World Lung Day | Air is deadlier than we thought it is!

Bobby Ramakant

While we observe World Lung Day, let us also pay heed to the latest policy guidelines on one of the major preventable risk factors of deadliest of lung diseases: air pollution. The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its latest Air Quality Guidelines that after rigorous scientific review has lowered the maximum upper limit of six top deadly air pollutants. After thorough scientific analysis of all data emerging from around the world, the latest WHO Air Quality Guidelines has slashed the maximum upper cap on each of these deadly pollutants, compared to the maximum limit set 16 years ago (as per the 2005 WHO Air Quality Guidelines).

These six air pollutants are: Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 micrometer (microns), PM 10 micrometer (microns), Ozone, Sulphur Di-Oxide, Nitrogen Di-Oxide, and Carbon Monoxide.

Air pollution kills over 7 million people every year

The latest WHO Air Quality Guidelines provide clear evidence of the damage air pollution inflicts on human health, at even lower concentrations than previously understood. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the world’s biggest killers, and air pollution is among the preventable causes of CVDs. Lung cancer is the deadliest of cancers, and no surprise that air pollution is among the preventable causes of it.

The WHO confirmed that every year, air pollution causes 7 million untimely deaths and result in the loss of millions more healthy years of life. In children, this could include reduced lung growth and function, respiratory infections and aggravated asthma. In adults, ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the most common causes of untimely death attributable to outdoor air pollution, and evidence is also emerging of other effects such as diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions. This puts the burden of disease attributable to air pollution on a par with other major global health risks such as unhealthy diet and tobacco smoking.

That is why the latest WHO 2021 Air Quality Guidelines recommend new air quality levels to protect the health of populations, by reducing maximum levels of the six lethal air pollutants, some of which also contribute to climate change.

According to the 2021 WHO Air Quality Guidelines, PM2.5 maximum levels are 5 (yearly average), which is half of what it was set as per the 2005 WHO guidelines.

PM10 levels in 2021 have a maximum cap at 15 (in 2005, the max cap was 20 for annual average).

Nitrogen Di-Oxide level maximum cap as per latest WHO guidelines is at 10 yearly average which is 10 times lower than what it was set in 2005.

Maximum cap on Sulphur Di-Oxide levels have also been slashed from 100 in 2005 to 40 in 2021.

Carbon Monoxide maximum levels are set at 4 (daily average), and maximum cap on Ozone levels as per the 2021 WHO Guidelines is 100 (8 hourly average).

According to the WHO, since its last 2005 update, there has been a marked increase of evidence that shows how air pollution affects different aspects of health. For that reason, and after a systematic review of the accumulated evidence, WHO has adjusted almost all the Air Quality Guideline levels downwards, warning that exceeding the new air quality guideline levels is associated with significant risks to health.

By striving to achieve these guideline levels, countries will be both protecting health as well as mitigating global climate change. When action is taken on these so-called classical pollutants – particulate matter (PM), ozone (O₃), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and carbon monoxide (CO), it also has an impact on other damaging pollutants.

Outdoor air pollution and Particulate Matter are carcinogens

Particulate Matter (PM) is primarily generated by fuel combustion in different sectors, including transport, energy, households, industry, and from agriculture. In 2013, outdoor air pollution and particulate matter were classified as carcinogenic by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Particulate Matter (PM), refers microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems. Both PM2.5 and PM10 are capable of penetrating deep into the lungs but PM2.5 can even enter the bloodstream, primarily resulting in cardiovascular and respiratory impacts, and also affecting other organs.

The more exposed to air pollution they are, the greater the health impact, particularly on individuals with chronic conditions (such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart disease), as well as older people, children and pregnant women.

In 2019, more than 90% of the global population lived in areas where concentrations exceeded the 2005 WHO air quality guideline for long term exposure to PM2.5. More alarming is the reality that in 2019, India’s Particulate Matter concentration was 70.3 microns 0 the highest in the world and 7 times the old 2005 WHO’s guideline of 10.

Almost 80% of deaths related to PM2.5 could be avoided in the world if the current air pollution levels were reduced to those proposed in the updated guideline, according to a rapid scenario analysis performed by WHO.

While air quality has markedly improved in high-income countries over this period, it has generally deteriorated in most low- and middle-income countries, in step with large-scale urbanization, extractive industries, and so-called ‘economic development’ which is actually not only impoverishing majority of the people (and making tiny tycoons richer), but also poisoning our planet.

Air pollution reduces life expectancy of over 40% Indians by more than 9 years

Last month in August 2021, Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago had reported its research findings: Air pollution is likely to reduce the life expectancy of over 40% Indians by more than 9 years, with Delhi and Uttar Pradesh states reported to be worst-affected ones in the country. Delhi residents will lose 9.7 years of their lives due to air pollution, while those in Uttar Pradesh will lose 9.5 years of life expectancy. Last month it was reported that annual average PM2.5 level in cities of Uttar Pradesh was more than 12 times than the old WHO guideline limit. Residents of the city I live in (Lucknow) are expected to lose 11.1 years of their life expectancy due to air pollution.

Business as usual is killing us!

The price of inaction by governments around the world is mountainous resulting in unnecessary human suffering, untimely deaths, and irreparable damage to our planet due to air pollution. Will governments dump the so-called ‘development model’ which not only plunders our air and natural resources but also is resulting in humanitarian crises for majority of our population? Will governments reject false solutions promoted by extractive and fossil fuel industries, hold these abusive corporations to account, and go for real people-centric solutions to save our health and our planet?

