Johnson UK government announces cost of living support package fearing social explosion

Robert Stevens

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in Parliament today a £15 billion “Cost of Living Support package” in response to the desperate situation facing tens of millions of people.

Sunak effectively tore up his Spring Budget statement, laid out just two months ago, which refused any respite for those thrust into abject poverty.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak explains in a video on his Twitter page his cost of living support package (Credit: screenshot-Rishi Sunak/Twitter)

In what was billed as an “Economy Update”, Sunak announced £15 billion in financial support, citing an inflationary surge that is “causing acute distress for the people of this country.” He declared, “We need to make sure that for those whom the struggle is too hard… and for whom the risks are too great… are supported.”

The  multi-hundred millionaire Sunak was forced to acknowledge the deeply entrenched hardship in a country in which 14.5 million live in poverty, with another 250,000 households set to “slide into destitution” in 2023, according to the National Institute for Economic & Social Research.

Eight million households who “already have incomes low enough for the state to be supporting their cost of living through the welfare system” will receive a £650 one-off Cost of Living Payment. Over eight million pensioner households who receive the Winter Fuel Payment as they cannot pay their bills will receive a £350 one-off ‘Pensioner Cost of Living Payment’”. Six million people who receive non-means tested disability benefits will receive a “one-off Disability Cost of Living Payment, worth £150.”

Just two months ago, Sunak announced an energy bill rebate scheme in which every household would be eligible for a loan of just £200, to be clawed back over four years. Today he was forced to scrap this and make available to every household a non-repayable £400 grant for help with energy bills.

A further £500 million was announced by the chancellor for household support fund delivered by local councils, increasing it to £1.5 billion.

The support package will be partially paid for by a temporary 25 percent tax on the profits of the giant oil and gas firms who are raking in what Sunak described as “extraordinary profits”. Just few weeks ago, Tory MPs were whipped to vote down a similar Labour Party motion for a windfall tax. Such is the scale of the crisis confronting British capitalism that Sunak’s tax on windfall profits is double that which Labour was proposing.

Even so the Johnson government’s tax will barely touch the profits of the oil and gas giants. Just in the first three months of 2022, Shell made £7.2 billion in profits and BP raked in £4.9 billion. Sunak reassured them, “when oil and gas prices return to historically more normal levels, the Levy will be phased out and with a sunset clause written into the legislation.”

In the 24-hour lead-up to Sunak’s announcement, the media trailed reports of a £10 billion support package. In the end, the government felt it necessary to put down a further £5 billion. Such is the scale of the social hardship gripping tens of millions that Sunak’s measures will provide only momentary relief, with the one-off payments dwarfed by rising fuel, food and energy costs.

There are several factors underlying the calculations of the Tories and the government’s sharp policy reversal.

Since Sunak delivered his March economic statement, inflation has reached the highest level in Britain in 40 years. In March, the CPI inflation rate stood at 7 percent—reaching 9 percent this month. The more accurate RPI inflation measure, including housing costs, has risen from 9 percent to 11.1 percent, much of it fueled by April’s lifting of the cap on household energy costs that saw many bills rise by £693 from £1,277 to £1,971. Prepayment bill payers, mainly the poorest in society, saw their bills surge by £708, from £1,309 to £2,017.

An analysis of 21,000 food and drink items by Which? consumer magazine between December 2021 and February 2022 found that inflation on these was up 3.14 percent on average compared with two years ago. At least 265 products had seen price increases of more than 20 percent over that period.

According to the Zoopla property website, rents across Britain rose by 11 percent over the past year to nearly £1,000 per month—forcing the average worker to spend more than one third of their household income on rent.

Sunak’s statement was doubtless timed to coincide with senior civil servant Sue Gray’s official report, published Wednesday, into the “partygate” scandal surrounding Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Both Johnson and Sunak have been the target of public fury over illegal drinks parties at Downing Street during the pandemic. Johnson declared this week that it was time to “move on”. They calculated that ignoring the cost-of-living surge would be political suicide.

The urgency of such a response was emphasised this week by Jonathan Brearley, CEO of Ofgem, who told Parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee that the price cap hike in October will likely see household fuel bills shoot up to a record £2,800. He warned MPs that the number of people in fuel poverty could double to 12 million. E.ON energy UK chief Michael Lewis declared, “Frankly, some people are at the edge. They simply cannot pay, and that will get worse once prices go up again in October… We need more intervention.”

Facing the greatest crisis of capitalism since World War II, Johnson and Sunak have adopted measures they previously denounced as “tax and spend socialism”. Today’s announcement provoked outrage among sections of the ruling Conservatives, with Richard Drax declaring, “throwing red meat to socialists, by raising taxes on businesses and telling them where to invest their money is not the conservative way.” The pro-Tory Spectator denounced, “Rishi Sunak, the tax snatcher”.

By far the main consideration in Sunak’s announcement was fear of an uncontrollable social explosion under conditions of an escalating class struggle. The eruption of mass protests and strikes in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other countries in recent weeks, driven by inflation, is being read as a warning sign.

