Barcelona train crash injures 56 during nationwide rail strike

Paul Mitchell

Friday morning at 7:15 a.m. a suburban train travelling from Tarragona in Catalonia ploughed into the buffers at the Estación de Francia (France Station) in the regional capital, Barcelona. Fifty-six people were injured and 21 hospitalised, with one left in a critical condition.

The Barcelona-based La Vanguardia reported that many of the passengers had been standing up, ready to get off, when the crash occurred.

Spain’s minister of public works, Íñigo de la Serna, claimed that the train had passed all its inspections, the last of which was on July 18, and that the driver had seven years’ experience. Catalan regional minister of the territory and sustainability, Josep Rull, said that the train had already slowed down and that “If it had entered at full speed we would have had an accident of unforeseeable consequences.”

Officials in the Metropolitan Transport Safety Area, attached to the Transport Division of the Mossos d’Esquadra (regional police), have already begun an investigation, as has the Commission for Investigation of Railway Accidents, which is part of the Ministry of Public Works. The High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) announced legal proceedings had begun.

The crash happened during a one-day national strike of rail workers opposed to attacks on jobs and wages. The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) made clear that it only called the action once the union had “exhausted all the channels of negotiation, the deadlines set by this organization and the patience derived from the goodwill to negotiate.”

The CGT warned that the “lack of response” by Renfe, the state-run train operator, and Adif, responsible for tracks and stations, generates “a lot of uncertainty within the railway collectives given the lack of future of the companies themselves, putting in question the continuity of the railroad as a public service.”

The CGT’s answer to the crisis is limited to requesting “an improvement in the quality of jobs,” “slowing down the continuous outsourcing of workloads” and “recovering lost purchasing power in recent years.”

That rail workers are having to strike for these demands is an indictment of the CGT and the other rail unions. The fact that rail companies, with the agreement of the union, are able to legally enforce minimum services during a strike—50 percent during peaks hours (33 percent in Catalonia) and 75 percent (66 percent in Catalonia) in off-peak—only causes chaos and confusion and increases the likelihood of accidents.

The crash occurred on the regional rail system Rodalies de Catalunya (Catalonia Commuter Rail), which, unlike any other system in Spain, has been administered by the regional government since 2010 rather than the Spanish government. The network consists of 17 lines, mainly around Barcelona, serving a total of 203 regional stations.

Rodalies de Catalunya, especially in Barcelona, has the reputation of being one of the worst rail operators in Spain in terms of safety. There is an ongoing dispute between the Catalan government and the Popular Party government in Madrid over who is responsible. The Catalan government continues to blame Adif, which still maintains track and stations in the region. Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported of Estación de Francia, “There may be questions over the state of the station itself; the listed building has been eyed for closure since 1969 and the previous mayor had planned to shutter it in 2015.”

A report in October 2013 revealed there had been nine accidents, injuring 80 people, in the previous three years. These included one in February 2012, when a train also ran into the buffers at the Mataró station, north of Barcelona, injuring 11 people.

Workers in the Barcelona Metro (TMB) have also been involved in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions. On Monday, they took their 12th day of strike action in the past three months. Yet again, under the auspices of the CGT, this was kept separate from the national rail strike.

Last year, the World Socialist Web Site reported how the CGT capitulated to the city’s mayor, Ada Colau, a founder of En Comú, a coalition including Podemos, Initiative for Catalonia Greens (ICV), United and Alternative Left (EUiA) and various community movements, over a strike in opposition to a four-year wage freeze and for an end to temporary contracts.

The Catalan government’s Department of Work, Social Affairs and Families presented on Monday a mediation proposal “worked on intensely during the last two weeks with the strike committee” that supposedly “improves” the meagre four-year deal offered by TMB last year, which was rejected by the Metro workers. The committee, made up of union bureaucrats, now has the task of selling the stitch-up to the workers’ assemblies.

The CGT declared, “We will hold a general assembly of workers to assess the proposal worked out between the labour department and the Strike Committee.”

The secretary general of the Communist Party-led CCOO union in Catalonia, Javier Pacheco, tweeted favourably, “The conflict has to come to an end with workers’ participation.”

Not to be forgotten is the role of the president of TMB—Mercedes Vidal, a leading member of the EUiA and councillor for the Barcelona district of Horta-Guinardó.

This week, Info Horta-Guinardó, a web site that “gives voice to the neighbourhood and popular movements” of the Horta-Guinardó district, released a series of mobile phone text messages between Vidal and other leading members of the EUiA, “mocking” the TMB workers, in the web site’s words. The officials complain that an “aristocracy of workers” at the Metro have been holding strikes “lasting for many years.” They warn of the “danger of putting on the table the salaries of the top managers of TMB” because it would make for “comparison with the lower workers, thus recognizing the privileges of some and the precariousness of others.”

The EUiA leaders then discuss how they needed to organise together to counteract “the presence of the underground workers” and “to deal with the pan-syndicalism that is a terrible scourge for the public.” This is the Spanish “left.”

European Union and Italy step up pressure on organisations assisting refugees

Marianne Arens 

On July 25, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti (Democratic Party) ordered representatives of nine non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in the rescue of refugees to attend a meeting at his ministry. There they were called upon to sign a “Code of Conduct,” restricting their activities in the Mediterranean Sea.

As the WSWS noted two weeks ago, the new code violates “existing law”: “On the high seas international maritime law prevails, which obligatorily demands the rescue of people in distress ... this is precisely what the ‘Code of Conduct’ is designed to prevent the NGOs and their rescue boats from undertaking.”

Should NGOs fail to sign the sinister, illegal code, Italy has threatened to close its ports to their ships. This is the latest disgraceful attempt by Italian authorities to rein in the activities of voluntary aid organisations and thereby reduce the number of migrants arriving from Africa. They want to restrict the NGOs and drive them out of the Mediterranean—or at least transform them into reliable adjuncts of the European Union (EU) Frontex operation and the Italian coast guard.

The migrant flight route across the Mediterranean is extremely dangerous. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as of July 23, 2,361 people had either died or gone missing in 2017, while some 95,000 migrants had reached Italy by sea. The dead include an estimated 300 children.

Without the NGOs, the number of drowned and missing people would be considerably higher. Currently more than 40 percent of refugees rescued at sea owe their lives to organisations such as Sea-Watch, Sea-Eye, MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), Jugend Rettet (Rescuing Youth), Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, SOS Méditerranée, Proactiva Open Arms, etc.

“We are just in mid-July,” noted Timon Marszalek, the director of SOS Méditerranée Germany, “and we’ve saved as many people in the Mediterranean as we did last year. In view of the failure of the European Union, the intervention of civilian organisations like our own is indispensable to prevent the deaths of thousands of people.”

