Australia: Svitzer steps up pressure on workers to accept cuts to wages and conditions

Terry Cook

Svitzer, Australia’s largest tugboat operator, is stepping up its campaign of intimidation to force workers to accept a new enterprise agreement (EA) that would slash wages and conditions.

Tugboats Svitzer Eagle (left) and Svitzer Falcon (right) near the entrance to the inner harbour of Fremantle Harbour, Western Australia, 2015 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The company, part of the Danish-owned Maersk international shipping group, has made clear it is determined to drive through regressive changes across its Australian operations, which involve more than 100 tugs.

Svitzer’s proposed EA covers 540 workers who are members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), the Australia Maritime Officers Union (AMOU) and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (AIMPE).

During negotiations that have dragged on through 50 meetings since the old EA expired in 2019, the company has maintained its aggressive position. Last month, even as he claimed Svitzer was “bargaining in good faith,” managing director Nicolaj Noes declared he was “not prepared to agree to a new EA that replicates legacy terms which had been agreed more than 22 years ago, in a completely different market.” Noes added: “We are looking to secure an EA which reflects the current market and meets our customers’ demands and expectations.”

In other words, what little remains of working conditions fought for and won by previous generations must be dismantled to ensure that the lives of employees are ever more tightly bound to the company’s demand for increased profits.

Svitzer management and the maritime unions have provided little detail about the 30 changes being demanded by the company, which include slashing full-day minimum shift lengths for casuals, abolishing fixed crewing levels and an end to any say from the unions in relation to hiring.

The proposed agreement would deliver pay increases of just 1.5 percent per annum this year and next. This paltry pay “rise” is well below the current inflation rate of 3.5 percent and far short of the 4.5 percent rise over the last 12 months to the cost of non-discretionary goods and services such as food, fuel, housing and health care. Moreover, as the current EA expired in 2019, workers did not receive a pay rise in 2020 or 2021.

After workers voted down Svitzer’s proposed EA by a massive 92 percent, the company applied last month to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), Australia’s pro-business industrial tribunal, to terminate the existing EA. If Svitzer’s FWC application is granted, the workers would be pushed onto the minimum industrial award, with far lower wages and greatly diminished working conditions.

Svitzer is ruthlessly pursuing this cost-cutting agenda although its parent company saw a 55 percent increase in revenue to $US61.8 billion in 2021. Maersk’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation tripled to $US24 billion and its free cash flow stood at a massive $US16.5 billion.

In 2020, Svitzer made 18 tugboat operators at its Geelong base redundant, claiming it was preparing to wind up operations at the Victorian port. In fact, the sacked employees were replaced with fly-in-fly-out labour hire workers.

The company has only been able to step up its intimidation because the maritime unions, with the MUA in the lead, have systematically worked to contain and isolate the dispute. The workers, increasingly frustrated with the interminable negotiations, voted overwhelmingly last year for a campaign of industrial action to oppose Svitzer’s demands and to defend their wages and conditions.

The unions, however, have consciously worked to undermine any genuine struggle, restricting all opposition to limited and sporadic stoppages and ineffectual work bans to ensure minimal disruption to Svitzer’s operations. The aim has been to “let off steam” and gain time for the unions to continue working behind the scenes to broker an outcome in line with the company’s demands, but which could be palmed off to workers as the best outcome possible.

Responding to Svitzer’s move to terminate the current EA, MUA assistant national secretary Jamie Newlyn complained that the company was abandoning “the flexibility and productivity that the enterprise agreement provides” and was “making it all but impossible for round-the-clock operations at Svitzer tugs to continue.”

As in recent MUA sell-outs at Qube and Victoria International Container Terminal, the union’s overriding concern in the Svitzer dispute is not to defend the jobs and conditions of its members, but to maintain its position as an industrial police force for management.

Putting further pressure on the Svitzer workers, the MUA this month “brokered peace” with Patrick Terminals in a two-year dispute in which limited industrial action was repeatedly shut down by the union. The recent union-management “in-principle” agreement includes wage rises far short of the rapidly increasing cost of living, grants the company complete control over hiring and firing, and delivers it “much-needed flexibilities.”

Like Svitzer, Patrick had applied to the FWC to terminate the previous agreement covering workers. The MUA’s deal with Patrick demonstrates the union’s readiness to utilise the threat of minimum award conditions to beat down workers’ resistance and impose a sell-out.

The unions have blocked any unified action between the Svitzer workers and their counterparts at Patrick or at tugboat operator Smit Lamnalco, which serves Gladstone, the largest multi-commodity port in the state of Queensland. In December, that company also applied to the FWC to terminate its EA covering marine engineers and members of the AMOU and AIMPE.

Last week, the AMOU, which covers master drivers on Svitzer’s tugs, informed the company it was calling a series of 48-hour work stoppages staggered over the ports in Brisbane, Sydney, Fremantle and Newcastle between February 17 and 25.

Far from the beginning of a counter-offensive by the unions against Svitzer’s increasing attacks, the purpose of these stoppages is to contain and hose down the growing anger among workers to allow the unions to continue their behind-the-scenes negotiations with the company.

Announcing the stoppages, AMOU executive officer Mark Davis proclaimed tugboat masters to be “a responsible group of workers with little previous intention to take strike action,” but said “the behaviour of the company has so exasperated them that they have had to withdraw their labour.” Even as it announced the stoppages, the union assured Svitzer there would be exemptions, including for “emergencies, defence or threat to life and property.”

