Sri Lankan trade unions back IMF austerity policies

W.A. Sunil

The Sri Lankan government, with active union support, has begun unleashing a new round of International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictated attacks on jobs and social conditions.

On Monday, an IMF team visited Colombo to begin 10 days of discussions with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and senior Central Bank and Treasury officials. The talks are focused on Colombo’s proposals to reduce government expenditure, step up privatisation, and implement other austerity measures. Debt restructuring to repay loans to foreign creditors is a major issue in the discussions.

These measures will further slash jobs, wages and pensions as well as health and education, severely impacting millions of workers and the poor. While some of the trade unions are silently backing these proposals, others are openly embracing these anti working class measures.

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have already proposed the elimination of over 800,000 public sector jobs. In line with repeated IMF complaints that state sector wages are too high, the government’s drastic downsizing is aimed at halving its salary expenditure of 845.7 billion rupees ($US4.2 billion) in 2021.

The ministries of public administration and manpower and human resources have already announced how they plan to impose these cuts.

One proposal is to direct state employees to apply for foreign jobs, granting them unpaid leave for five years. As well as destroying jobs, authorities believe this will generate foreign income for the cash-strapped government.

The Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau has revealed that a record number of workers have registered, since public sector authorities announced that they were directing state employees to find jobs abroad. Another job-cutting proposal includes the introduction of a voluntary retirement scheme, which involves meagre compensation.

This week the government, citing worsening fuel shortages, issued a two-week “work from home” order for most public sector employees. It follows the previous introduction of a public sector four-day week.

Last week, President Rajapakse proposed the decentralisation of the public service to district and regional levels, breaking up existing centralised institutions. While presented as a necessary measure to provide “an efficient service to the public,” it is another step in the dismantling of these services.

Not a single union has opposed any of these measures, let alone warned their members about the grave consequences. On the contrary, some public sector unions have begun campaigning to encourage their members to seek foreign employment.

Government Nursing Officers Union (GNOU) President Saman Rathnapriya is playing a leading role in promoting the government’s call for state employees to get foreign jobs. Rathnapriya was a former parliamentarian for Wickremesinghe’s United National Party.

Government Nursing Officers Union (GNOU) President Saman Rathnapriya [WSWS Media]

Rathnapriya told a media conference: “We are now preparing to send nursing officers [overseas], who have the highest demand in the world, through a special project. Even though there is a lack of staff here [for hospitals], we do it to bring dollars. We do so because we’re thinking of the country.” Rathnapriya’s patriotic posturing is to obscure the fact that he is implementing one of the IMF’s dictates.

Federation of Health Professionals (FHP) president Ravi Kumudesh was even more explicit. Asked about the government program, he told the WSWS: “Instead of sending half of the state employees’ home, we can direct them to foreign employment, thus obeying what the IMF asks from us.”

The reactionary responses of the GNOU and FHP are in the context of an escalating collapse of public health caused by ongoing funding cuts by successive Sri Lankan governments, slavishly endorsed by these and other health sector unions.

According to recent figures issued by the Central Bank, there is a shortage of at least 30,000 nursing staff in government hospitals. A massive outflow of nurses into foreign jobs will only hasten the closure of public hospitals and assist the government to slash free public health. The outflow of other public sector employees into foreign jobs and associated job cuts will produce a similar collapse of public services.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) does not oppose workers taking foreign jobs. Many state employees would prefer to seek work abroad as a means of escaping the current social calamity, but this will lead to massive cuts in state jobs. The working class is not responsible for this crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism and must oppose the government and IMF attempts to impose this burden on the masses.

Recent IMF dictated government measures have pushed inflation to unprecedented levels. According to the figures released yesterday, Sri Lanka’s year-on-year inflation rate for May rose to 45.3 percent. Food inflation climbed to 58 percent.

These steep increases, which began last September in line with spiraling global inflation produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, were compounded by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

While inflation has eaten into the wages of workers and the meagre income of the poor across the country, the unions have done nothing to defend workers’ living standards. Like the trade unions in every country, those in Sri Lanka are doing their utmost to assist the government and big business make the working class pay for this crisis.

Workers and youth protest in Kandy on May 6 [WSWS Media]

When 200,000 teachers and principals began online strike action and protests for higher wages last July, the education union leaders met with Mahinda Rajapakse, who was then prime minster. Rajapakse told them that “under the present global situation and the country’s financial predicament, the government is not in a position to rectify the salary issue at this moment.”

The union leaders responded by assuring him that they had “a clear understanding that an immediate increment for the salaries is not possible due to the current economic crisis” and asked the government to “take a policy decision” on salary increase. After 100 days of strike action the unions betrayed their members, accepting a salary increase of just one third of the original demand.

Similarly, when the government refused health workers wage’ demands in February, FHP leader Kumudesh told the media that his members were “professionals” and understood “the financial hardship the country is going through.” This was why the union, he said, was “not pushing for money at present” and that any settlement could only be in “principle.”

In April, the unions, following the outbreak of mass protests and demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government, betrayed the two one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6, called by the Trade Union Coordination Committee and the United Trade Unions and Mass Organisations.

The unions called the strike to channel the anger behind the call of the opposition parties for an interim capitalist regime. However, when millions of workers walked off the job to defend their living standards, the unions took fright and called off further strikes.

