UK contaminated blood scandal has global dimensions

Barry Mason

Prime Minister Theresa May has been forced to announce an inquiry into the contamination of blood products in the 1970s and 80s that led to the painful deaths of more than 2,400 patients and destroyed the health of many more.

According to a recent parliamentary report, around 7,500 people were affected. May called for the inquiry on July 14 at that morning’s cabinet meeting, knowing that otherwise she might lose a motion calling for one presented by Labour MP Diana Johnson later that same day.

Until now, May—as with all previous Conservative and Labour prime ministers—had ruled out calls for a public inquiry.

The 2,400 who died in the UK are among tens of thousands impacted worldwide due to profiteering from the sale of infected blood.

• In the United States around 8,000 haemophiliacs became infected as a result of receiving the contaminated blood products.

• In Canada 2,000 who received the contaminated blood products developed HIV and 60,000 Hepatitis C.

• In France, around 4,000 haemophiliacs were given contaminated blood. After long-drawn out legal proceedings, in 1999 Socialist Party Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and Minister of Social Affairs Georgina Dufoix were acquitted while Health Minister Edmond Hervé was found guilty but given no penalty. Doctors in charge of verifying the safety of the blood were given and served heavy jail sentences.

• As of 2001 in Italy, an estimated 1,300 people, including almost 150 children, had died from infected blood infusions since 1985.

The majority of those affected by contaminated blood products are haemophiliacs, who suffer from a faulty gene that prevents their blood from clotting. They can be treated with drugs to help their blood to clot.

In the 1970s, the Factor VIII drug became available, which proved to be more effective, acted more quickly and could be self-administered. It greatly improved the lives of many haemophiliacs who previously might have had to undergo long hospital stays resulting from bleeds.

Factor VIII was produced by pooling the plasma from thousands of blood donations, which was concentrated and refined. This carried an inherent risk that if just one donation among many was infected the whole batch would become infected. The UK was unable to meet the demands for Factor VIII and began to import the product from the US, where production was dominated by a few giant pharmaceutical companies.

Unlike in the UK, blood donors in America were paid to give blood. Many of those giving blood were drug addicts or those with lifestyles likely to compromise their health. It was recognised by the UK’s Department of Health (DoH) that health risks such as hepatitis could be the result, but a judgement was made that the benefits outweighed the risks. In Scotland, a decision was made not to use US-supplied Factor VIII and to use only home-produced products because of the risk.

The risk of infection was greatly multiplied in the early 1980s with the outbreak and rapid spread of AIDS. In the US, by the end of 1982, there had been nine reports of HIV infection in haemophiliacs, of whom eight had died.

Warnings about the danger of contaminated blood products were ignored by successive British governments.

In May 1983, the year the first UK AIDS infection related to Factor VIII was detected, Dr. Spence Galbraith, the head of disease control in England and Wales, wrote to the DoH advising that US blood products not be used. On the basis of a shortage of UK-produced Factor VIII, the panel advising on the safety of medicines rejected Galbraith’s advice.

A letter sent out to UK haemophilia centres in June 1983 advised that children not be treated with US-sourced Factor VIII and instead be given National Health Service (NHS) concentrates. However, some children continued to be given US product and went on to become HIV infected.

Kenneth Clarke, health minister in the Thatcher Conservative government, claimed, falsely, that there was no concrete proof that AIDS could be transmitted by blood products.

In April 1984, the HIV virus was identified and later that year a test became available. Many haemophiliacs were found to have been infected with the virus. The first case of UK-donated blood infected with HIV was reported.

At the end of that year US researchers discovered that heat-treating Factor VIII killed off the HIV virus. Scotland immediately went over to only dispensing heat-treated Factor VIII. In England, it took a full nine months before all Factor VIII was heat treated and in this period some haemophiliacs became HIV infected.

In 1989, the Haemophiliac Society called on the government to make £200 million available as compensation to the 1,200 people infected as a result of receiving contaminated blood products. Nine hundred people threatened to sue the government. In the end, the government promised those affected a lump-sum payment of just £20,000 each but did not accept liability. Those accepting the money had to sign a waiver saying they would not pursue further action in relation not only to their HIV infection, but also to infections resulting from the Hepatitis C virus.

The Hepatitis C virus had only recently been identified and it was found that many of the haemophiliac patients had been infected with it, along with HIV. Hepatitis C causes liver damage and can induce cancer. It was also found in donated blood from donors in the UK, meaning that not only haemophiliacs but also anyone receiving a blood donation could potentially become infected.

There was no routine testing of anyone given blood in this period, which could have revealed the presence of the Hepatitis C virus leading to prompt treatment. Some victims only became aware when they experience the full impact of symptoms, and there may be still some people unaware that they are harbouring the ravaging virus.

The first inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal was led by Lord Archer of Sandwell, only reporting in 2009 under the Labour government of Gordon Brown. Archer concluded that commercial interests had been given a higher priority than patient safety. However, his was a non-statutory inquiry with no powers to force those government ministers or civil servants who declined invitations to do so to give evidence. While criticising the government’s slow response, Archer did not apportion any blame.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party-led government announced an inquiry in 2008 that only finally reported in 2015. Another cover-up, it did not take any evidence from anyone at Westminster and concluded that in Scotland all that could have been done was done.

A BBC TV Panorama documentary first broadcast in May and repeated in July highlighted how the paper trail related to contaminated blood was concealed.

Haemophiliacs have found it almost impossible to retrieve their medical records. David Watters, General Secretary of the Haemophiliac Society from 1981 to 1993, said all files relating to the HIV crisis, including correspondence with the DoH, had been destroyed.

According to former Labour government Health Secretary David Owen (1974-76), he was unable to get hold of ministerial papers relating to the contaminated blood event and was told they had been “cleaned up” in an attempt to prevent the matter going to court.

