COVID-19 rampaging across the US Midwest

Kristina Betinis & Cole Michaels

The coronavirus outbreak in Wisconsin is currently one of the worst in the United States, with more than 2,500 new cases being reported each day in the last week. More than 17,000 people in Wisconsin tested positive in the last week. On Friday, the state reported the third highest daily total in the country with 2,745 new cases. Five deaths were recorded with more than 25,000 active cases.

With the rise in infections, hospitals in northern Wisconsin are being inundated by coronavirus cases.

A child receives a COVID-19 test [Credit: Envato]

Matthew Heywood, president and CEO of Aspirus HealthCare in Wausau, a city of 40,000 in central Wisconsin, told the Associated Press (AP), “The problem is, how do we care for you when you have an accident when we have an overflow of COVID patients? There’s only so much you can do before you start to overwhelm the system.”

Heywood also said Aspirus is placing patients on waiting lists and has seen a 30 percent increase of COVID-19 patients over the course of the last five days.

“If it’s growing the way that it has for the past week or so, we’re going to be in a dire situation in two, three, four weeks,” Michael Hooker, vice president and chief medical officer for acute care at ThedaCare, a hospital chain in the Fox Valley, explained to the AP. “Yes, we saw this coming but didn’t expect it to be quite so rapid.”

While the reopening of schools and universities drove the spread of the disease among young people earlier in September, officials are reporting that infections are now growing among other age groups as well. Dane County, the location of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reports 45 percent of COVID-19 cases are found among 18- to 22-year-olds. However, the county has seen a 28 percent rise in cases among other age groups in recent weeks.

Green Bay public schools shut buildings to all teachers and staff who had been using the buildings to teach virtually. The area’s private Catholic schools will be closed to students beginning next week and online instruction begins Tuesday.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and those in intensive care units more than doubled over the last month. On Thursday, 669 coronavirus patients were hospitalized, and 208 were in an intensive care unit. On September 1, 295 were hospitalized and 100 in intensive care.

Amid the rapid spread of the virus in the state and dire warnings from health officials, Republican leaders appeared in court this week to support a lawsuit from the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty against Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ statewide mask mandate. The state’s Republican-dominated Supreme Court struck down statewide social distancing restrictions in May.

The explosion of the pandemic in the state is beginning to impact the entire Midwest region. Near the border with Wisconsin, in northern Illinois, 26 of 42 Rockford public schools are reporting cases, along with all the area colleges.

Significant numbers of workers commute from state to state in the region for work, driving from Wisconsin into Illinois or from Illinois into Missouri to work in the large manufacturing plants in the region, including FCA Belvidere, not far from Beloit, and GM Wentzville. As the regional infection rates climb, factories with thousands of workers in close proximity represent a major risk for spreading the pandemic. Amazon has announced that more than 19,000 of its workers in the US have been infected with COVID-19.

In Missouri on Friday, officials reported 1,942 new cases and 29 deaths, bringing the state’s total to 133,439 confirmed cases and 2,268 deaths. The rising number of infections is currently being driven by rural counties, according to the state health department. New Madrid County, which has a population of about 17,000, reported a positivity rate of 49.5 percent on Friday. Pemiscot County reported a positivity rate of 41 percent. Both areas are located in the southeastern-most portion of the state bordering Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee.

The City of St. Louis Department of Health has called for those who attended the BikeFest in September, an annual motorcycle event outside the Lake of the Ozarks that draws over 100,000 people to the region, to get tested for COVID-19.

Cases have been steadily rising in St. Charles County, covering the northwestern outer suburbs of St. Louis, with 8,142 positive cases and 129 deaths as of October 1 in a county of 402,000. Last week, businesses in the Main Street district of the city of St. Charles ended live music at 11:00 p.m. and imposed capacity limits after wide condemnation over images of packed crowds spread across social media.

Jefferson County south of St. Louis remains in the “red zone,” reporting 64 new cases on Friday. The Jefferson County Health Department has called for more restrictions to be placed on the county which has met resistance from local political leaders and some members of the public. Jefferson County Health Director Kelley Vollmar has said that COVID-19 hospitalizations have gone up 90 percent in the last 30 days.

Students have begun to return to in-person instruction in public schools in St. Louis County for at least two days a week. Rockwood School District had children through second grade return September 30. Mehlville School District plans to return third through eighth grade students on a hybrid model by October 8. Affton School District will follow the same plan beginning October 13. Lindbergh School District will have children returning starting October 5.

Unbelievably, the Lindbergh school district admits on its website that though there are cleaning and social distancing plans in place: “It is important to understand that these precautions will not necessarily eliminate COVID-19 from our learning environments.” Worry from parents has forced the school districts to allow parents the option to continue having their students study all-online.

About 40 percent of parents in the Affton School District are choosing to have their children remain at home. St. Louis County Executive Dan Page announced on September 23 that there will be a rollback of restrictions on youth sports. Before this announcement, St. Louis County-based Incarnate Word Academy held its girls softball games in neighboring St. Charles County.

Republican Governor Mike Parson and First Lady Teresa Parson have both reportedly tested positive for the virus, and after just one week of quarantine the governor announced he would be returning to his usual schedule. The personal infection of the Missouri ruling elite will not stop them from doing all in their power to have the economy functioning normally at the expense of thousands of workers lives.

As with the entire nation, the pandemic is deeply affecting Missouri’s economy. Restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s announced it will lay off 150 workers throughout the state, and 208 workers are to be laid off from the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in the Central West End district of St. Louis City. Three of the state-run Missouri visitor’s centers will close. Missouri Amtrak employees will be part of the 2,000 total employees nationwide that will be furloughed from the passenger rail company due to low ridership. Maritz, a marketing firm based in Fenton, will lay off a total of 475 employees and temporarily furlough an additional 49.

