Far-right National Rally backs Le Pen as 2022 French presidential candidate

Alex Lantier

Last weekend, France’s neo-fascist National Rally (RN) assembled for its congress in Perpignan, which endorsed Marine Le Pen as the RN’s presidential candidate and president of the party. Le Pen, the only person standing for either position, won 98.35 percent of the vote.

Far-right leader Marine le Pen attends a press conference in Toulon, southern France, June 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Le Pen’s unopposed landslide victory notwithstanding, she came to the RN congress under pressure, after an unexpected setback in the June regional elections. Polls had shown the RN carrying six of France’s 12 regions, but its candidates failed to win a single region.

Amid mass disillusionment and anger with European governments’ stubborn refusal to carry out a scientific fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to over 1.1 million deaths from COVID-19 in Europe, voters overwhelmingly ignored the election. Abstention topped a record level of 65 percent. With voting largely driven by retirees, all 12 incumbent regional presidents, seven conservatives and five social democrats, were re-elected.

On election night, as journalists spoke of a crisis of French democracy, Le Pen, visibly frustrated, blamed her voters. She said: “The distance between voting intentions as measured by the polls and the actual vote, I say this gravely and solemnly, has only one explanation: our voters did not go vote. That is why I call upon them to wake up. All of those who oppose this government, which is taking our country to the edge of catastrophe, have a duty to react. If you want things to change, you must vote. If you do not vote for your ideas, your voice is no longer heard.”

The media discussion that unfolded in the lead-up to the Perpignan congress testified to the utter degradation of official public life in France. Since Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande invited Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace in 2015, after Islamist attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine, the RN has been entirely integrated into mainstream politics. Moreover, broader layers of the ruling elite now adopt fascistic positions, like President Emmanuel Macron’s hailing of Nazi-collaborationist traitor Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier.”

A substantial faction of the capitalist media attacked Le Pen’s “de-demonization” policy. Le Pen renamed the old National Front (FN) the National Rally and demanded the RN avoid hailing the Holocaust and other crimes of 20th-century European fascism. Instead, parts of the right-wing media demanded that Le Pen react to her defeat by taking a more “radical” line, with harsher denunciations of Islam or the European Union, and a more explicit defense of her party’s historic ties to Pétain’s Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II.

A prominent supporter of this view is Eric Zemmour, the influential former Le Figaro journalist and promoter of the Vichy regime, who has also been convicted for inciting racial hatred. Zemmour, who now works as a lead commentator for billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s far-right CNews television channel, mocked Le Pen as indistinguishable from mainstream conservative politicians, like Xavier Bertrand or President Jacques Chirac, or current President Emmanuel Macron.

“We heard RN officials, with Marine Le Pen in the lead, berating voters, it was mind-boggling. They looked like stockholders demanding their dividends,” Zemmour said, adding: “In truth, there is nothing separating her line from Emmanuel Macron or Xavier Bertrand. … People are saying that she is abandoning everything, betraying everything, becoming like Chirac, and she is paying heavily for it.”

Former social-democratic libertarian writer Michel Onfray, now on the far-right, similarly criticized Le Pen for “Chirac-izing herself,” observing: “She writes in L’Opinion that the euro, Europe, the free market, all of that is fantastic, she is going all over the place. … She is telling herself, ‘How can I get power? What can I say to get there?’”

At the congress, however, the RN rejected the advice of Zemmour, Onfray and others. In her address to the congress, Le Pen made clear that no profound differences separate her positions from theirs, by saluting the RN’s fascist heritage. However, she rejected calls to adopt a more explicitly fascistic political line. She said: “We will not go backwards. With all the respect that we have for our history, we will not go back to the National Front. We must continue to open ourselves up to all those French people who do not simply want to remain spectators.”

Le Pen insisted that the RN has concentrated on making the changes necessary to prepare to govern France. She applauded the RN for having supposedly become “a party that represents political change and that, more than ever, must be ready to take on the highest office. … This healthy and necessary evolution takes shape in what the RN has become, a party open to all, creative and audacious, responsible and demanding towards itself.”

Le Pen’s report was endorsed by the congress, which also named Jordan Bardella as temporary party president while Le Pen runs in next year’s presidential elections.

The rise of a far-right, authoritarian regime is a serious danger in France and across Europe. Its election setback notwithstanding, the RN can still win the 2022 elections and take power, especially given the unpopularity of Macron, the incumbent, the “president of the rich.” Le Pen’s decision to continue with a “de-demonization” strategy seems clearly aimed at avoiding alienating workers who might vote for Le Pen in a disoriented expression of political frustration, but who might not vote for a tendency more aggressively endorsing fascism or the Holocaust.

