The Slow Death Of Gaza

Yanis Iqbal

On August 31, 2020, Hamas announced that it had reached a ceasefire with Israel that would end the recent hostilities in Gaza. Since 6 August, the besieged Palestinian enclave was being bombed daily by the Israeli forces. In order to bomb Gaza, the “terror balloon” narrative has been used by the Zionist state. These so-called “terror balloons” are contraptions made from everyday materials, gas-soaked rags, home-made explosives and are used by Gazans as symbols of resistance against Israel. While Israel has dubbed the launching of balloons as “arson attacks”, they are merely indicators of the existential oppression suffered by Palestinians. Till date, no one has ever been killed or injured by these incendiary balloons.

Nevertheless, at the end of a meeting held on 9 August, 2020, commanders of Israel’s security services had concluded that “the continued launching of balloons will lead to a violent response even if this leads to a comprehensive escalation.” True to the statement, Israel’s response to symbolic acts of resistance has been particularly violent: On 13 August, 2020, an Israeli war drone launched a missile at Al Shate’ Elementary School for Boys in the West of Gaza, run by the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); On 15 August, 2020, – the fifth night of Israeli bombings on Gaza- four Palestinian children were wounded. Defense Minister Benny Gantz has termed this destruction of civilian life as a change in the “equation of response” where he took “the balloon issue seriously”.

Reflecting on the sheer absurdity of Israel’s policy of disproportionate response, Ahmed Abu Artema, a writer living in Gaza and a researcher at the Center for Political and Development Studies, says: “Israel has tried to portray these balloons as akin to a military threat. By doing so, it has tried to devise new “rules.” Under those “rules,” Israel thinks it may respond to crude balloons with missiles launched from F-16 warplanes.”

The near-nightly reprisal raids conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Gaza have gone unreported by the Western Media which is fixated on the Israel-UAE peace agreement. In this respect, a poem written by the Tunisian English teacher Olfa Drid serves as a painful reminder to our present-day world where every effort are made to erase the Palestinian struggle from the socio-political imaginary:

shelling
shelling
shelling
barren land,
fruitless trees,
wingless birds,
eclipsed sun,
miniscule corpses,
entombed hopes,
decapitated present,
castrated future
death ghost
death’s specter
&
global silence…

In addition to a 4-week long bombing, Israel barred the entry of construction materials to Gaza on 11 August; closed the region’s offshore fishing zone on 16 August; limited entry of goods to food and medicine only on 23 August ; and lastly, it banned fuel shipments to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing on 13 August, leading to the closure of the only electricity plant in the region five days later. With the closing of the power station, electricity supply was limited to three of four hours per day, causing serious disruptions of basic services. This disruption has proved to be fatal for some. On 1 September, 2020, 3 Gazan children passed away as a fire broke out because of a candle lit in their room. They were deprived of electricity due to the power outage and were forced to use candles.

Sami al-Amassi, president of the General Federation of the Palestinian Trade Union, said that fuel shortage in Gaza had the potential to destroy 90% of the local factories, which would lead to the unemployment of nearly 50,000 Palestinian workers. 500 factories would have shrunk to 20% of their production capacity if the ban on the entry of fuel was prolonged any longer. In addition to economic devastation, the power outage crisis had the capacity to jeopardize the lives of 120 newborns who needed neonatal care to survive.

Now, under the ceasefire agreement, Israel has opened its border with Gaza to allow for fuel shipments. The re-entering of fuel supplies has improved Gaza’s electricity supply from four to eight hours. Israel will also remove its maritime blockade and allow Palestinian fishermen to fish in the waters up to 25 kilometers off the Gaza coast. As part of the agreement, Qatar – whose envoy to Gaza al-Emadi helped to broker the ceasefire – will increase its monthly aid by $30 million. On its part, Hamas has to prevent the launching of incendiary of balloons and suspend its operations at the Israel-Gaza border.

The Brutal Blockade 

While the ceasefire agreement has stopped significant escalation, the brutal blockade of Gaza continues. In the words of Michael Lynk, special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, “Gaza has been reduced to a humanitarian whisper,”; “Behind the current hostilities – the launching of rockets and incendiary balloons by Palestinian armed groups and the disproportionate use of targeted missile strikes by Israel – is the long-term impoverishment of Gaza by Israel’s 13-year-old comprehensive blockade. This amounts to collective punishment of the entire civilian population in Gaza, which adds immeasurably to the suffering of Gazans and wider tensions in the region.” Echoing Lynk’s views,  Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masry – on 30 August, 2020 – stated: “Palestinian factions do not accept that the residents of the Gaza Strip be subjected to gradual death as a result of the continued [Israeli] siege and aggression.”; “We have nothing to lose, and the enemy’s effort to exploit the humanitarian situation [in Gaza] and the coronavirus pandemic to advance its own policies and extend the blockade imposed on our Palestinian nation will not succeed,”.

In the current Coronavirus conjuncture, Gaza is being subjected to slow death as the impact of Israeli blockade manifests itself in the form of an epidemiological-economic crisis. With more than 500 confirmed Covid-19 cases, Gaza’s woefully underequipped healthcare is rapidly reaching it limits. In the besieged enclave, there are only 3.5 doctors for every 100,000 people and only 1.4 beds for 1,000 persons. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), hospitals in Gaza “have shortages of specialized staff in intensive care units and the laboratory infrastructure urgently requires upgrade to conform with strict biosafety standards”. This inadequate healthcare system, too, is systematically destroyed by Israel which – between 30 March 2018 and 31 December 2019 – killed 3 health workers, injured 845 health professionals and damaged 112 ambulances and 7 health facilities. Israeli blockade of Gaza has pushed up medicinal shortages dramatically, reaching more than 52% by January 2020. Furthermore, 71% of the needed medications that are vital for children and their mothers are not available.

In addition to a largely crumbling healthcare, Gaza has a severe water crisis, reducing access to clean water and making it difficult for families to wash their hands – a crucial step in halting the spread of Coronavirus. The coastal aquifer of the region – which provides 98% of water supply – has been polluted by over-pumping and wastewater contamination. As a result, 96.2% of water from the aquifer is undrinkable. 40% of the domestic water supply is lost on the way to consumers because of Gaza’s outdated infrastructure. Due to the deficiencies of the water supply network, 95% of the population has to rely on desalinated water which costs five times more than network water and is qualitatively unreliable, being prone to faecal contamination.

As a consequence of an inefficient water system, it is estimated that 28% of children’s diseases are due to contaminated water and polluted water is a leading cause of child mortality in Gaza. In spite of that, Israel has restricted the imports of 70% of the technical equipments such as pumps and water purification chemicals which are direly needed to maintain water supply in the region. The siege has allowed only 16% of the materials needed to “construct vital water infrastructure” to reach the Palestinian region.

