South Korean health care workers strike despite union attempts to enforce sellout

Ben McGrath

The Korean Health and Medical Workers Union (KHMU) called off its planned strike in the early morning on September 2, only hours before nurses and other health care workers were scheduled to stop work across South Korea. The deal reached with the government is a sellout of the membership that voted overwhelmingly to strike.

Workers hold up warning signs as they confront security guards during a rally in front of the Seoul City Hall in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

The agreement between the KHMU and the Ministry of Health and Welfare will do nothing to address the demands of nurses, nursing aides, medical engineers, and other hospital workers. Already overworked prior to the pandemic, the spread of COVID-19 has worsened the long hours, serious stress and fatigue, and burnout for these highly exploited workers.

The union claimed victory, stating Thursday, “We have established a basis to overcome the exploitation of the medical personnel. This will be a new turning point to establish personnel guidelines for each job to improve chronic staff shortages and poor working conditions.”

The agreement includes six points: the government pledged to systematize the bonus pay for nurses treating patients with infectious illnesses, by January 2022; prepare guidelines this month for assigning nurses to treat COVID-19 patients, based on severity; expand the number of public hospitals by at least one in each of the country’s 70 medical zones by 2025; establish a ratio for the number of patients per nurse; expand the number of those who train new nurses; and raise pay for nurses working night shifts.

Missing from the agreement is the demand initially put forward for the construction of new infectious disease hospitals, as quickly as possible, an end to illegal medical practices, increased funding to address deficits, and the expansion of the number of doctors and public medical colleges.

Reflecting the widespread anger that exists and lack of faith in the union, thousands of health care workers at individual hospitals around the country walked out on Thursday. Stoppages continued into Friday involving at least 10 medical facilities.

In Seoul, 100 workers at Hanyang University Medical Center and another 1,000 from Korea University Anam Hospital, and Korea University Guro Hospital, stopped work. About 300 workers at Chonnam National University Hospital are participating in the strike, and another 850 at Chosun University Hospital in the city of Gwangju. Workers at Konyang University Hospital in Daejeon and at Pusan National University Hospital in Busan have also struck.

In contrast to the KHMU’s attempt to drive a wedge between irregular and regular workers, with its demand to push irregular workers out of employment, the strikers at Chosun Hospital are fighting for 200 of their irregular co-workers and demanding their transfer to regular status.

On Friday, the KHMU signaled that it had no intention of defending its striking membership: “We reached a deal when the government called off the strike, but workers at ten medical facilities are proceeding with the strike.” On its website, the KHMU calls only for the government to “respond” to the workers.

Health care workers should reject the sellout by the KHMU, and break the isolation imposed by the union, by reaching out to other health care workers, as well as regular and irregular laborers in industries such as logistics, shipbuilding, and auto manufacturing. As the KHMU’s stance shows, its militant posturing, and that of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) to which it belongs, is entirely fraudulent. Union bureaucrats call fake strikes in order to give the appearance they are fighting for workers, while making backroom deals with the government and big business.

From the beginning, the KHMU, with a membership of 80,000, had no intention of waging a campaign against the government. While initially claiming, at an August 18 press conference, that all members would take part in a general strike, the union maneuvered to isolate workers from each other. The KHMU planned to call out only 124 branches and their 56,091 members, excluding 72 other chapters. The union later announced that only 30 percent of workers from these 124 branches would have taken part in the strike.

This is the modus operandi of the unions affiliated with the KCTU. These organizations falsely pose as militant workers’ organizations, at times even employing anti-capitalist phrases, while claiming to organize large-scale labor struggles. In reality, the KCTU strangles workers’ struggles and binds the working class to the political establishment, particularly the Democratic Party.

When strikes do take place, the unions call them off after a few days, with little to nothing to show for it, as a means for letting off steam. Strikes are kept to a limited number of workers and are often only partial walkouts, lasting a few hours, all designed to limit their impact on big business and the government.

Sensing the spinelessness of the KHMU, the government has no intention of abiding by even the limited pledges in Thursday’s agreement. With the promises slated for implementation in the future, the administration of President Moon Jae-in, or a future government, will discard these pledges, with claims that there is no money, or some other lie to justify its exploitation of medical workers.

President Moon thanked the KHMU for calling off the strike and “thinking first about the people.” This is entirely cynical. While health care workers have been slandered in the press for supposedly taking action that would harm the population during the pandemic, Seoul is refusing to take the necessary measures to contain the COVID-19 virus. Instead, it is shifting to the so-called “with COVID” era, where the government no longer tries to stop the spread of COVID-19, but merely treats the most severe cases. The KHMU bureaucracy has embraced this position.

Sri Lankan teacher unions prepare to accept paltry wage rise

Kapila Fernando

Sri Lankan public school teachers have voiced their outrage over a meagre pay rise announced last week by a special cabinet committee. Around 250,000 teachers have been holding a national online learning strike since July 12 over longstanding demands for higher salaries.

