UK government prepares to use anti-strike laws against doctors

Robert Stevens

The Conservative government is preparing to use its new anti-strike legislation against National Health Service (NHS) workers in Britain.

Threats to use the Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Act were ramped up during this week’s annual conference of the Conservative Party. Consultants, senior doctors and radiographers began strike action over three days from Monday.

Striking doctors at the rally in Manchester, October 3, 2023

Hospitals across England saw picket lines mounted by members of the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents junior doctors and consultants. The three-day strike follows earlier walk-outs by medics who are seeking an above-inflation increase to make up for years of pay erosion. Last month, the two groups took joint strike action on one day for the first time. Including this week’s strikes senior doctors have held five days of action, while junior doctors have held 25 days of strikes.

The doctors and radiographers are the last NHS workers involved in industrial action, after a dozen health trade unions reached a sellout agreement detrimental to over 1 million staff.

On the eve of the strike, the leadership of the senior consultants wrote to Health Minister Steve Barclay saying that there was no further industrial action scheduled and that the BMA wanted further negotiations to settle the dispute. The BMA pledged that no further strikes would be called for four weeks to allow time for talks. It added that strikes would be resumed if there were no “credible deal that we can put to our members by November 3”. This offer was reiterated on Tuesday by BMA leaders at a national rally of hundreds of striking doctors held outside the conference centre in Manchester where the Conservatives are meeting.

Consultants are calling for a 12 percent rise for 2023-2024, while their junior colleagues are demanding a 35 percent rise to make up for 15 years of real-terms pay cuts. The government has made a “final” pay offer of a below inflation 6 percent for consultants, and 6 percent plus a lump sum of £1,250 for junior doctors.

The Tory government is working flat out to defeat the doctors strike, not to negotiate and compromise with the Financial Times noting Tuesday, “No direct talks have taken place between [Health Minister Steve] Barclay and the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, for more than six months”. Replying to the BMA’s letter, the government said there was nothing to negotiate.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ensured that the doctors strike featured in his keynote speech ending the Tories conference Wednesday, complaining that “they continue to demand, massive unaffordable pay rises.”

The previous day Barclay said the Tories “have faced opposition from the usual suspects when we are trying to do the best for patients. You probably saw some of them on your way in this morning. The militant BMA leadership – whose strikes have resulted in countless cancelled appointments and pose a serious threat to the NHS’s recovery from the pandemic. Their Consultants and Junior Doctors Committee are relentlessly demanding massive pay rises.”

He pledged the government would “take on” and defeat the doctors. This is to be carried by imposing “work notices” under minimum service levels, forcing NHS workers to break strikes. Last month, after the government finished sham consultations on minimum service levels for ambulance staff, fire and rescue services and passenger rail workers, it launched a new consultation on bringing doctors and nurses under the legislation. The eight week consultation ends November 14, meaning that any industrial action after that date can be targeted. A Department of Health statement updated on October 3 read, “We propose that hospitals will treat people who require urgent or emergency treatment in hospital and people who are receiving hospital care and are not yet well enough or able to be discharged, during the period of industrial action as they would on a non-strike day”. Presently some staff are already exempted from strike action, with trade union agreement, to provide the cover needed to care for patients.

The Strikes Act containing the legislation was passed in July, but almost every trade union that had been involved in a strike wave that began last summer has caved in and accepted a sellout below inflation deal, meaning the government has not yet resorted to using the authoritarian powers. A frothing Tory media is now demanding that it is used against any upcoming strikes by doctors and rail workers.

The Telegraph editorialised Monday under the headline “Time to strike back against the strikers” that “The Government has sought to legislate to ensure employers can insist upon the provision of basic levels of service, but there are no signs of that yet being enforced in any serious way. It’s time it was.”

In response to this offensive, both wings of the BMA leadership are claiming that the government will eventually respond to a few sporadic strikes organised by a self-described “fighting trade union” and to moral appeals. Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA junior doctors committee told the media Tuesday that “We don’t have to strike ever in the future. We can cancel the rest of this weeks strikes if the government came to the table and put an offer which is credible to our membership to end this dispute, but they are still resolutely ignoring us.”

Vivek Trivedi speaking at the doctors' rally in Manchester

These bankrupt appeals were made even as Trivedi acknowledged, “It’s been more than 140 days since he met with my colleagues and its been 170 days since he met with our consultant colleagues.”

BMA council chair Phil Banfield declared at the rally, “They [the Tories] say the NHS is safe in Rishi’s hands. I say prove it. End the pay dispute here and now. Get round the table and give us a credible offer”

He stated, “The BMA is coming to be at your side in your workplace… we are changing the way we train our reps and activists… we are experts as a professional association, but we are the doctors trade union… we will not just win this dispute but every dispute.”

Phil Banfield speaking at the doctors' rally in Manchester

Such bellicose language is an attempt to restore faith in the BMA after its selling out the junior doctors’ national strike in 2016, leading to an acceleration in attacks on their pay and conditions.

