Analysis of EPA data shows millions subjected to high levels of cancer-causing industrial pollution

Chase Lawrence

According to a new analysis by ProPublica of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data from 2014 through 2018, 256,000 Americans are being exposed to pollution levels higher than the EPA’s uppermost limit of 1 in 10,000 excess cancer risk, with 43,000 being subjected to at least triple this risk. Meanwhile 74 million people, nearly a quarter of the country’s population, are exposed to pollution that carries a higher than 1 in 1 million excess cancer risk.

Union Carbide Corporation, a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, in Seadrift, Texas. (Source: ProPublica)

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 1.7 million new cases of cancer were reported and almost 600,000 people died of the disease in 2018, accounting for at least 436 cancer cases and 149 deaths per 100,000 people in the US. Cancer was the second leading cause behind heart disease, with one in four deaths due to cancer that year.

ProPublica used data from an EPA model called Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI). This data has significant limitations, with the EPA warning in its RSEI Methodology Document that “RSEI does not perform a detailed or quantitative risk assessment, but offers a screening-level, risk-related perspective for relative comparisons of certain waste management activities (e.g., releases to the environment) of TRI chemicals.” That is, that the RSEI values are relative and by and large can be expected to be under the actual absolute value, meaning that actual cancer risk could be much higher.

Additionally, the analysis excludes the six criteria pollutants used for the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which include ground-level ozone pollution, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead and sulfur dioxide, some of which may or are known to cause cancer.

According to the EPA, PM2.5 pollution concentration, which refers to the concentration of fine particles 2.5 microns or less in width in the air, increased over the period of 2016-18, and again in 2019-20. While increases were also seen in 2004-05, 2006-07 and 2009-10, the general trend has been downwards, with a 41 percent decrease in the national average since 2000. The American Lung Association puts the number of people living in unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution at over 135 million.

One of the most significant conclusions from ProPublica’s analysis is that the EPA’s method of risk assessments, which assess facilities one by one, is woefully inadequate when more than one facility is present, causing dangerous overlaps in pollution that lead to cancer risks much higher than the EPA’s “acceptable” risk. Corporations frequently violate EPA rules with impunity, accepting fines from environmental violations as a mere cost of business, while the law does not even require the EPA to penalize polluters violating agency rules.

ProPublica identified more than 1,000 hot-spots of cancer-causing air. One environmental scientist and ex-EPA official, Wayne Davis, stated after reviewing the map the organization produced, “The public is going to learn that EPA allows a hell of a lot of pollution to occur that the public does not think is occurring.”

Many of the affected areas are in residential zones and schools, though the highest concentrations are unsurprisingly located at the source of the emissions—factories.

According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, “Cancer Incidence and Mortality among Petroleum Industry Workers and Residents Living in Oil Producing Communities,” those who work at factories experience much higher cancer rates than elsewhere. Employees in jobs which expose them on a daily basis to crude petroleum or its product, compared with non-exposed employees, were found to have rate increases ranging from more than double for mesothelioma and between 1.2 and two times the baseline of a variety of cancers, including skin melanoma, multiple myeloma, prostate cancers, urinary bladder cancer, leukemia, stomach cancer and lung cancer. Residential proximity to petroleum facilities was found to increase childhood leukemia incidence by 1.9 times.

ProPublica’s report and analysis provides a chilling visualization of this process of mass poisoning.

Almost all of the carcinogenic sites were found in southern states known for weaker regulations, with half in Louisiana and Texas combined. Texas is the number one oil producer out of all states, accounting for 41.4 percent of all oil production in 2019.

Celanese Ltd. Clear Lake plant in Houston, Texas, emits enough pollution to cause a lifetime cancer rate as high as 1 in 210 at the source, 48 times the EPA’s “acceptable risk,” with nearby Equistar Chemicals Bayport Chemicals plant having a similar rate of 1 in 220. Equistar produces this risk through ethylene oxide and acetaldehyde emissions, while Celanese produces this risk through emissions of ethylene oxide, methyl iodide, acetaldehyde and two other carcinogens. Shell Chemical LP has a 1 in 930 rate at the source.

In response to the publication of the map, Joe Goffman, the acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation said that “toxic air emissions from industrial facilities are a problem that must be addressed” under the Biden administration and claimed that “the EPA has reinvigorated its commitment to protect public health from toxic air emissions from industrial facilities—especially in communities that have already suffered disproportionately from air pollution and other environmental burdens.”

While pointing out where the sources of cancer are, ProPublica muddies the water by implying that pollution is either predominantly or solely a racial issue and not a class one. It is the working class, both those working at the polluting facilities and those living in the vicinity who bear the brunt of the pollution. The emissions are made by million-dollar and billion-dollar companies which have, through their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties, systematically destroyed environmental regulations in the drive for profit. The time period that ProPublica is examining covers two years of the Democratic Party Obama administration, the first black president, as well as two of the Trump presidency.

Given that 46.9 million people in the US identify as black or African American according to the US Census Bureau, even if every single one of these people were confined to these cancer-causing areas, it would still not explain why the rest of the 27.1 million people are being poisoned, let alone the 135 million people in the US exposed to ozone and particle pollution.

The Democratic Party-controlled government of Flint, Michigan, which was predominantly “black and brown” in the parlance of the Democratic party and pseudo-left, presided in coordination with the state Republican party over the poisoning of the population with lead by switching the city to untreated Flint River water. In the wake of this, then-president Barack Obama trivialized the disaster and told residents whose children were poisoned by contaminated water that “the kids will be just fine.”

