Steel mills close and layoffs mount throughout the United States

Samuel Davidson

Steel mills are closing and layoffs mount in the United States steel industry as manufacturers are in their worst crisis in history following the coronavirus pandemic. Never before in history has demand for steel evaporated so quickly. Tens of thousands of steelworkers and iron ore miners are losing their jobs as demand disappears and steel mills throughout the country close down and production scales back.

Currently, steel mills are operating at 56 percent of capacity, down from 80 percent in 2019 according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. The price of hot-rolled coiled steel, the industrial benchmark, has fallen 18 percent from $608 a ton in January to less than $500 a ton presently. The price is expected to drop further as demand continues drying up.

Even before the impact of the coronavirus, the decline in steelmaking was well underway. United States Steel’s corporate stock had lost 75 percent of its value, falling from the recent high of $48 in the beginning of 2018 to the $10-$12 range in December and January of this year and has since fallen even further—to the $5-$6 dollar range. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised he would revive the steel industry through trade war measures primarily aimed at imports from China and Europe.

U.S. Steel plant Gary Works (Wikimedia Commons)

The impact of the coronavirus and the global depression will accelerate the overproduction of steel and the attack on the jobs of steelworkers. China, which produces over half the world’s steel, kept most of its production running even while its manufacturing plants were shut down. China now has enough steel sitting in its warehouses, yards and docks to supply world demand.

New car and appliance sales have almost ceased to exist as tens of millions of workers have been thrown out of work. Coils, beams and slabs of steel are piling up in the yards of steel mills throughout the country and world. Declining prices and demand for oil and natural gas has meant a halt to most gas drilling and pipeline construction.

Building construction has stopped in many parts of the country and many will not resume as investors bail out of projects. Half-completed homes, offices and retail space will litter our cities even as millions go hungry and homeless. Natural gas and oil drilling have all but stopped as the price of oil plummets, even going into negative territory earlier this week as demand bottoms out.

Earlier this month US Steel, the nation’s second largest steel maker, began sending layoff notices to its 1,545 workers at its Great Lakes Steel works on Zug Island in the downriver communities of River Rouge and Ecorse just south of Detroit. The last cast of steel was made on March 30, and layoff notices began going out the next day. At one time the massive complex employed nearly 18,000 workers.

United States Steel is also closing its tube mills in Lorain, Ohio and in Lone Star, Texas. Last month the company issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) that it would idle its operations at Lorain Tubular Operations facility in Lorain, Ohio, with all 250 employees being laid off starting May 24. Aside from maintenance personnel, most of the 600 workers at US Steel’s Lone Star Tubular Operations in Lone Star, Texas will lose their jobs. Both mills make steel piping for the gas drilling and transport industry.

US Steel has also idled blast furnaces at mills in Gary Works in Indiana and its Granite City Works in Illinois. Both shutdowns were announced prior to the pandemic as cost cutting measures but the company now says it has no plans to reopen them. The company’s layoffs extend to the company’s iron ore mining operations in the iron range of Minnesota. The Keetac mine in Keewatin will be closed by the end of May. One-hundred workers with less than three years’ service are being laid off immediately while the other 260 employees will lose their jobs by the end of May.

In addition to layoffs and closures, US Steel has put off long overdue and much needed maintenance and improvements to its Mon Valley Works near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The $1.2 billion project, having been announced with great fanfare, would have included a continuous casting and rolling line, a cogeneration facility and $200 million in improvements to its Clairton Coke Works, which has had two fires while being repeatedly cited for releasing pollution into the air. The project was set to begin in September was first downsized and has now been completely put on hold. The Mon Valley Works include the steelmaking Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, the Clairton Coke Works and the rolling mills at the Irvin works in West Mifflin. The three mills employ over 3,000 workers.

ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer and the number three US steel maker is also cutting back production. Earlier this month the transnational announced plans to lay off hundreds of workers at the Indian Harbor mill outside of Gary, Indiana. The company announced that it is also closing its iron mine in Minnesota Iron Range. Hibbing Taconite will end mining May 3 while all of its 650 workers will be laid off. Cleveland-Cliffs, which recently bought AK-Steel, is closing its Northshore Mining operations in Babbitt and Silver Bay. The closure of the three mines has wiped out over 1,500 jobs.

Many smaller steel companies are also laying workers off. Liberty Steel in Georgetown County, South Carolina is laying off 130 workers as it scales back production and Evraz Oregon Steel in Portland is laying off 230 out of 600 employees.

The wiping out of jobs in steel production is another nail in the coffin for the United States coal mining industry. Already facing a record number of bankruptcies from declining demand for power generation coal, the shutting down of blast furnaces will lead to a vast drop in metallurgical coal supply, leading to even more mine closures and bankruptcies. Metallurgical coal sells much higher and is much more profitable than power coal.

Before the pandemic, US Steel, Nucor and ArcelorMittal all brought additional capacity online in anticipation of greater demand. While demand rose modestly, the price of steel climbing temporarily reached a high of $900 per ton, the additional capacity coupled with slowing growth quickly led to a crisis of overproduction and falling steel prices. The corporations rely on older blast furnaces to produce steel while Nucor and Steel Dynamics rely primarily on the newer electric furnaces. The blast furnaces are less expensive and more profitable when running at near full capacity, becoming money losers when capacity utilization falls below 82 percent.

US Steel and ArcelorMittal were themselves aggressively moving towards electric furnaces before the onset of the coronavirus. Late last year, US Steel bought a stake in electric furnace steelmaker Big River Steel for $700 million with the option to buy the rest of the Arkansas-based steelmaker by 2023.

