Germany: Weighing economic interests vs. human life in the coronavirus pandemic

Peter Schwarz

Although the number of coronavirus infected and dead in Germany, Europe and worldwide continues to rise, there are increasing voices urging a rapid lifting of social distancing and a return to work. Journalists, economists, politicians and some medical doctors are preparing the public for the fact that more people will have to fall ill and die from COVID-19 in the interest of the economy.

The abhorrence of the crimes of the Nazis, who destroyed “worthless lives” and worked millions of forced labourers to death, was previously considered a high moral hurdle in Germany against measuring the value of a human life in euros and cents. But now the media are again openly discussing how much a human life is worth and how many lives should be sacrificed to the interests of the economy.

Ten days ago, the news magazine Der Spiegel published an editorial with the provocative title: “Yes, one may weigh the economic damage against human lives.” In it, Christiane Hoffmann asks the question, “Is it possible to weigh the economic damage of the lockdown against the human lives that would be lost if the coronavirus were to spread?” Her answer: “Yes, you may. You have to.” It is “neither immoral nor cynical to state what has to be weighed against each other.”

Hoffmann demonstrates how cynical it really is three paragraphs later. She claims that “the question of the price of life” had also been raised before the coronavirus crisis. “Every decision to reduce hospital staff or to equip an emergency room more poorly indirectly decides on life and death; every discussion about expensive cancer drugs at the end of life is about the same question.” So she uses the massive cuts in health care that are now forcing nurses and doctors to treat COVID-19 patients in understaffed departments without the necessary protective equipment, at the risk of their lives, as an argument for letting even more people die!

Hoffmann, who has enjoyed a long career as a journalist at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Spiegel, is married to a high-ranking Swiss diplomat and is richly rewarded, so she does not have to worry about adequate treatment if she becomes infected with the coronavirus. She pleads for an open debate on “what risks we are taking to get the economy back on track” mainly because she fears a revolt against a social system whose blatant social injustice becomes more apparent with each day of the pandemic. There is a danger, she writes, that “a wave of rejection, a real hatred of ‘those up there’” will follow.

The weekly newspaper Die Zeit, whose long-serving editor was former Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, interviewed economist Clemens Fuest, head of the Munich-based Ifo Institute, and virologist Alexander Kekulé of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, to campaign for a quick lifting of social distancing—even if this means additional deaths.

Fuest warns that “the costs of the crisis will increase disproportionately over time.” Extending the lockdown by one week after one month is expensive, he said, “but when it comes after three months, it is much more expensive.”

Kekulé demands that the question should be asked, “How many deaths are we prepared to accept as a result of the pandemic?” After all, in some years 10,000 or 20,000 people in Germany die from influenza. And the measures taken against the pandemic also caused damage that resulted in deaths. He could not understand those who say, “Health always comes first.” It is “urgently necessary to weigh up the economic and medical consequences.” Too little has happened so far.

It is wrong “that we are not prepared to accept that individual people die so that in the end the majority is immune,” the virologist thinks. “If we keep society in lockdown for another three months or more, we are sacrificing everything we understand by our identity and culture.”

The tabloid Bild Zeitung has also found a medical doctor who advocates a targeted spread of the virus. Professor Ansgar Lohse from the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) supports the strategy of so-called herd immunity, according to which, as many as possible from low risk groups must become infected in order to achieve a high level of immunity in society. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson originally advocated this strategy, but then had to back down due to public outrage. Meanwhile Johnson is in intensive care with COVID-19.

“We must allow those for whom the virus is the least dangerous to become immune first through infection,” Lohse told Bild Zeitung. Although in the meantime, many younger people have also died from COVID-19, and it is by no means certain whether infected people will be immune afterwards, Lohse mainly wants to use children to achieve herd immunity. “Both children and the vast majority of their young parents do not belong to the risk group. The faster this group goes through an infection, the better. Therefore, day-care centres and schools should open again soon.” He is “in discourse with many colleagues from very different disciplines who think similarly.”

In his blog, Morning Briefing, former financial daily Handelsblatt editor Gabor Steingart rejoices that “in view of the ban on contact, assembly, demonstrations and extremely restricted freedom of travel in Germany,” “resistance has finally formed uniting lawyers specialising in medical law, writers, cultural workers, business experts and journalists of different stripes in their doubts about the proportionality of this policy.”

Among others, he quotes the writer Juli Zeh, who is a member of the SPD and whose novel Unterleuten (“Sub-people”) was recently broadcast as a three-part series on ZDF. Zeh wrote in the feature section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung that large sections of the professional world agree “that so-called herd immunization must take place, that is, at least 60 to 70 percent of the population must be infected until the pandemic subsides.”

Right-wing extremist journalist Roger Köppel, who heads the unofficial central organ of the xenophobic Swiss People’s Party, Weltwoche, and also quotes Steingart, complains that the cure is worse than the disease. “Stop this self-immolation of the economy,” he demands. “Without the economy, we won’t have coronavirus—everyone starves to death.”

Wolfram Weimer, former editor-in-chief of Welt, Cicero and Focus, demands, “Germany’s enforced coma must end on April 19! The pandemic control by closing down the economy is misguided, because it could mean in the end, the operation was successful, but the patient is dead.”

The demand to weigh human life against the interests of the economy is not limited to Germany. As the WSWS has shown in a recent perspective, this demand is also being made in numerous other countries—by the British Economist magazine, the American magazine Politico and numerous other publications. It means, the perspective argues, “nothing more nor less than sacrificing human lives for the profit interests of the capitalists. From the standpoint of the ruling class, the process of class exploitation through production must continue. And those who die can be replaced. The single overriding concern is the growth and expansion of stock market values for the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.”

It is significant that Germany’s leading stock index, DAX, has jumped by 1,000 points since the beginning of this week and yesterday rose temporarily above 10,500 points. Although there is no end in sight to the crisis, speculators on the stock markets see the opportunities to make a killing. After a decade of cutting social spending and destroying the health care system in the name of “balancing the books,” the federal government is now opening the financial floodgates to business.

The support packages for the coronavirus crisis now amount to almost €1,200 billion, more than three times the annual federal budget. Most of this huge sum is going into the coffers of the large corporations and banks, with only a fraction being spent on the fight against the pandemic and to alleviate its social consequences.