In the end four pharmaceutical companies responsible for supplying contaminated blood products—Alpha Therapeutic Corporation, Institut Mérieux (which then became Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc., and is now part of Sanofi), Bayer Corporation and Baxter International—paid out just $660 million to settle cases brought on behalf of 6,000 infected haemophiliacs. This equated to a payment of just $100,000 to each infected haemophiliac.

Trump administration prepares mass deportations

Patrick Martin 

The Trump administration is preparing to step up its attacks on immigrant workers, drafting new guidelines under which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would authorize “expedited removals” of hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers without any court proceedings.

The Washington Post published a report Sunday based on a 13-page internal DHS memorandum leaked to the newspaper. The proposal would expand the authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to deport immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the United States continuously for the past 90 days.

Until 2004, expedited removals were limited to the US border area and amounted to summarily deporting immigrants detained in the act of entering the US from Mexico. Under George W. Bush, the scope of expedited removals was expanded to areas within 100 miles of the US border and to individuals who had been inside the US less than 14 days.

The Obama administration maintained these guidelines but greatly expanded their enforcement, with the result that the number of immigrants subject to expedited removal nearly quadrupled, from 50,000 when the effort began in 2004 to 193,000 in 2013.

The Trump draft guidelines would further expand the geographic area for expedited removal to include the entire United States. Any immigrant picked up anywhere in the country who is unable to prove residence in the US for the past 90 days could be summarily deported.

Given that many immigrants have little or no paper record of their stay in this country, or may have nothing in their possession when they are accosted by ICE agents, the number affected by the new procedure is likely to be limited only by the number of ICE agents available to carry out enforcement.

The only limitation under the new guidelines, according to the Post, is that unaccompanied minors would not be subject to expedited deportation, regardless of where they are detained.

The expansion of summary deportation is only one in a series of attacks on immigrants being implemented under the Trump administration with little media attention and virtually no public protest by Democratic Party politicians, who falsely claim to oppose Trump’s rampage against democratic rights.

According to the investigative journalism group Pro Publica, the top official of the Enforcement and Removal Operations Division (ERO) of ICE, Matthew Albence, has told the 5,700 agents involved in deportations to stop prioritizing immigrants for detention based on the guidelines laid down by the Bush and Obama administrations, which targeted those convicted of violent felony offenses.

In an internal memo, he ordered “effective immediately, ERO officers will take enforcement action against all removable aliens encountered in the course of their duties.” During its first four months, the Trump administration each day arrested an average of 108 undocumented immigrants who had no criminal record, an increase of 150 percent from the previous year.

The administration is also pushing ahead with the enforcement of its executive actions banning travel from six Muslim-majority countries and effectively halting most refugee admissions to the United States. The executive order targeting Muslims was upheld by the US Supreme Court last month after it had been struck down as unconstitutional by several lower courts.

The State Department announced last week that on Wednesday, July 12, refugee admissions reached the 50,000-person cap set in the executive order. Refugees scheduled to enter the country that day were admitted, but admissions will now slow to a crawl. Under the guidelines set by the Supreme Court, once the 50,000 limit has been reached, only refugees with “a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” will be admitted.

Press reports indicate that another 50,000 refugees are at some stage in the process of being admitted to the US, but are currently outside the country. Only those who qualify under the “bona fide relationship” provision will now be admitted. The Trump administration has given an extremely narrow definition of “relationship,” including spouses, fiancés, children and siblings, but excluding grandparents and other more distant relatives.

A legal challenge to the relationship definition is going on in Honolulu, where US District Judge Derrick Watson ruled Thursday that grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives must also qualify. The federal Department of Justice immediately appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court, which gave the state of Hawaii until Tuesday to respond.

The DHS is also proceeding with an expansion of the geographic scope of the travel ban, sending a report to the White House last week listing 17 countries that have failed a preliminary assessment of their willingness and ability to share background information on their citizens seeking to travel to the United States.

The level of cooperation with US intelligence and police agencies required by the DHS is so extensive that many more countries are expected either to refuse to go along with the US diktat or prove unable to comply. The result could be a virtual shutdown of issuance of US entry visas in dozens of countries, mainly in the poorest regions of the world.

These actions come in the wake of the warning given by DHS Secretary John F. Kelly, a former Marine general, who told a group of Hispanic congressmen Wednesday that the administration did not plan to challenge the legal effort by 11 states, all with Republican attorneys general, which are suing to force the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

DACA is an executive order issued by Obama in 2012, under which nearly one million undocumented young people, who arrived in the US as children, have been issued Social Security numbers and given permits to work or study without risk of deportation.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the ultra-right Republican who is spearheading the anti-DACA campaign, has set September 5 as a deadline for suing the federal government to force an end to DACA if Trump does not rescind the executive order by then. Paxton has sought a Trump order to phase out DACA by refusing to renew the two-year permits issued under it.

Other anti-immigrant measures are being discussed, according to press reports, many of them directed at legal immigrants:

The DHS is considering requiring foreign students to reapply for permission to stay in the US each year and pay an annual fee, instead of the present system that entails a one-time fee for permission that is open-ended, as long as the student is enrolled and making progress. About one million students would be affected, 77 percent of them from Asia.

Two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, are drafting legislation that would cut the number of legal immigrants to the United States by 50 percent, from about one million per year to only 500,000. The bill, known as the RAISE Act, has Trump’s personal support.

White House policy adviser Stephen Miller has reportedly drafted a plan to move the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs and Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration over to the Department of Homeland Security, shifting the focus of refugee policy from foreign affairs to internal policing.

Global Warming-Induced Migration: An International Convention Needed

John Schabedoth

In recent years, reports on the first global warming-induced migration into New Zealand have accumulated. Two of the most prominent cases involved concerned nationals of the island states of Kiribati and Tuvalu applying for refugee status in New Zealand in response to the repercussions of global warming. 

The numbers of people who have to relocate due to the effects of global warming will rise significantly in the coming decades. At present, there is no satisfactory internationally-binding framework that deals with climate-induced migration. 

