US Midwest artists see collapse in income and careers during the pandemic

Cole Michaels

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastatingly affected the arts in the US.

Throughout 2020 and now halfway into 2021, millions of musicians, film industry workers, painters, and others in the US and elsewhere have had their incomes drastically cut or completely ended due to the inability to run concerts, film sets, festivals and other events and venues. Artists who rely on clients to provide them with income have seen their clientele being laid off themselves and unable to support them. At the same time, a good number of artists have died in the pandemic or been permanently affected by contracting the coronavirus.

The situation in the US is markedly worsened by the fact that the artists are almost entirely at the mercy of the “free market” and the whims of benevolent billionaire-philanthropists. Even before the current health disaster, federal programs like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were woefully underfunded ($162.3 million in 2020), while trillions were handed to the military-industrial complex to make weapons for devastating future wars against major powers like China and Russia. Americans for the Arts has estimated that artists nationwide have lost $12.5 billion in revenue since the pandemic began.

Raue Center for the Arts (Photo credit–Raue Center for the Arts)

For artists based in the 12 states of the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota), the pandemic has seen their ability to make a living dry up dramatically.

Kansas City National Public Radio affiliate KCUR produced a podcast this April on the issue. Artist Inc., an organization that assists in the professional development of Midwestern artists, conducted a survey revealing that almost 60 percent of artists in the region experienced a decrease in creative output through 2020 and into 2021. Furthermore, 80 percent of artists reported that the pandemic has negatively affected their art practice.

Artist Inc. Program Specialist Kathy Liao explained on the podcast, “I think probably one of the biggest things that struck me as an artist myself is one in five artists, about 20 percent, still are not able to practice their art, and that’s a significant amount of artists in the region who still are not able to be in their studio, able to make the work that they do at this very moment.”

Artist Inc. has received numerous appeals for financial support and studio space from distressed artists. Also, many have sought support for mental health struggles that contribute to the regional drop in artistic productivity. One third of surveyed artists have been forced to find employment outside of the arts to survive. Forty-two percent applied for relief grants through nonprofits, foundations and other grant-giving entities. Within that group, 28 percent of artists applied for arts-related grants. Half of applicants received some sort of assistance. Three out of four artists reported negative or very negative effects on their practice, and 90 percent of Midwest artists experienced a loss of income from April 2020 to April 2021. Six out of eight artists have lost more than two income streams, which may include performance gigs, contracts, etc.

Performing artists in particular, such as musicians and dancers, have been at great risk of losing their entire incomes. The NEA reports that over 50 percent of actors, dancers and choreographers experienced unemployment in the third quarter of 2020. Temporary furloughs are an issue with employed artists. Richard Kuranda, Director of the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Illinois (45 miles northwest of Chicago), told Patch.com that the center was forced to furlough 40 percent of its staff during the pandemic. Only now is the organization beginning to rehire these employees.

Lied Center Main Stage (Photo credit–Lied Center for Performing Arts)

The pandemic has caused visual artists to shift toward attempting to sell their work through social media and personal websites. Sales of gallery art for use as home decoration is one of the only art sectors that has seen an uptick in sales, as people forced to stay home due to lockdowns choose to adorn their residences. According to a recent Americans for the Arts survey, however, only 19 percent of fine artists’ sales come from social media. Eight-eight percent of visual artists have some kind of social media presence now. Online crowdfunding through platforms like Patreon is another new potential income stream. Forty-two percent of artists in the Artist Inc. survey felt that how they deliver their art to the public has been permanently changed by the pandemic.

The statistics have been grim for every state in the Midwest since March 2020. When Americans for the Arts conducted a survey, it found that in Iowa at least 700 arts-related jobs had been lost in the period April-October 2020. During those months, Iowa was impacted to the tune of $31 million by the halt of the arts industry. Iowa Workforce Development reported that 9,741 artists in all sectors claimed state unemployment during that timeframe. There are over 42,000 Iowans employed in the arts, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Formerly in-person arts communities that met at galleries and concert or outdoor venues have shifted online through the major social media sites and through Zoom, the teleconferencing application that was used by millions of people daily throughout 2020. The lack of financial support threatens to see a significant portion of artists leave their professions and never return.

On May 11, the Daily Iowan published a piece on how University of Iowa seniors were faring during the pandemic. Students lamented the loss of in-person interaction with other students and professors, and potential career opportunities. UI printmaking student Alex Fox explained that the cancellation of his summer 2020 internship in Berlin was a blow to his artistic hopes. He expressed the intention, upon graduation, of moving to Chicago and trying to sell his work on Etsy. He acknowledged that this may prove difficult.

Like many other theater companies, the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska opted to stream online performances instead of shuttering their venue during the 2020-2021 season. Ticket sales usually account for half of the center’s budget; in 2020 that figure dropped to five percent. Executive director Bill Stephan thanked donors for keeping the center afloat. “They also really appreciate the fact that we didn’t just shut down, that we found a way to continue to bring the arts to the community, and they wanted to thank us, as well as be part of it.”

Many arts fairs, concerts, performances and festivals scheduled to take place in winter and spring 2021 have now been canceled for two years in a row. Smaller events have struggled to survive this hit in income, and some small theatre companies and conventions have folded entirely.

