The World Inequality Report 2022, released by the global research initiative World Inequality Lab, found that the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the financial gap between the rich and poor to a degree not seen since the rosy days of world imperialism at the turn of the 20th century.
The world’s billionaires enjoyed the steepest increase in their share of wealth last year since the World Inequality Lab began keeping records in 1995, according to the study released Tuesday. Billionaires saw their net worth grow by more than $3.6 trillion in 2020 alone, increasing their share of global wealth to 3.5 percent. Meanwhile, the pandemic has pushed approximately 100 million people into extreme poverty, boosting the global total to 711 million in 2021.
“Global inequalities seem to be about as great today as they were at the peak of western imperialism in the early 20th century,” the report said. “Indeed, the share of income presently captured by the poorest half of the world’s people is about half what it was in 1820, before the great divergence between western countries and their colonies.”
People ride their bikes past a homeless encampment set up along the boardwalk in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, June 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The report showed the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population takes 52 percent of global income, compared to the 8 percent share of the poorest half. On average, an individual in the top decile earns $122,100 (€87,200) per year, while a person from the poorest half of global earners makes $3,920 (€2,800) a year.
Global wealth inequality is even more pronounced than income inequality. The poorest half of the world’s population only possess 2 percent of the total wealth. In contrast, the wealthiest 10 percent own 76 percent of all wealth, with $771,300 (€550,900) on average.
The ultra-rich have siphoned a disproportionate share of global wealth growth over the last few decades. The top 1 percent took 38 percent of all additional wealth generated since 1995, whereas the bottom 50 percent have only captured 2 percent of it. The wealth of the richest individuals has grown between 6 to 9 percent per year since the mid-1990s, compared to the global 3.2 percent average.
Inequality levels vary across the regions. In Europe, the top decile takes about 36 percent of income share, while it holds 58 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. However, inequalities between countries have declined in the last two decades, whereas inequality within “rich” countries has risen sharply. In the United States, the top 1 percent owned 35 percent of the country’s wealth, approaching Gilded Age levels of inequality.
This massive accumulation of capital has come at the expense of public wealth over the last four decades. The share of wealth held by public actors is close to zero or negative in “rich” countries, indicating that the totality of wealth is privately owned, a trend exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The report also studied connections between wealth inequality and inequalities in contributions to climate change, showing the top 10 percent of emitters are responsible for close to 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, while the bottom half produces 12 percent of the total. This disparity is also seen within nominally rich countries. The bottom half of the population in Europe, East Asia, and North America is responsible for an average of 3 to 9 metric tons of emissions per person a year. This contrasts sharply with the emissions of the top 10 percent in these regions: 29 metric tons in Europe, 39 in East Asia, and 73 in North America.
Given this diverse and severe inequity, the authors of the report propose a series of “modern progressive taxes” on wealth used to invest in education, health, and ecological restoration.
But such a path is a dead end; All the official and semi-official institutions of government are subordinated to the interests of the financial aristocracy and serve to constrain and block any measure that threatens their hoards of wealth.
This is demonstrated by the disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with governments around the world declaring the pandemic over and eliminating remaining protective measures. Rather than being driven by concern for public health, the actions of governments have been driven by the effort to protect the wealth and privileges of the upper echelons of society.
In a much-anticipated press release yesterday, Pfizer/BioNTech explained that in preliminary laboratory studies the antibodies from individuals recently vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine showed significantly reduced effectiveness. People fully vaccinated could not mount the same level of antibodies (called neutralization titers), needed to prevent breakthrough infections, as they did against previous variants.
The manufacturers of the vaccine wrote, “Sera from individuals who received two doses of the current COVID-19 vaccine did exhibit, on average, more than a 25-fold reduction in neutralization titers against the Omicron variants compared to wild-type [original ancestor], indicating that two doses of BNT162b2 may not be sufficient to protect against infection with the Omicron variant.”