It is estimated that 40 percent of US adults are suffering from mental distress due to the effects of the pandemic. Children are not being given the resources by schools to cope with the increased stress of isolation from friends and worry over getting themselves, their parents and siblings sick. Many school districts have only one licensed counselor per grade, making it impossible for counselors to address the mental health needs of vulnerable students.

The inability to make ends meet coupled with continued police brutality has also led to a surge in protests in the state. On the evening of September 24, protesters shut down a section of Interstate 64 in the St. Louis area. They continued to march on the interstate before dispersing at 8:00 p.m. Multiple protests were held throughout the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas after the announcement that the police who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky would not be charged for her death. Governor Parson signed an executive order in the wake of the announcement activating the state National Guard as a precaution to quell unrest.

Students at University of Missouri-Columbia have protested over inadequate coronavirus safety measures. Signs had slogans including, “We won’t die for your dollars” and “[Chancellor Mun] Choi = liar.” As of Friday, the university had 76 reported active student cases. The University of Missouri has never done mass testing of students. In total there have been 1,546 student cases since August 19. Among the students’ demands is that all students receive free and rapid COVID-19 testing.

Drop in September job growth shows slowdown in US recovery

Kevin Reed

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that September non-farm payroll employment rose by just 661,000 jobs, less than half of the number in August and the fourth monthly decline since June. The number of new jobs in September was far short of the 800,000 expected by economists.

The BLS report said that slowing job growth “occurred in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care and social assistance, and in professional and business services.” It noted that employment in government actually declined over the month, “mainly in state and local government education.”

The report also said that the US unemployment rate declined by half a percentage point to 7.9 percent, about one quarter of the decline in August of 1.8 percent. The total number of employed workers is still 10.7 million less than were employed in February, before the coronavirus pandemic began.

The number of workers considered permanently unemployed because there is no job for them to return to rose in September to a total of 3.8 million. This is an increase of 2.5 million since February.

Another way of looking at the rise in the number of permanently unemployed is the decline in the labor participation rate. This number for men is 67.6 percent, the lowest since records began except for the earliest months of the pandemic. For women, the labor participation rate is 55.6 percent, the lowest since the late 1980s.

The steep drop in key employment indicators shows that a rapid—or V-shaped—economic recovery from the catastrophic events of March and April is not happening. Far from it. As stated by the Wall Street Journal on Friday afternoon, the sharply slowing hiring gains heading into the fall, along with increasing numbers of permanently unemployed, are “adding to signs that the US economy faces a long slog to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic.”

Beth Ann Bovino, chief US economist at S&P Global Ratings, told the Journal that many businesses that laid off workers during the early days of the pandemic are now out of business. “It will be much harder to bring back that workforce in an economy that’s moving into a long, slow recovery,” Bovino said.

On the day the world woke up to the news that President Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, the White House unsuccessfully attempted to present the September jobs data as good news.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was pleased with the labor market’s progress even though parts of the economy continued to need help. Mnuchin said the BLS figures were “another good unemployment report,” and added, “I never thought a year ago I’d say I’m really proud of the fact that we have unemployment below 8 percent, but I really am.”

Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said unconvincingly on Fox Business Network that economists were misreading the numbers. “I think they are better than some people think. The overall economy is looking good,” Kudlow said.

The dismal September jobs report also comes amid expanding layoff announcements by large corporations in the entertainment, airline, energy and retail sectors. As reported yesterday on the World Socialist Web Site, Walt Disney announced 28,000 permanent theme park layoffs; US Royal Dutch Shell will be cutting as many as 9,000 workers; and the major US airlines are eliminating tens of thousands of jobs.

In the retail industry, a report by the professional services firm BDO USA says that 29 companies have filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020. The report also said that from January through mid-August, more than 10,000 retail stores were closed both by firms filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection—including Neiman Marcus, JC Penney, Pier 1 Imports and GNC Holdings—and those that remain solvent, such as Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and Gap, Inc. Other market studies show that there could be as many as 25,000 US retail store closures by the end of 2020.

An opinion piece in the Washington Post by columnist Catherine Rampell compares the change in employment during the present economic crisis to other post-World War II recessions, including the Great Recession of 2007–2009.

The graphic presentation of employment data, illustrating the number of months it took for each recession to return to the employment levels that existed before the downturn hit, shows that the economic depression triggered by the coronavirus pandemic is of a fundamentally different magnitude and character than anything that has happened over the past 75 years of world capitalism.

As the coronavirus continues to expand and surge in many parts of the country, the jobs crisis deepens, with economic activity restricted or shut down, in some cases for a second time. Meanwhile, the corporations and the banks are taking advantage of the crisis to move forward with massive cuts that were being discussed long before the pandemic began.

The stalled employment situation facing millions of workers stands in stark contrast to the wealth being accumulated on Wall Street since the onset of the economic crisis. The CARES Act, passed nearly unanimously by both Democrats and Republicans and signed into law by President Trump in late March, funneled trillions of dollars into corporate bank accounts, and the Federal Reserve has continued to inject trillions more into the stock markets, increasing the wealth of the superrich.

Meanwhile, the two parties have conspired to strip laid off workers of the $600-per-week federal unemployment supplement, which expired at the end of July, leaving millions of workers unable to make rent and car payments and properly feed their families.

US deploys missile destroyer off coast of Venezuela

Bill Van Auken

In an escalation of the US “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has deployed a guided-missile destroyer, the USS William P. Lawrence, barely 15 nautical miles off the Caribbean coastline of the South American nation.

USS William P. Lawrence, deployed off Venezuela's coast (US Navy)

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza issued a statement denouncing the deployment as an “erratic and infantile provocation” on the part of Washington, while ridiculing US claims that it is part of a US operation against drug trafficking.