Similarly, Houston, which is examined for a significant portion of one of ProPublica’s articles, has been governed by the Democratic Party for years. It has had a black mayor, Sylvester Turner, since 2016, and every mayor since 1982 has been a Democrat. The city council has been dominated by the Democratic Party for almost as long, with 11 of the 16 seats held by Democrats. The current city council is composed mainly of women and minorities, with the latter group holding almost half of the seats. They, along with the Republican state government and the federal government under both the Democratic and Republican administrations and the polluting companies who the aforementioned parties serve, are responsible for the plumes of cancer-causing pollution spewing over Houston.

The situation in Louisiana is similar, where a whole swath, stretching from New Orleans—dominated by the Democratic Party since the 1870s—to Baton Rouge, which has had Democratic mayors since 2005, is commonly referred to as Cancer Alley. A previous investigation by ProPublica detailed such high levels of pollution from nearby chemical plants that residents living in St. Gabriel, Louisiana could observe a golden mist falling from the sky at night so thick that they had to wash it off their lawns the next day.

Australia: Property bubble bonanza for ruling elite fuels social crisis for the working class

John Harris

As is taking place around the world, the intensifying COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the already staggering levels of income and wealth inequality in Australia. Millions of working-class households are suffering severe financial distress, while the ruling elite is swimming in cash. The social chasm is summed up by the speculative frenzy in the property market.

Domain last month revealed that median house prices across Australia reached $994,579 at the end of the September quarter, up from $816,082 at the corresponding time last year. This is a 21.9 percent increase in 12 months, the sharpest rise in three decades.

The worst affected city is Sydney, where median house prices last month hit a record of $1,499,126. This is up by $349,000 since the 2020 September quarter, or 30.4 percent, so the median housing cost increased by $984 per day over the past year. Prices in half a dozen suburbs rose by at least $500,000.

Canberra’s median house prices sat at $1.074 million, representing a record $740 increase per day over the past year. Melbourne’s median house price rose to $1.034 million. Brisbane’s hit $702,455, and Adelaide saw a 5.6 percent rise to $667,888. Perth experienced a rise of 9.8 percent, from $545,129 to $598,601.

Units and apartments across the country had a median cost of $609,642 up from $571,016 last year, a 6.8 percent increase. In Sydney, again the worst-affected area, median costs last month were $802,475, up from $733,049, an increase of 9.5 percent.

Suburban houses in Hobart, Tasmania (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania, also saw staggering increases in housing and apartment costs at 31.9 percent (increasing to $698,212) and 23.8 percent (increasing to $532,284 respectively). Hobart house prices have doubled in the past five years.

The explosion in prices has been fueled by record low interest rates implemented by the Reserve Bank of Australia, which has effectively funneled billions of dollars into the financial markets. Federal and state governments have provided unprecedented business stimulus packages that are being churned into speculative activity on the share and property markets.

Like its Labor Party predecessor, the Liberal-National Coalition government has maintained capital gains tax concessions and other policies, such as negative tax gearing, which has provided a financial bonanza for property developers. The rise and rise of housing costs has seen finance capital gouge out profits through speculation, especially in the property market.

One graphic expression of the crisis was the sale in March of a modest three-bedroom brick house in Cabarita in Sydney’s inner-west for $8.275 million. It is not unusual to hear of houses in Sydney’s working-class western and southwestern suburbs selling for well over a million dollars.

Working people, and younger people in particular seeking to purchase their first home, have been priced out of the market and face a wall of investor money when they try to buy a property.

Economist Saul Eslake told ABC-TV’s “Four Corners” program last month: “What’s really striking is the decline in the home ownership rate among people under the age of 45.” At the 2016 census, the rate of home ownership among people under 45 was lower than it had been at the census of 1954.

Eslake added: “I suspect when the 2021 results come out, the home ownership rate among younger Australian adults, that is say between their 20s and mid-30s, will be lower than it was at the census of 1947.”

The housing bubble is fueling a social disaster for millions of working people, students, and youth. In July, a Domain survey reported that approximately 31 percent of the population face rental or mortgage stress—that is, spending at least a third of their income on housing costs. According to an Equity Economics report released earlier this year, in New South Wales alone 530,000 households, accounting for 1.4 million people, were in housing stress and in need of affordable housing.

The government-promoted speculative frenzy in the property market is flowing on to increased rents. In June, CoreLogic reported that median rents were up 6.6 percent in a year, the biggest increase in a decade. The median weekly rent is now over $470 for houses or units.

Even before the pandemic, on any given night in 2019, around 290,000 people were homeless, according to the Australian Homeless Monitor 2020 report. In that year too, some 1.3 million people in low-income households were pushed into poverty because of unaffordable housing costs.

The housing bubble is also creating the conditions for a major financial meltdown similar to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States that triggered the global crash of 2008.

A central component of the collapse of the US bubble was the divergence between house prices and real wages. These conditions are emerging sharply in Australia. While housing costs are reaching astronomical heights, real wages are stagnating and declining.

Australian Tax Office data for the 2018–2019 fiscal year showed that the average salary was around $63,085, while the median salary was $52,732. This means that the median house price in Sydney was around 24 times higher than the average salary, and the national median house price was 16 times higher.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, wages have grown by just 1.7 per cent in the 2020–2021 fiscal year, below the rate of inflation, representing a wage cut in real terms. The pandemic has been used to accelerate a government-employer-union assault on the conditions of workers and intensify pro-business restructuring aimed at destroying permanent full-time jobs and driving down wages.

Governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have proceeded with the full reopening of the economy, adopting Boris Johnson-style “freedom days,” recklessly restarting schools and effectively embracing a “herd immunity” policy. These criminal policies are endangering the lives of working people, students and young people.