Ultimately, the rise of the French far-right can only be fought based on the political perspectives that the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has developed over the entire period since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 2002, FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, advanced to the second round of the presidential elections alongside Chirac, due to the elimination of Socialist Party (PS) candidate Lionel Jospin. A former student protester and member of Pierre Lambert’s ex-Trotskyist Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI), Jospin was discredited by the right-wing policies of his 1998-2002 Plural Left government. Faced with the false choice between Chirac and a neo-fascist, millions of people descended into the streets in mass protests.

The ICFI advanced the call for an active boycott campaign, to build an independent political movement in the working class against the policies Chirac would pursue once in office. On the other hand, petty-bourgeois groups like the Pabloite Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and the Lambert tendency campaigned for a Chirac vote, claiming this was necessary to keep Le Pen from coming to power.

Nearly 20 years later, the petty-bourgeois groups’ perspective stand utterly exposed. The fascistic danger cannot be fought simply by tactically opposing Le Pen’s party. In the course of two decades of wars and escalating attacks on social and democratic rights, especially after the 2008 Wall Street crash, the entire French bourgeoisie has turned sharply towards fascistic policies. Indeed, after Macron endorsed Pétain in 2018 while riot police violently attacked “yellow vest” protests, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin attacked Le Pen in a public debate for being “too soft” on Muslims.

The fact that political trash like Zemmour or Onfray can play leading roles in the French media further underscores that the fascistic evolution of the ruling class affects not only its political personnel, but the cultural and media establishment. The dangers this poses were further underlined by the recent coup threats made by French active-duty soldiers in the far-right magazine Current Values.

Bond market points to lower US growth

Nick Beams

The US bond market has been sending out signals that the much-vaunted US economic recovery could be short-lived. This is indicated by a persistent fall in yields over the past months after they rose earlier this year in expectation of higher growth due to the Biden administration’s stimulus measures and the Federal Reserve’s continuing support.

The Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC (Source: Wikimedia/Rdsmith4)

The stock market, fueled by the massive inflow of money from the Fed, is reflecting perplexity over the direction of the economy. After a significant fall on Thursday, the three major Wall Street indexes closed at record highs yesterday.

In what the Wall Street Journal described as a “topsy-turvy” week, the S&P rose 1.1 percent, following its largest one-day fall since the middle of last month, the Dow rose 448 points or 1.3 percent, and the NASDAQ was up by 1 percent as investors moved in to “buy the dip.”

However, the falls in bond market yields may be a surer indicator of longer-term trends. On Thursday, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond fell to 1.29 percent, down from a high of 1.75 percent at the end of March. Rising bond prices and the consequent fall in yields (the two have an inverse relationship) are generally taken as an indication of lower growth as investors seek a safe haven.

A New York Times article noted that whereas the expectation had been for higher growth, the shift in the bond market pointed to a “reversal of that narrative” suggesting that a “period of slower growth” could lie ahead.

In its economic projections the Fed has insisted that the present rise in inflation will prove to be “transitory.” Now the opinion is being voiced that this characterisation may apply to growth as well.

One of the major factors pushing in that direction is the escalation of COVID infections both in the US and globally as a result of the Delta variant.

A financial analyst cited by the Wall Street Journal noted: “Delta, or the next Delta, will be a recurring risk in markets,” adding that surveys of the US economy in recent days had fallen short of expectations. One of those indictors was the rise in filings for unemployment benefits to 373,000 last week, up from 371,000 the previous week and greater than expectations.

In an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, the president of the San Francisco Fed Mary Daly warned that the spread of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates in many parts of the world posed a threat to the global economy.

Daly, who is a voting member of the Fed’s policy making committee and a supporter of continuing stimulus by the central bank, said: “I think one of the biggest risks to our global growth going forward is to prematurely declare victory on COVID.”

Daly warned that difficulties in containing the virus in Japan and other countries, rising infections and lagging vaccination rollout were constraining an economic rebound internationally and in the US.

She indicated that the lower bond yields reflected “an increasing sense of the downside risk to the global economy.”

The meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers being held in Venice is expected to issue similar warnings. According to the meeting’s draft communiqué, while the global outlook has improved, “the recovery is characterised by great divergences across and within countries and remains exposed to downside risks in particular the spread of new variants of the COVID-19 virus and different paces of vaccination.”

The impact of the pandemic on the US and other major economies was the subject of a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued on Wednesday. It said that 21 million jobs had been saved by job support schemes but some 22 million jobs had been lost in advanced economies which faced rising long-term unemployment rates as unskilled workers struggled to get back into the workforce.

“Many of the jobs that have been lost during this pandemic crisis will not be recovered,” Stephane Carcillo, the head of the OECD’s jobs and income division said in a press briefing on the release of the report.

Younger sections of the workforce are likely to be the most adversely affected. Stefano Scarpetta, director of employment, labour and social affairs at the OECD, said: “The scars could be felt for a long time for young people in terms of employment and wages.” Youth in the US, Canada, Mexico and Spain have been among the hardest hit.

