UK rail workers strike against pay restraint and inferior terms and conditions

Tony Robson

A series of strikes have been called across the rail network in the past few months involving conductors, ticket examiners and maintenance engineers in the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT).

Taken against the private operators, the disputes are primarily in opposition to pay restraint—an attack facilitated by the RMT’s participation in the Rail Industry Coronavirus Forum (RICF) with the government, alongside the other rail unions, at the start of the pandemic.

Caledonia Sleeper service strikers on the picket line in Inversness this month (credit: RMT Twitter)

In the name of “Working Together”, the trade unions agreed to the suppress any expression of workers independent interests based on the claim that they would be upheld through collaboration with the private operators.

Instead throughout the pandemic rail workers have been subjected to an ever-present threat to their safety due to the combined impact of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government abandoning lockdowns early to reopen the economy and the private operators’ drive to restore revenue collection under the most hazardous conditions. At Christmas time, Great Western Railway (GWR) and South Western Railway were forced to cancel train services due to the shortage of rail staff resulting from workplace outbreaks of the virus, with GWR reporting one in four drivers having to self-isolate and 10 percent of staff affected at its depots in south west England.

In January, the government announced a two-year pay freeze for 62,000 rail workers across 22 operating companies under conditions in which inflation has continued to rise—especially for food and other essentials.

While rail workers safety and pay is sacrificed, the private operators have received full protection from the economic fallout of the pandemic through reduced passenger usage by a huge government hand out estimated to now stand at £12 billion.

The RMT has set out to build a reputation as the most militant of all the trade unions, but during the pandemic it has proven to be no less subservient to the demands of the government and private operators. It has been forced into strike action only because the toleration of rail workers of its partnership with the train companies and government has been exhausted.

The union is working to ensure that numerous disputes remain isolated and prevented from spreading. While from the standpoint of rhetoric the RMT has denounced the profiteering of the private operators, its overarching concern is to preserve and deepen its working relations with management and company shareholders as guarantors of “industrial peace” and corporate profits.

This led to the pathetic spectacle at East Midlands Railway (EMR) of the RMT setting up a negotiating table outside the headquarters of the company in Nottingham on June 20, ahead of consecutive 24 hour strikes on Sundays that commenced from June 27 and are due to continue until mid-August. RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch stated, “To make things easier for the company to make genuine proposals to end this dispute we will be bringing the negotiating table to them this Sunday.”

Mick Lynch (source: RMT)

The RMT preaches conciliation with EMR when the strike has been provoked by the company imposing inferior terms and conditions on some conductors including a reduction of £5,500 during the first year of employment, as well as being forced to work additional hours that are not part of current terms and conditions.

EMR is owned by Netherlands-based transnational Abellio, which also operates ScotRail running 95 percent of rail services in Scotland. ScotRail has been hit by strike action over demands by conductors and ticket examiners for rest day payments on equal terms to train drivers. The strike on Sundays was started by conductors in late March and was joined by ticket examiners in June, which has led to a reduction in services operated by the company to just 15 percent.

The company came to a separate agreement with train drivers who are members of the ASLEF union and have received enhanced payments for rest day working. The company has denied this to the conductors who perform up to 32 safety critical tasks on board the train. The agreement for drivers signed by ASLEF includes an additional payment of £375 and has been extended from its initial expiry date of January, but only until October. It is a policy of divide and conquer that relies entirely on the trade union bureaucracy collectively maintaining divisions among rail workers.

The RMT has decried rail drivers being given a “bung” and denounced their “preferential treatment”. But it will not challenge the ASLEF leadership’s betrayal and never has.

ScotRail fleet maintenance staff also took strike action for two days from June 15 at its depot in Perth, which is used to refuel and store trains overnight. The strike was backed by 80 percent of (RMT) members after a manager who was the subject of a collective grievance by 16 workers was promoted, after having been found guilty of bullying and harassment.

The RMT is also focusing its efforts on appeals to the Scottish National Party (SNP) government to commit to ending the franchise with Abellio and take the service back into public control. Its attempt to present the SNP government as an ally is bogus. As has been the case throughout the UK, the rail franchises have been effectively taken back under government control through the Emergency Measures Agreement (EMA), which shielded the private operators from financial losses. It is estimated that the Scottish government has pumped a total of £452 million into the coffers of Abellio and Serco, which runs the Caledonia Sleeper service. The Scottish government is, moreover, just as committed to opposing pay rises as Abellio when it takes over as the “Service Operator of last resort” and has refused invitations to meet with the RMT over a wage agreement for 2021.

The Caledonia Sleeper service has also been hit by a strike against the pay freeze after RMT members voted by an 85 percent majority for action. An eleven-day strike by RMT members between June 15 and June 26 led to the full cancellation of the overnight service between London and the Scottish Highlands. The RMT attempted to neuter the strike through calls to Serco to attend arbitration talks, which the company refused. The strike has been followed by a ban on overtime and rest day working.

On June 17, the RMT issued a press release stating that it was launching a “Bust the transport worker pay freeze” campaign, almost half a year after it was announced by the government. It issued no dates for strike balloting or any demands of its own in terms of wage increases.

While the RMT claims to be preparing for “a summer of strikes” over pay, it continues its corporatist collusion with the Johnson government to tie workers hand and foot to the restructuring of the rail system in the form of the Rail Industry Recovery Group (RIRG).