At the same time, the government has deliberately imposed the economic burden of the catastrophe on working-class households. Income support for workers and youth who have lost their jobs during lockdowns was at a poverty-level and is being ended with the “reopening.” Meanwhile, the governments continue to pour billions more dollars into the pockets of the finance and property markets.

The housing disaster is a sharp expression of a global process, with the deepening crisis of the capitalist economy resulting in an ever-more pronounced turn by the ruling elite to financial speculation and parasitism.

Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware

Binoy Kampmark

In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist.  On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

Russian company Positive Technologies and the Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy also made the list “based on a determination that they traffic in cyber tools used to gain unauthorized access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.”

The move had a measure of approval in Congress. “The entity listing signals that the US government is ready to take strong action to stop US exports and investors from engaging with such companies,” came the approving remarks in a joint statement from Democrat House Representatives Tom Malinowski, Anna Eshoo and Joaquin Castro.

This offers mild comfort to students of the private surveillance industry, who have shown it to be governed by traditional capitalist incentive rather than firm political ideology.  Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program observes how such entities have actually thrived in liberal democratic states.  “Relevant companies, such as Cellebrite, FinFisher, Blue Coat, Hacking Team, Cyberpoint, L3 Technologies, Verint, and NSO group, are headquartered in the most democratic countries in the world, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Israel.”

The relationship between Digital China and Austin-based Oracle shows how talk about democracy and such ideals are fairly meaningless in such transactions.  Digital China is credited with aiding the PRC develop a surveillance state; software and data analytics company Oracle, despite pledging to “uphold and respect human rights for all people” was still happy to count Digital China a global “partner of the year” in 2018.  Its software products have been used to aid police in Liaoning province to do, among other things, gather details on financial records, travel information, social media and surveillance camera footage.  What’s bad for human rights is very good for business.

In its indignant response to the Commerce Department’s blacklisting, NSO wished to point out to US authorities how its own “technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime, and thus we will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”  Portraying itself as a card-carrying member of the human rights fraternity, the company claimed to have “the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based [on] the American values we deeply share”.  Previous contracts with governments had been terminated because they had “misused our products.”

As NSO has shown on numerous previous occasions, such strident assertions rarely match the record.  In July, an investigation known as the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and groups, reported how 50,000 phone numbers had appeared on a list of hackable targets that had interested a number of governments.  The spyware used in question was Pegasus, that most disturbingly appealing of creations by NSO designed to infect the phone in question and turn it into a surveillance tool for the relevant user.

The range of targets was skin crawlingly impressive: human rights activists, business executives, journalists, politicians and government officials.  None of this was new to those who have kept an eye on the exploits of the Israeli concern. Its sale of Pegasus has seen it feature in lawsuits from private citizens and companies such as WhatsApp keen to rein in its insidious practices.

Despite denying any connection, the company will be forever associated with providing the tools to one of its clients, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to monitor calls made by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident scribbler, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi was carved to oblivion on the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad with prints stretching back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  In a legal suit against NSO, lawyers for Abdulaziz argue that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”  To date, the vicious, petulant modernist royal remains at large, feted by governments the world over as a reformer.

While NSO has hogged the rude limelight on the international spyware market, that other Israeli-based concern, Candiru, has been a rolling hit with government clients.  Their products are also tailored to infecting and monitoring iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and, discomfortingly enough, cloud accounts.

Those behind this company evidently have a distasteful sense of humour; the original candiru of Amazon River fame is, goes one account in the Journal of Travel Medicine, “known as a little fish keen on entering the nether regions of people urinating in the Amazon River.”  Equipped with spikes, the fish invades and fastens itself within penis, vagina or rectum, making it a gruesome challenge to remove.  However colourful the imaginative accounts of the candiru’s exploits are – William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is merely one – the Israeli version is far more sinister and deserves consternated worry.

In July this year, the Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto identified over 750 websites that had been influenced by the use of Candiru spyware.  “We found many domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities.”  The company, founded in 2014, maintains an opaque operations and recruitment structure, reputedly drawing expertise from the Israeli Defence Forces Unit 8200, responsible for code encryption and gathering signals intelligence.

Within two years of its founding, the company had raked in $30 million in sales, establishing a slew of clients across Europe, states across the former Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf, Asia and Latin America.  A labour dispute between a former senior employee and the company shed some light on the company’s activities, with one document, signed by an unnamed vice president, noting the offering of a “high-end cyber intelligence platform dedicated to infiltrate PC computers, networks, mobile handsets, by using explosions and disseminations operations.”

NSO Group’s reputation, and credentials, are now impossible to ignore.  The Israeli government, which grants the export licenses that enable the likes of NSO and Candiru to operate, is splitting hairs.  “NSO is a private company,” insists Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, “it is not a governmental project and therefore even if it is designated, it has nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government.”  In his view, no other country had “such strict rules according to cyber warfare” and “imposing those rules more than Israel and we will continue to do so.”

No Israeli government is likely to entirely abandon companies that make annual sales of $1 billion in the business of offensive cyber.  The efforts by governments the world over to attack encrypted communications while trampling human rights on route have become unrelenting.  In that quest, it matters little whether you are a citizen journalist, a master criminal, or a terrorist.  Those deploying the spyware rarely make such distinctions.

Labour Party returns to power in Norway

Jordan Shilton

Norway’s Labour Party returned to office last month at the head of a coalition government with the rurally-based Centre Party. The minority government brings an end to eight years of rule by the Conservative Party, which governed for most of that time in coalition with the far-right Progress Party.

