COVID-19 cases surge 340 percent among ICE detainees in one week

Kevin Martinez

According to the most recent federal data, an estimated 1,254 people currently held in US immigrant detention centers have tested positive for COVID-19, an increase of 340 percent from a week earlier.

Children who tested positive for COVID-19 sit in the ground at the Donna Department of Homeland Security holding facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in Donna, Texas, Tuesday, March 30, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, Pool]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is presently detaining 22,142 people, of which 285 were in isolation or being monitored after testing positive for coronavirus as of January 3. This figure jumped by more than four times after multiple outbreaks were reported at ICE jails in Texas and Arizona, according to ICE’s website.

The Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, reported the largest outbreak with 135 people testing positive. The La Palma Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona, and the South Texas Family Residential Center also reported 95 and 50 confirmed cases, respectively.

In 2020, researchers using ICE’s detainee population data from its 111 facilities determined that once COVID-19 enters a facility, 72 percent of the detainees would be infected within three months, based on optimistic circumstances. Using estimates based on higher transmissibility, researchers found that the entire inmate population would be infected within the same time period.

Given that the Omicron variant is more contagious than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, it is likely that the recent surge in infections is related. However, authorities have not commented on how many cases are indeed the result of Omicron infections.

Since the start of 2022, the number of infections among immigrants detained by ICE has increased by 520 percent bringing the total to 1,776 immigrants being monitored or isolated due to the virus. The number of infected is currently 8 percent of the total number of detained immigrants being held by ICE.

According to ICE’s data, more than 32,000 immigrants have been infected in detention centers since the start of the pandemic in early 2020 with 11 coronavirus-related deaths.

Unpublished ICE data obtained by CBS News revealed that 48,246 detainees received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. The agency began to offer a booster shot in late November and as of January 5, 671 detainees have received it. Most immigrants in ICE custody do not stay long enough to warrant a booster shot because the average stay is about a month, according to ICE.

The agency has not revealed how many immigrants in custody are currently vaccinated but did say that the number of detainees who have received at least one dose has more than doubled since August 2021. However, the 48,246 vaccinated detainees only account for one-third of the 141,000 immigrants who have entered ICE custody after July 2021, when the agency received its first allotment of federal vaccines for detainees.

Prior to this, ICE relied on state and local vaccine distributors to inoculate a limited number of immigrant detainees. According to ICE records, 37.6 percent of immigrants offered the vaccine have refused it. Public health advocates point out that skepticism of vaccines and miseducation have prompted some to refuse the vaccine.

In addition, lawyers across the country have fought for some detainees to be released on health grounds, with conditions ranging from inflammatory bowel syndrome and diabetes to post-traumatic stress syndrome, all of which have been denied by ICE because of detainees’ criminal histories.

It was revealed by documents provided to lawyers in a federal court case that there were 5,200 immigrants in ICE detention since late December whose health issues or age put them at a higher risk of becoming very sick or dying if they contracted COVID-19.

Around 76 percent of ICE’s 22,000 detainees do not have criminal records and many have been transferred from custody.

While the Biden administration has publicly backed away from some of the more nakedly cruel immigration practices of the Trump era, conditions and medical services at ICE jails and facilities remain poor. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General report from September 2021 found that inspected ICE facilities did not follow all coronavirus mitigation rules.

Meanwhile, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not been systematically providing coronavirus testing or vaccination to immigrants in its custody by arguing that its facilities are designed only for short-term custody.

Not until last month did CBP begin offering vaccines to a limited number of migrants in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” policy started by Trump and recently resumed by Biden, which forces migrants to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearings.

US government moves to end daily COVID-19 death reporting by hospitals

Andre Damon

The US federal government will no longer require hospitals to report the number of people who die from COVID-19 every day, according to new guidelines from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On January 6, the HHS published updated guidelines on which information hospitals provide to the agency. The guidelines note the “retirement of fields which are no longer required to be reported,” among which is “Previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.”

The guidelines note, “This field has been made inactive for the federal data collection. Hospitals no longer need to report these data elements to the federal government.” This change goes into effect February 2.

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The move by the Biden administration to weaken the reporting of COVID-19 deaths has direct precedents in the Trump administration. The House COVID Subcommittee’s 2021 year-end report said “Trump Administration officials purposefully weakened CDC’s coronavirus testing guidance in August 2020 to obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country.”

A document issued issued Jan 6 by the US Health and Human Services tells hospitals they are no longer required to report daily COVID-19 deaths to the federal government starting Feb 2.

Although the new HHS guidelines were issued on January 6, they were not made known until publicized by Dr. Jorge A. Caballero, a medical doctor and Clinical Instructor at Stanford university, on Twitter.