The RMT has taken its place alongside the other unions represented on the rail network, together with the private operators and government infrastructure agency, Network Rail, in a body that will report directly to the government on a £2 billion cost cutting agenda.

In a letter to the RMT membership this month, the union’s National Executive Committee claimed it was participating in the RIRG to protect workers’ interests. But the letter admitted, “Your NEC has noted that the basis of the agreement has the objective of reducing the overall operating costs of the railway as the Government wants to reduce its subsidy. This will affect the overall number of jobs, working practices and roles and other arrangements.”

Fiji overwhelmed by spiralling COVID-19 outbreak

John Braddock

The Pacific island nation of Fiji has, for the second week in a row, recorded spiraling daily cases of COVID-19 as the outbreak that began in April continues to spread unabated. Infection and death rates have been rising rapidly since the first registered daily total of 100 on June 13.

Fiji recorded 312 new COVID-19 cases and four deaths in 24-hours to Tuesday, June 29. This followed 241 cases and two deaths reported Monday, 266 cases and one death on Saturday, 215 cases and three deaths Friday, a previous record of 308 cases and one death Thursday and another 279 cases and four deaths last Wednesday.

A family sells produce in front of their home in Suva, Fiji on June 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Aileen Torres-Bennett)

Fiji’s count in the current outbreak stands at 3,306 active cases in just eight weeks. A total of 4,074 cases have been recorded since March 2020, with just over 800 people recovered.

The death count is shrouded in confusion. While the official toll stands at 21 deaths, New Zealand correspondent Barbara Dreaver told Radio NZ at least nine more people had actually died but authorities were not counting them, claiming they died from other conditions.

Dreaver added, “Officials are saying it’s going to get worse, and the reason that they know that is because people who are turning up positive come from really crowded settlements. And so there is this huge fear, and rightly so, that there’s just so many more people who are infected.”

The Fiji Times speculated on June 24 that the looming COVID-19 disaster could be the largest public health crisis in the Pacific since a New Zealand ship introduced influenza into Samoa in 1918, resulting in 9,000 deaths, or six percent of the population.

Fiji’s Medical Services’ Head of Health Protection, Aalisha Sahukhan, expressed alarm that government leaders knew what was coming but warnings were not listened to. “What we are most concerned about is the next wave, the wave of people with severe illness requiring hospitalisation and the deaths that will come with it,” she said.

Fiji’s test positivity ratio is running at 7.4 percent. This figure, which is also rising every day, measures the number of positive results for every 100 tests and gives an indication of community spread. According to the World Health Organisation, a threshold of 5 percent indicates widespread community transmission. Some medical authorities are warning of 600 deaths and over 50,000 active cases by early August.

The country’s vaccination program is insufficient to contain the outbreak. On Friday one centre had less than 200 vaccine shots to administer. While 28.8 percent of the population has received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine but only about 2 percent are fully vaccinated.

New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker has made repeated warnings about the “grim” situation in Fiji and advised a full lockdown. “If you don’t do this you are left with basic measures focusing on cases of testing, contact tracing. That capacity looks like it’s completely overwhelmed already in Fiji so that really isn’t effective anymore, so you are really running out of choices at the moment,” Baker said.

Despite the increasingly disastrous surge, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama continues to resist calls for the government to impose a full lockdown of either the main island Viti Levu, where the outbreak is centred, or across the entire country. Bainimarama said a complete shutdown would “cripple the economy.”

Radio NZ reported last Friday that Bainimarama appears to be “missing in action,” and is leaving Health Secretary James Fong to front the crisis. Bainimarama has only given one public address since April. He used that speech, given nearly two weeks ago, to reiterate that going into a full lockdown would be “too drastic” and lead to higher unemployment.

Targeted containment areas have been put in place in lieu of strict lockdown measures, with curfews for a limited number of areas on Viti Levu. The government has restricted movement to essential purposes only—to obtain food and medicine, and for authorised work.

However, the list of workplaces that can operate increases. Minister for Employment Parveen Bala has said being vaccinated will become mandatory for those wanting to travel between regions, including for work. Bala said once the country’s population of 889,953 had been vaccinated, steps such as containment areas and potential lockdowns would “not be needed.”

Fong’s statements are a dangerous mix of complacency, willful denial and finger-pointing. Last Thursday he told the media: “If I believed there was a medical case to be made for a 24-hour curfew for 28 days for all of Viti Levu, I’d advise the prime minister directly. I have not done that because, medically, we do not believe a 24-hour curfew for 28 straight days would work.”

Fong blamed ordinary people for the situation, declaring that “compliance, not lockdowns” was the way out of the alarming outbreak. He claimed that given the “track record” of poor public compliance there was no guarantee there would be compliance with further restrictions and the government “simply does not have the capacity to enforce such a strict lockdown” everywhere.

The UN resident coordinator for Fiji and the Pacific, Sanaka Samarasinha, repeated the same line, telling the pro-government Fiji Sun “not enough Fijians are taking the risks of Covid-19 seriously enough.”

The government, which came to power in a coup led by Bainimarama in 2006, is a brutal authoritarian regime with a long history of suppressing the working class and rural poor. It is pursuing the same strategy as governments elsewhere of “herd immunity,” i.e. letting the disease run rampant on the basis that ordinary people have to learn to “live with” it.

