Rebellion by Chilean miners comes into conflict with unions

Mauricio Saavedra

One hundred and ten workers were fired last month by Sigdo Koppers, a transnational engineering and construction company, days after some 500 workers launched a wildcat strike against “subhuman” working conditions. The incident took place at the “Salares Norte” silver and gold mine project owned by Gold Fields, located 4,000 meters above sea level in the northern mining region of Atacama, Chile.

The incident was brought to light September 2 on the Facebook page La voz del minero (The voice of the miner) run by the Morenoite International Workers Movement (MIT), an organization dedicated to preventing workers from breaking from the moribund trade union framework.

The events were relayed in a letter submitted by the fired workers.

Chuquicamata miners on strike (Twitter)

The letter states, “We are more than 110 workers fired from the Sigdo Koppers company in the Salares Norte project of the Gold Fields company… as a reprisal by the company for paralyzing work because of the terrible working conditions.”

“On August 14, more than 110 workers of the shift in struggle received a letter of dismissal for false ‘abandonment of work’(w)hen our decision was only not to get on the buses as a protest, but we never abandoned the work sites,” the workers stated. The day before “more than 500 workers decided not to get on the shift bus because of the bad working, living and accommodation conditions. They also demanded a bonus for (working at high) altitudes and a bonus to end the conflict.”

The fired workers were employed as subcontractors on an engineering and construction operation for the South African gold mining giant Gold Fields. The US$860 million project, scheduled to be completed in late 2022, was initiated in 2020 as the country was suffering a peak of COVID-19 cases. The northern mining regions were among the hardest hit.

The letter continues “The mobilization began because we, the workers, could no longer put up with the terrible working conditions that we have had since the beginning of this project. Seven workers were hospitalized due to food poisoning. The working conditions in the middle of winter are subhuman, with buses stuck in snow storms at 24 degrees below zero, the company put all the workers together in just one bus. The workers who complain are dismissed…”

“We denounce the union delegate of SINAMIND (National inter-company trade union for industrial assembly, civil works and industrial services) who did NOT support the mobilization and met with the company behind closed doors and behind the backs of the workers. These leaders are not trustworthy and are on the side of the company. That is why the dismissed workers of SIGDO KOPPERS are organizing ourselves to fight against our dismissals, in court and in organization. Workers who want to join us are invited to contact our trusted media ‘La Voz del Minero,’” the workers wrote.

In another dispute also reported by La voz del minero, Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti workers initiated a wildcat strike last week, the third in so many months due to terrible working conditions at the Chuquicamata underground site in the region of Antofagasta.

Chuquicamata, one of several mines owned by Codelco, the largest copper company in the world, directly employs about 2,770 workers. However, the majority of the workers are employed under inferior conditions by subcontractors such as Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti.

The workers launched a wildcat strike earlier in May in defiance of their union’s closed door negotiations with the employer that threatened worse conditions than the contract in force.

“We got tired of the decreases in wages and conditions,” reported one worker. “The ones who really lose are us. We are working our asses off and traveling thousands of kilometers away from our families and inside the mines is not a stroll in the park. Moreover, COVID is infecting many people at work and nobody seems to be interested in that.”

The three-day picket last May was ultimately broken when the subcontractor, Codelco and the company union prevented a shift change, stopping other Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti employees from joining. Workers are flown in on chartered flights to the mine which sits in the desert-like Andean ranges at 2,850 meters above sea level and 215 km away from the closest city. Moreover, the workers were deliberately isolated by the other unions on the site, which prevented their members from joining the picket with threats and intimidation.

The eruption of wildcat strikes outside the control of the unions is a significant development in the multi-tiered mining industry, a key sector of the Chilean economy. The fight launched by Sigdo Koppers and the Acciona Ossa Pizzarotti employees is connected to an incipient rebellion against the much-hated corporatist unions which have served as industrial policemen for the capitalist class.

Mass casualization of labor and increasing precariousness that is so ubiquitous in the mining industry today could not have been imposed without the connivance of the trade unions. These organizations, under the control of political representatives of the Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party or Frente Amplio, have over the last 40 years been a crucial pillar of capitalist stability.

This year, collective bargaining agreements have been or will be negotiated covering some 20,000 miners permanently employed by the giants of the mining sector: Codelco, BHP Billiton, Lumina Copper, Collahuasi and AngloAmerican. In some cases there exist several unions representing employees in one company. Codelco’s El Teniente mine in the O'Higgins Region, for instance, directly employs 3,300 workers, yet they are broken up into five unions—Caletones, El Teniente, No. 7, No. 5, Unificado—each bargaining separately. Their agreements are again different from the deal reached between Codelco Andina in Valparaíso, where the 1,070-member union signed a 36-month contract that does not include a single pay increase. Instead each member will receive a one-off bonus equivalent to US $5,800, and incentives are thrown in for production goals met.

Yet this bears almost no relation to the reality confronting the vast majority of the casualized, subcontracted workforce in Chile that in the last 22 months suffered mass layoffs and furloughs. On Monday, the National Mining Society (Sonami) reported that there were 219,000 workers directly involved in mining in May-July 2021, as compared to May-July 2020 when there were 185,000. But in 2019 there were 236,000 employed (likewise in the auxiliary industries there were 602,000 employed in 2019, 510,000 in 2020, 542,000 in 2021.)