In the midst of the surging coronavirus pandemic last April, US President Donald Trump announced the deployment of US naval and air assets, the largest such US operation in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama, on the pretext of preventing drug traffickers from exploiting the COVID-19 outbreak. The justification was preposterous on its face as even Washington’s own agencies acknowledge that the source of the bulk of drugs bound for the US is its own closest ally in the region, Colombia, and that the shipments do not pass through the Caribbean, but up the Pacific Coast and through Central America, through countries whose governments are also aligned with Washington.

In addition to the drug interdiction pretext, the Pentagon also justified the deployment of the advanced warship as a “freedom of navigation” operation designed to challenge what it termed Venezuela’s “excessive maritime claims in international waters.”

“The illegitimate Maduro regime improperly claims excessive controls over those international waters, which extend three nautical miles beyond the 12-nautical mile territorial sea, a claim that is inconsistent with international law,” the US Navy said. It noted that it had similarly deployed warships into waters claimed by Venezuela in June and July.

The “international law” invoked by the Pentagon is the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which limits member states’ claims to control over coastal waters to12 nautical miles. Neither Venezuela nor Washington are signatories to the agreement.

The provocative deployment of the US warship follows by barely two weeks joint exercises conducted by the US and Colombian militaries in a threatening show of force against Venezuela. The exercises were timed to coincide with a four-day Latin American tour by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who visited every country bordering Venezuela, promoting regime change in Caracas and railing against China’s influence in the region.

The US naval provocations are particularly threatening under conditions in which Venezuela is receiving desperately needed gasoline supplies aboard tankers sent from Iran, which is also the target of a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign and continuous military provocations aimed at achieving regime change in Tehran.

The Faxon, the third in a group of three Iranian tankers carrying fuel, is expected to arrive at a Venezuelan refinery port over the weekend. Together with two Iranian ships that have already reached the country, the Forest and Fortune, the total cargo amounts to 800,000 barrels of gasoline.

While Venezuela has the largest known petroleum reserves, its production has fallen precipitously under the impact of US sanctions, falling global oil prices and a lack of investment and maintenance of the country’s state-owned energy firm, PDVSA. It is also dependent on the import of condensate, a natural gas needed to turn Venezuela’s crude oil into gasoline. Its two functioning refineries are producing just 55,000 barrels per day, roughly 50 percent of the country’s requirements, meaning that the Iranian imports will not go that far.

Nonetheless, Washington is determined to cut off the gasoline imports. Last month, Washington claimed to have intercepted four ships carrying Iranian gasoline to Venezuela. None of the vessels were Iranian-flagged or owned, and the UAE, Oman and UK-based owners of the cargo shipped on Greek-owned tankers are suing the US government, insisting that the fuel was bound for Trinidad and destined for sale to Colombia and Peru.

If US warships were to attempt to seize Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela, the outcome could be a spiraling military escalation threatening region-wide war in the Middle East or even a global conflict.

Gasoline shortages and a protracted economic crisis sharply exacerbated by onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the official figures standing at nearly 80,000 cases and nearly 650 deaths, have led to growing poverty and hunger as well as a breakdown of basic services in Venezuela.

Lack of fuel, electricity, water and other necessities have triggered a wave of protests in recent weeks. The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict reported over 100 separate protests over the last week in September across 19 of the country’s 23 states.

Unlike previous protests, these have been concentrated in small towns and villages in the country’s interior and are driven by social unrest, rather than the machinations of the US-backed right-wing opponents of the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Nonetheless, the Maduro government has dispatched troops, police and paramilitary colectivos, or militias, to repress them.

The Maduro government has attempted to counter the country’s deepening crisis with a further turn to the right. While suppressing popular revolt from below, it pardoned in late August over 100 rightists who engaged in attempted coups and terror plots, in hopes of forging some kind of national unity accord and lending legitimacy to parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 6.

In addition, on Tuesday, the Maduro government unveiled what it described as an “anti-blockade” bill that it will submit to the National Constituent Assembly. The most significant clauses in the bill call for measures to “stimulate and favor” the growth of the private sector and foreign direct investment by means of labor and tax incentives along with guarantees of investments.

At the same time, it proposes to grant the government power to “modify the mechanisms of the constitution, property, management, administration and functioning of public enterprises.” This has been widely interpreted in Venezuela as opening the door to the privatization of PDVSA or its subsidiaries.

Washington, however, has shown no interest whatsoever in reaching an accommodation with Caracas, no matter how far Maduro goes in subordinating his regime to the interests of world imperialism. Its latest round of sanctions has targeted not just the Maduro government, but also those elements of the right-wing opposition that have agreed to participate in the Dec. 6 election. This includes representatives of the country’s four largest opposition parties: Justice First (PJ), Popular Will (VP), Democratic Action (AD) and A New Time (UNT).

The Trump administration has also successfully pressured the European Union to back out of providing election observers, with the EU now demanding that Maduro postpone the election for six months. The shift in the EU’s position was joined with one of the main opposition figures, Henrique Capriles, a former governor and presidential candidate, announcing his withdrawal from the election, joining the demand for its postponement.

Washington’s puppet, the self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó, meanwhile, has openly called for military intervention to topple Maduro. Addressing remarks to the United Nations, he urged the country’s member nations to invoke the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to justify military action and to “consider a strategy that contemplates different scenarios after the diplomatic route has been exhausted.”

Since his self-anointment as president in January of last year, Guaidó has utterly failed to mobilize a popular base of support or to trigger a military coup. He and his coterie of right-wing politicians are implicated in an abortive invasion led by an ex-US special forces operative, as well as in multi-million dollar corruption scandals surrounding their attempts to lay hold of Venezuela’s foreign assets.

That he now openly calls for military intervention represents a serious threat under conditions in which a crisis-ridden Trump administration may seek to execute an “October surprise” in the form of a new eruption of American militarism.

Border Wall threatens extinction of numerous endangered species

Adria French

The US-Mexico border wall severs some of the richest wildlife communities and oldest human settlements in North America. The latest segment runs through the most fragile desert area in the Southwest and has been given bipartisan support for the past 25 years.