Puseletso Lesofi prepares to sequence COVID-19 omicron samples at the Ndlovu Research Center in Elandsdoorn, South Africa Wednesday Dec. 8, 2021. The centre ls part of the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, which discovered the omicron variant. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
The press statement noted that the third dose, better known as a booster, appeared to increase effectiveness against the Omicron variant enormously: “A more robust protection may be achieved by a third dose as data from additional studies of the companies indicate that a booster with the current COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech increases the antibody titers by 25-fold.”
Additionally, they remarked that T-cell immunity did not appear to be impacted by the mutations in the Omicron variant, meaning that the vaccines may continue to protect people from severe disease even if the risk of breakthrough infection is considerable.
The implication here is that in an Omicron-dominant pandemic, fully vaccinated will now mean that three doses are required. That would mean that the 3.33 billion people (42.6 percent) on the planet who have received only two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine are only partially vaccinated. Currently, only 217 million people, or close to 3 percent of the world’s population, have received a booster and therefore can be considered fully vaccinated. Hypothetically, such a distinction would have immense implications on the movement of people, air travel, and, more specifically, criteria for return to work and school.
In a new study released in preprint form by South African scientists, the Omicron variant caused a 41-fold decline in neutralization titers for someone who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, compared to the D614G variant first identified in Wuhan, China.
Corroborating the Pfizer data, the principal author of the study, virologist Dr. Alex Sigal, Ph.D., who is leading the team of researchers that first identified Omicron, remarked that the variant’s ability to escape was incomplete, meaning that people previously infected or vaccinated could still mount a response against infection with the new strain, but he recommended vaccination and boosters to protect against severe disease.
A report by German virologist Dr. Sandra Ciesek from University Hospital Frankfurt analyzed the serum of individuals who had received three doses of Pfizer’s vaccine (boosted), comparing the impact of the Delta and Omicron variants. She found a 37-fold reduction in neutralization in the Omicron group, a far worse result than Pfizer’s own test.
Figure 1 Neutralization of Omicron versus ancestral virus in participants previously vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine
When she looked at the serum of individuals who had received only two doses of Pfizer, Moderna, or a mix with AstraZeneca six months previously, there was no measurable neutralization at all. In other words, the older vaccines had become completely ineffective against Omicron.
Dr. Zoë Hyde, an epidemiologist and biostatistician in Perth, Western Australia, responding to Dr. Ciesek’s Tweet, wrote, “I won’t sugar-coat things. This is a disaster. People vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer-BNT vaccine likely have no protection against infection with the Omicron strain. Protection after three doses has likely taken a big hit as well.”
Immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi explained that the breakthrough infections would mean that there will be little control of transmission of Omicron from the vaccines. He added, “Vulnerable people who did not respond well to vaccination could be infected by another person even if all parties were vaccinated,” and this is in the context of the current recommendations by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Protection) about lax mask policies for the vaccinated and the oft-repeated statements about knowing so much about this virus.
Barely a month into the beginning of the Omicron pandemic, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday that an “offshoot [designated BA.2] of the Omicron coronavirus variant could be more difficult to distinguish from other strains with routine PCR tests, making it harder to track the global spread of the heavily mutated virus.”
As Dr. Sarah Otto, a professor in evolutionary biology at the University of British Columbia, had explained, “The S-gene dropout,” which helped researchers and public health officials track Omicron in the early days and verify its higher spread than Delta, is not being picked up in the BA.2 offshoot. Without sequencing, it will be hard to track Omicron cases instead of Delta or other variants.
Despite assurances that these new subtypes are of no immediate concern, they do not pose the immediate critical questions: What qualities will the next strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, after Omicron, possess? And when will it emerge?
Dr. Leonardi said that it would be highly essential to continue emphasizing air quality, ventilation and respirators as the US goes into an unprecedented surge of Omicron and Delta outbreaks across the country.
On the news of these recent concerning findings, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” admitted, “When we see real-world data, [it] will determine if the Omicron is well covered by the third dose and for how long. And the second point, I think we will need a fourth dose … [and] with Omicron, we need to wait and see because we have very little information. We may need it faster.” The “faster” refers to projections he had made that a fourth shot would be needed a year after the boosters.