Fong has declared that the government’s strategy has moved from “containment” to “mitigation,” particularly in hard-hit areas. He falsely claimed the “global expert consensus” was that COVID-19 is likely to become an endemic disease, which continues to circulate indefinitely internationally. Fong said it was “too early” to say if that would be the case in Fiji, but regardless, the government's strategy would “remain the same.”

The response of the local imperialist powers to the crisis erupting in their own backyard remains extremely limited. Last week, the New Zealand government announced an extra $NZ10 million to help with Fiji’s response to the pandemic. Small teams of medical specialists from New Zealand and Australia have also been sent to assist, a totally inadequate contribution to the impoverished country facing the collapse of its health infrastructure.

Delta variant of coronavirus fuels rise in cases in Europe

Will Morrow

While governments in Europe abandon social distancing measures, coronavirus cases are rising across the continent, increasingly dominated by the more infectious Delta strain of the virus. The Delta variant, first detected in India, is considered to be up to 60 percent more contagious than even the Alpha strain first detected in the UK, and to be up to four times as likely to lead to hospitalisations.

The most advanced situation on the continent is the UK. This is largely because the Delta variant began to spread in Britain earlier than elsewhere, despite it having a higher vaccination rate than most EU countries, with almost 60 percent of the adult population having received two doses.

A bullfight amid the coronavirus pandemic at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, Spain, June 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

On Tuesday, the UK recorded a further 20,479 cases, the second consecutive day that they have topped 20,000, taking new infections recorded in the last seven days to 123,566. There were 108 deaths due to COVID-19 over the period, a comparatively low figure solely due to the impact of the vaccination program.

Despite this resurgence of the virus fueled by the Delta variant, and a total of more than 152,000 deaths from COVID-19, Sajid Javid, in his first speech to parliament as UK Health Secretary, insisted that July 19 would be “end of the line” for safety restrictions.

“We see no reason to go beyond July 19 because in truth no date we choose comes with zero risk, we know we simply cannot eliminate it. We have to learn to live with it,” he said. Javid made no bones that the protection of big business was his main concern: “We also know that people and businesses need certainty. So we want every step to be irreversible. Make no mistake, the restriction on our freedoms must come to an end.”

Much of the current surge has been due to the infection of youth and schoolchildren. On Tuesday, the Department of Education released figures showing that more than 375,000 pupils were absent from school last week in England due to the spread of COVID-19. This was an increase of more than 130,000 in a week, 66 percent, and equates to 5.1 percent of all schoolchildren.

In a stark confirmation of the government’s herd immunity policy, with masks now discouraged in schools in official guidance, 15,000 of the absent pupils are confirmed COVID-19 cases and another 24,000 suspected cases.

The Delta variant is also leading to a surge in cases in other countries, including in Russia and in Portugal. Russia recorded over 20,600 new cases yesterday. While the number of cases was approximately equal to the number recorded in Britain, there were approximately 30 times as many deaths, with 652 deaths officially counted. The vaccination rate in Russia is currently at 11 percent.

In Portugal, there were 1,746 new cases recorded yesterday. The Portuguese health ministry released a report last week stating that more than half of all cases are comprised of the Delta variant. In the capital Lisbon, more than 70 percent of cases are now from the Delta strain.

On Tuesday, the German government invoked a two-week quarantine on travel of passengers from Russia and Portugal, citing concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. The British Times newspaper reported on Monday that German government officials were seeking to designate the UK as a “country of concern” and ban travel of UK residents to the EU regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Tuesday criticized the entrance of large number of supporters into British football stadiums as part of the European Championship tournament. He told the regional newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine that it was “irresponsible that tens of thousands of people gather in confined spaces in countries classed at risk because of the highly contagious Delta variant.” The England-Germany clash yesterday evening was attended by some 45,000 people, half of the stadium’s capacity.

In Germany itself, however, the Delta variant is already spreading and is likely to already be the dominant strain. On Tuesday, Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told officials that, based on a national genome sequencing analysis, the Delta variant’s relative weight in coronavirus cases reached 36 percent in the week of June 14-20, more than double the 15 percent of the previous week. Based on this trend, Wieler estimated that the Delta variant already now makes up more than half the total number of cases.

Germany is nonetheless proceeding with the ending of limited social-distancing measures. As elsewhere across the continent, its concern is the return of business activity and corporate profit-making for German companies. Approximately 54 percent of the population in Germany has received a first dose of the vaccine, and 35 percent are fully vaccinated.

In Italy and Belgium, the Delta variant already makes up at least 20 percent and 16 percent of coronavirus cases, respectively.

On Tuesday, French Health Minister Olivier Veran stated that Delta made up “around 20 percent of new cases in France,” and “is becoming progressively dominant.” In the Landes region of southwestern France bordering Spain, the Delta variant accounts already for 70 percent of infections.

On June 24, Andrea Ammon, the head of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said it was “very likely” that Delta circulate “extensively” across the continent through the Summer. “This could cause a risk for the more vulnerable individuals to be infected and experience severe illness and death if they are not fully vaccinated,” she said.

“There are still too many individuals at risk of severe COVID-19 infection whom we need to protect as soon as possible,” Ammon said. She implicitly criticized the abandonment of social distancing measures, stating: “Until most of the vulnerable individuals are protected, we need to keep the circulation of the Delta [variant] low by strictly adhering to public health measures, which worked for controlling the impact of other variants.”

The stated policy of European governments, however, is to rely on vaccinations to blunt the spread of the virus, but to reject social distancing measures that would have an impact on corporate operations. Only approximately one third of the continent’s adult population is currently fully vaccinated.

