Attempting to define Long COVID: The NIH-funded RECOVER initiative trial

Benjamin Mateus

Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), often referred to as Long COVID, has had a substantial and growing impact on the global population. Recent prevalence studies from the United States and the United Kingdom found that the complication has affected, on average, around 45 percent of survivors, regardless of hospitalization status. 

No accurate tally of the number of people affected and its real global impact has yet been made, but conservative estimates of several hundred million and trillions in economic devastation would hardly be an exaggeration. Even in China, after the lifting of the Zero COVID policy late last fall and the tsunami of infections that followed, social media threads are now widespread with people complaining of chronic debilitating fatigue, heart palpitations and brain fog.

Yet, more than three years into the “forever” COVID pandemic, with Long COVID producing more than 200 symptoms, impacting nearly every organ system and causing such vast health problems for a significant population across the globe, it remains undefined and somewhat arbitrary in the clinical diagnosis. Additionally, the assurances given to study potential therapeutic agents have remained unfulfilled.

In this regard, a new Long COVID observational study called the “RECOVER [researching COVID to enhance recovery] initiative,” was published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, with almost 10,000 participants across the US. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it attempts to provide a working definition for Long COVID (PASC). 

While the study represents an advance from the standpoint of assessing the impact of Long COVID, and has been celebrated in media coverage, it must be viewed with several reservations and caveats. It is exclusively focused on describing the disease, rather than supporting efforts to alleviate its impact, let alone find a cure. And its definition, however preliminary, could well be misused by insurance companies and other profit-driven entities in the healthcare system to restrict diagnosis and care.

Comments by Dr. Leora Horwitz, one of the study authors and director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science at New York University, give some sense of the misgivings felt by serious scientists. Horwitz stated, “This study is an important step toward defining Long COVID beyond any one individual symptom. This definition—which may evolve over time—will serve as a critical foundation for scientific discovery and treatment design.” 

Certainly, a working definition that medical communities can agree on is critical. But after three years and nearly all the $1.2 billion given to the NIH already spent, one must ask how much another observational study contributes to answering pressing questions affecting patients that have not already been addressed in more than 13,000 previous reports, as tallied by the LitCOVID search engine? 

Why have there been so many delays in conducting clinical trials studying potential treatments and preventative strategies in the acute phase of infection that could reduce or eliminate the post-acute sequelae? Where is the urgency at the NIH and in the Biden administration to expand funding and initiate an all-out drive to develop treatments for Long COVID like the $12.4 billion spent on the COVID vaccines? 

Photo of an 8-year-old child who has suffered from Long COVID for over one year. Submitted to the Long Covid Kids case studies page. [Photo: Long COVID Kids]

Scoring post-acute symptoms

The findings in the recent study, published on May 25, 2023, in JAMA, titled, “Development of a Definition of Post-acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” are somewhat limited and problematic in their current formulation. The authors have identified 12 primary symptoms that distinguish COVID survivors with Long COVID from those without those aftereffects. These include loss of smell or taste (8 points), post-exertional malaise (7 points), chronic cough (4 points), brain fog (3 points), thirst, (3 points), heart palpitations (2 points), chest pain (2 points), fatigue (1 point), dizziness (1 point), gastrointestinal symptoms (1 point), issues with sexual desire or capacity (1 point), and abnormal movements (1 point).

Assigning points to each of the 12 symptoms and adding them up gives a cumulative total for each patient. Anyone scoring 12 or higher would be diagnosed as afflicted with PASC, accounting for 23 percent of the total. In general, the higher the score, the greater the disability in performing daily activities. 

The researchers also noted that certain symptom combinations occurred at higher rates in certain groups, leading to identifying four clusters of Long COVID based on symptomology patterns, ranging from least severe to most severe in terms of impact on quality of life. Why such clusters were seen remains uncertain.

Some symptoms were more common than others, and this did not correspond to the severity of the symptoms as measured approximately by the points. Symptoms of post-exertional malaise (87 percent), brain fog (64 percent), palpitations (57 percent), fatigue (85 percent), dizziness (62 percent), and gastrointestinal disturbances (59 percent) were most common.

The study’s lead author, Tanayott Thaweethai from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explained, “This offers a unifying framework for thinking about Long COVID, and it gives us a quantitative score we can use to understand whether people get better or worse over time.”

Andrea Foulkes, the corresponding author and principal investigator of the RECOVER Data Resource Core and professor at Harvard Medical School, said, “Now that we’re able to identify people with Long COVID, we can begin doing more in-depth studies to understand the mechanisms at play. These findings set the stage for identifying effective treatment strategies for people with Long COVID—understanding the biological underpinnings is going to be critical to that endeavor.”

The currently evolving definition could have significant implications, and not just medically. For instance, if people suffer only brain fog and post-exertional malaise and score less than 12 on their symptomology, they would not be construed as having PASC. Under such a construct, the definition could be used by employers and health insurers to deny compensation or treatment by telling people they don’t have a recognized Long COVID complication. Additionally, it is not clear how long these symptoms have to be present before the diagnosis is accepted.

Lisa McCorkell, one of the authors of the study, explained on her social media account, “If people didn’t meet the scoring threshold for PASC+, that doesn’t mean they don’t have PASC! It means they are unspecified. Unspecified includes people with Long COVID. Future iterations of the model will aim to refine this—that will include doing analysis using the updated RECOVER symptoms survey, adding in tests/clinical features and ultimately biomarkers. That is also why this isn’t meant to be an official prevalence study. The sample is not fully representative, but also, we know that there are people in the unspecified groups that have PASC.”