In the longer term, the notion that the US could lead a global recovery was given short shrift in a comment by Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley Investment Management chief global strategist, published in the Financial Times this week.

Sharma pointed to processes that undermine claims by the “commentariat” of an “American Renaissance” leading a world recovery. He noted that “significant voices” were arguing for America to spend freely because of the position of the US dollar as the world’s most wanted currency.

“But easy money flowing out of the Fed is threatening to weaken the dollar and feeding the rise of zombies—companies which earn too little to make even interest payments on their debt. They barely existed in the US 20 years ago, but accounted for 20 percent of listed companies by 2010, and almost 20 percent last year,” Sharma wrote.

With the federal government and corporations so deeply in debt it was “hard to imagine how they can further boost the economy.”

Sharma pointed out that in 2010, the US owed the world $2.5 trillion, equivalent to 17 percent of GDP. After rising to $10 trillion and more than 50 percent of GDP early last year, these liabilities now stand at $14 trillion, equivalent to 67 percent of GDP.

Hyundai and GM Korea autoworkers vote to strike

Ben McGrath

Autoworkers in South Korea voted this past week by large margins to strike as they fight to improve working conditions following a series of wage freezes in the industry last year imposed by the unions and the companies. On July 7, workers at Hyundai Motors, the country’s largest auto manufacturer, approved a walk-out, which followed a similar vote two days earlier by GM Korea workers.

GM Korea workers rally against the US carmaker’s plan to close the plant in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

At Hyundai, 74 percent of the 48,599 union members belonging to the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) voted to strike. They are demanding a 99,000 won ($US87) increase in the base monthly pay, 30 percent of Hyundai’s annual profits to be paid as bonuses, and an extension of the retirement age from 60 to 64 as workers are not eligible for the national pension until 65.

The company has offered a 50,000 won ($US44) monthly wage increase, an additional month’s salary plus so-called performance-based pay of up to three million won ($US2,622), an additional two million won in bonuses ($US1,748), and 100,000 won in gift certificates. Management is refusing to alter the retirement age in order to avoid paying older workers higher wages.

GM Korea, where jobs have been slashed in recent years, voted to strike with 76.5 percent of workers voicing approval. The KMWU’s GM Korea branch has 7,635 members and 6,613 took part in the vote. Workers are also demanding a 99,000 won increase in monthly base pay, a bonus equal to 150 percent of the ordinary monthly wage, and an additional four million won ($US3,487) in bonuses. They are also demanding the production of new vehicle models at the plant in Bupyeong, in Incheon.

Workers at both companies fear that as the industry switches to producing electric vehicles, it will lead to job cuts. Electric vehicles require fewer parts and less time to build. According to the Korean Automobile Manufacturers Association, an expected increase in sales of electric vehicles will lead to the slashing of 4,700 jobs in the industry by next year. The union is calling for Hyundai to expand operations within South Korea instead of investing in overseas factories. The Hyundai Motor Group, which owns both Hyundai and Kia, is expected to invest $US7.4 billion in operations in the United States to build electric vehicles.

Hyundai Motors President Ha Eon-tae responded to workers’ demands, stating, “We have made a decision to offer a wage raise that is the highest amount in the past three years, and a bonus that is also more than what we have agreed to last year.” In other words, workers should be happy they are being offered anything at all.

Hyundai is citing the COVID-19 pandemic to justify its stance. This is significant as the union enforced wage freezes last year at Hyundai, GM Korea, Kia, and Ssangyong Motors when management raised the same issue. The union has not called a strike at Hyundai in two years. Under the worsening pandemic, Hyundai and the union will attempt to force through another rotten deal that will become the basis for deals at other companies.

The KMWU, which is affiliated to the so-called militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), released a statement before the strike vote saying, “Last year, when other conglomerates and public companies were raising wages and offering ample bonuses to encourage their workers, we had agreed to the collective bargaining agreement without a conflict.” This statement is a damning indictment of the union, which hails big business and the government for pitiful raise wages while essentially admitting that it hung its members out to dry.

In reality, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, real wages increased last year by only 0.5 percent, down from three percent the previous year and the lowest growth in the past five years. The 2021 minimum wage negotiated last year for the most vulnerable workers rose by only 1.5 percent to 8,720 won ($US7.62), the smallest increase ever. Furthermore, the poorest workers saw a sharp decrease in wages last year. In the fourth quarter alone, the bottom 20 percent income bracket saw wages drop 13.2 percent to 596,000 won ($US521) a month.

Hyundai is well aware that it has nothing to fear from the KMWU. “The strike does not start immediately after the vote—it needs to get approval from the regional employment and labor administration, and after receiving approval, the union leaders will decide when to conduct the protest, so that will take some time,” a company official said in the Korea Times. “It is not like the old days, where the union conducts a full-on strike; nowadays they hold around a two-hour strike daily as a warning to management.”