Figure 2 Weekly hospital admissions in Gauteng
Despite these alarming reports, many public health officials and media pundits have suggested that Omicron will cause only mild disease and advocated allowing the new variant to rapidly infect everyone across the globe regardless of their vaccine status, in the hopes that such a horrific maneuver could quicken the exit out of the pandemic.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Public Health at Brown University and vocal critic of the idea that COVID-19 supposedly does not impact children, Tweeted, “First, we have plenty of evidence that Omicron will spread easily, quickly, and far. We should expect, globally, relatively large waves of infections. How will people fare? It depends on who you are.” In group one, the unvaccinated and not recently infected, how will they fare, he asks. “They are likely to get infected with Omicron at very, very high rates. Many of them will get sick. I hope, but doubt, that the virus will be mild for them.” This includes 4.45 billion people across the globe that are awaiting their turn for these life-saving measures.
In his usual cavalier attitude, speaking on “Good Morning America,” Dr. Jha offered this unsavory advice, “Omicron is not going to be dominant in the US probably until January. It’s just in small numbers still. For most Americans, if you’re fully vaccinated, especially if you’re boosted, I think travel is pretty reasonable, pretty safe.” And he made this public health message in the face of a seven-day average of more than 120,000 daily infections and a daily average death rate of 1,300. Daily hospitalizations for COVID-19 are now back up to 62,500.
As for the severity of the disease with the Omicron variant, hospitalizations in Gauteng province in South Africa, where the Omicron epidemic continues to surge, have seen new admissions doubling every five days and have already reached 31 percent of the previous peak, belying claims that the variant is less dangerous than Delta. Cambridge University Professor Ridhwaan Suliman explained that hospitalizations lag cases by up to three weeks, “and reporting delays need to wait a week to understand actual hospital admissions for the previous week.”
The active promotion of the spread of Omicron is Trump’s malign neglect on steroids—social murder on an unprecedented scale. Far from an end to the pandemic, spreading the infection will only ignite further variants that have repeatedly been selected for their ability to improve on their capacity to evade immunity. Vaccine makers are now beginning to closely study Omicron in case an “escape variant” emerges—a new strain that can completely evade immunity from current vaccines and previous infections.
“Armed groups,” “paramilitary forces,” “groups following the orders of another country.”
Human rights advocates in Iraq use these descriptions all the time when we refer to the men with guns behind the killings, abductions, and torture of protesters, activists, journalists, and communities seen to have been close to ISIS in Iraq.
In recent days we have seen these men go further than ever before, including a brazen effort on November 7 to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in his home, using three armed drones.
Many don’t dare go further in identifying who exactly these men are, the groups they belong to, and who they are getting their orders from — at least not in public. But on October 25, in a courtroom in Basra, someone finally came out and said it.
And what he said raises a bigger question: Can the Iraqi state even provide the rule of law?
Explosive Revelations About the Murder of Two Journalists
In a nutshell, his testimony indicated that the militias called Popular Mobilization Forces, which were formed to help defeat ISIS and some of which have close ties to Iran, may be calling the shots in Iraq and are independent of — and more powerful than — the government.
On that day, a judge at Basra Criminal Court presided over an investigative hearing for Hamza Kadhim al-Aidani, accused of killing two people on January 10, 2020: Ahmed Abdul Samad, a Dijlah TV reporter, and Safaa Ghali, his cameraman. The local media widely covered al-Aidani’s conviction for the murders and subsequent death sentence handed down on November 1.
What the media covered less, and the government refused to comment on, were the explosive statements al-Aidani made during the hearing.
Two people who attended said that al-Aidani, a Basra police commissioner, admitted that he was also a member of an abusive Popular Mobilization Forces unit formally under the control of the prime minister.
He said he fought with the group to retake the city of Fallujah from the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2016. He admitted that he was a member of a so-called “death squad” and was involved in the killing of the two journalists, the sources said. He said he and team members used the local PMF Commission (the PMFs’ governing body) office in Basra to plan the killings and hide their cars and weapons after the fact.