Given the urgency and imminence of this issue, there is a need for an international convention that regulates and provides for proper treatment of people displaced due to global warming and funding for the same. In doing so, responsibilities of countries who contributed to global warming need to be taken into account adequately.

International refugee law does not define a 'global warming-displaced' person. In this article, the term will refer to people who are forced to relocate within or outside their home countries due to the consequences of global warming in order to fulfil their basic needs. The causal link between the consequences of global warming and displacement serves to distinguish global warming-displaced persons from purely “economically-driven” migrants, the latter of which many states do not want. 

The consequences of global warming - droughts, floods, rising sea levels, extreme weather events and the ensuing soil salinity and salinisation of drinking water, soil erosions, etc. - deprive people of their livelihoods. According to the 2014 UN climate change report, sea levels will rise by one meter by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not radically reduced.

This will not only affect islands but also densely populated delta areas like the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta in Egypt and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. In Bangladesh for instance, 25 million people will need to be resettled in the next 30 years. 

Rich industrialised countries bear the primary responsibility for global warming-related migration. According to the World Resources Institute, since they began maintaining recording in 1850, 76 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions were caused by the industrialised northern countries. However, the effects of climate change will hit primarily and hardest those countries that have contributed far less to the acceleration of global warming.

In Western countries, their intake of refugees and funding of refugee aid in other countries has in most cases been regarded as an altruistic measure. Even though some former or ongoing Western policy measures might have contributed heavily to humanitarian crises in other countries, the Western countries saw the intake of refugees or its funding in other states as an "act of mercy," which is subject solely to their own political assessment.

This belief is not sustainable with regard to global warming-displaced migration. Global warming-displaced persons and countries most affected by global warming can and will legitimately have a demanding attitude towards the main accelerators of global warming.

Global warming is a cause of migration that is slowly developing and long-foreseeable compared to other events that drove people to leave their country. Therefore, dealing with global warming-displaced persons can be considered carefully.

An inclusion of global warming into the definition of a refugee in the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is insufficient. This convention was approved in 1951 against the background of mass expulsions in the aftermath of World War II. These mass expulsions had already taken place. The Convention was therefore intended to secure certain basic rights for the refugees in their host countries. There are no provisions on further intake of refugees. The principle of non-refoulement, which is regulated in the 1951 Refugee Convention, is not fitting for global warming-displaced persons. This principle forbids countries from returning refugees to their countries of origin if their lives or freedom are endangered there because of discriminatory persecution. Global warming-induced migrants are not threatened by persecution in their country of origin. In fact their country of origin may not able to adequately combat the effects of climate change.

An international regulation of global warming-displaced migration in the form of a new convention is needed. Such a framework should include a definition of global warming-displaced migration that includes internally-displaced persons, as a separation in the context of global warming appears artificial. The convention should regulate the rights of global warming-displaced migrants in relation to host countries. Additionally, the countries could agree on contingents of migrant intake.

However, the main objective of the agreement should be a fair distribution of migration costs. Most forced migrants prefer resettlement within their own country or region, so long as decent living conditions are guaranteed. Developed states responsible for accelerating global warming should support those countries financially and logistically. The solution could be a fund in which the states contribute pro rata to their greenhouse gas production. This is in the own interest of the industrialised states as well: it prevents controversial domestic political debates about immigration. In the end, it is also less expensive to pay for an appropriate migration aid abroad than taking in global warming refugees in large numbers.

The countries which accelerated global warming are primarily responsible for its consequences. They will not be able to avoid paying for the costs of global warming-displaced migration in an extent that highly exceeds the sums that are currently spent on refugee aid. If one wants to prevent a humanitarian disaster, by far larger than the recent refugee crises in Europe and elsewhere, it would be useful to act on making arrangements for the impending global warming-induced migration.

Australian cricket pay dispute escalates

Oscar Grenfell

An ongoing pay dispute between Australia’s professional cricketers and the sport’s administrators has escalated, with bitter recriminations traded between senior players and cricketing authorities.

Last week, Australia A, the second-line national team, boycotted a scheduled tour of South Africa, in a move labelled the first players’ strike in modern Australian cricket history. A deadline for new player contracts ended on June 30, leaving over 200 of the sport’s top professionals effectively unemployed.

The standoff has prompted nervous speculation that it could jeopardise the Australian cricket summer, including a tour in October by the Indian national team and the Ashes, a lucrative and prestigious test series between Australia and England.

In a sign that substantial financial interests are at stake, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this week called for a compromise deal, while commentators warned that sponsorships worth tens of millions of dollars are up in the air.

The Australian Cricketers Association (ACA), the players’ representative body, this week established a business to market and manage “intellectual property,” threatening the control of Cricket Australia (CA), the sport’s governing authority, over sponsorships and advertisements.

Leading players, including well-known fast bowler Mitchell Starc, have already defied warnings from CA against signing individual sponsorship contracts.

Much of the media commentary has asserted that the players are “overpaid” and their intransigence is a result of “greed.” It is true that the top players are handsomely remunerated, with the 20 most prominent cricketers receiving average annual salaries of over a million dollars.

In reality, the conflict is the product of long-standing moves by CA to ensure greater control over the large flows of money that cricket is attracting. It wants to cut spending on less profitable domestic forms of the sport and entrench a two-tier pay system.

The dispute began in March, when CA presented the players with a four-year Memorandum of Understanding that proposed to do away with the pay model used for two decades.

While containing pay rises for all the cricketers covered, the deal proposed to abolish revenue-sharing, by which elite players receive a guaranteed 25 percent of gross revenues on top of their base salaries. Instead, a $20 million surplus revenue pool was to be divided between the top 20 male and female players.

The widespread hostility to the attempt to overturn revenue-sharing in part reflects the origins of the model. Introduced in 1998, it was included in every subsequent contract, including the last in 2012.

The 1998 agreement was wrought through a protracted struggle by players, which included threats of strike action targeting the 1997 Ashes tour of England, and the formation of the players’ association by Steve Waugh and other international representatives.