The Svitzer workers face a concerted attack by the company, which has the complete support of the Australian political establishment. The Liberal-National federal government has made clear in recent months it is completely on board with the demands of business to restructure working conditions across the waterfront and the whole logistics sector.

Asked in December whether the government would intervene to prevent strikes at Patrick Terminals, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared: “I can assure you that the government will take action, if needed, to protect the Australian economy from serious harm.”

While the MUA denounced Morrison’s statement, their actual response was to ensure no industrial action was taken at Patrick in the lucrative pre-Christmas period.

The company is also assured of Labor’s backing. The FWC, with its extensive powers to terminate agreements and industrial action, together with the draconian industrial laws it enforces, were introduced by previous Labor governments with the full support of the trade unions.

The deepening assault on jobs and conditions across the ports, and the working class more broadly, is only possible because the unions have, for decades, suppressed any genuine opposition among workers. Amid growing anger over the “let it rip” pandemic policies, and the accompanying assault on wages and conditions, the unions are doing everything they can to prevent a breakout of the class struggle and any independent political action by workers.

Tugboat workers who, unlike Svitzer executives, are essential to port operations are in a powerful position to wage a genuine fight for improved wages and conditions and to win the support of major sections of the working class.

Shelling in Donbass brings Europe to brink of war

Clara Weiss

On Thursday, heavy artillery shelling, including of residential areas, was reported in East Ukraine’s Donbass region. It is the most significant military escalation of the conflict between the US-funded Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists since at least last spring. News of the bombardment came just hours after an “invasion” of Ukraine by Russia, which the US claimed was supposed to take place on February 16, failed to materialize. The Kremlin has always denied that it had any such plans.

Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, volunteer military units of the Armed Forces, train in a city park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

The Kremlin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that the situation in Donbass could “at any moment” escalate “into a new eruption of war in the immediate vicinity of our borders.”

In one village in territory controlled by the Luhansk People’s Republic, a kindergarten and a school were struck. The separatists blamed the Ukrainian military, while Kiev implicated the separatists.

Without providing any evidence, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was a “false-flag operation” by Russia designed to “discredit” the Ukrainians. For weeks, US and UK media and intelligence agencies have issued unsubstantiated allegations of a planned “false flag operation” by Russia. The allegations have been so absurd that recently even an AP reporter challenged a state department spokesman over them.

The current escalation in the Donbass can only be understood against the background of US efforts to provoke a war with Russia. Following an extraordinarily belligerent speech by US president Joe Biden on Tuesday, US and NATO officials insisted that the threat of a Russian invasion remains imminent even as Russia reportedly began withdrawing some of its troops.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged on Thursday that there has been no Russian troop withdrawal and that Russian troops “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” Washington-based journal Politico has now declared yet another supposed date for a Russian invasion—February 20.

Blinken announced that he will attend the Munich Security Conference, which is set to begin tomorrow in Germany, along with US Vice President Kamala Harris. At the same time, NATO’s general secretary Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance is preparing a further build-up its forces along Russia’s border. This kind of war-time mobilization against a “Russian threat”, he said, would now have to be accepted as “the new normal in Europe.”

Shortly after news of the shelling on Thursday broke, Moscow submitted its response to the US’ rejection of its December demands for security guarantees. The Kremlin reiterated that it wants a guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO, that NATO will return to its 1997 borders, and that NATO will not station nuclear missiles near the Russian border and will withdraw ones currently there. The Kremlin insisted again that it is not preparing any invasion of Ukraine. Noting that the US had failed to take into account any of its security demands, the Kremlin said that it would not budge and might be “forced to respond, including through the realization of measures of a military-technical character.”

For reasons that have not been made public, Moscow expelled the US’ deputy ambassador to Russia on Thursday.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky tacks between militarist tub-thumping and calls for calm. As the shelling in the Donbass escalated this week, he made a trip to the front to praise Ukrainian troops. In an interview with RBC Ukraina, he then effectively stated that his government would no longer accept the Minsk accords of 2015. While he said that Kiev would work within the Normandy format—four-way negotiations involving Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine—he insisted a new major international agreement would have to be signed.

This agreement, Zelensky demanded, would have to provide Ukraine with “security guarantees” tantamount to those that NATO members receive since the process of Ukraine's NATO accession is dragging on. At the same time, Zelensky again denounced the war hysteria in the Western media.

In recent remarks, David Arakhmia, head of Ukraine’s Servant of the People party, has said that this “hysteria is now costing the country $2-3 billion every month.” He described the “fake” information spread by CNN, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal as a form of “hybrid warfare” that was “worse” than the work of top Russian state propagandists. Beyond the economic concerns that drive these statements, there are no doubt fears in sections of the Ukrainian oligarchy that their country will be turned into another “Afghan trap” for Russia, as has repeatedly been threatened by US officials. In such a scenario, they could well find themselves hung out to dry.

Ukraine is becoming increasingly destabilized by the war drive against Russia. It is far from clear whether Zelensky is in control of the situation in the country. Over the past weeks, there have been many indications that preparations for the overthrow of his government and his replacement with someone more immediately compliant to the US are underway.

