Hundreds of jobs axed as News Corp Australia shuts regional and suburban newspapers

Richard Phillips

Last week, the Murdoch-owned News Corp Australia announced that it will stop printing its 112 regional and suburban newspapers at the end of this month. Thirty-six newspapers will be closed outright, with the remaining 76 only producing digital editions.

The company refused to reveal how many jobs will be axed, but the decision is likely to eliminate at least 900 positions. The newspapers—some in existence for over 150 years—previously employed up to 1,300 people. The closures constitute one fifth of the country’s regional and suburban newspapers and place a question mark over News Corp’s regional newspaper printing facilities.

The surviving papers, News Corp management declared, will be produced by 375 journalists. Most of the suburban digital publications, however, will not have separate websites but will only be available behind paywalls on the company’s capital city tabloids, such as Sydney’s Daily Telegraph or Melbourne’s Herald-Sun.

These moves will further restrict public access to news and information, especially for older and poorer working class people, and strike another blow to regional towns, on the back of similar closures of banks and retail chains.

News Corp’s attack on journalists and other media workers is not confined to its rural and regional publications. Pay cuts, along with increased part-time work, nine-day fortnights and calls for employees to take accumulated leave, initially imposed on suburban and regional media workers in April, have been imposed or demanded at the company’s metropolitan newspapers.

News Corp management claimed its decision to stop printing regional and suburban newspapers was solely in response to the COVID-19 crisis and sharp falls in advertising revenue. This is false.

While the pandemic has seen dramatic declines in advertising, News Corp CEO Mark Miller boasted in April that readership of the company’s publications over the previous 12 months had risen by 81 percent and that consumer subscription sales were are up 287 percent. The increase, he declared, “is the most dramatic we have ever seen.”

News Corp, like its local and international competitors and big businesses everywhere, has seized on the pandemic to speed up existing plans to drastically restructure its operations and drive up profits. The company is also seeking to further consolidate its domination of the Australian media. News Corp controls 70 percent of the country’s print media.

Last week’s announcement is part of an escalating wave of job destruction, wage cuts and increased productivity demands by Australian media corporations. Over the past decade more than 3,000 journalists, photographers and editorial jobs have been axed nationally. More than 210 newsrooms have been closed or temporarily suspended in the past 18 months alone.

Australian Associated Press (AAP) is set to close at the end of the month, destroying the jobs of about 600 journalists, photographers and other media workers, following the elimination of 10 percent of the news agency’s workforce in 2018.

The decision to axe AAP was made in March by its majority shareholders, News Corp and Nine Entertainment, in order to consolidate their joint hegemony over the media by denying other outlets access to the news agency’s material.

In April, Australian Community Media & Printing (ACM), the country’s largest owner of regional and rural publications, shuttered four newspaper printing facilities and suspended publication of 160 of its regional and agricultural newspapers. An unknown number of journalists and other staff were either stood down or had their working hours slashed.

ACM—previously part of Fairfax Media—was taken over by Nine Entertainment and sold in 2019 to Antony Catalano and Thorney Investments. No announcements have been made about when or if these newspapers will reopen.

Smaller regional publishers, including Cape and Torres News in Northern Queensland, the Elliott Newspaper Group in northwestern Victoria and others have also stopped printing their newspapers. While the owners claim they will resume production later this year, these pledges are worthless.

According to the Guardian, another round of job cuts is underway at the Sydney Morning Herald, which is owned by Nine Entertainment, and at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The state-funded ABC has slashed an undisclosed number of casuals at news and current affairs in the network’s television and radio programs.

Adding to the devastation, Domain, a real estate platform, recently gave its journalist and production staff the “choice” of taking 20 percent of their salaries for six months in share rights, or working shorter hours.

Nor has the offensive been restricted to newspapers. In early May, Australia’s largest magazine publisher, Bauer Media, shut down seven fashion, lifestyle and celebrity magazines and sacked 200 journalists, editors and production workers, including 60 from Pacific Magazines, which had just been acquired from Seven West Media. In April, Bauer in New Zealand stopped publishing all magazines in that country and axed the jobs of over 230 journalists and other production staff.

Other media outlets closed in Australia in the past three weeks include BuzzFeed News, 10 Daily and News Corp’s With Her In Mind Network (Whimn). Job cuts have taken place at Vice Network’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.

The industry’s main trade union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), reacted to News Corp’s announcement last week with a perfunctory statement about “the seriousness of the crisis” facing journalism, and appealed to the federal government to provide more funds to regional newspapers.

“We are determined to see proper consultation and fair treatment for any affected staff,” MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy cynically declared. The union’s officials had rubber-stamped previous deals that led to News Corp’s announcement last week.

Like other unions, the MEAA functions as an industrial police force. It operates as an arm of the corporate media, negotiating redundancy deals, imposing productivity demands, cuts in conditions and the increased casualisation of journalists, photographers and other production workers.

News Corp journalists, photographers and other production workers seeking to defend their jobs cannot leave their fate in the hands of the MEAA. The union will do whatever media employers require, as long as it is retained as their workplace enforcer.

Successive Labor and Liberal-National governments have helped create the conditions for this assault on journalism and public access to information. They have dismantled provisions limiting monopoly control over the media, allowing the corporate giants to accumulate enormous wealth and power.

To fight this assault, media workers need to establish genuine rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the MEAA, to unite and mobilise other journalists and media workers and broader sections of the working class. The struggle against the corporate destruction of jobs and journalism requires a socialist perspective, based on the needs of society, as well as media workers and their families, not the profits of the media proprietors and the financial elites.

NTEU helps Australian universities escalate job and wage cuts

Mike Head

With the federal Liberal-National government adamantly refusing to rescue the country’s public universities from the devastating impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, managements are unveiling hundreds of job cuts, together with attacks on pay and conditions.

So far, the jobs destroyed include at least 400 at La Trobe University, about 300 at Deakin University, and nearly 300 at Central Queensland University, which plans to close its Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon and Biloela campuses, hitting these regional centres hard.

