Mass joblessness deepens in US as corporations move to implement permanent layoffs

Shannon Jones

US government figures released today show mass unemployment in April unlike anything seen since the Great Depression, as the official unemployment rate hit 14.7 percent. According to the Department of Labor, 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, a number far larger than anything ever previously recorded.

Looked at another way, the number of jobs lost so far is equal to the total combined workforce of 25 US states. It is over 38 times worse than the 533,000 jobs lost in November 2008 at the time of the last economic crash.

The reality is even worse, since the official jobs figures for April are based on the state of the economy in the middle of the month. According to a report in Forbes Thursday, “The country is now at 40.6 million unemployed, or 24.9% of the work force. That matches the annual worst year of the Great Depression without considering how many have been unable to file.”

The economic catastrophe is being compounded by the continued refusal of the US government to marshal aid for the unemployed. After handing out trillions to the banks, the ruling class, spearheaded by the Trump administration, is seeking to use social distress as a weapon in its campaign to break down public opposition to the reopening of the economy even as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Many workers, already struggling in the low wage economy and living paycheck to paycheck, have been left essentially penniless as overburdened and antiquated state unemployment systems have failed to pay out timely benefits.

Meanwhile, a shocking report by the Hamilton Project found that 20 percent of households and over 40 percent of US mothers with children under the age of 13 are experiencing food insecurity.

The death toll in the US is set to exceed 75,000 as the pandemic spreads into more rural areas of the country, many beset by poverty, with older populations and lacking adequate health care infrastructure. A number of states set to relax or eliminate social distancing measures are in precisely those areas where new cases are rising fastest, such as Mississippi, Nebraska and Georgia.

Last week there were an additional 3.2 million new applications for unemployment assistance, bringing to 33 million the number of people who have filed since the outbreak of the pandemic.

These numbers are a serious underestimation. The Economic Policy Institute reported that it found that for every 100 workers able to successfully apply for unemployment benefits, there are another 37 that had tried to file but could not get through the system.

The economic meltdown triggered by the pandemic is metastasizing into a prolonged recession or depression as corporations utilize the crisis to implement permanent layoffs and restructuring. Major manufacturers, including Boeing, GE Aircraft and US Steel have already announced mass job cuts.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released its job cuts report on Thursday showing that US employers announced 671,129 job cuts in April compared to 222,288 in March. The April total is 1,577 percent higher than the 40,024 announced job cuts in April 2019.

The most job cuts in April were announced in New York, at 84,738. Florida had 71,138, Texas 70,318, Minnesota 57,192 and California 55,077.

This week United Airlines said it plans to eliminate 30 percent of its managerial jobs when government restrictions related to the bailout end, probably in October. This will result in the elimination of 3,500 jobs. In addition, the airline will require mangers and administrative workers to take 20 days off without pay between mid-May and the end of September. Earlier this week, United announced plans to lay off more than one third of its pilots, 4,457 positions, by October 1. Other airlines are likely to follow.

On Thursday, department store chain Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy. It had temporarily closed all 43 stores in March due to the pandemic. Earlier this week, retailer J. Crew also filed for bankruptcy. Other retail chains such as Lord & Taylor and J.C. Penney are considered vulnerable.

On Tuesday, bed and breakfast network Airbnb said it would lay off a quarter of its 7,500-person global workforce as demand for short-term home rentals plummeted. On Wednesday, ride service Uber announced that it would lay off 3,700 workers worldwide, or 14 percent of its total workforce, mostly customer support and recruiting jobs.

Projections for US auto sales have been lowered from 16 million to just 11 or 12 million, pointing to a likely massive downsizing in the car industry, with a wide-ranging impact on supplier industries.

Small businesses, which account for half of all US employment, are being especially hard hit. Thousands of small businesses, largely shut out of receiving federal stimulus money and already struggling, will likely never reopen.

Companies are also using the pandemic to institute pay cuts. Workers at Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, California, who treat COVID-19 patents, are protesting an effective pay cut of 24 percent. Employees will be forced to take 12 furlough days over a 10-week period. Many of the workers earn between $55,000 and $65,000 a year.

States and localities continue to stagger due to lost tax revenues. The University of Georgia system voted Thursday to require all faculty and staff to be furloughed or take pay cuts due to budget shortfalls. Employees will be required to take either four or eight uncompensated furlough days depending on their pay grade.

There has been an unprecedented increase in hunger and food insecurity across the United States as tens of millions lose their livelihoods. Food lines are now common. On Wednesday residents in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York waited outside a local food pantry in a line extending half a mile.

In the state of Hawaii, cars lined up for more than a mile outside Aloha Stadium to receive 50 pounds of free food. Organizers estimated that 100 tons of food were distributed to 4,000 households.

Most of direct food aid comes from private donations, with state and local governments chipping in pathetically inadequate amounts.

The report released by the Hamilton Project this week found that rates of food insecurity in April 2020 were significantly higher than at any point for which there is data between 2001 to 2018, including the 2008-2009 economic crash.

After a near unanimous vote to enact a multi-trillion-dollar corporate bailout, Congress is bogged down in squabbling over a pathetic 15 percent increase in food stamp aid. The proposed increase, being blocked by Republicans, would provide an average increase of only about $35 a month to the typical household eligible for the program.

Ever tightening restrictions to the program enacted by Republican and Democratic administrations have forced millions out of the program even as need has risen.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a sharp light on the irrationality of the accumulation of private wealth as the motive principle of society. Instead of prioritizing the fight against the pandemic and alleviating human suffering, countless billions are squandered on propping up Wall Street and massive funding of the war machine.

