Modi regime steps up repression of farmers opposing its pro-agribusiness laws

Wasantha Rupasinghe

“There were several layers of security,” noted an Indian Express report: “two heavy layers of metal barricading (along with spools of razor wire); a layer of large stone boulders; followed by a layer of (more than 2,000) nails (embedded on the road) and a layer of concrete barricades. A few meters ahead of that was another layer of stone boulders, followed by yet another layer of concrete barricades after a few meters.”

Anyone thinking that this was a description of a war zone would be badly mistaken. The report describes just one element in the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s mounting campaign of repression against farmers who are encamped on the borders of India’s capital, Delhi, as part of a protest against its pro-agribusiness farm laws.

In an effort to force an end to the two-and-a-half month agitation, the authorities are working to confine tens of thousands of farmers—some reports place the numbers in excess of 200,000—to what are effectively now open-air prisons.

The protesting farmers are demanding the repeal of the three farm laws that the BJP government rammed through parliament in September, at the same time as it amended the labor code to illegalize most strikes and promote a “hire and fire,” “flexible” labour market.

The three farm laws will pave the way for domestic and international agribusiness companies to dominant India’s agricultural sector. The farmers, the majority of whom struggle to support their families on plots of 2 hectares (5 acres) or less, rightly fear that their livelihoods are threatened and that the government is intent on abolishing India’s Minimum Support Price system.

The BJP government has surrounded the farmers’ camp sites on the outskirts of Delhi, particularly the three largest, situated at the Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri border crossings, with war-like barricades, manned by huge numbers of police. Heavy security deployments block access roads into the national capital, as well as access to nearby amenities.

On Thursday, police prevented 15 opposition MPs from visiting the farmer protest encampment at the Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh/Delhi border crossing.

“Farmers are barricaded behind fortress-like concrete barriers and barbed wire fencing,” tweeted one MP, Harsimrat Kaur Badal. “Even ambulances and fire brigades cannot enter the protest site.” A leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Badal served in Modi’s cabinet until the Punjab-based SAD withdrew from the government to protest the farm laws.

“The impression we got at the Delhi Ghazipur border is like the border between India and Pakistan,” the 15 MPs subsequently wrote in a letter of protest to the speaker of the lower house of parliament. “The condition of farmers resembles that of prisoners in jail.”

This vicious state repression has been ordered by the Delhi police, which is under the direct control of Modi’s chief henchman, the Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, and supported by the BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, the two states that encircle India’s National Capital Territory.

Referring to the thousands of nails placed on roadways to puncture the tires of vehicles coming from Haryana, Sudesh Goyat, a protesting farmer, told the Express, “I call what they’ve created here a ‘China wall’ (Great Wall of China.) Are they so scared of farmers?” Commenting on the brutal intent behind the barricades, he added, “My biggest concern is they have not left any room for an ambulance to pass through.”

According to another Express report, the barricades have cut off the farmers’ access to roughly 100 portable toilets. The BBC reported, “All roads going from UP [Uttar Pradesh] to Delhi have been closed. Even the walkways and footpaths have been blocked.”

The Modi government has also ordered the shutoff of electricity and water supplies to the agitation sites. Municipal workers have been instructed to stop collecting garbage, leading to mounting piles of waste at the protest sites.

In tandem with its massive security buildup, the BJP government has adopted a more aggressive political posture. It has said any further meetings with farm union leaders are dependent on their abandoning their demand for the repeal of the three pro-corporate farm laws; and, contrary to media expectations, included no measures to placate farmers in Monday’s 2021–2022 budget.

Both domestic and international capital are adamant that the Modi government must implement its farm laws and quicken the pace of pro-market reforms, so as to enhance the profitability of Indian capitalism. Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) endorsed Modi’s pro-agribusiness laws, calling them a “significant step forward.” The S&P credit-rating agency, for its part, is threatening to slash India’s rating to junk-bond status if it retreats on the laws’ implementation.

The new Joe Biden-led US administration has also voiced its support. “The United States welcomes steps that would improve the efficiency of India’s markets and attract greater private sector investment,” said a State Department spokesperson Wednesday.

The Modi government’s greatest fear is that the farmers’ agitation will become a catalyst for a broader working-class-led movement against its pro-investor economic reforms and associated austerity measures. Tens of millions of workers joined two one-day general strikes during 2020 against the government’s economic onslaught on working people, including privatizations and the promotion of contract labour. The second of these strikes occurred on November 26, the same day that the farmers launched their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) agitation. By means of a massive mobilisation of police and security forces, the Modi government prevented the farmers from entering Delhi, forcing them to establish the camps where they remain to this day.

The Modi government seized on clashes between the farmers and police during a January 26 Republic Day protest in Delhi to justify the latest round of repression. Cynically claiming it was protecting “public safety,” the authorities shut off mobile phone and internet services in the outskirts of Delhi and adjacent areas of UP and Haryana after January 26. The BJP-ruled state government in Haryana subsequently extended the suspension of mobile services till 5 p.m. February 4 in seven of the state’s 22 districts.

The Delhi police have filed 44 criminal cases and arrested 122 people in relation to the “violence” on January 26. The police have also filed cases of “rioting, attempted murder and criminal conspiracy” against at least 37 farmers’ union leaders and activists, including Medha Patkar and Yogendra Yadav, alleging they made “inflammatory speeches” and were “involved in the violence.”

More than half a dozen journalists who covered the January 26 demonstration have also been targeted with baseless charges. In a statement on February 2, Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged the Indian authorities to drop the charges against the journalists, which include “sedition, promoting communal disharmony and making statements prejudicial to national integration.” Ganguly noted that the government is focused on “discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government and prosecuting those reporting on the events.”

