Citigroup announces plans for 20,000 layoffs as corporate attack on jobs continues into 2024

Tom Hall

A Citibank office is seen in New York on Jan. 13, 2021. [AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

American banking giant Citigroup announced plans on Friday to lay off 20,000 people across its global workforce. These are by far the largest layoffs announced so far in 2024, which has already seen substantial job cuts, as corporations use automation to eliminate whole sections of the workforce.

Another 40,000 workers will be removed from Citigroup’s payroll under its planned spinoff of Mexican bank Banamex, that country’s second-largest. Overall, Citigroup’s workforce will decline from 240,000 to 180,000 due to the cuts, which are expected to largely take place over the next two years.

The job cut announcement at Citigroup follows the announcement earlier in the week of hundreds of job cuts at Google and Amazon. Google also plans to restructure its ad services unit, which currently employs 30,000 people, as it moves towards implementing artificial technology. Videogame engine maker Unity has also announced 1,800 layoffs, about one-quarter of its workforce, and the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union has announced a new contract allowing for AI voice acting in the video games industry, threatening to eliminate significant amounts of voice work.

Less publicized, but no less significant, are major cuts underway among industrial workers. More than 3,000 auto layoffs were announced at the end of last year, as the industry continued to shift towards electric vehicles, which require far less labor than traditional gas vehicles. Hundreds of layoffs have been announced at UPS, as the logistics company moves rapidly to increase the use of automation in its warehouses. A massive restructuring at the United States Postal Service is underway, which aims to close thousands of local offices and eliminate at least 50,000 jobs.

Other recent job cuts, according to a list compiled by Business Insider, include:

• A $2 billion cost-cutting plan at Nike, which is “increasing automation and use of technology” in its business. The total number of jobs impacted has not been released, but Nike “does expect to book somewhere between $400 million and $450 million in pre-tax charges, largely in its fiscal third quarter and largely related to severance costs,” BI writes;

• More cuts at computer chip maker Intel, which carried out five rounds of layoffs in 2023, including 235 jobs on December 31;

• A 3 percent staff cut at investment bank Blackrock, equal to about 600 people. In a memo explaining the cuts, Blackrock executives wrote that “new technologies,” likely a reference to AI, would help the company “achieve significant efficiencies in how we operate,” BI reported.

A major factor in job cuts over the course of the year is the use of automation by companies to ratchet up the exploitation of their workforce. According to a survey by ResumerBuilder.com, nearly 40 percent of business leaders predict they will cut jobs this year, with similar numbers citing AI as a major reason.

The layoffs in the financial sector, while apparently not directly related to AI, come in spite of continuing record profits in the industry even amid growing signs of an economic crisis. Citigroup’s rivals in the rest of the six largest banks in the United States laid off 20,000 workers over the course of last year. Only JPMorgan Chase did not report major job cuts.

Summing up the latest quarterly financial results of the major banks, the New York Times headlined its article: “Biggest US Banks Earn Billions, Even After Insurance Bill.” This was a reference to payments levied at the end of the year for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which was heavily depleted in the aftermath of the series of bank failures last year. “Profits for the fourth quarter of 2023 reported on Friday by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo exceeded analysts’ expectations,” the newspaper wrote.

Only Citigroup reported a major loss last quarter, the Times reported, of $1.8 billion, compared to a $2.5 billion profit the same time last year. Even still, the bank made $9.2 billion in profits over the course of 2023, on total revenues of $78 billion.

Citigroup is the third-largest American bank by assets and, for now, the second-largest by total workforce, but by far the weakest of the six largest banks financially. The 20,000 job cuts are part of a massive restructuring program, ironically code-named “Project Bora Bora” after the luxury beach resort.

The money saved from the cuts will go directly into shareholders’ pockets. “A silver lining of the bank’s pivot is it will allow the firm to resume a ‘modest’ level of share buybacks this quarter,” CNBC reports. The total value of the buybacks was reported elsewhere at around $500 million.

In spite of massive overall profits in the financial sector, uncertainty over central bank policies and extreme instability in the world and US political situations could provide triggers for a major financial crisis. Inevitably, the ruling class will try to offload the cost of this crisis onto the working class, through a combination of job and benefit cuts, attacks on democratic rights and the escalation of wars across Europe and Asia.

Beginning in early 2022, the US Federal Reserve launched a policy of increasing interest rates, which had been kept at near-zero since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Rates ultimately reached a high of around 5 percent. The stated goal of this policy was to rein in minor increases in workers’ wages by increasing unemployment.

This has had its intended effect, with over 700,000 job cuts last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, almost double the level in 2022 and the highest since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

But while this policy was enacted to defend the profits of US and world capitalism, sustaining these somewhat higher interest rates for any significant length of time holds severe dangers for finance capital, which has become totally dependent on virtually free money since the 2008 crash.