Bangladesh’s Response to COVID-19

Alok Kumar Gupta 

Bangladesh’s healthcare infrastructure has in large part developed as a result of the country’s continued exposure to disasters as well as in pursuit of MDG4 goals. As with countries across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe medical, social, and economic impact in Bangladesh.

While Bangladesh has responded swiftly and efficiently on some counts, it also faces mounting challenges as a result of the circumstances, as well as its own institutional inadequacies.

Responses

The Bangladesh government took a number of quick initial actions. International organisations, NGOs, and civil society organisations have been key partners in the state’s response.

The Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA) was instructed to prepare a list of 500 doctors to be incorporated towards COVID-19-related infection management in the immediate aftermath of the first cases being reported. To address acute shortages in healthcare equipment and medical supplies, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) is coordinating with five member companies to produce 500,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) established direct contact with district administrations to coordinate protection measures and relief distribution work. Over April, other administrative and legal measures were put in place, including: declaring all of Bangladesh an ‘infection risk area’ under the country’s 2018 Infections Disease (Prevention, Control and Elimination) Act; assigning district-wise responsibilities for coordination; and restricting movement of people between 6 pm to 6 am.

Congregational prayers at mosques were subsequently banned. Borders were closed; land and air travel with the worst-hit countries at the time, such as China Iran, and Italy were suspended. On 30 April, India eased restrictions to open the India-Bangladesh border at Petrapole, a move that has been objected to by the West Bengal government. The opening is viewed as essential to address the shrinking supply of goods, with thousands of trucks intended for Bangladesh put on hold.

Educational institutions were closed, and 26 March to 4 April was declared a public holiday. This was subsequently  extended to 14 April, and then until 25 April, and is now applicable till 16 May. The army has been deployed to manage the lockdown effectively.

Bangladesh has also encouraged all non-essential businesses to move their transactions online. It has launched a large-scale awareness campaign on its national mobile phone network operator’s platform. Some of these early steps have allowed Bangladesh an opportunity to further strengthen its healthcare facilities in light of the pandemic.

Some steps to ease economic hardships have also been taken. Bangladesh Bank has declared a moratorium on loan repayments up to end-June 2020. Relaxations in Foreign Exchange Regulations up to September 2020 were announced on 19 March. An emergency relief package of US$ 600 million, later raised to USD 8573 million to implement four programmes, has been offered. On April 12, the government announced a USD 1.7 billion relief package for the farming sector. Those whose livelihoods have been affected are being provided with meals under existing social safety programmes, rather than through direct cash transfers.

Challenges

Socio-economic assistance for the vulnerable is the immediate need of the hour. The ability to organise adequate funds and a fair disbursal of resources are some of the challenges Bangladesh will face in this regard. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the country is expected to lose 1.1 per cent of its GDP growth as a result of the pandemic.

Bangladesh’s informal sector, with over 50 million workers, is the worst hit. Another six million formal sector workers, largely from the manufacturing sector, could face unemployment until June 2020. The trickle-down effects of job losses faced by Bangladeshi diaspora across Europe, West Asia, and North Africa will be felt by families in rural Bangladesh, given that remittances, which account for 5 per cent of the country’s GDP, will shrink.

The country is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. After China, Bangladesh is the world’s second largest garment manufacturer. Its ready-made garment industry, driven by a largely female workforce, is the engine of its economy. Companies across the globe have cancelled more than US$ 2 billion worth of orders. Bangladesh has already lost US$ 1.2 billion, which impacts 1.2 million workers.

While the government has introduced a US$ 558 million stimulus package for companies to pay their staff, there is no way of guaranteeing that its benefits will reach the workers. It has also been suggested that this amount is not sufficient.

On 26 April, in the midst of this brewing humanitarian crisis, many companies opened in defiance of the lockdown, with mounting pressure from global brands to meet pending order deadlines. This has impacted the legitimacy of lockdown orders, and put the already vulnerable even more at risk of exposure to COVID-19.

Bangladesh also houses nearly one million stateless Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar. Reportedly, the facilities are overcrowded, flimsily built, with poor standards of health, hygiene and sanitation, and limited access to potable water. The risks these pose during a pandemic are well-recorded, and Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) is working to address some of the challenges.

Further, Human Rights Watch has castigated Bangladesh for supressing freedom of speech, with many doctors, opposition activists, writers, cartoonists and students reportedly arrested under the auspices of the Digital Security Act for their criticism of how the government is dealing with the pandemic.

Conclusion

Overall, the Bangladesh government has undertaken a proactive strategy in response to COVID-19, with a focus on strengthening healthcare infrastructure and delivery. The pressing economic, social, and humanitarian challenges the country faces, which have not received the same attention, are likely to intensify, and pose long-term problems.

AO Spine Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa (AOSESA) fellowship program 2020 for Surgeons

Application Deadline: 31st May 2020

About the Award: The purpose of an AOSESA fellowship is to provide additional experience for trained orthopedic and neurosurgeons interested in spinal surgery. It is the responsibility of the host Spine Center to ensure that the fellow becomes conversant in the principles, indications, planning, techniques and complications of spinal surgery and develops the hands-on surgical skills for general spinal practice. Fellows are expected to enthusiastically immerse themselves in all aspects of the program offered by the host center.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Successful candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Be a paying member of AO Spine
• Be a spine physician (or in-training, but at least in the 4th year as resident in the specialty), or specialized in Orthopedics, Neurosurgery, or Trauma surgery with a strong interest in spine surgery
• Speak and understand English, as English is the first language in South Africa
• Submit a complete online application form and required documents in time ((1–31 May)
• Have previously participated in an AO Spine Course
• Have not participated in any other AO fellowship within the past two years (from the date when the application is handed in)
• Live and work in a Sub-Saharan African country, other than the Republic of South Africa
• Registration (or ability to register) with the Health Professions Council of South Africa
• Neurosurgery / Orthopedic surgery training completed
• To be practicing in a Sub-Sahara country and to provide a written letter of intent to return to their country of origin to practice for three or more years upon the end of the fellowship period is considered an advantage
• Female candidates will be given priority, in order to enhance the access of women to training opportunities

