Pacific Islands Forum in crisis following regional split

John Braddock

The Pacific Islands Forum—the Pacific’s major regional leadership body—is facing a crisis after nearly one-third of its 18 member countries quit last month. The Micronesian sub-grouping—Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati, and Nauru—gave notice they will leave in protest over the selection of the new secretary-general on February 3.

At the reportedly “heated” 16-hour remote meeting, former Cook Islands prime minister, Henry Puna, defeated the Marshall Islands’ US ambassador Gerald Zackios by 9 votes to 8 in the final round. Other contestants included Tongan economist Amelia Kinahoi Siamomua, Fiji’s former foreign minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, and Jimmie Rodgers of Solomon Islands.

Following the vote, the Micronesian leaders’ group released a statement expressing “great disappointment with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General appointment process.” It declared the northern sub-group will “act swiftly like the Republic of Palau.” Palau, a former US territory, had unilaterally announced it would close its embassy in Fiji and commence withdrawal proceedings.

Former Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna (Source: Wikimedia)

Palau’s newly installed president Surangel Whipps Jr said the split was in response to the decision by other Pacific leaders to ignore Micronesia’s expectation that their candidate would take up the role. By convention, leadership of the forum is meant to cycle through the region’s three major subgroupings: Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia.

With former PIF head Meg Taylor stepping down after six years, positioning over her replacement was fractious from the start. Last October, the Micronesian group issued the “Mekreos Communique,” insisting the Forum honour the supposed agreement to rotate the position. In reality, Micronesia has only held the post once (Kiribati from 1992-98), while the two larger and more populous sub-regions have held it three times each.

Behind the manoeuvring lie profound geo-strategic rivalries fuelled by the US-led preparations for war with China, which are intensifying under President Joe Biden. Three of the defecting states—Palau, FSM, and the Marshall Islands—are closely allied to the United States in compacts of so-called “free association.”

Palau, Nauru, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu are the only Pacific states maintaining relationships with Taiwan, after the Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched diplomatic ties to Beijing in 2019, heightening concerns over China’s growing regional influence. Nauru, a former Australian colony and the site of its notorious refugee “offshore processing” centre, remains heavily dependent on Canberra financially. However, its president, Baron Waqa, has repeatedly denounced China for allegedly seeking to “entice and hook up” countries in the Pacific.

Pacific Forum Island members in dark blue (Source: Wikimedia)

The split may well have involved the US State Department. The US ruling class views China as its main economic rival and chief obstacle to maintaining its post-World War II global dominance. The US and its local allies, Australia and New Zealand, have sought to push back against China diplomatically and economically while carrying out provocative military exercises.

The PIF was formed in 1971 by New Zealand, Australia, Nauru, Western Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and the Cook Islands. Eleven more states progressively joined, mostly as they achieved formal independence. The Micronesian countries began joining in 1987, while the French territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia were admitted in 2016 with the support of Canberra and Wellington.

Palau would doubtless have viewed Micronesian leadership of the PIF as an opportunity to shift the organization closer to Washington. Whipps Jr, a US-born businessman and former member of the Palau senate, has taken an aggressive pro-US agenda. He has bluntly declared he will oppose Chinese “bullying” in the north Pacific, and Palau will stand by its “true friends,” the US and Taiwan. Last September, Palau formally requested that the US military build new ports, airstrips and bases on its islands, which are strategically positioned in the Philippine Sea.

Speaking to Radio NZ on February 10, Whipps Jnr condemned Polynesia and Melanesia as siding with Australia and New Zealand to dominate the Forum’s decision-making. He challenged the membership of the Cook Islands and Niue, which are semi-colonies of New Zealand, while the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, Saipan and the state of Hawaii are not. “Maybe we need to come up with a new organisation and find new members because the current configuration is self-interest and that is the problem,” he concluded.

Puna’s appointment is clearly a disruption to US interests. The 71-year old Cook Islander campaigned for the position with a reputation for being friendly towards Beijing. The Cook Islands established consular relations with the US in 1995 and full diplomatic relations with China in 1997. In 2019, Puna remarked that China had been increasingly financially supportive of island nations. “China is very present in the Pacific. Unfortunately for a long time, America has not been,” Puna declared.

The impoverished Pacific island states have been forced into a delicate balancing act, reducing their dependence on the local powers by increasing economic and aid relations with China. Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic the Cook Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu have all reached out to Chinese-led funding agencies to prop up their budgets after exhausting financing options from traditional sources.

According to the Diplomat, Australia and New Zealand are likely to have supported Puna’s candidacy under their policy of closer regional “integration” within their respective spheres of influence. New Caledonia and French Polynesia were also rumoured to have voted for the Cook Islands candidate. Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape revealed he had supported Zackios on the basis that the rotation agreement should have prevailed.

Writing in the Guardian on February 19, Whipps Jnr alleged that Australia, which had promised not to “influence the process,” should have abstained from the vote in the interests of “consensus,” as could have New Zealand and Fiji. “The lack of leadership by PIF’s strongest members could hardly be more jarring,” he wrote. Whipps Jnr further claimed that “Ambassador Zackios’s relationship with Washington” could well have harmed his candidacy among South Pacific nations.

Since the launching of the Obama administration’s Pivot to Asia strategy, Australia and New Zealand have increasingly marched in lockstep with US policy across the region. However, the local powers still maintain their own imperialist interests, as does France with its substantial military presence.