The government is particularly worried about media reports that exposed the police’s gunning down of a protesting farmer who was driving a tractor during the January 26 rally. At least six senior journalists and editors from BJP-ruled states, together with a prominent Congress Party politician, Shashi Tharoor, are facing sedition charges for allegedly “misreporting” the facts concerning the death of the protester.

On January 30, Delhi police also detained two journalists, Dharmender Singh and Mandeep Punia, who were covering the protests, alleging that they “misbehaved” towards the police. Punia, a freelance journalist, was deliberately targeted for his reports on a BJP-sponsored mob that threw stones at the farmers and vandalized their tents, while police stood by, at the protest site on the Singhu border between Delhi and Haryana on January 29. The police released Singh the next day, but they have sent Punia to judicial custody for 14 days for allegedly obstructing and assaulting a police officer.

The government repression has prompted other farmers to join the protest. Media reports have noted that thousands of farmers, including large contingents of women, have arrived at the protest sites in Haryana. On Monday night, the farmers blocked the Jind-Chandigarh highway at Kandela village in protest at the suspension of internet services, which has disrupted their children’s studies.

Addressing a press conference at the Singhu border on February 2, farmer union leaders announced that farmers will carry out a nationwide three-hour “chakka jam,” a blockade of national and state highways, today to protest the suspension of internet services and the harassment of protesters by the authorities.

With the political crisis for the ruling elite triggered by the farmers’ protest showing no signs of abating, the opposition Congress Party is endeavouring to defuse tensions. Punjab’s Congress Party Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh called February 2 for an “all-party conference” to seek the “immediate withdrawal of farm laws.”

A statement issued by the Punjab Congress government after the meeting, which was boycotted by the BJP and Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party, appealed for an “early resolution of the crisis.” Making clear that his main concern was to avoid a social explosion, the chief minister added, “We have to work to resolve this issue before things go out of hand.”

Congress is fully committed to pro-investor economic reforms, of which the Modi government’s farm laws are a part. It was a Congress Party government that in the early 1990s initiated the drive to make India a centre of cheap-labour production and services for global capital; and it led the United Progressive Alliance government that during its decade in office (2004–2014) pressed forward with a raft of neo-liberal “reforms,” while forging an Indo-US “global strategic partnership” with Washington.

Over the past three decades, Congress Party-led governments repeatedly sought to introduce pro-agribusiness measures akin to those now championed by Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP, but backed down for fear of mass opposition.

On Wednesday, at the request of 16 opposition parties, the Modi government agreed to hold 15 hours of discussion on the farm laws in parliament. Given that the Modi government has repeatedly insisted that it will not repeal the farm laws, this manoeuvre amounts to an attempt to provide the government and opposition parties with some “democratic” cover and the opportunity to pose as friends of the farmers while doing nothing to endanger the reforms.

British Gas workers continue strike action against fire and rehire threats

Barry Mason

Around 7,500 workers at energy company British Gas began a four-day strike yesterday. British Gas, owned by Centrica, supplies gas and electric energy and services equipment and has around 20,000 employees.

Those on strike include 4,000 service and repair gas engineers, 1,700 smart metering engineers, 600 central heating installers, 540 electrical engineers and 170 specialist business gas engineers. The GMB union members have already taken 12 days of strike action. This has led to a backlog of 170,000 boiler repairs and the delay of 200,000 service visits.

A British gas van

Yesterday, the GMB announced an additional 12 days of strikes, to be taken in three lots of four days—on February 12, February 19 and February 26. The union’s Central Executive Council says it will continue strike action through to mid-April.

Workers are opposing British Gas’s plans to impose inferior contracts which would mean an effective 20 percent pay cut. The company announced restructuring plans in June last year, including shedding 5,000 jobs.

Following negotiations, three of the other unions recognised by British Gas, Unison, Unite and Prospect, reached agreements to accept the inferior terms. This includes 7,000 front-line office workers, most of whom are represented by Unison.

The GMB has done everything it can to try and reach its own rotten agreement with the company. The union held a consultative ballot in August after British Gas revealed its plans returning a 90 percent vote in favour, but delayed calling a strike ballot for months. This gave space for the other unions to negotiate their sellouts.

Only in November did the GMB ballot its members for strike action. The votes in December produced an 86 percent majority for strike action by gas and electrical engineers and 89 percent by other British Gas GMB members.

Centrica announced it was prepared to issue section 188 notices to its employees. Such a notice enables an employer who has failed to negotiate changes to fire and reinstate its employees on different terms and conditions.

In fighting this threat, British Gas workers are combatting a national assault by big business on the working class. So called “fire and rehire” ultimatums are becoming the chosen method by which companies push through long-planned attacks on workers’ jobs and conditions, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext.

The unions’ only concern is that such methods undermine their role as a labour police force, able to impose changes on behalf of the employers. At a UK parliament business select committee discussing the dispute on February 2, GMB national officer Justin Bowden accused the company of “poisoning the well”, adding, “It has no place in modern industrial relations, it is an utterly un-British type of mechanism.”

Other examples of the “hire and fire” strategy include its use by bus company Go North West in Manchester. The company, which is part of the multi-billion pound Go Ahead group, wants to impose an inferior contract including a 10 percent pay cut, working extra hours for no additional pay and cuts to sick pay for the 500 drivers and other staff. The company is pushing ahead with these plans despite the Unite union proposing measures to save the company £1 million a year and a pay freeze saving the company an additional £200,000. Unite is holding a ballot of its members at the depot, which runs until February 9.

The bus workers voted for strike action by a more than 90 percent majority in a consultative ballot last September. Rather than proceeding to a strike ballot, the union appealed to the Go Ahead group to pressure Go North West to drop their plans.

Another example is at British Airways’ cargo handling operation at Heathrow airport. The company threatened to fire and rehire its entire workforce on inferior terms. Some workers faced losing a quarter of their income under the new terms. The Unite members voted to strike almost unanimously and came out for nine days between December 25 and January 2. The union initially refused to set strike dates, hoping to reach agreement with management, as it did in other sectors of BA.