Labour’s return was not the product of any popular enthusiasm for its record of support for US-led military aggression, attacks on immigrants, and public spending discipline. Its share of the vote fell compared to its 2017 electoral defeat. The social democrats secured just 26.3 percent of the vote, losing 1.1 percentage points and one parliamentary deputy compared to the 49 elected in 2017. This marked one of Labour’s worst electoral results since the 1920s, barely surpassing the 24.3 percent of the vote the party secured in its devastating 2001 electoral defeat.

Its ability to form the government was thanks both to even larger losses for the Conservatives and far-right Progress, and modest gains by Centre. The Conservatives, led by incumbent Prime Minister Erna Solberg, obtained just 20.5 percent of the vote, a decline of 4.7 percentage points. This translated into a loss of nine deputies, leaving the Conservatives with 36. Centre, meanwhile, emerged with 28 deputies, up nine compared to the previous parliament. Gains were also made by the Socialist Left, which has its origins in a fusion of disgruntled Labour Party “lefts” and the Stalinist Communist Party in the early 1970s and served as a coalition partner with Labour between 2005 and 2013, and the ex-Maoist Red Party, which crossed the 4 percent hurdle required to form a parliamentary group for the first time.

Norway’s new prime minister is Jonas Gahr Støre, who was foreign minister in the last Labour-led government under Jens Stoltenberg. He initially sought to form a majority government with Centre and the Socialist Left, but the latter withdrew from talks citing a lack of progress on ending Norway’s dependence on oil.

Støre in February 2016 (Credit: Creative Commons)

The new government appears set to continue the Solberg government’s pandemic response, which has been to lift almost all public health measures over recent months. Norway managed to restrict infections and deaths comparatively well in the pandemic’s early stages, recording 919 deaths and about 200,000 infections to date. This compares with neighbouring Sweden, which has twice the population but has recorded 1.75 million cases and over 15,000 deaths due to its pursuit of an explicit “herd immunity” policy.

Støre is a close ally of Stoltenberg, who took over as head of the NATO military alliance after stepping down in 2013. Ever since, Stoltenberg has served as an ardent proponent of US-led military aggression throughout Eastern Europe against Russia, and in the Middle East. NATO’s Secretary General has also joined in the Biden administration’s ratcheting up of diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against China.

Norway, which shares an Arctic border with Russia, is an important ally and military base of operations for US imperialism. In April, Oslo concluded a new Supplementary Defence Cooperation Agreement with Washington. Building on decades of military collaboration since the founding of NATO in 1949, the deal permits the US military to build facilities at three Norwegian air bases and a naval port to “enhance cooperation between the two armed forces.” It provides for American military personnel to enjoy “unimpeded access and use of these facilities and areas.”

Particularly significant will be the US bases at Evenes Military Air Station and Ramsund Naval Station, located in Norway’s far north. Foreign Minister in the Conservative government, Ine Eriksen Soreide, commented, “To ensure that Norway and our Allies can operate together in a crisis situation under difficult conditions, we must be able to hold exercises and train regularly here in Norway.”

Labour is fully on board with this agreement.

In addition to support for US military aggression, the new government will enforce the strict public spending controls imposed by the previous right-wing government. While no expense was spared during the coronavirus pandemic to support big business, the Conservative government imposed strict spending limits when it tabled the 2022 budget just days before Støre took over as prime minister.

These limit government expenditures in the budget each year from Norway’s oil fund, one of the largest wealth investment funds in the world with a valuation of about $1.3 trillion. In 2017, Solberg’s government cut the annual spending cap from 4 percent of the fund’s total value to 3 percent. This cap was suspended for the 2020 and 2021 budgets, to fund large subsidies to business. For the 2021 budget, the previous government used 3.6 percent of the oil fund’s total value. This was slashed to 2.6 percent for 2022.

Established in the early 1990s to invest Norway’s oil profits, the fund has served to strengthen the position of the Norwegian bourgeoisie abroad and keep public spending on a tight leash at home. Kyrre Aamdal, a senior economist for DNB markets, remarked, “The total use of oil money (the structural, non-oil deficit) will probably not be changed that much by a new government.”

As the pandemic spread globally in early 2020, Norway’s economy suffered what was described as its worst peacetime economic shock. Unemployment reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.

The government responded with two state-backed loan guarantees worth up to 100 billion kroner for businesses. This package included 50 billion kroner of investment in the bond market to support large companies. This massive bailout for the corporate elite and Norway’s rich accelerated the growth of social inequality, which has steadily expanded over the past four decades.

Often held up as an example of equality and social harmony in the international liberal and “left” press, Norway is riven by a deep social gulf. A 2018 Statistics Norway report noted that the richest 10 percent of Norwegians own 60 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 percent controls 21 percent of total wealth. In comments to the faktisk.no website in 2020, Statistics Norway researcher Rolf Aaberge compared the levels of wealth inequality in the country to those found in Britain and France. “The value of the big fortunes are underestimated,” he remarked, because, “we use values that are reported to the tax authorities, while the actual market value of for instance commercial real estate or unlisted shares in reality may be much higher. The same goes for property abroad.”

According to Aaberge’s estimates, the top 1 percent of income earners take home 20 percent of all income. The richest 0.01 percent earn 6 percent of total income.

A 2018 report from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health noted the gulf between the life expectancy of the richest and poorest in society. In Oslo, life expectancy varies by up to eight years between rich and poor neighbourhoods. Life expectancy for those with the highest education levels is five or six years more than for people with the lowest level of education.