Water crisis-caused insanitary conditions are compounded by the fact that most Palestinians in Gaza cannot afford sanitizers, gloves and masks. Some families have bought single masks and gloves for repeated use, thereby rendering them ineffective. This is a direct corollary of the Israeli blockade which has initiated a process of immiseration. In 2002, before the blockade, only 10% of Gazans were dependent on aid. In 2018, 11 years after the blockade was first enforced, 80% of Gazans were dependent on aid. The unemployment rate in Gaza is above 50% (one of the highest in the world), the poverty level is 53% and 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip is food insecure.

While the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread in Gaza, the Israeli permit system is making matters worse for patients in need of medical care. In the Gaza Strip, all Palestinians require Israeli-issued permits to exit via Erez crossing. In the current period, Coronavirus-caused movement restrictions, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) halt in coordination due to Israel’s annexation plan and the latter’s refusal to process permit applications besides urgent medical cases, have resulted in a 98.5% drop in the number of exits from Gaza via the Erez Crossing in June 2020. Commenting on this pressing issue, the NGOs Al-Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies submitted an urgent appeal to the UN Special Procedures in June 2020 wherein they stated: “The current situation is a desperate one for Gaza patients, who face no avenue to access health services needed outside the Gaza Strip. Israel’s permit system, an integral part of the illegal closure of Gaza, is an arbitrary and unnecessary measure that unlawfully preconditions urgent and lifesaving care for thousands of Palestinians.”

The Israeli permit regime has particularly impacted children who have again got caught in the barbarity of a blockade. Jeremy Stoner, Save the Children’s Regional Director for the Middle East, says that “desperately sick children need to leave Gaza to survive – there is simply no other option. It’s cruel that children are dying or suffering extreme pain when they can receive treatment just beyond the checkpoints. With every day that passes, the window to help these children closes further”.

Suffocating Gaza

The implementation of a ceasefire agreement and the perpetuation of blockade is a reflection of Israel’s long-standing policy toward Gaza: maintain the region on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. For Israel, the preferred policy would have been to eliminate Palestinians. This sentiment was expressed by Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who –referring to Gaza – once said, “If only it would just sink into the sea.” Unable to commit a downright genocide, Israel has optimized violence: inflict suffering but avoid its extremes. Currently, we are witnessing the effective implementation of this strategy as Israel bombs and strangulates Gaza during the Covid-19 pandemic yet allows insufficient humanitarian aid to enter the region after the ceasefire agreement. Through this strategy, Israel is engulfing Gaza in a mist of slow violence where oppressive conditions have left the region in a death-like state.

In the contemporary period of Covid-19 pandemic, the Zionist strategy of slow violence against Gazans has accelerated. About 20,000 workers have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic in the Gaza Strip and around 50,000 families in the region are expected to become food insecure after losing their daily income. These economic losses are intimately interconnected with Israel’s Gaza blueprint which consists of destroying the enclaves’ internal productive base through a paradigm of unending siege and de-development.

As the Covid-19 pandemic in Gaza intensifies due to Israel’s policy of institutionalized impoverishment and blockade, the possibility of a change is increasing. An article published by the Institute for Palestine Studies acknowledges that the most powerful challenge to the status quo in Gaza is the region’s “steady and heart-wrenching collapse.” It further states, “A widespread humanitarian catastrophe, in the form of a famine or an outbreak of cholera, would swiftly turn the world’s attention toward Gaza.” Presently, the Covid-19 pandemic has the capacity to turn the world’s attention toward Gaza’s slow death and give an international impetus to the Palestinian liberation movement.

Has Indian Democracy Been Facebooked?

Subhash Gatade

Belarus-born American writer Evgeny Morozov, a scholar of the political and social implications of technology, is among the early technology sceptics whose words have now proved prescient. Morozov had questioned the claim that the internet would challenge dictatorships even at an inconvenient time to do so. While thousands were out on streets during the Arab Spring, he delivered a Ted Talk on How Internet Aids Dictatorships. Considering that the Arab Spring protests had been organised and coordinated through social media, it quite a brave, even blasphemous, thing to do in those days.

Morozov’s 2011 book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, focuses on two delusions, namely, “cyber-utopianism” or the belief that the internet fosters an inherently emancipatory culture; and “internet-centrism” or the belief that every important question about modern society and politics can be framed in terms of the internet. His views were considered eccentric for the mood around the net was celebratory at the time. To cite another instance, the noted journal, MIT Technology Review, wrote in 2013 that new technologies would prove “deadly to dictators”.

How things change. Scholars and activists are now increasingly challenging “cyber utopianism” among policy makers and ordinary people. They are openly saying that social media is facilitating authoritarian regimes and exclusivist politics and strengthening the far right the world over. Neutral observers pointed out after right-wing strongman Jair Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil, his supporters credited Facebook and WhatsApp with the win. During that election a massive disinformation campaign funded by a conservative pro-business interest group targeted the Opposition. In Brazil, WhatsApp is immensely popular; and it was deployed to create an ambience favourable to Bolsonaro even before the elections were announced.

In January 2019, Ronald Deibert, a professor of political science at University of Toronto and director of its Citizen Lab, unequivocally stated that social media “must bear some of the blame for the descent into neo-fascism”. A former cyber enthusiast, Deibert wrote an essay for the prestigious Journal of Democracy in which he lists “three painful truths” about social media. The truths are that social media businesses are built around personal data and their products designed to spy to push advertising our way; that users have consented to this situation, though not entirely wittingly. Deibert identifies the problem as social media tools being designed as “addiction machines”. They are programmed to make us feel a certain way, which has us returning for more. The third is that the attention-grabbing algorithms of social media platforms propel authoritarian practices that sow “confusion, ignorance, prejudice and chaos…” This manipulation undermines accountability and when combined with surveillance, these tools wield authoritarian control over us.

Recent revelations made in the Wall Street Journal about Facebook’s “partisan action in favour of BJP” and widening commercial ties with the government make Deibert’s “three painful truths” relevant to India. We have allowed a regime of personal data surveillance, become part of the “addiction machine” and ushered in a majoritarian regime via democratic means which has unleashed an “us” versus “them” politics of prejudice and ignorance. India has the biggest number of subscribers of Facebook, around 35 crore and growing.

Facebook, which is close to the Trump administration, facilitated training and assistance to Modi’s electoral journey, the WSJ article has revealed. That the social platform has been spreading fake news is already on the radar. The American company’s global government and politics unit had prompted strong critiques over this issue in the past. A WhatsApp-sponsored report, prepared in partnership with Queen Mary University had said that India’s 2019 elections are widely anticipated to be “WhatsApp elections”. With rapidly improving internet connectivity and rising smartphone penetration, the number of people using WhatsApp—also owned by Facebook—has soared since its India launch in mid-2010 to more than 20 crore, more than in any other democracy.