Three further days of strikes beginning January 22 were suspended at the last minute, with Unite citing “progress” in negotiations. The two parties reached an agreement and another round of strikes set for this weekend has been suspended pending a ballot on BA’s new terms, which Unite is recommending workers accept.

Unite states that the deal includes “the end of fire and rehire” and “an increase in pay for a significant proportion of staff”. Two key points listed are “no compulsory redundancies” and an agreement that “workers will revert to previous contractual provisions subject to agreed changes ” [emphasis added]. As of this writing the ballot result has still to be announced.

The extent of employers’ fire and rehire threats nationally was revealed by the results of a Trades Union Congress (TUC) poll published January 25. The poll showed nearly one in 10 (nine percent) of workers in Britain had been faced with having to re-apply for their jobs on worse terms and conditions or be sacked. Nearly a quarter reported they had seen their hours or pay cut back since March last year. This rises to 30 percent of low-paid workers, earning less than £15,000 a year.

Reporting the poll, the TUC writes, “The government promised in 2019 that it would bring forward a new employment bill to improve people’s rights at work. But there has been no sign of the legislation. The TUC says that improving workers’ rights and pay is a key test of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up agenda’. The union body says any move to water down European Union-derived protections on safe working hours, rest-breaks ‘would be a betrayal of that promise.’”

The TUC has the gall to make this statement after having effectively declared open season on workers’ lives and livelihoods throughout the pandemic. When the virus struck, the TUC immediately entered talks with the government and oversaw a situation in which strike after strike was called off in the name of national unity. This opened the door to the wave of fire and rehire threats and the “levelling down” of employment contracts which the TUC now reports with feigned dismay.

The TUC then supported the criminal reopening of the economy, in what it hailed as a “mass return to work”, allowing thousands of workers to become infected, and backed the “winter plan” of unemployment, pay cuts and corporate bailouts devised by Chancellor Rishi Sunak. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady posed for photo opportunities in Downing Street with Sunak and Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Director General Dame Carolyn Fairbairn.

Experts warn Hawaii on the brink of major outbreak and hospital overcrowding catastrophe

Angelo Perera

Despite its relatively low case numbers, the state of Hawaii is on the verge of a major COVID-19 outbreak which is just weeks away. The Healthcare Association of Hawaii warned Hawaii Public Radio on January 8 that by February 19 hospitals would reach full capacity, noting that hospitalizations were up by 77 percent in the previous two weeks. The warnings about a coming wave of cases has faced a near media blackout as the state pushes to reopen schools.

Front view of The Queen's Medical Center (Wikimedia Commons)

The site Covidactnow.org, which tracks statistics, has labeled Maui as being on the verge of an outbreak with zero ICU capacity available. The Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) reported 92 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the statewide total to 26,187.

Significantly, Hawaii’s effective reproduction rate (Rt) was 1.12 according to data gathered from rt.live on January 27—the second highest within the United States. This means that every infected person is spreading the virus to 1.12 other people. The data collection site rt.live is owned by Instagram, and recently stopped publicizing data. It projects a message on its page arguing that with the administration of vaccines, the Rt figure is no longer of value and that one should “never rely too heavily on a single metric.” The suspension of this aggregated data raises concern, particularly since the virus is still spreading out of control throughout the United States, and it remains undetermined to what degree the vaccines—which have so far only been administered to a small segment of the population—slow the spread of infection in the population.

Adding to the concern is the February 2 announcement by DOH officials that analysis pointed to the possible spread of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 UK variant in Hawaii. The DOH says it will release definitive proof by the end of this week once the genome sequencing is completed. However, state officials and the media have sought to downplay the news and insist that no changes to current health and safety protocols are necessary at this time.

Just last week, Hawaii acting epidemiologist, Dr. Sarah Kemble, announced that scientists have also detected a variant associated with California outbreaks among seven patients on Oahu, one on Maui and one on Kauai, proving that opening travel to and from the mainland has resulted in increased infections. In mid-October, Hawaii arbitrarily reduced its quarantine period from 14 to 10 days, allowing travelers with a 72-hour-old negative coronavirus test to bypass quarantining altogether. Traveling to Oahu from another Hawaiian island requires no test nor a quarantine. Significantly, all four COVID-19 deaths reported on Wednesday were from Oahu.

Acting in the interest of the ruling class and tourist industry, Hawaii state officials have refused to adopt the lockdown measures needed to curb the spread of the virus and have pushed the reopening of tourism while downplaying the degree of community spread. Maui, which has a population of 167,417 has a test positivity rate of 7.1 percent, far above the 5 percent guideline outlined by the World Health Organization for coming out of a lockdown.

Maui only has a total of 31 ICU beds and 38 ventilators, meaning that even a moderate surge in cases will easily overwhelm the system. With the threat of a major outbreak looming, the situation facing medical workers remains dire throughout the state where hospitals are already nearing capacity. Across Hawaii there are a total of 339 ICU beds, and 196 of them are currently occupied. Lanai—the island owned by Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison—has a single hospital with just four critical care beds.

It is under these conditions that the Hawaii Nurses’ Association (HNA) Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 50, forced acontract on nurses at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, averting a strike. Significantly, none of the nurses’ demands were met in the contract, which the union pushed through and nurses were unable to read before the vote. The major concerns of nurses, including a lack of access to new N95 masks, an end to the multi-use of masks, and the dangerous policy of caring for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients on a single shift remain unresolved.

A nurse from the Kapiolani Medical Center spoke with the WSWS and expressed dissatisfaction on how OPEIU Local 50 quickly pushed the sellout contract as a victory to the nurses. “The Union said the nurses won, but nurses didn’t feel that way at all! The hospital has continued to run out of equipment since the beginning of the pandemic. A nurse got COVID-19 and they said it was community acquired. The hospital showed massive disrespect toward nurses.” The outcome of the vote tally has not been made public. Ninety-three percent of nurses voted in favor of authorizing the strike out of concern for the safety of patients and staff.