This betrayal provided an opening for President Rajapakse to appoint Wickremesinghe prime minister and the imposition of harsh IMF austerity.

Ukraine bans largest opposition party

Jason Melanovski

A Ukrainian court has officially banned the activities of the country’s largest opposition party, the Opposition Platform—For Life party.

The decision was handed down by the Administrative Court of Appeals No. 8 on June 20 in Lviv and effectively upheld President Volodymyr Zelensky’s banning of 11 political parties that Kiev regarded as “anti-Ukrainian” and “collaborationists” earlier in March. The measure was then approved by the Ukrainian parliament in May.

Ten other pro-Russian and left-wing parties were included in Zelensky’s ban, among them the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Party of Shariy led by the popular Youtube blogger Anatoly Shariy.

In addition to legally banning the party’s activities, the court also stated that the party’s property and assets will be confiscated by the State Treasury. 

The banning of the country’s largest opposition party marks the temporary culmination of an undemocratic campaign initiated by the Zelensky government against parties and individuals who could potentially undermine the war that Kiev is waging against Russia on behalf of the imperialist powers.

Led by oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, the party controlled 44 out of 450 seats in Ukraine’s parliament, surpassed only by the ruling Servant of the People party of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Prior to Russia’s invasion in February, several opinion polls showed the Russia-aligned party leading hypothetical parliamentary elections or finishing second.

In eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, Opposition—For Life functioned as the dominant political party at both national and local levels. It was the effective successor to the Party of Regions of former President Viktor Yanukovych. In contrast to his opponents in the oligarchy that, with the heavy backing from US and German imperialism, toppled him in 2014 in a coup, Yanukovich spoke for a faction of the Ukrainian oligarchy that has been seeking to balance between Western imperialism and the Kremlin, and opposed a direct alliance of Ukraine with NATO.

Prior to 2014, the Party of Regions was the country’s largest political party but it disintegrated after the coup as its members fled the country or joined Opposition Bloc, the pro-Moscow predecessor of the Opposition—For Life party. 

Medvedchuk, the co-founder and head of the Opposition—For Life party, is a billionaire who has long maintained very close ties to the Russian oligarchy and, in particular, the Putin regime. 

However, Medvedechuk’s Opposition—For Life party publicly denounced Russia’s invasion of the country and called for negotiations to quickly end the war. Twenty-three of its national parliament members voluntarily left the party and formed the Platform for Life and Peace party which has pledged to protect Russian-minority rights within Ukraine but distanced itself even further from Medvedchuk and Moscow.

Throughout its existence, the party supported the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which were intended to end the war in the eastern Donbass region between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government through a settlement negotiated with French and German imperialism. Despite coming to power in 2019 on vague promises to secure peace, prior to the invasion Zelensky and his staff were openly hostile to the agreements’ implementation, which called for a federated status in the separatist-controlled regions and local elections.  

For over a year prior to the current war, the Zelensky government, at the behest of US imperialism, worked systematically to stamp out the party’s influence, and in February of 2021 undemocratically banned three popular television stations associated with Medvedchuk. At the time, the move was praised by the US Embassy as part of Kiev’s efforts “to counter Russia’s malign influence, in line with Ukrainian law, in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Later in May 2021 Medvedchuk was arrested and charged with “embezzlement” as well as “high treason” for “subversive activities against Ukraine.” A Ukrainian court placed him under house arrest, where he would remain until the outbreak of full-scale war in February of this year, when he fled.

On April 12, Medvedchuk was apprehended by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) while apparently disguised as a Ukrainian soldier and again charged him with treason for supposedly providing Russia with military assistance.

No evidence has been published indicating how exactly Medvedchuk supposedly collaborated with the Russians. Nor has it been explained why he remained in Kiev days after the attack, putting his life in certain danger, if he really did know of the impending invasion beforehand.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly offered Moscow to exchange Medvedchuk for captured Ukrainian soldiers. Moscow has so far publicly refused to discuss the exchange of its supposed stalwart collaborator, but recent reports suggest he could be swapped for British nationals recently captured by separatist forces.

While under arrest, Medvedchuk has become entangled in the ongoing prosecution of former President Petro Poroshenko, another Zelensky political rival. In May, the SBU released a video in which Medvedchuk accused Poroshenko of enlisting his assistance to illegally purchase a Russian oil pipeline.

Due to his immense wealth and political influence, Medvedchuk undoubtedly knows much about “where the bodies are buried”—both figuratively and literally in the case of bourgeois Ukrainian politics—and it is likely the Zelensky government will now exploit him to continue its persecution of political enemies. 

Whatever the ultimate fate of Medvedchuk and the remnants of his political party, the banning and state liquidation of oppositional parties exposes the lie that Ukraine is a bulwark of “democracy” that needs to be defended in a “just war” against totalitarian Russia.

In reality, Ukraine is controlled by a section of the reactionary ultra-wealthy oligarchy that has emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and which has chosen an open alliance with NATO against Russia. It is now demonstrating with the war that it is willing and able to kill hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to maintain its rule and pro-NATO orientation. According to officials of the ruling party, between 200 and 500 members of the Ukrainian armed forces are dying every single day in the war in east Ukraine. There are also growing reports of desertions on both sides of the conflict.