Political parties are capitalising on WhatsApp to expand their presence, but it has also been used to misinform voters in elections and become a tool to spread fake news—which has also led to serious violence in India. There is a real danger to the democratic process, The Conversation recently reported. Another survey in February found that “India has more fake news and internet hoaxes than anywhere else in the world.” A BBC report looked at a string of murders and growing anti-minority sentiments spread through online disinformation and fake news.

A large BBC study focussing on Kenya, Nigeria and India studied reactions to fake news and identified availability of low-cost data and growing nationalist sentiment as the reasons for fake news becoming widespread. Dr Santanu Chakrabarti, the head of audience insight at the BBC World Service, who conducted this study, said that the “rise of the Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, had made many Indians feel as though they had a patriotic duty to forward information.” According to him, Indians are seeking validation of their belief systems and on these platforms validation of identity trumps verification of fact.

It is quite clear that there is a hiatus between what Facebook claims about its community standards and how they are practised. Recall that not too long ago in Myanmar Facebook’s CEO apologised for spreading hate speech. The United Nations human rights experts investigating the crisis in Myanmar also declared that Facebook posts played a significant role in spreading hate speech in the country.

In his October 2019 speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg had said that freedom of expression is a governing principle of his platform and that it prioritises free expression over all other values (including equality and non-discrimination). Now his platform stands accused of actively working with political parties and leaders, even with those who use Facebook to stifle opponents, sometimes using troll armies to spread extremist ideologies.

A high-level probe is needed to unpack the behaviour of the foreign company, expose the “brazen assault on India’s democracy and social harmony” that has come in its wake. India needs to be vigilant and find a way out of this crisis and the best option would be to constitute a Joint Parliamentary Committee to conduct a thorough and neutral investigation. All political parties which care for national sovereignty would support such an enquiry, considering the ramifications on our democracy. Another option could be to have a Supreme Court or Election Commission-monitored probe to see if the guardrails of India’s democracy are still intact.

Recently, the Delhi Legislature Committee on Peace and Harmony looked into the allegations against Facebook and has called its representatives to explain their position. The recommendations of such an enquiry are mainly symbolic but this is still a welcome step, which Opposition-ruled states can emulate in future.

The enormity of the challenge, when a behemoth’s role is in question, should not be underplayed, but it will take more than an enquiry to restore democracy. Deibert’s suggestions need to be taken seriously, and a comprehensive long-term reform should begin, extending from the personal to the political, from the local to the global. Our information environment has to be protected in the same way as our natural environment, like any territory we exercise stewardship over. And we must enhance public education on social media and its pitfalls, with media literacy, ethics, civility, and tolerance at their foundation.

Indian Muslims At the Cross roads

Shafi Ahmad

I had cultivated an idea before 2014 elections that BJP in power is a better option than out of power. It was based on the perception that BJP in the long run wants to grab power and it creates an anti Muslim rhetoric to win majority community votes .And when power is achieved they don’t need the anti minority path. But soon Modi took over I was proved wrong . Pune Techie was bludgeoned to death followed by a circulated SMS ‘ first wicket has fallen’. Then events like Ikhlaq and others took place. In Ikhlaq case the government machinery concentrated more on whether meat in the fridge was actually beef , mutton or cow than  a human being , a lesser mortal, been done to death. This and what followed was a clear signal that Muslims have to change their course of action. With almost all lynching cases being anti Muslim, the issue remains burning. Delhi riot was a bigger scale pogrom and role of various government agencies remains suspect. Even political reaction from the recently elected AAP government was pathetic.  Subsequently , the failure of the government to control Corona virus ,was smeared on the assembly of Tablighi members proved even more shameful. The idea has recently been ridiculed by the Hon’ble High Court.

In such a scenario when almost all political parties feel that they must concentrate on majority community votes will the Muslim minority be sidelined as far political power is concerned. Some of the happenings need consideration. Rahul Gandhi tried to show his Hindu card during campaign in assembly elections in Gujarat, MP, Karnataka, Rajasthan etc when he did not miss the opportunity to visit a temple before treading on election Yatras.  G.N.Azad is on record to have been requested by his colleagues not to venture out in their constituency as it would harm them politically. Yogindra yadav ,during a discussion, said that these so called liberal parties think the Muslim vote will come to them , may it come after spitting  or even abusing, because they have no other option.

Some people have been floating the idea of launching a Muslim political party to counter such an anti Muslim behavior of Right Wing or the “where else will they go?”  attitude of so called secular parties. This implies Muslim support for Right Wing  is not needed and for others it will come without any bargain.

IN 2019 a total of 27 Muslim MPs belonging to various political parties were elected. With the ruling dispensation having a brute majority and other parties struggling with meager presence small number of Muslim MPs don’t have any say. These MPs are so much scattered among various parties that they can’t forge a common agenda and have to stick to their own party agenda first. In such a situation Muslims are relegated to back burner  suffering on one or the other pretext.

In this scenario how will the Muslim political party perform and what can be expected . The bigger question is outcome of election results when the battle lines are drawn between Muslim party and other parties . Will Muslim vote in various election trends have an effect where winning streak is drawn? The Right Wing  parties which are trying to garner votes on anti Muslim jargon will play the game belligerently  and pitch the Muslim non Muslim (Hindu) card directly. In presence of Muslim party these Right Wing  parties and their associates will definitely reap a better benefit. Muslim candidates returned victorious have been getting combined votes of a political party and sizable Muslim votes effecting a win for them. But as a Muslim party candidate apprehensions are only Muslim votes will go in their favour thereby reducing the winner number or at the most retaining the same number. As such this number will in no case empower Muslims politically.

J&K is the only state where a Muslim can return as Chief Minister and Kashmiri apprehension is gaining ground that delimitation may see gerrymandering in such a way that Hindu belt constituencies may be increased under a machination. And J&K being reduced to a UT, Chief Minister will hardly enjoy powers which can be termed as political empowerment .

Already on a sticky wicket fears are rising that Muslims will be not only politically disempowered further but various steps by Modi-Shah will dent their effectiveness. In a recent survey conducted by Center for the study of Developing Societies (CSDS)  it was revealed that while 74% Muslims accept Hindus as friends around 33 %  Hindu population do see Muslims as a favourable entity. The Sachar Committee report submitted in 2006 had stressed the need to bring more Muslims into governance, because at the time, just 3 per cent of IAS officers, 1.8 per cent of IFS officers and 4 per cent of IPS officers were Muslim, while their population according to the 2001 Census was 13.4 per cent.