On Friday afternoon, Dr. Caballero wrote, “I’d love to understand why the federal government will no longer require hospitals to report the daily number of #COVID19 deaths as of February 2nd”

Caballero retweeted a response by this reporter noting that the same day the HHS published the updated guidance, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Biden administration COVID-19 advisor and advocate of eugenics, published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) calling on governments to “retire” the reporting of deaths from COVID-19.

Emanuel’s call for a “new normal” was hailed with an editorial in the Washington Post and a lead interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, the most prominent of the US Sunday talk-shows.

Although hospitals will still report to state health authorities, and via the states to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), many states, led by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are themselves moving to shut down daily COVID-19 reporting, or have already done so.

The CDC has been in discussions with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists about a directive that “would direct states to limit daily case reporting,” according to a report published December 30 in the New York Times.

States led by far-right Republicans are already slashing testing and reporting.

Tennessee, run by the far-right governor Bill Lee, who refused to recognize the election of US president Joe Biden, has already stopped daily case reporting, switching to a once-per-week system of reporting tests.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said last month that the state intended to “unwind” the “testing mentality.” Ladapo reports to DeSantis, a right-wing ideologue who also refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 2020 election.

Even more states plan to end daily reporting of cases, with many “that are still doing daily reporting eager to make the shift in the coming months,” Marcelle Layton, chief medical officer at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, told the Times.

After WSWS reporters verified that Caballero was correctly summarizing the HHS guidance, our report summarizing his findings was shared more than 6,000 times and viewed by more than two million people on Twitter.

Commenters responded with outrage. “The US government doesn’t want us to know how many of us are dying,” wrote Chris Richards, in a comment that received 1,500 likes. Thousands of commenters voiced their outrage that, after promising to “follow the science,” the Biden administration has taken an action that smacks of the Trump administration’s efforts to cover up the pandemic.

The day before, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was asked, as “the virus is setting records for infection,” whether “things need to change.” Psaki replied, “We could certainly propose legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits and ice cream, but that wouldn’t be very rewarding for the American people,” prompting widespread outrage at the Biden administration’s indifference to mass death.

Responding to Caballero’s tweet, Sarah Lovenheim, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the US Department of Health And Human services, replied, “COVID mortality data remains publicly accessible. The data remains publicly accessible here and as there is new analysis, it becomes publicly available, too,” linking to data from the CDC compiled from state reporting.

To this, Dr. Caballero replied, “There’s no other source of daily in-hospital #COVID19 deaths at the state/national level. All other data sources are derivatives of *this* specific field. This field is *not* found in any other publicly available dataset. This field is used to estimate total COVID deaths + more.”

Responding to the claims by Dr. Caballero and the WSWS, Erin Kissane, a journalist at the Atlantic and co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project, which shut down on March 7 last year, replied “hospitals no longer reporting covid deaths to daily HHS doesn’t mean that all covid deaths don’t have to be reported to local/state health authorities, who report them to CDC. We’re still counting deaths.”

Likewise BNO Newsroom tweeted, “Contrary to some tweets, the U.S. is not ending daily reporting on deaths from COVID-19. Health departments will continue to provide updates as usual.” BNO confirmed to this journalist that it was replying to our tweet, but gave no further clarification in response to our inquiries.

Replying to these and other claims, Caballero wrote, “I, for one, care to have a secondary data source that can be used to double-check #COVID19 deaths reported by states with a 20-month track record of unscrupulous policies and questionable data management.”

Regardless of the claims by Kissane and BNO, the reporting by Caballero and the WSWS stand. On February 2, hospitals will no longer be required to report COVID-19 deaths directly to the federal government, and will be reliant on reporting by state governments that are themselves moving to shut down reporting.

There is no public health justification for the limiting of data reporting in the midst of a raging pandemic which is currently setting records for infections and hospitalizations. Just like under Trump, the efforts by the federal and state governments to limit reporting on COVID-19 is driven by a political effort to cover up mass infection and death.

Documents show Google operated a secret management program to prevent workers from organizing

Kevin Reed

An administrative law judge ruled on January 7 that Google must turn over to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) a series of documents concerning a secret management program set up to prevent employees from organizing and engaging in workplace activism.

The Google logo displayed at their offices in Granary Square, in London [Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Judge Paul Bogas was appointed by the NLRB as a special master to review documents connected with a program called Project Vivian that was run by senior executives at the giant tech company between late 2018 and early 2020.

The documents deal specifically with the relationship between Google—along with its parent company Alphabet, Inc.—and IRI Consultants, a firm known for corporate anti-union strategies. The campaign by Google management was a response to worker protests and organizing efforts that began in 2018.