In response a group of “left” forces won leadership positions in the union’s junior doctors’ section. One of their number, Dr. Arjan Singh, told a rally in London in April, “We will not sell you out. There will be no weak or feeble action. To the registrar’s here, this is a new BMA and this is not 2016. This is a BMA that is unashamedly pro-doctor and for you.”

Since that date the union has not wrested a single concession from the government.

Chinese property giant Evergrande another step closer to collapse

Nick Beams

The fate of the highly indebted Chinese property developer Evergrande is hanging in the balance as attempts are made to get its restructuring back on track before liquidation proceedings start in a Hong Kong court on October 30.

A man rides on an electric bike past by a residential buildings under construction in Beijing on June 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The restructuring process for the company, which is reported to have the equivalent of more than $300 billion in debts, has been in train for more than a year following its default on bond repayments towards the end of 2021.

Authorities are anxious to avoid a liquidation because it can set in motion a scramble by creditors to grab what they can from the carcass of the failed company. That can lead to unpredictable consequences which can reverberate through the financial system.

It is why considerable effort has been made to try and effect a restructuring.

This effort was derailed last week by two developments: the inability of a subsidiary company to make payment on a bond and the announcement that Evergrande founder and chairman Hui Ka Yun was under investigation by authorities. He potentially faces criminal charges, as yet unspecified, but believed to involve attempts to move money offshore.

Born into rural poverty and raised by his grandmother, Hui, now aged 64, started the company in 1996 and became a multibillionaire on the back of China’s property and real estate boom, rising to a high level within the ruling Communist Party.

In a speech in 2018, he highlighted the intimate connections between the CCP and the financial oligarchy.

With a fortune at that time estimated to be almost $44 billion, he said: “All I have and all that Evergrande Group has achieved were endowed by the party, the state and the whole society.”

In July 2021, he was among the guests onstage at Tiananmen Square during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party.

Within months of reaching that pinnacle, Evergrande had defaulted on debts and its rapid downward slide was underway.

It was set in motion by a decision of the government in 2020 to clamp down on the easy money policies that had led to the elevation of Evergrande and other property developers.

Evergrande’s business model was not exactly a Ponzi scheme but close to it because it depended on the continual inflow of credit. The scheme worked while the going was good and then failed when it was not. It borrowed money to finance projects with home buyers often paying in advance before the projects were completed. This money, together with borrowed funds, was used to finance other developments.

The model continued to function so long as apartment prices kept rising and credit was freely available.

However, Chinese authorities became fearful that the growth of debt was becoming so great that it might threaten the stability of the financial system. Instituting the new regime, Chinese president Xi Jinping insisted houses were for living in, not for speculation.

There was also a political dimension to the government’s moves as was seen in the simultaneous clamp down on major tech company giants. It reflected the fear that with increased financial power, the oligarchs acquired greater political clout that could undermine the stability of the regime.

As the World Socialist Web Site analysed in 2018, when Xi moved to acquire power beyond the normal two terms as president and rule indefinitely, it was becoming a Bonapartist regime with “Chinese characteristics” seeking to balance between conflicting forces.

Under conditions of slowing growth, it defended the interests of the oligarchy as a whole against the working class, while strengthening the state apparatus against the growing bellicosity of US imperialism. At the same time, it sought to regulate and control the different interests within the oligarchy itself.

Now the growing property market crisis has compounded economic and financial tensions. It would be significant enough if Evergrande were an isolated case. But it is the expression of a crisis throughout the property and real estate sector which, when all its interconnections are considered, accounts for about 25 percent of the Chinese economy.

The impact of Evergrande alone is indicated by the fact that it has acknowledged it still owes the suppliers of construction materials the equivalent of $82 billion.

Since its demise, another major developer, Country Garden, has come under the spotlight after experiencing problems in debt repayments despite being touted as secure. Many smaller developers have gone under.

One of the key questions confronting the government and financial regulators is how far the property crisis will reach into the financial system.

As the New York Times reported recently: “China’s giant banking system, the world’s largest, is heavily exposed to the real estate crisis: nearly 40 percent of all bank loans are related to property. Pressure is building on those banks as dozens of real estate developers have defaulted or missed payments on overseas bonds …”

Parallels have been drawn with the crisis in the US in 2007-2008 which originated in the property market. However, there are significant differences. The US crisis was sparked by speculation in the securities market whereas the problem in China is loans that cannot be repaid.

There is also the added factor of state involvement in the Chinese banking system providing a degree of support.

This is not to say that there not major problems.

As the NYT noted back in January, shortly before stepping down, the then Chinese vice-premier Liu He told the World Economic Forum in Davos there were major problems that could arise from the real estate crisis.

“If not handled properly, risks in the housing sector are likely to trigger systemic risks—that is why prompt steps must be taken to address them,” he said.

One channel through which those risks could emerge is the so-called shadow banking system where problems have already taken place. One of the oldest shadow banks, Xinhua Trust, went bankrupt in May after expectations of government backing failed to materialise.

Another shadow bank, Zhongrong, a trust fund, is on the edge of going under after missing payments to 150,000 investors. It holds $136 billion worth of client investments. In total, the shadow banking system manages around $4.5 trillion.