While the coronavirus continues to spread, Hawaii Governor David Ige is pushing to return to in-person teaching by offering to vaccinate school employees as essential front-line workers. Although 18,200 school employees have signed up for vaccinations—half of the teacher worker force—reports show that only a small percentage have actually received the first dose of the vaccine. The Hawaii State Teachers Association has enthusiastically endorsed this plan, stating that teacher vaccinations “will open up safer opportunities to increase in-person learning options.” The necessity of vaccinating the entire population, including students, and the families of teachers and students has not been raised by the union.

Meanwhile, data continues to reveal that school openings facilitate the spread of COVID-19. On August 20, around the time that many K-12 schools were returning for classes in the US, child cases totaled 442,785 — 9.3 percent of the 4.76 million total cases for all ages. By November 12, the number of total cases had risen by 87.5 percent to over 9 million. Child cases, in turn, had risen by 135 percent to 1.04 million.

Strikes against face-to-face teaching at Bavarian schools widen

Gregor Link

Students in Bavaria are striking against the state government’s attempts to force graduating classes back into in-person lessons amid the pandemic. School strikes, which began in Nuremberg on Monday at seven schools, then spread to Augsburg within three days and met with a huge response on social media among students from all over the country.

Students arrive at the 'Friedensburg Oberschule' school for the first day at school after the summer vacations during the new coronavirus outbreak in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Participating in the strikes in Nuremberg on Monday were high school graduates from the Hans-Sachs-Gymnasium, the Dürer-Gymnasium, the Bertolt-Brecht-Schule, the Neues Gymnasium and the state vocational high school (BOS). At the state-run Fachoberschule 2 (FOS 2), only 30 of the 400 students in the 17 graduating classes showed up for the face-to-face classes on Tuesday.

In an “urgent request” to the state government, student representatives at FOS had noted that they had received no response from the “responsible departments,” in some cases for months. “The government is giving us an ultimatum,” counterposing “our health and that of those we care about to education,” the students said. “This is an ultimatum we cannot and will not agree to.” The high incidence levels of 130, as well as the emergence of the new viral strains, were “deeply worrying.” The student body had therefore decided by majority vote on Saturday “that a strike will take place against in-person teaching.” This was “also agreed and supported in the upper secondary schools.”

“The main demand of our strike has been met,” Mike, a high school graduate from FOS Nuremberg, told the World Socialist Web Site.

“Originally, all non-attending students were excluded from online classes. Now, at our school, anyone who wants to is allowed to study from home. Citing ‘fear of infection,’ students can call in sick on days they should attend in person and participate in online classes instead. Students who lacked decent technology have been given a tablet for this purpose.” He and the other students, Mike said, were “proud and very positively surprised” by the growth of the strikes and the great support they have won among students and teachers.

In Augsburg, final year students at three secondary schools went on strike at the beginning of the week, starting with around 50 students from the Fachober und Berufsoberschule (FOS/BOS) on Monday. Student spokesperson Dominique Treske emphasised to broadcaster SAT.1 the risk of contagion associated with the journey to school. “Many come from the surrounding area and sometimes have to travel an hour and a half by train—and then by tram.” Under the current conditions, public transport was “the main place of infection.”

A petition in which the students demand, among other things, a “considerable reduction” in the number of exams and school-leaving examinations has already received over 8,000 signatures.

At the Holbein Gymnasium, final year students first wrote a letter of protest to state Education Minister Michael Piazolo (Free Voters) after a survey showed that 90 percent of students rejected a return to alternating in-person and remote classes. Then, on Wednesday, only 25 of the 160 prospective graduating students showed up for face-to-face classes. “We all called in sick,” explained pupil spokesperson Luisa Link, stressing “the health risk for pupils and teachers … even more so now that the [COVID] mutations have been detected in Augsburg.”

The 60 final year students at Bayernkolleg also went on strike on Wednesday. As pupil Hanna Zrayenko told the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, the strike would continue after an examination next Tuesday. In addition to the Abitur graduation exam, it was “also about our health and that of our teachers,” she said. The strike was an “act of solidarity” because teachers, (classed as civil servants), could not stop working. In a press release, the students demand, among other things, the expansion of digital teaching options and the hiring of new educators to relieve teachers and reduce class sizes.

If the state government has its way, Bavaria is currently threatened with a general return to face-to-face teaching from February 15. A spokesperson for the Education Ministry told the press that the “goal is to have as much face-to-face teaching as possible.”

“One is forced to weigh up between education and health,” commented Mike. “We all want to pass our exams, after all. But we wanted to campaign for everyone who is scared to stay at home. I know what it’s like to be scared—I myself was still in serious therapy just last year. We were expecting to strike until everyone was on the verge of being kicked out.”

The students’ fight for safe education enjoys the support of teachers and headteachers, who are unanimous in calling for the continuation of distance learning for all students.

“It won’t be long before the first students are back in quarantine for 14 days,” Bianca V., a teacher from Bavaria, told the WSWS. “You sit on top of each other all day with a mask on; at home you have to wonder if you might just be carrying the virus from the classroom into your family.

“Schools have nowhere near the internet bandwidth needed for connection from the classroom—so you only manage a fraction of the material relevant to the Abitur exams this way. The pupils in Nuremberg are therefore absolutely right: where distance learning works, it is the much better way for pupils in this age group. For pupils with poor internet connections, there would be a need for additional facilities in libraries, for example.”

However, the government and all the establishment parties have made it clear again and again in recent months that they are hostile to the legitimate and popular demands of students and instead intend to put all available resources at the service of militarism and trade war. While the current federal budget slashes expenditure on education and health, military spending is to be increased and the security agencies strengthened. Schools are to open so that parents can work and businesses can make a profit.