Detroit-based WDIV Local 4 ran a story on the effects of the cancellation of the Ann Arbor Art Fair for two years in a row on local artists and stores. Lindsey Leyland, co-owner of clothing shop The Getup Vintage, commented, “I was pretty sure Art Fair was going to happen. To miss that two-years in a row is kind of heartbreaking. Honestly, it’s one of the highest-grossing weeks for us.” Ed Davidson, owner of outdoor clothing store Bivouac, confirmed that the art fair brings in a lot of customers to the city. “[The art fair] is a huge, huge boom to the local economy. ... We’re packed from dawn until dusk, so it’s a huge loss to the community.”

In short, many artists in the Midwest face poverty or the collapse of their artistic aspirations entirely; innumerable small businesses confront ruination. The region’s billionaires, however, continue to rake in the money.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, Illinois’ richest person, for example, soaked up an additional $4 billion from April 2020 to April 2021, increasing his net worth to $16 billion, according to Forbes magazine. As Patch.com noted, “Griffin’s 2020 income was about 192,000 times what someone working a minimum wage job would have earned last year—if they were lucky enough to keep their jobs through the pandemic. While many Illinoisans were waiting on $1,200 stimulus checks last year to make ends meet, Griffin could have personally written each Illinoisan a check for that amount and still had nearly a $1 billion left in the bank. And he’s just one of Illinois’ 22 billionaires.” That list includes Gov. J. B. Pritzker and three other members of the Pritzker family, who between them control more than $13 billion in wealth.

Michigan “boasts” nine billionaires, a list headed by Daniel Gilbert, the owner and co-founder of Quicken Loans, with a net worth of $51.9 billion. Les Wexner, the founder of L Brands, is the wealthiest individual in Ohio and one of the state’s eight billionaires, with a reported worth of $6.1 billion. Wisconsin too has eight billionaires, with John Menard Jr. of Menard Inc., worth $14.2 billion, heading the group. Glen Taylor, owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Taylor Corp commercial printing, with $2.9 billion, is the richest of Minnesota’s four billionaires.

Continental workers in Karben accept contract, but with many dissenting votes

Marianne Arens

The so-called “social contract” has been accepted at Continental Karben in northern Hesse. However, the vote expresses the growing mistrust in the IG Metall union. Despite the relatively high average age in the company and a massive propaganda campaign by the union and the works council, there were remarkably many votes against it.

Only members of IG Metall and IG BCE were allowed to vote, just under 80 percent of the workforce, and of these, one in four abstained. Of the 75 percent who took part in the vote, 72.2 percent finally voted in favour. This means that in the end, only 45 percent of the entire workforce, not even half of all Continental employees at the Karben plant, voted yes.

Since last autumn, the workers have been fighting for the preservation of the plant and all jobs. After the 24-hour strike on April 15, an indefinite strike was prepared. A first “social contract” was rejected by the workforce. But the second draft agreed by the union also sealed the closure.

Strikers in front of the Continental plant in Karben; banner reads “This factory is on strike.” (Credit: WSWS media)

IG Metall told workers there was no alternative. According to IGM district leader Jörg Köhlinger, the contract contained the “opportunity for sustained site development.” Frank Grommeck (Left Party), chair of the works council, called together workers in small groups and put a gun to their heads: If they rejected it again, they would “stand empty-handed on the street.”

The contract itself is still being guarded like a state secret. Even workers who could vote on it were only able to see it in full on Monday, a few hours before the end of the vote.

In any case, it seals the closure of the plant in Karben by 2025 with the loss of 1,088 jobs. Only a small rump of 187 employees will continue to work for CES (Continental Engineering Services), while at Continental Automotive GmbH the layoffs will start at the beginning of 2023. Older workers have been promised early retirement or partial retirement. Younger workers will be put in a “transfer company” before facing unemployment.

The closure agreement clearly shows which side the unions are on. They helped draw it up, so the plant shut down proceeds smoothly. They are not prepared to wage a fight to defend jobs, which would have sent a signal to other plants in the group and the whole auto and supplier industry.

The bourgeois press immediately recognised this. The pro-social democratic Die Zeit rejoiced: “The job cuts at the Continental plant in Karben, Hesse, can be carried out as agreed. The members of IG Metall agreed to the improved social collective agreement.”

This makes it clear—workers who want to defend their jobs must join together in action committees that are independent of the trade unions!

The Network of Action Committees for Safe Workplaces called on workers to vote No. It warned against IG Metall’s divisive manoeuvres that pit older workers against younger ones, union members against the unorganised and each plant against the others. “Above all, do not let yourselves be divided by location,” it said. “The union is letting each workforce fight on its own, which means they can only lose.”

The correctness of this warning can be seen every day, especially at Continental. Step by step, the cutbacks agreed are being enforced against the workers. In Bebra in northern Hesse, not far from Karben, IG Metall is preparing the next sell-out.

On Friday, the IG Metall called on the workers of Vitesco Technologies, also part of Continental, at the Bebra and Mühlhausen (Thuringia) sites to take part in a 24-hour warning strike. It is demanding a “social contract” for about 900 workers. The Vitesco plant in Mühlhausen is to be closed and one in two jobs in Bebra destroyed.

With the help of IG Metall, 30,000 jobs are to be destroyed across the Continental group, 13,000 of them in Germany. The numerous closures and partial closures will also affect tyre production in Aachen (1,800 employees), brake production in Rheinböllen (650), the drive division Vitesco in Regensburg (2,100) and Nuremberg (250), the Continental plant in Babenhausen (2,500), as well as the above-mentioned sites in Bebra and Mühlheim and many more. Both the company board and IG Metall are keeping quiet about the attacks on jobs and sites in other European countries.