The court witnesses told Human Rights Watch that Al-Aidani told the judge the police had not arrested the head of his squad within the PMF unit but instead allowed him to flee the country. This was the man, he said, who killed the journalists in front of him. He said that the man told the team that the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a fatwa (a religious legal ruling) that journalists covering protests with calls against Iran and the PMF, and those inciting the protests, should be killed.
He said they targeted Samad because he had covered a protest on December 13, 2019, on a street that the PMF had renamed Khamenei Street in 2019. During the protest, demonstrators burned a large picture of Khamenei that the PMF had hung up on the street. Samad, in his coverage, asked viewers why the street was not instead renamed after an Iraqi leader. The judge ultimately said that he would not include this detail in the record.
Al-Aidani’s apparent comments, and the fact that he was standing trial alone, raise another question. Where were the other suspects connected with this case?
In February, the authorities had said they arrested four people who were behind the killings. But as many questions as his comments raised, they also provided clear and disturbing answers — including just how powerful the PMFs are in Iraq, if they can even give a police commissioner orders to carry out extrajudicial killings.
Out of Control Militias
The PMFs were originally formed in 2014 as informal armed groups outside the state structure to combat the advance of ISIS.
After the collapse of the Iraqi army, Iraq’s parliament voted in November 2016 to incorporate the PMFs into the government’s armed forces. At the time, groups like mine expressed concern that this step might mean letting the fox into the henhouse. But diplomats and senior Iraqi officials assured us in meetings that we were seeing it all wrong. Instead, this was a move to break up these units, by integrating their fighters into state structures that answered to the prime minister as commander-in-chief. This would, they said, break the PMFs’ power.
But that is not what happened. The PMFs have remained independent entities, some with varyingly strong ties to Iran, some pursuing their vision of nationalism, and some pursuing criminal motivations aimed at capturing control of money, oil, and other resources. In addition, the PMFs have been able to infiltrate and control parts of the state security structure.
The result of this is a state in which some of its own fighting and law enforcement units do not answer to the government nor have an interest in protecting the integrity of its structures. They are driven by entirely different motivations.
Large-scale popular protests that began in 2019 demonstrate the way in which the PMFs flaunt government directives. After the initial days of demonstrations in October, and a mounting death toll of protesters, then-Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi publicly ordered his forces not to use live ammunition against people in the streets. And yet armed forces continued to fire live rounds into the crowds, killing protesters.
Through my engagements with the government, I never got the sense that Abdul-Mahdi was lying to the public, but why then was a clear order from the commander-in-chief being ignored?
The truth is that the forces firing on people were either not listening to his orders, or they were receiving orders from elsewhere. Al-Aidani’s testimony in court suggests that there might be some truth to this terrifying prospect.
The Rule of Law in Doubt
When Human Rights Watch documents unlawful killings in Iraq, we call on the authorities to hold those responsible to account, in line with the government’s obligations under international and national law.
But what can the state authorities now do about such groups? I remember the first time I used the phrase “failed state,” when speaking about Iraq, in 2020. A diplomat was asking what I thought could be done to address this wave of killings of protesters and activists, in the context of impunity.
The impunity was caused not necessarily because of a lack of will by judicial authorities to hold killers accountable, or indeed a lack of information as to who is responsible for these assassinations. More often it was caused by the authorities’ knowledge that these groups can easily subvert any and all attempts by the government to hold them accountable.
Al-Aidani’s testimony really does raise the question of whether the Iraqi is able to enforce the rule of law on its streets. If the answer to that is no, or even maybe, the real question is where we go from here.
The crisis of the massively indebted Chinese property developer, Evergrande, has entered a new stage with the direct involvement of Chinese regulatory authorities in what appears to be an effort to ensure an orderly re-organisation of its international obligations and eventually a wind up of the company.
The move was precipitated by a company announcement to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday evening that it may not be able to meet a demand for repayment of a $260 million debt.
“In the event that the group is unable to meet its guaranteed obligations or certain other obligations it may lead creditors to demand acceleration of repayment,” it said. “In the light of the current liquidity status of the group, there is no guarantee that the group will have sufficient funds to perform its financial obligations.”