The partial strike described by the Hyundai official is the union’s main tactic in preventing a broader struggle against the auto companies. The partial “strike” is designed to allow workers to let off steam and give the appearance the union is fighting for better conditions while reducing the impact on the company as much as possible. The KMWU also drives wedges between workers in the same industry and even within the same factories in order to prevent a unified struggle.

The KMWU has no intention of launching a joint struggle of autoworkers, even as General Motors, the Detroit-based auto company that owns GM Korea, threatens to exit the country. This is despite a deal GM signed in 2018 to maintain operations in South Korea through 2028 in exchange for the union signing off on the company’s plans to shutter its factory in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province. This led to the slashing of 2,000 jobs.

Even the phony appearance of struggle is too much for GM. In telling remarks about the role of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the United States, the Korea Times reported on a closed-door meeting in June between representatives of the GM Korea branch of the KMWU and senior GM officials. In the meeting, the company told the KMWU it should take a page from the UAW with GM’s Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing Gerald Johnson praising the UAW for “co-existing” with management. In real terms, this means being bought-and-paid for stooges of GM, forcing pro-company contracts on the workers.

At least 52 young workers perish in Bangladesh factory fire

Mike Head

In yet another shocking inferno, at least 52 mostly teenage workers died in a sweatshop factory, when a blaze engulfed a multi-storey food and beverage factory, just outside Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, on Thursday night. The factory was exploiting cheap labour to export products to Western markets.

A firefighter communicates with his colleagues on a walkie talkie inside the burnt food and beverage factory in Rupganj, outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, July 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

Fire officials said 49 of the victims’ bodies were burned beyond recognition, after they were trapped behind a locked door, a supposedly illegal practice, which is commonly used by employers in the country to prevent workers from leaving their workplace without permission or being searched. Three workers died after jumping off the building’s roof. About another 50 were injured.

There may be more victims, because yesterday, the factory’s top two floors had yet to be searched. Debasish Bardhan, deputy director of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, told reporters: “After searching the top floors we will be able to get a complete picture.”

The blaze broke out on Thursday night at the Hashem Foods Ltd. factory, in Rupganj, an industrial town 25 kilometres east of Dhaka. It was so intense that it sent huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky, and was still burning 24 hours later. Police initially put the death toll at three, but then discovered piles of bodies on Friday afternoon, after the fire was extinguished.

Hundreds of distraught relatives and other workers waited anxiously on Friday, as victims in white body bags were piled in a fleet of ambulances. Angry demonstrations developed outside and around the factory. Earlier, family members had clashed with police, as they waited overnight without any word of the fate of their loved ones.

Mohammad Saiful, a factory worker who escaped the fire, told reporters: “On the third floor, gates on both stairwells were closed.” Mamun, another worker, said he and a dozen other workers ran to the roof after the fire broke out on the ground floor, and black smoke covered the whole factory. “Firefighters brought us down by using rope.”

Dinu Moni Sharma, head of the Dhaka fire department, said the fire took place because highly flammable chemicals and plastics had been stockpiled inside. Substances like polythene and clarified butter made it more difficult to bring the blaze under control, the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) news agency reported.

Almost none of the bodies recovered on Friday could be recognised, BSS reported, citing Fire Service and Civil Defence director Lieutenant Colonel Zillur Rahman.

Abdul Al Arifin, the Narayanganj district deputy director of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, said each of the building’s floors was about 3,250 square metres, but were only accessible by two stairways. Many workers could not get out, as the fire spread to the stairs. One of the doors leading from the stairs to the roof was also locked, Reuters reported.

According to officials, most of the victims were juveniles. And the toll could have been much worse. Some of the factory’s units were closed, due to the COVID-19 pandemic devastating the country.

The factory was a subsidiary of Sajeeb Group, a Bangladeshi company that produces juice, under Pakistan’s Lahore-based Shezan International Ltd., according to Kazi Abdur Rahman, the group’s senior general manager for export.

Rahman told the Associated Press by phone that the company was fully compliant with international standards, but he was not certain whether the factory’s exit door was locked.

The group’s website states that the company exports its products to numerous countries, including Australia, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and nations in the Middle East and Africa.

In a bid to head off working class anger over the fire, the State Minister for Labor and Employment, Begum Monnujan Sufian pledged to take legal action against the factory owner if evidence of negligence emerged. The government promised pitiful payments of 25,000 taka ($US295) for families of dead workers and 10,000 taka ($118) for families of the injured, while speaking of providing further compensation on behalf of the factory owner.

The Narayanganj district administration has formed a five-member probe committee to examine the incident, Reuters reported. Such official investigations, following the country’s frequent factory disasters, have proven to be whitewashes of the companies and the Awami League government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been in office since January 2009. This has allowed the tragedies to continue.