Among their complaints were the low wages and uncertain conditions facing players in the domestic competition, who were paid as little as $24,000 a year. With no framework for collective bargaining, players were forced to sign individual contracts. If they did not agree to the onerous terms, they risked not being selected to play. Tim May, the first head of the players’ association noted in 1997: “As an individual the players are at the board’s mercy for selection and progression.”

Wages for domestic cricketers have increased substantially since the 1998 deal. CA claimed last year that the average retainer for a player in the state Sheffield Shield competition was $99,000 per year, a figure it says will rise to over $200,000 under the current offer. The minimum retainer, however, is currently a modest $61,800.

Even if they do receive greater pay than before, the state and second-tier players are still burdened with uncertainty, including the prospect of losing their income if they experience a poor run of form and are left out of a side. As in many elite sports, players dedicate years of their life to a career that may last a decade or substantially less, and that does not provide transferable employment skills.

The risk of life-changing injuries is also ever present. That was underscored in 2013, when Nathan Bracken, a former fast bowler, initiated legal action against CA, claiming he was not compensated for irreparable knee damage sustained during his career, which left him with a permanent limp. An out-of-court settlement was reached in 2015.

Stuart MacGill, another former international player, also launched legal action against CA, alleging it reneged on hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for a two-year period beginning in 2008, during which he was unable to play due to injury.

CA’s rationale for its exclusion of domestic cricketers from any profit-sharing scheme pointed to its financial calculations. The governing body claimed that Sheffield Shield matches, which are poorly attended, were not attracting any revenue.

Players, including Australian captain Stephen Smith, have argued that the domestic competition, featuring four-day matches, is the essential training ground for international test cricket, the game’s traditional five-day format. The longer version of the domestic game nurtures skills, including batting for extended periods, that are absent from shorter versions, including T20 cricket, a three-hour format modelled on baseball.

T20 cricket has attracted lucrative broadcasting and sponsorship deals, but is widely regarded as lowering the standards of the game, with an emphasis on immediate risk, and big-hitting, over the many other skills featured in longer formats.

CA submitted another proposal last month, involving a limited capped profit-sharing scheme that would extend to domestic players, but rejected any continuation of guaranteed revenue sharing. The players’ association turned down the offer and denounced attempts by CA to circumvent a collective agreement by offering contracts to individual top-line players.

The dispute’s origins lie in a 2012 review into Australian sport governance, which was followed by the restructuring of CA’s board, reducing the influence of state-based associations and installing three “independent” directors.

There are parallels between the moves to abolish revenue-sharing and the broader cost-cutting agenda of the corporate elite, aimed at maximising profits.

CA’s chairman, David Peever, is a former director of the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto. In that role, he oversaw restructures, the slashing of wages and conditions and actively pushed to abolish any form of collective bargaining. The other two “independent” directors are former Westfarmers chairman Bob Every and Qantas director Jacquie Hay.

Peever has high-level connections. Prime Minister Turnbull is consulting the cricketing boss over the appointment of the next head of the Defence Department. In 2014, Peever oversaw a review into the department, and then chaired the oversight committee implementing its recommendations.

CA’s public affairs boss, Mark O’Neill is another former Rio Tinto executive. He was an advisor to Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, whose government oversaw the pro-business deregulation of the economy and the abolition of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the early 1990s.

An Australian Financial Review report on July 7 said “insiders” confirmed the board was “determined to assert control over the game” and “the dispute is all about revenue, the future of the game and the way the public consumes it.” CA’s in-house broadcasting business could deliver up to $2.64 billion over the next five years, as a result of online streaming and the growing popularity of T20 cricket.

The ACA alleges that CA’s financial operations are increasingly opaque. The Australian reported that CA chief executive James Sutherland is estimated to have an annual salary of around $2 million. Administrative costs stood at $32.2 million in 2015–16, while total operational expenses doubled over three years to $56.7 million last year.

Australian unions isolate miners facing attacks on pay and conditions

Terry Cook

Mining conglomerate Glencore is continuing to demand significant cuts to workers’ wages and conditions in new enterprise agreements (EBAs) at seven coal operations in the New South Wales Hunter Valley region, north of Sydney. Each mine is covered by a separate EBA.

The company has rejected union demands for “assurances” in agreements against further casualisation. It has also opposed any changes to redundancy arrangements, which currently calculate severance payouts on a 35-hour week, rather than the average weekly hours worked by miners.

Glencore is offering only 2 percent per annum pay increases, below the rate of inflation. Some of the previous EBAs expired as far back as July 2012, so some workers have had no wage rise for five years.

Glencore’s intransience has been encouraged by the actions of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), which covers the seven sites. The union is manoeuvring behind the scenes to broker a deal acceptable to the company. It has sought to isolate the disputes at each individual mine, calling sporadic “aggregate stoppages” and strikes by “individual lodges.”

On Monday, during a second round of 48-hour strikes, around 1,300 workers from the Mangoola, Liddell, Bulga and Glendell pits, and the Ravensworth coal handling and preparation plant, attended a CFMEU meeting in the Hunter Valley town of Singleton.

The aim of the meetings was to let off steam, with union officials spouting demagogy, while suppressing any discussion of a genuine industrial and political struggle against Glencore’s agenda.

An official resolution was pushed through by CFMEU Northern District president Peter Jordan, without any discussion. It said the meeting empowered “the district to again co-ordinate aggregate meetings to bring lodges together to continue the fight.” This means another round of token strikes.

No copies of the resolution were provided for workers to read and consider. No printed copies of the resolution were provided for workers to read and consider. Also, as was the case at the previous meeting, no roving microphones were provided to make it difficult for workers to raise discussion or questions. The anti-democratic character of the meeting was connected to the union’s attempts to strike a deal with Glencore, and its fear over the mounting frustration among workers with the supposed CFMEU “campaign.”

