The University and College Union’s incredible disappearing pensions dispute

Ioan Petrescu

Over the past two and a half years, UK university staff have been engaged in a struggle against the gutting of their pensions. This culminated in March this year, with 50,000 lecturers, technicians, library, and other university workers striking for 14 days.

But under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic, the University and College Union (UCU) conspired with Universities UK (UUK) to push through changes to members’ pension plans that will see them paying more for smaller benefits. This has happened behind the backs of staff, who were not asked to vote on the agreement.

The dispute centres on the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), an investment fund with total assets of £67 billion. This is the principal pension scheme for universities and other higher education institutions in the UK, with almost 460,000 scheme members across 340 institutions.

The USS has been losing money since the 2008-09 financial crisis, causing its deficit to rise dramatically. To cover this shortfall, USS is demanding larger contributions from universities and employees. At the same time, UUK insists staff must bear the brunt of funding the scheme.

Manchester university staff and students protest on Oxford Road (credit WSWS)

Over the past eight years, changes to the scheme mean a typical member pays around £40,000 more into their pension pot during their working life but will receive almost £200,000 less in retirement. Employee contributions were raised from 6.35 percent of salary in 2011 to the current rate of 8.8 percent, with the closure of the final salary element and a restriction on defined benefits. University workers rightly want the institutions to cover the cost of pension contribution rises that have been imposed on academic and other staff in recent years.

When the March 23 lockdown came into effect in the UK, the UCU called off pickets and any re-ballot for continuing the strike. The union issued a statement, “In the past two weeks, our negotiators have tabled proposals that fall short of our original demands but which we believe could represent an acceptable resolution to our disputes.” Having halted the work stoppage, it suggested members take “action short of a strike” and set a target for re-ballots on this proposal “no later than the end of June”.

With industrial action off the agenda, the union proceeded to cook up a dirty deal with the employers and the pension fund. The UCU argued that the need for extra contributions could be eliminated by USS making riskier investments (and thus potentially more profits), essentially letting the pension fund gamble with its members' pensions on riskier investments, and potentially leaving them without anything accrued for when they retire.

While the UCU pushed hard for the scheme to bet its members’ pensions on rising stock markets, the employers were reluctant to go ahead as it would mean they would have to bail out the fund were it unable to pay out retirement benefits.

Following further backroom negotiations, a deal was struck between the union and employers that USS should not “de-risk” (use its money in safer but less profitable investments) but make no concessions on increased pension contributions from staff. However, rather than putting the matter before the membership, the union’s higher education committee decided to accept the agreement without a ballot, so shutting down the dispute with none of the workers’ demands having been achieved.

The UCU is now attempting to pass off the deal with UUK as a victory, to demobilize the fight of university staff and stymie any further strike action. As its record makes clear, this has been its aim in all previous disputes and confirms that the UCU functions as an adjunct of management.

At the end of July, the USS announced that its deficit had grown to £18 billion by March this year, compared to £5.4 billion the same time last year. The rise is largely a consequence of lower interest rates since the start of the pandemic, which inflates the cost of “defined benefit” pension promises. The gigantic rise in the deficit will most likely be foisted on the backs of university staff, with some proposals suggesting they would have to contribute a huge 50 percent of their salary to finance their pension plans.

Dispute over casualization, equality, pay and workloads

While workers were striking to defend their pensions, the UCU was involved in another dispute with university management—the so-called “Four Fights” dispute—over casualization, equality, pay and workloads. Following its typical modus operandi, the union has kept the two struggles separate, to prevent the development of a united fight by lecturers and other university staff.

The same cost-cutting, market-oriented considerations that are driving the gutting of pensions stand behind the attacks on pay and conditions. As with the pensions dispute, all industrial action was stopped by the UCU in March, citing COVID-19, but talks between the union and the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association (UCEA) continued. In May, UCEA made a revised offer—virtually identical to the initial one in January—which had sparked the strike. There was no movement on the paltry 1.8 percent pay increase (below the rate of inflation), and only vague formulations stating the employers’ “expectations to minimise” hourly-paid employment, but with no firm commitments to do so.

Even though there were no substantial differences between the revised offer and the one rejected in January, UCU negotiators decided to ballot members again in July, which resulted in a firm rejection by education staff, with over 61 percent voting against the employers’ offer. The UCU employed a common tactic used by all unions to prevent strikes and maintain their cosy relations with the employers, only conducting a “consultative” ballot. For a strike to take place following such a vote, even if supported by a massive majority, the union must then hold a “formal ballot” as well (a process taking weeks longer), which the UCU has not announced.

A critical role in these betrayals has been played by the “UCU Left”, a pseudo-left grouping within the union, politically led by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which is well represented in the highest echelons of the UCU bureaucracy.

In a statement in March, the UCU Left gave the pensions dispute just a one-sentence mention. Even more glaringly, the UCU Left does not mention anywhere on its website the decision not to put the agreement reached with UUK to a vote, even in an article about the meeting in which it was decided.

Only a rebellion by the membership in 2018 prevented the union from immediately imposing a rotten deal as the UCU sought to shut down what were then the largest strikes in the history of Higher Education in the UK. When the union then pushed through a modified deal, it cost UCU leader Sally Hunt her job. In the subsequent election, the UCU Left initially backed Jo McNeill—a Labour Party member—as their candidate for General Secretary.

When Jo Grady secured 64 percent of the vote in the second round of counting, the UCU Left warmly toasted her victory. Its website cheered, “Union takes a leap to the left… UCU Left look forward to working with Jo Grady to transform UCU into a democratic fighting union that can send shivers down the spine of every employer.”

The UCU Left promotes the fraud that Grady’s election has transformed the union into an accountable and staunch defender of workers’ rights.

The claims that the UCU has become more “democratic” under Grady have been completely discredited by events since, exposing the UCU Left as an opportunist tendency. Despite occasional rhetoric, the UCU Left supports the union bureaucracy and its betrayals of HE and FA staff—to maintain its own influential positions inside the apparatus.

UCU members must draw the lessons from their recent experiences at the hands of the UCU. The unions do not function as organisations that defend the interests of their members but act to enforce the diktats of management and wring concessions out of the membership.