Following the 2006 Fiji military coup, in which the current Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama seized power, Canberra and Wellington imposed sanctions and had Fiji suspended from the PIF. The move backfired, with Bainimarama encouraging Pacific neighbours to take a more “independent” stance. Concerned that Fiji was shifting closer to China, Washington unilaterally restored diplomatic relations, forcing Canberra and Wellington to fall into line and Fiji was readmitted to the PIF in 2014.

Tensions again emerged at the 2019 summit over a bitter dispute regarding the Australian government’s refusal to agree to limit coal production in order to address climate change. Bainimarama told the Guardian that Canberra’s intransigence was “alienating” Pacific leaders and warned that this would again push them closer to China.

The Diplomat claims that Washington remains unhappy with the way the two local powers are running their Pacific affairs. The subtext, the journal maintains, is that the US’s Five Eyes partners “haven’t been delivering,” allowing China to make inroads. Despite the particularly close relations between the US and Australia, the result will now force some “deep re-evaluations.” in Washington, with the prospect that the PIF result may well be “countered.”

The crisis comes as Pacific economies are being crushed by the shutdown of travel from the COVID-19 pandemic and the islands face the existential threat of global climate change. Australia, New Zealand and China have all called on the Forum nations to stay together. The Marshall Islands and the FSM have, however, followed Palau in initiating their withdrawal. With the formal process likely to take up to 12 months, anything can still happen. Meanwhile, Bainimarama has invited Biden to visit Fiji in August when it hosts the next summit.

German secret service officially characterises the Alternative for Germany as a “suspected right-wing extremist case”

Christoph Vandreier

Last week, the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz, as Germany’s domestic secret service is called) informed his colleagues from the federal states that the agency would treat the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a suspected right-wing extremist case and will now subject it to observation for intelligence purposes. After years of refusing to do so, the government is now forced to officially recognise the fascistic character of Germany’s largest opposition party.

Given the significance of the rise of fascism once again in Germany, the home of Nazism, it is extraordinary how little media attention is given to the phenomenon in the international press. Outside of an article once every couple months in the New York Times, it is virtually ignored in the United States. The fact is, however, that thirty years after the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all claims of an “end of history” and triumph of liberal democracy have been conclusively refuted.

In a comprehensive report leaked to various media outlets, the Verfassungsschutz summarised its justification for the classification, which is based on the statements of 302 functionaries, 88 of them at the federal level. It concludes that the officially disbanded, openly fascist “ Der Flügel ” (“wing”) grouping in the party still exerts great influence. “Violent resistance” could also “not be excluded in principle,” the Verfassungsschutz wrote.

File picture taken May 1, 2019 shows AfD supporters walking along a party elections poster in Erfurt, Germany. German media outlets are reporting the country's domestic intelligence agency has put the opposition Alternative for Germany party under observation under suspicion of extreme right sympathies. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer, file)

According to the summary statement, political opponents are dubbed “enemies of the people” and “destroyers of Germany” by the party, Muslims are “defamed, belittled and marginalised across the board.” The failure to respect the human dignity of migrants is not only “diametrically opposed” to the constitutional guarantee of human dignity and the principle of equality, “but also greatly endangers social cohesion and peaceful coexistence in Germany.”

There can be no doubt about the right-wing extremist character of the AfD. As early as 2017, its parliamentary group leader and honorary chairman Alexander Gauland called the crimes of the Nazis just so much “bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history” and expressed his pride in Hitler’s Wehrmacht soldiers. Party members and elected officials maintain close contacts with violent neo-Nazis and those in the right-wing terrorist scene, whose members hoard weapons and draw up lists of thousands of political opponents whom they intend to round up and shoot on a “day X.”

Alexander Gauland (right) and the Thuringian AfD spokesman and leader of the fascist 'wing' Björn Höcke (AP Photo / Jens Meyer)

However, the Verfassungsschutz, which ostensibly answers to the interior ministry, has covered up for and supported the right-wing extremists for years. When the AfD marched through Chemnitz in August 2018 together with other right-wing extremists, inciting the hunting down of refugees as well as anti-Semitic attacks, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stood behind the demonstration and declared, “If I wasn’t a minister, I would also have taken to the streets as a citizen.”

The then head of the Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maassen, even denied that there had been any right-wing extremist agitation at all. He had also met regularly with AfD leaders to advise them on how to escape surveillance by the intelligence agencies.

In the same year, the Verfassungsschutz classified the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) as “left-wing extremist” and “anti-constitutional,” among other things, because it positioned itself “against supposed nationalism.” The SGP, more than any other party, has warned of the right-wing danger and organised resistance against it.

In its annual report, the intelligence service cites protests against AfD party conferences, the “ongoing ‘fight’ against right-wing extremists” and the collection of “information about alleged or actual right-wing extremists and their structures” as evidence of “left-wing extremist” sentiments.

The AfD entered the Bundestag (federal parliament) in 2017. For the first time since the end of the Nazi dictatorship, over 90 right-wing extremist deputies sat in parliament. The party was subsequently courted by all parliamentary groups and integrated into parliamentary work. It was elected to the chair of important committees and finally made the official leader of the opposition when the Social Democratic Party (SPD) resumed its place alongside the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in the Grand Coalition government. In Thuringia, the CDU and Free Democratic Party (FDP) even formed a government majority with the fascists. In 2019 alone, the AfD received over ten million euros in state support.