This level of joblessness, insecurity and precariousness amid non-stop mining activity, 10-year-high record copper prices, bonanza profits and massive dividend payouts to shareholders is what is driving the class struggle and the growing conflict with the union apparatus that has for so long done the bidding of big business.

But just as workers come into direct conflict with these moribund institutions, the satellite pseudo-left forces like the Morenoites of the MIT intervene to prevent workers from making a decisive break and instead push them back into the fold. How the Morenoites do this is by firstly glorifying the spontaneity of the workers, as though sheer militancy is all that is required to overcome the domination of and the limitations of syndicalism as well as the betrayal of the unions.

“The workers are bypassing the union bureaucracy and taking the struggle for their demands into their own hands, using the most effective historical methods of the class struggle, such as production stoppages, rank-and-file assemblies and self-organization,” wrote the La voz del minero on August 14, referring to the outbreak of the Sigdo Koppers wildcat strike. Yet on the day of publication the 110 workers were fired.

The Morenoites make no attempt to provide any political leadership, any guidance to the struggling workers. Instead, from a safe distance, they “encourage” workers and passively report on the unfolding of events without having to hold themselves accountable for the inevitable defeats.

That is because the main purpose of the MIT’s intervention is to keep the workers straitjacketed to the unions and the capitalist state. It makes criticisms of the “bureaucracy that does not want to fight,” only to promote the illusion that with mass pressure or with founding new, more militant unions, the union bureaucracies will be forced to fight.

As one of many examples, on April 23 La Voz del Minero wrote, “We call on the leaders of (all the major union federations) to move from words to action, organizing unitary assemblies in all the workplaces and divisions of the country, without differences of unions, plant workers and contractors, so that this April 30 will be a general strike of miners and workers in other areas.” Of course this pipe dream never happened.

This is the method of classical Pabloism, shared by another Morenoite party in Chile, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PTR)- La Izquierda Diario, which last May also implored the union bureaucracy to “show solidarity and support Acciona's strike in an active way.” The bureaucracy did become active, threatening workers with intimidation tactics.

In reality, the unions long ago stopped functioning as social reformist organizations claiming to represent the interests of workers in the capital-labor relation. The actual existing corporatized trade unions function as an institutionalized police force, determined to protect the corporate and financial interests of the ruling elites and their governments against growing popular resistance.

Summer ends with 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in Spain as schools reopen

Alejandro López

This summer, there have been 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in Spain, with 2,800 in August alone. These horrific figures are the result of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)–Podemos government’s ending of all social distancing before the summer.

Much of the recent wave has been triggered by the reopening of bars and nightclubs in Spain. Youth were encouraged to return to these venues under the false pretext that they are safe and that there is a low chance of a new surge of the virus. Minimal social distancing measures—masking, curfews, limiting the number of people who could meet, and the banning of potential super-spreader events like concerts or music festivals—were junked to reopen the economy, especially for tourism.

Maestro Padilla school in Madrid, Spain, on September 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The PSOE–Podemos government let the virus spread massively: this summer ended with more than 1.1 million infections in Spain. However, it covered its policy with claims that vaccination, now reaching 70 percent of the population, will by itself halt infections. In fact, despite this vaccination rates, there are still more than 130 deaths and nearly 10,000 infections each day. Another 600 to 700 deaths are expected this week.

Spain’s 14-day incidence rate of COVID-19 stands at 210 per 100,000 inhabitants, well over the 150 per 100,000 Spanish authorities call “high risk.” All Spain’s major urban areas are over 150; provinces like A Coruña, Álava, Badajoz, Bizkaia, Cáceres, Toledo and Seville are over 250.

These numbers will only mount as students return to schools, where incidence rates have skyrocketed. Among adolescents aged 12 to 19, the incidence is 400 per 100,000 inhabitants. In this age group, only about one-third (32.2 percent) are fully vaccinated.

On Monday, schools in Madrid, Cantabria and Melilla started. In coming weeks, more regions will follow. In total, 8.2 million children will return to school to face a virus that has claimed more than 1.1 million lives across Europe since last year.

Last Wednesday, Education Minister Pilar Alegría demanded “maximum presence” in schools. Calling vaccinations an “effective tool,” she insisted the new school year “will not resemble the previous one at all. First of all, because of the experience we have acquired.”

In reality, infections are mounting. According to the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, in the three weeks from July 26 to August 15, 82,587 children and adolescents aged between 5 and 19 were infected.

The PSOE–Podemos government’s reckless reopening of schools consciously ignores what is happening outside Spain’s borders. In America, more than 500,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 from August 5 to 26, according to state data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics. At least 203,962 of those cases were reported in the week of August 19–26 after schools were reopened. At the end of June, a reported weekly figure was just under 8,500.

In Britain, the week to August 28, there were more than 300 Covid cases per 100,000 among 5- to 15-year-olds. In neighbouring France, Pasteur Institute estimates that in France alone, there could be 50,000 infections of children each day by late September.

The PSOE–Podemos government, however, is covering itself with claims of the alleged success of its school reopening policy last year. According to the Ministry of Health, last school year closed with 6,631 outbreaks that affected some 37,500 students.

As the government authorities know, this was before the Delta variant became predominant. Its spread will be facilitated by the PSOE–Podemos government’s decision to slash minimal social distancing measures that existed last school year. While masks will remain compulsory for all children above age 6, social distancing, nominally still maintained, has been reduced to only 1.2 metres. Moreover, teacher-to-student ratios have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with a deficit of 17,000 teachers according to the Central Sindical Independiente y de Funcionarios (CSIF) union.

