Europe nears 750,000 COVID-19 deaths as governments move to end lockdown restrictions

Robert Stevens

The European continent, including Russia and Ukraine, is approaching the horrific toll of three quarters of a million deaths due to COVID-19.

As of Friday evening, 729,201 people had already perished. Total infections passed 31 million in Europe on Tuesday, with over 180,000 new cases recorded daily on Wednesday and Thursday this week.

Workers move a coffin in the warehouse of a funeral agency in Amadora, outside Lisbon, Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. Portugal continues to top the global charts with the worst 7-day rolling average of new daily COVID-19 infections and fatalities per 100,000 residents, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

In the UK, there have been over 111,000 deaths, in Italy 90,618, in France 77,952, in Russia 75,732, in Germany 61,161 and in Spain 61,386.

These deaths are measured by governments based on various criteria but are around 20 percent lower than the real figure, according to a study of excess deaths by Nature magazine, meaning that Europe may be closer to a million deaths.

Around 5,000 people a day are dying in Europe and the pandemic is undergoing a dramatic resurgence in parts of the continent. The mass loss of life continues amid escalating moves to end lockdown and restrictions by governments.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has announced a “roadmap” out of its current limited lockdown, beginning February 22—with around 20,000 new infections announced daily and an average of over 1,000 deaths.

Lockdowns are being ended in the knowledge that not only are new and more deadly variants of the virus developing, including the UK’s B117, but they continue to infect, and at a higher rate.

On Friday, a million people in Liverpool, Preston and Lancashire in the North West of England were advised to get a Covid test, including for a far wider range of symptoms than the original strain, with more than 100 cases of a new mutated strain (E484K) of the virus detected in the region.

The two variants acknowledged to be more infectious than the British mutation originated in Brazil and South Africa. Latest reports attest that the British mutation has itself mutated to resemble the South Africa variant. All this points to COVID-19 becoming more infectious and therefore more deadly.

In some countries, B117, first detected only last September, has become the dominant variant.

The terrible implications are already unfolding with devastating consequences, with its most deadly impact in Portugal. A resurgence of the virus is being led by the spread of the British variant with deaths surging from 167 on January 18 to 275 on January 24 and rising again to 303 by January 28. In the last week, 1,854 lives have been lost to Covid in Portugal, an average of 264 a day. By Wednesday, over the previous seven days, almost 850 new coronavirus cases were recorded for every 100,000 inhabitants.

Last month, Portugal recorded the worst rate of per capita COVID-19 new infections in the world. According to health authorities, 43 percent of the country’s overall COVID-19 infections and 44 percent of all related deaths were recorded in January alone. Hospitals are unable to offer care for those sick and dying of Covid, with Deutsche Welle reporting Wednesday that with the “country's intensive care units (ICUs) already treating around 850 patients there are almost no vacant beds for the treatment of severe new coronavirus cases.”

“Approximately 6,700 other patients are being looked after in normal hospital wards and triage tents have even been erected outside some hospitals. Here doctors decide which patients to treat first on the basis of oxygen levels and body temperature. Field hospitals, too, are being speedily set up to take in more sick people.”

A further indication of the spread can be seen in the Netherlands. The Dutch News web site reported that the RIVM public health institute has “warned that the more infectious version of the virus first identified in Britain may now account for two-thirds of all new cases in the Netherlands. The estimate is based on computer models rather than actual lab results.

“Nevertheless, this is further evidence that there are two pandemics underway in the Netherlands—the older form of the virus and the new B117 variant, the RIVM said.”

Under these conditions, the reopening of school is proceeding as a key component in fully reopening of the economy—with tens of millions of parents herded back into workplaces across Europe.

The Scottish National Party government is beginning school reopenings on February 22, with Johnson’s Conservative government planning to reopen schools in the rest of the UK just days after. This is supported by opposition Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, who took to the pages of the pro-Tory Daily Mail this week and proclaimed, “I share the Government’s ambition to make it a national mission to reopen our schools. I will do everything in my power as leader of the Labour Party to make that happen.”