The paltry pay rises were proposed by a cabinet subcommittee appointed by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who has repeatedly rejected any salary increase for educators. The committee said its proposed increases would be announced in the government’s forthcoming November budget and paid in four annual instalments.

Protesting teachers hold motorbike rally in Jaffna [Source: Facebook]

While teachers have demanded a 31,000-rupee ($US150) monthly salary for first grade teachers and 10,000 rupees for newly-recruited lowest grade teachers, the government has only offered 11,000 rupees and 5,000 rupees respectively, with other grades to receive similar small amounts.

A 5,000-rupee allowance will also be paid in September and October to teachers involved in online education. This is a contemptuous manoeuvre to exploit the economic difficulties confronting those involved in the online strike.

In line with union demands, public education will be made a separate “closed service,” meaning that employees can only be transferred within the education sector, not to other public sectors. While the unions claim that this would improve wages and conditions, “closed services” in other state sectors, such as the railways and the postal services, have produced no improvements for workers. The cabinet committee readily accepted this demand because it opens the way for accelerating its moves to privatise education.

Teachers angrily reacted on Facebook and other social media to the cabinet committee’s paltry pay offer and warning unions not to accept it. Comments included: “Don’t betray our struggle” and “The government has offered a carrot, one cannot buy even a kilo of saffron with this scanty allowance.” One teacher said: “Let us continue the strike until we will win” and another wrote: “Future generation of teachers will curse us if we accept this.”

In defiance of teachers’ determination to fight, the unions are engaged in closed-door manoeuvres in a bid to end the strike. Leaders of the educators unions, including the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-controlled Ceylon Teacher Services Union (CTSU) and the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP)-affiliated United Teacher Services Union (UTSU), have held several rounds of discussions with the cabinet committee.

Addressing the media on Wednesday, after the cabinet committee announcements, the Teachers and Principals’ Unions Alliance called on the government to issue a “circular” and make the proposed increases in one payment, not four separate instalments.

CTU secretary Joseph Stalin proclaimed the teachers’ struggle as one of “the greatest” in recent history and appealed to the government to “offer us a discussion, in order to give us a solution, otherwise, the struggle will continue.”

CTSU secretary Mahinda Jayasinghe said teachers would get a very meagre sum if the proposed increases were paid in four instalments. “We are flexible,” he added. “We are ready to accept the offer if it is paid as an entire payment.” He appealed to the Sri Lankan finance minister and the president to intervene and “solve the problem.” If they failed to do so, the unions would take new measures, he said, but did not elaborate.

Mahinda Jayasinghe [Source: Mahinda Jayasinghe Facebook page]

UTSU secretary Sanjeewa Bandara demagogically declared that the union was ready to “rally parents, other social forces around this struggle.”

Despite their empty rhetoric, the leadership of the teachers’ and principals’ unions have clearly indicated that they are prepared to accept the government’s “offers,” which are nearly one third less than educators’ demands. Their calls for a meeting with the president and finance minister are a desperate attempt to deflect teachers’ anger.

On July 27, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse told union officials that the government faced an economic crisis and that the government could not grant teachers’ wage demands. The unions acknowledged these concerns and urged him to accept their demands as a “policy” and make the payments in instalments.

Irrespective of whichever party holds power in Colombo, whenever educators fight for higher pay and better conditions, they are told that the government faces economic difficulties, but would increase pay in the future. For decade after decade the unions have embraced these empty promises and shut down teachers’ strikes and protests.

Striking teachers demonstrate in February 2020 [WSWS Media]

Teachers have not forgotten these betrayals and, in the face soaring cost of living increases, government attacks on social rights and increased indebtedness worsened by the pandemic, have shown increasing militancy. The continuing, almost two-month, online teaching strike, along with protests and demonstrations throughout the country and in central Colombo in defiance of police bans, media denunciations and arrests, testify to educators’ determination and reflects rising working class struggles unfolding in Sri Lanka and internationally.

Addressing the media this week, cabinet subcommittee members defended their proposals and urged teachers to resume work. Committee member Wimal Weerawansa declared that the government “has taken the most reasonable decisions on this issue at a very difficult time” and warned teachers not to ask for “a pound of flesh… like Shylock.”

Feigning concern, the cabinet committee report said the coronavirus epidemic had seriously impacted on “children’s education” and denounced the online teaching strike, claiming that it had created a “frightening picture” for the “children’s future.”

The health and social catastrophe, and the ruining of children’s education, is a direct result of the Rajapakse government and its COVID-19 policies. Like those of its counterparts around the world, Colombo places big-business profits above human life, allowing workplaces to keep operating and for schools to reopen in unsafe conditions, even as the deadly Delta variant surges throughout the country.

Declaring that it has “no money,” the government has refused to provide the computer and internet facilities needed to carry out online education, compelling teachers to maintain online lessons using their own equipment and at their own expense.