The enormous sums now being pumped into the financial markets must be compensated for by the intensified exploitation of the working class. This is behind the demand for a return to work at the expense of human lives.

Hundreds of thousands of UK jobs threatened as coronavirus spreads

Margot Miller

Hundreds of thousands of UK workers stand to lose their jobs and livelihoods as the coronavirus spreads rapidly. In the last two weeks, a wave of companies have collapsed into administration and closure--meaning that tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs will not have one to go back to after the lockdown ends.

The large Debenhams department store chain began the week by announcing its intention to go into “light touch” administration to fend off legal action from creditors. It is unclear how many of its remaining 40 stores and 20,000 jobs will remain when stores reopen after the coronavirus lockdown. The company had already planned 28 closures in 2021.

As the virus takes its toll, unemployment mounts. Over the weekend, store chain Cath Kidston, which sells everything from furniture and clothing to pet accessories, announced it was going into administration, shedding 847 jobs.

Last week, restaurant chain Carluccio’s and retailer Brighthouse both collapsed into administration putting 4,400 jobs at risk.

The COVID-19 outbreak has precipitated an avalanche of job losses, described by the Financial Times as “economic Armageddon.” The unemployment rate for the quarter ending June is expected to soar to eight percent, up from 3.9 percent in January, to 2.5 million. By September, a figure of at least 8.5 percent is predicted.

On March 20, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced the closure of all bars, pubs, restaurants, leisure facilities and high street stores in a belated attempt to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

Italian-owned Carluccio’s, with 71 outlets and 2,000 employees, was the first chain in the dining sector to announce its collapse since being forced to close its doors to the public. Administrator FRP Advisory said it was hoping to mothball the business under the government emergency job retention scheme, which provides 80 percent of employees’ wages.

Even before the outbreak, Carluccio’s was in trouble, due to fierce competition in the industry, rising costs and falling revenues. In 2018, it entered a company voluntary arrangement to renegotiate its debts.

Brighthouse, mainly located in rundown shopping centres, faced difficulties before the pandemic, closing 30 stores last year. The shuttering of its remaining 340 outlets means 3,000 job losses. Preying on the most financially vulnerable, Brighthouse was the UK’s leading rent-to-own retailer, notorious for high interest loans for customers to purchase white goods, TVs and furniture.

The firm was recently hit by new regulations curbing high-cost lending, and compensation claims for failing to carry out credit-worthy checks.

The Mexican restaurant chain Chiquito also went into administration, threatening the closure of 61 restaurants and 1,500 jobs.

Marston's, proprietor of 1,400 pubs across the UK, and Mitchells & Butlers, the owner of Toby Carvery—before lockdown packed with working-class families enjoying traditional roast dinners—and All Bar One are struggling to avoid foreclosure.

On March 17, fashion house Laura Ashley became the first retail casualty of coronavirus, with 150 stores shutting and 2,700 redundancies. Founded in 1953, it became famous for its unique textile and wallpaper designs, furniture and women’s clothing. The company was already struggling and on the verge of securing a £150 million loan to keep afloat, when main shareholder, Malaysian-based investment company MUI Asia Limited, pulled out.

The UK’s retail industry has been particularly hard hit in the recent period, losing 140,000 jobs in 2019. The rise of online-based shopping and companies like Amazon with fewer overheads left department chains unable to compete.

The pandemic has greatly accelerated what was an already advanced decline. Last year, Debenhams shut stores while Mothercare folded completely.

On the same day as Laura Ashley’s demise, Dixons Carphone announced the closure from April 3 of all its 531 stand-alone stores in the UK, with 2,900 posts going. The company plans to sell online or via its 305 “shop-in-shops” in Currys PC World stores when stores reopen. Dixons Carphone said the decision to shutter stores was unconnected to the pandemic.

British clothing chain Mountain Warehouse, an outdoor gear specialist, said it was considering 2,000 redundancies across stores in nine countries following a “catastrophic drop in sales.”

Halfords is another well-known brand cutting back on its High Street presence, announcing it would shut its 22 Cycle Republic stores, which serve mostly city commuters. Some 200 jobs will be lost.

The collapse of these firms and loss of thousands of jobs only confirms that the £370 billion emergency coronavirus bailout fund that the government made available to big business is doing next to nothing to protect the working class from the loss of their livelihoods.

A month ago, regional airline Flybe went into administration, with the loss of 2,300 jobs. The airline provided half the UK’s domestic flights outside of London. Reduced bookings due to coronavirus was the final straw.

Airlines are teetering on the brink as travel is banned.

The UK’s flagship airline British Airways (BA) cancelled all flights out of London’s Gatwick airport and suspended 30,000 staff, who will be paid 80 percent of their wages under a “modified” version of the government’s furloughed workers’ scheme, in agreement with the trade unions. BA boss Mr Cruz explained the industry was faced with a “crisis of global proportions,” immeasurably worse than the fallout of the SARS virus or 9/11, warning that “jobs would be lost—perhaps for a short term, perhaps longer term.”

Speaking like a CEO, Brian Strutton, head of the pilots’ union Balpa, said: “The reality is, with such a loss in forward bookings for the summer—the time when airlines make all their profit—the airlines have had to look at ways to save money to keep the companies afloat.”

BA rival Easyjet has grounded its entire fleet. The BBC reported seeing a memo to Ryanair staff saying that crew may be forced to take unpaid leave.

The Centre for Aviation, an Australian consultancy firm, said the impact on the industry means that “[by] the end of May 2020, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt.”

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade body UK Hospitality, warned that “Our analysis suggests in excess of 1m jobs are now on the line.”

Outgoing chief of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote, warned the Treasury Select Committee that some businesses will “inevitably” fail.

While big corporations were handed a bailout, 800,000, or a fifth of small businesses, are weeks away from going bust. The Corporate Finance Network warned that the government’s coronavirus interruption loans, ostensibly aimed at preventing companies collapsing, are either inaccessible due to bank closures, or businesses report that they are ineligible.

This means thousands more will be thrown into the draconian Universal Credit system—from which nearly a million workers who have already been made unemployed by the crisis are seeking to claim paltry benefit payments.

Two thirds of UK car production ground to a halt as BMW, Honda and Toyota joined Vauxhall and Nissan in shutting plants due to the pandemic. The day before, aerospace giant Airbus stopped production.