This was already demonstrated by the spate of bank failures in early 2023, including that of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, the second and first-largest bank failures in American history. The danger of a full-scale financial crisis was indicated by the massive scale of the intervention by the government. This included the unprecedented move to guarantee deposits worth more than $250,000, the threshold for coverage under the FDIC.

For now, the Federal Reserve intends to carry out multiple rate cuts over the course of this year. But a higher-than-expected inflation report in December has already placed a question mark over this policy.

Among the major banks, Citigroup is particularly vulnerable to an economic downturn. The restructuring program is aimed at increasing the bank’s returns to 11 percent over the next several years, CNBC reports, “but revenue growth may be hard to achieve as the US economy slows, leaving expense cuts the biggest lever left to pull.”

“Not one investor I’ve spoken to thinks they’ll get to that return target in ‘25 or ‘26,” one analyst told CNBC. “If they can’t generate returns above their cost of capital, which is typically around 10 percent, they have no right to stay in business.”

The uncertainty in the financial situation was indicated in a statement by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released alongside the bank’s quarterly earnings report. While claiming the US economy “continues to be resilient,” Dimon immediately contradicted himself by adding that the economy “is being fueled by large amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus.” He added that “Quantitative tightening,” a reference to the higher interest rates and similar policies by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, “is draining over $900 billion of liquidity from the system annually.”

Dimon added, “And the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have the potential to disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships.”

This is putting it mildly. US imperialism is barreling recklessly into World War III, attempting to use its military advantage to offset the historic economic decline of American capitalism.

The United States’ decision to conduct strikes against targets in Yemen threatens to expand the Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza into a region-wide war involving Iran. The US government has also committed itself to a defeat of Russia in Ukraine, which, under the worsening military situation for the Ukrainian military, can only be achieved by the involvement of US and NATO troops. Finally, plans are well advanced for a massive war against mainland China, centered on Taiwan, which would involve tens of thousands of US sailors and troops.

Beijing Government Scholarships 2024

Application Deadline: All application materials should be handed to the relevant university or college before 29th February 2024.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International  and developing countries students

To be taken in (country): Applicants may choose institutions and specialties from the Chinese institutions of higher education in the Beijing region.

Accepted Subject Areas: Courses offered at Chinese higher institutions in Beijing

About Scholarship: The Beijing Government Scholarship (BGS) was established by Beijing Municipal Government, aiming to provide tuition fees fully or partially to the international students studying or applying for studying in Beijing. Its administrative office is the International Cooperation and Exchange Office of Beijing Municipal Commission of Educations, which is in charge of project establishment, review, acceptance and daily management of the Beijing Government Scholarship Program. The international students applying for the Beijing Government Scholarships shall normally submit relevant materials to the universities in Beijing that he/she hope to apply by the end of February every year.

Eligibility

1) Applicants must be non-Chinese nationals in good health.

2) Educational background and age limit

• Applicants for undergraduate studies in Beijing must have completed senior high school with good grades and be under the age of 30. Applicants for Masters degree studies in Beijing must have Bachelor’s degree and be under the age of 35. Applicants for Doctoral degree studies in Beijing must have Master’s degree and be under the age of 40.
• Applicants for advanced studies must have an undergraduate degree or be in the second year of a university course and be under the age of 50. Applicants for long term language study must have a high school diploma and be under the age of 60.
• Visiting scholar candidates in Beijing must have a Masters or higher degree or hold academic titles of associate professor or higher, and be under the age of 50.

3) Requirement for the applicant’s language proficiency is based on the requirement of the academic programs and determined by the individual higher learning institution.

4) An applicant receives financial support from other Chinese government scholarship programs or organizations/agencies would not be eligible for the Beijing Municipal Government Scholarship for International Students

Number of Scholarships: several

Scholarship Benefit

The Beijing Municipal Government Scholarship for International Students only covers tuition fees. According to the applicants’ status, the allowance for scholarship students can be classified into 5 types:

• 40,000 RMB/year for a Doctoral degree
• 30,000 RMB/year for a Masters degree
• 20,000 RMB/year/ for a Bachelor degree
• 10,000 RMB/year for a Senior training or long term language program
• 5,000 RMB/year for Exchange students or students with outstanding contributions to international education in Beijing.

Duration of Scholarships

• Applicants for Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Chinese universities and colleges in Beijing region: duration of scholarship should be under 4 years.
• Applicants for Chinese language training or relevant advanced studies in Chinese universities and colleges in the Beijing region: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.
• Scholars and international students for specialized training in Chinese universities and colleges in Beijing region: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.
• Exchange students or students with outstanding contributions to international education in Beijing: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.

How to apply: For specific application means, you can consult the government departments and relevant institutions responsible for dispatching students abroad in your country, Chinese embassies or consulates; or directly apply to the universities qualified to issue such scholarship in Beijing.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: Beijing Municipal Government – International Cooperation and Exchange Office of Beijing Municipal Commission of Educations

Netanyahu and IDF downplay mounting Israeli deaths and severe injuries in Gaza

Jean Shaoul

The price paid by Israelis for the Netanyahu government’s genocidal assault on Gaza is being concealed to shore up public support for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

The mounting toll of deaths and severe injuries in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) threatens public confidence in the government’s declared military objectives of eradicating Hamas, securing the return of the remaining 140 hostages and forever ending any security threat to Israel.