A recent analysis in the Economist summed up the situation as follows: “The risk of contagion is high because lending by trusts is ubiquitous and investment in them produces tangled ties. They have also lent to local government projects—and now cities and provinces across China are struggling to repay debts, which are estimated to have hit $12 trillion at the end of 2022.”

The policy of the government and financial authorities at this stage appears to be to restructure debts and secure their repayment over a longer term. That, at least, was the strategy with regard to Evergrande which was to have issued new bonds as part of a restructure plan, but that scheme fell apart when a subsidiary defaulted.

The hope in the real estate sector and among its financial backers is that the government will step in directly, but so far there is little sign of this.

As Lestor Ross, the managing director of the Beijing office of the US legal firm Wilmer Hale told the NYT: “The system is carrying this forward, waiting and waiting and waiting for some kind of bailout, and it has not come.”

Germany’s 2024 budget: Armaments über alles

Max Linhof

On Friday, the upper house of the German parliament discussed the 2024 budget, which includes the biggest military budget since World War II and huge cuts in every social sector. It is a far-reaching attack on the working class—including teachers, carers and other public sector workers, children, the sick, those in need of care and refugees. It is the most blatant austerity budget in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Yet the government and the opposition have not even named the true extent of the cuts. The nominal cuts of 6.4 percent or €30.5 billion, which are horrendous in themselves, do not take into account core inflation of 6.1 percent. If this is included, the overall cut in the budget is 11.8 percent.

[Photo: Max Linhof/WSWS]

These cuts are not simply for budget consolidation. They are intended to claw back the hundreds of billions that have been thrown down the throats of the banks and corporations in recent years. Above all, however, arms spending is being massively increased, and every area of social life is being subordinated to war policy.

While cuts are being made rigorously in almost all departments, military spending is increasing rapidly. With the planned €51.8 billion, the defence budget takes up almost 20 percent of the entire federal budget for 2024.

But that is by no means all. In addition to the reported €51.8 billion, there are €19.2 billion from the Bundeswehr (armed forces) “special fund,” as well as billions more hidden in other budgets, such as expenditure for UN missions, Germany’s share in various EU armament expenditures such as the promised arms deliveries to Ukraine, which alone amounted to €17.1 billion from January 24, 2022 to July 31, 2023.

[Photo: Max Linhof/WSWS]

Yet military spending has not only been rising since the Ukraine war. Just as the Bundeswehr “special fund” had been discussed long before the Russian invasion, the arms budget has also been continually raised for years. In order to be able to enforce German economic interests all over the world with tanks and bombers, all social sectors are literally being plundered.

The health budget is being almost completely slashed. From €64.4 billion in 2022 to €24.5 billion in the current year and finally down to €16.2 billion next year. This cut is the result of the “profits before lives” policy: the government has almost completely cut the funds for monitoring and fighting COVID-19, even though the pandemic is currently spreading rapidly again in ever new variants. Moreover, hardly any resources are being made available for research and cures for Long COVID, although hundreds of thousands are suffering from it.

The massively shrunken health budget not only endangers the health of the population but is also a slap in the face of the nurses who have borne the burden of the pandemic and went on strike for months for better working conditions and higher wages and were then rewarded with cuts in real wages. Now health is being cut further.

[Photo: Max Linhof/WSWS]

The federal subsidy for long-term care (previously €1 billion) is being cut and will have to be financed by workers paying higher contributions in future. This is a particular burden on low-income earners, who already have to pay a considerable part of their income for social benefits and are hit hardest by inflation.

The basic child allowance, which was supposed to help children in need participate at least somewhat in education and society, is being brutally cut. Originally planned at €12 billion for 2025, only €2.4 billion are now earmarked. This hits the weakest in society who are dependent on support, especially in a country where a quarter of children and young people are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Money for jobseekers and the long-term unemployed will also be reduced, as will the budget for housing and urban development, despite a dramatic housing shortage. The education budget will also be cut, further limiting the educational opportunities of working class children and driving ailing education systems into collapse.

To pay off the national debt, the government is also drawing on a reserve it had been building up since 2015 for asylum policy. While all parties are agitating xenophobically and ranting about upper limits for refugees, the municipalities are systematically deprived of money, provoking problems with accommodation and care. This is then used to justify the inhumane policy of Fortress Europe.

Drastic cuts are also planned in the transport budget, especially for investments in the railway network and freight transport. Instead of the urgently needed €45 billion, the railways will receive less than half that amount, which poses a sustained threat to the restoration of the rail network. A measure that makes it more than clear that even the talk of environmental and climate protection is nothing but wastepaper. Money only flows to the rich and into armaments.

In comparison: the ministries of Education (€20.3 billion), Health (€16.8 billion), Development (€11.5 billion), Economy & Climate (€10.9 billion), Housing (€6.9 billion), Foreign Affairs (€6.1 billion) and Environment (€2.4 billion) together will receive €74.9 billion less than the military budget. The cuts are substantial everywhere.