The banning of the Opposition—For Life party and other oppositional parties makes clear that the imperialist-backed Zelensky government will stop at nothing to crush opposition to its war—above all when it emerges within the working class.

Israel’s government collapses after one year in power

Jean Shaoul

Israel’s “government of change” coalition led by right-winger and former settlement leader Naftali Bennett has announced it can no longer stay in office following the defection of two of his Yamina Party members.

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is to be dissolved next Tuesday, which means that the government will fall and the country will go to the polls, probably in late October or November, for the fifth time in three and a half years.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, left, speaks during a joint statement with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, June 20, 2022. Bennett's office announced Monday, that his weakened coalition will be disbanded and the country will head to new elections. Bennett and his main coalition partner, Yair Lapid, decided to present a vote to dissolve parliament in the coming days, Bennett's office said. Lapid is then to serve as caretaker prime minister. The election, expected in the fall, would be Israel's fifth in three years. [AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo]

The announcement comes just 12 months after Bennett’s government took power on June 21, 2021, in Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in two years, ending 12 years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In accordance with their coalition deal, Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, the largest party in the government, will replace Bennett as caretaker prime minister until new elections are held and another government is formed. He will continue as foreign minister, meeting US President Joe Biden when he visits Israel on July 13, while Bennett will take on the role of alternate prime minister, handling the Iran portfolio.

Israel’s deepening political crisis flows from the rapid escalation of class tensions within Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Middle East and internationally, as Israel’s political elite gives succour to the far-right, fascistic forces led by Jewish Power legislator Itamar Ben Gvir and his Religious Zionism partner Bezalel Smotrich. It was Netanyahu who engineered their entry into the Knesset to bolster his bloc prior to the 2021 elections. Their Jewish supremacist agenda includes Israeli rule over the West Bank, the expulsion of Israel’s Palestinian population and the demolition of the al-Aqsa Mosque to make way for the building of a Jewish Temple.

Lapid and Bennett assembled an unlikely coalition with a razor-thin majority after Netanyahu—on trial for corruption, fraud and breach of trust—proved unable to form a coalition despite his Likud Party winning the largest number of votes in last year’s election. United only in their opposition to Netanyahu, the coalition consisted of eight disparate parties, spanning most of Israel’s mainstream parties, including those ostensibly committed to the Olso Accords and a Palestinian mini-state—Meretz, Labour, Yesh Atid and Blue and White—and included for the first time one of Israel’s Arab parties, the United Arab List.

Lapid ceded the premiership to Bennett even though the latter’s party won only six seats because he was seen as more acceptable to the coalition’s right flank, agreeing not to negotiate with the Palestinians over statehood for the duration of their alliance. That set the scene for what passes for Israel’s left and centrist parties to support an ever-sharper lurch to the right, an escalation of Israel’s covert wars against Iran and its allies, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and its attacks on the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

In the last year, Israel has demolished at least 580 structures in the occupied territories, while its security forces have killed more than 100 Palestinians, according to B’stelem, the human rights organisation. The HaMoked Centre for the Defense of the Individual says that 640 Palestinians are being held without trial in “administrative detention.” According to other sources, the government has advanced plans to build 7,292 housing units in the settlements and issued calls for proposals for a further 1,550, while housing starts in the settlements increased sharply.

It was the Minister for Public Security from the Labour Party Omer Bar-Lev who approved last month’s Jerusalem Flag March that led to violent clashes with the Palestinians amid chants of “death to Arabs.” He justified the ultra-nationalist march so as not to “undermine the legitimacy and erode the sovereignty” of Israel in occupied East Jerusalem. His police officers brutally assaulted the pallbearers of murdered Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem for carrying Palestinian flags. Defence Minister Benny Gantz from Blue and White classified six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist organizations.

As Bennett faced increasing opposition from his own right-wing, with Matan Kahana, one of his ministers, saying he wished he had a magic button that could peacefully send all Palestinian citizens of Israel to Switzerland and two of his Yamina Party members and three of his political advisors resigning, the left and centrist parties leapt to his government’s defence. They supported the extension of Israel’s apartheid laws, with both the Labour Party and Yesh Atid absenting themselves from the Knesset, enabling the passage of racist bills expanding community admission committees that can ban Palestinians from living in Jewish neighbourhoods and outlawing Palestinian flags at state-funded institutions.

Most of the centre-left voted to renew the legislation extending Israeli law to the settlements in Area C in the occupied West Bank that is under direct military rule, even as Netanyahu’s opposition bloc voted against the extension in a political maneouvre aimed at bringing down the government and securing his own return to power.

It was the failure of the Knesset to approve the law—renewable every five years—that brought down the government. Without the passage of such a law by July 2, the settlers’ right to enter Israel, obtain benefits and de facto rights as Israeli citizens would have lapsed and they would have been subject to military law. By dissolving parliament, Bennett and Lapid automatically triggered the extension of the settler law. They apparently took their decision without discussing or even informing the defence or interior ministers.

With polls predicting that Netanyahu’s Likud Party will again win the largest number of seats and the far-right forces of Ben Gvir and Smotrich likely to increase their vote, but not enough for Netanyahu to form a government, it is possible that right-wing parties on both sides of the government-opposition divide will join forces to form another coalition without holding further elections.