Labour and the Socialist Left sought to exploit the growth of social inequality during the election campaign. But their criticisms rang hollow given their record in power. Under the first Stoltenberg government beginning in the late 1990s, Labour initiated the privatisation of oil, telecommunications, and railway companies. When Stoltenberg, who portrayed himself as the Norwegian Tony Blair, returned to power in 2005 with support of Centre and the Socialist Left, his government embraced the far-right Progress Party’s anti-immigrant policies and enforced fiscal discipline for public services following the 2008 global financial crisis

The integration of Progress into the mainstream of Norwegian politics, and the embrace by all major parties of its immigrant-bashing, racist outlook, played no small part in the strengthening of right-wing extremist and outright fascist forces. The most terrible expression of this process occurred in July 2011, when fascist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoeya and in Oslo’s government district.

The groundwork for the austerity that characterised Solberg’s two terms in office, which marked the first time that the far-right, tax-cutting Progress Party formally entered a Norwegian government, was also laid by Stoltenberg and Labour.

Volkswagen factory meeting in Wolfsburg heralds fierce disputes with workforce

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Speeches at last week’s factory meeting at Volkswagen’s main plant in Wolfsburg, herald fierce disputes between the company and the workforce, not only in Wolfsburg, with almost 60,000 employees, but also in the other German and international plants.

VW CEO Herbert Diess plans to convert the company to produce electric vehicles as quickly as possible, especially the main plant. At a supervisory board meeting at the end of September, he had estimated the resulting job cuts at up to 30,000.

The Volkswagen complex in Wolfsburg (credit: Volkwagen AG)

Workers were outraged when this became known in mid-October, since they had not heard anything about it from IG Metall union officials or from works council representatives on the supervisory board. The chairwoman of the VW General and Group Works Council, Daniela Cavallo—who also sits on the supervisory board—tried to smooth the waters and calm the workers.

In her speech to several tens of thousands of staff at the factory meeting, only 7,000 of whom were there in person because of coronavirus, she repeated that the agreed employment guarantee until 2029 would hold “in principle.” Diess accused her of playing on employees’ fears. Talk of cutting tens of thousands of jobs was “nonsense in terms of content” and had unsettled employees, many of whom have been constantly on short-time working since the start of the pandemic.

Diess himself did not mention a specific figure when speaking to the workforce, saying, “The jobs that exist today will certainly be fewer within the next 10 to 15 years—especially in administration at company level, but also in production and development.” At the same time, new and different work would be added, he said. But it was clear that many who listened to him would lose their jobs if he had his way.

For a long time, IG Metall and its works council representatives were able to subordinate Volkswagen’s more than 600,000 employees—120,000 in Germany—to the interests of the shareholders, which include the Social Democratic-governed state of Lower Saxony, where the main Wolfsburg plant is based. Job cuts were mostly worked out and implemented by the works council through attrition, severance payments and “social plans.” Most recently, the VW works council signed a “pact for the future” in 2016, which will claim 30,000 jobs by 2025.

Both IG Metall and its officials on the supervisory boards and in the works councils at the plants have benefited. Under Cavallo’s predecessor Bernd Osterloh, the works council representatives raked in millions in salaries and supervisory board compensation; he himself received 750,000 euros a year in the best of times. Many became euro millionaires themselves by taking over positions in the group—like Osterloh, most recently, who moved to the truck subsidiary Traton as a member of the executive board.

But now the merciless cut-throat competition in the automotive industry in the wake of the move to electrification is causing this corrupt relationship—euphemistically described as “co-determination” and “social partnership”—to implode.

IG Metall and its works council representatives are preparing to destroy tens of thousands of jobs. The first thing that has happened is they began bickering among themselves. On November 12, the supervisory board is supposed to decide upon the allocation of investments worth around 150 billion euros to the 120 or so plants worldwide, up to 2025.

But this planning round has been postponed until December 9. This is because several German plants had already been selected in advance as new e-car production sites, with the main factory in Wolfsburg in particular left out. Cavallo wanted to divert production commitments from other plants to Wolfsburg.

But Cavallo is not the only top dog in the multi-brand group. The works council chairmen of Porsche and Audi also intervened. According to preliminary plans from November last year, the commercial vehicle plant in Hanover was actually supposed to manufacture new electric models from Porsche and Audi in order to keep production running in the future. But Porsche is now withdrawing its commitment to joint production, finance daily Handelsblatt recently reported.

Cavallo and the VW works council accuse Diess of allowing this to happen. IG Metall and Cavallo have therefore brought out the heavy artillery and withdrew their confidence in Diess at a preparatory meeting of the supervisory board. Diess is reportedly facing being sacked again.

“How things will proceed and whether there could be a compromise will be decided by supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch, Lower Saxony’s Minister President Stephan Weil, IG Metall head Jörg Hofmann and works council leader Daniela Cavallo,” writes Handelsblatt. They are the members of the mediation committee on the supervisory board.

But in reality, these skirmishes serve to prepare for the upcoming massive attacks, and Cavallo is quite the pupil of Osterloh in this respect. Her predecessor also liked to rant against Diess, whom he himself had brought to Wolfsburg from BMW, as he liked to put on record. In the end, both of them pushed through the interests of the shareholders against the workforce.

But now these fake encounters might not be enough, the planned job cuts are too big. And clearly, not everyone in the union thinks Cavallo is up to the job.

There is no other way to understand the announcement by long-time VW works council member and Wolfsburg IGM official Frank Patta that he will present his own list of candidates at the end of the month, with which he intends to run against the official IGM list in next year’s works council elections.

Patta was IG Metall’s senior representative in Wolfsburg from 2006 to 2011. In 2012, Osterloh brought him onto the VW works council, made him general secretary, and gave him the task of chairing the world and European group works council. In 2018, Patta had to relinquish this post, which took him all over the world, becoming an “ordinary” works council member in the production area.