[Photo: Max Linhof/WSWS]

Large parts of the cuts result from the fact that public employees’ salaries and pensions are not being adjusted to the increased cost of living. For example, in the April wage settlement, federal government employees faced a pay freeze for this year. The increase that will come in 2024, at 5 to 10 percent annually, does not even begin to compensate for the real increase in prices. In this way, armaments and the billions in gifts to the rich are to be financed directly through cuts to the workers.

This is because the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has risen by 17.5 percent between January 2020 and August 2023. The index measures the average price rise of all goods and services that private households buy for consumption purposes. But the two most relevant items for working households are far above average. Food is on average 30.7 percent more expensive and energy costs have risen by as much as 53.5 percent. Fuels such as diesel and gasoline are also about 50 percent more expensive than in 2020.

In this way, billions of euros are diverted from ordinary workers to the state budget, which is then used to enrich the wealthy and put the horrendous rearmament into action. The same aggressiveness with which the federal government is fueling the proxy war against Russia is evident in the budget cuts. Therefore, the struggle against social cuts and wage reductions must be linked to the struggle against war.

World Bank forecasts slowdown in east Asian economies

Nick Beams

The higher interest rate regime instituted by the world’s major central banks over the past year and a half is starting to have its effect on the global economy. In its latest economic update, the World Bank has forecast that growth in east Asian economies could fall to its lowest level in five decades in 2024.

This region has been one of the mainstays for global growth over the past several decades. However, it is now on course for its slowest rate of expansion, excluding events such as the global financial crisis and the pandemic, since the 1960s.

A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic display board in the lobby of the Shanghai Stock Exchange building, China, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. [AP Photo]

China is central to the downturn. The World Bank revised down its forecast for Chinese growth in 2024 to just 4.4 percent, compared to the already low rate of 4.8 percent it predicted in April. Chinese authorities have set a growth target of 5 percent in 2023, the lowest level in three decades.

On China, the bank cited “longer-term structural factors”—a reference to a fall in population growth—as well as high debt levels and weakness in the property sectors as reasons for the downgrade.

The property and real estate sector, one of the main engines of Chinese growth over the past 15 years, has been hit by a number of debt defaults by major companies, including two of the biggest, Country Garden and Evergrande.

When it lifted its anti-COVID public health measures at the end of last year, the Chinese government expected a surge in the economy along with an initial wave of infections that would then subside. There was a surge of deaths at the start of the year, estimated to be nearly two million, followed by a further wave of COVID infections in the middle of the year.

There was an uptick in the Chinese economy as health measures were lifted but this has now passed.

According to Aaditya Mattoo, World Bank chief economist for east Asia and the Pacific, economists expected the lift in the economy after the ending of COVID controls to be “more sustained and more significant than it turned out to be.”

The bank said retail sales growth had fallen to pre-pandemic levels, house prices were stagnant, household debt had increased, and private sector investment was down.

The slowdown extends across the region.

“While domestic factors are likely to be the dominant influence on growth in China,” the World Bank said, “external factors will have a stronger influence on growth in much of the region.”

This is a reference to the slowing demand from the major economies because of the impact of the higher interest rate regime. Goods exports are reported to be down by more than 20 percent in Indonesia and Malaysia, compared to the second quarter of 2022, and by 10 percent from China and Vietnam in the same period.

There are also major structural changes taking place which mean that the conditions which led to the rise of the so-called “Asian tigers” from the mid-1980s are coming to an end.

Pointing to this shift, Mattoo said: “In a region which has really thrived through trade and investment in manufacturing … the next big key to growth will come through reforming the services sector to harness the digital revolution.”

The efforts by the US to exclude China from the cutting edge of high-tech development through its series of bans and export restrictions, as well as efforts to re-shore operations through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act, are hitting south-east Asian countries.

“This whole region which had perversely benefited from US-China trade tensions in terms of [trade] diversion is now suffering trade diversion from it,” Mattoo said.

As the Financial Times reported: “Electronics and machinery exports from China and south-east Asian countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand declined after President Joe Biden’s protectionist policies came into force, according to the World Bank.”

This is because these countries are excluded from the subsidies available under the legislation. The FT cited the case of Vietnam where electric vehicle related exports to the US fell by 19.1 percent from July to August, following a 13.6 percent increase the previous year because so far Hanoi has been excluded from tax credit benefits.

Another expression of the slowdown is the sharp fall in the share market value of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) one of the most important, if not the most important, chip manufacturing firms in the world.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that since June the company’s stock had “lost more value than any other in Asia” as investors braced “for prolonged weakness in the chip sector.” Its shares have fallen 10 percent since their high in mid-June wiping $72 billion from TSMC’s market capitalisation.

The company’s shares were lifted in the first half of the year by the profit prospects resulting from artificial intelligence (AI). But since then, concerns have grown over the state of the smartphone and personal computer business as well as the slowing of high-end AI chip orders.

The trends cited in the World Bank report on East Asia are underscored by broader tendencies in the global economy.

According to the World Trade Monitor, world trade volumes in July fell at their fastest annual rare for three years—an indication of the general slowdown in the global economy due to higher interest rates.