Both the Awami League government and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which have alternated in office since 1990, have been intent on maintaining exploitative conditions and low-paid workforces, in order to satisfy the profit requirements of the national capitalist class and international investors.

In 2012, about 117 workers died in a fire when they were trapped behind locked exits in the Tazreen garment plant, in Dhaka’s Ashulia industrial zone. Supervisors ordered employees back to work, after the fire alarm sounded, leaving workers trapped on the upper floors.

The country’s worst industrial disaster came the following year, when the eight-storey Rana Plaza garment factory complex outside Dhaka collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. The building, housing five garment factories, employing thousands of workers, was typical of those serving the needs of global corporations, ruthlessly pursuing greater profits through the employment of sweated labour.

In response to the resulting outrage in Bangladesh and worldwide, nearly 200 global brands and some 1,600 employers signed an agreement, purporting to promote safe working environments for workers. However, the latest inferno confirms that nothing has improved.

According to Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence statistics, 383 industrial fires occurred in 2020, 273 of them in apparel factories. Between 2012 and 2019, disasters in the apparel industry killed more than 1,300 workers and injured another 3,800.

Working class homes have also suffered in industrial infernos. In February 2019, a blaze ripped through a 400-year-old area cramped with apartments, shops and warehouses in the oldest part of Dhaka, killing 70 people. Nine years earlier, a fire in Old Dhaka, in a house illegally storing chemicals, killed at least 123 people.

As the latest fire demonstrates, many workers have been forced to stay on the job, despite the Awami League government now implementing a so-called strict national lockdown, because of record numbers of COVID-19 deaths and infections.

The government reported 201 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, due to the surge of the highly infectious Delta variant, taking the total count to 15,593. Nearly one million infections have now been recorded in the population of some 165 million.

As has happened around the world, the government has permitted factories to continue operations during the pandemic, placing workers on the frontline of infection, and allowing mutant strains like Delta to proliferate.

Sri Lankan government uses coronavirus laws to ban protests

Pani Wijesiriwardena

On July 6, Sri Lanka’s Director General of Health Services (DGHS) Dr. Asela Gunawardena imposed a ban on all protests and gatherings, claiming this measure was necessary to “prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

Police arrest demonstrator at anti-privatization protest [Photo credit: Facebook]

In reality, the ban is a major attack on democratic rights, initiated by the Rajapakse government to suppress a growing wave of social opposition. It was announced in response to strikes and demonstrations involving tens of thousands of workers, farmers, students and fishermen in recent weeks, against attacks on social and living conditions and democratic rights in recent weeks.

The claim that the measures have been taken to protect the masses from the pandemic is false. The Rajapakse government reopened the economy months ago, allowing the full operation of factories. Minimal or no health safety measures, including social-distancing, have been implemented in these workplaces, with employees compelled to travel to work on congested buses and railways, paving the way for a rapid spread of the virus.

Addressing cooperative society representatives on Monday, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse hinted at a complete abandonment of the existing limited health restrictions.

“The only solution in the world to face the COVID-19 pandemic is vaccination,” he said, then added: “The country can be fully opened by September. If we are unable to open the economy sooner, then the economy cannot go ahead.” His comments were made amid rising numbers of people being infected with the deadly Delta and Lambda variants.

A day after the DGHS guidelines were announced, police moved to end all protests, declaring that participants were violating the quarantine laws.

• On July 7, police broke up a small demonstration of Joint Employees Association of Engineering Corporation members, outside the corporation’s head office in Colombo. Five people were arrested, including Duminda Nagamuwa, a Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) leader. The protest was called to demand the reinstatement of several workers.
• On the same day, police arrested Mahinda Jayasinghe, general secretary of the Ceylon Teacher Service Union, which is controlled by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and another person, at a 100-strong protest in Pamunugama in the Colombo suburbs. The action was called to oppose the environmental destruction of the Muthurajawela wetlands.
• On July 8, police violently shut down a demonstration in Battaramulla, a few kilometres from the national parliament. It was called to oppose the Kotelawala National Defence University (KNDU) Act, a move aimed at privatising and militarising state education. Thirty-one people were arrested, including several leaders of the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF) and the Ceylon Teachers Union general secretary, Joseph Stalin.
• In the southern town of Akuressa, police dispersed a protest over increased fuel prices, and to demand fertilisers for farmers. Thirteen people were arrested in the crackdown, including some JVP area leaders.

These are just some of the repressive police actions that have taken place over the past two days. In all these incidents police used force. Those taken into custody were brought before magistrates, in their respective areas, and arbitrarily sent by police into various quarantine centres for 14 days.

Police brutally arrest elderly women protesting against privatisation of education in Colombo [Photo credit: Facebook]

Reportedly, none of those sent into quarantine were given polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or rapid antigen tests. The 31 people arrested at Battaramulla were sent to a quarantine centre at Mullaithivu, more than 300 kilometres away, in the island’s Northern Province

Justifying the repression, Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara told parliament yesterday that the police “would continue to arrest anyone who was protesting in violation of quarantine laws.”