Scientists have warned that the policy of permitting the virus to spread among a large, partially vaccinated population creates the conditions for the development of new and even more deadly variants, which could be even more resistant to existing vaccine protections.

The fact that new strains have been allowed to develop and become so dominant was itself not an inevitable, purely biological phenomenon. It was the outcome of the policies pursued by capitalist governments across the European Union, the US and elsewhere. Since the end of stricter lockdown measures last year, they have pursued, in all but name, a policy of “herd immunity” allowing the virus to spread in order to protect the financial interests of the corporate elite.

The result has been more than 1.1 million COVID-19 deaths in Europe. In the same year, the wealth of Europe’s billionaires has risen by $1 trillion, to approximately $3 trillion, spread among just 628 people.

Almost half of Australia’s population under lockdown measures as Delta outbreak grows

Oscar Grenfell

Since Saturday, four state and territory governments have initiated limited lockdown measures, covering up to 12 million people, or almost half Australia’s population, as outbreaks of the highly-contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 spread across the country.

Infection numbers remain relatively low, in the dozens each day in Sydney, where the current swell began, and single figures in several other cities. The governments have been compelled to impose restrictions, however, because Labor and Liberal-National administrations at the state and federal levels have created what some epidemiologists have termed a “perfect storm” for a major surge of the disease.

A COVID testing site in Sydney (Credit: St Vincent's Sydney, Twitter)

Prior to the current outbreaks, almost all safety measures, including caps on mass events, had been lifted. Australia has the slowest vaccination rate of an advanced OECD country, with only around 7 percent of the adult population fully-inoculated. Governments have, throughout the pandemic, failed to develop an effective quarantine program, instead relying on private hotels that are incapable of stemming airborne transmission and have been the source of up to 30 COVID “leaks.”

The high transmissibility of the Delta variant, which is twice as contagious as the original version of the disease, and widespread public anger over the government failures, have prompted the current lockdowns.

Governments fear the public backlash, under conditions in which their political survival over the past year has largely depended on false claims to have protected the population from the coronavirus disasters witnessed internationally. Over recent days, demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and denunciations of state leaders, particularly New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian, have developed on Australian social media platforms.

NSW authorities this morning reported 22 infections in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. last night. This takes the total number of locally-acquired cases since June 16 to 171. They are all of the Delta variant and are in or near Sydney, the country’s most-populous city.

For over a week, the Berejiklian government, with the full support of the state Labor opposition, rejected demands from epidemiologists for a lockdown. This allowed Delta to circulate, extending from the city’s eastern suburbs to every corner of the city. On Friday, the NSW government announced stay-at-home restrictions for four local government areas, but infections were already being detected elsewhere.

Epidemiologists denounced the shambolic measure and correctly noted that it was dictated by the demands of large businesses that their operations not be hindered by a city-wide lockdown. Amid mounting cases, Berejiklian announced a lockdown covering all of Sydney on Saturday. Since then, daily infections have continued to approach or exceed 20.

With hundreds of potential exposure sites across Sydney, health experts have warned that the limited lockdown now in place may be insufficient to stem infections. On Twitter yesterday, Professor Bill Bowtell noted: “What’s happening in Sydney is not a hard lockdown. Many non-essential businesses open. Mask compliance sporadic. Roads busy. Without JobKeeper support, some workers have to work despite risks. Beyond that, clarity urgently required about lockdown rules.”

Many retail outlets are continuing their operations, while factory workers remain on the job, as they have throughout the pandemic. The federal JobKeeper wage subsidy was ended in March. Casual workers who have been thrown out of work are eligible for far lower federal payments, which are tied to stringent eligibility requirements. Affected small businesses may be provided with grants of between $5,000 and $10,000 by the state authorities.

Lockdowns in other states are also limited, and are set to intensify a social crisis confronting working people.

Yesterday, the Labor government in the northeastern state of Queensland announced a four-day lockdown, effective until at least Friday. It covers the state capital, Brisbane, along with the regional city of Townsville and much of southeastern Queensland.

The outbreak there has highlighted the dangerous implications of the vaccine shambles. A 19-year-old unvaccinated receptionist working outside a COVID ward at Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane contracted the virus, before visiting parts of north Queensland. Four cases of the Delta variant have been detected. The Labor government immediately sought to scapegoat the young worker.

In Western Australia, the state Labor government announced a four-day lockdown of the capital Perth and the surrounding Peel region, following three confirmed cases of the Delta variant. The outbreak began after a woman returned from Sydney, unknowingly infectious. At least one of the subsequent cases stemmed from transmission in a Perth gym.

The Northern Territory government has lengthened a lockdown of Darwin and extended it to the regional centre of Alice Springs. The territory has recorded at least nine COVID cases, all thought to be of the Delta variant, the first community transmission registered there since the pandemic began.

The outbreak is thought to have begun at the Tanami gold mine in central Australia. It has been staffed by fly-in fly-out workers. One of the staff members contracted the disease in a Brisbane hotel quarantine, before returning to the mine, prompting a lockdown of 640 workers at the site. Such fly-in fly-out operations have been permitted by governments throughout the pandemic, despite the clear risk of a COVID spread, so that nothing disrupts the multi-billion dollar mining sector.

The Northern Territory has some of the highest rates of poverty and social deprivation in the country, and is home to a large Aboriginal population. Despite being classed as a vulnerable demographic eligible for fast-tracked vaccination, rates of inoculation in Northern Territory communities, including those near the Tanami mine, are at 20 percent or lower.