Trade volumes were down by 3.2 percent for the month, following a 2.4 reduction in June.

There was a 1.5 percent fall in China, the world’s largest exporter, eurozone exports fell by 2.5 percent and the US saw a 0.6 percent reduction. Trade volumes are expected to fall even further in coming months.

“With the lagged impact of high interest rates likely to weigh heavily on demand for certain goods, it could be several months before global trade reaches its trough,” Ariane Curtis, global economist at Capital Economics told the FT.

On top of the effects of a general slowdown in the world economy, the rise of protectionism, on the increase since around 2018 but accelerating with the US-NATO war against Russia and the US economic war against China, is also hitting trade.

According to the latest report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development: “Geo-economic fragmentation and a shift to more inward-looking trade policies would curtail the gains from global trade and hit living standards, especially in the poorest countries and households.”

Tens of thousands of educators threaten strikes across the US

Emma Arceneaux

Tens of thousands of teachers and school workers in districts from coast-to-coast are demanding strike action over the deepening assault on public education as funds are drained from social programs to pay for war.

Districts everywhere are reeling amid the drying up of $190 billion in federal COVID-related funding, which expires next year. These cuts, combined with declining enrollment across districts, result in abruptly declining budgets, as state aid to districts is pegged to student numbers.

The growth of social inequality has dramatically impacted K-12 enrollment. On the one hand, greater homelessness, food insecurity and poverty mean more school absences and the phenomenon of “disappearing” students. On the other hand, charter and private schools were able to exploit the crisis in public schools caused by the ruling elite’s refusal to enact the necessary measures to stop the pandemic, and these institutions have continued to increase their numbers among the upper-middle-class.

The broadside against public education will only deepen as the US commits untold billions to the US-NATO war in Ukraine. In the ongoing federal budget crisis, the Republicans are calling for the virtual end of Title I funding, proposing to slash up to 80 percent of the program which aids more than half of all schoolchildren in the US. Title I, established in 1965 under the “War on Poverty,” provides services to 25 million students and assistance to 70 percent of US school districts–an indication of the widespread poverty in the US.

Las Vegas teachers at September 6, 2023 rally. [Photo: Clark County Education Association]

The Democrats have already put forward their own plan to cut federal education funding and will undoubtedly agree to even further cuts in the interests of securing a deal for more money for war. 

In districts controlled by both Democrats and Republicans, teachers and school workers are already working under terrible pressures–wages falling further and further behind inflation, staff shortages requiring doubling-up on work of all kinds, poorly ventilated buildings conducive to the spread of COVID, RSV and other diseases, and all the effects of growing poverty. 

The mass disenrollment of Medicaid recipients following Biden’s ending of the COVID public health emergency puts as many as 7.3 million children at risk of losing health insurance, threatening both their well-being and school-based health programs.

These attacks are leading directly to an explosion of struggles among educators.

Across California, 10,000 academic workers within the California State University system, including Teaching Assistants, Student Assistants and Graduate Assistants, are entering into struggle following the expiration of their contract on September 30. Student workers–many of whom make minimum wage and depend upon local food pantries–are demanding an end to poverty wages, paid sick leave, and better working conditions. Ahead of the deadline, students held rallies across multiple campuses, while officials with the United Auto Workers are keeping them in the dark about contract demands and refusing to mobilize a joint struggle by the academic workers with the autoworkers who are currently on strike.

In Las Vegas, Nevada, the fifth largest school district in the US, 18,000 teachers in the Clark County School District (CCSD) are working under an expired contract amid conditions of significant staff shortages, lack of resources, and inadequate pay. Despite teacher strikes being illegal in Nevada and threats from the district, teachers have courageously engaged in numerous wildcat sickouts and protests to fight for better conditions. Earlier this month, the district filed a punitive injunction, upheld by the courts, against the union in an effort to stop the work stoppages.

Students and parents in Las Vegas have demonstrated strong support for teachers, with students holding multiple walkouts during school. Speaking with WSWS reporters, one student said, “Teachers deserve so much more. And I think CCSD and a lot of other school districts are going to be the downfall of our education system.” She added, “I’ve already had eight substitute teachers this year. In fact, my reading teacher just quit and now we have a substitute. So I guess this sub is now a first year teacher.”

In New York City, the largest school district in the US with over 1.1 million students, school bus drivers will be voting in the coming weeks on a sellout contract worked out between the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 officials, the bus operators and Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who has announced sweeping budget cuts across all city agencies, including $2.1 billion from the Department of Education. Bus drivers, who the union kept on the job for months despite a 97 percent strike vote back in June, have launched an independent rank-and-file committee to take control, prevent a sellout of their struggle, and to link their fight with that of New York City teachers, parents and the broader working class.

In Fresno, California, the state’s third largest district with over 72,000 students; 4,000 teachers, nurses, social workers and other professionals are set to vote on October 18 to authorize a strike. They have been working under an expired contract since June. Teachers are demanding significant pay increases, class size caps and a reinstatement of lifetime health benefits, which were ended in 2005. The district has preemptively announced plans to hire subs at $500 per day as scabs in the event of a strike.

In San Francisco, a district with over 55,000 students; 6,500 teachers, counselors, nurses and other school employees are voting on October 11 to authorize a strike. Primary demands are higher pay, smaller class sizes and more support for special education. The district faces a huge teacher and staff shortage, with an estimated 25 percent of vacant positions unfilled. Custodial workers, cafeteria workers and other school staff, who have not seen a single raise during the entire pandemic since their last contract expired in 2020, are also voting to authorize a strike on October 3.

The two largest school districts in Oregon also face potential teacher strikes. In Portland, with 49,000 students, 4,500 teachers could strike beginning October 23 after a 30-day “cooling off period.” Teachers are demanding COLA raises, reduced class sizes and teacher planning time. Despite sitting atop a $100 million reserve fund, the district’s “last, best” offer included a mere 4 percent per year raise and no increased planning time. On social media, parents and community members were outraged at the conditions inside schools, including large class sizes, high temperatures and mold infested ceilings. One parent stated, “I fully support the teacher’s right to strike. Everyone at my kid’s school is amazing and they deserve better.”

South of Portland, in the Salem-Keizer district, 2,300 teachers could be on strike in coming months.

In current contract negotiations, the administration has remained intransigent in the face of demands for improved working conditions and increased staff. The district is demanding that teachers and students make sacrifices to overcome a $50 million budget shortfall. “Every dollar we add to our budget is a dollar we will need to cut over the coming months,” stated Superintendent Andrea Castañeda.

In San Antonio, Texas, with 47,000 students; parents and community members flooded a recent school board meeting to condemn the district’s proposal to close 19 elementary schools, nearly 20 percent of the district’s schools, citing declining enrollment and a $300 million budget deficit in the near future.

In smaller districts across the US, teachers, school workers and bus drivers are fighting against the same issues. In September alone, there were school bus driver strikes in Louisiana, Connecticut and Ohio. Teachers in North Andover, Massachusetts, many of whom work two or three jobs to survive, began a work-to-rule job action last week—suspending any voluntary duties not included in their contract—following the district’s refusal to meet the union’s modest proposal for a 13.5 percent raise over three years.

The struggles in the US are part of an international movement with educators everywhere confronting the same issues: a soaring cost of living, draconian cuts to education, crumbling school infrastructure, and the ongoing spread of COVID in schools. From Sri Lanka, to Germany and other countries across Europe, to ongoing teacher struggles across Latin America, educators and students are told there is no money for education while billions are funneled to war, bank bailouts and support for the rich.

All the issues that brought hundreds of thousands of American teachers into mass struggle in the strike wave of 2018-2019 remain unresolved and have only increased over the last three and half years.

The living standards of teachers has fallen. A recent report found that the “teacher pay penalty”—the disparity between teacher pay and that of similarly educated professionals—hit a record 26.4 percent in 2022. Average teacher pay, adjusted for inflation, dropped by $128 per week between 2021 and 2022.

At the same time, the bipartisan assault against public education has only deepened, from the vast expansion of privatization schemes, to ongoing bipartisan budget cuts, to growing far-right censorship in schools. All of these attacks are creating the conditions for an explosive growth of struggles by teachers, parents and students to defend public education.

In 2018-2019, the strike wave began independently of and in defiance of the trade union apparatus, which was able to temporarily suppress this militant rebellion, channel teachers behind the Democratic Party, and force through sellout contracts that ensured a further decline in teachers’ living standards and working conditions.

But the ability of the union bureaucracies to suppress these struggles is breaking down, as shown by the wildcat sickouts of Las Vegas teachers. Since 2019, educators have gone through enormous experiences, from being forced by the union apparatus to return to COVID-infested classrooms to facing the isolation and sabotage of one strike after another.

Educators have powerful allies throughout the entire working class facing the same untenable conditions. These include healthcare, logistics and auto workers, who are battling not only the corporations and the politicians but also the trade union bureaucracies.

US political crisis deepens with removal of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker

Jacob Crosse & Barry Grey

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republican-California, leaves the House floor after being ousted as speaker of the house at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, October 3, 2023. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

For the first time in US history, the speaker of the House has been removed from office by a vote of House members, leaving the House paralyzed until a new leader can be elected.

Bitter divisions within the Republican conference torpedoed California Republican Kevin McCarthy’s speakership after 269 days, the third shortest term in US history. The central priority of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, is to ensure the uninterrupted and expanded flow of money and arms to Washington’s puppet regime in Kiev so as to escalate the war against Russia over Ukraine.

McCarthy’s ouster comes less than nine months after he assumed the position following 15 rounds of voting, and exactly 1,000 days after the attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s far-right mob, aimed at overthrowing the election of President Joe Biden. Many of the same far-right members of the Republican caucus who opposed McCarthy’s elevation to speaker in January were behind the effort to force him out this week, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.

The final vote to eject McCarthy was 216-210, with eight Republicans and 208 Democrats supporting the “motion to vacate” the office of House speaker.

McCarthy himself is no “moderate.” A supporter of Trump and promoter of the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by the Democrats, he advocates an intensification of the crackdown against migrants and massive cuts in social programs. He has made one concession after another to the demands of the most far-right and fascistic elements in the Republican Party, including his agreement to allow any single House member to force a vote to remove him by lodging a motion to vacate his office.

He supports anti-abortion legislation and the “herd immunity” policies that have led to countless deaths and millions of cases of long COVID in the ongoing pandemic.

More recently, he initiated an impeachment inquiry against President Biden based on allegations of corruption in relation to the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

His conflict with the group of House members who organized his removal has increasingly centered on his support for the war in Ukraine, under conditions where a majority of Republican House members, backed by Trump, have voted against additional US funding for the Ukraine military.

The speaker of the House is an enormously important position in the US government. The speaker decides which legislation comes to the floor for debate and makes appointments to key committees. One of the few national officials listed in the US Constitution, the speaker is second in the line of succession to the president, following the vice president.

The last time a motion to vacate was filed was in 1910. Tuesday’s vote was the first time it succeeded. Previous Republican speakers in the last decade, including Paul Ryan and John Boehner, opted to resign or retire under the threat of motion to vacate from far-right members of their conference.

The motion to vacate was filed by Gaetz, a proxy for former President Trump, after McCarthy enabled Republicans and Democrats to pass a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) on Saturday to avert a government shutdown and fund the federal government through November 17.

Following the vote to remove McCarthy, Gaetz confirmed in an interview that he had “spoken to President Trump over the last several days.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican-Florida leaves a meeting on the morning after he filed a motion to strip Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Republican-California from his leadership role, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, October 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein]

While the media has presented the crisis as a conflict of personalities, Tuesday’s vote is reflection of deep divisions within the ruling class itself. Gaetz and roughly a dozen other far-right Republicans opposed the CR because it lacked social spending cuts and further appropriations for the border police.

In an interview on Newsmax following the vote, Gaetz, speaking for a faction of finance capital, rejected accusations that without a speaker the government would be thrown into “chaos” and reiterated that McCarthy was stripped of the speaker’s gavel because of his refusal to enact sufficiently draconian spending cuts.

“Chaos is the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Chaos is the greatest nation in the world sitting on top of $33 trillion debt. Chaos is accepting Biden budgets that will lead to $2 trillion annual deficits...forever,” said Gaetz.

Following his ouster, McCarthy told a closed-door meeting of House Republicans that he would not seek reelection as speaker. At a subsequent Tuesday evening news conference he said, “I will not run for speaker again... I’ll have the conference pick somebody else.”

Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is currently serving as the interim speaker. McHenry said the House would not meet again until next Tuesday, with the aim of holding a vote for the new speaker on Wednesday, October 11. Several names have been floated by Republican representatives as possible candidates to replace McCarthy, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (Louisiana), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minnesota), Kevin Hern (Oklahoma) and even Donald Trump.

While it is unclear who, if anyone, will be the speaker in the immediate future, what is clear is that Tuesday’s vote marks an inflection point in the ongoing US political crisis, which has not subsided more than two-and-a-half years after Trump’s failed coup. The ousting of McCarthy sets the stage for even more explosive political convulsions and a further shift to the right by the entire political establishment.

At the brief meeting of the House Republican conference following the vote to remove McCarthy, the deposed speaker reported that Democratic House leaders had approached him on a possible deal to keep him in office. McCarthy reportedly claimed that he refused to discuss any such deal.

However, the present chaos does not foreclose the possibility of the Biden White House and Democratic leaders striking such a deal as part of the election of a new speaker, based on an agreement to continue funding the US war against Russia in Ukraine.

The unprecedented removal of the House speaker follows the debacle of the “spring offensive” in Ukraine and comes in the midst of a massive upsurge of working class struggles in the US and internationally, including among US autoworkers, actors and healthcare workers.

As Tuesdays’ vote was being held, Trump was in New York City for the second day of his civil trial, during which he was ordered to stop issuing violent threats against the judge and the judge’s clerk. President Biden, obviously in failing health as he approaches his 81st birthday, is cratering in the polls while facing an impeachment inquiry. His son, Hunter, pleaded “not guilty” to three federal firearms charges on Tuesday.

As the intersecting political, economic and social crises mount, the central concern of the Democratic Party is to maintain a working relationship with its “Republican colleagues” in order to prosecute the war against Russia in Ukraine, prepare for military conflict with China, and suppress working class resistance to continued attacks on wages and jobs, social cuts and ever increasing levels of social inequality.

The main concern of the bulk of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party is that the political conflict within the House will stall a massive infusion of funds for the war in Ukraine. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the existing funding was only enough to “meet Ukraine’s urgent battlefield needs for a bit, for a bit longer.”

Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo González still in “Polish Guantanamo” 18 months after arrest

Alice Summers

Pablo González [Photo: #FreePabloGonzález]

A Polish court has extended for a further three months the imprisonment of Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo González, arrested in February 2022 on unsubstantiated charges of spying for Russia. This is the sixth time his “provisional detention” had been extended. González’s lawyers will be able to appeal the decision, although the court is expected to uphold it. 

The journalist has now been left to languish in a Polish jail for more than a year and a half by the far-right Polish government, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government and all the NATO powers. He has not been found guilty of any crime, or ever faced a criminal trial. No date has even been set for him to face the charges in court.

His continuing detention exposes the NATO powers’ claims to be defending “human rights” against Russia in Ukraine and China in the Pacific. 

González was arrested only days after the NATO-provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he covered the influx of Ukrainian refugees into the Polish border town of Rzeszow. If convicted, González could face up to 10 years in prison.

His conditions resemble those “enemy combatants” detained by Washington at the notorious Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. He spends 23 hours per day in isolation in a five-metre cell, with one hour of walking across a 10-metre patio. Every time he is taken out of the cell, he is searched and handcuffed. Upon entering, he is frisked again. Since his detention, he has only been able to receive a visit from his wife twice, the last time in November. Both visits took place in the presence of a jailer and an agent of the Polish intelligence services.

The arrest of a reporter on baseless spying allegations is an assault of freedom of the press, aiming to intimidate journalists and silence reporting on the Russia-NATO war in Ukraine. 

It has far-reaching implications for the ability of journalists to cover and criticise the actions of the imperialist powers, as NATO mounts a concerted campaign to obscure the origins of the war in Ukraine, instead presenting it one-sidedly as a Russian attack on defenceless Ukraine.

No substantive proof has been presented that González passed information to Russian secret services, or that he ever had any intention of doing so. Neither has any information been given to the journalist, his family or his lawyers about what the specific charges against him are, or what evidence the charges are based on. 

Polish authorities still refuse to provide evidence that the reporter is a Russian spy. The only “proof” cited on his arrest was that González, who has dual nationality, was in possession of two passports bearing different names, one Russian and one Spanish—implying that one was a false identity used for espionage. 

In reality, this proves nothing. González’s Russian passport names him as Pavel Rubtsov, using his father’s surname, while his Spanish document identifies him as Pablo González Yagüe, using his mother’s two surnames. Pablo is merely the Hispanicised version of the Russian name Pavel. 

His work for newspapers including the Basque Gara, which Madrid has alleged is funded by the Russian state, his ability to speak Russian, and his credit card from Caja Laboral (“Workers Fund”), a Basque credit union, were also cited as evidence of alleged “pro-Russian” views.

In May, just over a year after González’s arrest, the Russian opposition publication Proekt (formerly known as Agentsvo) reported that the Polish authorities had found documents supposedly proving that the journalist was a Russian intelligence agent. These documents allegedly consisted of several reports on González’s mobile devices. However, little information has been given about what these reports contained, to whom they were addressed, or if they were ever sent to anyone.

Proekt claimed that these “reports” included information on Zhanna Nemtsova, daughter of Boris Nemtsov, a Russian opposition politician assassinated in Moscow in 2015, and on others linked to the foundation Nemtsova set up in her father’s memory. González’s lawyers have so far been prevented from reviewing any of the documentation allegedly found on their client’s phone and computer.

None of these allegations offer any further proof that González was engaged in espionage for Russia. Even if they are true, they merely show that the reporter had collected information on one or several Russian citizens, which does not constitute criminal activity and is not beyond the remit of his role as a journalist reporting on Eastern Europe and Russia.

The Polish government could not act with such impunity were it not for the support of Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government, NATO and the EU. In August 2021, in a clear sign that González’s arrest was part of a broader NATO campaign, the head of British secret services MI6, Richard Moore, defended the arrest of the journalist at the Aspen Security Forum in the United States. Moore alleged González “was trying to enter Ukraine to be part of Russian efforts at destabilization.”

The PSOE-Podemos government, meanwhile, has been central to González’s arbitrary detention since the beginning. The day before he was arrested by Polish police, the Spanish National Intelligence Centre (CNI) visited the homes of his family members and asked them about his “pro-Russian” views.

Podemos, has made a few empty protestations, without ever demanding González’s immediate release. This is the character of the letter sent to Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Zobro by 14 social-democratic, Green, and pseudo-left European Members of Parliament.

Their letter denounces the conditions in which the journalist has been detained in Poland for over a year and a half and demand that the Polish Government hand over González to Spain, so he “may return to Spain under provisional freedom, near his family and with guarantees of respect for his rights as a citizen of the European Union and the support of the Spanish Government to make this possible.”

Signatories of the letter include social-democratic MEP Nacho Sánchez Amor and members of the Sumar electoral front containing Podemos, such as María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop, Sira Rego, Manu Pineda and Idoia Villanueva. These are members of parties that have ruled Spain over the past four years, imposing austerity at home and supporting NATO’s war in Ukraine. Their letter is a toothless request aimed at covering for their war policy.

Sumar Movement is led by Spain’s acting deputy prime minister and labour minister, Yolanda Díaz. Díaz and Sumar have refused to make any statements on González. In reality, all the ministers, senior officials and deputies of Podemos and Sumar have supported the US-NATO war.