At one point, a worker shouted out to ask what the union would do if the company imposed a lockout at his workplace. Jordan dismissively declared: “Our attitude would be … if you’re gonna lock one job out, you may as well lock them all out.” In other words, as in previous disputes, the union would do nothing to mobilise broader opposition to any company lockout.

At the same time, the CFMEU utilised the meeting to promote the empty rhetoric of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). To head off hostility among workers to the relentless assault on jobs, conditions and wages, the ACTU has recently criticised social inequality, poverty and corporate tax avoidance.

Union officials who have overseen countless sell-out deals with the major companies and successive governments, which have destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs, have begun presenting themselves as champions of the working people.

The ACTU demagogy seeks to subordinate a developing movement of the working class to the election of yet another pro-business federal Labor government.

The task of pushing this line at the meeting was assigned to CFMEU national secretary Michael O’Connor, introduced by Jordan as “Australia’s greatest union leader.” O’Connor, a decades-long union bureaucrat, has close ties to the highest levels of the Labor Party.

O’Connor claimed, without citing any evidence, that the unions were launching “campaigns everywhere” against the major companies. Most of his remarks consisted of hectoring questions directed at the miners, such as “are you up for it?” and “I’m not too sure if you’re up to it.” His taunts were received with stunned silence.

O’Connor got to the nub of the issue when he declared that under the Fair Work Australia industrial legislation, “workers do not have the right to go on strike.” He asked: “What happened to the right of showing solidarity to other workers? Why is it, that in this country it’s illegal for construction workers and timber workers to take action to support you?”

What O’Connor did not mention is that the Fair Work laws were introduced by the previous Labor government, with the full support of the unions, as a means of using the union apparatus to police the requirements of the corporate elite.

After declaring, “We want to see change,” O’Connor called for the election of a Labor government, saying “let’s make sure we get a good result and get rid of this rotten (Liberal) government.”

A similar message was delivered when O’Connor and ACTU secretary Sally McManus attended a rally of Glencore Oakey North workers in the central Queensland town of Tieri on Tuesday. Glencore has locked out those workers since June 9, with the union trying to keep them isolated.

The attacks by Glencore at its Hunter Valley and Oakey North operations are part of a broader offensive by the transnational mining companies, which are slashing costs and ramping up productivity in order to bolster profits.

The CFMEU and ACTU willingly enforce the anti-strike provisions in Labor’s Fair Work laws. The unions fear that a unified fight by miners could become the focus for an industrial and political counter-offensive by the entire working class.

Fiat workers in Serbia launch strike

Ulrich Rippert 

Some 2,000 workers at Fiat-Chrysler’s (FCA) Kragujevac plant in central Serbia, 60 miles southeast of Belgrade, have been on strike for two weeks. The workers, who are combatting starvation wages and terrible working conditions, confront a united front of corporate management, the Serb government and the trade unions.

Under pressure from the unions, the workers agreed to call off the strike from Friday to Sunday for negotiations with management. Workers will be informed about possible solutions on Sunday, according to Zoran Michajlovic from the association of independent trade unions.

The workers are demanding a wage increase from the current average monthly salary of 38,000 dinar (€316 or $US362) to 50,000 dinar. The management of the Italian company has responded in an extremely provocative manner. They have essentially called for an end to the walkout, and refused to negotiate otherwise. Information from sources in the strike leadership suggests that a miserable management offer of around €350 is on the table.

The workers, who often labour up to 60 hours per week, were forced into strike action. Many are no longer able to provide for their families in the face of rising food prices and taxes. Seven hundred workers were laid off last year, reducing the workforce to 2,500, while at the same time the workload of those remaining increased. Since then, two shifts have been producing 400 vehicles daily.

The strike has had a major impact. According to press reports, 4,000 fewer Fiat 500L vehicles have been produced than planned.

The FCA plant is an important economic factor and one of the largest exporters in Serbia. Three percent of the country’s GDP is dependent upon FCA, as well as 8 percent of national exports. Approximately 67 percent of FCA is owned by Fiat-Chrysler and 33 percent is in state hands.

Immediately after the strike broke out, FCA management threatened that Fiat could withdraw from Serbia and close the Kragujevac plant. The government has also applied pressure on the strikers with this threat.

Kragujevac has been the site of auto production in Serbia for decades. This was the location of the Yugoslav automaker Zastava’s production facilities. Vehicles have been produced since the 1950s, first under licence from Fiat and later as an independent brand. The best known model was the Zastava Yugo 45. During the civil war in the 1990s, production came to a standstill and air strikes almost completely destroyed the facility. Following the war, the factory suffered a fate similar to that of other industries in the former Yugoslavia.

In 2000, the factory began producing Zastavas again, but only at a fraction of its former production level. In 2008, Fiat took over the plant and concluded a contract with the Serb government for ten years. Encouraged by extremely low wages, minimal taxes and willing political authorities, Fiat invested approximately €1 billion to modernise the plant.

FCA has been cooperating closely with the Serb government ever since. A few days after the outbreak of the strike, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic travelled to the area to, as she put it, mediate. In fact, Brnabic explicitly threatened the workers and called on them to end the strike immediately. The Tanjug news agency reported Brnabic as saying on Monday that the strike endangered the Serb economy and workers would “lose more” if they continued the strike. She confirmed that Fiat would not engage in negotiations until the strike ended. In addition, she claimed the strike violated an agreement with the company. According to the report, she said, “It will be very difficult for us in the future to bring new investors when there is no certainty that workers will honour contracts between unions and employers.”

Brnabic is a typical representative of a corrupt layer that has enriched itself and, since the reintroduction of capitalism, consolidated power in its hands and created the best conditions for international corporations to exploit workers. She studied business management in the US and Britain before becoming Serb director of the subsidiary to the American energy firm Continental Wind. In 2015, she defended the director of the state-run energy provider Elektromreža Srbije, Nikola Petrović, a close confidante of President Alexander Vučić, against corruption charges. Several months later, President Vučić appointed her prime minister. She is considered to be an unconditional advocate of the Vučić government’s right-wing agenda, which has intensified tensions with neighbouring states in recent months.