Sudarshan TV is a recent example of bigotry and response by Muslim groups is praiseworthy. The Channel representative was at his hoarse crying and blaming Muslims for their success in elite service. The association of the elite class did come out in support of their minority colleagues in particular and the Muslims in general. What followed was that TV channel was made to bite the dust through a High Court Order. Similar issue was decided by The Maharashtra High Court in the case of Tablighi Jamat and the Hon’ble court passed strictures about a whole scenario  played up by Right Wing  and ignited by lapdog media from March 2020 onwards.

A serving IPS officer Najmol Huda has put forth an extreme view by almost blaming Indian Muslims for all their woes. In a recent article he writes  ,

“Since Indian Muslims, as Muslims, never had much power, it would be wrong to say that they lost any. The ruling class had a preponderance of foreigners. They were Turks, Persians, Afghans and Arabs whose religion was Islam. In the transition from medieval to modern, and from feudalism to capitalism, most of them fell by the wayside. Still, in the new order, they could have had a proportionate share. But they went for the easier option of dividing the country. The remaining Muslims, in the remaining part of India, sheltered by a democratic and secular Constitution, did have an opportunity to make their own mark. If they haven’t, some introspection is in order.”

          However, a former DGP of Kerala N. C Asthana  puts his response as under;

“In a recent article with the headline, ‘Indian Muslims must rewrite their victim mindset to be indispensable in India’s rise’, Najmul Hoda, a serving Indian Police Service officer, blames the Muslim community itself for all its travails. This is both wrong and unfair because, in the first place, it absolves every other constituent of society of any responsibility whatsoever and second, indirectly supports a narrative which attributes the Muslims’ current plight to their ‘self-marginalization”

What then can be the way forward. Muslim  groups/associations maintained a  meaningful silence in TV channel case not giving them a chance to ignite passions. But same has not been followed when elections, in particular, are round the corner. Some non entities prop up to issue Fatwas about whether Vanday Matram, Bharat Mata and the like are allowed in Islam. While majority of Muslims are not interested in such Fatwas but Right Wing  beats the drum vociferously and are able to divide the society for political gains. It has been alleged time and again that such Fatwa issuing persons are actually encouraged to take the line.

Political empowerment as a community is not possible in present circumstances unless Muslims politicians shun their personal interests and forge alliances with like minded people . Secondly, there is a vast world beyond construction of huge mosques and running religious schools teaching religious books only. Muslim intellectuals and influential people shall have to sit together ,scratch their heads and find way out. Enhancement in educational potential can be effected. Since Muslims have a lower percentage of educated youth this area can and should  be tapped to uplift the community both economically and socially and with this the overall empowerment can be achieved.

Australian governments demand full economic “reopening” by December

Mike Head

Despite the still-worsening global COVID-19 pandemic, and continuing outbreaks in Australia, the bipartisan “national cabinet” has outlined a plan to almost completely “reopen” the economy within three months.

Worldwide, the number of reported cases is nearing 27 million, with almost 900,000 deaths. This includes more than 26,000 infections and over 750 fatalities in Australia.

Yet, the leaders of the federal, state and territory governments—Liberal-National and Labor Party alike—agreed last Friday to resurrect the “three-step” reopening agenda that was accelerated disastrously in May and June, leading to a deadly second wave of the virus.

This reckless agenda is driven solely by the rapacious demands of big business for the lifting of all restrictions on profit-making, regardless of the concerns and opposition of working class households, particularly those of health and aged care workers, and school teachers, who are on the front line of the “return to work” offensive.

The revived blueprint includes the key industrial state of Victoria, currently the epicentre of the pandemic’s resurgence in Australia, accounting for 675 of the country’s 762 deaths, as of today. Infections are still erupting elsewhere too, particularly in Sydney and Brisbane, where outbreaks are being reported virtually daily in schools.

Victoria’s state Labor Premier Daniel Andrews yesterday announced a parallel reopening “road map,” which includes partially lifting lockdowns as early as next week and herding about 100,000 more workers back into workplaces by September 28.

Andrews was at pains to meet the demands of the corporate elite and keep in sync with the national cabinet timetable. Like the rest of the political establishment, he spoke in terms of reviving the economy, not concern for working class health and lives.

“I want all of us to stay the course so that we can all have something approaching a normal Christmas,” he said. “I want to get the place open and I want to keep it open, and unless this is done safely and steadily that simply won’t happen.”

Working closely with the trade unions, the state Labor government has already kept major industries substantially open, with limited safety restrictions, during the past five weeks of a “Stage 4” lockdown in Melbourne, the state capital. This includes mining, construction, manufacturing and warehousing.

Now the Labor government intends to start reopening schools and childcare facilities by September 28, risking the lives of teachers and students and their families, in order to push more workers back onto work sites. There will be a “staged” return to face-to-face teaching, starting with the youngest and oldest students, in Melbourne, and an even faster schedule in regional areas of the state.

The Andrews government released Melbourne University modelling showing a 60 percent risk of a third wave lockdown if the economy is reopened before cases are below 25 a day. New cases in the state are still averaging around 70 each day, after exceeding 500 before last month’s lockdown measures.

But the potential delay of some workplace reopenings, such as offices, until November provoked fury in the corporate media and business establishment. One main employer organisation, the Australian Industry Group, predicted “catastrophic economic, health and social damage caused by the continued lockdown.”

Andrews has been accused of pursuing a de facto virus “eradication” strategy rather than the officially-imposed “suppression” plan. “Suppression” is based on allowing the coronavirus to continue to spread, while asserting it can be mostly contained by testing, tracing and quarantining—a claim belied by the ongoing emergence of COVID-19 “hotspots” in the states of New South Wales and Queensland.

The ferocious business criticism highlights the demand of the capitalist class for the subordination of lives to the generation of profits and the accumulation of private wealth. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott revealed the homicidal logic of this agenda in a speech in London last week. He branded any measures to tackle the spread of COVID-19 as a “health dictatorship” and called for the elderly to be left to die from the virus.

While neither the current Liberal-National leader, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, nor his Labor Party counterparts are stating their calculations so blatantly, this is their outlook as well. Most of Australia’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred in chronically under-funded and under-staffed aged care homes in working class areas, the result of decades of bipartisan indifference.

However, the Andrews government and the union leaders are anxiously seeking to keep suppressing the resistance of workers. That includes the over-worked health and aged care workers who have been forced to care for pandemic victims without adequate masks and other personal protection equipment, and the teachers who eventually forced the closure of schools in June due to the well-proven danger of infections in classrooms and school yards.

Reflecting that nervousness, today’s Australian Financial Review editorial denounced the Andrews government’s “aggressive suppression” policy but concluded that “if Victoria follows the road map, the state would be pulled back into line with the national cabinet’s reopening plan by December.”

Likewise, while Morrison echoed the corporate frustration with the “hard and crushing” situation in Victoria, he avoided open criticism of Andrews. Both Morrison and Andrews are carefully retaining the unity of the de facto coalition government established with the formation of the unprecedented “national cabinet” in March.