Marszalek pointed to one recent incident on July 11, in which a baby was born during a rescue operation. Mother and child were still connected by an umbilical cord when they were brought on board the Aquarius. This was the fifth birth at sea on this one rescue ship alone. “What would have happened if our team had not been there on time?” the SOS Méditerranée official asked. Such examples also show how desperate people must be to take to sea.

The “Code of Conduct” that NGOs are now being required to sign by the government of Paolo Gentiloni (Democratic Party) is a crude and deliberate attempt to sabotage rescue efforts. It establishes harsh guidelines and demands that refugees be transported directly to the Italian mainland instead of being transferred to larger ships belonging to the coast guard, merchant marine or navy. This forces the small NGO ships to undertake longer journeys and restricts their presence in the most dangerous waters where their work is most necessary.

Ruben Neugebauer of Sea-Watch told Deutschlandfunk (German radio): “What they want to achieve is obvious: they are trying to keep ships out of the danger zone because we undermine the concept of dying on Europe’s borders.”

NGOs are also forbidden to enter Libyan territorial waters, even if refugees’ lives are at stake. They must look on as people drown, without being able to intervene. NGOs must also accept Italian police accompanying their vessels to track down smugglers among the refugees. This can only lead to a worsening of relations between the rescue teams and refugees.

The “Code of Conduct” is not merely the work of the Italian authorities. It was agreed upon at a meeting of EU ministers in Tallinn, Estonia in early July. At that meeting German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière repeated his slanderous claim that NGOs were working with so-called people smugglers.

German newspapers have also run articles accusing NGOs of collaboration with smugglers. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claimed, for example, that the rescue organisations were “involuntarily becoming an important element in the smugglers’ strategies.”

The Berliner Zeitung scandalously asserted that the NGOs’ role was not rescuing those in need at sea, but rather “assisting refugees and the transfer of emigrants.” The newspaper referred disapprovingly to Sea-Watch, based in Berlin. That organisation, which has not signed the “Code of Conduct,” rightly argues that there is already an International Law of the Sea, which obliges every boat owner to assist in sea rescue when necessary.

The Berliner Zeitung complains, however, that while it is “self-evident” that shipwrecked persons be saved, “this does not answer the question as to where to land those rescued. Sea-Watch 2 does not return the stranded to Libya, but brings them all to Europe.”

This slanderous article and the steps taken by the various EU interior ministers against the NGOs reveal there is a concerted campaign to drive private organisations out of the seas along the Libyan coast.

This campaign is bound up with unprecedented military deployment taking place in the Mediterranean off the North African coast. Taking part in the operation, which has been ongoing since June 2015 under the innocuous name of “Operation Sophia” (formerly known as Eunavfor [European Union Naval Force] Med), are the navies of Germany, Italy, Great Britain and other European countries.

On the same day the NGOs were summoned to the Italian Interior Ministry, the EU decided to extend the “Sophia” mission to the end of 2018. Officially, the remit of the operation is to combat “smuggler criminality on the Mediterranean” and thus prevent deaths at sea. In fact, the combined navies are responsible for just 8 percent of sea rescue operations.

In reality, mission “Sophia” is an important part of Europe’s plans for imperialist intervention in Africa. The Great Powers regard Africa as a strategically crucial area, with huge oil and natural gas deposits and other resources. With the war against Libya in 2011 and the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the new colonial “scramble for Africa” entered a new phase.

For the past six years the imperialist powers have been trying to install a new, reliable and loyal regime in Libya, which is key for access to Africa as a whole. This explains the background of a third important meeting in Paris on July 25: the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, invited the two main rivals in the Libyan civil war, Fayez al-Sarraj, the unelected head of the Western-backed Libyan Presidential Council, and Khalifa Hafter, head of the so-called Libyan National Army and an “asset” of the CIA since the 1980s. The two men subsequently agreed to suspend their armed struggle and hold parliamentary elections in the spring of 2018. On Wednesday, Sarraj visited Italian government officials in Rome.

The EU has committed itself to continue financing the Libyan coast guard and equipping it with weapons. The European Union is supporting an organisation notorious for trafficking in human beings, torture and murder. At the request of the EU, the Libyan coast guard forces refugees into Libyan prisons, where around 300,000 people are currently being held under appalling conditions.

For their part, NGOs must decide whether or not to cooperate with the Italian government and sign the “Code of Conduct.” The NGOs rely on private donations and young volunteers. Their efforts demonstrate a widespread willingness to assist and defend refugees.

This readiness was confirmed a few weeks ago in a poll carried out by the European Broadcasting Agency. Almost 1 million young people between the ages of 18 and 35 were interviewed. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) said they were willing to actively support immigrants. Some 78 percent of respondents in Germany said they noticed growing nationalism, and considered it a bad thing. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of young people in Germany and the overwhelming majority of young people surveyed said they were not ready to fight in a war.

The poll demonstrates the abyss between the vast majority of the population and establishment politics. Millions of workers and young people express their solidarity with the refugees and are ready to help them, while the political elite and governments are permitting thousands to drown in the Mediterranean.

Japan’s defense minister resigns in wake of scandal

Ben McGrath

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada resigned Friday, ostensibly for her role in the cover-up of Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) documents damaging to the Abe government’s militarist agenda. Her departure is an attempt to prevent further falls in public support for the government and Abe’s plans to force through pro-war constitutional revisions by 2020.

The cover-up involved daily logs that revealed Japanese troops participating in a so-called peacekeeping operation in South Sudan were at risk of being pulled into a military conflict in July 2016. One of the five legal requirements for the Japanese military to take part in such a mission is that a ceasefire agreement be in place, a condition that the GSDF daily logs clearly showed had been violated.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga painted Inada’s resignation as an attempt to take responsibility for the cover-up, rather than being forced out in a planned cabinet reshuffle on August 3. Suga apologized for the scandal as well and claimed the government “will work hard to win back the public’s trust.”

A close ally of the prime minister, Inada is known for her nationalist and militarist views and regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism. The shrine is where those who died in Japan’s wars, primarily World War II, are symbolically interred, including 14 class-A war criminals.

Inada has largely been a liability during her tenure in office. She was appointed defense minister last August as Abe pushed his cabinet even further to the right. A Jiji news agency survey earlier this month found support for Abe’s cabinet had fallen to 29.9 percent, with many people citing a lack of trust in the government.

At a press conference yesterday, Inada revealed more behind her decision to step down. She stated: “Not only has the log controversy highlighted inappropriate handling of information disclosure, but the fact that there were numerous instances of what appeared to be information leakage from within our organization [that] has risked eroding public trust in our governance system.”