An infected worker from the mine also visited South Australia while contagious, prompting limited restrictions there.

The state, territory and federal governments have responded to the crisis with mutual recriminations and attempts to downplay their responsibility. Throughout the pandemic, all of them have collaborated in an extra-constitutional national cabinet, which has overseen the disastrous vaccine rollout, the failed hotel quarantine and the premature lifting of safety measures.

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese has bemoaned the impact of the outbreaks on big business, telling the Australian Financial Review that billions of dollars are being lost. State and federal Labor representatives have advocated lowering the intake of Australian citizens who remain stranded abroad. Fully-implicated in the official refusal to develop purpose-build quarantines, they are seeking to blame international arrivals and promote nationalist isolationism.

For its part, the federal Liberal-National government is increasingly mired in crisis. Prime Minister Morrison announced on Monday that all Australians could receive AstraZeneca vaccines, contradicting official health advice that the product is safe only for those aged over 60, due to rare bloodclotting complications. The Australian Medical Association and other doctors’ groups have refused to endorse the new policy, with some openly implying that it is a political manoeuvre.

The AstraZeneca announcement again demonstrates the failure of the federal government to develop a diversified vaccination program. Instead it settled on the cheapest option available.

Amid widespread public concern over the outbreaks, the corporate and financial elite is clamouring for a rapid end to the limited lockdowns that have been put in place, and condemning governments for capitulating to popular pressure. Editorials in the Australian and the Australian Financial Review this morning accused governments of “overkill” and insisted that the population had to “learn to live with the virus,” while other corporate outlets condemned the “insanity” of the current restrictions.

Roma man dies during brutal arrest by police in Czech Republic

Markus Salzmann

As a result of a brutal police operation on June 19 against a member of the Roma minority in the northern Bohemian town of Teplice, 46-year-old Stanislav Tomáš died during his arrest. While video footage clearly proves the violent actions of the security forces, the government in Prague has declared its full support for the police and announced there will be no investigation of the perpetrators.

A video circulated on social media shows how a police officer pushed Tomáš to the ground, holding him down for minutes with his knee on his neck and throat. Another video shows a half-dressed man hitting a car parked on the side of the road in an uncoordinated manner. The police officers who then approached acted with tremendous brutality against the man, who was already lying on the ground and obviously in a wretched physical and mental condition.

The second video, almost six minutes long, shows Tomáš being pushed to the ground by three police officers. After his hands were tied behind his back, one of the officers pressed his knee into the victim’s neck for minutes—even after he was already lying motionless on the ground and the two other officers were no longer holding him. Terrible screams can be heard, which fall silent at a certain point.

A few minutes later the man was pronounced dead, after rescue workers tried in vain to resuscitate him. Another video has not yet been released by the police, according to media reports. It is said to document the arrival of an ambulance and may show that the victim was already dead. Eyewitnesses were expressly asked by the police not to speak to the media about the case.

The death of the Roma man is frighteningly reminiscent of that of George Floyd last year in the USA. The latter’s killing, in a similar manner by the now-convicted police officer Derek Chauvin, triggered a worldwide wave of protests. Millions of workers were shocked by Floyd’s killing, which they saw as symptomatic of police terror in the US and around the world.

Many reacted to the video of the death of Tomáš in horror. “This is the height of brutality,” commented Roma activist Michal Miko. Last Wednesday, a demonstration against police brutality and discrimination against Roma took place in Prague, the capital. In Teplice, several hundred people demonstrated on Saturday afternoon after a memorial service for Tomáš, and spontaneously marched to the local police station, where they chanted, “Come and kill us.”

Although the European media hardly reported the case, hundreds of people also gathered in cities such as Berlin and Glasgow for protests and vigils. The Council of Europe is calling for an independent investigation, saying the footage of the police action was alarming. Amnesty International is also calling for an investigation into the incident.

Contrary to the video footage that has emerged, which leaves no doubt about a connection between the death and the brutal operation, the security forces have denied any responsibility for the man’s death. The General Inspectorate of the Security Forces (GIBS) said on Thursday that there was no evidence of a criminal offence and therefore no criminal proceedings would be initiated against the police officers.

There is no connection, supposedly, between the death of the Roma man and the actions of the police, according to an evaluation of police documents and captured images, as well as the autopsy report. According to the report, the deceased had crystal meth in his blood, which was the cause of his death. The coercive measures applied by the police had been appropriate, it says. A statement by the Czech police says explicitly, “There is no ‘Czech Floyd.’”

Immediately following the crime, the deadly police action was justified by the highest government circles. Social Democratic Interior Minister Jan Hamáček declared on Twitter, “The intervening police have my full support. If someone breaks the law while under the influence of addictive drugs they must expect the @PolicieCZ [Czech police] to intervene; thanks mainly to the work of police officers, we are among the ten safest countries in the world.” The leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) described police officers as “great professionals.”

Head of government Andrej Babis also justified the murderous actions of the security forces. “When someone demolishes cars, acts aggressively and even bites a policeman, he cannot expect to be handled with kid gloves,” he wrote on Facebook. The prime minister explicitly thanked the police in Teplice for their “work.”