Judge Bogas’s ruling says that Google cannot use attorney-client privilege as a means of concealing documents that were subpoenaed by the NLRB in a case that was filed by the agency in December 2020. The case involved the illegal firing and surveillance of employees who were involved in campaigns to change company policies and efforts to organize other workers.

In his decision, the judge called Google’s attempt to block the release of 180 documents a “broad assertion” that is “to put it charitably, an overreach.” In all, Bogas has ordered the Silicon Valley tech corporation to turn over 1,500 documents connected with its communications with IRI Consultants and Google had logged as “privileged.”

The judge said Google’s argument that it has the right to withhold these documents was not persuasive because the relationship with IRI Consultants involved communications and messaging and was not legal advice.

In one of the documents the company claimed was protected by attorney-client confidentiality, Michael Pfyl, Google’s director of employment law, described the mission of Project Vivian as “to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck.”

Showing that Google executives viewed their efforts as trend-setting in the tech industry, the judge also described evidence in the documents that a Google attorney proposed to find a “respected voice to publish an OpEd outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like, and counseling employees of FB (Facebook), MSFT(Microsoft), Amazon, and google (sic) not to do it.”

Bogas’s report also showed that Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director, said that she liked the idea of the OpEd but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.”

The documents show that the decision to hire IRI Consultants was not made by company lawyers but by executives such as Silverstein and Danielle Brown, Google’s vice president of employee engagement.

IRI Consultants was founded in 1979 and has offices in 31 US states and specializes in corporate labor relations and employee communications. Among the services the firm provides is Union Vulnerability Assessments and Labor Campaigns. A feature blog post on the firm’s website is entitled “The Resurgence of Labor’s Biggest Threat—The Strike.”

The NLRB case stems from the firing by Google of three employees in 2019 for their organizing activities. On May 5, 2021, the NLRB ruled that Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers and Paul Duke were released by the company in retaliation for their activism. In December 2020, the agency ruled that Google illegally spied on and then terminated employees Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers also in 2019.

The company has maintained that the terminations were disciplinary actions taken against “employees who abused their privileged access to internal systems, such as our security tools or colleagues’ calendars.” The workers have maintained that the documents they accessed to conduct their organizing activities were accessible to all engineers within the firm and only later classified by management as “need to know.”

As reported previously here on the WSWS, a group of Google engineers announced the formation of the Alphabet Workers Union on January 4, 2021. The union, which was set up with the support of the Communications Workers of America, has not yet held an official NLRB election at Google workplaces, and it has not been recognized as a bargaining agent by the company.

As we have explained in the union organizing drive at Amazon, Google’s current opposition to the unionization drive by AFL-CIO-affiliated organizations is a tactical question for the corporation. At this moment, having an official labor union inside the $1.8 trillion corporation, cuts across the current financial and strategic plans of Google and Alphabet, Inc.

However, under conditions where tech workers and engineers begin to put forward their own demands, the company would quickly adapt to such a situation and move to utilize a union for its own purposes. For its part, the Communications Workers of America and the AFL-CIO would willingly collaborate with the tech monopolies to suppress the demands of Google workers in exchange for automated dues collection and expansion of the audience within which to push for its right-wing orientation the Democratic Party politics and economic nationalism.

Google employees and employees throughout Silicon Valley and the high-tech industries must learn the lessons of the past struggles of workers who have been trapped inside unions, such as the CWA in the telecommunications industries. For decades, workers at Verizon, AT&T and other corporations in the telecom sector have been betrayed by the CWA and, even when they have gone on strike, their struggles have been isolated and shut down. Workers have been told that they have no choice but to accept the destruction of their jobs, wages, benefits and working conditions as demanded by the corporations.

Israel escalates war on all fronts against Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

Human rights organisation B’Tselem has highlighted the massive increase in Israel’s attacks against the Palestinians in 2021, the deadliest year since Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza in 2014.

According to B’Tselem, Israel’s security forces killed 313 Palestinians in the Palestinian territories it has illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab Israeli war: 236 in the Gaza Strip, almost all during the 11-day assault in May, and 77 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Another six were killed either at the hands of soldiers or armed settlers. A further 25 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by rockets fired at Israel that landed within Gaza, while it was unclear whether another eight were killed by Israeli forces or Palestinian rocket fire. In the West Bank, Israel’s de facto subcontractors, the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces, killed two Palestinians during their arrest.