The United Steelworkers, which represent a shrinking but still significant number of steelworkers, is working with the companies to ensure an orderly shutdown of the mills.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the USW backed the companies’ demands to keep workers on the job without providing proper safety measures and protection, claiming the industry was part of “essential operations” even while the companies were preparing to shut them down. As production and demand collapses, the USW is already pedaling the lie that there is nothing that can be done, and that workers have to wait and suffer until the economy opens up again.

The USW fully embraces Trump’s trade war policies. The USW’s only criticism is that current policies do not go far enough to include autos, appliances and other steel products. By aligning themselves with Trump’s economic nationalism, the misnamed “united” steel workers labor syndicate is trying to line workers up against their coworkers throughout the world and behind US companies.

In the upcoming presidential campaign, the USW will be backing Biden, himself a strong supporter of trade war measures. He, like Trump, will use anti-Chinese rhetoric to pit workers in the United States against their class brothers and sisters throughout the world.

The Socialist Equality Party urges steelworkers to form rank-and-file factory committees to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the USW, which is nothing but a tool of corporate management and the government.

The production of breathing ventilators and other health and safety equipment on an international scale requires the industrial mobilization of the working class combined with a new political strategy in opposition to both big-business parties and based on the international unity of the working class and the fight for socialism. The only way to oppose the relentless job- and wage-cutting demands and ensure that production is run safely is to unite the entire working class to transform the steel industry into a public enterprise under the democratic control and collective ownership of the working class.

Foodbank use soars across Canada, as 8 million apply for government aid

Penny Smith

Foodbanks across Canada are seeing a major spike in demand as the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic plunge increasing numbers of working people into destitution and acute need. According to Food Banks Canada, demand has jumped 20 percent on average over the last few weeks and is expected to “keep going up and up and up.”

The latest indication of the rapidly accelerating social crisis was provided by news this week that more than 8 million Canadians, or almost 40 percent of the country’s labour force, have now applied for the federal government’s makeshift and utterly inadequate Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). The CERB effectively places workers who have lost their income due to the pandemic and its economic fallout on rations. Recipients are to receive C$2,000, C$1,800 of which is taxable, per month for a maximum of four months. This miserly sum is barely enough to cover rent for a one-room apartment in Toronto, Vancouver, and many other of Canada’s large cities, never mind food and other basic necessities.

In Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, the Daily Bread Food Bank, which supplies nearly 200 food programs in Toronto, has seen requests for help skyrocket over the past month. The number of families seeking food each day has risen from 120 to more than 300—an increase that Chief Executive Neil Hetherington said is “completely unheard of.” The Stop foodbank, which has three Toronto locations, has seen a 30 percent increase in clients, many of whom are accessing emergency food services for the first time. The Davis Centre foodbank, which usually feeds 600 people at five locations, is now struggling to feed nearly twice as many.

Food bank (U.S.Air Force)

In Quebec, the Moisson network, which normally serves half a million people per month, has seen demand rise by 50 percent province-wide, including a doubling of demand in rural areas.

Similar circumstances can be found elsewhere in Canada, as the economic toll from a health emergency for which Canada’s pro-big business governments failed to prepare, takes full effect. “It really doesn’t take long when people are living paycheque to paycheque to need food,” says Chantal Senecal, who manages 60 foodbanks across New Brunswick, the province that has the highest per capita rate of foodbank use anywhere the country.

In the prairie province of Saskatchewan, where half of all businesses are now shut down, foodbanks in the capital Regina and Melfort, a town northeast of Saskatoon, are reporting a surge in demand of 40 to 50 percent. Executive Director Kim Scruby of the Prince Albert Food Bank is preparing for a 50 percent increase in the coming weeks. “We’re expecting to get a lot busier once the full impact of all of the layoffs kicks in,” she said.

The challenge of meeting the sudden boost in demand is being exacerbated by the increased scarcity of volunteers and resources. According to Food Bank Canada, some charities are experiencing a 50 percent drop in donations with only a few weeks of food supplies left. The shortages have also given way to service reductions and closures across the country. In Toronto, almost half of the city’s foodbanks have already shuttered their doors.

The sharp uptick in demand for foodbank services across the country has been triggered by the mass layoffs following the business closures and economic slowdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. More fundamentally, however, the eruption of intense food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, epitomized by the recent miles-long lineups of cars at foodbanks in cities across the US, has exposed the precarious existence of wide swathes of the population, who are living on the edge at the best of times under crisis-ridden capitalism.

Over the last year, according to PROOF, a university-based team of researchers, about one in eight households across Canada experienced food insecurity—amounting to 4.4 million people—the largest number ever recorded. Canada’s deeply impoverished Northern communities are particularly vulnerable, with 57 percent of households in the territory of Nunavut considered food-insecure.

Last May, business website Bloomberg reported that almost 48 percent of Canadians were C$200 or less away from financial insolvency every month. A recent Ipsos Reid survey reported that three in ten Canadians would not be able to pay their bills if they lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

According to Hunger Count, 60 percent of food-insecure households rely on wages and salaries as their main source of income, indicating that those working low-wage jobs can’t earn enough to meet their families’ basic nutrition needs. “Not enough hours, not enough benefits, only one salary carrying a whole family, and that salary just doesn’t pay enough,” explained Nick Saul, CEO of Community Food Centres Canada. “So when you have something like COVID, hit in the midst of that stress and uncertainty and anxiety, those ranks are only going to grow.”

The economic seizure is creating disruptions in the global food supply and further exacerbating the social crisis of food insecurity. Food scarcity and inflation are to be expected. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball warns that the island has just a five-day supply of food if strapped shipping giant Oceanex—which delivers 50 percent of all freight to Newfoundland and is a major supplier of Costco and Walmart—ceases its operations.