But FCA workers do not only confront an aggressive management and reactionary government. The trade unions view the workers with mounting opposition and outright hostility.

Since the late 1990s, when governments enforced social cuts, and the destruction and privatisation of the formerly state-run industries under pressure from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, the Serb trade unions have been fully implicated in the attacks on workers and support them.

In what almost amounted to full-scale deregulation, the government launched a wide-ranging assault on labour laws in early 2014. The unions suppressed all working class opposition to this and backed the government’s plans. The same applies to the major cuts imposed on wages and pensions in the public sector, which were imposed in close cooperation with the unions so as to secure additional loan payments from the IMF. “None of the major union centres has opposed the transition ‘reforms’ of the past 25 years,” stated sociologist Nada Novakovic, according to Balkaninsight.

Some union officials are company managers, while other unions have been “openly bought” by companies. Trade union representatives receive lucrative posts in company management. Others enrich themselves through “per diems, travel expenses, mobile phone expenses, cars, lunches, various extras,” according to Novakovic.

The close collaboration between the unions and political parties is exploited by many union officials as a springboard into a position in a party or the state, which offers even more opportunities for self-enrichment.

The strike heralds mounting opposition to these phenomena. When the economy minister once again called for an immediate end to the strike last week, the workers responded with a new strike vote in which the vast majority voted to continue the struggle.

The recent walkout by Volkswagen workers in Bratislava already made clear that major class struggles have begun in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. To be successful in these struggles, workers must combat the bankrupt nationalist conceptions of the trade unions.

The struggle against low wages and social cuts requires a socialist perspective and an internationalist strategy. The strike can only attain the strength and endurance it requires for victory if it is guided by a policy that seeks to unite workers internationally against capitalism, regardless of their origin or nationality.

We call upon all workers to actively support and expand the strike in Kragujevac.

Study shows US has poorest health, widest health care gap between rich and poor

Kate Randall 

A new study reveals findings that will come as no surprise to most American workers and youth: In the United States, your level of income defines your access to health care, the quality of care you receive, and whether you will meet with an early death because of it. The US also has the poorest health overall among high-income countries.

Using survey data to measure and compare patient and physician experiences across 11 countries, the Commonwealth Fund’s “Mirror, Mirror 2017: International Comparisons Reflect Flaws and Opportunities for Better US Health Care” finds that the US ranks last overall on providing equally accessible and high-quality health care, regardless of income.

The report compares health care system performance in the US with that of 10 other high-income countries, ranking them in five areas: care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes. The US ranks last overall, and last in all but one area studied, care process, in which it came in fifth.

If the United States were a politically healthy society, the release of this report would sound alarm bells in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Why, in “the greatest country on earth,” is the health of its citizens in such a deplorable state? What can be done to remedy what can only be described as a health care emergency of crisis proportions?

Instead, the study’s release follows the unveiling Thursday of the Senate Republicans’ latest version of their Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), which proposes to slash $772 billion from the Medicaid program for the poor, and the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the bill would leave 22 million more uninsured by 2026 than under current law.

The Commonwealth study points to factors contributing to this appalling US health report card, which will only be worsened under whatever health care “reform” is hatched in Washington. Life expectancy, after improving in recent years, has been aggravated by the opioid crisis. As the baby boom population ages, more people in the US are living with age-related disease, placing increased pressure on the health care system.

These are problems that could be confronted with timely and accessible health care, but these services are woefully inadequate. In particular, poor access to primary care has contributed to inadequate prevention and management of diseases. And in the US, far more than any other country studied, lower-income people are far more likely to lack access to affordable care, and to suffer and die because of it.

Forty-four percent of lower income people reported financial barriers to care, compared to 26 percent of those with higher incomes. By comparison, in the UK only 7 percent of people with lower incomes and 4 percent with higher incomes reported that costs prevented them from getting care.

According to the study, in the US population as whole in the past year:

• 33 percent had cost-related access problems to medical care.

• 32 percent skipped dental care or check-ups due to cost.

• 27 percent were denied insurance payment for care or did not receive as much as expected.

• 20 percent had serious problems paying or were unable to pay medical bills.

• 60 percent of doctors reported patients often had difficulty paying for medications or out-of-pocket costs.

• 54 percent of doctors reported time spent on insurance claims is a major problem.

• 54 percent of doctors reported a major problem getting patients needed medications or treatment because of insurance coverage restrictions.

These problems are worse in the low-income segment of the US population. For example, 44 percent of this group had a cost-related access problem to medical care, and 45 percent skipped dental care or a check-up due to cost. There is also a 24 percent gap between those in the above average and below average income groups who skipped dental care due to cost.

The study uses “average” income, which was about $75,000 in 2016, as the dividing line between upper and lower income. However, multimillionaires and billionaires skew this average upwards, and due to the growing income inequality in the US, the health care problems of those living in poverty in the “below average” group are most likely underrepresented.

Some of the most shocking statistics presented are on population mortality, in which the US ranked last in every category studied compared to the other 10 countries.

• Infant mortality: 6 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to Sweden, with 2.2 (the lowest)

• Life expectancy at age 60: 23.5 years in the US, compared to 25.7 in France (the highest)

The study also examined “mortality amenable to health care,” or deaths considered preventable by timely and effective medical care. The US had 112 deaths per 100,000 people that could have been prevented with timely and effective care. This is more than twice the rate in Switzerland, at 55 per 100,000.

The US also had a much lower decline in these preventable deaths over 10 years, falling by only 16 percent compared to 34 percent in the Netherlands.

The US spent $9,364 per person on health care in 2016, compared to $4,094 in the UK, which ranked first overall in health care. In other words, while spending far more per person, the US population has poorer health than the other 10 countries studied.