Calling for national unity with Johnson’s herd immunity government of social murderers in defence of the economy he insisted, “We are only going to get our children back into school, reopen society and secure our economy if we are bold, decisive and working together.”

There are growing signs of resistance among workers and students to the danger to life posed by these homicidal policies. This week schools strikes, which began in Nuremberg at seven schools on Monday, have continued to spread throughout Germany. Meeting an enthusiastic response on social media among students, they spread to Augsburg within three days. In Bavaria, schoolchildren struck against the state government's attempts to force graduating classes back into classroom teaching amid the pandemic. Students have told the WSWS of the support of educators for their strikes, as teachers and school principals unanimously call for the continuation of distance learning for all students.

On January 31, the World Socialist Web Site published a perspective, “ Capitalism vs. socialism: The pandemic and the global class struggle ”. It summarised the irreconcilable conflict between the two major classes in society—the bourgeois oligarchy and the working class: “One year into the crisis, the pandemic has starkly revealed the class divide that separates the capitalist and socialist programs,”

The perspective identified the seven main opposed standpoints between the capitalist and socialist programme for the pandemic.

1. The capitalist program insists that the response to the pandemic must prioritize saving the financial markets over saving lives. The socialist program insists that the response to the pandemic must prioritize saving lives over saving the financial markets.

2. The capitalist program asserts that pandemic policy must be driven by profit interests. The socialist program advocates that medical policy must be guided by science.

3. The capitalist program advocates a program of “herd immunity,” allowing the virus to spread with as few restrictions as possible while vaccinations are produced and distributed. The socialist program calls for all measures to impede virus transmission until the necessary number of people to stop community spread of the virus have been inoculated.

4. The capitalist program insists, in accordance with its “herd immunity” strategy, that factories and other workplaces be kept open for business. The socialist program insists that all nonessential workplaces be closed down until inoculated workers can safely return to their jobs.

5. The capitalist program demands that schools be reopened, claiming falsely that there is little risk to students and teachers. The socialist program, based on scientific evidence that schools are a major source of virus transmission, demands that schools remain closed until the pandemic has been brought under control.

6. The capitalist program seeks to restrict social expenditures aimed at counteracting the economic impact of the pandemic on the great mass of the people, while demanding that central banks provide unlimited support for the financial markets and large corporations. The socialist program demands full income compensation to workers and small businesses to be paid for by the expropriation of the pandemic profiteers in big business.

7. The capitalist program promotes a policy of vaccination nationalism, restricting and opposing equitable distribution of vaccines throughout the world. The socialist program, recognizing that the coronavirus can be eradicated only through a scientifically directed international strategy, calls for a globally coordinated inoculation program.”

This Sunday, a vital online meeting, sponsored by the WSWS is being held that will review the critical political, historical and programmatic issues for workers in fighting against the homicidal policies of the ruling elite.

Germany: Siemens Energy announces thousands more job cuts

Elisabeth Zimmermann

On February 2, Siemens Energy announced 7,800 job cuts and at the same time reported an annual profit of almost €100 million. Trade union IG Metall supports the job destruction plans in the name of cost-cutting. Together with the Siemens executive and the union-run works council, IG Metall presented its “Future Agreement 2030,” which provides the framework for the company to shed jobs.

The figures, presented by company CEO Christian Bruch on Tuesday, relate to the first quarter of the 2020–2021 financial year, the period from October 1 to December 31, 2020. Following losses the previous year, Siemens Energy now made an after-tax profit of €99 million. The company’s sales also increased slightly. Bruch’s simultaneous announcement to cut 7,800 jobs worldwide by 2025, including 3,000 in Germany, was met with considerable concern by Siemens total workforce of 90,000.

