Greek government introduces six-day working week in stepped up offensive

John Vassilopoulos

From the start of this month Greece formally introduced a six-day working week, the first country to do so in the European Union (EU). The measure will currently apply in industries that operate on a rotating shift basis, such as manufacturers and retailers, but the measure can be extended to sectors such as tourism in the future.

The conservative New Democracy (ND) government denies that it will apply to the public sector, but it could be extended to areas such as sanitation where rotating shifts apply.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair on September 10, 2022 [AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos]

The new measure has been a long-time demand of the Federation of Industries of Greece (SEV). It will allow firms to increase the workload of existing staff without the need to hire additional staff to cover shifts or pay overtime costs.

The six-day week was enshrined into a labour law legislated by the conservative New Democracy government last September. The basis of the law is a 2019 EU directive that aims to incorporate within the EU zone exploitative practices such as “zero hours contracts”, with employers not required to guarantee a set number of hours to workers. The new law specifies that an employer cannot prohibit “a worker from taking up employment with other employers,” while giving workers the “option” to work up to 13-hours a day—the only limit being the statutory 11 hours rest stipulated by Greek law.

With the minimum wage set at a paltry €830 a month, many Greek workers are already compelled to work longer hours to make ends meet, with one in six forced to work more than one job.

The aim of the new law was to formalise and extend the brutal working conditions that workers already face. Labour Minister at the time, Adonis Georgiadis, commented just before the law was passed, “Our aim is to make our labour relations more honest. We have not invented something new. We are merely mapping out what is already happening in the world.”

According to 2023 figures compiled by the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat, Greek workers work the longest hours in the EU (39.8 a week compared to the EU average of 36.1.) 11.6 percent already work 49 hours a week or more—the highest proportion across the EU whose average is 7.1 percent.

What little Greek workers do earn is continuously eroded by spiraling prices. According to the April figures published by Eurostat, Greece had the second highest food inflation in the EU at 5.4 percent compared to the EU average of 1.86 percent. Nearly 50 percent of overall food inflation is driven by the increase in the price of olive oil—a staple in Greece—with prices up by 63.7 percent. The 40 percent wage top up for the sixth day of work, with an extra 75 percent if that day is a Sunday or a public holiday, offers scant recompense to Greek workers struggling to make ends meet.

The devastation faced by the working class today is the direct consequence of the successive rounds of austerity during the previous decade imposed by the EU and the International Monetary Fund in return for receiving loans ostensibly to pay off the national debt, which stood at €330.57 billion in 2010. The economy contracted by 25 percent, unprecedented for a European country during peacetime. According to OECD figures real wages declined by a third between 2007 and 2022, with Greek workers today being the poorest in the EU after Bulgaria.

Speaking in parliament before the law was introduced, ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared “the nucleus of this legislation is worker-friendly, it is deeply growth-oriented and it brings Greece in line with the rest of Europe.”

A circular published by the new Labour Minister Niki Kerameus outlined how the six-day week measure is to be implemented. It stipulates that an employer’s decision to impose a six-day week supersedes any collective agreements already in place that stipulate a five-day week. The circular stated that the 30 minute preparation time of putting on/taking off uniforms and safety equipment before and after a shift does not form part of the 8 hour day.

The ND government’s concerted attacks on the working class have earned it widespread praise from the global financial elite. In its April report the credit agency Standard and Poor’s updated its outlook on Greece from “stable” to “positive”, writing that “Greek authorities are undertaking a broad ranging structural reform agenda and tackling long-standing bottlenecks.”

The report noted that “the positive outlook reflects our expectation that the tight fiscal regime will continue to spur a reduction in the government debt ratio, while growth should continue to outperform that of Greece’s eurozone peers.” In 2023 Greece’s economy grew by 2 percent, in contrast with Germany whose economy contracted by 0.3 percent.

It is no surprise that the introduction of the six day week has been greeted with great approval in the German media as an example to follow. As the most economically powerful country in the EU, the German bourgeoisie led the attacks on the living standards of Greek workers. The German news network RDS declared “We should take lessons from the Greeks”, while Deutsche Welle asked whether the measure can be a model for other countries.

German financial journal Handelsblatt commented that “the country which Germans, led by reports in countless tabloids, dismissed as lazy ten years ago is at the forefront of the debate on the length of the working day. The conservative government in Athens has given employers the ability to establish a six-day week.” The article complained that “while economists and employers agree that average working hours have to increase [in Germany], collective contracts and social developments are moving in the opposite direction.”

Handelsblatt commented that the introduction of the six-day week has seen a lack of “a storm of protests,” attributing this to the fact that “the shortage in skilled workers is plaguing the country too much.”

The lack of protests is because all opposition to the austerity agenda of successive governments over the past 15 years has been strangled by the trade union bureaucracy. Since 2010, dozens of general strikes were called by the private sector trade union federation GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY against attacks on living standards and working conditions rammed through parliament at the behest of the EU, and the IMF. According to the GSEE, in the years between May 2010 and the end of 2015, it held 28 general strikes (20 lasting 24 hours and 4 lasting 48 hours). But the purpose of these strikes was to ensure social anger was corralled under its control, and to allow workers to let off steam while anti-worker measures were voted through.

Demonstrators shout slogans as they march during a 24-hour nationwide strike in central Athens, Greece, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

This time GSEE’s “protest” against the new measure was confined to an open letter by General Secretary Nikos Fotopoulos to Kerameus, saying the law was from “the most barbaric, anti-worker and reactionary government that has ever ruled the country.”