She continued, “It is very clear throughout the paper that in order for this to be actionable at all, iterative refinement is needed. In presenting this to NIH leadership, they are fully aware of that. But the press is not fully understanding the paper which could have dangerous downstream effects. Since the beginning of working on this paper I’ve done everything I could to ensure the model presented in this paper is not used clinically.” 

Unfortunately, in the world of capitalism, such things take on a life of their own. The definitions will influence how health systems will choose to view these patients and demand their clinicians abide by prescribed diagnostic codes. This has the potential to dismiss millions with Long COVID symptoms and deny them access to potential treatments if and when they materialize. 

The concerns of Elisa Perego

Dr. Elisa Perego, who suffers from Long COVID and coined the term, offered the following important observations. 

In response to the publication, she wrote, “Presenting a salad of 12 symptoms, (many of which many patients might not even experience) as the most significant in #LongCOVID is also detrimental to new patients, who might be joining the community now, and might not recognize themselves in the symptom list.”

She added, “We are also in 2023. There are thousands and thousands of publications from across the world that discuss imaging, tests, clinical signs (=objective measurements), biomarkers, etc. related to acute and #LongCOVID. We have many insights into the pathophysiology already. The #LongCOVID and chronic illness community deserve more. Other diseases, including diseases linked to infections, have sadly been reduced to a checklist of symptoms in the past. This has made research, recognition, and a quest for treatment much more difficult.”

There are additional findings in the report worth underscoring as they provide a glimpse into the ever-growing crisis caused by forcing the world’s population to “live with the virus.”

Hannah Davis, a Long COVID advocate and researcher, with Dr. Eric Topol, Lisa McCorkell, and Julia Moore Vogel, wrote an important review on Long COVID in March, which was published in Nature. She said of the RECOVER study, “The overall prevalence of #LongCOVID is ten percent at six months. The prevalence for those who got Omicron (or later) AND were vaccinated is also ten percent … [However] reinfections had significantly higher levels of #LongCOVID. Even in those who had Omicron (or later) as their first infection, 9.7 percent with those infected once, but 20 percent of those who were reinfected had Long COVID at six months after infection.”

Furthermore, she said, “Reinfections also increased the severity of #LongCOVID. Twenty-seven percent of first infections were in cluster four (worst) versus 31 percent of reinfections.” These facts have considerable implications. 

Immunologist and COVID advocate Dr. Anthony Leonardi wrote on these findings, “If Omicron reinfections average six months [based on current global patterns of infection], and Long COVID rates for reinfection remain 10 to 20 percent, the rate of long COVID in the USA per lifetime will be over 99.9 percent. In fact, the average person would have different manifestations of Long COVID at different times many times over. Some things reverse—like anosmia [loss of smell]. Others, like [lung] fibrosis don’t reverse so well.”

The work done by these authors deserves credit and support. Every effort to bring answers to these critical questions is vital. The criticism to be made is not directed at the researchers who work diligently putting in overtime to see the research is conducted with the utmost care and obligation it merits. Rather, it should be directed at the very institutions that have adopted “living with the virus” as a positive good for of public health.

The Biden administration neglects Long COVID

In a recent scathing critique of the Biden administration and the NIH by STAT News, Rachel Cohrs and Betsy Ladyzhets place the issue front and center. In their opening remarks, they write, “The federal government has burned through more than $1 billion to study Long COVID, an effort to help the millions of Americans who experience brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms after recovering from a coronavirus infection. There’s basically nothing to show for it.”

They continue, “The NIH hasn’t signed up a single patient to test any potential treatments—despite a clear mandate from Congress to study them. And the few trials it is planning have already drawn a firestorm of criticism, especially one intervention that experts and advocates say may actually make some patients’ Long COVID symptoms worse.” This is in reference to a planned study where Long COVID patients would be asked to exercise as much as possible, when it has clearly been shown that such activities have exacerbated the symptoms of Long COVID patients. 

As the report in STAT News explains, there has been a complete lack of accountability in how the NIH funds were used. Much of the work to run the RECOVER trial has been outsourced to major universities. 

Michael Sieverts, a member of the Long COVID Patient-led Research Collaborative with expertise in federal budgeting for scientific research, told STAT, “Many of the research projects associated with RECOVER have been funded through these organizations rather than directly from the NIH. This process makes it hard to track how decisions are made or how money is spent through public databases.” 

In April the Biden administration announced they were launching “Project Next Gen,” which is like the Trump-era COVID vaccine “Warp Speed Operation.” It has promised $5 billion to fund the development of the next iteration of vaccines through partnership with private-sector companies, monies freed up from prior coronavirus aid packages. Incredibly, it has left Long COVID out of the plan.  

Indeed, this diverting of money back into the hands of the pharmaceuticals and selling it as the Biden administration’s continued proactive response to the ongoing pandemic, while divesting all interest in preventing or curing Long COVID, is on par with every effort the administration has made to peddle the myth that “the pandemic is really over.” Long COVID is one of the central elements of the worst public health threat in a century, in a pandemic that is far from ended.

United States government’s anti-China semiconductor strategy thrown into disarray by congressional budget cutting

Dmitri Church

The recent “crisis” over the US debt limit has exposed the contradictions tearing apart the US state. Currently at stake is one of the Biden administration’s flagship pieces of legislation, the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to shift the vast semiconductor supply chain back inside the US in preparation for war with China.

The CHIPS Act provides roughly $280 billion in funding to create a domestic manufacturing capability for semiconductors, a crucial component in nearly every facet of the economy. However, $170 billion of that funding requires yearly appropriation by Congress and is thus subject to the new spending limits agreed upon by the Democrats and Republicans.

This money is split between the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, and is intended to fund workforce development, STEM education, and research and development over the next three years. Already funded is $52 billion in direct subsidies to chip manufacturers in exchange for beginning work on US-based foundries.