New Caledonia rejects independence from France for second time

John Braddock

The Pacific island territory of New Caledonia held a second referendum on independence from France on Sunday, following a previous plebiscite in 2018.

Just over 53 percent opted for the status quo, down on the 56 percent majority in the first referendum. Turnout was above 85 percent of the 180,000 enrolled, exceeding the 81 percent return in 2018. That referendum was marked by a surge in support by pro-independence indigenous Kanaks, defying polls that had forecast a 70-30 percent split.

A Yes vote would have initiated a limited transition period to transfer the remaining sovereign powers, relating to justice, defence, policing, monetary policy and foreign affairs.

The Southern Province, encompassing the capital Noumea, which is the most populous and richest, overwhelmingly voted against independence while the mainly Kanak Northern Province and the Loyalty Islands emphatically voted for independence. The Parti Travailliste and USTKE trade union confederation, which had called for “non-participation” in the 2018 referendum, campaigned for a Yes vote this time.

People attend a referendum in Noumea, New Caledonia, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Mathurin Derel)

New Caledonia has been on the United Nations’ so-called “decolonisation” list since 1986, but this is resisted by the French ruling elite. With a major French military presence, it is strategically significant. As the US-led build-up against China has intensified, French influence is being boosted. The Pacific Islands Forum, which includes Australia and New Zealand, agreed in 2016 to admit New Caledonia and French Polynesia as members. France had been pushing for membership for its territories since 2003.

France’s ruling En Marche party called for a vote against independence, as did the Union des Democrates Independants (UDI) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Le Pen warned that a victory for independence would lead to “uncertainty, danger and tears.” In a statement on the outcome, President Emmanuel Macron said that as head of state, he saluted the “show of confidence in the Republic” with a “profound feeling of gratitude.”

Under agreements signed as part of the Matignon Accord (1988) and Noumea Accord (1998), three referenda on independence were provided for. A third of legislators in the Congress are required to request the final plebiscite, which would be held in two years. Following elections in 2019, a grouping of anti-independence parties, with a minority of the popular vote, controls 28 Congress seats while pro-independence parties hold 26.

Voting for the referenda is restricted to indigenous Kanaks and residents who have lived in New Caledonia continuously since 1994. Another 40,000 adults can only vote in French and local council elections.

Sunday’s result will further entrench the deep social divisions between the largely impoverished Kanaks and the more privileged, mainly European, layers. Anti-independence proponents are already calling for New Caledonia’s formal re-integration into France under a new statute while Kanak leaders insist that independence is inevitable.

Roch Wamytan, a leading member of the largest independence party, Union Calédonienne, told the Guardian the independence campaign would continue to the next referendum, and beyond. “If the ‘no’ wins again in two years, we’ll get together, we’ll talk, and we’ll figure something out,” he said.

New Caledonia was established as a French colonial possession in 1853, and used as a penal colony. The indigenous Kanaks make up nearly 40 percent of the 271,000 population. The Kanaks were removed from their land, forced onto reservations and subject to the Indignat, a code of ‘native regulations,’ which gave them inferior legal status. Uprisings occurred in 1878 and 1917.

Today Kanaks make up 95 percent of the unemployed and many low-paid workers live in slum conditions. Police clashes with Kanak youth have erupted with increasing violence, prompting demands by local politicians for harsher “law and order” measures.

Meanwhile, descendants of the original European settlers known as Caldoches, French public servants, military personnel and business employees occupy expensive residences overlooking the tourist beaches and yacht harbours.

A virtual civil war simmered throughout much of the 1980s. Tensions came to a head in 1988 when a group of Kanaks captured the gendarmerie on the island of Ouvea, killed four gendarmes and took 27 hostages. Some 300 troops were flown in under the command of the head of the French elite anti-terrorist squad. The military stormed the cave where the Kanaks were holed up, killing 21 Kanaks and 2 policemen. The French troops reportedly tortured and beat civilians during the massacre.

The then minority Socialist Party government in Paris moved to bring the crisis under control. Prime Minister Rocard brokered the Matignon Accord, which was billed as a “compromise” between the independence movement, led by Jean-Marie Tjibaou of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste-FLNKS), and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur.

The accord, which set out the long-term process for independence, was ratified by an 81 percent majority in a plebiscite in which, however, only 37 percent of the electorate voted. The result failed to quell the aspirations of the pro-independence Kanak nationalists.

Fearing a possible flare-up of the troubles, the independence issue was buried by adopting the Noumea Accord which is the current framework defining the territory’s governance. When it was signed in 1998, it was a tripartite deal involving the French state, the anti-independence Rally for Caledonia in the Republic (RPCR) and the FLNKS.

New Caledonia’s economy is underpinned by annual subsidies from France of €1.3 billion ($US1.48 billion), while French companies retain significant economic interests. The main island, Grande Terre, has the world’s largest nickel deposits, about a quarter of all known reserves. It is also the second largest cobalt producer. Nickel is critically important in the defence industry, and has been designated a “strategic material” to ensure the French state can maintain a close watch over its production and distribution.

The global coronavirus pandemic has escalated uncertainty. With just 28 cases of COVID-19, the government has set up strict quarantine measures for international travelers. The global recession has heavily impacted tourism, transport and the export of nickel.

An economic crisis is unfolding. The Brazilian owner of the huge Vale nickel plant put its 95 percent stake up for sale in December after losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars as the world nickel price has plummeted.

Last month an Australian buyer, New Century Resources, withdrew its bid triggering fears of the site’s closure. The offer was opposed by pro-independence parties and Kanak chiefs because it included plans to export nickel ore rather than have it processed locally.

Vale has threatened to stop its operation by the end of October if no new buyer is found. The site’s possible closure and loss of 3,000 jobs threaten a meltdown of New Caledonia’s economy and social security systems. Two local bidders have come forward but there has been no word if Vale will accept any of the offers.

New Caledonia’s main trade union umbrella group, L’Union des syndicats des ouvriers et employés de Nouvelle-Calédonie (USOENC), last month called a toothless rally in Noumea to divert growing anger into a demand for the sale to be extended by six months. USOENC has not acted on a threat of a general strike.