Media headlines have reflected nervousness over the economy being ground to a halt after 40,000 rail workers voted for strike action. As Sunak prepared his speech, the Daily Mail raised the spectre of “A YEAR of discontent?”, warning of a “wave of rail strikes this summer going into 2023—as British Airways staff, hospital cleaners, refuse collectors and lorry drivers also set to walk out in coming months”. Even as Sunak announced his cost-of-living package, BT telecoms workers are preparing to launch their first national strike in 35 years. They are being balloted for industrial action next month after rejecting a below inflation pay offer from a company making £1.3 billion annual profits.

The main concern of the ruling class is that the class struggle is threatening to break through the shackles imposed on it for years by the corporatist trade unions.

Protesters in Dover march in protest at the job losses at P&O (WSWS Media)

Throughout the pandemic, the unions have deepened their collaboration with the employers and government, imposing ever worsening attacks on the working class. Among those betrayed by the unions were tens of thousands employed at British Airways, British Gas, Weetabix, Go North West, Tesco, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, P&O Ferries and at universities and colleges and schools nationally.

There are growing signs that workers will no longer accept the unions’ sabotage of their struggles. Last week oil rig workers walked out in wildcat action across 16 platforms in the North Sea. The strikers called for a “wage revolution”, with its organisers declaring they were targeting not simply one company but the “industry world-wide as a whole.”

Germany’s IG Metall union rejects seeking compensation for inflation through higher wages

Ulrich Rippert

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war and the draconian economic sanctions imposed by the German government, energy and food prices have shot up. The constant spread of short-time working has already led to heavy financial losses for working people. Many workers are faced with the question of how they will pay for fuel, rent, heating, loans, and the wellbeing of their families in the future.

Protest against job cuts at the Daimler plant in Berlin-Marienfelde in November 2020 (WSWS photo).

Despite the assault on workers living conditions, the IG Metall union has said that current and upcoming collective bargaining negotiations will not address compensation for inflation. “Exorbitant inflation rates are not to be compensated through collective bargaining,” according to Roman Zitzelsberger, district leader of IG Metall in Baden-Württemberg and the union’s negotiator for pilot agreements.

To the question, “Why not?”, Zitzelsberger answered that the high inflation rates were the result of political decisions and therefore had to be corrected by “politics.”

Until now, the trade unions had always said that setting wages was the exclusive responsibility of the collective bargaining partners and that the government had no role to play. Inflation plus productivity growth served as a rule of thumb for calculating wage demands.

Now, Zitzelsberger has turned this upside down and claims that massive income losses caused by price increases are not a yardstick for wage demands and collective agreements. In other words, IG Metall is entering the bargaining round with the declared aim of lowering real wages.

Zitzelsberger thinks he can pull the wool over workers’ eyes by claiming that the government is responsible for compensating for inflation. But everyone knows that the question of price increases has been an important issue in all collective previous bargaining. And now, when price rises threaten an existential crisis for many, this is no longer supposed to be the case!

The truth is that IG Metall is supporting the government and the corporations in carrying out the biggest wage robbery in decades. A few weeks ago, Zitzelsberger signed a joint statement on behalf of IG Metall with the Südwestmetall employers’ association welcoming the “united and determined” response of Germany, Europe, and its allies to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We support the measures that have been decided,” both federations stressed. Zitzelsberger and employers’ president Porth left no doubt that this also meant the dramatic increase in military spending. They expressly welcomed the sanctions against Russia, despite their dire effects on the population in Russia and at home. “These measures will demand sacrifices from all of us,” the statement said.

Now, IG Metall is forcing workers to make these “sacrifices” by refusing to seek compensation for rampant inflation and agreeing to real wage cuts through the collective bargaining process. As a stooge of the government, it is thus forcing the working class to finance the arms deliveries to Ukraine, the NATO war against Russia and the gigantic military build-up of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces).

The struggle against war and rearmament has thus become a struggle against the trade unions, which serve as an extension of government and the corporate employers’ organisations.

The same Zitzelsberger who now preaches wage reductions also declares at every opportunity that it is impossible to defend jobs in the auto and supplier industries. He repeats the arguments of the company bosses who have declared war on workers. Not a week goes by without them announcing new mass layoffs. Ford, Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen, Mahle, Bosch, Continental and ZF, each want to destroy thousands of jobs.

A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is close to the Social Democratic Party and the trade unions, predicted as early as three years ago that 500,000 jobs would be lost in the automotive sector. A more recent study by the Ifo Institute predicts the destruction of 178,000 jobs in the production sector in the next four years alone. In other sectors, too—at Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, BASF, and the shipyards—massive numbers of jobs will be destroyed.

This jobs massacre is being justified by citing technological changes and the conversion to electromobility. But this is a lie. Technological progress and climate protection are not the reason for the destruction of the livelihoods of millions of people. Technological advances, planned and democratically controlled under a rational social order, could significantly raise the standard of living of all humanity.

What is really at stake is profit. The global car companies and their billionaire shareholders are waging a brutal international competitive battle on the backs of the workers, which is increasingly turning into open trade and military war. They are using the Ukraine war and the pandemic to further increase the exploitation of the working class. They are cutting jobs, intensifying levels of exploitation, lowering wages and closing and relocating entire factories.