As it did in May-June, the national cabinet is already lifting restrictions long before any of its three “stages” has had a chance to be assessed. Friday’s announcements featured a “National Agricultural Workers’ Code” to allow backpackers and other low-paid workers to be moved across state borders to pick crops.

Also announced was a “hotspot” definition to require the lifting of state border restrictions when an area records less than 30 cases in three consecutive days. By that rule, border controls would be scrapped across the country, except, for now, for Melbourne residents.

The close partnership between employers and the unions in pushing workers back into unsafe sites was underscored by a joint statement issued by the Victorian Master Builders Association and the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU). It welcomed the Andrews government’s “vote of confidence in our industry” by shifting its activities from “heavily restricted” to “restricted” on September 28, claiming to be already adhering to such measures.

Last Friday’s national cabinet decisions further demonstrated the sidelining of parliamentary democracy. Federal parliament had just sat for two weeks, after not meeting fully since March. It will not reconvene until the delayed federal budget is handed down on October 6.

The main bill rushed through both houses of parliament last week by Morrison’s government, with Labor’s backing, was to slash the already poverty-line rates of JobKeeper wage subsidies and JobSeeker unemployment benefits from late this month. This reduction is designed to give about five million jobless or “under-employed” workers no choice but to return to workplaces, regardless of the threat to health and lives.

Toppling of Sir John A. Macdonald statue triggers furor within Canada’s ruling elite

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

A few hundred protesters calling for “defunding the police” pulled down a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, at a demonstration in Montreal Saturday, August 29. In doing so, they inadvertently decapitated the more than century-old statue.

The incident, which has been trumpeted by ostensibly “radical” proponents of identity politics as a blow to the “racist” and “colonial” Canadian state, has provoked howls of outrage from across the political establishment.

In place of the statue, protesters raised a banner that denounced Macdonald for his role in the adoption of discriminatory legislation targeting Asian Canadians and in the establishment of the residential school system. Residential schools functioned for over a century to tear indigenous children away from their families with the aim, explicitly advocated by Macdonald, of eliminating indigenous cultures and languages.

In aggressive Trump-style fashion, Alberta’s hard-right United Conservative Party premier, Jason Kenney, railed against the protesters as “roaming bands of thugs” and the “extreme left.” He added threateningly, “This vandalism of our history and heroes must stop.” Francois Legault, Quebec’s “Quebec First” premier, called the incident an attack on “democracy” and vowed the statue would be restored to its prominent place in downtown Montreal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal government has touted its “gender-balanced” and racially “diverse” cabinet and “feminist” foreign policy as “progressive” cover for its right-wing policies, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the toppling of the statue, and denounced it as “vandalism. “We are,” he intoned, “a country of laws, and we are a country that needs to respect those laws even as we seek to improve and change them.” But unlike Kenney, he made his defence of Macdonald more conditional. “I believe,” said Trudeau, “that a country must inform itself of its past, must be conscious of positive things and negative things that any leader has done in their career.”

New Democrat (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, who has led Canada’s social democrats in propping up the minority Liberal government as it provided a massive corporate bailout and is now orchestrating a reckless back-to-work drive amid the COVID-19 pandemic, avoided criticizing the toppling of the Macdonald statue outright. Nevertheless, he sought to distance himself from the action. Said Singh, “Taking down a statue of (Macdonald) doesn’t erase him from history any more than honouring him out of context erases the horrors he caused.”

Who was John A. Macdonald?

Trudeau and Singh undoubtedly came under pressure from the most powerful sections of the ruling elite to condemn the toppling of the statue. Macdonald was, after all, the principal architect of Confederation—which united the three largest British North American colonies in a federal state in 1867—and Canada’s dominant political figure in its first quarter century.

By spearheading the creation of the Canadian nation-state and then its expansion, including the effective annexation of the territory that now comprises Canada’s three prairie provinces and much of its three northern territories, Macdonald played a major role in laying the groundwork for the rapid development of Canadian capitalism and its emergence, at the beginning of the 20th century, as an imperialist power.

It is these services—accomplished through deceit and violence, and in close cooperation with railway promoters, bankers, and the British Colonial Office—which compel Canada’s ruling elite and political establishment to honour him, regardless of their current political orientation.

A Tory, Macdonald was a fitting representative of the emerging Canadian bourgeoisie, which rejected the US as “too democratic and egalitarian,” and founded the Dominion of Canada as a constitutional monarchy and an integral part of the British Empire.

The Canadian capitalist elite’s successful consolidation of its rule over the northern tier of North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was inseparably bound up with the dispossession and subjugation of the Native peoples, whose communal forms of property were incompatible with bourgeois private property. Nomadic indigenous communities were brutally driven off their lands, in a process described as “the clearing of the Plains,” to make way for the Canadian Pacific Railway, “settlement,” and the development of western Canada as the “bread basket” of the British Empire.

As the head of federal Conservative governments from 1867-73 and 1878-91, Macdonald presided over the suppression of First Nation and Metis rebellions, and a policy of starving Native peoples so as to force them onto reservations.

The seizure of the lands of the indigenous peoples was a key plank in a policy of national capitalist development championed by Macdonald, and codified in the Tories’ National Policy. It called for high tariffs to stimulate manufacture in the East, and for the development of agriculture in the West, with the aim of providing markets for Ontario and Quebec-based industry, and profits for the banks, railways and merchants who were to organize the export of Western grain and other resources to Britain.

From this brief overview of Macdonald’s career it is clear that there is no reason for working people to mourn the toppling of his statue.

However, the racialist political perspective being advanced by those celebrating the attack on the Macdonald monument is deeply retrograde and antithetical to the struggle for socialism.

These forces do not denounce Macdonald as a political leader of the Canadian bourgeoisie, but as the supposed representative of “white society,” thereby blaming the working class and poor immigrant farmers for the crimes of Macdonald and Canadian capitalism. Similarly, they rail against “white society,” not capitalism, for the continuing injustices against Native people, racism, and police violence (whose victims, while disproportionately indigenous and black, are first and foremost overwhelmingly working class.)

This outlook, saturated with racialist identity politics, is well suited to these forces’ political agenda, which is to press for a more “equitable” distribution of wealth, privileges and power within the top 5 to 10 percent of society, while leaving capitalist oppression untouched.

The recently-established Coalition for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour Liberation has been presented in the media as the political voice of the protesters. In a post on the statue’s toppling, it wrote that “racist monuments don’t deserve space,” and demanded that “all statues, plaques and emblems commemorating perpetrators of racism and slavery” be taken down because they encourage “white supremacist attitudes.” It also appealed for the police to be defunded by 50 percent and that the funds be redistributed to “black communities” and small businesses.