The report cynically declares that the government will have to bear the 70 billion-rupee annual cost of resolving the teachers’ salary problem but avoids any mention of the billions of rupees Colombo has provided in tax cuts, cheap credit and debt relief allowed to big businesses that resulted in record profits.

The Rajapakse government is planning to impose another round of austerity measures on the Sri Lankan masses, with cabinet this week announcing that it will “strictly limit government expenditure.” Finance Minister Basil Rajapakse reportedly told cabinet that state revenue has “drastically decreased” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was “not sufficient, even for recurrent expenditure.”

The government and big business circles are currently discussing cuts to the salaries and pensions of the public sector employees in response to the collapse in state revenue. The Rajapakse government also faces a foreign debt crisis exacerbated by the collapse of export earnings, foreign remittances and the tourism industry. In response it has just one policy—to place the entire burden of this crisis on the working people.

Growing opposition among US students, parents and educators as infections and deaths soar

Renae Cassimeda

In the six weeks since schools began reopening across the United States in late July, the severity of the Delta variant in children has been made entirely clear as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths surge. According to a weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), there were 203,962 official new cases among children for the week ending August 26, a 500 percent increase since July 22 when cases were around 38,000. Mississippi and Hawaii currently have the highest infection rates among children, representing over 25 percent of all cases in their respective states.

The report also shows that at least 425 child deaths have been reported since March 2020, with 76 deaths occurring since July 22. It must be noted that Michigan, Rhode Island, Montana, most of New York and South Carolina are not reporting age distributions of COVID-19 deaths, indicating an undercount of the data.

Analyn Tapia, left, and Dezirae Espinoza hold their supplies as they wait to enter the building for the first day of in-class learning since the start of the pandemic at Garden Place Elementary School Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, in north Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that there has been an 11.5 percent increase this week in child hospitalizations, with a current seven-day average of 360 pediatric patients admitted into hospitals across the US. In total, there have been 53,474 hospitalizations among youth since August 1, 2020, according to the CDC.

Amid the current surge, children’s hospitals across the US are currently at or near the brink of capacity. Doctors are warning of an influx of child multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) patients in the coming weeks. There have officially been a total of 4,404 MIS-C cases and 37 deaths since the start of the pandemic. As symptoms of MIS-C usually occur four to six weeks after infection, reports of diagnoses often come after rises in COVID-19 cases.

Educators and school staff have also not been spared from this tragedy as infections and deaths continue to rise. With no comprehensive aggregated data available to the public on educator deaths, reports have been patched together by concerned individuals which provide a glimpse of the immense amount of death that has resulted from the reopening of schools. The Twitter account, “School Personnel Lost to Covid,” (@LostToCovid) aggregates confirmed deaths of educators and staff through local news media and notes that at least 1,600 active and retired K-12 educators and personnel have died of COVID-19.

The account also notes that at least 181 school personnel have died since July 1, 2021. This does not include the recent deaths of fifteen teachers and staff in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, two Indian River County district teachers in Florida and two teachers at Connally Junior High School district in Waco, Texas.

Tens of thousands of students and staff have been quarantined in recent weeks due to infections or possible exposure to the virus. In Mississippi alone, over 24,000 students and staff are in quarantine after COVID-19 exposure from August 23-27. Nearly 4,000 K-12 students tested positive last week in the state.

The surge in cases has also resulted in partial, short-term school closures across the US. According to a school closures tracker released by the news outlet District Administration, at least 20 states have reported multiple school closures due to high infection rates. This includes entire school districts in Tennessee, Georgia and Texas.

Despite mass increases in cases, many major districts have remained open, citing “mitigation measures” as a supposed means to keep students safe. These measures, often consisting of mask mandates, limited testing and some improved ventilation, are entirely inadequate and are already resulting in mass infections in many districts.

In California, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country with over 600,000 students, has had at least 5,936 reported COVID-19 cases among students and staff since schools reopened two weeks ago on August 16. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 5,207 infections were identified among students and 729 cases among school staff between August 15 and 29.

LAUSD has been hailed as one of the “safest” districts due to its mandatory weekly testing program and other mitigation measures. Given the current infection rate in the district and high transmission rates in LA county, mitigations in place within the district have proven to be inadequate and unable to be fully enforced. Weekly testing has not been consistent within the district, and the fact that there is an 18-72 hour period in which an infected individual can shed virus and not produce a positive test, will result in large numbers of infected students going undetected. Additionally, only close contacts are asked to quarantine, and if an individual is vaccinated, they do not have to quarantine, despite the fact that vaccinated people can still be infectious.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest district in the US with over 300,000 students, reopened last Monday and is already seeing cases in schools. Additionally, the district had promised concerned parents and staff that they would implement a large-scale plan for weekly COVID-19 testing of all students and staff, but district officials announced Thursday that the program will not operate at full capacity until a few weeks into the school year.