“The many should not suffer for the profit of a few,” Mike said. “But the pandemic has shown that the greed of a few seems to outweigh the interests of the many.” The “real starting point” of the crisis, he said, is the “gap between rich and poor.”

“I get that feeling in schools, too, where attendance is supposed to be compulsory during a pandemic, even though online classes are available.” This leads to “struggling students either doing badly or living in fear—or not at all,” he said.

“I saw what happened in France,” Mike added, referring to the students who demonstrated for infection control in schools last year and were attacked by riot police using mace and clubs. “That might have happened to us too if we had all demonstrated in front of the school. To the French students, I say: Restez à la maison, restez forts! Et montrez votre solidarité avec les faibles de votre école! [Stay at home and stay strong! Show solidarity with the weakest in your school!]”

“I would personally support” a Europe-wide school and general strike, says Mike, “this is a Europe-wide problem.” He said the international unity of students and workers is crucial: “In Turkey, protesting students are called terrorists. If so many students of a multicultural society unite and all differences of opinion become unimportant, the government has a problem.”

January jobs report shows ongoing economic disaster as US Senate strips minimum wage increase from the relief bill

Shannon Jones

The US Senate voted Friday morning to approve a budget bill, a key step toward enactment of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. In securing passage of the budget bill the Democrats made several key concessions to Republicans, barring a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour during the pandemic, putting a graduated income cap on the $1,400 stimulus payment to individuals and barring payments to undocumented immigrants.

President Biden, accompanied by Kamala Harris, speaks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Peter DeFazio, and Rep. John Yarmuth, in the Oval Office, Feb. 5, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The action on the relief package came as new government economic figures show there was a net increase of just 49,000 jobs in January following a revised figure showing a loss of 227,000 jobs in December. November employment figures were also revised downward. For the week ending January 30 there were 779,000 new claims for unemployment benefits, a decline from the previous week, but still an unprecedented level.

After the Senate vote the Democratic-controlled House passed a key procedural vote clearing the way for the lower chamber in Congress to pass the pandemic relief bill by the end of the month.

The employment figures show the continued heavy economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and their families. With the daily COVID-19 death toll running at over 3,000 and wide areas of the economy nonfunctional, millions are suffering destitution, hunger, the cutoff of medical benefits and the danger of eviction.

The Democrats are using a parliamentary tactic, budget reconciliation, to advance the pandemic relief bill to avoid the threat of a Republican filibuster. However, despite having a working majority in both houses of Congress, the Democrats capitulated on the proposal for a phased-in increase of the minimum wage, set currently at the sub-starvation rate of $7.25 an hour, to $15 by 2025. This after one Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, threatened to vote “no.”

The miserable $7.25 rate was set in the first year of the Obama administration and has not budged since then despite periodic cynical posturing by Democrats.

Following the Senate vote Biden said it is likely the minimum wage increase would be dropped from the final relief bill after it emerges from the House-Senate reconciliation process. He claimed it would be put forward later as a separate measure, but passage even in a scaled-back form is extremely unlikely given the ability of Senate Republicans to block legislation using the filibuster.

The refusal of the Democrats—in full control of Congress and the White House—to draw a line in the sand over the minimum wage increase, a measure that would potentially benefit 32 million workers, shows the insincere character of Biden’s claims, reiterated at a news briefing on the pandemic relief measure Friday, that he was prioritizing the needs of workers over the wealthy.

A full time worker earning the current minimum wage takes home about $15,080 annually. That is well below the absurdly low official poverty level of $17,240 annually for a family of two and $21,720 for a family of three.

Significantly, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, now chairman of the Senate budget committee, supported the amendment by Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa saying that no minimum wage increase should take place during the pandemic. The callousness of this move is hard to overstate. Many of those workers who would be immediately benefited by a minimum wage increase are in food distribution and logistics and other essential, frontline services, where workers risk their lives daily for starvation rates of pay.

In addition, eight Democrats also joined the entire Republican Senate delegation to impose a ban on the distribution of pandemic relief checks to undocumented workers.

Democrats have indicated they are open to capping the proposed $1,400 stimulus checks to individuals based on household income, scaling them back starting at $50,000 annual income for an individual or $100,000 for a household, a move that would impact millions of working class families. In a further slap at workers, income in 2019, prior to the economic impact of the pandemic, will be used as the basis for calculation of the reduction.

Meanwhile, no relief from the pandemic is yet in sight. The disastrously slow and inept rollout of vaccines is being undermined by the emergence of new, more infectious and deadly variants of the virus. Further, evidence is mounting that these variants may also be at least partly vaccine resistant.

The numbers released Friday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the economic disaster triggered by the pandemic is far from over. Nearly 18 million workers are receiving unemployment assistance of some kind and another 6 million counted as employed are working part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time employment.

The net job loss in December was increased from 140,000 to 227,000 while the gain for November was revised downward from 336,000 to 264,000.

There are 4 million long-term unemployed, those who have been unemployed 27 weeks or longer. The number applying for extended benefits rose by 197,000 to 1.7 million in the week ended January 16, the most recent week whose figures are available, an indication the number of long-term unemployed is increasing.

While the official unemployment rate in January fell 0.4 percent to 6.3 percent, other measures show that the number of jobless is holding steady. The labor force participation rate, the percentage of the working-age population who are employed, is still 1.9 percent lower than the January 2020 level.

Only a net of 49,000 new jobs were created in January, the bulk in government. Private employment increased by just 6,000. Employment in leisure and hospitality, including eating and accommodation, continued to be hard hit, declining by 61,000 jobs last month after falling by 536,000 in December.

In addition, employment in temporary help services rose 80,900 in January, more than the overall employment gain, an indication that employers are reluctant to create permanent, well-paid jobs.