Threats of unspecified job losses, including forced redundancies, have been issued at Charles Sturt University, Wollongong University, the University of the Sunshine Coast, Swinburne University, the University of Tasmania, the Australian National University and the University of Canberra. At the University of Sydney, the arts faculty will eliminate 8 percent of its units.

Elsewhere, the employers are demanding pay freezes or cuts, on top of the destruction of thousands of casual academic and administrative jobs, either by variations to NTEU enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) or by exploiting existing EBA provisions. At the University of Melbourne, the measures include a pay cut of 2.2 percent, reductions in redundancy pay and no limits on involuntary redundancies

Education Minister Dan Tehan reiterated the government’s stand on Wednesday, bluntly telling the universities they needed “greater focus on domestic students, online education and greater alignment with industry needs.”

This means accelerating the pro-business transformation of the universities. They are being told to slash costs, service the training and research needs of the corporate elite and end their reliance on overseas students, especially from China.

The government is also demanding that the universities, like schools, physically reopen, despite the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in crowded lecture theatres and classrooms. Tehan said the government’s priority was “the further reopening of campuses for face-to-face learning.”

In order to comply with these orders, university managements are exploiting the efforts of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to stifle university workers’ outrage and opposition. For two months, throughout April and May, the NTEU suppressed all resistance while it conducted backroom talks with the employers on a national “framework” to permit pay cuts of up to 15 percent, while still allowing at least 18,000 job losses.

Facing widespread rank-and-file hostility to the agreement, and with the employers losing confidence in the NTEU’s capacity to deliver it, the union finally abandoned the deal. Far from being deterred by this historic blow to its credibility, however, the union is now working intensely with individual managements to impose their requirements.

As at Western Sydney University, the NTEU is using anti-democratic methods to shut down debate and push through agreements to cut wages, with no more guarantees against redundancies than in its national “framework.”

At some universities, such as Monash, La Trobe and the University of Western Australia, the NTEU is still trying to ram through versions of its national sellout, even overriding rejection votes by its own members. At La Trobe, the NTEU backed management’s plan for a 10 percent wage cut for at least 12 months, which the vice chancellor said would save 225 jobs but would still leave result in around 400 redundancies.

On May 27, an NTEU branch meeting at La Trobe voted by 60 percent, 138 to 62, to reject the national framework. Determined to fight all job cuts, including those of casuals, the participants also voted by 74 percent, 110 to 22, to “condemn any sacking of casual staff or standing down of staff in relation to COVID-19.” They signalled that they would “refuse variations to the EBA to overload our teaching or professional responsibilities as a result of work being stripped from casuals.”

In an extraordinary exposure of the role of unions, the NTEU refused to accept these outcomes. It claimed the votes were “non-binding” and called a postal ballot of La Trobe’s NTEU members, which started on Thursday, in a bid to reverse the rejection of the national agreement.

Under a revised management “offer,” staff would receive a sliding pay cut, depending on their classification, their annual leave would be reduced to 10 days and they would receive no pay increases until 2022.

To back the union’s effort to intimidate staff members into dropping their opposition, vice-chancellor John Dewar this week revealed that the university was negotiating with banks for a loan to cover its debts. As part of these negotiations, “the banks are interested to see actions around balancing our books over time,” he said.

In other words, the NTEU is working with management to impose the requirements of the banks, as well as the federal government, on the university.

La Trobe workers should vote “no” to defeat this attack, but that is only the first step. The NTEU’s collaboration with the employers is not an aberration. It is part of a wider drive by the unions to enforce cuts to jobs, pay and conditions in partnership with employers across entire industries, such as retail, fast food, hospitality and the clerical sector. In the words of Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus, the unions are giving employers “everything you want.”

These developments underscore the necessity for the call issued by the Committee for Public Education and the Socialist Equality Party for the formation of rank-and-file committees of tertiary education workers and students—completely independent of the pro-management NTEU.

Such committees, democratically elected, are essential to organise a nationwide, unified struggle to defend all jobs and basic rights, protect university staff from unsafe COVID-19 conditions and link up with workers internationally who are facing similar critical struggles against the impact of the worsening global crisis.

La Trobe’s crisis is typical of the plight of the public universities, which have turned to exploiting full fee-paying international students over the past decade to offset the slashing of billions of dollars in funding by successive federal governments, starting with the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard.

A quarter of La Trobe’s 2019 revenue came from overseas students. Some universities depend even more on this revenue: 34 percent at Monash, 36 percent at RMIT and 35 percent at UTS.

Universities Australia this week said universities faced a combined revenue loss of up to $4.8 billion in 2020 and $16 billion by 2023. Even these estimates could be optimistic if the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen globally.

All the causes of this crisis—the slashing of university funding, the pandemic itself and the profit-driven government responses to the pandemic—are products of global capitalism. That is why a socialist perspective, based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy, is necessary to fight this historic assault on universities and their workers. All those who want to take forward this struggle should contact the Committee for Public Education.

Philippines begins lifting lockdown despite rising infection rates

Owen Howell

On Monday, the Philippine government commenced its plans to reopen businesses by ending a three-month lockdown of Metro Manila, the country’s capital and COVID-19 epicentre. Millions of Filipino workers are being forced back on the job, despite a rapid rise in the number of infections.

Last week witnessed 4,051 new confirmed coronavirus cases, an increase of nearly 29 percent. Since May 28, there has been an unprecedented surge in the daily number of cases. A new record was set last Friday, with a spike of 1,046 cases, while the second highest number, 862, was reported on Sunday. The total number of infections now stands at 20,382, with 984 deaths.

In the face of these shocking figures, the government is recklessly pushing ahead with its premature reopening of the economy.

Social restrictions in Metro Manila and throughout the main island of Luzon, which is home to nearly 60 million people, are being downgraded to a “general community quarantine,” from the previous stage of “enhanced community quarantine.”

Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade stated that public transport will return in a limited form, with shuttle buses and trains permitted to restart operations. Meanwhile, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport announced it will resume domestic flights.

Non-essential businesses, including restaurants, gyms, beauty salons, sports facilities and churches, are allowed to open at limited capacity, as are hotels and tourist spots. The changes are set to be in place until June 15, when restrictions will be further relaxed.