Patta embodies the classic union bureaucrat. In his capacity as Wolfsburg IGM representative, he conducted disputes with works council members and IGM members who had drawn up their own list against the official IGM list—as Patta himself has now announced. At that time, in 2011, he instigated an investigation against the members of the MIG 18 list, which he later discontinued. Patta required, among other things, that they not speak negatively or disparagingly about IG Metall and that they follow instructions from the executive committee or local board. Violation of this would have opened expulsion proceedings.

As general secretary for “international cooperation,” he then ensured compliance with rules set by IG Metall around the world. When temporary workers at VW’s Chinese plant turned to the World Works Council for help in 2017, he brushed them off. For months, the Chinese workers had fought in vain for equal wages, as VW had contractually promised them; in the end, their leaders were even imprisoned. In a letter at the time, Osterloh and Patta wrote that they could “unfortunately not verify the accusations you have made in this form.”

This month, the long-time bureaucrat wants to present “The Other List” (as his list is called), with which he wants to run in the VW works council election in February 2022. His criticism is directed solely at the works council under Cavallo. “I have no intention of leaving IG Metall,” Patta says. “We have to get away from the works council monarchy, where a very few make decisions that the other works council members then have to communicate to the workforce.”

Patta has since been expelled from the IG Metall faction and has lost his area of responsibility in VW assembly. The works council and IG Metall accuse him of standing because he did not get the position he sought as coordinator on the works council in the summer.

Here, too, the real reasons lie deeper. Patta is a works council member in production and is directly aware of the mood in the plant. The reason for his candidacy was “concern about jobs here in Wolfsburg, especially in production,” he told the Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. He added that the decision had been made to phase out internal combustion engines, but that Wolfsburg only built internal combustion engines, with the exception of a few hybrids. “Not even I as a member of the works council have more detailed and reliable information,” he complained.

Employees were worried about their jobs, he said, “Not only with a view to the future, but also against the background of the current situation at the site with ongoing short-time working.” The fact that a shift on assembly line 1 had already been cancelled before coronavirus hit, he said, “doesn’t exactly help to calm things down” in this situation.

His talk about the “non-transparent” nature of the works council under Osterloh and now Cavallo, who see themselves as co-managers instead of controllers of the management board, and about their hanky-panky in “back rooms or company planes” serves only to try and stifle the growing opposition in the plant and lead workers’ resistance into a dead end.

Patta does not represent the interests of the workers, but of the trade union to which he has belonged for decades, which in turn is beholden to the shareholders. Business weekly Wirtschaftswoche describes this function of Patta succinctly: “Patta, too, knows that the 663,000-employee giant Volkswagen needs a radical overhaul.”

Patta’s declaration that “you can only change things and influence decisions with a strong democratic and transparent opposition in the works council” is a dangerous illusion.

VW workers should study the lessons of the Opel plant closure in Bochum, where workers repeatedly rebelled against the corporation and the IGM-led works council. The in-house opposition always intervened—with the same criticism and the same platitudes as Patta does now.

When opposition trade unionist Peter Jaszczyk—a long-time Stalinist, later joining the SPD—became works council chairman in 1996, he continued where the official social democratic IGM works council had left off: organizing one sellout after another.

After Jaszczyk, and after a brief interlude of an SPD-led works council, Rainer Einenkel, another long-time Stalinist, took over as works council chairman in 2004. Within ten years, he finally wound up the plant. At the end of 2014, the last Opel auto rolled off the Bochum production line.

Diplomatic clash between Australia and France highlights implications of militarist AUKUS pact

Oscar Grenfell

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s attendance at the recent G20 and COP26 summits in Europe was dominated by an escalating war of words with French officials, which threatened a major diplomatic rupture.

The immediate cause of the conflict is Australia’s cancellation of a $90 million contract for France to construct a fleet of 12 diesel-powered attack submarines. The scuttling of the longstanding deal was publicly declared in September, as AUKUS, an aggressive military alliance of the US, Britain and Australia, aimed at preparing for war with China, was unveiled.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in June. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP

As part of the pact, Australia has been given access to American military technology to facilitate its construction of nuclear-powered submarines. It is, however, highly likely that Canberra will simply buy the vessels off the shelf from the US or Britain.

While the financial loss resulting from Australia’s shelving of the French contract is undoubtedly a factor in the tensions, more broadly they reflect the far-reaching implications of the AUKUS agreement.

Declared without prior discussion with other NATO states, and explicitly directed against China, AUKUS has sidelined the European powers, which have their own ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, and have voiced concerns over the prospect of a full-scale US-led confrontation with Beijing. France, in particular, which still has colonial territories in the Pacific, considers itself a Pacific power.

Shortly after arriving in Rome for the G20 late last month, Morrison announced that he and Macron had held their first telephone conversation since AUKUS was signed. While the readouts of the discussion differed sharply on the French and Australian sides, Morrison described the call as the start of “the way back” to normalising relations. Initially, the French ambassador was recalled in protest over AUKUS and Macron refused to answer the Australian prime minister’s calls.

Morrison then ostentatiously approached the French leader for a photo opportunity as the summit got underway, with the pictures then posted by his office.

The suggestion that the tensions had eased was immediately contradicted by Macron. Approached by the Australian media the next day, Macron declared that “when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line and consistent with this value.” Asked whether he thought Morrison had lied to him by failing to give prior notice that the French deal would be terminated, Macron said: “I don’t think, I know.”

Morrison’s problems then became worse when US President Joe Biden apologetically told Macron that the handling of the AUKUS announcement had been “clumsy.” “I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the [French] deal was not going through,” Biden said.