Even the small job gains in government may be illusory. The Labor Department previously warned that the layoffs of education workers last year due to the pandemic had distorted normal seasonal buildup and layoff patterns, possibly making the hiring numbers for January appear better than they were in actuality.

Further illustrating the irrationality and socially regressive nature of the capitalist response to the pandemic, employment in health care declined by 30,000 jobs in January. This despite the initiation of supposedly robust vaccination programs and tragic scenes of overcrowded hospitals and intensive care units amid a post-holiday surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The endless concessions and retreats by the Democrats demonstrate that even with control of both houses of Congress and the presidency they are incapable of, and in fact are opposed to, advancing any serious economic measures to address the social catastrophe confronting the working class in the United States. The alternative that is posed is for workers to take up the fight for socialism to take control of society and end the subordination of economic and social life to the profit requirements of the rich.

UK National Education Union bolsters homicidal plans to reopen schools and the economy

Margot Miller

On January 28, the National Education Union (NEU) released its Education Recovery Plan January 2021, urging the UK government “to create the conditions to sustain education throughout and beyond the pandemic.”

In lockstep with the government, the plan is predicated on the dangerous fiction that it is possible to reopen schools safely while the pandemic is raging.

National Education Union joint general secretary Mary Bousted speaking at the Zoom meeting attended by 400,000 educators

The previous day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced that he would set out a “roadmap” for lifting lockdown restrictions on February 22 and that schools would reopen from March 8. The government’s official COVID-19 death toll, a significant undercount, had just passed the grim milestone of 100,000. Its own statistics agencies had reported that the prevalence of the virus is still extremely high and, at best, falling very slowly. Over the next few days, dozens of cases of new, more dangerous variants of the virus were recorded across the country.

Opening schools, which Johnson has acknowledged are “vectors for transmission”, in these circumstances would lead to an explosion of infections, hospitalisation and deaths.

Both the Labour opposition and the trade unions support the government’s homicidal agenda, with a few caveats required to sell the government’s “roadmap” to educators and the general public. Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said in response to Johnson’s announcement, “We all want schools to open, but like the Prime Minister we want them to open when it is safe to do so… We agree with Boris Johnson that this is a balancing act.”

The NEU, the largest education union with a membership of 450,000, has fallen behind government policy since the virus first hit, acting alongside the other unions to divert and suppress opposition to the Johnson’s herd immunity policy. Its latest Education Recovery Plan “sets out how to reopen schools and colleges in a safe and sustainable way… away from the Government’s stop/start approach, which has resulted in schools and colleges being closed to full pupil intakes twice.”

The plan states that on June 10 the “NEU wrote to [prime minister] Boris Johnson with its first education recovery plan. We did not receive a reply.”

What they do not mention is that the union went along with the government’s reopening of schools and campuses in the autumn term—knowing full well that even the limited measures they were calling for were not in place and that their members, pupils and families would be in grave danger. The results proved catastrophic.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), approximately one in 1,400 people in England had COVID-19 in the week August 30-September 5. By January 23, the ONS reported that the rate had skyrocketed to one in 55, and one in 35 in London. On average, 1,000 died each day in January, the deadliest month in the pandemic. Notwithstanding government claims that schools are safe, official statistics reveal widespread coronavirus infection in schools and the deaths of 570 education workers.

The latest NEU plan states that the union “ will campaign for Government to accept this plan so that our members can return to school— only when the science says it is safe to do so [their emphasis].” This reassurance is worthless.

When school gates opened last September, the NEU quietly shelved the science, dropping its own five safety criteria as a condition for safe re-openings. The criteria included the R rate being below 1, test, track and trace being in operation, social distancing in place and the protection of vulnerable staff. None were fulfilled or, like social distancing, even possible in a school setting. The NEU fell behind the government so that furloughed parents could return to work and resume profit making for big business.

In November, Boycott Return to Unsafe Schools (BRTUS, now Parents United) called for a parents’ strike against the government’s refusal to close schools as infections raced out of control. The NEU ignored a letter of appeal from BRTUS to call its members out, and like the other education unions sabotaged the strike. United action by parents and educators would have shut schools and significantly slowed down the spread of the virus, saving thousands of lives.

The NEU’s Recovery Plan includes social distancing, limiting the numbers on site through rotas and remote education, increased use of face coverings and better ventilation, specific support for SEND (special needs) settings, and the vaccination of education staff. The criterion of testing and contact tracing has been junked, after the government dropped its £78 million plan to roll out testing in schools, because the lateral flow tests proved impractical and the results unreliable.

Vaccination is presented as the panacea to enable a return to normality. But vaccines must be coupled with strong public health measures to suppress the virus until the whole population is protected. By March 8, millions of vulnerable people will still be unvaccinated. The further rollout of the vaccine is threatened by the fierce vaccine wars emerging between nations. New strains of the virus which make inoculation less effective are already being allowed to spread widely.

The NEU’s plan appeals to the government to look to the future and build a better education system, with more resources like laptops, staff, ending punitive welfare reforms that have plunged many families into destitution, and an end to child poverty.

This is a cruel joke, after more than a decade of austerity cuts have been imposed by governments and Labour councils—with the collaboration of the unions. This resulted in a dramatic increase in poverty, accelerated by the pandemic crisis, so that the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts UK child poverty will rise to 5.2 million in 2022.

The NEU’s appeals for a fully resourced education system are for the record. They are under no illusions that the government will reverse its attacks on the working class.

To cover for the government and its own complicity over cuts to education and the unsafe reopening schools, a much-hyped “major announcement” in a Zoom meeting hosted by the NEU on January 26 turned out to be the launch of a joint fundraising campaign with the Daily Mirror, Help a Child to Learn .