An explosion caused by Israeli airstrikes is seen in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday Jan, 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)

Of the 232 Palestinians killed by the military during the May assault on Gaza, at least 137 were non-combatants, including 53 minors and 38 women, many of whom were killed during the criminal bombardment of densely populated areas, a consistent feature of Israel’s operations. While senior Israeli officials claim that lethal fire is used as a “last resort” in accordance with Israeli and international law, this is clearly routine with no one held accountable.

B’Tselem investigated 336 incidents of settler violence, up from 251 in 2020, that resulted in at least eight Palestinian civilian deaths, including two minors, at the hands of security forces or settlers that occurred during the weeks of protests against the establishment of the illegal Eviatar outpost on Palestinian land. Violence was not simply a case of a few unruly settlers out of control, but a strategy aimed at taking over more and more Palestinian land with the full support of the military and the government.

Following an agreement with the government in June, the 50 settlers at Eviatar agreed to leave and allow Israeli troops to establish a base in the area, while the defence ministry studied land claims to assess whether to recognise a future settlement.

Since then, Israeli soldiers have prevented Palestinian farmers from accessing hundreds of dunams (one dunam is equal to one quarter of an acre) of their own land, blocked agricultural roads and repeatedly damaged them. On July 9, soldiers fired on Palestinian protesters, injuring nearly 400 people, making it clear that that the settlement will get government approval.

Civilian deaths and Israel’s rules of engagement

As well as killing and wounding Palestinian protesters, soldiers killed at least 36 Palestinians, including four minors and five women, accused of attacking or attempting to attack Israeli security forces or civilians with a car, knife, firearm or even stones. B’Tselem cited two of the most egregious examples of such unlawful shootings: the killing of Osama Mansur, who was not endangering the soldiers’ lives and was mistakenly suspected of trying to run them over; and of Fahmeyeh al-Hrub, 60, who was moving slowly towards the soldiers who killed her.

Together with right-wing settler groups’ demands that the military stop “tying the hands” of Israeli soldiers in the West Ban, citing such attacks provides the context for last month’s decision of the military, which has for years granted its soldiers near-total immunity and little legal accountability, to revise its Rules of Engagement (RoE) in relation to its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank. Under the new rules, Israeli soldiers may shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinians, including children, for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli “civilian” cars, even when they no longer pose any danger. By “civilians,” the new army manual means the armed settlers who have taken over land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and killed and wounded numerous Palestinians over the decades. The new RoE do not apply to armed settlers that assault or attempt to assault soldiers.

The security forces now have carte blanche to shoot-to-kill, without any fear of retribution in the courts since they are acting in accordance with the army’s manual of operations. This enables Israel to plead in any investigation into human rights violations and war crimes in the occupied territories by the International Criminal Court that no war crimes have taken place, since the killing of Palestinians have been carried out in accordance with Israel’s military code and judicial system.

Israel’s soldiers and police have become judge, jury and executioner, free of all restraint.

Demolitions

Israeli authorities demolished 295 residential buildings in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, the highest number since 2016, making 895 Palestinians, 463 of them children, homeless; in addition to 548 non-residential buildings, including warehouses, agricultural structures, cisterns, businesses and public structures, the highest number since 2012.

Israel uses the Emergency Statutes of 1945, left over from the British Mandate, in the occupied territories to claim these demolitions were a matter of “law enforcement” as the homes and structures were built without permits. In the 1950s Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun terrorist gang and future Likud prime minister, deemed this legislation when used against Jews as “worse than the Nazi legislation.”

The use of these laws serves to block almost all Palestinian development in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while greenlighting settlement expansion. The Palestinians have no option but to build without a licence, providing the pretext for the Israeli authorities to issue demolition orders.

Last month, Menachem Mazuz, a former attorney general and judge in Israel’s highest court, told Ha’aretz that he considers house demolitions as collective punishment, illegal and immoral, as well as ineffective. His frustration over the issue was a major reason for his leaving the court in 2020, some five years before his tenure expired.

Arrests, imprisonment and administrative detention

A report by several Palestinian organisations, including the Commission of Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS), Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and Wadi Hilweh Information Center, revealed that the Israeli army had arrested nearly 8,000 Palestinians in 2021, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women.

There were around 4,600 prisoners and detainees, including 34 women and a girl and about 160 children and minors, in Israeli jails. Some 547 prisoners were serving life sentences. According to the Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA), Israel holds 10 journalists in its prisons, while 384 Israeli violations against journalists in the West Bank were registered in 2021.

Addameer said that there about 500, including nine members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and four minors, in administrative detention—open-ended detention by the military authorities based on secret evidence without charge or trial. This is a practice that Michael Lynk, the United Nations human rights expert monitoring the occupied territories, has called “an anathema in any democratic society that follows the rule of law.”