In other words, her de facto removal is not so much due to her role in a cover-up, but in allowing it to go public.

The scandal began last September when journalist Yujin Fuse made an information disclosure request to see the GSDF daily logs from South Sudan for July, the month fighting broke out between government and rebel troops. The Japanese soldiers were taking part in the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), supposedly aiding construction projects in the oil-rich, African country.

The government initially claimed in December that the logs had been discarded, but then announced on February 7 that a wider search had uncovered the documents in digital form at the Joint Staff office, which oversees the GSDF, the Air SDF, and Maritime SDF, the formal names for Japan’s military branches.

The logs contained reports such as, “Fierce gun fighting at five, six o’clock (reference to direction) of the camp,” and “Fierce fighting involving tanks and trench mortars.” They also contained a map of the GSDF camp and a red area adjacent with the words, “Fighting broke out.”

In total, 300 people were killed in the conflict and 36,000 were displaced in July last year. Abe’s government pulled the GSDF troops out of South Sudan in May, but denied that the decision was related to unstable military conditions.

At the time of the fighting, the government downplayed what was happening in South Sudan. On top of securing access to oil and minerals, the Sudan deployment provided Abe’s government with the pretext for employing its new security legislation that allows SDF troops to take part in battles alongside allied countries, ostensibly by coming to their defense. Last November, the cabinet formally authorized the SDF to operate under the laws, which were passed in September 2015 and enacted the following March.

By March this year, however, Japan’s state-run broadcaster NHK reported that the GSDF also had digital copies of the logs and had met in February to decide what to do with them, opting to delete them in order to preserve the lie that only the Joint Staff had the documents.

Defense Minister Inada appeared before the Diet’s Lower House Security Committee that month to point fingers at GSDF figures for the cover-up and claimed to have no knowledge of what had transpired. She assigned the in-house Inspector General’s Office of Legal Compliance to investigate.

This month, however, it was revealed that Inada had been present at the meeting in February and was well aware that the digital logs existed and were being deleted. Yet the Inspector General’s Office cleared Inada of wrong-doing.

That whitewash became untenable on July 25. Fuji News Network reported that it had a two-page memo from an anonymous senior Defense Ministry official, showing that Inada had been present at a February 13 meeting to discuss the cover-up. It quoted a conversation between Inada and Lieutenant General Goro Yuasa, who reportedly said: “We have only confirmed we don’t have the paper (version of the log). But (electronic) data does exist.”

Inada responded, according to the note, by asking: “What should I say in answering [questions] tomorrow?” Two days after that meeting, Inada allegedly endorsed the decision to prevent the public from learning that the GSDF also had retained the daily logs, leading to their deletion.

Only weeks ago, Prime Minister Abe rejected calls for Inada’s dismissal after she angered voters by urging them to back the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidate in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections in order to “support” the SDF. The opposition to her comments reflected broader anti-war sentiment in Japan and hostility to the Abe government’s agenda of remilitarization.

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP), sensing an opportunity to score political points, attacked Inada on July 19, saying she “has repeatedly given false responses in the Diet and it is very egregious.” It called on Abe to dismiss her.

The DP, whose support rating has fallen to single digits, is not opposed to remilitarization, but instead is posturing as a defender of the current constitution in order to win electoral support. In fact, the party’s proposed alternatives to Abe’s 2015 security legislation were nearly mirror copies, with only minor cosmetic changes added.

The leaks from within the Defense Ministry reveal an internal conflict over how to push forward with the remilitarization plans in the face of popular opposition. Sections of the ruling LDP have been critical of Abe’s proposed revisions to the constitution, demanding he adopt an even more right-wing, pro-war position. This includes Shigeru Ishiba who is considering challenging Abe for the LDP presidency in next year’s leadership vote.

Russia expels US diplomats in retaliation for sanctions bill

Alex Lantier

On Friday, amid a collapse in relations between the world’s two leading nuclear-armed powers triggered by the US Senate’s passage by a lopsided 98-2 vote of a sanctions bill targeting Russia, Moscow ordered hundreds of US diplomats to leave the country. The Russian government indicated it has concluded that the US political establishment is seeking a confrontation with Russia, which has the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared: “The passage of the new law on sanctions shows with all obviousness that relations with Russia have become hostage to the domestic political battle within the US. The latest events show that in well known circles in the United States, Russophobia and a course toward open confrontation with our country have taken hold.”

On this basis, it told Washington to make a more than 60 percent cut in its 1,200-strong diplomatic mission to Russia by September 1. The Foreign Ministry stated: “We kindly ask the US to adjust the headcount of its diplomatic and technical staff by September to exact parity with the number of Russian diplomats and employees in the US. This means the overall number of personnel employed in American diplomatic and consular institutions in the Russian Federation will be reduced to 455.”

It added that Moscow would retaliate against any further US cut in Russian diplomatic staff by imposing identical cuts to US personnel in Russia. American diplomats will also lose access to Moscow warehouses and a dacha compound on an island in the Moscow River on August 1.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov confirmed that these measures were taken on orders from President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, Putin responded to the sanctions bill by declaring: “We are behaving in a very restrained and patient way, but at some moment we will need to respond… It’s impossible to endlessly tolerate this kind of insolence towards our country.”

A spokesperson for the US embassy in Moscow said: “We have received the Russian government notification. [US] Ambassador [to Russia John] Tefft expressed his strong disappointment and protest. We have passed the notification back to Washington for review.”

Hours later, Friday evening US time, the White House announced that President Trump planned to sign the sanctions bill, against which he had previously lobbied. The bill also increases sanctions against Iran and North Korea. It includes, in an unusual provision designed to target Russia, congressional power to veto any move by the White House to reduce or remove sanctions.

Moscow’s assessment that it expects the US government to launch an open confrontation with Russia points to the extraordinary level of international tensions and the immense danger of war. This assessment will not only guide the Russian government’s policy statements. It will also guide the force posture and readiness status of military forces engaged in explosive proxy wars and military stand-offs in countries surrounding Russia—from North Korea on Russia’s eastern border to Ukraine and the Baltics on its western border and Syria to the south.

These forces control sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the NATO countries of North America and Europe, and, indeed, the entire surface of the planet, several times over.

During the war provoked in Ukraine by the February 2014 NATO-backed coup that toppled a pro-Russian regime in Kiev, when Russian forces occupied Crimea after its largely Russian-speaking residents voted to return to Russia, the Russian army was placed on full alert. In a TV documentary that aired in 2015, Putin said that he feared “the most adverse development of events.” He added that the Russian nuclear arsenal had been “in a state of full combat readiness.”