The return to work in the Philippines is part of an international campaign being waged by the ruling classes of every country, which are abandoning any serious attempt to contain and eradicate the coronavirus. This drive is not based on current scientific knowledge about the virus or its ability to spread, but is motivated solely by the economic interests of the financial elite.

The relaxing of restrictions follows increasingly strident appeals to the government from company executives, transnational corporations and investors.

Official gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of the year, the first contraction since 1998. The fears of big business over the pandemic’s impact on corporate profit-making have outweighed any public health considerations in the government response.

In order to justify meeting the demands of this financial oligarchy, and prepare the grounds for a return to work, President Rodrigo Duterte has publicly rejected known facts and proclaimed that the number of COVID-19 infections in the Philippines is negligible. Immediately after delivering a report of record-high infection figures in a press briefing last week, Duterte said: “All in all, for me, it’s not so bad.”

His remarks, completely out of touch with the horrific reality, sparked anger from health experts, along with workers and peasants, whose lives will be placed at risk due to the reopening.

The lack of significant lockdown measures could result in potentially catastrophic transmissions in Manila, the most densely populated city in the world. The capital region has been the source of more than 60 percent of the country’s confirmed cases. Any implementation of adequate social distancing on the reopened Manila transit system, which services around 300,000 commuters daily, will be impossible.

The Philippines’ testing rate is among the lowest in the world. While capacity has allegedly reached 32,100 tests per day, the actual number of tests performed is much lower. For example, only 8,496 tests were conducted on May 27, in a country of 109 million people.

Even this is an increase on rates up until early May, when testing was negligible. This serious delay in available testing led residents in provincial areas, where social restrictions were virtually non-existent, to worry that there may have been undetected outbreaks in their communities. The official records of cases and deaths are undoubtedly a gross underestimation of the real extent of the spread.

World Health Organisation (WHO) representative Dr Socorro Escalante recently highlighted the government’s failure to conduct contact tracing needed to combat the virus. She explained that tracing must begin once a suspect case visits a hospital, instead of upon confirmation of laboratory results, as is currently being practiced. “By that time, we have already spread the infection to many people and that’s really very, very late,” Escalante said.

The pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on the Philippine health care system, which was unprepared for a crisis of this scale. Due to a widespread shortage of protective equipment, at least 2,480 health workers have been infected, including 695 doctors, 905 nurses, 155 nursing assistants, 93 medical technologists, 46 radiologic technologists and 308 non-medical hospital staff. As of last week, 31 medical workers had died from the virus.

As is the case internationally, the pandemic and the pro-business government response is creating a social crisis of unprecedented dimensions. Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello has warned that the 2.6 million workers who lost their jobs after the pandemic began could be joined by 7 million more before the end of the year.

Unemployed workers, confronted with economic destitution at home, are offered no choice but to return to work under unsafe conditions. Cabusao, a young aviation firm worker, told Channel News Asia this week: “I have to go back to work… The fear of contracting the virus will always be there.”

The government has been slow in distributing the pitiful cash handouts that it promised to around 20 million impoverished families. The relief funds, just $US100 per person, have not yet reached all eligible recipients three months into the crisis. In the meantime, large numbers of low-income workers have stood all day in long queues to receive cash and food aid from charities.

Hunger has also surged during the pandemic. The Nikkei Asian Review cited a survey conducted in early May, which found that 16.7 percent of Filipinos residents, an estimated 4.2 million families, experienced hunger at least once in the previous three months, doubling from 8.8 percent in December.

President Duterte is well aware that growing social opposition among workers and the poor has been accelerated by the pandemic. Last week, the presidential Malacañang Palace announced it was “necessary” to extend Duterte’s special emergency powers, which were due to expire within weeks.

The measures will now be extended until September. They strengthen the powers of the executive branch— i.e., Duterte—placing hospitals and other public services under its direction. They also include provisions for the imprisonment for two months of anyone accused of spreading “fake news” online, along with fines ranging from 10,000 to 1 million pesos.

The government will attempt to use these measures to suppress opposition to the premature reopening, and the further corporate restructuring that will accompany it.

Duterte repeatedly threatened the population with martial law through the course of the lockdown, during which heavily-armed police officers and military troops arrested a total of 57,177 people for alleged quarantine violations. Police records show that nearly a quarter were arrested without a warrant.

Parliament approved a new “anti-terrorism bill” on Wednesday. It aims to provide a legal basis for the warrantless detention and wiretapping of anyone deemed by the government to be a “terrorist.”

In a letter to the House Speaker, Duterte certified the bill as “urgent,” writing that its purpose was to “adequately and effectively contain the menace of terrorist acts for the preservation of national security and the promotion of general welfare.”

There is no doubt that Duterte, as with his “war on drugs,” will use the new law as a means of criminalising any opposition to the government and provide the military absolute impunity in targeting political opponents.

European Central Banks boosts support for financial markets

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has ramped up its emergency bond-buying program—introduced in mid-March to counter the meltdown in financial markets as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—to €1.35 trillion.

The decision to lift purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP) by €600 billion, from an initial amount of €750 billion, was warmly welcomed by financial markets. The euro reached its highest level against the US dollar since March and stock markets rose on the back of the decision as the ECB brought its policy response closer into line with that of the US Federal Reserve

Reflecting the favourable response to the decision to make still more money available through the PEPP, one London-based investment fund manager told the Wall Street Journal: “The ECB is very well known to be behind the curve, acting only at five minutes to midnight, but now they are ahead of the curve.”

In her review of the state of the euro zone economy delivered at the start of a news conference yesterday at which she announced the new move, ECB president Christine Lagarde said the latest data confirmed that the region “is experiencing an unprecedented contraction” and there had been an “abrupt drop” in economic activity as a result of the pandemic.

She said while real-time indicators showed some signs of a “bottoming-out” in the plunge “the improvement so far has been tepid compared with the speed at which indicators plummeted in the preceding two months.”

In her words, as in the rest of the world, there is no prospect of V-shaped recovery—a scenario widely promoted at the start of the pandemic.