Last month, Israeli military officials, concerned that the death of 40-year-old Hisham Abu Hawash—who had been on hunger strike for four months to protest his open-ended detention—would spark civil unrest in the West Bank and Gaza, suspended his detention saying his failing health meant he no longer posed a danger to the state.

Nearly 600 prisoners were sick, including several with cancer. On Tuesday, rallies took place in the West Bank in a show of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israel, with calls to free Nasser Abu Hamid, battling cancer in detention. Qadura Fares, the head of the PPS, a prisoners' rights advocacy group, said that Israel “is practicing slow killing” of Palestinian prisoners through “medical negligence.”

Price surge slashes workers’ living standards

Shannon Jones

As the latest upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic rips through workplaces and schools, causing mass illness and death, workers’ living standards fell dramatically in 2021 as a result of soaring prices for everyday necessities.

US consumer prices rose at a 7 percent annual rate in the month of December, according to figures released by the Labor Department Wednesday. Last month’s figures marked the highest rate of inflation since 1982, in the midst of an offensive by the Reagan administration and US corporations against workers’ jobs and living standards.

The biggest price jumps have been in gasoline and heating oil, which increased at an annual rate of 50 percent and 41 percent respectively. The price of used vehicles is up 37 percent and natural gas, used for heating and cooking, up 24 percent. The price of some basic food items has surged with beef and veal up 16 percent, chicken up 10.4 percent, eggs up 11.1 percent. Bread was up 11 percent.

A worker restocks shelves at Heinen's Fine Foods store, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, in Pepper Pike, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

Workers stressed by two years of a deadly pandemic are struggling harder than ever to make ends meet. Rising prices in 2021 significantly outweighed wage gains in the US, with the average worker seeing an overall 2.4 percent pay cut last year.

The surge in prices is having an even more devastating impact on those with fixed incomes. The rise in heating prices is particularly deadly, as winter weather grips large swaths of the US.

The impact of inflation is global. The Eurozone reported a 5 percent annual price rise in December and Brazil, 10.06 percent. The impoverished masses of India faced a 5.59 percent rise last month according to official figures, with a higher rate expected in the first quarter of this year. Inflation in Turkey is currently running at a 36 percent annual rate amidst the country’s currency crisis. Some sources put the real inflation rate at more than twice that.

In frank comments to the Wall Street Journal, Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate, said this year “comes up as a loss for many households. Their expenses increased even faster and chewed up all of the benefit of whatever pay raise they had seen.”

The surge in inflation is the byproduct of policies pursued by the ruling class in response to the pandemic. Governments have pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets to prop up stock exchanges, creating a ocean of fictitious values. At the same time the policy of allowing the uncontrolled spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has led to mass infection and deaths, creating labor shortages and supply bottlenecks, disrupting production and pushing up prices.

The ruling class has sought to force workers back into unsafe workplaces by eliminating all social supports enacted during the pandemic. In the US this has included halting expanded unemployment benefits, lifting eviction bans and stopping the $300 monthly child tax credit. Small businesses and the self-employed have seen virtually all support disappear as well. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done its part, cutting the recommended isolation period for people infected with COVID-19 in half, from 10 days to five days.

For the most part corporations have been able to offset, indeed profit off, cost increases by jacking up prices. US corporate profits before adjustments reached a record $3.14 trillion in the third quarter of 2021. After tax and adjustments for inventory, profits rose to a record high $2.74 trillion.

Meanwhile, big Wall Street investors have filled up their pockets with virtually free government cash. Stocks continue at record levels with global stock market capitalization up by an astonishing $60 trillion since the start of the pandemic. In 2021 alone, 10 of the richest billionaires saw their net wealth increase by $500 billion in 2021, led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Workers around the world have responded to the pandemic with an upsurge of strikes, both against the destruction of their living standards and the homicidal “herd immunity” policies being pursued by the ruling classes of virtually every major capitalist country. A partial list of strikes includes:

• Three thousand Volvo Trucks workers in Virginia walked out in April and May in two separate strikes.
• Eight hundred St. Vincent nurses in Massachusetts conducted a 301-day strike over staffing.
• More than 2,500 Cook County, Illinois, nurses and state workers struck against wage and benefit concessions.
• ATI Steelworkers in Pennsylvania and four other states struck for 106 days against job cuts and other concessions.
• One thousand Warrior Met coal miners in Alabama have been on strike since April, facing union sabotage and company-orchestrated violence.
• Over 10,000 John Deere workers struck after voting down union-sponsored concessions
• Some 1,400 Kellogg’s workers in four states struck for nearly three months against tiered wages and other concessions.

This week 8,000 workers at King Soopers stores in Colorado struck over a derisory management wage offer that would have seen pay for the lowest tier of workers set at just 13 cents per hour over the minimum wage. Reflecting a broader mood of militancy, management has had problems recruiting strikebreakers at $18 per hour and has had to fly in supervisory personnel from out of state.

Inflation has hit these workers hard. The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Denver is $2,400, which is up 16.5 percent from last year. The current maximum wage of a King Soopers worker is just $3,100 a month. A worker supporting a family of four in Denver would need to make twice that, $36 an hour, to have a living wage, according to the MIT living wage calculator.

Internationally there have been major struggles as well:

• About 155,000 metalworkers in South Africa struck over wages.
• Volvo car workers in Belgium took part in a wildcat walkout.
• About 2,400 Vale nickel miners and Rio Tinto smelter workers in Canada struck after voting down union endorsed concessions.
• Tea plantation workers, health care workers and teachers in Sri Lanka have held a series of actions in defense of living conditions and democratic rights.
• About 30,000 nurses, health care assistants and midwives at public hospitals in New Zealand walked off their jobs against inadequate pay.
• Teachers, transit workers and railway workers in Brazil have organized strikes and protests against government austerity measures during the pandemic.

Wildcat strikes erupted in Turkey earlier this week after unions for 150,000 metalworkers signed a sellout deal cutting real wages of workers. The soaring cost of living in Turkey is creating unprecedented levels of social discontent.

Teachers in both the city of Chicago and across France have staged walkouts over the policy of forcing schools to stay open despite the upsurge of the Omicron variant. COVID-19 cases are surging globally, with cases averaging more than 760,000 daily in the US and 1,700 daily deaths. France reported 305,322 new COVID-19 cases Thursday. Close to 100,000 have died in France during the pandemic.

The treacherous role of the unions in strangling these struggles is indicated by US Census Bureau figures that show for the 12-month period ending in September 2021 average wage growth for nonunion workers substantially exceeded that for unionized workers, 4.7 percent versus 3.5 percent respectively.

The fact that the unions so far have contained the strike movement has not halted worried talk in the financial press about a “wages push” undercutting profits. The restoration of long abandoned cost-of-living increases, in particular by workers at Deere, has evoked hostile commentary in the Wall Street Journal and other business publications.

The fight by workers to defend their living standards against surging inflation is bound up with the fight to end the pandemic. This is not simply a medical question. The policy of the ruling class, allowing the virus to spread unchecked, is based on the subordination of every aspect of life, including public health and safety, to the mad drive for enrichment of the financial oligarchy. The working class must advance a different social principle, the prioritization of its own needs, its lives and health as well as living standards, over corporate profit.

While the ruling class proclaims that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic, that is it will go on killing millions indefinitely, the working class cannot accept this “solution.” Nor can it accept the efforts of capitalist governments to make workers pay the financial costs for this catastrophe.

Destroying Democracy: China in Hong Kong

Mel Gurtov

On July 1, 1997 the United Kingdom formally handed Hong Kong over to China under an agreement that was supposed to give Hong Kong 50 years of autonomy: “one country, two systems,” Deng Xiaoping promised.

That same year, students and professors at the University of Hong Kong erected a statue, called “Pillar of Shame,” to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The tall sculpture by a Danish artist lasted until the end of 2021 when, in the dead of night, it was carved in half and removed. Two other sculptures of the same event at two other Hong Kong universities were also removed. The ongoing eclipse of civil society by the PRC authorities could not have been more starkly demonstrated.

It Can Happen Here

Authoritarian rule is by nature incapable of tolerating dissent, the rule of law, freedom of press and speech, and organized political opposition. Institutions erected to support representative government become mere shells, operating to cloak predetermined policies and give the pretense of legitimate authority.

What we are witnessing in Hong Kong under direct rule by Beijing follows that script. The Chinese authorities there, like their bosses in Beijing, are ruthlessly efficient when it comes to curtailing or simply extinguishing democracy.

They force the closure of independent media, arrest leaders of protest movements and other outspoken critics, track and threaten dissidents who have gone abroad (and their families still in China), and create rules that make independent thinkers ineligible to hold office.

All this is accompanied by Orwellian language about promoting real democracy and protecting society from people who “cause trouble” and engage in “subversion.”

Many observers took the attitude of “it can’t happen here” because protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020, which started over an extradition bill and broadened to demands for greater autonomy, seemed to have the support of a clear majority of the city’s 7.4 million people.  Beijing surely wouldn’t crack down on a highly visible and defiant uprising in an international trade and financial hub.

The protesters, however, had no central leadership and no game plan, while Beijing controlled the police, the courts, and, if necessary, the People’s Liberation Army bivouacked on the edge of the city. China’s leaders had no interest in negotiating with the demonstrators, apparently believing that to do so would legitimize the protests and weaken its rule.

The new face of Hong Kong is direct Chinese intervention.

It began with Beijing proclaiming the right to “supervise” Hong Kong’s internal affairs, in violation of the Basic Law that was supposed to protect Hong Kong’s autonomy. China’s legislature passed a new national security law and suspended legislative council elections in Hong Kong for a year.

Then, in early 2021, what little remained of democratic governance in Hong Kong was obliterated by imposition of a loyalty oath that candidates for district councils would have to take. The oath, to China and the Chinese Communist Party, was announced as a test of patriotism and “political reform.”

Hong Kong legislative elections in December 2021 under Beijing’s new rules yielded predictable results. Only “patriots” were allowed to run.  Turnout was a record low. Pro-China candidates won all but one seat, including all the directly elected seats that normally would have been won by opposition forces.

Virtually all elements of civil society, such as labor and student unions and nongovernmental organizations, have been disbanded. Leaders of the protest movement have either been arrested or been able to leave Hong Kong. Independent news sources have disappeared one by one, notably including the arrest of the editors of the independent newspaper Apple Daily, followed by its closure.

The other day, Stand News, the last independent news outlet in Hong Kong, was forced to close, its offices raided by the Hong Kong police and its files seized.  A former member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council said:

“Our freedom movement, our democratic movement, a large part of it relies on, for us, we have access to truth, we have access to a different narrative compared to the one the government is providing to us. And it’s really difficult for us to find a really credible and well-read news media outlet for now.”

Difficult?  I would say, impossible.

What Can Be Done?

Hong Kong is not going to become another Xinjiang, but neither will it be just another Chinese province.  Hong Kong is a highly visible enclave, a dynamic center of international business with a well-educated Cantonese-speaking population that has its own diaspora. It has voluble supporters in the US Congress, in Australia, and in Canada.

Unlike Trump, the Biden administration and members of Congress have responded to China’s policies in Hong Kong with vociferous criticism and sanctions.

Trump reportedly told Xi Jinping in June 2019, that Washington would “tone down” its comments on the spiraling protests. “Very tough situation,” Trump tweeted on August 12, 2019, “hope it works out for everybody, including China.”

Legislation such as the US Senate’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act appropriately sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong officials, but to little effect. Not only has Beijing shrugged off the criticism, it has refocused Hong Kong’s economy on those international investors and banks that don’t make an issue of political repression.  Instead of experiencing capital flight, Hong Kong has seen a higher inflow of capital as the national security law took effect.

Western sanctions, in short, are proving to be insufficient to derail Xi Jinping’s aims, and China’s apparent reluctance to impose harsh rules on companies and banks that remain in Hong Kong may be helping its cause.  As one observer noted, “The way things are playing out in Hong Kong demonstrates just how hard it will be for Washington and its partners to carry out a comprehensive ‘strategic competition’ with China.”

Hong Kong thus joins the ranks of countries and territories where democracy and social justice demanded by an overwhelming majority of the population has been denied by force. Belarus and Kazakhstan are other recent examples. The sad reality is that the international community has very few means to protect these populations other than sanctions and shaming.

Eastern Europe reaches over 1 million coronavirus deaths

Martin Nowak

People light candles to commemorate those who who have died from COVID-19 as Poland hit the sad milestone of 100,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. The commemoration in the center of the Polish capital was organized by the opposition party Civic Platform. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Just before the New Year, the number of coronavirus fatalities in Eastern Europe passed the 1 million mark, according to estimates by Reuters .

Although this region, which stretches from the Czech Republic to Russia and Romania, is home to only 39 percent of the European population, it accounts for 55 percent of the 1.8 million European coronavirus deaths. According to the statistics website Worldometer, 317,687 people succumbed to the virus just in Russia, 100,254 in Poland, 97,554 in Ukraine, 59,070 in Romania, 40,016 in Hungary and 36,683 in the Czech Republic (as of January 12).

The fall wave of Delta variant infections has created catastrophic conditions even in smaller countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, which are reporting hundreds of deaths per day. Poland reported a new daily high of 794 fatalities on December 29. As in all Eastern European countries, the Polish government watched passively as daily infections grew from a few hundred in the summer to over 20,000 recently.

Since November, the proportion of positive tests in Poland has been around 20 percent, suggesting massive under-reporting. The death toll is likewise rapidly rising, recently averaging around 450 a week.

