Macron’s pandemic speech and the politics of “social murder”

Will Morrow & Alex Lantier

In February, analysing the British government’s refusal to impose a lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19, the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) wrote that the government’s response to the pandemic “might be classified as social murder.” It pointedly asked: “When politicians willfully neglect scientific advice, international and historical experience, and their own alarming statistics and modelling because to act goes against their political strategy, is that lawful?”

This policy was on full display on Wednesday evening, as 31 million people tuned in for French President Emmanuel Macron’s primetime speech on the upsurge of COVID-19 now devastating France and Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron visits a call centre of the French Social security insurance dedicated to Covid-19 vaccinations, Monday, March 29, 2021 in Creteil, outside Paris.

Macron was widely expected to announce new social distancing measures. Even before the surge, caused by the British and South African variants of the virus, COVID-19 death tolls were nearing one million in Europe and 100,000 in France. But with only 5 percent of France’s population fully vaccinated, cases have tripled since March 7, from 21,825 to 59,038 yesterday, according to Public Health France. This is equivalent to 300,000 in a country the size of the United States.

Before Macron’s speech, leading medical authorities demanded, one after the other, a strict lockdown. Epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola denounced Macron’s refusal to impose a lockdown in January, when two-thirds of the French public was polled as supporting a lockdown, adding: “It is naive to claim Macron is an epidemiologist.” Paris Public Hospitals, 90 percent of whose intensive care beds are already taken by 1,484 patients, warned that they are only days away from denying lifesaving care to thousands of critically ill patients.

The head of France’s Association of Doctors, Patrick Bouet, wrote to Macron an open letter. “Life can tolerate today no arbitrage, no hesitation, no betting,” he said. Insisting one can “still prevent the virus engulfing everyone,” he added, “a true lock-down everywhere is needed.”

The response of France’s “president of the rich” must be taken as a warning to workers not only in France, but internationally: the ruling class acts with utter contempt for human life. Macron’s speech, no doubt coordinated with the European Union (EU) and Washington, was an unambiguous refusal to take any meaningful action to halt mass deaths.

Macron acknowledged there is an “acceleration due to the variant that threatens to make us lose control if we do nothing.” However, he proposed only a one-week closure of schools before the spring holidays, followed by a week of distance learning for high school students after that. He also closed nonessential retail stores, while pledging that cultural venues and restaurants, which spread COVID-19, would reopen in May.

Macron’s attempt to pass this off as a lockdown is a fraud.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread across Europe and America, wildcat strikes broke out in factories in Italy and the United States and spread internationally. As France’s Medef business federation warned of “an extremely brutal shift in workers’ attitudes” and that management “can no longer continue production due to pressure from the workers,” Macron agreed to a strict, eight-week lockdown, closing schools and all nonessential production. Such lockdowns dramatically slashed the spread of the coronavirus not only in France, but across much of Europe.

Now, however, as thousands face a denial of lifesaving care in a wealthy European country, Macron is refusing to stop nonessential production and has closed schools for less than two weeks.

Macron also shamelessly applauded his own disastrous policy, claiming that he was “taking into account the consequences of restrictions on our children, on their education, on the economy, on society, on mental health.” Had he spoken honestly, Macron would have said he was “taking into account the consequences of social distancing restrictions on our companies, their profits, and our fortunes.” Schools and nonessential production are being kept open—not based on scientific evidence—but to ensure that corporate profits keep flowing into the financial markets.

Macron’s open contempt for medical experts and public opinion, however, is only an especially tactless version of the policy pursued by the bourgeoisie across Europe. The same day Macron spoke, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was interviewed on television and refused to say how or when a lockdown could be implemented in Germany. Then yesterday, the director of Germany’s intensive care registry, Christian Karagiannidis, warned Tagesschau that in four weeks all intensive care beds would be full in Germany.

Tens of millions of workers in France and across Europe are being brought face to face with the fact that the EU is implementing a policy of social murder.

The outcome, and how many lives can be saved, will depend on how quickly the working class can intervene independently, mobilizing in struggle against the capitalist governments of Europe for a scientifically-guided policy on the pandemic.

This requires independent organizations of struggle and an internationalist and socialist perspective for struggle against capitalism. In the wake of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, pseudo-left academics and anti-Marxists declared that humanity had arrived at the “end of history” and the class struggle; capitalist democracy would reign. What followed were decades of imperialist wars, economic crisis, and rising social inequality and austerity that have devastated basic health infrastructure. The pandemic has now torn the mask off of European capitalism.

In March 2020, the World Socialist Web Site analyzed the catastrophic failure of the pandemic response in America in a column titled “Capitalism is at war with society,” writing:

“These four decades have revealed all the socially reactionary characteristics of a system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which all considerations of social need are subordinated to the drive for profit and vast personal wealth. The motto of the capitalist oligarchy is: ‘If the accumulation of our billions requires the death of millions, so be it.’”

The last year has vindicated this assessment. European capitalism’s pretensions as the kinder, gentler version of its American cousin have been exposed as a fraud. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and European governments poured trillions of euros and pounds into bank and corporate bailouts. While individual financial aristocrats made fortunes, with France’s Bernard Arnault raking in €30 billion last year, countless thousands were left to die, based on false claims that society cannot afford lockdowns.

Workers struggles against the policy of social murder can only be waged independently of its accomplices in the union bureaucracies, and their supporters in their pseudo-left political allies like France’s New Anti-capitalist Party or Germany’s Left Party. France’s Stalinist General Confederation of Labor and the German Trade Union Federation isolated the wildcat strikes in March. They then signed EU bailouts and helped implement the back-to-school policies that played a critical role in the resurgence of the pandemic after the spring 2020 lockdown.

In March 2020, wildcat strikes compelled a lockdown last year in much of Europe, but this last year has shown the fatal limits of spontaneous struggle. Without a socialist perspective and their own organizations of struggle, workers were subordinated to reactionary manoeuvres of the governments, banks and trade unions who implemented a “herd immunity” policy.