Macdonald dismissed the indigenous peoples as inferior, denounced Chinese immigrants as a threat to Canada’s British and “Aryan” character, and subscribed to the claim that the British Empire had a civilizing mission (memorialized shortly after his death in the Rudyard Kipling poem “The White Man’s Burden”).

But to characterize Macdonald or any other leading Canadian politician of that period as a “racist” or “white supremacist” without mentioning their chief function as representatives of the Canadian bourgeoisie is to falsify history, above all by covering up the essential class content of their racism.

The Canadian ruling elite required the destruction of the indigenous population’s communal forms of property, including through mass murder and genocide, in order to solidify its control over the northern half of the North American continent and profitable capitalist development. Furthermore, under conditions in the last decades of the 19th century where the increasingly sizable working class was emerging as a powerful adversary, Canada’s capitalist elite whipped up Anglo and anti-immigrant chauvinism as a means of diverting mounting social tensions along reactionary lines.

Identity politics and “settler colonialism”

The Coalition’s failure to even mention the interrelated issues of capitalism and class oppression is in keeping with the longstanding insistence among “left” petty bourgeois forces that Canada is a “settler colonial” state, not a capitalist state.

Not only does this definition whitewash the Canadian bourgeoisie for its crimes against the native population. It is also aimed at legitimizing calls for “decolonizing” and “deracializing” the Canadian state and Canadian society by promoting a supposedly more equitable capitalism. That is, by integrating privileged elites from the native population and other minorities into positions of power and privilege, from corporate boardrooms to government, through the expansion of affirmative action programs, reparations, and an enhanced role for native self-government within the Canadian capitalist state.

The Trudeau government, and broad sections of the ruling class, are by no means hostile to this agenda. Since its election in 2015, the Trudeau government has sought “nation to nation reconciliation” with Canada’s Native peoples. What this means in practice is the cultivation of a tiny First Nations elite to serve as business partners and political allies for the Canadian bourgeoisie as it intensifies its exploitation of indigenous-controlled lands and workers.

Earlier this summer, tens of thousands of people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds participated in mass protests across Canada against racist police violence. The protests were motivated by the emergence of a mass, multi-racial movement in the United States, triggered by the brutal police murder of George Floyd. But they also expressed the deep anger among working people over rampant social inequality, mass unemployment, poverty, and the social crisis triggered by the pandemic. When Trump sought to suppress this movement by inciting police violence and seeking to initiate a military coup by deploying military forces on the streets of America’s major cities in defiance of the Constitution, the protests only grew bigger.

Terrified by the growth of social opposition, powerful sections of the ruling elite and petty bourgeoisie felt the need to change the subject. In the United States, the Democratic Party, and its house organ, the New York Times, took the lead in injecting racialist poison into the mass protests. They insisted that police violence was not the product of the police’s function as defenders of private property and arm of the capitalist state, but rather arose out of a racist “white population.” They also lent encouragement to the defacing and toppling of statues of the leaders of America’s two bourgeois democratic revolutions—revolutions which, whatever their historically-rooted limitations, struck mighty blows in favour of democracy and equality, including by abolishing slavery—on the basis of their alleged “racism.”This is part of a larger project to promote a racialist narrative of American history that presents racial conflict, not the class struggle, as its defining element.

A similar process has developed in Canada. Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made public statements declaring that the root cause of police violence is “systemic racism” for which the entire population must bear responsibility.

Corporate Canada responded to the racialization of the protests with enthusiasm. “Over the past two weeks, many of Canada’s largest companies have made statements condemning racism after a wave of protests against police violence in the United States and Canada,” gushed the Globe and Mail, the mouthpiece of Toronto’s financial elite, in a June article. It reported the creation of an organization called the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism, whose leaders include the CEO of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, to support the “black community” by promoting “black employees to leadership positions.”

The Coalition of BIPOC Liberation may not argue so explicitly in favour of the co-opting of a tiny elite of black and indigenous people into positions of corporate power. But its perspective is entirely compatible with and promotes this pro-capitalist agenda. Its protest actions are not aimed at the political education and mobilization of the working class as an independent political force in struggle against big business and its political representatives. Rather, as in the case of the toppling of Macdonald’s statue, they are designed to scandalize the ruling elite into providing greater access for professionals and business people from “racialized minorities” to corporate boardrooms, the top ranks of academia, and positions in the capitalist state.

The BIPOC coalition and like groups seek to gain a popular base for their pro-capitalist program by misdirecting grievances arising out of the social crisis along racial rather than class lines. A prime example of this is its call to support small businesses devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, but only in “black and indigenous communities.”

Working people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds who are horrified by the historic crimes of the Canadian ruling class and want to put an end to social inequality, racist police violence, poverty and the oppression of the Native people must decisively reject all forms of identity politics and recognize that all of these social ills are the responsibility of capitalism. Overcoming them is only possible through the mass mobilization of the working class in Canada and internationally in struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society along socialist lines.

Trump administration adds $1 billion to USDA food box program that has failed to deliver on food aid

Alex Findijs

New reports on the Farmers to Families Food Box program indicate that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) overpaid and underprovided on promises to deliver tens of millions of food aid boxes to families in need.

Ostensibly, the program was designed to bridge the gap between farmers who had lost markets during the pandemic and the millions of people struggling to put food on the table. It would do this by contracting distributors to purchase, package and deliver the food to charities and food banks around the country.

In theory, this would have provided food to those in need, saved farmers from bankruptcy and eased the burden on food banks. The reality has been far from what was promised. Within just weeks, the program has been riddled with issues of inefficiency, disorganization and fraud.

The USDA had promised to deliver 40 million boxes by the end of June. By June 17, only 17 million boxes had been delivered and by the end of July Reuters was reporting that just two-thirds of the boxes ordered had actually arrived.

Food banks across the country were reporting that orders were not being fulfilled. In Puerto Rico, the distributor Caribbean Produce Exchange failed to show up to a scheduled distribution event in mid-May in San Juan, leaving 600 people waiting for food that never arrived.

The catering company CR8AD8 (pronounced Created a Date) was awarded a $39 million contract but failed to deliver 250,000 boxes of the 750,000 ordered. The boxes that were delivered were often reported to have issues with packaging and labeling, making it difficult for food banks to actually distribute the provided food once delivered.

Even when food boxes were delivered on time they were consistently overpriced. Both Caribbean Produce Exchange and CR8AD8 were paid up to $100 per box, much to the dismay of food bank organizers who noted that equivalent boxes could be made for two-to-three times less money.

The issue lies in the very structure of the program.

Other food aid programs provide assistance directly to food banks from farms. Last year, for example, the USDA purchased 18.5 million gallons of milk and delivered it to food banks free of cost. Also in 2019, the USDA purchased $1 billion worth of food impacted by increased tariffs and delivered it to food banks as well.