The virus especially threatens 8 million people who have not yet received the full vaccination schedule. To these are added 6 million children under 12.

As the WSWS has insisted, vaccination alone will not stop the pandemic. Claims to the contrary ignore the character of the Delta variant, which is scientifically proven to be too transmissible and capable of infecting vaccinated individuals for vaccinations alone to halt the pandemic.

The World Health Organisation has warned that it expects 236,000 deaths in Europe this autumn. If proven scientific policies are adopted to stop the transmission of COVID-19 and eradicate the virus, however, these deaths and the related tens of millions of infections can be stopped.

Yet scientific policies face determined opposition across the entire European political establishment, who place corporate profits and the wealth of the super-rich above workers’ lives. To save lives, workers must clearly understand the necessity to fight for an independent, scientifically grounded policy to eradicate the virus. This can only be carried against the capitalist system and its political accomplices.

In Spain, this means above all a struggle against the staggering indifference to human life of the “left populist” Podemos party. Having promised radical change and an end to austerity, Podemos has become the PSOE’s chief co-conspirator in the ruling elite’s pandemic policy. It has covered for the government’s claims to have finished with the virus, arguing that in-person schooling is safe and covering for the austerity measures linked to the EU bailout fund.

Spain’s trade unions have played a key role in letting the PSOE–Podemos enforce these measures. They have all defended the false line that returning to schools and reopening of factories and offices are safe, if only some limited measures are taken, like wearing masks.

Just days before schools re-opened, the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) union called on the government to contract 40,000 teachers and cut class sizes to 20. The CCOO did not call any protests, let alone strikes to enforce this demand, however.

Podemos’s political satellites are also intervening to cover for the PSOE–Podemos government’s policies. The Spanish Morenoite Workers Revolutionary Current (CRT) refuses to explain that closing schools is a matter of urgency. Last year, its online publication Izquierda Diario defended reopening schools even while acknowledging that the safety of teachers and students “cannot be guaranteed.” This year, they have not even published one article on the back-to-school campaign, focusing instead on calling for in-person education in universities.

In an article titled “Semi-in-person education will be the norm again this year,” posted yesterday, Izquierdadiario.es states: “After a summer in which most of the population has been vaccinated (it is already over 70 percent with two doses) and in which a large part of the restrictions on leisure have disappeared, the students do not understand the recent news that universities will start the course with a semi-in-person system.”

Citing CRT members in the student body, it then declares, “the underlying problem is not so much in-person [or not] (on which students themselves take different positions) as ‘the lack of democracy in the university, which prevents students from having any voice in decision-making, despite being the majority of the university community.’ ”

Such phrase mongering aims to ensure that working class opposition does not overflow the union bureaucracies, and also aims to tie workers and youth to the PSOE–Podemos government.

UK: Johnson government escalates attacks on working class with tax increase and end to pension triple lock

Robert Stevens

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has announced a National Insurance Contribution (NIC) tax increase of 1.25 percentage points, disproportionately hitting millions of younger, lower-paid workers, to fund an increase in health and social care spending. It will also suspend the “triple lock” pension system—meaning pensioners will be limited to a 2.5 percent increase for the 2022/23 financial year.

Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the changes Tuesday as part of the government’s agenda to slash tens of billions of pounds from workers’ income, including billions from those reliant on welfare benefits.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (centre) chairs a press conference in No9 Downing Street with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (right) and Health Secretary Sajid Javid (left) on the day new health and social care changes were announced. 07/09/2021. (Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Today, the government will vote to end even the meagre £20 weekly uplift that Universal Credit benefit recipients have received since the start of the pandemic. Six million households claiming Universal Credit will lose over £1,000 a year in the largest ever single cut in the history of UK welfare provision. At the end of the month, the furlough job support scheme—under which 11.6 million jobs have been supported since the start of the pandemic—will be withdrawn entirely

These cuts are aimed at making the working class pay the costs of the pandemic crisis, the ruling class’s criminal herd immunity policy and the hundreds of billions handed out to support big business and the super-rich.

National Insurance is a form of taxation paid by workers from the age of 16 until they become eligible for the state pension. It is also paid by employers, at a lower rate proportionally than employees.

From April 2022, workers will pay an additional 1.25 percent in NIC, with National Insurance returned to its previous level in April 2023 and the extra 1.25 percent paid through a newly created “Health and Social Care Levy”. The rise will bring the government £36 billion in revenue over the next three years.

The majority of workers, who earn between £184.01 to £967 a week, currently pay NIC at a rate of 12 percent. With the increase, a worker on a wage of £20,000 a year will have to pay a further £130 and a worker on £30,000 another £255. Those earning anything above £50,268 a year only pay NIC at 2 percent for that extra income, meaning the new NIC increase will have proportionally smaller impact on them.

Unlike National Insurance, the Health and Social Care Levy will also hit more than 1.2 million working pensioners—often those with few savings who cannot afford to retire on the pitiful state pension.

Those receiving the state pension will miss out on billions next year due to the suspension of the triple lock system. Under the triple lock, the state pension increases by the rate of inflation, the increase in earnings between May and July or 2.5 percent, whichever is the greater. However, due to anomalies in wage growth caused by Covid, pensions would have risen by more than 8 percent next year. This would have added a further £4 billion to the pensions of more than 12 million elderly (£16 a month each), which has now been taken away at a stroke.