The most recent updates were initiated in a 2018 appropriations bill which provided $1.6 billion for border barrier enhancement and construction, along with an increase in border militarization. This funding was used to begin the first major border wall construction under the Trump administration, severing critical migration corridors for endangered Mexican gray wolves in New Mexico and decimating rare national wildlife refuge habitat in South Texas. A further $1.3 billion was provided in 2019.

These fund allocations follow attempts in 2013 to pass a “border surge” provision in the Senate bill S744 which would have provided $40 billion for what Senator John McCain called “all-out militarization” of the US-Mexico border, including $20 billion for border wall construction. The bill would have destroyed the future for jaguars, ocelots, Sonoran pronghorn and dozens of other endangered borderlands species. It passed in the US Senate with the support of every Democrat in the Senate, plus nominally independent Senator Bernie Sanders, but failed in the House of Representatives.

The building of the border wall along the US-Mexico border began, however, under the initiative of President Bill Clinton within five years after the fall of the Berlin wall. President Clinton’s wall was confined to the cities of El Paso and San Diego, where impoverished farmers displaced by NAFTA had begun crossing in exploding numbers in the mid-1990s. The wall did not stop desperately poor migrants from crossing the border, it re-routed them through the harsh terrain in the desert Southwest, where thousands of migrants died as a result of the Clinton administration’s “prevention-by-deterrence” border policy. In 2005, more than one million migrants crossed the Mexico border into the US.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US Congress began using the attacks as an excuse for building more walls on the US-Mexico border, even though the attacks had nothing to do with this border or undocumented immigration. This did not stop Congress from passing the Real ID Act of 2005, which allowed the head of the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to waive all laws, including environmental laws, to build a border wall. This was followed by the Secure Fence Act in 2006, which mandated that DHS construct about 700 miles of border barrier along the US-Mexico border. It passed and resulted in about 350 miles of wall being built by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The ongoing construction increased an already tragic rate of migrant deaths. It also has destroyed, fragmented and degraded hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, and now threatens the extinction of more than 100 endangered species on the border. The 2006 legislation enabled the building of continuous barriers separated by an access road for patrol vehicles on long stretches of the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Environmental activists and the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) raised the alarm in 2006 about this legislation. Environmentalists and USFWS wardens warned that the barrier would disrupt the migration of scores of species from jaguars and Mexican wolves to hawks and hummingbirds along a wildlife corridor connecting northern Mexico and the US southwest.

A chain of 40 mountain ranges links the northern range of tropical species such as the jaguar and the parrot in the Mexican Sierra Madre Mountains, and the southern limit of temperate animals such as the black bear and the Mexican wolf in the US Rocky Mountains.

One of the major habitats that is being destroyed is the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. It lies at the headwaters of the Río Yaqui, a large river that drains portions of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in the United States, as well as eastern Sonora and western Chihuahua in Mexico. Within this basin, the San Bernardino ciénega (marshland) has historically been considered the largest, most expansive wetland in northwest Mexico and this part of the Southwest US. It provides an important corridor for wildlife to migrate between Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental and the Rocky Mountains to the north.

William Radke, Manager of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge (SBNWR) warned that the planned barrier would also sever the rugged highland trails used by “pioneer” jaguars currently crossing from Mexico and repopulating the rugged Peloncillo Mountains east of Douglas, Arizona after decades of absence.

The spotted cats originally roamed the Americas from Argentina in the south to the Grand Canyon, in northern Arizona, but they vanished from the United States several decades ago due to hunting and pressure from human encroachment on their habitat.

The San Bernardino NWR was established in 1982 to protect the rare wetlands in the middle of the desert that are home to a variety of wildlife, including several species of fish that are protected by the Endangered Species Act, like the Yaqui chub, Yaqui minnow and Yaqui catfish. Sitting on over 2,300 acres on the US-Mexico border in southeastern Arizona, close to New Mexico, the refuge is home to hummingbirds, 75 species of butterflies, bats and, most importantly, to these native Rio Yaqui fish, which the refuge was set up to protect.

That no major statement has been issued by either the Democrats or Republicans against the destruction of this region speaks to the bipartisan drive to build the border wall and their indifference toward the environment as a whole.

Australian budget to slash taxes for the rich while hitting workers

Mike Head

Behind all the words about “creating jobs,” next Tuesday’s pandemic-delayed federal budget in Australia will have one central aim. That is to intensify the imposition on working-class households of the devastating impact of deepest global economic meltdown since the 1930s Great Depression, while boosting corporate profits and private wealth.

The Liberal-National Coalition government began that drive last week by reducing JobKeeper wage subsidies and JobSeeker unemployment payments to poverty levels. That is designed to coerce the five million recipients into low-wage employment on drastically worse conditions. Then, another attack occurred this week—a public sector wage freeze in the most populous state, New South Wales, on top of federal and Queensland pay freezes.

At the same time, the budget will feature huge income tax cuts for the wealthiest layers of society and a plethora of new business tax concessions. These will add to the estimated $400 billion already handed out since March to the corporate elite in subsidies, cheap loans and other “support packages” by federal and state governments.

Whatever the plans of the ruling elite, however, this is a crisis budget like no other in living memory. Much worse is to come.

Just over a year ago, the government boasted that it would produce a budget surplus in 2019–20 for the first time since the global financial breakdown of 2008–09. The Liberal Party even started selling coffee mugs with “back in black” emblazoned on them.

Very quickly, the $5 billion cash surplus for 2019–20 forecast last December turned into an $85 billion deficit. Likewise, the pre-pandemic estimate for 2020–21 was a $6 billion surplus but on Tuesday the estimate will be for a cash shortfall of over $200 billion.

Already postponed by five months because of the worldwide COVID-19 disaster, all the projections in the budget will be even more misleading and falsely optimistic. Every estimate is overshadowed by the uncertainty and instability produced by the public health and economic breakdown, compounded by the intensifying political crisis surrounding the presidential election in the United States, the headquarters of global capitalism.