Adding another element of enormous instability to the situation is the fact that Ukraine’s fascists have been emboldened by the escalation of the conflict with Russia and the shameless Western media campaign promoting them as fighters for “democracy” and “freedom.” These forces, having been de facto integrated into the state and military apparatus, are heavily armed. Since November, Dmitry Yarosh, who led the fascist Right Sector during the 2014 coup and is still running his own far-right paramilitary unit, has been an adviser to the head of Ukraine's general staff, Valery Zaluzhny.

Starting in early 2021, “retaking” Crimea and the Donbass—a long-standing demand of the far-right—was made a part of Ukraine’s official military strategy. Spelling out what is no doubt being discussed behind closed doors, Oleh Tyahnybok, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and head of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party, declared earlier this month that Russia had to be “dismembered” and split into two “20 national states” in order for Crimea to be “returned” to Ukraine. Russian President Putin has repeatedly invoked this very scenario—that is, a repetition on a grander scale of the carve-up of Yugoslavia—as a principal concern.

After three decades of imperialist encirclement—a reality for which they and their Stalinist predecessors are directly responsible--substantial sections of the Russian ruling class increasingly view a war as inevitable.

Sergei Karaganov, the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council of Foreign and Defense Policy, said in a recent interview, “[T]he dilemma we face is quite simple. If we remain in the current system (i.e., looking blankly at NATO's expansion into Ukraine), war is inevitable. …In that sense, our concern is how to find a way to achieve a stable and equitable security system in Europe and thus avoid a military conflict. We want to change the system without a big war. Nevertheless, I don't rule out that a small war or a series of local wars could still happen. There is simply a high probability that our Western ‘partners,’ due to their forgetfulness of history or their malicious stupidity—which they have as, alas, has been demonstrated over the past decades—will try to prevent the ‘soft’ scenario, [and] will try to provoke us.

“So the situation is really acute. And [because] it is so acute that we must go all the way, because if we do not, the system will collapse anyway. And then a big war will be inevitable, and it may start on conditions beyond our control. The choice, therefore, is clear.”

Explaining why the Kremlin advanced its demands for security guarantees in December, Karaganov went on to state that Russia now had better “trump cards” for negotiating with the US than ever before. While Karaganov did not go into any details, the Kremlin has been seeking to play on tensions between the imperialist powers, especially Germany and the US, and also hopes to exploit fears of a Russo-Sino alliance as US imperialism increasingly focuses on preparing for war with China.

Whatever the geopolitical and domestic calculations of either Washington or the Kremlin, the dynamics unleashed by the crisis of capitalism and US imperialism’s military rampage over the past decades inexorably lead toward a catastrophic war.

Mass strikes and protests continue in Puerto Rico against debt deal

Rafael Azul

On Wednesday, a coalition of unions and social movements called for new protests and strikes this Friday in San Juan. At issue are wages and pensions which are under attack by the Financial Oversight and Management Board. A month ago, federal courts gave the go-ahead to a settlement between Wall Street hedge funds and other holders of Puerto Rican bonds and the Pedro Pierluisi administration.

Striking teachers in Puerto Rico (Twitter/@irizarry_aimee)

The settlement represents an attack on the Puerto Rican working class and is being challenged by workers across the island. The protests that followed the announcement of the debt deal have become massive. Last week thousands marched and rallied in San Juan’s La Fortaleza government house.

This Friday’s protest will very likely take the form of a general strike across the Island. Public workers will picket their places of employment early in the morning and then begin a series of marches that will unite them in mass rallies in San Juan and other cities.

“We demand a decent retirement and no privatizations,” [of schools and public corporations] said Javier Córdoba, spokesperson for the Association of Puerto Rican University Professors.

In addition to the University Professors, also joining in this job action are members of the Puerto Rican Workers Union (SPT), the Union of Electric and Water Workers (UTIER), the Teachers Federation, The Central Workers Federation, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and other unions.

Migdalia Santiago, President of the EDUCAMOS teachers’ group, declared on Thursday that there is a very real possibility of a general strike by all workers on Friday. It depends, in part, how the governor manages this “pressure cooker that is in his hands right now.” Santiago suggests that there is some concession that the governor can make at the eleventh hour.

UTIER members walked off their jobs on Thursday evening in preparation for the action Friday.

On Wednesday, protesting highway construction and maintenance workers, also members of UTIER, had blocked access to the Highway Authority’s headquarters in San Juan’s business district [Santurce] demanding decent wages. Four protesters were arrested by the police for blocking the entrance to the building. The highway workers have been working without a contract since 2014. At a meeting last month with government officials the workers had been promised an answer on January 14. Instead, the Authority is now putting off a response until May 15, which the protesting workers consider a delaying tactic.

The four workers arrested for blocking the building have been charged with obstruction, according to a police report.

Notably absent in the above list of protesting organizations is the 40,000-member American Federation of Teachers-affiliated Puerto Rican Teachers Association (AMPR), whose leadership has ignored the strike movement. Instead, it negotiated with the Financial Oversight Board the pension givebacks that teachers are rejecting today.

In 2017, when AMPR became part of the American Federation of Teachers, AFT president Randi Weingarten issued a demagogic statement declaring that “An attack on teachers anywhere is an attack on teachers everywhere. AMPR has been battling against austerity and privatization in Puerto Rico and the everyday consequences for the Island’s people. With this affiliation, the 1.6 million members of the AFT will join that fight.” Now it is openly sabotaging the fight against the oversight board.