Hospitalizations in Poland have peaked for the time being, with over 24,000 coronavirus patients hospitalized on December 17. Around 2,000 patients required artificial respiration due to their critical condition. As a result, the health care system is on the verge of collapse. According to the Ministry of Health, the country has about 31,900 COVID-19 beds and 2,900 ventilators.

In Poland, only 57 percent of the population is doubly vaccinated. Only 19 percent have received a so-called booster vaccination, which is crucial in significantly reducing the risk of a severe course of disease. Since the proportion of the population over 65 years of age is 18.7 percent, a large proportion of the total population is at extreme risk.

In other Eastern European countries, the situation is similarly dramatic. For example, the vaccination rate in Romania is just over 40 percent, in Ukraine and Hungary just over 30 percent, and in Russia 46 percent. At 64 percent, the Czech Republic still has one of the highest vaccination rates in the region, but due to the official policy of mass infection, it still has one of the highest death rates (3,398 deaths per million inhabitants).

The mass mortality in Eastern Europe is a screaming indictment of the capitalist profit system. The reintroduction of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago ushered in an unprecedented social counterrevolution. The oligarchy, recruited from former Stalinist bureaucrats, hit the Eastern European countries with one “reform” after another in the interests of the banks and corporations.

The health care system has been stripped to the bone. Health care spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in all Eastern European countries was below the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average in 2019, and thus below the level of most developed industrial nations. The number of hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants is also below average.

Despite these horrific conditions, Eastern European governments have refused to respond with the necessary measures.

The right-wing Polish PIS government tightened measures only minimally shortly before the Christmas holidays. Occupancy rates for restaurants, hotels, cinemas, theatres, sports facilities and religious institutions, for example, have been reduced to 30 percent. However, those who are vaccinated are exempt. As of this week, all students are back in attendance at classes. Kindergartens and businesses are also open without restrictions.

The newly elected Czech government led by Petr Fiala likewise ended the state of emergency shortly before New Year’s Eve. As in many countries, the remaining measures are limited to leisure activities and to the unvaccinated. Schools and businesses are open without restriction.

The quarantine period has been shortened to five days so that profits flow despite mass infection. A so-called “test-to-stay” policy has been introduced in schools. A positive rapid test now no longer sends children into quarantine, rather only a positive PCR test.

So far, only a few dozen cases of the new Omicron variant have been officially detected in Eastern European countries. But with the first official Polish Omicron case reported as early as December 16 in Katowice, Poland, it is clear that the virus is far more prevalent than reported.

Scientists have long warned of the immense danger posed by the spread of Omicron. The eight-member Coronavirus Panel of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) said in a statement on December 21 that Omicron is “a threat to us all.”

The scientists point out that Omicron undermines vaccine protection and only with a booster vaccination can the risk of symptomatic disease be reduced by about 75 percent. At the same time, the scientists say, the variant is much more contagious, meaning that even assuming Omicron is “milder,” which is by no means proven, it will max out the health care system. In the face of mass infections, not only the health care system but also other parts of the critical infrastructure could be crippled.

“Even assuming that Omicron is less pathogenic than Delta, the very high number of cases will result in a maximum burden on the health care system—both for hospitals and primary care facilities. We must not forget that in Poland the number of doctors and nurses per inhabitant is extremely low, by far the lowest in the countries of the European Union. Numerous quarantines can paralyze not only the health care system, but also other infrastructure important for the functioning of society: police, firefighters, border guards, army, education, courts, public transport, energy, etc.”

The scientists urge strict monitoring of distance and masking rules in public. They also say a return to reduced social contact is necessary. The statement ends with an urgent plea, “Let us take the looming threat as seriously as it deserves.”

Even Andrzej Horban, chief medical adviser to the Polish prime minister, better known for relativizing the dangers of the coronavirus, expressed this clearly. In an interview with the newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Horban spoke of a “tsunami of infected people.” He called discussions about compulsory vaccination and vaccination passport controls a “joke” in view of the facts.

About 12 million Poles are not vaccinated, and “all of these people” would become “infected with the new variant,” he said. Of them, “statistically, 5 to 10 percent would go to the hospital.” So “about a million people would have to be accommodated.” And even if the wave extends “over a few months,” that means “we may need 50,000-60,000 COVID beds. Not to mention where we’re going to get doctors and other medical personnel.”

With vaccination rates low and infections rising, he said, “There will be no option but to implement a hard lockdown.” There is a need to “come to our senses.” “The tsunami is coming, and it’s our duty to warn everyone about it.”

The governments in Eastern Europe know full well that their “profits before lives” policies are creating an ever-greater disaster, with millions infected and killed.