Car production, the biggest UK industrial employer with 1.7 million workers, has been haemorrhaging jobs in the past period due to fierce competition in a shrinking world market.

Looking to the future of UK auto production, Chief Executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mike Hawes, warned the industry “stands on the precipice.” Professor Karel Williams of the Manchester Business School said that “lost sales will not be found again and there will be a massive hit in terms of lossmaking in the major carmakers.”

Measured against the scale of the 2008 economic crash, the social and economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis are predicted to be far more severe. According to the International Labour Organization, the coronavirus crisis will slash working hours by almost seven percent worldwide in the second quarter of 2020. It described a “catastrophic” effect that is equivalent to the loss of 195 million full-time workers. This is compared to the 22 million losses after the 2008 global financial crash.

UK social care system faces collapse amid spike in coronavirus deaths

Stephen Alexander

The daily COVID-19 death toll in the UK reached an unprecedented 938 on Monday, bringing the country’s total to 6,227 fatalities, with more than 50,000 confirmed infections. The country’s woefully underfunded social care system is rapidly becoming a second major front in the fight against the pandemic, alongside acute and intensive care units in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals.

Mass deaths and runaway infections have begun to rip through residential and nursing home facilities across the country, bringing adult social care services to the brink of collapse. These include the following grim figures from care facilities across the UK:

• Burlington Court Care Home in Glasgow has been the worst hit to date, where 16 elderly residents have died in barely over a week. Fourteen other residents are displaying symptoms and two staff members have been admitted to hospital, where they tested positive for the virus.
  
• Eight residents have died at Castle View Care Home in Dumbarton in the west of Scotland after developing coronavirus symptoms.
  
• Nine residents have died of suspected coronavirus infections at the Oak Springs Care Home in Wavertree, Liverpool. Carers there are functioning with a skeleton staff, after 50 staff members developed symptoms or were unable to work due to underlying health conditions.
  
• Seven residents of the Hawthorn Green home in Stepney, east London, have died with coronavirus. The home houses 48 people and a further 21 residents there are displaying Covid-19 symptoms.
  
• Fifteen residents have died during the pandemic at Castletroy Residential Home in Luton, with five of those confirmed to have died of COVID-19.
  
• Four deaths have been reported at Harry Sotnick House care home in Portsmouth and concerned workers at the Summerhill care home in Kendal, Cumbria, have contacted a local newspaper to report multiple suspected COVID-19 deaths among residents and dozens of infected staff.
  
• At least two care workers have lost their lives after contracting the virus—Carol Jamabo, 56, who worked at Cherish Elderly Care in Bury in Greater Manchester and Catherine Sweeney from West Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

Care workers and service users have been placed in terrible danger by the belated and inadequate response to the pandemic orchestrated by the British government and devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This comes on the back of decades of austerity cuts and widespread privatisation, which has cut adult care services to the bone and left them deeply fragmented, without the central organisational structures required to fight the contagion systematically.

Most care homes remain without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), including a number of facilities where residents have already died from the disease. Of the 482 UK care providers surveyed recently by the BBC, 381 reported having inadequate supplies of masks, gloves, hand sanitiser and aprons, while another quarter of respondents reported having less than a week’s supply left.

Nadra Ahmed, executive chair of the National Care Association, has warned that care homes are desperate for protective equipment: “Once you run out, it is a question of being down to Marigolds [household rubber gloves] and bin liners. Government has not reacted quickly enough to build confidence in the sector that PPE is available.”

The deplorable absence of systematic testing, months into the global pandemic, has made it impossible to assess the true extent of contagion in care homes. It is likely far more widespread than is presently recognised given the long gestation period of coronavirus, which is also infectious among pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers.

This was underscored as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures showing that the number of deaths reported by the government each day was likely to be an underestimate, as it only included those who had died in hospital. According to the ONS, in the week up to March 27, while 501 deaths from coronavirus were recorded in hospitals in England and Wales, 38 deaths occurred outside hospital, in the home or in care and residential homes, amounting to 7 percent of the total.

Despite nursing and residential homes being home to nearly half a million elderly, disabled and chronically ill people—those whose lives are most in danger—no testing at all has been carried out in these facilities.

Widespread under-staffing, low pay and job casualisation are adding to the danger of rapid transmission of the virus across care services.

Already dire staff shortages—there are 122,000 unfilled vacancies in the sector—have been compounded as workers are forced to self-isolate when they present symptoms or due to underlying health conditions. This has heightened reliance on agency staff, who frequently cover shifts across several care facilities as well as private households, leading to concerns that they may already be a major source of transmission for the virus.

Approximately 60 percent of the UK workforce that provide care to people in their own homes are on zero-hour contracts. Such carers who become infected have no access to sick pay from their employer and are being forced to decide between applying for poverty-level Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) of £95.85 per week or continuing to work whilst potentially infected with COVID-19. Many labour agencies in the sector are known to levy financial penalties if carers call in sick.

There are also widespread reports of care homes denying sick pay for vulnerable workers with underlying health conditions, even where the government has instructed them to self-isolate for 12 weeks. Hundreds of carers have been recorded as taking authorised unpaid leave and thus do not even qualify for SSP. As key workers, they do not qualify for the government’s 80 percent wage guarantee—conceived primarily to cover the wage bills of private businesses during the pandemic lockdown—and many will therefore be pressured to work at acute risk to their own lives.

The situation is set to deteriorate further as the Conservative government is now instructing care homes to make available beds for the rapid discharge of non-critical elderly patients from hospitals to relieve pressure on the NHS. In lieu of adequate PPE and testing to ensure discharged patients are free of the virus, the government is consciously preparing the ground for rapid contagion and mass fatalities among service users and staff.

The monstrous incompetence of the Johnson administration, as well as its murderous contempt for the lives of the working class, is betrayed by the latest guidelines issued to care homes. They advise that patients admitted from hospitals “may have COVID-19 whether symptomatic or asymptomatic” but can be “safely cared for in a care home” if cursory hygiene measures are observed.

The government knows full well that residential care homes have neither the medical equipment nor nursing staff qualified to isolate and treat the very ill, who are unlikely to be readmitted back into overstretched NHS facilities. Hospitals are already being forced to ration limited oxygen and ventilators, with doctors facing the horrific task of deciding who lives and who dies.