Honduran migrant caravan broken up by Guatemalan troops, as devastation grows across Central America

Andrea Lobo

A caravan of over 3,000 Honduran migrants was viciously broken up in a military operation ordered by the far-right Guatemalan government of President Alejandro Giammattei.

This is the first caravan after the coronavirus pandemic interrupted a constant stream of similar attempts since 2018 of workers and peasants escaping violence and poverty from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to reach the United States.

Given the health risks, along with official threats of repression and even prison sentences, the caravan signals that growing layers of the population in Honduras and the region have reached a new level of social desperation—a phenomenon accompanied by growing popular demonstrations.

The caravan entered Guatemala on Friday unimpeded, but Giammattei—undoubtedly under pressure from the White House— then announced that he would enforce a “state of exception,” claiming the caravan constituted a COVID-19 contagion hazard. Suspending democratic rights in the departments involved, the administration deployed soldiers and police to violently halt and round up the migrants.

Security forces block the way to Honduran migrants in Poptun, Guatemala. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

By Sunday, Guatemalan authorities claimed that they had deported over 2,000 of the caravan’s members, while smaller and disjointed groups kept attempting to reach Mexico on parallel routes. The following day, Guatemala raised the figure to 3,384 Hondurans sent back, i.e., virtually the entire caravan.

The Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assisted in deterring migrants with a highly publicized show of force involving border police and troops on its southern border, where more than 26,000 Mexican soldiers had already been deployed against migrants under orders of the Trump administration.

López Obrador, who explicitly threatened caravan participants with prison sentences of up to 10 years citing COVID-19 regulations, made the unfounded and reactionary claim that the caravan was the product of a conspiracy to aid the Democratic Party in the US elections.

While they ingratiate themselves with the fascist president in the White House by halting the flow of workers and peasants escaping death threats and starvation, Giammattei and López Obrador have lifted COVID-19 regulations and sacrificed thousands of lives to safeguard the profits for transnational corporations and the local elites.

Across Central America, the economic re-openings are feeding an uninterrupted spread of the pandemic. The region reached an official toll of over 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 408,258 cases as of yesterday.

In July, during the peak of the first wave of infections, the Honduran and Guatemalan governments began their gradual re-opening of nonessential economic activities. Guatemala has since lifted all restrictions, opening movie theaters, bars, amateur sports and parks. Both countries have seen a constant fluctuation in the 7-day average of new cases between roughly 500 and 900 cases.

In late August, the Salvadoran government recklessly lifted all COVID-19 restrictions on economic activities, simply calling on people to “abide by personal protection norms.” This has led to a second wave of infections.

Continuing its gradual lifting of business restrictions since late August, the Costa Rican government is now reopening bars and casinos, while seeing a constant growth in new daily cases. During the same period, Panama has carried out a full economic reopening that ended a slight drop in new cases.

Commercial air travel has resumed in all countries in the region, after Belize began receiving tourists on October 1.

While all governments have now adopted in practice a “herd immunity” policy, the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has pursued it most aggressively. Deaths consistent with COVID-19 symptoms are systematically tallied as “flu” and other conditions, while the government convokes public parades and provides no aid whatsoever for workers and small business. Schools reopened in mid-July—a step other regional governments have not taken.

While Honduras is the poorest country in the isthmus, the pandemic has driven the social catastrophe for the region’s workers to new depths. The UN estimates that the crisis will sink 1.5 million more people into poverty in Central America, surpassing 20 million in total out of the 50 million inhabitants.

These conditions and the criminal response of the ruling elites are stirring growing working class resistance.

The coronavirus closures saw waves of demonstrations and roadblocks in Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras involving workers in the most impoverished layers of the population demanding economic aid. These were accompanied at times by health care workers demanding appropriate protective equipment.

More recently, protests have acquired broader and increasingly political demands. Student groups and workers protested in Guatemala City on August 22 against “hunger, poverty and inequality,” as well as austerity in public education, while demanding the fall of the right-wing Giammattei administration.

In Panama, on September 15, students, unions and peasant groups organized mass protests and widespread roadblocks to protest cuts in education, a regressive labor reform, and to demand land and social services for rural communities. More recently, construction workers and bus drivers have carried out demonstrations.

Most significantly, Costa Rica is entering its second week of roadblocks that have brought the country to a virtual standstill, with increasing calls on social media and within the trade unions for an indefinite national strike of the public and private sectors. These have centered around the cancellation of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund after a potential deal was announced involving mostly regressive taxes and the sale of state companies and institutions.

In each case, the trade unions and “opposition” establishment figures have employed appeals to nationalist sentiments to subordinate the opposition from below behind talks with the corrupt national governments, which are wholly submissive to foreign capital.

The demonstrations have shown that workers across the region and internationally face the same concerns and the same enemies, the capitalist oligarchies and their imperialist patrons. The migrant caravans are only another expression of the same struggle among workers and peasants across the region.

Summarizing the results of a new study by the Economic Research and Teaching Center (CIDE) based on interviews of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras en route to the United States, El Faro writes:

“They demand stable jobs, a better wage and legal social benefits, as well as greater investment in public services and infrastructure, above all in rural areas. Some stressed that the priority should be social investment and not security.”

On the other hand, as they carry out the murderous re-openings, governments are now resuming social austerity and exploiting the increased poverty and unemployment as a bludgeon to cut wages and social provisions. These measures are ultimately aimed at intensifying neocolonial exploitation by imperialism, which is responsible for the staggering levels of inequality and poverty.

A policy paper published last week by the Atlantic Council titled “Central American Economic Reactivation in a COVID-19 world,” insists that the key challenge is “to sustain reactivation of their economics in a COVID-19 world,” regardless of the resulting death toll.

Then, in the medium and long term, countries must exploit their proximity to the US, “competitive wages” and “large and young labor force” as a means for “nearshoring multinational firms,” especially those seeking cheap labor alternatives to China due to the US-led economic war. This requires, the paper notes, “rule of law” and promoting a “business-friendly environment,” citing the existing tax-exempt free trade zones.

Tens of thousands laid off as major exhibitor Cineworld closes movie theaters in US and UK

Matthew MacEgan

Cineworld Group, which owns Regal Cinemas, announced Monday that it would suspend operations in all of its movie theaters in the United States and United Kingdom beginning this Thursday.