Continental wants to save one billion euros a year with these cutbacks and the company headquarters in Hanover and IG Metall are working hand in hand on this, for which the union officials are being paid handsomely. The second chairperson of IG Metall, Christiane Benner, received 269,000 euros last year as deputy chair of the Continental supervisory board. Furthermore, Hasan Allak (IG BCE), chair of the corporate works council, received 183,000 euros and Lorenz Pfau, chair of the central works council of Continental Automotive GmbH, 182,000 euros for his work on the supervisory board.

In Bebra, Mühlhausen and all other locations there is also only one way to take up the fight to defend jobs: Place no confidence in IG Metall and the trade unions! Workers face the same problems in all countries. They are confronted with the same big corporations and their stakeholders in the trade unions.

G7 summit issues threats against China and Russia

Robert Stevens

The governments of the world’s wealthiest nations (the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada) ended three days of deliberations at a G7 summit in Cornwall, England on Sunday. The G7 powers played up “multilateralism” and downplayed the deep differences that emerged inside the G7 under US President Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. Yet they were able to agree only on a summit communiqué that was tantamount to a threat of war against China.

The 25-page summit communique backed the Wuhan lab theory provocation, insinuating that China was seeking to conceal its production of the COVID-19 virus in a laboratory and then allowing it to escape. The document called for “investigating, reporting and responding to [pandemic] outbreaks of unknown origin. We also call for a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO [World Health Organisation]-convened Phase 2 COVID-19 Origins study including, as recommended by the experts’ report, in China.”

Almost 4 million lives have been lost to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with well over a million in the G7 nations, based on conservative figures compiled by the world’s governments, with nearly 176 million infected. The demand that China “come clean” would therefore alone provide a casus belli for aggression against China. But things did not stop there.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, center, with from left, Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President of the European Council Charles Michel during the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, Saturday June 12, 2021. (Leon Neal/Pool via AP)

Point 49 of the communique points to trade war between the imperialist powers and Beijing. Asserting the “particular responsibility of the largest countries and economies in upholding the rules-based international system and international law,” it continues with “regard to China … we will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenging non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global economy.”

It ends with the threat that “we will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.”

Xinjiang is home to China’s Uighur population and has been the chief focus of accusations of human rights abuses by Washington and other capitals.

Point 60 declares the ambitions of the imperialist powers to confront China militarily on its own doorstep, stating: “We reiterate the importance of maintaining a free and open Indo Pacific, which is inclusive and based on the rule of law. We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions.”

The militarist subtext of such statements of “concern” over China’s supposedly “unilateral” moves to consolidate its dominance of global seaways was epitomised by US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson posing on a Cornish beach with one of the UK’s new £3 billion aircraft carriers, HMS Prince of Wales, and other warships in view behind them. The UK’s other carrier, HMS Queen Elisabeth, is the lead ship in a carrier strike group, including a US destroyer and Marines, that is heading towards the South China Sea where it will carry out military exercises.

Additionally, the G7 pledged to combat China’s One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR), through which it is undertaking numerous global infrastructure projects to facilitate trade, with the launch of a US-led Build Back Better World (B3W) development project. Russia was also the target of hostilities. Point 51 states: “We reaffirm our call on Russia to stop its destabilising behaviour and malign activities, including its interference in other countries’ democratic systems.” It calls on Russia to withdraw “military troops and materiel at the eastern border of Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula. We remain firmly of the view that Russia is a party to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, not a mediator.”

Biden arrived at the summit declaring that America is back. What this translates to for the world’s population is an escalating danger of war. As Biden told US troops stationed at RAF Mildenhall, America’s “one truly sacred obligation” was to “prepare and equip” its armed forces. Last month, the Biden administration released its budget proposal for the coming year centred on a record military budget of $753 billion, including $24.7 billion for nuclear weapons modernization.

Germany, France and Britain have all ratcheted up military spending, with the Johnson government increasing its nuclear warhead stockpile by a massive 40 percent.

The obscenity of the multitrillion-dollar war drive was thrown into stark relief by the summit’s determined refusal to do anything to seriously combat the escalating threat of the pandemic. While busily spreading the lie of a Chinese lab origin, the G7 governments are intent on continuing to allow COVID-19’s ever more deadly variants to spread unchecked while they funnel the world’s resources into the bank accounts of the oligarchs and transnational corporations.

The cost of vaccinating the world’s population has been put at just $66 billion, but this will not be raised by the world’s richest nations. The G7 would only agree to donate a tiny fraction of the vaccines needed—one billion doses will be made available, but with the majority not distributed until the end of 2022 and with little infrastructure in place to do so. This equates to less than 10 percent of the 11 billion doses urgently needed globally to fight the pandemic. Even this headline pledge is a lie. The US offer to donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech SE vaccine is in lieu of $2 billion it pledged to the global vaccination program COVAX, with the US total funding amounting to just $5.5 billion—less than one percent of its military budget.

Nothing must cut across the accumulation of profits by the major corporations. In the face of growing public repugnance at the superrich glutting themselves during the pandemic and multitrillion-dollar corporate bailouts, the G7 made a meaningless pledge to establish at some unspecified date “an ambitious global minimum tax” on corporations. But the communique reassured all concerned that this would still be as low as “15 per cent on a country-by-country basis.”