Eligible Countries: Sub-Saharan African countries

To be Taken at (Country): AOSESA long-term fellowships are offered uniquely at Tygerberg Hospital and Stellenbosch University, Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital-University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Applicants must choose and prioritize the Spine Centers, which increases their chances of being accepted.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• An AOSESA stipend will be transferred to the bank account of the fellow on a monthly basis at the beginning of each month. If a regular bank transfer is not possible, additional fees (e.g. for a Western Union transfer) will be deducted from the fellow’s stipend. The stipend is
  calculated based on the current World Bank Purchasing Power Parity in order to cover the costs for food and accommodation in the host country. All travel expenses are the responsibility of the fellow.
• To receive the monthly stipend, the fellow must send financial documents certifying how the grant has been spent, and educational feedback showing the progress of the fellowship (her/his activities) and the mentoring process. Incomplete or unsatisfactory documentation may be a cause for termination of the grant.
• If family or hotel housing is required, arrangements must be made privately by the fellow himself (AO Spine will not provide any support in arranging accommodation). This can be expensive, and AOSESA cannot cover such additional expenses

Duration of Award: AO Spine long-term fellowship runs one year, from 1 January to 31 December, unless agreed otherwise

How to Apply: Apply here

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The Dark Face Of COVID-19 In Sri Lanka

Thambu Kanagasabai

The pandemic Covid-19 which originated in Wuhan province, China sometime in December 2019 made its cruel impact as a global deadly disease in January 2020 declared as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. It then spread to other countries causing fear, panic and deaths.

Currently more than 3.5 millions have been infected with about 240,000 deaths reported. Sri Lanka reported the first victim on January 27, 2020 who was a Chinese visiting Sri Lanka as a tourist. The first Sri Lankan national was tested positive on March 10, 2020. Since then more than 700 cases has been reported positive, most of them in the Western province particularly in the Colombo district including the Welisera Navy Camp totalling 360 while Northern and Eastern provinces reported only 24.

Sri Lankan government has set up quarantine centers where more than 3,500 suspected persons are under quarantine including 31 foreigners. Above all 32 quarantine centers have been set up in the north, the details are as follows:

1. Vadamarachi 10 centers
2. Mullaitivu 06 centers
3. Vavuniya 05 centers
4. Mannar 04 centers
5. Chavakachcheri 03 centers
6. Kilininochi 03 centers
7. Madu 01 centre

Most of the quarantine centers in the above areas have been set up in Colleges and Schools seized by the military to house the suspected Covid-19 personnel mostly security forces who had been transported in buses from the South. More than 3000 Covid-19 suspected persons are said to be residing in these centers. It has to be stated that these centers being Colleges and Schools are located in the areas where there is a density of Tamil population living in the surrounding areas.

However, the selection of Tamil areas and educational institutions in the North reveals a sinister motivated scheme and hidden agenda being executed by the dictatorial President Gotabaya’s regime assisted by the military which is slowly and steadily assuming control of civilian’s lives and administration ignoring and discarding the local administration. These high handed ruthless and arbitrary moves of the Government have been condemned by human rights activists but with no avail.

The emerging question is whether these unjustified moves constitute and fall within the definition of genocide as defined in the UN Convention 1948 and falling within the provision of said Convention which among others “Includes acts causing serious bodily or mental harm to member of an ethnic or racial group with intent to destroy or even a part of them.”

It can be perceived that these acts of militarization, seizure of schools and occupying them with a tarnished Security Forces and others mostly from the South were deliberately undertaken by the Government without any consultation with Health Officials and Local Authorities. The fact that an alleged war criminal Major Savendra de Silva is in charge of Covid-19 Relief Operations plainly confirms the genocidal motive of the Government which selected educational institutions in the North targeting the Tamil civilians.

The lethal consequences and harms which befall from these naked discriminatory actions would be as follows:

[a] The Tamil civilians and students living in the surrounding and adjacent areas of schools and colleges are forced to live in fear, insecurity and uncertainty due to the presence of the Security Forces alleged to have committed war crimes etc. A possible mingling and interaction with civilians could cause health hazards to them.

[b] The civilians are also unknowingly brought under surveillance while curtailing their freedom of movement and rights of expression.

[c] The risk of spread of Covid-19 by any infected member of Security Forces is high which could initiate a spiral of infections among the hitherto unaffected civilians.

[d] The risks of deaths of innocent affected civilians are also high due to absence of proper medical facilities and prompt attention and care in these areas.

[e] The fact that North and East reported less than 30 out of more than 700 positive cases of Covid-19   in Sri Lanka must have been taken into account by the Government before opening these quarantine centers in these locations to open up the risks of infections in these safe areas inhabited by Tamil civilians.

[f] Besides, the sufferings of the already traumatized Tamil victims of war who are yet to recover due to the lethargic handling of the government are further compounded by these ulterior moves of the Government.

[g] There are reports that the Governors in the Northern and Eastern Provinces are not approving the use of Emergency Funds by the Local Government Officials who have been forced to call upon the Civil Societies to provide relief to the starving civilians. It is also reported that those who offered assistance were obstructed, intimidated and even arrested by the Security Forces. This inhuman action is inflicted only to accelerate the death of Tamil civilians which is nothing but a genocidal crime.