Instead of distributing food directly, however, the USDA has overspent on contracts to outsource distribution. The idea was that food banks could not afford to distribute the extra food directly to people in need so the contractors would be paid to do that instead. This was referred to as “truck to trunk” and was expected to alleviate much of the pressure placed on food banks to handle nearly double the demand of previous years.

It is now becoming clear that distributors oftentimes did not even uphold this end of the bargain. Food bank organizers have been reporting that distributors have been delivering food to warehouses and then leaving the food banks to foot the bill to handle the “last mile” from the warehouse to the distribution site.

A particularly severe example of this was Gordon Food Service, which refused to deliver outside of its “footprint,” according to Sherrie Tussler, executive director of Wisconsin’s Hunger Task Force. This meant that indigenous communities were left out of reach of the food box program and Hunger Task Force was left to pay $50,000 to deliver the food itself, using money that could have been spent helping more people.

To make matters worse, contracted distributors have generally purchased food from the same commercial vendors that food banks would typically buy from themselves. This means that not only are the contractors essentially pointless as middlemen, but that the farmers whom the program was ostensibly created to protect have hardly benefited at all.

All the money that has been poured into paying distributors for nonexistent services has translated to overinflated box prices and wasted funds. According to the USDA, the weighted average price for fresh vegetables is 64 cents per pound and 71 cents for fresh fruit. This means that a typical American worker should be able to purchase a 20-pound box of fresh fruits and vegetables for less than $14. Eric Cooper, CEO of the San Antonio Food Bank, told NPR that “some of these food boxes, they were $40, $50, $60 for what you’d get at a grocery store for about $20.”

Millions of dollars that could be utilized to feed struggling workers have been wasted all while millions of American families go hungry and millions of pounds of food have gone to waste in the fields.

The USDA has taken some steps to improve the program, including increasing the size of boxes to 30–40 pounds and mandating that they be combinations of produce, meat and dairy with set minimum requirements for each group. Previously, boxes weighed 15–20 pounds and were often just one type of food.

However, this is far too little too late. The extra $1 billion will amount to just 31 cents for each food insecure person, which Feeding America believes has risen to 54 million people due to the pandemic.

The Farmers to Families Food Box program has been a wasteful and disorganized mess that has failed to accomplish even its most basic goals. It is little more than an electoral campaign stunt for President Trump, who has also ordered the placement of signed letters in food boxes touting the President’s response to the pandemic. Such a move is a blatant attempt to utilize federal funds to promote the Trump campaign and is another wasteful insult to the millions of people suffering from the pandemic.

Teen in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania linked to 40 new COVID-19 cases

Isaac Finn

Officials from Allegheny County Health Department reported September 2 that 40 COVID-19 cases over a two-week period had been traced back to one teenager. This revelation by health officials is a deadly warning about the ability of COVID-19 to spread throughout the country that includes the city of Pittsburgh as it prepares to open for in-person learning on September 9.

As part of a monthly department briefing, Dr. Debra Bogen, the health department director, said, “This teenager developed symptoms and within two weeks … it had spread to family members, to the coworkers of family members, to other people in that teen’s community.”

According to the data, the teen—who was not named—began showing symptoms on August 14. In subsequent days, individuals the teen had interacted with began to show symptoms of the virus. These people went on to spread the virus to another layer of people before the spread was able to be identified and contained. As a result, 40 people contracted COVID-19, including two elderly individuals.

Young people walking and talking. (Tulane Public Relations/Creative Commons)

In the monthly department briefing, Bogen elaborated on the now well-known fact that young people are just as capable of spreading the virus as adults: “You start out with young, healthy people who get the infection and, unfortunately, they spread it to more vulnerable populations.”

Furthermore, health officials reiterated that young people are themselves not immune to the effects of the virus. In fact, there have been 14 children in the county who have needed hospitalization because of COVID-19, two of whom had to be placed in intensive care units.

While it is true that youth are statistically less likely than adults to have fatal complications from the virus, many young people who contract it require hospitalizations and some die. In addition, hundreds of very young children have become extremely sick with an inflammatory disease after contracting the virus.

The level of spread that took place from just one unknowing teenager gives an indication of what is to come if the schools in Allegheny County go forward with plans to reopen on September 9. Many schools in the district have either announced plans to include an in-person option within the first week or have failed to publicly update their plans for school reopening since early August.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, there were 105 new confirmed cases in Allegheny County and 257 new cases in Philadelphia between August 27 and September 2. Over the same time, there have been 1,160 cases of COVID-19 across Pennsylvania, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases throughout the state to 136,771 with 7,732 deaths.

Under conditions in which the virus continues to rapidly spread throughout the country, Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has made the reopening of schools a top priority.

On top of this reckless policy, Wolf also announced on Wednesday a revision to the state’s previous COVID-19 guidelines regarding high school sports. Wolf will now allow spectators at the high school and youth sporting events as long as the venue adheres to social distancing guidelines. The governor is attempting to distance himself from the policy by issuing a “strong recommendation” that they are postponed, even though he was the one ultimately responsible for changing the policy.

The administration wrote in a public statement, “As with deciding whether students should return to in-person classes, remote learning, or a blend of the two this fall, school administrators and locally elected school boards should make decisions on sports.”

The drive to reopen schools throughout Pennsylvania has prompted widespread opposition from teachers and faculty who are unwilling to needlessly risk the health and safety of their students and themselves.

In late August, the East Pennsboro School board was forced to agree to a policy of all online learning after large numbers of teachers attempted to avoid returning to schools by taking a sabbatical or obtaining medical waivers.

Katelynn Edgar, a district spokeswoman, told the Patriot-News, “The stark reality is that we did not have enough qualified teachers and aids comfortable teaching face-to-face with students to begin school.”

Other school districts in Pennsylvania—including Central Bucks School District, East Penn School District, Mount Lebanon School District and Beaver Area School District—all agreed to transition to remote learning because of a shortage of teachers.

Peters Township School District, located in Washington County on the southwest border of Allegheny County, had to halt in-person classes just two days after school started on August 24 because someone at the school had tested positive for COVID-19. In a letter on August 31, the district reported another two presumptive COVID-19 cases. Despite the clear danger, the district announced that in-person classes would resume on September 8.

The dangers confronting students, parents, teachers and other education workers in Pennsylvania are the same issues facing educators throughout the country and, in fact, internationally. The homicidal drive to reopen schools is a central pillar of the Trump administration’s campaign to get workers back to businesses and factories. While the Democrats and Republicans may have tactical differences over how this policy is discussed and presented, they fundamentally agree on the conclusion: the schools must open.

Democratic Governor Tom Wolf is one of many Democratic Governors throughout the country, including Andrew Cuomo in New York and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, who are forcing the reopening of schools.