The danger facing workers is that the unions are attempting to divert this powerful movement against the demands of the bankers into futile appeals to the Puerto Rican legislature, Governor Pierluisi and the federal courts. Such efforts are bound to fail, and only serve to wear down and demoralize workers. There is in fact, no local Puerto Rican solution to this debt crisis.

CDC director spouts anti-mask rhetoric as thousands of Americans die daily

Benjamin Mateus

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Wednesday, “We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing.”

Walensky’s comments came as 2,200 people were dying on average each day in the US from COVID-19.

A poll conducted by CBS News-YouGov found that 56 percent of Americans support mask requirements for indoor venues.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during an event on Dec. 8, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

One in 300 people in the US, more than 955,000, have died from COVID-19, certainly an underestimate. Already more than 80 million Americans have been infected in the two years since the pandemic began to take a foothold in the country. Yesterday, 2,184 people were reportedly killed by complications of COVID-19. Over 97 percent of counties in the country are continuing to report high rates of community transmission.

COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, a modeling center based out of Penn State University that utilizes multiple datasets to forecast their projections which are shared with the White House, had projected that between mid-December to mid-March the US could expect to see 191,000 deaths. Thus far, 130,000 have died and at the current pace it can be construed as a highly reliable estimate.

Indeed, when the World Health Organization declared Omicron a variant of concern, the news was replete with how mild Omicron was and a cause to celebrate the mass infection that would offer the population herd immunity. These sentiments were being professed with the memory of Delta still fresh on the minds of the population.

Notably, the Omicron wave produced a peak of deaths that eclipsed even Delta’s onslaught. It was shy of last winter’s catastrophic proportions by 25 percent. And this was despite 75 percent of the adult population having been fully vaccinated.

In a recent “In the Bubble” podcast hosted by Andy Slavitt, former interim senior advisor to the COVID-19 response coordinator in the Biden administration, featuring Dr. Kristian Andersen of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, they raised an important question. What would endemic look like?

Andersen noted that a return to 2019 normalcy would mean expecting everyone in the population to get infected at least twice a year. He added, “If we are looking at the number of deaths resulting as a result of this, we have to be realistic too that this is not going to be no common cold or flu.” Slavitt countered, “Look, I don’t think they want to say that, but I do think that implicit in this is an acceptance that there are going to be, at least in the US, 200 to 250 thousand deaths a year at baseline.”

As the estimates given by Slavitt underscore, an “endemic” state can be deadly year in and year out without an end in sight.

In Denmark, where health authorities are pursuing the “Danish model,” which means allowing the virus to rip whatever the consequences, daily cases continue to reach pandemic highs of over 50,000 per day. The death toll has caught up with the peak of last winter and continues to rise. More have died in this wave than any other wave during the pandemic.

The dominant strain in Denmark is BA.2, which a recent study out of Japan highlighted very concerning findings. Not only is it more contagious than its distant cousin BA.1, but it also appears to cause more severe disease and may have the ability to deflect some of the important treatments used against SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Kei Sato, the researcher who conducted the study at the University of Tokyo, explained that BA.2 is highly mutated and argued that his findings establish that BA.2 should be considered a new strain. Dr. Deborah Fuller, a virologist at the University of Washington School of medicine who reviewed the study, told CNN, “It looks like we might be looking at a new Greek letter here.”

The subvariant of Omicron is beginning to spread across the Eastern and Western seaboards. Though it accounts for less than five percent of all sequenced cases, some experts are warning it will become dominant in the US and worldwide. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, in region three, which includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland, the BA.2 variant accounted for 6.2 percent of cases.

These developments coincide with the efforts by the Biden administration to politically declare the pandemic over. The policies they will be implementing in the next few weeks will intersect with the growth of the BA.2 variant and will likely lead to another massive wave of infections.

Health experts declare Sri Lanka is being hit by a tsunami of Omicron infections

Pani Wijesiriwardena

On Wednesday, the Daily Mirror quoted comments from health experts who warned that Sri Lanka was “in the midst of a massive Omicron wave sweeping through the country.” They added, “We don’t know the actual caseload, but the situation is far from normal. The caseload has risen tremendously due to the Omicron variant.”

Despite a drastic drop in testing in order to hide the full extent of the pandemic, more than 1,000 cases have been officially reported every day since January 31. On Wednesday, Health Ministry Technical Division director Dr. Anwar Hamdani told Ada Derana that the number of COVID-19 infected patients had increased by 20 percent, deaths by 17 percent and patients depending on oxygen by 12 percent over the previous week.

School students and teachers packed together on railway steps in Colombo suburb [Photo WSWS Media]

The current official daily COVID-19 death toll is around 30. Thirty-six deaths were reported on Wednesday, surpassing the previous day’s figure of 31. According to statistics, the total number of infections since the pandemic hit the island is now over 633,000 with total deaths at 15,899. Rising infections have overwhelmed the limited number of COVID-dedicated hospitals and seen thousands of patients pushed into so-called “home quarantine.”

Over 5,000 health employees have been infected, including more than 1,000 nurses. On Monday, 20 doctors and 60 other frontline workers at Badulla Hospital tested positive.

Last month, a Naththandiya Dhammissara National School student died of the coronavirus, taking the official student death toll to 90 since the pandemic began in 2020. COVID infections among students and teachers have been reported all over the island.