[h] The sudden and unnecessary setting up of check-points in the North is another glaring and intimidation and discriminatory policy by the Government targeting the Tamils who would be subjected to mental harm and distress besides creating ill-will and hostility towards the Government. Furthermore these actions are providing opportunities for the Security Forces to harass and intimidate the civilians even with possibilities of detentions and arrests.

Undoubtedly, the Tamil civilians in the North and East are inflicted with mental and physical harm leading to serious health issues which eventually would hasten their deaths, the proximate causes being the militarization and quarantined centers occupied by suspected Covid-19 personnel living among them.  This is just another clear act falling within the definition of structural genocide which is being subtly and quietly executed by the Government with the assistance of the Military Officials as has been happening since 2009.

The other dark face of Covid-19 is its naked exploitation and utilization for political gains and mileage by the ruling government which appears to be steadily and slowly inching towards a militarized dictatorial government.

New Zealand government exploits pandemic to boost police and military powers

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s Labour Party-led government, like others throughout the world, is exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to test anti-democratic measures, including an extension of police and military powers.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a state of emergency on March 25, as the country went into a lockdown aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Most businesses and all schools were closed. The lockdown was necessary, particularly given New Zealand’s lack of preparation for the pandemic, its rundown public health system, lack of quarantine facilities and inadequate testing and contact tracing.

The government eased lockdown restrictions on April 28, allowing many businesses and schools to reopen, despite opposition from thousands of teachers and warnings from scientists that a longer lockdown was needed to eliminate the virus. The state of emergency, however, has been extended.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy in 2017. (Image Credit: Governor General Website/Wiki Media)

The Ardern government’s expansion of state powers goes well beyond what was needed to enforce the lockdown. Under the Civil Defence Emergency Act, the government can override virtually any legislation, with only a handful of exceptions including the Bill of Rights Act and the Electoral Act.

The government is strengthening the police, military and intelligence agencies in preparation to suppress opposition as it imposes the burdens of the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression on the working class. While businesses are receiving billions of dollars in subsidies, tens of thousands of people have already lost their jobs or suffered wage cuts. Unemployment is expected to go above 10 percent and could reach 30 percent, a level comparable to the 1930s.

Police now have the power to “direct any person to stop any activity that may cause or substantially contribute to an emergency.” Officers can enter houses without warrants to enforce social distancing and isolation. Police can also call on the military for assistance.

So far, more than 600 people have been prosecuted by police for allegedly breaching the lockdown. Thousands more have received warnings. The maximum sentence for failing to comply with self-isolation orders is six months in prison and a $4,000 fine.

Canterbury University law professor John Hopkins wrote on Stuff on March 31: “There is no limit to this power unless the government provides guidance or rules as to how it should be exercised.” Police have reportedly been issued with guidelines by the government’s Crown Law office, but these have not been made public.

Law professor Grant Morris wrote on the Radio NZ website on March 30 that the police commissioner had been given “huge, largely unchecked, power.” He compared the state of emergency to “what New Zealand experienced in World War I and II and during the 1951 Waterfront Dispute.”

In those periods, extraordinary powers were used to enforce conscription, ban strikes and censor and imprison anti-war and left-wing activists. Similar laws were used in the 1930s Great Depression to suppress protests by thousands of unemployed workers.

In addition to the new police powers, Radio NZ has reported that the Ministry of Health consulted the spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and US company Palantir, which has worked with the CIA, about how to track contacts of people with COVID-19. The GCSB is part of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network, which carries out mass surveillance on all the world’s electronic communications.

The GCSB is providing advice to help to develop a contact-tracing, mobile phone app, similar to one announced in Australia, which is capable of significantly expanding state spying.

In another ominous development, the military has been training for urban operations. A two-day Defence Force exercise was held in the working-class area of South Auckland on April 16-17, involving Army soldiers and the Air Force. Local residents were given no details about the exercise and the Defence Force refused to answer media questions about it.

The Labour Party’s middle class “left” supporters have sought to sow complacency about the expanded powers.

Writing on the trade union-funded Daily Blog on April 21, pro-Labour Party commentator Chris Trotter praised the exercise, saying the military was preparing to suppress “a serious outbreak of civil disorder… if necessary by the use of deadly force.” Trotter declared that the state had to be ready to deal with right-wing opposition to the lockdown, like the protests organised by heavily-armed Trump supporters in the US.

The pseudo-left International Socialist Organisation (ISO) published an article on March 25 saying that any “incidents of heavy-handedness by the police or military… should be condemned. But in these extraordinary circumstances the police and military are being called on to play a social role.”

The ISO article by Martin Gregory declared: “I cannot see that rightwing authoritarianism and militarism will be strengthened because state forces were roped in to help in the struggle against COVID-19.”

Such statements are intended to disarm the working class, under conditions where governments have been strengthening the police and military for years. The Ardern government has recruited an extra 1,800 police officers since coming to power in 2017. It has expanded police training programs in schools. Last year, the government used the Christchurch fascist terrorist attack as a pretext to further militarise the police and give more money to the spy agencies.

The military is also being expanded and upgraded, to the tune of $20 billion. The Defence Force’s regular biennial Southern Katipo exercises are explicitly preparing to confront and suppress “insurgent” populations.

The real reason the government is strengthening the police, military and spy agencies has nothing to do with protecting public health, let alone combating fascism. (In New Zealand, as in the US, fascists support the military and have joined it.)

In Spain, police have been mobilised to force workers back to work while the pandemic is still out of control. In Australia, police have used emergency powers to ban protests by refugees.