US weekly combined unemployment claims spike above 950,000

Jacob Crosse

The latest Department of Labor first-time unemployment claims report revealed an increase of 61,000 state claims compared to the prior week, bringing the weekly total to over 719,000.

In addition to the 719,000 state claims, the report also revealed another 237,025 initial claims were filed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA), created under the CARES Act. This brought the combined state and federal claims to 951,548, nearly four times the pre-pandemic average of 225,000 claims.

Volunteers carries food to waiting cars at the Utah Food Bank's mobile food pantry Thursday, March 11, 2021, in West Valley City, Utah. Since the coronavirus pandemic began many have relied more on food banks to get enough to eat. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

The PUA program, designed for self-employed, contract, and so-called “gig” workers, along with the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, will both expire in September, barring congressional action. Out of the 18.2 million workers that were claiming some form of unemployment assistance in mid-March, nearly 7,350,000 of those continuing claims were filed under PUA, while roughly 5,515,000 claims were for the PEUC program.

Despite efforts from Republican and Democratic governors alike to abandon limited lockdowns and health and safety measures in the interests of “reopening the economy” and generating profits for the ruling class, the stubbornly high claims showed that millions are struggling to find permanent, steady and well-paying work.

After limited lockdowns were implemented and then abandoned last spring, some 22 million jobs were lost. One year later, roughly 9 million have yet to return. While trillions of dollars have been made available for Wall Street speculators, large multinational corporations and the politically well-connected, millions of jobless workers and their families remain on the brink of destitution and homelessness. For those that have found work, it has generally been part-time and transitory, such as rideshare, grocery shopping and food delivery services, which also lack steady wages and benefits compared to “traditional” employment.

While millions remain out of work, April’s job report is expected to show an increase in employment upwards of 500,000. However the majority of these jobs are centered in the low-paying service, restaurant, travel and hospitality industries, which have been decimated due to COVID-19 induced lockdowns.

A February report from McKinsey & Company illustrated the character of the unequal “recovery” in the US. Their research found that the total unemployment rate among those who make under $30,000 a year was at 17.34 percent as of February 2021, compared to only 3 percent for those who reported earning above $150,000.

For workers earning between $30,000 and $50,000 total unemployment was at 9.32 percent, while those who made between $99,000 and $150,000 were recorded at only 3.24 percent. The increased employment rate for the working class tracks with statistics provided by the Federal Reserve last month which estimated that the real jobless rate was between 9 and 10 percent.

While the DOL report found that the overall total of 18.2 million workers claiming unemployment decreased by over 1.5 million from the week prior, this was not an indication that over a million workers found jobs. Instead, state benefits continue to expire, forcing the unemployed to apply for assistance through federal programs. In addition to expiring eligibility requirements, several state governments are reimposing job search requirements in an attempt to blackmail workers back into dangerous job sites.

In Michigan, where COVID-19 hospitalizations are skyrocketing and daily new infections are exceeding 5,400, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the state legislature refused to renew an important element in the state law which would have allowed jobless workers to continue claiming COVID-19 as a valid reason to receive state unemployment. The change, which took effect on April 1, followed another anti-worker decision by Whitmer, which would have allowed jobless workers to claim unemployment benefits for 26 weeks instead of 20.

After the extension passed the legislature last year, Whitmer vetoed the proposal in December, calling it a “tax break for big businesses.” As of March 6, nearly 640,000 Michiganders were receiving some form of unemployment pay, with nearly 75 percent of the funds distributed via federal pandemic benefits and not state programs.

In Nevada, where the official unemployment rate remains at 5.4 percent and over 5,200 have succumbed to COVID-19, Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak’s Department of Employee Training and Retention announced this week that those receiving unemployment payments would have to submit proof that they are actively searching for jobs. Some claimants will also be “randomly” selected to meet with “virtual representatives” as part of the “Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment program.”

Despite claims from President Joe Biden and the Democratic party that the misnamed $1.9 trillion “American Recovery Act” represented the most “progressive” legislation since the “New Deal” and “Great Society” programs, millions of workers have already used up the fleeting and insufficient benefits included in the legislation. Among the miserly benefits touted in the program include one time $1,400 relief checks and $300-a-week-unemployment checks, down from the $600 included in the CARES Act last year.

CNN has reported, and the Internal Revenue Service has confirmed, that some 8 million eligible people have yet to receive their $1,400 stimulus payments due to the IRS having incorrect filing information. In a note to CNN, Erin Collins from the National Taxpayer Advocate said the issue “is problem the law and the IRS have created.” Collins said. “The rug is being pulled out from under eligible individuals with outstanding debts.”

Unlike the $600 stimulus checks passed under the Trump administration in December, the last batch of checks do not include protections that would have prevented the checks from being seized by creditors, debt collectors or for child support payments.

Mark, an unemployed worker in Las Vegas, spoke to this reporter on the current crisis saying that it’s been “frustrating” trying to find a decent job.

Despite putting in multiple applications for low-paying work he feels he’s overqualified for, Mark hasn’t received a call back from any prospective employers.

“It seems like every job I’ve been looking at has been starting at $11 an hour. Starting wages have been depressed, probably because so many people are out of work,” he said.

Mark described the “American Rescue Plan” as “inadequate,” and said the election of Biden has brought no relief.

“Nothing’s changed, things have gotten worse, the media is ignoring all the terrible things Biden is doing. Everything Trump was doing, Biden is doing. CNN would report Trump’s lies, but just when Biden lies, they are called ‘misstatements.’ Like, the $2,000 checks we were promised would have been nice. There hasn’t been any talk about further relief. It’s like we got the $1,400 and that is it. Yet my rent is still going up, now it is over $1,000 a month.”

Mark recalled that, “[Vice President Kamala] Harris campaigned on $2,000 a month, what happened to that? The $1,400 was gone almost immediately.”

New Zealand: Pike River mine disaster families oppose government plan to end underground investigation

Tom Peters

On March 23 New Zealand’s Labour Party-led government announced there would be no more funding to continue the underground investigation into the causes of the Pike River Coal (PRC) mine disaster.

Dean Dunbar in 2016 at the families’ blockade on the road to Pike River mine.