Siemens plant in Mülheim/Ruhr (Photo: Frank Vincentz, via Wikimedia Commons)

The plan envisages the elimination of every 12th job by 2023. Bruch justified the job cuts by arguing that costs in the company’s fossil energy business (coal, gas and oil) should be reduced by at least €300 million per year. Above all, the profitability of Siemens Energy is to be increased from 6.5 percent to 8.5 percent by wiping out thousands of jobs and intensifying productivity and stress for the rest of the workforce.

Shares in the MDax-listed company reacted positively and showed significant gains following the announcement. With the job cuts due to take place mainly in the company’s gas and power (fossil fuel) sector, workers in plants in Mülheim/Ruhr, Duisburg and Berlin in particular fear for their jobs.

Up to 370 jobs are expected to be cut at Siemens Energy Duisburg and at least 600 at the Mülheim/Ruhr plant. Many jobs could also be affected in the Nuremberg-Erlangen area and other regions, for example at the company factory in Görlitz. According to the company, three quarters of the job cuts will take place in management, administration and sales. Savings are also to be made in purchasing and with the use of external service providers, as well as by optimising logistics and the company’s information technology division .

The company wants to withdraw from the construction of power plants and gas turbines and invest more in technology for renewable energies. The job cuts now announced and the associated cost reductions are primarily intended to strengthen the competitiveness of Siemens Energy, according to CEO Bruch.

Siemens Energy is currently headquartered in Munich, but the corporate headquarters is soon to be moved to Berlin. The longstanding seat of the company, Erlangen, dates back to the time when Siemens Energy was still part of Siemens AG under the name Energietechnik. This division was outsourced last year and floated on the stock exchange as an independent company, Siemens Energy.

As was the case with Medical Engineering, which now operates under the name Siemens Healthineers, the outsourcing is in line with the overall plan to split Siemens into several divisions, leaving each company to fight for its survival. The main instigator of this restructuring plan was Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser, who is now stepping down from the top post at Siemens AG to become chairman of the supervisory board at Siemens Energy.

The Siemens energy sector had already been subjected to massive cost-cutting measures and job losses before its outsourcing. For example, over 6,800 jobs have been eliminated since 2018 in order to make the sector ripe for its spin-off.

All these attacks on workers were pushed through with the full support of IG Metall and the Siemens works councils and this will be no different in the newly formed company.

At the end of January, just a few days before the announcement of the huge job cuts, the Siemens Energy board, IG Metall and the company works councils signed the so-called “Future Agreement 2030.” According to the agreement, the restructuring of the company is to take place “as much as possible” without plant closures and compulsory redundancies. “Necessary personnel adjustments” are to be implemented as much as possible through “voluntary” measures such as severance agreements, internal qualification, transfers, etc.

A press release from Siemens Energy dated January 29, 2021 states: “The Future Agreement 2030 provides for existing locations in Germany to be maintained in principle and no plants to be closed if possible. The parties assume that, as much as possible, no compulsory redundancies will be made as part of the transformation. The common goal is to enable necessary staff adjustments through so-called ‘voluntary measures.’ These have priority over compulsory redundancies.”

The text does not explicitly exclude site closures and compulsory redundancies, and the phrase “if possible” leaves a door open for every contingency. Also, in the majority of cases, “voluntary measures” are never genuinely voluntary, but rather the product of intense pressure exerted on workers by both their factory superiors and union representatives. Nevertheless, the agreement has been praised by IG Metall and works council representatives, who were most likely instrumental in drafting and formulating the deal, based on their decades of expertise in enforcing job cuts and other attacks on workers.

Robert Kensbock, chairman of the joint works council of Siemens Energy, described the agreement as a “clear commitment to Germany as a location and to employees” and emphasised: “We agree with management that even in the case of conflicts over content, finding an amicable internal solution should always have priority.”

The “commitment to Germany as a location” underlines the nationalist stance of the union bureaucrat. The idea that workers could lead a struggle to defend jobs across plant and national borders is furthest from his mind. In defence of their own privileges, IG Metall and the works councils are prepared to accept all attacks on workers’ rights. They regard and understand themselves to be co-managers and company police.