Although able to rapidly marshal hundreds of billions of pounds to indemnify the wealth of the corporate and financial elite during the pandemic, the Tory government has provided only a pittance to mobilise health care resources. Its approach to the chronically ill, elderly and disabled borrows far more from the fascist pseudo-science of eugenics than it does from the scientific disciplines of epidemiology and medicine. No longer of use as labour for capitalist exploitation, the vulnerable are being left to die en masse.

Leading medical authorities, including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners, recently drafted health care prioritisation guidelines for health care professionals advising that “do not attempt to resuscitate” (DNAR) forms be “proactively completed” for patients in high-risk groups, including the elderly. There was public outcry as several GP surgeries and care homes across the country attempted to issue blanket DNAR protocols without proper consultation with the individuals or their families.

Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, which represents hundreds of independent care providers and services, has labelled the guidance “misplaced, immoral and illegal.” Underscoring the consistency of this policy with the efforts of the British ruling class to eviscerate the Human Rights Act as well as compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights, Macaskill denounced the government for its “historical failure to realise where the modern system of human rights came from, which inescapably was the horrors of the second world war.”

Brazilian workers clash with unions over coronavirus crisis

Tomas Castanheira

The vicious choice advanced by Brazil’s fascist President Jair Bolsonaro at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis – that workers keep working, exposing themselves to the coronavirus, or starve – is becoming more and more concrete for millions.

As Bolsonaro conducts a virulent agitation for a premature return to work, in tune with US President Donald Trump and the interests of Brazilian and international capitalists, layoffs and wage cuts are spreading throughout the country at the same pace as the new and deadly coronavirus.

A new provisional measure approved by Bolsonaro on April 1 allows companies to suspend contracts, reducing working hours and cutting wages by up to 70 percent. With only partial compensation from the government, workers are facing drastic shortfalls in their incomes. The government has cynically named its measure the "Emergency Program for Maintenance of Employment and Income."

Bus company workers hold independent protest demanding unpaid wages in Bahia.

The unions that claim to represent the workers, are running to approve agreements with these measures as their foundation. But this criminal movement did not start only last week.

Ten days earlier, Bolsonaro had failed to implement another even more radical provisional measure, which allowed the suspension of employment contracts without any financial compensation to workers. In the few hours that the measure lasted, before being revoked on the afternoon of the same day it was announced, unions were quick enough to negotiate deals on its basis.

The Union of Workers in Hotels, Bars, Restaurants in São Paulo and Region (Sinthoresp) signed a deal authorizing, for four months, the suspension of contracts without payment of wages for workers in 32 municipalities, in addition to São Paulo, the largest city in the country.

This agreement was sharply criticized. One worker said: "This corrupted union has signed a criminal deal that will destroy the lives of millions of workers." Another added: "The intention of the unions is clear, either the worker dies of hunger or with the pandemic, so the boss does not pay anything in both cases; this is a clear example of why unions should be EXTINCT!"

Over the last few weeks, strikes, work stoppages and protests have been carried out almost daily by bus drivers and ticket collectors in several Brazilian states. The bus companies are proposing mass layoffs and pay cuts that could affect more than 70,000 workers in April, according to the companies' own assessment. Just this Monday, April 6, two industrial actions by bus drivers and collectors have shut down bus terminals in Campinas, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul.

The unions have been calling for these strikes and stoppages to alleviate pressure from the workers, and are quickly suspending them by reaching partial agreements in the interest of the companies, reducing workers' wages and benefits. Every effort is made to isolate the workers locally, preventing the unification of the movement.

An agreement made behind the backs of the workers in Rio de Janeiro, in the southeast of the country, was denounced on Twitter. The wife of one of the workers wrote: "Here in Rio de Janeiro, the bus company workers' union made an agreement that harms the workers. Unpaid vacation, 15 days of unpaid leave, you either sign or are fired".

The pro-corporate policy adopted by the unions in the midst of the coronavirus crisis is hardly surprising; it is merely a continuation of their previous policy. Wagner Santana, the president of the Metalworkers Union of ABC (SMABC), a historic base of the Workers Party (PT), made this clear in an interview with the business newspaper Valor Econômico on the eve of the approval of Bolsonaro's provisional measure.

Santana defended, in the name of maintaining jobs, the resumption of layoffs and other policies along the lines of the Employment Protection Program (PPE), a milder version of the current Bolsonaro program, proposed by the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), run by the PT, and implemented by the PT administration of President Dilma Rousseff.

Santana's argument that these measures "saved a lot of jobs" is completely undermined by data from his own union: since 2011 the number of metalworkers in the ABC region has fallen from 119,000 to 68,000. The only result of these policies has been the safeguarding of corporate profits, especially of the transnational corporations operating in the country.

At General Motors, the workers have gone through bitter experiences with several of these agreements. Over the past week, the unions have coordinated the implementation of yet another hated layoff program.

The metalworkers' union run by the Morenoites of the PSTU at the GM plant in São José dos Campos, which initially claimed to be against the agreement signed by the other unions, is now leading a campaign for its approval. After its second meeting with the company, union leaders announced that they were willing to accept a layoff program if it were implemented in the same way as those signed in previous years, which involved minor losses to workers. This position was widely rejected by the rank-and-file, which said it was not willing to accept any form of layoffs.

The union, after meeting with GM for the third time, reported that the negotiations had ended and that the company would not make any concessions. The workers were told they would have to assess whether the proposal was "feasible" and vote. In response, the workers' opposition was even more overwhelming. Hundreds of comments on Facebook denounced the union.

"They keep us waiting and waiting to bring us the same thing in the end. They make it seem like they're fighting and later they come back passive,” one of them commented. Others said, "GM doesn't want to give in? Just don't accept its proposals."

"This union is completely without direction. 3 meetings with the company to present this... No more trust in our representatives, lets refuse this shameful agreement..."

The experiences of Brazilian workers point to the urgent need to overcome the reactionary structure of the unions, which has serves only as a blockade against the working class movement.

This was radically demonstrated by the uprising of call center operators throughout Brazil, who organized strikes and militant protests against the unsafe conditions imposed by large corporations in the name of their profit interests. State and municipal companies and governments responded to the workers by giving extremely limited concessions with one hand and, with the other, redoubling the attacks.