The greed of the financial oligarchy knows no bounds. Despite the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the 40 largest Dax-listed companies in Germany were able to record massive growth and record profits in the first quarter of 2022 alone. Both turnover and profits were higher than ever before, according to audit and consulting firm Ernst Young.

Overall, the turnover of DAX companies rose by 14 percent to €4,44.7 billion compared to the same period last year. Operating profits also improved by 21 percent and totalled €52.4 billion—the highest profits ever measured in the first quarter of a year.

But the unions are preaching sacrifice, demanding wage reductions, negotiating social cuts and agreeing to plant closures and layoffs. The signs point to an approaching storm. More and more workers are realising that a struggle is inevitable. Around the world, resistance is growing. In the US, the biggest strike wave in decades is building. In Sri Lanka, a general strike against inflation turned into an uprising against the government. In Turkey, workers have occupied a car parts factory.

Major class struggles are inevitable. But to win, workers must break with the corporatist trade unions like IG Metall, which is responding to the growing willingness to fight in the factories by clinging even closer to the corporate bosses and the government.

As Russia war rages on, US secretary of state declares China the “most serious long-term challenge”

Andre Damon

Despite the eruption of military conflict between the United States and Russia over Ukraine, the central aim of US foreign policy is to cripple, isolate and contain China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a major policy speech Thursday.

Blinken’s remarks, which have been delayed for months following the eruption of the war in Ukraine, represent a public presentation of the Biden administration’s internal strategy document on China, which declares that Beijing is the central target of the US military.

“Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order—and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Blinken said.

He continued, “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”

“We will defend our interests against any threat,” Blinken said.

Although he did not use the term, Blinken’s statement embraces the framework of economic “decoupling” developed under Trump. Blinken explicitly repudiated the efforts by the Nixon administration to engage with Beijing. The “China of today is very different from the China of 50 years ago, when President Nixon broke decades of strained relations to become the first US president to visit the country,” he declared.

Blinken continued, “Now, China is a global power with extraordinary reach, influence, and ambition. It’s the second largest economy… it seeks to dominate the technologies and industries of the future. It’s rapidly modernized its military and intends to become a top tier fighting force with global reach. And it has announced its ambition to create a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power.”

Blinken’s statement constitutes yet another embrace of the central foreign policy aim of the Trump administration: preparations for conflict with China. Notably, Blinken invoked the racist conspiracy theory developed by the Trump administration, that COVID-19 was a man-made virus, condemning China’s alleged efforts to block an “independent inquiry into COVID’s origin.”

Modeling his tone and delivery on the rhetoric of former President Obama, Blinken repeatedly made completely contradictory assertions with a straight face. Blinken delivered blood-curdling threats, followed immediately by a declaration that the United States is not threatening anyone.

“We are not looking for conflict or a new Cold War,” Blinken said, after making clear that Washington views the economic development of China as a threat to its “interests,” and is prepared to “defend our interests against any threat.”

The unstated premise of Blinken’s remarks was the so-called “Wolfowitz doctrine,” the policy conception, first expressed in the 1992 US defense planning guidance, which pledged, “to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies.”

The ultimate guarantor of US primacy, in Blinken’s view, is the US military. Blinken declared, “Our country is endowed with many strengths. “We have … abundant resources, the world’s reserve currency, the most powerful military on Earth.”

Blinken doubled down on the “whole of society” approach to military competition pioneered under the Trump administration, declaring, “The Biden administration is making far-reaching investments in our core sources of national strength—starting with a modern industrial strategy to sustain and expand our economic and technological influence, make our economy and supply chains more resilient, sharpen our competitive edge.”

Blinken’s saber rattling comments are accompanied by equally belligerent actions. The US is funneling weapons to Taiwan, seeking to turn the island into a front-line war zone against China, similarly to the way Ukraine is being used in the war against Russia.

Blinken’s warmongering against China comes as the United States is intensifying its own involvement in the Ukraine war.

The United States is actively discussing supplying Ukraine with the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a missile system that would enable Ukrainian forces to strike hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory, Reuters reported Thursday.

Critically, US officials have put no restrictions on the use of this weapons system. “We have concerns about escalation and yet still do not want to put geographic limits or tie their hands too much with the stuff we’re giving them,” a US official told Reuters.

Earlier this week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the US would provide Ukraine with Harpoon anti-ship missiles via an intermediary, Denmark. The Harpoon is the standard anti-ship armament of the US Navy, capable of sinking large warships.

The Washington Post, for its part, is demanding further escalation, condemning all of those seeking a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The Post approvingly quotes Boris Bondarev, a former Russian official now campaigning for an escalation of the US war, who declares, “You just can’t make peace now… If you do, it will be seen as a Russian victory… Only a total and clear defeat that is obvious to everyone will teach them.”

Commenting on these remarks, the Post declared, “It would be a disaster—both moral and strategic—if Mr. Putin were invited to talks before his major war objectives had been thwarted… the best way for Ukraine’s friends to help is to accelerate shipments of vital weaponry—and stop negotiating with themselves.”

These comments make clear that the United States is absolutely hostile to any peaceful settlement of the war. The aims of the conflict are to retake the Donbas and Crimea—Russia views the latter as its own territory.