Senior Vice President of the NEU Daniele Kebebe complained the government had not made good on its promise to roll out laptops to schools, that the attainment gap between richer and underprivileged children had widened. The Mirror and NEU were therefore making a national appeal to the public to help plug the education funding gap, and the NEU would start the ball rolling with a pledge of £1 million, paid for out of members’ subscriptions.

The Mirror ’s headline that morning had been, “We just want to go back to school”.

Teachers’ responses on social media to this stunt ranged from lukewarm to scathing. Mrs B posted on Twitter: “You are my union representing teachers not a children’s charity. I really feel it’s the govt’s job to fund schools and by dipping further into our pockets we are letting the govt off the hook.”

In the Zoom meeting, which did not take questions, Jeddeo asked drily in the chat, “Wouldn't it be more efficient for us to cancel union subs and set up a standing order direct to schools?”

Amanda wrote, “Thought this was going to be a ‘major announcement’ to finally help those of us who are currently teaching in lockdown in schools where all staff are expected in, up to 20 children are being housed in one small room, no segregation, and no safety in the school, teaching online as well as in person etc etc. O well. Better luck next time.”

The NEU and other unions stand on the side of government and the financial oligarchy, which will tolerate no interruption to the accumulation of profit. To this end they are prepared to sacrifice the lives of educators and pupils by agreeing their return to the classroom before the virus has been suppressed and controlled.

Workers have shown time and again their opposition to these policies and a willingness to fight. An online meeting of the NEU ahead of the planned reopening of schools at the start of January was attended by a world-record 400,000 people. Many of these school workers then voted with their feet, refusing to return to schools and forcing Johnson to declare the current lockdown. Tens of thousands of teachers in Chicago are currently refusing to return to unsafe in-person teaching.

Australian PM calls on New Zealand to “align more” against China

Tom Peters

On Sky News on February 1, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called on New Zealand’s Labour Party-led government to “stick together” with the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network, which includes Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Canada, against China.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sky News on February 1 [Source: Sky News Australia]

Interviewer Paul Murray asked whether Morrison was concerned that New Zealand was “changing its priorities a little bit, or [is] China helping them change their priorities?… How important is it that New Zealand is all in on Five Eyes [and] not trying to keep an eye somewhere else as well?”

Morrison replied: “The Five Eyes is really important, and so are liberal market democracies… all of these countries need to align more… on security issues and intelligence” in opposition to “authoritarian” countries. He added: “We’ve got to continue to maintain our vigilance over this, and to do that we’ve got to stick together.”

These statements come amid explosive geo-political tensions stoked by Washington’s increasingly direct talk of war. Admiral Charles Richard, head of the US Strategic Command, which oversees nuclear weapons, recently wrote that “a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons.” He called for the US military to “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility.’”

Under successive administrations, beginning with President Barack Obama, followed by Donald Trump and now Joe Biden, Washington has greatly expanded its military presence in the Indo-Pacific region. The US and its allies, including Australia and New Zealand, have carried out provocative military exercises aimed at preparing for an attack on China, which the US ruling class views as its main economic rival and chief obstacle to its post-World War II global dominance.

The world economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has prompted all imperialist powers to further increase their military spending, while promoting nationalism to divert class tensions onto an external enemy.

Australia and New Zealand are minor imperialist powers closely allied with the United States. Successive Labor and Liberal-National Party governments in Canberra have placed the country on the front line of US preparations for war against China. Australia’s intelligence agencies are engaged in a witch-hunt against politicians, business figures and academics with links to China. The Morrison government has joined the US-led trade war by vetoing numerous Chinese investment agreements on “national security” grounds. In an apparent response, Beijing last year imposed restrictions on some Australian exports.

New Zealand has likewise strengthened military ties with the US and adopted a more explicit anti-Chinese stance since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party-led coalition took office in October 2017. Following an inconclusive election result, then-US ambassador Scott Brown made clear that the Trump administration saw the previous National Party government as too close to China. After Brown’s public intervention, the right-wing nationalist and anti-Chinese NZ First Party decided to form a coalition with Labour and the Greens instead of National.

The Ardern government, with NZ First playing a major role in foreign and military policy, produced a defence strategy in 2018 that referred to China and Russia as the main “threats” to the international order, echoing the Pentagon. The government is committed to spending billions on upgrading the military and boosting its presence in the Pacific, to shore up New Zealand’s neo-colonial interests in the region, backed by the US.

Morrison’s comments, however, reflect concerns in Australia’s ruling elite—and no doubt in Washington as well—that New Zealand’s political leaders have not gone far enough in putting the country on a war footing and are strengthening trade ties with China.

In the October 2020 election, Labour gained an absolute majority, while NZ First failed to retain any seats in parliament—removing the vocal anti-Chinese Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark.

While Australia’s relations with China have deteriorated, New Zealand last month upgraded its “free trade” agreement (FTA) with China, which remains NZ’s biggest trading partner with annual two-way trade worth $NZ32 billion. The agreement will remove or reduce tariffs and compliance costs on most forestry, dairy and other exports from NZ, while providing benefits for its education, aviation and finance industries.

Morrison’s remarks to Sky News were triggered by comments by NZ Trade Minister Damien O’Connor after the FTA was signed. Asked by CNBC whether New Zealand could mediate the worsening relations between Australia and China, O’Connor replied: “I can’t speak for Australia and the way it runs its diplomatic relationships, but clearly if they were to follow us and show respect, I guess a little more diplomacy from time to time and be cautious with wording, then they too, hopefully, could be in a similar situation.”

There was an immediate backlash in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote: “Senior Australian government officials are infuriated at Mr O’Connor’s comments, which they see as a continuing pattern of New Zealand not joining other allies in standing up to China’s growing assertiveness.” The Australian accused New Zealand of “opportunism” and said “the Chinese Foreign Ministry was quick to praise Comrade O’Connor, a spokesperson saying Australia should ‘heed the constructive voices from people with vision.’”