Workers therefore must regard the emphasis on finding an “amicable internal solution” to substantive conflicts as a warning. In the case of conflicts, i.e., failure to agree to a “voluntary severance agreement,” the works council finds itself on the same side as the company against the workers.

Jürgen Kerner, member of the IG Metall executive and also member of the supervisory board at Siemens Energy, is full of praise for the “Future Agreement”: “The change in energy supply we all want presents Siemens Energy with major challenges with massive consequences not just for its products and activities, but also for sites and employment.” Of particular importance for Kerner is the commitment on the part of company management to the German corporatist principle of “co-determination” and the safeguarding of the privileges and posts of the IG Metall and works council representatives.

A press release from IG Metall Berlin dated February 2 stated that 500 jobs could be shed at Siemens Energy in Berlin alone. The release acknowledges that the company is cutting 7,800 jobs worldwide in order to increase its profitability at the expense of the workers, but then states: “IG Metall and the joint works council have been able to prevent even worse happening with an agreement on the future.”

By drafting and agreeing to the “Future Agreement,” IG Metall and the central works council had already provided the framework before the huge job cuts at Siemens Energy were announced, thereby sabotaging any struggle to defend jobs across factory and national boundaries.

Canada’s governments lift COVID-19 restrictions, even as pandemic rages

Frédéric Charlebois

Canada recorded its 20,000th death from COVID-19 last Sunday.

Of those 20,000 deaths, 5,000, or fully a quarter, came in the 36 days between December 26 and January 31—underscoring just how much more lethal the “second wave” of the pandemic is proving to be than last spring’s.

In recent days, the number of daily new COVID-19 infections has fallen to around 4,000, as a result of a spate of late December-early January lockdown measures. But governments across Canada, flying in the face of the recommendations of the most reputable epidemiologists, are now rushing to lift these restrictions.

They are doing so under conditions where many hospital intensive care units remain almost fully occupied. As of February 2, there were 1,144 hospitalizations in Quebec, 183 of which were in intensive care. Neighboring Ontario reported 1,158 patients in hospital, 354 of whom were in intensive care.

Transmission in the workplace continues, and it is picking up momentum in Quebec schools following their reopening last month. A similar process will soon be under way in Ontario after hard-right Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Wednesday plans to reopen all schools by the middle of this month.

Meanwhile, with the support of Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government, provincial governments are reopening the few economic sectors that had been closed.

On Tuesday Quebec’s government announced that stores, hair salons and museums will reopen across the province starting February 8. Restaurants and gyms will be reopened in six regions; colleges and universities are encouraged to resume face-to-face education immediately.

In Manitoba, businesses have started to reopen in the southern part of the province with the lifting of various measures. In Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney, one of the strongest advocates of the reckless back-to-work policy of the ruling class, recently said, “We need to recognize that we can’t suspend businesses indefinitely because many of them simply won’t survive that.”

With the detection in Canada of scores of cases of the more contagious strains of the coronavirus that were first identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa, this lifting of restrictions threatens to plunge the country into a death spiral.

The ruling elite believes that the price of further mass deaths is worth paying in order to guarantee the profits of big business.

The danger of a resurgence of the pandemic and thousands more deaths is made all the more likely by the ruling elite’s disastrous mismanagement of the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The development of multiple effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus within the space of a year is a tremendous scientific achievement. But the domination of for-profit pharma giants like Pfizer and Astra Zeneca over its production and distribution, and the associated phenomenon of vaccine nationalism, have proven calamitous.

Speaking at a press briefing Thursday, Maj. Gen. Danny Fortin, the military officer tasked with leading the federal government’s distribution of vaccines, said that he does not know how many doses Moderna will supply during February and March. The first shipment in February, which arrived this week, was reduced by 20-25 percent from the originally agreed upon volumes.