It was only because of this policy that the AfD was able to enter all 16 state parliaments, build up a comprehensive party apparatus and massively expand its influence inside the police, army and secret services.

Now, given the enormous opposition to the right-wing extremists, even the Interior Ministry and the Verfassungsschutz cannot avoid officially recognising the character of the AfD. This shows how serious the fascist danger really is and fully confirms the warnings of the SGP.

But neither the government nor the secret services can be expected to seriously fight the AfD in any way. After all, the last few years have shown how closely the Verfassungsschutz is linked to the extreme right.

Even before the AfD, secret service employees set the tone in right-wing extremist organisations, and the Verfassungsschutz financed large sections of the fascist scene. In the course of its “observation,” the Verfassungsschutz infiltrated the neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD) to such an extent that, according to the judges of the Supreme Court, it had to be spoken of as a “state affair.”

The Grand Coalition not only made the AfD the leader of the opposition but is also putting the policies of the right-wing extremists into practice. The construction of inhumane deportation camps for refugees, the strengthening of police state measures and the most massive rearmament since the Second World War all bear the AfD’s imprimatur. This takes on particularly sharp forms with the ruthless policy of re-opening the economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which places corporate profits before health and lives.

Because capitalism has nothing more to offer the vast majority of the population than social inequality, militarism and death, the ruling class is increasingly resorting to authoritarian and fascist methods to enforce the policies of the financial oligarchy, as it did in the 1930s. This is why far-right tendencies are being built and strengthened throughout the world.

Donald Trump’s coup attempt on January 6 was a turning point in this respect. Trump mobilised significant parts of the state apparatus, the Republican Party, and a fascist mob to try and overturn the US elections and establish a presidential dictatorship. Not for nothing did AfD Bundestag member Martin Renner write on Facebook shortly after the storming of the Capitol, “Trump is waging the same political battle—which already has to be called a culture war—as we are as the ‘Alternative for Germany.’”

In the US, as in Germany, the opposition of official politics to the far-right is mendacious and hypocritical. They do not fear the programme of the fascists so much as the resistance that is developing against it in the working class. All historical experiences show that the struggle against fascism cannot be based on the bourgeois state and its secret services. The latter inevitably use their increased powers to suppress opposition from the left.

As public health organizations call for lockdown, Turkish government removes COVID-19 restrictions

Ulaş Ateşçi

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Monday that his government had begun a “gradual normalization” process in the pandemic on March 2. In fact, it means removing almost all restrictions limiting the spread of COVID-19 as part of a “herd immunity” policy.

On the basis of an unscientific four-risk categorization (low, medium, high and very high) for cities, the government has removed restrictions without imposing an inter-city travel ban. Weekend curfews were fully lifted in low- and medium-risk cities, while restrictions on Sunday will continue in cities classified as “high risk” or “very high risk.”

Healthcare organizations oppose the easing restrictions and call for vaccination and lockdown on March 4, 2021, Ankara [Credit: The Turkish Medical Association (TTB)]

After Erdoğan declared, “Face-to-face education will start in low- and medium-risk provinces, including in middle and high schools,” millions of students began returning to schools across Turkey. Predictably, there are already reports of positive cases detected in schools all over the country. While the government claimed it would vaccinate teachers, no vaccination campaign for teachers has begun yet.

While state employees have resumed normal working hours, restaurants and cafés are open at 50 percent capacity from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., except in very high-risk provinces. Erdoğan also announced that general assemblies of organizations can be held in low-, medium- and high-risk cities with the participation of up to 300 people. However, many scientists have clearly showed that outbreaks in some cities came just after congresses or meetings organized by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

These moves are part of a universal back-to-work and back-to-school drive in the interests of the ruling elites at the expense of workers’ health and lives. From the beginning, the Erdoğan government’s priority has been to maintain the flow of profits to the financial oligarchy not to save public health.

While he claims that his government produced financial aid packages for “all affected sections” of the public, 89 percent of these bailouts in 2020 went to big businesses, according to a report published early February by the DİSK trade union confederation. The 11 percent, or 42 billion Turkish Liras (US$ 7.6 billion), spent on workers went to unemployment insurance. In fact, even these “social aids” are in support of the capitalist class, which in this period did not pay workers who were forced to take short-time work or “unpaid leave” allowances.

As a result of this “herd immunity” strategy, Turkey ranks ninth in the world in terms of total number of cases, with more than 2.7 million. According to the highly unreliable numbers of the Health Ministry, which admitted that it has lied about the real figures for a while, the death toll has reached 29,000, including at least 385 health care workers. Even then, these figures severely underestimate the true losses.

According to calculations by investigative filmmaker Güçlü Yaman, there have been 98,000 excess deaths in Turkey since the pandemic began. The highly unreliable nature of official figures was shown in the graphic below produced by researcher Zeki Berk.

In this graph, daily COVID-19 deaths per 1 million people between December 1 and February 25 in 17 European countries including Turkey are shown. The graph is prepared over 7-day moving averages. (Source: Our World in Data website)

Commenting on this chart, Yaman criticized the reactionary collaboration of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) with the government’s response to the pandemic, “Let’s not forget the contribution of the CHP municipalities, which hid the real data of the pandemic from the public for a long time, like the government, to keep the red line below [above] this level.”