Israel’s political crisis comes amid key domestic issues, including the annual budget for 2023, the health, economic and social fallout from the continuing COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 11,000 people and is again on the rise as all restrictions have been lifted. The skyrocketing cost of living, one of the highest in the advanced countries, makes it hard for Israelis and Palestinians alike to put food on the table.

In scenes reminiscent of the tent protests in 2011, in the last week young people have been setting up tents in towns and cities throughout Israel in protest against the country’s high housing costs that have escalated even as wages fell in real terms, with a big rally scheduled for July 2. With most young people unable to afford to buy a home and public housing sparse, with thousands on waiting lists for years, they are dependent on a rental housing market that is almost entirely unregulated. It also takes place as teachers’ half day strikes continue for a third day over their demands for higher pay and dozens of resident physicians from Haemek Hospital in Afula went on 24-hour strike over the postponement of the shortening of on-call times at hospitals.

The occupied West Bank, where the corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s subcontractor enforcing its illegal hold over the West Bank and Gaza, has sought to strengthen the grip of the Fatah movement as rumours surrounding President Mahmoud Abbas’s failing health spread, is a social powder keg.

Stellantis announces more indefinite layoffs, as rising gas prices and interest rates slow auto sales

Shannon Jones

Employees at Sterling Stamping Plant remove a minivan roof after it has been stamped in a 180-inch Transfer Press [Photo by Stellantis Media]

Indefinite layoffs were scheduled to begin this week at the Stellantis Sterling Stamping plant in the north Detroit suburbs. Far from opposing the cuts, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is collaborating to shift displaced workers to other Stellantis plants scores or hundreds of miles away, including the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, and the transmission complex in Kokomo, Indiana.

Neither the UAW nor management has divulged how many jobs will be cut, nor what portion of those being laid off will be full-time workers or temps. According to a letter circulated by UAW Local 1264 at Sterling Stamping, there were 90 available job slots for displaced workers at Detroit-area Mopar parts and distribution facilities, as well as 150 at Toledo Assembly, 39 skilled trades positions in Kokomo and 50 parts hauling jobs with FCA Transport. The UAW also announced that Stellantis was adding 460 temp jobs.

In a statement on the cuts, Stellantis spokeswoman Ann Marie Fortunate said, “In order to operate the plant in a more sustainable manner Stellantis confirms that there will be indefinite layoffs at the Sterling Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, effective June 20.” There are over 2,100 workers at Sterling Stamping, which Stellantis claims is the largest stamping plant in the world.

The layoff announcement comes as new vehicle sales have been hit by rising gas prices and higher interest rates, which make car financing more expensive. US new car sales fell to an annualized rate of 12.8 million in May, down from 14.6 million in April. Historically car sales have picked up in May.

This month, the US Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the highest single rate increase in almost 30 years. The interest rate hikes, using the pretext of fighting inflation, are in reality intended to drive up unemployment in order to dampen the militancy of workers who are demanding wage increases to compensate for price rises.

Stellantis and the other Detroit automakers have been reaping bumper profits despite constant production interruptions due to parts shortages. At the same time, regular plant shutdowns, along with skyrocketing inflation, have wreaked havoc on workers’ incomes.

At the end of March, 98 workers had been laid off at Sterling Stamping. Warren Stamping had laid off an unspecified number of workers in April.

Stellantis had also announced indefinite layoffs at other plants earlier this year, including at the assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and at Windsor Assembly in Ontario, Canada.

At Belvidere, management has announced a goal of reducing employment to just 800 workers, down from the current count of 1,800 and far below the 5,000 the plant employed in 2019. Stellantis is still threatening to cut the second shift at Windsor Assembly, although it has extended the shift through the end of 2022.

Workers posting on social media reacted angrily to the announcement of the job cuts at Sterling Stamping. The UAW’s announcement that laid off workers would have the “opportunity” to transfer to plants outside the Detroit metro area also did not sit well with many.

One worker wrote on Facebook, “They continue to hire Tpt’s [temporary part-time workers] by the 100’s. Worst thing we could have ever allowed the company to do. That needs to be a strong point in the contract negotiations, go back to a percentage of the work force.”

Another worker posted, “This is how your slave owners save themselves, by sacrificing its slaves! Wait until they post ‘We’re Hiring’ at half of what the slaves they sacrificed were making! Wake up people.....YOU MADE THEM RICH, THEN THEY THROW YOU AWAY! Think you deserve it?! They do!”

Referring to the Stellantis management statement announcing the job cuts, another worker commented, “‘In a more sustainable manner?’ No, that means the investors are not earning enough money. Therefore, they order to have employees cut so their earnings will increase.

“This is what everything has come down to. It’s all about working as a skeleton crew.”

The cuts take place under conditions in which automakers are pouring enormous resources into the development of electric vehicles (EV). To generate the capital needed to dominate the EV and other new technologies, all the car companies are working to lower labor costs and squeeze as much profit as possible out of their existing workforces.