Johnson’s claim yesterday that the tax increases will “fix the long-term problems of health and social care that have been so cruelly exposed by Covid” is a cynical lie. His government is responsible for a murderous herd immunity policy which has brought the NHS to its knees, resulted in the deaths of over 155,000 people and turned care homes into killing fields. It has built on successive governments’ savaging of the healthcare system and abandonment of social care to cut-price, profiteering private companies.

The fact, as Johnson was forced to acknowledge, that the number of people on NHS waiting lists could expand to 13 million is entirely the product of his own criminal policies, supported by the entire ruling elite.

The money supposedly being allocated to social and health care is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required to fix this catastrophe. Social care has been a chaotic, privatised mess for decades, forcing many to hand over their entire assets, including selling their homes, in order to pay for the care they need in old age.

A 2019 report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee found that 1.4 million older people had an unmet care need in 2018, while public funding was £700 million lower than 2010/11 in real terms in 2017/18. The Health Foundation reports that an additional £12.5 billion in funding would need to be invested by 2023/24 just to return funding to the already inadequate level of 2010/11.

Johnson has cut the threshold of assets for those required to pay for social care from £23,250 to £20,000. All those with assets over £20,000 up to £100,000 will have care cuts subsidised, paying up to a maximum of £86,000 over the rest of their lifetime. However, as the new means-tested system does not begin until October 2023, some people will still have to pay more than £86,000 in total.

Just £5.3 billion of the £36 billion of revenue being seized from working people in the next three years is ring-fenced to go towards social care, with Johnson stating that the priority was spending the money on an NHS “catch up programme” that would enable “nine million more appointments, scans and operations.”

This too is a fraud. Even with Monday’s announcement of an additional £5.4 billion in NHS funding over the next six months, the health service will remain critically underfunded. According to NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, the health service still needs £10 billion next year, beyond the £5.4 billion announced to clear the backlog. Even then it is estimated by NHS leaders that even with £10 billion a year extra, waiting lists could still take seven years to clear, and 14 years if only half as much is available.

By raising National Insurance and ending the triple lock on pensions, Johnson has broken pledges made in the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto. These have been the rallying cry of large sections of the Tory Party and the right-wing media opposed to any additional spending, however unfairly funded, on the elderly and poor—considered “empty eaters”.

The Daily Telegraph warned in an editorial that the NIC increase was an “attack on the crucial low-tax, small-state, Thatcherite core of the Conservative electoral coalition”, urging that “Boris Johnson can still stop Britain’s descent into the welfarist death-spiral that Margaret Thatcher tried to halt by cutting taxes in the 1980s and Cameron/Osborne by reforming entitlements in the 2010s.”

Dan Wootton, writing in the Daily Mail, denounced Johnson as a “Tory in name only” overseeing “astronomical tax rises” and “a sprawling and inefficient National Health Service that sucks up billions and billions more each year.”

This obscene conflict between two equally reactionary factions has dominated the debate over social care and NIC in the last few days thanks to the complete absence of an opposition party. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s contribution to the issue was an interview with the Mirror in which he said: “Do we accept that we need more investment? Yes we do. Do we accept that NI is the right way to do it? No we don’t.

“But we will look at what they put forward because after eleven years of neglect we do need a solution.”

The party is pathologically afraid of making any statement which might be interpreted as support for increased public spending, to the point that the first mention of a tax rise since Starmer became leader has come from Johnson. While Labour will vote against the plan, and against the termination of the Universal Credit, they do so safe in the knowledge that, given the Tories’ 80 seat majority, these measures will easily pass.

Starmer was sure to confirm Labour’s own Thatcherite credentials in the parliamentary debate yesterday, telling Johnson, “Read my lips: the Tories can never again claim to be the party of low tax.” The inspiration for this performance was a column by Tory arch-reactionary Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Sunday Express, in which he quoted US President George H.W. Bush’s pledge in 1988, “Read my lips: no new taxes”, to warn Johnson, “voters remembered those words after president Bush had forgotten them.” The Labour leader, at least, has heeded his advice.

Federal bankruptcy judge grants Sackler family sweeping immunity in $4.3 billion opioid settlement

Chase Lawrence

In an example of class justice, the billionaire Sackler family, which fueled and profited immensely from the opioid epidemic through its company Purdue Pharma and its OxyContin medication, was handed immunity last week from all future opioid lawsuits by federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York. The ruling affirms the capitalist right to profit regardless of the cost in lives.

More than 100 people die in the US every day from opioid overdoses, with preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers putting the number of deaths for 2019 at nearly 50,000, an all-time high.

Judge Drain’s decision is part of a $4.3 billion bankruptcy settlement that involved the Sacklers’ selling their pharmaceutical holdings and forfeiting ownership of Purdue Pharma. The ruling, which is exactly what the Sacklers demanded, grants releases from liability for harm caused by the company’s aggressive and sometimes illegal marketing of the discontinued opioid OxyContin and other opioids. This marketing entailed a coordinated campaign to get doctors to prescribe opioids for everyday chronic pain, which also included bribes to doctors.

In addition to the Sacklers themselves, hundreds of individuals and organizations associated with the Sacklers, such as lobbyists, financial advisors, public relations firms, law firms, drug-makers and laboratories, as well as the Sacklers’ remaining business empire, are also granted immunity.