However, Turkey reported 11,837 new cases in a day on Tuesday, the most since January 7, 2021. The daily official death toll is still above 60. Berk noted that total coronavirus cases in Istanbul rose by nearly 50 percent in a week.

Prof. Dr. Fatih Tank pointed out that half of the total official COVID-19 deaths in the country took place in the last three months, adding that the test positivity rate reached 8.75 percent on March 2, its highest level since December 24. The reproduction rate (R0) is 1.11, according to his calculations, indicating an exponential growth in infections.

Prof. Dr. Tuğrul Erbaydar, a public health specialist from Ankara University, denounced the bourgeoisie’s policy of the malign neglect. “The first wave was a surge that was difficult due to uncertainty over what to do against a new virus. The second wave came as cases got out of control, as necessary precautions were not taken adequately and numbers were hidden. The third wave is due to the blatant abandoning of existing precautions.”

An international homicidal policy based only on the interests of the financial oligarchy is emerging. Governments are reopening schools for in-person education to get children out of their homes so their parents can be sent back to work to produce profits for the corporations, under conditions where social aid is largely denied to parents or children.

Moreover, despite enormous opposition among high school students against holding face-to-face exams in schools, Erdoğan ordered that they return to in-person education and exams in so-called “low-” and “medium-risk” cities, making clear his government’s contempt for youth. Throughout February, hundreds of thousands of students campaigned on social media against plans to hold face-to-face exams in schools.

These criminal, unscientific policies have faced no serious objections from bourgeois opposition parties or the trade unions. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality led by CHP Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu joined the campaign, opening restaurants and cafes starting on March 5, after students had to begin using subways and public transport in Istanbul, with its population of more than 16 million, packed like sardines.

Moreover, as the government eases limited restrictions, variants of the coronavirus are spreading. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca himself admitted this on Wednesday, stating, “variants of the virus may be observed more commonly. As such, measures will be in effect for variants as well,” before adding, “High numbers of cases still pose a threat to our hope of having back our natural flow of life, and normalization will be possible only by abiding by the coronavirus measures.”

Scientists and public health specialists have strongly opposed state policy, warning that ending the current limited restrictions will cause a public health disaster overshadowing even the massacre in November-December. Shortly after the government reopened schools for in-person education, Turkey saw over 30,000 infections and more than 250 deaths per day in the November-December period.

Calls by scientists and public health specialists denouncing a “herd immunity” policy and demanding full lockdown and vaccination policies, powerfully vindicate the response to the pandemic of the International Committee of the Fourth International’s (ICFI) and its Turkish sympathizing group, Sosyalist Eşitlik.

A coalition of health organizations, including the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), Health and Social Service Laborers Union (SES), Progressive Health Workers Union, Turkish Nurses Association (THD), All Radiology Technicians Association (Tüm Rad-Der) and Social Service Specialists Association (SHU-Der), issued a joint statement on Thursday denouncing the premature reopening policies of the government.

It stated: “This [opening] decision was taken too early. Vaccinations and precautions are mandatory for these controlled steps,” adding that “we need to spread the vaccination by supplying 120-150 million doses of vaccine rapidly, to ensure social immunity with fair access to vaccines, while providing financial aid to our citizens with the principles of the social state so that social mobility is reduced for 14-28 days.”

However, vaccination is progressing slowly in Turkey and internationally. Moreover, within Turkey, serious regional inequalities are emerging. According to the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), as of March 1, only five percent of the population was vaccinated in 14 eastern and southeastern Kurdish-majority cities, while this figure was between 10 percent and 14.4 percent in 34 other cities.

The TTB has explained this difference by “distrust in government policy” and difficulties due to lack of access to health care services in the inhabitants’ mother tongue, Kurdish. The situation facing more than five million refugees and immigrants in Turkey is horrific. They are not even listed in the official vaccination schedule.

Against this global death policy by the ruling elites, there is no way forward besides the independent political intervention of the international working class and the launching of political general strikes. Workers must demand and struggle for a halt to all non-essential production and schools until the pandemic is contained, with full compensation to all affected workers and small businesses. This and other scientific social distancing and contact tracing measures must be combined with a rapid and broad international vaccination campaign, focusing on the most vulnerable sections of society.

Spanish department store El Corte Inglés to slash 3,500 jobs

Santiago Guillen & Alejandro López

One of Europe’s largest retailers and an indicator of the Spanish economy, El Corte Inglés, has announced that it will slash 3,500 jobs, its largest job cut since its founding in Madrid in 1940. The proposal was submitted last week to the trade unions, who have already stated their readiness to accept job cuts this year amid mass unemployment.

Most El Corte Inglés stores closed only for six weeks during the total lockdown in the spring of 2020. Its supermarkets and online sales remained active during that period. Nonetheless, the company, with sales revenues of €15.267 billion, is justifying its latest decision by citing the economic impact of the virus.

El Corte Inglés (Wikimedia Commons)

From June to August, the company did not even make losses, thanks to the back-to-work campaign of the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government which has cost the lives of 100,000 people and infected over 3.2 million. It made a net profit of €64 million, recovering its normal activity since then.

Workers risking their lives on the front line for its profits were cynically given €300 gift vouchers to spend on the company’s products. Many were given temporary redundancy (furlough) schemes if they were involved in non-essential activity. This is technically illegal if the company makes profits.