Lagarde said June macro projections were for growth declining at “an unprecedented pace” in the second quarter before a rebound in the second half of the year. Overall annual euro area GDP was expected to fall by 8.7 percent in 2020 before rebounding in 2021. But Lagarde did not rule out an even deeper downturn and cautioned that “the overall scale and speed of the rebound remains highly uncertain.”

Press conferences following the meetings of the ECB’s governing council always have a certain air of unreality about them because of the central bank’s single mandate which is to maintain price stability and a level of inflation around 2 percent.

This means that decisions which have really nothing to do with price levels, and are directed to providing a boost to financial markets, have to be justified in official statements as if they did.

This type of shadow play was particularly in evidence at yesterday’s press conference because it was the first to be held after a decision by the German constitutional court on May 5 that called into question whether the Bundesbank, the German central bank, could continue to take part in the ECB’s bond buying program.

The decision reflected opposition in some sections of the German financial and political establishment to what they regard as ECB operations to bailout southern European countries and finance their governments’ budget deficits.

Lagarde was questioned about the decision of the German constitutional court a number of times during the press conference. In reply to one of those questions, she noted that the European Court of Justice had ruled that the ECB’s actions have been in line with its mandate.

“[A]ll of us, take note of the judgement passed by the Karlsruhe constitutional court, which is directed at two parties; the German government and the German parliament. We are confident that a good solution will be found… which will in no way comprise the independence of the ECB, primacy of European law and decision by the European Court of Justice.”

However, the fact that the question continues to be raised means this is by no means a settled issue.

One questioner pointed out that when the PEPP was first announced in March the word “inflation” did not appear in the statement and asked whether its inclusion in the announcement to expand it was in part aimed at providing the explicit rationale being insisted on by the German constitutional court.

In a number of answers about the operations of the PEPP Lagarde made clear that euro zone financial system was facing a severe crisis in the middle of March. She said its introduction on March 18 had “prevented the downward spirals to financial markets and reduced any tail risks at the time without which we would have been in a seriously different situation in terms of both growth and inflation outlook.”

She said it had been decided to increase the size of PEPP because financial conditions in the euro area had become “significantly tighter” in a situation where the economy needed easier conditions.

Commenting on reports that not all members of the governing council had been prepared to support an increase in the PEPP, Lagarde said “there was a unanimous view” that action had to be taken.

The latest ECB decision is significant, not only because the size of the intervention—an increase to €1.35 trillion in new asset purchases on top of the more than €2 trillion it already holds—but the broadening scope of those purchases.

Lagarde pointed out that the ECB had included a “significant amount of corporate bonds—almost €46 billion worth under the PEPP program up to May 29—and that it had decided to shift a large share of our purchases to commercial paper.”

This indicates that, like its counterpart in the US, the ECB, the world’s second most important central bank, has become the chief backstop and prop for all areas of the financial system—from long-term government debt to corporate debt and short-term commercial paper.

Protests spread in Chile as hospitals reach saturation point

Mauricio Saavedra

With almost 114,000 COVID-19 cases confirmed since March 4, Chile has the third highest number of cases after Brazil and Peru in Latin America, one of the epicenters of the virus. With a population of 19 million, Chile is reporting close to 5,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, a rate comparable, in per capita terms, to Spain at the peak of the viral spread last March.

It is forecast that, at the present rate, within two months, the death toll may reach 10 times yesterday’s figure of 1,275. This loss of life is the inevitable outcome of decades of pro-corporate policies that have led to a chronically underfunded health system, now on the verge of collapse. They have also produced extreme poverty, overcrowding and a lack of infrastructure in working class neighborhoods that has led to continued hunger riots.

Youth, the working class and the lower-middle classes who demonstrated against capitalism in their millions last year, are today confronting the full brunt of the anti-social policies of the ultra-right government of President Sebastian Piñera and the entire parliamentary “left.”

In a statement made earlier in March, Health Minister Jaime Mañalich raised that the health system might not be able to handle coronavirus cases once they passed 100,000. But the ministry did nothing to contain the virus. It has not introduced strict quarantining measures, applied a countrywide lockdown, expanded testing, broadened contact tracing, or ordered the closure of non-essential work—all measures advised by the WHO. Nor did it significantly increase the health care budget to deal with decades of under-resourcing and under-staffing.

On the contrary, the government adopted a criminally reckless policy of “dynamic” quarantining, which meant letting the disease spread before reacting to the outbreak and only then placing in and out of quarantine a commune, province and now a region on the basis of unclear criteria. Mañalich’s homicidal “dynamic” quarantining policy, which has condemned untold thousands to disease and death, was a calculated maneuver to forestall for as long as possible forking out financial resources to the ailing health system and for emergency social measures to aid the poverty-stricken population.

To introduce the WHO recommendations would have required increasing by orders of magnitude public expenditure, something excluded under Chile’s much-lauded “free-market” system, which essentially works by pillaging the historically-accumulated social wealth collectively created by the working masses and placing it at the disposal of international finance capital. Hospital care, education, pensions and social security are not social rights but commodities bought and sold on the market.

Now with a contraction of up to 4.5 percent forecast for 2020 due to a deterioration in global demand for exports and a sharp reversal in capital inflows, Piñera was granted from the IMF a flexible credit line of US$24 billion over two years. It can be safely predicted that this will not be used to ease the hardships of the masses, but rather to save big business and guarantee liquidity.

The official unemployment rate for the February-April quarter reached 9 percent, the highest in 10 years. This was due to a drop in demand for the retail, agriculture, fishing and manufacturing industries.

Another estimate, however, found that if the totals of the a) unemployed but actively looking for work, b) not looking for work, and c) receiving severance insurance, are combined then the real unemployment figure is closer to 25 percent of the national labour force, the highest since the 1982 depression.

Whole layers of post graduates and the professional middle class have lost jobs or are having salaries cut in half. Rental properties have reduced prices by up to a quarter for up to six months in “Covid promotions” to try and attract tenants as vacated rental apartments proliferate across Santiago and other regional cities.