Israeli soldiers preparing for the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on October 29, 2023 [Photo by IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Public confidence in the government is already rock bottom. These is widespread anger over the exposure of claims that it received no warnings of Hamas’s October 7 attack, the fact that military forces were stood down to facilitate this and provide a justification for moving against the Palestinians, and that the IDF’s helicopter and tank assault on Hamas fighters was responsible for killing hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

As of last Monday, at least 185 Israeli soldiers had been killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27, including nine reservists, combat engineers, killed when a tank stationed nearby fired shells at a building as the soldiers were assembling explosives to demolish a tunnel. This is already nearly three times the 67 soldiers killed in the month-long assault on Gaza in 2014, but there is a growing belief that IDF deaths have been underreported, given the government’s tight censorship of information related to military casualties, with every press release regarding wounded soldiers requiring approval.

On November 18, when the military claimed that a total of 60 soldiers had died in Gaza, David Oren Baruch, the director of Israel’s military cemetery on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, said that 50 Israeli soldiers had been buried there in the previous 48 hours, “We are now going through a period every hour there is a funeral, every hour and a half a funeral.”

Adding to suspicions of underreporting, the IDF had initially, unlike in previous wars, refused to disclose the number of wounded soldiers. Only in December, when Haaretz planned to publish its report on the number of soldier casualties based on hospital sources, did this change. Haaretz reported “a considerable and unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals,” with hospital data showing the number of wounded soldiers was “twice as high as the army’s numbers.”

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that “the cumulative numbers since October 7 are astronomical: More than 2,000 soldiers, policemen and other members of the security forces have been officially recognized as disabled.”

Limor Luria, head of the rehabilitation department at the Ministry of Defense, said, “We have never been through anything even similar to this. More than 58 percent of the wounded who are taken in by us have severe injuries of arms and legs, including those that require amputations. About 12 percent are internal injuries—spleen, kidney, tearing of internal organs. There are also head and eye injuries.”

On Monday, the IDF released data showing that nearly 13,000 soldiers have required some level of medical care since the start of the war, with 2,335 transferred for treatment in hospitals, including 155 soldiers who suffered eye injuries and 298 who suffered damage to their hearing. The data revealed that about 9,000 soldiers have received psychiatric treatment since the start of the war, with nearly one quarter unable to return to combat, and 275 soldiers are receiving treatment at a rehabilitation centre for significant mental health complications.

The daily losses at the front take place amid mounting economic and social dislocation within Israel itself.

The mass call-up of reservists, amounting to nearly 10 percent of the workforce, has impacted Israel’s high-tech industries, public services and small, family-run businesses, while the displacements and knock-on effects of the war have idled up to 20 percent of the workforce.

The October 7 attack led to mass evacuations from Israel’s southern towns and villages, while the fighting in the north has displaced tens of thousands more, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah has forced Israel to move all civilians from the border area. As a result, some 175,000 people are now living in hotels and temporary accommodation. Schools were closed for weeks, leaving parents scrambling for childcare, while the opening of the new academic year at universities was postponed to January 1.

Israel’s gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, shut down early in the war, are only now beginning to operate.

Tourism has all but collapsed, with the Old City in Jerusalem bereft of foreigners and Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem cancelled. Construction, which relies on Palestinians in the West Bank, has ground to a near-halt after Israel suspended the work permits of more than 100,000 Palestinians after October 7.

A poll by the charity group Latet found that 45 percent of Israelis admit they are worried the war will bring economic hardship. According to the Bank of Israel, there has been a 20 percent rise in late mortgage payments since the war began.

Israel’s own Palestinian citizens have been particularly badly affected: they have seen a 10-percentage point rise in unemployment from 5 percent to 15 percent.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the cost of Israel’s war on Gaza is running at $272 million a day and will cost at least $60 billion, more than 10 percent of the country’s GDP, even before a wider war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Iran and Syria is factored in. It said, “After tabulating every aspect of the war thus far, the price tag stands at around $60 billion. This includes the war budget itself as well as the various forms of financial aid for every civilian that saw his income dwindle because of the conflict.”

The newspaper added, “State budget is looking at a $30 billion deficit as is, which will require both budget cuts and tax hikes to the tune of over $18 billion, which will be felt keenly in terms of quality of life and reduced services for the Israeli public at large.”

This takes place as tax revenues have plummeted and Israel’s credit ratings are set to fall. The Bank of Israel has forecast lower rates of growth, falling from 3 percent in 2023 to 1 percent in 2024, with some economists predicting contraction.