The immunity deal effectively shuts down any further investigation into the role played by the Sacklers and their hundreds of associates in the opioid epidemic, despite the fact that there is extensive documentation of the Sackler family’s involvement in Purdue’s operations in and profiting from the opioid epidemic, with Richard Sackler playing a key role in the marketing of the drug as an executive and even afterwards as late as 2012, while former board member Kathe Sackler bragged about coming up with the idea for OxyContin.

Richard Sackler

The Sacklers moved billions from Purdue before the deal, stashing it into other investments and offshore bank accounts that cannot be touched in the settlement.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in 2020 that the Sacklers committed “fraudulent transfer” as part of a scheme to “hinder future creditors,” and the family settled these allegations to the tune of $225 million while denying any wrongdoing in that case as well.

The DOJ filed two legal briefs condemning the release from liability provided to the Sacklers and their associates in the bankruptcy deal on constitutional grounds, arguing that people with potential claims against the Sacklers would be deprived of their right to due process without legal review or compensation.

Purdue Pharma and its attorneys launched a pressure campaign against the DOJ aimed at convincing them to not challenge the plan, with an early draft of a letter from this campaign being obtained by National Public Radio.

For all of the death attributable directly to the Sacklers’ leadership of Purdue, which pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its marketing of OxyContin both in 2007 and 2020, not even an apology was issued, and the Sacklers deny any wrongdoing. Drain cynically remarked that “A forced apology is not really an apology… So we will have to live without one.”

Steve Miller, chair of Purdue Pharma’s board of directors, voiced his satisfaction with the ruling in a statement to NPR, declaring, “Instead of years of value-destructive litigation, including between and among creditors, this plan ensures that billions of dollars will be devoted to helping people and communities who have been hurt by the opioid crisis.”

The company that emerges from Purdue Pharma will be allowed to continue the production and selling of OxyContin and other opioid drugs.

According to a report from the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by US Representative Carolyn Maloney, the Sackler family wealth totals $11 billion, accrued “in large part through sales of OxyContin.” The settlement means that the Sacklers will keep the bulk of their fortune.

The report continues “Members of the Sackler family pushed Purdue to use deceptive marketing practices to flood communities with this dangerous painkiller, and now the Sackler family is attempting to use Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to evade individual responsibility for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.” This is exactly what has happened.

House Democrats in April called for the passage of the “Sackler Act” which supposedly would prevent the Sacklers and other non-debtors in the deal from receiving immunity from lawsuits. The settlement details were announced in October 2020, with the protection from liability having already been announced as part of the deal. Only the amount to be paid under the deal was increased since then, with no change in the liability protection.

However, nothing has been done by the Democrats, who have feigned surprise at the ruling. The Democrats along with the Republicans are awash in pharmaceutical company money, with the vast majority of Senate and House members, 72 senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives, cashing a check from the pharmaceutical industry, according to an analysis by Stat News released in June.

Purdue itself spent over $1.2 million in lobbying in the year and a half leading up to the settlement, according to a review of lobbying records by T he Intercept, and reportedly was monitoring the Sackler Act, among other proposed legislation. It hired the same public relations firm, Purple Strategies, that BP hired following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

As the WSWS noted in December 2019, protection was already granted to the Sacklers as the settlement was being hashed out: “On November 6, federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain halted all lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family until April 8, 2020. The extension of protection to the Sackler family was highly unusual because the Sacklers themselves have not yet filed for bankruptcy. Even Judge Drain conceded that the order was ‘extraordinary.’”

Drain hypocritically called his ruling last week a “bitter result” and stated that “I believe that at least some of the Sackler parties have liability for those [opioid OxyContin] claims. ... I would have expected a higher settlement.'

Drain’s record reflects the judicial system’s class character as a tool of the corporate financial oligarchy, and belies any of the feigned surprise or outrage by the Democrats, who knew full well that he would bow to the Sacklers’ demand for immunity.

• In 2006 Drain approved a plan by Delphi Corporation executives to approve tens of millions in bonuses to Delphi executives while hourly autoworkers faced a wage cut of up to 60 percent and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, claiming it was needed to make Delphi “competitive.”

• In 2012 Drain approved $1.75 million in bonuses for Hostess executives and shortly thereafter approved the liquidation of the company and the destruction of 15,000 jobs, shutting bakeries, distribution centers and stores.

• In 2015 Drain ruled in favor of former supermarket chain A&P allowing the severance pay of about 2,500 workers be cut to 52 percent of what they were entitled to receive under the labor agreement between the company and the unions representing them.

This is just a small glimpse of the class justice that rules not only in Drain’s court but the capitalist legal system as a whole, as well as the parasitism of an economic system which profits off death and destruction.

Bolsonaro rehearses fascistic coup on Brazil's Independence Day

Tomas Castanheira

President Jair Bolsonaro used September 7, Brazil's Independence Day, as the occasion for a dress rehearsal of a fascistic coup to overthrow the civilian government and install a dictatorship in Brazil.

Bolsonaro publicly called for the national protests Tuesday as a “counter-coup” to an alleged plot organized by the Supreme Court (STF) to remove him from power, imprison him, and criminalize the far right in Brazil. Extolling his coup perspective, the fascistic president declared a few days earlier that his destiny is to be “arrested, killed, or victorious.”