New data reveals life expectancy in England has fallen to its lowest level since 2011

Simon Whelan

This week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that on September 7 the UK passed the grim total of more than 160,000 deaths due to COVID-19.

A screenshot of the Public Health England report [Credit: Public Health England]

These deaths have been the main factor in a massive fall in life expectancy. Deaths in England were 1.4 times higher than expected between March 21, 2020, and July 2, 2021, according to data published by Public Health England (PHE). The increase is largely driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, find PHE, and has resulted in a staggering overall decrease in life expectancy of 1.3 years for males, to 78.7, and 0.9 years for females, to 82.7 years.

Life expectancy is now at its lowest in 10 years. Evidence indicates the growth in life expectancy began slowing in 2010-11. Analysts at the time strongly suggested a link between decreased life expectancy and the “age of austerity” beginning in 2008, including savage cuts to the National Health Service (NHS) and local government services.

Longitudinal data tracking life expectancy in England shows this most recent fall in life expectancy is the sharpest outside those experienced in wartime. The Kings Fund think tank recently stated: “There have been two turning points in trends in life expectancy in England in the past decade. From 2011 increases in life expectancy slowed after decades of steady improvement, prompting much debate about the causes. Then in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a more significant turning point, causing a sharp fall in life expectancy the magnitude of which has not been seen since World War II.”

This health crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, is a class issue. The explosive growth of social inequality over recent decades is the key factor in understanding the disproportionate and devastating impact of reduced life expectancy in working class communities.

The PHE report found that inequality in life expectancy between the richest and poorest residential areas of England is at its highest level since PHE began recording data on deprivation-linked life expectancy over 20 years ago. For men the gap was 10.3 years in 2020, a year longer than in 2019; for women it was 8.3 years—0.6 years more than in 2019.

“This demonstrates that the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities in life expectancy by deprivation. Covid-19 was the cause of death that contributed most to the gap in 2020,” states the PHE report, noting that “higher mortality from heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic lower respiratory diseases in deprived areas remained important contributors.”

These pre-existing conditions, often the product of inequality, have themselves been made worse by the pandemic. Many of the most vulnerable sections of society have missed crucial hospital treatment due to COVID-19 overwhelming the NHS. PHE found evidence that people with worsening health conditions between May 2020 and January 2021, did not seek treatment. The most common reason given was to avoid putting pressure on the NHS, followed by fears of the pandemic.

Elsewhere, PHE reports an “unprecedented increase” in alcohol-related deaths, with alcohol-specific deaths increasing by 20 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. In the United States, the economists Case and Deaton have tracked over recent years the surge in what they term “deaths of despair”, i.e., deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction and suicides, among workers.

PHE conclude, “The report has highlighted how the direct impact of Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected people from ethnic minority groups, people living in deprived areas, older people and those with pre-existing health conditions.”

PHE’s research is only the latest to demonstrate the close links between social class, deprivation and COVID-19 mortality rates and to raise the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on working-class communities. This summer, The Lancet medical journal, reporting on the impact of cuts to local government funding on life expectancy in England, explained, “Funding reductions were greater in more deprived areas and these areas had the worst changes in life expectancy.”

The Institute of Health Equity in their February 2020 report, “Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On”, revealed that, since 2011, life expectancy in England has stalled for the first time since at least the turn of the last century. This stagnation and fall in life expectancy in the working class is a direct result of the hammer blows of austerity, with cuts in budgets from central government then faithfully imposed by mainly Labour Party-run local authorities.

A report released in July by University College London (UCL) reported how the coronavirus death rate in Greater Manchester was a quarter higher than anywhere else in England. Life expectancy dropped 1.6 years for men and 1.2 years for women in the region last year compared to 1.3 years and 0.9 years in England as a whole.

Professor Michael Marmot, an expert on health inequalities who led the research, described the figures as “jaw dropping”. He found that the more impoverished a local authority, the higher its mortality rate was.

The COVID death rate in the North West of England was 307 per 100,000 for men and 195 for women—compared to England's overall rate of 233 per 100,000 for men and 142 for women. In some parts of Greater Manchester—a conurbation with a population of around 3 million—the rates were even higher at 350 per 100,000 for men in Salford and over 200 for women in Tameside.

The UCL report did not look at regions beyond the North West, but data released by the ONS in May show that the wealthiest parts of the country have recorded five times lower COVID death rates.

The loss of life detailed in the latest research is the result of monumental crimes carried out by the ruling elite, who have put the health of the economy before public health and lives. The overall impact on human life has been enormous. In March, the Health Foundation found that a staggering 1.5 million years of life were lost in the UK in the first year of the pandemic. On average, each person killed by COVID-19 lost 10.2 years of life. In the poorest 20 percent of areas in England, there were 35 percent more deaths and 45 percent more years of life lost than in the richest 20 percent.

At that point, the Health Foundation charity calculated that 146,000 deaths had been lost due to COVID-19 in Britain. Many thousands more deaths have been tragically lost since then and the ruling elite’s “let it rip” policy is taking the lives of hundreds more each week.

Who is responsible for the far-right murder in Idar-Oberstein, Germany?

Johannes Stern

Even a week after the murder in Idar-Oberstein, people are shocked and in deep mourning over the horrific act. There are many candles and flowers in front of the gas station where 20-year-old student and cashier Alexander W. was shot in cold blood last Saturday night.