The IDF’s announcement that it is to scale back its ground and air campaign in Gaza to “a more targeted phase” that will require fewer ground troops, and will be carried out by brigades of the regular army, is in part a response to this mounting crisis. Reservists serving near the border with Lebanon will also be discharged and replaced by regular units.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the return of some of the reservists “to their families and their jobs,” at least temporarily, “will allow significant relief for the economy.” With reservists notified they must serve at least another month later in the year, this is already the largest burden since the 1982 Lebanon War even as Netanyahu warns that the offensive “isn’t close to finished.” On Saturday, he said, “The war will last for many more months.”

Winter COVID and flu wave hits UK’s National Health Service

Ioan Petrescu

Britain is suffering another wave of COVID-19, fueled by the recently identified JN.1 variant, as well as the winter season. Case numbers and hospitalisations are rising rapidly and on track to match those from the Omicron outbreak of early 2022, if not surpass them.

According to the latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) data, approximately 2.5 million people were infected as of December 13, 4.3 percent of the British population—more than double the level at the start of the month. The record was set in April 2022, when 7.6 percent of the population was infected.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [AP Photo/Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Since the mid-December data was published, numbers are expected to have increased considerably due to Christmas socialising, meaning the 2022 highs may have been exceeded.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures show that the hospitalisation rate was 5.21 per 100,000 in week ending December 31, up from the 4.8 per 100,000 the previous week.

The JN.1 mutation of SARS-CoV-2 is a subvariant of BA.2.86 (named Pirola) and is by far the most infectious of all the variants circulating in the UK, and the world at the moment. It has evolved to be more infections while not losing the genes that made it adept at circumventing the immunity conferred by the existing vaccines.

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick University, told the i newspaper, “the rapid rise of infections with the JN.1 variant in the UK and across the world is yet another reminder that the pandemic is far from over. JN.1 is one of the most immune-evading variants to date and is likely to be the lineage from which new variants will evolve”.

Professor Peter Openshaw, a virus expert at Imperial College London told The Sun, “We're going to see quite a major surge in infections over the coming weeks—the wave could be bigger than anything we've seen before. To help stop the spread, those who haven't had the COVID booster should consider wearing face masks in public places, like on trains, when shopping and at large events.”

If the rate of patients developing Long COVID following infection remains the same (around one in 10), then hundreds of thousands will be left debilitated for months or even years following this winter surge.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and director of the clinical epidemiology center at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, who studies Long COVID, recently told Time magazine, “Reinfection remains consequential.”

He published a paper in Nature Medicine in 2022 which found that those infected twice by COVID suffered higher rates of short- and long-term health effects than those infected once.

Time summarised, “People who had multiple infections were three times more likely to be hospitalized for their infection up to six months later than those who only got COVID-19 once, and were also more likely to have problems with clotting, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney, and mental-health symptoms. The risks appeared to increase the more infections people experienced.”

“I wish we lived in a world where getting repeat infections doesn’t matter,” Al-Aly told the magazine, “but the reality is that’s not the case.”

The impact of COVID is compounded by the increased circulation of flu and other viruses. The admission rate for patients with flu stood at 6.8 per 100,000 people in the week to December 31, up from 5.1 the previous week and the sixth weekly rise in a row. This is currently below the record numbers seen last year, when the rate stood at 12.8 per 100,000 but is still a significant burden on the National Health Service (NHS).

Norovirus has seen a resurgence this winter, with 49 percent more cases reported in the two-week period ending on December 24 than the past five-year average for the same two-week period. Around 450 beds were occupied by norovirus patients in the second of those weeks, about two-thirds higher than the levels seen last winter.

UKHSA data also shows that more people were hospitalised with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the final week of the year compared to the same period in any other year since the pandemic began. There were 2.2 admissions per 100,000 in the week to December 31, a 10 percent increase over the previous year.

The surge is part of an international trend, with the United States and Europe seeing sharp increases in these cases of these viruses. Nearly half of all flu test came back positive in Spain in the last week of December, RSV has caused a rise in hospitalisations of children under one and hospitalisations for COVID are increasing among the elderly.

In Italy, two million people came down with flu, COVID and RSV in the final two weeks of the year, overfilling some hospitals.

Mary Ramsay, director of public health programmes at the UKHSA, warned in comments to the Financial Times that, in the UK, “The winter peak for flu is still to come and may coincide with high levels of COVID-19.”

With hospitals struggling even during “normal” times due to decades of underfunding and a chronic lack of staff, the present surge in illness and hospitalisations has left several trusts unable to cope with the influx of patients. The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire NHS Trust declared a “critical incident” in the first days of January after all A&E services were reportedly full and “under pressure.”

Portsmouth Hospitals University did the same, citing “a combination of delays across our system and an increase in demand for services.”

The Conservative government, agreed with by the Labour Party, refuses to take even the most elementary public health measures such as mandating masks in healthcare settings, as was the case from June 2020 until June 2022.

Some hospitals have taken matters into their own hands, with United Lincolnshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Barnsley Hospital and Chesterfield Royal Hospital among a rising number to reintroduce mask requirements. Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust already did so last October, as did Royal Stoke University Hospital, Stafford’s County Hospital and the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton.

