Australian teacher staffing shortage exacerbates schools’ crisis

Patrick O’Connor

Numerous reports have recently detailed the impact of Australia’s national shortage of school teachers. Thousands of positions remain unfilled across the school system, creating enormous workload pressures within the schools and exacerbating the crisis of the public education system.

Striking NSW teachers marching towards parliament on June 30, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

A detailed survey of the teaching workforce was issued by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) on September 20. Its Australian Teacher Workforce Data project involved the regular surveying of tens of thousands of teachers—the latest edition polled nearly 32,000 school workers, which AITSL characterised as “by far the largest ever sample of teachers for research purposes.”

The survey showed a growing divergence between rapid growth in the student population and slowing enrolment and graduation from teaching degrees.

The existing workforce is ageing, with AITSL reporting that more than one-third of all registered teachers, 38 percent, are older than 50 years. The report underscored one of the main reasons for younger teachers quitting the profession, crushing workloads and expectations of delivering unpaid overtime every day. AITSL’s survey found that full time teachers typically worked 55 hours a week, 45 percent more hours than they are paid for.

The situation in the schools is undoubtedly even worse than indicated in the Australian Teacher Workforce Data, given that the published survey results date from 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in that year has since wreaked havoc in Australian schools, especially in late 2021 and this year. State and federal governments, both Labor and Liberal, have worked closely with the teacher unions to keep schools open amid record rates of infection, with even minimal precautions such as mandatory mask wearing jettisoned.

Numerous, though as yet not properly quantified, reports have emerged of teachers quitting the profession over fears of being repeatedly infected with the dangerous virus.

Federal government projections anticipate a shortfall of around 4,000 secondary teachers by 2025. This is likely to be a gross underestimate. In each state in Australia, there are already hundreds and sometimes thousands of advertised teaching positions that are being unfilled.

In Victoria, an Australian Education Union survey of public school principals was released last August. It found that every secondary school principal has had to readvertise teaching vacancies due to no appointments being made when positions were first listed. Across both secondary and primary schools, more than 80 percent of principals reported that it had become “much harder '' to fill staffing vacancies in the last twelve months. Finally, the survey reported that the top two reasons teachers gave for leaving the profession were stress/burnout and workload.

A research report conducted by several academics at Monash University and published in the Australian Journal of Education last August found that of nearly 2,500 surveyed teachers, 59 percent planned on quitting the profession. The survey was conducted on the eve of the pandemic, so, again, the real situation is likely even worse than reported.

The majority of those surveyed reported the impact of excess workload, especially non-teaching requirements including administrative duties and data entry demands. This impact includes mental and physical health problems. 

One teacher explained: “I am an extremely hardworking person, but excessive workload, constant emotional and mental fatigue plus a young family at home have all brought me crashing down this year. Even today I am on sick leave because I just can’t be f***ed. I can’t get out of bed and put on my teacher face and be responsible for 200 students every day. […] We are being knocked down one brick at a time and it’s taking its toll on me.”

A steady influx of young graduate teachers has long propped up the Australian school system. Their passion for teaching and for the wellbeing of children is cynically exploited, with schools happy to employ graduates, typically on insecure 12 month contracts, with the expectation that they will run themselves into the ground for a few years before burning out and then getting replaced by a new young person desperate for their first position. The staffing crisis is partly due to that influx of graduates drying up.

Recent federal government statistics have outlined that annual completions in initial teacher education declined by nearly 20 percent percent between 2017 and 2020. Whereas 17 percent of students across undergraduate courses drop out before graduating, an extraordinary 50 percent of students in teaching degrees do so. This is because courses involve trainee rounds—after young would-be teachers see what conditions are actually like in the schools, half of them quit.

The impact of the staffing crisis falls most heavily on working class communities. Within the Australian school system, among the most privatised and unequal in the world, wealthy private schools can draw on their enormous cash reserves, bolstered every year by vast injections of federal government public funding, to pay higher salaries as required to attract staff.