Last month, the government’s murderous policy of “living with the virus” saw 232 virus-infected Grade 5 students forced to sit for scholarship examinations. This month, 29 separate district level centres have been established so that COVID-19 infected candidates can participate in Advanced Level examinations. Education authorities ordered infected students in quarantine “to report to the designated examination centre mentioned in their examination admission form.”

Workplaces are being hit hard. Free Trade Zone Manufacturers Association secretary Dhammika Fernando told the Sunday Times that there were “huge absentees of about 15 to 20 percent in each and every factory” because of COVID-19 and lamented that factories were being delayed in fulfilling their orders.

The Sunday Times reported that in contrast to previous outbreaks, “today the management is asking employees to continue to work as a result of which the pandemic is widely spreading in the factories.”

Rather than challenging this, the trade unions are fully collaborating with the companies. Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees Union leader Anton Marcus said that his union was calling for a meeting of the National Labour Advisory Council and the health authorities. Employers must “take the situation seriously as they too have a responsibility to look after the welfare of their workers,” he declared.

Marcus’s union—like all the other unions that fully supported reopening the economy and maintaining production at all cost—has not called for temporary closures of non-essential factories or full pay and proper health facilities and treatment for those infected.

Voicing the Rajapakse regime’s brutal indifference to the tsunami of Omicron, Sri Lankan Army Commander General Shavendra Silva told a press conference last week that despite “the huge spread of the coronavirus, the government has no intention of re-imposing travel restrictions.” Starting in April 2020, Colombo began systematically removing the limited health restrictions, with current restrictions applying to just some public gatherings.

What is needed to save lives is the closure of schools and non-essential production, the imposition of travel restrictions and the modernisation of the entire health infrastructure.

Against these essential requirements, the army commander cynically appealed to the population to “follow the health security measures.” The current rudimentary health measures will not stop the virus from spreading, as masses of people are forced to travel in congested buses and work in factories where social distancing is impossible.

Neither the government nor its health authorities have any concern for the lives of working people. From the outset, their priority has been to maintain big business profits. This, they declare, is “defending the country’s economy”—i.e., the profit system.

Long lines outside vaccination centres in plantation areas [Photo credit: Facebook]

Instead of a virus-elimination policy to defend human lives, rulers all over the world, including the Rajapakse administration, have imposed murderous “living with the virus” policies, resulting in the deaths of millions of people.

The outcome of these criminal measures finds its starkest expression in the US, the wealthiest country in the world, where the official COVID death toll recently surpassed 900,000. By contrast, in China, which has the largest population in the world and which follows a zero-COVID policy, less than 5,000 COVID deaths have been reported.

Principled epidemiologists have repeatedly explained that vaccination alone, without a range of public health measures, will not stop or control the pandemic. This scientific truth has been proven in the negative in the US and Europe where higher vaccinations rates have failed to stop a tsunami of the deadly Omicron variant. The World Health Organisation has predicted that half of the entire population in Europe will be infected with the coronavirus in the next few months.

Addressing Independence Day celebration on February 4, President Rajapakse declared: “We understood very early that the only solution to control the COVID-19 pandemic was vaccination. Accordingly, we have been able to start community life by controlling the disease by administering both doses to more than 85 percent of the population.” In plain language, Rajapakse is making clear that his regime will do nothing to prevent the spread of Omicron and the ongoing health catastrophe.

Several Sri Lankan health experts have backed Rajapakse’s “living with the virus” death agenda and promoted illusions in the government’s vaccination drive. The newest of these is Dr. Nadeeka Janage, a specialist virologist at the National Medical Research Institute. The Economy Next website on February 5 reported that Janage claimed that “by providing more and more vaccination, the pandemic can be brought to endemic level.” These comments are in line with a right-wing international campaign to “endemicise” the pandemic.

The anti-scientific character and the political objectives of these efforts were exposed in a January 25 WSWS article published on January 25. The article quoted Dr. Raina MacIntyre, an internationally acclaimed Australian epidemiologist, who stated: “Denial of the science of epidemiology is widespread, even among ‘experts.’ We are told repeatedly that SARS-CoV-2 will become ‘endemic.’ But it will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. The key difference is spread.”

MacIntyre pointed out that respiratory transmission infections, such as influenza, measles and Sars-CoV-2 do not become endemic. She stated: “Public health is the organized response by society to protect and promote health and to prevent illness, injury, and disability. It is a core responsibility of government.”

The “endemicising” theory peddled by Janage and others is an anti-scientific attempt to justify the criminal policies of governments all over the world, which defend the capitalist profit system.

MEST Africa Training Programme 2023 for African Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline:

• Application Deadline: 20th April 2022
• Final Interviews: May 2022 in Accra, Lagos, Dakkar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg
• Training Program beings August 2022 in Accra

Eligible Countries: This program is open to anyone of any nationality or citizenship who meets all the application requirements.

To be taken at (country): The training will take place online.

About the MEST Africa Training Programme: MEST offers a full scholarship to a 12-month graduate-level entrepreneurial training in business, communications and software development, including extensive hands-on project work, culminating in a final pitch and the chance to receive seed funding.

This campaign falls in line with MEST’s plan to create a pan-African network which will pool the collective talents of entrepreneurs and techies alike. The campaign will also seek to increase the number of entrepreneurs by empowering young Africans while increasing investment eligibility throughout Africa.