The ruling class’s only concern is keeping profits flowing to the banks and corporations, unimpeded by any public health measures. To that end, the Sunak government is responding to increase in infections with a “nationwide marketing campaign” aimed at convincing parents to ensure their children go to school, even if they are sick. The government advice reads, “It is usually appropriate for parents and carers to send their children to school with mild respiratory illnesses.”

While this is cynically justified with phrases like, “There is wide agreement among health professionals and educational professionals that school attendance is vital to the life chances of children and young people”, the true motivation is to ensure workers are not preoccupied with childcare duties so they can get on with generating profits for the super-rich.

The Labour Party has jumped on board, with Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson urging parents on Sunday not to take children out of school in an interview with the Telegraph.

The evolution and rapid global spread of JN.1 is a product of the ruling class’s refusal to address the pandemic.

Google, Amazon start off new year with job cuts, as corporations plan to use AI to slash workforces

Tom Hall

Google and Amazon announced new rounds of layoffs Wednesday, continuing the jobs bloodbath last year that included tens of thousands at these tech giants and hundreds of thousands across the United States.

The Google logo displayed at their offices in Granary Square, in London [Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Google announced it was laying off hundreds of workers in its Augmented Reality division, which produces hardware such as the Google Pixel phone and Fitbit smart watches. It also announced layoffs in its personal assistant division. Amazon announced it would lay off 35 percent of the workforce at streaming platform Twitch, as well as “several hundred” employees at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.

Amazon, Google and other tech giants led the way in massive job cuts last year, which included over 262,000 in the tech sector alone, according to layoffs.fyi. According to the same website, 27 tech companies have laid off over 4,500 employees in the first 11 days of 2024.

Other major tech layoffs so far this year include around 1,800 at videogame engine Unity, 200 at short term rental provider Frontdesk and 170 at Discord. Language learning app Duolingo has also “offboarded” 10 percent of its translation contractor workforce, replacing them with AI-driven translation sofware.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also released unemployment figures for November 2023, which found that unemployment rose that month in 214 out of 389 metropolitan areas across the United States.

Over the course of 2024, major corporations are seeking to use the latest advances in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to eliminate vast sections of the workforce. This includes substantial sections of white collar workers previously considered middle class. A recent report by outplacement firm Randstad RiseSmart found 90 percent of employers are planning job cuts this year.

According to another survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com, 38 percent of business leaders believe that layoffs are likely at their companies this year, with 39 percent citing replacing workers with AI as a major reason. About half also cited anticipation of a new recession as another reason.

A Newsweek article reporting the survey last month carried the stark headline: “Massive Layoffs are Coming in 2024.”

In fact, these layoffs are already starting. Google is reportedly planning a massive restructuring of its advertising sales unit as it incorporates AI into this side of its business. The ad sales unit currently employs 30,000 people, or around one-sixth of the company’s total workforce.

SAG-AFTRA, the US actors’ union, announced a contract Tuesday with an AI firm, which will pave the way for the use of artificial intelligence in video game voice acting. Replacing actors and writers with AI was a major factor in the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes last year, before both unions crammed through sellout deals to end the strikes providing no protections against this. The new contract shows the union bureaucracy is openly assisting companies in replacing workers.

Emerging technologies are also being used to wipe out large sections of industrial jobs over the course of this year. In December, UPS announced hundreds of job cuts as it moved to eliminate daytime sort shifts in multiple facilities around the country. These jobs, currently performed by highly exploited part-timers who make up most of the company’s workforce, are being replaced by new automated facilities. One new facility, the Velocity Hub in Louisville, Kentucky, can handle 350,000 packages a day with a workforce of only 200 people working alongside 3,000 robots. The company hopes to triple its use of robotics over the course of the next year.

Thousands of layoffs were also announced at the end of last year in the auto industry, where the shift to electric vehicles, which companies say require 40 percent fewer workers to produce, will be used to wipe out tens of thousands of jobs. The layoffs in each of these industries came only weeks after the United Auto Workers rammed through what union officials claimed were “historic” contracts. In reality, the deals allow for unlimited use of automation and other technologies to wipe out jobs.

Tens of thousands of jobs are also on the chopping block at the US Postal Service, under the “Delivering for America” restructuring program. Local post offices will be closed down while new centralized hub facilities continue to come online over the course of this year.

The consolidation is having a knock-on effect across the whole logistics industry. FedEx is anticipating a 50 percent reduction in its air contracts with USPS this year, placing the jobs of hundreds of freight pilots at risk, according to a report in FreightWaves.

These cuts are not being “caused” by automation. This is technology that, in a rational society unburdened by the profit motive, could be used to rapidly improve the quality of life, including by reducing the length of the working day with no loss in pay. They could also be used to efficiently move supplies to anywhere in the world where they are needed most, including to fight the pandemic or provide life-saving food and medical supplies to the besieged population of Gaza.