Many thousands are moving back with parents, extended families or into share arrangements. Families are moving in with other families to reduce costs of utilities and other expenses. Several families in San Pedro de La Paz near the southern city of Concepcion have sought refuge in abandoned buildings blocks declared uninhabitable after the 2010 earthquake caused structural damage.

The banks, meanwhile, continue to charge at full rates on credit card debts, student loan debts, and mortgages. Adding insult to injury the State Bank confiscated a risible 65,000 pesos (US$800) emergency fund from the government to pay off personal account debts, while the much vaunted food hampers promised by the government to 2.5 million indigent is expected to reach eligible families in an undefined “near future”, and not today when they need it most.

Two separate studies reported that in the poorer working class communes people are going to work despite being sick with coronavirus. A joint study by the University of Chile and the Medical Association found that 15.2 percent of people with COVID-19, 24 percent of those suspected of having the disease and 43.6 percent of those with symptoms were still going to work. To do otherwise would condemn their families to starve as the state has provided no substantive assistance in a country where the majority have been pushed into poverty.

The protests that erupted May 18 against rising unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger have continued throughout the country as working class communities confront the third month of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chile. Dozens of residents have continued to gather in El Bosque with barricades and hold protests along with Cerro Navia, San Bernardo in the Metropolitan Region and in outer regions.

The free-market reality is expressed just as sharply in health care. A survey conducted last month by the national Medical Association found that 75 percent of health teams lacked PPE: N95 masks (62.71 percent), visual covers (51 percent), breastplate (34.35 percent), surgical masks (33.39 percent) and gloves (15.78 percent).

The Nurses Association also released the results of a survey conducted earlier in the month which found that 39.2 percent of respondents reported nurses in quarantine in their facility, 60.5 percent of facilities did not provide replacement staff and 72 percent did not have staff access to PCR or other rapid tests.

Eighty-nine percent stated that they did not have access to one or more items of PPE during their daily work, among which were N95 mask (61.4 percent), boots (51.5 percent), face shields (37 percent), surgical mask (36.9 percent), disposable apron (35.4 percent) and alcohol gel (29.9 percent). Finally, and most damningly, 63.7 percent did not have at their establishment mental health support programs aimed exclusively at health personnel.

The health ministry reported that there are 3,707 health officials infected with coronavirus and are in quarantine today. Since March 3, 12,051 public health workers have either been infected with COVID-19 or have had to go into preventive quarantine. This breaks down to 4,882 infected personnel and 7,169 in quarantine. In the private clinics 1,958 staff have been infected, and 3,158 have had to go into preventive quarantine.

With current conditions, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington estimates that 11,970 will die by the end of August. These calculations do not take into account, however, a viral spread and death rate in an environment where the country’s hospital system is on the verge of collapse. This is the situation today with 84 percent of the nation’s mechanical ventilators in use, even as the private clinics refuse to increase their share of critical beds and machines.

It was reported last week that the hospital system in Greater Santiago, with more than 7 million people, was saturated and patients were being transferred to outer regions. That is, the region with the most important and largest health system within the country has almost collapsed, reaching 95 percent occupancy. The southeast zone, under the most pressure, has already reached overcapacity, followed by the central and western zones with 97 percent, north with 95 percent, the south at 94 percent and the east with 92 percent.

This has created chaos in the hospital system. Ambulance drivers protested after they had to wait more than 15 hours with patients suspected of having COVID-19. Patients have had to wait for hours on stretchers. Staff have been instructed to suspend preventive quarantines for COVID-19 early and to return to work. Lunch breaks have been reduced to 15 minutes, and staff have been instructed to reuse masks for three days. Protests over lack of protective gear and insufficient ICU beds have broken out in several hospitals; patients in field tents are forced to wait three to four days before being admitted into an ICU ward.

No patients could be transferred to the second largest hospital system in the Valparaíso region as it, too, almost reached saturation point last week. Moreover, at least 1,100 staff at the Carlos Van Buren Hospital in Valparaíso have not received wages for the past two months.

Valparaíso has registered daily infections of between 100 and 150 cases for the last week, with a total of 3,164 cases, making it the second most infected area in the country. The medical profession has pleaded for weeks for stricter confinement measures in the region and especially in the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar due to their large squatter settlements.

Rodrigo Cruz, director of the Infectious Disease Diagnosis and Research Center at the University of Valparaíso warned that if the virus spreads, the area “will live a tragedy of proportions.” There are “tens of thousands of houses stuck to each other, with reduced access to basic services and with a large number of older people, many of whom have mobility problems or are bedridden,” he said.

“I understand that quarantines generate additional problems, but it seems to me that the priority today is to prevent people from dying. And if we don’t act accordingly, deaths will continue to increase exponentially there,” said Dr. Cruz.

According to the last report of the Chilean Society of Intensive Medicine, 82 percent of ICU beds are today occupied in the Antofagasta region. While unlike many other regions it can double the number of critical beds in circulation, due to a cache held in storage at the old regional hospital, Medical Association spokesman Dr. Hugo Benitez warned that the health system could still collapse “if the quarantine is lifted and cases begin to rise.”

Antofagasta, one of the main mining regions of the country to the north of Santiago has the third highest number of confirmed cases. The number, 2,862, has more than tripled since a total quarantine was belatedly applied on May 3, when there were already 740 cases.

Despite this, Mañalich announced last week that he will lift the quarantine. This has nothing to do with health considerations, but rather the interests of the mining corporations, which want to resume several new copper mining projects suspended in March following the outbreak of the coronavirus in Chile. The regular open pit operations have continued throughout this period.

US colleges prepare full opening of campuses in the name of football

Andy Thompson

American colleges and universities have begun announcing plans for how they will reopen campuses for the fall 2020 semester amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with many schools indicating that they will operate on a modified schedule or implement more online learning options for the fall. However, many prominent schools including the University of Louisville, Syracuse University, the University of Texas at Austin and Ohio State University, among others, have unveiled plans to reopen with in-person classes and other school activities for the fall semester.