Predictably, its online sales increased, like those of other online outlets, during the pandemic. Before COVID-19, El Corte Inglés consolidated net profits of €310 million in the fiscal year 2019-2020 (between March 2019 and February 2020).

The giant retailer also plans to close a dozen of its 100 stores. This process already began in early 2019 before COVID-19 broke out with the closure of stores in the southern Spanish cities of Los Arcos (Seville) and Bahía Sur (Cádiz). The most recent closure was in Línares (Jaén) in January set to destroy 223 jobs.

This was accepted by the Federation of Trade Union Associations of Department Stores (FASGA), the union with the largest presence in the firm, which claimed it saved 70 jobs during the negotiations.

The store closure at Línares intersected with an incident of police violence in the town, leading to a two-day riot. It revealed the simmering explosive social conditions generated by the criminal herd immunity policy of the ruling class and decades of social counterrevolution.

Línares has Spain’s highest unemployment rate, above 30 percent and 50 percent among youth. The Socialist Party-Podemos government only brought the town under control with brutal violence, including the unprecedented use of live pellet ammunition by anti-riot police, leaving two protesters severely injured.

Underlying the company’s job cuts is its furious competition with Amazon. Last December, El Corte Inglés created a new independent logistics subsidiary for storage and shipping management to compete with Amazon, aiming to offer its infrastructure to third parties, triple its business volume and make €1.2 billion.

In this business war, El Corte Inglés works closely with the unions. For years, the Podemos-linked CCOO trade union and the PSOE-affiliated UGT claimed that the main unions working in El Corte Inglés, FETICO (Federation of Independent Trade Workers) and FASGA (Federation of Trade Union Associations of Department Stores), were “yellow” unions.

That is, CCOO and the UGT openly stated that these unions collaborated with management at workers’ expense.

In reality, of course, all the trade unions working in El Corté Inglés, irrespective of their origins, are based on the same nationalist, corporatist perspective. None of them has acted in defense of workers’ interests against the corporations and the ruling class. Since the earlier decades of the 20th century, there has been a universal degeneration of the trade unions. All of them play a critical role in isolating and suppressing workers struggles, while collaborating with management in defence of competitiveness.

This was on full display this week. On Tuesday, CCOO, UGT, FETICO and FASGA formed a negotiating committee tasked with negotiating the job cuts with El Corte Inglés. After the meeting, the unions posted a joint statement stating their intentions to carry out discussions "with maximum dialogue." They pledged to seek “positive measures such as voluntary redundancies and good economic compensations for the workforce.”

The unions falsely claim that the cuts will “not be carried out in a traumatic way but harmonized with the interests of the workers.” They cynically added that they would have a “clear and forceful” position in the negotiation and would seek a better redundancy compensation “above legal limits.”

In other words, they are willing to accept 3,500 job cuts without a fight.

Workers cannot put their hopes in the empty promises of the unions. In May 2020, the four unions reached an agreement with the company in which El Corte Inglés promised to “not promote any collective process of termination of contracts,” in exchange for concessions from workers which they justified, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Not even 10 months later, the company has broken the agreement, with the trade unions’ support.

As for the PSOE-Podemos government, it is complicit in the job cuts. Sources at the Ministry of Industry told Vozpopuli: "We have found out from the press.” This is hard to believe, however, as Industry Minister Reyes Maroto met with El Corte Inglés in January to discuss the job cuts they were planning.

Podemos Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz tried to maintain the fiction that she was ignorant of the cuts, claiming that there is “no legal obligation for companies to inform us of these processes. Although redundancy schemes of this size are usually forewarned, especially when there is such a fluid relationship.”

In fact, there is little doubt that the PSOE and Podemos are leading the drive to cut jobs at the company and thus be more competitive against Amazon. The PSOE-Podemos-controlled Credit Institute is the main guarantor of two loans in 2020, for €960 million and €1.2 billion, to El Corte Inglés. The same institute also worked with the European Investment Bank to give the company a grant of €110 million to "accelerate the digital transformation.”

Workers should reject all job losses and all the manoeuvres and claims of the union bureaucracy. The only way forward for workers is to break with the trade unions and build independent rank-and-file committees at El Corté Inglés and other retailers, to coordinate a unified political fight in defence of jobs and against store closures.

Other retail workers are facing similar attacks. The ANGED association of department stores, which includes companies such as IKEA, Carrefour and El Corte Inglés, is in discussions with the unions to impose a salary freeze this year and increase the number of Sundays and holidays to work for more than 250,000 workers.

This would set into motion further redundancies, sackings and wage cuts that would serve as a blueprint for further attacks in the sector. Older workers accepting compensation will be unable to find jobs, amid mass unemployment. Last month added an additional 44,436 new jobless claims, pushing the total to number of unemployed to 4,008,789.

Such a fight can only go forward through the development of a broader political movement of the working class, based on a socialist programme directed against the austerity agenda and herd immunity policy being imposed on workers across Europe.

More virulent strains of COVID-19 threaten spring surge

Benjamin Mateus

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaking to National Public Radio host Ari Shapiro expressed a level of concern about the next few weeks of the pandemic’s course that is seldom heard from high-level officials.

“I think,” she said, “the next two or three months could go in one of two directions. If things open up, if we’re not really cautious, we could end up with a post-spring-break surge the way we saw a post-Christmas surge. We could see much more disease. We could see much more death.”