Opposition is growing in response to the catastrophic conditions in the schools among students, parents and school staff. On Thursday, Bessemer City High School students in Bessemer, Alabama, staged a protest against the continuing demand that they learn in-person after dozens of students have tested positive for COVID-19 in the school district. The protest prompted officials to temporarily switch to remote learning on Friday, with plans for next week not determined as of this writing.

In Hawaii, parents have organized a “Mass Student Stay at Home Movement” to keep their children home indefinitely due to significant safety concerns in the schools and mass infections.

In Tennessee, parents from Knox County Schools have also organized a sickout and protest this week to keep students safe. On August 27, more than 8,600 students were absent due to quarantine for COVID-19 infection or exposure.

A recent promotional video from the Tennessee Department of Education praising the reopening of schools in the state has received major opposition from parents. In the video, education commissioner Penny Schwinn grotesquely states, “The smell of new books, clean hallways, the energy and feeling of being back in classrooms with their friends and their teachers. It’s such a special time, and I am so excited for our state.”

Multiple protests have been organized across the US by parents in opposition to inadequate levels of mitigations in schools, including mask mandates and social distancing. Additionally, school employees have recently expressed opposition to unsafe working conditions.

In Georgia, over 50 Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools System (SCCPSS) bus drivers went on strike last Friday over safety concerns and low pay. In Chicago, 73 CPS bus drivers quit last Friday over the same concerns, resulting in a 500-driver shortage for the start of the school year Monday. Over 2,100 CPS students did not have a ride to school Monday and the district has been providing families with a $500-$1,000 stipend to call Lyft or Uber to take their children to school.

Bus drivers are a section of the workforce particularly hard hit by the dangers of the pandemic as they have been subjected to dangerously overcrowded and enclosed spaces on top of staggeringly low pay. The Twitter account @LostToCovid has reported that at least 171 school bus drivers have died during the pandemic. Just last week, two Texas bus drivers and one Florida bus driver succumbed to the virus. Phyllis LeFlore, president of the AFSCME Local 1184 in Miami-Dade, Florida, told local media, “We’re losing, what, about seven employees a week to COVID. Now everybody is getting scared.”

The line of the entire political establishment and ruling elite in response to the pandemic continues to be to enforce the policy of herd immunity on the population for the sake of profits. Recognizing the immense opposition to the current conditions resulting from the callous reopening of schools and businesses, the ruling elite is now promoting inadequate “mitigation” measures as a guise to keep schools open and enforce herd immunity. Politicians, district officials, and union bureaucrats across the US are knowingly throwing children and staff into deadly classrooms.

Not a single additional death of a child or school employee is acceptable! The only viable strategy is for the eradication of the virus, based on the policies advanced by the leading scientists, and epidemiologists.

Eradication entails the universal deployment of every weapon in the arsenal of measures to combat COVID-19 to stamp out the virus once and for all. This involves the closure of all schools and nonessential businesses, and the provision of full financial assistance to all affected workers and small business owners. Mass vaccinations, mask mandates, universal testing, contact tracing, isolation of infected patients and other measures must be implemented in every country.

Parents, educators, school staff and students across the US and beyond must oppose the reopening of schools as part of a globally coordinated struggle of the working class to eradicate COVID-19.

Worsening US health care crisis during pandemic prompts strikes and protests by nurses over staffing

Alfred Kurosawa

A recent study shows that the United States places dead last among 11 high-income, industrialized countries in the organization and delivery of health care for its residents. This situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is ripping off the remaining tattered Band-Aids from an already deplorable health care system.

EMT Giselle Dorgalli, second from right, looks at a monitor while performing chest compression on a patient who tested positive for coronavirus in the emergency room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The Commonwealth Fund compared health care in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The study ranked the countries in access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes. The US came in last in every category but care process, which includes measures of “preventive care, safe care, coordinated care, and engagement and patient preference,” where it placed second.

The US’ last-place standing in relation to access to care, equity and health care outcomes are the product of the subordination of all aspects of the health care system to private profit. The delivery of health care and access to prescription drugs are all beholden to the profiteering of the giant health care chains, pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry.

The US is the only one of the countries studied that does not provide what the study terms “universal coverage.” While the health care systems in none of the other countries has anything in common with genuine socialized medicine, the US is the only one of the 11 that makes no pretense of providing universal coverage.

The already appalling state of US health care has worsened over the course of the pandemic, affecting not only patient care and outcomes but the working conditions of nurses and other health care workers. One of most common issues for nurses in hospitals is the lack of safe staffing ratios, which are central to providing adequate care to patients and to ensure the safety of both staff and patients.

These conditions have prompted an uptick in nurse contract struggles. Nurses have also left hospitals seeking other nursing positions, including as traveling nurses, or left the nursing field entirely in search of better pay and working conditions. While most of the nurses’ struggles have been limited short strikes or protests, at every turn the nursing unions have isolated these actions and worked to betray nurses and capitulate to the hospitals’ demands.