But under capitalism, these technologies, which are the product of the collective intellectual and physical labor of mankind, are privately owned and monopolized by corporate and financial oligarchs solely concerned with boosting their profits. Therefore, technological advances are used not to improve the conditions of society, but to destroy jobs and increase the exploitation of the working class.

This year’s layoffs are a continuation of a sustained attack on jobs which unfolded over the last year. According to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US companies planned 721,677 jobs cuts during 2023, a 98 percent increase over 2022 and the highest since 2020, when many corporations laid off their workforces during the limited lockdowns enacted in the opening phase of the pandemic. At the same time, hiring plans declined by nearly half last year.

The largest number of cuts took place in the technology and retail industries, but over 21,000 jobs in media were also cut, a 467 percent increase.

This was the product of deliberate policy, not impersonal market forces. It was spearheaded by the decision of the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, with the stated aim to use unemployment to combat the modest increases in wages caused by labor shortages during the ongoing pandemic.

This is a class war policy, aimed at beating back the rising growth of working class opposition, registered in the major growth of strikes during the pandemic, while freeing up resources to pay for the trillions in corporate bailouts and world war from Ukraine to the Middle East and China.

A critical role in blocking the resistance of the working class is being played by the union bureaucracy. More than half a million US workers struck last year, part of a growing wave of class struggle around the world. But these struggles were betrayed by the pro-corporate bureaucracy, which forced through sellout agreements that paved the way for an accleration of job cutting. The result has been that wage increases for private industry unionized workers (3.8 percent) were even lower than nonunion workers (4.4 percent) betweeen September 2022 and September 2023.

The union bureaucracy is playing the role of enforcer of “labor peace” on the homefront as Washington gears up for war. This is the meaning of the claim by President Biden, who infamously moved to ban a railworkers strike last year, to be the most “pro-labor president in American history.” But the recent meeting between Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and would-be fascist dictator Donald Trump shows the union bureaucracy is not particular about with whom it maintains these corporatist relationships.

The combined impact of anti-worker monetary policy, sellouts by the union bureaucracy and direct repression by the government has had a significant effect on workers, who are suffering under huge levels of financial distress. The St. Louis Federal Reserve recently found that household debt delinquency rose significantly in 2023. This was particularly evident in credit card debt, where levels of debt distress reached their highest levels since the 2008-2009 recession.

More big economic shocks are likely over the course of 2024. At the close of last year, the Federal Reserve indicated that it was planning multiple interest rate cuts in 2024, in a sign that it considers its rate hikes to have led to sufficient levels of job losses, while also indicating concern that prolonged elevated interest rates could threaten the entire financial system, which is totally reliant on free money.

But higher than expected inflation figures in December—a report Thursday found the consumer price index increased by 0.3 percent last month—threatens the viability of that policy. The growing danger of a financial crisis will also interact explosively with the growth of war and the extreme political crisis in the United States.

Alcoa to shut down West Australian alumina refinery, destroying more than 1,000 jobs

Martin Scott

Alcoa announced on Tuesday that it plans to shut down its 60-year-old alumina refinery at Kwinana, south of Perth in Western Australia (WA).

Part of the Kwinana refinery [Photo by Calistemon / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The move will eliminate around 550 jobs by the third quarter of this year, when all alumina production is ceased. A further 200 workers will be cut over the following 12 months. In addition, Alcoa will no longer engage about 300 workers employed by third-party contractors.

Around 50 workers will be kept on after the 2025 shutdown, with the Kwinana facility’s port continuing to handle caustic soda imports and alumina exports for the company’s nearby Pinjarra refinery.

The Australian Workers Union (AWU), which covers most of the affected workers, responded with a token expression of “deep disappointment.” Presenting the closure as a foregone conclusion that could not be opposed, the AWU declared, “Our focus now shifts to supporting our members and keeping Alcoa honest.”

This message is intended to hose down opposition to the shutdown among workers at Kwinana, and, above all, to suppress any call for a unified struggle against the closure involving workers from Alcoa’s Pinjarra and Wagerup refineries.

The AWU plans to deliver the company an “orderly closure” of Kwinana, as it is currently trying to do at the Molycop steel plant in Newcastle, on the opposite side of the country, and as it has done countless times before, including with the complete destruction of the Australian car industry. To avoid the same fate, workers will have to take matters into their own hands.

As one of the largest factories in the Kwinana Industrial Area, the refinery’s closure will be major blow to workers in the area, which has been a major industrial centre for decades. It follows soon after the BP oil refinery shutdown announced in 2020 and completed in 2021, which destroyed at least 600 permanent jobs.

Alcoa of Australia, a joint venture between US-based multinational Alcoa and Melbourne-headquartered Alumina Limited, owns three alumina refineries in WA, of which Kwinana is the smallest and oldest. Feedstock for the plants comes from the company’s nearby Huntly and Willowdale bauxite mines. Alcoa also owns a 55 percent stake in the Portland aluminium smelter in south-west Victoria.