The NZ ruling elite is anticipating a renewed upsurge of working class struggle. In 2018 and 2019, tens of thousands of nurses, teachers and doctors held nationwide strikes against the crisis in hospitals and schools, caused by decades of underfunding.

The capitalists fear that these struggles could expand beyond the ability of the discredited, pro-capitalist trade unions to suppress and betray them. As in the 1930s and the 1951 waterfront dispute, governments will rely ever more heavily on the armed forces of the state to defend the profit system.

Nearly half of Australia’s young hospitality workers lose their jobs

Mike Head

Data released on Tuesday further reveals how deeply the underlying economic crisis, vastly magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, is impacting on young and older workers, especially in the lowest-paid and most casualised industries.

Despite the biggest government handouts to big business in history, almost one million people were made jobless over the five weeks from March 14 to April 18, inflicting severe hardship on millions of working class households.

This is by far the largest and fastest mass job destruction since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The highest job losses were inflicted by accommodation and food services employers, with employment reduced by 33.4 percent. Arts and recreation services were down 27 percent.

But even these totals hide the full price being paid by younger and older workers. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported: “Jobs in accommodation and food services worked by people aged 20 to 29 and people over 70 decreased the most, down 40.8 percent and 43.7 percent.”

This provides just a pale outline of the devastating financial and personal damage being suffered by young workers, including domestic and international students who depend on part-time work to survive, as well as those in the arts.

The ABS data estimated that the total wages paid to workers had been cut by 8.2 percent and the unemployment rate had more than doubled from 5.1 percent to 12 percent. This rate is a gross underestimate. The ABS does not count individuals still working any hours, even if only one per week, nor anyone on the federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme for employers, as jobless.

A Grattan Institute report last month estimated that the true unemployment rate was likely to soon exceed 30 percent and that this would intensify inequality. About 40 percent of low-paid workers—those on less than $150 a week in personal income—were likely to be thrown out of work, twice the rate for employees on more than $3,000 per week.

Both the corporate media and the country’s governments falsely presented the job carnage reported by the ABS as being solely due to the restrictions belatedly imposed by the federal, state and territory governments to fight the pandemic, even though the shutdowns were announced on March 24, ten days after the survey began.

“Almost 1 million people have lost their jobs due to restrictions imposed to fight COVID-19,” the Australian Financial Review claimed. This dovetails with the drive by big business and the bipartisan “national cabinet” of Liberal-National and Labor leaders to push all workers back into workplaces even though the pandemic is still rapidly spreading around the world.

Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, echoed by the Labor Party leaders, cited Treasury estimates that social distancing restrictions are causing a $4 billion a week “reduction in economic activity.”

In reality, the impact of COVID-19 and the limited shutdowns came on top of an already deepening slump globally, intensified in Australia by the months-long bushfire catastrophe. Equally, there will be no “recovery” from the job destruction while the global capitalist economy continues to plunge into depression.

The economic breakdown is clearly not solely a product of the domestic lockdown measures. Last month’s International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook forecast the global economy to contract by 4.2 percent in 2020—four times worse than the global financial breakdown of 2008-09.

Sharply reduced migration is cutting growth as well, with the Treasury now predicting a fall in gross domestic production of over 10 percent in the June quarter, the equivalent of $50 billion. This is despite most workers being kept on the job on mining and construction sites and in factories, regardless of unsafe conditions, as the result of employer-union deals.

The jobless figures expose the fraud of the colossal handouts given to employers, on the pretext of protecting jobs. So far, the federal and state governments, Liberal-National and Labor Party alike, have handed something in the order of $330 billion to big business and the banks, including $130 billion via the $750-a-week JobSeeker wage subsidies. More tax cuts, subsidies and bailouts are announced practically every day.

Already, the “stimulus” or “rescue” packages total more than 10 times those in the 2008-09 bailouts, which only resulted in a further huge transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich.

Job losses, wage cuts and social distress were soaring long before the pandemic. A survey of 1454 community sector workers, undertaken late last year, found two thirds reported that poverty and disadvantage increased among the people accessing their services in 2019, and 82 percent reported demand for help either “increased” or “increased significantly” during 2019.

Now living and social conditions are worsening dramatically. Overall consumption, according to National Australia Bank data, has fallen 19.5 percent since the start of the year.

Another indicator of the household financial stress, and its particularly sharp effect on working class people, are car sales figures. In April, they fell by almost half—48.5 per cent—compared to a year earlier. This was the worst monthly result since records began in 1991.

However, upmarket car manufacturer BMW largely escaped the rout. Its sales dropped just 5.7 percent. By contrast, Hyundai, which makes generally cheaper vehicles, posted a 65.3 percent fall.

Having already borne the brunt of the economic disaster, the working class now confronts an increasingly aggressive demand by the corporate elite, backed by the “national cabinet” and the trade unions, for a premature return to work that will inevitably lead to more, possibly fatal, infections of workers.

The scale of the mass unemployment and the resulting impoverishment is being used cynically as a battering ram to coerce workers back into schools, offices, factories and other workplaces. The ruling capitalist class must seek to extract the cost of the breakdown, and the bailouts, out of the labour power of workers, and exploit the crisis to accelerate the decades-long assault on social spending and workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

Deaths surge in UK care homes

Stephen Alexander

As Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and a compliant media advance “a roadmap” to restart the UK economy in line with the demands of big business, new statistics confirm that the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic has shifted from hospitals to care homes.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has recorded 30,064 deaths involving coronavirus in England and Wales. Of the 27,356 that were registered by April 24, 19,643 (71.8 percent) occurred in hospitals, 5,890 (21.5 percent) among care home residents, 1,306 in private homes and 301 in hospices.