Cineworld is the second-largest movie-theater company in the world after AMC, and the closures mean the laying off of approximately 40,000 workers employed in 536 theaters in the US and 5,000 workers at 127 theaters in the UK.

In a statement, Cineworld said that it could not provide customers “with the breadth and strong commercial films necessary for them to consider coming back to theaters against the backdrop of Covid-19.” This “backdrop” includes the escalation of new coronavirus cases in both the US and the UK.

Cineworld (Photo credit–Cineworld)

Cineworld’s stock shares fell by as much as 60 percent in London following the announcement, and there is concern that the company will never recover. Cineworld employees were shocked and angered by the news. A collective of workers in the UK, the Cinema Action Group, tweeted on Saturday that “there has been no consultation with staff whatsoever.”

“We have found out vital information about our jobs from the media throughout the pandemic,” another tweet reads. “Workers have been left out of the discussions that should’ve included our voices. However, in this case it goes beyond belief. To find out you may no longer have a job from the media is awful.”

No Time to Die

The announcement came just days after the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, was delayed until spring of 2021. This was only the latest in a series of postponements of major commercial “blockbuster” releases in cinemas. Other films that have been delayed include Black Widow, Wonder Woman 1984 and Candyman. The financial jury is still out on whether Disney’s digital release (in the US) of Mulan has been an “unmitigated disaster,” in the words of one commentator, or has turned out to be “good,” as another asserts.

In general, the global film industry has been turned upside down by the pandemic.

Tenet

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet opened in 70 countries in late August and in the US in early September. The film, apparently one of Nolan’s bloated, “mind-bending” extravaganzas, will reportedly need to bring in some $500 million in revenue to break even. As of October 5, it had grossed a worldwide total of $307.7 million.

According to ScreenRant, “Major markets like New York City and Los Angeles haven’t reopened theaters at all, and…states that have resumed operations are only allowing limited capacity. Tenet only managed to bring in $10 million during its opening weekend in North America.” Tenet ’s performance, reports the same website, hurt many theaters that reopened specifically to show it, “as the film’s box office take suggests that many theaters are operating at a loss to showcase the movie. Seeing how there isn’t another big release slated for a couple of months—and potentially more if releases get delayed again—many theaters are set to be losing money in the upcoming weeks.”

These financial difficulties and uncertainties form the background to Cineworld’s decision. In effect, the livelihoods of 45,000 workers and their families depend on the fate of a handful of empty superhero or comic book movies and such.

Cineworld CEO Moshe (Mooky) Greidinger said in a statement that his company would “resume operations…at the appropriate time, when key markets have more concrete guidance on their reopening status and, in turn, studios bring their pipeline of major releases back to the big screen.”

This statement shows that the “appropriate time” has little or nothing to do with worker or customer safety and is being determined by the lack of profit that has accompanied the drought in the commercial film industry.

Cineworld initially closed its theaters for several months when the coronavirus lockdowns began earlier this year. It began reopening its cinemas in July with supposed new “safety” protocols in place. About 200 theaters, mostly in California and New York, have never reopened since the beginning of the pandemic.

In an interview with Deadline, Greidinger blamed the company’s closure decision squarely on Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York who has been “inflexible,” according to the Cineworld CEO, on the issue of reopening movie theaters. Greidinger complained, “The main thing blocking the studios is that they don’t see movement in New York—and in some other places—but New York is kind of the symbol. Even California is already 50 percent open.” The layoff announcement may well be an effort in part to pressure Cuomo into changing the policy.

Last month, Cineworld reported a loss of $1.6 billion during the first half of 2020 due to its revenue dropping by 67 percent. In its statement issued Monday, the company reported that it was “assessing several sources of additional liquidity and all liquidity raising options are being considered.”

AMC also saw its stock fall by 10 percent Monday morning due to the announcement made by Cineworld. The S&P Global Ratings had already lowered its issuer credit rating of AMC last Friday. The ratings agency explained that AMC could run out of liquidity over the next six months unless it raises additional capital or movie attendance levels substantially improve. AMC’s stock has plunged a total of 41 percent this year. Both AMC and Cineworld, says Deadline, were already “carrying immense debt before the pandemic.”

AMC and the third-largest movie exhibitor in the US, Cinemark, announced Tuesday they intended to keep their theaters open.

Many workers, including those employed with rival movie theater chains, tweeted in support of Cineworld workers. One wrote: “I work for Vue, but all of my solidarity and support goes to you guys. No doubt the same news awaits us sooner rather than later. We’ve been treated horrifically throughout this pandemic, and we deserve better.”

A former Cineworld employee tweeted: “Cineworld were never and have never been about the Staff, glad I left them when I did. … So sorry for the rest of you guys, you are just a number to them.”

Another supporter wrote: “This is unacceptable. I bet the board of executives will make sure to stuff their golden parachutes with as much filthy lucre as they can, while the average worker fears starvation and lack of medical care. TAX THE RICH MORE and stop Corp. welfare!”

Cineworld is leaving about 100 locations open in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. However, 90 percent of the company’s revenue was generated in the US and Britain last year.

The British government recently announced a new job support program which would allow employers and the government to share the cost of maintaining wages of workers who have reduced hours due to the pandemic. However, Greidinger told staff in Britain that the program “cannot work for us when we have almost no income.”

Greidinger’s total compensation at Cineworld Group Plc was £2,109,000 ($US2.7 million) in 2019, and he, along with his brother, owns 29 percent of the company.

US safety agency undermines federal oversight of COVID-19 workplace spread

Shannon Jones

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has rewritten its workplace safety guidelines regarding reporting of COVID-19 infections to give employers a blank check to allow the spread of coronavirus throughout their workforces.

While the deadly virus has ripped through food processing plants, Amazon facilities, auto factories and nursing homes, OSHA has done little or nothing. Since the start of the pandemic the federal agency responsible for workplace safety has only issued citations to 30 employers even though it has received 9,000 complaints and 1,200 referrals from other agencies relating to the handling of COVID-19. OSHA’s highest proposed fine to date is just $40,482.