The summit was heralded as a return to business as normal after the fractious relations between the major powers during Donald Trump’s presidency, but it was dominated to an extraordinary degree by rising interimperialist tensions, including between the UK and European Union over post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Despite Biden’s efforts to bludgeon his rivals into line, by the summit’s end, commentators were stressing that Trump’s departure has not fixed US-European relations, or the deep internal political crisis in the United States—which saw Trump launch an attempted coup on January 6 to try to seize the US Capitol and block the certification of Biden’s election victory.

Several noted that Biden will be 82 if he contests the next 2024 election, rapidly reaching the end of his political career. Former EU ambassador to Washington David O’Sullivan asked, “Is this an interregnum between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0? Nobody knows. … I think most people are of the view that we should seize the opportunity with this administration to strengthen the [G7] relationship and hope that this can survive beyond the midterms and 2024.”

The fundamental question posed by the G7 summit is how is the growing war danger, the threat of the pandemic and the mounting social catastrophe facing humanity to be combated?

Over the last decades, the very same forces driving the imperialist powers into conflict and towards war are creating the conditions for working class opposition to develop.

Analysing the “Globalization of capitalism and the renewed upsurge of the working class” in a June 7 WSWS perspective, David North noted: “In history there is such a thing as retribution. For all the crimes committed by capitalism against the working class over the past 40 years, the ruling class, in the very process of attacking the working class and vastly enriching itself, has overseen a vast expansion and integration of the capitalist system of production. The most significant and revolutionary outcome of this process—driven by staggering advances in science and technology—is the massive growth in the global working class.”

German labour legislation strengthens hand of trade unions

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

On 21 May the Bundestag (parliament) passed the Works Council Modernisation Act. The new legislation makes it easier to set up works councils and provides them with additional powers with regard to the use of artificial intelligence and the organisation of mobile forms of working.

Germany’s ruling coalition parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) voted in favour of the law, together with the Green Party. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the new liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) voted against. The Left Party abstained, arguing that the act was inadequate and should award even more powers to trade unions.

The new law is designed to strengthen the influence of these organisations in workplaces. The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), which was involved in drafting the bill, expressed its alarm in 2019 that only 9 percent of German concerns had a works council and only 40 percent of workers in Germany were represented by a works council. Presenting the law in the Bundestag, Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) proclaimed: “We need more works councils in Germany.”

German federal parliament, Bundestag, at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

In fact, the initiative is not about improving workers’ rights and incomes, but rather tightening the stranglehold of the trade unions, which exert their influence in workplaces mainly through works councils.

The government and the DGB fear that in the face of growing class tensions, social struggles will develop that they can no longer control. In past decades, the unions played a decisive role in suppressing any form of opposition and organising job and wage cuts as co-managers. Today they have hardly any influence, especially in smaller companies and modern industries such as the IT sector.

Heil openly admitted in the Bundestag that the law was intended to strengthen the trade unions’ function as co-managers. He said that works councils “very often, in many cases, now also take on co-management functions in German companies in processes involving crisis and change.”

The Left Party claims in its amendment to the law: “Workplace co-determination is a model of success. More than 100 years ago, and after long struggles by workers and trade unions, the Works Council Act came into force.” It laid “the foundation stone for workplace democracy.”

This is a blatant historical falsification. In reality, the Works Council Act was part of the measures adopted by German social democracy to suppress the revolutionary movement that threatened to sweep away not only the monarchy but also capitalism after the bloody carnage of the First World War.

In the November Revolution of 1918, workers’ and soldiers’ councils spread like wildfire across Germany, with revolutionary-minded workers setting the tone. Germany’s ruling circles feared that these councils—as was the case in Russia a year earlier—would take power and establish a socialist soviet republic.

The SPD did everything in its power to prevent such a development. The government, led by Friedrich Ebert (SPD), allied itself with the German high command in order to violently put down the workers’ uprising and assassinate its leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The Workers’ Councils Act, which they put forward at the end of 1919-start of 1920, was intended to transform workers’ councils into organs of class collaboration.

The word “councils” was a verbal concession to the council movement, but the law intended the opposite. The works councils were obliged to ensure “the greatest possible economic performance of the enterprise” and protect companies from “shocks”—i.e., strikes and other actions by the workers.

Revolutionary workers who had joined the newly formed German Communist Party (KPD) and the Independent SPD (USPD) during the Weimar Republic protested against this obvious attempt to replace the workers’ and soldiers’ councils with corporatist organs of class collaboration.

In a biography of KPD member Jacob Walcher, the authors note, “On January 13, 1920, Reichswehr Minister [Gustav] Noske and Interior Minister [Wolfgang] Heine, both SPD, had protesting workers shot in front of the Reichstag building on the occasion of the second reading of the law in the National Assembly. Forty two lay dead and 105 were wounded. After this bloodbath, the way was clear for the adoption of the law on February 4, 1920.”[1]

The post-war German Federal Republic continued the tradition of the Weimar Works Council Act. Within the framework of the German system of “co-determination,” class collaboration was regulated and institutionalised by law. As early as April 1946, the western Allied forces enacted a new Works Council Act. In November 1952 the Works Constitution Act came into force, and in January 1972 it was amended.