Weerasekara claimed that the decision to ban all protests on the island was not “taken by the politicians.” Such drastic action, however, could only come from the highest levels, including the president and the army commander heading the National Centre for Preventing COVID-19.

The national crackdown on all protests is the latest in a series of anti-democratic actions against the working class by the Rajapakse government.

On May 27 and June 2, President Rajapakse banned strikes, in virtually all state institutions, covering nearly one million employees under the Essential Public Services Act. Any violation is punishable by a two- to five-year jail term, and/or 2,000 to 5,000-rupee ($US25) fines.

The government has also stepped up its censorship of social media. On June 8, the police announced that any person found to have published, shared, spread or aided “fake news” on social media, would be arrested without a warrant and punished under the penal code and the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The Rajapakse government and the entire ruling class are fearful of rising numbers of strikes, protests and other forms of opposition across the country. Struggles involving thousands of workers in the health sector, electricity and water boards, education and railways have erupted in recent weeks, while tens of thousands of nurses and health workers have held protest strikes over the past months.

Unrest is brewing among plantation workers, over low pay and increased workloads, and in the garment sectors, where employees are being forced to work in unsafe COVID-19 conditions.

Lanka Estate workers at Maskeliya protest over increased work loads [Photo credit: Facebook/Malayaga Kuruvi]

The Rajapakse regime is stepping up its efforts to impose the economic burden produced by the global pandemic on these restive masses.

On June 28, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank printed 208 billion rupees (about $US1 billion) after having printed 23 billion rupees just three days earlier. The decision was made because the government did not have enough revenue to fill its budget expenditure gap. Similar inflationary measures have been taken in recent months.

The Central Bank and the government have restricted imports of several “non-essential” items, including fertilisers; increased the price of petrol, in an attempt to preserve foreign reserves, and is taking out more loans to avoid default on external debts. The fertiliser ban and fuel price increases have heavily impacted on hundreds of thousands of farmers.

Voicing concerns in the ruling elite, last weekend’s Sunday Times wrote: “Inappropriate economic policies and ineffective administration have depressed incomes, increased prices of essential consumer items, decreased food availability and accessibility, and aggravated poverty and starvation.”

On Thursday, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the main parliamentary opposition party, demonstrated outside parliament against the government ban on protests and gatherings. Yesterday, it filed a fundamental rights case in the country’s Supreme Court, over protesters being held in quarantine centres.

The SJB is attempting to exploit and divert the mounting opposition to the government. Formed by a breakaway faction of the right-wing United National Party, the SJB has worked to strengthen the hands of the Rajapakse government, repeatedly calling for an all party conference with the president to help “solve” the pandemic crisis.

The JVP, pseudo-left FSP and trade unions are likewise appealing to the very government that is unleashing escalating attacks on the democratic and social rights of workers and the poor. These organisations are committed to the defence of the capitalist system. The purpose of the FSP, IUSF and trade union protest against the KNDU Act on Thursday, was to appeal to ruling party MPs to vote against it.

Combined US federal and state unemployment claims rose to 470,000 last week

Jacob Crosse

The release Thursday of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) latest weekly unemployment claims report gives an indication of the economic and social crisis facing workers and their families more than 16 months into the coronavirus pandemic. According to the report, 373,000 jobless workers applied for state unemployment benefits, a slight increase over the previous week, and an additional 99,000 filed for assistance under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.

The report was received with consternation within corporate boardrooms and both big business parties. They had hoped that the early termination of supplementary unemployment benefits by over half of the states would have forced more workers to accept dangerous and low-paying jobs, despite the new surge in COVID-19 infections fueled by the reopening of businesses and schools and the lifting of virtually all remaining social distancing and safety measures, carried out in the face of the spread of the virulent Delta variant.

Pedestrians wait in line to collect fresh produce and shelf-stable pantry items outside Barclays Center as Food Bank For New York City provides assistance to those in need due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

The DOL report also found that more than 14.2 million Americans were still receiving some form of unemployment payment through June 19. Meanwhile, economists estimate that there are some nine million job openings across the US, the majority centered in the low-paying service, retail and seasonal tourist industries.

The 472,000 combined state and federal claims filed for the week ending July 3, which is double the pre-pandemic average, came despite the fact that 26 states have announced plans or have already begun to eliminate the meager $300-a-week federal supplement included in the Biden administration’s “American Rescue Plan,” which was signed into law this past March.

Biden has already announced that he will not seek to extend the federal benefit when it expires on September 6, and the White House has explicitly endorsed the “right” of Republican-led state governments to turn down the federal funding and terminate the program prematurely, on the grounds that the extra $300 a week is a “disincentive” to work.

In plain English, this translates into: Either work for poverty wages and risk infection and possible death from COVID, or starve!