The episode underscores tensions and divisions over foreign policy within New Zealand’s political and media establishment. Some pro-business commentators defended O’Connor. The New Zealand Herald’s Heather du Plessis-Allan said he was “correct in what he said. His error was in saying it out loud… Given our size and dependence on China’s trade, we can’t afford the sanctions Australia is copping.”

Ardern sought to distance herself from O’Connor’s statements, without directly contradicting him. She told the media on Wednesday: “I don’t necessarily take that same position in the way he’s presented it… In the same way we wouldn’t expect Australia to give too much commentary on our relationship [with China], we shouldn’t be giving commentary on theirs.”

Others demanded a firmer alignment with Australia and the US. National Party MP Simon O’Connor, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which includes politicians from the US, Australia and other allied countries, denounced the trade minister’s statements as “a slap in the face.” He told Stuff: “It suits the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] to have a trade deal with New Zealand right now in order to increase pressure on Australia. For Damien to so loudly trumpet in the Australians’ faces suits the political end of the CCP.”

Academic Anne-Marie Brady, whose anti-Chinese “research” has been funded by NATO and promoted in the media, tweeted: “NZ’s China policy isn’t pretty to watch.” She called on the US, European Union and UK to “drop trade barriers to help us diversify” and decrease NZ’s reliance on China.

The trade union-backed Daily Blog, which supports the government, is the most prolific purveyor of anti-China propaganda. On February 1 its editor Martyn Bradbury demanded “a united front with Australia” against China, which he accused of “preparing for war in the South China Sea.” The article did not mention the US military build-up in the region and preparations for nuclear war.

Three days later, Bradbury repeated discredited claims by Trump and the US intelligence agencies that the coronavirus had leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. He wrote: “China have aggressively upped their rhetoric for war… to distract a planet away from their culpability in a global pandemic.”

As these comments make clear, there is no faction of the political establishment that opposes the drive toward war, including the Labour Party, the unions and their “left” supporters. In a speech on February 4, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta underscored the importance of the alliance with the US, calling it “an integral defence and security partner and our third largest individual trading relationship” that “will continue to strengthen.”

Rethinking US security

Donna Park

Most Americans who either support or accept the large amount of money spent on the U.S. military probably do so because they think it makes our nation secure.  But does it really?

We certainly spend a lot of money on the military, much more than any other nation.  U.S. economic expert Kimberly Amadeo estimates that FY2020-2021 expenditures on the U.S. military will reach $934 billion, the second largest expense category behind Social Security.  The Peterson Foundation reported in May 2020 that the United States devotes more money to the military than the next 10 nations combined, and that is based on a more conservative estimate of $732 billion for the year.

Why do we spend so much money on the military?  According to Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “Our current strategy is based around us being a superpower in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.  We’ve sized our military to be able to fight more than one conflict at a time in those regions.”

As a team of New York Times journalists covering the issue concluded: “The United States has higher military spending than any other country partly because its foreign policy goals are more ambitious: defending its borders, upholding international order and promoting American interests abroad.”

Another factor behind the bloated U.S. military budget is the self-interested pressure by corporate and military elites to increase U.S. military spending.

President Dwight Eisenhower discussed this in his famous 1961 Farewell Address, in which he warned against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,” he said, “exists and will persist.”

As a result, the very high level of U.S. military spending currently far exceeds the requirements for keeping the United States militarily secure.

In fact, the idea that a vast military machine will keep us safe and secure is outdated, especially given the real and perceived threats to American security.

Of course, we are a deeply divided country, so we don’t all agree on the threats.

Some conservatives think we are threatened by the Black Lives Matter protesters or the “socialistic” goals of the liberals, such as making sure all citizens have adequate housing, food, health care, living wages, and a sustainable environment.

Some liberals think we are threatened by societal conditions that can turn people into terrorists, including environmental destruction, white supremacist domestic terrorist groups, or extreme poverty. Other frequently voiced threats to our security include global pandemics and cyber insecurity.

None of these concerns is adequately addressed by our military strength or our nuclear arsenal, which could destroy the world several times over by intent or accident.  It is time to re-think U.S. security.

The money spent on the military could certainly be put to better use. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute, spending money in other sectors of the economy would create more jobs than would spending it on the military.

The Poor People’s Campaign proposes “a comprehensive response to the systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and war economy plaguing the United States today.”  Its comprehensive Moral Budget specifies the major costs and benefits of its demands, grouped into critical areas including democracy and equal protection under the law, life and health, the planet, and an equitable economy.

Spending in these areas would increase our security and can be funded by the reallocation of some of our military spending.

Fortunately, when it comes to obtaining security from actual military aggression, Americans can find a useful guide in their own history.

They managed this in 1787, when the U.S. constitution went into effect and the states agreed to solve their problems in the court of law instead of on the battlefield.

Why not do this now at the global level? We can transform the United Nations from a confederation of nations to a federation of nations with a strong, democratic constitution. Then we can establish and enforce world law that would outlaw war and nuclear weapons and address other global problems as well, such as global pandemics, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses.

By moving our global problems to the court of law, we could dramatically reduce the amount of money spent on military force and have more money available to address the problems that threaten our nation at home.

Would a democratic federation of nations really help the United States become more secure? Yes, just the way New York is more secure today as a member of the United States than it would be on its own, the United States would be more secure in the future as a member of the United Federation of Nations.

In a democratic word federation, we could retain sovereignty over national issues but participate in the creation of world law to ensure world peace, universal human rights, and a sustainable global environment. With a federation of nations in place, the U.S. military would not be expected to uphold international order or to plunge into multiple wars around the world.

There is a global role for U.S. leadership today, but that role is to help move the world towards a democratic federation of nations that will create peace and security for all.