In the words of one Australian correspondent today: “There has never been a budget like the one [Treasurer] Josh Frydenberg will reveal on Tuesday. It will have a million moving parts, an Everest-like debt profile and economic forecasts as wobbly as jelly.”

Further budget deficits ahead are expected to lift federal government debt over $1 trillion by 2023. The resulting “budget repair” demanded by the financial elite will mean deeper cuts to public health, education and other social spending, on top of decades of chronic under-funding.

To add to the crisis, Frydenberg dropped two political bombshells yesterday when conducting a round of pre-budget interviews with journalists. The first was that the government expects young workers to face, on average, 8 percent lower wages in the coming year—that is, if they can find work in the “gig economy.”

That is just a pale indicator of the wider assault on working-class wages and conditions. Big business and its governments, assisted by the trade unions, are seeking to exploit the pandemic to further restructure class relations, on top of sweeping cuts to jobs and basic working conditions that have already been imposed.

The budget will seek to accelerate that offensive by offering unemployed workers an incentive to take low-wage fruit picking jobs, in an effort to cover the loss of highly exploited overseas backpackers. JobSeeker recipients will be allowed to earn up to $300 a fortnight without losing any of their benefit, which has been cut to $815.70 per fortnight for singles and will be further reduced on December 31.

Frydenberg’s second admission was that the government now expects a net outflow of population over the next two years at least, ending the country’s main source of economic growth since the end of World War II. The budget will include a “revision” of the net overseas migration rate, which just last July was expected to fall from 154,000 in 2019–20, to 31,000 in 2020–21.

That drop was predicted to reduce by 230,000 the number of new dwellings to be built, throwing many more construction workers on the dole queues. But now “more people will be leaving Australia than coming in,” Frydenberg said. “This is the first time since 1946 that this has happened.”

Frydenberg said “budget repair” would begin when the official unemployment rate dropped below 6 percent. That would still mean almost two million workers out of work, or not getting enough work, including nearly 660,000 young workers aged 15 to 24.

Cynically, the budget will be labelled “The JobMaker.” But its centrepiece will be the bringing forward of already legislated income tax cuts, supposedly to stimulate consumer spending.

These handouts will further boost the fortunes of the top 5 percent of income recipients. According to tables attached to the original plan for 2024, they will give a dual-income household on $400,000 an annual tax cut of $23,280, while a single person on $30,000 will receive just $255, or $5 a week.

Millions of low-paid workers, students and welfare recipients will get nothing. Instead, their JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments are being gutted.

Announcements over the past two days have indicated that business, primarily big business, will get yet more tax cuts and other handouts in the budget.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday outlined grant funding of $1.4 billion to boost “six priority sectors” of manufacturing, mostly to help “commercialise” ideas, generate “economies of scale” and fix “vulnerabilities” in global supply chains. He also flagged larger research and development subsidies.

The six priorities are strongly related to preparations for wartime conditions amid the government support for the escalating US confrontation with China. They are “resources technology and critical minerals processing, food and beverage, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence and space.”

Yesterday, Frydenberg foreshadowed fringe benefit tax exemptions for all businesses supposedly retraining or reskilling workers who face redundancy, and for small and medium businesses who supply items such as laptops and phones to workers.

In addition, businesses with turnovers between $10 million and $50 million will be entitled to 10 tax concessions now only available to small businesses. These payouts will be retrospectively backdated to July 1. Eligible businesses will be able to immediately deduct certain start-up expenses and prepaid expenditure.

Despite these handouts, the financial elite is demanding more, and a faster turn to “budget repair” austerity measures. An Australian Financial Review editorial on September 30 said the government’s promise to delay spending cuts for now was “good politics, and stops critics from slapping on the damaging austerity tag.”

But the newspaper complained that waiting for unemployment to fall before imposing austerity “looks too much like the economic equivalent of insisting that virus infections be eliminated forever.” In the sentence, the editorial gave voice to the twin demands of the financial aristocracy: get all workers back into workplaces, regardless of the COVID-19 risk, to generate profit, and make the working class pay for the health and economic catastrophe.

The editorial further insisted that a “determined and resolute government” must remove “inflexible workplace rules and inefficient taxes.”

As recent developments have underscored, in order to fight this assault, workers and youth need to make a complete political break from the Labor Party opposition and the unions. These apparatuses are doing their utmost to help deliver the ruling class’s demands. Behind the backs of workers, for four months the unions have pursued “confidential” talks with the government and employer groups on “industrial relations reform.” Labor leader Anthony Albanese gave a “vision” speech this week, echoing the call for budget “discipline” and “back to work.”

Breonna Taylor police murder grand jury proceedings released by Kentucky court

Matthew MacEgan

The Jefferson County Circuit Court in Louisville, Kentucky, released audio recordings Friday of the grand jury proceedings relating to the killing of 26-year-old African American emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor.

People gather in Jefferson Square awaiting word on charges against police officers, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

This came after an unidentified juror disputed Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s explanation last month for why none of the officers were charged over Taylor’s murder earlier this year. Both the juror’s decision to speak out publicly and the exposure of the grand jury are unprecedented and extraordinary developments.

The juror in question came forward less than one week ago to accuse Cameron of misleading the public about the grand jury’s deliberations. The juror filed a formal motion on Monday asking Jefferson Circuit Judge Ann Bailey Smith to allow fellow jurors to give up their confidential status if they wish and to speak freely about the proceedings, which are typically kept private.

The juror’s filing earlier this week stated that “the full story and absolute truth of how this matter was handled from beginning to end is now an issue of great public interest and has become a large part of the discussion of public trust throughout the country.”

Judge Smith directed prosecutors to file the recordings during an arraignment hearing Monday for Brett Hankison, the former Louisville police detective who was indicted for shooting into neighboring apartments the night Taylor was shot and killed.