The demonstrations took place in different Brazilian cities and were systematically orchestrated by Bolsonaro's civilian and military advisers. Caravans financed by businessmen and far-right organizations brought groups of protesters from all parts of Brazil to the two main demonstrations held in the capital, Brasilia, and São Paulo.

In a choreographed spectacle, Bolsonaro flew by helicopter over the events in both cities before coming down to the platforms and speaking to demonstrators who held banners calling for the overthrow of the Supreme Court, for military intervention, and for the criminalization of communism.

Bolsonaro delivers speech to crowd in Brasilia (Credit: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom/Agência Brasil)

In Brasília, where Bolsonaro spoke alongside his vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, and his defense minister, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, he attacked STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who is conducting investigations of the organizers of the very same September 7 demonstrations which are increasingly pointing to Bolsonaro himself. He threatened a coup against the high court if the judge is not removed from office.

The president declared, “We cannot continue accepting that a specific person from the region of the three powers [i.e., Moraes] continues barbarizing our population. We cannot accept more political arrests in our Brazil. Either the head of this power manages his own, or this power might suffer what we do not want.”

The attack was complemented at the rally in São Paulo, where Bolsonaro openly called for Moraes’ removal and declared that given “any decision by Mr. Alexandre de Moraes, this president [himself] will no longer comply.” He concluded his speech by stating that “only God can take me out of [Brasilia]” and that “I tell these bastards: I will never be arrested!”

During the Brasilia rally, Bolsonaro also declared that he will preside next Wednesday over a meeting of the Council of the Republic, a consultative constitutional body that advises the Brazilian president on national security measures, including the imposition of a state of siege and suspending individual rights.

Although the seriousness of the statement was quickly dismissed by the media, which unanimously took comfort from declarations by Mourão and the congressional leaders that they had not been called for such a meeting, the mentioning of the Council of the Republic can only signify preparations by Bolsonaro for assuming dictatorial powers.

A significant episode preceded the demonstrations on Monday night in Brasilia, when caravans of Bolsonaro supporters broke through Military Police blockades and invaded the “Esplanada,” or the outdoor mall between the ministry buildings, claiming they would storm the STF the next day. Videos show that the police made no real attempt to stop them, nor did they carry out promised searches of the protesters, either in Brasilia or in São Paulo.

The protests themselves were called by prominent politicians connected to the state Military Police forces and by police commanders themselves, who directly called on their soldiers to join the demonstrations. A survey by the Instituto Atlas Intelligence showed that 30 percent of the military police active duty officers were willing to participate in the protests.

Although demonstrators did not invade the STF, as they had threatened, it is very significant that the Supreme Court itself considered “calling on the Armed Forces to protect its headquarters, after the Military Police of the Federal District failed to contain the advance of pro-government demonstrators,” according to Record reporter Renato Souza.

The September 7 demonstrations represent a high point of a dictatorial turn advanced ever more frantically by Bolsonaro.

This process has included, in recent months, the unprecedented dismissal of the entire command of the Armed Forces on March 31, on the eve of the anniversary of the 1964 military coup; subsequent threats by military commanders against the COVID-19 parliamentary investigation, making it clear that they will not allow any investigation of members of the Armed Forces by the civilian power; and, in August, the vote on Bolsonaro’s “printed ballot” proposal, accompanied by a military parade, which demonstrated significant support within the state for Bolsonaro's coup plans.

These events, and particularly the actions orchestrated by Bolsonaro and his clique for September 7, are explicitly inspired by Donald Trump's January 6 coup attempt in the United States.

The weekend leading up to the protests saw the Brazilian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is headed in the country by the president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro. Eduardo directly participated in the preparations for the January 6 coup in Washington, just as Trump’s advisers are directly connected to the preparations of the fascistic plots in Brazil.

The Brazilian CPAC had the online participation of Donald Trump Jr., who in his speech explicitly compared the upcoming elections in Brazil with those recently held in the United States and stated that Brazilians will need to choose between 'socialism and freedom' (that is, fascism) in what will be an unfair fight. Businessman Jason Miller, Trump’s former adviser, attended the Brazilian CPAC in person. He was detained by the Brazilian Federal Police on Tuesday at Brasilia’s airport as he was returning to the United States. He was questioned in connection to the same inquiry on threats against democracy that is being attacked by Bolsonaro.

More fundamentally, what is driving the destruction of democratic forms of rule in Brazil, the United States and countries around the world is the profound crisis of the world capitalist system.

In the April 12 statement “57 years after the 1964 coup, Brazil again confronts specter of dictatorship,” the World Socialist Web Site described Bolsonaro's dictatorial maneuvers in the context of the deep social crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We wrote: “[The current] grotesque levels of social inequality as well as the imposition of mass killings by COVID-19 are radically incompatible with democratic forms of government. These objective trends are behind the remarkable political events of the past week.”

These conditions have only grown worse in the past five months, and the threat of a coup has intensified.

Millions return to school in the UK as doctors and scientists issue warnings

Thomas Scripps

Millions of children returned to school in England yesterday for the first full week back after the summer break, amid warnings from scientists over the rapid spread of COVID-19.

The infection rate in the UK among all age groups is currently 26 times higher than it was this time last year, and rising. Over 41,000 people tested positive for the virus yesterday, taking the total for the last week to 263,885 cases, a 12.2 percent increase on the week before. There were 6,573 people admitted to hospital in the last week, a 3.7 percent increase, and 789 deaths, over 110 a day.