Ford announced production cuts at four large assembly plants over the summer, according to a recent memo sent to Chicago Stamping workers. The cuts will impact workers at Chicago Assembly, Kansas City Assembly, the Kentucky Truck plant and Louisville Assembly. Workers at Chicago Stamping will face layoffs as of Monday and running through September 11. The company asked for workers to volunteer for temporary layoff during the summer.

Ford is also apparently eyeing the shutdown of Louisville Assembly due to parts shortages. Press reports did not indicate for how long.

Stellantis and other automakers have turned to hiring more and more temp workers, both to cut costs and cover for labor shortages due to sickness, incapacitation or the retirement of more senior workers. The callous disregard for worker safety by both the UAW and the Detroit carmakers was highlighted by the announcement this week that masks will no longer be required at any plant, even in areas of high COVID-19 transmission such as Detroit.

On top of this, workers face dangerous conditions. In 2021 Sterling Stamping crane operator Terry Garr died in a tragic accident in the facility. One year later the UAW has yet to publish the results of the investigation into the accident.

A veteran worker at the Ford Kansas City Assembly worker told the World Socialist Web Site that temp workers at his plant were quitting due to the recent record heat and generally poor working conditions.

“There is no climate control on the assembly line but fans,” he said. “I can barely work under my fans. I am always outside of my cool zone grabbing doors and loading their crappy machines everyday doing 11 hours.”

Other Ford workers described similar conditions. A worker at Ford Ohio Assembly told the WSWS that in some areas of the plant the heat index reached 118 last week. “It is brutal....the humidity makes it hard to breathe in here. Several people fell out and were taken to medical. Shouldn’t have to risk your health to keep a job. Same with COVID. People see how expendable we are.”

Both Ford and the UAW have trumpeted the company’s recent announcement that some 3,000 temporary workers would be converted to full-time positions. Workers have reported that the automakers have struggled for months to hire and retain employees and stem high turnover, given the grueling workplace conditions which have become widespread.

According to the Detroit Bureau, an auto industry news site, Ford’s move to convert the temps to full-time also allows more senior, higher-paid workers to take their place for voluntary layoff.

There can be no doubt that the automotive executives, in consultation with Wall Street analysts and top UAW officials, are already well into planning their strategy for the expiration of the Big Three-UAW contracts next year. In Europe, Ford has given a foretaste of what it is preparing. The company has pit workers in a fratricidal race to the bottom, stoking a “bidding war” between plants in Spain and Germany to see which factory can offer the most cuts, with promises of EV investments and job security dangled in return.

But opposition to any further concessions is already high and building among autoworkers. A militant mood has also emerged among heavy equipment workers at CNH Industrial—where workers are nearing their second month on strike, in a struggle which has been isolated by the UAW—and Caterpillar, where outrage erupted earlier this month over the horrific workplace death of 39-year-old Steven Dierkes.

COVID-19 driven staff shortages fuel crisis in Australian schools

Carolyn Kennett

COVID is continuing to cause havoc in Australian schools, belying state and federal government claims that the pandemic is over.

Schools across the country are reporting chronic daily teacher shortages due to illness. This is seeing classes being combined or cancelled, executive staff covering classes, and year groups being returned to remote learning for all or part of the school week.

Students sitting the HSC in 2019 (Credit: ABC News)

Mitigation measures such as mask mandates, contact tracing and isolation periods for close contacts have been junked across the country. Masks are no longer mandated at schools for either staff or students, and close contacts of confirmed cases no longer need to isolate. 

Under education department directives, schools have also resumed camps, assemblies and other forms of mass congregations. Around the country, hundreds, and in some cases, more than a thousand young people and staff are regularly packed into poorly ventilated halls. Parents are reporting on social media that numerous school camps have ended up as super spreader events.

Infection rates and deaths were relatively low in Australia before late 2021 and early 2022. Under pressure from teachers, school workers and parents, state governments responded to earlier surges in the pandemic by having schools function via remote learning as an important mitigation measure. 

The emergence of the Omicron variant was falsely presented as a “mild” variety of COVID, and over the December-January summer school holiday state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal alike, worked with the teacher unions to enforce the reopening of schools regardless of infection rates. 

On January 13, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison explained the pro-business calculations behind the reopening drive: “If schools don’t open, then that can add an additional five percent to the absenteeism in the workforce,” he declared. “So it is absolutely essential for schools to go back safely and to remain safely open if we are not to see any further exacerbation of the workforce challenges we’re currently facing. So schools open means shops open… That’s what schools open means, and it’s very important they go back.”

In the subsequent six months, the outcome has been mass infection, illness, and death. Out of Australia’s population of nearly 26 million people, 7.7 million cases have been officially confirmed. Of the 9,200 confirmed deaths due to COVID, the vast majority, around 7,000, occurred in 2022. Daily per capita COVID deaths in Australia are now the third highest in the world for countries with populations greater than 10 million.

An Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report released in May provided a snapshot into the effect of COVID on families. One-third of Australian households with children under 18 reported their child’s attendance at school was affected by COVID. A significant proportion of households, 12 percent, reported that they were unwilling to send their children to school or preschool due to COVID.

The extent of the crisis is being covered over both by the government and the unions. One teacher reported to the World Socialist Web Site that primary school principals in New South Wales (NSW) schools have been threatened by the education department with disciplinary action if they talk to the media about cohorts of students required to study from home, or the number of classes collapsed due to staff shortages. Schools are reporting staff absences of up to 40 percent on any one day, many due to COVID infections. 

