Pandemic and disrupted supply chains bring major problems for Australian economy

Nick Beams

In line with the government’s “reopening” agenda, even as COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths surge out of control, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has delivered an upbeat assessment of the direction of the Australian economy.

It was contained in the statement on monetary policy issued by RBA governor Philip Lowe following a meeting of the central bank’s board on Tuesday.

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe (Credit: Wikimedia)

Notwithstanding the June quarter data already showed a slowing of growth, Lowe said that, prior to the Delta outbreak, the Australian economy had “considerable momentum,” but this recovery was being “interrupted” by Delta. Gross domestic product was expected to “decline materially in the September quarter and the unemployment rate will move higher in coming months.”

However, the optimistic assessment continued, the “setback to the economy” was expected to be only temporary. The economy would grow again in the December quarter and was “expected to be around its pre-Delta path in the second half of next year.”

The only change the bank made in its monetary policy was to slow its reduction of purchases of government bonds. It will go ahead with an earlier decision to cut its weekly purchases of bonds from $5 billion a week to $4 billion but will delay any further reductions from November until early next year.

It repeated earlier commitments to the financial markets it would not increase its base interest rate of 0.1 percent until inflation was “sustainably” within the range of 2 to 3 percent. This was not expected until 2024.

A somewhat different assessment was set out in an article in the Australian Financial Review by Gareth Aird, the head of the Australian economic division at the Commonwealth Bank, published earlier this week.

He began with a pointed remark on methodology, noting that when economists try to predict the future it always looks good “because the problems of the present have essentially been assumed away.”

“My overriding sense is that most economists are currently so fixated on the medium term that they are unwittingly downplaying what is an extraordinary negative near-term shock for the Australian economy.”

Aird forecast that the Australian economy will contract by a “whopping” 4.5 percent in the September quarter and this “massive loss of production will be accompanied by a huge fall in jobs.”

The bank’s estimate is employment will decline by half a million, representing 7 percent of NSW and Victorian workers and there will be no immediate bounce in the December quarter.

Taking issue with the “consensus view” that an economic rebound will be very swift once stay-at-home orders are lifted, he said things would look very different when the NSW and Victorian economies exit lockdowns.

“Economic activity and employment will rise because the base will be low. But the reopening will likely be accompanied by a surge in COVID-19 cases—as has been the case overseas.

“It will be simply a matter of time before the virus has spread across the entire country, although some states will try to keep it out for as long as possible.”

“Living with COVID-19,” he continued, would produce what he euphemistically termed a “significant period of adjustment for households and businesses as the virus circulates within the community in large numbers and hospitalisations rise.”

But, in line with his fellow economists, for whom the economy in the final analysis is not concerned with the lives, health and well-being of the population but corporate profits, the “good news” is that by the middle of next year Australians will have “adjusted” to life with COVID.

By that time Australia would be in a similar position to that of the UK—where infections, hospitalisations and infections of children have continued to rise as a result of the reopening of the Johnson government. COVID-19 will be treated “in much the same way as we treat other viruses” and the “economy should start to fire on all cylinders again.”

This is a repeat of one of the big lies used to push the reopening program. Society has not “learned to live” with other deadly viruses, such as polio, along with smallpox and others, but has eradicated them. But this policy, entirely possible if scientific measures are undertaken, has been ruled out for COVID because of its impact on profit.

Economic activity in Australia is being impacted by the surge of the pandemic around the world, making clear that eradication has to be a global strategy.

As thousands of workers in warehouses and distribution centres are in isolation because of virus infections, major retailers are reporting that their global supply chains are being increasingly disrupted.

Bernie Brooks, a former CEO of Myer, now running a handbag and jewellery chain, told the Guardian that there was a “dramatically bad” supply chain situation across Asia, the source of many of the goods on the shelves of retailers.

“What we continue to see is just this snowball down a hill, a gathering of different [COVID-19 related] influences… that means that probably the supply out of Asia has been the worst I’ve seen in 40 years of retail history.”

Earlier this week, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) report said: “Balloons, books, bikes, hair products, game consoles. Name almost any item imported to Australia and you can bet a retailer is struggling to get it, and it’s costing a fortune to get it here.”

The ABC report quoted a retailer of children’s bicycles who said she was now waiting months for some stocks. “Before when we had a sale, we would just call up [the wholesaler] and order it and we would have it within days.” Now the supply of cheaper bikes had dropped by 50 percent and the waiting time for high-end bikes was between six and 10 months.

Paul Zahra of the Retailers Association told the ABC that small businesses had been “absolutely decimated by this pandemic” and would be “even more impacted by the supply chain issues that they’re currently experiencing.”

It is not only a question of supply. Retailers, he said, were paying up to four times the previous cost of shipping products to Australia and this would ultimately impact on prices.

The growing supply chain crisis is not confined to the retail sector but is hitting manufacturing industry as well.

Virtually every manufacturing firm is dependent on the supply of raw materials, such as steel and copper, components and parts, ranging from the most complex to the simplest, from all over the world—China, Southeast Asia, India and Europe. And these suppliers, in turn, are part of other global supply chains, all of which are being disrupted. The result is that orders that used to be filled within days now take weeks or months.

Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Fellowship 2022/2023

Application Deadline: 5th November 2021 for the 2022 Fellowships (the deadline for reference letters is November 11th, 2021)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries and Emerging Economies

To be taken at: Top universities abroad

Accepted Subject Areas: Physical sciences and related disciplines

About Fellowship: Each year, The Faculty for the Future fellowships, Launched by the Schlumberger Foundation, are awarded to women from developing and emerging economies who are preparing for PhD or post-doctoral study in the physical sciences and related disciplines at top universities for their disciplines abroad. Grant recipients are selected for their leadership capabilities as for their scientific talents, and are expected to return to their home countries to continue their academic careers and inspire other young women.