In 2022, the most recent year for which figures have been filed, Alcoa of Australia recorded a profit of $837 million and paid dividends to Alcoa and Alumina Ltd totaling $1.3 billion.

A spokesperson for Alcoa said on Wednesday that the Kwinana closure was based on “a variety of factors including its age, scale, operating costs and current bauxite grades,” as well as “current market conditions.”

While claiming he was “disappointed” by the announcement, WA Labor Premier Roger Cook defended the company’s action, saying: “the Kwinana plant is old technology, doesn’t have the scalability that they’re looking for, and as a result of that they’ve made a commercial decision.”

Cook noted that an Alcoa vice president had recently told him that “he appreciated the work the government was doing to make sure their operations remained viable.”

The most recent example of this collaboration came less than one month ago. In mid-December the WA Labor government granted Alcoa an exemption allowing it to continue mining operations in areas under investigation by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), despite the company’s dire environmental record.

Cook claimed in December that the exemption would “support local jobs while strengthening protections for our environment.” The fraudulent character of this claim is exposed by Cook’s comment this week that “the situation in Kwinana has been evolving for many years.”

In fact, restructuring at Kwinana has been underway since October, with $9 million allocated for severance costs in early 2024, and 90 job cuts flagged. A total shutdown was also raised with investors as a possibility by Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger, who declared: “Kwinana is a marginal asset at this point, we’ll consider options on the table, including curtailment and closure.”

The closure announcement also exposes the extent to which the AWU leadership has betrayed Alcoa workers.

In 2018, workers across the company’s WA operations struck for 53 days in opposition to management’s attempt to slash workers’ rights and real wages through a new enterprise agreement. The AWU eventually forced workers back on the job, falsely claiming the company was committed to protecting full-time jobs.

In fact, the so-called “job security” provisions in the agreement did nothing of the sort, merely preventing the company from making workers involuntarily redundant and replacing them with labour-hire or casual employees.

But this meagre protection would only apply “for 6 months after the nominal term of this Agreement or until the Union applies for a protected action ballot order whichever occurs sooner.”

This was, in effect, a guarantee from the AWU leadership that a repeat of the eight-week strike would not be allowed. The mere act of calling a vote on industrial action would have given the company grounds to sack full-time workers and replace them with cheaper, more precarious labour.

The six-month limit in the clause also meant that workers would ultimately have to accept whatever the company offered, or risk being made redundant.

With workers stripped of their most basic workplace rights, the stage was set for another betrayal in 2023, which even more starkly reveals the AWU’s collaboration in the Kwinana closure.

While the previous agreement was not set to expire until December 15, the union rushed through a deal in October, ensuring that the bargaining period would be well and truly over before the closure was announced. Under Australia’s draconian industrial relations laws, workers can only legally strike while an enterprise agreement is being negotiated.

In addition to smoothing the way for Alcoa to destroy 1,000 jobs, the deal delivers a further real wage cut for the workers that remain employed, with just a 10 percent nominal pay rise over three years. Following on from the 1.5 percent per annum continued in the 2018 agreement, under conditions where inflation reached as high as 8 percent, this represents a massive hit to wages.

AWU WA secretary Brad Gandy offered no criticism of Alcoa’s decision to shutter Kwinana, except to claim the company gave workers “false hope” in recent months. Instead, he hit out at the federal Labor government, declaring, “from a WA point of view, it sometimes feels like we’re just the ATM.”

This appeal to state parochialism is both an attempt to divert workers from a struggle against Alcoa and the other corporations that derive massive profits from WA’s natural resources, and a plea for even more taxpayer handouts and concessions to these big businesses.

The AWU has trod a similar path at Molycop and elsewhere, going hand-in-hand with management to demand guarantees of cheaper energy from the federal government, under the false pretext that this will “protect Australian jobs.”

In reality, the aim is to subordinate workers to big business, governments and the corporations, as both destroy jobs and conditions. That is in keeping with the role of the AWU and all the unions as corporatised entities, hostile to the basic interests of workers.

A fight to defend the jobs at Kwinana can and must be waged. But it requires a rebellion against the AWU bureaucracy.

What is posed is the need for workers to take matters into their own hands. As a first step, this means forming a rank-and-file committee, democratically controlled by workers, not well-heeled union officials.

The struggle cannot be confined to Kwinana. An appeal must be made to workers across Alcoa’s WA operations. These workers should be warned—if the destruction of jobs at Kwinana is allowed to proceed without a fight, it will serve as a blueprint for future attacks throughout the company.

Although it ended in betrayal, the 2018 strike demonstrated the potential for a unified struggle to defend jobs at Kwinana and fight for real improvements to pay and conditions for all Alcoa workers.