The comments clearly implied that it was the Australian government that had misled France, with much of the Australian media reporting them as “Biden throwing Morrison under the bus.”

Whatever the precise details of the discussions leading up to the termination of the crisis-ridden French submarine deal, there is no question that the sudden announcement of AUKUS was intended to send a message, not only to China, but also nominal US allies. It was a declaration that under Washington’s leadership the US, Britain and Australia were ratcheting up the preparations for a major war to levels not seen in the past eight decades, and that they would act outside of the old NATO and other alliance relationships in the process.

Biden’s comments were aimed at dampening down immediate tensions after France responded to the AUKUS announcement by also withdrawing its ambassador to the US amid official French denunciations of the “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decisions.” Biden reportedly discussed the issue of China at length with Macron as both affirmed their commitment to NATO and their support for “robust” collaboration in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, Macron told reporters after the meeting: “Trust is like love: Declarations are good, but proof is better.”

The seriousness of the tensions has been underscored by extraordinary leaking. The Australian media has been provided with a copy of a confidential report prepared by Biden’s National Security Council in the lead-up to the AUKUS announcement indicating the US administration knew France would be blindsided by the initiative.

Text messages between Morrison and Macron purporting to show that Australia had given advance notice that the French contract could be terminated have also made their way to the media. In that case, government leaders have all but admitted to the leaking, asserting that it was necessary to refute Macron’s claim that the Australian prime minister had lied.

Last Wednesday, the French ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, delivered an address to the National Press Club in Canberra at which he described the abandonment of the previous submarine contract as a “stab in the back” and insisted that the “deceit had been intentional.”

Thebault pointed to the underlying source of the tensions, insisting that France would remain an Indo-Pacific power. He complained that the AUKUS announcement was in “stark contrast with Australia’s alleged intent to seek greater involvement by European allies in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The clash, still unresolved, has intensified a crisis of the Morrison government. It is faced with widespread popular opposition, as well as concerns within the ruling elite that it is not pressing ahead rapidly enough with imposing austerity measures in the interests of the major corporations, and accelerating Australia’s military build-up.

In the press, much of the focus has been on the immediate details of the row and the government’s handling of them. The broader implications of AUKUS, as placing Australia on the frontlines of a potential global war, have largely been obscured.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne noted last week that the submarines were just one aspect of the new pact. In addition, it provides for expanded military collaboration across the board between Washington, London and Canberra, as well as expanded basing arrangements for the US in northern Australia and elsewhere in the country.

The turn to more expensive nuclear-powered submarines itself points to the preparations for conflict. The vessels have superior stealth, range, endurance and speed to their diesel-powered counterparts under conditions in which one of Australia’s central roles in a war with China would be to assist in dominating the waters of the Indo-Pacific.

The response of the Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan to the diplomatic crisis with France was revealing. Having initially lambasted Biden’s response as an undermining of the Australian government, he changed tack late last week.

Whatever problems had arisen, Sheridan insisted, the key issue was to press ahead. The Murdoch columnist, who has close ties to the military-intelligence apparatus, revealed that the Australian and US governments “will within the next couple of weeks begin rolling out a series of announcements and initiatives under the rubric of the AUKUS deal to bring the agreement to life, and to demonstrate the work being done—now with some urgency—on the nuclear-propelled submarine project.”

Dozens of full-time military operatives are working on the project in both countries, Sheridan reported. The completion of a review of the submarine project could be brought forward from 18 months to 9–12 months. The US could begin leasing nuclear-powered submarines within five to ten years.

Sheridan called for a campaign to “continually” explain the importance of AUKUS to “the electorate.” While he did not elaborate, this was a veiled reference to the need for the political and media establishment to overcome mass opposition to militarism and war among workers and young people.

For its part, the opposition Labor Party has responded to the diplomatic stoush with France by questioning Morrison’s ability to advance the “national interest” on the international stage. Labor, as a pro-war party of big business and the banks, is pitching that it would be better placed to advance the interests of Australian imperialism, including its preparations for a US-led war with China.

Labor enthusiastically welcomed the announcement of AUKUS. Its federal leader, Anthony Albanese, last week bemoaned that the conflict with France may have “created problems for our relationship with the United States.”

The diplomatic rifts, which are a symptom of how advanced the moves towards war are, demonstrate the urgent need for the building of an international anti-war movement of the working class, directed against all of the governments plotting conflict, and the capitalist profit-system which is its root cause.

Sri Lankan president’s “One Country, One Law” taskforce will provoke racial tensions

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse has appointed a 13-member “One Country, One Law” task force headed by extremist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) leader Galagodaaththe Gnanasara, notorious for whipping up violent anti-Muslim sentiment.

President Rajapakse opens Bodhu Bala Sena's Buddhist Leadership Academy in Galle [Photo courtesy: Defence.lk]

In an extraordinary October 26 gazette, Rajapakse declared that because “no citizen should be discriminated against in the eyes of the law” he was establishing a task force “to make a study of the implementation of the concept one country one law” and prepare a draft law.

The task force has wide powers to study various draft acts and amendments already prepared by the justice ministry. It will submit its own amendments and proposals to the ministry and present a final report by February 28.

Rajapakse’s claim that the aim is to eliminate discrimination and treat all citizens equally is a gross lie. He is, in fact, creating the conditions to whip up unprecedented ethnic and religious tensions as he moves to entrench autocratic presidential rule.