Offered Since: 2004

Type: PhD/PostDoctoral, Fellowship

Selection Criteria: A successful application will have gone through four selection rounds, with the reviewers paying particular attention to the following criteria:

• Academic performance;
• Quality of references;
• Quality of host country university;
• Level of commitment to return to home country;
• Commitment to teaching;
• Relevance of research to home country;
• Commitment to inspiring young women into the sciences.

Eligibility: Applicants must meet all the following criteria:

• Be a woman;
• Be a citizen of a developing country or emerging economy;
• Wish to pursue a PhD degree or Post-doctoral research in the physical sciences or related disciplines;
• Have applied to, have been admitted to, or are currently enrolled in a university/research institute abroad;
• Wish to return to their home country to continue their academic career upon completion of their studies;
• Be very committed to teaching and demonstrate active participation in faculty life and outreach work to encourage young women into the sciences;
• Hold an excellent academic record.

Number of fellowships: Several

Value of Award: Faculty for the Future grants are awarded based on the actual costs of studying and living in the chosen location, and is worth USD 50,000 for PhDs and USD 40,000 for Post-doctoral study. Grants may be renewed through to completion of studies subject to performance, self-evaluation and recommendations from supervisors.

How to Apply: Interested candidates may Apply below

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Iran’s President Raisi faces fifth wave of pandemic as economic pressures and opposition from workers grow

Jean Shaoul

By far the country worst affected by Covid-19 in the Middle East, Iran has for weeks been grappling with a fifth wave of infections—the strongest yet. Daily deaths and cases are mounting amid criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic on social media.

According to the latest official figures, over 12,000 people, including children, have died from Covid-19 in the last two weeks, overwhelming Iran’s rundown public health service. It brings the total death toll to more than 110,000, although the state-run Shargh daily said that “experts believed the actual figure is 2.5 times more.”

Some 7,689 people are in severe condition and are being treated in intensive care units, while more than 600 people are dying every day, including members of Iran’s ruling circle. Last week, local media reported that Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of Iran’s armed forces until 2016 and then military advisor to supreme leader Ali Khamenei, had died of coronavirus aged 70.

Hospitals are so overcrowded that patients line the floors and the most desperate lay waiting on the streets. Vital medicines are in short supply.

US sanctions on Iran targeting its oil exports, which have suffered a catastrophic loss of $100 billion in revenues, and its access to the US-dominated international banking system, have ravaged the country’s healthcare system, denying it access to pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.

People wait for their turn to receive Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Iran Mall shopping center in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 9, 2021. So far only 3 million people out of Iran's population of 80 million have had both vaccine doses. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

At the same time, Iran’s pro-business clerical regime, by seeking to impose the full burden of the economic crisis caused by the sanctions and the pandemic on the working class and poor farmers to protect the country’s corrupt financial elite, has played a crucial role in allowing the coronavirus to sweep through the population.

Chairing his first cabinet meeting, President Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the “hardline” or “principalist” faction around Khamenei, was forced to admit the scale of the crisis confronting workers and their families. He said that Iran is “seriously lagging behind” in many areas and pledged to improve its economy and Covid response, saying that the current situation “does not befit” the Islamic republic.

However, he failed to announce any measures to reduce the transmission of the disease other than “advising” people to wear masks and maintain social distancing. Raisi lifted a six-day closure and travel ban last month, even as cases were rising.

The pandemic is all but invisible in the country’s heavily censored media, with the president calling for any public discussion of the pandemic to focus on “creating maximum hope and refraining from creating fear and anxiety in the people.” Last month, the Iranian authorities arrested six prominent human rights lawyers and activists who were reportedly preparing a complaint against the government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. While one of them was released the next day, the rest were detained.

A health official has admitted the government spent more than $800 million on a drug with a poor record of treating the disease’s symptoms. This money could have been used to purchase more than 160 million doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, more than enough to vaccinate every Iranian adult. Instead, Khamenei banned the purchase of American and British vaccines in January, claiming that the West would use them to experiment on Iranians.

As a result, Iran’s vaccination programme has been slow to get off the ground. Although Khamenei and government officials insisted that Iran was developing its own “safe and effective” vaccines, and that most of the population would be inoculated by mid-summer, problems with its development left the country dependent on the import of vaccines from Russia and China that have only recently become available. According to the Health Ministry, just 9.5 million of Iran’s 85 million population have received their second dose of a vaccine and just under 19.5 million Iranians have received their first.

Last week, 10 prominent Iranian activists, including Narges Mohammadi and Mohammad Nourizad—both of whom served time as political prisoners, and renowned filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof—wrote to Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other international rights organization. The called for urgent action on Iran’s Covid crisis, including requiring the Iranian government to import vaccines.

They said, “We will be facing terrifying mass deaths in Iran if enough vaccines are not imported to vaccinate everyone in the country,' blaming Khamenei's vaccine ban, the lack of other vaccines and the government's promotion of large religious gatherings that acted as super-spreaders, while stressing that the official figures are not to be trusted.

Iran’s currency has fallen to nearly one tenth of its value since 2017, forcing the government to print money to make up for its loss of foreign income. Inflation is approaching 50 percent, eroding workers’ wages. Government officials have admitted that up to 60 percent of Iranians have fallen below the poverty line, far higher than the 30 percent reported in official statistics, and are unable to afford many food items. New data show that the prices of seven food items, including cooking oil, beverages, mushrooms, tomatoes, butter and carrots, rose more than 100 percent in July compared with last year, along with an increase in the cost of medications.