There is no doubt that it was an act of right-wing extremist terrorism. The perpetrator, 49-year-old Mario N., comes from the far-right extremist milieu of coronavirus deniers, which vehemently rejects all measures to curb the pandemic. He shot Alexander W. point-blank in the head after the latter had asked him to wear a mask at the gas station two hours earlier.

Right-wing extremist coronavirus deniers protest in Berlin on April 21, 2021 (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

After his arrest, Mario N. justified the act as a fight against COVID-19 mitigation policies. As to the motive, senior prosecutor Kai Fuhrmann stated the situation “put a lot of stress on him [Mario N.].” He had felt pushed into a corner and “saw no other way out” than to set an example. In the eyes of Mario N., the man he killed was “responsible for the overall situation, since he enforced the rules,” Fuhrmann said.

Mario N. also made no secret of his right-wing extremist sentiments in social media. A Twitter account attributed to him follows, among others, Alternative for Germany (AfD) right-wingers Björn Höcke and Beatrix Storch, right-wing media such as Tichy’s Einblick and former head of the Secret Service and notorious right-wing extremist Hans-Georg Maaßen.

There is much to suggest that Mario N. is part of the extensive far-right terrorist structures that reach deep into the army, police and intelligence services, maintain death lists with several thousand targets and who are planning a right-wing coup. In addition to the murder weapon—a large-calibre Smith & Wesson revolver—other illegal weapons and ammunition were seized in Mario N.’s apartment.

Mario N. gave free rein to his right-wing extremist fantasies of violence and terror even before the coronavirus pandemic began. In early 2019, he tweeted, “Looking forward to the next war. Yes, this may sound destructive now, but we can’t get out of this spiral.”

When asked by another user if he was a soldier in the Bundeswehr, Mario N. replied, “No, not anymore, but there are always ways to be found.” Then he threatened, “My muscles are tense, my mind sharpened. Mercy to those who have brought about this situation. Or, no, mercy would be wrong.”

Similar to previous far-right terrorist attacks, leading politicians feign horror, wash their hands of the matter and point to the responsibility of the AfD and its entourage.

They express shock at, in the words Green Party candidate for chancellor Annalena Baerbock wrote on Twitter, “the terrible murder of a young man who only asked to follow the rules in place, to be prudent and show solidarity.” “The radicalization of the coronavirus deniers milieu” was causing her “great concern,” she said.

Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate for chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on Twitter that his thoughts were with the relatives of the murder victim. Now, he said, “as a society, we must resolutely oppose hatred.”

Armin Laschet, the Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) candidate for chancellor, called during an election campaign appearance in Fulda for the perpetrator to be “severely punished.”

Ute Vogt, the domestic policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, said the AfD had “made a significant contribution to the enormous rise in hatred and incitement on the streets and in social media since it entered the German Bundestag [federal parliament].” The party had “quickly recognized the potential and used the ‘anti-vax’ scene for its own benefit.”

Domestic politicians from the Left Party, the Greens, the CDU/CSU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) expressed similar sentiments.

The AfD was “the supreme agent of political radicalization in Germany,” the domestic policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Konstantin Kuhle, told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). “By spreading their confused accusations of dictatorship during the coronavirus pandemic,” right-wing extremists “bear a share of the responsibility for the radicalization of certain population groups, including the perpetrator from Idar-Oberstein.”

All these expressions of sympathy and accusations of guilt cannot hide the fact that the responsibility for right-wing terror lies not only with the AfD and other far-right groups, but with the ruling class as a whole. It has systematically created the ideological climate and the political conditions for right-wing extremist terrorist acts like the one in Idar-Oberstein. And it has done so in several respects.

First, there are the murderous COVID-19 policies. Throughout the course of the pandemic, all governing parties, from the CDU/CSU to the Left Party, have placed the profits of business above the lives of the population and rejected consistent measures to eradicate the virus. With the recent softening of coronavirus protections, the ruling class is openly following the line of the AfD, which has long called for an end to all measures and a “return to normalcy.”

The “profits before lives” policy, which has cost more than 93,000 lives in Germany alone, has been accompanied from the outset by a campaign by politicians and the media that has fascist overtones and uses the arguments of coronavirus deniers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) who dismissed COVID-19 as ordinary flu and opposed mandatory mask wearing.

When it came to ending the first lockdown in spring 2020, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) declared—to the applause of AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland—that the right to life was not “absolutely” protected by the Constitution. Since then, politicians of all parties regularly denounce life-saving coronavirus protection measures up to vaccinations as an attack on “freedom rights.”

In order to push through the reopening policy and intimidate the broad opposition to it, representatives of all parties in the Bundestag have repeatedly supported the far-right coronavirus deniers’ demonstrations.

Significantly, just two days after the murder of Alexander W., the CDU published an election ad calling for talking “precisely to those” who “have a critical attitude,” meaning the right-wing extremists.

The CDU video features a certain Thomas Brauner, who is one of the best-known representatives of the far-right and violent coronavirus deniers milieu. At the end of April, Brauner, together with other co-thinkers, harassed a camera team of the Welt TV station in Berlin’s government district so intensely that the reporters had to interrupt their work.

Criticism of Laschet and the CDU by the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens is pure hypocrisy. Representatives from their ranks have also repeatedly declared that coronavirus deniers should not be excluded. Like the Greens parliamentary group leader in the Saxony state parliament, Franziska Schubert, or the Left Party’s parliamentary group vice-chairman in the Bundestag, Andrej Hunko, they have even taken part in their demonstrations.