To date, less than 2.5 percent of Canada’s population has received the first of the requisite two doses of either the Moderna or Pfizer Bio-NTech vaccines, and less than 0.5 percent both doses.

Leading epidemiologists insist that now is not the time to lift the limited restrictions that the ruling elite adopted through gritted teeth as infections surged in December. According to Covid Strategic Choices’ forecasts, which agree with those of public health agencies, new daily cases could reach the 9,000 mark in Canada this spring, putting intense pressure on already overwhelmed hospitals.

Among the many experts who deplore the premature lifting of restrictions is Dr. Matthew Oughton. He recommends instead “bringing the numbers down and then easing up,” especially under conditions where evidence demonstrates that the much more contagious British variant is already being transmitted in the community in at least two of Canada’s most populous provinces, Alberta and Ontario.

Other experts warn that with the critical situation in hospitals and potential increases in cases, we could soon face widespread use of triage, which occurs when doctors and nurses are forced, due to equipment and personnel shortages, to choose which patients to treat and which to let die.

According to Dr. Mathieu Simon, the chief of intensive care at the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute, “If we were to slacken off in February, there is a risk of overcapacity and a return to the dynamics that we were talking about not so long ago, including allocation protocol and inhumane selection for intensive care beds.”

In recent weeks, hospitals in Quebec and Ontario have conducted “simulations” to train physicians in deciding who will—and will not—have access to intensive care in the event of triage.

While governments are blaming citizens for community transmission, statistics show that the majority of infections are occurring in the workplaces or being transmitted from workplaces and schools to homes. In Quebec, for example, workplaces account for more than 40 percent of infections, while nursing homes account for nearly 35 percent of cases.

Across Canada, there have been countless outbreaks among health care workers, in factories and at workplaces. Last week, more than 250 cases of COVID-19 were detected at a Canada Post facility in Mississauga, Ontario, with one worker dying as a result. A Toronto meat processing plant, Belmont Meats, reported 78 cases, including at least two associated with the new British strain.

As for the public agencies that are supposed to ensure the health and safety of workers (such as the CNESST in Quebec), they are turning a blind eye to the flagrant violations of public health measures by businesses. Since the beginning of the pandemic, out of more than 17,000 interventions, the CNESST has issued only 86 statements of offense, resulting in the closure of only two establishments and 23 construction sites.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the central role schools are playing in community transmission, including one conducted in Montreal after the start of the school year last fall.

Falsely claiming that health risks are low among young people, governments are forcing students back to school so that their parents can be ordered to return to work and generating profits for big business.

This has made schools important vectors for the spread of the virus. In Quebec, just three weeks after schools reopened from the Christmas/New Year holidays, there are already 1,450 schools with at least one case, 857 closed classes and three completely closed schools.

In addition to the unknown long-term effects of COVID-19 on young people, the virus can cause hospitalizations and even deaths in this age group.

A 14-year-old boy from Quebec City, Viktor Rousseau, was recently hospitalized after developing multisystemic inflammatory syndrome, a disease similar to Kawasaki disease, weeks after contracting the virus in his classroom. While Rousseau survived after being taken to an intensive care unit, another Ontario youth was not so fortunate. At only 19 years of age, Yassin Dabeh of London, Ontario died of COVID-19 after being hospitalized with respiratory problems.

It is imperative for the working class to intervene and advance its own response to the health and socio-economic crisis that has been triggered by the pandemic.

Workers must establish rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the pro-capitalist unions, in all workplaces—hospitals, schools, factories, distribution centers and construction sites.

Through these committees the working class can mobilize its social power to enforce the emergency measures needed to contain the pandemic: mass testing and systematic contact tracing; billions of dollars of additional investments in health care; shutting down schools and all non-essential production, with full financial compensation for affected workers and small businesses until the vast majority of the population is vaccinated.

This program of struggle must be based on a socialist perspective aimed at the establishment of a workers government and the reorganization of the economy to satisfy the social needs of the majority, not creating private profit for a tiny minority.

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.