Public schools in outer working class and rural and regional areas find it most difficult to attract and retain teachers. The impact of family poverty and financial distress generated by the profit system is expressed within classrooms through childhood trauma, undiagnosed disability, and related behavioural issues that make teachers’ work even more challenging and stressful.

One teacher at a working-class primary school in Melbourne’s northern suburbs told the World Socialist Web Site: “We have had numerous teaching positions go unfilled this year. Some didn’t get even a single applicant, which was unheard of until recently. Because of the shortage, there is now one less Year 4 classroom than was initially planned, with those children spread across other classrooms, increasing class sizes. 

“Also, the school frequently can’t hire enough relief teachers, so when teachers are ill or absent their students are split across other classrooms. I frequently have up to six additional students placed in my room when this happens; some days feel like a circus. This adds to my workload and stress levels. I have needed to call in sick because I just can’t make it through the week. This is a tough choice as I know it impacts my colleagues who are feeling the same.”

The political establishment and the education trade unions are responsible for the staffing crisis. The situation within the schools has not emerged accidentally—this is a consciously engineered crisis. What has emerged are the entirely predictable consequences of bipartisan Labor and Liberal party policy, of underfunding public schools while pouring billions of public funds into the private system, continually increasing teachers’ responsibilities and workloads while failing to provide the necessary support services, and tying every level of education to standardised test scores including the regressive NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests.

At the same time as all this, the teacher unions have collaborated with state governments in undermining teachers’ salaries. Most recently in Victoria earlier this year, the Australian Education Union bureaucracy rammed through a three-year industrial agreement that increased nominal base wages by less than 2 percent a year, far lower than the inflation rate.

The ruling class is now proceeding in line with the old political adage of never letting a good crisis go to waste. Under the guise of addressing teacher shortages, new measures are being prepared to undermine the public education system and tailor it ever more directly to the needs of the corporations.

State and federal education ministers met last August for a “round table” discussion on the staffing crisis. Amid warm bipartisan agreement between the Labor and Liberal politicians, they resolved to issue a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan by December. Already flagged measures include watering down initial teacher training and education requirements and allowing university students to work as “interns”, measures serving to undermine the teaching profession. The New South Wales state government has also announced plans to introduce a new “performance pay” regime, potentially tying teachers’ salaries to standardised test results.

Dominican Republic militarizes border with Haiti, cracks down on migrants

Dominic Gustavo

Dominican President Luis Abinader announced the deployment of troops to the Haitian border on October 9 to stop the flow of refugees fleeing poverty and violence in crisis-stricken Haiti.

Speaking at a press conference in Dajabón, on the northwest frontier with Haiti, Abinader echoed his Haitian counterparts in calling for a foreign military intervention to quell the popular uprising against the US-installed regime of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Dominican President Luis Abinader with troops being deployed on Haitian border (Credit: Mide.gov.do)

Abinader, speaking for the venal ruling elite of the Dominican Republic—itself a deeply unequal and poverty-stricken nation—no doubt views the mass movement of the Haitian working class with extreme nervousness. He praised the Haitian government’s plea for foreign troops as “wise, reasonable and patriotic.”

He went on to declare that, in the event of an intervention, his government would seal the border and accept no refugees: “We understand that this international force will have the methods to prevent a massive migration of Haitian citizens to our country, because we, in that case, would block the border. … It’s very dangerous for the integrity of the Dominican Republic to receive asylum seekers in the country.” Abinader promised even harsher controls on migrations, while boasting that “the Migration Directorate has deported the largest number of Haitian people that has been documented in recent years.”

The president added that the government would purchase six helicopters, 10 aircraft, 21 armored vehicles and four anti-riot trucks, the nation’s biggest military procurement since 1961. Troops and tanks were deployed in Dajabón, with Abinader announcing the construction of 400 residences as well as pay raises for the soldiers.