A Tropical Medicine University virology lab researcher works to develop a test that will detect the P.1 variant of the new coronavirus, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, March 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Similar concerns are being raised across Europe, where after six weeks of steady decline over 1 million new cases have been reported this week, representing a 9 percent increase over the previous week. Hans Kluge, chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, noted on Thursday, “We are seeing a resurgence in Central and Eastern European countries where rates were already high.”

The hard-hit Czech Republic’s health system continues to face significant strains. Kluge urged nations “to get back to the basics” of public health measures. These upturns in infections stem from the relaxation of restrictions combined with the growing dominance of the more virulent lineage of the coronavirus.

In the United States, according to the CDC variant map, as of March 2 there were 2,506 cases of B.1.1.7 variants detected across 46 states. States where there have been more than 100 confirmed cases include Florida, Michigan, New York, Georgia, Texas and California. The immune-evading strains B.1.351 and P.1 are also on the rise, but not yet to the same level.

Dr. Michael Worobey, a virologist at the University of Arizona, urged more attention in the United States to the P.1 variant. He raised concerns that it could become more common, though it would compete with the B.1.1.7 variant. “At the very least, it’s going to be one of the contenders,” he told the New York Times.

These developments have blunted many scientists’ earlier optimism when the efficacious COVID-19 vaccines began being deployed in December. The strains that emerged out of South Africa and Brazil prove more transmissible and dampen the effect of the vaccine and, possibly, evade the natural immunity produced by previous infections.

Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), raised concerns that if the variant from South Africa or other lineages with similar mutations continue to spread and become the dominant variants, COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths next winter could be four times higher than the flu. He told Reuters that in a worst-case scenario that would mean as many as 200,000 COVID deaths. These figures are derived from federal government estimates of annual flu fatalities.

There is a growing hesitancy in how public health officials respond to media questions as to when the country could see a return to normalcy. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said, “Even after vaccination, I still would want to wear a mask if there was a variant out there. All you need is one little flick of a variant sparking another surge, and there goes your prediction.”

In an interview with Wired, he commented, “Let’s not declare victory yet, right? You don’t want the decline that we’re seeing to plateau at an unreasonably high level. Right now, the level of daily infections is somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 a day. That’s absolutely too high a level to be acceptable.” These levels are comparable to the highs during the summer.

Local public health departments responded with grave concern when the governors of Texas and Mississippi rescinded pandemic restrictions, lifting all mask mandates and allowing businesses to operate at full capacity. Texas Governor Greg Abbott unabashedly tweeted, “OPEN 100 percent. EVERYTHING.” Such rapid maneuvers, in the context of multiple circulating strains, have scientists worried about an alarming surge that will again inundate health systems.

Biden admonished the Texas and Mississippi governors for their actions, saying, “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it.” In this regard, his demand for the opening of all K-12 schools for in-person classes is sheer hypocrisy. Recent evidence emerging out of Canada and the UK has confirmed the critical role schools and children have played as driving vectors of community transmissions. Additionally, the new variants appear to have the highest prevalence among young children. The reopening of schools will intersect with the rise in dominant strains, pouring gasoline over a smoldering fire. The December wave in Manaus, Brazil, demonstrates this reality.

Since the pandemic first hit the region, 18 lineages of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been identified in the Amazonas. Out of this pool of variants, the P.1 emerged in November and rapidly grew to account for 51 percent of samples sequenced in December. By the first half of January, the P.1 variant accounted for 91 percent of sequenced coronaviruses. Its meteoric rise was matched by the horrific scale of misery and death it left in its wake, with hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs) running out of medicinal oxygen.

Brazil continues to see soaring daily cases of COVID-19 and new record highs in daily deaths. With health systems and ICUs throughout the country under extreme pressure, running on fumes as they near collapse, President Jair Bolsonaro continues to declare there will be “no lockdowns.”

The country’s national association of health secretaries released a statement saying, “The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil.”

A recent study on the Brazil variant conducted by a team from Oxford University, Imperial College London and the University of Sao Paulo found that the P.1 variant was between 1.4 to 2.2 times more transmissible. It also evaded 25 to 61 percent of protective immunity from the previous infection, raising concerns about current vaccines’ effectiveness. Most importantly, they sought to understand why, if a significant number of the population had been previously infected in Manaus, did the December surge surpass the April wave in both the number of cases and the intensity of transmission.

In addition to significantly higher transmissibility, even compared to the B.1.1.7 variant, they postulated that the mutations in the P.1 variant helped the virus escape antibodies created by previous infections. According to the New York T imes, Dr. Nuna Faria, a virologist at Imperial College, and his team heading the research “estimate that in 100 people who were infected with non-P.1 lineage in Manaus last year, somewhere between 25 and 61 of them could have been reinfected if they were exposed to P.1 in Manaus. … Dr. Faria said ‘an increasing body of evidence’ suggests that most cases in the second wave were the result of reinfections.”

In another recently published report, researchers found that the immune plasma of previously infected COVID-19 patients had a sixfold less neutralizing capacity against the P.1 strain.

Reinfections may not translate into severe disease, as T cell immunity may fend off severity associated with future infections despite waning antibodies. There are, however, difficulties posed in attaining herd immunity through natural infection or vaccination, as previously infected or vaccinated individuals may be prone to repeat infections and become vectors for future community transmissions. The P.1 variant has spread throughout Brazil and 24 other countries, including the United States, where 13 cases have been detected across seven states.