One teacher, on condition of anonymity, reported to the Committee for Public Education (CFPE) that “COVID is rampant in our school … we are now finally getting SOME of the COVID numbers, but these are not the real numbers of the COVID spread, especially as sibling groups are not actively testing—‘so never get covid.’ The reality is, a lot of the VCE (final year) students are reluctant to report their results (even when positive) to the school as it means that they are unable to attend school.”

One principal from a regional school in NSW revealed the difficulties that he and his staff were facing. He wrote a letter to the parents at his school outlining what it would be doing to mitigate against the teacher shortage, including collapsing classes, having students under minimal supervision in the playground and getting unqualified staff to supervise some classes. 

The Department of Education rewrote his letter, deleting almost all of his temporary arrangements. In an interview with the ABC’s “Background Briefing,” he said that he had refused to send the redrafted letter to parents, as it was “just outright lying to parents.” He added, 'People need to know that there is a real issue, and this is not something just to be swept under the carpet.'

The principal expressed his frustration: “I love my job. Absolutely love it… But work is really, really hard. And I don't mind working hard when you get outcomes, but when you work your backside off and the people around you are doing the same and the kids are still missing out…”

Teacher shortages were a huge problem before COVID, but the pandemic has led the system to a breaking point. An article recently published by Monash academics found that 59 percent of teachers surveyed were planning to leave the profession. The reasons given by teachers included “heavy workloads, health and wellbeing concerns for teachers and the status of the profession.”

Epidemiologists are warning that the BA.4 and BA.5 are set to become the dominant variants in Australia, which will lead to another surge in infections. Of serious concern is a recent study from Japan, which found that the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are not only more pathogenic but also have the ability to evade existing immune responses from both prior infection and vaccination. 

In May this year, Ozsage, a multi-disciplinary network of Australian experts, warned that COVID was now the leading cause of death in Australia. Professor Nancy Baxter explained, “On average some 50 people a day are dying from COVID. That’s one person every 30 minutes. We will see tens of thousands more suffering from long COVID. Our health systems, schools and businesses are already struggling and the situation will get a lot worse if we do not act.”

The diagnosis of Long Covid covers a raft of symptoms that last well occur after even mild infection from the virus. It includes significant damage to many of the body’s major organs including the brain. Several studies have found that 10 percent or more of people who are infected with the virus will suffer from some form of Long Covid. This includes countless children now contracting the virus in their classrooms.

Sri Lankan government shuts down government offices and schools

K. Ratnayake

Unable to provide adequate fuel, the Colombo government this week announced desperate measures to halt many public and economic activities, provoking deeper anger among workers, the poor and youth. The government has virtually no foreign exchange to import essentials, including fuel, food items and medicines.

People queue for gas in the rain in Ragama [Photo: WSWS]

On Monday the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe began a new round of talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about the further harsh austerity measures they must impose in order to obtain a bailout loan.

The measures already implemented from this week include a two-week “work from home” rule for all public sector employees from Monday. But no proper facilities, such as internet access and computers, are available to work from home. Public institutions have begun calling workers back into workplaces for two days a week.

Two weeks ago, the government introduced a Friday holiday for all government employees, citing the food and fuel crisis. These workers were cynically told to cultivate their home gardens because of severe food shortages.

State employees previously did overtime in an effort to earn enough income to cope with the rising cost of living, but paid overtime has been stopped. Casual employees’ pay has also been cut because the number of working days has been reduced.

Though the “work from home” regime was scheduled for two weeks, several employees told the WSWS it is uncertain when it will end. They noted that the fuel crisis is not lessening in Sri Lanka and other countries.

On Sunday, Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera urged private companies to also introduce “work from home”, as some of them did during earlier periods of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of inadequate fuel supplies and the lack of international orders, some companies have already reduced employment to two or three days a week. Workers have expressed fears for their jobs as companies may shut down.

People waited all day and night in the rain in Ragama, where gas was not delivered. [Photo: WSWS]

The education ministry has ordered all public and private schools in major cities to close from Monday for one week and conduct online teaching. However, these shutdowns may also last longer. School principals have told students not to attend schools until they are informed.

Across the entire country, a major disruption of education is taking place as teachers and students are unable to attend schools due to drastic reductions in transport services.

The country’s largest university, the University of Peradeniya, was closed from Monday until further notice. The authorities said they took this step due to “current difficulties.”

The public hospital system is also crumbling because of the lack of medicines, the food crisis and the fuel shortages. The Daily Mirror reported that cardiac surgeons and cardiac anesthesiologists at national hospitals have written to authorities saying that they have decided to curtail several operations from Monday because of shortages of drugs and the fuel crisis.

Colombo South Teaching Hospital director Dr. Sagari Kiriwandeniya told the media that doctors were facing problems reporting to work because of the difficulty in obtaining fuel. She told The Morning: “The doctors who report for duty stop their vehicles at fuel queues and come to the hospital by three-wheeler or on foot. They complete their shift and return to the queue.”

During the past two weeks, kilometres-long queues have emerged near about 600 distribution stations around the country. Hundreds of thousands of motorists have waited for up to three days for fuel.