The wealthiest public official in the Dominican Republic—with an official net worth of some $70 million—Abinader was elected in 2020 on a platform of “law and order” and cracking down on migration from Haiti. During the election, he cultivated close ties with the likes of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and then-Secretary of State and former CIA director Mike Pompeo, signaling his desire to faithfully serve the interests of US imperialism. In 2021, he was named in the Pandora Papers leak, which revealed the hidden wealth that he and other world leaders had stashed away in tax havens.

In February 2021, aiming to cultivate support among far-right chauvinist elements, Abinader announced plans for a Trump-inspired border wall to cover nearly half of the 244-mile (392 km) border with Haiti. Construction began last February. No expenses will be spared in equipping the wall with advanced facial recognition cameras, thermal and motion sensors, and military-grade drones to patrol its length.

Emboldened by the tacit support of the government, outright fascist organizations such as the Antigua Orden Dominicana (AOD) have carried out violent provocations against the Haitian immigrant community and their defenders in the Dominican working class. On October 12, an “Anti-Colonial Day” demonstration in Columbus Park in Santo Domingo was violently dispersed by a mob of fascists chanting anti-Haitian slogans, while police looked on from the sidelines.

Fourteen social and human rights organizations petitioned the Office of the Attorney General of the Dominican Republic for “firm action” to end “the impunity that covers” racist hate crimes and human rights abuses committed against the Haitian migrant community.

The letter reads, “We have seen the proliferation of racist speeches and criminal actions against the Haitian immigrant community in the country continue in the face of the authorities’ passive gaze, when it is not under their direct incitement.”

The letter recounts one of these crimes, carried out in Rancho Manuel, in Puerto Plata province. Earlier this month, the local Haitian community was subjected to a brutal lynch mob assault after a rancher and two of his employees were found murdered. Videos posted on social media show the migrants’ makeshift dwellings being ransacked and torched, while the perpetrators shouted racist and xenophobic curses.

A 2017 census recorded some 500,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, though the true number may be twice that. Haitian immigrants make up the majority of the workforce in agriculture and in the burgeoning construction industry.

With no legal protections, they are subject to the most brutal exploitation. On the sugar cane plantations, the laborers are subject to slave-like conditions, including 12-hour days, arbitrary wages and in some cases even physical abuse. Forbidden from striking or organizing, they are at the mercy of their employers, who can dismiss them at will and even call the authorities to round them up, sometimes before wages are paid.

The Dominican constitution had guaranteed birthright citizenship until 2010, when an amendment was made that denied citizenship to the children of undocumented migrants. In 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal, stacked with right-wing nationalists, handed down a draconian ruling that retroactively denied citizenship to anyone born to non-Dominican parents since 1929.

Hundreds of thousands were rendered stateless overnight and subject to deportation. Many of them were children of Haitian parents, who were born in the Dominican Republic, speak Spanish and have never set foot in Haiti. Tens of thousands were deported over the following years, while others “self-deported” to Haiti out of fear. Many settled in makeshift camps on the border, living in abject squalor amid disease and starvation.

As the flow of refugees has increased due to growing deprivation and political instability in Haiti, the Dominican government has stepped up its attacks on migrants, deporting more people in the first half of 2022 than in all of 2021.

In cultivating anti-Haitian chauvinism and xenophobia, Abinader and the rotten comprador bourgeoisie that he represents are following a well-worn path. Historically, the Dominican elite—while profiting enormously from the cheap labor of Haitian workers—have stirred up the most backward and disoriented elements of the population by scapegoating Haitian migrants for depressed wages and unemployment.

The 1937 Parsley Massacre, also known as El Corte (The Cutting), provides the most notorious example. The US-backed dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo was then faced with an economic crisis and growing social opposition, triggered by a precipitous fall in the price of sugar, the country’s primary export.

Haitian laborers living in the borderlands provided a convenient scapegoat, and in October of that year, seizing upon a few murky allegations of crimes, Trujillo ordered the extermination of Haitians living on the Dominican side of the border.

Some 20,000-30,000 Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans were slain, many of them butchered with machetes in order to make it appear a spontaneous action by the campesinos. Cynically, Haitians working on American-owned plantations were left untouched.