The announcement by Andrew Little, the minister in charge of the Pike River Recovery Agency (PRRA), shocked and angered many families of the 29 men who were killed when multiple explosions tore through the mine, beginning on November 19, 2010. For ten years, successive National and Labour Party governments, along with the police and the judicial system, have ensured that no PRC managers, chief executives or directors have been prosecuted for the extremely unsafe conditions in the mine.

A 2012 royal commission of inquiry found that the company had placed production ahead of its workers’ safety and, ultimately, their lives. There had been multiple warnings that the mine had grossly inadequate methane-gas drainage and ventilation, with gas levels frequently in the explosive range, making it a death trap. There was also no adequate emergency exit, as required by law. The commissioners, however, could not identify the precise cause of the explosion due to a lack of physical evidence.

The Labour Party and its coalition partners, the Greens and New Zealand First, promised in the 2017 election campaign to re-enter the mine to look for bodies and gather evidence for future prosecutions. More than three years later, however, no charges have been laid.

Miners have explored the drift tunnel, but have stopped at a roof-fall blocking the main workings of the mine. Beyond the obstruction there is likely to be crucial evidence, including an underground ventilation fan, which is a probable source of ignition for the explosion.

On March 30, the Pike River Family Reference Group (FRG), which is part of the PRRA, said in a press release: “Families accept advice that going further would be a major, expensive engineering project, with complex potential safety risks… Families accept, with heartbreak, Andrew Little’s advice that there will be no more government money to expand the project at this time.”

In fact, many families were not consulted on this statement and have strongly objected to it. The FRG consists of three family members and two advisers: Rob Egan, a former senior adviser to two Labour Party leaders, and Tony Sutorius, a documentary film-maker close to the unions.

Cloe Nieper, whose husband Kane died in the mine, told Radio NZ: “I didn’t agree to [the FRG statement], so I don’t know why they’re saying that we all agreed to it… I feel like I’ve been blindsided.”

Carol Rose, who lost her son Stuart Mudge in the mine, told the World Socialist Web Site she had heard from 14 families “who are against what’s happening” and knew nothing about the FRG’s decision prior to reading the press release. Rose said in her opinion the FRG was not operating democratically and had served to “divide and conquer” the families.

Before the 2017 election, the families had united against the then-National Party government. They won widespread support in the working class in 2016 when they picketed the mine access road and stopped the government’s plan to seal it forever and prevent any underground investigation.

Carol Rose (Source: Governor-General’s Facebook page, April 2016)

Rose had hoped that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government would be more “honourable,” but she now wondered “if the Pike River families were used to get election votes by making these promises,” which are now being reneged on.

Minister Little told Stuff on March 30: “There never was a commitment to re-enter the mine workings. There was only ever a commitment to recover the drift.”

This statement is deeply misleading. Dean Dunbar, whose 17-year-old son Joseph was killed in Pike River, told the WSWS that in 2017 the government agreed “that once we reached that roof fall an assessment and a feasibility study would be done, to see what it would take to go further.”

He said claims by the FRG that it could cost another $60 to $100 million to explore further in the mine appeared to have been “plucked out of the air,” and the government was “trying to scare everyone into submission” with unsubstantiated claims that it is too dangerous.

Responding to claims that the investigation had become too expensive, Rose noted that New Zealand recently hosted the America’s Cup yacht race, which got $250 million in public funds. The government has also distributed tens of billions to prop up businesses throughout the country in response to the economic crisis produced by COVID-19 over the past year.

Technical experts also criticised the government. Tony Forster, New Zealand’s former chief inspector of mines, announced on March 23 that he had resigned his position as an advisor to the FRG because “no one is listening.” He told Stuff that the roof fall would be relatively straight-forward to pass and the obstruction was composed of coal, not rock as previously thought.

Forster said: “I have a problem with the families being told it is too difficult when it is not. They deserve the truth.” He said the government had promised to assemble an expert panel to advise “on the feasibility of re-entry into the main mine workings, [but] to my knowledge, that never occurred. So in the absence of that feasibility study, how can anyone say what it would cost?”

According to Newshub, geology expert David Bell and ventilation expert Dr. Roy Moreby also said it would be feasible to proceed past the roof fall.

Richard Healey, an electrical engineer who has spent years investigating the disaster on behalf of some of the families, explained to the WSWS that passing the 20-metre roof fall was an “absolutely standard mine engineering problem” that was tackled “every day” in mines around the world.

Healey said the government “has said it’s too dangerous, too expensive and too technically difficult without ever assessing the danger, the difficulty or the cost. They don’t seem to understand how important that particular area of the mine is… This is where we have really good reason to believe that the first explosion was centred.”

Examples of Andrew Little’s promises as Labour Party leader in 2016 and during the 2017 election campaign.

Bernie Monk, whose son Michael died in Pike River, said he was particularly angry because Little was the leader of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) when the disaster happened, and several of the dead miners were union members. Little entered parliament in 2011 and led the Labour Party from 2014 to 2017. He had attended annual meetings of Pike River families and supporters in Blackball to sing “Solidarity” and repeatedly promised to do everything possible to recover the bodies.

Monk said immediately after the explosion in 2010 Little “announced that Pike River was one of the safest mines, and he had to retract that after he found out he was wrong.” Prior to the explosion several union members at Pike River had protested against unsafe conditions in the mine, but the union leadership never attempted to shut down the operation and never criticised the company. It collaborated with PRC to ensure that nothing disrupted the mine’s operations.

Malcolm Campbell, whose son, also called Malcolm, died at Pike River, told the WSWS that Monk and other family members pushing for a thorough investigation had been “treated pretty awful,” and the government’s decision not to go beyond the roof-fall “is heart-breaking. We always thought when the recovery was set in place, the decision about the rock fall would be assessed when they reached it, as nobody really knew how big it was, and now the [experts] say it could be passable.”

Bernie Monk (Source: Governor-General’s Facebook page, April 2016)

The WSWS also spoke with Ben Joynson, who was 10-years-old when his father William died in the mine. He said he had been surprised by the FRG’s statement and he urged all the families to “come together and talk.”