Some of Canada’s major corporations are using the COVID-19 crisis to masquerade as do-gooders, with media giant Rogers announcing it would donate 1 million meals to Food Bank Canada and Shaw Communications C$1 million to Community Food Centres Canada. These are the same corporations that have made their fortunes through wage-cutting and price gouging. The Canadian arm of Nestlé, which has also pledged over C$2 million in food donations to Food Banks Canada, is demanding a speed-up in production from its workers in return for a few extra dollars an hour, despite the outbreak of COVID-19 infections and deaths that have already blazed through factories and warehouses throughout North America.

Two weeks ago, the big business Liberal party led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to address the “urgent food needs” of Canadians by providing a miserable C$100 million to be distributed to food organizations throughout the country. This is a trivial amount—all the more so when compared to the C$650 billion his government funnelled into the banks and big business, to bail out investors, literally overnight.

In early April, Trudeau discussed with the provinces the possibility of invoking the draconian, anti-democratic Emergencies Act, so as to give Ottawa the power to conscript labour to work under dangerous conditions under the pretext of providing “essential” services. According to media reports, the government was concerned about rising absenteeism, as workers forced to work in unsafe conditions and fearful for their safety and that of their families call in sick.

Even as infections continue to spread across the country at a rapid clip, the Trudeau government is in talks with agribusiness and the unions on how to keep food production going, despite the dangerous “elbow to elbow” working conditions, exposed most recently at the Cargill meatpacking plant near Calgary, Alberta. More than 550 workers at the Cargill facility near High River, Alberta, have fallen sick, and one worker, an immigrant from Vietnam, has died.

The deep-seated socio-economic hardships brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic are the product of the decades-long assault big business and its hirelings in all the establishment parties, from the avowedly pro-big business Conservatives to the ostensibly “left” NDP, have mounted. Public services, like health care, and social protections, like minimum wages and unemployment insurance, have been shredded and workers’ living standards gutted in endless rounds of government austerity and employer drives for increased “competitiveness”—i.e., investor profit.

Japan’s medical system collapsing as COVID-19 cases surge

Ben McGrath

As result of government indifference and inaction, Japan’s emergency medical system has collapsed as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to surge in the country.

The number of confirmed cases is now 12,368, while 321 have died. With widespread denial of testing to suspected patients, the real numbers are undoubtedly far higher.

The Health Ministry has warned that as many as 400,000 people could die if no preventative measures are taken. Japan lacks a sufficient quantity of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds, with an average of 5 per 100,000 people compared to 12 in Italy and 35 in the United States. This is a clear warning that deaths may skyrocket as seen in Italy.

Tokyo Rosai Hospital (Wikimedia Hospital)

Furthermore, as the number of cases grows, the majority are of unknown origin, meaning that health authorities are failing to track infection routes. This indicates widespread circulation of the virus in the community.

Takeshi Shimazu, a doctor at Osaka University, recently stated that because of COVID-19, “We can no longer carry out normal emergency medicine.”

It is not just coronavirus patients who are being affected. Hospitals are refusing to treat people, including those suffering from other serious ailments such as strokes and heart disease. Women are also struggling to find places to give birth. Hospitals unequipped to deal with the virus fear it will be transmitted to new patients, but the denial of treatment is also because of a lack of hospital beds.

The rate of available beds in cities like Tokyo and Osaka, as well as six other prefectures, was less than 20 percent as of April 17. When taking into account those sick at home who have not yet been hospitalized, the numbers surpass available beds. In Saitama, Kochi, and Kyoto prefectures, the rate was below 30 percent.

As in other countries, medical workers lack personal protective equipment, including gowns, masks and face shields. Doctors and nurses are forced to re-use masks or create make-shift gowns out of raincoats.

Exposure to COVID-19 is forcing many medical workers to quarantine themselves at home, exacerbating already existing staff shortages. In addition, to make ends meet, medical workers may have shifts at two or three hospitals, meaning that if they are forced to stay home or get sick, it has a wider impact on healthcare. Some workers are being told to quit their jobs at other hospitals.

That the Shinzo Abe government sat back and essentially did nothing for two months while the pandemic raged in other countries means that his government is guilty of nothing less than social murder. Testing was greatly restricted to give the impression that the number of COVID-19 cases in Japan was low and that additional lifesaving measures were not necessary.

The real reason for this is the same as in other countries: the government is refusing to spend the money necessary to help the sick, deeming it as an unacceptable impost on big business’ bottom line.

The administration has previously targeted healthcare for senior citizens as being too costly with Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso saying in 2013 that the elderly needed to “hurry up and die.” He made similar remarks in 2016: “I recently saw someone as old as 90 on television, saying how the person was worried about the future. I wondered, ‘How much longer do you intend to keep living?’”

The primary concern of the government is the impact on the economy. It is now focused on providing bailouts to big business as the International Monetary Fund predicts the economy will contract by 5.2 percent this year.

As of Monday, the government has approved a total of 117 trillion yen ($US1.1 trillion) in stimulus packages, with individuals receiving only paltry cash payments of 100,000 yen ($US929) each.

Companies like Toyama Chemical of Fujifilm Holding Corporation are set to profit as 13.9 billion yen ($US129 million) is earmarked to stockpile the flu drug Avigan, which the company produces. It is currently being tested as a possible treatment for people with COVID-19.

These are resources that could have been directed towards lifesaving measures well before the pandemic struck. Medical authorities around the world have warned for decades that a global pandemic could strike, yet even after the first cases began to emerge in China, Tokyo refused to set up the necessary testing and medical infrastructure.

For more than two months, the government strictly limited who could receive a COVID-19 test. In March, Japan conducted approximately 52,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests or around 16 percent of the number in South Korea. Little has changed since Abe declared a national emergency, which was extended to the whole country on April 16.