Yesterday’s case number took the official total in the UK during the pandemic to over 7 million. Case numbers are likely far higher. The ZOE Covid Symptom Study, working with King’s College London, reported an estimated 57,322 daily cases last week—a 10 percent increase on the week before.

Pupils at Covid test station as they entered their new secondary school for the first time at Wales High school, Sheffield, England, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fewer measures are in place in schools than during last term, with bubbles and masks no longer in use in England and Wales, while Northern Ireland has also scrapped social distancing requirements. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

An estimated 30 percent of these cases were among double-vaccinated people, with lead scientist Professor Tim Spector commenting, “we’ve seen evidence that the protection provided by vaccines is wearing off.” This confirms the findings of a major study by Oxford University last month which found waning levels of vaccine efficacy over time for both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs.

The infection rate among children—with 30 times more cases—is even more elevated compared to last year than it is for the general population. In the week to August 28, there were more than 300 Covid cases per 100,000 among five to 15-year-olds, compared to 10 in 100,000 in the same week in 2020.

These numbers will skyrocket in the next few weeks, as children spend hours a day in schools with no requirements for mask wearing, distancing or contact tracing. The “bubble system”, albeit limited, has been scrapped and no provisions made to improve ventilation. The vast majority of children are still unvaccinated.

Dr David Strain, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, told Sky News, “The summer holiday acted exactly as a firebreak would. What we’re now expecting is the rates to pick up and the R number to jump to about 1.7—basically doubling in case numbers on a weekly basis.”

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (SAGE) cautioned that there was “a long way to go if we allow infection just to run through the population, that’s a lot of children who will be infected and that will be a lot of disruption to schools in the coming months.”

Primary school pupils return to a school in Bournemouth on Monday September 6, 2021 (WSWS Media)

A report published by SAGE’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling subgroup on August 27 predicted: “Schools will represent a high proportion of remaining susceptible individuals and it is highly likely that exponential increases will be seen in school-attending age groups after schools open.”

Infections have already surged in Scotland, after schools reopened several weeks earlier there and in Northern Ireland. A further 7,065 new coronavirus cases were reported Monday in Scotland. Case rates specifically among the under-15s in Scotland have trebled. In the last week, over 400 pupils at both Larne High School in Northern Ireland and St Ninian’s High School in Kirkintilloch, Scotland were reported absent due to Covid.

The rapid spread of infection will expose millions of children to the risk of debilitating Long Covid and severe illness and hospitalisation, with the longer-term health implications still unknown. School workers, even if vaccinated, can still contract the disease with serious consequences and will be exposed to extremely high levels of the virus. These risks are especially grave for the clinically vulnerable.

High infection rates in schools will also contribute to a dangerous worsening of the pandemic in the wider population.

Imperial College London pandemic modeller Professor Neil Ferguson has warned that he expects the return of English schools to lead to a “significant surge”. He added that if daily cases are allowed to climb above 100,000 there would be “significant demands on the health system”.

This would coincide with the extreme pressures placed on the National Health Service (NHS) annually in the colder months, which this year are preceded by a “summer crisis”.

Dr Nick Scriven, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, explained last week: “I think it is fair to say we are currently facing an unprecedented summer workload that feels more like the worst winter pressures most of us can recall.

“We are seeing vast numbers of patients with non-Covid illness alongside the steady admission rates of those still very poorly with Covid.

“The types of illnesses we are seeing are typical of winter weather as in a lot of respiratory infections, especially in paediatrics, but also a lot of people where the lack of access to primary and secondary care during the last 18 months could now be contributing to them needing hospital admission.”

Current president Dr Susan Crossland added: “This is a deeply concerning time as we are in uncharted territory here with a summer crisis consisting of so many different problems with no end in sight and the daunting prospect of an extremely busy and difficult winter.

“We know many hospitals are at bed occupancy levels well over the safe limit of 85 percent, with some at more than 95 percent, at this point of the year and we know we have worse to come”.

The ambulance service received a record number of calls in July—close to one million—and of callouts for life-threatening conditions—82,000. In August, ambulance trusts in the North East, East, South Central and South West regions of England had to call in support from the Army.

Multiple hospitals in the last two months have been forced to declare “black alerts” due to patient numbers and a shortage of staff and resources, meaning they are “struggling or unable to deliver comprehensive care” and patients’ safety is at risk.

NHS Confederation leader Matthew Taylor described the summer as being like a “mid-winter crisis”, saying “we are running hot and you can’t do that forever.”

The criminally unsafe return to school has been backed by a major government propaganda campaign. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has pledged to “move heaven and earth to make sure that we aren’t in a position of having to close schools,” insisting “we want to see children back in the classroom; we don’t want to see the same level of disruption [i.e., children exposed to the virus self-isolating].”

On August 26, the BBC reported, “A campaign on radio, social and digital media to reassure parents and pupils it is safe to return to school in England has been launched by the government.” The BBC have lent their own services to this offensive.

Williamson and the Tory government can count on the backing of the Labour Party and the trade unions, both of which support the reopening even as they admit schools will become a “cauldron of Covid,” in the words of shadow schools minister Peter Kyle.

Where the unions criticise the government’s actions, they frequently do so from the Tories’ own perspective of minimising “disruption”, not of protecting workers and children. Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said late last month that the government’s management of the return to school was “a recipe for chaos, and the government cannot once again allow a situation to develop in which attendance unravels, and children experience yet more disruption.”