Joynson said it was essential to continue the investigation and “someone needs to be held accountable for the decisions that caused the explosion. They may not have thrown a match in it, but because of their decisions and their lack of morals, that’s what occurred, an explosion that killed 29 men.” He added: “A lot of corporations, most of them if not all of them, don’t do 100 percent of what they should do. At the end of the day it comes down to money.”

He said families had suffered “many sleepless nights, tears, pain… You try to move on, but you can’t.” For the investigation to stop now “would be, as many have said, a betrayal to all of us.” Joynson urged the government to “do what’s morally right by the families… People aren’t just numbers, they are living, breathing creatures that deserve respect.”

Monk, Rose and Dunbar all expressed scepticism that the police and crown prosecutors would lay any charges with the evidence gathered so far. In 2013 police dropped an initial investigation into PRC and the government’s Department of Labour withdrew charges against chief executive Peter Whittall for health and safety breaches. Police have also destroyed evidence, and some items have gone missing.

Ben Joynson, whose father died in the disaster.

Dunbar and Monk compared their struggle to that of the CTV building families. The building collapsed in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, killing 115 people, because of its extremely unsafe design. Police announced in 2017 that they would lay manslaughter charges against the builders, but the state’s solicitors intervened to ensure that this did not happen.

Both cases—and many similar ones internationally—are examples of class justice, in which the entire political establishment, the trade unions and judicial system has acted in the interests of big business, and against the basic rights of the working class to safe working conditions.

Australian Labor Party backs coal, gas and “border protection”

Mike Head

On two critical issues, climate change and the global refugee crisis, this week’s Labor Party “special platform conference” demonstrated the utter political bankruptcy of all those who have insisted for decades that Labor, a thoroughly capitalist party, can somehow be pressured in a progressive direction.

In Labor’s tightly-controlled two-day event, one of the longest sessions—lasting less than an hour—involved hand-picked trade union and party representatives paying lip service to the need for action on the environmental crisis and criticising the pro-fossil fuel policy of the Liberal-National Coalition government.

Labor’s energy spokesman Chris Bowen addressing conference from Nissan showroom (Source: Facebook)

Yet the main outcomes were to abandon any carbon emissions reduction target for 2030, mirroring the government’s refusal to set such a target, and to recommit any Labor government to continuing to support the mining giants based on the lucrative extraction of the main fossil fuels—coal, gas and oil.

With these outcomes stitched up by the party and union powerbrokers behind closed doors, there was no dissent, even of a token character. Every vote was unanimous.

Because of the insatiable drive for corporate profit, global warming is accelerating. All the scientific reports have warned that unless carbon emissions and the use of fossil fuels are urgently reduced, the world is headed for average temperature rises of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, producing intense heatwaves, droughts and fire, more severe tropical storms and flooding, increased acidification of oceans, accelerated permafrost melt, the thinning of ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica, and rising sea levels.

Despite the global nature of this crisis, Labor’s policies were recast, more explicitly than ever, in nationalist terms, in line with the conference’s overarching focus on strengthening the US military alliance, directed against China, and preparing for war.

“Labor will ensure that Australia becomes a renewable energy superpower,” is the opening declaration of the party’s platform chapter on the environment. In moving the chapter, Labor’s energy spokesman Chris Bowen even claimed that the development of the continent’s clean energy sources would make the country a “manufacturing superpower” as well. He told the conference: “The globe’s climate emergency is Australia’s jobs opportunity.”

Alongside this promotion of “green” industries to profit from the climate crisis, an agreed amendment was adopted, proposed by Australian Workers’ Union national vice president Paul Farrow, to specifically hail the coal industry, along with the rest of the mining sector.

“Labor recognises and values the economic and employment contribution of Australia’s mining and extractive resources industries including iron ore, coal, uranium, nickel, rare earths, gold, copper, zinc, silver, gas, bauxite and others,” the amendment stated.

Another amendment, sponsored by the Construction Forestry Mining Maritime and Energy Union’s mining and energy general secretary Grahame Kelly, reiterated Labor’s backing for the highly-profitable exporting of coal, oil and gas. “Labor supports Australian industry, including agriculture, manufacturing, minerals including coal, oil and gas,” the amendment said.

That means backing the further expansion of fracking and other new gas projects, which are widely opposed in urban and regional areas alike.

Speaker after speaker from the mining-related unions insisted that these commitments were essential to give the party any hope of winning back disaffected mining workers, who deserted the party in the 2019 federal election, along with many other workers. But the essential thrust of the platform chapter is to guarantee the super-profits of the coal, oil and gas conglomerates.

To provide a figleaf for these pledges, representatives of the Labor Environmental Action Network (LEAN) were given time to pretend that a Labor government would make a difference to the global warming disaster.

In an attempt to appease the immensely popular concern over climate change, intensified by the 2019–20 bushfire catastrophe and this year’s floods, LEAN co-convener Felicity Wade said the conference “confirms Labor’s commitment to showing up to keep Australians safe from a disrupted future where terrifying fire and flood are just the beginning.”

An amendment by Labor MPs Ged Kearney (a former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions) and Josh Wilson said a Labor government would recognise “a climate emergency” and adopt renewable energy “at a rapid pace.” Even this purely token gesture was couched in terms of transforming Australia into a “renewables superpower.”

In reality, that means boosting the fortunes of the mining companies, along with those of the much-hyped “green” and “clean energy” businesses that are becoming more prominent in Australian capitalism’s corporate and financial elite.

The only climate-related initiatives announced during the conference were subsidies for purchases of electric cars, which remain out of reach for working class people, and for small-scale battery storage projects to facilitate the spread of household solar panels.

These proposals, even if implemented, are dwarfed by the magnitude and global character of the climate crisis. To seriously address global warming it is necessary to carry out a major reorganisation of economic life worldwide. Energy production has to be shifted to renewables, accompanied by the genuine protection and enhancement of the lives and livelihoods of mining workers.