According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, OHSA recently withdrew its first coronavirus citation after issuing a new legal interpretation. The withdrawn citation concerned Winder Health Care, a nursing home outside Athens, Georgia.

Workers at Ford Dearborn Truck Plant (Source: Ford Media)

The citation of Winder came after OSHA found that the nursing facility failed to report within 24 hours that six employees had been hospitalized with COVID-19. Instead, the nursing home reportedly waited more than two weeks. Initially, the fine proposed by OSHA was a token $6,506 for an “other-than-serious” violation. That was later reduced to just $3,904.

In revoking the fine against Winder, OSHA posted revised wording on its website stating that employers must only report a hospitalization if it occurs within 24-hours of a worker being exposed to the virus on the job. Since the incubation period of the virus after initial exposure is days, if not weeks, this will virtually never happen. The change, in effect, abolishes any requirement that companies notify OSHA of employee COVID-related hospitalizations.

Colin Smith, a clinical assistant professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, told the Journal-Constitution, “The burden of proof has been set so high, that this appears to be another pro-business endeavor to excuse non-reporting.”

Further, the governor of Georgia signed legislation earlier this year shielding businesses and health care providers from liability lawsuits as long as they follow basic health protocols.

As of Sept. 4, OSHA had conducted just 199 inspections in response to complaints and closed more than 8,000 cases without taking any action.

Meatpackers face particularly dire conditions. At least 41,000 workers at 49 plants have tested positive for COVID and at least 193 have died. However as of early September OSHA had issued just 2 COVID-related citations.

Food processor Smithfield Foods was slapped with one of OSHA’s token fines, a $13,494 penalty for “failing to provide a safe environment.” At least 1,294 Smithfield employees have been infected and four have died.

This is in fact the biggest fine that OSHA can levy for a single “serious” violation, even if it involves the death of a worker. This amount is so insignificant that for most big businesses it can be easily absorbed as a minor overhead cost.

OSHA has not set any guidelines for workplace safety in relation to COVID. It has merely called on employers to follow guidelines set by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which themselves are the product of political interference by the Trump administration. It has made clear however, that these are only recommendations, and not enforceable rules.

The news site FairWarning reported on a case where workers at Pennsylvania meat processor Maid-Rite filed a lawsuit against OSHA over its refusal to respond to their complaints. Workers said management offered incentives for workers to come in sick and refused to report when someone tested positive. They also alleged that there were not enough masks and that they were forced to work “shoulder to shoulder.” Half the workers said they had contracted COVID-19.

OSHA brushed aside the workers’ concerns, essentially declaring that since no one had yet died, the situation did not merit serious attention.

Commenting on OSHA’s indifference to COVID-19 safety, a Fiat Chrysler worker in Detroit told the World Socialist Web Site: “This is a blatant attempt to say ‘we don’t care about your safety.’ The government and the corporations are making it clear that their priority is getting labor out of us, not providing safe conditions. They want to keep us from knowing what we need to know to protect ourselves. It worries me that there could be countless outbreaks and workers will not know unless we inform each other.

“Inside my factory, 8 out of 10 times we learn about infections on Facebook groups used by plant workers. The UAW (United Auto Workers) is saying nothing and doing nothing about the fact that we don’t have testing. The factories are a breeding ground for the virus.

“We’ve set up a rank-and-file safety committee because we have to take our rights and safety into our own hands. Workers have to insure and enforce our own safety. But OSHA and other institutions are stripping away our rights and making the factories more like concentration camps.

“If a worker gets sick and dies, they say, ‘Oh well, there are 10 other people to take their spot.’ Allowing the employers not to report cases is criminal.

“Trump’s saying anyone can get over Covid. But not everybody has a private helicopter to take them to the hospital, a private suite and doctors giving them the best medical treatment available.”

In another blatant attack on workers health and safety, a Wisconsin judge blocked the release of state health department data reporting the location of COVID-19 outbreaks and the companies involved, depriving workers of vital information needed to protect themselves.

The judge’s Oct. 1 ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), which sought to block the release of data on the health department website. The WMC claimed that release of the date would amount to “blacklisting” of businesses.

American workplaces are being turned into COVID-19 free-fire zones, where workers are being left to fend for themselves against a virus that is spreading unchecked as the government and big business abandon any attempt at containment. Workers are learning the bitter truth that as far as corporations are concerned their lives are expendable, valued even less by employers than their machinery.

This takes place in the context of rising COVID-19 infections around the US and internationally. Schools and universities are resuming in-person instruction and even limited safety restraints on businesses are being lifted in open defiance of the recommendations of health experts. Both Democrats and Republicans are enforcing this return-to-work policy, which will result in the preventable deaths of tens of thousands. However, the death toll is deemed necessary by Wall Street, which demands workers return to the factories to crank out profits.

Australian budget: A bonanza for business at workers’ expense

Mike Head

Billions more dollars will be poured into the pockets of the corporate elite and high-income recipients as a result of last night’s pandemic-delayed Australian federal budget for 2020-21. And the price is already being paid by the millions of workers thrown out of jobs in the worst economic breakdown since the 1930s Great Depression.

With the support of the opposition Labor Party, the Liberal-National Coalition government has seized on the COVID-19 disaster to accelerate the vast transfer of wealth to the rich that has been imposed over the past four decades.

The bipartisan backing for this budget is a turning point in the restructuring of economic and social life in the interests of a tiny super-rich layer.

Never before has a budget been so blatant in enriching the wealthy. In the enthusiastic words of the Australian Financial Review’s Chanticleer column, the “tsunami of money headed for the corporate sector over the next few years” is “absolutely staggering.”

While the share market is rejoicing, every cent of this “massive cash flow injection for listed [share market] companies” will be extracted from the working class via the decimation of social spending and the forcing of workers, especially the young, into low-wage employment on insecure conditions.

Finance minister Mathias Cormann and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (Credit: @MathiasCormann, Twitter)

Backed by Labor’s immediate pledges to vote for its measures, the government plans to ram an “Omnibus” bill through both houses of parliament within days, before there can be any public scrutiny of the budget’s extraordinary features.

Another $50 billion in tax cuts, wage subsidies and incentives will be pumped into the hands of big business and wealthy individuals. This is on top of the more than $400 billion handed to them by the federal and state governments since March by way of subsidies, “stimulus packages” and low-cost central bank financed loans.