Harrowing stories of sick people, many struggling to breathe, are starting to emerge. In March, there were 931 cases of more than five hospitals rejecting ambulances with patients, forcing them to drive around looking for a hospital that would take them. In the first eleven days of April, there were 830 cases, according to the Japan Times. In one particular case, a man was rejected by 80 hospitals in Tokyo.

People are expressing outrage at the situation on Facebook and Twitter, using the hashtag #検査難民 (kensa nanmin) or “testing refugee,” to describe their experiences. One user, @monochromic, described the hashtag as “basically all the people in Japan struggling to get the attention they need to even just get a diagnosis.”

A user on Facebook named Jordain described a horrifying experience over six days of trying to get her friend, for whom she was serving as a translator, into a hospital for a COVID-19 test and treatment.

Jordain wrote that when she was finally able to set up a test at a clinic after four days she learned that: “It’s a secret location. It’s a medical facility that’s currently closed, but is being used as a corona testing site on the down-low. To enter the building, she’ll have to walk through the parking lot and use the staff entrance.

“The woman on the phone makes me promise not to tell ANYONE other than my friend the name of the place where she is being tested. Because if people knew they were doing testing there it would ‘cause a commotion.’

“I really wish I was making that last part up. It's absolutely horrific how much they are trying to cover this up and keep the official numbers low.”

COVID-19 deaths in Scotland 79 percent higher than official figures

Stephen Alexander

Yesterday, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon advanced plans for ending the coronavirus lockdown in Scotland.

While noting that a “return to normal” is not possible, the First Minister said it is necessary to “transition” to a “new normal” which will see people “living alongside this virus but in a form that keeps it under control.”

“It may be that certain businesses in certain sectors can reopen, but only if they can change how they work to keep employees and customers two metres distant from each other.”

Nicola Sturgeon (Vimeo.com, theSWP)

Sturgeon continued: “Similarly, with schools, classrooms may have to be redesigned to allow social distancing, so maybe not all children can go back to or be at school at the same time.”

Sturgeon made these comments days after it was revealed that the COVID-19 death toll in Scotland reached 1,616 as of April 19, according to weekly figures published by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). This figure is almost 80 percent higher than official data reported on the Scottish government’s web site. The government’s official figures stood at 903 on the same date—recording only laboratory-confirmed cases in hospitals. NRS figures include all deaths where a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection has been listed on the death certificate.

Although 56 percent of all COVID-19 deaths occur in hospitals, 33 percent, 537 deaths, have occurred in care homes. About 10 percent, 168 deaths, have occurred at home or in non-institutional settings. Care home deaths have been excluded from official figures for weeks.

Data has belatedly emerged from other European pandemic hotspots showing that such fatalities account for as much as 40 to 60 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. This trend is confirmed by NRS figures, which show that the proportion of deaths occurring in Scottish care homes has risen significantly from the 24.6 percent recorded in last week’s figure.

Several Scottish residential care homes have reported double-digit COVID-19 deaths, including the Berelands Care Home in Prestwick, Crosslet House Nursing Home and the Castle View Care Home in Dumbarton, Burlington Court Care Home in Cranhill, Elderslie Nursing Home in Paisley and Guthrie House in Edinburgh. Multiple deaths have occurred in at least a dozen other care homes, and 44 percent of Scotland’s care homes have now registered suspected COVID-19 infections.

One carer recently died of a COVID-19 infection at the Pitkerro Care Centre in Dundee. At least one other care worker and two nurses have died in Scotland, part of a ghastly death toll of at least 118 health and social care workers across the UK. At a single health board, National Health Service Ayrshire & Arran, 216 staff have tested positive for the virus.

Nurses, doctors, carers and other essential workers are being pressured to work in perilous conditions without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and infection control protocols, risking their own lives and the lives of their families. Moreover, it remains impossible to track the true extent of the contagion due to the lack of a systematic regime of testing and contact tracing across the UK.

At every stage of this crisis, the devolved SNP government, for all its professed “progressive” political agenda, has aped the reactionary “herd immunity” policy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government at Westminster. Sturgeon has consistently resisted mass testing and supported the Tories’ genocidal policy of financially incentivising largely privatised, for-profit care facilities to accept the rapid discharge of elderly patients from hospitals, without first testing them for COVID-19.

The impact of this deadly policy has fallen overwhelmingly on the poor, densely populated areas in deindustrialised centres of the working class. Glasgow is particularly exposed due to its high population of elderly and disabled people, combined with some of the worst poverty, mortality and health indices in the developed world.

The Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board has recorded 513 COVID-19 fatalities, followed by Lothian (including Edinburgh) with 256 deaths, Lanarkshire with 228 deaths, Ayrshire and Arran with 120 deaths and Tayside (including Dundee) with 106 deaths. This amounts to a death rate (per 10,000 of population) of 4.4 in Glasgow and Clyde, 3.5 in Lanarkshire, 3.2 in Ayrshire and Arran, 2.9 in Lothian and 2.5 in Tayside. Deaths have been recorded in all health board areas.

Across Scotland there have been more than 800 “excess deaths” in the past three weeks that cannot be accounted for directly by COVID-19 infections. Postponement of cancer screening and a 72 percent drop off in urgent cancer referrals by doctors has led to concerns that people are dying because they cannot access life-saving health care through fear of being infected or because of overstretched health services. In the week ending April 19, there were 38 excess cancer deaths, 11 cardiac deaths, 83 deaths related to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and 101 “other” excess deaths, according to NRS.

A deadly crisis is looming for sufferers of drug addiction. Thousands face the life-threatening prospect of unsupervised drug withdrawal as the pandemic is expected to interrupt supply chains in the black market. Scotland has the highest per capita drug deaths in the world, yet addicts have not been put on the list of high-risk priorities for critical care. There are already indications of a spike in deaths of despair, including suicides and alcohol-related deaths as a result of the pandemic.