The law obliges management and the works council to “cooperate in confidence” and maintain confidentiality. It prohibits the works council from calling industrial action. Instead, it is obliged to negotiate once a month “on contentious issues with a serious intent to reach agreement and make proposals for the settlement of differences of opinion.” (section 74, subsection 2, BetrVG)

This legally regulated class collaboration is directed against workers and any defence of their interests using “measures of industrial action.” This has become particularly clear in the last three decades, during which the situation for workers has deteriorated continuously.

Millions of jobs have been destroyed on a “socially acceptable” basis, i.e., without a murmur. After German reunification in 1990, the trade unions helped decimate the East German economy with instruments such as zero-hour, short-time work and so-called “transfer companies” for those laid off.

The millions of unemployed created were then forced into the low-wage sector in 2004/2005 by the “Agenda 2010” and the Hartz laws introduced by Gerhard Schröder’s SPD-Green Party government. At the same time, many thousands of well-paid jobs in industry were wiped out.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008–2009, the unions supported massive bailouts for the banks and subsequent austerity programmes. The German government instituted wage settlements that resulted in real wage losses for many years. The unions were a key instrument for the banks to pass on the consequences of their unrestrained speculative activities onto the working class.

In the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the unions have been the most vigorous proponents of the official “profits before lives” policy, ensuring that production continue during lockdowns, even though workers’ health and lives were at stake. They studiously made sure that a lid was kept on the number of reported COVID-19 cases in factories.

Digitalisation and automation processes mean that another major upheaval is about to take place in production and the service sectors. To implement these new technologies at the expense of workers, the companies need the unions and their works councils. The new law serves this purpose.

For years, the DGB, IG Metall and other trade unions have been arguing that jobs should be cut in the course of digitalisation, employing the same methods used to break up the steel industry and the East German economy: i.e., promises of retraining and re-education within the framework of transfer companies, which retain workers for a short time before releasing them into unemployment. The new law extends the powers of the trade unions in this regard.

Works councils are also being awarded more influence on the “organisation of mobile work” and technical changes in the workplace—including those related to the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). In smaller companies, whose employees are often young and poorly paid, the establishment and election of a works council is to be made easier.

The procedure for electing a works council and a youth and trainee representation (JAV) will be simplified. Since works councils do not exist in one-third of German companies with 51 to 100 employees, the simplification of the organisation of works council elections are “also justifiable to overcome possible disadvantages resulting from the promotion of ‘splinter groups’ and ‘dubious’ election proposals,” the DGB writes in its statement on the law.

Those who want to set up a works council or a JAV will receive extended special protection against dismissal, which already applies if someone undertakes “preparatory measures for the establishment of a works council.”

The plan is to involve tens of thousands of workplace officials to prevent social struggles and replenish the shrinking ranks of the unions. The membership of the eight unions organised in the DGB has fallen since the turn of the millennium from 7.8 million to 5.9 million last year. Only about one in seven workers is currently a member of a union. The Works Council Modernisation Act is aimed at stemming this haemorrhage.

The government’s efforts to strengthen the unions are also linked to the return of German militarism. The German army (Bundeswehr) is being massively rearmed and prepared for military interventions across the globe. Preparations for war against Russia in particular, are intensifying day by day.

Historically, the trade unions have played a criminal role in the militarization of Germany. In the First World War, the unions concluded a truce with the government, suppressed all political and social opposition and sent hundreds of thousands of young workers into battle at the front, where they died senselessly defending the Kaiser and capitalism.

After Hitler came to power, the General Confederation of German Trade Unions (ADGB) sought incorporation into the National Socialist state. On May 1, 1933, the trade unions demonstrated under the Swastika and offered Hitler their cooperation. The latter concluded that he had nothing to fear from the unions and replaced them with the German Labour Front (DAF), which united entrepreneurs and workers in one organisation.

The efforts of the ruling class to strengthen the trade unions is not limited to Germany. In the US, President Joe Biden personally called on Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, to vote to register the RWDSU union. To no avail, however. In the end only 13 percent of the 5,800 workers at the warehouse voted for the corrupt union, from which they expect nothing other than sellouts and the enrichment of the union bureaucrats.

Just as in the US, the German government is relying on the unions to suppress growing opposition in the factories, plants and offices. The task of the unions is to discipline workers, keep production running smoothly and increase exploitation.

The transformation of the unions into factory police is not simply the result of the undoubted corruption of individual functionaries. It results from the trade union perspective, which recognises capitalist private property, legally regulated class collaboration and competition for markets and profits. As competition on the world market intensifies, the unions line up closer and closer with “their” corporations and governments. Workers who are still members of a union are given no voice. At the same time they are made to finance the bloated trade union apparatus with their membership fees.

In 2018, for example, IG Metall reported that its then 2.27 million members had paid a record 585 million euros in dues, an increase over the previous year of 4.3 percent. Only 40 million euros—less than 7 percent—went to members in the form of strike pay or legal support. More than half a billion euros flowed into the offices, staff salaries, reserves and real estate of the union. The union executive committees, like the works council chairpersons in major companies, receive annual salaries amounting to several hundred thousand euros.

Biden targets China in executive order for review of foreign-based apps

Kevin Reed

On June 9, President Biden signed a directive calling for foreign-based apps to be reviewed for the “unacceptable national security risks” they pose to US interests. The “Executive Order on Protecting American’s Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries” specifically targets apps developed in the People’s Republic of China as among those from countries that continue “to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

Biden’s order further states that the US government should evaluate the threats “through rigorous, evidence-based analysis” because the apps operating on personal electronic devices “can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including United States persons’ personal information and proprietary business information.” The directive claims that such data collection includes the efforts of “foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain United States persons’ data” and also warns about “advancing authoritarian controls and interests.”