There is nothing to address the catastrophic conditions laid bare by the pandemic—especially the chronic under-funding of public hospitals and aged care homes, and the lack of social and affordable housing. Nominal increases in mental health and home care packages are disastrously short of what is required.

JobKeeper wage subsidies and JobSeeker dole payments will continue to be slashed and about two million laid-off casual workers, visa holders and international students will still be denied any relief.

Even by the budget’s falsely inflated forecasts of a dramatic economic “recovery” by next year, about two million workers will remain unemployed or under-employed for years to come, and real wages will fall.

This is a deliberate program to bludgeon workers into cheap labour employment and unsafe conditions, even as the same “back to work” drive by business and governments internationally is producing a global resurgence of COIVID-19 infections and deaths.

For all the efforts of the government and the ruling class to promote a false sense of public hope, however, this budget’s calculations will be shredded by the worsening worldwide pandemic, the intensifying political crisis in the US—the global capitalist headquarters—and rising geo-strategic conflicts, particularly Washington’s aggression towards China.

To drum up business “confidence,” the entire budget is based on irresponsible and profit-driven assumptions, such as that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available from January. This flies in the face of medical advice. Assumed also is that practically every pandemic safety restriction and internal border control will be lifted by Christmas, and all coronavirus outbreaks will be successfully suppressed.

These predictions are even more unreliable than those in the government’s mid-year economic update, which was blown out of the water by the deadly second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria, the second most populous state.

Equally false is the claim that the cash handed to business and the wealthy will be used to spend and create jobs.

Under the slogan of “jobs, jobs, jobs,” employers will be offered a total of $4 billion to hire unemployed workers aged up to 35. Businesses will receive a weekly subsidy of up to $200 to pay half of what will be the minimum wage, and will need to only employ recipients for 20 hours a week.

Likewise, the unprecedented handouts to big business will create no real new jobs. The corporate boards will only take the cash to boost profits, dividends and executive bonuses. At a cost of $26.7 billion over just two years, an investment allowance will enable almost every company to immediately write off in full any eligible depreciable asset, with no limit on value.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told parliament the plan is “the largest set of investment incentives any Australian government has ever provided.” The lion’s share will go to large companies, because many family and other small businesses are in dire straits, unable to afford such spending.

The budget also included $4.9 billion in loss carry-back provisions to enable the same businesses—those with turnovers of up to $5 billion—to write off any losses incurred until June 2022 against profits made since 2018-19.

In addition, there was a $10 billion increase in the existing $100 billion plan to provide business-related infrastructure.

To try to stimulate consumption, and hence corporate profits, the government’s “stage 2” income tax cuts have been brought forward by two years and backdated to July 1 this year. As a result, individuals on more than $90,000 a year—nearly double the median wage—will get up to $2,745 a year, or about $50 a week, compared to 2017-18. But those on $40,000 will receive less than half that—$1,060, or some $20 a week.

Stage 3 of the plan, which will introduce a virtual flat tax system, with a 30 percent tax bracket between $45,000 and $200,000, remains on schedule for July 2024. That will see the benefit to a dual-income household on $400,000 soar to $23,280 annually.

For all the hype about a “business-led recovery,” the budget papers reveal a darker reality. They warn of a collapse in business investment, which is expected to decline by another 9.5 percent in the year to June 2021.

Because of falling revenues, as well as the corporate handout, the budget deficit for this financial year is forecast to hit $213.7 billion—more than four times the record reached following the 2008 global financial breakdown.

Despite the talk of a sudden economic growth spurt of nearly 5 percent in 2021-22, such deficits are forecast to last for a decade. Gross debt will hit $1.8 trillion by 2030-31—all of which every government will seek to claw back by deeper social spending cuts.

Net overseas migration will plunge from around 154,000 last year to around minus 72,000 in 2020-21, eliminating the main source of Australian capitalism’s economic growth since World War II.

Wage growth of just 1.5 percent is expected by the end of next financial year, which is a real wage cut because the consumer price index is forecast to rise by 1.75 percent over the same period.

To add insult to injury, aged pensioners and other welfare recipients will receive two paltry payments of $250 each by March, on the expectation that their poverty will compel them to spend the money quickly.

Cuts to public universities, the public broadcasting services of the ABC and SBS and cultural programs will intensify as well, in a bid to deaden public consciousness.

In anticipation of war, and to keep pledges made to the Trump administration, the military budget will rise to nearly 2.4 percent of gross domestic product within four years. A billion dollars in spending will be brought forward as part of a $270 billion decade-long plan, announced in July, to arm the military with “more lethal and long-range capabilities” in the words of Defence Minister Linda Reynolds.

To deal with rising political and social discontent, the police and intelligence agencies will receive an extra $450 million, and additional funding will see a total of $1.7 billion spent on “cyber security” surveillance.

Nevertheless, the largesse shoveled toward big business has not satisfied the appetites of the financial aristocracy. Today’s Australian Financial Review editorial criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government for not “using the shock of this recession to drive fundamental change to improve and reform economic performance.”

Significantly, the editorial unfavourably compared the Coalition government to the trade union-backed Labor governments of Hawke and Keating. “The recession of the early 1980s paved the way for the Hawke government’s real wage cuts to make Australia competitive” and “the recession of the early 1990s was followed up with Paul Keating’s domestic competition reform, the productivity-driven enterprise bargaining system and the budget consolidation.”

This must be another warning against any illusions in Labor and the unions. A Labor government would only intensify the pro-business restructuring. The only answer to this historic offensive lies in the turn to the socialist perspective fought for internationally by the Socialist Equality Parties.

Germany’s parliamentary parties elect far-right AfD candidate to Gera city council

Martin Nowak

The latest developments in the east German city of Gera underline the sharp turn to the right by the ruling class. Last Thursday, a retired doctor and member of the far-right, racist Alternative for Germany (AfD), Reinhard Etzrodt, was elected chairman of the city council in the third largest city in the state of Thuringia. His appointment was the first time in post-war history that a far-right candidate filled such a post. Etzrodt received 23 of 40 votes cast, although the AfD has just 12 seats on the city council. This means the right-wing extremist was elevated into office with the support of Germany’s mainstream political parties.