Real estate prices have also risen after people bought properties to protect their savings, leading to higher rents amid a massive shortage of affordable homes as workers have moved from the drought-affected rural areas to the cities.

Speaking on state television, President Raisi insisted he would deliver on his campaign promise to build one million affordable housing units for sale a year during his term in office. But the scale of the task was revealed in Iran’s business media, which reported it would cost $15 billion a year, more than last year’s oil export revenues. The reports pointed out that at $200 per square metre, even a 50 square metre apartment would cost $10,000, beyond the reach of most workers. Others questioned how electricity and water would be supplied to new homes given the existing power and water shortages.

Strikes and protests that subsided with the onset of the pandemic have now begun to reemerge, including the ongoing strike by contract workers in the state-owned petrochemical industry and protests over the shortage of electricity and water.

On Sunday, hundreds of teachers rallied outside the parliament and the budget and planning building in Tehran to protest the cancellation of a pay increase, agreed by the former Rouhani administration. They chanted, “With Masters and PhD, we are paid a small salary.” Their wages, around $120 a month, are far less than the $400 minimum needed to avoid poverty. Masoud Mirkazemi, the incoming head of the Budget and Planning Organization, dismissed the pay increase as unaffordable and criticized the previous administration for making such a pledge to teachers.

The regime came under further criticism when leaked video clips from security cameras in Tehran's Evin Prison, where many political prisoners are held, revealed the scale of the physical abuse suffered by inmates. According to the website of Iran International, one clip shows police officers attacking a handcuffed prisoner as others look on. Another shows several people trying to prevent the suicide of a fellow prisoner and a third shows inmates carrying another prisoner, presumably to the clinic, without the assistance of wardens.

While all the political factions would like to see the lifting of US sanctions and the revival of the nuclear accord with the major powers—as a way out of the economic, social and political crisis confronting the regime—it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the US will agree to lift all the sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration in 2018, as well as additional ones imposed later. While Raisi has expressed his support for the talks in Vienna to lift the sanctions, he said he would not agree to negotiate under pressure, a reference to the demands by the United States and its European allies not to further delay the talks.

Tehran is hoping to take advantage of the collapse of Washington’s puppet regime in Afghanistan—although relations with the Taliban are by no means good—to improve its bargaining position and is in no hurry to restart the talks, paused in June pending Raisi’s inauguration.

Iran’s new foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said it was important for Iran to maintain symmetrical relations, implying that he sought to strengthen relations with Iran’s neighbours and regional countries, and underlined the importance of Asia for the new administration, including the further strengthening of ties with Russia and China, in line with Tehran’s “look to the east” policy.

Rebellion by Chilean miners comes into conflict with unions

Mauricio Saavedra

One hundred and ten workers were fired last month by Sigdo Koppers, a transnational engineering and construction company, days after some 500 workers launched a wildcat strike against “subhuman” working conditions. The incident took place at the “Salares Norte” silver and gold mine project owned by Gold Fields, located 4,000 meters above sea level in the northern mining region of Atacama, Chile.

The incident was brought to light September 2 on the Facebook page La voz del minero (The voice of the miner) run by the Morenoite International Workers Movement (MIT), an organization dedicated to preventing workers from breaking from the moribund trade union framework.

The events were relayed in a letter submitted by the fired workers.

Chuquicamata miners on strike (Twitter)

The letter states, “We are more than 110 workers fired from the Sigdo Koppers company in the Salares Norte project of the Gold Fields company… as a reprisal by the company for paralyzing work because of the terrible working conditions.”

“On August 14, more than 110 workers of the shift in struggle received a letter of dismissal for false ‘abandonment of work’(w)hen our decision was only not to get on the buses as a protest, but we never abandoned the work sites,” the workers stated. The day before “more than 500 workers decided not to get on the shift bus because of the bad working, living and accommodation conditions. They also demanded a bonus for (working at high) altitudes and a bonus to end the conflict.”

The fired workers were employed as subcontractors on an engineering and construction operation for the South African gold mining giant Gold Fields. The US$860 million project, scheduled to be completed in late 2022, was initiated in 2020 as the country was suffering a peak of COVID-19 cases. The northern mining regions were among the hardest hit.

The letter continues “The mobilization began because we, the workers, could no longer put up with the terrible working conditions that we have had since the beginning of this project. Seven workers were hospitalized due to food poisoning. The working conditions in the middle of winter are subhuman, with buses stuck in snow storms at 24 degrees below zero, the company put all the workers together in just one bus. The workers who complain are dismissed…”

“We denounce the union delegate of SINAMIND (National inter-company trade union for industrial assembly, civil works and industrial services) who did NOT support the mobilization and met with the company behind closed doors and behind the backs of the workers. These leaders are not trustworthy and are on the side of the company. That is why the dismissed workers of SIGDO KOPPERS are organizing ourselves to fight against our dismissals, in court and in organization. Workers who want to join us are invited to contact our trusted media ‘La Voz del Minero,’” the workers wrote.

In another dispute also reported by La voz del minero, Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti workers initiated a wildcat strike last week, the third in so many months due to terrible working conditions at the Chuquicamata underground site in the region of Antofagasta.

Chuquicamata, one of several mines owned by Codelco, the largest copper company in the world, directly employs about 2,770 workers. However, the majority of the workers are employed under inferior conditions by subcontractors such as Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti.

The workers launched a wildcat strike earlier in May in defiance of their union’s closed door negotiations with the employer that threatened worse conditions than the contract in force.

“We got tired of the decreases in wages and conditions,” reported one worker. “The ones who really lose are us. We are working our asses off and traveling thousands of kilometers away from our families and inside the mines is not a stroll in the park. Moreover, COVID is infecting many people at work and nobody seems to be interested in that.”