The situation is poised to deteriorate, with Scotland’s chief economist, Dr. Gary Gillespie, warning of a 20 to 30 percent collapse in economic output in the space of one month. As unemployment and financial instability soars, applications for Universal Credit benefits have increased from the usual 20,000 per month to more than 110,000. Demand on food banks has risen by as much as 100 percent in some areas.

The catastrophic dangers from a global pandemic of a novel influenza virus have long been the subject of scientific warnings. Yet capitalist governments internationally, including Holyrood, have decimated vital social services and scientific resources required to fight the pandemic. At the same time, they have made available hundreds of billions in public revenues to prop up the obscene fortunes of the financial and corporate elite.

In 2015, the Scottish government, together with health and social care authorities, undertook an exercise—Silver Swan—which revealed significant gaps in the country’s preparedness for a pandemic. In a follow up report, NHS Lanarkshire warned, “An influenza pandemic is considered to be one of the highest public health risks for the UK” and recommended the development of “flexible” contingency plans for personal protective equipment testing, and infection control procedures that would “require testing on a regular basis”.

Months into the global pandemic, the SNP government is nowhere near implementing any of these protections. Yet Sturgeon is already raising the possibility of lifting lockdown restrictions, based partly on instruction from German government advisors. Ignoring the guidance of the Robert Koch Institute, the country’s leading authority on disease control and prevention, Germany is already lifting lockdown restrictions on shops and schools, motivated by the demands of big business for a revival of the economy. COVID-19 deaths continue to rise exponentially in Germany and are now in excess of 5,100.

It will not be long before Scotland and the rest of the UK follows the German path so that big business and the banks can resume raking in profit from the exploitation of the working class, to be paid for with an escalation in deaths from COVID-19 and a likely second wave of the pandemic.

US House overwhelmingly passes $484 billion “relief” package, refilling corporate slush fund

Jacob Crosse

Following Tuesday’s unanimous consent vote in the Senate, lawmakers of both big business parties in the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the “Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act” on Thursday.

Taking every precaution to assure their personal safety and well-being, as opposed to the absence of such precautions for hospital workers, Amazon workers, transit workers, grocery workers and those being sent back into the auto plants, the Democrats and Republicans came together in the House chamber and voted 388-5, with one abstention, to send the approved bill to President Trump’s desk for his signature as early as Thursday evening.

Three of the Republicans who voted against the measure are leaders of the ultra-right Freedom Caucus, including Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado and Jody Hice of Georgia. The fourth Republican to vote against the bill was Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who had protested against the passage of last month’s CARES Act on procedural grounds.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The only Democrat to vote against the measure was New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In another theatrical display, Ocasio-Cortez gesticulated wildly while castigating Republicans for “not fixing this bill for moms and pops,” before every other member of her party, including the rest of the so-called “squad”—Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar—voted for the bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom Ocasio-Cortez fondly refers to as “mama bear,” tweeted her support for the bill following its passage, writing, “Today’s historic, bipartisan vote on our latest #FamiliesFirst package is essential to protecting families across America and ensuring more small businesses have acces to the resources they need."

Far from putting “families first” and guaranteeing paychecks for workers, this second round of corporate handouts, as the first, will be largely siphoned off by larger businesses, while the Wall Street banks that process the government-backed loans rake in billions. The vast majority of family-owned entities—restaurants, barber shops, beauty salons, gas stations, etc.—will not receive a dime.

The central provision of the newly passed measure is the replenishment of the so-called “Paycheck Protection Program” (PPP) with an additional $310 billion in funding. The initial $349 billion allocated to the program, supposedly geared to aiding businesses with fewer than 500 employees and keeping their workers on the payroll for eight weeks, ran out after less than two weeks, leaving the vast majority of small business applicants high and dry. Only 6 percent of small business applicants received loans.

It then emerged that large restaurant chains such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Shake Shack and Potbelly, each with over 5,000 employees and hundreds of millions in revenues, were put at the front of the line of applicants by the Wall Street banks chosen by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to dispense the loans and collect the lucrative fees. These companies received between $10 and $20 million in free money. The big banks raked in $10 billion in fees.

Other multimillion- and billion-dollar publicly traded firms also received loans. The biggest recipients were two interlocked real estate investment trusts, Ashford Hospitality Trust and Braemar Hotels & Resorts, which received a combined total of $53 million in loans. The firm controls more than 100 properties, including luxury hotels such as the Ritz Carlton Atlanta, which markets itself as “celebration” of “contemporary Southern luxury.” Single night August reservations begin at $341, while a one-night reservation for the Skyline Suite goes for $3,000.

That this fraud was perpetrated by both parties was underscored by the role of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York in making sure that large companies received a disproportionate share of the loan money. The New York Times reported Thursday that the provision inserted into the CARES Act allowing restaurant and hotel chains to receive “small business” PPP loans, as long as all of their units employed fewer than 500 people, was negotiated by Schumer and the right-wing Republican chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee, Marco Rubio of Florida.

Schumer, often referred to as the “senator from Wall Street,” is one of the biggest recipients of investment banking campaign cash. According to OpenSecrets.org, between 1989 and 2016, he received nearly $600,000 from Goldman Sachs.

Prior to Thursday’s House vote, in an attempt at political damage control, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and the SBA announced that they had set new “guidelines” for the PPP loans that would supposedly bar large firms with alternative credit sources from benefiting. Mnuchin called on the restaurant chains and other large businesses that had received loans in the first round to return the money or possibly face investigation.