Now, Washington has again escalated the confrontation—this time imposing sanctions on any company investing in new pipeline infrastructure carrying Russian oil or gas towards European markets. While this threatens Europe with a cut-off of crucial energy supplies, it threatens Russia, whose economy depends completely on its energy exports, with economic strangulation.

If Moscow is again anticipating a confrontation with Washington and expelling US diplomats, a move typically taken when two states are preparing for war, Russian forces are doubtless again being placed on high alert. The danger that a clash, accidental otherwise, between Russia and the United States, starting in the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific or Eastern Europe, could escalate into an all-out conflict has surged.

The Moscow Times cited Franz Klintsevich, who sits on the Defence and Security Committee of the Federation Council, as saying that Russia’s response to the Senate vote was “just the first steps” in Moscow's strategy. “No doubt, others will be taken,” he declared, adding that Russian responses could be “unexpected.”

This escalation of tensions between the world’s main nuclear powers testifies to the depth of the economic and geo-political crisis of world capitalism. In this, the main driving force has been the attempt of Washington and its European imperialist allies to dominate the Eurasian land mass. In the course of the quarter-century since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union and began the restoration of capitalism, removing the main military counterweight to NATO, the Atlantic Alliance has threatened, bombed or invaded countries from Iraq and Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and North Korea.

Any notion that workers can leave the task of stopping the war drive of US and European imperialism to the Russian capitalist regime and its armed forces is a dangerous illusion. Instead, what is emerging ever more starkly are the disastrous consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The corrupt Russian business oligarchy that emerged from the social and economic collapse produced by capitalist restoration is neither able nor willing to appeal to the international working class for support against imperialist war threats. Instead it desperately seeks to work out ways to coexist with US and European imperialism, vacillating between pleas for collaboration and military adventurism.

The Kremlin regime is itself emerging as a dangerous factor in world politics. Even after Moscow confronted NATO wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the 2011 wars in Libya and Syria, NATO’s backing of a coup in neighboring Ukraine led by far-right anti-Russian forces came as a shock to the Kremlin.

The Putin regime hoped, however, that a change of personnel at the top in Washington—the election of Trump and the installation of officials it believed would be more pro-Russian, such as National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—would improve its situation and lessen the dangers. After Flynn's resignation and the passage of the anti-Russian sanctions, however, the Kremlin is reaching the conclusion that these hopes were misplaced.

In a piece titled “After Trump,” pro-Kremlin commentator Boris Mezhuyev wrote: “In less than two months, it has become clear that for the US political elite, Flynn and Tillerson are less than insignificant people; they will not be allowed to rule America… Now this page of history can be considered turned, and Russian conservatives and Russia as a whole should learn to live in a ‘post-Trump’ situation.”

With tensions growing between Washington and the European Union, which sharply criticized the US sanctions bill, Moscow is hoping its somewhat strengthened geo-strategic situation will allow it to confront Washington. US-backed Islamist militias are losing ground rapidly in Syria to the Russian-backed Syrian regime, and pro-Moscow forces in eastern Ukraine recently set up a “Little Russia” state entity hostile to the NATO-backed regime in Kiev. Russia believes it can also count on support from Beijing, which sent warships to the Baltic Sea this week amid Russia’s confrontation with NATO there.

Some pro-Kremlin commentators are now proposing that Moscow play on growing conflicts between Washington and the EU. In Vzglyad, Pyotr Akopov wrote that the “new law on anti-Russian sanctions, paradoxically, is already benefiting Russia.” He continued: “It is not only an anti-Russian and anti-Trump, but also an anti-European law that is exacerbating contradictions among the Western powers. Europe is increasingly convinced that Americans’ words about ‘Atlantic solidarity’ are nothing more than a cover for their own selfish ends… It chased after Trump, it wanted to harm Putin, and as a result it tore one more thread out of the rope binding the Europeans to ‘Atlantic unity.’ Bravo, Congress!”

The Kremlin’s hopes that a more aggressive policy will force US imperialism to back down will prove to be no less illusory than its previous hopes in Trump. The sanctions bill is further proof that the American ruling elite will respond, as usual, with escalation, setting the stage for an even more dangerous conflict.

New Zealand: Job cuts planned for Auckland rail services

Sam Price 

Up to 300 Auckland rail workers face losing their jobs in a restructure of train services in New Zealand’s largest city. They include at least 160 on-board train managers, who could be axed in favour of 18 officers who will monitor automated electronic ticket gates, the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) told Newstalk ZB on June 29.

Auckland Transport (AT) is still negotiating the plan with the trade union and private contractor Transdev. AT refused to confirm the job cuts but told Newstalk ZB “some services could operate just with a driver.”

The Land Transport Amendment Bill, expected to pass parliament next month with support from Labour and the Greens, will give officers at ticket gates more legal powers, including to issue penalty notices to fare evaders.

Councils throughout the country are enforcing the National Party government’s 2013 “public transport operating model” to increase profits and promote privatisation to slash costs at the expense of workers’ wages, jobs and conditions. This is in line with similar assaults on transport workers internationally. Earlier this month, rail workers across Britain struck against the imposition of Driver Only Operated trains.

In a press statement on June 30 , AT spokesman Brendon Main claimed the proposed changes would “make the trip safer.” The removal of onboard staff will, in fact, make train journeys less safe. The plans are clearly intended to reduce spending and boost profits.

Transdev, a French-based multinational corporation, reported global revenues of €6.7 billion ($NZ10.5 billion) in 2016, largely achieved through attacks on its workforce. Transdev and its parent company Veolia cut 140 bus drivers’ jobs and wages in Seattle in 2008. In 2015, over 580 ferry workers were made redundant after Transdev’s France-Corsica service SNCM was sold to an entrepreneur. Both moves were supported by the trade unions involved.

Auckland’s commuter rail services were privatised in 2004 under the then-Labour Party government and contracted to Connex (later Transdev). Transdev’s Auckland operation doubled its profits to $1.99 million between 2012 and 2013, and again to $4 million in 2014. Staff are paid little more than the minimum wage, currently $15.75 an hour.

AT is cutting costs throughout its network. It closed the Westfield station in the working-class suburb of Otahuhu in March, saying the number of passengers using the station dropped below 330 a day.

In fact, there is an urgent need for more train services. Auckland’s population is over 1.5 million and grew 2.8 percent last year. According to AT, in the 12 months to March “rail boardings [grew] by over 19 percent.”

Despite publicly criticising the planned job cuts, the RMTU is collaborating in the restructure. Negotiations between the union and Transdev began approximately two months ago, and recruitment reportedly has begun for the 18 new officers. The union called a token two-hour stopwork meeting on July 13 in which 150 workers protested against the cuts.