China Evergrande Centre [Wikimedia Commons]
This was a warning that failure to meet the payment would lead to a rush by creditors to secure what they could from the cash-strapped company leading to full-scale liquidation. If that took place, it could have contagious effects on the rest of the highly-indebted Chinese property development sector.
Accordingly, following the announcement, Evergrande’s founder and major shareholder, the multi-billionaire Hui Ka Yan, was called to a meeting by the Guangdong provincial government to discuss the company’s situation.
Evergrande’s position worsened when investors reported that they had not received payments on bonds after the expiration of a 30-day grace period on Monday, effectively meaning it was in formal default.
The crisis emerged last September, when Evergrande began missing debt obligations and only came up with the money during a 30-day grace period, thereby avoiding a declaration of default. It has since been living a hand-to-mouth existence as far as its cash flow is concerned.
It has raked up money by sales of assets and through the sale of shares at vastly deflated prices by Hui, under pressure from the central government, who has then put the money into the company.
Following the meeting with provincial government authorities, Evergrande announced on Monday that “in view of the operations and financial challenges” the board had set up a risk management committee.
Its members include representatives from state-owned companies, including Guangdong Holdings. This is an investment company controlled by the provincial government and China Cinda Asset Management Company, which is one of China’s largest managers of distressed assets.
Hui and Evergrande’s chief financial officer Pan Darong are also on the new management committee and will “play an important role in mitigating and eliminating the future risks of the group,” the company statement said.
Any pretence by Evergrande that its executives remain in control is exposed by the fact that state authorities have the majority of seats in the new management authority. The operation has been described by the Financial Times as a “slow motion collapse” of Evergrande as authorities seek to find third parties to take over its projects.
In response to the latest developments, China’s central bank repeated an earlier statement criticising the company for “poor management” and pursuing “blind expansion.”
This is something of a cover-up because Evergrande’s modus operandi was very much in line with the promotion of highly indebted property development sanctioned by the central government which is the characteristic of many other developers.
In August last year, however, the central government became increasingly concerned that the model it had promoted was leading to the creation of a financial crisis throughout the property sector. The sector has been estimated to account for up to 30 percent of the Chinese economy when flow-on effects are taken into account.
In an effort to bring the debt bubble under control, authorities instituted what became known as a “three red lines” policy, restricting credit, leading to a crisis for Evergrande as well as others.
Besides heavy borrowing, Evergrande financed itself with prepayments from purchasers of apartments that were then used to finance further expansion—in effect receiving interest-free cash from buyers in what amounted to a kind of Ponzi scheme.
The move to set up a debt management team has been broadly welcomed in financial circles. Citigroup issued a note to clients saying the “managed restructuring” of Evergrande had officially started.
“We see this is as a positive development, and the uncertainty associated with the debt resolution of the second largest developer in China has been finally removed,” it said.
This claim may be somewhat premature. As an article in the Wall Street Journal noted: “The process of thrashing out a restructuring is still in its very early stages.”
Evergrande has had conversations with offshore creditors but has not begun formal talks with them about what a restructuring process would look like, it said.
Debt restructuring processes are never simple because they generally require the agreement of all parties involved over what losses they will take. It can fall apart if some creditors decide they are better off if they pursue their claims independently.
The Chinese government is treading a fine line. It is opposed to organising a bailout because this would cut across its efforts to reduce debt accumulation in the property sector, setting a precedent for other companies that may well go the same way as Evergrande.
As Andrew Lawrence of TS Lombard, a long-time property sector analyst told the Wall Street Journal: “Evergrande has definitely pushed it further than most, but there are a lot of developers out there that share the same model. It’s been a massive boom and they’ve over traded in order to get bigger.”
While opposing bailouts, the central government does not want to precipitate a sudden collapse because of the possible flow-effects to the rest of the financial system, notwithstanding claims by financial authorities that they have the Evergrande situation under control.
There are thousands of Chinese property development companies with at least 100 listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange with a combined market value of $242 billion. Among the biggest names in trouble is Sinic Holdings Group, which failed to repay $250 million in bonds last October.