“One Country, One Law” is being promoted as introducing a general set of laws for the entire country. Sri Lankan legislation is mainly based on Roman-Dutch law but there are exceptions: certain personal laws relate to Muslims; Thesawalamai law deals mainly with the property rights of northern Tamils; and Kandyan law is also still used by some Sinhalese in the Central Hill Districts. While these are all retrogressive laws, the main target of Rajapakse and his chauvinist allies is the law practised among Muslims and Tamils.

The taskforce consists of nine ethnic Sinhalese—academics and lawyers, some with a Sinhala-chauvinist background—and four Muslims loyal to Rajapakse. Gnanasara’s appointment to head the group signifies its real purpose.

Gnanasara established the BBS in 2012. He was previously a leading member of the Sinhala-racist Jathika Hela Urumaya, which aggressively backed Colombo’s communalist war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

From its inception, BBS had the blessing of then President Mahinda Rajapakse and his defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, now president, who covertly backed its Sinhala chauvinist propaganda and provocations.

BBS initiated one communalist provocation after another, targeting Muslims and Christians. It attacked their places of worship and accused them of “unethical conversions,” “destruction of archaeological monuments” and “cultural invasion.” BBS acted with impunity, openly flouting laws, with the military and the police turning a blind eye.

Gnanasara was sentenced to six years jail in 2018, after being found guilty of “contempt of court” for interrupting a court hearing in 2016 into the involvement of military intelligence officials in the abduction of a journalist. He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been given bail and threatened the journalist’s wife.

In 2019, the previous Sri Lankan president, Maithripala Sirisena, pardoned Gnanasara, demonstrating the allegiance of every section of the Colombo political establishment to Sinhala-Buddhist racism.

There have been widespread denunciations of Gnanasara’s appointment to head the taskforce, including from sections of the mainstream media. Justice Minister Ali Sabry, one of Rajapakse’s loyal allies, even tendered his resignation but it was rejected.

Addressing a public meeting on Saturday, Rajapakse attempted to justify Gnanasara’s appointment, declaring: “This revered monk is the only one to have consistently spoken about the ‘One Country, One Law’ concept during the past five years.”

Rajapakse’s establishment of this task force is no accident. The government and the ruling elites as a whole face an unprecedented economic and political crisis that has been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The government is teetering on the brink of defaulting on loan repayments and the economy is in a shambles.

Working class struggles are erupting around the country uniting Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil workers in opposition to the attacks by government and big business on wages, jobs and social conditions. At the same time, there is growing unrest and protests in rural areas as paddy farmers and others demand fertiliser, pesticides and other necessities for crop cultivation.

Rajapakse and his ruling Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna (SLPP) government are determined to suppress and break up these developing struggles. This involves the imposition of draconian anti-strike laws with harsh punishment in key state-owned industries along with the incitement of communalism and the promotion of extreme-right and fascistic groups.

Consecutive Sri Lankan governments since independence in 1948 have used communal discrimination against Tamil minority whenever they faced crises. In 1956, Colombo made Sinhala the country’s only official language, and in 1972 formally enshrined Buddhism as the state religion and Sinhala as the only official language in the constitution.

Facing a new crisis in the early 1980s and in response to rising popular opposition, the United National Party government, following a series of provocations unleashed its bloody 30-year war against the LTTE. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother Gotabhaya in 2006 oversaw the final years of the war which ended in May 2009 with the killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

Current President Rajapake’s so-called One Country, One Law was a central plank in his election campaign. He and his SLPP seized on extremist Islamic terror attacks on Catholic churches and big hotels that killed about 270 people on Easter Sunday in 2019 to whip up communalism. In the wake of the bombings, racist groups, encouraged by Sri Lankan capitalist parties, including the SLPP, launched violent attacks on Muslim communities.

Just weeks later, Rajapakse announced his presidential candidacy, declaring that his priority was defending “national security.” BBS and outfits such as Sihala Rawaya (Echo of Sinhalese), Sihala Le (Blood of Lion) and other chauvinist groups rallied in support.

Following his election, Rajapakse continued the anti-Muslim campaign, arresting and jailing hundreds of Muslims, including political party leaders and human rights activists, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations. Dozens of Tamil journalists and Facebook users have also been arrested on “suspicion” of connection to “LTTE terrorism.”

While Rajapakse has constantly referred to One Country, One Law, his October 26 announcement was the first time that he moved to implement it.

On November 1, Gnanasara addressed a group of selected journalists in the presidential media centre explaining what he intended to do.

“Today we have got a result for all of our hard work. The president’s attention has been drawn to speak emphatically about these issues. We have a number of suggestions [and] if we can put all these together and stand up, that will be the day when we will rise as a nation,” he jubilantly declared.

Gnanasara’s so-called hard work is the communalist provocations orchestrated by his organisation and its political allies over the past decade. While the list of these attacks is too long to list here the operations of his fascistic group have been consistently exposed by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP).

Remains of Muslim shops burnt by racist mobs in 2014

When the former President Mahinda Rajapakse regime faced a deep crisis in 2014, BBS leader Gnanasara instigated a major anti-Muslim attack in the southern Aluthgama and Beruwala area. As an SEP statement declared at that time:

The emergence of Sinhala Buddhist extremists, working alongside the Rajapakse government, poses great dangers for the working class. The SEP calls on all workers to oppose the attacks on Muslims and to defend the democratic rights of all working people. The only means of combating these communal organisations is through the independent mobilisation of workers and youth on the basis of their common class interests and a unified political struggle against the Rajapakse government’s austerity agenda.

Seven years later the Rajapakse regime, like its international counterparts, is responding to a far deeper economic and political crisis and the resurgence of working-class struggles by using extreme-right and fascistic elements to prepare for the conditions for dictatorial forms of rule.