An AlmaViva worker in São Paulo reported to the WSWS that most operators maintained the strike for more than a week. However, the company is now trying to force a return to work. "I didn't get the home office, they would have to give me both the computer and the internet. They're not giving it to me and they want me to keep going to work normally. They've threatened that after 14 days of uninterrupted absences, they'll let you go for just cause... I have friends who are coming back to work for fear of starvation."

The WSWS also talked to call center operators in Salvador, Bahia, who organized a page on Instagram, called senzala80. They reported that although the local city hall has ordered the release of 30 percent of workers from the companies, "there is a lack of oversight by the competent agencies".

At the company ATMA, the workers of senzala80 said, "It is still very crowded and now they are not respecting the 30 percent since they brought the majority of the people who were sent off back today ... They are all apprehensive about being fired. The company 'established a constitution', where they dictate the rules".

A similar situation is happening in Sergipe, also in the northeast of the country, where AlmaViva managed to reverse a judicial decision and forced the return of 30 percent of the workforce.

Fighting the workers' movement opposing AlmaViva, the union that officially represents this sector, Sinttel-SE, published a note repudiating the protests: "The greatest enemy that the Sinttel-SE has faced is the virus of misinformation spread daily by unscrupulous people who, ignoring the risks of contagion from COVID-19 and the possibility of employer reprisals, try to induce workers to participate in actions at the company's gates."

Against this union blockade, the workers of Salvador affirmed that they continue to work within the companies to organize new protests and strikes. They say that the creation of the web page was very important: "It is where we can talk without reprisals about our dissatisfactions and even fear. Here we receive complaints, we publish it. Here we have a voice".

They also see their struggle in the context of the strikes carried out worldwide by the working class against the conditions of insecurity imposed by capitalism. "We've been going through a lot of problems for a while now... so this [the risk of contamination by COVID-19] was a kind of spark,” one of them said. "It would be important to have this international unification, all united to achieve a single purpose. It would be good because we have no unions, they usually pull to the company's side and ours is no different."

The educational and social impact of global school closures

Renae Cassimeda

An unprecedented number of schools have been closed throughout the world in an attempt to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global statistics reported by UNESCO reveal that since the last week of March roughly 1.7 billion students from pre-primary to tertiary education levels are out of school, including every student in 188 countries that have mandated nationwide closures. With most schools set to remain closed through the rest of the current academic year, the scale of these closures is unprecedented in the history of world capitalism.

In several countries, including the United States, Australia, Russia, Canada, and Greenland, school closures have been localized. In the US, the Trump administration has punted the decisions on school closures to state governors and districts to decide on a piecemeal basis, resulting in only 17 states issuing orders to close schools through the end of the academic year, with others being closed through April, May, or “until further notice.”

Schools are major centers for COVID-19 transmission, and from an epidemiological perspective school closures are imperative to reduce the spread of the virus. This was proved most starkly in New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic in the US, where the delayed closure of schools and the continued use of the mass public transit system have greatly exacerbated the crisis. The number of confirmed cases in New York City alone now stands at over 81,803 with 4,571 deaths. So far, there have been at least two deaths of educators as well as over 1,100 cases and 33 deaths of transit workers.

Educators in schools that remain open face one of the highest risks of infection amid this crisis aside from health care workers, and government negligence around the world is putting at risk the lives of thousands in order to protect the interests of profit over public health. While promoting a social Darwinist “ herd immunity ” conception, Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to close schools in Britain until there was mounting opposition among teachers. Similarly, regional governments in Australia have been forced to shut down schools, facing incipient teacher rebellions breaking outside the control of the trade unions.

While a necessary precaution, school closures throughout countries both rich and poor have already had major ramifications for students and will compound deeply entrenched inequality in education for years to come.

All students will experience some form of trauma from this unprecedented catastrophe, but for the working class and poor, the impacts will be far greater and long-term—affecting everything from an interrupted education, to mental and social isolation, lack of access to teachers, counselors and positive adult figures, and hunger and potential abuse.

The impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans students gives a small glimpse into the gravity the impact the pandemic will have on youth globally. In response to the devastation wrought by the hurricane in August 2005, the city closed most public schools for the entire fall term.

According to Doug Harris, a Tulane University researcher and author of a study that looked at the effects of Hurricane Katrina on academic outcomes of students, it took students two full years on average to make up for lost learning. Harris argues that such a lapse in learning is not due solely to an interruption in class time but is compounded by economic impacts and emotional trauma stemming from the crisis event. The present global school closures and economic dislocation will magnify these educational impacts, on an exponentially larger number of students.

The COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding within school systems that are already in desperate conditions, having faced decades of unrelenting austerity. Where forms of online “distance learning” are beginning to be patched together, students’ access and availability are starkly determined by the material conditions in their homes. Many private schools closed well before public schools and were able to transition to online learning more easily, to an extent lessening the negative impacts for these students.

The private online tutoring industry is also an option only for families who can afford it. Oneclass.com, an online tutoring service that charges $80 per hourly interactive session, has seen its number of students double amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For those who do have access to the internet, the speed of their connection is dependent upon wealth, with the fastest and most reliable connections available only to the wealthy. Based on Microsoft data from 2018, 162 million internet users in the US don’t have access to high-speed broadband internet. A Pew Research Center survey found that adults from households earning less than $30,000 annually are far more likely than the most affluent adults to not use the internet at all (18 percent versus 2 percent).

Worldwide, hundreds of millions of students face a neglected education due to the school closures. The Telecommunications Development Sector (ITU) reports that in 2018, 51 percent of the world’s population lacked computers and 41 percent did not have access to the internet. Before the crisis, millions of young people relied on cafe or library internet services for internet access, and many families in rural or remote areas have no internet access whatsoever.

In the US, many public school districts are waiting to roll out an online teaching format, causing not only a break in learning but compromised learning for students. In major metropolitan cities such as Detroit and Philadelphia, students have missed three weeks of school. In San Diego, most students will begin distance learning April 20.

Behind the backs of educators, the teachers unions and local schools districts are working to circumvent the immense amount of equity issues that the crisis exposes, in the process redrawing all of teachers’ traditional job duties and demanding that they rapidly shift to teaching online.