After the first far-right coronavirus deniers’ demonstration in Berlin on August 1, 2020, the top candidate of the Left Party in the federal elections, Dietmar Bartsch, demanded, almost in the same words as Laschet and the CDU, that one must engage with the participants. “Labelling them and marginalizing them doesn’t help,” Bartsch told Deutschlandfunk radio at the time. “There are also right-wing extremists there and really also lunatics, but also many people who, yes, participated there out of displeasure.”

How directly the Left Party in particular is also responsible for the rise of the extreme right is particularly evident in Thuringia. There, the “left-wing” Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow is currently protecting the AfD-backed CDU candidate Hans-Georg Maaßen. He condemned a call by the Campact association to prevent Maaßen from running by presenting a joint opposing candidate as an inadmissible interference in “a free election.”

Ramelow’s defence of the figurehead of the extreme right comes as no surprise. Particularly in Thuringia, where Maaßen is running with AfD support, the SPD-Left Party-Green state government cooperates with fascists in the state parliament committees and hoists them into important offices. Last February, Ramelow used his own vote to help AfD man Michael Kaufmann into the vice presidency in the Thuringian state parliament.

The murder in Idar-Oberstein is a warning. It is the result of the policy of the entire ruling class, which, as in the 1930s, is reacting to the deep crisis of capitalism by deliberately strengthening far-right and fascist forces.

UK: Institute of Fiscal Studies reports largest drop in per-pupil schools funding in 40 years

Tom Pearce

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) into the funding of UK schools confirms the devastating consequences of a decade of government underfunding, despite claims of spending boosts during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Mary Bousted (top left) speaking at an NEU Zoom meeting, Kevin Courtney (bottom left)

In real terms, the report found that spending per pupil has fallen for the first time since the 1990s, by “9% or about £600 per pupil between 2009–10 and 2019–20.” This is the largest effective cut in over 40 years.

An extra £7.1 billion of funding for schools in England, promised by the government for 2022–23, is being trumpeted as a reversal of the 9 percent fall. However, the IFS report found that “If we account for expected increases in teacher pay, the real terms increase in spending per pupil will be lower, at 6%. Therefore, school spending per pupil in 2022–23 would be no higher in real terms than in 2009–10.”

The impact has been especially hard on the poorest and most vulnerable children.

Since 2011, schools have received a pupil premium payment, introduced by the Conservatives/Liberal Democrats coalition, which grants extra funds to schools for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. These payments have not increased as need has grown.

According to the IFS, “Since 2014-15, spending per pupil has fallen by 4% amongst the most deprived primary schools as compared with a rise of 3% amongst the least deprived primary schools. Amongst secondary schools, the most deprived schools saw a 13% real-terms fall in spending per pupil between 2014–15 and 2018–19, which compares with a 7% fall amongst the least deprived schools.”

Factoring in smaller rises between 2010 and 2015, the most deprived schools have suffered the highest overall fall in spending per pupil since 2009–10. The total funding premium was found to have fallen by about “25% by 2018–19, taking it back to mid-2000 levels”.

A separate survey this September of 1,500 head teachers by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) union found that 97 percent of all schools “had received insufficient funding to support pupils who had special needs”. Nearly a third of schools have cut higher-level needs services in the last year.

These figures totally expose the lying propaganda from the Conservative government, Labour Party opposition, trade unions and the media that they are keeping schools open during the pandemic for the sake of children’s learning. The ruling class clearly could not care less about providing working-class children with the resources needed for a good education. By comparison, in the last four years, as pupils have seen their funding fall, UK defence spending has risen by £5.3 billion in real terms.

The truth is that schools have been reopened purely as holding pens so that parents can return to work making profits for the corporations, paying back the costs of the pandemic. Now that children are back in the classrooms, the poorest are immediately confronted with more cuts, giving the lie to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s fraudulent “levelling up” agenda.

Data sourced under the Freedom of Information Act by the Observer shows that a government change to how pupil premium funding is calculated—from October 2020 rather than January 2021—will lead to substantial shortfalls in the poorest areas. “Schools in the most deprived 10% of areas in England each enrolled an average of seven extra FSM [free school meals] pupils between October 2020 and January 2021, compared with 2.6 extra FSM pupils at each school in the least deprived locations,” the paper reports. These pupils will not be awarded funding.

Councils have yet to calculate the cost of the changes, but there is no doubt that they will exacerbate the desperate financial situation for thousands of schools. Education website Schools Week estimates the total loss of funding to be around £125 million.

The IFS report was met with oppositional rhetoric from the teaching unions and the Labour Party. Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green said, “Conservative cuts have hammered school budgets over the last decade. Children’s opportunities have been stripped away as class sizes have soared to record levels and enriching extracurricular activities have been cut back.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, commented, “This is at a time when demands on schools have been increasing. There is no escaping the fact that the schools have had and will continue to have to make cuts to provision until this is properly addressed.”

But what Labour and the unions describe are the consequences of their own betrayals of school workers’ struggles and refusal to seriously oppose government cuts. The unions have bent over backwards to accommodate the cost-cutting agenda of Tory-led governments, waved through by the Labour Party, and have deepened their criminal partnership over the course of the pandemic by supporting the government’s reopening of COVID-infested schools. Token campaigns for more funding run by NASWUT and the NEU have been allowed to fall on deaf ears for decades.

The leaders of the education unions made clear in their criticisms of the funding figures that nothing will change in this approach, limiting themselves to offering advice to Johnson’s viciously right-wing government.