That involves massive international funding for infrastructure and the development of technologies, instead of pouring trillions of dollars into military spending and war preparations and the pockets of the mining magnates and other billionaires. In other words, a socialist solution is urgently required.

No time at all was allocated at Labor’s conference to the mounting global refugee disaster, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the universal closing of borders by governments. More people are fleeing persecution, violence and poverty than any time since World War II. Increasingly brutal measures are being taken against desperate asylum seekers, from the US-Mexico border to the Mediterranean Sea and Australia’s detention facilities.

For the past three decades, Labor conferences have featured set-piece “debates” on the party’s anti-refugee policies, which date back to the Keating government’s imposition of the mandatory detention of refugees in 1992. Even at the last conference, in 2018, such a charade was conducted in order for supposed opponents of the detention regime to foster illusions that a Labor government would deliver “fairness” and “compassion,” in contrast to the Liberal-National government.

No such show was conducted this time. Endorsed without debate, the platform declares unequivocal support for the effectively indefinite detention of asylum seekers on remote Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, which was re-instituted by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013, along with the denial of their basic democratic and legal right to apply for protection visas.

Cynically seeking to stoke xenophobic anti-refugee sentiment, the platform states: “To maintain Australians’ confidence and trust in the integrity of our migration system, Labor will fund and maintain robust border security measures that support the orderly processing of migration to our country and protect our national interest and our national borders.”

A “statement in detail” adds: “To support Australia’s strong border security regime, Labor will maintain: • An architecture of excised offshore places; and • The non-statutory processing on Christmas Island of persons who arrive unauthorised at an excised place, except where other arrangements are entered into under bilateral and regional arrangements.”

More than ever, Labor and the unions are seeking to divert the rising discontent in the working class over yawning social inequality and deteriorating working and living conditions in a reactionary nationalist direction, scapegoating refugees and other workers overseas.

This toxic nationalism plays into the promotion of a wartime-style anti-foreigner political climate. Against this poison, working people need to defend the right of refugees and workers to live and work in whichever country they choose, with full civil and political rights, instead of being treated like criminals.

The Adani Business Formula: Dealing with Myanmar’s Military

Binoy Kampmark

Corporate morality can be a flexible thing.  Some companies see tantalising dollar signs afloat in the spilt blood of civilians and dissidents.  Military governments, however trigger crazed, offer ideal opportunities; potentially, corners can be cut, regulations relaxed.  The Adani Group has shown itself to be particularly unscrupulous in this regard.

In many ways, it is fitting.  The group’s record in a range of areas suggests that the profit motive soars above any other consideration.  Environmentally, Adani is an irresponsible, wretched beast.  A shonky Adani coal ship, the MV Rak, sank off the coast of Mumbai in August 2011 with devastating effects on marine life, the fishing industry, beaches and tourism.  Its lacklustre response to dealing with the mess suggested environmental vandalism of the highest order.

In terms of employment practices, the company has been found to underpay its workforce and use child labour in the bargain.  As for corporate strategy, Adani is happy to spread largesse for favours.  The illegal export of 7.7 million tonnes of iron ore between 2006 and 2010 mobilised the company in a campaign of suppression and concealment.  The Ombudsman of the Indian state of Karnataka took an interest in Adani’s conduct and found a vast bribery enterprise covering local politicians, customs officials, members of the police force, the State Pollution Control Board, the Port Department and the Weight and Measurement Department.

So why stop there?  With the killing of demonstrators in Myanmar well underway, human rights groups and activists turned their sharp focus towards Adani’s record on port investment and its involvement with the military junta.  The grounds of concern were already laid in 2019, when the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar listed Adani Ports and its commercial links with the military conglomeration, the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC).

The previous year, the UN Mission had issued a call for the top military commanders of Myanmar to be investigated and prosecuted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity against ethnic groups in the states of Arakan (Rakhine), Kachin and Shan and for alleged genocide against the Rohingya of Arakan state.  The fact finding mission was stern in judgment: “no business enterprise active in Myanmar or trading or investing in businesses in Myanmar should enter into an economic or financial relationship with the security forces of Myanmar, in particular the Tatmadaw, or any enterprise owned or controlled by them or their individual members”.

The International Criminal Court has also authorised the Prosecutor to investigate alleged atrocities by the military, including deportation and other inhumane acts and the persecution of the Rohingya inside Myanmar.  While Myanmar is not a State Party to the court’s jurisdiction, Bangladesh, which received the bulk of the displaced Rohingya, is.

In Port of Complicity: Adani Ports in Myanmar, a March 2021 report by the Australian Centre for International Justice and Justice For Myanmar, the authors focus on Adani Port’s commercial ties with the MEC military conglomerate.  In May 2019, Adani Ports entered into an agreement to construct, operate and transfer land held by the MEC for 50 years in an investment that promises to run to US$290 million.  Land is being leased for the construction of the Ahlone International Port Terminal 2.  The very property in question is a source of concern.  “Due diligence obligations,” warn the authors, “would require Adani Ports to investigate whether the land is the subject of illegal appropriation by the military.”

The report also draws upon documents obtained by Justice for Myanmar, revealing that Adani Ports’ subsidiary in Myanmar, the Adani Yangon International Terminal Company Limited, paid US$52 million to the MEC, including $30 million in land lease fees.  The rest constitute land clearance fees.

Through its Australian arm, the Adani Group released a statement seeing little problem with the commercial deal with a military-run corporation, despite acknowledging arm embargoes and travel sanctions on important members of the junta.  Such facts did not “preclude investments in the nation or business dealings with corporations such as MEC”.  The company also “rejected insinuations that this investment is unethical or will compromise human rights”.

In December 2020, Adani reiterated that understanding to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, seeing no problems between ongoing arms embargoes and travel restrictions on “key members of the military”.  A more constructive reading of company intentions was encouraged.  “The Adani Group’s vision is to help build critical infrastructure for nations across key markets and help in propelling economic development and social impacts.”