Etzrodt is a leading representative of the “Wing” faction of the AfD in Thuringia led by the Björn Höcke wing and has links to neo-Nazis and far-right terror groups. According to media reports, he took part in the “Thügida” demo in Gera in June 2015. The far-right march was organised by members of the fascist German Democratic Party (NPD) and the “European Action” movement, which has since dissolved. Former cadre of the core cell of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) and activists of the fascist network “Combat 18”—banned at the beginning of 2020—also took part in the protest.

Etzrodt’s participation in the march alongside far-right terrorists was no accident but rather reveals the real character of the AfD. Just a few days ago, the party was forced to sack Christian Lüth, the head of the press office of the AfD parliamentary group. Lüth had proudly described himself as a “fascist” in chat discussions and, according to research by the TV station ProSieben, ranted, in the course of a secretly recorded conversation in a bar, that migrants should be “shot or gassed.” When asked whether he wanted to bring more migrants to Germany, he replied: “Yes, because it’s better for the AfD. We can still shoot them all afterwards. That’s not an issue. Or gas them, whatever you want. I don’t care!”

Reinhard Etzrodt (back middle) in June 2015 at the Thügida demonstration in Gera (Photo: Antifa Recherche Gera)

Following Etzrodt’s election, all of the establishment parties sought to maintain their hands were clean. The new Thuringian state chair of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Mario Voigt, declared his faction had “clearly agreed not to vote for the AfD candidate,” while the Left Party and the Greens accused the CDU of doing exactly that. “If red-red-green did not vote for the AfD candidate, which one can assume, then in terms of arithmetic there must have been votes from the CDU for Etzrodt. So that’s clear,” declared Daniel Reinhardt, who sits on the Gera city council for the Left Party.

What is “arithmetically” clear is that the fascist candidate received support from the ranks of mainstream parties. There are currently 42 seats divided between 11 parliamentary groups on the Gera city council. The AfD has 12 MPs, the Left Party eight, the CDU six, the Citizenship Gera group three, the alliance “For Gera” three, the Greens three, the SPD three, and one each for the Free Voters, the Liberal Alliance, the neo-liberal FDP and The Party. Even if one assumed—which is unlikely—that all the representatives of smaller factions voted for the AfD, Etzrodt would still have received only 21 votes. In other words: at least two pro-AfD votes came from mainstream parties with representation in the German parliament.

There are some indications that the votes may have come from the CDU and FDP. In November 2019, the deputy chair of the CDU parliamentary group in Thuringia, Michael Heym, and 17 other CDU state politicians spoke in favour of “open-ended” talks with the AfD. Heym referred to a “bourgeois right-wing majority” and speculated on the possibility of a CDU-FDP government tolerated by the AfD. This was an option raised at the time by the fascist chairman of the Thuringia AfD, Björn Höcke, and this strategy was then implemented after the state election. In February this year, the state chairman of the FDP, Thomas Kemmerich, was elected state premier with the votes of the CDU and AfD. Following spontaneous mass protests all over Germany—20,000 alone took to the streets in the Thuringia state capital, Erfurt—Kemmerich resigned from his post.

This, however, had no impact on the right-wing policy of the CDU and FDP. In the course of a right-wing demonstration in Gera against coronavirus restrictions, Kemmerich marched alongside well-known neo-Nazis. The protest was organised by the Gera-based entrepreneur Peter Schmidt, a non-aligned member of the CDU Economic Council. Introducing Kemmerich as a speaker at the demonstration, Schmidt declared him to be the “only legitimate prime minister.”

The claim by the SPD-Left Party and Greens that they represent a “left alternative” to the brown alliance of CDU, FDP and AfD is pure hypocrisy. In Thuringia, in particular, the Left Party, SPD and Greens are also prepared to strike deals with the fascists. In March, for example, state Premier Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) help secure the AfD deputy Michael Kaufmann the post of vice president of the Thuringian parliament. He had “decided very fundamentally ... to clear the way for parliamentary participation, to which every faction has a right,” Ramelow said at the time.

The SPD and the Greens are also quite prepared to line up with the AfD and other right-wing extremist parties. Also last Thursday, the SPD voted in Eisenach, Thuringia, together with the AfD and NPD in favour of an application to fill a position on the local Board of Trustees.

One year ago, representatives of the SPD, CDU and FDP elected the deputy chairman of the Hessian NPD, Stefan Jagsch, to lead the Altenstadt community of Wetterau. Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that the SPD city council faction in Sassnitz in Rügen was working together with the AfD and that Green Party politician Uwe Börner had formed a municipal council faction with the AfD in Gohrisch, Saxony. At about the same time, SPD candidate Udo Wernitz raised the prospect of a coalition with the AfD in connection with state elections in Brandenburg.

At the start of this year, the Left Party, SPD and Greens voted in the Mecklenburg town of Waren/Müritz in favour of a motion from the AfD. In May, the city parliamentary group led by the Left Party politician Ingo Paeschke cooperated with the AfD on a building project in the Brandenburg town of Forst. Paeschke even held a joint press conference with the right-wing extremists.

In May, Günter Schulz from the Bavarian SPD was elected deputy mayor of Höchstadt with the votes of the AfD; in September, the SPD broke ranks with its Left Party-Green coalition partners to vote for an AfD countermotion in the district assembly of Berlin-Pankow.

The cooperation between the AfD and nominally “left-wing” bourgeois parties is now so widespread that Gera AfD city councillor Dieter Laudenbach said after the latest election, “I don’t know whether the CDU voted for our candidate, and I think it is highly conceivable that the votes also came from the Left Party or the SPD.”

Regardless of who ultimately voted for Etzrodt and the AfD last Thursday, the election is a warning and contains important lessons. In the midst of the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the German ruling class is once again relying on a fascist party to enforce its policies of social cuts and militarism against growing social and political opposition on the part of workers and youth. As was the case in the past, the struggle against fascism and war requires the independent mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist programme.

Trump breaks off talks on pandemic stimulus bill

Barry Grey

One day after his return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received millions of dollars’ worth of medical care for his COVID-19 infection at taxpayer expense, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he was breaking off talks on a new stimulus bill until after the November election.