Just ahead of a noon deadline, Cameron’s office released a redacted version of the recording in 14 different audio files. The redacted audio comprises approximately three minutes and 50 seconds out of approximately 20 hours of recordings.

“I’m confident,” Cameron stated, “that once the public listens to the recordings, they will see that our team presented a thorough case to the Jefferson County Grand Jury. Our presentation followed the facts and the evidence, and the Grand Jury was given a complete picture of the events surrounding Ms. Taylor’s death on March 13.”

The Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) used a narcotics warrant to enter Taylor’s apartment on March 13 where they shot her after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a gun at them one time. Taylor was shot a total of five times. The police never found any drugs in the apartment.

The audio includes officers’ testimony that they knocked on Taylor’s door multiple times and announced their police presence before entering, which contradicts the story given by Walker. Walker previously stated that the officers bashed down the door with a battering ram unannounced, which was what prompted him to fire his warning shot at them in self-defense and that he never would have fired if he knew they were police.

The LMPD maintains that none of the officers involved in the shooting wore body cameras, though body camera footage from other officers who responded to the shooting has since been released. That footage corroborates Walker’s statements that he was threatened by the police and shows violations of department protocol.

One audio recording comes from an interview on March 13, the day of the killing, from Lt. Shawn Hoover: “We knocked on the door, waited, I don’t know, 10 or 15 seconds. Knocked again, waited even longer.” The majority of residents of the building report that they did not hear any such warning from the officers.

Another recording features a law enforcement officer testifying that the police ultimately never executed the warrant to search Taylor’s apartment. “Were drugs or paraphernalia recovered from apartment 4? … The answer to that is no. They didn’t go forward with executing the initial search warrant they had for Breonna Taylor’s apartment.”

Details are still emerging as journalists study the new audio recordings, but at least one interview has already come under public scrutiny at the time of this writing: a neighbor told the FBI that he heard three rounds of shots and that the last one sounded like an automatic rifle. The same neighbor stated that he saw an officer holding a 9mm Glock, which is the type of weapon that was fired into the leg of Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly. Cameron has previously claimed that the police officers do not carry 9mm weapons.

The grand jury charged Officer Brett Hankison, who was previously fired, with three counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into a neighboring apartment, where no one was hit. He has pleaded not guilty, and Cameron has stated that there is no conclusive evidence that any of his shots hit Taylor.

Cameron argued in his press conference announcing the grand jury’s decision that Mattingly, who fired his weapon six times, and Detective Myles Cosgrove, who fired 16 shots, including the fatal shot that struck Taylor in the head, were protected by Kentucky law.

“While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law,” Cameron stated, “these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed, and the Grand Jury agreed, that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified” in firing their guns.

To date, none of the officers has been indicted on charges directly related to Taylor’s death. Walker, meanwhile, who fired a defensive warning shot when the door was busted down, was initially charged with attempted murder.

As the WSWS explained earlier this week, the whitewashing of the police killing of Breonna Taylor is part of a politically orchestrated attempt to stifle the mass protests that have erupted against police violence since the spring.

Protesters have again taken to the streets in recent days to demand more accountability in the case. Activists, Taylor’s family, and the unidentified juror had all called for the grand jury file to be released.

Last week, Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, wrote in a statement that was read aloud at a press conference, that “I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law.”

Speaking of Cameron, who is African American and a rising star in the Republican Party, she wrote, “What I had hoped is that he knew he had the power to do the right thing, that he had the power to start the healing of this city.” She concluded, “What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them, that we are never safe when it comes to them.”

In addition to the State of Kentucky’s case against Hankison, the FBI is still reportedly investigating the police shooting.

Canadian autoworkers’ union, Unifor, hid major concessions in “pattern” contract with Ford

Carl Bronski

Shortly after electronic voting closed for ratification of the contract negotiated between Unifor and Ford Canada, details of major concessions agreed to behind workers’ backs appeared in the Detroit Free Press. These concessions were intentionally left out by Unifor in the self-serving contract “highlights” summary they presented workers, and they have not been widely reported since in the mainstream press.

The silence of the union, company, and corporate media on the concessions was deemed necessary so as to pull wool over workers’ eyes as to the sweeping givebacks that Unifor has made in what it is touting as the “pattern” contract for the Detroit Three’s 17,000 Canadian workers.

Unifor has effectively surrendered the hallowed principles of the eight hour day and overtime pay provisions. In addition, it has agreed to a scheme to create a large third tier of workers on the shop floor by flooding the auto plants with a new wave of temporary part-time (TPT) workers.

Unifor has agreed to the implementation of an Alternative Work Schedule (AWS). This concession, Ford boasted in a press release, will help “maximize production flexibility” and corporate “efficiency,” ensuring that the automaker remains “globally competitive.”

The AWS, first introduced into US auto plants and widely hated by workers there, was imposed during the 2009 Obama administration-led restructuring of Chrysler and GM. It allows the automakers to run their plants longer, adding the equivalent of an extra 49 days of production annually compared with traditional plant schedules. It also allows the companies to cut tens of millions in labor costs by eliminating overtime payments for working more than a 40-hour week and on Saturday, which previously paid time-and-a-half.

AWS schemes can compel workers to labour at least 10 hours a day including at straight-time pay on weekends. Workers are at the whim of the corporations when it comes to setting work hours. In many plants, all the company needs to do is give 14-days’ notice and it can force workers to toil whenever management deems it necessary, including workweeks with grueling shifts even beyond 10 hours. Seniority does not matter. This is akin to an “on call” provision, where the company can force workers to do as it pleases, when it pleases. The company can change start times each week if they so choose.

The AWS is also known as the 3-2-120 schedule because three crews work two shifts for 120 hours a week. While AWS schedules change, there have been instances at the FCA Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit, where an “A” crew has worked 10 hours a day on day shift from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. A “B” crew has worked 10 hours on night shift 6 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday through Saturday, and a “C” crew has worked 10 hours on the night shift Monday and Tuesday and 10 hours on the day shift Friday and Saturday. Under this schedule, the paid lunch break—won by auto workers decades ago—was also eliminated.