Other defaulters include Modern Land (China), Fantasia Holdings and China Fortune Land Development.
The offshore borrowing of the property development companies is only the tip of a very much bigger debt iceberg. As the Journal reported, according to the Japanese financial firm Nomura, as of last June overall borrowings were in excess of $5 trillion.
The crisis in the property development market is now starting to make its effects felt throughout the economy. According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, China’s top 100 property developers made a combined $118 billion from sales in September, down 36.2 percent year-on-year, following a 20.7 decline in August.
Construction starts fell 33.14 percent year-on-year in October, following a 13.54 percent fall in September.
The Financial Times has reported that sales of urban plots of land have fallen sharply in recent months causing problems for local government authorities which use the revenue from such sales to finance infrastructure projects.
According to Nomura, last year sales of land generated the equivalent of $1.31 trillion for local governments, more than 30 percent of their total revenue.
The decline in property could make it increasingly difficult for the central government to achieve its growth targets and the growth rate could drop below 5 percent.
As Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie told the FT: “The biggest growth headwind will be the property downturn. The tumbling property sector poses significant contagion risk for the Chinese economy.”
In New Zealand, COVID-19 has spread into well over 130 schools and early childhood education centres (ECEs) since the outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant began in August.
The figure was only revealed by the Ministry of Education (MOE) on December 2, with a spokesperson telling the New Zealand Herald that 56 ECEs and 75 schools in Auckland have experienced positive cases among staff or students. The vast majority of affected ECEs and several of the schools have not been publicly named.
Not included in the MOE figures are more than 15 affected schools outside of Auckland, including in Bay of Plenty, Waikato, New Plymouth, Rotorua, Northland and Nelson. Every week there are multiple new reports of cases in schools.
Four schools that recently reported COVID-19 cases: Maungatapu Primary School in Tauranga; Whenuapai School in West Auckland; St Anne's Catholic School in Manurewa; Enner Glynn School in Nelson. (Images from Google Streetview)
The trade unions, NZEI Te Riu Roa and the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association, have not published any reports about which schools and ECEs have had cases of coronavirus. While keeping such information from teachers and parents, they have worked closely with the Labour government to enforce its reopening policies.
Auckland is the centre of New Zealand’s outbreak, with about 6,000 active cases of COVID-19. There are more than 300 additional cases spread across other parts of the country. Cases have shot up since the Labour Party-led government abandoned its previous elimination strategy more than two months ago, and began to reopen ECEs, schools and businesses in Auckland.
On December 3, the New Zealand government lifted what remained of the lockdown in Auckland, allowing all businesses and public buildings to reopen.
The MOE’s belatedly released and incomplete figures expose the false claims, made by the government and the media, that reopening education during the outbreak can be done safely. Several news reports quote a standardized email that schools are sending to parents with the reassuring message: “Based on international and local evidence and experience, the risk of COVID-19 transmission within school settings is considered low.”
In fact, the evidence shows the exact opposite. Schools are hotbeds for the spread of COVID-19 among children, staff, their families and the wider community, especially under conditions where no one under 12 can be vaccinated.
In the UK, the reopening of schools has produced a disaster: 115 children have died from COVID-19 and 77,000 aged 2 to 16 have suffered from the debilitating condition known as Long COVID, including 14,000 who have had symptoms for longer than 12 months. In the US, by the end of November, 23,000 children had been hospitalized and more than 700 had died.
Reports from South Africa indicate that the new Omicron variant is disproportionately infecting children, with a concerning increase in hospitalisations for those under five years old.
There are few mitigation measures in New Zealand schools. While teachers must be vaccinated, there is no such requirement for eligible students or parents. Currently in Auckland, masks are only mandatory for students above Year 4, while for much of the rest of the country, masks are not required.
Children under 12 cannot be vaccinated. Nationwide, about 74 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, 88 percent of eligible people. This leaves about a million people unvaccinated.