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis at the EU summit in Brussels on 24-25 June (Aris Oikonomou, Pool Photo via AP)

The dramatic incident is the latest in a series of brutal attacks by security forces against Roma. In October 2016, Miroslav Demeter, a mentally ill man, died under similar circumstances when he was arrested by police about 50 kilometres from Teplice. Again, the official cause of death was given as a drug overdose; and again, there were no investigations, let alone sanctions against the police officers involved.

In 2017, two police officers were investigated on suspicion of forcibly coercing confessions from Roma. One police officer was convicted but acquitted on appeal. Many cases of police abuse against Roma do not even come to public attention.

Of the approximately 300,000 Czech Roma, many live in Teplice. The town, which is about 75 kilometres from Prague, is considered a social hotspot, with high levels of unemployment. The Roma are particularly affected by this. In the Roma settlements, unemployment is often as high as 80 percent. Across Europe, 62 percent of young Roma are currently without work or education.

This minority is exposed to systematic social harassment and racist agitation. Following an amendment to the social laws in 2017, certain zones were defined in which residents are not entitled to housing benefits. This regulation is almost exclusively limited to areas with a high Roma population. In 2018, President Milos Zeman publicly called for Roma to be beaten if they “refuse to work.”

But the police brutality, legitimised and publicly defended by the government, is not only directed against the Roma minority, it is also a feature of the capitalist system, a social and economic order in which workers are exploited for the profit of a small minority.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the establishment parties have demonstrated very clearly whose interests they represent. Government head Babis is a businessman and the fourth-richest person in the Czech Republic. His party, ANO, forms a minority government with the completely discredited Social Democrats, which is kept in office by the Communist Party.

As a result of the policy of opening up the economy, the Czech Republic has at times recorded the highest infection and death rates in the EU. More than 10 percent of the population has so far been infected with the virus and over 30,000 people have died. As everywhere in Europe, the pandemic is accompanied by mass layoffs, rising unemployment and poverty.

By publicly defending police violence, and mobilising right-wing and racist forces, the government in Prague is preparing for fierce class battles ahead.

Health care workers face mental health crisis as the result of pandemic disaster

Shelby Michaels

 

We are seeing “ the great resignation ” in health care. Studies show three-tenths of health care workers are looking for new jobs. We ran on adrenaline for a year, burning the candle at both ends. Now we are empty and have nothing but time to reflect on the tragedy. The many lonely deaths witnessed left us traumatized. We remember feeling scared, unprotected and let down by our administration , who didn’t value us enough for a plastic gown. Every day a new direction and our lives, our families ’ lives and our patients ’ lives were caught in the balance. I will never be the same person as I was before this pandemic. I will never forget that management hid in offices and made decisions that I was not worth the value of a paper mask. I have never felt more strongly that nurses are not [considered] valuable. Every day I showed up and gave my whole heart to those who were scared and alone. I held their hand with empathy , knowing that their fate was inevitable. If you were a prostitute, a politician, a lawyer, a drug dealer , it didn’t matter. I would care for you , giving everything I had.

I am realizing that I am the one that is treated without care.

— Erin, a nurse in Riverside, California

The coronavirus pandemic has lasted for more than 15 months, severely impacting not only the physical but the mental health of the vast majority of the world’s population. While almost 4 million people have died globally, hundreds of millions more have experienced overwhelming levels of stress, loss, economic anxiety, depression, isolation and uncertainty.

In few other fields have workers been exposed to such high levels of stress as in health care. Health care workers, especially those on the frontline, have faced increased work hours, shortages of lifesaving personal protective equipment (PPE) and endless exposure to patient deaths. Large numbers of their colleagues have also died fighting to save lives.

Nurse Debbi Hinderliter (left) collects a sample from a woman at a coronavirus testing site near the nation's busiest pedestrian border crossing, August 13, 2020, in San Diego [Credit: AP Photo/Gregory Bull]

During the first year of the pandemic, more than 3,600 health care workers died in the United States, according to the ongoing study, “Lost on the frontline,” by Kaiser Health News and the Guardian newspaper. Nurses and health care support specialists accounted for the largest share of these deaths. More than 700 died in New York and New Jersey alone, the study found.

While the report outlines a shocking scale of death among health care workers, these statistics are not comprehensively tracked by the government, and the authors of the study suggest the true toll is higher.

Many of these deaths were the product of a direct failure of hospital administrators and governments to procure adequate supplies of masks and other personal protective gear, lack of mass testing and contact tracing, inadequate safety measures at workplaces, and refusal to implement necessary public health measures like lockdowns and restrictions until COVID-19 was successfully contained.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “essential workers” are more likely to report symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, substance use and suicidal thoughts during the pandemic. Many current studies of health care workers are showing increased rates of post-traumatic symptoms among those workers caring for COVID-19 patients, with nurses being more often adversely impacted than doctors.

Psychiatrist Dr. Julian Lagoy at Community Psychology in California explained to Healthline: “Generally, PTSD trauma is defined as being exposed to a traumatic event, such as a sexual assault, war, a car accident, or child abuse. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic has qualities that qualify as a traumatic experience as it takes a physical and emotional toll on many people.”

In 2019, a review of available literature by The Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association found that burnout among health care workers was endemic even before the pandemic. After a year of exposure to massive deaths and increasing staffing shortages, burnout has certainly increased, and many health care workers are reaching a breaking point.

According to a survey by the Vivan Health website, in 2021, 43 percent of respondents considered leaving the health care profession in 2021. By comparison, at the start of the pandemic, 80 percent of respondents said they were likely to continue working in their field. Additionally, a staggering 87 percent of respondents now say that their hospitals or facilities are, on average, short staffed.