The Biden administration is making assertions about the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by foreign adversaries without providing any specific evidence of said data collection or even naming the apps in question.

Biden speaks at The Queen Theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. [Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum]

However, the foreign policy objective of making threats against China is so transparently the motive that the executive order includes the absurd claim that the US “seeks to promote accountability for persons who engage in serious human rights abuse” and goes on to claim the right to “impose consequences on those persons in action separate from this order.” This from an American government that is responsible for three decades of bloody imperialist wars, countless human rights atrocities around the globe and the mass surveillance of the world’s electronic communications.

The corporate media has focused in on the fact that Biden revoked and replaced the three executive orders from the Trump administration that aimed to shut down and ban the popular Chinese-based TikTok, WeChat and eight other applications. Aside from the fact that TikTok and WeChat are mentioned in the titles of two of the revoked Trump executive orders, the names of these apps would not even have been mentioned in Biden’s order.

The lead for the media reporting was provided in a separate Biden press release that goes into the fact that Trump’s orders attempted to shut down the apps by making business transactions of any kind with the developers a crime. The release mentions in passing that “two of these E.O.s are subject to litigation.”

The anti-Chinese operation by the Trump White House to steal the valuable TikTok from the Beijing-based ByteDance and hand it over to American investors and corporate management fell apart last year when a US judge agreed with the company that the President’s emergency economic powers did not grant him the authority to impose an arbitrary ban. TikTok is currently valued at $50 billion and the app has nearly 100 million US users, nearly 700 million worldwide users and has been downloaded to electronic devices more than 2 billion times.

The truth is that the Biden White House is deepening the national security-based attack on China that was initiated during the Trump administration. This is proven by the fact that the basis for Biden’s authority to impose his executive orders is the national emergency declaration issued by Trump on May 15, 2019, called, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.”

Trump’s Executive Order 13873 is referenced five times in Biden’s June 9 order and is itself based upon two US laws—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (1977) and the National Emergencies Act (1976)—that grant the President extraordinary authority in times of crisis such as a national emergency or declaration of war by Congress.

In his Executive Order 13873 Trump declared a national emergency and gave the US Commerce Secretary authority to prohibit business transactions that involve information technology, “controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary” or are deemed by members of the President’s cabinet to pose “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons.”

That Biden did not revoke Executive Order 13873 shows that the Democrats are determined to utilize the adoption of the most right-wing and xenophobic elements of the Trump and Republican Party agenda to conduct their foreign policy, especially in relation to China.

This fact was acknowledged by the New York Times in its report on a call with Biden administration officials on the day the executive orders were signed. The Times report said, “The Trump order had not been carried out ‘in the soundest fashion,’ Biden administration officials said in a call with reporters, adding that the new directive would establish ‘clear intelligible criteria’ to evaluate national security risks posed by software applications connected to foreign governments, particularly China.”

The Times report went on to say that Biden’s order reflects “a growing urgency among American officials, both Republican and Democrat, to aggressively counter what they see as a growing threat posed by China’s military and technology sectors.”

Recognizing that Trump’s approach to TikTok and WeChat failed in the US courts, the Times reported, “Analysts said the new executive order was meant to create a process that could withstand such a challenge if the Biden administration chose to ratchet up pressure on individual apps.”

James Lewis, a senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Times, “They are taking the same direction as the Trump administration but in some ways tougher, in a more orderly fashion and implemented in a good way.” By “in a good way” Lewis means that Biden hopes to be be more effective and successful than Trump in blocking the global expansion of Chinese information technology.

Although the Biden White House did not give details about the future of TikTok in the US, administration officials did say the review of the app by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that was initiated under Trump was continuing and separate from the order.

Tokyo exploits COVID-19 disaster to push militarist and repressive constitutional revision

Ben McGrath

The Japanese government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are pushing ahead with plans to revise Japan’s constitution to facilitate remilitarisation and block the emergence of a working class movement opposed to war and capitalism.

The ruling class is trying to drum up the necessary public support for such changes by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic, now resurging across Japan.

The precursor to any attempts to alter the constitution is a national referendum bill that passed Japan’s parliament, the National Diet, last Friday. The upper house approved the bill with support from both the ruling LDP and the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP). The bill passed the lower house last month, also with support from both big business parties.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building with Tokyo 2020 Olympics poster. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Suga told right-wing supporters during a Constitution Day speech on May 3: “We must aim for [the referendum bill’s] passage as the first step in the debate on constitutional revision.” The bill, initially proposed in 2018 under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, ostensibly makes voting in a national referendum easier, by allowing polling places to be set up in public places like train stations and department stores.

The LDP and other proponents of constitutional revision are pushing this bill, as they believe they will be able to dominate public debate on it through a massive and well-financed media campaign, essentially silencing anti-war voices.

Seeking to posture as opponents of the LDP’s plans, the CDP argued for spending restrictions in the bill that would supposedly limit the amount of money spent on television, radio, and internet advertisements.