This is yet another cruel deception. Schumer, Pelosi, Mnuchin and the rest know that the $310 billion in the new bill will be exhausted in a matter of days, leaving in the lurch most small businesses staring bankruptcy and closure in the face. And even for businesses that receive loans, the money will cover payroll, rent and utilities for only eight weeks. The pandemic and economic contraction will last far longer, leading to the shutdown of tens of thousands, if not millions, of small businesses and the permanent layoff of millions of workers.

The bill also includes a paltry $75 billion in aid to hospitals and derisory $25 billion earmarked for COVID-19 testing. There is nothing in the bill to aid state and local governments, which are facing massive deficits and preparing to slash funding for schools, health care and other essential services and cut the jobs and pensions of public employees.

US coronavirus deaths approach 50,000

Benjamin Mateus

Between 1955 and 1975, there were 47,424 US combat deaths from the Vietnam War, a defeat that continues to perplex and stigmatize American imperialism. In approximately one month, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed 49,751 people in the United States. Despite all talk about a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, the number of new cases has remained consistently over 25,000 per day while the number of daily deaths has kept pace. This pandemic, like Vietnam, is conflagrating the consciousness of the working class.

In a similarly gruesome vein, Europe’s numbers have continued at a steady pace with nearly 29,000 cases and over 3,000 deaths daily. Italy had been Europe’s epicenter in mid-March, reaching its zenith on March 21. One month later, new cases in Italy are at half their peak. Europe’s fatalities are also declining at a similarly sluggish trend. Spain follows suit while the UK emulates the United States’ trajectory.

Globally, at the speed with which new cases are being tallied, before the month’s end the pandemic will have reach 3 million cases. Over 200,000 people have lost their lives, which could have been prevented had the ruling elites of the global capitalist nation-state system decided to act in concert to heed the warnings of their own World Health Organization.

Dr. Ala Stanford administers a COVID-19 swab test on Wade Jeffries in the parking lot of Pinn Memorial Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Presently, the only effective measure to stem the health crisis is to continue to shelter in place, which takes its toll on the flipside by creating economic hardship for the population. On Thursday, an additional 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment, bringing the total to 26 million in the five weeks since lockdowns were imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Financial Times, the number of approved claims for unemployment insurance accounts for 11 percent of the entire workforce, approximately 16 million thus far.

Millions more are attempting to navigate the online or telephone application processes that have created a massive gridlock. Up to 17 percent of Michigan’s workforce is receiving unemployment benefits. Florida saw a tripling of unemployment benefit applications last week to 505,000, second only to California with 534,000. The hardest-hit states are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, Alaska and Washington, with estimated unemployment rates exceeding 20 percent.

According to the Federal Reserve Board, in the Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, the leisure and hospitality sector has seen 4 million job positions lost, accounting for over 30 percent of all employees in that industry. Construction and manufacturing have lost almost 700,000 jobs since mid-March. When the April jobs report is released on May 8, JPMorgan Chase is predicting a loss of 25 million jobs, triple the loss experienced in the 2008–2009 Great Recession. An economist at ING, James Knightley, said, “Less than half of working-age Americans will be earning a wage next month. In an election year, this means that the call for politicians to reopen the economy is only going to get louder, irrespective of the health advice.” This call is arising from the financial sectors.

In a CBS News poll published yesterday, 70 percent agreed that it was essential to slow the spread of the epidemic through social distancing measures, even if the economy was hurt in the short term. Almost two-thirds stated that they are concerned that the outbreak will get worse if stay-at-home restrictions are lifted too fast. The majority said widespread public testing is required before implementing reopening measures. Yet, the United States has lagged behind many countries in adequately ramping up testing. By conservative estimates, the country would need to conduct 500,000 to 700,000 tests per day to begin reopening. And a recent Harvard report calls for at least 5 million tests per day, rising to 20 million a day, “to fully remobilize the economy.”

The National Governors Association (NGA), chaired by Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan, insists any large-scale plan to return the population to work will require assistance from the federal government to much improve the distribution of testing supplies as well as fortify crumbling public health measures. A report from the NGA states, “Opening prematurely—or opening without the tools in place to rapidly identify and stop the spread of the virus—could send states back into crisis mode, push health systems past capacity and force states back into strict social distancing measures.”

The uncertainty the NGA has voiced in connection to the back-to-work drive underscores not just the public’s psychological concerns. The weight of the evidence and experience that the efforts imposed thus far have only provided temporary breathing room against the onslaught of the last four weeks, which stunned the country as a whole with the terrifying rapidity with which the virus tore through communities. As eagerly as many governors have demonstrated their agreement with Trump’s assessment of the cure being worse than the disease, the disease stands ready on the field.

With a vaccine against the virus, in the best-case scenario potentially available only this time next year, efforts to find a treatment to lessen the impact of the infection on the population have taken on a frenzied state. Despite Trump’s maniacal and negligent attempt to push hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, the drug is proving to be more harmful than doing nothing. The Veterans Affairs study of over 300 people showed the rate of death higher for those on the medication while not impacting the rate of ventilation.

Similarly, Gilead’s Remdesivir, an antiviral medication against RNA viruses, appears not to speed the improvement of patients with COVID-19 nor prevent them from dying. The study results had been inadvertently released, leading to a statement by Dr. Merdad Parsey, chief medical officer of Gilead Sciences, who said, “Today, information from the first clinical study evaluating the investigational antiviral Remdesivir in patients with severe COVID-19 disease in China was prematurely posted on the World Health Organization website. This information has since been removed, as the study investigators did not provide permission for the publication of the results. Furthermore, we believe the post included inappropriate characterizations of the study.” Gilead Sciences Inc. shares fell 4.34 percent on the news.