Special education has largely fallen to the wayside as the closure of schools removes necessary support for this population of students. Moderate to severe special education students can be guaranteed they will have little to no access to the teachers and resources once available for both physical and academic learning and progression. Further lack of attention will be experienced by vulnerable populations who need specific support in a classroom setting. As part of the CARES Act stimulus package, Congress provided Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos with the ability to provide waivers to states for the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The Trump administration, along with state governments run by Democrats and Republicans, see the pandemic as an opportunity to dramatically undermine public schools nationally and implement even deeper cuts to public education. Undoubtedly, the ruling elites will use the chaotic and difficult shift to online education as a means to justify its future expansion, at the cost of tens if not hundreds of thousands of educators’ jobs.

The consequences of the crisis will fall most heavily on students with parents or guardians who live paycheck to paycheck and have no savings to deal with any additional expenses. Twenty percent of the global population lack adequate housing, which will increase as more family members become unemployed. Economic uncertainty will also increase conditions of domestic violence. Already one in five students in the US experience domestic violence, and the growth of spousal and child abuse among quarantined groups facing economic ruin is of grave concern.

The 30 million students in the US who receive lunch at school, and the 14.7 million that also receive breakfast, must now scramble to find “pick-and-go” bag lunches at a few distribution points, in many cases miles from their homes. Even in the wealthiest country in the world, the degree of food insecurity was already at crisis levels, and there is every reason to fear that millions of these students will simply go hungry. Worldwide, hundreds of millions face a looming food shortage that will fall most heavily on the poor.

With schools closed, children have also lost access to school counselors, school-provided health services, and myriad forms of social support. Students face an overall lack of socialization with peers and adults, further exacerbated in situations where students don’t have access to the internet. Sports and extracurricular activities, which provide students with necessary outlets and means for building self-esteem, have also been canceled.

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened preexisting crisis conditions facing students across the globe, a nightmarish reality of poverty, malnutrition and vast social inequality. The experience of the pandemic, which is radicalizing millions of people internationally, will leave an indelible mark on the consciousness of youth, who will increasingly recognize the need for a radical transformation of society to secure a future free of mass deaths, starvation and want.

Social crisis looms in Pakistan as COVID-19 pandemic surges

Sampath Perera

The government of Pakistan and the various provincial administrations are in complete disarray in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The country's principal health authority, the Ministry of National Health Services, has told Pakistan's Supreme Court it expects the outbreak in the country will increase rapidly this month to hit 50,000 cases by April 25.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have already risen above 4,100, with more than 60 deaths. This official figure is relatively low compared to neighbouring Iran and Western countries. A more realistic picture, however, is that a lack of testing is masking a far wider spread of the coronavirus in the poverty-stricken country with a population of over 200 million and a barely functioning healthcare system.

Fewer than 28,000 tests were performed across the country as of March 31, data reported by Dawn showed. Sindh had performed just 6,578 tests, although Karachi, the largest city in the province and in all Pakistan, is home to upwards of 20 million people. While the government claims it is urgently working to increase testing capacity, this panicked response only highlights its negligence and failure to contain and prevent the spread of the disease, despite repeated warnings from the World Health Organization.

In its report to the Supreme Court, the Ministry of National Health Services estimated that 2,392 patients will need intensive care and 7,024 will be in a serious condition by April 25.

According to media reports, in all of Pakistan there are just 2,200 ventilators, an essential medical instrument in caring for those seriously ill with COVID-19. The government has ordered 3,000 more. However, the shortages in the country go beyond ventilators and protective gear. They include a severe lack of facilities, equipment and personnel.

The hostility of the Khan government to any criticism of its criminally negligent policies was shown Monday, when police in Quetta beat and arrested dozens of doctors and health care workers. The medical staff were protesting a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) at their workplaces.

After taking steps to leverage hotels and other buildings for health care use, the government claimed that there are 119,000 hospital beds in isolation wards and 162,000 beds in quarantine facilities. Pakistan’s strategic ally China is reportedly sending critical medical supplies and personnel.

However, the government has manifestly failed to intervene in any significant way to minimize the impact of the pandemic. After the Health Ministry’s report to the court, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s special assistant on health, Dr Zafar Mirza, downplayed concerns over the spread of the virus, saying, “At this stage, it is uncertain whether these figures based on different scenarios and assumptions are true or not.”

Whether intentionally or not, Mirza is merely blurting out the government’s policy to weather the pandemic while deviating as little as possible from the pro-investor economic “reform” program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Khan cynically sought to use the endemic poverty and precarious economic position of most Pakistanis to justify his government’s refusal to institute strict social distancing and an economic shutdown. He claimed that people “will die from hunger” if they cannot work and made a series of demagogic statements on television. However, his top concern was the economic impact lockdowns would have on business and the wealth and investments of the capitalist elite.

When the provincial authorities went ahead with the lockdown of cities with the assistance of the military, the Khan government promised 12,000 rupees or about US$71.75 relief for 67 million low-income earners. It is not clear how even this meagre sum will be distributed.

Khan’s Islamic populist Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) government is struggling against already falling popularity. After ditching his cynical election promise of an “Islamic welfare state,” Khan has implemented the austerity demands of the IMF.

Underscoring its weakened position, the government’s appeals to limit mass gatherings have largely been rejected by the Islamic religious establishment. A gathering of up to 250,000 organized by the Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat in Lahore was called off only at the last moment after many participants had already arrived. Reportedly, the first two coronavirus patients in the Gaza Strip had traveled to Lahore for the gathering.

The debt-ridden economy is facing a worsening crisis. The government has requested emergency financing of $1.4 billion from the IMF in addition to the ongoing $6 billion bailout. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, confirming that Islamabad has requested assistance, added that Pakistan “reaffirmed their commitment to the reform policies included in the current arrangement.” In other words, Khan has promised to continue socially incendiary pro-investor economic reforms and austerity measures no matter what.

According to the Pakistan-based The News, which cited “top sources,” the yet to be released third tranche of $450 million of the current bailout program “might be delayed for some time.” With less than $12 billion in reserves, any delay in the approval of the tranche will affect Pakistan’s ability to maintain debt repayment and pay for imports. The News reported that the IMF has agreed to consider the emergency funding, but both the IMF and the government have remained “tight lipped” about the discussions. The IMF will likely impose additional strict conditions before providing any further financing to Pakistan’s ailing economy.