NAHT leader Whiteman counselled, “A far more ambitious programme of investment is required from the government if schools are going to be able to deliver the education that the current generation of pupils need and deserve.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said in the same vein, “The government must invest more in our schools and colleges and it has to ensure that funding is put on a more sustainable footing in the future.”

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), the largest teachers’ union in Europe, stated, “If the Government is serious about making sure no child is left behind, they will show far more urgency and ambition to support and resource schools with their efforts to deliver education recovery.”

In fact, the NEU, sitting on enormous anger in its membership, has gone out of its way to offer ongoing support to the Tory government.

Last week, the widely despised education secretary Gavin Williamson was replaced in a government reshuffle by Nadhim Zahawi. This was a transparent manoeuvre by Johnson to use Williamson as a scapegoat for his government’s schools policy during the pandemic, presenting the new minister as a fresh start. Bousted’s counterpart as NEU joint general secretary Kevin Courtney duly played his part in this fiction, appearing on the BBC to welcome Zahawi into his office. The NEU Twitter account said that Courtney was “Looking forward to working with Nadhim Zahawi and all at DfE to ensure schools and colleges get funding needed to support education recovery for pupils.”

The multi-millionaire Zahawi then began his tenure as education secretary by refusing calls to extend free school meals over the holiday period and claiming parents “actually prefer to pay a modest amount” for the scheme.

WHO/ILO study says nearly 2 million workers globally die from work-related issues each year

Shannon Jones

A new report, jointly issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) on work-related deaths for the year 2016, shows that workplace-related diseases and injuries led to the deaths of 1.9 million people in that year.

The WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-Related Burden of Disease and Injury, 2000-2016, conducted before the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, gives a glimpse of the terrible toll taken on the international working class by the insatiable profit drive of the corporations. Globally, 34.3 out of every 100,000 people over age 15 die each year from work-related causes.

The WHO/ILO study was compiled using strict statistical standards with the collaboration of more than 220 experts from 35 countries. It considers risk factors, including exposure to carcinogens, air pollution, workplace injuries and long working hours. It concluded that long work hours, 55 or more per week, was the largest single contributor to worker mortality, accounting for 750,000 deaths annually. Workplace exposure to air pollution was responsible for 450,000 deaths. Occupational injuries killed 360,000 annually.

The WHO/ILO study examined 41 selected pairs of occupational risk factors and health outcomes. In 2016, 1.88 million deaths and 89.72 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY) were estimated to be caused by 41 occupational risk pairs. Non-communicable disease accounted for 81 percent of occupational deaths. This included 450,000 deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (400,000 deaths) and ischemic heart disease (350,000 deaths), mostly related to long work hours.

In addition to overwork, huge numbers of workers fall victim to numerous other hazards. The next leading cause of workplace deaths are occupational exposure to particulate matter, gases and fumes, and occupational injuries. These categories account for 450,381 and 363,283 deaths each year, respectively.

Of the 363,283 deaths due to occupational injuries, the largest number involved traffic and transport-related causes. Motor vehicle road injuries killed 76,946 annually and pedestrian road injuries 72,157.

The report notes that the actual number of deaths from disease are undercounted, since some categories are not considered in the survey.

While overall occupation-related deaths fell 14 percent between 2000 and 2016, deaths from stroke and heart disease related to overwork rose 19 percent and 41 percent respectively. A disproportionate number of work-related deaths impacted workers in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific, as well as males and people over the age of 54.

Several major industrial countries registered particularly heavy death rates, such as the United Kingdom, with 41.5 deaths per 100,000, and Italy, at 38.2 per 100,000.

Mexican workers work the most hours per year, 2,225 hours, followed by South Korea at 2,113. (World Atlas) However, the United States is the most overworked developed nation in the world, according to many others studies. It is one of the few countries in the world that does not have a maximum workweek, and the only country in the Americas without a national paid parental leave benefit. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, full-time workers worked an average of 43 hours a week in the US, but in many industries like manufacturing six- or seven-day weeks are common, with workers clocking 60, 70 or even 80 hours.

“All of these deaths are preventable,” International Labour Organization chief Guy Ryder correctly noted in a video message on the report. “We can and we must ensure safe and healthy workplaces for all workers.”

In issuing the report, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, stated, “It’s shocking to see so many people literally being killed by their jobs. Our report is a wake-up call to countries and businesses to improve and protect the health and safety of workers by honouring their commitments to provide universal coverage of occupational health and safety services.”

However, such pleas are sure to fall on deaf ears. Indeed, The WHO/ILO report was barely noted by the corporate media, who are systematically downplaying the impact of a pandemic that continues to kill over 10,000 people each day worldwide.

This annual toll of premature death and terrible suffering has been raised to a new level by the COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of the deadly virus, in which workplaces, including schools, are a deadly vector of transmission, adds a whole new dimension to future surveys. The pressure by the banks and finance houses to further ramp up the exploitation of workers has only grown under the impact of the global pandemic. Vast amounts have been handed over to the corporations, money that must be repaid by imposing even higher levels of exploitation.

Official estimates place the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic at 4.7 million, well over twice the annual death toll from work-related causes. However, the official toll from COVID is also likely a vast undercount. The Economist published an estimate, based on an examination of death records, that placed the real toll at more than three times the official figure, or over 15 million.

The WHO/ILO report makes clear that the expansion of the workweek is a form of social murder whose impact is quantifiable. Historically, the fight for the shortening of the workday and the workweek has been the focus of bitter struggles by the working class for more than two centuries.