Even before the theater surrounding the debt ceiling, Congress had already declined to provide the full funding authorized by the CHIPS Act. For the 2023 fiscal year the NSF received $9.87 billion out of a maximum $11.9 billion, and the DoE received $8.1 billion out of a maximum $8.9 billion. With the new spending limits agreed to by the Democrats and Republicans, this shortfall is likely only to grow in the coming years.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, speak to reporters after a bill designed to encourage more semiconductor companies to build chip plants in the United States passed the Senate, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 27, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

While semiconductors are vitally important to the economy as a whole and the money authorized by the CHIPS Act is officially non-defense spending and thus subject to the new spending limits, the law is at its core a foreign policy measure aimed at China. The US ruling elite reacted with trade war measures to the CCP’s “Made in China 2025” program, which aims to make China a center for manufacturing semiconductors and most other advanced technology products.

The US is also concerned that the dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which produces the bulk of the most advanced chips, poses an obstacle to its efforts to provoke a war with China. Almost any open military conflict in or around Taiwan would end the production of semiconductors on the island, with massive ramifications for the global economy. Washington is hoping to induce TSMC to move much of its production to the US, so it has a freer hand in turning Taiwan into a battlefield.

However, subsidies and tax breaks alone cannot run a factory, especially one working at the extreme levels of precision necessary to produce modern semiconductors. Washington and the chip companies confront a massive shortage of skilled labor as they attempt to create new production facilities. The obstacles to training enough workers to staff the facilities being planned already cast doubt on the effectiveness of the CHIPS Act. The unwillingness of Congress to fully fund the act only makes this problem nearly insurmountable.

Some members of Congress have called for the CHIPS Act to be fully funded, but they do so from the perspective of economic nationalism. The New York Times cites comments from Democratic California Representative Ro Khanna, who said, “To make America a manufacturing superpower, we have to have advances in technology. Technology has to be the driver of that because it requires massive increases in productivity.” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) explicitly stated the act needed to be fully funded in order not to “cede the future to China.”

The support of the Democratic Party, along with anti-China hawks in the Republican Party, for the CHIPS Act is an expression of the two parties’ joint support for US militarism and trade war. Economic nationalism, which is shared by all sections of the capitalist class, is a key component of the preparation for military conflict with China. 

Khanna, who was Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign co-chair and who has the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, shows that this right-wing nationalism is also a central plank of the American pseudo-left and the trade unions. The latter have been engaged by the Biden administration as its instruments to keep workers in line behind its economic and foreign policy agenda.

The inability of the US to fund its scientific aspirations, even in service of key national security imperatives, is deeply rooted in its economic decline. The initial development of semiconductors as well as related technologies like lasers owed much to the large amounts of money the US government was able to pour into scientific research in the aftermath of World War II.

The importance of nuclear weapons to war planning led to massive investments in engineering and technology as well as basic research. Money was poured into not just particle physics, with the hope of creating more powerful bombs, but into guidance and delivery systems, command and control networks, and computer modeling of many natural phenomena including the weather.

Workers at the Micron Technology automotive chip manufacturing plant February 11, 2022, in Manassas, Virginia. [AP Photo/Steve Helber]

This massive investment in science and technology had follow-on effects in the rest of society. Companies were eager to commercialize their research however they could, but it could not escape the broader dynamics of capitalist development. The economic crises of the 1970s led semiconductor manufacturing to move offshore in search of cheaper labor. The erosion of the vast economic trade and balance of payments surplus, its weakening global position, and the decline in funding for science and technology all played a part.

This new attitude toward science and research was epitomized by the 1993 cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, four years and $2 billion into construction. The SSC would have been a massive step forward in experimental particle physics, even compared to the Large Hadron Collider which came a decade later. 

The cancellation came shortly after George H. W. Bush had promised that a so-called “peace dividend” resulting from the freeing up of vast sums that had previously been spent on military preparations against the Soviet Union would make such investments in science and infrastructure possible. Instead, the ensuing decade would see the dismantling of domestic programs, including spending on scientific research and education.

This decline has found its sharpest expression in the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments throughout the world spent years ignoring the warnings of scientists while cutting funding for medical research and letting stockpiles of medical equipment run dry. The ignorance championed by the ruling elite has found noxious expression in agitation against necessary public health measures and the anti-vax movement.

Over 115 million across US and Canada choked by smoke as massive wildfires burn out of control

Niles Niemuth

An aerial view shows New York City in a haze-filled sky from the Empire State Building observatory, Wednesday, June. 7, 2023, in New York. [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]

More than 115 million people across the eastern United States and Canada were under extreme air quality warnings Wednesday as choking smoke from massive wildfires burning in northern Quebec made its way as far south as Texas and Florida.

Extremely dry conditions and record-breaking heat driven by capitalist-induced climate change have resulted in the eruption of massive wildfires across Canada since early May. This has now developed into a public health crisis on an enormous scale.

The fires in Quebec have forced more than 11,400 people to flee their homes, with entire communities evacuated, including all 7,500 residents of Chibougamau. Over 460,000 hectares have already burned, breaking a more than 30-year-old fire season record, with many weeks yet to go. 

The areas most impacted by the smoke include Canada’s main population centers of Montreal in Quebec and Ottawa and Toronto in Southwest Ontario, Upstate New York and New York City, as well as Philadelphia in eastern Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh in the west. 

In New York City, the center of Wall Street and world finance capital, the Air Quality Index (AQI) soared well above 400, giving it the worst air quality of any major city in the world and the highest level since 1999, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began recording measurements.