Type: Entrepreneurship, Training

Eligibility: To be eligible for the MEST Africa Training Programme, applicants need to meet the following requirements:

• A degree from a top university or Technical College or equivalent experience with at least two (2) years corporate and startup experience (preferred)
• Deep skills in either communications, business or software development (from the onset or acquired during the Pre-Learning stage)
• Young persons crazy about tech and entrepreneurship, and how to use technology to achieve business results
• Should be ready to commit to a full residential program for a whole year
• Disciplined, motivated self-starter who can work and deliver on assignments and projects – demonstrate this by completing the required Pre-Learning courses and MEST’s rigorous recruitment process
• An entrepreneurial spirit and strong desire to start a company
• Ability to communicate candidly and persuasively
• Ability to work well in teams, proven academic or professional excellence
• Demonstrated leadership abilities
• Confident and independent thinking
• Excellent people skills

Number of Awards: 60

Value of MEST Africa Training: The MEST Training Program is fully-sponsored and requires no financial payments to MEST. This is a full-time program that requires you to be available to attend all classes and sessions.

Duration of Training: 1 year

How to Apply: Anyone who would be willing to apply can do so below.

Visit Training Webpage for details

Slovak Republic Bilateral Scholarships 2022/2023

Application Deadline: 30th June 2022

Eligible Countries: Belarus, Belgium-French Community/Walloon region, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldavia, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine.

To be Taken at (Country): Slovak Republic

Type: Bachelor, Master, PhD

Eligibility: The Slovak Republic Bilateral Scholarships are usually designed for study stays of students (bachelor/master level) and/or or research stays of PhD students.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Slovak Republic Bilateral Scholarships: The amount of monthly scholarship for academic year 2020/2021, if not specified otherwise in bilateral agreement:

• For students (bachelor/master level): 280 € per month.
• For PhD students: 330 € per month.
• For university teachers or researchers: 550 € per month.

Duration of Award: The length of scholarship (usually ranges from 3 to 10 months), the categories of eligible recipients (students on bachelor/master level/researchers/ teachers /PhD students) depends upon the agreement concerned.

How to Apply: Slovak Republic Bilateral Scholarships are awarded to applicants nominated by the competent authorities of eligible countries. National authorities are either education ministries or/and respective agencies designated by the ministries in the home country. Applications sent by individual applicants directly to the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic will not be processed.

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Ruling elite celebrate UK economy’s “rebound” at workers’ expense

Jean Shaoul

Britain’s economy grew by 7.5 percent in 2021, after taking a smaller than expected hit in December when the Conservative government was forced to implement some restrictions in the face of the surging Omicron variant.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left) and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

It was the occasion for rejoicing by the political and financial elites and their bought and paid for media commentators, with all noting that this was the largest expansion since 1941 and made Britain the fastest growing economy of all the rich countries in 2021. The pubs and bars in the City of London were full of bankers drinking vintage champagne after being awarded £4 billion in bonuses, their biggest haul since before the 2008 global financial crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the UK economy to grow at 4.7 percent in 2022, slightly less than its October prediction as a result of Omicron, but still more than the world’s other largest capitalist economies in the G7.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak, a multi-millionaire, patted himself on the back, saying, “Thanks to our package of support and making the right calls at the right time, the economy has been remarkably resilient.” The “support” he refers to includes the Bank of England’s £900 billion in quantitative easing and cuts in interest rates, as well as the government’s low-interest loans, debt repayment holiday, and other subventions to businesses, banks and the stock market. He did not explain that the cost of all this is to be clawed back from workers in the form of tax rises, cuts in public services and runaway inflation that is decimating living standards.

The rebound comes after Britain suffered a far sharper economic contraction than its peers. Its largely consumer service-based economy collapsed by 9.4 percent in 2020 as lockdowns were imposed in March and December, around twice the fall following the 2008-09 global financial crisis. This means that output as reflected in GDP is still smaller than in the last quarter of 2019, while the US and France have recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Nevertheless, it confirms why Prime Minister Johnson was so adamant in October 2020 that there must be “No more fucking lockdowns” even if this meant the bodies would “pile high in their thousands!” The “herd immunity” strategy favoured by the government from the outset of the pandemic had nothing to do with science and everything to do with allowing nothing to impinge on the flow of profits to the corporations and the super-rich.

It was only on March 23, 2020, faced with mounting public anger and scientists insisting that the current policy would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, that the government reluctantly implemented a partial lockdown to limit the spread of COVID-19 behind which it carried through its real imperative—funneling hundreds of billions of state funds to big businesses, including a furlough scheme for workers unable to work during the pandemic.

Within weeks of recklessly reopening the economy, including overseas travel, in July 2020, to restore the profits of the corporations, and announcing an £840 million “eat out to help out” programme as a subsidy for the hospitality industry, the pandemic was on the rise again. A few, even less stringent, measures were imposed in September and reluctantly increased in the following months, culminating in the closure of schools between January and May 2021 as part of a set of unavoidable restrictions.

But by summer 2021, all restrictions were lifted, including on foreign travel at the insistence of the airlines and hospitality industry, even as infections remained widespread. The furlough scheme and other support measures for workers were withdrawn in October.

In December, even as the country faced the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant, the government imposed only the most minimal social distancing measures and called on people to work from home where possible. All this too has since been lifted.