Johnson has trumpeted declining weekly figures for hospital deaths to justify an easing of lockdown restrictions, even as yesterday registered a death toll of 649 and a massive 6,111 additional cases.

Of growing significance is how care home deaths continue to expand at an alarming rate. Data provided by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), based on death notifications directly from care homes, recorded 6,391 COVID-19 deaths between April 10 and May 1 in English care homes alone. Nearly one-third of these (2,044) occurred in the last week of this period, and the CQC is now receiving around 400 death notifications each day.

Deaths among care home residents are rapidly increasing as a proportion of weekly fatalities from all causes. ONS figures for England and Wales reveal care home deaths constituted 36 percent of all deaths in the week ending April 24, compared with a five-year average of 22 percent. The proportion of overall deaths occurring in private households—where hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people depend on home care services—has also risen to 4,834 deaths, a 5.8 percent increase compared with the previous week.

The number of care home residents dying of any cause has nearly tripled from an average of 2,500 per week in March to 7,300 in a single week in April. Approximately 2,000 of these were directly related to COVID-19, meaning that thousands of residents have become secondary victims of the pandemic as access to both routine and lifesaving medical treatment has been cut off as health and social care services have been overwhelmed.

Care home deaths also account for a growing proportion of the overall death toll in Scotland. According to the National Records of Scotland (NRS), 43 percent of the country’s 2,795 COVID-19 fatalities have occurred in care homes. In the last week for which data is available, between April 27 and May 3, 59 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities occurred among care home residents, although total care home deaths declined marginally to 310 compared with 339 counted in the previous week.

The NRS has begun to identify the causes of excess deaths not related directly to coronavirus infections. Dementia and Alzheimer’s accounted for 154 excess deaths in the past two weeks compared to the five-year average. There have also been considerable excess deaths related to heart failure, cancer and other co-morbidities that disproportionately impact the elderly population and other vulnerable groups dependent on social care.

The true scale of fatalities in care is likely much higher owing to a lag in reporting, the absence of mass testing and thousands of excess deaths occurring each week not directly linked to COVID-19. The Financial Times estimates that as many as 53,800 have lost their lives either directly or indirectly as a result of the virus.

Nevertheless, the Johnson government has declared that Britain is “past the peak of this disease,” basing his assessment on a daily Department of Health count that systematically underestimates fatalities occurring in care homes and individual households. The back-to-work propaganda of the ruling class is based on the fabricated claim that the reproduction rate of coronavirus is below 1, meaning that each infected person infects on average less than one other individual and the contagion is safely under control, which is impossible to calculate without systematic mass testing.

Hugh Pennington, a microbiologist and emeritus professor at Aberdeen University, has warned that the reproduction rate could be as high as 10 or more in care homes. NHS England’s incident director for coronavirus, Professor Keith Willet, has advised National Health Service bosses that the uncontrolled contagion in care homes could spark a second wave of the pandemic and overwhelm hospitals. “The expectation is that for the next few weeks…those care homes will be the epicentres of transmission back into society and feeding the endemic problem that we will have going forward,” Willet stated in a leaked online call. “We need to be very careful that we aren’t making an assumption that somehow we’re on a downward trajectory that’s not going to change,” he continued, “we can rapidly climb back to where we were in a matter of weeks, possibly in a matter of days.”

Downing Street has denied any responsibility for the deadly crisis engulfing care homes. Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that the sector “has been absolutely at front of mind right from the start.” The chief medical advisor, Sir Chris Whitty, has claimed that the high mortality rate in care homes is largely unpreventable, “sadly because this is a very vulnerable group.”

The truth is that the Tory government, with support of all the major parties including Labour, has pursued a policy of malign neglect, which has forced care homes into delivering its barely concealed agenda of social euthanasia. Johnson hypocritically lauds austerity-stricken NHS hospitals for weathering the initial outbreak without exhausting capacity, but this has only been possible through systematically denying medical care to the elderly, disabled and infirm, who have been left to die horrendously in care homes and in the community.

Mass deaths in care homes have been fueled by policies that financially incentivise the largely privatised, for-profit sector to admit elderly patients rapidly discharged from hospitals without first testing them for the virus. This genocidal initiative was only partly revised in recent days, after dozens of care homes refused to admit untested residents, and with a growing number of families pursuing legal action to remove their elderly relatives from care.

Nevertheless, patients who do test positive are still placed in residential care homes, even though they are neither built to nor equipped to safely quarantine infectious patients. Nor do they employ adequate numbers of medically qualified staff to provide humane care to sick or dying people. Care workers are reporting widespread shortages of the substandard levels of protective clothing and equipment recommended by the government, which is responsible for at least 190 deaths among health and social care workers across the UK.

Researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) who are studying the long-term care implications of COVID-19 have shown that the few countries that have followed comprehensive testing, contact tracing, and stricter quarantine protocols for residents and staff have recorded relatively low levels of care home deaths (Germany, South Korea) or none at all (Hong Kong).

A recent LSE report states: “While it is early to come to firm conclusions and there are many difficulties with the data, these differences suggest that having large numbers of deaths as result of COVID-19 is not inevitable and that appropriate measures to prevent and control infections in care homes can save lives.”

Garment workers’ protests hit Bangladesh industrial belts

Wimal Perera

Working-class protests and demonstrations have swept through Bangladesh industrial belts hitting the export-oriented garment manufacturers and amid rising concerns over coronavirus infections.

Citing data from the government’s Industrial Police, the Financial Express reported over 440 incidents of “labour unrest” in 374 factories during April and 279 incidents in 179 factories in March.