Recent Detroit Three contracts in the US have paved the way for the expanded use of lower-paid, temporary part-time workers in the factories. The deployment of ever more TPTs becomes even more necessary for the extraction of corporate profit under conditions where the gruelling AWS impacts attendance levels. To push against absenteeism, in UAW-Detroit Three agreements absences and lateness demerits are no longer “wiped clean” in ensuing contracts. Currently, FCA employs the highest percentage of second-tier and temporary workers out of the US-based Detroit Three auto companies, but the new Ford agreement adopts provisions that will allow Ford to quickly close that gap.

The reality is, had Unifor presented these provisions openly to the membership, their pattern agreement with Ford might well have been decisively rejected. As it turned out, Unifor President Jerry Dias and his fellow union bureaucrats managed to secure passage of the agreement with bogus promises of “job security,” and hyped claims about a $1.8 billion investment in the Oakville Assembly Plant to retool it for electric vehicle production. As the WSWS explained in its initial article analyzing the ratified agreement: in exchange for investment commitments that are far from finalized, Unifor accepted the destruction of hundreds of jobs during the life of the new agreement, particularly among higher-paid legacy workers, who will be pushed into retirement.

At Unifor’s insistence, the Ford-pattern deal will run for three instead of the usual four years. This means it will expire in September 2023 at the same time as those between the UAW and the Detroit Three. Unifor wants to synchronize its Detroit Three contracts with the UAW’s not in order to facilitate a joint struggle by North American autoworkers. On the contrary, Dias has stressed that synchronized bargaining will allow Unifor to compete directly with the UAW for products and prevent the “migration of investment to Mexico.” In other words, it will bring about a further intensification of the race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, as the rival unions compete to demonstrate which can deliver the lower “labour costs.”

Autoworkers are very familiar with Unifor’s longstanding anti-democratic modus operandi of withholding important information from them at contract ratification meetings in order to induce a “Yes” vote. Unifor, as a matter of practice, refuses to release and distribute the full contract complete with all side-agreements and “Memorandums of Understanding” until months after a ratification vote takes place.

This has never “sat right” with thousands of workers at the Detroit Three auto plants in Canada. After all, the 2016 pattern contract at General Motors where Unifor guaranteed that auto assembly at the Oshawa plant would be saved was met only two years later by the company’s closure announcement based on a contract clause never presented or discussed with workers at the ratification meetings.

Unifor’s flagrant violation of Ford Canada workers’ basic democratic right to be fully informed of what they were voting on must be taken as a serious warning by autoworkers across Canada. Reports indicate that Unifor may announce a rapid agreement with FCA as early as this weekend as it seeks to wrap up the current bargaining round as quickly as possible.

FCA workers must decisively reject all efforts to stampede them into voting on a deal they have not seen, especially since Dias has already made clear that it will follow the Ford concessions-laden pattern.

Unifor, like the pro-capitalist trade unions around the world, does not represent the interests of working people, but rather of a privileged bureaucracy focused above all on maintaining its lucrative partnerships with big business and capitalist governments. Attempts to “reform” the union or persuade it to “fight” on behalf of workers’ interests are doomed to fail. It is worth recalling in this regard that although over 1,800 workers—more than one in ten of the Detroit Three’s total Canadian workforce—signed a petition demanding that Unifor release agreements in full prior to any ratification vote, the union ignored it with contempt. “I don’t chase mice when I’m hunting elephants,” said Dias when asked for his view of the petition.

Workers at FCA, GM and Ford must act now to organize independently of Unifor by establishing rank-and-file committees to block its efforts to impose similar pro-corporate, job-cutting agreements as it has done at Ford.

These committees should demand the full release of any agreement reached between Unifor and FCA, and at least one week to study and discuss the terms before any ratification vote is held. They should also establish links with autoworkers in the United States, Mexico and internationally to prepare a unified counter-offensive by autoworkers against the hated two-tier system and all concessions and job cuts.

Modi government rams half-dozen anti-worker, anti-farmer laws through India’s parliament

Kranti Kumara

Flouting longstanding parliamentary norms and procedures, the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government rammed a half-dozen blatantly pro-corporate farmer and labour “reform” laws through an abbreviated “Monsoon session” of India’s parliament last month.

Three of the “reform” laws are aimed at throwing open India’s vast agricultural sector to the rapacious transnational agri-business corporations and their would-be domestic competitors.

The other three represent an all-out attack on the jobs, working conditions, and rights of the small fraction of workers who work in the so-called formal sector, that is for large-scale industrial and commercial enterprises.

The new legislation will permit the use of contract labour in virtually all industries both public and private, and in “core” production activities where they were previously banned.

Most egregiously, the BJP government’s “reform” of the labour code erects huge legal barriers to workers organising themselves into unions or waging strikes. As the Mint business newspaper observed: “Several startling clauses in the code effectively create a legal regime where strikes are impossible and workers will no longer be free to organise or even participate in peaceful strikes. They will be penalised for doing so and the penalties collected will be used to maintain the social security fund.”

According to various government agencies, at least 90 percent of India’s approximately 450 million workers are employed in what is termed as the “informal sector.” The overwhelming majority of these 405 million workers do not have any legal protection. Most earn their livelihood as “self-employed” small vendors or as day-labourers, doing the most menial work.

Out of the remaining 45 million workers in the “formal” or “organised” sector, at most 29 percent or some 13 million workers are regular full-time employees possessing guaranteed benefits such as paid leave, holiday and some retirement benefits.

The highly precarious nature of employment in India, even within the formal sector, was confirmed in the government’s latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 released in May 2019. It notes that among regular/salaried workers in the non-agriculture sector, 71.1 percent have no written job contract, 54.2 percent were not eligible for paid leave, and 49.6 percent were not eligible for any social security benefit.