The political crisis surrounding the Khan government is also deepening. The Washington-based Brookings Institute, commenting on Khan’s handling of the coronavirus in an analysis published on March 27, noted the “limits of his populism,” and “the precariousness of his position,” and advised him to “tread carefully,” because the army “is all too willing to swoop in to gain the population’s sympathy, reassert its role as the country’s one competent institution, and further consolidate its already considerable control.”

Khan’s populism is floundering on an unbridgeable social divide that is being exacerbated by his government’s loyal enforcement of the IMF’s dictates. The United Nations World Cities Report 2016 named Karachi’s Orangi Town as one of the largest slums in the world and found that the slum population is only increasing. The lockdown of Karachi imposed by the provincial authorities further exposed the social misery in Orangi Town.

Despite the use of force, the population could not “self-isolate” in the limited space available in their slum dwellings, forcing many to stay outside. This was especially true of children, who continued to roam the streets and play. Many families of these miserable dwellings sleep in shifts, a reality for South Asian slums in general. Sanitary facilities are also virtually non-existent in these slums, which are estimated to house more than half of the population in Karachi and Lahore.

Another section of the population living in squalid conditions is the Afghan refugee population of 2.8 million. They often occupy mud or tarpaulin huts in designated camps or slums across the country, without any proper supply of drinking water or other sanitary needs.

According to Pakistani economist Hafiz A. Pasha, the poverty ratio in the country was 31.3 percent in July 2018 and is projected to hit 40 percent by July 2020. These grim figures, released prior to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic to Pakistan, were due to low economic growth, double-digit inflation, and the expected impact of IMF-dictated austerity.

The current crisis will sharply increase poverty. Behind the thin veneer of Khan’s “Corona Tigers Relief Force” and the like, close to half of the country’s population is facing a social and economic catastrophe.

The Khan government’s criminally negligent response to the outbreak was exemplified by the situation in the Taftan quarantine camp near the border with Iran. Those returning from Iran after the COVID-19 outbreak in that country were interned there. The New York Times reported in March that part of the camp was burned down by the internees to protest the squalid conditions. “It was not an attack on the camp, but an attempt to rescue ourselves from the animal-like treatment we were receiving,” one protester told the Times. “We appealed to the government to treat us like humans, but it fell on deaf ears.” Al Jazeera revealed that those held there were neither adequately tested for coronavirus nor treated for existing conditions. According to its March 25 report, 51 percent of all confirmed cases at the time in Pakistan could be traced back to Taftan. When the camp's incompetent administration was brought to the attention of the Islamabad High Court, it rejected the petition, declaring, “This is not the time to suspect the intentions of the state and get involved in differences.”

Police in Pakistan beat and arrest health care workers protesting over Coronavirus safety concerns, lack of PPE

Zayar

Police officers beat and arrested protesting doctors and health care workers in Quetta, Pakistan on Monday, prompting outrage across the country.

The clash occurred after several hundred medical staff had marched to protest the authorities' failure to provide them with personal protective equipment (PPE) in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Across Pakistan, over 4,000 cases and 60 deaths have been recorded so far, figures which are certainly underestimates due to the shambolic state of the country's health care system.

The arrests and beatings occurred after health workers rallied near the city’s main hospital and marched to the Balochistan Chief Minister’s house. Police aggressively used batons to disperse the march and arrested 150 health workers. Responding to the arrests, health workers went on strike.

Doctors detained in Balochistan, Pakistan, following a protest against lack of equipment. Credit: Pakistan Young Doctors Association

The Young Doctors Association (YDA) warned in a press briefing that most services will not be provided until they are given the necessary equipment and PPE to tackle the surge in coronavirus cases. YDA has denounced the government for not following World Health Organisation guidelines, forcing medical staff to protest in defence of their right to safety and life itself.

The lack of PPE is an issue common to all health care workers on the frontline of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. The protest by doctors and other staff in Pakistan comes as protests and criticism of governments' lack of preparedness have mounted across North America and Europe.

Pakistan’s government claimed the medical workers were arrested for violating Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which bans gathering of more than five people, and holding a procession. Facing a wave of public criticism, Prime Minister Imran Khan later expressed his “dismay” over the arrests.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan, Pakistan’s poorest province, and the 10th largest city in the country, with a population of well over one million. The province, which has long been the scene of an ethno-separatist insurgency, is virtually under Army control, and dominated politically by a tiny kleptocracy. They preside over dilapidated public infrastructure, including totally inadequate health facilities. This is reflected in the fact that in Balochistan, which is home to some 12.3 million people, less than 4,000 coronavirus tests have thus far been conducted. To date there have been 206 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two deaths.

Monday’s protest was driven by the mounting toll the virus is taking on health care workers. Underscoring the disastrous impact of the absence of PPE, 19 doctors and health workers in Balochistan have tested positive for COVID-19. Thousands of suspected cases are not tested for COVID-19 due to the lack of test capacity and essential medicine.

The situation across Pakistan is little better. All medical facilities in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar are dealing with a severe shortage of ventilators, gloves, masks and respirators. Health workers in Sindh have also warned the government that they will take strike action if their demands for PPE are not met.

The most vulnerable are the residents of villages and rural areas bordering Iran, which are economically dependent on Iran and have been completely ignored by the central government and Balochistan provincial authorities.

This state of affairs has been created by the hoarding of billions of rupees by the super-rich, venal bourgeois elite, which has displayed its utter contempt towards the masses by refusing to take the most elementary measures to effectively combat the coronavirus.

The terrible social conditions facing the masses are worsening by the day. Many can no longer afford basic food items due to skyrocketing prices and the devaluation of the rupee. While the Balochistan government has extended a lockdown till April 21 in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus, this has further exacerbated the social crisis for working people, many of whom now find themselves unemployed and without income-support. Neither the Balochistan provincial government, nor Khan’s federal government have taken adequate measures to protect Pakistan’s impoverished masses from the catastrophic social and economic impact of the pandemic.

EU talks on COVID-19 pandemic response collapse

Alex Lantier & Johannes Stern

Two weeks after the collapse of a first Eurogroup summit of eurozone finance ministers on the COVID-19 pandemic, a second emergency Eurogroup summit collapsed yesterday amid bitter recriminations among leading European states. The European Union (EU), obsessed with saving the wealth of the super-rich, has no policy to address the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu.

