10,000 healthcare workers strike in New Zealand

Tom Peters

About 10,000 health workers in New Zealand held a nationwide 24-hour strike on May 16. The strike went ahead after the Public Service Association (PSA) union, the District Health Boards (DHBs) and the state’s Employment Relations Authority failed to reach an agreement to call it off. The PSA members are continuing work-to-rule industrial action until May 20, which includes a ban on overtime and on working during breaks.

Health workers protest in Wellington. [Source: Public Service Association Facebook page]

Thousands of workers and supporters took part in protests and pickets in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and many regional centres including Nelson, Blenheim, Rotorua, Tauranga, Whanganui and Palmerston North.

The allied health workers are employed in more than 70 occupations, including anaesthetic technicians, audiologists, occupational therapists, dental technicians, social workers and physiotherapists, and workers who process COVID-19 tests. Many of these workers are making little more than the legal minimum wage of $21.20 an hour. Their pay has effectively been frozen since their previous employment contract expired 18 months ago.

The strike points to growing anger among working people at the soaring cost of living under the Labour Party-led government, as well as the crisis of under-resourcing in public hospitals. Annual inflation in New Zealand stands at nearly 7 percent, more than double what most workers are receiving in wage rises.

Lakes DHB occupational therapist Bridget Davey told the Rotorua Daily Post that her team was “notoriously understaffed” and staff were “leaving to go overseas” to try and make more money. Physiotherapist Grant Tuhaka added that staff were pushed to work too many extra hours and “everyone’s either leaving or we’re burning out and we’re just really tired.”

A striking mental health worker, Scott Rusbridge, told TVNZ: “I probably put in an extra 10 hours a week in unpaid overtime. I’ve got a masters degree in social work and I still start off on a $53,000 salary,” about $25.50 an hour.

Conditions for healthcare workers have dramatically worsened as a result of the government’s decision last October to end its COVID-19 elimination policy and to allow the virus to spread throughout the country. According to the Ministry of Health, 986 people had died with COVID as of May 17—up from 59 at the end of 2021. The toll is likely to pass 1,000 deaths by the end of the week.

Hospitals currently have more than 400 patients with the virus, and thousands of hospital workers have been infected, leading to major staffing shortages and delays for essential medical procedures. On May 16, Stuff reported that 37-year-old mother Aroha Raynel​, who had recently had COVID, was told she would have to wait 17 hours for attention after she went to Waikato Hospital’s emergency department suffering severe chest pains. Many other patients reported similar wait times.

Sue Stebbeings,​ chairperson of the College of Emergency Nurses, said: “Chronic understaffing, space constraints, increasing [patient] presentations and more complex presentations are all factors” in long waiting times. Last Friday, Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield warned that hospitalisations for COVID-19 could more than double during the winter, which starts next month, making the situation even worse.

Southland Hospital in Invercargill was forced to close to visitors this week after several vulnerable patients tested positive for COVID, prompting fears that the virus was spreading in the hospital. Dr Hywel Lloyd, a spokesperson for the Southern DHB, told Radio NZ that both patients and staff had to be protected, adding that “we have significant staffing shortages.”

Allied health workers had initially voted to strike in March, but the Employment Court banned the strike at the last minute, in an extraordinary anti-democratic ruling. The PSA had already sought to appease the authorities by calling off the strike in Auckland, but the court decided this was not enough.

Following the ruling, the union re-entered negotiations with the DHBs, facilitated by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA). The ERA recommended a deal which was agreed to by the PSA leadership, which said if it was accepted by the DHBs, then the strike could be averted. Last week, the DHBs presented an offer, which the union said fell short of the ERA’s proposal. No details of either proposal have been made public, leaving healthcare workers in the dark as to what the PSA has agreed to.

The union now says it wants to negotiate directly with the government’s new agency Health NZ, which is to replace the DHBs in July as part of a restructure that will centralise the public health system. Workers should have no confidence that this will produce a better deal; the government has made clear that it supports the offer made by the DHBs.

Health workers protest in Auckland. (Source: Public Service Association Facebook page)

Health Minister Andrew Little revealed to Newstalk ZB on May 16 that under the DHBs’ offer, “those on the lowest rates [of pay] would go up to about $52,000 a year,” i.e., hardly more than the minimum wage. He nonetheless backed the offer, implying that workers who were unhappy with it should wait for a separate “pay equity” deal, which the government claims will significantly boost wages.

The details of the “pay equity” deal—supposedly meant to address long-standing underpayment in the sector—have not been determined, and Little admitted that “we don’t even know when agreement is going to be reached.”

Nurses have strongly objected to a similar “pay equity” deal hatched between the government and the New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation, which falls short of the increased cost of living and will not address the staffing crisis.

The situation facing healthcare workers, and the working class as a whole, exposes the unions’ lies that the Labour-led government would enact progressive reforms. In 2020, the PSA campaigned vigorously for Labour’s re-election, declaring in one statement that the party had a “commitment to workers’ rights and wellbeing” (September 19) and in another that its policies “signal a shift toward secure work with decent pay and conditions for all” (September 14).