The most significant of these struggles is the ongoing five-month strike of 700 nurses at St. Vincent hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts over safe staffing ratios. The strike is now in critical danger of being sold out by their union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). When the strike began in March, about 100 nurses crossed the picket line. St. Vincent and its multibillion-dollar owner Tenet claim that around 200 nurses have crossed the picket line.

After five days of secret negotiations with executives of the hospital, the MNA bargaining committee signed off on a tentative proposal that does not meet the nurses’ central demand of guaranteed safe staffing. The MNA bargaining committee was only prevented from carrying through with this betrayal and ending the strike by Tenet’s refusal to remove the scab replacements it hired during the strike.

More than 830 workers at three Tenet-owned hospitals in Southern California last month authorized a walkout over staffing, pay, benefits and pandemic-related safeguards. However, the National Union of Healthcare Workers negotiated contracts for the hospital workers to prevent a strike, refusing to mobilize these workers to back the nurses at St. Vincent who are facing betrayal by the MNA.

In Chicago, 300 nurses at the Community First Medical Center went on a one-day strike July 26, while 1,400 nurses from USC Keck & USC Norris Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles went on a two-day strike July 13-14 to voice their protest over unsafe staffing ratios.

Last month, nurses at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania voted to authorize a strike after six months of negotiations. Nurses are frustrated that hospital management has failed to respond to their request for measures to deal with the nurse staffing crisis.

“A nursing crisis has been happening before the pandemic,” Kayla Rath, a postpartum nurse, told a rally last month. “It’s just gotten much worse. I know many nurses that left because it was too stressful and we haven’t replaced them.”

West Penn is part of the Allegheny Health Network, which comprises several facilities. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) already represents some 4,000 workers at Allegheny Health, and the union has made clear that it will not seek to unite these workers in a common struggle.

In Connecticut, a strike set to begin June 4 was called off at the 11th hour by SEIU District 1199 New England. This was the third time in a month that the SEIU called off a strike in the state by nursing home and group home workers at the last minute.

Nurses at Mc Laren Macomb Hospital in Michigan had also voiced their opposition to unsafe staffing ratios and were ready to go on strike, but were presented with a rotten contract sanctioned by Local 40 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU). When its contents were first made public, the WSWS wrote that “items listed are vague and indicate that there are no meaningful enforcement mechanisms in place to specifically guarantee that McLaren will abide by the staffing obligation.”

A nurse at McLaren informed the WSWS that nothing has changed since then, saying, “Still the same terrible staffing issues. And to make it worse, staffing did not know we ratified our contract that had new nurse-to-patient ratios, so they keep trying to staff us to the old matrix.”

Many hospitals were and are still unprepared to deal with the influx of patients due to COVID-19, and conditions are getting worse in hospitals with each passing day the Delta variant is allowed to rampage through the population, with some states in even worse straits than others.

A recent study by WalletHub compared the 50 US states and the District of Columbia across 44 measures of health care costs, accessibility and outcomes. Louisiana and Arkansas, now experiencing more COVID-19 hospitalizations than ever before, ranked the second and third worst states for health care.

Florida ranked 14th worst in this same study, and due to the major influx of hospitalizations is expected to have critical staff shortages in 70 percent of hospitals, according to the Florida Hospital Association. In Nevada, ranked the ninth-worst state, cases are also rising with each passing day. On August 4, nurses protested at Mountain View Hospital in opposition to unsafe staffing ratios.

The deepening crisis of the health care system as it intersects with the pandemic is creating worsening conditions for nurses and other health care workers and propelling them into struggle. This is epitomized by the struggle at St. Vincent Hospital. The ongoing isolation of their strike on the part of the MNA and AFL-CIO is a deliberate policy. The unions long ago abandoned the defense of the workers and have spent decades securing pro-company agreements, while channeling workers’ political opposition behind the Democratic Party.

Hundreds of vaccinated students test positive for COVID-19 at Duke University

James Langley

After hundreds of vaccinated students and staff tested positive for COVID-19 at Duke University, the university administration is implementing stricter measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Duke Chapel (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Although Duke boasts the highest vaccination rate among major North Carolina universities and is requiring all students and staff to receive their shot by October 1, last week 349 students and 15 employees tested positive for the virus. All but eight were fully vaccinated. These cases have arisen in the context of vaccination rates for students standing at 98 percent, and 92 percent for faculty. Students are also tested weekly and those who are unvaccinated are required to take a test twice a week.

In an attempt to control the growing outbreak, the administration is placing new limits on student activities. In addition to the previous mandate requiring masks in classrooms and indoor settings, all students must now wear masks outdoors, while at the gym and generally around other students. All indoor seating for dining has been moved outside, with more than 25 tents set up across campus for meals. Faculty have also been given the temporary option of shifting classes online for the next two weeks due to many students missing class because of quarantine.