Now the Conservative government, the Labour Party, trade unions and the media proclaim with one voice that the pandemic is “over”, Omicron is equivalent to the flu or common cold and we must “live with” a supposedly endemic virus. It is this removal of all restrictions that might hamper profits and the ever more brutal exploitation of the working class that accounts for the UK economy’s rebound, one paid for with the loss of 180,000 lives and 1.3 million people suffering from Long COVID. This is what the political and financial establishment and the media are celebrating.

But while output, particularly manufacturing and construction, if not services, expanded and profits rose—the high street banks’ annual profits alone are expected to exceed £34 billion, the highest since 2007 during the boom before the financial crisis—workers’ living standards were and are falling. This follows decades of wage restraint, courtesy of the trade unions that have done everything in their power to isolate and sell out workers’ struggles, leading to labour’s share of GDP falling from around 58-61 percent in the 1960s and 70s to around 53 percent in the 1980s, where it has remained.

Whatever meagre wage rises workers may have won, their pay falls ever further behind rising inflation, now at the highest level for 30 years, amid a huge increase in the cost of energy, petrol, consumer goods and food—goods that make up the bulk of poorer households’ budgets. Domestic energy prices are set to rise by a massive 54 percent in April as the energy regulator green lights tariff increases for the gas and electricity companies, while National Insurance contributions will also increase. Rising inflation also means that the Bank of England is likely to raise interest rates again, triggering an increase in mortgages that struggling households will find hard to pay.

The Bank of England expects inflation to increase from its current rate of 5.4 percent to 7.25 percent in April. With taxes also set to rise, it warns that households will see the biggest fall in disposable income since 1949, when records began. Pensioners and the 6 million people receiving Universal Credit welfare payments, of which 40 percent are low-paid workers, will see their benefits rise by just 3.1 percent, less than half the expected increase in living costs.

That did not stop the Bank’s governor Andrew Bailey, who earned £575,538 last year, demanding that workers refrain from asking for a pay rise to help control inflation, a declaration of the brutal class war to be waged on the working class. Wages must be held back to ensure that corporate profits continue to rise, the CEOs get their fat bonuses, shareholders their unearned dividends and the huge loans handed out by the government can be partially repaid.

Furthermore, the number of people in work is still more than half a million below pre-pandemic levels, largely as a result of a big fall in the number of self-employed—down 850,000 on two years ago—and older workers, as well as an increase in the number of long-term sick, all to a large degree the fallout from the pandemic and government policies that prioritised profits before all else.

Increasing COVID cases on UK university campuses as all restrictions lifted

Ioan Petrescu

The Department for Education (DfE) has changed the operational guidance within higher education as a main plank towards eliminating all remaining COVID restrictions, in line with the “herd immunity” agenda of the Conservative government.

Up to 300 students in a lecture room at Cardiff University this term (WSWS Media)

A January 19 DfE document specified, “With the removal of the Plan B measures, HE providers should note that there are no COVID restrictions that apply to Higher Education, and they should ensure that they deliver face-to-face teaching without restrictions”. 

Ominously, it continued, “Risk assessments should never be used to prevent providers delivering the full programme of face-to-face teaching and learning that they were providing before the pandemic”. In other words, no matter how many students and staff are exposed to the risk of contracting a debilitating disease and potentially dying, nothing is being allowed to stand in the way of the universities being fully operational. 

The guidance is being imposed even as scientists warn of the likelihood of major outbreaks of COVID-19 on campuses. Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at the Open University Kevin McConway noted that the number of booster shots among the student population is low, as many only became eligible in January. The TES (Times Higher Education) reported January 14, “The most detailed Office for National Statistics (ONS) data available—which indicated that one in every 15 people in their late teens or early twenties in London was infected with COVID in early December—offered the most helpful guide to infection levels in the student cohort, Professor McConway said.”

McConway cautioned against returning to in-person classes: “Given the spike in infections in freshers week last year, the considerably higher rates of infection in the relevant age groups in the country now compared to then, and the fact that Omicron is so much easier to transmit, I think the risk of major outbreaks in universities as students go back for next term is considerable.”

The rise in infection will also slow down the adoption of vaccines even more, as booster appointments are delayed by at least 28 days if someone has a positive test, ensuring students will continue getting ill in large numbers for the foreseeable future.

Recent weeks have seen a steady increase in the number of COVID-19 cases reported in universities. In the week ending January 31, Cambridge University reported 116 positive cases, up from 50 the week before. The University of Reading reported 124 cases for the week ending February 11 and 1,448 since the start of school year in September 2021. That is compared with 691 cases at Reading in the 2020-2021 school year, even though both students and staff have much higher rates of vaccination now. University College London reported 82 cases among staff and 210 cases among students in the week to February 11. At the University of Sussex there were 199 staff self-isolating as of February 9 due to testing positive for coronavirus and the 7-day average of positive tests has been increasing steadily since early January.

All these numbers are likely severe undercounts, as only a tiny slice of the student population is being regularly tested. Cambridge University reports testing only 3,000 students a week out of approximately 21,000 and is the only university that is testing asymptomatic students as well.

Higher education institutions have been implementing the government’s new guidance with enthusiasm. Mask mandates have been lifted from virtually all campuses and most courses moved to in-person learning, with some reports of as many as 300 students crammed in a single lecture room. Social media users report of institutions enforcing attendance more harshly than before, with students being punished with lower marks if they are not present even in the most crowded lectures. A student at Cardiff University told the WSWS that members of staff are forced to come to campus to teach in-person even if one of their family members has tested positive.