Italy arrests ex-Catalan regional Premier Puigdemont for extradition to Spain

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

Yesterday, an Italian judge ordered the release of former Catalan regional Premier Carles Puigdemont after his sudden arrest on Thursday evening, as he arrived at the airport at Alghero on the Italian island of Sardinia. Puigdemont faces an extradition hearing on October 4, although Italian press reports say charges will not be pressed if he leaves Italy before then.

In 2017 he fled to Belgium after Madrid’s brutal police crackdown against the Catalan independence referendum he had organised. The crackdown left over 1,000 peaceful voters injured. This was followed by threats to impose a state of emergency on Catalonia, the detention of top officials of Puigdemont’s regional government, and a show trial which condemned a dozen of them to a decade in jail for sedition. If extradited, Puigdemont faces decades in jail on trumped-up charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds.

The current leader of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, who was in government at the time, vowed that Puigdemont would end up “like Companys.” Lluís Companys was the Catalan regional premier who declared independence in 1934. Exiled at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, Companys was captured by the Nazi Gestapo in occupied Paris in 1940 and handed over to the Spanish fascist regime of Francisco Franco, who had him in tortured, beaten and shot.

The arrest, flowing from the most reactionary political interests, was a flagrantly anti-democratic operation of Europe’s police-state machine, apparently carried out behind the back of the Italian government, and was rapidly exposed as having no legal basis.

Puigdemont was arrested by Italian Carabinieri police as he stepped off the aircraft as he arrived in Sardinia to attend Adifolk, a Catalan cultural festival in Alghero.

The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia wrote: “Members of the Puigdemont team who were in Alghero waiting at the airport saw an unusual deployment of Carabinieri and already warned of what could happen. Two plainclothes officers proceeded to ask for his identification and took him first to the airport police station and then as a detainee to [Alghero's] police station. Italian police sources explained that the arrest was carried out by the Sardinian Border Police.” He then spent the night at Bancari prison, before being released by the Court of Appeal of Sassari yesterday.

Italian police reportedly detected Puigdemont’s arrival via the integrated Passenger Name Registration (PNR) system and the Schengen Information System (SIS). The first collects passenger information, which is transferred to police authorities of EU Member States to screen for criminals. The second, the SIS, is a large-scale information system to facilitate cooperation between national border control authorities, customs and police in Europe to deny entry to a person or search and arrest a person for whom a European Detention Order has been issued.

Puigdemont reportedly has a data sheet in the SIS registering the arrest and surrender order issued in October 2019 by Spain’s Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena. This order was suspended, however, though Llarena told the Sardinian judge the order had never been “de-activated.”

Llarena’s argument does not hold water, however, having been explicitly rejected even by Spanish authorities themselves.

Puigdemont’s immunity as a Member of the European parliament was stripped last March in a vote sponsored by the Spanish fascist Vox party’s European Conservatives and Reformists group and supported by liberals, conservatives and social democrats. He appealed the decision, but in a ruling at the end of July, the EU’s general court said there was no immediate risk of arrest, as the detention order was suspended. The state attorney representing Spain at the European Court, Sonsoles Centeno, said last July, “There is no procedure for executing the aforementioned arrest warrants.”

Arguing that Puigdemont was not subject to imminent arrest, the European Court of Justice denied his appeal. Since July, he has travelled freely in Europe—to Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and France. In France, he rented a summer house and went to the National Assembly in Paris, where he gave a press conference and met publicly with various deputies of the French National Assembly. He was never arrested, let alone questioned.

Moreover, attempts of Spain’s Supreme Court to secure the extradition of Puigdemont and two of his former regional councillors, Antoni Comín and Carla Ponsatí—who also fled Spain, and are also MEPs—have previously failed. Belgian, German and Scottish courts, and the Court of Justice of the European Union have all rejected extraditing Comin, Ponsatí and Puigdemont.

After the Carabinieri arrested Puigdemont, the Italian government’s ruling parties denounced the decision, making clear they had not been consulted. Former far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of the Lega opposed the arrest, saying, “Italy does not lend itself to the vendettas of others.”

Democratic Party Senator Tatjana Rojc said, “The arrest on Italian soil of a Euro-deputy who should be able to travel freely is shocking: handcuffs on Puigdemont are a serious act and an image unbecoming to a country with the rule of law.”

This underscores that Puigdemont’s arrest appears to have been an operation of unelected forces in the police-state machine. According to the far-right news site OKDiario, the arrest took place because Spain’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) was alerted to Puigdemont’s travel by the SIS, after which Spanish authorities contacted Italian police. A security source told OKDiario: “what a country that detects [a fugitive] has to do is to notify the police of the country that ordered his capture and alert the police of the country that is the fugitive’s destination.”

This fascistic arrest of Puigdemont provoked mass anger in Catalonia. In Barcelona, thousands of protesters gathered outside the Italian consulate to demand his release. Catalan regional Premier Pere Aragonès issued an official statement calling for “freedom for President Puigdemont and all those facing repression.”

Significantly, however, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government endorsed the police-state operation against Puigdemont. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared on Friday at a press conference, stating that Puigdemont “must be brought to justice,” and “stand trial.” Sánchez added that the Spanish government “respects all judicial proceedings whether opened in Spain, in Europe or in this case in Italy, and will comply with any judicial decisions that may be taken.”

Puigdemont’s arrest is a reactionary attack on democratic rights, revealing the vast police-state machine that the ruling class is building up across Europe as it shifts rapidly to the right. His Catalan nationalist politics themselves are bankrupt and reactionary, working to divide workers inside Spain along ethnic and linguistic lines. However, the principal target of the fascistic forces pursuing Puigdemont is the working class.