According to the Raleigh News and Observer, Duke administrators announced the new guidelines in an email saying “this surge is placing significant stress on the people, systems and facilities that are dedicated to protecting our health, safety and the ability of Duke to fulfill its educational mission, particularly our isolation space for on-campus students who test positive.”

One year ago, while classes were fully remote, only 241 students and staff tested positive for coronavirus during the entire fall semester, in contrast to the 349 positive cases just this past week. Such a substantial increase in transmission is occurring under conditions where universities and schools are attempting to reopen under normal conditions, all while the Delta variant continues to spread throughout the population, causing more and more breakthrough cases and filling up ICU units across the state.

In fact, more than 3,700 people are currently hospitalized across North Carolina. At Duke University Hospital and Duke Health Raleigh, the ICUs are currently at capacity. At Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, two ICU beds are available. In the larger Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle region, there are a cumulative 12 remaining ICU beds available to treat critically ill patients.

Over the month of August, 788 North Carolinians died from COVID-19, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic since February, even though vaccines have become widely available. The state also reported over 7,200 new cases on Wednesday, with a 13.8 percent positivity rate. Of the cases that have been sequenced, 97 percent are Delta, according to the latest report from the CDC.

Other universities across the state have also begun to reopen for full in-person instruction during August, though most are not requiring students or staff to be vaccinated. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, from August 23 to August 30, 158 students and 16 employees tested positive. At UNC Chapel Hill, 230 students tested positive in the last week, and 468 were reported in the last month.

At Appalachian State University, where only 51 percent of students and 88 percent of staff are vaccinated, 216 positive tests have been reported. Though university testing is limited and these figures may not represent the full extent of the spread, the positivity rate has surged to 10.5 percent this past week, the highest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

In response to this, more than 200 faculty have petitioned to move all possible courses online until vaccination rates increase and COVID-19 transmission rates decrease.

Across the nation, students and faculty are facing similar conditions, with University of Michigan faculty circulating a similar petition that has received over 700 signatures from graduate students, lecturers and staff.

Pandemic-related unemployment programs expire for over 7.5 million jobless workers in the US

Jacob Crosse

The Labor Day holiday this weekend marks the end of pandemic-related unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers after the Democratic Party-controlled Congress and President Joe Biden refused to lift a finger to extend the programs which have served as a critical lifeline.

Pedestrians wear face coverings while passing by a sign on an empty restaurant/retail space Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021, in downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Despite the fact that COVID-19 continues to spread uncontrolled throughout the country, resulting in at least 660,000 deaths as of this writing, the ruthless logic of the capitalist system demands that workers return to work producing profits for the ruling class, even if it kills them and their families. An average of 164,000 people are testing positive for the virus every day.

Research conducted by the Century Foundation found that the ending of the CARES Act’s pandemic unemployment aid programs, such as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), will leave some 7.5 million workers with no unemployment benefits on Labor Day, September 6, 2021.

“This is a five-alarm fire that we’re treating as if nothing were wrong,” Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, told Politico. “It is an act of policy negligence to allow a record number of workers to be completely cut off from unemployment benefits as the Delta variant surges, jeopardizing the economic progress we have made.”

The elimination of the unemployment programs, meager as they were, will spell catastrophe for millions of jobless workers and their families, many of whom have been forced to subsist on the paltry payments to pay for basic necessities, such as food, shelter and medicine.

While the US government is consigning millions of people to hunger, homelessness and poverty, no such worries plague Wall Street bankers and money managers, who will continue to grow fat off of the Federal Reserve’s monthly $120 billion injections, which Chairman Jerome Powell indicated last Friday would continue.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to set record highs, lining the pockets of the ultra-wealthy and politically connected. Meanwhile, the latest report from the Department of Labor gives some indication of the large number of people reliant on unemployment benefits who will now be without any income. For the week ending August 14, over 12 million claims were made across all unemployment programs. This includes 5.4 million for the PUA and 3.8 million continued claims under the PEUC.

The PUA program was designed for so-called “gig” and contract workers, who would typically not qualify for traditional state unemployment benefits, while the PEUC is designed for workers who have already exhausted state benefits, which in many states typically last between 20 and 26 weeks, but in some states, such as Florida, can be as little as 12 weeks.

The FPUC initially provided an additional $600-a-week federal bonus on top of state-level unemployment benefits. However, this ended last July and was only reinstated briefly by then-President Donald Trump at $300 a week, half of the previous amount, and revived by the Democrats this year at the same level.

A March analysis from Forbes found that there is not a single state where the average weekly state benefit is more than $475, with a vast majority doling out between $236 and $320 a week, that is, between $12,272 and $16,640 a year. For comparison’s sake, a full-time minimum wage worker working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, can expect to earn just over $15,000.

An unemployed worker from Detroit told the World Socialist Web Site that the cutoff of pandemic relief “has made it very difficult to pay bills and forces me to panic.