The more than 5,000-strong Industrial Police, which was established by the Bangladesh government in 2010 to suppress workers’ struggles, covers over 7,600 factories. About 4,500 of these are officially-registered garment plants, employing over four million workers.

The coronavirus pandemic began impacting on Bangladesh’s industrial sector in February resulting in immediate falls in orders and exports earnings. Garment industry owners responded to reduced, or cancelled, orders by giant US and European retailers, such as Wal-Mart, H&M, C&A, Marks and Spencer, Esprit, GAP, Li & Fung and Premark, by cutting jobs and wages or outright closures.

Bangladesh officially recorded its first COVID-19 cases on March 8, but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government attempted to downplay concerns. She was forced, however, to impose a national lockdown, excluding emergency service providers, from March 26 to April 4.

Publicly criticised by medical experts, Hasina decided to extend the lockdown until May 5 for all government and private sector institutions, but allowed export-oriented industries to reopen on April 26.

Over 930 factories are reported to have laid off their employees and not paid months of outstanding wages. Workers’ safety was being violated in many plants that had reopened. Workers responded to the refusal of companies to provide a safe working environment with strikes and protests to demand hand sanitisers, face masks and gloves.

Tens of thousands of garment workers, whose monthly wages are about 8,000 takas ($US95), are from villages and went back to their rural homes during the lockdown. When they returned to the industrial zones after April 26 and discovered the plants were still shut, some indefinitely, a wave of angry demonstrations erupted that are still continuing.

“The garment industrial belt at Gazipur and Ashulia turned into a battlefield yesterday, as several thousand apparel workers clashed with police,” the April 28 edition of New Nation reported.

On May 5, a Business Standard article revealed that hundreds of workers from around 10 garment factories at industrial zones in Dhaka, Ashulia, Savar, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Chittagong had demonstrated demanding their jobs back and payment of all outstanding wages.

• In Ashulia’s Narsinghpur area at least 300 Adiyat Apparels workers demonstrated over layoffs. Management shut down the plant on March 28 and later announced that all employees were laid off until June 1. Workers were not paid their March wages.
  
• Over 100 Dragon Sweater factory workers in Dhaka’s Malibagh area on Tuesday demanded five month’s outstanding wages.
  
• About 400 Jeasha Fashion workers protested over their unpaid March wages and another 400 Satter Tex workers demonstrated for three months’ wages.
  
• About 900 Papella workers and 1,300 UFM (BD) employees at garment factories in the Chattogram Export Processing Zone marched for their March and April salaries.
  
• About 3,000 Antim Knitting, Dyeing and Finishing garments workers protested for payment of the outstanding 50 percent of their wages.
  
• On Sunday, thousands workers from factories at Ashulia, Dhamrai and Gazipur industrial zones demonstrated over similar demands.

The Hasina government has provided export industry companies with a 50 billion taka ($US595 million) “stimulus package” to pay for workers’ wages but this has not reached many workers.

The government and company owners, with support from some trade unions, agreed to cut 40 percent from workers’ gross monthly wages during the closure period.

Fearing widespread protests, some of the unions affiliated with the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council (IBC) and Stalinist Communist Party of Bangladesh-controlled Garment Workers Trade Union Centre (GWTUC) rejected this. They later agreed, however, to a 35 percent wage cut. In 2018, the IBC and GWTUC betrayed mass strike action by garment workers demanding higher pay, opening the way for factory owners to sack thousands.

The reopening of export-industry garment plants has left thousands of workers vulnerable to COVID-19, particularly those living in overcrowded accommodation near the plants in Dhaka, Narayanganj and Gazipur. These areas are now considered coronavirus hotspots. On May 3, the New Age reported at least 12 workers at 10 factories had tested positive with the virus.

Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute, warned of the danger of premature and unsafe plant reopenings. “The number of coronavirus patients may increase in the worst-affected areas in Dhaka, Narayanganj and Gazipur after eight to 10 days, as there is a risk of virus transmission among garment workers,” he told New Age .

Such warnings have been ignored by the government and factory owners who are facing pressure to fulfill orders for the US and European retailers.

Bangladeshi factory owners fear that they would lose to their global competitors, such as Vietnam, China and Cambodia, which have already resumed production. As of yesterday, over 2,590 Bangladeshi garment producers remain open . The clothing industry accounts for some 84 percent of the country’s $40 billion annual export earnings. Currently about $6 billion worth of orders could be lost this financial year.

The reopening of the Bangladesh factories, and threatened loss of workers’ lives, coincides with similar moves in the US and Europe.

Last Friday, 890—or 40 percent of 2,200 workers at the Tyson Foods pork plant in Logansport, Indiana in the United States—were confirmed COVID-19 positive, as a result of President Trump’s executive order forcing reopening of meat-processing plants.

A new wave of workers’ struggles has emerged in the US—a global epicenter of the pandemic—against factory reopenings and unsafe working conditions. There have been at least 140 wildcat strikes in the US between March and April, while workers in other countries have taken strike action or demonstrated over the same issues.

The Hasini government is insisting that the garment factories keep operating. However, because the pandemic is escalating out of control, it has decided to extended the national lockdown until May 16 but only at public and private office workplaces.

In the past two weeks the official number of COVID-19 deaths has more than doubled—from 84 on April 18 to 186 on May 5. Yesterday morning the Directorate General of Health reported two more deaths and 665 new cases—the highest in single day.

The total number of officially-confirmed cases is 9,455 but there is no mass testing. The number of daily tests is less than 6,000 as against at least 10,000 recommended by medical experts. People are dying of coronavirus-like symptoms but these fatalities are not officially counted.