The fuel stations are like battlefields, with police and armed military personnel deployed. Without fuel, clashes have erupted near many petrol sheds. Angry people have chanted slogans and cursed the government for lacking concern for the masses. At some places soldiers have fired into the air to “control” unrest and at other places police have attacked and arrested people.

The fuel crisis has disrupted internal supply chains, further intensifying shortages of essentials and pushing up prices. Many lorries are waiting in queues for days to obtain fuel. Even the produce in one area cannot be transported to other areas in time. This disruption has particularly affected vegetables and fish, increasing prices by up to 300 percent.

Part of a long queue of three-wheelers waiting for petrol in Padukka [Photo: WSWS]

This extreme economic turmoil has been produced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which drove up commodity and fuel prices. The country’s foreign exchange reserves dried up with declining exports, the collapse of income from tourism and falling remittances from those working overseas. The situation has compounded by the massive repayments required on foreign loans.

Sri Lanka has only $US1.9 billion foreign reserves, according to the latest figures cited in Bloomberg. Of this, $1.5 billion is a swap loan from China.

An IMF team has begun ten days of talks with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and Central Bank and treasury officials. Its statement said: “We reaffirm our commitment to support Sri Lanka at this difficult time, in line with the IMF’s policies.”

That means the government has to conduct “debt restructuring” with its creditors and cut government expenditure to satisfy the IMF. International creditors, who are always demanding pounds of flesh, will provide the least “debt relief.”

The government will intensify its austerity program by slashing government expenditure, particularly by downsizing the public sector, privatising state-owned enterprises and cutting social programs such as education and health. Already the government has begun slashing about 800,000 public sector jobs and increasing taxes, including the VAT (value added tax).

The World Bank last week estimated Sri Lanka will face a 7.8 percent economic contraction this year and 3.7 percent in 2023. This is the result of the combined impact of IMF austerity policies and the global economic crisis.

In its Economic Prospect Report, the World Bank warned the government not to delay in implementing IMF measures, saying: “The contraction can be greater in case of protracted delays in actions by the authorities to restore macroeconomic stability and in debt restructuring.”

The working class will not tolerate this developing horrific situation and the government’s austerity measures.

Since early April, workers, the poor and youth have launched massive protests, demonstrations and strikes against the government. Millions of workers joined one-day general strikes on April 8 and May 6.

They demanded the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government and an end to austerity policies, soaring prices and long hours of power cuts. These struggles shook the entire political establishment to the core. 

The trade unions reluctantly called the strikes to deflect the massive opposition among workers into the demand for an interim regime and general elections. These were the demands that the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) presented to divert the mass anger into parliamentary channels.

After unions betrayed these struggles, the SJB and JVP rallied to support the newly-appointed Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, who promised to intensify the IMF policies to “solve the economic crisis.” 

However, sensing the growing anger among workers and the poor, these opposition parties have begun to play a new tune. Yesterday the leaders of SJB and JVP accused the new government of failing to solve the problems of the people. They declared a one-week boycott of parliament from yesterday. 

The SJB is calling for an all-party government and the resignation of President Rajapakse. The JVP has demanded an all-party interim regime for eight months for “political stability” as a supposed first step to solve the economic crisis.

These are sinister moves to once again derail the developing mass opposition. The SJB and JVP may have small tactical differences but they offer no alternative other than implementing the IMF program. Both parties voted for Wickremesinghe’s tax increase bill earlier this month.

The trade unions, which are associated with these opposition parties, will join their bandwagon. Not a single union opposed the austerity measures announced by the government, demonstrating their support for the IMF policies. 

German Air Force chief calls for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia

Johannes Stern

While the NATO powers are escalating the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) is threatening Moscow with the use of nuclear weapons. According to a report in the Bild newspaper, the Air Force head Ingo Gerhartz stated at the Kiel International Seapower Symposium on Friday:

“For credible deterrence, we need both the means and the political will to implement nuclear deterrence if necessary.” According to the newspaper, he added threateningly, “Putin, don’t mess with us! By 2030, Europeans will have 600 modern fighter jets in the Baltic Sea region. Then there are the Americans’ planes.”

The fact that a German general is openly threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia must be taken as a serious warning. Seventy-seven years after the fall of the Third Reich, a fascist mentality is once again spreading in the ruling class. It is ready to commit the worst crimes once again in order to assert its imperialist interests.

The Wehrmacht’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union which began 81 years ago today and in which the Luftwaffe under its then leader Hermann Göhring played a central role, resulted in the death of about 30 million Soviet citizens. A comprehensive nuclear war with Russia would not only turn Europe into a nuclear desert, but it would also call into question the survival of all humanity.

Figures like Gerhartz are apparently totally unmoved by such a scenario. In a recent interview on the official YouTube channel of the German Armed Forces, he defended the proxy war being waged by Germany and the other leading NATO powers against Russia, which increasingly directly raises the threat of a nuclear war.

The general began by celebrating the “successes” of the Ukrainian Air Force against Russia. He “admired the courage and bravery with which it acts there.” The country has “repeatedly succeeded in occasionally shooting down Russian planes and helicopters.” German “help” played a central role in this. For example, Ukraine was supplied with Stinger missiles “to combat enemy aircraft,” and these have “even shot down one or the other combat aircraft and also helicopters.”