The United States is set on a course of military escalation threatening to rapidly escalate into a direct shooting war involving US forces, whether in Ukraine, over the Taiwan Strait, or both. The path being plotted by the Biden administration threatens the lives not only of the tens of thousands already killed in the Ukraine war, but hundreds of thousands, or even millions more.

There is no limit to the number of Ukrainians, Taiwanese, Australians or even Americans that US imperialism is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of its “interests.”

Persecution continues of UK mum Sarah Paxman for stand against COVID-infested schools

Julie Hyland

The persecution of single mum Sarah Paxman for defending her vulnerable 8-year-old son Stanley from COVID-19 infested schools is relentless.

At the start of this month Sarah was committed for trial at Staines Magistrate Court on charges instigated by Surrey County Council of “failing to ensure regular school attendance” of Stanley under Section 444 (1) of the Education Act.

Sarah and Stanley (Credit: Sarah Paxman)

The charge, to which Sarah has pleaded not guilty, carries a fine of up to £2,500 and a possible three-month prison sentence. It is thought to be the first prosecution of its kind in England.

She has subsequently received a further notice from Surrey County Council and the NE Inclusion Service, informing her of another visit to her home “to determine any support your child may need to return to school.” Sarah fears this could be the basis for further action.

Stanley, who has not attended his specialist school since the start of the pandemic, has vulnerabilities that are well-known to the education and local authorities. He is autistic and suffers from several underlying health conditions including Cold Urticaria, which can cause anaphylaxis and is potentially life threatening. Sarah herself suffers from Long COVID, the debilitating effects of which have been exacerbated by the threatened prosecution.

Stanley’s Educational Health Care Plan hasn’t been updated for almost three years. But the government has abandoned all mitigation measures and has even ended daily updates on COVID infections. In the seven days to May 23, 44,143 people tested positive and 469 people died within 28 days of a positive test in England. Some 3,664 people were admitted to hospital with COVID over the same timeframe.

The real purpose of Sarah’s persecution is to bully her into deregistering Stanley from school, which means he would lose his school place. If Sarah was prepared to submit to this any “concerns” over Stanley’s wellbeing and education would vanish immediately.

Sarah is being represented pro bono by distinguished barrister Mark McDonald. Based at Furnival Chambers, London, he has worked on prominent criminal defence and human rights cases and is a founder of the London Innocence Project, a non-profit legal resource clinic working on miscarriages of justice. He was also involved in setting up the UK-based Amicus, a charity working on the death penalty in the US.

Mark says he has clients across the country coming forward with similar cases and their numbers are growing. In a tweet he wrote, “The biggest COVID risk to our country is from children going to school, spreading the virus & bringing it home. A complete failure by [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson to recognise this & fully ventilate schools & urgently vaccinate our kids will once again lead to thousands of deaths.”

Sarah prepared a statement to be read in court on May 4, but as the hearing was only called to set a trial date never got to make it. She recorded the statement and played it to the exclusion officer on the last visit as she is “sick and tired of repeatedly having to explain the same concerns without them being taken on board.”

After explaining Stanley’s vulnerabilities, Sarah’s statement sets out the situation in schools: “It was all one big rush to get the children back to school. ‘It’s all over now.’ And it never sat right with me. After how badly I suffered experiencing symptoms I can barely begin to describe, I know first-hand how bad the effects of this virus can be for someone. I am certainly not sending Stanley into school willingly knowing that he could have long term brain issues. Especially on his little developing autistic brain which is confused enough due to Autism.

“Brain fog? It’s more like brain damage. Schools are the main drivers of transmission. They have been since day dot. Yet we have been led to believe otherwise. The virus has been minimised at every given opportunity through the pandemic, especially as far as schools are concerned. We have had Jenny Harries saying children are more likely to be hit by a bus than contract coronavirus as ministers were insisting parents would be fined!

“This was at a time when Boris Johnson was returning from holiday in August 2020 begging parents to send their kids back. He has said repeatedly schools are safe, which is a lie. It’s disgusting. Well, yes, schools are as safe as can be if your child attends private ones or the likes of Eton. They’re ok aren’t they, with their adequate ventilation systems and air filters installed.

“We all know it is airborne. And we have since very early on. Everybody had been misled to believe that this is just a respiratory virus when it is so, so much more. The main three symptoms list wasn’t even updated until recently. The narrative that has been pushed to make it ‘mild’ and ‘just like a cold’ is quite frankly unbelievable. It may be just like a cold to many. I’m happy for them. But it’s not for everyone.

“The whole school situation is an absolute, utter scandal. Who in their right mind can argue about ventilators in schools for our children? It’s a proven benefit. Not just to help break the chain of transmission from COVID but all other airborne viruses flying around. And even if there wasn’t, it would benefit children’s cognition and brain function while learning. And it will even reduce common allergy triggers.

“There has been a complete and utter lack of care and compassion. Complete incompetence and total failure of our government to protect our children. They are our future. It’s made out that education is so important, that mental health is so important. So, I struggle to understand just how easy it is to deregister or, at worst, be given a choice between that or court!

“Where is the extra help for the forgotten ones? Where were the laptops for the vulnerable that never materialised? Everyone dealing with children has a duty of care, yet I am the only one that is providing him with it. Yet I’m the one being punished!

“Their despicable crimes always go unpunished yet here I am standing up in court facing a fine of up to £2,500 or up to three months in prison - or both - for protecting my boy the way I see fit and doing what I believe is in his best interests because I know him better than anyone.

“I will not be sending him back until the whole school is safe and every room in it is ventilated with the right HEPA filters installed as advised by the experts.

“If I’m going to be threatened, then follow up with those threats because I will categorically not be changing my mind on this. Fine me as many thousands as you want. Put me in prison as often as you want. Open as many new cases as you like. Make an example of me if you must. Because enough is enough.”

Sarah’s case is of enormous importance. It takes place after a Health and Safety Executive investigation into the death of Burnley teacher Donna Coleman from COVID on January 6, 2021. No one is to be seriously held accountable for her death, aged just 42. Despite the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) finding the college was in breach of multiple COVID safety regulations, the government body perversely concluded that Donna was “more likely to have contracted COVID through community transmission rather than work.”

Daniella Modos-Cutter has campaigned throughout the pandemic to highlight the dangers of herd immunity, taking responsibility for painstakingly collating the weekly cases of COVID-19 in schools over more than two years. This work was already difficult, due especially to the unions who have failed to collate any information on the rates of infection in schools as they railroaded their members into unsafe classrooms.

Daniella told the World Socialist Web Site, “I have paused my work on collecting COVID cases in schools due to the information being even harder to obtain. Schools are now acting like COVID is over. Children can go back to school after isolating with symptoms for three days if they don’t have a fever. Children are allowed to attend schools now with COVID symptoms, i.e., cold symptoms. This is to further the government plan with their herd immunity strategy. This will further endanger vulnerable children, staff and their families, while making sure people who cannot afford tests have no record of their infection so they will not be able to get access to Long COVID clinics. The government are washing their hands completely of any accountability for their dangerous actions.”

UK rail workers vote overwhelmingly for strike action

Laura Tiernan

Rail workers at 15 train operating companies and Network Rail infrastructure have voted for industrial action in defence of jobs, pay and conditions.

Around 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) were balloted, with 89 percent voting to strike off a participation rate of 71 percent. Guards, platform and ticketing staff, track maintenance workers and signal crews were among those balloted.

Rail workers face a historic assault on jobs, terms and conditions, with £2.5 billion in cuts being rolled out. 2,500 jobs have already been axed through a “voluntary” severance scheme, with thousands more slated for destruction as the Johnson government proceeds with its plans for Great British Railways.

Despite an unambiguous strike vote by rail workers—the biggest since the railways were privatised in 1994—the RMT has once again handed the political initiative to the government, appealing for negotiations.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, the RMT announced, “The union will now be demanding urgent talks with Network Rail and the 15 train operating companies that were balloted to find a negotiated settlement to the dispute over pay, jobs and safety.”

Mick Lynch (WSWS Media)

Mick Lynch, RMT General Secretary, declared, “we sincerely hope ministers will encourage the employers to return to the negotiating table and hammer out a reasonable settlement with the RMT.” Handed a mandate to set strike dates, the RMT’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has postponed any decision on limited strike action until its next meeting on May 31.

The RMT is using the strike vote as a bargaining chip, with the stated aim of pressuring the government and employers to resume their collaboration with rail unions. The NEC announced, “We note that prior to the ballot there were regular meetings at an industry-wide level, therefore we call for the convening of an industry-wide forum of the employers, Rail Industry Recovery Group (RIRG—the employers' umbrella group), Department for Transport and the rail trade unions to address the issues in this dispute.”

This must serve as a sharp warning to rail workers. The RIRG was initiated by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in December 2020 to begin sweeping pro-market restructuring. Seizing on the collapse of fare revenues during the pandemic, the government unveiled a massive program of “efficiencies” as a prelude to re-privatising rail companies taken back into state ownership in 2020.

The RMT, ASLEF, Unite and TSSA joined the RIRG, signing up to its Enabling Framework Agreement that committed “to address efficiency and cost savings” as part of industry-wide plans by the Tory government to “rebuild and modernise” the railways.

Speaking to the Mirror following Tuesday’s results, amid newspaper headlines warning of a national strike, Lynch declared, “This is a regular industrial dispute. It’s not one with a political agenda. The only political agenda that’s been put there is by this government. And their agenda is to keep people low paid and impoverished to deliver austerity.”

Lynch’s statement confirms the RMT will mount no political fight against the Johnson government’s plans. Indeed, the RMT’s ballot of rail workers made no mention of GB Railways, despite its role in spearheading the government’s privatisation agenda.

While Lynch declares the RMT has no political agenda, the Johnson government is making no secret of its own plans. Over the weekend, Shapps warned his government would legislate to ban rail strikes unless minimum service levels are maintained. He told the Sunday Telegraph, “If they really got to that point then minimum service levels would be a way to work towards protecting those freight routes and those sorts of things.”

The Tories’ pledge to ban rail strikes is modelled on Spain’s “essential services” anti-strike legislation that was inherited from Franco’s fascist dictatorship.

With inflation at its highest level in 40 years, the British ruling class has responded nervously to the prospect of a national rail strike. Dozens of newspaper articles and editorials have warned such strikes must be prevented at all costs, pointing to the already perilous supply chain crisis. The Telegraph, Times and Financial Times have all invoked the precedent of the 1926 General Strike.

TSSA union General Secretary Manuel Cortes has been widely quoted, asserting, “The disruption will be unparalleled. I don’t think we will have seen anything like it since the 1926 General Strike. That’s the last time the three unions came out together. And we will co-ordinate our action. It’ll be a summer of discontent.”

The British General Strike of 1926 encompassed 1.5 million workers who came out in support of the miners’ fight against pay cuts and longer hours. It assumed an insurrectionary character, threatening capitalist rule in Britain but was betrayed by the Trades Union Congress General Council which called off the strike after nine days. The general strike took place less than 10 years after the Russian Revolution and was led by socialists. But the Communist Party under the political direction of Joseph Stalin played a critical role in the strike’s defeat by promoting illusions in the “left” union leaders who strangled the strike.

With millions of workers struggling to survive, the Tory and “liberal” press are right to fear the emergence of a unified mass movement of the working class. But almost a century after the 1926 strike, the idea that Cortes, Lynch and company would organise such an offensive is laughable. Heading corporatist organisations wholly integrated into the structures of management and the state, these well-paid functionaries are implacable opponents of the working class. A general strike will only develop in political opposition to the trade unions and through an organisational break from them.

While Lynch claims to have “no political agenda”, the RMT is suppressing rail workers’ opposition and channeling it behind the Labour Party. On the London Underground, Lynch has promoted Labour as an ally of rail workers, inviting its MPs to speak at rallies and calling on Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to “decide which side you’re on”. Khan is implementing £400 million worth of cuts on behalf of the Tories and has denounced strikes on the London Underground.

Labour’s support for the Tory government’s rail agenda is an open secret. During last year’s House of Commons debate on the GB Railways white paper, Shapps thanked Labour MPs for their “tacit support” and “partial welcome” of the government’s proposals.

The government's Great British Railways white paper (Credit: gov.uk)

The RMT is calling for an end to the pay freeze, a ban on compulsory redundancies, and a commitment that “no detrimental changes will be made to working practices and/or terms and conditions”. But such commitments are incompatible with Johnson’s GB Railways project, which is premised on the evisceration of safety, jobs, wages, conditions and pensions.

As the government proceeds with its plans, including the establishment of a GB Railways Transition Team headed by Network Rail boss Andrew Haines, the RMT’s overriding concern is to retain their corporatist partnership with the government and rail employers. Hence their central demand for negotiations via the RIRG.

Keeping schools open during the pandemic is causing a mental health crisis for US teachers

Harvey Simpkins

The continuing uncontrolled pandemic is having a devastating impact on the mental health of teachers in the US. Overworked and severely underpaid, many teachers are leaving the profession, deepening the crisis in public education.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), there are almost seven percent fewer K-12 public school teachers now than at the start of the pandemic. Between February 2020, before the pandemic took hold in the United States, and December 2021, the EPI found that total public school employment, including support staff, was down 376,300 positions, a 4.7 percent decline.

At least 2,000 striking Minneapolis teachers, support staff and their supporters rallied outside the State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)

The pandemic only accelerated the long-standing trend of declining public school employment. In the years following the 2008 financial crisis—caused by rampant speculation and outright fraud by the capitalist ruling class—states made huge cuts to public education. These cuts were not fully restored by the time the pandemic hit. The EPI determined that if school staffing had kept pace with student enrollment growth since the 2008-2009 school year, public school employment would be 658,000 higher than it was in December 2021, or 8.6 percent higher than the actual employment levels.

These downward trends are also reflected in college teacher preparation programs. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the number of students graduating with teaching degrees was 25 percent fewer than in 2009.

Many teachers are leaving the profession because of incredible workloads, only exacerbated by the pandemic, causing unsustainable stress and burnout. In a June 2021 RAND survey, 78 percent of teachers reported experiencing frequent, job-related stress, compared to 40 percent of employed adults overall. Twenty-five percent of teachers reported symptoms of depression, compared with 10 percent for the adult population as a whole. As a result, nearly a quarter of teachers said they were likely to leave their jobs by the end of the 2020-2021 school year, compared with one in six teachers who reported being likely to leave prior to the pandemic.

The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union in the country, conducted a January survey of 3,621 of its members. The results paint a devastating picture of working conditions in schools and stand as an indictment of the NEA for its failure to take any meaningful measures to improve the lives of their members during the worst public health crisis in at least a century. Instead, the NEA, along with the American Federation of Teachers, has snuffed out every strike waged by teachers since a wave of walkouts began with a wildcat strike by West Virginia teachers in 2018. Since the start of the pandemic, the NEA and AFT have functioned as the most reliable enforcers of the criminal back-to-school, back-to-work policies first of Trump, then Biden.

An astounding 91 percent of teachers responding to the NEA survey reported that stress from the pandemic was either very serious (61 percent) or somewhat serious (30 percent). As a result of this stress, 90 percent reported that burnout among teachers is either very serious (67 percent) or somewhat serious (23 percent).

More than 55 percent of respondents to the NEA survey now have plans to leave teaching earlier than expected due to the pandemic. When the NEA first asked this question, in July 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic and when most schools were closed for in-person learning, only 28 percent said they planned to leave the profession early. While that percentage increased slightly to 32 percent in March of 2021 (when a majority of school districts were still providing a remote option and vaccines were beginning to provide some protection), it shot up 18 percentage points between July of 2021 and January 2022, corresponding to the 2021-2022 school year when nearly every school district in the country was fully open for in-person learning and virtual options were almost completely eliminated. 

In the NEA survey, 95 percent of teachers identified improved ventilation as the most pressing issue to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in schools, but only 38 percent reported having adequate systems in place, and only 28 percent reported that their ventilation system provided sufficient protection to feel safe working in-person.

Responsibility for the full reopening of schools, with completely inadequate safety measures, lies with President Biden, whose stated goal even before taking office was to force open schools throughout the country. Within weeks of taking office, Biden also infamously lied on CNN about the dangers of COVID to children, telling a second grader that “You’re not likely to be able to be exposed to something and spread it to mommy or daddy.”

In fact, with schools serving as a major vector of transmission, the Biden administration’s policy has led to tens of millions of children becoming infected with COVID. Many children have then unwittingly infected their parents, leading in many cases to their deaths. In the United States, at least 215,000 children have lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID, leaving the survivors with incalculable trauma and potentially long-lasting mental health issues. Dr. Julie Kaplow, executive director at the Trauma and Grief Center at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, has even warned of an epidemic of “psychological long COVID” for these children.

In addition, while politicians and well-heeled pundits continuously claimed, without evidence, that schools had to be reopened for the sake of mental health, in fact, as the NEA and RAND surveys show, the mental health of teachers has been completely sacrificed to reopen schools.

A Baltimore teacher told the World Socialist Web Site that she is leaving a classroom position to become a literacy coach next school year because of the high stress levels, which have only intensified during the pandemic. 

“The amount of extra tasks teachers have been expected to take on because of COVID has been exhausting,” she said. These include, “COVID testing every Monday, reaching out to families whose students test positive (and close contacts for the first part of the year), maintaining seating charts, regulating mask wearing (while it was still required), creating assignments for students to complete in quarantine, communicating with families about assignments and quarantine situation, extra SEL [social-emotional learning] lessons because of [student] social delay, and after school tutoring every Monday and Wednesday to ‘catch kids up.’”

Teachers in the NEA survey identified many easy-to-implement solutions to the crushing stress that threatens to drive tens of thousands of teachers out of the profession, including raising salaries, providing additional mental health support for students, hiring more teachers, hiring more support staff, reducing paperwork load, reducing standardized testing, and hiring more counselors and school psychologists.

But federal, state and municipal governments are cutting school funding, not increasing it. School officials in New York City, San Francisco, Oakland, Minneapolis, Detroit and other cities are using the decline in student enrollment during the pandemic to close schools, lay off educators and slash programs. This is driving educators into new struggles, which will necessarily involve a revolt against the AFT and NEA and its local affiliates and demands for a radical redistribution of society’s resources.

“Part of the solution to me is more positions in schools for nurses or other qualified professionals to take on the task of managing COVID in a school setting,” the Baltimore teacher said. “And paying teachers more. Teacher pay doesn’t justify the amount of work teachers do on a daily basis. It’s insulting.”

The resources certainly exist to easily implement all of these measures. Last week, President Biden signed a bill authorizing another $40 billion for the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, on top of $13 billion approved in the last few months. As the World Socialist Web Site recently noted, if this $53 billion were directed to the needs of the working class rather than war, 500,000 teachers could be hired at $106,000 a year in salary and benefits. Alternatively, this sum could “provide a $6,000 raise to every nurse, teacher and nursing home worker in America (9.25 million workers).” 

In fact, $53 billion represents a drop in the bucket of the annual American war budget, which amounts to at least $782 billion for the current fiscal year.

The Uvalde massacre and the tragedy of school shootings in America

Niles Niemuth

On Tuesday, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, joined the long list of names which have been violently inscribed on the collective consciousness: Columbine, Newtown, Parkland, Blacksburg and many more over the last 25 years.  

[AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

For reasons which may never be known, the shooter, 18-year-old high school student Salvador Ramos, first shot his grandmother before driving to the elementary school. Dressed in all black and armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun, Ramos shot his way past an armed school district police officer and made his way into the school. Within two minutes 19 children and two teachers were dead—making it the deadliest school shooting in Texas history and third in the US surpassing Parkland and Columbine. Ramos was killed in a shootout with police. 

Grieving parents were taken to the local Civic Center, where they were swabbed for DNA. The bodies of the children, between the ages of seven and 10, were in some cases so mutilated by AR-15 fire that they can only be identified through genetic testing.

A few details are beginning to emerge. According to media reports, Ramos, born in North Dakota, was bullied in school for a stutter and lisp, frequently getting into fist fights with classmates. He apparently had few friends and kept to himself and often missed class. He made posts on social media about guns, including posting images of his two legally purchased semi-automatic rifles just three days before the attack on Robb Elementary. 

Whatever the individual psychological issues involved, however, they do not explain the routine outbursts of mass violence that plague American society. The problem is much deeper.

Little exposes the pretense of the US as the land of milk and honey as much as the regularity of such horrors. The massacre at Robb Elementary was the 19th school shooting so far this year. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 17,000 gun deaths so far this year, the majority by suicide. There have been 213 mass shootings where four or more people were killed or injured. Of these, 10 have been mass murders with four or more killed.  

The politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties have responded to Uvalde with their typical trite and empty platitudes that explain nothing. President Joe Biden gave a perfunctory nine-minute speech Tuesday night where he postured against the gun lobby while calling on the country to do nothing but pray. On Wednesday, Biden called for “action” on gun laws. 

On Wednesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer threw cold water on the president’s pretenses, noting that the prospect of any new federal gun laws was “all too slim,” even though the Democrats control both houses of Congress and suggested that horrified Americans should vote in the November midterms.

The Republicans meanwhile, while offering up hollow concerns about mental health, insist that the solution is more guns and brute violence, so that the good guys” can kill the “bad guys” before they carry out their attacks. They also argue for turning schools into armed garrisons more akin to maximum security prisons than institutions of learning. These fascistic “solutions” are the rhetoric and justifications of the so-called “war on terror”—which resulted in the operation of torture chambers, drone assassinations and the destruction of entire societies in the Middle East—brought home. 

Nowhere from within the political establishment and the media, however, is there any serious examination of the underlying social and political conditions that find expression in the homicidal actions of individuals. American capitalism, in fact, is suffused with violence, promoted by a ruling class that normalizes death and trivializes life.

The attack on Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 of their classmates and one teacher shocked the world and was seen as a significant turning point. At the time it was the fifth deadliest act of mass murder in the US since World War II. The WSWS drew attention to the social factors ignored and covered up at the time:

... the concentration on individual warning signs will be of little help in preventing further tragedies. Attention should be focused, rather, on the social warning signs, that is, the indications and indices of social and political dysfunction which create the climate that produces events like the Columbine HS massacre. Vital indicators of impending disaster might include: growing polarization between wealth and poverty; atomization of working people and the suppression of their class identity; the glorification of militarism and war; the absence of serious social commentary and political debate; the debased state of popular culture; the worship of the stock exchange; the unrestrained celebration of individual success and personal wealth; the denigration of the ideals of social progress and equality.

Since then mass shootings have become more common and more deadly. Columbine now ranks as only the sixth deadliest school shooting in American history. The students who survived that shooting now have children of their own who must deal with the prospect of being victims themselves. Across the country children are put through active shooter drills where they are taught to “run, hide, fight.”

The social, political and cultural factors underlying the growth of malignant tendencies, including school shootings, have only grown more extreme. Social inequality has grown to almost incomprehensible levels, with the 400 richest Americans claiming more than $3 trillion in wealth, while half of adults report they would have difficulties covering a $400 emergency.

The Republican Party, one of the two principal parties of the ruling class, has been transformed into a semi-fascistic organization which sought to overturn the Constitution through a violent coup on January 6, 2021. The massacre in Texas came only 10 days after a gunman, politically and ideologically inspired by the fascistic conceptions promoted by significant factions of the Republican Party, murdered 10 people in Buffalo, New York.

The growth of school shootings and mass shootings in general is a symptom of the advanced decay and breakdown of American society. Life has become exceedingly cheap under capitalism. 

The United States is now in the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic that has already claimed the lives of more than 1 million people. Children and educators have been forced back into schools that are known to be primary vectors for the disease, offered up as sacrifices for profit. More than 1,500 children have died from COVID-19 as a direct result of the homicidal “herd immunity” policy pursued first by Trump and now Biden. 

At the same time, the Biden administration is pursuing a reckless and aggressive foreign policy that has opened up a war against Russia in Ukraine, pouring billions of dollars worth of guns, ammunition and missiles into that country. Biden made his remarks about the Uvalde shooting on Tuesday after returning from a trip to Asia where he threatened to wage war against China. A direct conflict between the US, Russia and China would inevitably result in nuclear war, killing millions, a prospect that the American ruling class is clearly prepared to accept. 

Meanwhile police roam the streets of America harassing, beating and killing workers with impunity. An average of three people are killed every day by the police, adding up to more than 1,000 deaths every year, far above the total from school shootings in even the deadliest years. 

Hundreds of thousands of students, educators and parents participated in walkouts and protests after the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, demanding that action be taken to end school shootings. However, this mass outpouring of anger and determination was subordinated to the Democratic Party and illusions in gun reform legislation through the March for Our Lives organization. Millions continue to look for a way forward, with students and educators discussing the possibility of walkouts on social media in the aftermath of Uvalde.

Finding a solution must begin with identifying the cause. Any explanation of the massacre at Robb Elementary that does not point to the ruling class, its political leaders, its military-police machinery, its homicidal policies and, above all, the socio-economic system of capitalism over which it presides, is nothing more than a cover-up that prepares the way for the next horror.