The schools that are particularly committed to having full or partial reopening of campus activity all have one thing in common: large multimillion-dollar football or basketball programs, with playing seasons that start in the fall. Over the past several decades, college sports has become a multibillion-dollar industry and has made athletics the center of revenue and funding plans in most major US universities.

In early May, the National College Athletics Association (NCAA) released a statement outlining their plan for resuming college sports, titled, “Core Principles of Resocialization of Collegiate Sport.” The principles include a number of conditions that must be met in order for sports to begin: COVID-19 testing for the athletes, adherence to federal guidelines, and a three-phase plan where social distancing measures are gradually lifted over time.

Ben Hill Griffin Stadium (Wikimedia Commons)

These “principles'' differ little from the phony PR statements of other industries which have already begun sending workers back to factories and workplaces. In these instances, the workers are being forced to return to work with little to no protections that they had been promised. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 cases have surged in many of these major industrial sectors.

Students returning to campuses, living in crowded residence halls and attending large classrooms, will be confronted with similar circumstances. They will have no guarantee that they will not catch the virus and spread it to others once they return to school.

Eager to restart the multibillion-dollar college sports industry, NCAA has also announced that it will permit student athletes to return to campus for summer workouts and training starting on June 8. Most schools with large sports programs will have their teams on campus in June to prepare for the upcoming season. Some schools like the University of Oklahoma will wait, but only until July 1, before sending their students back to training. Delaying training could set back the athletic performance of those teams. For college sports, winning games is critical for revenue streams.

Canceling the fall 2020 football season alone would result in estimated losses upwards of $4 billion for the top NCAA schools. Athletics programs at 36 colleges reported over $150 million in revenue in the 2018 fiscal year. The University of Texas at Austin and Ohio State University both garnered over $200 million. In total, the revenue generated by college sports programs has surpassed $14 billion per year.

The revenue produced from college sports is mostly from advertising deals and sponsorships from major corporations like Nike, Coca-Cola, and Google. These companies pay handsomely for exclusive access to market their products to the millions of Americans who enjoy college sports. During the televised broadcast of the March Madness basketball tournament, a 30-second commercial costs over $1 million.

Despite the giant sums generated by college athletics departments, only 12 schools actually see a profit return from their sports teams. Most schools go into debt hiring coaching staff and building exclusive, luxurious facilities to entice talented high schoolers to sign on to their teams. In 41 out of 50 states, the highest-paid public employees are college coaches, who are often considered to be the most critical part of a successful sports program. The 25 highest-paid college coaches all have annual salaries of over $4 million. The highest is Dabo Swinney of Clemson university’s football team, who is paid $9.3 million per year.

Only the few schools who make it to the top of their divisions by winning games and tournaments can land the million-dollar corporate sponsorships. The competition for these slots is immense. Oftentimes, the schools that do make profits off their teams put that money back into the program to keep a step ahead of other schools. In other words, the money very rarely, if ever, goes to improving the quality of education for students.

The athletic departments that are not in the exclusive group that makes giant profits are looking to get there and consider it necessary to keep pumping money into the sports programs to develop winning teams and see a return on their investments.

There is no doubt that the fierce competition for the few money-making spots is a major motivating factor driving schools to bring their athletes on campus and get them in shape for the season as quickly as possible. At the University of Georgia, where athletes are returning immediately on June 8, head coach Kirby Smart told ESPN reporters that student athletes will likely be safer than if they stayed home outside of coaching staff supervision. “I know that our facility is one of the safest, and we certainly have the ability to care for that facility better than a lot of places they can go back home,” Smart said.

Schools like the University of Georgia have invested sums into the tens of millions to build professional facilities staffed with trainers whose job it is to keep athletes in good health so they can continue to perform and win games. When the players return for workouts, they will be closely monitored and have their health tested regularly to ensure that a COVID-19 outbreak does not occur within the student teams. Such a development would devastate the performance of a team and potentially take them out of the season entirely, which would cause a financial disaster for teams whose ticket prices and lucrative sponsorship deals depend on winning.

The athletes will be receiving testing and special treatment, but the general student population is another question. The average student will not receive regular testing, access to special facilities, and other precautions that would help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Instead, they will be expected to pay the full cost of tuition, for food in the dining halls, and of course buying tickets to football games.

The NCAA official football schedule is still largely to be determined, and representatives have said they will continue to evaluate the situation as it progresses over the summer before making a final decision for the fall. But statements from coaches and athletic directors make it seem increasingly likely that the games will go on.

Last week, University of Iowa athletic director Gary Barta told ESPN that the school is planning normal operations at their football stadium, where games see upwards of 65,000 fans in attendance. Oregon State athletics director Scott Barnes said, “Anywhere from 75 up to almost 85 percent of all revenues to our departments are derived directly or indirectly from football.”

The head of Texas Christian University athletics, Jeremiah Donati, told reporters, “If there's no football season, or if the football season is interrupted or shortened, there will be a massive fallout. There would have to be massive cutbacks.” Many schools, particularly those who are in the less elite Division II or Division III, have already cut many of their smaller sports programs that do not generate revenue. But even schools with a Division I sports program are cutting their less profitable departments. This includes sports like track and field, lacrosse, soccer, and even baseball.

The pandemic has triggered a crisis in college sports. Years of inflated spending on football programs have driven many schools to rely on the anticipated income of future seasons to cover debts incurred from building stadiums, workout facilities, and high salaries for coaching staff. The potential shutdown of the football season will provoke cuts in funding that will likely target other academic departments to make up for the loss of football revenue. This could include cutting student scholarships and tuition waivers for graduate workers, an increase in costs and fees for undergraduates, and layoffs or wage freezes for teaching staff.

Schools are eager to avoid the looming financial disaster and are making plans to ensure football will open, even if delayed until the spring. The cost of this decision will instead be the health and lives of the student body and the larger university communities.

New US weekly unemployment claims near 2 million as foreclosures, hunger loom

Shannon Jones

New unemployment claims in the United States are continuing at historically unprecedented levels as ever-broader layers of the population are feeling the impact of mass joblessness.