The utter depravity of the ruling classes was captured in Trump’s remarks during the White House brief yesterday, giving it its most succinct senseless expression. After Bill Bryan, who leads the Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology division, presented data that higher temperature, higher humidity, disinfectants and sunlight adversely impact the virus’s ability to survive on surfaces, Trump began to gesticulate and suggest, the sitting press in disbelief, “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light—and I think you said that hadn’t been checked because of the testing … and then I said, suppose you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too … I see the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

The working class faces a threat not only from a pathogen that is highly lethal and infectious, but a capitalist class that is not only disinterested in their welfare, but has also lost the ability to comprehend reality and should be committed to an asylum. Science and scientific socialism are the tools that the working class must use to liberate themselves from the stranglehold of capitalist society.

US unemployment up 26 million in five weeks

Evan Blake

An additional 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the total number of people who have filed jobless claims over the past five weeks to 26 million. Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 7.1 million people were already unemployed in the US, meaning that roughly 33 million are now officially unemployed, or over 20 percent of the labor force. The social impact of the pandemic on the US has in some ways already dwarfed that of the 2008 financial crisis, and the unemployment rate is rapidly approaching that of the height of the Great Depression in 1933, roughly 25 percent.

As of Thursday, there were 880,204 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 49,845 deaths in the US, with cases and deaths continuing to grow rapidly.

The official unemployment figures, while staggering in themselves, are known to be a significant underestimation of the true levels of unemployment in the US. Approximately 11.3 million undocumented immigrants live in the US and are barred from applying for unemployment benefits. An untold number of these workers have been laid off, cast into destitution without any supports whatsoever.

Together Omaha food pantry workers load supplies into a vehicle driving up to the pantry in Omaha, Neb., Thursday, April 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

In addition, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of workers have been unable to navigate the complicated online application process, which in some states such as Michigan is the only possible way to apply, as phone applications have halted. It can take days and hundreds of call attempts just to speak with someone. For those whose claims are denied, there is no simple appeals process in most states, and little if any assistance is provided to help these workers.

Millions of workers whose claims have been approved have yet to receive any actual payments. In this regard, the most egregious state has been Florida, where less than 16 percent of all claimants who filed since March 15 have received benefits.

In Ohio, claims for the supplemental $600 provided by the federal government through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program will not be processed until May 15. Pennsylvania only began accepting applicants for this program a few days ago and has not said when benefits will be paid.

For the millions of Americans that have yet to receive unemployment benefits, most are facing financial ruin. A January survey by Bankrate found that only 41 percent of Americans had enough saved to cover a $1,000 emergency. Millions face the prospect of eviction or sliding deeper into debt, which will only compound the immense suffering wrought by the pandemic.

A particularly stark expression of the rapid growth of mass poverty in the US has been the miles-long lines at food banks in cities across the country, as millions now struggle to afford food for their families.

Similar processes are unfolding on a global scale, with the number of unemployed rising astronomically in every country. On Tuesday, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned that up to 265 million people around the world are in danger of starvation and death stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jay Bryson, acting chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co, told Bloomberg News that the number of weekly unemployment claims is beginning to slow down, but “if we open up too soon and this coronavirus comes roaring back then we may in fact see those sorts of numbers again.”

As states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota and Montana already begin to reopen their economies, amid growing calls by sections of the media and political establishment for a nationwide reopening without adequate safety measures in place, the ruling class is pursuing policies that threaten to produce a mass upsurge in the number of cases in May, with ensuing mass deaths shortly thereafter.

Efforts to quickly reopen the economy are driven solely by the profit motive, and the mass unemployment levels are being used as a cudgel to try to force workers to toil in unsafe conditions. In most states, if workers refuse work that is available, they become ineligible for unemployment benefits, placing enormous pressure on them to return to work despite facing unsafe conditions.

In the White House press conference Thursday, in response to a question about mass unemployment in the US, Trump stated, “I think our economy will start to pick up very substantially as soon as the states start to open.” He went on to make the threat, “They’re going to get back to work, and very fast.” At Monday’s press conference, Trump acknowledged that his administration is working to exempt corporations from legal liability for workers that contract COVID-19.

Georgia began to reopen barbershops, nail salons, tattoo parlors, gyms and other businesses today, with restaurants scheduled to reopen on Monday, under orders from Republican Governor Brian Kemp. More than 860,000 unemployment claims have been filed in the state since mid-March, costing over $500 million.

Employment lawyer James Radford commented to Reuters, “I think that one of the big drivers of this decision by Kemp is to get people off unemployment rolls and having the private sector keeping these people afloat.”

In the drive to restart the economy, capitalism is presenting the working class with the false dichotomy: return to work facing lethal conditions that put you and your family at risk or accept economic ruin with no social safety net whatsoever.

Workers in the US and internationally must reject the mounting calls for them to either return to work facing unsafe conditions or be thrust into abject poverty without any future. The only alternative path, which will become ever clearer in the eyes of millions, is that of socialist revolution. By taking control of the situation and seizing the wealth of the financial aristocracy, the working class can rapidly implement the measures necessary to contain the pandemic globally, provide safe working conditions to all essential workers, and ensure the health and well-being of all those whose labor is not essential.

Google Africa Developer Scholarship (GADS) program 2020 for Young African Developers

Application Deadline: 13th May 2020

About the Award:  The aim of this program is to continuously engage with aspiring and existing developers to help them become professional developers with skills that can get them opportunities after the program.
To continue advancing through the sessions to get access to more courses and mentoring, you’ll need to prove you’re dedicated to learning these tech skills. You can do this by:

• Registering for your selected track
• Completing all requirements to advance to the next phase
• Participating in Andela challenges and meetups when you can

Advancing to each subsequent phase will help you master in-demand Google developer skills with expert-authored Pluralsight content. You’ll gain skills that can help you get opportunities after the program. 
Learners who complete the program may be eligible for an opportunity to take a Associate Android Developer or Associate Cloud Engineer Google certification exam with the certification exam fee paid for by Google.