At most, the unions call for inadequate mitigation measures such as the reimplementation of masking, but even these are made as lame appeals to the government to act.

National Education Union joint general secretary Kevin Courtney has politely recommended, “Government should support leaders in secondary schools and colleges in weighing up the case for continuing to require staff and students to wear face coverings around the premises—including potentially in classrooms—and on dedicated school transport, particularly in areas with high case rates.” He has asked Williamson to help schools “consider face coverings from day one of term, alongside social distancing where possible, and special consideration for vulnerable staff.”

Reopening of French schools threatens students and workers with a resurgence of the pandemic

Anthony Torres

With an average of over 13,000 daily cases, the reopening of schools in France that began last week is preparing a new wave of infections, illnesses and deaths among teachers, children and the population at large.

In the face of this criminal policy, workers and teachers must fight for a strategy to eradicate the virus, based on the measures proposed by epidemiologists, virologists and other scientists throughout the pandemic. This means the international application of all the measures available in the fight against the virus, including lockdowns and social distancing measures. The implementation of this strategy requires the development of a powerful international and unified working-class mass movement based on science.

Millions of children and students returned to school and universities on September 2. Youth aged under 12 are not vaccinated, and those aged under 18 are on average the least vaccinated. In September 2020, France counted an average of 5,407 new daily cases, which prepared a new epidemic wave and the spread of new variants. Now the health situation is worse, due to the aggressiveness of the Delta variant.

Children sit in a classroom at school in Strasbourg, eastern France, Sept. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Jean-François Badias)

Questioned on news channel BFMTV, Health Minister Olivier Véran said: “We must be extremely vigilant, and I ask the French people who are watching this to be very careful in the days and weeks to come, to respect social distancing measures, to wear the mask wherever necessary, to wash your hands; all of that you know.”

On the same channel, Lila Bouadma, a health worker at the Bichat Hospital in Paris and member of the Scientific Council, estimated that in the coming days, “there will be 50,000 children infected per day, which is colossal. We can fear that there will be a return of a paediatric epidemic. We are not prepared for that, because it is specialty care. For children, we think that it is not more serious, but we must change the paradigm; this does not matter. Some have long forms of COVID, they are not very symptomatic but they remain so, with a significant state of fatigue.”

The epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet warned on France Inter: “The schools are the most complex situation that awaits us this fall. We cannot apply the same recipes as before.”

The reopening of schools in the United States confirms these warnings in France. In the second week of August, more than 121,000 children tested positive for the virus and a record number, more than 1,900, were hospitalized in the US alone. These numbers are expected to skyrocket in the coming weeks with the full reopening of schools.

Already in the initial days of the opening, teachers have posted statements on social media warning of the lack of preparation, the absence of resources, and no means to impose even limited social distancing measures.

One teacher, Marie, posted an image on the Red Pens Facebook group showing her windows almost sealed shut, with the caption: “Here are the windows of my classroom in their maximum open position. The two other walls have no windows. There are two doors but they open into another classroom and a hallway. … A CO2 captor would not be a luxury…”

Wrongly presented as a disease of the elderly, the virus is increasingly infecting young adults and unvaccinated children. Le Monde reports, “As of August 23, nineteen children and adolescents aged 0 to 19 were hospitalized in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, exceeding the thresholds reached during the third wave. These figures are linked to the record levels of contaminations in these territories during the holiday season.”

Faced with this alarming situation, the Education Minister Michel Blanquer announced on August 29 that the return to school would take place under a Level 2 health protocol, that is to say, face-to-face instruction with all students. As soon as the first case is detected in middle and high schools, there will not be any shutting of classes, and vaccinated students are to continue attending class. Only in primary school and kindergarten are classes to close for seven days after the first case is detected.

Non-vaccinated students who are contact cases will have to isolate for seven days. In Guadeloupe and Polynesia, where lockdowns have been implemented, the start of the school year has been postponed by two weeks.

The maintenance of the start of the school year accompanied by limited health measures, despite the alarming warnings of epidemiologists, underscores the criminal policy of the Macron government. The limited measures will not prevent the circulation of the virus among children and teachers as well as parents, encouraging the development of new and potentially more dangerous variants.

The policy of “herd immunity” has already caused more than 110,000 deaths in France and more than one million in Europe. Macron will be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the coming months, including children, as well as the long-term impact of Long COVID from which many children will suffer.

This criminal policy would not have been possible without the complicity of the trade union apparatuses. The reopening of the schools is part of the “herd immunity” policy of the financial aristocracy. Having flooded the financial markets with liquidity and implemented bailout packages for itself, the financial elite is imposing the return to work, which would be impossible without the reopening of schools. The aim is to make massive profits on the backs of workers and their families, who are in mortal danger.

Not only did the trade unions refuse to fight to keep workers safe since the beginning of the pandemic. The CGT and CFDT, like the German trade unions, applauded the EU bailout packages and participated in the negotiations to restructure the European economy throughout the pandemic. They helped the state and employers to impose on worried teachers and parents the dangerous reopening of classes for children.

The Minister of Education negotiated and agreed with the unions upon the implementation of the reopening of in-person classes. The unions have since participated in protests against the health pass organized by the extreme right, demanding the lifting of health restrictions for the implementation of a policy of “herd immunity” without mitigation.