In reality, the Labour-Greens government has used the pandemic to carry out the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich and big business in New Zealand’s history, through multi-billion dollar subsidies and quantitative easing. The accumulated debt is to be repaid through brutal austerity measures, at the expense of healthcare and other essential services.

Throughout the world, from Sri Lanka to the United States, Europe and Australia, workers are seeking to fight back against the out-of-control cost of living, and to stop more needless deaths from COVID-19. They are hamstrung and divided by the trade unions, which are enforcing government and corporate austerity and have suppressed opposition to the dismantling of public health measures.

School districts slash spending across the US

Renae Cassimeda

School districts across the United States are implementing deep budget cuts. Citing the drop in student enrollment—the result of the criminal response of both political parties to the pandemic—federal, state and local officials are accelerating the attack on public education.

A major decline in enrollment in US public schools has taken place over the past two years. According to Return 2 Learn Tracker, a recent national survey on student enrollment, an estimated 1.2 million students have left public schools since the pandemic began.

There are still no definitive studies on the causes of the sharp decline. However, large numbers of working class parents likely pulled their children out of school because they lost jobs, suffered homelessness, got sick or lost family members who cared for children. Some parents with the economic means also transferred their children to parochial and other private schools, which have largely remained open throughout the pandemic.

As most public school funds are tied directly to student enrollment and attendance, districts face major budget deficits for the upcoming school years. Insufficient pandemic relief funding from the federal government has not stemmed the budget crisis. Projecting major budget deficits, districts across the US are already imposing austerity measures in the form of hiring freezes, school closures, cuts to vital services and programs including Special Education programs and English as a Second Language programs, teacher and staff layoffs, classroom consolidations and more.

A snapshot of school budget cuts in several areas gives a sense of the scale of this assault.

Minneapolis educators march earlier this year (WSWS Media)

In New York City Public Schools, the largest district in the US, over 50,000 students have left the district over the past two years. Proposals for cuts to the budget include cutting $215 million for next school year and a total of nearly $1 billion to schools over the next three years.

In Minnesota, Minneapolis Public Schools faces an estimated $27.1 million budget deficit for the upcoming school year. Citing decline in enrollment and added expenses from meager employee raises under new labor agreements, the district plans to enforce a hiring freeze, cut 5 percent from each department, and decrease allocations to school sites. The district also plans to use 78 percent of its remaining pandemic relief funds to pay salaries for the next two years. The drastic cuts come two months after the 20-day strike of teachers and support staff in the district was shut down and betrayed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.

In California, student enrollment has declined by more than 250,000 students since 2019, representing the state’s lowest public school student enrollment numbers in 20 years. In the Sacramento City Unified School District, one month after the Sacramento City Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union Local 1021 sold out the strike of over 5,000 school employees, the district voted unanimously to lay off 106 classified positions, effective since last Friday, and unilaterally extend the school year. The district has cited the cost of the below inflation rate wage increases for educators and fines from lost instruction due to the strike as basis for its estimated $38.5 million budget deficit.

San Francisco Unified School District last week rescinded hundreds of layoff notices and issued 35 layoff notices to teachers and classified staff, instead of an initial proposal of 311 layoffs back in March. The rescinding of layoffs was due in large part to a major exodus of teachers and staff from the district for the 2022–2023 school year. Since January, 68 teachers have resigned and 15 teachers retired. The district is cynically presenting these figures as a means for solving the budget crisis, but most of the vacancies will remain unfilled due to ongoing budget cuts.

Facing a $50 million budget deficit, Oakland Unified School District will carry out the closure, consolidation and merging of 11 schools in the district over the next two years, a plan which has been confronted with mass opposition from teachers, staff and families. The school board recently announced there have been 96 employee “separations” from the district since January, which include special ed teachers, counselors, psychologists, English as a second language teachers and food service staff, among others.

According to state data, Kansas public schools enrollment dropped by more than 15,000 since the start of the pandemic. The Olathe School District in Kansas City faces a $28 million deficit for next school year and has issued major cuts to the district including 140 teaching and staff positions and a hiring freeze on vacant positions.

Maysville School District in Everett, Washington, recently finalized 35 teacher layoffs to offset $13.5 million in lost revenue. Also on the chopping block are millions in cuts to sports programs, instructional materials, student support staff and school maintenance staff. Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, plans to lay off nearly 200 positions for the 2022–2023 school year, including teachers, paraeducators and student intervention specialists. The district also proposed to eliminate all COVID-19 quarantine monitor positions.

In New Jersey, Montclair Schools will cut 26 teaching positions due to a more than $3 million budget deficit. An undisclosed number of support staff are also getting laid off in addition to hiring freezes on special ed and bus driver vacancies.

Pentucket Regional School District in West Newbury, Massachusetts, plans for $1.34 million in cuts for next year, which will have a devastating impact on the quality of public education in the district. Cuts are to include the elimination of seven teachers, two paraeducators, two Special Ed teachers, one nurse and one librarian position in the district. There will also be cuts to school supplies, field trips for grades 6–7, reductions in athletics and cuts to summer special ed programs.