Type:  Training

Eligibility: In order to participate in the Google Africa Certification Scholarship program, you must be at least 18 years of age and be a resident of a country in Africa.

Selection: Acceptance into this program is limited, so get started today to ensure you don’t miss out! Applicants will be prioritized for advancement based on onboarding survey completion, amount of Pluralsight content consumed and other target demographics.

Eligible Countries:  African countries

To be Taken at (Country):  Online

Number of Awards:  Not specified

Value of Award:  The Google Africa Developer Scholarship (GADS) program gives you free access to Pluralsight course content plus support from the Andela Learning Community in your chosen skills development track. After completing your desired track, you may be eligible to receive a Google certification grant to take Google’s Associate Android Developer or Associate Cloud Engineer certification exams. Mobile web learners will not be eligible for certification.

How to Apply:

• Register at this link and meet the program criteria.
• Take the Andela onboarding survey with the same email you used to register on Pluralsight. Make sure to select which track you’re focusing on.
• Watch one or more hours of Pluralsight content in the track you chose.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

How the Acceleration of Death Precipitated by Covid-19 Exposes State Crime

Neve Gordon & Penny Green

It did not take long. Three weeks after the outbreak, the Hungarian parliament conferred formidable executive powers on prime minister Viktor Orbán, allowing him to rule by decree. Israel was even faster. Immediately after the government announced a nation-wide lockdown, the Justice Minister barred the courts from convening, a move that indefinitely postponed the corruption hearings against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, in Chile the government sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters.

The introduction of emergency measures to address the Covid-19 crisis is undoubtedly necessary, but numerous governments have also exploited the pandemic to undermine democratic principles, violate human rights and perpetrate crimes against citizens and migrants.

Yet the pandemic has not only unleashed new state crimes; it is also exposing underlying and largely hidden crimes. Like an earthquake that shatters a city, filling the streets with debris and leaving only the bare infrastructure exposed, Covid-19 has been uncovering the structural violence that states have instituted against their own populations. Also like an earthquake, the destruction and death in the pandemic’s wake are neither inevitable nor entirely natural.  

Structural Violence as State Crime

Despite being less visible than violence employed by state agents, such as the police, military and security forces, structural violence is nonetheless lethal. This form of violence is embedded in social institutions and policies and tends to harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. It often leads to many fatalities, while disproportionately affecting specific populations.

People frequently fail to recognise that the violence emanating from social structures is a manifestation of state crime, which, in our research, we define as a form of violence that involves human rights violations perpetrated by states to advance organisational goals. They don’t see this criminality because structural violence tends to precipitate social death, which is gradual, and therefore fails to generate the kind of visceral shock we are currently experiencing as the pandemic spreads across the globe.

The attritional violence perpetrated against the Rohingya in Myanmar—initially through stigmatization and the denial of access to education, livelihood and health care—was, for instance, effectively hidden from view. It was only after the genocidal violence of 2017 that Myanmar’s systemic violence was widely exposed for the world to see. Similarly, Covid-19 has illuminated the structural violence informing our societies through its acceleration of death.

Indeed, local newspapers in the worst affected countries immediately began reporting on their own health services, providing countless graphs of government investment in healthcare infrastructures and personnel. In the UK we learned that there are only 2.5 hospital beds and  only 2.9 doctors per 1,000 people, compared with an OECD average of 5.4 and 3.4 respectively. A connection was then drawn between the Tory’s austerity policies and the mounting body bags, and the British people could readily see that their government’s policies kill.

Exposing existing inequalities

The fatal consequences of treating healthcare as a commodity rather than as a basic right and of distributing healthcare unevenly within society have now become devastatingly clear. Although data is still limited, the claim that Covid-19 is an equalizer, killing the rich and poor, black and white alike is simply untrue. Numbers released on April 7 suggest  that in Chicago, black Americans account for 68 percent of the city’s 118 deaths and 52 percent of the roughly 5,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, despite making up just 30 percent of the city’s population.

The fact that African Americans are dying at double the rate of their percentage in society underscores their systematic marginalization, a strategy characteristic of most forms of state crime. And while structural racism may be more pronounced in the United States, preliminary data in the UK suggests that  black people are significantly over-represented in Intensive Care Units.

In a similar vein, the representation of the elderly during the crisis reveals that they are perceived as dispensable, while the pandemic has also laid bare how poverty renders people more exposed. Poor people have neither the resources to cope during this crisis, nor do they have a safety net to catch them.

Of course the situation in the global south will likely be much worse. Wide scale exploitation of resources, political corruption, repression and poverty create an intensified vulnerability to ‘natural’ disasters like earthquakes, floods and pandemics.

Adam Hanieh, points out that this disaster is largely human-made. The poor state of public health systems across most countries in the South, which tend to be underfunded and lacking in adequate medicines, equipment, and staff are due to ‘the subordination of poorer countries to the interests of the world’s wealthiest states and largest transnational corporations’.

UK State Crime and the pandemic

Social and economic structures are rarely understood as state crimes, because crime is generally perceived as a discrete act defined as criminal by law. But, as we have witnessed in the past few weeks, austerity measures that starved the NHS of necessary resources, while not formally illegal, have led to many unnecessary deaths and should be considered a crime.

Thus, the acceleration of death precipitated by Covid-19, while wreaking its own havoc, is also exposing the structural crimes of our governments. Although welfare packages—unthinkable just two months ago—will help some people get through this crisis, the most vulnerable remain without support. What we need now is to dismantle the very structures that precipitate the crimes. What we need, at the very least, is a Green New Deal.