Data from staffing firm Aya Healthcare shows that such results are already being reflected in mass vacancies within the health care system. One year into the pandemic, permanent nurse vacancies have skyrocketed, with job postings at hospitals and health systems up 20 percent compared to the start of the pandemic.

These conditions are not isolated to the United States but are part of the international impact of the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, thousands of doctors plan to leave the National Health Service after the pandemic due to exhaustion and mental health concerns, according to a report released in May by the British Medical Association. The report finds that the number of UK doctors seeking early retirement has doubled, and 25 percent are more likely to take a break from their profession.

The disastrous state of health care is the result of decades of cuts to public and private health systems. Years of cost-cutting measures mean that the medical system has fewer resources to confront the worst global health crisis in a century. Health care systems in the US are both publicly and privately funded and lack proper coordination to treat the needs of society effectively and holistically.

Hospitals are still experiencing impacts from the virus with continued increasing staff shortages. In May of this year, Oregon State Hospital had to call in the National Guard for help with treating severely mentally ill patients. The hospital is chronically understaffed, by as much as 30 percent.

Despite a rising number of vaccinations, numbers are far below what is required for herd immunity, even in advanced countries. The more infectious and deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus is present in at least 80 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In the US, it accounts for at least 10 percent of all new cases and is probable to soon become the dominant variant, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky. There exists the danger of new surges of the virus as the Delta variant spreads, as well as the threat of COVID-19 becoming an ongoing endemic lasting for years, so long as policy decisions remain in the hands of the profit-driven ruling class.

In response to the deadly, stressful and unsafe conditions facing health care workers, exacerbated by the pandemic, nurses, hospital workers, and other health professionals have gone on strike throughout the world over the last year. Recently, health care professionals throughout India have been on strike, including thousands of doctors, health care teachers and hospital workers.

Earlier this year, hundreds of doctors went on a 24-hour strike in Israel, midwives went on a one-day strike in France, and health care workers in Bolivia also went on strike. In May, 30,000 New Zealand public sector nurses voted to strike, while in Massachusetts, 700 nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital have been striking for weeks over patient care and unsafe conditions.

While trillions of dollars have been handed out to the major banks to weather the economic fallout from the pandemic, vital frontline health care professionals face death, sickness, burnout and poor conditions that have led them to the brink.

Health care workers worldwide have suffered immensely under the decaying capitalist health care system that was ill prepared for a global pandemic. It is time for health care workers and all workers to fight for a rational, science-based plan to suppress the virus, based on putting human lives before profits.

751 unmarked graves discovered at Canadian residential school site in Saskatchewan

Alexandra Greene

The Cowessess First Nation has announced that 751 unmarked graves have been discovered on reserve land that once housed the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley.

This grisly discovery comes just weeks after the remains of 215 children were discovered on the site of an Indian residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, and sheds light, yet again, on the brutal and inhumane treatment Canadian capitalism and its state have meted out to the indigenous population.

A group of students from the Marieval Indian Residential School (National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation)

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme addressed reporters at a virtual news conference last Thursday morning, where he relayed details of the operation that has been underway to locate the graves.

The First Nation partnered with technical teams from Saskatchewan Polytechnic to begin the search in early June. Using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), the teams covered the 44,000 square metres that previously constituted the residential school’s Roman Catholic cemetery.

Delorme said that there could be more than 751 bodies buried at the site. GPR registered 751 “recorded hits” during the searches. However, it is possible that more than one set of remains are buried at some “hit” locations. He noted that penetrating radar has a 10 to 15 percent error rate and that technical teams will announce a verified number of how many remains have been found in the weeks to come.

“This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves,” he clarified at Thursday’s press conference. He explained that the community will now be treating the site “like a crime scene,” with the goal of matching names to those in the graves and eventually erecting a monument on the site to memorialize them. On Saturday, a vigil involving members of the First Nation band was held at which 751 solar-powered lamps were placed on the 751 grave sites identified to date.

Memorial on the steps of the Vancouver Art gallery for the 215 children whose corpses were recently discovered on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. (Wikimedia Commons)

The search efforts are “Phase 1” of ongoing work within the Cowessess First Nation, guided by the community’s oral history, to locate the victims of the residential school system as well as other unmarked gravesites. These include unbaptized babies whom Church authorities refused to allow to be buried alongside those inducted into the Catholic faith.

Chief Delorme says that oral history indicates that adults were buried at the site, as well as children, and that it is possible people who attended the church or lived in nearby towns may be among the remains.

The Marieval Indian Residential School operated from 1899 to 1997 and was long run by organizations affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. The school building itself was controversially demolished in 1999. However, the church, rectory and grassy plot of land that was the cemetery remain.

The federal government—which at one time funded 130 residential schools across Canada—purchased Marieval for $70,000 in January 1926. The site is located approximately 140 kilometres east of Regina, Saskatchewan. On government orders and with the support of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and “Indian Agents,” the Department of Indian Affairs’ representatives on reserves, native children, as young as five or six from across southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba, were separated from their parents and sent to the Marieval School.

Saskatchewan had the highest number of residential schools of any province or territory in Canada and has the highest number of survivors. It is currently known that 566 children died at residential schools within the province, although the single site at Marieval indicates that the true death count is much higher.