In Pennsylvania, Pleasant Valley School District has issued layoffs to 52 staff, including 18 teachers and 34 support staff for next school year. The layoffs come after the district incentivized early retirements in February resulting in 28 teacher and 22 support staff early retirements in the district.

Additional relief funding from the federal government during the pandemic has proven to be entirely insufficient. The $30 billion one-time COVID-19 relief funding for schools from the CARES Act did not adequately address safety concerns across US schools. Instead it served largely as a buffer for districts to keep afloat during the pandemic. Another $122 billion in American Rescue Plan stimulus funds must be spent by July 2024. Even if this was actually spent, it would hardly be a dent in the resources needed to address crumbling infrastructure in schools, lack of resources and COVID-19 safety mitigations.

Significantly, federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund money is being used to “bolster” meager pay raises through one-time funds. At the same time, state and district officials, along with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), are telling teachers and support staff to lower their expectations because this money will soon run out too.

US Secretary of Education Cardona issued a nationwide call in March, during the Minneapolis teacher strike, for districts to use ESSER funds as a means to attract new educators and address the teacher shortage. But most of those funds were already allocated for important school services and in many cases have since been redirected for one-time bonuses. During the strike and contract negotiations in Sacramento, district and union officials agreed to take ESSER funds earmarked for health services for 504 plans, behavioral supports, and nutrition services and other services amounting to $11 million.

Far from fighting for a genuine redistribution of wealth in order to expand funding for public education programs and teacher salaries, the unions have pursued this “rob Peter to pay Paul” policy, which allows districts to drive a wedge between teachers, parents and students.

Significantly, the latest budget passed by Congress has offered no significant increase in public education funds, instead funneling unlimited billions for war. Just last week the US House of Representatives voted to send an unprecedented $40 billion in military and financial aid to Ukraine. All claims that there is no money to adequately fund public education is a lie.

The present crisis in public education is the result of a decades-long defunding of public education and diversion of public resources to for-profit charters and other school privatization schemes. Declines in student enrollment before the pandemic were always a self-fulfilling prophecy. The gutting of public schools led to lower enrollment, which in turn was used to carry out further cuts and promote charters, school vouchers and other “school choice.”

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, first Trump and then Biden refused to carry out the necessary public health measures—school and workplace closures and the replacement of lost wages, universal testing, contact tracing, quarantining and a global campaign of mass vaccinations—to shorten the pandemic and eliminate SARS-CoV-2.

Politicians from both parties cite the dangers of supposed “learning loss” to keep the schools open as cases and hospitalizations rise due to the highly infectious and immune-resistant Omicron BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 subvariants. But the “let it rip” policy has and continues to have a catastrophic impact on schoolchildren, including on their learning capacity, with many thousands facing long-term illness and debilities from Long COVID.

Now all of the feigned concern over the educational needs of students is further exposed by the massive budget cuts hitting the schools.

Sri Lankan attorney general orders arrest of leaders of mob violence against anti-government protesters

Saman Gunadasa & K. Ratnayake

On the orders of the Attorney General Sanjay Rajaratnam, the Sri Lankan police have begun arresting some 22 leaders of the mob that violently attacked anti-government protesters on May 9.

The 22 persons include former ministers, MPs and local leaders of the President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). The attorney general also ordered the arrest of Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of Colombo area, Dehabandu Tennakoon, in connection with the attack.

The anti-government campaigners had been occupying the Galle Face Green in Central Colombo for more than a month demanding the resignation of the president and his government and an end to the intolerable hardships caused by soaring prices and chronic shortages of essentials. Some campaigners had also started a protest outside the official residence of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse.

More than 1,000 SLPP thugs were bussed from many parts of the country to the prime minister’s official residence where they were whipped up into a frenzy. They first attacked unarmed demonstrators outside the residence then turned on protesters at Galle Face Green down the road. There they smashed up temporary shelters and physically beat up the demonstrators. More than 100 were injured.

Right-wing thug attack on a protest hut at Galle Face Green [Photo: Facebook]

The police stood by allowing the mob to rampage freely across Galle Face Green, only later dispersing the attackers with tear gas and water cannon. None of the attackers were arrested.

In response, thousands of workers and others flooded onto Galle Face Green to oppose the attack and demand the immediate arrest of those responsible. Health, postal and port workers immediately went on strike and many other sections of the working class joined a general strike the following day.

Widespread public outrage has continued to mount over the past week over the failure to arrest and prosecute anyone over the flagrant attack on the anti-government protests.

After dragging his feet, the attorney general finally instructed the Inspector General of Police and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to arrest the 22 persons and produce before the courts.

Apart from Deputy Inspector General Tennakoon, former minister Johnston Fernando, State Minister Sanath Nishantha, MPs Sanjeewa Edirimanne and Milan Jayatilake, and Moratuwa Mayor Samanlal Fernando were among the others to be detained.  

Lankadeepa reported that it had asked whether any action would be taken against Prime Minster Mahinda Rajapakse, who resigned in response to the public outcry over the attack. He has been widely criticised for inciting the attackers.

Reuters journalists in Colombo reported that they had seen people enter the meeting at the prime minister’s residence chanting: “Whose power? Mahinda’s power!”

According to Reuters, a video showed Mahinda Rajapakse rhetorically asking whether he should resign. “No” came the reply. “That means,” he said, “I don’t need to resign… I have always been on the side of the country… I am willing to make any sacrifice for the people’s benefit.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa, former prime minister of Sri Lanka [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

In the video, former minister Johnston Fernando told the meeting: “Get ready… Let’s start the fight. If the president can’t ... he should hand over to us. We will clear Galle Face.”

All that the attorney general’s department told Lankadeepa, however, was that the investigation was ongoing.

So far, police have arrested Sanath Nishantha and Malith Jayatilake, who faced court yesterday and remanded until May 25. Four others on the list have also been arrested.

Johnston Fernando, a high profile SLPP figure, is being allowed to roam free and even attended the sittings of parliament this week. The CID questioned Deputy Inspector General Tennakoon for eight hours but did not arrest him despite the attorney general’s order.

Sri Lankan police and authorities are notorious for suppressing cases against high-profile politicians and other figures. If unable to cover up their crimes, scapegoats are found to let the real culprits off the hook.

The attack on the anti-government protesters was a deliberate provocation aimed at creating the conditions for widespread state repression on the mass protest movement.

It came in the immediate aftermath of a second general strike and hartal on May 6 involving millions of workers and small businesses across the island that effectively shut down the economy. The previous one-day general strike on April 28 was also widely supported.

The emergence of the working class in struggle not only against the government but the entire political establishment, including the opposition parties and the trade unions that had called it. On the night of May 6, the president proclaimed a state of emergency enhancing his already sweeping powers, including to mobilise the military.

In the wake of the May 9 attack on Galle Face Green, the president seized on retaliatory violence at the homes of government ministers and MPs as the pretext for mobilising the military and police across the island and imposing a nation-wide 24-hour curfew. Soldiers were ordered to strictly enforce the law and shoot rioters and looters on sight. Military check points were set up throughout the country.

As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) warned, the violent attacks on government figures and the burning of their homes would only play into the hands of reaction and the state apparatus.

While legal action against the SLPP thugs and their leaders has been dragged out, the police rapidly arrested many of those involved in the retaliatory protests. So far 900 people have been arrested based on CCTV footage and formal complaints.

The resignation of Mahinda Rajapakse as prime minister plunged the country even further into political crisis. The ruling class is desperate for emergency finance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other sources to be able to pay for essential imports of food, fuel and medicines. Any bailout will inevitably come with harsh austerity measures that will only deepen the social crisis facing working people.

In a desperate move last week, President Rajapakse appointed right-wing United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. He is notorious for ruthlessly implementing the dictates of international finance capital and serving Washington’s geopolitical interests. For months, he has criticised the government for not holding talks with the IMF sooner. 

In a speech to the nation on May 16, Wickremesinghe warned that the next few months would be the hardest that anyone had faced. He set out the extent of the country’s financial crisis in an effort to bludgeon the population into accepting the hardships as inevitable.

The UNP is widely discredited and Wickremesinghe, a former prime minister, is its sole parliamentarian. But the opposition parties, including Samagi Jana Balawegaya, the Tamil National Alliance and an “independent” grouping that recently broke from Rajapakse’s ruling coalition have all declared they will back Wickremesinghe’s “development work.”

The trade unions have also fallen into line. Having previously promised to call an indefinite general strike if the president and the government did not resign, they have now abandoned their bogus posturing in favour of token protests. Their aim from the start was to deflect and suppress the rising anger and opposition of the working class.

The SEP has explained repeatedly that there is no solution to the social crisis facing working people within the profit system or the national borders of Sri Lanka. The turmoil in Sri Lanka is a particularly sharp expression of the global crisis of capitalism.

The government led by President Rajapakse and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe will ruthlessly impose the IMF’s dictates on working people and will not hesitate to use police state measures against any opposition.

The state of emergency is still in place. A night curfew is still in force. Armed troops have been deployed throughout the country, including near the country’s free trade zones. A crackdown on social media has been intensified.

The Northern Ireland Protocol is in Tatters

Kenneth Surin

Photograph Source: Sinn Féin – Protest at Boris Johnson visit – CC BY 2.0

The recent UK midterm elections delivered a historic verdict in the north of Ireland when Sinn Féin, standing for a reunited Ireland, emerged as the largest party.

Sinn Féin topped the first-preference vote with 29%, and won 27 seats, enabling its deputy leader, Michelle O’Neill, to become the north of Ireland’s first minister-designate.

O’Neill is the first nationalist to hold this position in a momentous blow to Protestant-oriented Unionism.

The Democratic Unionist party (DUP), the largest of the Unionist parties won 25 seats.

The cross-community Alliance Party won 13 seats, becoming the third-largest party in an election for the first time.

The DUP, much chagrined at its loss of hegemony in Northern Ireland politics, retreated in a huff by saying it will not re-enter the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive while issues with the Northern Ireland protocol remain.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which resulted in the prevailing Northern Irish political settlement, called for a “frictionless” border between the 2 parts of Ireland.