Now the support has to go “even further.” “The Luftwaffe will supply the Iris-T SLM system and thus a rocket that we have developed for the Eurofighter to shoot down enemy aircraft and helicopters,” he continued. 

Gerhartz leaves no doubt that the German military is de facto already at war with Russia. In an interview, he praised the rapid advance of the German Air Force in Eastern Europe. “After the Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the Air Force was the first to move its Eurofighters to Romania,” he said. They have “shown what the Air Force has to show, that we are fast.” The Patriot missile defense systems already “rolled into Slovakia one week after the invasion.”

The general made clear that the Bundeswehr is preparing for a comprehensive military confrontation behind the backs of the population. Among other things, he called for the rapid procurement of a national missile defense system. This is “now urgently also a gap that we must close.” In order to be able to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles in space, he proposed to politicians the acquisition of the US-Israeli “Arrow 3” system, he explained. 

Gerhartz is particularly proud of the prompt acquisition of the US F-35 fighter jets, which were funded from the €100 billion “Bundeswehr Special Fund.” He said he was “glad that we were able to achieve this in this government” and that “we will now move forward very, very quickly.” The F-35 were the “most modern system at present” and enabled the Air Force to “act strongly against the Russian armed forces, against Putin … in the alliance.”

What this “acting in an alliance” precisely means in an emergency is regulated by the NATO concept of so-called “nuclear participation.” In the event of a nuclear war against Russia, German combat aircraft would be armed with US nuclear bombs stored in Germany and would also use them. According to an article on the official website of the Ministry of Defence, “the possible arming” of the F-35 includes “free-falling nuclear weapons.”

Gerhartz’s nuclear threats against Russia are not simply the testimony of a mad general but are consistent with the logic of war. With the systematic military encirclement of Russia by NATO, the imperialist powers, especially Germany and the US, provoked Putin’s reactionary attack on Ukraine. Above all, they are now responding to the deep economic crisis and the growing opposition of the working class with a further escalation of war, which literally provokes the use of nuclear weapons.

Above all, the ruling class in Germany is striking out more and more recklessly and sees war as an opportunity to return to an aggressive foreign and great power policy after their monstrous crimes in two world wars.

In a keynote speech at a conference of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung yesterday, Lars Klingbeil, Secretary General of the SPD, stated that “after almost 80 years of restraint ... Germany now has a new role in the global coordinate system.” Germany is “increasingly at the centre” and must “have the ambition to be a leadership power.”

Klingbeil explicitly understands this to mean the use of military weapons. “For me, a peace policy also means seeing military force as a legitimate means of politics,” he stated.

He praised the special assets of the Bundeswehr, the decision of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to “deploy more German troops on NATO’s eastern flank” and demanded that Europe “be given more weight as a geopolitical actor.” This is the only way to survive “in the coming years” in the international “competition for relationships, dependencies, connections, cooperation and projection”—that is, the imperialist redivision of the world.

The costs of this megalomaniac policy are to be passed on to the working class. “This new role as a leading power will demand tough decisions from Germany, including financial and political decisions,” he threatened. One must “change structures, also renegotiate budgets.”

The ruling class knows that the policy of war abroad, as in the past, requires the militarisation of society and the establishment of a dictatorship at home. He wants “we as a society to develop a new normality with the Bundeswehr. That we develop a self-evident way of paying respect and recognition to those who do their service for our country, who are willing to go to extremes if Parliament so decides.”

The warmongers in the media underscored that there are no more moral boundaries for these “extremes.” Earlier this week, Der Spiegel Editor Dirk Kurbjuweit published an article directly calling for “German nuclear weapons.”

Kurbjuweit cynically explains that “only a functioning nuclear deterrent can prevent great wars.” This would include “a debate that is not yet underway: If Europe cannot rely one hundred percent on the United States, if Germany cannot rely one hundred percent on France and Britain, does Germany not also need nuclear weapons?” He said that when he wrote these words, it sent “chills down his spine.” “But if you think through all that is currently happening,” he continued, “you have to ask yourself this question.”

The fact that the call for German nuclear weapons is raised by Kurbjuweit of all people sheds light on the “new era” of foreign policy that has been proclaimed. In reality, the “new era” was prepared over a lengthy period of time. It was Kurbjuweit who, just a few days after representatives of the Federal Government announced the end of military restraint at the 2014 Munich Security Conference, published the notorious article “The Transformation of the Past” in Der Spiegel.

Kurbjuweit attacked the historian Fritz Fischer, who had proved in his 1961 book Griff nach der Weltmacht (Grab for World Power) that the German Empire had a large share of responsibility in the outbreak of the First World War. Fischer’s theses are “basically scandalous,” he quoted the now emeritus Humboldt Professor Herfried Münkler.

With regard to the German crimes in the Second World War, Kurbjuweit gave the Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte, who died in 2016, a platform. Nolte had already claimed in the historians’ dispute in the 1980s that the Holocaust was a justified reaction against the Soviet Union. Kurbjuweit quoted the Berlin “historian” Jörg Baberowski, a declared follower of Nolte, as saying: “Hitler was not a psychopath, and he wasn’t vicious. He did not want to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table.”