The three-day picket last May was ultimately broken when the subcontractor, Codelco and the company union prevented a shift change, stopping other Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti employees from joining. Workers are flown in on chartered flights to the mine which sits in the desert-like Andean ranges at 2,850 meters above sea level and 215 km away from the closest city. Moreover, the workers were deliberately isolated by the other unions on the site, which prevented their members from joining the picket with threats and intimidation.

The eruption of wildcat strikes outside the control of the unions is a significant development in the multi-tiered mining industry, a key sector of the Chilean economy. The fight launched by Sigdo Koppers and the Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti employees is connected to an incipient rebellion against the much-hated corporatist unions which have served as industrial policemen for the capitalist class.

Mass casualization of labor and increasing precariousness that is so ubiquitous in the mining industry today could not have been imposed without the connivance of the trade unions. These organizations, under the control of political representatives of the Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party or Frente Amplio, have over the last 40 years been a crucial pillar of capitalist stability.

This year, collective bargaining agreements have been or will be negotiated covering some 20,000 miners permanently employed by the giants of the mining sector: Codelco, BHP Billiton, Lumina Copper, Collahuasi and AngloAmerican. In some cases there exist several unions representing employees in one company. Codelco’s El Teniente mine in the O'Higgins Region, for instance, directly employs 3,300 workers, yet they are broken up into five unions—Caletones, El Teniente, No. 7, No. 5, Unificado—each bargaining separately. Their agreements are again different from the deal reached between Codelco Andina in Valparaíso, where the 1,070-member union signed a 36-month contract that does not include a single pay increase. Instead each member will receive a one-off bonus equivalent to US $5,800, and incentives are thrown in for production goals met.

Yet this bears almost no relation to the reality confronting the vast majority of the casualized, subcontracted workforce in Chile that in the last 22 months suffered mass layoffs and furloughs. On Monday, the National Mining Society (Sonami) reported that there were 219,000 workers directly involved in mining in May-July 2021, as compared to May-July 2020 when there were 185,000. But in 2019 there were 236,000 employed (likewise in the auxiliary industries there were 602,000 employed in 2019, 510,000 in 2020, 542,000 in 2021.)

This level of joblessness, insecurity and precariousness amid non-stop mining activity, 10-year-high record copper prices, bonanza profits and massive dividend payouts to shareholders is what is driving the class struggle and the growing conflict with the union apparatus that has for so long done the bidding of big business.

But just as workers come into direct conflict with these moribund institutions, the satellite pseudo-left forces like the Morenoites of the MIT intervene to prevent workers from making a decisive break and instead push them back into the fold. How the Morenoites do this is by firstly glorifying the spontaneity of the workers, as though sheer militancy is all that is required to overcome the domination of and the limitations of syndicalism as well as the betrayal of the unions.

“The workers are bypassing the union bureaucracy and taking the struggle for their demands into their own hands, using the most effective historical methods of the class struggle, such as production stoppages, rank-and-file assemblies and self-organization,” wrote the La voz del minero on August 14, referring to the outbreak of the Sigdo Koppers wildcat strike. Yet on the day of publication the 110 workers were fired.

The Morenoites make no attempt to provide any political leadership, any guidance to the struggling workers. Instead, from a safe distance, they “encourage” workers and passively report on the unfolding of events without having to hold themselves accountable for the inevitable defeats.

That is because the main purpose of the MIT’s intervention is to keep the workers straitjacketed to the unions and the capitalist state. It makes criticisms of the “bureaucracy that does not want to fight,” only to promote the illusion that with mass pressure or with founding new, more militant unions, the union bureaucracies will be forced to fight.

As one of many examples, on April 23 La Voz del Minero wrote, “We call on the leaders of (all the major union federations) to move from words to action, organizing unitary assemblies in all the workplaces and divisions of the country, without differences of unions, plant workers and contractors, so that this April 30 will be a general strike of miners and workers in other areas.” Of course this pipe dream never happened.

This is the method of classical Pabloism, shared by another Morenoite party in Chile, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PTR)- La Izquierda Diario, which last May also implored the union bureaucracy to “show solidarity and support Acciona's strike in an active way.” The bureaucracy did become active, threatening workers with intimidation tactics.

In reality, the unions long ago stopped functioning as social reformist organizations claiming to represent the interests of workers in the capital-labor relation. The actual existing corporatized trade unions function as an institutionalized police force, determined to protect the corporate and financial interests of the ruling elites and their governments against growing popular resistance.

Summer ends with 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in Spain as schools reopen

Alejandro López

This summer, there have been 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in Spain, with 2,800 in August alone. These horrific figures are the result of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)–Podemos government’s ending of all social distancing before the summer.

Much of the recent wave has been triggered by the reopening of bars and nightclubs in Spain. Youth were encouraged to return to these venues under the false pretext that they are safe and that there is a low chance of a new surge of the virus. Minimal social distancing measures—masking, curfews, limiting the number of people who could meet, and the banning of potential super-spreader events like concerts or music festivals—were junked to reopen the economy, especially for tourism.

Maestro Padilla school in Madrid, Spain, on September 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The PSOE–Podemos government let the virus spread massively: this summer ended with more than 1.1 million infections in Spain. However, it covered its policy with claims that vaccination, now reaching 70 percent of the population, will by itself halt infections. In fact, despite this vaccination rates, there are still more than 130 deaths and nearly 10,000 infections each day. Another 600 to 700 deaths are expected this week.

Spain’s 14-day incidence rate of COVID-19 stands at 210 per 100,000 inhabitants, well over the 150 per 100,000 Spanish authorities call “high risk.” All Spain’s major urban areas are over 150; provinces like A Coruña, Álava, Badajoz, Bizkaia, Cáceres, Toledo and Seville are over 250.

These numbers will only mount as students return to schools, where incidence rates have skyrocketed. Among adolescents aged 12 to 19, the incidence is 400 per 100,000 inhabitants. In this age group, only about one-third (32.2 percent) are fully vaccinated.

On Monday, schools in Madrid, Cantabria and Melilla started. In coming weeks, more regions will follow. In total, 8.2 million children will return to school to face a virus that has claimed more than 1.1 million lives across Europe since last year.

Last Wednesday, Education Minister Pilar Alegría demanded “maximum presence” in schools. Calling vaccinations an “effective tool,” she insisted the new school year “will not resemble the previous one at all. First of all, because of the experience we have acquired.”

In reality, infections are mounting. According to the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, in the three weeks from July 26 to August 15, 82,587 children and adolescents aged between 5 and 19 were infected.

The PSOE–Podemos government’s reckless reopening of schools consciously ignores what is happening outside Spain’s borders. In America, more than 500,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 from August 5 to 26, according to state data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics. At least 203,962 of those cases were reported in the week of August 19–26 after schools were reopened. At the end of June, a reported weekly figure was just under 8,500.

In Britain, the week to August 28, there were more than 300 Covid cases per 100,000 among 5- to 15-year-olds. In neighbouring France, Pasteur Institute estimates that in France alone, there could be 50,000 infections of children each day by late September.

The PSOE–Podemos government, however, is covering itself with claims of the alleged success of its school reopening policy last year. According to the Ministry of Health, last school year closed with 6,631 outbreaks that affected some 37,500 students.

As the government authorities know, this was before the Delta variant became predominant. Its spread will be facilitated by the PSOE–Podemos government’s decision to slash minimal social distancing measures that existed last school year. While masks will remain compulsory for all children above age 6, social distancing, nominally still maintained, has been reduced to only 1.2 metres. Moreover, teacher-to-student ratios have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with a deficit of 17,000 teachers according to the Central Sindical Independiente y de Funcionarios (CSIF) union.

The virus especially threatens 8 million people who have not yet received the full vaccination schedule. To these are added 6 million children under 12.

As the WSWS has insisted, vaccination alone will not stop the pandemic. Claims to the contrary ignore the character of the Delta variant, which is scientifically proven to be too transmissible and capable of infecting vaccinated individuals for vaccinations alone to halt the pandemic.

The World Health Organisation has warned that it expects 236,000 deaths in Europe this autumn. If proven scientific policies are adopted to stop the transmission of COVID-19 and eradicate the virus, however, these deaths and the related tens of millions of infections can be stopped.

Yet scientific policies face determined opposition across the entire European political establishment, who place corporate profits and the wealth of the super-rich above workers’ lives. To save lives, workers must clearly understand the necessity to fight for an independent, scientifically grounded policy to eradicate the virus. This can only be carried against the capitalist system and its political accomplices.

In Spain, this means above all a struggle against the staggering indifference to human life of the “left populist” Podemos party. Having promised radical change and an end to austerity, Podemos has become the PSOE’s chief co-conspirator in the ruling elite’s pandemic policy. It has covered for the government’s claims to have finished with the virus, arguing that in-person schooling is safe and covering for the austerity measures linked to the EU bailout fund.

Spain’s trade unions have played a key role in letting the PSOE–Podemos enforce these measures. They have all defended the false line that returning to schools and reopening of factories and offices are safe, if only some limited measures are taken, like wearing masks.

Just days before schools re-opened, the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) union called on the government to contract 40,000 teachers and cut class sizes to 20. The CCOO did not call any protests, let alone strikes to enforce this demand, however.

Podemos’s political satellites are also intervening to cover for the PSOE–Podemos government’s policies. The Spanish Morenoite Workers Revolutionary Current (CRT) refuses to explain that closing schools is a matter of urgency. Last year, its online publication Izquierda Diario defended reopening schools even while acknowledging that the safety of teachers and students “cannot be guaranteed.” This year, they have not even published one article on the back-to-school campaign, focusing instead on calling for in-person education in universities.

In an article titled “Semi-in-person education will be the norm again this year,” posted yesterday, Izquierdadiario.es states: “After a summer in which most of the population has been vaccinated (it is already over 70 percent with two doses) and in which a large part of the restrictions on leisure have disappeared, the students do not understand the recent news that universities will start the course with a semi-in-person system.”

Citing CRT members in the student body, it then declares, “the underlying problem is not so much in-person [or not] (on which students themselves take different positions) as ‘the lack of democracy in the university, which prevents students from having any voice in decision-making, despite being the majority of the university community.’ ”

Such phrase mongering aims to ensure that working class opposition does not overflow the union bureaucracies, and also aims to tie workers and youth to the PSOE–Podemos government.

UK: Johnson government escalates attacks on working class with tax increase and end to pension triple lock

Robert Stevens

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has announced a National Insurance Contribution (NIC) tax increase of 1.25 percentage points, disproportionately hitting millions of younger, lower-paid workers, to fund an increase in health and social care spending. It will also suspend the “triple lock” pension system—meaning pensioners will be limited to a 2.5 percent increase for the 2022/23 financial year.

Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the changes Tuesday as part of the government’s agenda to slash tens of billions of pounds from workers’ income, including billions from those reliant on welfare benefits.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (centre) chairs a press conference in No9 Downing Street with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (right) and Health Secretary Sajid Javid (left) on the day new health and social care changes were announced. 07/09/2021. (Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Today, the government will vote to end even the meagre £20 weekly uplift that Universal Credit benefit recipients have received since the start of the pandemic. Six million households claiming Universal Credit will lose over £1,000 a year in the largest ever single cut in the history of UK welfare provision. At the end of the month, the furlough job support scheme—under which 11.6 million jobs have been supported since the start of the pandemic—will be withdrawn entirely

These cuts are aimed at making the working class pay the costs of the pandemic crisis, the ruling class’s criminal herd immunity policy and the hundreds of billions handed out to support big business and the super-rich.

National Insurance is a form of taxation paid by workers from the age of 16 until they become eligible for the state pension. It is also paid by employers, at a lower rate proportionally than employees.

From April 2022, workers will pay an additional 1.25 percent in NIC, with National Insurance returned to its previous level in April 2023 and the extra 1.25 percent paid through a newly created “Health and Social Care Levy”. The rise will bring the government £36 billion in revenue over the next three years.

The majority of workers, who earn between £184.01 to £967 a week, currently pay NIC at a rate of 12 percent. With the increase, a worker on a wage of £20,000 a year will have to pay a further £130 and a worker on £30,000 another £255. Those earning anything above £50,268 a year only pay NIC at 2 percent for that extra income, meaning the new NIC increase will have proportionally smaller impact on them.

Unlike National Insurance, the Health and Social Care Levy will also hit more than 1.2 million working pensioners—often those with few savings who cannot afford to retire on the pitiful state pension.

Those receiving the state pension will miss out on billions next year due to the suspension of the triple lock system. Under the triple lock, the state pension increases by the rate of inflation, the increase in earnings between May and July or 2.5 percent, whichever is the greater. However, due to anomalies in wage growth caused by Covid, pensions would have risen by more than 8 percent next year. This would have added a further £4 billion to the pensions of more than 12 million elderly (£16 a month each), which has now been taken away at a stroke.

Johnson’s claim yesterday that the tax increases will “fix the long-term problems of health and social care that have been so cruelly exposed by Covid” is a cynical lie. His government is responsible for a murderous herd immunity policy which has brought the NHS to its knees, resulted in the deaths of over 155,000 people and turned care homes into killing fields. It has built on successive governments’ savaging of the healthcare system and abandonment of social care to cut-price, profiteering private companies.

The fact, as Johnson was forced to acknowledge, that the number of people on NHS waiting lists could expand to 13 million is entirely the product of his own criminal policies, supported by the entire ruling elite.

The money supposedly being allocated to social and health care is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required to fix this catastrophe. Social care has been a chaotic, privatised mess for decades, forcing many to hand over their entire assets, including selling their homes, in order to pay for the care they need in old age.

A 2019 report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee found that 1.4 million older people had an unmet care need in 2018, while public funding was £700 million lower than 2010/11 in real terms in 2017/18. The Health Foundation reports that an additional £12.5 billion in funding would need to be invested by 2023/24 just to return funding to the already inadequate level of 2010/11.

Johnson has cut the threshold of assets for those required to pay for social care from £23,250 to £20,000. All those with assets over £20,000 up to £100,000 will have care cuts subsidised, paying up to a maximum of £86,000 over the rest of their lifetime. However, as the new means-tested system does not begin until October 2023, some people will still have to pay more than £86,000 in total.

Just £5.3 billion of the £36 billion of revenue being seized from working people in the next three years is ring-fenced to go towards social care, with Johnson stating that the priority was spending the money on an NHS “catch up programme” that would enable “nine million more appointments, scans and operations.”

This too is a fraud. Even with Monday’s announcement of an additional £5.4 billion in NHS funding over the next six months, the health service will remain critically underfunded. According to NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, the health service still needs £10 billion next year, beyond the £5.4 billion announced to clear the backlog. Even then it is estimated by NHS leaders that even with £10 billion a year extra, waiting lists could still take seven years to clear, and 14 years if only half as much is available.

By raising National Insurance and ending the triple lock on pensions, Johnson has broken pledges made in the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto. These have been the rallying cry of large sections of the Tory Party and the right-wing media opposed to any additional spending, however unfairly funded, on the elderly and poor—considered “empty eaters”.

The Daily Telegraph warned in an editorial that the NIC increase was an “attack on the crucial low-tax, small-state, Thatcherite core of the Conservative electoral coalition”, urging that “Boris Johnson can still stop Britain’s descent into the welfarist death-spiral that Margaret Thatcher tried to halt by cutting taxes in the 1980s and Cameron/Osborne by reforming entitlements in the 2010s.”

Dan Wootton, writing in the Daily Mail, denounced Johnson as a “Tory in name only” overseeing “astronomical tax rises” and “a sprawling and inefficient National Health Service that sucks up billions and billions more each year.”

This obscene conflict between two equally reactionary factions has dominated the debate over social care and NIC in the last few days thanks to the complete absence of an opposition party. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s contribution to the issue was an interview with the Mirror in which he said: “Do we accept that we need more investment? Yes we do. Do we accept that NI is the right way to do it? No we don’t.

“But we will look at what they put forward because after eleven years of neglect we do need a solution.”

The party is pathologically afraid of making any statement which might be interpreted as support for increased public spending, to the point that the first mention of a tax rise since Starmer became leader has come from Johnson. While Labour will vote against the plan, and against the termination of the Universal Credit, they do so safe in the knowledge that, given the Tories’ 80 seat majority, these measures will easily pass.

Starmer was sure to confirm Labour’s own Thatcherite credentials in the parliamentary debate yesterday, telling Johnson, “Read my lips: the Tories can never again claim to be the party of low tax.” The inspiration for this performance was a column by Tory arch-reactionary Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Sunday Express, in which he quoted US President George H.W. Bush’s pledge in 1988, “Read my lips: no new taxes”, to warn Johnson, “voters remembered those words after president Bush had forgotten them.” The Labour leader, at least, has heeded his advice.