Economists estimate that cutting unemployment pay prematurely in the 26 states will force some four million jobless workers and their families to participate in what NBC News described last month as a “bold experiment” in compelling workers to fully resume pumping out corporate profits.

However, the “bold experiment” has to date fallen short of expectations. Economists with Morgan Stanley in a recent analysis reported by Forbes found that: “... generous [sic] unemployment benefits are likely no more of a factor than other impediments, including childcare, transportation and health concerns, to workplace re-entry.”

The same report found that states that eliminated benefits on June 19, including Alabama, Idaho, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming, had only slightly larger declines in continued unemployment claims through May compared to states that had yet to eliminate the benefits—12 percent compared to 8.7 percent. States that have not announced plans to terminate benefits early saw a 4 percent decline in continued unemployment claims through May.

The group of economists, led by Sarah Wolfe and Ellen Zentner, wrote that they could find “only mixed evidence” that ending benefits early had an effect on workers seeking employment, adding: “Stripping out the disincentive effect of unemployment benefits on the labor market recovery is not simple.”

As the ruling class and the entire political establishment rush to fully “reopen” the economy, they are centrally concerned by the development of a tight labor market, which gives workers, particularly lower paid workers, a degree of leverage in seeking better-paying positions and, in general, pushing for wage increases after decades of stagnating or declining wages. This hinders the drive to utilize the pandemic to further cut wages and increase the exploitation of the working class.

The Biden administration’s response is three-pronged: Allow the pandemic-triggered relief to expire, support the corporatist trade unions in their efforts to suppress mounting working class militancy, and promote identity, and particularly racial, politics to divide and disorient the working class.

Even with the temporary $300-a-week federal supplement, the combined total of state and federal benefits falls far short of meeting the basic needs of working class families. In many states, the amount does not replace even half of a worker’s normal earnings.

Despite having control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, the Democratic Party has not lifted a finger to preserve the $300-a-week stipend, which is already a 50 percent cut from the $600-a-week supplement passed as part of last year’s CARES Act.

In an interview with the Vermont Business Magazine published on Friday, Democratic Vermont Governor Phil Scott, who like many governors instituted work-search requirements this spring in an effort to cull the unemployment rolls, stated: “If Congress decides to extend the $300 stipend, I would probably not accept it. I think it’s gone on long enough and we would let it lapse as of September 6.”

The coming expiration of federal unemployment benefits, coupled with the ending of the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium at the end of July, has pushed thousands of families into homeless shelters, tents or cramped living situations with friends or relatives.

This past week, the Eviction Lab at Princeton University made public data collected in conjunction with the Las Vegas Review-Journal over the past year showing that despite the moratorium, thousands of evictions have been processed in metro-Las Vegas, including 4,559 in November 2020 alone.

“The fact that in November filings were 50 percent above what they are normally—that’s not the case in really any of the other cities we track,” Jacob Hass, a research specialist at the Eviction Lab, told the newspaper. Haas noted that the November spike occurred after Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak allowed the state-wide moratorium to expire on October 15, before renewing it on December 14.

Overall, between March 15, 2020 and May 27, 2021 Clark County (Las Vegas) had an estimated 22,400 eviction filings, which is more than any other similarly sized area studied by the researchers. For comparison’s sake, Dallas County, Texas, which has a larger population than Clark County, had nearly 4,000 fewer evictions, 18,600, over the same time period. Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania recorded 5,200 evictions total.

Thousands of Turkish electricity workers launch wildcat strike wave

Hasan Yıldırım & Ulaş Ateşçi

Thousands of energy workers in cities across Turkey are going on wildcat strikes against misery contracts imposed on them amid the social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the April 30 action, when 2,000 Bedaş electricity workers in Istanbul launched a wildcat strike defying a strike ban, now thousands of electricity workers in Istanbul, Ankara, Adana and Zonguldak have spontaneously walked off the job. They are protesting sell-out contracts made by the Tes-İş union affiliated to the Türk-İş union federation.

Electrical workers stopped work and held a sit-in protest in Adana [Credit: @bedaiscileri on Twitter]

In recent days, electricity workers held mass protests in various cities, inspired by the Bedaş workers, against the union’s attempt to hide plans for a sellout contract from them. Energy workers generally earn near to minimum wage, i.e., a little over 3,000 Turkish liras (US$350).

The union announced its fourth meeting for collective bargaining with the EnerjiSA company on June 29 in the Istanbul (Ayedaş), Ankara (Başkent) and Adana (Toroslar) branches. It said it had received the employer’s offer and agreed to negotiate as soon as possible.

Ayedaş workers in Istanbul, who did not accept the company’s offer, gathered in front of the Sabancı Holding Headquarters, EnerjiSA’s parent company, defying objections from the Tes-İş union. Sabancı Holding, one of Turkey’s largest private conglomerates, has purchased privatized energy distribution operations in many cities.