“Three hundred dollars a week is not enough to pay bills or even buy groceries for two weeks. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) at least gave me a few hundred extra dollars to pay bills. Not to mention student loans will go back to normal deductions soon.”

The elimination of benefits began earlier this summer, in June, when 26 states, all but one governed by a Republican, began ending the federal benefits prematurely. The cutoff was done with the blessing of the Biden administration, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters on June 4 that Republican governors “have every right” to “not accept” federal unemployment payments, adding, “That’s OK.”

The cutting of benefits was hailed in the capitalist press, including NBC News, as a “bold, mass, social and economic experiment” to see if starving workers would be prodded back to work during a public health catastrophe.

The results of this criminal “experiment” were revealed in a recent paper, authored by economists and researchers at Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Toronto. The paper found that ending benefits early did not translate into mass hiring. Instead, in the “cutoff states” studied between June and August, the researchers found that the majority who lost benefits, seven out of eight, did not find new jobs.

“Most people lost benefits and weren’t able to find jobs,” wrote University of Massachusetts Amherst Economics Professor and co-author of the paper, Arindrajit Dube. While the cutoff did not fuel job growth, it did result in a nearly $2 billion reduction in consumer spending from June through the first week of August in the “cutoff states.”

“They turned down federal transfers, and that money didn’t come back into the state [from new jobs income],” University of Toronto Assistant Professor of Economics Michael Stepner told CNBC.

The elimination of the benefits follows the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium. While vindictive landlords and right-wing judges continued to file and process evictions throughout the pandemic, including nearly half a million in the 31 cities tracked by the Princeton Eviction Lab since March 2020, the complete elimination of the moratorium has left some 3.5 million people at risk of eviction in the next two months, according to a mid-August U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey.

One estimate from Goldman Sachs suggested that 750,000 renter households would likely lose their homes by the end of the year. The same analysis found that between 1 and 2 million households would not receive any federal support, putting them at risk of eviction.

The cutting off of benefits, coupled with the ending of the eviction moratorium, is forcing millions of workers and their families to move in with friends and relatives to avoid homelessness. The cramming of people into small apartments and rental homes exacerbates the spread of the deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus.

This has been given a further boost thanks to the duplicitous trade unions, which have worked hand in glove with the ruling class to reopen schools for in-person learning. This anti-scientific policy has led to the mass infection of children and hundreds of preventable deaths among educators and school personnel, while at the same time fueling community spread of the virus.

While Biden and the Democrats touted the passage of the American Rescue Plan in March as the “most progressive” and “transformative” piece of social legislation since the New Deal of the 1940s, the fact is that many of the “benefits” contained within the bill are mired in red tape or are fleeting, such as enhanced unemployment benefits.

Another example is the estimated $46.6 billion in federal rental assistance included in the bill, which was supposed to help offset the over $70 billion in back rent owed, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. However, the Treasury Department revealed this past week that only $5.1 billion, or 11 percent, of the funds had been distributed through July, leaving millions of renters without access to the much needed support. Like state unemployment systems, the process for applying for and getting approved for the aid is purposely convoluted and difficult to navigate.

Australian COVID-19 outbreak in Aboriginal communities exposes severe healthcare crisis

John Mackay

The spread of COVID-19 from its current epicentre in Sydney, to western parts of the state of New South Wales (NSW), is creating a crisis for rural health care systems, especially those that cover the highly vulnerable populations of Aboriginal communities. Currently, more than 750 indigenous people are infected and one Aboriginal man has died.

Australian Medical Assistance Teams in Wilcannia offering door-to-door COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. (Source: Wilcannia On The Baaka Darling River Facebook)

The virus is now widespread in rural NSW. In the regional hub of Dubbo, in the state’s central west, there are more than 450 active cases. Other rural towns closer to Sydney also have active infections including Orange, Bathurst, Parkes, Forbes and Bourke.

Western Local Health district chief executive Scott McLachlan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last week that the infection levels were “very concerning” and the “numbers of cases infectious in the community means the potential further spread of this virus across the whole of Western NSW.” Further adding increased pressure to the health care system, 156 health staff were in isolation after being identified as close contacts.

A microcosm of the disaster facing the Aboriginal population is the situation unfolding in the small rural town of Wilcannia, almost 1000 kilometres west of Sydney.

With the announcement of seven new cases today, there are now 85 COVID infections in the town. Given that the population is just 745, more than 11 percent have contracted the virus. This makes it the largest hotspot in the state by per capita infection, with more than double the rate of the worst hotspots in Sydney. Over 60 percent of the population are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and at least 62 of the active cases are people who are Indigenous.

The dire social conditions in these rural communities are accelerating the disaster. In a 2017 survey conducted of households in western NSW, the Murdi Paaki Regional Assembly (MPRA) found that 54 percent of Wilcannia residents lived in properties that were “often or always crowded.” Some 26 percent said their living conditions had affected their health.