Such figures evoke howls from both big business parties for spending to be slashed. Typical were the recent comments of Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price who said, while claiming to be committed to fighting the opioid epidemic that killed 60,000 people in the US last year, “We don’t need to be throwing money” at the crisis.

What goes unmentioned in such statements is the root cause of the health care crisis in America: a health care system based on capitalist profit. The for-profit insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and giant health care chains are not in business to promote the health of the American people, but to boost their bottom lines.

Whatever health care legislation is passed in Congress—either by the Republicans, or in a bipartisan “compromise” with the Democrats—will be based on this capitalist model. The Republicans’ House and Senate health bills are, in fact, based on Obamacare, incorporating the structures set up under the Democratic legislation.

The central purpose of Obamacare was to shift costs from the government and corporations to the working class, with health care increasingly rationed on a class basis. The Commonwealth Fund’s findings on the state of US health care, particularly those on mortality, are an indication of the preliminary results of this bipartisan strategy.

Behind the BCRA’s proposals to gut Medicaid, and to give the private insurers even more latitude to boost profits through offering shabby, high-cost coverage, lies a calculated effort to reduce life expectancy for working people, and to send many of the old, sick or disabled to an early grave.

Wages and Wall Street

Barry Grey

Despite mounting geo-political conflicts, economic stagnation and governmental crises in country after country, stock markets in the US and around the world continue their spectacular upward climb. On Friday, as new revelations in the Trump-Russia saga intensified the crisis facing the deeply unpopular US administration, Wall Street chalked up another banner day. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed at new record highs and the Nasdaq recorded its best week of the year. Since its post-2008 crisis low point in March of 2009, the Dow has risen by 340 percent.

The other persistent economic trend, particularly in the United States, is the stagnation and decline of wages. This is despite a nominal US unemployment rate of 4.4 percent, a low level by historical standards, and what the media characterizes as “robust” job-creation.

Last week’s US employment report for June, despite a better-than-anticipated growth in payrolls, sparked unease even in some bourgeois circles because wages rose a mere 2.4 percent from the year-earlier period, well below the 3 percent rate in the months preceding the 2008 financial meltdown. The New York Times quoted a top executive at Manpower North America, who said: “We have not before seen unemployment drop, low participation rates and wages not move. That tells you something’s not right in the labor market.”

According to the most recent “Real Wage Index,” posted earlier this month on the PayScale website, five of the 32 metro areas included in the index saw wage declines in the second quarter of this year. Four of the five were in Midwest regions hardest hit by decades of deindustrialization: Detroit, Kansas City, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Adjusting for inflation, real wages in the US have, according to this index, fallen by 7.5 percent since 2006. In real terms, average wages in the US peaked more than 40 years ago.

The Dow Jones Industrial average (red) vs US wages (blue)

Unlike the 1929 stock market crash, which was followed in the US by social reform and a modest redistribution of wealth away from the rich, the 2008 Wall Street meltdown ushered in an intensification of attacks on the working class combined with a further enrichment of the financial aristocracy and a record rise on the stock market. Social inequality has accelerated and continues to climb.

The share of the US gross domestic product going to labor has fallen to the lowest level since the end of World War II, while the share going to corporate profits has hit record highs.

How is this situation to be explained, and what is the relationship between the staggering rise on Wall Street and the decline in working class paychecks?

The Wall Street boom and profit bonanza for the rich are not the result of a growth in production or a new upward spiral of the productive forces. On the contrary, the International Monetary Fund has placed at the center of continuing economic and trade stagnation a persistent decline in productive investment and, related to that, a slump in productivity growth.

What has happened is that the process of financialization and the growth of parasitism that led to the 2008 crash—triggered by the outright criminality of the major banks and investment firms—have accelerated in its aftermath. Far from diverting a small portion of corporate profits to finance social reforms, governments and central banks have overseen an unprecedented plundering of the world economy to rescue the financial aristocracy and make it even richer, at the direct expense of the working class.

The US Federal Reserve has led the way. After the Bush and Obama administrations seized $700 billion in public funds to finance an initial bailout of the major Wall Street banks, the Fed set about buying trillions of dollars of worthless assets to remove them from the banks’ books (dubbed “quantitative easing”), resulting in a five-fold growth of its balance sheet. At the same time, it lowered interest rates to near-zero and kept them at ultra-low levels to pump liquidity into the financial markets and drive up stock prices.

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has grown more than five-fold

The banks used their super-profits to provide a windfall for the financial aristocracy in the form of dividend increases, stock buybacks and corporate mergers. Just this month, the Fed gave the green light for banks to raise their payouts to big investors. Bank of America said it would increase its dividend by 60 percent and unveiled a $12 billion share repurchase plan.

This was accompanied, under Obama, with a policy of austerity and wage-cutting directed against the working class. This included the bailout of the auto corporations on the basis of an across-the-board 50 percent cut in the wages of newly hired workers, the gutting of health care for millions of workers in the form of Obamacare, and an assault on pensions signaled by the Detroit bankruptcy.

That this attack continues unabated was made clear last week when the state of Missouri cut the already derisory $10 minimum wage in St. Louis to the statewide starvation level of $7.70.

What has made this social counterrevolution possible is the nearly complete suppression of working class opposition. When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, the example of the Russian Revolution and the existence of the Soviet Union continued to haunt the bourgeoisie and inspire working class resistance internationally. The social reforms of the New Deal were not the result of beneficence on the part of Franklin Roosevelt, but the explosive eruption of working class struggle, particularly between 1934 and 1938, including general strikes that paralyzed entire cities and a wave of sit-down strikes in auto and other industries.

The current period is dominated by the opposite—the artificial suppression of the class struggle. The US Labor Department reports that over the past four decades major work stoppages declined 90 percent. The period from 2007 to 2016 was the lowest decade on record, averaging approximately 14 major work stoppages per year.