Federal bankruptcy judge grants Sackler family sweeping immunity in $4.3 billion opioid settlement

Chase Lawrence

In an example of class justice, the billionaire Sackler family, which fueled and profited immensely from the opioid epidemic through its company Purdue Pharma and its OxyContin medication, was handed immunity last week from all future opioid lawsuits by federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York. The ruling affirms the capitalist right to profit regardless of the cost in lives.

More than 100 people die in the US every day from opioid overdoses, with preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers putting the number of deaths for 2019 at nearly 50,000, an all-time high.

Judge Drain’s decision is part of a $4.3 billion bankruptcy settlement that involved the Sacklers’ selling their pharmaceutical holdings and forfeiting ownership of Purdue Pharma. The ruling, which is exactly what the Sacklers demanded, grants releases from liability for harm caused by the company’s aggressive and sometimes illegal marketing of the discontinued opioid OxyContin and other opioids. This marketing entailed a coordinated campaign to get doctors to prescribe opioids for everyday chronic pain, which also included bribes to doctors.

In addition to the Sacklers themselves, hundreds of individuals and organizations associated with the Sacklers, such as lobbyists, financial advisors, public relations firms, law firms, drug-makers and laboratories, as well as the Sacklers’ remaining business empire, are also granted immunity.

The immunity deal effectively shuts down any further investigation into the role played by the Sacklers and their hundreds of associates in the opioid epidemic, despite the fact that there is extensive documentation of the Sackler family’s involvement in Purdue’s operations in and profiting from the opioid epidemic, with Richard Sackler playing a key role in the marketing of the drug as an executive and even afterwards as late as 2012, while former board member Kathe Sackler bragged about coming up with the idea for OxyContin.

Richard Sackler

The Sacklers moved billions from Purdue before the deal, stashing it into other investments and offshore bank accounts that cannot be touched in the settlement.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in 2020 that the Sacklers committed “fraudulent transfer” as part of a scheme to “hinder future creditors,” and the family settled these allegations to the tune of $225 million while denying any wrongdoing in that case as well.

The DOJ filed two legal briefs condemning the release from liability provided to the Sacklers and their associates in the bankruptcy deal on constitutional grounds, arguing that people with potential claims against the Sacklers would be deprived of their right to due process without legal review or compensation.

Purdue Pharma and its attorneys launched a pressure campaign against the DOJ aimed at convincing them to not challenge the plan, with an early draft of a letter from this campaign being obtained by National Public Radio.

For all of the death attributable directly to the Sacklers’ leadership of Purdue, which pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its marketing of OxyContin both in 2007 and 2020, not even an apology was issued, and the Sacklers deny any wrongdoing. Drain cynically remarked that “A forced apology is not really an apology… So we will have to live without one.”

Steve Miller, chair of Purdue Pharma’s board of directors, voiced his satisfaction with the ruling in a statement to NPR, declaring, “Instead of years of value-destructive litigation, including between and among creditors, this plan ensures that billions of dollars will be devoted to helping people and communities who have been hurt by the opioid crisis.”

The company that emerges from Purdue Pharma will be allowed to continue the production and selling of OxyContin and other opioid drugs.

According to a report from the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by US Representative Carolyn Maloney, the Sackler family wealth totals $11 billion, accrued “in large part through sales of OxyContin.” The settlement means that the Sacklers will keep the bulk of their fortune.

The report continues “Members of the Sackler family pushed Purdue to use deceptive marketing practices to flood communities with this dangerous painkiller, and now the Sackler family is attempting to use Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to evade individual responsibility for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.” This is exactly what has happened.

House Democrats in April called for the passage of the “Sackler Act” which supposedly would prevent the Sacklers and other non-debtors in the deal from receiving immunity from lawsuits. The settlement details were announced in October 2020, with the protection from liability having already been announced as part of the deal. Only the amount to be paid under the deal was increased since then, with no change in the liability protection.

However, nothing has been done by the Democrats, who have feigned surprise at the ruling. The Democrats along with the Republicans are awash in pharmaceutical company money, with the vast majority of Senate and House members, 72 senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives, cashing a check from the pharmaceutical industry, according to an analysis by Stat News released in June.

Purdue itself spent over $1.2 million in lobbying in the year and a half leading up to the settlement, according to a review of lobbying records by T he Intercept, and reportedly was monitoring the Sackler Act, among other proposed legislation. It hired the same public relations firm, Purple Strategies, that BP hired following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

As the WSWS noted in December 2019, protection was already granted to the Sacklers as the settlement was being hashed out: “On November 6, federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain halted all lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family until April 8, 2020. The extension of protection to the Sackler family was highly unusual because the Sacklers themselves have not yet filed for bankruptcy. Even Judge Drain conceded that the order was ‘extraordinary.’”

Drain hypocritically called his ruling last week a “bitter result” and stated that “I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties have liability for those [opioid OxyContin] claims. ... I would have expected a higher settlement.'

Drain’s record reflects the judicial system’s class character as a tool of the corporate financial oligarchy, and belies any of the feigned surprise or outrage by the Democrats, who knew full well that he would bow to the Sacklers’ demand for immunity.

• In 2006 Drain approved a plan by Delphi Corporation executives to approve tens of millions in bonuses to Delphi executives while hourly autoworkers faced a wage cut of up to 60 percent and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, claiming it was needed to make Delphi “competitive.”

• In 2012 Drain approved $1.75 million in bonuses for Hostess executives and shortly thereafter approved the liquidation of the company and the destruction of 15,000 jobs, shutting bakeries, distribution centers and stores.

• In 2015 Drain ruled in favor of former supermarket chain A&P allowing the severance pay of about 2,500 workers be cut to 52 percent of what they were entitled to receive under the labor agreement between the company and the unions representing them.