In a transparent attempt to provide “progressive cover” for its pro-corporate rewriting of the labour code and to exploit the divide between workers employed in the informal and formal sectors, the Modi government has claimed that a central aim of its labour “reform” is to extend some form of “social security,” such as retirement benefits, to informal workers.

This is a sham. Part of the funds for these benefits, as noted in the quote above, are to be stolen from workers who participate in “illegal” strikes. Moreover, these “social security” schemes are at this point entirely notional. What schemes are to be provided and how they are to be funded is to be determined by a future National Social Security Board. Various social support schemes previously announced by the BJP government have provided only the most meagre support, and have frequently been handed over to private for-profit financial corporations to manage.

The Modi government also claimed to be improving workplace safety. But the changes, such as they are, only apply to enterprises employing at least 250 workers. Thus, 90 percent of India’s workers are completely excluded from the ambit of this legislation.

Even for these “larger” enterprises, the maximum compensation an employer would be liable for when a worker is killed on the job, is a measly Rupees 100,000 (US$1,300). In India, at least 48,000 workers perish every year from workplace accidents and further hundreds of thousands are seriously injured.

Under the new labour laws, companies employing fewer than 300 workers, that is the vast majority, will be able to hire and fire workers at will or even shut down altogether. Previously, it was mandatory for companies employing 100 workers or more to obtain government permission before laying off permanent workers.

Eliminating these restrictions, as well as expanding still further the employment of contract labour, have been longstanding demands of both domestic and international capital.

The government made a show of the fact that it retained the obligation of the largest firms to seek government approval before instituting job cuts or shutting down a factory or other workplace. But on closer inspection, this restriction proved to be little more than a ruse. The legislation stipulates that if the appropriate government agency does not respond within 60 days after a company seeks such permission, “the permission applied for shall be deemed to have been granted” [emphasis added]. In other words, the employer will have a free hand.

The three agricultural “reform” laws are similarly sweeping, and likewise impose reactionary changes long demanded by the corporate elite.

The three farms bills—which had already been rushed through the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament where the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners have a large majority—were approved by the Rajya Sabha in a voice-vote, an inherently undemocratic procedure,

This result was obtained after the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman, a BJP MP, expelled eight opposition members who insisted that the bills first be sent to a parliamentary panel for detailed scrutiny.

The BJP pushed the bills through in the face of massive opposition from farmers, the vast majority of whom work small or marginal plots. Land holdings in India are highly fragmented with over 86 percent of farmers possessing less than 2 hectares (5 acres).

Huge demonstrations of farmers and their supporters took place in the days prior to the bills’ passage. In the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, hundreds of thousands of angry farmers blocked road and rail traffic for a couple of days while braving tear gas and beatings from India’s notoriously brutal police.

The central aim of the new agricultural laws is to destroy the decades-old state-government-managed and -regulated agricultural markets known as Mandis, which despite their endemic corruption and inefficiency have nonetheless provided farmers a modicum of security by providing them a guaranteed avenue to sell their produce.

Now, Indian farmers are to be thrown to the mercy of the “free market,” where they will be at a decided disadvantage. The giant corporations through their Indian agents will inevitably use their purchasing power to drive down wholesale prices at farmers’ expense—”savings” that they will not pass onto consumers, but rather use to boost profits.

The big retail and agricultural corporations or other large buyers will also now be allowed to enter into contracts with farmers to grow whatever agricultural commodities these companies demand at a mandated price and quality throughout the country.

In ramming these “reform” bills through parliament, the Modi government postured as a friend of the farmers. It touted the fact they will now be able to bypass “middlemen” in government-regulated markets and directly sell their product to any buyer.

In reality, Indian farmers, except for a tiny minority of the largest ones, will be compelled to sell to village middlemen since large corporations do not buy directly from fragmented small and marginal farmers.

This was demonstrated in the eastern state of Bihar, which in 2006, under a BJP-allied coalition government, eliminated the government-regulated Mandi system. A 2014 study by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Centre for Advanced Asian Studies found that farmers continued to sell their produce to village merchants (in popular parlance in northern India, “banias”), the trading class that is one of the major political bases of the BJP.

As one of the agitating farmers commented to the BBC’s Punjabi service: “This is a death warrant for small and marginalised farmers. This is aimed at destroying them by handing over agriculture and market to the big corporates. They want to snatch away our land. But we will not let them do this.”

The stated aim of all of these pro-business measures is to entice investments from transnational corporations at the expense of China, and to boost the country’s World Bank “ease-of-doing-business” ranking from its current 63 to among the world’s top ten.

The opposition Congress Party postured as a determined opponent of the agricultural and labour bills. But it was the Congress that ushered in pro-investor “reforms” in 1991, and till its fall from power in 2014 spearheaded the drive to transform India into a cheap-labour haven for global capital and a “global strategic partner” of US imperialism.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government conjured up schemes similar to those now enacted by the BJP to dismantle the regulated agricultural markets and force the country’s impoverished small farmers to deal with the vicissitudes of the “free market.” But ultimately it did not proceed for fear of mass opposition.

The trade union federations have denounced both the labour and farm “reforms” in the strongest terms, accusing the government of seeking to reduce worker rights to the days of the British Raj. Yesterday, they announced that they will hold a one-day nationwide general strike on November 26 to oppose the BJP government’s “labour reform,” its austerity policies and massive privatisation drive.

Undoubtedly there is mass working-class anger against the Modi government, including over its ruinous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the unions—including the CITU and the AITUC, which are respectively the union affiliates of the Stalinist Communist Party of India-Marxist or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—have for decades suppressed the class struggle and collaborated in the implementation of the Indian ruling elite’s neo-liberal agenda. One of their central complaints is that the BJP government has refused for several years to convene the corporatist, union-government-business, Indian National Labour Conference.