Behind the bluster, in a separate statement, GSEE confined its demands for the measure not to be implemented “until there has been a substantive dialogue between [the Labour Ministry], workers’ representatives (GSEE) and those of employers.” GSEE’s ultimate concern is to secure for itself a stake in deciding how best to ram through the measure.

The main opposition party, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) issued a pro-forma denunciation of the measure, stating that “the return to 19th century working conditions is shameful for the country.” Syriza should know.

Syriza was swept into power in January 2015 on an anti-austerity ticket whose mandate was junked within weeks. Following the July 2015 referendum, in which workers overwhelmingly rejected a third austerity package, Syriza—along with its junior coalition partner, the far-right Independent Greeks—swiftly agreed to a new austerity package with the EU/IMF.

The next four years saw Syriza impose austerity more savage than that enforced by the previous social democratic and ND-led administrations. In 2018, Syriza implemented its own anti-labour legislation, raising the threshold for a strike vote from a third to at least 50 percent of a union’s membership.

Behind the chauvinist attacks by the international corporate media against the “lazy Greeks” during the austerity onslaught of the previous decade, which the Handelsblatt article now admits “were never true”, was an agenda to roll back the gains won by workers through bitter struggle across Europe in the last century. The successive austerity programmes imposed on Greece served as a test case for a restructure of labour relations across the continent.

This drive has been intensified as the ruling class across Europe aims to end the “peace dividend” by putting the continent’s economy on a war footing. Greece, as a key NATO member already spends 3.76 percent of its GDP on its military—a figure that will increase as NATO prepares for a direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, and Irana and China.

Budget for 2025: Germany’s coalition government plans to slash “citizen’s allowance” by billions

Marianne Arens

As the German government—a coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP)—is finalizing the details of its new war budget, it has already been revealed that it plans to slash the country’s citizen’s allowance by €2.6 billion in the coming year. Citizen’s allowance is paid out to the unemployed and low-paid. It totals at most €563 a month—a sum far too little to live on. The latest cuts to the income allowance were announced by several social organisations with reference to leaked figures. Specifically, the government plan involves cuts of €1.6 billion to job centres and €900 million currently paid out for vocational training and rehabilitation services for social welfare recipients.

Queue in front of a food bank in Frankfurt-Höchst

Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) has already pushed through a war budget for the current year. On the one hand, record sums are being spent on war and rearmament; at the same time, Lindner has declared war on the working class by significantly reducing social spending. In order to establish Germany as Europe’s leading military power, the government has freed up more than €90 billion—the highest increase in military spending since the Second World War.

As a result—and because the government refuses to increase taxes on shareholders and the super-rich—Lindner, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) now have to fill a budget gap of several dozen billion euros for the coming year, 2025. They are doing this through austerity measures totaling billions.

Citizen’s income is always the first target. The start of the war in Ukraine two and a half years ago also marked the beginning of the constant attacks on this meagre form of support. At the beginning of 2024, Labour and Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) threatened that anyone who did not “cooperate satisfactorily” with the demands of job centres would face months of withdrawal of the citizen’s allowance.

The victims are “people with special problems,” explained the Protestant Social Organisation, “for example those who cannot properly read and write, or people with mental illnesses or addiction problems.” It didn’t take long for the cuts to be extended to broader sections of the working class.

Currently, around 5.5 million people receive citizen’s benefits via a job centre, and the trend is rising. Poverty is increasing overall in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, one in four children and one in four young adults in Germany are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. More than half of statutory pensions (10.1 million) are below the poverty line at less than €1,100 per month.

The State Labour Working Group (LAG Arbeit), which is now sounding the alarm, is an association of organisations that care for socially disadvantaged young people, migrants and refugees, poor senior citizens and people with disabilities. Grouped together in the Federal Network for Labour and Social Participation, these associations have sent an open letter to Finance Minister Lindner and Social Affairs Minister Heil.

This open letter is a damning indictment of the coalition government. It points out that the functioning of job centres is already “no longer financially viable to a sufficient extent.” In fact, despite constantly rising unemployment figures, their budget has already been cut by half a billion in the current year 2024. As the open letter states, this means that “tried-and-tested and meaningful measures for the long-term unemployed are being massively cut across Germany” and “social participation and the opportunity to integrate into the labour market are being denied.”

In this situation, the planned cuts will have a devastating effect. In future, job centres will no longer be able to provide for many people who are likely to slip into long-term unemployment. “The reduction in integration benefits will effectively result in the exclusion of people who are considered ‘remote from the labour market,’” the open letter states.

“Important social services such as food banks, neighbourhood projects and social provision stores” are also under massive threat. These organisations have already taken on a large part of public municipal services: “for example, providing home furnishings and initial basic needs, counselling for refugees, supplying pensioners with food or providing low-income families with children with other social services.”

The latter reveals the rotten state of German society. In the much-vaunted “social market economy,” basic social functions, such as “providing pensioners with food,” are dependent on organisations that largely rely on volunteers. It is precisely these organisations that are now to be deprived of state funding.

Parallel to this social attack, politicians have unleashed a vicious campaign against so-called “shirkers” and “social parasites.”

While concealing the assets of the super-rich and their own privileges, they arrogantly lay blame for social ills on those who supposedly “don’t want to work.” For example, Finance Minister Lindner complained on The Pioneer portal: “We are spending billions of euros to support people who don’t work.” What is needed is “a labour market policy that increases demands made upon the unemployed,” he said. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) insistently repeats: “We have to work more again” (by “we” he means “you”).

In his ARD t.v. summer interview, Chancellor Scholz commented on the planned changes to the citizens’ income, saying that the government’s aim was to “increase certainty”: “Nobody should shirk [from work].” In an interview with the Rheinische Post, SPD leader Saskia Esken threatened that the government would no longer tolerate “citizen’s allowance recipients caught working illegally”: “There must be no false tolerance for illegal labour.”