The RMTU’s Stuart Johnstone told the WSWS the union did not intend to organise a strike against the cuts because it would be “illegal.”

Instead, the union is calling on workers to install a Labour-led government in the September national election. This is despite Auckland’s mayor Phil Goff, who is overseeing the attacks on rail workers, being a former Labour Party leader. His council has also axed 194 library jobs, and is considering privatising Ports of Auckland and introducing a user-pays scheme for roads.

Goff was a minister in the 1984–1989 Labour government, championing the regressive Goods and Services Tax and introducing fees for tertiary education.

The Labour Party and the unions are themselves responsible for the draconian anti-strike legislation that the RMTU uses as an excuse to oppose strike action. In 2000, Helen Clark’s Labour government passed the Employment Relations Act (ERA), which outlaws most strikes outside contact negotiations. The bill was accepted and promoted by the Council of Trade Unions.

The National Party, which took office in 2008, has seen no reason to overturn the ERA, only amending it in 2008 with a law that allows small businesses to sack workers arbitrarily within a 90-day trial period.

The RMTU has a long record of helping to impose redundancies, including 158 job cuts at the state-owned company KiwiRail in 2012.

In Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, the union has worked with Transdev to keep wages down, imposing a 2 percent wage increase, barely above the 1.6 percent rate of inflation in 2016. Last year, the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), led by former Labour and Green MPs, privatised commuter rail services and gave the contract to Transdev, which vowed to cut $100 million in operating costs over 15 years.

The RMTU has kept Wellington rail workers in the dark about the planned job cuts in Auckland, even though similar attacks are no doubt being prepared for the capital. The GWRC and private company Tranzit are currently seeking to slash wages for bus drivers.

Job cuts are sweeping the country, including at the Cadbury chocolate factory in Dunedin (350 redundancies), the Silver Fern Farms meatworks in Ashburton (370), Auckland library (194), Otago University (182) and A&G Price engineering in Thames (100). The Inland Revenue Department confirmed this month it plans to axe at least 1,500 positions over the next three years.

This intensifying assault on the working class by big business and the government is fully supported by the Labour Party and the unions. This underscores the need for workers to break decisively from these organisations and form new rank-and-file committees to unite workers in transport and other industries, who are seeking to defend their right to decent jobs, wages and conditions.

There is an urgent necessity for a new political party to lead the working class in the fight against capitalism and for the socialist reorganisation of society on a world scale. This includes taking public transport and other essential services out of the hands of corporations and placing them under public ownership and democratic control.

Brain damage found in 99 percent of deceased NFL players

Alan Gilman

A study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 110 out of 111 deceased National Football League (NFL) players suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE is the result of repeated head trauma, and it’s most commonly diagnosed in veterans and people who have played contact sports, particularly American football. The symptoms vary from person to person and can be mistaken for other conditions. This makes it more difficult to accurately diagnose. A person suffering from CTE could experience any combination of symptoms like confusion, memory loss, depression, impaired judgment, anxiety, anger issues, aggression, difficulty controlling impulses, and suicidal tendencies.

The only way to confirm the existence of CTE is to examine the brain after death.

This latest study involved 202 brains from men who played football at the high school, college, or professional level. Of the 202 total players, 87 percent were found to have some degree of CTE. Aside from 110 of 111 NFL players, 48 of 53 college players and three of 14 high school players had CTE.

The study acknowledges that these results may be skewed to a degree because former players or their family members who donated brains for research likely means they noticed symptoms while their loved ones were still alive, but even if these percentages might be lower among a much larger sampling, the result would still represent a very high percentage of players with CTE.

Dr. Ann McKee, the director of Boston University's CTE Center and the coauthor of this study said, “There's no question that there’s a problem in football. That people who play football are at risk for this disease.”

In response to this latest study the NFL released a statement saying it is committed to supporting research into CTE and finding ways to prevent head injuries and effectively treat them. It was not until early 2016, however, that the NFL admitted there was a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE.

For decades the multi-billion-dollar NFL, like “Big Tobacco” denying the pernicious effects of smoking, utilized its well-paid “experts” to promote the claim that football-related concussions had only minimal short-term effects and were otherwise harmless. The same well-paid shills would also work to discredit and intimidate anyone who stated otherwise.

This strategy was epitomized in the NFL’s attacks on Dr. Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist employed by the Pittsburgh Coroner’s Office who had made the initial finding connecting football with CTE.

Dr. Omalu had performed the autopsy on Pittsburgh Steeler Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at age 50 after experiencing prolonged emotional and cognitive decline. Dr. Omalu concluded that Webster had died of CTE and found that “this case highlights potential long-term neurodegenerative outcomes in retired professional NFL players subjected to repeated mild traumatic brain injury.” Dr. Omalu’s findings were subsequently published in the journal Neurosurgery.

The NFL’s concussion committee responded to these findings by writing to the journal claiming that Dr. Omalu’s paper had “serious flaws” and demanded its retraction—a request that was denied. The committee similarly attempted to discredit two subsequent reports of CTE that Dr. Omalu had diagnosed in other deceased former players. The NFL also attempted to have Dr. Omalu fired by the coroner’s office, and engaged in further acts of threats and intimidation against him. These events were depicted in the 2015 film Concussion.

In 2011, in response to these findings and to the decades-long denial by the NFL of any connection between repeated concussions sustained by players and the high incidence of brain disorders sustained by former players, a class action was filed by several hundred former players against the NFL.

By then it had become common knowledge that many former players were suffering from early onset of dementia. Many others were committing suicide at alarming rates. Among those were: Terry Long in 2005; Andre Waters in 2006; and Junior Seau, Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling in 2012. The families of these players insisted that the brains of these players be autopsied for brain damage and all were subsequently diagnosed with CTE.

With so many former players suffering from dementia and the repeated findings of CTE in deceased players, the NFL owners determined it was to their financial benefit to limit the financial damages. Consequently, in 2013 the league reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among its 18,000 retired players. One of the principal terms of the settlement was that the agreement “cannot be considered an admission by the NFL of liability, or an admission that plaintiffs’ injuries were caused by football.”

The NFL’s subsequent admission in 2016 of the link between football and brain damage, however, had nothing to do with accepting responsibility, but instead had everything to do with protecting its immense wealth from future lawsuits. The official admission that football-related concussions cause CTE will now make it harder in the future for players to accuse the league of concealing the dangers of the sport.

“Strategically, the NFL’s admission makes a world of sense,” said Jeffrey A. Standen, the dean of the Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University. “The league has paid a settlement to close all the claims previous to 2015. For future sufferers, the NFL has now effectively put them on notice that their decision to play professional football comes with the acknowledged risk of degenerative brain disease.”