Brexit put the “frictionless” border in jeopardy, since a border now existed between the EU-member Republic of Ireland and the UK-belonging (and thus non-EU) Northern Ireland.

The anomalous status of Northern Ireland with regard to EU trade was resolved by the Northern Ireland protocol, which retained the “frictionless” border, but upheld the need for checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the latter basically being a part of the EU’s single market).

In the 2019 general election, Boris “BoJo” Johnson had a single mantra—he had an “oven-ready deal” that would “Get Brexit Done!”. It won him an 80-seat parliamentary majority.

The routinely dishonest BoJo claimed categorically that his Brexit deal would not put a border in the Irish Sea. He insisted that businesses in Northern Ireland would have unencumbered access to markets in England, Scotland and Wales, saying with typical bombast that the Irish Sea trade border would exist “over my dead body”.

However, BoJo, in his haste to show he could “get Brexit done”, signed an agreement with the EU, binding in international law, which required the Irish Sea border to be there.

In so doing BoJo conned the DUP, which is renowned historically for its inflexibility when it came to safeguarding what it perceives to be Unionist interests.

BoJo also duped the EU into thinking he could be trusted when he signed a treaty enshrining Northern Ireland’s special status with regard to the EU— a status he clearly had no intention of adhering to.

The DUP, having lost its majority in the assembly, decided to take a gamble by calling BoJo’s bluff— telling BoJo that unless he scrapped unilaterally the part of the Northern Ireland protocol which requires trade barriers to exist between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, the DUP would not enter into any power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Féin, thereby scuppering the Good Friday Agreement.

The foreign secretary Liz Truss, who has ambitions to succeed BoJo and is branding herself as a “Margaret Thatcher MK 2”, has taken the position that the UK has no choice but to act unilaterally if the EU did not accede to the UK’s demands to abolish the checks on goods crossing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

BoJo supported Truss at first, but shifted his position later in typical fashion. Renowned for having no settled principles on anything (except his own self-interest)— BoJo was after all anti-Brexit when he was mayor of London, BoJo flew to Belfast on Monday to meet with the north of Ireland’s political leaders.

BoJo took a less strident tone than his foreign secretary, but ended-up pleasing no one.

Sinn Féin’s president Mary Lou McDonald accused BoJo of intolerable and timewasting tactics where the protocol is concerned.

McDonald said BoJo was placating the DUP and that he gave “no straight answers” during their meeting, saying: “The British government is in a game of brinkmanship with the European institutions, indulging a section of political unionism which believes it can frustrate and hold society to ransom”.

The DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said after meeting BoJo: “We cannot have power-sharing unless there is a consensus. That consensus doesn’t exist”.

“Consensus” for the DUP involves ditching the part of the protocol which requires a trade border to exist between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and since Sinn Féin is opposed to this, no return to power-sharing is on the horizon, and BoJo left the meetings empty-handed, with the ball back in his court. The only thing that would be acceptable to the DUP is precisely what Sinn Féin opposes.

BoJo said more details regarding the protocol would be released “in the coming days”, and is widely expected to scrap unilaterally key parts of the protocol, daring the EU to give him what he wants or else.

After his meetings with the Northern Irish leaders, BoJo typically wanted to have his cake and eat it. He dismissed the idea that his proposed legislation, giving his government the right to ignore key parts of the protocol, could start a trade war with the EU, saying: “What we’re doing is sticking up for the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, and what we are doing it trying to protect and preserve the government of Northern Ireland”.

It is hard to see the EU sitting back and allowing the UK to get away with breaking an international treaty it had signed in order to maintain a “frictionless” border between the 2 parts of Ireland, and by so doing, ensuring that a single market exists between the north and the south of Ireland.

The EU fears a “slippery slope”. Its members have trading relations with non-EU countries, of course, and allowing the UK to break agreed-upon rules for the institution of a single market could set a precedent for other countries demanding a similar leeway in their trading relations with EU members.

Meanwhile, a delegation of powerful US Congressional representatives, including the head of the ways and means committee, Richard Neal, is expected to arrive in London in the coming days, reflecting the White House’s concern about escalating tensions over the protocol.

WHO study reveals high excess mortality in Germany during the pandemic

Tamino Dreisam

The actual death toll resulting from the German government’s coronavirus policies is much higher than its official statistics show. This is proven by the latest study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on excess mortality in the first two years of the pandemic.

Charité intensiv - Station 43 (Bild: DOCDAYS Production)

The study established the death figures worldwide in 2020 and 2021 and compares them with the figures that would have been expected without the pandemic. It comes to the frightening conclusion that excess mortality due to the pandemic, at 15 million deaths, is 2.75 times greater than the official figure of 5.42 million coronavirus deaths. Other studies on excess mortality come up with even higher figures.

Such studies on excess mortality reveal the consequences of the pandemic much more precisely than, for example, the public reporting data of the health authorities can. In addition to direct coronavirus deaths, those who died indirectly, such as through breakdowns in the health care system, are also recorded.