However, there is a method to the cuts. They serve the purpose of further expanding the country’s already huge low-wage sector. After all, anyone who does not want to slip into the downward spiral of long-term unemployment is forced to take one (or more) of the increasing number of low-paid jobs. At the same time, this serves to exert pressure on the working class and further reduce real wages. This is all part of the “economic turnaround” planned by the government.

A caricature comes to mind. A government politician boasts, “I have created a million jobs”; a worker replies, “And I have three of them.”

Against this backdrop, the arrogant appeals by leading politicians that Germans must “work more” are a serious threat. It amounts to new, systematic and brutal attacks on the rights and achievements of the entire working class. This will provoke fierce class conflicts, of which the recent warning strikes by train drivers, for example, are just a foretaste.

In this context, the established parties, with their own right-wing policies, are paving the way for the far-right Alternative for Germany and allowing the AfD to profit from growing frustration. History teaches that when it comes to enforcing social and democratic attacks in the interests of imperialist war, a fascist party is needed.

Research reveals precipitous decline in UK working class living standards

Simon Whelan

Research conducted by two think tanks into the decline of working-class living standards in Britain in recent years paints a devastating picture of millions going without food, basic necessities, heating and hot water on a daily basis.

“Living Standards 2024 UK General Election Briefing”, published by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), found that living standards have fallen by 7 percent on average since 2019—measured by real disposable income and accounting for housing costs and household composition.

For the poorest 10 percent of UK households, the lowest decile, living standards have fallen by an astonishing 20 percent compared with 2019-20 levels—an income shortfall of £4,600 (in current prices) in 2024-25 relative to 2019-2020. For income deciles 2-4, the fall in living standards is on average 8 percent. In their previous Winter 2024 UK Economic Outlook, the NIESR explained how living standards had fallen most sharply for the poorest tenth of UK families since the beginning of the inflationary crisis.

“Living Standards since the last election”, published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), reports that household income fell for all income deciles except the top two between 2021-22 and 2022-23. After housing costs, the measured fall in median income was 1.5 percent.

The IFS notes that declines across the previous 2019-2024 parliament were “mainly driven by a fall in workers’ real earnings”. Average pay, adjusted for inflation, is less than it was in 2007. The total growth in average pre-tax pay “between 2009/10 and 2023/24 is equivalent to what we previously might have expected in about 17 months”.

This is an indictment of the trade union bureaucracy, which has for decades worked with the employers and successive Conservative and Labour governments to suppress wage demands and the struggle to improve employment terms and working conditions.

According to the IFS, stagnating and falling wages were particularly marked in the middle of the income distribution, i.e. the most unionised section of the working class—skilled trades and white-collar workers. The number of people in working households with incomes that fall beneath the poverty line now exceeds one million and in-work poverty continues to grow.

Approximately 12 million people are in absolute poverty—a quarter of all children and nearly 15 percent of all those in work. There has been a notable increase in absolute poverty among private renters—approximately 200,000 more people. The overall figures are a 0.8 percent increase, but, as the IFS notes, this masks the disproportionate impact higher rates of inflation for basic goods have on poorer households. Figures for actual material deprivation, food insecurity and inability to warm one’s home are all up significantly.

Again according to the IFS, the rate of material deprivation rose from 15 percent to 19 percent between 2019–20 and 2022–23, corresponding to an extra 2.8 million people—returning child and pensioner deprivation rates to the same level they were back in 2010–11. The rate of food insecurity increased from 8 percent to 11 percent over the same period, approximately 2.1 million additional people.

Among working-age adults, the proportion reporting themselves unable to afford to keep their home warm enough close to tripled from 4 percent in 2019–20 to 11 percent in 2022–23. Those unable to pay to keep their home in a decent state of decoration increased by a third (from 10 percent to 13 percent) and those unable to save just £10 a month by roughly a fifth (from 19 percent to 23 percent).

This rise in material deprivation finds expression across all age groups, housing tenures, work statuses, household compositions and regions but is especially acute among those with mortgage payments and pensioners.

The NIESR predicts that the living standards of households in the bottom 40 percent of the population, earning up to £34,000 per year, will not return to pre-pandemic levels for another four years. This is despite an optimistic assumption of a rise of 6 percent in 2024-25 relative to 2023-24.

Even this rise would be distributed unequally: households in the bottom decile are forecast to experience no increase but instead a further 2 percent fall and those in the second decile only a 5 percent increase.

Such sharp falls in working class living standards over the past five years follow on from the already calamitous decline experienced in the decade-plus since 2008. The attack on living standards was begun by Gordon Brown’s Labour government with austerity measures imposed to offset Labour’s £1 trillion bailout of the banks and big business after the global financial crash. In 2010, the David Cameron-led Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition took over where Brown left off, inaugurating the “age of austerity”.

Successive Conservative governments led by May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak deepened this brutal assault, especially to pay for Johnson’s billions in subsidies handed to big business during the height of the pandemic.

In a briefing paper titled “Seven Key Facts about UK Living Standards”, the IFS write how the poor performance of living standards since the recession after the 2008 global financial crash means that the UK has fallen down the league table relative to other comparable European and North American economies.

In the 12 years prior to 2008, median working-age incomes rose by over 40 percent in the UK, one of the best-performing countries. In the 12 years post-2007 (up to 2019), income growth was just 6 percent, versus 12 percent for the United States and 16 percent for Germany.