In the last week of May, 1.9 million people filed for jobless benefits, a slight drop from the previous week but far outstripping the high of previous recessions by multiple factors. The above number does not include 623,000 new claims for federal aid now available to the self-employed and Gig workers not normally eligible for state unemployment benefits. Nationwide the numbers of workers receiving benefits increased to 21.5 million, indicating more are losing their jobs than are returning to work.

The official unemployment rate is expected to reach 19.5 percent in May, the highest level since the Great Depression. This number is in itself a vast underestimate of the actual rate of unemployment since it does not include undocumented workers, many self-employed workers, discouraged workers and the millions who were unemployed before the pandemic. Some estimate the real unemployment rate is closer to 25 percent.

A man looks at signs of a closed store due to COVID-19 in Niles, Ill., Thursday, May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

The official unemployment rate was above 20 percent the week of May 17 to 23 in five states. Nevada, dependent on tourism, has a jobless number of 28.3 percent, the highest unemployment rate of any state, even during the Great Depression. Michigan is second with 22.7 percent.

The unemployment figures give the lie to the claims of an impending “V”-shaped recovery, or that the worst of the economic meltdown is over. To make matters worse, payment of claims for many workers has been delayed due to inefficient and outmoded state unemployment systems. Some laid-off workers have been forced to call their state offices hundreds of times to try to file.

In Michigan 50,000 new claims were filed last week, with only 50 staff workers to process them. Some have reported waits of three to four or even eight weeks to get benefits.

Even though governors in most states are allowing the re-opening of businesses and some companies are recalling workers to take advantage of federal assistance tied to maintaining payrolls, many of these workers are likely to be laid off again when the aid runs out.

Further, the premature re-opening of factories and businesses, while COVID-19 continues to spread, gives workers the impossible choice of returning to work without proper protection or facing the cutoff of their unemployment benefits. Several states are actively encouraging employers to report workers who refuse to return to work over health concerns, who would then face the loss of their benefits.

According to a University of Minnesota survey, through the end of April 10 million people had lost their health care coverage, which in the US is often provided by employers. The loss of health care during a pandemic is a lethal combination, which demonstrates starkly the reactionary character of for-profit medicine.

The continuing high number of new unemployment claims points to the broader economic meltdown that has been triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. US commercial bankruptcy filings were up 48 percent in May from one year earlier. They were up 28 percent from April, including major bankruptcy filings such as J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus. This month, fashion retailer J. Crew and Pier 1 Imports joined the list of business failures.

It is becoming increasingly clear that many of the jobs wiped out over the past two months will never come back and that many small businesses will never re-open. In the face of this social catastrophe the response of the ruling class has been to shovel trillions to bail out Wall Street, money that will have to be repaid through the imposition of unprecedented hardship on the backs of millions of workers and young people.

High levels of unemployment are leading to predictions of a mass wave of foreclosures and evictions in coming months as state moratoriums on foreclosures are expiring. While some states have enacted temporary extensions of moratoriums, bans are being allowed to expire in others. In Texas, a moratorium on foreclosures expired May 19. Starting June 8, landlords in non-federally subsidized housing in Louisiana can begin evictions. Kansas has also let its foreclosure ban expire.

A 60-day ban on foreclosures in the state of Wisconsin came to an end on May 27. “I think there is going to be a tsunami of evictions filed, which is going to jam up the courts pretty good for a while,” Nick Toman, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, told local media.

The temporary federal expansion of unemployment benefits has helped many to meet mortgage and rent payments. Andrew Jakabovics, with an affordable housing non-profit, told NPR, “When the $600-a-week unemployment insurance runs out at the end of July, most people expect tremendous displacement risk. Evictions are likely to go through the roof.”

Meanwhile, workers are increasingly unable to pay off debt. According to the Wall Street Journal about 15 million credit cards and 3 million auto loans did not get paid in April.

As a consequence of the spreading economic disaster some 54 million people across the US could go hungry, without food aid assistance of some kind, according to an analysis by Feeding America, which oversees a network of food banks. That compares to 37 million last year.

Food pantries distributed 32 percent more food in April than a year earlier, even as thousands had to shut down due to lack of volunteers because of COVID-19. At the same time, staple goods such as canned vegetables are becoming more expensive.

Many of the states with the highest level of food insecurity are in the Deep South, but the problem is truly national in scope. Mississippi is proportionately the worst-affected state both before and since the pandemic. Almost three-quarters of a million people in the state could need food assistance in 2020, including one of every three children. Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas are also severely affected, along with New Mexico and Nevada.

Long lines of cars outside food distribution points are a common sight. Last week in Tucson, Arizona, some 1,400 cars lined up at a mobile distribution point. For three hours, volunteers helped distribute grocery boxes containing canned fruits, pinto beans, pasta, milk, fresh vegetables, frozen meat and bread.

In Las Vegas, Larry Scott, who runs a food bank in the city, said food aid needs to increase by 65 percent to stop people from going hungry . According to Feeding America, workers in the service or leisure and hospitality industry suffer above average rates of food insecurity (16-17 percent). With the shutdown of hotels, restaurants and casinos their situation is particularly dire.

Los Angeles County, California is expected to have 1.68 million food insecure people this year, the highest number in absolute terms in the US. As of May 22, food-related calls to the county’s hotline were up 406 percent since the previous month. The county has a 20.3 percent unemployment rate. While food stamp applications have tripled, food banks say they will be unable to meet the need if high levels of unemployment persist.

The growing economic hardship for millions combined with the rising death toll from COVID-19 due to the homicidal “herd immunity” policy of the ruling class, has raised class tensions to an unprecedented level. It is posing ever more sharply the need for the socialist reorganization of society so that human needs can be met, rather than squandering vast resources on the further enrichment of the financial elite.

Ten thousand people have been arrested across the US as protests against police violence continue to expand

Kevin Reed

More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during the protests against police violence as of Thursday, the tenth day of demonstrations in a row since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day.