Following the February 1 coup, Adani issued a statement denying any engagement with the junta over the 2019 approval of the port.  “We categorically deny having engaged with military leadership while receiving this approval or thereafter.”  This was a curious version of events, given the July 2019 visit by a Myanmar military delegation led by Commander-in Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to Adani Ports’ headquarters based in Mundra, India.  Ten days prior to the visit, the US State Department had targeted Min Aung Hlaing and three senior members of the military with travel bans, citing their “responsibility for gross human rights violations, including in extrajudicial killings in northern Rakhine State, Burma, during the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya”.

The tour presented the general and his coterie a happy occasion for photo and video opportunities, many of which were posted on his personal website and the website of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Defence Services.  Gifts were also exchanged between the CEO of Adani Ports, Kiran Adani, and the Senior General.

Caught out by this howler, the company, through a spokesperson, attempted to minimise the significance of the meeting.  The general and his delegation were on an official visit to India; visiting Mundra was merely an informal matter.  “In 2019, the government of India hosted the Myanmar general Min Aung Hlaing and Mundra Port was only one such location out of the multiple sites on this visit”.

The military regime in Myanmar is becoming the subject of interest in certain foreign capitals.  The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) within the US Treasury has targeted the two main military holding companies, the MEC and Myanma Economic Holdings Company Limited (MEHL) with sanctions.  “These companies,” states the US Treasury, “dominate certain sectors of the economy, including trading, natural resources, alcohol, cigarettes, and consumer goods.” Various high ranking military officials, former and current, have links to the holding companies and their various subsidiaries.

Superbly disingenuous, a spokesperson for Adani Ports has suggested watchfulness at this increasingly sordid picture: the company was “watching the situation in Myanmar carefully and will engage with the relevant authorities and stakeholders to seek their advice on the way forward”.  In what can only be regarded as an exercise in moral vacuity, the same spokesperson claimed that the Yangon International Terminal project was “an independent container terminal with no joint venture partners.”

The Myanmar-Adani nexus comes with broader, blood-stained implications.  The company’s Australian operations in the Carmichael coal project in Queensland, long challenged by a determined grassroots effort, raises the question of ethical financing.  “The question for Australia and Australians is whether we want to be hosting a company that is contributing to the enrichment of the Myanmar military,” asks Chris Sidoti, an Australian lawyer who was on the 2019 UN Mission.  Investing in Adani was tantamount to the indirect financing of the Myanmar military.  “This is a question especially for sovereign wealth funds and pension funds that should have a highly ethical basis for their investment decisions.”  As ever, some room to hope.

UK’s “New Plan for Immigration”—a fundamental assault on the right to asylum

Richard Tyler

Home Secretary Priti Patel’s “New Plan for Immigration” is a fundamental attack on the right to asylum. The 52-page document cloaks the introduction of draconian anti-democratic measures in the doublespeak of supposedly bringing about more “fairness” and “streamlining”.

Although it is already a “criminal offence to enter or be in the UK without status or permission,” the government intends to extend this to those “seeking to enter the UK illegally”, as well as increasing the maximum penalty from its current six months. Since virtually all “legal” means for an asylum seeker to reach Britain are being blocked, those arriving will almost all be catagorised as “illegal” immigrants. Anyone receiving a custodial sentence of 12 months or more in the UK is defined as a “Foreign National Offender” (FNO) and can be subject to deportation. Breaching a deportation order and returning to the UK would mean someone defined as a FNO could be jailed for up to five years, rather than six months as currently.

Home Secretary Priti Patel chairs a virtual call with members of the G6 at the Home Office in London. 24/03/2021. (Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street-FlickR)

In future, a right to stay will usually only be given to those refugees and asylum seekers who apply for “resettlement” to the UK through the official process. The document boasts of Britain’s “ proud history of those facing persecution, oppression and tyranny ,” with the UK accepting “more refugees through planned resettlement schemes than any other country in Europe”.

Resettlement involves making a claim from abroad, before arriving in Britain, enabling the authorities to strictly control the arrival of those fleeing persecution, wars, famine, and natural disasters. Between 2015 and 2019, less than 5,000 people a year were able to come to the UK based on this process. According to statista.com, over the same timeframe, the annual number of refugees worldwide rose from 15.48 million to 20.45 million, the number of asylum seekers almost doubled, from 2.32 million to 4.15 million, and the tally of “internally displaced persons” increased from 37.49 million to 43.5 million.

Put in this global context—the term “fair” or “fairness” is used over 20 times in the document—Britain’s “fair” share amounted to just 0.04 percent of global refugees, displaced persons, and asylum seekers!

Either through its historic crimes against the populations of Africa, Asia and elsewhere, or more recent involvement in wars and “regime-change” operations, British imperialism has played a major role in creating such widespread misery that millions are forced to flee their homes each year.

“Streamlining” means speeding up the deportation of those who eventually manage to set foot in the UK after long, dangerous, and expensive journeys. The document complains that current legislation enables too many challenges in the appeal process—dubbed “meritless claims” by Patel—leading to insufficient “enforced returns”.

Under a “one-stop” process, someone seeking asylum in the UK has only a single chance to make their case. They will be required to raise “all protection-related issues upfront and have these considered together and ahead of an appeal”. If they later introduce other grounds to justify their asylum claim, “decision makers, including judges, should give minimal weight to evidence that a person brings after they have been through the ‘one-stop’ process.”

In an overturning of international law, applications for asylum will be routinely rejected through the strict application of a “safe third country” rule, meaning any refugee passing through what is deemed to be such a country is automatically “considered inadmissible to the UK’s asylum system” and will be rapidly returned.

The proposals have been harshly criticised by those responsible for upholding the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), British Red Cross and the Refugee Council.

The 1951 Refugee Convention did not “oblige asylum seekers to apply in the first safe country they encounter”, a spokesman for the UNHCR said. “Some claimants may have legitimate reasons to seek protection in specific countries, including family or other links…

“We should not judge how worthy someone is of asylum by how they arrived here. The proposals effectively create an unfair two-tiered system, whereby someone’s case and the support they receive is judged on how they entered the country and not on their need for protection. This is inhumane.”