There are many signs of growing anger and militancy in the working class. But there is no basis for social struggle in any of the existing organizations. The Democratic Party has moved ever further to the right and today functions openly and directly as a party of Wall Street, war and the CIA.

The AFL-CIO and the rest of the unions—corporatist organizations of a corrupt and reactionary bureaucracy—devote their efforts to suppressing working class opposition to layoffs, wage cuts, speedup, casualization of labor and attacks on health care and pensions. They block strikes wherever possible and sabotage them when they break out.

Strike levels (blue) and income share of the top one percent (red)

The AFL-CIO web site reflects the organization’s indifference and contempt for the working class. On the issue of wages, it notes, as part of a few perfunctory paragraphs, that “Ninety percent of Americans’ wages are lower today than they were in 1997.” Its plan of action to confront this astonishing and damning fact? A petition addressed to Congress!

Wage stagnation and the ever-greater concentration of wealth at the very top will not be halted by appeals to the bribed stooges of Wall Street in Congress or any of the other institutions of the corporate-financial oligarchy. Only the renewal of working class struggle on the basis of an anti-capitalist and socialist program will change the situation.

The long and highly uncharacteristic period in which the class struggle in America has seemed to disappear is rapidly coming to an end. Anger is rising as is a desire to fight back. Last year’s Verizon strike was one of the longest and largest in many years. This growth of militancy is accompanied by a broad political radicalization and rise of anti-capitalist sentiment, which found an initial expression in the mass support for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, based on the misplaced belief that Sanders is really a socialist and opponent of the “billionaire class.”

The brutal attacks on social conditions and democratic rights by Trump’s government of oligarchs will provoke growing resistance among workers and young people. This emerging movement must, however, find a new organizational form and be guided by a conscious political perspective. It must not allow itself to be channeled behind the Democratic Party or sabotaged by the unions.

The Socialist Equality Party is fighting for the development of the broadest possible movement, uniting all of the various struggles—in defense of health care, immigrants, jobs, wages and education, and against the growing threat of world war—in a single mass social and political movement directed against the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.

We are calling for workers to establish committees of struggle in the factories, work locations and communities to develop this movement and link it to the struggles of workers around the world. Above all, we are calling on workers and youth who see the need for a struggle against capitalism to join and build the SEP as the new political leadership of the working class.

Skoll Scholarships at Said Business School for International Students 2018/2019 – UK

Application Deadlines:

• 29th September 2017
• 5th January 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International students from all countries

To be taken at (country): Said Business School, University of Oxford, UK

Subject Areas: MBA, Management Studies in Social Entrepreneurship

About Scholarship: The Skoll Scholarship is a competitive scholarship for incoming MBA students who pursue entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges. The Scholarship provides funding and exclusive opportunities to meet with world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors. Once selected, these students are known as Skoll Skollars.

The Skoll Scholarship provides tuition for entrepreneurs who have set up or have been working in entrepreneurial ventures with a social purpose, and who wish to improve their knowledge of market-oriented practices so they can be more effective in their subsequent social change pursuits.

The Scholarship is given in recognition that the MBA may represent a significant financial burden, particularly for those who have chosen to work in social ventures rather than the commercial or public sectors.

Selection Criteria

• All the candidates are required to take the GMAT test for entry to Oxford’s MBA programme.
• Candidates whose first language is not English or who have not studied at an English speaking University are required to take either the TOEFL or IELTS tests.
• Demonstrate evidence of need for financial support.

Who is qualified to apply?: To be considered, you need to meet the following criteria:

1. By the time the candidates apply for the MBA, they must have spent preferably at least 3 years either:
   • • starting and growing a social venture;
     • OR leading a major expansion of an existing social venture or programme within an organisation;
     • OR pursuing positive change as an impact career professional, i.e. someone who has used entrepreneurial approaches to address the same social/environmental issue, with a clear core thread that unites his/her work.
   In each of these 3 cases, candidates should be able to describe the outcomes/impact that has been created as a result of their work.

2. Candidates will have used entrepreneurial approaches to identify opportunities, taken action to positively shift the status quo, and produced proven impact that contributes to rectifying unjust systems and practices in their chosen area of work.

3. Candidates must demonstrate evidence of personal qualities strongly resonating with entrepreneurial leadership, and illustrate how these have influenced their career path thus far. These qualities include:
   • Single-mindedness and persistence in pursuit of a social/environmental benefit goal, including a willingness to face failure and start again;
   • A bias towards action rather than reflection on an issue and a willingness to apprentice with a problem* if they are tackling a challenge they didn’t personally live;
   • A tendency to explore the environment for opportunities and resources;
   • A willingness to take personal, and sometimes financial, risks;
   • A propensity to develop networks and draw upon their members to pursue mutual goals.

4. Candidates must demonstrate how a business education can contribute to the wider development of their work. They will need to illustrate why a business degree at this stage of their career trajectory can help them amplify their impact.

5. Candidates must demonstrate some evidence of their need for the Scholarship. This may be exhibited, for example, in previous work experiences or personal backgrounds which make self-funding the MBA a significant financial burden.

Number of Scholarships: No more than five scholarships will be awarded in any year.

What are the benefits? The Scholarship is intended to cover the Oxford Saïd MBA course and college fees, which in 2018-19 will be £55,000. Additional funds of up to £8,000 are provided as a contribution towards living expenses, totalling an award of £63,000.

Duration: Scholarship will last for the duration of the programme

How to Apply

In order to apply for the Skoll Scholarship you first need to apply and be accepted onto the Saïd Business School’s MBA programme. To be formally considered for a Skoll Scholarship, you need to state your interest in the “Scholarships” section of the MBA application form. Do this by checking the box next to “Skoll”.

When your MBA application is submitted, the MBA admissions team will first assess your application to ensure that you meet the academic requirements sought by the school. If you are accepted onto the programme, you will be sent an essay question that needs to be completed.

The Skoll Centre will then consider your candidacy for the scholarship. A final decision will be made after a phone interview.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Sponsors: Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship