Volkswagen factory meeting in Wolfsburg heralds fierce disputes with workforce

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Speeches at last week’s factory meeting at Volkswagen’s main plant in Wolfsburg, herald fierce disputes between the company and the workforce, not only in Wolfsburg, with almost 60,000 employees, but also in the other German and international plants.

VW CEO Herbert Diess plans to convert the company to produce electric vehicles as quickly as possible, especially the main plant. At a supervisory board meeting at the end of September, he had estimated the resulting job cuts at up to 30,000.

The Volkswagen complex in Wolfsburg (credit: Volkwagen AG)

Workers were outraged when this became known in mid-October, since they had not heard anything about it from IG Metall union officials or from works council representatives on the supervisory board. The chairwoman of the VW General and Group Works Council, Daniela Cavallo—who also sits on the supervisory board—tried to smooth the waters and calm the workers.

In her speech to several tens of thousands of staff at the factory meeting, only 7,000 of whom were there in person because of coronavirus, she repeated that the agreed employment guarantee until 2029 would hold “in principle.” Diess accused her of playing on employees’ fears. Talk of cutting tens of thousands of jobs was “nonsense in terms of content” and had unsettled employees, many of whom have been constantly on short-time working since the start of the pandemic.

Diess himself did not mention a specific figure when speaking to the workforce, saying, “The jobs that exist today will certainly be fewer within the next 10 to 15 years—especially in administration at company level, but also in production and development.” At the same time, new and different work would be added, he said. But it was clear that many who listened to him would lose their jobs if he had his way.

For a long time, IG Metall and its works council representatives were able to subordinate Volkswagen’s more than 600,000 employees—120,000 in Germany—to the interests of the shareholders, which include the Social Democratic-governed state of Lower Saxony, where the main Wolfsburg plant is based. Job cuts were mostly worked out and implemented by the works council through attrition, severance payments and “social plans.” Most recently, the VW works council signed a “pact for the future” in 2016, which will claim 30,000 jobs by 2025.

Both IG Metall and its officials on the supervisory boards and in the works councils at the plants have benefited. Under Cavallo’s predecessor Bernd Osterloh, the works council representatives raked in millions in salaries and supervisory board compensation; he himself received 750,000 euros a year in the best of times. Many became euro millionaires themselves by taking over positions in the group—like Osterloh, most recently, who moved to the truck subsidiary Traton as a member of the executive board.

But now the merciless cut-throat competition in the automotive industry in the wake of the move to electrification is causing this corrupt relationship—euphemistically described as “co-determination” and “social partnership”—to implode.

IG Metall and its works council representatives are preparing to destroy tens of thousands of jobs. The first thing that has happened is they began bickering among themselves. On November 12, the supervisory board is supposed to decide upon the allocation of investments worth around 150 billion euros to the 120 or so plants worldwide, up to 2025.

But this planning round has been postponed until December 9. This is because several German plants had already been selected in advance as new e-car production sites, with the main factory in Wolfsburg in particular left out. Cavallo wanted to divert production commitments from other plants to Wolfsburg.

But Cavallo is not the only top dog in the multi-brand group. The works council chairmen of Porsche and Audi also intervened. According to preliminary plans from November last year, the commercial vehicle plant in Hanover was actually supposed to manufacture new electric models from Porsche and Audi in order to keep production running in the future. But Porsche is now withdrawing its commitment to joint production, finance daily Handelsblatt recently reported.

Cavallo and the VW works council accuse Diess of allowing this to happen. IG Metall and Cavallo have therefore brought out the heavy artillery and withdrew their confidence in Diess at a preparatory meeting of the supervisory board. Diess is reportedly facing being sacked again.

“How things will proceed and whether there could be a compromise will be decided by supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch, Lower Saxony’s Minister President Stephan Weil, IG Metall head Jörg Hofmann and works council leader Daniela Cavallo,” writes Handelsblatt. They are the members of the mediation committee on the supervisory board.

But in reality, these skirmishes serve to prepare for the upcoming massive attacks, and Cavallo is quite the pupil of Osterloh in this respect. Her predecessor also liked to rant against Diess, whom he himself had brought to Wolfsburg from BMW, as he liked to put on record. In the end, both of them pushed through the interests of the shareholders against the workforce.

But now these fake encounters might not be enough, the planned job cuts are too big. And clearly, not everyone in the union thinks Cavallo is up to the job.

There is no other way to understand the announcement by long-time VW works council member and Wolfsburg IGM official Frank Patta that he will present his own list of candidates at the end of the month, with which he intends to run against the official IGM list in next year’s works council elections.

Patta was IG Metall’s senior representative in Wolfsburg from 2006 to 2011. In 2012, Osterloh brought him onto the VW works council, made him general secretary, and gave him the task of chairing the world and European group works council. In 2018, Patta had to relinquish this post, which took him all over the world, becoming an “ordinary” works council member in the production area.

Patta embodies the classic union bureaucrat. In his capacity as Wolfsburg IGM representative, he conducted disputes with works council members and IGM members who had drawn up their own list against the official IGM list—as Patta himself has now announced. At that time, in 2011, he instigated an investigation against the members of the MIG 18 list, which he later discontinued. Patta required, among other things, that they not speak negatively or disparagingly about IG Metall and that they follow instructions from the executive committee or local board. Violation of this would have opened expulsion proceedings.

As general secretary for “international cooperation,” he then ensured compliance with rules set by IG Metall around the world. When temporary workers at VW’s Chinese plant turned to the World Works Council for help in 2017, he brushed them off. For months, the Chinese workers had fought in vain for equal wages, as VW had contractually promised them; in the end, their leaders were even imprisoned. In a letter at the time, Osterloh and Patta wrote that they could “unfortunately not verify the accusations you have made in this form.”

This month, the long-time bureaucrat wants to present “The Other List” (as his list is called), with which he wants to run in the VW works council election in February 2022. His criticism is directed solely at the works council under Cavallo. “I have no intention of leaving IG Metall,” Patta says. “We have to get away from the works council monarchy, where a very few make decisions that the other works council members then have to communicate to the workforce.”

Patta has since been expelled from the IG Metall faction and has lost his area of responsibility in VW assembly. The works council and IG Metall accuse him of standing because he did not get the position he sought as coordinator on the works council in the summer.

Here, too, the real reasons lie deeper. Patta is a works council member in production and is directly aware of the mood in the plant. The reason for his candidacy was “concern about jobs here in Wolfsburg, especially in production,” he told the Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. He added that the decision had been made to phase out internal combustion engines, but that Wolfsburg only built internal combustion engines, with the exception of a few hybrids. “Not even I as a member of the works council have more detailed and reliable information,” he complained.

Employees were worried about their jobs, he said, “Not only with a view to the future, but also against the background of the current situation at the site with ongoing short-time working.” The fact that a shift on assembly line 1 had already been cancelled before coronavirus hit, he said, “doesn’t exactly help to calm things down” in this situation.

His talk about the “non-transparent” nature of the works council under Osterloh and now Cavallo, who see themselves as co-managers instead of controllers of the management board, and about their hanky-panky in “back rooms or company planes” serves only to try and stifle the growing opposition in the plant and lead workers’ resistance into a dead end.

Patta does not represent the interests of the workers, but of the trade union to which he has belonged for decades, which in turn is beholden to the shareholders. Business weekly Wirtschaftswoche describes this function of Patta succinctly: “Patta, too, knows that the 663,000-employee giant Volkswagen needs a radical overhaul.”

Patta’s declaration that “you can only change things and influence decisions with a strong democratic and transparent opposition in the works council” is a dangerous illusion.

VW workers should study the lessons of the Opel plant closure in Bochum, where workers repeatedly rebelled against the corporation and the IGM-led works council. The in-house opposition always intervened—with the same criticism and the same platitudes as Patta does now.

When opposition trade unionist Peter Jaszczyk—a long-time Stalinist, later joining the SPD—became works council chairman in 1996, he continued where the official social democratic IGM works council had left off: organizing one sellout after another.

After Jaszczyk, and after a brief interlude of an SPD-led works council, Rainer Einenkel, another long-time Stalinist, took over as works council chairman in 2004. Within ten years, he finally wound up the plant. At the end of 2014, the last Opel auto rolled off the Bochum production line.

Diplomatic clash between Australia and France highlights implications of militarist AUKUS pact

Oscar Grenfell

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s attendance at the recent G20 and COP26 summits in Europe was dominated by an escalating war of words with French officials, which threatened a major diplomatic rupture.

The immediate cause of the conflict is Australia’s cancellation of a $90 million contract for France to construct a fleet of 12 diesel-powered attack submarines. The scuttling of the longstanding deal was publicly declared in September, as AUKUS, an aggressive military alliance of the US, Britain and Australia, aimed at preparing for war with China, was unveiled.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in June. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP

As part of the pact, Australia has been given access to American military technology to facilitate its construction of nuclear-powered submarines. It is, however, highly likely that Canberra will simply buy the vessels off the shelf from the US or Britain.

While the financial loss resulting from Australia’s shelving of the French contract is undoubtedly a factor in the tensions, more broadly they reflect the far-reaching implications of the AUKUS agreement.

Declared without prior discussion with other NATO states, and explicitly directed against China, AUKUS has sidelined the European powers, which have their own ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, and have voiced concerns over the prospect of a full-scale US-led confrontation with Beijing. France, in particular, which still has colonial territories in the Pacific, considers itself a Pacific power.

Shortly after arriving in Rome for the G20 late last month, Morrison announced that he and Macron had held their first telephone conversation since AUKUS was signed. While the readouts of the discussion differed sharply on the French and Australian sides, Morrison described the call as the start of “the way back” to normalising relations. Initially, the French ambassador was recalled in protest over AUKUS and Macron refused to answer the Australian prime minister’s calls.

Morrison then ostentatiously approached the French leader for a photo opportunity as the summit got underway, with the pictures then posted by his office.

The suggestion that the tensions had eased was immediately contradicted by Macron. Approached by the Australian media the next day, Macron declared that “when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line and consistent with this value.” Asked whether he thought Morrison had lied to him by failing to give prior notice that the French deal would be terminated, Macron said: “I don’t think, I know.”

Morrison’s problems then became worse when US President Joe Biden apologetically told Macron that the handling of the AUKUS announcement had been “clumsy.” “I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the [French] deal was not going through,” Biden said.

The comments clearly implied that it was the Australian government that had misled France, with much of the Australian media reporting them as “Biden throwing Morrison under the bus.”

Whatever the precise details of the discussions leading up to the termination of the crisis-ridden French submarine deal, there is no question that the sudden announcement of AUKUS was intended to send a message, not only to China, but also nominal US allies. It was a declaration that under Washington’s leadership the US, Britain and Australia were ratcheting up the preparations for a major war to levels not seen in the past eight decades, and that they would act outside of the old NATO and other alliance relationships in the process.

Biden’s comments were aimed at dampening down immediate tensions after France responded to the AUKUS announcement by also withdrawing its ambassador to the US amid official French denunciations of the “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decisions.” Biden reportedly discussed the issue of China at length with Macron as both affirmed their commitment to NATO and their support for “robust” collaboration in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, Macron told reporters after the meeting: “Trust is like love: Declarations are good, but proof is better.”

The seriousness of the tensions has been underscored by extraordinary leaking. The Australian media has been provided with a copy of a confidential report prepared by Biden’s National Security Council in the lead-up to the AUKUS announcement indicating the US administration knew France would be blindsided by the initiative.

Text messages between Morrison and Macron purporting to show that Australia had given advance notice that the French contract could be terminated have also made their way to the media. In that case, government leaders have all but admitted to the leaking, asserting that it was necessary to refute Macron’s claim that the Australian prime minister had lied.

Last Wednesday, the French ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, delivered an address to the National Press Club in Canberra at which he described the abandonment of the previous submarine contract as a “stab in the back” and insisted that the “deceit had been intentional.”

Thebault pointed to the underlying source of the tensions, insisting that France would remain an Indo-Pacific power. He complained that the AUKUS announcement was in “stark contrast with Australia’s alleged intent to seek greater involvement by European allies in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The clash, still unresolved, has intensified a crisis of the Morrison government. It is faced with widespread popular opposition, as well as concerns within the ruling elite that it is not pressing ahead rapidly enough with imposing austerity measures in the interests of the major corporations, and accelerating Australia’s military build-up.

In the press, much of the focus has been on the immediate details of the row and the government’s handling of them. The broader implications of AUKUS, as placing Australia on the frontlines of a potential global war, have largely been obscured.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne noted last week that the submarines were just one aspect of the new pact. In addition, it provides for expanded military collaboration across the board between Washington, London and Canberra, as well as expanded basing arrangements for the US in northern Australia and elsewhere in the country.

The turn to more expensive nuclear-powered submarines itself points to the preparations for conflict. The vessels have superior stealth, range, endurance and speed to their diesel-powered counterparts under conditions in which one of Australia’s central roles in a war with China would be to assist in dominating the waters of the Indo-Pacific.

The response of the Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan to the diplomatic crisis with France was revealing. Having initially lambasted Biden’s response as an undermining of the Australian government, he changed tack late last week.

Whatever problems had arisen, Sheridan insisted, the key issue was to press ahead. The Murdoch columnist, who has close ties to the military-intelligence apparatus, revealed that the Australian and US governments “will within the next couple of weeks begin rolling out a series of announcements and initiatives under the rubric of the AUKUS deal to bring the agreement to life, and to demonstrate the work being done—now with some urgency—on the nuclear-propelled submarine project.”

Dozens of full-time military operatives are working on the project in both countries, Sheridan reported. The completion of a review of the submarine project could be brought forward from 18 months to 9–12 months. The US could begin leasing nuclear-powered submarines within five to ten years.

Sheridan called for a campaign to “continually” explain the importance of AUKUS to “the electorate.” While he did not elaborate, this was a veiled reference to the need for the political and media establishment to overcome mass opposition to militarism and war among workers and young people.

For its part, the opposition Labor Party has responded to the diplomatic stoush with France by questioning Morrison’s ability to advance the “national interest” on the international stage. Labor, as a pro-war party of big business and the banks, is pitching that it would be better placed to advance the interests of Australian imperialism, including its preparations for a US-led war with China.

Labor enthusiastically welcomed the announcement of AUKUS. Its federal leader, Anthony Albanese, last week bemoaned that the conflict with France may have “created problems for our relationship with the United States.”

The diplomatic rifts, which are a symptom of how advanced the moves towards war are, demonstrate the urgent need for the building of an international anti-war movement of the working class, directed against all of the governments plotting conflict, and the capitalist profit-system which is its root cause.

Sri Lankan president’s “One Country, One Law” taskforce will provoke racial tensions

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse has appointed a 13-member “One Country, One Law” task force headed by extremist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) leader Galagodaaththe Gnanasara, notorious for whipping up violent anti-Muslim sentiment.

President Rajapakse opens Bodhu Bala Sena's Buddhist Leadership Academy in Galle [Photo courtesy: Defence.lk]

In an extraordinary October 26 gazette, Rajapakse declared that because “no citizen should be discriminated against in the eyes of the law” he was establishing a task force “to make a study of the implementation of the concept one country one law” and prepare a draft law.

The task force has wide powers to study various draft acts and amendments already prepared by the justice ministry. It will submit its own amendments and proposals to the ministry and present a final report by February 28.

Rajapakse’s claim that the aim is to eliminate discrimination and treat all citizens equally is a gross lie. He is, in fact, creating the conditions to whip up unprecedented ethnic and religious tensions as he moves to entrench autocratic presidential rule.

“One Country, One Law” is being promoted as introducing a general set of laws for the entire country. Sri Lankan legislation is mainly based on Roman-Dutch law but there are exceptions: certain personal laws relate to Muslims; Thesawalamai law deals mainly with the property rights of northern Tamils; and Kandyan law is also still used by some Sinhalese in the Central Hill Districts. While these are all retrogressive laws, the main target of Rajapakse and his chauvinist allies is the law practised among Muslims and Tamils.

The taskforce consists of nine ethnic Sinhalese—academics and lawyers, some with a Sinhala-chauvinist background—and four Muslims loyal to Rajapakse. Gnanasara’s appointment to head the group signifies its real purpose.

Gnanasara established the BBS in 2012. He was previously a leading member of the Sinhala-racist Jathika Hela Urumaya, which aggressively backed Colombo’s communalist war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

From its inception, BBS had the blessing of then President Mahinda Rajapakse and his defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, now president, who covertly backed its Sinhala chauvinist propaganda and provocations.

BBS initiated one communalist provocation after another, targeting Muslims and Christians. It attacked their places of worship and accused them of “unethical conversions,” “destruction of archaeological monuments” and “cultural invasion.” BBS acted with impunity, openly flouting laws, with the military and the police turning a blind eye.

Gnanasara was sentenced to six years jail in 2018, after being found guilty of “contempt of court” for interrupting a court hearing in 2016 into the involvement of military intelligence officials in the abduction of a journalist. He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been given bail and threatened the journalist’s wife.

In 2019, the previous Sri Lankan president, Maithripala Sirisena, pardoned Gnanasara, demonstrating the allegiance of every section of the Colombo political establishment to Sinhala-Buddhist racism.

There have been widespread denunciations of Gnanasara’s appointment to head the taskforce, including from sections of the mainstream media. Justice Minister Ali Sabry, one of Rajapakse’s loyal allies, even tendered his resignation but it was rejected.

Addressing a public meeting on Saturday, Rajapakse attempted to justify Gnanasara’s appointment, declaring: “This revered monk is the only one to have consistently spoken about the ‘One Country, One Law’ concept during the past five years.”

Rajapakse’s establishment of this task force is no accident. The government and the ruling elites as a whole face an unprecedented economic and political crisis that has been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The government is teetering on the brink of defaulting on loan repayments and the economy is in a shambles.

Working class struggles are erupting around the country uniting Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil workers in opposition to the attacks by government and big business on wages, jobs and social conditions. At the same time, there is growing unrest and protests in rural areas as paddy farmers and others demand fertiliser, pesticides and other necessities for crop cultivation.

Rajapakse and his ruling Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna (SLPP) government are determined to suppress and break up these developing struggles. This involves the imposition of draconian anti-strike laws with harsh punishment in key state-owned industries along with the incitement of communalism and the promotion of extreme-right and fascistic groups.

Consecutive Sri Lankan governments since independence in 1948 have used communal discrimination against Tamil minority whenever they faced crises. In 1956, Colombo made Sinhala the country’s only official language, and in 1972 formally enshrined Buddhism as the state religion and Sinhala as the only official language in the constitution.

Facing a new crisis in the early 1980s and in response to rising popular opposition, the United National Party government, following a series of provocations unleashed its bloody 30-year war against the LTTE. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother Gotabhaya in 2006 oversaw the final years of the war which ended in May 2009 with the killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

Current President Rajapake’s so-called One Country, One Law was a central plank in his election campaign. He and his SLPP seized on extremist Islamic terror attacks on Catholic churches and big hotels that killed about 270 people on Easter Sunday in 2019 to whip up communalism. In the wake of the bombings, racist groups, encouraged by Sri Lankan capitalist parties, including the SLPP, launched violent attacks on Muslim communities.

Just weeks later, Rajapakse announced his presidential candidacy, declaring that his priority was defending “national security.” BBS and outfits such as Sihala Rawaya (Echo of Sinhalese), Sihala Le (Blood of Lion) and other chauvinist groups rallied in support.

Following his election, Rajapakse continued the anti-Muslim campaign, arresting and jailing hundreds of Muslims, including political party leaders and human rights activists, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations. Dozens of Tamil journalists and Facebook users have also been arrested on “suspicion” of connection to “LTTE terrorism.”

While Rajapakse has constantly referred to One Country, One Law, his October 26 announcement was the first time that he moved to implement it.

On November 1, Gnanasara addressed a group of selected journalists in the presidential media centre explaining what he intended to do.

“Today we have got a result for all of our hard work. The president’s attention has been drawn to speak emphatically about these issues. We have a number of suggestions [and] if we can put all these together and stand up, that will be the day when we will rise as a nation,” he jubilantly declared.

Gnanasara’s so-called hard work is the communalist provocations orchestrated by his organisation and its political allies over the past decade. While the list of these attacks is too long to list here the operations of his fascistic group have been consistently exposed by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP).

Remains of Muslim shops burnt by racist mobs in 2014

When the former President Mahinda Rajapakse regime faced a deep crisis in 2014, BBS leader Gnanasara instigated a major anti-Muslim attack in the southern Aluthgama and Beruwala area. As an SEP statement declared at that time:

The emergence of Sinhala Buddhist extremists, working alongside the Rajapakse government, poses great dangers for the working class. The SEP calls on all workers to oppose the attacks on Muslims and to defend the democratic rights of all working people. The only means of combating these communal organisations is through the independent mobilisation of workers and youth on the basis of their common class interests and a unified political struggle against the Rajapakse government’s austerity agenda.

Seven years later the Rajapakse regime, like its international counterparts, is responding to a far deeper economic and political crisis and the resurgence of working-class struggles by using extreme-right and fascistic elements to prepare for the conditions for dictatorial forms of rule.

Massive COVID-19 outbreaks in Germany’s elderly care homes

Markus Salzmann

With the rapid rise in COVID-19 infections in Germany, massive outbreaks are being recorded in elderly care homes. Once again, it is the residents, who are often in poor health or have pre-existing conditions, and the nursing staff who are suffering the most due to the criminal pandemic policy of the government.

A nursing home in Germany

In the first two waves of the pandemic in the spring and autumn of 2020, the nursing homes, in addition to hospitals, became hotspots for COVID-19 infections. According to the AOK Federal Association, the mortality rate in nursing homes during this period was significantly higher than the average of previous years. As the “Nursing Report 2021” by the AOK Scientific Institute found, 20 percent more deaths occurred in the spring than in previous years. From October to December 2020, mortality even exceeded the level of previous years by an average of 30 percent.

With the prioritized vaccination of older people, the imposition of visiting bans in elderly care homes and other medical facilities, as well as other—albeit inadequate—protective measures such as school closings and the partial shutdown of public life, the situation stabilized somewhat and infections in the facilities declined.

However, the unscrupulous reopening policy of the last few months has now led to an even more disastrous situation. Despite the vaccinations, infections are higher than last year at the same time. A massive increase in the number of deaths is imminent in the coming winter months.

Although representatives of all political parties insisted last year that the massive outbreaks in care facilities should not recur, they are happening again all over Germany. The devastating outbreaks of the past few days and weeks make it clear where the policies of federal and state governments have led.

Four people recently died of a COVID-19 infection in a retirement home in Salzwedel (Saxony-Anhalt). A total of 38 people were infected with coronavirus. The infection was apparently brought into the facility from outside. The incidence rate in the Altmark Salzwedel district is currently over 400 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.

According to District Administrator Michael Ziche (Christian Democrats), the schools were the starting point for the wave of infections. Ziche said the situation was “worrying.” The intensive care units in the regional clinics are fully occupied. Some of the patients have to be treated in Magdeburg.

Sixty-eight residents and 22 employees tested positive in a nursing home in Norderstedt. Eight people, including one contact, died as a result of the infection. The public prosecutor in Kiel has now initiated a post-mortem investigation to check whether there were criminally relevant responsibilities. It is noteworthy that, according to the district, visits are already allowed again in the facility, since it has been declared that no one is infectious anymore.

Thirty-nine residents and 11 employees tested positive in the St. Josef House in the Bavarian capital of Munich. Siegfried Benker, managing director of the municipal agency for elderly care homes, said that infections are part of the “new normal” in nursing homes.

Thirty percent of the employees at the care home are not vaccinated. Only after the massive outbreak were workers ordered to wear FFP-2 (N95) masks again. At the same time, Benker refused to take any other kind of protective measures. “We don’t want to close our homes like last year,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

In a care facility in Bad Doberan, 17 people have now died after a COVID-19 outbreak in mid-October. Most of the 83 residents of the care facility had tested positive since the beginning of October. Out of 60 nurses at the facility, 35 also tested positive.

The State Office for Health and Social Affairs in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania revealed in its current report that the number of nursing homes currently affected by coronavirus infections has increased from 10 to 13 within a few days. A total of 161 residents and 72 nurses were infected last Monday.

In a facility in Schorfheide in the Barnim district (Brandenburg), 12 residents died as a result of an infection after 44 residents and 17 employees had previously tested positive. Only half of the employees have a complete vaccination status, according to an announcement from the responsible medical officer. Only since the outbreak began have workers been tested on a daily basis.

The first criminal complaint in connection with the outbreak has now been filed. According to information from the Frankfurt (Oder) public prosecutor’s office, a citizen’s complaint was filed with the police’s internet station alleging attempted bodily harm resulting in death. The public prosecutor’s office will now examine the facts, as the RBB reported.

The list goes on and on, including outbreaks from all regions and federal states. The situation in Thuringia is particularly dramatic. According to data from the state administration office, more than one in five of the 339 elderly care homes in the state was affected by COVID-19 outbreaks on Thursday. In Thuringia, the seven-day incidence rate on Friday was 386.9 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, more than twice the national average.

In addition, the state’s intensive care beds will soon be fully occupied. According to the DIVI register, only 72 intensive care beds were free on Thursday. Between Monday and Thursday alone, the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units rose by 20, an increase of 25 percent within four days. Minister President Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) said on ZDF television, “In the next few days we will reach the situation where we no longer have enough intensive care beds.”

What Ramelow neglects to mention is the fact that he and his government are largely responsible for the catastrophic situation. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Left Party politician has been a proponent of the murderous conception of “herd immunity.” Under his leadership, Thuringia spearheaded the relaxation of public health safeguards, although it was absolutely clear that this would lead to a resurgence in the number of cases with all the consequences that it entails.

The statements by Ramelow’s Health Minister Heike Werner (Left Party) should be considered in this context. Werner spoke out on Thursday for an expansion of the test requirement for employees in nursing homes. “Currently only the unvaccinated are tested. I think it will have to be expanded so that the unvaccinated are tested daily and the vaccinated maybe once a week, in order to have at least some kind of screening,” said the minister.

This puts her in line with Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn and her colleagues from the other federal states. Spahn also stated that he wanted to campaign for mandatory testing in elderly care and nursing homes and, if necessary, promote enforcement by federal law in parliament.

Apart from the fact that the obligation to test should never have been suspended and is completely insufficient as the sole measure to prevent further cases of infection, it is the height of cynicism when Spahn, Werner and other government representatives, who have been advocating unchecked infection for months, now pretend to be acting for the benefit of patients, residents and employees.

Just a few days ago, Spahn—despite the skyrocketing number of cases—pushed for the end of the “epidemic situation of national scope.” The Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats, which have a majority in the new federal parliament, have agreed not to extend the “epidemic situation” in November. This will eliminate the legal basis that enables the federal and state governments to enact protective measures such as mask requirements, social distancing regulations and lockdown measures.

Snap elections called in Portugal after government falls amid mass strikes

Alejandro López

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has called snap elections on January 30 after Prime Minister António Costa’s seven-year minority Socialist Party (PS) government collapsed amid mass strikes. Parliament had voted down the PS’ 2022 budget last week. It is the first time since the 1974 Carnation Revolution toppled fascistic dictator António Salazar’s Estado Novo regime that a Portuguese budget has been rejected.

São Bento Palace

In a televised address, Sousa said the PS budget defeat “has totally reduced the government’s support base,” and 2022 will be “a decisive year for a sustainable exit from the pandemic and the social crisis that has hit us.” He added, “In moments like this there is always a solution in democracy … to give the word back to the people.”

Costa refused to resign as interim prime minister, promising to lead the PS campaign for a “reinforced, stable and lasting majority.” The PS held only 108 seats in Portugal’s 230-seat parliament, depending on support from the Stalinist Communist Party of Portugal (PCP) and the petty-bourgeois Left Bloc (BE). To maintain the pretense that they oppose austerity despite supporting the PS for six years, the BE and PCP felt compelled to oppose the budget in the October 27 vote in parliament, leading to its immediate failure.

The ruling elite is terrified of an eruption of the class struggle. The snap elections are deeply unpopular; indeed, 54 percent of the respondents in one recent poll opposed the calling of snap elections. It is widely seen as a filthy maneuver, using nationalism and pseudo-democratic rhetoric to try to smother an upsurge of the class struggle. It comes as the unions, under mounting pressure, are desperately trying to divide, call off and defuse a wave of strikes.

In recent weeks, strikes involving tens of thousands of workers across multiple industries have erupted throughout the country. In September and October, rail workers, teachers, pharmacists, subway workers, pre-hospital emergency technicians, tax office workers and prison guards all went on strike.

On Thursday, as Sousa announced the elections, Metropolitano de Lisboa (ML) workers went on the latest in a series of 24-hour strikes against wage freezes and lack of career advancement.

Last week, the National Union of Professional Firefighters called off a strike for higher wages scheduled for November 11-12, arguing that the budget failure and the “predictable fall of the Government decided in the next few days are factors that justify the withdrawal of the strike.” It claimed it would present its demands “in due course to the new elected executive.”

The leader of the Public Administration Union Front, José Abraão, then suspended this week’s strike for salary increases for civil servants, saying: “Without the State Budget, there is a set of measures that are impossible … in what concerns our problems … we suspended all forms of struggle in the expectation that, in the shortest period of time, we can have a budget.”

The FNAM, the federation of doctors, also announced the suspension of the strike scheduled for November 23-25. It stated, “After careful evaluation of the current political crisis, conditioned by the non-approval of the State Budget for 2022,” it was calling off the strike. It concluded by calling for “urgent” negotiations with the new government.

The trade unions, the PS government and the Stalinist PCP and Left Bloc are terrified of mounting working-class anger, notably against the European Union pandemic bailouts. The new government will be mandated to ram through EU austerity measures to pay back the €45 billion the EU is handing over to Portugal’s financial aristocracy in the coming years as part of the bailout fund. It will also be faced with cutting the huge public debt of 133 percent of the GDP.

While the EU and the Portuguese government hand over billions to the wealthy, they plan to strictly limit wages and pursue a “herd immunity” policy of mass COVID-19 infection. Thousands are expected to die in the country, part of the 500,000 more COVID-19 deaths expected in Europe in the next three months, according to statements by World Health Organisation (WHO) Director for Europe Hans Kluge.

The criminal policies of the PS government in Portugal have led to mass deaths. Since March 2020, 18,167 people have died, and 1,091,142 cases of infection have been recorded—10 percent of the population, according to data from the Directorate-General for Health.

Recent opinion polls suggest that the Socialist Party will win re-election but will again fall short of a parliamentary majority. It would obtain 36 percent of the vote. PS leader and interim Prime Minister Costa’s pro-austerity policies, however, face increasing opposition, even according to official opinion polls. He has gone from 45 percent in support and 34 percent against in a poll last July to 34 percent in favor and 38 percent against today.

Fearful that the elections will deepen the political crisis, the PCP and BE, who have seen their support dwindle after having supported Costa for six years and supported the brutal crackdown of the truck drivers strike in 2019, as the PS government called out the army to force the truckers back to work.

The PCP and BE would have preferred that Costa make nominal concessions during the budget debate. Their demands during the budget negotiations, such as increasing the minimum wage to a meagre 805 euros and compensation for collective layoffs; strengthening the hands of the unions in collective bargaining to suppress workers struggles; and slight increases in pensions and public investment in the national health service (SNS), would have done very little to reverse the brutal austerity implemented by both conservative and BE and PCP-backed PS governments.

Reacting to the snap elections announcement, Left Bloc’s parliamentary leader Pedro Filipe Soares began by defending this saying this outcome “does not [mean] it was an inevitability.” He continued, “On the part of the Left Bloc, we did not want elections, and we always wanted to guarantee a budget that the country would not lack at this fundamental moment.”

The PCP leader Jerónimo de Sousa reacted on Friday, cynically stating, “The country does not have a budget because the PS did not want to affront the interests of capital to be free to serve the interests that it has always served.”

In fact, the PCP and Left Bloc, by backing the reactionary policies of the PS, have opened the door to the far-right Chega party to posture as the sole opposition party. It is expected to become the third largest force in parliament, going from one seat in the year of its founding to as many as 20 seats, according some polls. Chega is the first far-right party to win a significant share of the national vote since the toppling of the Salazar dictatorship.

That Chega is on the rise and is taking place as the capitalist class in Europe and internationally pursues a policy of austerity and mass COVID-19 infections is the most serious warning.

In order for the emerging strike movement in Portugal to reach its aims, it must be linked to the expanding international movement in the working class against wage austerity, war and the fascistic “herd immunity” policies of the ruling elite on the COVID-19 pandemic.

UK GREAT Scholarships 2022/2023

Application Deadline: The deadline to apply for a UK GREAT Scholarship varies according to each institution. For details on individual institutions’ deadlines, please see the institution page.

About the UK GREAT Scholarships: GREAT Scholarships offers numerous scholarships from UK universities, across a variety of subjects for students from the countries below. Each scholarship is worth a minimum of £10,000 towards tuition fees for a one-year postgraduate course. 

Each scholarship is jointly funded by the UK government’s GREAT Britain Campaign and the British Council with participating UK higher education institutions. 

Type: Postgraduate

Eligibility:

1. UK GREAT Scholarships – Bangladesh: Find out about GREAT Scholarships in Bangladesh. There are eight postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
2. GREAT Scholarships – Brunei: Find out about GREAT Scholarships in Brunei. There are 5 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
3. GREAT Scholarships – China: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from China. There are 20 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
4. GREAT Scholarships – Egypt: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Egypt. There are – postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
5. GREAT Scholarships – Ghana: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Ghana. There are 7 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
6. GREAT Scholarships – India: Find out GREAT Scholarships for students from India and the postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
7. GREAT Scholarships – Indonesia: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Indonesia. There are 10 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
8. GREAT Scholarships – Kenya: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Kenya. There are eight postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
9. GREAT Scholarships – Malaysia: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Malaysia. There are 6 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
10. GREAT Scholarships – Mexico: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Mexico. There are 9 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
11. GREAT Scholarships – Nepal: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Nepal. There are eight postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
12. GREAT Scholarships – Nigeria: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Nigeria. There are 7 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
13. GREAT Scholarships – Pakistan: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Pakistan. There are 11 postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
14. GREAT Scholarships – Singapore: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Singapore. There are eight postgraduate scholarships for the 2022-23 academic year.
15. GREAT Scholarships – Sri Lanka: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Sri Lanka. There are eight postgraduate scholarships for the 2022-23 academic year.
16. GREAT Scholarships – Thailand: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Thailand. There are nine postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
17. GREAT Scholarships – Turkey: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Turkey and the postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.
18. GREAT Scholarships – Vietnam: Find out about GREAT Scholarships for students from Vietnam and the postgraduate scholarships available for the 2022-23 academic year.

Eligible Countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Vietnam & Thailand

To be Taken at (Country): UK

Number of Awards: Numerous

Value of UK GREAT Scholarships: Each scholarship is worth a minimum of £10,000 towards tuition fees for a one-year postgraduate course. 

How to Apply for UK GREAT Scholarships: Filter by your country to find a GREAT Scholarship at a UK university.

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details