In Germany in particular, the unrecorded number of deaths because of the pandemic is especially high. In 2020 and 2021, around 195,000 more people died in Germany than expected. That is 83,000 deaths or 42 percent more than the officially recorded 112,000 COVID deaths in the same period.

On average, excess mortality in Germany is 116 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year. This puts it in the top third of rich countries—significantly higher than in the UK, France or even Sweden, which is considered the home of the murderous “herd immunity” strategy of allowing the virus to rip through the population.

The period from October 2020 onwards contributed to these frightening figures, when no protective measures were taken for a long time in Germany, despite an exponential increase in the number of infections and deaths. Particularly criminal are the deaths in 2021, when life-saving COVID-19 vaccines were already available. Despite this, excess mortality that year was 128,000, some 51,000 more than deaths recorded in the official statistics due to the virus.

The high excess mortality disproves the lie that Germany came through the pandemic well—a claim that is repeated like a prayer by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD) in particular. This is meant to normalise the mass suffering and deaths in the pandemic, which is still going on.

In fact, between 100 and 200 people are still dying every day in Germany and about 6,000 are hospitalised; 1,034 people currently need intensive medical care. The official 7-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants is around 450. However, due to the reduction in testing capacities and the abolition of compulsory testing in almost all areas, the actual incidence levels can hardly be traced—and this even though it is becoming increasingly clear what long-term consequences a coronavirus infection can have even if the illness is “mild.”

Numerous studies show that at least 10 percent of those infected develop symptoms that last three months, and in many cases well over a year. Symptoms can affect almost every organ of the body. Infection with coronavirus is now associated with an overall increased risk of mortality, as well as heart disease, brain damage, diabetes, kidney disease, a compromised immune system and more.

Despite the official propaganda, the pandemic is not over. On May 12, at a virtual COVID-19 summit convened by US President Joe Biden, even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) admitted that the virus was still a threat. “We may perceive the pandemic as being over ... But in the harsh reality, the pandemic is by no means over,” Scholz declared. “Recent outbreaks and new worrying virus variants highlight the risk that the pandemic will drag on even longer.”

The ruling class knows what it is talking about. During the summit, two sad records were set: the official number of coronavirus deaths in the US reached 1 million and in Europe, 2 million. Nevertheless, governments in the US and Europe have been working hard for months to lift all remaining protective measures and promulgate the alleged end of the pandemic.

Lauterbach himself described the Zero-Covid strategy, i.e., the targeted elimination and ultimate eradication of the virus by taking scientifically sound coronavirus protection measures, as a failure. Cynically, he declared, “You can hardly achieve anything with containment measures, lockdown measures.”

What this means is clear: the policy of allowing mass infection in the interests of the financial markets will continue, no matter how many more lives this costs. Instead of containing the virus and preventing the pandemic from gaining further victims by adopting protective measures, the aim is to regulate who will die.

This is particularly repulsive in the case of Lauterbach’s proposed “triage law.” Draft legislation, which was leaked to the public last weekend, provides for the rationing of intensive medical treatment so that it could be discontinued for one patient in favour of another with a higher chance of survival.

The draft was met with popular indignation and harsh criticism by numerous lawyers and human rights activists. Above all, the envisaged “ex-post triage” was condemned as running contrary to human rights.

Even though Lauterbach reacted by announcing some sections of the law would be modified, the thrust of the draft legislation remains the same. There were “still other problematic points in the draft so far,” explained Leander Palleit, head of the monitoring office of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the German Institute for Human Rights.

“It is envisaged that the ‘current and short-term probability of survival’ will be used to decide who is to be treated and who is not,” Palleit noted. “As seemingly neutral as this criterion is formulated, it nevertheless carries the danger of unintentionally becoming a gateway to unconscious discrimination against people with disabilities and older people in practice.”

A person’s advanced age or severe physical impairment, “while not in itself a basis for decision-making, could indirectly be used as a negative indicator in the medical assessment of their short-term survival probability, at least in direct comparison with younger or supposedly ‘healthier’ people competing for the same intensive care bed,” Palleit continued her criticism. Casting this “immanent risk in legal form” was “incompatible with the equal dignity of every human life.”

Canada’s official COVID-19 death toll surpasses 40,000 amid sixth wave of infections

Dylan Lubao

Canada’s official COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 40,000 amid a sixth wave of infections and deaths which is devastating working class families across the country. Governments at the provincial and federal level, irrespective of their political affiliation, have embraced mass infection as a positive good.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

In an article marking the grim milestone, Global News acknowledged that the “true death toll could be thousands higher,” since “two-thirds of all COVID-19 deaths may have been missed.” If this is the case, Canada’s real death toll amounts to a staggering 120,000 people, nearly equivalent to the United States staggering death toll of 1 million on a per capita basis.

Government officials, including Theresa Tam, the Liberal-appointed Chief Medical Health Officer of Canada, have been quick to announce that the current wave, fueled by the highly transmissible BA.2 Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is “waning.” Figures show that hospitalizations and deaths are on the decline, although these numbers are both a significant undercount and highly suspect. Governments across the country stopped widespread public testing and contact tracing at the beginning of January.

From a sixth wave peak of around 7,000 at the end of April, hospitalizations have fallen gradually to around 5,800 nationwide by mid May, still higher than any other wave except the recent December/January surge. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths has decreased from a peak of 82 on April 25 to 69 on May 10. Although the majority of provinces and territories show declining or stagnant hospitalizations and deaths, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba continue to see increases in both.

These figures make clear that hundreds more deaths will be recorded in the coming weeks. A study published May 16 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that 11 percent of all patients hospitalized with COVID-19 die or are readmitted within a 30-day period. At the current level of 6,300 hospitalizations, 11 percent equates to some 700 people.

Infectious disease researcher Dr. Tara Moriarty at the University of Toronto has noted that the official government figures, as devastating as they are, are wildly inaccurate. Many provincial governments have ended daily pandemic reports and shunted them off to anemic weekly information dumps.

According to her projections, based on data from April 20, near the peak of the current sixth wave, a staggering 78 percent of the population has been infected with Omicron in Alberta, 77 percent in Manitoba, and 79 percent in Saskatchewan. New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador are close behind at 65 percent and 63 percent of the population, respectively. None of the provinces show infection percentages below 40 percent.

Dr. Moriarty estimates that 63,639 Canadians were infected on April 20, compared to the official government count of 7,972. This amounts to an undercount in the official figures of roughly 87 percent. She estimates that April 20 saw 3,818 cases of Long COVID, which often produces debilitating long-term illness even after initial symptoms subside.

Among the most alarming of Dr. Moriarty’s projections is the ratio of future COVID-19 deaths to other causes of death. Assuming that governments persist with their herd immunity policy of no public health measures, there will be one COVID-19 death for every three cancer deaths. One person will die of COVID-19 for every death due to heart disease. COVID-19 will kill over seven times more people each year than the influenza virus, dispelling the absurd claim that the coronavirus is no worse than the flu.

What the federal and provincial governments have effectively accomplished over the past two years is the introduction of COVID-19 as the third leading cause of death, whittling down ranks of the elderly, the medically vulnerable, and even younger and healthier individuals. Every major political party has blood on its hands, as well as the union bureaucracies, which have not once lifted a finger to protect their members, their families, or the broader population.

The sixth wave began in late March, less than a month after the peak of the fifth wave, which was triggered by the BA.1 Omicron variant. Even accounting for the artificially suppressed official data, the fifth and sixth waves have produced the most infections and hospitalizations by far of any stage of the pandemic. Over 6,500 lives were lost to COVID-19 in the fifth wave, approaching the colossal death tolls of the first and second waves of the pandemic, which took place before vaccines were widely available.

The scale of illness and death produced by the ruling elite’s let it rip policy during the fifth and sixth waves is immense and exposes as a lie the claim by every media outlet and major political party that the Omicron variant is “mild.” A recent Harvard study demonstrated that Omicron is intrinsically as severe as earlier strains of the virus, including the Delta variant.

In Quebec, it is estimated that one-quarter of adults and one-third of children were infected with the Omicron variant within the past five months. Contrary to Premier François Legault’s dismissal of Omicron as a mere “cold,” Quebec’s pandemic death toll in 2022 has already surpassed the 3,271 fatalities registered in 2021, with seven months left to go.

The Atlantic provinces, including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, have since last winter experienced their worst stages of the pandemic. Provincial governments in this region begrudgingly tolerated a strategy similar to COVID-19 elimination during the first year of the pandemic, before dismantling public health measures in late 2021 with the rollout of vaccines and in accordance with the demands of Canada’s banks and major corporations. This decision has unsurprisingly resulted in an explosion of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

New Brunswick, where the Progressive Conservative government took the lead among the Atlantic provinces in dropping public health measures last summer, saw its highest daily death toll on March 22 with 16 deaths. Hospitalizations have come down from a peak of 165 on February 2 but continue to hover at around 80. Since mid-September, lulls in the province’s hospitalizations and deaths have been fleeting, leading to an almost permanent surge.

The entirely expected but no less devastating impact of herd immunity policy continues to be felt outside of the morgues and funeral homes. Work absences due to illness reached record levels in April, while hospitals continue to be struck by unprecedented staff shortages, leading to backlogs for critical medical procedures that will not be fulfilled for months if not years. Seasonal flu, which was almost eliminated during the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, is now making a comeback.

For the ruling class and its political representatives, the pandemic is entirely in the rear-view mirror. All of the major press outlets have reduced their pandemic coverage to a trickle. Ontario’s ongoing provincial election campaign sees all four major parties, including the ostensibly “progressive” New Democratic Party (NDP), deliberately omitting the pandemic as a significant issue.

On May 14, Quebec became the last province to end its mask mandate. With the exception of mask mandates in a selection of high-risk settings like public transit and health care facilities, no obstacles remain to the widespread transmission of the virus.