In a series of tweets, he wrote: “Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bail out poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19. We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith.

“I am rejecting their request, and looking to the future of our Country. I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business.”

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

Trump went on say that he had asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “focus full time” on confirming his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, the far-right judge whose pre-election confirmation will virtually ensure that an eventual ruling on the election outcome will be favorable to Trump. Senate Republicans plan to hold a confirmation hearing for Barrett next Monday.

Trump’s announcement is a savage attack on the working class under conditions of a worsening pandemic, a rising tide of permanent layoffs—on top what were already near-Depression levels of unemployment—soaring hunger and tens of millions of looming evictions and home foreclosures.

The move is consistent with Trump’s escalation of plans to carry out an election coup d’état, refusing to recognize the results of the election if, as seems increasingly likely, they go against him, mobilizing his fascistic supporters inside and outside the police and military, and turning to a stacked Supreme Court to validate a stolen election and a de facto presidential dictatorship.

He is not basing his strategy on election polls, but rather on the drive by the most right-wing sections of the corporate-financial oligarchy to authoritarian rule.

In this civil war conspiracy, he is relying above all on his supine and complicit political opposition, the Democratic Party. The Democrats, the presidential campaign of Joe Biden and the media aligned with them seized on Trump’s COVID-19 illness to wish him a speedy recovery and rapid return to his “duties,” which center on prosecuting his homicidal “herd immunity” policy in the pandemic, stoking military confrontations around the world, and plotting a coup to overturn the Constitution and violently crush mounting social opposition at home.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been holding sporadic and desultory talks with Trump’s treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on a new stimulus bill, issued a lame response on Twitter to Trump’s announcement, writing: “President Trump has shown his true colors: walking away from coronavirus relief negotiations and refusing to give real help to poor children, the unemployed, and America’s hard working families.”

In fact, the Democrats colluded with Trump and the Republicans to allow the expiration of the $600-a-week federal unemployment supplement on July 31, reducing the income of millions of workers by two-thirds or more. This followed their near-unanimous support for the CARES Act passed in March, which has provided some $6 trillion in handouts and virtually free credit to the Wall Street banks and major corporations. Unlimited cash infusions by the Fed have fueled a massive rise on the stock market, which has boosted the wealth of America’s billionaires by $845 billion during the pandemic.

In August, Trump enacted a temporary, six-week $300 boost in jobless pay by executive order, but that is rapidly running out. Meanwhile, last week’s Labor Department employment report showed that nearly 700,000 workers dropped out of the workforce in September.

Non-farm payrolls rose by just 661,000 jobs, less than half of the number in August and the fourth monthly decline since June. The number of workers considered permanently unemployed because there are no jobs for them to return to rose to 3.8 million. This is an increase of 2.5 million since February.

The ranks of long-term unemployed out of work for 27 weeks or more increased by 781,000 to 2.4 million. These workers have exhausted their 26-week limit on state unemployment benefits, and another five million laid-off workers will reach this limit over the next two months.

Just over the past several days, US corporations have announced more than 100,000 new layoffs. These include at least 40,000 airline jobs, 45,000 cinema jobs, 28,000 Disney resort and theme park jobs, along with 280,000 education jobs.

What is unfolding in the United States—and around the world—is a social catastrophe that promises to exceed even the devastation of the years of the Great Depression. In the US, 10 million people have already lost their health insurance as a result of being laid off.

Food banks have seen the volume of food distribution soar by nearly 80 percent. A survey taken by the US Census Bureau in August found that 10.5 percent of adults, or 22.3 million people, said they could not afford to adequately feed their families, up from 18 million in March.

Bloomberg recently published a report on hunger in the United States that found that 50 million Americans, about one-sixth of the entire population, will struggle to afford enough to eat this year. This is up by 45 percent year-on-year.

The Washington Post published an article on September 30 based on Labor Department data showing that since mid-March, the lowest 25 percent of income earners have seen their wages decrease by as much as 30 percent, while the top 25 percent have seen their earnings remain the same or slightly increase. Meanwhile, ultra-wealthy pandemic profiteers such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have seen their wealth increase by 65 and 50 percent respectively .

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) imposed a moratorium on evictions until January 1, 2021. The CDC warned that as many as 30 to 40 million people could be at risk of eviction and warned that “A wave of evictions on that scale would be unprecedented in modern times.”

However, the order does not reduce rent payments, or cancel fees, penalties or interest. During the moratorium, rent and fees will accrue as usual, leaving renters with a massive bill in the new year.

Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told National Public Radio, “While an eviction moratorium is an essential step, it is a half-measure that extends a financial cliff for renters to fall off of when the moratorium expires and back rent is owed.”

In addition, millions of homeowners are facing the prospect of foreclosure. According to mortgage analytics firm Black Knight, 3.9 million households were not paying their mortgages as of late August.

These conditions are not the unavoidable result of a biological disaster. Rather, they are the result of a deliberate class policy being carried out by the ruling corporate-financial oligarchy, which controls both major political parties. Trump, along with the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, having been briefed on the virulent and deadly nature of the coronavirus in January, concealed the danger of the pandemic from the public for fear of spooking the financial markets.

After passing the CARES Act bailout, they moved rapidly to reopen the economy by forcing workers back into unsafe factories and workplaces, using mass layoffs and looming poverty as a bludgeon. This homicidal policy, which has fueled a new upsurge of infections and deaths, has been expanded with the drive to reopen the schools and colleges. For the ruling class, compelling workers to resume producing profits for the capitalist owners is dictated by the need to back up the vast expansion of government and corporate debt with real surplus value pumped out of the working class.

This is a bipartisan policy, spearheaded by Trump but implemented on the state and local levels by Democratic as well as Republican officials. The bitter conflicts between the two parties center on questions of imperialist foreign policy, with the Democrats demanding a more aggressive stance towards Russia and the Middle East. On the war on the working class, they are in basic agreement.

In last week’s presidential debate, Biden did not even raise the issue of mass unemployment or the cutoff of federal aid for laid-off workers, and he has made clear his support for the back-to-work and back-to-school drives.