In a tally taken of recorded arrests across the country, the Associated Press reported that the number of protesters arrested has grown by the hundreds each day. The news agency reported that one quarter of the arrests have been made in Los Angeles followed by New York City, which has 2,000 arrests, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

The AP analysis also showed that the majority of the arrests are for “low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse.” Exposing as false the claims by President Donald Trump and Democratic politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that the majority of the protesters are outside agitators, AP reported that, during a 24-hour period over the weekend in Minneapolis, “41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.”

Additionally, in the US capital, AP reported, “86 percent of the more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.”

The actual number of those detained by law enforcement is unknown. “The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the scene in buses,” an issue, the report said, “at a time when many of the nation’s jails are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks.”

A protester is arrested for violating curfew near the Plaza Hotel on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

New York County Supreme Court Justice James Burke ruled on Thursday against a writ filed by New York’s Legal Aid Society and refused to release anyone held longer than 24 hours between arrest and arraignment. While New York courts stipulate that those in custody over 24 hours are entitled to release, Judge Burke ruled that the pandemic and mass protests were a “crisis within a crisis” and the New York City Police Department had thereby provided justification for the delays.

The historically unprecedented protests—in the face of arrests and ongoing police assaults with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash grenades and other “non-lethal crowd control munitions”—continued to expand across the country on Thursday. According to a summary published by USA Today, protests have been reported by local news media in 584 cities and towns across all 50 states and as well as the territories of Puerto Rico and Guam.

In New York City, thousands of protesters marched from a memorial service for George Floyd in Brooklyn—which featured the first public appearance of George’s brother Terrance Floyd—across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The assembled crowed expressed hostility by turning their back on Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, drowning him out and forcing him to cut his remarks to 90 seconds at the memorial, as they chanted, “I can’t breathe,” “resign” and “defund the police.”

Protesters were particularly angry about the baton assault by police on Wednesday night against those who remained on the street passed the 8:00 p.m. curfew. Both de Blasio and Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo defended the violent actions of the police on Thursday morning which had been captured on video and seen widely across social media. Amid the melee two police officers were shot and one was stabbed in the neck in Brooklyn.

Unlike the night before at the Manhattan Bridge, New York City police did not attempt to block demonstrators from entering the bridge, as the crowd swarmed both the northern land side and the pedestrian walkway. According to a report in the New York Times, “Drivers in the opposite lane honked horns and raised fists in shows of support.”

Protests in Washington, DC continued on Thursday near Lafayette Square and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, while many rallied near the DC/Maryland border. Earlier in the day, Washington, DC’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser lifted the 11:00 p.m. curfew, citing the fact that there had been no arrests the previous day. Bowser has also adapted herself to the stationing of federal troops in the city, merely demanding that non-DC troops leave.

Meanwhile, military vehicles and police expanded the perimeter around the White House on Thursday, erecting tall metal fencing and putting in concrete barricades in preparation for what is expected to be a mass protest on Saturday.

According to a statement by the US Secret Service, “The areas, including the entire Ellipse and its side panels, roadways and sidewalks, E Street and its sidewalks between 15th and 17th streets, First Division Monument and State Place, Sherman Park and Hamilton Place, Pennsylvania Avenue between 15th and 17th streets, and all of Lafayette Park, will remain closed until June 10.”

Demonstrations took place in multiple locations in the Chicago area on Thursday, including several hundred protesters who marched from Lincoln Park High School to Whitney Young High School three miles away on the north side of the city. Other protests took place in the northern suburbs of Evanston, Grayslake and Zurich Lake.

Chicago Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot declined to answer questions at a press conference regarding a high-speed police chase on Wednesday evening that resulted in the death of a female motorist as well as two other incidents of police violence. One was at Brickyard Mall parking lot, where officers were caught on video pulling two women out of their vehicle and brutalizing them, with an officer kneeling on the neck of one of the two while she was on the ground. In another video, an officer is seen chasing down and punching a protester in Uptown on Monday night.

Tensions are high in New Orleans on Thursday evening, following the events of the previous night in which New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) used tear gas to disperse a large group of protesters who marched onto the interstate from downtown New Orleans and headed for the Crescent City Connection bridge to cross over into the West Bank, Jefferson Parish. The Jefferson Parish police are notorious for their brutality and cruelty, known to be openly racist and blatantly abusive.

NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson defended the repressive actions at a press conference on Thursday morning, showing social media videos of the confrontation and claiming that rubber bullets were not used on the crowd, although this was disputed by protesters. When asked about plans for Thursday evening Ferguson said, “We don’t know what they’re planning to do tonight.”

Despite the rain, protesters gathered in Orlando, Florida for a fifth night in a row on Thursday downtown near city hall and prepared to march to the headquarters of the Orlando Police Department where a dozen officers were reportedly waiting in helmets and with shields. On Wednesday night, tear gas was used after a crowd at city hall of approximately 2,000 people began moving through downtown and violate a previously announced 8:00pm curfew.

Protests continue to grow in size and scope throughout the San Diego area, with many held Thursday throughout smaller cities and suburbs in addition to the downtown protests which included over two thousand people. Cities such as Chula Vista, Oceanside, Julian, North Park, Carlsbad, Encinitas, La Mesa, and Santee held protests in the hundreds.

In the growing downtown protests, police and national guardsmen kettled in protesters and shot rubber bullets and tear gas indiscriminately into crowds. Just the day before, at least 200 armed national guardsmen arrived in San Diego, following a request from San Diego Sheriff Gore. After Wednesday’s protests, the San Diego Police Chief announced a ban on chokeholds.

San Diego County is home to the largest military and naval base in the US. Stoked by Trump and the brutality of the state’s response, some right-wing and white nationalist groups have been organizing in cities such as Santee and Carlsbad to join police and engage in violence against protesters. These small groups, however, represent a tiny fraction, compared to the thousands who continue to take to the streets throughout the county.

In an example of the spread of protests across the US, hundreds of people demonstrated at the downtown parking garage in Grand Forks, North Dakota, 80 miles north of Fargo, and marched through the downtown area as organizer Kollin King shouted over a bullhorn, “What’s his name?” and the crowd yelling back, “George Floyd.” The demonstration stopped briefly near the Red River and then continued on past its previously agreed-on route.