However, the CDP agreed to the bill anyway, on the basis that it contains a mandate for enacting restrictions on spending in separate legislation within three years. There is no reason to believe that such laws will come into being, particularly as the LDP continues to dominate both houses of the Diet. Furthermore, while the CDP postures as an opponent of constitutional revision, many of its members openly support the LDP’s agenda.

As Tokyo increasingly flexes its military might overseas, the government sees the revisions as necessary to block the development of an anti-war movement, particularly following 2015, when mass protests around the country erupted in opposition to “collective self-defence” bills, which allowed Japan to take part in military actions overseas, alongside an ally, namely the United States. These protests culminated in August that year, when 120,000 people gathered outside the Diet to denounce the bills that were nevertheless rammed through the following month.

The ruling class hopes to insert a national emergency clause into the constitution that would allow the cabinet to suspend certain democratic rights, including by shutting down political meetings or banning anti-war rallies. Lawrence Repeta, a former law professor at Meiji University, said an emergency clause “would give the cabinet the power to create a secret government during an emergency that the cabinet itself would declare. It would be the very antithesis of the constitutional democracy we have today.”

The other major attack on the working class is a proposal to add a paragraph to the constitution’s Article 9, in order to explicitly legalise the Self-Defence Forces, the formal name of Japan’s military. Article 9, known as the pacifist clause, bans Japan from maintaining a military and waging war. Many within the Japanese ruling class feel that even this revision does not go far enough and instead want Article 9 scrapped completely. As the constitution has never been revised, since it went into effect in 1947, any amendments would set a precedent for bigger changes in the future.

Constitutional revisions must pass both houses of the Diet with a two-third majority, and then receive a majority of votes in a national referendum. While the pro-revision side has the necessary numbers in parliament—including support from within the opposition bloc—there is widespread public opposition to altering the constitution and to remilitarisation in general. Opinion polls regularly show that far more than 50 percent of the population opposes any revisions.

Exploiting the pandemic, the ruling class is attempting to drum up support for the national emergency clause, claiming it is necessary to grant the government more power to enforce lockdowns and other measures. Tokyo claims that current laws prevent it from issuing legally-binding stay-at-home orders. Satoshi Yokodaido, a professor of constitutional law at Keio University, challenged this, saying: “I don’t think a lack of an emergency clause is the reason the COVID-19 response has not gone well. The problem is incompetent politicians.”

Tokyo’s response to the pandemic, however, is driven by more than just incompetence. It is bound up with the profit interests of big business, which opposes any measures that obstruct its capacity to generate revenue. This finds its most immediate expression in the push to hold this year’s Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, despite widespread opposition and the danger posed that the huge event could lead to further transmission and the emergence of dangerous new strains of COVID-19.

Furthermore, during the pandemic, schools, a major transmission vector for the virus, have been kept open and testing has been inadequate. Countless people have reported being unable to receive a test, despite showing symptoms of COVID-19, indicating that the real number of cases is far higher than the government reports.

Tokyo’s claims that it needs a national emergency law to combat the current or future pandemics are thus entirely fraudulent. In reality, the ruling class has long pushed for these constitutional changes, as it pursues an agenda that increasingly comes into conflict with the needs of the broader population and puts Japan on the path to war.

The political establishment is attempting to use the COVID-19 disaster, exacerbated by the capitalist class itself, to carry out attacks on democratic rights and hasten the return of Japanese militarism.

Australian nurses, midwives strike against unsafe staffing levels and wage cuts

Clare Bruderlin

More than 300 nurses and midwives in Sydney and across New South Wales (NSW) walked off the job on June 10, defying an order by the state’s Industrial Relations Commission. Hundreds more have taken industrial action in the past two weeks at public hospitals all over the state.

The stoppages were over dangerous ongoing staff shortages, excessive overtime and lack of clinical staff, as well as the state Liberal-National Coalition government’s cap of 1.5 percent on public sector pay increases this year—a real wage cut.

Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA), the trade union covering them, from Liverpool and Campbelltown hospitals in southwestern Sydney, and at Lismore Base Hospital in the state’s north, voted to strike on June 10, with action ranging from four to 15.5 hours.

Nurses and midwives demonstrate at Tweed Heads Hospital (Source: NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Facebook)

The stoppages, while kept isolated and limited by the union, are part of growing and determined industrial action by health workers in Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and internationally. On the same day, paramedics in the Ambulance Division of the Health Services Union, went on strike for 24 hours over the public sector pay cut, only responding to the most serious call-outs.

There were stopwork actions by NSWNMA members at Port Macquarie Base Hospital and the Tweed Hospital in the state’s north on June 9, and some 200 nurses and midwives rallied outside Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on that day also. On June 7, workers voted to close beds at Yass District Hospital, in the state’s south, over staffing and security concerns.

The previous week, around 500 nurses and midwives walked off the job or closed beds in public hospitals, at various places across the state—Belmont, Bowral, John Hunter, Waratah, Blue Mountains, Shoalhaven and Springwood.

In May, the NSWNMA reported that a “resounding majority” of its public sector members had voted to reject the state government’s pay cap and lack of shift-by-shift ratios.

The urgent need for safe staffing ratios has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with an influx of coronavirus patients leading to increased emergency room wait times and delays in elective surgery. The emergence of more transmissible and deadly variants of the disease, and the lifting of all safety restrictions by governments, before a substantial section of the population has been vaccinated, has resulted in a new outbreak in Melbourne, in the neighbouring state of Victoria.