The federal Liberal government recently ended the last of its already meager financial aid packages to workers, asserting that emergency help was no longer required. The NDP, which entered a “confidence-and-supply” agreement with Trudeau in March to keep the Liberals in power through 2025, did nothing to oppose this criminal move. With no way to compensate for lost wages if they need to shelter at home during an infection or take care of an infected child, workers will be forced to turn up to work infected or send their infected kids to schools and daycares, spreading the potentially deadly virus even more rapidly throughout the population.

Pay packages for US CEOs hit record for sixth year in a row

Kevin Reed

The pay packages of the top executives of the largest US corporations set another record in 2021, hitting a median value of $14.7 million. This was the tenth year in a row that median compensation increased and the sixth straight year of record setting packages for the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the top US companies.

CEO Tim Cook at the Apple retail store in downtown Los Angeles Thursday, June 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis published on Monday, total compensation of the CEOs of more than 400 companies on the S&P 500 rose by 12 percent in 2021. The Journal study also said that “most companies recorded annual shareholder returns of nearly 30 percent.”

Of the median total package value of $14.7 million, the analysis reports that $10.6 million consisted of equity awards, that is, non-cash compensation in the form of various company stock options. The balance of $4.1 million in the median CEO package was in the form of salaries, bonuses and other cash compensation.

In 2020, the median CEO package was worth $13.4 million, and the cash component was $3.1 million. In other words, while workers in nearly every US industry saw a reduction in real wages in 2021 due to an inflation rate of 7 percent, the cash portion of median CEO compensation increased by 32.3 percent.

As with everything related to the accumulation of vast sums of wealth in the upper echelons of American capitalist society, massive equity and cash compensation packages were awarded to a handful at the top end of the Journal rankings, and this exclusive club is growing. The analysis says, “Nine CEOs got pay packages worth at least $50 million last year—up from seven in 2020 and one in 2016.”

At the very top of the list is Peter M. Kern of Expedia Group who took in $296.25 million in 2021, an increase of a whopping 6,952 percent from 2020. Kern took over the online travel shopping company in April 2020 when the pandemic devastated the travel and tourism industries worldwide. Since the collapse of Expedia Group on Wall Street at that time, the company’s stock surged to more than double its pre-pandemic level.

As though it makes a difference, the Journal says that equity awards made up nearly all of Kern’s package, and these assets will not begin vesting until 2024 “at the earliest.” The Expedia Group CEO “isn’t expected to receive additional equity during his three-year employment contract,” according to a company spokesperson.

Second on the CEO pay package list is David Zaslav, the longtime CEO of Discovery Inc. and now the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., who received a total pay package of $246 million, an increase of 554 percent from the previous year. Of this amount, 82 percent, or $203 million, was in the form of an option grant “that depends on the stock price at least doubling from current levels before December 2027.”

However, the Journal reports that Zaslav received a total $30.5 million in cash compensation. The executive started his leadership of the new media conglomerate—the merger of AT&T’s WarnerMedia with Discovery—by announcing $3 billion in cuts that he says are needed to eliminate “overlapping” and to establish a company with “less layers.” Zaslav is fully aware that attacking the workforce, which has a median income that is 3,000 times smaller than the CEO’s, is the surest way to improve Wall Street performance and get him his $200 million.

Third on the list is Bill McDermott of ServiceNow, a software company that provides cloud computing services. McDermott’s 2021 package was worth $165 million, an increase of 560 percent over the previous year, and the cash portion is $3.57 million. McDermott has a $139.2 million option award that requires the company stock value to increase by half and that the company reach subscription revenue targets.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the most valuable company on Wall Street at $2.5 trillion, is next with total package worth $98.73 million and cash compensation of $15 million. Cook, who had not received an equity award since 2011, received nearly $84 million in options in recognition of “his exceptional leadership and is commensurate with the size, performance and profitability Apple has achieved during his tenure.” Apple finished 2021 with $94.7 billion in profit.

Cook is followed by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon with a total pay package of $84.43 million, of which $6.5 million is salary and other cash compensation. The Journal says that Dimon “must wait at least five years to exercise options the company valued at $52.6 million, nearly two-thirds of his $84.4 million in reported 2021 pay, and hold resulting shares at least another five years.”

As the leading voice of the US financial elite, the Wall Street Journal presents the increasingly grotesque accumulation of wealth at the top of society as the result of success for the winners among the capitalist class during “a tumultuous year that started with Covid-19 disrupting operations and sapping demand and ended with an economic rebound that left many US companies scrambling for workers and trying to stay ahead of rising inflation.”

While the Journal sees the equity portion of the lucrative compensation awards as some kind of “performance” requirement for the ultra-wealthy executives, the dirty little secret behind the 30 percent returns earned by the majority of the firms in 2021 is that the unprecedented rise on Wall Street has been fueled by the infusion of trillions of dollars into the markets by the US Federal Reserve.

While the Journal expresses a jubilant attitude toward the increasing pay package data, very little is said about the decline in the financial markets since the beginning of 2022, the increase in the inflation rate to 8.5 percent, the Federal Reserve interest rate policies or the volatility in the bond prices, all of which are indications of mounting instability of the entire financial system.