This is just a small glimpse of the class justice that rules not only in Drain’s court but the capitalist legal system as a whole, as well as the parasitism of an economic system which profits off death and destruction.

Bolsonaro rehearses fascistic coup on Brazil's Independence Day

Tomas Castanheira

President Jair Bolsonaro used September 7, Brazil's Independence Day, as the occasion for a dress rehearsal of a fascistic coup to overthrow the civilian government and install a dictatorship in Brazil.

Bolsonaro publicly called for the national protests Tuesday as a “counter-coup” to an alleged plot organized by the Supreme Court (STF) to remove him from power, imprison him, and criminalize the far right in Brazil. Extolling his coup perspective, the fascistic president declared a few days earlier that his destiny is to be “arrested, killed, or victorious.”

The demonstrations took place in different Brazilian cities and were systematically orchestrated by Bolsonaro's civilian and military advisers. Caravans financed by businessmen and far-right organizations brought groups of protesters from all parts of Brazil to the two main demonstrations held in the capital, Brasilia, and São Paulo.

In a choreographed spectacle, Bolsonaro flew by helicopter over the events in both cities before coming down to the platforms and speaking to demonstrators who held banners calling for the overthrow of the Supreme Court, for military intervention, and for the criminalization of communism.

Bolsonaro delivers speech to crowd in Brasilia (Credit: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom/Agência Brasil)

In Brasília, where Bolsonaro spoke alongside his vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, and his defense minister, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, he attacked STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who is conducting investigations of the organizers of the very same September 7 demonstrations which are increasingly pointing to Bolsonaro himself. He threatened a coup against the high court if the judge is not removed from office.

The president declared, “We cannot continue accepting that a specific person from the region of the three powers [i.e., Moraes] continues barbarizing our population. We cannot accept more political arrests in our Brazil. Either the head of this power manages his own, or this power might suffer what we do not want.”

The attack was complemented at the rally in São Paulo, where Bolsonaro openly called for Moraes’ removal and declared that given “any decision by Mr. Alexandre de Moraes, this president [himself] will no longer comply.” He concluded his speech by stating that “only God can take me out of [Brasilia]” and that “I tell these bastards: I will never be arrested!”

During the Brasilia rally, Bolsonaro also declared that he will preside next Wednesday over a meeting of the Council of the Republic, a consultative constitutional body that advises the Brazilian president on national security measures, including the imposition of a state of siege and suspending individual rights.

Although the seriousness of the statement was quickly dismissed by the media, which unanimously took comfort from declarations by Mourão and the congressional leaders that they had not been called for such a meeting, the mentioning of the Council of the Republic can only signify preparations by Bolsonaro for assuming dictatorial powers.

A significant episode preceded the demonstrations on Monday night in Brasilia, when caravans of Bolsonaro supporters broke through Military Police blockades and invaded the “Esplanada,” or the outdoor mall between the ministry buildings, claiming they would storm the STF the next day. Videos show that the police made no real attempt to stop them, nor did they carry out promised searches of the protesters, either in Brasilia or in São Paulo.

The protests themselves were called by prominent politicians connected to the state Military Police forces and by police commanders themselves, who directly called on their soldiers to join the demonstrations. A survey by the Instituto Atlas Intelligence showed that 30 percent of the military police active duty officers were willing to participate in the protests.

Although demonstrators did not invade the STF, as they had threatened, it is very significant that the Supreme Court itself considered “calling on the Armed Forces to protect its headquarters, after the Military Police of the Federal District failed to contain the advance of pro-government demonstrators,” according to Record reporter Renato Souza.

The September 7 demonstrations represent a high point of a dictatorial turn advanced ever more frantically by Bolsonaro.

This process has included, in recent months, the unprecedented dismissal of the entire command of the Armed Forces on March 31, on the eve of the anniversary of the 1964 military coup; subsequent threats by military commanders against the COVID-19 parliamentary investigation, making it clear that they will not allow any investigation of members of the Armed Forces by the civilian power; and, in August, the vote on Bolsonaro’s “printed ballot” proposal, accompanied by a military parade, which demonstrated significant support within the state for Bolsonaro's coup plans.

These events, and particularly the actions orchestrated by Bolsonaro and his clique for September 7, are explicitly inspired by Donald Trump's January 6 coup attempt in the United States.

The weekend leading up to the protests saw the Brazilian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is headed in the country by the president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro. Eduardo directly participated in the preparations for the January 6 coup in Washington, just as Trump’s advisers are directly connected to the preparations of the fascistic plots in Brazil.

The Brazilian CPAC had the online participation of Donald Trump Jr., who in his speech explicitly compared the upcoming elections in Brazil with those recently held in the United States and stated that Brazilians will need to choose between 'socialism and freedom' (that is, fascism) in what will be an unfair fight. Businessman Jason Miller, Trump’s former adviser, attended the Brazilian CPAC in person. He was detained by the Brazilian Federal Police on Tuesday at Brasilia’s airport as he was returning to the United States. He was questioned in connection to the same inquiry on threats against democracy that is being attacked by Bolsonaro.

More fundamentally, what is driving the destruction of democratic forms of rule in Brazil, the United States and countries around the world is the profound crisis of the world capitalist system.

In the April 12 statement “57 years after the 1964 coup, Brazil again confronts specter of dictatorship,” the World Socialist Web Site described Bolsonaro's dictatorial maneuvers in the context of the deep social crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We wrote: “[The current] grotesque levels of social inequality as well as the imposition of mass killings by COVID-19 are radically incompatible with democratic forms of government. These objective trends are behind the remarkable political events of the past week.”

These conditions have only grown worse in the past five months, and the threat of a coup has intensified.