This homicidal policy has resulted in a growing movement of opposition from workers, parents and young people. Last week teachers, parents and students in Kenosha, Wisconsin held a demonstration outside of the Kenosha Unified School District office in opposition to in-person learning. Teachers in Andover, Massachusetts, and Elizabeth, New Jersey have also voiced that they will refuse to work if the district demands they resume in-person teaching.

Last month, teachers from around the country established the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee to unite educators, parents, and students and prepare for a general strike to halt the reckless opening of schools. Safety committees, which are independent of the unions, are being set up in Michigan, Florida, Texas and other states.

German automotive supplier Continental doubles job cuts

Gustav Kemper

The automotive industry is facing an unprecedented jobs massacre in which workers in the supply chain are its first victims. Major automotive supplier manufacturer Continental has announced the elimination of 30,000 jobs worldwide out of a total workforce of 232,000. The coronavirus pandemic is now being used as an opportunity to shift the costs of the crisis onto the backs of the working class and to push ahead with cost savings that were already planned because of the move to electric motors.

The crisis in the automobile industry is bigger and more intense than anything in the past 70 years, Continental boss Elmar Degenhart told news agency Reuters. The cuts programme, “Transformation 2019-2029,” adopted last autumn, had originally envisaged cost reductions of €500 million and the elimination of 15,000 jobs. Now, one billion euros are to be saved by 2023 with twice as many job cuts as those planned last year.

The company, which has been consistently profitable over the last ten years and received an additional €72 million in subsidies from the German government over the last 13 years, is now cutting 13,000 jobs in Germany alone. That is almost one in four jobs, twice as many as planned for last year. The job cuts affect all locations. Unprofitable business units are to be sold off.

The plant in Karben/Hesse—with 1,100 employees, including some 200 temporary workers—manufactures components for air conditioning systems, speedometers and driver assistance systems, and is to be completely closed down by 2024. The automotive site in Nuremberg is to be closed by the end of 2022, and the Vitesco site in Mühlhausen by the end of the same year.

The Frankfurt Rödelheim plant is to lose 500 jobs, with further jobs to be cut in Babenhausen, Schwalbach, Oppenweiler, Nuremberg, Mühlhausen and Roding. At the same time, 2,000 jobs have already disappeared since the announcement of the cuts programme last year.

A company spokesman emphasized to the press that talks were still ongoing and that “confidentiality had been agreed.” The Group Management Board and the trade union are currently working together on how to implement the planned cuts.

Christiane Benner, Deputy Chairwoman of IG Metall and of the Continental AG Supervisory Board, has called for “a business strategy geared to the future” and has already announced that IG Metall will agree in principle to structural changes. This would depend on their “concrete form.”

For many years, the union has systematically urged the Continental workforce to make ever more far-reaching concessions through so-called “supplementary collective agreements.” Among other things, workers were pushed to give up the alignment of their wages to the level of the regional collective agreement, with the IG Metall claiming that this would secure production in Germany.

Wage “sacrifices” have never secured jobs but ensured the profits of shareholders and company owners. The constant cuts have only prepared the final closure of several sites and the current job cuts.

Since 2006, a lot of money has been saved through wage and salary concessions at German plants, Frank Grommeck, chairman of the Karben works council, told the Wetterauer Zeitung newspaper when hundreds of employees protested against the plant closure there on Wednesday. The money saved was used to build new plants in Lithuania and the Czech Republic, where wage levels are considerably lower. After the plant closure, the remaining parts are to be relocated there.

At the Continental plant in Babenhausen too, the works council and IG Metall had already agreed years ago to an increase in weekly working hours—free of charge for the company—to “support the plant.”

The job losses that have now been announced in the supplier groups and companies, as well as the manufacturers, are only the beginning. The management consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) assumes that the entire automotive supplier industry, with some 187,000 employees in Germany, will face a wave of insolvencies in the autumn. Smaller companies would be bought up or disappear from the market altogether.

The VDA industry association estimates that 60 percent of companies are currently negotiating a reduction in staffing levels; with short-time working operating at 93 percent. The current suspension of the legal obligation to file for insolvency means the expected wave of bankruptcies will not begin for several months. The association estimates that some companies intend to cut up to 40 percent of jobs. Business daily Handelsblatt assumes that the crisis in Germany means there will be “around 100 fewer suppliers.”

Even now, the already announced cutback plans give a glimpse of what is involved:

* The Board of Management of ZF Friedrichshafen AG, one of the five largest automotive suppliers, announced in July this year that an agreement on the “structural realignment” of the company had been reached with the General Works Council and the unions. Worldwide, 15,000 jobs are to be cut in the coming years, half of them in Germany. Since mid-2019, the company has already cut 5300 jobs worldwide, 3,800 of them this year.

* Last year, Bosch already announced the elimination of 1,600 jobs.

* Mahle has already cut 400 jobs in Stuttgart and 770 in Luxembourg. The Italian plants at La Loggia and Saluzzo, with 450 workers, will be closed. Production in Rouffach, France, with 240 employees is to be discontinued.

* Deutz AG has also negotiated an “efficiency programme” with the IG Metall trade union called “Transform for Growth.” Sabine Beutert, the Cologne-based IG Metall membership advisor, announced that Deutz would first “sack temporary workers.” The company wants to save €100 million a year—a total of 1,000 jobs are to be cut in the company’s plants in Cologne-Porz, Ulm and Herschbach. Of the total of about 4,700 employees, the contracts of 380 temporary workers have already expired in the first half of the year. Another 350 employees are to be forced out of their jobs as part of a “volunteer programme.”

* Eisenmann, the Böblingen-based manufacturer of painting systems for the automotive industry, will be broken up. The 650 workers will have to register as unemployed after three months in a “qualification company” from December 8, negotiated with the IG Metall.

* Cable manufacturer Leoni in Nuremberg, with a total of 95,000 employees worldwide, including 4,700 in Germany, received a state guarantee of 330 million euros. Plants in the United States, North Africa and Europe have already been closed. By the end of 2019 2,000 workers were already laid off.

The corporations are working out the job cuts with the IG Metall or other unions such as the IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie. “There is already a lot going on in the background. Talks have been going on for a long time,” reports Norbert Heinz whose consulting business advises medium-sized supplier companies.

Every day, the unions prove that they are on the side of the corporations against the workers. Many Continental workers responded with anger and tears at the rally on Wednesday in Karben. Now the lessons must be learned.

The unions will not wage a genuine fight to defend jobs, wages or conditions. The initiative must be taken by independent factory committees, which join forces with their colleagues nationally and internationally to fight for the defence of every workplace throughout the industry. This can only be done with a socialist programme that prioritises workers’ interests, takes the factories into collective social ownership in opposition to the profits drive of the corporations.