In the face of mounting protests by residential school survivors and native groups, the Harper Conservative government convened a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008 to investigate the abuse faced by First Nations, Inuit and Metis children at Canada’s residential schools. The TRC’s final report, issued in 2015, identified 4,100 children who had died at or while trying to escape residential schools. However, it estimated the real death toll could exceed 6,000. It also documented tens of thousands of cases of physical and sexual abuse.

An estimated 150,000 children were enlisted in Canada’s government-ordered, church-administered residential school system during its more than century-long existence. This puts the odds of dying in a residential school as high as a Canadian soldier who served in the armed forces during World War II.

The youngest survivor to provide the TRC with a statement about Marieval attended from 1993 to 1997. Amber K.K. Pelletier wrote that during her time there, students had their hair cut by teachers upon arrival. They were also assigned numbers, and when staff were upset, they would refer to students by these numbers instead of their names. As well as the haircuts that Pelletier described, children were stripped of their traditional clothing upon arrival.

Classes at the school were taught in English and French; it is widely known that children were routinely beaten in residential schools for speaking their native language. Survivors that attended Marieval report that staff at the school were very physical with the children and that students were repeatedly slapped, kicked, hit and punched.

Residence at Marieval was enforced. Local parents were allowed to visit their children and take them home for a meal during the first few decades after the school’s establishment, but this was disallowed in 1933. From then on, children were only allowed to visit their homes and families under special circumstances.

The school was overcrowded, something that was all too common in residential schools, which were often awarded funding on the basis of how many students they housed. Overcrowding, combined with malnutrition, unsanitary environments and other deplorable living conditions, made the schools ripe for the spread of tuberculosis and other often fatal diseases. Inspectors’ reports of appalling health and safety violations recorded at Marieval can be found in TRC documents.

Barry Kennedy, a survivor of Marieval, told CTV News that he “can’t find the words” to describe how he feels in light of the discovery of the graves. Kennedy spoke about a friend he had made at Marieval named Brian, who was “taken” one night “like everybody else” and was never seen again. Kennedy wonders today if Brian is among those buried at the site.

Having attended the school from the age of five, Kennedy said that he was witness to frequent burials during his time helping the church as an altar boy. “We were called to the church one early morning … we were brought outside and they were burying someone. Who it was, whether it was a boy or a girl, I don’t know. But what I do know is that this individual was wrapped in a sheet and there was a hole dug,” he recalled.

According to Chief Delorme, senior Cowessess First Nation members who are survivors of the Marieval school say that they were forced to dig graves for and bury their own classmates. Delorme also noted that formerly there were headstones on many or all of the now-unmarked graves, but that they were likely removed by Catholic Church officials at some point in the 1960s. This in itself is a crime under Canadian law.

Archbishop of Regina Donald Bolen commented that the graves were unmarked at least in part due to an argument that occurred between an oblate priest at the school and a local First Nations chief. According to Bolen, the priest took a bulldozer and knocked over huge numbers of headstones following the dispute.

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he had spoken personally with Pope Francis and implored him to visit Canada and make a formal apology to indigenous Canadians for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in operating 60 percent of the country’s residential schools. The Catholic Church has steadfastly refused to issue any apology for its role, so as to limit its financial liability and uphold its claims to infallibility. The most Pope Francis would do following the discovery of the 215 corpses on the site of the former Catholic Church-run Kamloops Indian Residential School was to express “sorrow” and call for “healing.”

In his initial media statements on the latest discovery of hundreds of unmarked indigenous graves, Trudeau said that the pain and grief indigenous communities are feeling is “Canada’s responsibility to bear.”

This is a despicable cover-up. The Canadian population at large is not responsible for the 751 unmarked graves in Saskatchewan or the 215 at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Nor should it be blamed for the genocidal policies pursued by the Canadian capitalist state and its representatives during the process of Confederation and its aftermath. The dispossession of the native people; the deliberate starvation of thousands of indigenous people in order to force them onto reserves and create space for agricultural and industrial expansion across Western Canada; the subsequent violations of “treaty rights” and encroachments on resource-rich reserve lands; and the seizure and forcible placing of children in residential schools with the aim of “killing the Indian in the child” and transforming them into pliant wage-labourers—these were crimes carried out by the Canadian ruling class and its state, not working people. They arose out of the conflict between capitalist private property and indigenous society. Similarly, the appalling conditions the majority of Canada’s native people face today derive from the requirements of the capitalist “market.”

All attempts to blame the entire population or “white society” are either aimed at whitewashing the role of Canadian capitalism or advancing the interests of a privileged minority of the native elite, which calls for “reconciliation” on a capitalist basis, i.e., the granting of positions of power within government and the private sector to a tiny minority of indigenous people while the majority continues to live in grinding poverty.

The hypocrisy of the prime minister’s empty pledges to “walk the shared path of reconciliation” in order to “build a better future” is exemplified by the fact that the federal Liberal federal government is currently embroiled in judicial proceedings to overturn two Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders regarding discrimination against indigenous children and their families, resulting from the federal government’s decades-long systematic underfunding of child family services on the reserves.

The first of the two orders, issued in 2016, would widen the application of Jordan’s Principle, a child-first principle which states that First Nations children on reserves must not be deprived of critical social services in the event that Ottawa and the provinces cannot decide which level of government will pay for such services. The principle was created because native children were suffering and, in some cases, dying while governments wrangled over who would pay for essential services the state was legally obligated to provide.