On Thursday, the workers gathered in front of EnerjiSA’s Maltepe, Istanbul, office with a banner reading, “We do not accept this slavery contract. We want a living wage.” They noted that while EnerjiSA CEO Murat Pınar reported that the company “grew by 48 percent in the first six months of 2021,” their raise was below the official rate of inflation. Union officials who tried to speak to the workers were booed.

Energy workers also mobilised in the capital, Ankara. After it was announced that the union had reached an agreement “in principle” behind the workers’ backs, workers protested in front of Tes-İş headquarters on July 7. The workers staged a sit-in, briefly turning their backs on the union headquarters, then entered the union building, chanting, “Union management should resign!” The union management was booed, and the protest continued into the evening hours.

A worker told the press: “There has been a 122 percent hike in electric bills, but our union is demanding a 9 percent [for the first six months] and 5 percent [for the second six months] increase. I almost died in this job.” Another worker added, “I have lost three coworkers since 2008.”

Yesterday morning, the workers gathered and stopped work, chanting, “We don’t want an increase in misery.” Terrified by the workers’ militant stance, union officials tried to get workers back to work, but this failed. Workers protested horrific workplace safety records and repeated workplace deaths. One said, “We should die one day, not every day.”

In Zonguldak, on the western Black Sea coast, electricity workers went on a wildcat strike yesterday morning after protesting against terrible conditions and the union’s cooperation with EnerjiSA on Wednesday. The workers expressed their determination to struggle, chanting a slogan: “This is just a beginning, more will come.”

Protests and strikes also spread to Adana, where NATO’s Incirlik Air Base is located. On Wednesday and Thursday, hundreds of workers protested the union and shouted slogans after Tes-İş signed a sellout contract for a 9 percent raise for the first six months and a 6 percent raise for the second one.

Workers chanted, “We don’t want such a union.” One worker told the press, “We work for hours in very hot weather. Everything gets a raise. Our wages have just melted. We have been waiting for this contract for two years. Real inflation rate is around 30 percent. We are given a 9 percent, and then a 6 percent wage increase. With this contract, our labor and sweat have been sold.”

While union leaders tried to appease the workers, claiming that “there will be a renegotiation, the contract has not been signed yet,” police came to threaten the workers in front of the Tes-İş Adana Branch. Yesterday morning, after an hour of booing and protesting the union, workers stopped work, pledging not to go back to work until their demands were met. A worker declared, “I will not be silent anymore. Enough is enough!”

On Thursday, Süleyman Keskin, chairman of the rival Enerji-Sen union from the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK), told Yol TV: “Our colleagues are uncomfortable with collective bargaining agreements conducted behind closed doors, and a contract process in which their approval is not obtained.” However, Keskin was silent on the fact that DİSK also negotiates contracts and cooperates with companies behind closed doors, and that anger is mounting among workers in many industries against DİSK, as well.

This April, the Bedaş workers’ struggle in Istanbul came to a dead end due to pressure to support another union, namely, Enerji-Sen. Today, Bedaş workers are calling for joint action with workers in other cities in their social media group, but their new union, Enerji-Sen, is silent. Strictly adhering to the legal ban on strikes in the energy sector, the only thing it does is organize ineffective, symbolic actions outside of working hours to restrain workers’ militancy.

The energy workers’ rebellion against the unions, defying the strike ban, is part of an international upsurge of the class struggle. While the ruling class has massively enriched itself around the world during the pandemic, with a criminal “profits before lives” policy, social attacks have mounted against the living conditions of the working class, alongside mass deaths and infections.

While the unions undertake to defeat the workers in the service of the ruling class and state, workers’ anger against this reactionary collaboration is growing. Workers are increasingly engaged in struggles to reject the conditions imposed on them and seek a way forward.

US Volvo workers twice overwhelmingly rejected a contract imposed by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and formed their own rank-and-file committee, setting an international example. Volvo workers in Ghent, Belgium, also walked out on Thursday, protesting the union’s support for extending weekly working hours.

In Turkey, Bedaş workers recently downed their tools, again defying the strike ban. TPI Composite workers who opposed a sellout contract signed by the union were fired from their jobs. Miners from Soma, who have not received their severance pay for years, recently tried to go to Ankara, but police blocked them from entering the city. On their way back, Tahir Çetin, chairman of the Independent Mining Workers’ Union, and miner Ali Faik Inter lost their lives in a traffic accident reportedly due to exhaustion, increasing workers’ anger.

Lifting the ban on strikes, improving living and working conditions and achieving a real increase in wages cannot be achieved by unions that have become an extension of the companies and the capitalist state. Nor is it possible based on the nationally based program that the unions and their pseudo-left supporters advance.

Getty Scholar Grants for International Senior Researchers 2021

Application Deadline: 1st October 2021

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