Where it is not possible to simply remove those deemed inadmissible, a “new temporary protection status with less generous entitlements” will be applied. The status will only be granted for up to 30 months, “after which individuals will be reassessed for return to their country of origin or removal to another safe country”.

Patel said the status would not constitute 'an automatic right to settle' with those affected 'regularly reassessed for removal.' Those under temporary status would have “no recourse to public funds,” making them reliant on charitable organisations.

Several existing refugee accommodation facilities were recently exposed as unfit for human habitation. An investigation by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, led to him describing former military bases such as Penally Camp and Napier Barracks used to house asylum seekers as “filthy”, “impoverished” and “run down”.

Conditions in the Immigration Removal Centres (IRC), where some of those awaiting deportation are held, are already putting detainees lives at risk from COVID-19, as proper hygiene and social distancing are virtually impossible.

Patel’s proposals will worsen the miserable conditions in which refugees and asylum seekers are held. Together with plans to expand the government’s asylum estate—described as “basic accommodation—where those whose claims are still pending can be quartered, the intention is to make life as intolerable as possible to encourage a “voluntary return”.

Following the example of Australia, which houses hundreds in squalid conditions “off-shore”, the British government intends to amend the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to “Make it possible for asylum claims to be processed outside the UK and in another country”.

Turkey receives payment from the European Union to detain refugees on its territory who are trying to reach the continent, and such an approach could enable the British government to bribe a friendly regime to do its dirty work. Failing that, Britain possesses several isolated island territories that could be used.

The grounds for making an asylum application are to be “strengthened.” This will establish a more rigorous standard for testing the “well-founded fear of persecution.” Not only will the individual have to prove their claim to the higher civil standard of the “balance of probabilities”, but a so-called “credibility assessment” will be applied. This means that in assessing whether there is a well-founded fear of persecution, consideration would also be given to any opportunities the individual had to lodge an asylum claim in a “safe third country.”

Ominously, the document promises to “clarify in statute the definition of ‘persecution,’” which is a key test to claim protection under the Refugee Convention.

Rights to appeal against unfavourable asylum decisions are to be drastically curtailed. Since it is impossible to reach the UK “legally” except through the resettlement process, everyone else will be deemed to be an “illegal” immigrant, who has acted in “bad faith” and so stand virtually no chance of being granted asylum.

Last year, more than 8,000 people crossed the Channel in small vessels and claimed asylum and 800 people have claimed asylum after small-boat crossings in 2021. A failure to apply for asylum in a “safe third country” and the manner of the person’s arrival, e.g., by crossing the Channel in a dingy, is taken as prima facia evidence of a “failure to act in Good Faith”, which may then be considered by the Home Office, or a judge” in assessing the “credibility” of a claim. This will apply not only to an initial claim for asylum but in any subsequent appeals, the document threatens.

Some of the most draconian penalties are being proposed for those who pilot such vessels, under the pretext of deterring people-traffickers. Existing powers are to be widened and the maximum penalty for “facilitating illegal immigration” raised to life imprisonment.

Sonia Lenegan of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association called the measures “cruel” and said they would leave “traumatised people with an uncertain, temporary form of status.”

COVID-19 pandemic triggers social, economic devastation among Canada’s cultural workers

James Clayton

In contrast with the hundreds of billions it was able to pull out of its back pocket for banks and profitable corporations virtually overnight in March 2020, the Trudeau government took an entire year to find a miserable $181 million to alleviate the situation in the performing arts sector. Competition for these totally inadequate grant funds will be fierce.

Claire told us, “We have been writing grants, looking for help, via the Ontario Arts Council and Department of Canadian Heritage. There is emergency funding through the Ontario Arts Council and Canadian Heritage. Grants are out for live-streaming equipment. But that cannot replace live theatre or the energy in a live performance. That is the heart of the performing arts. I’m glad that live streaming can happen, but that just cannot compare to the collective euphoria of an audience of strangers sitting together and experiencing a work of beauty, together.”

Much of the actual funds for live-streaming equipment will find their way into the coffers of technology corporations, not artists.

The meagre funds the Trudeau government has allotted will not be distributed equally to cultural workers but rather in a highly unequal manner, along unofficial networks of patronage that have been built up over years by the system of official arts funding in Canada, the provinces and territories. Most cultural workers will receive not a single cent. These programs will not remove artists from the pressures of the capitalist market but form an intrinsic component of intensified market discipline.

Elgin Theatre, Toronto

The psychological stress of isolation and an uncertain future, which is the direct product of the ruling elite’s complete indifference to the plight of the arts, is taking its toll on artists. Brooke relates, “One of the things you lose when you’re not working in the theatre is that it’s a collective process. It’s a social process. Actors work together, and it’s the dynamic that comes out of that which creates the energy of the piece, and not having that ... you lose a part of yourself. The loneliness is a big problem.”

The mental health crisis faced by all workers is unprecedented. As the artists who talked to the WSWS emphasized, the arts themselves are a major contributor to the spiritual and mental uplift of the whole of society in times of crisis. Claire noted, “Where did people go for comfort and sustenance, in terms of mental health? They went to the arts. Music, Netflix, movies, film.”

But who will provide spiritual “comfort and sustenance” for workers in tomorrow’s crisis, if half of today’s cultural workers are driven into destitution? Never mind that Canadian imperialism is working overtime to ensure that “tomorrow’s crisis” is a catastrophic war with Russia and China which could easily destroy world civilization itself.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fact that the capitalist system is not capable of advancing human culture. It is an enormous dead weight preventing such advancement and, through its promotion of militarism and all forms of political reaction, threatening the cultural achievements of the past.

IG Metall union will have a role in job cuts and wage reductions

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

On Tuesday morning in Düsseldorf, the IG Metall union signed a collective bargaining agreement covering almost four million workers in the metal and electrical industries without any increase in wage rates. Workers will be fobbed off with one-off payments, but payment of these depends on the profits of the corporations.

This provides rising profits for businesses and reductions in real wages for the workers. Above all, it allows IG Metall and its works council representatives to maintain a stranglehold on the workforce. The union has been contractually assured that it will be involved in future decisions on cuts in the factories.