The collapse in living standards driven by cuts to wages and welfare will continue under the Labour government, the party of big business, “iron discipline” on public spending, and total commitment to war and an increase in military budgets.

Labor’s cuts threaten thousands of jobs in Australian universities

Mike Head

The Australian Labor government’s deep cuts to international student enrolments, on top of Labor’s continuation of years of chronic underfunding of universities, threaten to destroy thousands of educators’ jobs.

Economic modelling commissioned by the University of Sydney estimates that the expected cut to international student numbers by 63,500 next year will create a $1.1 billion revenue black hole and cause 21,922 direct and indirect job losses in 2025.

National Tertiary Education Union members rally in Canberra on May 11, 2023 [Photo: @NTEUACT]

The government not only plans to impose punitive university-by-university caps on international student numbers from next year, it has cut student visa approvals by a third over the past year, and last week more than doubled international student visa fees from $710 to $1,600.

In the year to April 30, the number of visas approved fell to 306,000, from the 465,500 approved up to April 2023. Universities Australia, the managements’ umbrella body, said its members are already facing a $500 million shortfall in funding this year due to the visa crackdown.

Acting in bipartisan unison with the Liberal-National Coalition, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is making overseas students and immigrants scapegoats for the intensifying cost-of-living, housing and social crisis that is causing immense financial stress throughout the working class. It has vowed to halve immigration, including student arrivals, to 260,000 in 2024-25.

University managements are wasting no time in moving to slash jobs. So far, Federation University, a regional institution in Victoria, has said it will axe 200 staff on the way to shedding 20 percent of its employees. The University of Tasmania has instituted a jobs freeze, and both La Trobe and Wollongong universities have warned staff of looming cuts to courses, subjects and jobs.

These moves highlight how much is at stake at Western Sydney University (WSU). A rank-and-file campaign is being developed there to fight the management’s plan to restructure WSU College, the university’s wholly-owned feeder college, at the overall cost of nearly 19 educators’ and learning coordinators’ jobs, or about 10 percent of the total. If not defeated, the pro-business restructuring of WSU College will set a precedent across the tertiary education sector.

Despite objections by university managements, Labor is pushing ahead with its Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, which would give the education minister unprecedented political powers to cap international student enrolments and scrap courses.

According to the bill, the minister could cancel international enrolments and/or courses on the basis of “systemic quality issues,” or providing “limited value to Australia’s current, emerging, and future skills and training needs and priorities” or because it is in the “public interest to do so.”

Such vague and arbitrary language essentially means tying enrolments and funding to the narrow vocational demands of employers and the corporate elite as a whole, as well as other government “priorities.” These include military preparations, such as the AUKUS nuclear submarines and weapons program, for a US-led war against China.

In its submission on the bill, the University of Sydney said any cuts to foreign enrolments would have “very damaging flow-on consequences,” pointing out that it and the other “Group of Eight” elite universities take more than 30 percent of their total revenue from international student fees.

Likewise, the University of Melbourne said enrolment caps would lead to “disruptive job losses and course cancellations as early as next year.” The Regional Universities Network warned any reduction in its international enrolments would result in the “loss of regional university jobs [and] the closure of regional campuses.”

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which covers most university educators, is seeking to divert the blame for the job destruction solely onto the university managements and away from the Labor government.

NTEU national president Alison Barnes told the media she was “deeply concerned” that the managements might be weaponising the federal migration policy as an “excuse to threaten staff and students with decisions that damage universities.” She claimed it was “premature” and “cruel” to warn of job losses because the government’s policy details were not finalised.

In reality, the cuts to student visas are already biting, and the reactionary thrust of Labor’s measures is clear.

Labor’s attacks on international students are so financially damaging because successive governments, Labor and Coalition alike, have slashed funding and pushed universities into relying on international students as cash cows, charging them exorbitant fees, in order to operate.

A report last July calculated that federal government funding for universities, excluding the fees loan system that students must repay after graduation, fell from 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995 to 0.6 percent in 2021. That amounted to a $6.5 billion funding reduction in 2021, equal to almost half (46.5 percent) of current higher education funding.

This decline began in 2011‒12, during the “education revolution” instigated by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. Moreover, since 1995, private sources had doubled as a share of university revenue—increasing to 43 percent by 2019. Thus, the nominally “public” universities have become substantially privatised, while casualising their workforces and ramping up class sizes.

Despite the NTEU and other trade union apparatuses promoting illusions that a Labor government would reverse this historic assault, the opposite is occurring. In a media release, Barnes hailed the government’s May budget this year as “a first step on the road to major reform universities desperately need.”

Barnes highlighted the government’s headline claim that the budget earmarked $1.1 billion in funding over the next five years to implement recommendations from the Universities Accord. First of all, however, this figure camouflages the ongoing cut to funding, which Labor’s first budget, in October 2022, would decrease by more than 9 percent in real terms from 2021–22 to 2024–25.

At the same time, the Universities Accord proposes to tie funding, via individual university “mission statements” to the reshaping of tertiary education to satisfy the employment and research needs of big business and the preparations for war, such as the AUKUS military pact against China.

While starving the universities of funds, the Labor government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending and backing the US-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

The NTEU bureaucrats have a long record of suppressing educators’ hostility to the increasing corporatisation of universities, even when they claim to oppose it. While striking regressive enterprise bargaining deals with university managements, all designed to assist restructuring, the NTEU machine has repeatedly blocked any unified mobilisation against it.

New Popular Front carries French snap elections as hung parliament emerges

Kumaran Ira & Alex Lantier

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) emerged as the winner of the second round of the French snap elections last night. The NFP carried 182 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, against 168 for President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition and 143 for the far-right National Rally (RN). Final turnout was 67 percent, the highest in the second round of legislative elections since 1997 and over 20 percent higher than the 2022 legislative elections.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, center, delivers a speech while Daniele Obono, second right, gestures, after the second round of the legislative elections Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Paris. [AP Photo/Thomas Padilla]

The result, bucking media expectations of an RN victory, testifies to the left-wing sentiment and the rejection of neo-fascism among broad layers of workers and youth in France.

It is a debacle for Macron, who throughout his presidency has claimed to be leading a fight against the far right. In reality, he has ruled systematically against the will of the people. His party has been relegated to a rump in the National Assembly as 70 percent or more of the population opposes his illegitimate pension cuts, which he rammed through without a vote last year, and his call to send French troops to Ukraine to fight Russia.

Minutes after the results were announced at 8 p.m. yesterday, Mélenchon spoke on national television, appealing to Macron to call upon the NFP to form a government. “The president has the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern,” Mélenchon said, hailing voters for having “’won a result that was said to be impossible.”

“The majority has made another choice for the country,” Mélenchon added, arguing that “the will of the people must be confirmed. … The president must give in.”

Mélenchon claimed the NFP would apply “its program, only its program, but all of its program.” Measures like repealing Macron’s reform raising the retirement age to 64, stopping price increases by fixing prices for key goods, and raising the minimum wage “can be taken by decree, without a vote,” he said.

Before the result was announced, Macron held a meeting at the Élysée presidential palace with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and leaders of his Ensemble coalition. Earlier, it had been reported that either Macron or Attal would speak after the election results were announced. Afterwards, however, the Elysée palace reported that Macron would not be speaking Sunday evening and was “taking note of the results of these legislative elections as they come in, constituency by constituency.”

Macron will wait for the “structuring” of the new Assembly before “taking the necessary decisions,” the Elysée announced, including deciding who to name as a new prime minister to try to assemble a parliamentary majority. Attal later issued a statement to the press declaring that he is willing to stay in power “as long as duty will require it.”

The Elysée also reported that Macron will delay by one day, but not cancel his trip to Washington to attend a NATO war summit starting tomorrow. At the NATO summit, imperialist warmongers like Macron will discuss how to escalate the war against Russia while intensifying the attacks against the working class to finance the war economy. Macron, despite his election debacle, clearly intends to continue ruling against the people.

Today, Macron asked Attal to “remain as prime minister for the moment,” supposedly to “ensure the stability of the country.” Thus Macron will fly to Washington to continue NATO war plotting as a representative of a government that is rejected by the French people.

Last night, RN leader Marine Le Pen spoke on TF1 television to state that her party had suffered only a temporary setback and pledged that neo-fascism would one day rule France. She said, “The tide is rising. It did not rise high enough this time, but it is continuing to rise and, consequently, our victory is only delayed. I have too much experience to be disappointed by a result which allows us to double the number of seats we have,” citing a result that made the RN “the first party” in terms of the number of seats.

Frustration exploded at RN election headquarters, however, as RN officials issued foul-mouthed threats and denunciations of the French people for not electing them. “The French people are assholes, it’s a people of idiots!” one told the media, while RN legislator Julien Odoul said: “They will pay the price of this act of submission. They will pay the price of this non-choice.”

But the electorate has spoken against fascistic-authoritarian rule and the hated policies of Macron. The will of the overwhelming majority of the people that works for a living—repeatedly trampled underfoot by Macron and his right-wing allies—must be done. The war escalation against Russia and the genocide in Gaza must be stopped, Macron’s pension cuts and other austerity measures must be repealed, and the police-state dictatorship of the banks that he has imposed must be dismantled.

While the election marks a setback for the RN—that, like previous setbacks, will likely lead to criticisms in the RN of Marine Le Pen’s refusal to openly promote the heritage of French fascism and to advocate street violence—the RN has established itself as a significant force.

According to official French Interior Ministry figures, the RN led in absolute numbers of votes with 8.7 million, followed by 7 million for the NFP, and 6.3 million for Ensemble. There were 1.6 million blank or spoiled ballots, and 1.5 million votes for the right-wing The Republicans (LR) party. The NFP vote fell and Ensemble rose because the NFP largely favored Ensemble in tactical voting deals to block RN candidates: the NFP withdrew its candidates to back Ensemble candidates in 125 constituencies, while Ensemble supported NFP candidates in only 80.

Within the NFP, moreover, Mélenchon’s electoral negotiations gave away substantial positions to longstanding parties of capitalist government that support war with Russia and denounce opposition to the Gaza genocide as “anti-Semitism.” While Mélenchon’s own France Unbowed (LFI) party carried 72 seats, the big-business Socialist Party (PS) 65, the Greens 34, and the French Communist Party (PCF) 9 seats. The Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) did not win any seats.

Within the NFP, forces around the PS are calling for the NFP to make far-reaching concessions to Macron, because they in fact support his reactionary policies. Raphaël Glucksmann, who denied that a genocide is underway in Gaza while he led the PS campaign in the European elections this spring, told the media: “We are in a hung parliament and therefore we will have to act like adults, that is, we will have to talk, to discuss, to engage in dialogue, to get beyond ourselves.”

West Nile fever epidemic in Israel

Benjamin Mateus

Israel is seeing the largest outbreak of West Nile fever in almost a quarter-century. Case numbers are up 400 percent from the same period last year. Thus far, at least 175 people have contracted the mosquito-borne virus and at least 11 people have succumbed to the infection, according to the Israel Ministry of Health.

This initial stage compares to the entire length of the 2000 outbreak, when serological testing confirmed 439 cases with 29 fatalities.

The virus that causes West Nile fever is a single-stranded RNA virus, from the genus Flavivirus that also includes the Zika virus, dengue virus, and yellow fever virus. Birds are the primary hosts of the West Nile virus. Humans and horses both exhibit disease symptoms from infection, but there are only vaccines available for horses at present. Treatments for infected people are supportive only. Humans can’t transmit the virus to each other, except in rare cases through blood transfusions, organ transplants or from a mother to her infant during her pregnancy, delivery or while breastfeeding.

Artwork featuring a female Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito—which transmits West Nile virus (image courtesy of CDC), Culex mosquito larvae(image courtesy of CDC), a cryo-EM reconstruction of West Nile virus (courtesy of NIH 3D Print Exchange), and a transmission electron micrograph of West Nile virus particles (orange) replicating within the cytoplasm of an infected VERO E6 cell (blue), captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. [Photo by NIAID and CDC / CC BY-SA 2.0]

About 20 percent of infected individuals will exhibit symptoms of fever, headache, vomiting or a rash. One percent will go on to develop inflammation of the brain and spinal cord that can lead to neck stiffness, confusion and even seizures. Once the infection involves the nervous system, fatality rates rise to about 10 percent. Recovery can take weeks or months.

Typically, outbreaks occur during the late summer months, a byproduct of rising temperatures and humidity. However, given the recent acceleration of heat waves, together with torrential rains and flash floods becoming commonplace, outbreaks of vector-borne viruses like West Nile, malaria, Zika, and dengue are occurring earlier than expected.

Professor of molecular virology Roger Hewson, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the Telegraph, “Israel’s hot and humid summers create an ideal environment for mosquitoes to breed and proliferate. These conditions [climate change] can extend the mosquito breeding season and increase their populations, thereby enhancing virus transmission rates.”

The West Nile virus was first isolated in 1937 from a woman in the West Nile region of Uganda. The earliest documented outbreak occurred in July 1951 in an agricultural communal settlement of Maayan Zvi near Haifa, Israel. For decades afterward, most West Nile fever epidemics had occurred in Israel or Africa.

However, due to globalization and mass travel among the world’s population, the epidemiology of the West Nile vector-borne disease rapidly shifted by the 1990s. In a recent report on the West Nile virus (WNV), the authors wrote, “WNV was first detected in New York City in 1999 and subsequently spread rapidly throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, including the United States, Canada, and Argentina. Concurrently, epidemic activity increased in Europe, the Middle East, and Russia.”

They added, “In 2018, Europe experienced an unprecedented WNV epidemic, with human cases exceeding 1,900, seven times higher than in previous seasons. In 2020, locally transmitted cases of WNV were reported for the first time in the Netherlands and Germany. Evidence suggests interactive WNV cycles on all continents except Antarctica.”

Notwithstanding the impact climate change and globalization have had on the emerging rates of infectious diseases and threats posed by pandemic potential pathogens, there is an additional factor of concern in relation to the current outbreak of WNV in Israel. It coincides with the genocidal campaign that has seen Gaza’s infrastructure decimated. Health authorities have cited possible direct and indirect links between the outbreak and the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave.

Most of the WNV cases have occurred in Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and Kiryat Ono, located within 80 kilometers of the Gaza border. As a November 2023 article in the Jerusalem Post noted, “It is important to note that many nature areas in the South have recently turned into military positions. These locations produce waste and stagnant water, which are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Moreover, due to the war, there has been a lack of treatment for breeding areas in the South, allowing the mosquitoes to thrive.”

Furthermore, the complete mobilization of all of Israel’s resources to prosecuting this campaign of annihilation also means funds for public health measures are being diverted at the population’s peril. Professor Hewson noted, “Disruptions caused by conflict can exacerbate poor living conditions, leading to inadequate waste management and increased standing water. [The] conflict strains public health resources, making it harder to control mosquito populations effectively and respond promptly to outbreaks.”

There has as yet been no mention of the implications of the WNV outbreak for the 2 million and more Gazans who are trapped in the enclave under conditions where the entire infrastructure has been demolished and access to healthcare, food, water and shelter are nonexistent. There is no way to implement standard public health precautions such as preventing formation of standing water and widespread use of mosquito repellent.

Gaza has become a breeding ground for infectious diseases, with the entire population made vulnerable to large scale epidemics of not just WNV, but flu, pneumonia, bacterial dysentery, cholera, polio, measles and meningitis.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) noted in mid-April that even if an immediate ceasefire were implemented, they expected nearly 12,000 people would lose their lives in Gaza as a result of disease. And if the genocidal campaign persisted, nearly 90,000 could die of secondary health impacts.

Dr. Seema Jilani, Senior Health Technical Advisor for Emergencies, observed, “With Gaza’s health system decimated by Israel, diseases once easily controlled are now spreading, and children, especially malnourished children, are the most susceptible. Projections suggest that the spread of cholera, measles, polio, and meningococcal meningitis pose a mortal threat … Immunity, previously ensured thanks to high levels of vaccination, is now decreasing especially among children and babies, who have now missed multiple doses of key vaccines including Hepatitis B, polio, and rotavirus.”

Jilani added, “Respiratory infections and other endemic infectious diseases are currently widespread due to exposure, overcrowding in shelters, lack of access to proper sanitation facilities, and inability to access treatment. The IRC and partners working in Gaza have seen children die from diarrhea—affecting children at rates 25 times higher than before October 7th—otherwise easily treated with fluids and antibiotics. Half of the over 330,000 respiratory infections reported from October to January were children under 5, many of whom might face fatal or debilitating consequences given the current state of health care in Gaza.”

Debt cloud hangs over new governments in France and UK

Nick Beams

Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Keir Starmer [AP Photo/Thomas Padilla/Kin Cheung]

The shift to the left in the French elections, which saw a broad anti-fascist movement deal a blow to the ambitions of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) to form the next government and has led to a hung parliament, could have significant implications for financial and currency markets in the coming weeks.

The initial reaction was a slight fall in the value of the euro. It dropped by 0.3 percent but then steadied. However, there could be a return to the turbulence experienced in the lead-up to the elections.

Reporting on the initial downward movement, a Bloomberg article said it was the result of the unexpected strong showing of the New Popular Front “as traders began to digest an outcome they’d largely written off just days ago, and has the potential to reignite a tumultuous few weeks for markets.”

A key issue for financial and currency markets is the level of French debt. The French budget deficit is running at 5.5 percent of GDP which is well above the level of 3 percent allowed under the rules of the European Union. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that without spending cuts or revenue raising measures total debt could rise to 112 percent this year.

The yield, or interest rate, on French 10-year debt, known as OATs, is 66 basis points (0.66 percent) above the level on German Bunds which are considered to be the safest. The spread had reached as high as 80 basis points last month, hitting levels last seen in the euro area’s sovereign debt crisis in 2012.

James Rossiter, the lead of global macro strategy at TD Securities, said what had been a “shocking result” wrote in a note the spread could go higher again. “Rates markets went into the elections with the OATs vs Bund spread pricing in a scenario for a hung parliament—but a hung parliament led by RN not NFP [New Popular Front].”

Rather than be returned as the main party in the new parliament, RN came in third behind French president Macron’s party and the NFP which secured the most seats.

Back in May, before Macron had called the snap election, the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s cut its rating for French sovereign debt to AA-.

In the run-up to the elections, the fear in the markets was that a government, which depended for support of the RN, would undertake increased spending. Now this fear has been transferred to the NFP.

Vincent Juvyns of J.P. Morgan Asset Management said the value of French bonds could decline relative to their peers.

“Markets may demand a higher spread [that is, a higher interest rate] as the new government hasn’t clarified its fiscal position. The European Commission and rating agencies are expecting 20 to 30 billion of cuts but the government will have to deal with a party which wants to increase spending by 120 billion.”

The demands of the financial markets and the institutions of the EU were articulated by the French economy minister Bruno Le Maire who said the country could experience a financial crisis if the program of the NFP were implemented.

Debt problems are by no means confined to France. Public debt in the UK has risen to 104 percent of GDP this year, compared to 86 percent in 2019 and 43 percent in 2007. In France the corresponding figures are 112 percent, 97 percent and 65 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.

In the lead up the British election, which resulted in the victory of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer, a London-based think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said all the major parties had avoided making hard decisions in their manifestos.

According to Isabel Stockton, senior research economist at the institute: “Growth is set to be quite disappointing and debt interest is set to remain high. And that combination of things is looking worse than [for] any other parliament in the postwar history of the UK.”

That is a significant assessment given that the Attlee Labour government which came to power in 1945 confronted a British economy significantly drained by the war effort.

The IFS analysis was echoed by the incoming chancellor Rachel Reeves who, in her first major speech, said the Labour government had inherited “the worst set of circumstances since the second world war.”

The debt cloud extends beyond France and the UK. It is covering all the major economies, according to calculations by Capital Economics, which found that they are running deficits three percentage points above pre-pandemic levels.

Debt was very much on the agenda at the European Central Bank’s annual summer gathering held in Sintra, Portugal, at the start of this month.

In an address to the delegates, ECB president Christine Lagarde said “fiscal matters enormously” and that policymakers were “very concerned” that governments bring down their deficits in line with the EU’s limit of 3 percent.

She also indicated that the key target in the ECB’s “fight against inflation” is the wages of the working class. She claimed that wage rises of 5 percent, which do not make up for the real cuts imposed by inflation, were pushing up prices for services that were being passed on to consumers.

“We have to look what is behind it, which is a lot of labour costs,” she said.

The debt situation of the US is also coming under increased scrutiny. In a panel discussion at the Sintra gathering, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell was asked about the impact of the spending and tax plans of the Democrats and Republicans in the upcoming elections.

He refused to be drawn on specifics but said the economy was too strong to be running such high deficits and this had to be addressed “sooner rather than later.”

In a sign of the accelerating pace of US debt accumulation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last month revised its estimate for the deficit this year to $1.9 trillion, or 7 percent of GDP, compared to its projection of $1.5 trillion as recently as February.

Powell said the present level of debt, some $35 trillion, was “completely sustainable but the path we are on is completely unsustainable.”

The rising level of debt, much of it fueled by the higher interest rates imposed by central banks and the escalation of military spending in all major countries, is driving governments into a head-on confrontation with the working class as the financial markets dictate cuts to government spending on social facilities, coupled with the suppression of wage demands.

In an article on the “crushing debt” in Europe published on Monday, the Wall Street Journal, citing analysis by David Miles, an official at the Office for Budget Responsibility in the UK, noted: “Lower public spending might require reduced expectations of the role of the state. Those expectation have expanded significantly since the end of World War 2 and might not have adjusted to the reality of recent poor economic performance.”

As the article noted, this situation raised the prospect of a repeat, possibly on a bigger scale, of the Liz Truss experience in the UK. When the short-lived British Tory prime minister sought to carry out major tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy without making spending cuts, she set off a bond market crisis in September 2022.

This threat is not confined to the UK but hangs over every government, including that of the US.