The union is fully aware of this danger, with NSWNMA general secretary Brett Holmes telling a rally of nurses and midwives in Newcastle in April about severe staff shortages, including at Westmead, the major public hospital in western Sydney.

“We hear far too many stories about large intensive cares that are running short,” Holmes revealed. “Westmead for instance, has 10-15 shortages on shift. It was the first ward set up for COVID-19 patients. If Westmead can’t staff its intensive care, what hope for the rest of NSW if it were to be hit by a wave like that in Victoria?”

Despite this, the NSWNMA has refused to mobilise its 72,000 members across the state in a united struggle, and has instead ensured that the industrial action has remained restricted, with strikes confined to individual hospitals, across different days and for different lengths of time.

Nurses protesting outside Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (Source: NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Facebook)

Moreover, the strike actions have been brought to an end without any of the workers’ demands being met.

The union is seeking to “let off steam” in order to prepare a sell-out, and force through the state government’s demands, saying it will continue to “sit across the table” and negotiate, despite workers’ rejection of the government’s pay cut.

The 1.5 percent pay rise cap is not only a real wage cut, given the rising cost of living. It follows a 0.3 percent public sector wage freeze imposed by the state government last year. The unions claimed to oppose these wage cuts, but ruled out taking industrial action during the pandemic.

The NSWNMA is calling for a mere 4.7 per cent pay increase this year, which would only bring workers’ pay in line with the 2.5 percent that was promised for last year. The union is also seeking staff-to-patient ratios of 1 nurse to 4 patients, as is meant to apply in the two adjoining states of Victoria and Queensland.

These demands are woefully inadequate. Over the past month, public health systems in Queensland and Victoria have reported increased ambulance ramping, due to lack of beds, with patients treated in ambulances on hospital driveways until a bed becomes available.

In May, the Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital emergency ward in Queensland reported a code yellow internal emergency, with more than 191 percent capacity, and Rockhampton Base Hospital, in central Queensland, similarly reported a code yellow. Staff shortages have also been reported across a number of major hospitals in Victoria over the past month.

In fact, public hospitals throughout Australia are in crisis, even before a major outbreak of coronavirus, with reports from every state and territory of emergency departments overflowing due to lack of beds. In Wyong Hospital, on the NSW Central Coast, it was reported last month that over a dozen ambulances were ramped outside, with some patients waiting over five hours to be admitted.

With the long-delayed rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the public healthcare system is being stretched to breaking point, as nurses and midwives are redeployed to vaccination hubs. Around 200 nurses and midwives are working at Sydney’s vaccination hub alone, alongside 100 other staff members, including pharmacists and pharmacy students. Nurses in hospitals in the working-class suburbs of southwest Sydney are having to work double shifts, to make up for the staffing shortfall.

A NSW parliamentary inquiry report, released at the end of last year, revealed that health services in the same area, which includes Campbelltown and Liverpool hospitals, have experienced historic under-funding by successive governments, with lower overall funding and numbers of health workers per capita than wealthier areas of Sydney, resulting in wait times of over 500 days for some procedures. An ongoing parliamentary inquiry into NSW rural and regional health services has likened conditions to those of “a third world country.”

Last November, the NSWNMA shut down a strike of over 150 nurses and midwives at Blacktown hospital in western Sydney, in response to the deaths of five babies at the hospital in under two years, ongoing staffing shortages and concerns about patient safety. Acting on the orders of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, the union forced workers back to work, without their demands being met. Since then another newborn has died at the same hospital.

Health workers everywhere are being driven to take action over conditions and wages. Last week, more than 20,000 Sri Lankan health workers, and around 30,000 nurses, healthcare assistants and midwives in New Zealand, went on strike, directly challenging the governments of President Gotabaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern respectively. There were also strikes by nurses and hospital workers in France, Poland and Belgium.

This mounting opposition from workers is coming into conflict with the trade union apparatuses that have shut down strikes and refused to mobilise broader support.

Netflix Screen Writers Fellowship 2021

Application Deadline: 18th June 2021

About the Award: This fellowship, for each writer, will include a bursary of £22,568 to write a spec script for an original idea over the course of a year, monthly development events and workshops, and a paid placement in a writers room of a Netflix or Sky series.

We are looking for applications from writers of Black, Asian and other racial and ethnic backgrounds that are under-represented in the High End TV and film industry.

Each submission will be assessed by an experienced script reader. Shortlisted applicants will then be interviewed and selected by a panel of industry experts.

Type: Fellowship

Selection Criteria:

We want to encourage greater diversity of voices among new writers, and so are looking for Black, Asian and other racially and ethnically under-represented writers to apply.

We’re looking for dedicated writers with an authentic and original voice in all scripted genres, so we’ll need to see an example of your work – this means submitting a script.

Eligible Countries: Not specified

Number of Awards: 6

Value of Award: The Fellowship offer will include:

• A bursary of £22,568 over 12 months to write a spec script for an original idea.
• Paid placement in a writers’ room on a Netflix or Sky show, including the opportunity to write a shadow script and receive feedback on it.
• Credit for writers’ room participation.

• Production shadowing, details of which will be COVID-19 dependent.
• Regular development workshops and events.

• Allocation of an industry mentor.
• Three mentoring meetings with Bisha K Ali over the course of the year; beginning, middle and end of programme.

How to Apply: All the rules and information you need to know regarding the Fellowship can be found here !

SUBMIT APPLICATION

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details