Vox, the army, and the rest of the Spanish political establishment including the PSOE-Podemos government have all supported the EU’s “herd immunity” policy of allowing the virus to spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to over 1.2 million confirmed COVID-19 deaths across Europe, and over 100,000 excess deaths in Spain during the pandemic. Over 10 percent of Spain’s population is confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus.

After mass strikes broke out across Europe in March 2020, as workers demanded the right to shelter at home to stop the contagion and mass deaths in the early weeks of the pandemic in Europe, the far-right forces leading the anti-Catalan campaign were appalled. Broad sections of the officer corps and of the Vox party leadership began agitating for a coup to crush domestic opposition. In December, WhatsApp chats were leaked to the press in which Spanish Air Force officers declared they were “good fascists” and wanted to kill “26 million people” in Spain.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro attacks socialism and COVID-19 lockdowns at UN

Tomas Castanheira

The opening session of the 76th UN General Assembly began on Tuesday, September 21, with a speech by Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro. Exactly two weeks earlier, Bolsonaro had led far-right demonstrations that threatened to install a military dictatorship in Latin America’s largest country.

In his speech, Bolsonaro openly vindicated his September 7 coup threat. He also defended his criminal state policies, particularly his homicidal “herd immunity” strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already caused nearly 600,000 recorded deaths in Brazil. Bolsonaro personified this criminal policy, as he attended the international event as the only speaker who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The Brazilian president opened his speech by clearly presenting the counterrevolutionary perspective that guides his policy. He proclaimed, “Brazil has a president who believes in God, respects the Constitution and its military, values the family and owes loyalty to his people. That is a lot, it is a solid foundation, if you take into account that we were on the verge of socialism.”

He went on to say that the epoch in which Brazil “[financed] works in communist countries” is over and that today the country has “the largest investment partnership program with private enterprise in its history.”

Based on outright data distortions, he affirmed his government’s environmental commitment, including the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, whose devastation he claimed had been radically reduced. While Bolsonaro declared “a 32 percent reduction in deforestation in the month of August,” the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) says that in the first years of his term there was a 56 percent increase in the average deforestation of the Amazon.

Speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro viciously attacked policies based on science and in the interests of preserving human lives. He stated that “isolation and lockdown measures have left a legacy of inflation, particularly in foodstuffs worldwide.”

The president also declared himself opposed to “any vaccine-related mandates” and advocated the use of drugs without scientific proof against COVID-19, claiming “[to be] one who has taken the ‘initial treatment,’ always respecting medical autonomy.”

At the same time as he gave this hideous statement, a scandal was revealed in Brazil involving the medical company Prevent Senior, which conducted a barbaric experiment on elderly COVID-19 patients, who were given hydroxychloroquine and erythromycin without their consent, provoking hundreds of deaths. These results, in turn, were falsified to support a “study” that would claim the efficacy of such drugs against COVID-19. Bolsonaro was deeply involved with the organizers of this criminal experiment and systematically publicized its fraudulent results.

The Brazilian corporate media reported Bolsonaro’s speech and participation in the UN event as a national “shame.” He “has no place in the world,” an article by Jamil Chade at Uol stated. The press also claimed that the speech was entirely aimed at his domestic ultra-right base and that he refused to “speak to the world.”

These assessments attempt to single out Bolsonaro as an aberration, a black stain invading the sea of roses of fraternal international political relations embodied by the United Nations. The profound hypocrisy of imperialist leaders, such as US President Joe Biden, who proclaimed the end of a “period of relentless war” and the opening of a “new era of relentless diplomacy,” is portrayed by them as the purest truth.

The 2021 UN General Assembly was, however, marked by the announcement, just a few days earlier, of the formation of the AUKUS military alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This military agreement exacerbated the threats of an imminent war against China and exposed the deepening conflicts between the imperialist powers themselves—as the unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the AUKUS countries and France unequivocally demonstrated.

While uttering speeches extolling “peace” and “diplomacy” and advocating “humanitarian” policies, the world bourgeoisie walks blindfolded towards the eruption of catastrophic wars, while domestically advancing policies of social murder in response to COVID-19 and of widespread repression against growing social opposition.

Regardless of whether his peers turn up their noses at him, the fascistic Bolsonaro is a legitimate expression of the political degradation of the international bourgeoisie driven by the deep crisis of world capitalism.

Bolsonaro’s attitude of criminal neglect towards the COVID-19 pandemic, known in Brazil as “denialism,” is not peculiar to him either. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who this week was highlighted in the Brazilian press for allegedly warning Bolsonaro that “vaccines save lives”—will go down in history for his nefarious phrase: “No more f…ing lockdowns; let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

Although Bolsonaro focused on promoting his domestic political conspiracies, his speech aimed far beyond his fascistic foot soldiers in Brazil. By attacking socialism, lockdowns and mandatory vaccination, by advocating a chauvinistic policy based on “God and family,” he spoke on behalf of fascistic forces that are being brought to the fore and integrated into capitalist governments around the world.

In conjunction with the Brazilian president’s participation in the UN event, his son and political right-hand aide, Eduardo Bolsonaro, participated in Tucker Carlson’s reactionary program on Fox News. With Carlson’s enthusiastic approval, Eduardo attacked New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, declaring he “is a Marxist that follows a lot of what Antonio Gramsci says.” De Blasio had recommended that Bolsonaro get vaccinated before entering the US or to not come at all.