A teacher in Gisborne told the WSWS that she was concerned that the MOE had downplayed “the effect that Covid can have on a child and a [childcare] centre.” She said parents able to stay home should be told that they “must have their children at home.” The Tairawhiti region that includes Gisborne has a vaccination rate of 67 percent (80 percent of those eligible), one of the lowest in the country.
The MOE says that going forward, under the new so-called “traffic light” public health framework, schools are unlikely to close if they get cases of COVID-19. According to a list shared in the Teachers Advocacy Group (TAG) on Facebook, out of 38 schools and ECEs where students or staff tested positive during November, 22 remained open and 16 were closed temporarily (usually just for a few days).
The TAG is a forum, independent of the unions, for ECE teachers, parents and supporters to share information and raise concerns. One member recently thanked the TAG for publicising positive cases in schools, saying it was “one of the reasons why I didn’t send my child back to school.” Had they done so, “I would be isolating right now because one of the cases is in his class.”
Another teacher contacted the group saying that she was refusing to go back to work until there was more clarity. Her child had recently become severely ill with a different virus and she was unwilling to “take any chances.”
TAG founder, researcher and teacher Susan Bates, sent the WSWS some findings from a recent survey she conducted on Facebook, which attracted 446 responses from ECE teachers:
Nearly half, 49 percent, did not feel safe in their workplace, a further 16 percent were unsure, leaving just 35 percent who felt safe.
60 percent said they had no input into their service’s COVID response and protocols.
Only 47 percent felt that enough information had been provided to them; 31 percent said not enough had been provided, and 22 percent were unsure.
Asked if they were aware which of their centre’s families were most at risk from COVID, 53 percent said yes and 47 percent were not aware.
Only 18 percent said that their centre had an air filter, one of the recommended mitigations for COVID-19, and 27 percent didn’t know.
67 percent of respondents said most activities with children could be conducted outdoors, which reduces the risk of transmission, but 33 percent said this was not possible at their centre.
One respondent commented in their survey: “I’m very disappointed with the decisions of the government and my employer, putting business before health and safety.” The person said that parents were not being told of positive cases in ECEs and had “a false belief of safety.”
Another comment stated: “No one listens to [ECE] teachers or cares about the risks to us or the children and [the authorities] are hiding ECE COVID cases.” A further respondent criticised the “vague and often very late announcements” about the protocols for ECEs, which was contributing to parents becoming stressed and hostile.
One respondent called for government funding for centres to have air filters and ventilation. The government announced only last week that it was ordering air purifiers and carbon dioxide monitors for schools, but it is not clear if these will be available for ECEs.
Schools are due to close at the end of next week for the summer holidays. In the meantime, with the full support of the pro-capitalist trade unions, the government is determined to keep them open, placing children at risk so that their parents can keep working, generating profits for the ruling class. Over the holidays, the virus will spread further as families travel around the country.
Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is set to close the year with a battery of European Union (EU) austerity measures agreed to by the trade unions.
In July 2020, then-Podemos leader and deputy prime minister of the PSOE-Podemos government, Pablo Iglesias, endorsed an EU bailout funneling €750 billion to the banks and corporations. The fund was engineered as COVID-19 spread throughout Europe, killing hundreds of thousands, due to the ruling class’s herd immunity policy prioritising profits over lives.
Iglesias described the fund as “a good agreement for the European Union (EU) and for Spain, and it is a breath of fresh air for the European project.” He added, “There is no doubt that today, one of the most brilliant pages in EU history has been written.”
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
He then claimed that bailout funds would not be tied to austerity, as the EU “seems to have learned the lessons after the previous crisis, this time we will not have austerity, but an ambitious plan of fiscal stimuli.” Unsurprisingly, the PSOE-Podemos government said nothing about the conditions to which Madrid committed in order to obtain EU funding. However, it sent letters to the EU pledging major labour, pension and spending reforms.
The WSWS’s warning that Podemos’ claims there would be no EU austerity were a fraud has been fully vindicated.