No Dominican official was ever charged or prosecuted, and the crime was never officially acknowledged until after Trujillo’s assassination in 1961. In December 1962, the first free-elections in 30 years saw the accession of nationalist reformer Juan Bosch to the presidency. His limited reforms provoked the ire of the possessing classes and their imperialist sponsors, and nine months later he was overthrown in a coup and replaced with a military junta.

In April 1965, workers rose up against the military dictatorship. Arms in hand, they took over Santo Domingo and beat back the efforts of the junta to dislodge them. US President Lyndon Johnson ordered the invasion and occupation of the country to “restore order.” Four thousand died in pitched street battles fought in the slums of Santo Domingo, with poorly armed workers giving battle to US Marines and junta troops equipped with tanks and heavy artillery.

After the carnage, “free” elections were held and Joaquin Balaguer, a former henchman of Trujillo, was installed as president. He would rule for the next 12 years through a combination of fraud and police terror, facilitating the exploitation of the nation’s natural resources and cheap labor by American capital.

With this bloody history in mind, Abinader’s call for a military intervention in Haiti has sinister implications. The Dominican bourgeoisie would also not hesitate to call upon their imperialist sponsors for military assistance in the event their “own” working class threatened their grip on power.

Indigenous women account for almost half of Canada’s female federal inmate population

E.P. Milligan

Recently released figures from the Office of the Correctional Investigator show that indigenous women comprise almost 50 percent of Canada’s female inmate population in federally run prisons. Indigenous men are also grossly overrepresented among Canada’s prison inmates, albeit not to the same degree. Overall, indigenous people account for 37 percent of the federal prison population despite comprising just 5 percent of the Canadian population.

The report notes that the indigenous inmate population has risen by some 18 percent over the past decade, even as the number of non-indigenous inmates dropped by 28 percent during the same period as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rates of indigenous incarceration are even higher than the average in Ontario and Canada’s western provinces. In the period from 2011 to 2012, for example, indigenous inmates comprised 78 percent of the total prison population in Saskatchewan, while the indigenous population comprises only 12 percent of the province’s inhabitants.

Female prisoner being held in segregation cell. (Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2016-2017)

These tragic figures underscore the savage mistreatment of indigenous peoples by the Canadian capitalist state for over a century and a half, beginning with the forcible dispossession of the native people and the destruction of their communal forms of property. Historically, Canada’s ruling class ruthlessly cleared the native populations from their land to make way for capitalist economic development and suppressed native culture in an effort to transform them into a docile workforce. The most notorious method employed was the state-created, church-run residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families for long periods of time and sought to erase their cultural and linguistic heritage. The inhumane conditions within the residential schools led to the deaths of as many as 6,000 indigenous children, while tens of thousands of others were physically and sexually brutalized. The last of such institutions closed as recently as the late 1990s.

The intolerable social conditions which Canadian capitalism has meted out to the indigenous peoples have created generations of mentally distressed individuals living in extreme poverty. Figures from a Statistics Canada study based on 2016 data found that as many as 44 percent of residents on native reserves live in low-income households, standing in stark comparison to the 14 percent of Canada’s total population living in poverty. The reserves themselves often lack basic social infrastructure, including things as fundamental as access to clean drinking water. Today, 32 long-term boil water advisories remain in effect across Canada’s indigenous reserves, including the Neskatanga First Nation in Ontario, which has been without clean water for over 25 years.

The deepening of Canada’s social crisis has pushed more vulnerable sections of society into the desperate conditions that increase incarceration rates. Many indigenous women relocate to cities to escape the poverty rampant on the reserves, leaving their families and communities behind. Once in an urban environment, they often face problems in securing housing and employment, which are exacerbated by the lack of social supports and isolation from their culture and family. The rampant opioid epidemic, expressed above all in the deadly wave of fentanyl overdoses, has also devastated many urban indigenous communities. Both on- and off-reserve, the lives of many indigenous people, have been scarred by the residential school system—either having lived through the traumatic experience themselves, or having been raised by parents and family members who did. These conditions of social deprivation also make indigenous people even more likely targets for discriminatory practices by law enforcement and the Canadian judicial system.