Protest against job cuts at Siemens Berlin in September 2019 (WSWS Media)

The deal had been on the horizon for some time. Last weekend, IG Metall district leader Knut Giesler described a similar result for the 70,000 workers in the north-west German steel industry as a “fair compromise.” The steelworkers will receive a €500 “coronavirus bonus” at the end of June and €250 at the end of December 2021 and the end of February 2022. From 2023, these one-off payments are to increase to €600 a year.

Giesler has now concluded a similar pilot agreement in the metal and electrical industries in North Rhine-Westphalia for around 700,000 workers, which covers approximately 3.8 million workers nationwide. The new collective agreement will run for 21 months and includes a no-strike pledge until October 2022.

According to the agreement reached on Tuesday morning, workers will initially receive a one-off coronavirus special payment of €500, as in the steel industry. Apprentices will receive €300.

The centrepiece of the agreement, however, is a new “transformation payment.” Workers will, theoretically, receive a monthly pay increase of 2.3 percent beginning July this year. However, this wage increase will be retained by the company and paid out only once a year as a lump sum: equating to 18.4 percent of a monthly wage in February 2022 and 27.6 percent in February 2023.

The real key, however, is that the “transformation money” will not be paid out at all in most companies since it can be used to finance wage compensation for future reductions in working hours. This is essentially a private version of the German Kurzarbeit unemployment insurance program, where employers agree to cut hours rather than carry out layoffs, with the government—or in this case, the “transformation money,”—paying a portion of lost wages. Companies that the union and the management certify as being in crisis or in transformation can use the money to finance wage compensation for reductions in working hours to as low as 32 hours a week.

In practice, this means that workers pay their own wage compensation by foregoing the agreed wage increase—a zero-sum game! No wonder the employers are cheering.

“We have achieved our goals in this round of collective bargaining,” said Dr Stefan Wolf, the president of the Gesamtmetall employers’ association. After last year’s pay freeze approved by IG Metall, there would be no additional burdens on companies this year and no general reduction of working hours, he said.

The president of the North Rhine-Westphalian Metal Industries Federation, Arndt G. Kirchhoff, praised the “fair” result. After IG Metall had initially demanded a wage increase of four percent, he noted with satisfaction, “For us, it is quite important that our companies do not have to cope with an increase in wage rates in 2021, as they did in 2020.”

Reductions in working hours are now certain to follow. “What company is not either in crisis or transformation?” were the initial reactions from steel and auto workers.

IG Metall has long proposed a four-day week (32 hours) as a mechanism to push through job cuts in the transition to electric mobility and autonomous driving and to secure general profit maximisation. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line in the auto industry alone.

IG Metall, like the company owners, believes that this jobs massacre is unavoidable. A reduction in working hours is supposed to string out and realise the cuts without “compulsory redundancies.” Instead, workers are pressured by the works councils and human resources departments to leave voluntarily by accepting severance pay or early retirement. New workers will not be hired, and relatively well-paid industrial jobs will be irrevocably lost.

The collective agreement allows for a 32-hour week for a period of up to three years. Since the management and the union have to agree at company level, numerous company agreements along these lines are almost pre-programmed.

Collectively agreed supplementary allowances had already been agreed in 2018. Supplementary allowance A could be converted into eight days off with the consent of the works councils. Now, the collectively agreed additional payment (allowance B), which is due in October, can also be waived depending on the company’s results. The payment can be postponed if the company achieves a negative result.

In other words, if profits fall, workers finance shareholders’ yield and dividends with their wages and jobs.

But that is not all. The deal provides for additional “future collective agreements” at the company level. A works council can demand talks with the company leadership—optionally, also between the employers’ association and IG Metall—in which, according to IG Metall district leader Giesler, “the situation will be analysed” and “the necessary steps will be laid down in a collective agreement.”

If no agreement is reached, the talks go to arbitration. Also, the parties can call in a “transformation agency” for further consultation.

IG Metall chief Jörg Hofmann praised the deal in the highest terms. “In the midst of one of the most serious crises in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,” he said, the union had ensured that “the consequences of the crisis are fairly distributed and not unilaterally dumped on the workers.” Employees’ incomes had been stabilised and their jobs secured.

The opposite is the case—and the union has been instrumental in pushing this through. It has not only concluded a truce with the corporations but has also agreed on the mechanisms for the coming attacks on wages and jobs.

The union officials and works council leaders, like the millionaire managers and shareholders, agree that production in Germany’s factories and plants must become significantly more efficient to outdo the international competition: jobs must be cut, wages reduced.

They fear that an open confrontation with workers could start a conflagration that would escape the control of the unions and challenge capitalist private property. Socialists would gain influence, the lavish remuneration the union bureaucrats receive for their posts on works councils, supervisory boards, etc. would dry up—not to mention the semi-legal perks and illegal bribes.

Corporations are using the pandemic to carry out long-planned attacks. Tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut and wages reduced at plant level. When production started to rise again at the end of last year (even in the steel industry production was higher last December than in the same month the previous year), car manufacturers made billions in profits and passed them on to shareholders. The companies’ constant talk of “crisis,” “lack of scope for distribution” and their calls for “moderation” were met with growing indignation in the factories, where workers remained on the job despite the coronavirus threat. As a result, 800,000 metalworkers took part in IG Metall’s protest strikes earlier last month despite pandemic restrictions.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) welcomed the workers’ willingness to fight but warned against IG Metall selling out. In a statement at the beginning of March, we said: “The IG Metall trade union, which called the strikes, is pursuing goals that are totally opposed to those of its members. The union stands firmly on the side of the corporations and is jointly plotting attacks on jobs, wages, workplace benefits, and working conditions.” This has now been confirmed.

Although labour costs in the car industry now account for no more than one-fifth of total costs, it is human labour that is the only component of production that produces surplus value.

Workers are not simply confronted with the corporations, their managers, and shareholders, but also with the trade unions, who, with the current deal, are tightening their stranglehold. Workers must organise independently of IG Metall and take the fight against job cuts, for higher wages, health protection and better working conditions into their own hands.