Eduardo Bolsonaro was directly addressing the base of support of Donald Trump, who, like the Brazilian president, declared the minimal social distancing measures promoted by governors and mayors as “dictatorial” and instigated a fascistic insurrection against them.

Also during the trip to New York, members of Bolsonaro’s entourage, including his Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga and Eduardo Bolsonaro himself, tested positive for COVID-19. Following up on his provocations, Eduardo implied he was making use of the unproved drugs and, in a post on Twitter on Friday, raised doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccines. He wrote: “We know the vaccines were made faster than standard. ... Does that mean the vaccine is useless? I don’t think so. But it is another argument against the vaccine passport.”

Entertainment industry union IATSE calls for strike authorization vote

Hong Jian

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the bargaining agent for 140,000 technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the media and entertainment industry, called for a strike authorization vote on September 20, ten days after an extension of the previous contract expired. The vote will be held October 1–3 and cover the 13 West Coast locals that belong to the Hollywood Basic Agreement.

IATSE image montage [Credit: IATSE/Facebook]

The following day, September 21, IATSE President Matthew Loeb and the leaders of the 23 locals located outside Los Angeles, covered by the Area Standards Agreement, sent a letter to their members calling for a strike authorization vote, claiming that the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) had broken off negotiations by failing to respond to IATSE’s last offer.

In a statement about the contract negotiations, IATSE officials asserted, “It is incomprehensible that the AMPTP, an ensemble that includes media mega-corporations collectively worth trillions of dollars, claims it cannot provide behind-the-scenes crews with basic human necessities like adequate sleep, meal breaks, and living wages. Worse, management does not appear to even recognize our core issues as problems that exist in the first place.”

Conditions for below-the-line employees (crew members as opposed to script and story writers, producers, directors, actors and casting) have not only become intolerable, but they are also a danger to the health and safety of everyone on the set. Twelve-hour shifts are the norm and a majority of entertainment workers in Los Angeles are not earning a livable wage. Abuse is rampant, and breaks—if they are permitted—are too short and too infrequent. Workers complain they are being worked to death and that these conditions cannot continue.

The overwhelming sentiment of workers as it finds expression on social media is that change is urgently needed and that a strike is necessary. One worker, criticizing the union leadership, explained that Loeb “is the one that led us to this mess we are in. He alone said all the past contracts were great and we should ratify them. Now … all of a sudden everything is wrong. That said … if the producers can’t agree on a basic human need of time off (10- or 12-hr turn around and proper meal breaks) it really says it all. … Money and benefits are highly negotiable. The basic human necessities are not. For those alone I would vote [to] strike.”

One worker on the iatse_stories Instagram site commented bitterly, “You know what’s funny? The fact that we need to hear stories of 14–18 hour work days for people to be riled up. You know what’s crazy? 12 hour days. The fact that this hardly sets off alarms shows how far we’ve normalized this work/life imbalance.”

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Elizabeth, who has been working in the business for two years. She began as a production assistant (PA) and then as an office PA before transitioning to her current position as a set decorator coordinator. She explained that when she worked as a PA, her shifts were normally from 14 to 17 hours a day. In six months, she only had two 12-hour shifts. She said, “Fatigue is a major issue, you have to stand all day, with only a half-hour break every six hours if you are lucky. Once we worked straight through without eating for an entire shift, but I did get the meal penalty pay, which is minimal.”

She also stated that, like others whose stories have come out on the iatse_stories Instagram page, she had fallen asleep twice in her car because of the grueling schedule. Elizabeth said that even when a crew member is ill, it is hard to get time off. She said she was sick for a week at the beginning of last year before her employers finally let her go home, and even then, it was only for two days. She also complained of abusive managers and rampant sexual harassment.

Elizabeth noted that the current project she is working on has so far been a good experience, but there was no guarantee that it would continue, or that the next project she works on would be the same. For that reason, she supports the strike authorization vote and would be very supportive of a strike if it occurs. “It’s good that they (IATSE), are taking a stand. The AMPTP does not want to even consider negotiating or changing anything.”

A warning must be issued. Matthew Loeb, IATSE president since 2008 and with a compensation package worth over $500,000, along with the rest of the IATSE leadership, will not conduct a struggle to improve wages and working conditions. They will sabotage and betray such a struggle. They are fully responsible for the current miserable conditions, the product of a history of accepting concessions to the AMPTP, contract after contract.

Moreover, the union is only now calling a strike authorization vote, 10 days after the extension of the contract had expired and almost two months after the expiration of the original contract. This is an indication of how little appetite they have for a confrontation with the employers.

Loeb was well aware of the issues IATSE workers faced before the contract expired July 31 and yet did nothing to prepare workers for the impending conflict. Rather than calling for a strike authorization vote before the contract ended, the IATSE leaders opted to extend the contract, while pausing negotiations to implement a looser (and more dangerous) COVID-19 protocol under which the industry works.

While the Delta variant was already surging, IATSE helped the AMPTP reduce COVID-19 requirements, thereby allowing the employers to ramp up production and stock up on product in order to weather any possible strike.

The new COVID-19 protocols are set to expire on September 30. It is entirely possible that negotiations will be paused once again, so that the corporations can loosen restrictions one more time and further endanger the health and safety of IATSE workers. IATSE has not called attention to the rise of the Delta variant and the death and destruction it has caused, or demanded the implementation of tighter restrictions or a suspension of production during which workers would have to receive full pay from the billion-dollar corporations.