The NFL has also in recent years enacted rule changes limiting hits to the head and has instituted a “concussion protocol” as its approach to CTE prevention. Under this protocol, if a player is believed to have sustained a concussion, he is deemed ineligible to continue playing in that game or any subsequent game until he passes a series of neurological tests. This procedure, however, is flawed for a variety of reasons.

Concussions affect everyone differently, and symptoms can show up days after the injury. Moreover, the tests used to screen concussions are inexact and need to be interpreted by a qualified medical professional who themselves differ in their assessments. Moreover, players have a financial incentive to "fake" these tests. Last October, Doug Baldwin of the Seattle Seahawks went on Bill Simmons’ “Any Given Wednesday” program and claimed that NFL players fake the concussion protocol. He had taken a big hit the weekend before and was screened for a concussion on the sideline. Baldwin said that he didn’t try to cheat the protocol but that he could have if he had wanted to, and that the ability to cheat is “relatively known around the league.”

Lastly, this protocol is premised on concussions being the only cause of CTE. The research of Dr. McKee and others has proven, however, that it is also the repeated hits—tens of thousands during a typical NFL player's career—that also lead to CTE.

Dr. McKee emphasized that what is needed is a “very well-constructed longitudinal study,” looking at young individuals playing these sports. “We need to follow them for decades. We need to take measurements throughout their lives and playing careers so we can begin to detect when things start to go wrong. If we can detect early changes, that’s when we could really make a difference.”

“We need a lot of funding,” she says, noting that the researchers are working with a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke that ends in December. “It’s always tricky for us to get funding.”

She has submitted applications for funding into next year, she says, but she is not sure they will be granted. “There's so much discussion of this disease not existing that funding agencies are reluctant to consider this a real neuro-degenerative disease. But I think we’ve proven beyond a doubt this is.”

Trump Justice Department: Corporations can fire employees based on sexual orientation

Eric London 

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed court papers Wednesday night arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect homosexual people from being fired from their private sector jobs because of their sexual orientation.

The move marks a significant attack on the rights of gays and lesbians. By allowing businesses to fire LGBT workers, the Trump administration seeks to reestablish their legal status as second-class citizens. The Department of Justice brief advances the pseudo-legal argument that anti-gay discrimination is legal as long as the corporation equally discriminates against homosexual men and women.

The Department of Justice position is a departure from the official stance of the Obama administration. While billing itself as a defender of LGBT rights, the Democratic Party’s muted response to the Justice Department move reveals the right-wing character of its pseudo-populist “Better Deal” agenda rolled out earlier this week.

The Justice Department’s unusual decision to file a “friend of the court” brief in a private discrimination lawsuit to which the government is not a party is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to whip up bigoted and homophobic elements to distract from the escalating crisis within the White House.

Trump’s maneuver takes place as the Democratic Party continues to escalate its anti-Russia campaign, the purpose of which is to force Trump to take a more aggressive position against Russia at the risk of bringing the two nuclear powers to war.

The move came the same day as Trump tweeted that he would ban transgender people from the military. Amid a climate of crisis and disorder, key cabinet members like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis have left Washington, ostensibly on “vacation,” while Trump continues to attack his own Attorney General, Jefferson Sessions, on a daily basis.

The discrimination lawsuit involves a New York skydiving instructor who was fired in 2010 after telling a female client he was gay in an attempt to avoid making her uncomfortable during their tandem jump. His employer fired him upon learning his sexual preference.

By advancing the position that private employers can fire employees for their orientation, the Trump administration is attempting to undo the legal effects of a 2015 order by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission barring such discrimination. Earlier this year, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Hively v. Ivy Tech that private employment discrimination against LGBT people is illegal in a decision widely considered to be a turning point in civil rights statutory interpretation.

The Democratic Party set the stage for Trump’s assault on the fundamental democratic rights of LGBT people by announcing their “Better Deal” program earlier this week. Absent from the program is any mention of the rights of immigrants, LGBT people, or the right of women to abortion.

Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Maryland) told reporters recently that social issues like the rights of LGBT people “won’t be the focus” of the party’s new agenda. “Essentially what we don’t want to do is distract people…We don’t want to distract ourselves.”

These lines explode the claim that the Democratic Party can be depended on to defend even the most basic democratic rights, including for LGBT people, even after last year’s presidential campaign, in which the party’s strategy was based entirely on appealing to questions of identity politics while ignoring the fundamental issue of social inequality.

Politico noted that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (New York) acknowledged their program “purposefully avoids the social issues.”

Democrat Chris Van Hollen (Maryland), who leads the Democrats’ 2018 senate campaign, said the party is aimed at appealing to voters in “places Trump won.” Politico commented that “the decision to downplay social issues is remarkable,” and is bound up with the party’s effort to “appeal to center-right voters who may be open to Democrats’ populist economic pitch but turned off by their liberal social plank.”

The “Better Deal” program’s economic elements are themselves right wing. The platform includes massive tax cuts for corporations, ostensibly for “job training” purposes, and is based on what Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) called “pro-market” reforms. In words that could have been taken from the playbook of Trump’s fascistic adviser Steven Bannon, the plan calls for enforcement of anti-trust laws and includes an appeal to American economic nationalism through a pledge to “aggressively crack down on unfair foreign trade.”

Several Democratic congressional representatives have expressed concerns about the absence of social issues in the “better deal” program. There are fears within the Democratic Party over the political implications of allowing the Trump administration to carry out its attacks on the rights of LGBT people, especially as Americans now overwhelmingly support the equal rights of gays and lesbians.

Aware of this emerging division, the Trump administration’s offensive is aimed at creating divisions within the Democratic Party, as an anonymous official acknowledged to Axiom News. The Trump administration is counting on the fact that significant sections of the Democratic leadership are adapting themselves to his reactionary provocations in order to avoid “distracting” people from their toothless economic program.

In the absence of a mass movement of the working class, none of the social gains of the last century are set in stone.

Less than a decade ago, the Democratic Party was united in its opposition to gay marriage. Hillary Clinton only announced her support for gay marriage in 2013, and had previously stated her belief that “marriage has always been between a man and a woman.” Obama was opposed to gay marriage until the 2012 election, when he “changed his mind” in order to attract support for his re-election campaign, noting in 2004: “What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman … I don’t think marriage is a civil right.”

Amazon to seize the land of freed slaves’ descendants to lay power lines

Nick Barrickman & Alex González

Local residents inform the International Amazon Workers Voice that Amazon is attempting to seize 50 acres of land owned by elderly working class descendants of slaves in Northern Virginia, pave over the residents’ homes, and build power lines.