It becomes essential, considering these findings, that all measures be taken to further reduce the virus’s transmission to the greatest extent possible. The concept behind a Zero COVID strategy implies that strict mitigation measures are maintained for a definite period and reinforced with social support to the population to drive the daily rate of new cases to near “zero.” A stringent lockdown in place for two months could drive COVID cases to essentially undetectable levels, even with the dominance of variants, while at the same time leading to a sixfold decrease in deaths due to COVID-19.

This would allow local and state governments to bolster the public health infrastructure and establish mass vaccination campaigns with support from federal agencies. Additionally, these vaccines’ production and distribution must be carried out across broad regions of the globe to ensure a reliable supply of these life-saving treatments is available. Managing the first phase of the pandemic requires preventing death and morbidity to the greatest extent possible while protecting health systems. Ruling elites around the world, subordinating their response to the pandemic to the capitalist market, have proven they are not up to these tasks. The intervention of the working class on the basis of a socialist program is required.

At the WHO’s March 1 virtual COVID-19 press conference, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “It is regrettable that some countries continue to prioritize younger and healthier adults in their own populations ahead of health workers and older people elsewhere. Countries are not in a race with each other. This is a common race against the virus. We are not asking countries to put their own people at risk. We are asking all countries to be part of a global effort to suppress the virus everywhere … we urge all governments and individuals to remember that vaccines alone will not keep you safe.”

Colleges and universities in the US once again emerge as COVID-19 hotspots

Emily Ochiai & Genevieve Leigh

According to new data collected by a New York Times survey, COVID-19 cases have exploded at colleges and universities throughout the US since campuses have reopened for in-person learning. Predictably, campuses across the country are seeing COVID-19 outbreaks in the tens of thousands as students return for the spring semester.

The most recent New York Times, updated March 3, revealed that more than 17 colleges observed over 1,000 cases of new infections since the start of the year. University of Florida recorded a total of 2,138 new cases on campus for 2021 alone. Arizona State University has 1,822 cases, and University of Wisconsin-Madison has recorded 1,664 cases. Based on the survey, approximately 120,000 new cases this year have been directly linked to colleges and universities.

Major infection outbreaks and new records on universities across the United States are flooding in daily. A massive outbreak was recently reported at University of Virginia, with 220 university employees and 1,335 students testing positive out of a student population of 25,000.

The University of Delaware, where students are living on-campus and taking in-person classes for the current semester, recorded 324 new cases among students and employees last week. This figure is five times higher than the previous week, a staggering increase.

Dartmouth logged 119 new cases just over the past weekend. At the University of Michigan, where case numbers account for 62 percent of all Washtenaw County cases, there were 352 new cases reported in a week, the highest infection number in a single week since the start of the pandemic in the county. In addition, three individuals at the university have tested positive for the new highly infectious variant of the COVID-19.

There are presently 164 buildings closed because of COVID-19 cases discovered among students and staff school across multiple classrooms in just the last week.

Situations like these are shared among countless universities all over the United States since the start of the spring semester.

Top 20 Universities with the Highest COVID-19 Growth Rates

Of the 1,900 universities surveyed, a total of 102 universities had over 100 percent growth rate, meaning case numbers in 2021 exceeded case numbers in 2020. Among these universities, significant examples were Fairmont State University with a 295 percent growth rate and 236 cases of new infections this year; Jackson State University with a 271 percent growth rate and 160 new cases; Santa Clara University with a 256 growth rate and 243 new cases; and University of California, Davis with a 230 percent growth rate with 283 new cases.

The growth rate was calculated by the New York Times by taking the ratio of 2021 cases to 2020 cases. Readers must keep in mind that each institution’s method of counting was inconsistent. For example, some colleges subtract cases from their tallies once people have recovered. Some colleges only report tests performed on campus, and some did not provide full data, therefore, making the data incomplete.

The reckless reopening of colleges and universities comes on the heels of the fall semester in which more than 85 campuses reported at least 1,000 cases each—with some registering well over 5,000. More than 75,000 COVID-10 cases were confirmed in the last month of the fall semester alone. During the fall semester, there were more than 90 deaths involving college employees and students.

The dangerous myth that the virus only threatens the older generation was exposed to be a complete lie with more than 100 deaths of university students and many more suffering from long-term effects, such as damage to the lung, heart and brain.

Top 20 Universities with the Highest 2021 Cases

Additionally, one critical lesson from the fall was that the spread of the virus among students and faculty was not contained to college campuses. Towns and cities with colleges that reopened for in-person learning, or which, for one reason or another, allowed large numbers of students to return to their dorms, quickly became some of the worst hot spots in the country.

Despite the vast wealth of scientific data showing the dangers of reopening schools for in-person learning, dozens of colleges and universities, along with hundreds of K-12 school districts, have opened their doors.

The threat of death or serious illness from the virus to educators, students, their families and the community at large is immense.

Behind this reckless policy stands the Democratic Party, which has spearheaded the spring reopening campaign with local and state officials implementing Biden’s goal of fully reopening the majority of schools by the end of April.