For workers in Europe and internationally, the pandemic is an unprecedented social and economic crisis. On Tuesday, as the Eurogroup summit failed, 34,487 new cases were diagnosed and 4,599 died in hospital across Europe, bringing the total of 709,125 recorded cases and 57,245 deaths. Restrictions adopted in a desperate bid to slow the contagion cost over 11 million jobs last week, unleashing Europe’s deepest economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.

With the UN estimating that 80 percent of the world’s 3.3 billion-member labor force is now impacted by full or partial work shutdowns, millions more jobs have been lost. Since then a million more jobs were lost in Spain, 1.8 million in France, and millions more Europe-wide.

Anger is mounting among workers and professionals towards the EU, which has blocked coordination by health authorities and subordinated its medical response to corporations’ calls to keep workers on the job to make profits for the banks. This policy, which spread the pandemic, led to disaster. While confinement policies were adopted only after mass strikes and walkouts by workers across Italy and Europe, the EU governments pursued beggar-thy-neighbor policies exemplified by the decision of Berlin and Paris to ban exports of key medical supplies to hard-hit Italy.

On Tuesday, European Research Council (ERC) President Mauro Ferrari, the leader of Europe’s leading scientific institution, resigned in protest at the EU’s handling of the pandemic.

“I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to COVID-19,” Ferrari told the Financial Times of London. “I arrived at the ERC a fervent supporter of the EU, but the COVID-19 crisis completely changed my views, though the ideals of international collaboration I continue to support with enthusiasm.” Ferrari condemned the EU’s “complete absence of coordination of health care policies among member states, the recurrent opposition to cohesive financial support initiatives, the pervasive one-sided border closures.”

This assessment was echoed by Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, who criticized the EU’s callous response to the initial outbreak in Italy: “There was an inadequate response to the Italian request for assistance from other EU member states.”

Despite Lenarčič’s critique, EU finance ministers were unable to produce a coordinated policy to finance essential health care and assistance to workers and small businesses during the pandemic. The summit devolved into bitter conflicts between the leading EU powers over who would benefit from bank bailouts and who would decide what austerity measure to impose.

The meeting started 90 minutes late, at 4:30 p.m. amid differences over the summit agenda. The ministers canceled a planned 8 p.m. press conference and continued arguing throughout the night. A planned press conference at 10 a.m. was again canceled for lack of agreement. Ultimately, the Eurogroup’s president, Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno, announced the failure of the conference and that talks would restart today.

In reality, the package proposed by the EU powers is not a “recovery package” and contains no emergency funding for medical measures or the production of key medical supplies (masks, respirators or key drugs). The €540 billion package contains only €100 billion supposedly earmarked to finance reduced wages paid to workers laid off during the pandemic; the rest consists of subsidies for the banks and big business.

It appears talks failed over demands by the Dutch government, partially backed by Berlin, that countries receiving EU aid, like Italy, agree to budget cuts and other austerity measures dictated externally by the EU via the so-called European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Italian officials refused to agree to such a deal, modeled on the EU’s looting of Greece during the euro crisis that followed the 2008 Wall Street crash.

It was left to German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, who is working closely with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire, to make an official statement on the talks. In a press statement yesterday morning, Scholz claimed that the deployment of the ESM “is not linked to a troika that enters the countries and develops programmes for the future as was the case ten years ago.”

This is an obvious lie. Already in his further remarks Scholz left no doubt that the billions are to be squeezed out of the European working class by more brutal austerity measures.

"You can see from the decisions we have made in Germany that it is already possible to develop very clever programmes for the future," Scholz explained, adding: "Our decision is, for example, that we are going to repay the additional debt that we take on through the rules that we have given ourselves in our own constitution from 2023 on to 2043. We can do that and that's how it will work elsewhere.”

Such statements must be taken as a warning to workers in Germany and across Europe. The European bourgeoisie insists not only on maintaining austerity policies that caused a social catastrophe across Europe, but to intensify it amid a historic economic collapse. Scholz's reference to the debt brake written into Germany’s constitution in 2009 makes that clear. In the past decade the so called "black zero" balanced-budget policy, drawn up by former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, served to implement massive attacks on the working class.

It speaks volumes about the class character of the EU that Scholz boasts that he already has secured the support of almost all European governments. “As a German government, we know that we are in harmony not only with our French friends, but also, for example, with Portugal and Spain and all the others who have spoken out,” Scholz claimed.

In fact, the deepest health and economic crisis in a century is shaking the EU to its foundations, revealing intractable, historically rooted contradictions of European capitalism. A group of Italian mayors took out a full-page ad in Germany’s right-wing Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, demanding aid for Italian debts and invoking Western Europe’s forgiveness of Germany’s Nazi war debts after World War II at the 1953 London conference.

At the same time, strategists of the financial elite are starting to discuss putting EU countries, which are highly indebted after a decade of bank bailouts to the super-rich, through state bankruptcy amid an upsurge of strikes and protests that has terrified the financial aristocracy. State indebtedness stands at over 150 percent of GDP in Italy, and 100 percent of GDP in France.

Le Monde carried a column proposing to prepare for defaults on sovereign debt by European countries by issuing “Senior Corona Bonds” (SCB). Investors could buy SCBs, Le Monde wrote, knowing that if a government “goes bankrupt, it will pay out first to the holders of the SCBs.” Creditors could then try to demand that bankrupt states organize drastic attacks on wages, social spending, health systems and public schools.

EU bailouts, like the individual national bailouts adopted by its member states, are reactionary and must be rejected. Vast measures, essential to stopping the pandemic but opposed by the European bourgeoisie, will cost trillions of euros: supporting wages, jobs and pensions of the workforce and the livelihoods of small businessmen; producing hospitals, respirators, drugs and safety equipment needed to treat the disease; and funding for the development and distribution of a vaccine. Getting the money needed to save lives means taking back the obscene, multibillion-euro fortunes of Europe’s financial aristocracy.

The force that can expropriate the super-rich is the European working class, mobilized in a common international struggle for socialism and to bring down the capitalist EU, replacing it with the United Socialist States of Europe.