The soil that Amazon plans to cover with asphalt contains the sweat of slaves and the blood of Civil War soldiers. The residents’ ancestors, who worked the land as slaves, took possession of these plots after being freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and liberated by the Union Army during the American Civil War. American capitalism has come full-circle: the government is stealing land from the descendants of slaves and giving it to one of the world’s most powerful corporations.

A representative of a community group called the Alliance to Save Carver Road (ASCR) told the IAWV, “The homeowners have been there for generations. Many of the properties were purchased by freed slaves. After emancipation, the slaves that worked that area were allowed to purchase property. A number of the property owners are descendants of those freed slaves.”

Last month, Amazon subsidiary VAData, working in collusion with local government agencies and utility company Dominion Virginia Power, announced plans to construct 230,000 volt power lines running through the semi-rural community of Carver Road just outside of Gainesville, in order to power nearby internet data centers.

The Alliance to Save Carver Road

The power lines will also pave over parts of the Manassas Civil War battlefield area. The area in which the community is located, about an hour west of Washington D.C., was the site of the First and Second Battles of Manassas, two key battles of the Civil War of 1861-65. Local reports show that the power lines will be paid for by utility company customers.

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors rejected an alternative route which would have gone through a wealthy area. The rejected route was also estimated at $167 million while the one traveling through Carver Road was estimated at $62 million. Deeming the additional expenses too costly, the corporate giant proceeded to cut a path through the historic community to save money.

The ASCR representative said, “Amazon was able to use a loophole in the county rules to site their data center in an area that was not zoned for data centers. If they were in the designated area, there would not need to be any new power lines. Those designated areas have sufficient power. The county is complicit,” she added, speaking on the role the government has played in helping the company strong-arm the community.

The state of Virginia has awarded Amazon millions in tax breaks and grants to construct its warehouses and data centers throughout the state, even as it throws families out of homes to make way for these properties and subjects its employees to illegal forms of exploitation. As the case of Carver Road reveals, its abuse of the workforce goes well beyond the four walls of its facilities.

Asked how the slated construction would affect Carver’s properties, the ASCR representative replied, “There is a school that would be impacted. The construction does not directly cross the school building, but there is a school nearby. Property values would plummet. You cannot use the property. In my case, I have tenants. They have already told me that they want out of the lease if the lines come through.”

“There have been no studies of what Dominion is doing,” she noted. “They have not looked at the economic impact [to] our community, or the environment or our property rights. They have not contacted any of us to discuss any of this… They did a very cursory review of Carver Road.

“Some property owners are not familiar how this will impact them. The elderly are not comprehending what is going on.” The representative of the Alliance to Save Carver Road stated that many of Carver’s residents are retired or on fixed income.

Amazon locates dozens of its sprawling internet data centers in northern Virginia to house its enormous web infrastructure. On a given day, nearly 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic passes through the region, a third of which is filtered through Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) numerous facilities. The region has also become something of a focal point for the nexus existing between the internet giant and the US federal government’s surveillance agencies.

The local government, sensing the growing anger among residents, postponed the planned demolition, which will likely still go forward in the near future. Last week, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, the same body which approved the plan to destroy the community, voted to give $30,000 in county discretionary funds to the residents to aid in their legal effort against the corporate giant.

This posturing is entirely cynical. The funds given by the county, roughly equal to the amount of money Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes in a single minute, are a face-saving gesture to absolve the government of responsibility for the legal nightmare into which the residents have been thrown. The sum of $30,000 equals less than what Amazon’s brigade of corporate attorneys are paid in a single day.

The power lines would pass near the federally-protected Manassas Battlefield National Park, home to numerous battle grounds from the American Civil War. One such site, Buckland Mills, would be filled in with concrete to clear space for the power lines.

Amazon CEO Bezos makes $1.4 billion Thursday morning, briefly becoming world’s richest person

Evan Blake

Around the time Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos woke up Thursday, he became the richest person in the world after making roughly $1.4 billion shortly following the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. With an estimated net worth of $90.9 billion, Bezos briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who had been the world’s richest person since May 2013.

Bezos’s fortune stems almost entirely from being the largest shareholder of Amazon stock, of which he owns roughly 17 percent. With the company slated to report strong earnings and growth in its quarterly earnings report released Thursday evening, its stock surged 1.6 percent shortly after the NASDAQ opened Thursday morning, reaching a high of $1,083.31 per share at mid-day.

The released earnings report, however, differed from what analysts had predicted and caused Amazon’s stock price to fall 3 percent to $1,012.68 in after-hours trading Thursday evening. The company reported earnings per share of only $0.40 cents per share, far below the predicted $1.42 per share. Bezos finished the day as the second richest person, trailing Gates by just $1.1 billion.

Under capitalism, the daily fluctuations of the market cause figures such as Bezos and Gates to win or lose hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars on an hourly basis, while the vast majority of the population struggles to survive.

The obscene amounts of money that Bezos accrued early Thursday and in recent years contrasts sharply with the low wages earned by Amazon’s global workforce. While Bezos netted $1.4 billion in his sleep, it would take 54,280 years for a graveyard shift worker in one of Amazon’s warehouses in the US to earn the same amount.

As the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) reported last month, super-exploited Amazon warehouse workers in India make just $233 per month. Thus, it would take an Indian Amazon warehouse worker 500,715 years to earn the same amount that Bezos did overnight.

Coinciding with the rise of the stock market, Amazon’s stock value has skyrocketed over 40 percent this year alone. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos has cashed in with $24.5 billion since January. In the past five years, a period of almost uninterrupted stock market boom, Bezos has made an astounding $70.4 billion.

Bezos’s wealth is so vast that it would be enough to end homelessness in the US and provide access to water and sanitation for the entire global population, according to figures from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

After a summer of skyrocketing share value, the company’s market capitalization surpassed $500 billion for the first time on Wednesday, joining the exclusive set of fellow tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Earlier this summer, Amazon began acquisition negotiations with Whole Foods, which also propelled Amazon stock and netted Bezos another $2.88 billion in a single day. The deal portends a massive shift in the grocery industry, as Amazon aims to introduce technology to make superfluous jobs that currently employ millions of people, including cashier positions.

On July 11, Amazon held its annual Prime Day event, a sales bonanza in which numerous items were discounted, including Amazon-produced technology like the Echo Dot. The company afterwards announced that the sales event was their “biggest day ever” in terms of overall sales—a 60 percent increase over Prime Day 2016. In the 30-hour time frame of the event, they surpassed their combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2016 and added more Prime members than ever before.