Cuban government declares “war economy”, deepening austerity measures

Alexander Fangmann

On June 30, the Cuban government announced that its economic plan and budget for 2024 will be adjusted to conditions of a “war economy [economía de guerra].” The announcement of an economic war footing and the deepening austerity measures are a response to the profound economic, social and political crisis gripping the island, the result of decades of embargo and sanctions by US imperialism and the inability of the Cuban state to effectively counter them. 

Cuban Government Cabinet meeting on Economic Projections, March 5, 2024. [Photo: Presidencia de Cuba]

Speaking at the meeting of the Council of Ministers in which these measures were announced, First Deputy Minister of Economy Mildrey Granadillo de la Torre, said they are intended “in essence, to correct macroeconomic imbalances; increase the attraction of foreign currency to the country through different means and concepts; incentivize national production, with emphasis on food production; and organize the functioning of non-state forms of management.”

No different from other capitalist states in the region, the bourgeois nationalist regime in Cuba finds no other solution than cheapening labor and embracing the diktats of global finance capital to attract investments, relying today primarily on Spanish, French, Chinese, Canadian and Russian capital.

According to a report on the meeting in Granma, the official newspaper of the ruling Cuban Communist Party, the government plans to reduce “budget items with the objective of reducing the fiscal deficit in 2024.” Such decisions are to be “centralized,” that is, made at the highest levels. Though the newspaper gives no solid figures, the depth of the cuts is indicated by the statement that the government intends to “postpone or even paralyze investments that are not essential at this stage.”

Granadillo said, “a single, inclusive pricing policy will be established on equal terms for all subjects of the economy, which includes both the state and non-state sectors.” Although the precise meaning of this has not been officially clarified, reports suggest price caps will be imposed on chicken, powdered milk, pasta, sausage, soybean oil and detergent, based upon import costs. 

Recognizing that the widespread legalization of privately owned businesses has created opportunities for siphoning off state resources, the government has instituted a measure “to limit the profit in purchases of products and payments for services and inputs carried out by the state sector to the non-state sector.” This policy, which already took effect as of July 1, limits profits to between 15 and 30 percent, with the higher figure reserved for “high technology and innovation companies,” according to the Cuban News Agency.

The new austerity measures follow an announcement in January of a “macroeconomic stabilization program.” That package of measures raised the price of gasoline five-fold and increased prices on electricity, water and cylinders of cooking gas, among other measures meant to reduce demand for fuel and other scarce imports. At the time, the government announced it would “review the state structures and payrolls,” a prelude to mass layoffs. 

The current crisis in Cuba has gone well beyond the levels those seen during the Special Period in the 1990s following the dissolution of the USSR and the end of its subsidizing of the Cuban economy. Official inflation for 2023 was recorded at 31 percent, down from 77 percent in 2021. Additionally, the economy contracted by 2 percent, and the Cuban peso has depreciated 50 percent against the US dollar on the black market. 

Large swaths of the island continue to experience hours-long blackouts, owing to a combination of fuel shortages and breakdowns of power plants. A 2022 fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base reduced Cuba’s oil storage capacity, complicating efforts to ensure the thermoelectric power plants have enough fuel to generate electricity. 

Food shortages have also continued, with rationed, subsidized products often unavailable. Protests erupted in March over blackouts and food shortages in Santiago de Cuba and elsewhere, leading to dozens of arrests. 

As in the United States and other countries around the world, the invocation of a war footing by the Cuban government is an indication the state is preparing to undertake further repressive measures in the face of popular opposition to its policies. 

Over half a million Cubans, or nearly 5 percent of the population, have fled to the United States since October 2022 as conditions in the country have worsened. In an interview with the Associated Press, the head of the Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Foreign Affairs said around 3 million Cubans are currently living abroad, and the government admitted last week that 1.3 million Cubans maintain residency in Cuba while living in the US. In light of the unprecedented number of emigre Cubans, an upcoming session of the National Assembly is set to debate changes to citizenship laws allowing Cubans to live overseas for longer periods and expands citizenship and residency rights. 

Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that a significant factor in the economic crisis is “directly related to the bureaucracy and the inefficient control that we are carrying out from our institutional system.” Nonetheless, he claimed that, “All of us are here to save the Revolution and save socialism.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

While the economic embargo, or blockade, imposed by US imperialism following the Cuban Revolution has been the most significant factor in the protracted economic crisis, the Cuban government, from the Castro era to today, has carried out a domestic and foreign policy which has left the country in a blind alley.

Flowing from the petty-bourgeois class character of the regime brought to power by the 1959 revolution and its long subordination to the peaceful coexistence doctrine of the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy, the Cuban government has for decades sought to reach some form of accommodation with American imperialism, which the latter has had no interest in granting. 

Indeed, just this week, Republican Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart inserted into an appropriations bill a measure that would prevent the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a slanderous designation that imposes additional US sanctions beyond the embargo. 

Although the Republican Party and the right-wing Cuban exiles in the US smell blood in the water, the Biden administration has largely maintained Trump’s rollback of relations begun under Obama. In any case, the latter’s opening of relations between Cuba and the United States was based on a conception of fostering the growth of a social layer wedded to American imperialism for the purpose of carrying out a regime change, not fundamentally out of a change of heart by the ruling class or the Democratic Party. 

The Cuban government was able to hold out against the embargo for many years based upon a sugar and tourism-based economy due to heavy subsidies provided first by the USSR, which gained an outpost in the Caribbean, then by subsidized oil supplies from Venezuela, which allowed the latter to burnish its leftist credentials. Venezuela, however, is no longer in the position it once was, due to sanctions on the country imposed by the American government. Oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba are down to 27,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 80,000 bpd in 2020, and 51,500 bpd in 2023.