On November 15, the government and the General Union of Labor (UGT) and Workers Commissions (CCOO) unions reached an agreement on pensions. It is an assault on the public pensions system, favouring its privatisation. It will extend the retirement age to 67, increase workers’ social security contributions (a de facto paycut), promote company pensions and slash future pensions by linking their amounts to the increases in life expectancy. Future workers retiring will see their pensions cut by up to an estimated 20 percent, or 300 euros for the youngest workers.
The agreement is based on the so-called Intergenerational Equity Mechanism (MEI) that is fraudulently presented as current workers contributing to the “baby boom” generation, those born after 1947, who are now retiring.
It will entail employers and workers increasing social contributions by 0.6 percent to Social Security for 10 years. This will provide money to the Reserve Fund, used to guarantee the payment of future pensions, and which is currently practically exhausted after successive PSOE and right-wing Popular Party governments systematically misused these funds for other purposes. Workers will assume 0.1 percent, which is a disguised wage cut under conditions of rampant inflation levels of 6 percent.
In turn, employers will assume 0.5 percent. This has led them not to support this agreement, to which the unions have reacted by cynically claiming the agreement as a great victory for workers.
Secretary General of the UGT Pepe Álvarez declared, “The doomsayers, those that don’t dare to tell the pensioners and workers of our country what they would do, which is to increase the retirement age and lower the pensions, have seen that there is another formula … one that allows us to guarantee the future for current generations and pensioners.”
Álvarez, however, is lying through his teeth. To start, the rise in contributions, according to calculations by the research group on Pensions and Social Protection of the University of Valencia and Extremadura, will barely amount to about 2 billion euros a year, of which employers will contribute slightly more than 1.6 billion euros.
This is ridiculous when compared with the €30 billion profits that Spain’s listed companies earned just in the first half of this year; or the €212 billion that all businesses obtained in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. This is thanks to the herd immunity policy implemented by the PSOE- Podemos government that has cost the lives of over 105,000 people in Spain alone.
This figure is also completely insufficient to guarantee the future payment of pensions. Next year, Social Security will have a deficit of €50 billion. The government and trade unions are fully aware of this and are leaving the door open to new rounds of pensions cuts in the coming years.
The government and the unions are simultaneously negotiating with employers for changes in the 2012 labor reform passed by the right-wing Popular Party (PP). Podemos claimed that the repeal of that reform was one of its fundamental objectives when it entered government.
Even before negotiations started, the new Podemos leader and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz stated, “Technically, can the labor reform of the Popular Party be repealed? No.” She added, “One thing is the political fetish and another is what we are going to do, which is to change the PP’s framework of labor relations, which has been deeply damaging.” The central point of the PP’s reform, mass cuts to severance pay, will be untouched. Díaz herself declared, “We are not going to touch the severance pay. It is a balanced reform.”
Another of the proposed measures to limit the number of temporary contracts to 15 percent, in a country where one out of every four contracts are of this type, was also removed from discussion. Podemos thus guarantees employers that they will continue to have legal mechanisms to fire at low cost and continue to exploit workers on precarious, temporary contracts.
As with pensions, what Podemos and the trade unions seek in these talks is that the employers make minor, face-saving concessions in front of workers to avert an eruption of working-class anger.
At the same time, Podemos has showered the unions with money. Díaz nearly doubled the capitalist state’s payoffs to the unions since Podemos took office. On November 2, she pledged €17 million in subsidies in the 2022 budget.
The role of the unions was made clear by UGT leader Pepe Álvarez. He warned that “if the employers’ association is not aware of the protest moment that Spain is experiencing, many more situations will be experienced, such as those of the protests over the provincial metal agreement of Cádiz.” CCOO Secretary General Unai Sordo called for calm, asking “to let the negotiation run its course” because it is “complex but not impossible” and calling for an “exercise of prudence.”
Along similar lines, Enrique de Santiago, general secretary of the Stalinist Communist Party, now integrated in Podemos, appealed to the workers who maintained a militant 9-day indefinite strike in the metal sector in Cádiz to “have confidence in the work this government is doing. Obviously, the economy in this country is not intervened by the State and depends on the decisions of private companies.” In other words, they trust the government that sends hundreds of policemen and a 15-ton armoured vehicle tank to try to break their strike.