Oxfam report describes Israel’s onslaught on Gaza as “deadliest conflict of the 21st century”

Jordan Shilton

Israel’s three-month genocidal onslaught on the Palestinian population in Gaza is the deadliest conflict of the 21st century, according to an OXFAM report. Israel is killing Palestinians at a rate of more than 250 per day, based on a UN reported death toll of 23,074 fatalities in Gaza and 330 in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and January 7, 2024.

The intensity of the Zionist regime’s bombardment has claimed the lives of Palestinians at a pace many times higher than NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war, the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wars in Sudan and Yemen. Even allowing for the longer duration of these other conflicts, which reduces the daily rate of casualties somewhat, Oxfam’s figures expose the unprecedented savagery of the Israeli state, which enjoys the unrestrained support of US imperialism and its European allies.

“The scale and atrocities that Israel is visiting upon Gaza are truly shocking. For 100 days the people of Gaza have endured a living hell. Nowhere is safe and the entire population is at risk of famine,” commented Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East director. “It is unimaginable that the international community is watching the deadliest rate of conflict of the 21st century unfold, while continuously blocking calls for a ceasefire.”

The reality is that the “international community,” led by US imperialism, is not merely watching the conflict, but supplying Israel with the weaponry it needs to slaughter Palestinian men, women, and children. Moreover, Washington and its British ally have recklessly escalated the conflict with air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen early Friday. This escalation is bound up with US-led plans for a region-wide war with Iran aimed at consolidating its unchallenged domination over the energy-rich Middle East.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government believes it can act with impunity due to its alliance with Washington. This fact was underscored as Israel’s savage bombing campaign continued unabated even as South African lawyers presented devastating evidence of the Zionist regime’s commission of genocide in Gaza. In the first day of hearings at the International Court of Justice, the South African legal team cited the statements of Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and others to demonstrate the Israeli government’s intent to carry out a genocide, and documented the horrific consequences of Gaza’s destruction by the Israel Defence Forces.

None of this had an impact on the imperialists’ support for Israel. The US State Department described the accusations against Israel as “unfounded.” Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck declared, “Accusing Israel of genocide distorts the victims and perpetrators.”

In Gaza, Thursday saw another air strike on the southernmost city of Rafah, where over a million people, about half of Gaza’s pre-war population, are now crowded. The strike on a residential building killed nine people and injured several more. Strikes were also reported in Khan Younis, where IDF ground operations continue alongside the aerial bombardment.

Over the preceding 24 hours, Israeli air strikes killed 112 people and injured 194, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. This took the official death toll to 23,469 and the number injured to 59,604. In addition, around 7,000 people remain missing and are presumed dead under the rubble.

Attacks in central and southern Gaza threaten to lead to the closure of another three hospitals, further restricting the availability of even the most basic medical care to the population. At one of these facilities, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Israeli forces intensified shelling of the hospital over recent days. One doctor reported a direct attack on the intensive care unit, while civilians sheltering in the vicinity of the hospital were shot at by Israeli helicopters in scenes reminiscent of the storming of the al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza.

One strike near the gates of the Al-Aqsa Hospital killed and injured at least 40 people Wednesday. Another strike elsewhere in Deir el-Balah on Wednesday killed six people in a Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance. The casualties included four medics and two injured Palestinians being transported to a hospital.

Fighting is also intensifying in Khan Younis, where IDF soldiers are reportedly stepping up above-ground and underground operations in the city’s central areas. Hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza prior to Israel’s onslaught.

The Gaza Media Office released a statement declaring that a total of 380 mosques have been destroyed since October 7. Among them are religious sites that have stood for over 1,000 years.

Israel is persisting in its use of food as a weapon of war by deliberately withholding aid supplies. On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation announced the cancellation of the sixth aid delivery to northern Gaza since December 26 because Israel refused to provide assurances of safe passage. Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped in the area, which has no functioning hospitals.

Oxfam’s report made dire warnings about an impending famine throughout Gaza if the restrictions placed on aid deliveries persist. There are also shortages of blankets, no fuel for heating, and no hot water under conditions of cold and rainy winter weather. Cases of diarrhea are 40 times higher than they were at the same time last year, although Oxfam acknowledges the figure is likely a vast underestimation of the true number of cases.

Human Rights Watch became the latest human rights organisation to accuse Israel of war crimes in its annual World Report released Thursday. Israel’s moves to cut off essential services like water, electricity, and fuel were “acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes.” The report continued, “Israeli air strikes incessantly pounded Gaza, hitting schools and hospitals and reducing large parts of neighborhoods to rubble, including in attacks that were apparently unlawful. Israeli forces also unlawfully used white phosphorous in densely populated areas.”

Beyond Gaza, the IDF continues to provocatively escalate its strikes on southern Lebanon. A strike on a civil defence centre Thursday destroyed an ambulance and killed two medical workers. On Wednesday evening, War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz made an explicit threat to launch an onslaught on southern Lebanon comparable to the bombardment of Gaza. “If Hizbollah continues,” Gantz said, referring to the group’s firing of rockets into northern Israel, “we will act in southern Lebanon as we act in the northern Gaza Strip.”