The rise of Amazon and the billions accumulated by Bezos have been built upon the exploitation of its workforce worldwide, which faces brutal working conditions. Over the past few weeks, building up to and after Prime Day, workers at Amazon’s immense distribution warehouses have been under intense pressure to meet productivity requirements. Thousands of workers have been forced to work mandatory overtime, often at least 60 hours per week.

At most “fulfillment centers” across the US, inbound workers are already stocking up for the “peak” holiday shopping season and have continued to work mandatory overtime. Inbound workers have told the IAWV that they come home so stressed out from the thought of having to go back to work overtime the next day that they cannot fall asleep, creating a grueling feedback loop of overwork, stress and sleep deprivation.

Inside the facilities, workers are forced to labor under the intense summer heat. Workers frequently collapse from heat exhaustion, at which point they are simply advised to take a break and then get back to work.

This brutal exploitation is the real source of Amazon’s climbing stock value and Bezos’s soaring wealth. Without the labor of Amazon workers, there would be no profits. The wealth that Bezos has extracted from Amazon workers must be seized and redirected to meet social needs, not hoarded away in his private bank accounts and stock portfolio.

The way forward for Amazon workers requires that they form links with their coworkers internationally and fight to build independent rank-and-file committees, which will be used to unite with the international working class more broadly.

Bipartisan push in Australia for four-year parliaments

Mike Head

Australian Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten last Sunday called for a pact with the Liberal-National Coalition government to ensure that whichever party wins the next election will hold a referendum to introduce fixed four-year terms in office.

Soon after Shorten put up his proposal on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Insiders” program, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rang him to discuss it.

The prime minister’s office later denied that Turnbull had given bipartisan support, but said he was interested in talking with Shorten about four-year terms, while noting there were many complications.

The proposal is a blatantly anti-democratic push to overcome widespread distrust, alienation and anger with the political elites. It is a bid to shore up the political establishment and strengthen its capacity to impose deeply unpopular policies, particularly austerity and preparations for war.

“We need both Labor and Liberal to co-operate on four-year terms,” Shorten said. “Governments can be more daring and more determined if they’re not constantly thinking about the next election. What this country needs is long-term policymaking.”

By “more daring and more determined,” Shorten means more ruthless in overriding working-class opposition in order to enforce the dictates of the corporate elite. Longer terms would bolster the capacity of governments to ride roughshod over popular opposition by avoiding electoral defeat for four years.

Mounting hostility toward the agenda of big business has been largely responsible for one short-lived government after another, both Labor and Coalition, over the past 10 years.

Since the landslide defeat of the decade-old Howard Coalition government in late 2007, no prime minister has lasted three years. Labor’s Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and the Coalition’s Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, have proven unable to carry through key cuts to education, health, welfare and other essential social programs.

At present, under the Constitution, parliaments are meant to be elected every three years, with the prime minister having the power to ask the governor-general for an early poll. On average, however, terms have lasted only two-and-a-half years.

To impose fixed four-year terms would require a referendum to amend the Constitution. To pass, a referendum would have to get a national majority, plus a majority in four of the six states. However, there is a long history of Australian referenda being defeated whenever they involved strengthening the powers of the capitalist state and its political servants.

In 1988, the Hawke Labor government, which imposed a sweeping pro-market restructuring of the economy with the backing of the trade unions, put a referendum for four-year terms for both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Its bid was overwhelmingly defeated, gaining only 32.9 percent of the national vote and losing in every state.

Over the three decades since then, the level of support for the two traditional ruling parties has crumbled as they have delivered on the requirements of the giant companies and financial markets. That support sank to new historical lows last July, when Turnbull called a rare “double dissolution” election of all members of both houses.

Turnbull was trying to break the political impasse produced by the ongoing blocking of some 2013 budget measures by Senate “crossbenchers.” These “third party” and “independent” members, mostly right-wing populists, refused to vote for the most egregious cuts to health, education and welfare, fearing to do so would be electoral suicide.

The election backfired, however, reducing the Coalition to a fragile one-seat majority in the lower house and just 29 out of 76 seats in the Senate. Together, the two major parties polled just 65 percent of the vote for the Senate, a far cry from the 80 to 90 percent support they still obtained back in the 1980s. Despite the unpopularity of Turnbull’s government, Labor’s vote remained less then 30 percent.

Media and political commentators endorsed Shorten’s call for bipartisan backing for a referendum, agreeing that a common front was necessary to win a majority. In reality, a Labor-Coalition unity ticket would only intensify the widespread hostility toward them.

Equally delusional is the thought that a four-year term would resolve the underlying political crisis. Public opposition will erupt outside the parliamentary channels, aggravating the instability of the political establishment.

For this reason there is nervousness in ruling circles about the proposal. “People are disenchanted with the major parties,” the Australian warned in a July 25 editorial. “In the present climate, voters are hardly going to support a measure that looks like making politicians less accountable to the verdict of the electorate.”

Any referendum also would involve trying to reduce the capacity of the Senate to block austerity measures. Senators are currently elected for six years, with only half facing election at the end of each three-year term (except for “double dissolution” elections). Any proposal by Shorten and Turnbull would halve senators’ terms to four years, or else extend them to eight.

For years, the Business Council of Australia (BCA), representing the largest companies operating in the country, has agitated for four-year terms. Soon after Shorten made his proposal, BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott declared the council was “broadly in favour.”

Westacott linked this backing directly to the demand for “economic reform”—a euphemism for further gutting social spending, cutting taxes for companies and the wealthy, driving down wage levels and dismantling working conditions.

“Although governments have undertaken serious economic reform within the constraints of a three-year political cycle, the ­demands of the 24/7 media cycle appear to be making this harder to achieve,” Westacott said. “I hope longer fixed terms would encourage governments to broaden their horizon and move away from the short-term thinking that is holding our country back.”

Westacott’s comments were quickly backed by a leader of Labor’s “Left” faction, Senator Doug Cameron, a former national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Cameron said the BCA had identified “short-termism” as one of the key problems facing the economy. “One of the ways you get away from short-termism is to have a four-year term,” he told Sky News. “And that gives you the capacity to actually push good, long-term policies.”

These remarks are a warning. Labor is making a pitch for the formation of a Labor government that will be pledged to emulate the Hawke and Keating governments of 1983 to 1996 in imposing the requirements of global capital.

With the assistance of the unions, the Labor leaders are seeking to channel the deepening opposition to Turnbull’s crisis-wracked and unstable Coalition government behind the return of another vicious pro-business Labor government.

Shorten’s call for four-year terms points to this being the real agenda behind his recent populist rhetoric opposing the ever-widening social inequality. While posturing as opponents of corporate greed, Labor is declaring its intent to not just replace Turnbull’s shaky government but bolster the parliamentary order itself.