A hazardous air quality warning, the highest possible warning, was issued for Central New York and Eastern Pennsylvania from Syracuse to Allentown, with the AQI exceeding 400 Wednesday afternoon. All the major urban centers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut reported extreme AQIs above 150, which the federal government deems unhealthy.

Photos and videos showed the skyline of Manhattan obscured by heavy smoke and the sky tinted deep orange. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop for flights into LaGuardia International Airport and slowed flights into Newark Liberty International Airport due to significantly reduced visibility. A Code Red Air Quality Action was issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for the entire state Wednesday.

The inhalation of fine particulate smoke from wildfires can trigger asthma attacks and heart attacks and contributes to longer-term health issues, including lung cancer. It can also exacerbate conditions for those who recently suffered pneumonia or myocarditis, common conditions for those infected by COVID-19. Poor air quality is attributed to over six million fatalities per year globally, making it among the leading contributors of death.

Health experts have made urgent warnings about avoiding any work and exercise outside, and that those who have to go out should, at a minimum, wear N95 respirators.

Despite the nature of the threat, however, no recommendations have come from the federal, state or provincial governments that people wear N95 masks when outside in the smoke-affected regions. In New York City and across the affected region, children were still sent to school, even as buildings filled up with smoke. And even though the immediate impact of toxic smoke on those who work in agriculture, landscaping, construction and in factories is well known, there were no stay-at-home orders issued. 

The WSWS received reports from workers Tuesday night and Wednesday at the Mack Trucks plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania, just outside Allentown, that workers were passing out on the line and suffering from nausea and headaches due to the smoke, but production continued. Under conditions of terrible air quality and heat, no efforts were made to ventilate the plant or provide workers with high quality masks. The second shift was finally canceled Wednesday as conditions continued to deteriorate and workers called out sick. 

In New York City, workers at a Trader Joe’s walked out over unsafe conditions, declaring that the air was so bad that they had trouble breathing.

These horrors were repeated in countless workplaces across the affected regions of the US and Canada, with tens of millions forced to labor in unsafe and potentially deadly conditions.

As with every weather disaster or public health crisis, the capitalist ruling elites and their political representatives are totally indifferent to the suffering of the population. Their only concern is to keep production going and maintain profits in the face of mass suffering and death.

The apparatus of the trade unions, predictably, have done nothing to safeguard workers’ lives. The union bureaucracy has kept workers on the job throughout the affected region, with production halted only when workers took action themselves.

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 20 million people globally and more than one million in the United States alone, has further inured the bourgeoisie to the misery they inflict on the working class. The dropping of all pretense to even mitigate the spread of COVID-19, allowing the virus to evolve into new and potentially more dangerous variants, signals the abandonment of the most basic principles of public health. Whether in response to the emergence of a new pandemic, or to what is in effect the mass poisoning of millions of people from smoke inhalation, the ruling class is determined that nothing will be done.

The widespread air pollution across Canada and the US is a graphic demonstration of the impacts of the deepening climate crisis, which scientists have repeatedly warned is fueling worse droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes and other devastating weather events. The consequences of unchecked global warming are not in the future, they are already happening and being borne by workers around the world. 

Last year saw the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history, inundating one third of the country in water, killing more than 1,700 people and leaving over 2 million homeless. Australia witnessed one of its worst ever bushfire seasons in 2019-20, in which thousands of homes were destroyed and 34 people directly killed. An estimated 445 people died as the result of smoke inhalation. Meanwhile, extreme heat records have been repeatedly broken around the world, from China and India to the Arctic, which is one of the fastest warming regions of the planet. Last year was the fifth warmest on record globally and the last nine years were all in the top ten.

Australian Labor government backs real wage cut for 2.5 million workers

Martin Scott

On Friday, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) handed down its annual wage review ruling, ordering a 5.75 percent nominal pay rise for the 2.5 million workers covered by industrial awards. With inflation at 7 percent, this means a real wage cut for a section of the workforce that already confronts low pay and high levels of casualisation.

Childcare workers demand higher wages at Melbourne protest in 2022. [Photo: WSWS]

The FWC also increased the national minimum wage, which applies to just 0.7 percent of the Australian workforce, by 8.6 percent. While higher than the official inflation rate, this falls far short of keeping up with the real rise in the cost of living, which disproportionately affects low-income earners. The sharpest inflation over the past year have been in the price of basic essential goods and services, including education, health, housing, food and energy.

The minimum wage will increase from $21.38 per hour to a meagre $23.23. The average hourly rate for workers employed under the General Retail Industry Award—the most commonly used—will increase from $24.48 to $25.89. Average hourly pay for fast food workers employed under the award will reach just $20.24. This figure is lower than the minimum wage because the industry mostly employs workers under 21, who are paid a fraction of the adult rate.

These are among the lowest wages in the country. According to FWC data from 2021, average hourly earnings across all awards were $25.80, less than 60 percent of the $45.20 for workers not employed under awards.

Labor Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke hailed the ruling, declaring it would make a “huge difference in people’s lives” and provide poor workers with “better capacity to be able to pay their bills.”

Labor’s claim that this is a victory for workers, echoed by the unions and the corporate media, is a sham.

The FWC spelled this out in its statement announcing the decision: “We acknowledge that this increase will not maintain the real value of modern award minimum wages or reverse the reduction in real value which has occurred over recent years.”

This is the second successive cut to the real wages of low-paid workers delivered under the Albanese Labor government. As was the case last year, Labor’s submission to the review made clear that it opposed an “across-the-board” pay rise in line with inflation.

This year’s recommendation to the FWC repeated the baseless assertion underlying Labor’s federal budget, that inflation has “reached its peak.” Yet the main factor identified in the submission as responsible for the soaring cost of living—the Russia-Ukraine war—is only escalating, along with mounting preparations for a war against China.

Labor’s claim that inflation is falling also flies in the face of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 6.8 percent for the year ending in April, compared with 6.0 percent for the 12 months to March.

Business lobbyists and the financial press have responded to the nominal award wage rise with hysterical claims that it will lead to job cuts, inflation and further interest rate rises. Embracing the fiction that wages, which are increasing at less than half the rate of the CPI, are the cause of inflation, the FWC noted, “We have also had regard to the need to avoid entrenching high inflation expectations by taking a perceived wage indexation approach.”

In other words, workers must shoulder an even greater share of the burden of the crisis that global capitalism has created for itself. Repeated interest rate rises instigated by the central banks, in Australia and globally, are not about lowering inflation, but driving up unemployment in order to force down wages.

Labor’s insistence that award rates must fall in real terms is in line with its broader agenda of deep cuts to jobs, wages, working conditions and social spending.

Across the public sector, Labor governments at state, territory and federal level have imposed, or are in the process of imposing, nominal pay rises of half or less the rate of inflation. At the same time, thousands of public servants are being sacked, while spending on health, disability, education, and social housing has been slashed under the May federal budget.

These attacks are being carried out with the full support of the unions, which have hailed the FWC wage review as a “victory.”

Having declared in April that a 7 percent pay rise was “a matter of survival,” Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus celebrated the 5.75 increase as “the largest increase to minimum and Award wages in Australia’s history.” The ACTU noted that the nominal wage rise was less than the rate of inflation, yet claimed it “should get wages moving in the right direction.”

The unions are in fact playing the leading role in ensuring that wages move in the “wrong” direction. In 2022, wages for workers covered by enterprise agreements increased by just 2.8 percent, compared with the overall Wage Price Index rise of 3.3 percent.

This is a reflection of the fact that the unions are no longer workers’ organisations in any sense. They are an industrial enforcement arm of management and government, controlled by a layer of well-heeled bureaucrats who represent the profit interests of “Australian” capitalism, that is, the demand for ever-increasing exploitation of workers.

The unions’ endorsement of the award wage cut should serve as a stark warning to the broader working class of the sell-out deals the bureaucracy will seek to ram through in the coming period. It is also yet another demonstration of the unions’ unwavering support for the pro-business FWC, which they falsely claim is an “independent umpire.”

It is in reality an anti-worker industrial tribunal that enforces Australia’s draconian anti-strike laws. Labor’s first tranche of industrial relations reforms, rushed through parliament late last year with the full support of the unions, heighten these powers, enabling the FWC to declare a dispute “intractable,” shut down industrial action and impose the demands of big business.

These developments are just the latest among four decades of attacks on the working class, with the union apparatus and Labor playing the leading role. This began with the Hawke-Keating governments of 1983–1996, which slashed jobs, wages and conditions, while the unions suppressed opposition from the working class.

Since then, successive Labor governments, always with union backing, have deepened the assault, including through the establishment of the FWC itself by the Rudd-Gillard government in 2008.

China slowdown drives Saudi oil production cut

Nick Beams

The most significant feature of the decision by Saudi Arabia to cut its production of oil by 1 million barrels a day in July, with a possible extension, is what it says about assessments of the prospects for the world economy.

The driving force of the decision, announced following the OPEC+ meeting in Vienna on Sunday, is that the much-touted “recovery” of the Chinese economy after the lifting of anti-COVID heath measures is not taking place, leading to a further slowdown in the world economy and sending down the price of oil.

The meeting was held two months after the cartel, which includes many of the world’s major oil producers, announced production cuts to try to sustain prices. But these measures have proven largely ineffective, and the oil price has fallen by 12 percent since the middle of April, touching $70 a barrel at one point last week.

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud [Photo by en.kremlin.ru / CC BY 4.0]

Saudi Arabia, under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has embarked on a major investment and infrastructure program to try to lessen its dependence on oil production. But the program, which has so far failed to attract significant international investor support, depends on oil revenue to be carried out.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that in recent months Saudi policymakers have been warned that “the kingdom needs elevated oil prices for the next five years to keep spending billions of dollars on ambitious projects that have so far attracted meagre investment from abroad.”

According to the International Monetary Fund, Saudi Arabia needs an oil price above $80 a barrel to balance its budget and fund major projects. But as the world economy slows—the IMF has forecast that global growth this year will reach its lowest point, apart from the COVID-19 recession, since the financial crisis of 2008-2009—recessionary trends are exerting downward pressure on oil prices.

Since last October, when OPEC+ cut production by 2 million barrels a day followed by a further cut of 1.6 million barrels in April, the price of Brent crude, the major international benchmark, has fallen by around 20 percent.

Oil prices have kicked up at certain points going as high as $90 a barrel, but the dominant trend has been down. Predictions made earlier this year that the price could go to $100 a barrel have failed to materialise.

The latest Saudi cut is only for July at this stage, but it could be extended. Following the meeting, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the half-brother of the crown prince, said it was a “Saudi lollipop,” that is, a sweetener for the rest of the group which did not have to make cuts.

“We want to ice the cake with what we have done,” he said. “We will do whatever is necessary to bring stability to this market.”

And in an effort to cover over tensions within the group, he said that “the quality of cooperation is unprecedented.” That seems not to be the case.

Saudi production will be reduced to 9 million barrels a day, compared to its maximum capacity of 12 million.

It appears that the Saudis wanted cuts from other producers but failed to obtain them. According to a WSJ report, there was a “fiery exchange” at the meeting as the Saudis pushed other members to make cuts “but faced stiff resistance, especially from some African producers.”

It was reported that on Saturday Abdulaziz called some African delegates to his hotel suite in Vienna and told them their production quotas would be reduced, but they left the meeting without any agreement, and it was only at the last minute that Kuwaiti and Algerian representatives managed to secure a deal.

In the event, the best the Saudis could obtain was an agreement from others to stick to their existing production targets with the Saudi decision to voluntarily cut production, getting the deal over the line.

The tensions produced by the slowing world economy and its impact on the oil market were in evidence in the lead-up to the meeting.

Throughout this year Abdulaziz has been denouncing short sellers on Wall Street whose speculative activities have been causing prices to fall. Last month he warned they had to “watch out,” an indication that the Saudis would at least try to induce a price increase so that they made losses by gambling on a fall.

In a further indication of the tensions, the Saudi energy minister excluded several journalists, including the entire teams from Reuters and Bloomberg, from coverage of the meeting, presumably because their reports had been encouraging speculation that oil prices would continue to fall.

But there are much more powerful forces at work than the writings of financial journalists. Besides the global slowdown, a major long-term factor is the attempt to shift away from carbon dependence.

In the immediate situation, the chief factor is the slowdown in China. All the latest data on industrial production, consumer spending, the housing and property markets and investment indicate that even the target growth rate of 5 percent for this year—the lowest in three decades—will be very hard to achieve.

The rest of the world, including the major economies, is facing a major slowdown in growth this year, if not a recession, because of the interest rate hikes led by the US Federal Reserve and followed by other central banks.

The hope, including by the Saudis, was that the global economy would be cushioned by Chinese growth after the ending of the COVID-19 lockdowns and other public health safety measures at the end of last year.

As Sydney Morning Herald economics columnist Stephen Bartholomeusz noted: “OPEC+ had expected a big rebound on demand for oil and in the oil price in the second half of this year, but unless China’s economic engine stops sputtering and starts roaring, that would seem unlikely, which leaves further manipulation of the supply side as its major lever.”

But with many producers, particularly in Africa, facing worsening economic conditions, there is little appetite for such moves and even the Saudis, as he noted, are only prepared to proceed a month at a time.

1,000 anti-fascist demonstrators detained in Leipzig, Germany police kettle for hours

Marianne Arens

Police encircled around 1,000 demonstrators in a police “kettle” in the Connewitz district of the city of Leipzig, Germany, on Saturday night for up to eleven hours. The demonstrators were protesting against the harsh sentence delivered on June 1 against the anti-fascist activist Lina E.

German riot police [Photo: Peace for Afrin @ Berlin]

Even captive children were held for hours, initially without access to drinking water or toilets. Everyone in the kettle was forced to provide identification before they were finally released at 05:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Several persons reported that they had been forced to hand over their mobile phones.

Fifty people were taken to a police detention centre, where 30 were still being held on Monday morning. They face charges of aggravated trespass and assaulting police officers.

Meanwhile, reports on the internet reveal the brutal violence used by police. Tim Lüddemann, a taz reporter, explained in a video: “When the police wanted to clear the street, an officer pulled out his baton and beat me wildly at head height without any reason. In my point of view this was completely irresponsible, because it could have resulted in the worst type of injuries.”

Another video was posted online by Lüddemann and his colleague Konrad Litschko directly from the police encirclement. Litschko said: “The fundamental right to freedom of assembly was very, very limited here.”

On Sunday, Leipzig mayor Burkhard Jung (Social democrats, SPD) thanked the police and called the detained youths “crazy delinquents in Connewitz.”

In fact the Leipzig police kettle was anything but a spontaneous police reaction to violent rioters. Rather, it was a planned provocation aimed at intimidating left-wing protest. At the same time, it served to stir up public opinion in order to enforce stricter laws and dismantle basic democratic rights.

Already on Sunday, the Saxony Interior Minister Armin Schuster (Christian Democrats, CDU) called for a “concept against left-wing extremism” at a federal level. Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) also announced on Sunday that the state would “continue to keep a very close eye on the violent left-wing extremist scene in the coming days and weeks” and would “intervene consistently when criminal and violent acts occur.”

However, the police encirclement in Leipzig shows the extent to which violence originates from the state, which deliberately provokes violence and then ruthlessly exploits it for propaganda purposes.

The demonstration on Saturday evening in Leipzig-Connewitz was in reaction to the Dresden verdict against Lina E. The 28-year-old woman had been sentenced to five years and three months, her three co-defendants to around three years in prison each, for allegedly forming a criminal organisation and attacking and injuring neo-Nazis.

The protest against this harsh sentence was also directed against a state that has a long record of promoting and covering up the crimes of the far right. The most recent examples include the involvement of large numbers of secret service under cover agents in the neo-Nazi NSU gang which murdered nine migrant workers and one police woman and the notorious Hannibal network of prepper groups in the German army (Bundeswehr). The tentacles of right-wing extremism reach into the highest levels of state and politics.

Shortly after last Wednesday's verdict all demonstrations related to the Lina E. case had been banned In Leipzig, following claims that a “non-peaceful course of events” could be expected. A 48-hour police “control area” was imposed over part of the city and only one rally was allowed on Saturday evening.

Jürgen Kasek, a Leipzig lawyer and Green city councillor, had announced the rally under the motto: “Freedom of assembly also applies in Leipzig.” Several thousand participants came to the demonstration at Alexis-Schumann-Platz, among them a great many young people carrying placards with inscriptions such as “Free Lina” or “Solidarity against Nazis!” Also in attendance were families with baby strollers, senior citizens, so-called “Grannies against the right” and a group in solidarity with imprisoned Turkish opposition members.

From the start, the rally was met with an unprecedented police presence: many hundreds of martially equipped police, including officers from several federal states, appeared, along with heavy equipment, an armoured vehicle and water cannons. A police helicopter circled overhead.

The police made clear they would not allow any demonstration, thereby provoking protesters. Some participants shouted at the police “Where were you in Hanau?”—a reference to the shooting of nine people by a far right extremist under the noses of the police. A deputy of the Left Party in the Saxony parliament, Juliane Nagel, also protested loudly and some in the crowd from the anarchist black block threw bottles and stones at the police.

This then served as a pretext for the police to encircle a large part of the demonstration—about 1,000 people in total—in the directly adjacent Heinrich-Schütz-Platz and detain them all night. Frustrated, Green city councillor Kasek stated: “I have the impression that it was never planned that we would be allowed to walk,” the whole thing seemed “like a trap.”

The SPD politician Albrecht Pallas, a former police officer, also criticised the “massiveness of the police presence.” This had had “an escalating effect,” which had mainly affected bystanders.

The taz newspaper commented that an “absurdly expensive large-scale deployment” and a “police circus beyond all proportionality” had been staged for a “few hundred antifas, some of them minors.”

What happened in Leipzig on Saturday night, however, was not an exaggerated isolated incident that got out of hand, but rather an operation planned long in advance. The media had literally been predicting violent protests days before the verdict of Lina E. was announced. When they failed to materialise—the police provoked a counter-reaction with their massive operation.

This was confirmed by the remarks made by the state Interior Minister Schuster on MDR television. Schuster said that “joint decisions” had been made in the run-up to the police encirclement and that there had been “perfect cooperation this weekend: with the city of Leipzig, the police, the public prosecutors and judges, who were also on the scene.”

The police encirclement in Leipzig-Connewitz is part of an escalation of police violence and state armament aimed at suppressing any kind of social and political resistance. A few days before the police crackdown, police carried out nationwide raids on May 24 against leading members of the “Last Generation,” whose website was blocked and whose accounts were frozen, even though they are non-violent environmental activists. This was then followed by the drastic verdict in the Lina E. case and on Saturday the massive police crackdown.

South Korean president pledges restrictions on right to protest

Ben McGrath

The government of President Yoon Suk-yeol in South Korea is stepping up its crackdown on workers’ basic democratic rights, in particular the rights to free speech and assembly. It is part of the revival of the police state measures that the ruling class used for decades to suppress political dissent.

The Yoon administration and the ruling People Power Party (PPP) are seeking to forcibly block the growth of working-class struggle against attacks on economic and social conditions, as well as opposition to the growing threat of a US-instigated war against China.

South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol, May 29, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, Pool]

On May 23, President Yoon announced he would strengthen the police and restrict protests, condemning an overnight rally the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) held on May 16 and 17. “It will be difficult for the people to tolerate the actions of the KCTU during the rally that infringed on people’s freedoms and basic rights, and disturbed the public order,” he claimed. “Our government will not neglect or tolerate any form of illegal action.”

During the May 16-17 rally, approximately 25,000 members of the Korean Construction Workers’ Union (KCWU), under the KCTU umbrella, held a march to the presidential office in Seoul to protest the government’s anti-union policies. They staged sit-ins throughout the night in the streets around Gwanghwamun and Seoul City Hall, where many government offices are located. The next day, they were joined by another 15,000 KCTU members to continue their protest.

That demonstration was held, in part, in memorial to Yang Hoe-dong, a KCWU official who died on May 2, after self-immolating the previous day to protest criminal charges being brought against him. The government had accused Yang of extorting money from construction projects, allegations which the union denounced as fabricated.

Following Yoon’s denunciation of the KCTU’s protests as “illegal,” the union confederation held another rally on May 31, with approximately 20,000 taking part. At the demonstration, police carried crowd-control pepper spray for the first time in six years, though it was not used. The authorities also deployed 80 riot squads. Police clashed with union members and four protesters were arrested while another four were injured.

The KCWU released a statement on the May 31 rally, saying, “If they want to stop us from setting up a public memorial space and remembering the deceased, the right thing to do would be for the Yoon Suk-yeol government and Police Commissioner General Yun Hui-geun, who drove Yang Hoe-dong to his death, to first apologize to Yang and his family.” It continued, “The police should not try to crush actions to remember Yang Hoe-dong with violence. The Construction Workers’ Union will continue the struggle according to the wishes of the late activist until they sincerely apologize.”

Despite this posturing, the KCTU does not genuinely represent the interests of the working class. It is closely aligned with the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DP), which is pro-capitalist and has backed the US-led war drive against China.

However, the government’s attacks on the union confederation are, above all, an attack on workers’ rights to speak out and protest. While the KCTU attempts to portray itself as a “militant” labor organization, it will fall into line with the demands of the political establishment. The strengthening of the police state apparatus will be used against workers themselves, particularly those who attempt to break the confines established by the unions, such as by taking wildcat strike action or organizing independently.

Workers’ anger is growing as their conditions decline markedly. Statistics Korea reported on May 25 that the lowest, second lowest, and middle quintiles of wage earners saw their incomes increase by 3.2 percent, 2.2 percent, and 2.5 percent respectively in the first quarter of 2023. Factoring in inflation of around 5 percent, these amount to declines in real wages. The top two quintiles, however, saw their incomes exceed inflation, leading to further wage inequality.

Conscious of anti-war sentiment in the working class, the government and PPP are also accusing the KCTU of connections with North Korea. On May 10, the government indicted four former KCTU officials, charging them under South Korea’s draconian National Security Act with espionage and meeting with North Korean spies. The identities of the four have not been revealed.

The allegations against the four include claims that Pyongyang directed them to hold protests against joint US-South Korea military exercises. The government is moving towards labelling any opposition to the growing danger of a US-instigated war with China as “pro-North Korean” in an attempt to intimidate workers and youth from speaking out.

Seoul has already taken an active role in preparing for such a conflict under both former President Moon Jae-in, a Democrat, and now under the right-wing Yoon. In April, Yoon and US President Joe Biden agreed to increased cooperation over the planning and potential use of nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, South Korea participates in the US’s anti-ballistic missile system in the region through the hosting of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery, holds joint military exercises with the US and Japan, and embraces the deployment of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

More broadly, the Yoon administration’s manoeuvrings are part of growing attacks on democratic rights around the globe. Last week, for example, the South Australia state Labor Party government pushed through parliament new legislation imposing harsh penalties on any protesters causing an “obstruction” in a public place.

Dam collapse in Ukraine causes major humanitarian and ecological disaster

Clara Weiss

In the early hours of Tuesday local time, the Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed in Ukraine’s southeastern Kherson region, which has been held by Russia since the spring of 2022. The collapse of the dam, which has been described as “strategically important,” came amidst the early stages of Ukraine’s NATO-backed “counteroffensive” against Russia.

While it is unclear what caused the dam to break, images from the scene appear to indicate that an explosion occurred.

The collapse of the dam and destruction of the adjacent Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant have created a humanitarian and ecological disaster of immense proportions.

Built in 1956 as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, the dam is hundreds of metres wide, 30 meters tall and traverses Ukraine’s Dnipro River. It held 18 cubic kilometers (4.3 cubic miles) of water, about the same volume as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. As of this writing, the rate and scale of water loss is not clear. Thousands of people have been evacuated, and dozens of settlements flooded. The provincial capital of Kherson, which had a pre-war population of about 290,000, is also threatened with flooding.

The Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was also destroyed. It supplied a significant portion of the population in both Ukrainian- and Russian-held territories with drinking water, including the population of the Black Sea peninsula Crimea, which Russia has claimed since 2014. Their drinking water supplies are now threatened.

The plant also helped cool the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which were placed in a cold shutdown in September. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is monitoring the situation, the water supplies for the nuclear power plant in a cooling pond and the adjacent channels are still sufficient for “several months.” The IAEA stated there is “no short-term risk to nuclear safety and security.”

Scientists have warned that the dam collapse may be the biggest ecological disaster in Ukraine since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 

As a result of the damage of the Kakhovka hydroelectic power plant, at least 150 tons of engine oil were released into the Dnipro (or Dniepr) River, according to the Ukrainian government. Another 300 tons of engine oil could be released into the waters in the coming days, with incalculable ecological consequences not just for Ukraine but the entire region. The Dnipro River is one of the largest waterways of Europe.

Speaking to the German Der Spiegel, ecological scientist Oleksandra Shumilova said, “These oil products are not simply diluted and percolate away but are absorbed by living organisms such as vegetation and animals. In addition, oil forms a film on the surface of the water and over a large area, since the area is very shallow, and the water can therefore spread widely.”

Moreover, Shumilova continued, the flooding of a large agricultural area means that “pollutants such as pesticides are washed out and into rivers and oceans.” According to Der Spiegel, 98 percent of Ukraine’s river basins flow into the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, with the remaining 2 percent flowing into the Baltic Sea.

The humanitarian and ecological disaster is hitting workers in Ukraine on top of a horrifying bloodbath on the battlefield and an unmitigated social crisis of historic proportions. Recent figures released by a Ukrainian NGO indicate that 8.5 million people have left the country permanently since the beginning of the war, reducing its population to 29 million. Not all of them live in territories controlled by the NATO-backed Zelensky government. Of these 29 million, only between 9.1 and 9.5 million are gainfully employed, and about one-third of these rely on state salaries. Estimates put the number of Ukrainian deaths out of this small population at up to 200,000, with hundreds of thousands more wounded. It is a scale of mass slaughter and social misery unseen in Europe since World War II.

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the disaster, with both sides accusing each other of having deliberately blown up the dam. Some news reports indicate that the dam may have already been damaged through previous fighting last fall. According to CNN, satellite images indicated that the dam was damaged just days before the collapse.

There have also been conflicting reports about who might benefit from the disaster militarily on the battlefield. The Wall Street Journal noted that the flooding would “cut options” for Ukraine’s counter-offensive but also reported that the flooding could wash away fortifications and minefields put up by Russian forces in the area, possibly creating a military advantage for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

The NATO powers and Ukraine have been quick to blame Russia for the disaster. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has recently erupted in apoplectic rantings against Russia unheard of in Europe since the Nazi period, declared, “All things considered, one must naturally assume that this was an aggression perpetrated by the Russian side in order to stop Ukraine’s offensive aimed at liberating its own land.” 

The US government was somewhat more guarded, with White House spokesman John Kirby stating that the US had not reached a final determination on who destroyed the dam. Kirby added, “We’re still trying to assess what happened here, but the Russians had illegally taken over that dam and the reservoir many months ago, and they were occupying it.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denounced the dam’s destruction as “an outrageous act, which demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

The truth is that the imperialist powers recklessly and deliberately provoked this war for decades, consciously taking the risk even of nuclear war, no matter the consequences for the population of Ukraine, Russia and the world. Since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO systematically expanded to Russia’s borders. A US-backed 2014 far-right coup in Kiev installed a government that spent the subsequent eight years transforming the Ukrainian army into a NATO proxy force and arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis to the teeth to prepare a war with Russia. 

The Russian oligarchy, having emerged out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, was provoked into invading Ukraine, believing that by military means it could achieve some sort of compromise with the imperialist powers. All of the military and political calculations of the Putin regime have been motivated by this delusional belief in the possibility of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, which it inherited from the Stalinist bureaucracy, and its profound fear of an international movement by the working class directed against capitalism.