The latest steps in eliminating restrictions have provoked outrage and disgust among students and staff. Student Ga Kitada tweeted, “Translation: Let’s mass infect everyone with Omicron and build up herd immunity because it’s ‘mild’ and it’s not as if it causes tonnes of preventable deaths, multi-system complications and long COVID.” 

Other tweets point out the real motives behind government policy: “Yes, let’s make children and school staffers cannon fodder for the good of the economy! Great idea! Magical thinking as policy”. Twitter user Debbie Cameron exposes the lies being spread about the disruption of education: “Are they ever going to grasp that what disrupts education most is continuously high rates of infection rather than precautions taken to control them?”

The WSWS spoke to a second-year medicine student at the University of Bristol regarding the situation on her campus: “COVID cases seem to be on the rise among students but at the same time, it is a very vaccine accepting population. Anecdotally, the people testing positive are asymptomatic and find out through necessary lateral flows for societies and Uni events. My friends’ sports team has someone announcing they have COVID every few days. So yes, there seems to be more cases, but it doesn’t seem to be knocking people out as it may have done in the earlier waves.”

When asked what she thought of the plans to end the legal requirement to self-isolate, she said it will lead to an increase in the spread of the virus. She pointed out the insufficiency of self-isolation under conditions where the virus is spreading rampantly, which meant that vital services such as rail transport were disrupted because of lack of staff: “I had a four-hour journey back from my home town because enough staff couldn’t man all lines so there were many delays. 

“I would love/prefer an eradication strategy, but I know people who have said they wouldn’t follow it anymore because of ‘partygate’. It sounds a lot better than living with it.” This was a reference to the crisis wracking the Conservative government after it leaked that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other government officials held parties in Whitehall during lockdown, breaking rules and guidance in place.

When asked what she thought of the International Committee of the Fourth International’s strategy of a global eradication policy against the herd immunity policies of capitalist governments, she replied, “I would support that!”

The University and College Union (UCU), the main university workers union, has been completely silent on the latest developments, with the latest article dealing with COVID-19 on their website being published over a month ago, on January 12, even before the latest DfE guidance was published.

The purpose of the UCU article was to pursue the fiction that campuses can be made safe for in-person learning if only a few cosmetic measures are taken to mitigate risks. Examples provided by the UCU include providing FFP2 and FFP3 masks to staff teaching in-person, ensuring effective ventilation measures are in place to reduce airborne transmission risks, access to regular free testing (PCR and LFT tests) and support to those who are asked to self-isolate. Even if these measures were implemented, they would hardly make any impact due to the sheer number of HE students (2.4 million) and staff (hundreds of thousands) that would be present on campus, coupled with the exceptional transmissibility of the Omicron variant.

Energy, transport and municipal service worker strikes in Kazakhstan

Andrea Peters

Soldiers are seen though a bus, which was burned during clashes, as they patrol a street near the central square blocked by Kazakhstan troops and police in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Vasily Krestyaninov, File)

Strikes across several industries broke out on February 15 in southwestern Kazakhstan. Workers at seven companies in Mangystau oblast walked off the job on Wednesday in protest over low wages, poor working conditions and political repression. In their statements, the strikers expressed solidarity with one another and insisted that the country’s oligarchs give up some of their millions.

The city of Zhanoezen, where in January police massacred protesters objecting to a sharp hike in gas prices, is among the places hit by the latest round of labor unrest. Among their demands, drillers with the oil company Ozenmunaygaz are calling for all those imprisoned for participating in the January demonstrations to be set free. “The detainees are not terrorists,” as the government claims, said a worker reading a declaration. “We demand a stop to the torture and their release.”

The oil workers are also calling for jobs for the city’s unemployed, who have been staging daily protests for two weeks demanding that the government fulfill its long-standing promises to those out of work. While the authorities insist that just 8,000 of the city’s nearly 83,000 residents cannot find employment, ordinary people say that the real number is 25,000.

Employees at transportation, construction and energy companies, as well as those employed in municipal services, in the cities of Aktau, Kalamkas and Zhetybay, also went on strike the same day. While the limited news reports currently available do not provide information about the numbers of people involved, video footage indicates that at least hundreds, if not more, are participating. (The video narration is in Russian, and groups of workers from different factories can be seen reading their demands in Kazakh in the second half.)

On Thursday in Aktau, a city of about 180,000 that sits on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast, oil workers with Aktaukrantechservice LLP threatened to start a strike if the government does not “stop the persecution and slander against innocent citizens in connection with the January events” and the company does not “raise salaries” and “bring social and living conditions to the appropriate level.” A similar statement was issued by employees with energy company BozashyTransKurylys LLP.

Much of the anger of energy sector workers is directed at KazMunayGaz, the national oil and gas conglomerate. Despite popular opposition, the Kazakh government is currently preparing to transfer even more of the country’s natural resources into private hands. In a statement released on February 7, the ministry of energy underscored that it has no intention, as is being demanded on social media, of nationalizing Kazakhstan’s oil and gas supplies. “The state is actively working to transfer state and quasi-state enterprises to a competitive environment, including in the oil and gas complex,” declared the ministry’s press service.

This week’s strikes come just eight days after workers at MAEK-Kazatomprom—a nuclear power plant in Mangystau that supplies the region’s heat, water and electricity—walked out in demand of a 100 percent wage hike.