Top 20 universities with the Highest Total Cases (2020-2021)

In tandem with school reopenings, politicians from both parties are loosening other restrictions on in-person gatherings, reopening bars, restaurants and other indoor venues. With more infectious, lethal and potentially vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2 spreading throughout the country, the conditions are ripe for a massive surge of cases that will result in needless suffering and deaths.

It is urgently necessary to close all schools and non-essential workplaces until the pandemic is brought under control and the population is fully vaccinated.

Mobilizing educators and the broader working class to oppose this policy and implement the necessary measures to contain the pandemic is a life-and-death question.

Australia: McCormick Foods workers strike after five-year wage freeze

Paul Bartizan

Nearly 100 workers at the McCormick Foods factory in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton began indefinite strike action on February 26. The industrial action follows a five-year long wage freeze and company plans to slash conditions and penalty rates of the workforce, which is covered by the United Workers Union (UWU).

McCormick Foods Australia is part of a US-based Fortune 1,000 corporation that is one of the largest producers of herbs and spices in the world. Globally, McCormick has 13,000 employees and annual revenues of more than $4 billion.

Strikers picketing McCormick Foods (Source: WSWS Media)

As well as processing McCormick-branded spices, the Melbourne plant supplies condiments to fast-food outlets KFC, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Subway and others. Supermarket chains Aldi, Woolworths and Costco also source food products from McCormick, with Keens mustard, Aeroplane jelly and Gourmet Garden among the lines produced at the Clayton factory.

The company has stonewalled negotiations over a new workplace agreement for the past five years since the expiry of the previous enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) in 2016. With no pay increase for five years, workers have had an effective wage cut of at least ten percent based on cost of living increases over that period—the equivalent of working one day each fortnight for free.

Corporate management is now offering a new EBA that entrenches zero wage increases, that is further real wage cuts. They also want to abolish the four-day week, a measure introduced by the company decades ago. The expired EBA stipulates that ordinary hours are 38 hours per week worked over four days at 9.5 hours per day, either Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday. The company has repeatedly stated that until workers concede this condition they will not negotiate. By scrapping the four-day week McCormick is aiming to cut overtime, which is paid at higher rates, and possibly introduce a night shift on top of the current day and afternoon shifts.

Some of the other company demands include cutting shift penalties, paid meal breaks, and overtime rates, which are currently paid at time and a half for the first two hours and double time thereafter.

McCormick wants a cap of 10 years on redundancy payouts. Many workers have worked much longer than 10 years. Workers explained to World Socialist Web Site reporters that ongoing automation such as palletisers that stack product onto pallets has seen a reduction of at least a quarter of the workforce over the past decade. Older workers who retire and workers who leave are not replaced.

Workers explained the company has previously threatened to offshore production to overseas McCormick plants in Thailand, India and China.

During the COVID-19 pandemic production at the Melbourne plant increased as fast-food sales and demand for home cooking ingredients boomed. Workers noted that management and office staff—who receive annual wage increases—worked from home, while production workers had to risk infection by staying in the plant. They also faced numerous challenges such as arranging to look after school-aged children while classroom teaching was suspended.

McCormick Foods (Source: WSWS Media)

The United Workers Union (UWU, formerly National Union of Workers), which covers the McCormick workers, is responsible for the appalling situation in the plant.

Annual real wage cuts have been imposed unchallenged, with the last industrial action only occurring in 2017 in response to company demands for a 6 percent wage cut. The UWU’s log of claims for the new EBA include a three percent annual wage increase, which fails to address the wage cut workers have suffered.

The UWU is isolating the McCormick workers, in the same manner as it has in numerous other struggles. McCormick’s Mentone distribution warehouse, just 8 kilometres away from the production plant, is maintaining operations as usual. The company claims they have at least two weeks’ worth of product in stock at the warehouse. Meanwhile the union is not providing any strike pay to the workers, despite having over $300 million in assets and $94 million in cash reserves.

McCormick workers need to review the UWU’s recent betrayal of striking Coles warehouse workers at Smeaton Grange, Sydney. There, 350 workers were locked out for more than three months. Coles refused to negotiate when workers rejected the EBA offer and ultimately forced workers to accept company demands.

The UWU conspired with Coles against their own members by refusing strike pay and failed to mobilise Coles warehouse workers around the country in their defence. The bureaucracy worked with management, ignoring numerous “no” votes against a regressive deal, wearing the workers down until they could no longer hold out.

The end result is that Coles workers have been forced back to jobs that will be destroyed within two years as the company shuts down the warehouse as part of an automation-driven restructuring of operations.

A warning must be issued to the McCormick workers following the organisation of a so-called “community picket” last Thursday, featuring Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus. Similar events at numerous other industrial disputes have been the immediate prelude to the shutdown of the strike and the lying public declaration of a “victory,” while workers’ wages and conditions are sacrificed in the fine print of a union-management deal.

McManus told the McCormick workers she was offering “100 percent solidarity.” She clarified that this involved some Twitter and Facebook posts, with the unions working “online, on social media, fundraising, in every other way we possibly can to start building and getting behind what you’re doing here.”

McCormick workers need to take their struggle out of the hands of the UWU, and form a rank-and-file committee independent of the unions. This committee should send a delegation to the McCormick warehouse in Mentone and fight for unified strike action, and turn out to other sections of the working class confronting similar attacks on their wages and conditions. The fight for the social rights of the working class against the major corporations and finance capital is a political struggle, requiring a new socialist and internationalist perspective.