The national healthcare system also faces collapse as increasing numbers of medical workers are being infected—currently 574 doctors and 600 nurses—amid an acute shortage of personal protective equipment. Two doctors have died from the virus and, according to the Bangladesh Nursing and Midwifery Council, the country has only 24 percent of total 300,000 nurses required nationally.

German auto companies demand even more state money

Ulrich Rippert

The impudence of the auto manufacturers knows no bounds. Although VW, Daimler and BMW made billions in profits last year and paid high dividends to shareholders, they are demanding extensive state aid from the government in the form of economic stimulus programmes and consumer subsidies for new cars. In this, the carmakers are being supported by the IG Metall trade union.

At Tuesday’s auto summit, which normally takes place in the Chancellor's Office, but was held as a video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic, government officials postponed any decisions on corporate handouts until early summer, but representatives expressed their support for the carmakers’ demands.

After the conference, government spokesperson Seibert said that Chancellor Merkel had referred to the "special importance of the industry for value creation and employment in Germany". To begin, a working group will discuss economic stimulus measures, which will then be put up for discussion in early June. This will also include support for "innovative technologies".

In addition to the chancellor, several federal ministers, the heads of VW, Daimler and BMW, representatives of the automobile lobby association VDA, and top officials of the IG Metall (IGM) union took part in the summit.

Because the greed of the automobile companies, the diesel exhaust emissions scandal and massive dividend payments have generated public opposition, Merkel announced before the meeting that any decision on special incentives for the industry would take time. It is expected that the manufacturers, the VDA and IGM will use the dire situation in the global auto industry to make their demands.

Decisions on aid will likely be made as part of a broad-based economic stimulus package. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) has announced he will make proposals on this at the end of May or the beginning of June.

While Merkel claims nothing has been decided yet, the auto summit has made it clear how strongly and directly the company heads determine government policy.

The state governments of Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the main locations of VW, BMW and Daimler, called on the federal government to act quickly. Although the three state leaders belong to different parties—the SPD, Christian Social Union (CSU) and Greens—they unanimously demanded state-paid auto incentives on Monday.

Customers would get 3,000 euros towards the purchase of most modern petrol and diesel cars. For plug-in hybrids, electric and hydrogen cars, there would be an additional 4,000 euros, in addition to already existing incentives.

In addition, customers who return some older cars should receive an additional 1,000 euros as a scrappage bonus. Those buying a modern combustion engine and later changing to an electric car would receive another 1,000 euro changeover payment. A scrappage bonus for old cars was introduced after the financial crisis in 2008.

Parallel to this hunt for government money and economic stimulus packages, production is being ramped up again in all car factories, even though this endangers workers’ health and lives. In most production areas, social distancing and safety measures will only be observed inadequately or not at all.

The IG Metall supports this reckless and irresponsible policy and is part of the conspiracy against the working class along with the auto bosses and the government.

IG Metall head Jörg Hofmann said on Monday, "We need a signal from politicians that there will also be measures to support the key sector of vehicle manufacture as part of an economic stimulus package". IG Metall also considers a state-paid incentive to be sensible if it includes a certain amount of the automobile industry's own contribution and a focus on reducing CO2 emissions.

The union is presenting the state money for the car companies as a "job security programme", although exactly the opposite is the case. The billions are being used specifically to accelerate restructuring measures in the car industry, which are associated with massive job and social cuts.

IG Metall and works councils are also the driving forces in restarting production. They are calling for "more European cooperation" in the easing measures for the economy.

"In order to get out of the deep recession in industry", the German debate on opening up the market is "only partially effective", Hofmann told finance daily Handelsblatt. What is needed, he said, is a "European-coordinated economic ramp-up", and the confidence of consumers and investors must also grow again. "This requires economic stimulus packages," Hofmann declared.

The auto companies, which together with their suppliers exert great economic and political influence, are using the coronavirus crisis to further increase their power, in several respects.

On the one hand, they are seeking as much state money as possible, in the form of economic stimulus packages, purchase premiums, tax breaks and short-time working allowances, in order to further enrich powerful shareholders.

The corporations collect billions in government money while implementing short-time working—VW alone is receiving state funds for 80,000 employees—but the "liquid funds" go to the shareholders. Only last month, for example, sports car manufacturer Porsche distributed 952 million euros in dividends to its shareholders, around half of which, almost half a billion euros, went to the Porsche family.

BMW's Executive Board and Supervisory Board propose to pay a dividend of 1.64 billion euros to shareholders this year. Half of this will go to the Quandt and Klatten families who own the company. The German Association for the Protection of Securities Holdings complains that the 160 listed companies in the Dax, MDax and SDax "will only [!] pay out 44 billion euros to their shareholders this year because of the coronavirus crisis," 14 percent less than last year. "In the current situation, securing liquidity is the first priority", writes Handelsblatt.

The stock exchange is already factoring in state aid. Car stocks were particularly in demand throughout Europe on Tuesday. In Germany, securities from Daimler, VW and BMW were among the best in the Dax, with price gains of up to 4 percent.

In addition, state funds are being used to accelerate the restructuring and rationalization of the automobile industry. Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis, the automobile industry was in a state of upheaval. During last autumn’s so-called "Industry Week", a large number of meetings of high-ranking government representatives, industry bosses and trade union officials discussed strategic plans.

Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) presented the "National Industrial Strategy 2030". In doing so, he made it clear that although the federal government continued to recognise the independence of business and "free competition", it wanted to pursue German economic interests more strongly than before through a state industrial policy.

While some industrial associations initially reacted with restraint and feared a "restriction of entrepreneurial freedom", IG Metall reacted enthusiastically from the outset and deepened its collaboration with the government. Now this cooperation between industry, government and trade unions is becoming even closer in order to fight competitors in China and the United States.