are desperate to relieve. According to Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the talks, the negotiations are approaching the final round, with only a few secondary issues remaining.

Raisi has declared his support for the negotiations and a signed agreement “if it serves the interests of Iran,” indicating that Khamenei is determined to reach an agreement. It has been suggested that Khamenei has postponed signing any agreement until after the election but still during Rohani’s government, to place responsibility for the agreement on Rohani without compromising Raisi’s “conservative purity.” This will enable him to claim that he inherited the agreement should it fail to deliver the much sought-after economic rescue. Tehran insists that the sanctions relief in the 2015 agreement was limited in that it did not allow Iran to carry out a range of international financial transactions, including through the SWIFT system used by financial institutions to transfer money and settle international debts.

Washington wants Iran’s agreement to commit to return to the negotiating table as soon as the old deal is restored and begin hammering out the terms of a wider agreement that would be “longer and stronger.” Tehran has refused to agree to any changes that would limit its nuclear production even further, or to accept any limits on their missile capabilities and their support of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

The replacement of the centrist Rouhani with a member of the principalist faction will not resolve Iran’s deep-going political, social, and economic crisis. The real fear of the Iranian bourgeoisie is of an eruption of class struggle driven by declining living standards and a dramatic increase in social inequality as those at the top have enriched themselves, while working people have faced death, disease, unemployment and impoverishment.

US hotel chains plan to lay off hundreds of thousands of housekeepers in post-pandemic restructuring

Alex Findijs

Major US hotel chains are making use of the collapse of business during the COVID-19 pandemic to permanently eliminate hundreds of thousands of housekeeping jobs.

An estimated 3.1 million hospitality and leisure workers have been laid off since March of 2020, accounting for 39 percent of the total number of unemployed in the United States. These are among the lowest paid and most oppressed sections of the working class.

The largest US hotel chains lost an estimated $14 billion in revenue in 2020, according to Travelweek Group, which estimates it will take three years for the industry to recoup the shortfall. As in other sectors of the economy, hotel industry companies are seizing on the crisis to drive up profitability by reducing labor costs.

Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California (Image Credit: Minnaert/Wikipedia)

Hilton Chief Executive Chris Nesetta told investors in February, “The work we’re doing right now in every one of our brands, including Tru and Hampton, everything else is about… creating more labor efficiencies, particularly in the areas of housekeeping, food and beverage and other areas.”

He continued, “When we get out of the crisis, those businesses will be higher margin and require less labor than they did pre-COVID.”

The same strategy is being adopted by other firms. Park Hotels and Resorts, which owns dozens of high-end and luxury hotels around the world, informed investors that it would be protecting profitability through a permanent reduction in full-time staff, saving an estimated $70 million in labor costs every year.

This restructuring is taking the form of a transition to “opt-in” housekeeping, in which rooms will be cleaned daily only if specifically requested. Daily cleanings are to be largely replaced by cleanings only after check-out.

This impact on hundreds of thousands of cleaning staff who work at hotels will be brutal. The union Unite Here, which represents 300,000 hospitality workers, estimates that ending daily cleanings will likely eliminate at least 39 percent of cleaning jobs at hotels, some 181,000 jobs.

But instead of mobilizing workers to oppose the planned cuts, Unite Here is focusing its efforts on working with management to promote the “Save Hotel Jobs Act,” which would provide millions of dollars in public funds to hotels to cover payroll costs for rehired workers. There is no language in the bill guaranteeing that all laid-off workers will be reinstated, implying on the contrary that only some workers will be rehired.

This is yet another attempt by the trade union bureaucracy to prevent workers from mobilizing their industrial power against the corporations and instead channel opposition behind the Democratic Party, itself a party of Wall Street and the corporate elite. The Biden administration has made clear its support for the early termination of supplemental unemployment benefits being implemented mainly by Republican-controlled states and announced its intention to end the program nationally on September 6. It is overseeing as well the ending of pandemic restrictions of evictions at the end of June.

These policies are calculated to blackmail workers into returning to unsafe factories, schools and work locations under threat of starvation and homelessness, as all safety measures imposed during the pandemic are lifted, in defiance of warnings by epidemiologists of the potential for new outbreaks and hundreds of thousands of more deaths from more deadly variants of the coronavirus.

When workers do return, they will be confronted with lower wages, longer hours and greater speedup.

The changes being prepared by the hotel magnates will mean increased workloads and more dangerous workplace hazards. By cleaning rooms every day, housekeeping staff are able to mitigate the buildup of garbage and dirt in rooms. Under the new model, the health and safety of cleaning staff will be put at risk as they are forced to do more cleaning in less time.

The job cuts will affect some of the most exploited workers in the country. The average wage for a hotel cleaner is around just $25,000 a year, below the federal poverty line of $26,200 for a family of four.

More than 86 percent of hotel cleaners are female and 25 percent are Hispanic, the second largest demographic. Many are immigrants from Mexico or South America. The average age of these workers is about 45, making a career change much more difficult.

The hotel chains, worth billions of dollars, have been given huge federal bailouts under the 2020 CARES Act and other bipartisan pandemic programs. The two big business parties placed no restrictions on their using the billions in taxpayer money to prepare a further attack on the jobs and living standards of their workers.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were given to hotels under the misnamed “Paycheck Protection Program,” presented to the public as a lifeline for small businesses and their employees. Loans to units of major national chains covered at least 2.5 times their monthly payroll costs through forgivable loans.

These government handouts have enabled hotel chains to increase their profitability despite the sharp decline in business over the previous 15 months. According to the industry website Hotel Management, hotel profit margins were 30.6 percent in April of this year, with a profit of about $35.45 per room. With the number of vaccinated Americans rising and pandemic restrictions being lifted, the industry is experiencing a sharp rebound in occupancy.

In an industry with 5.29 million rooms in the US, which generated upwards of $200 billion in revenue in the years before the pandemic, there is more than enough money to provide decent wages and benefits to all hotel staff.

According to STR, a business data firm, the hotel industry in the US generated $59 billion in earnings before interest and tax in 2017.

Instead, the industry is seizing upon the pandemic to permanently remove a large segment of its workforce. In doing so, it hopes not only to cover losses from the pandemic, but permanently raise its profit margin and increase the fortunes of its major investors and bankers.

This is welcome news to the vultures in the fast food and other service industries, who are gratified by the prospect of hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers suddenly finding themselves in desperate need of a job.