In an interview with the ABC, Chloe Quayle, who grew up in the area, said COVID-19 was “ripping through the community like wildfire at the moment, which is really, really scary”. Quayle explained that people were “isolating in tents down on the river and stuff, and sleeping out the front [of their homes] if they tested positive. How are you supposed to isolate when there is so much overcrowding in the homes?”

Catherine Bugmy, interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, has been forced to wash her clothes in a nearby lagoon, as she is not allowed to use communal washing facilities since testing positive for the virus. She does not have access to a microwave or toaster, and was given stale food by the authorities, which she had to cook with a fire outside. “We’ve been cooking kangaroo tail, and dry curry,” she said, “Government got to put their foot down and help.”

COVID test results are taking up to a week to be reported, leading to infected people spending longer in the community and transmitting the virus. The town’s medical centre does not have intensive care or ventilator facilities, and nor do many regional hospitals.

Last week, an Aboriginal woman with COVID-19, who had difficulty breathing, was reportedly turned away from the Wilcannia medical service. Only later was she airlifted to Adelaide Hospital, nearly 600 kilometres away.

In a Facebook video about the incident, indigenous woman Monica Kerrin noted the absence of any ventilators in Wilcannia, commenting: “This woman needs medical treatment right now… she is struggling to breathe.” Kerrin said that when the woman was first at the medical facility, “they wouldn’t let her in the front door. They made her sit out in the cold.”

In a chilling warning, Kerrin added that NSW Health does not “have a COVID plan here, they don’t have ventilators. They don’t have anything. I think they’ve just got body bags”.

The NSW Government is acutely aware of the existing healthcare crisis among rural Aboriginal communities. In 2012, the current NSW Health Chief Medical Officer, Dr Kerry Chant, prepared a report into the health problems of Aboriginal people in Western NSW.

Titled “The Health of Aboriginal People of NSW: Report of the Chief Health Officer,” it covered Aboriginal life expectancy and child mortality, the health of mothers and children, risk factors for ill health, as well as delivery of health services to this population.

Now almost a decade old, the report found that hospitalisation rates were 1.7 times higher for Aboriginal people than for the general population. The indigenous were also 2.7 times more likely to be hospitalised for diabetes, and suffered increased rates for cardiovascular disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. All these underlying conditions heighten the risk factors for COVID-19.

The rates have only increased in the past ten years. According to a 2019 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), more than half of the NSW Aboriginal population had one or more chronic conditions that posed a significant health problem.

Last year, the Maari Ma Aboriginal Health corporation warned federal Indigenous Health Minister Ken Wyatt of “grave fears” that the virus would spread to the vulnerable communities. They outlined the risks caused by high rates of overcrowded and poorly maintained housing, a lack of food security, a highly mobile population and issues with poor health and chronic diseases.

Maari Ma CEO Bob Davis, author of the letter, wrote “the poverty and extreme vulnerability of Aboriginal people and communities in the Murdi Pakki region [which encompasses much of far-western NSW] is a direct result of decades of failed government policies. I’m sure you can understand our anxiety that these failures do not continue, or worsen, throughout the COVID-19 crisis.”

In a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week, Maari Ma Aboriginal Health stated that a “humanitarian crisis” was unfolding. The official response had been “chaotic,” and the mistakes and problems were mounting...Disappointingly no tangible plan was in place prior to this outbreak that could have been easily implemented. As a result, we’ve been playing catch up from day one”.

The NSW Liberal-National government has sought to redirect responsibility for this crisis onto the very communities affected. Health Minister Brad Hazzard labelled those who attended a funeral in Wilcannia, on August 13, as “selfish,” stating “if you are actually spreading the virus, you could be responsible for people's deaths.” As family members of the deceased have noted, the funeral was held prior to the announcement of a state-wide lockdown.

In reality, the NSW government is responsible for the crisis occurring in regional communities, as well as in Sydney. With the support of the state Labor opposition, it has refused to implement workplace closures and other measures demanded by epidemiologists to stop the spread, and is instead insisting that the population must “learn to live with the virus.”

Hazzard also insinuated that vaccine hesitancy among indigenous communities was contributing to the outbreaks. Last week, the ABC reported that only 6.3 percent of the Aboriginal population in Western NSW was fully-vaccinated, compared with 26 percent of the non-indigenous population in the region.

Jamie Newman, from Orange Aboriginal Medical services, told the ABC’s 7.30 Report that vaccination rates were low due to reduced supply. “We had overwhelming support for [vaccinations] but when we're having 100 to 200 doses of vaccine delivered a fortnight, you can't maintain connection with communities by offering something that's not there,” he said. The low rates are one expression of a shambolic rollout across the board.

The crisis in Wilcannia, and more broadly, is an indictment of state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike. For decades they have slashed public healthcare funding in remote areas, regional centres and the major cities alike. Now their homicidal program of letting the virus rip, to ensure corporate profits, is leading to a catastrophe for workers, the vulnerable and the poor.