A 2004 Correctional Service Canada (CSC) Research Branch report titled “A Needs Assessment of Federal Aboriginal Women Offenders,” assessing indigenous women during incarceration and post-release, found that over two-thirds (69 percent) were rated at a “high needs” level for programming, whereas 29 percent were rated at moderate and only 2 percent at low-level needs. Noted among the most pressing needs were personal and emotional orientation, substance abuse treatment and securing employment. Figures from 2009-2010 showed abysmally long wait times for gaining access to such rehabilitative programming. For Métis women, indigenous peoples with mixed native and French ancestry inhabiting Canada’s western provinces, the average wait time took 264 days. For a First Nations woman the wait time was 238 days, and no Inuit women were receiving program support at all.

The 2004 CSC report noted that the vast majority of indigenous women have become entangled in Canada’s criminal justice system for “more serious offences.” Between 2009 and 2010, the average sentence length for incarcerated indigenous women was 3.52 years, and the majority (68.08 percent) were serving sentences ranging between two to five years. Indigenous women inmates generally had low levels of education and employment. Many had a previous criminal history, often involving youth convictions that led to their being ensnared in the penal system at an early and especially vulnerable age. In a further reflection of the social misery imposed upon Canada’s indigenous reservations, most women endured some form of childhood dysfunction and difficulties within their family or community.

As among all sections of the working class, the growing social crisis resulting from increased economic insecurity and the evisceration of public and social services has been particularly hard on native young people. On average, incarcerated indigenous women were younger than the average Canadian inmate. As of 2010, roughly 50.9 percent of new admissions were under the age of 30 (as compared to 37.8 percent of non-indigenous incarcerated individuals) and the average age of all female indigenous inmates was 34 years old. By 2016-17, indigenous youth aged 12-17 accounted for 46 percent of youth admissions to correctional services in 10 jurisdictions while comprising on average only 8 percent of the general young population within the same jurisdictions.

The conditions of incarceration for indigenous women are also typically worse than that of their non-indigenous counterparts. They are segregated more frequently and for longer periods of time than non-indigenous women. One woman was reported in 2003 to have been held in segregation for 567 days, for example. In 2006, another report showed an indigenous woman actually spent the majority of her sentence in isolation—for a period of over 1,500 days. Isolation or solitary confinement is known to have serious deleterious effects on psychological well-being, especially for individuals with prior mental health issues. The United Nations considers more than 15 consecutive days of 22 hours or more of confinement “without meaningful human contact' to be torture.

Outdoor segregation yard at a women’s prison. (Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2016-2017)

Reports note that due to a lack of resources, the CSC often responds to mental health issues (including acts of self-harm) by segregating inmates rather than providing them with treatment.

Indigenous prisoners are less likely to be granted either day or full parole. In the period of 2009-10, over 75 percent of all indigenous inmates remained incarcerated until their release date—a number over 10 percent higher than their non-indigenous counterparts. Indigenous individuals also comprise 33.42 percent of total overall detentions past their statutory release date, a number disproportionate to their population size. Overall, only 1.2 percent of indigenous inmates were granted full parole during the 2009-10 period compared with 3.8 percent of non-indigenous ones.

The massive over-representation of indigenous people in Canada’s prisons is yet another example of the fraudulent character of the Trudeau Liberal government and ruling elite’s policy of “nation to nation” “reconciliation” with Canada’s native people. This policy is not aimed at addressing the urgent social and economic needs of the native population, but at advancing the predatory interests of Canadian capitalism. Through the cultivation of a tiny petty-bourgeois native elite and its incorporation into the structures of bourgeois politics, Canadian capitalism seeks to gain a fig-leaf of legitimacy for socially and environmentally destructive resource development projects on historic native lands, and to suppress opposition among the native population and segregate it from the rest of the working class    

“Native reconciliation” is enabling a privileged minority to become business owners, government officials and judges, as exemplified in the person of Governor General Mary Simon, the King’s representative in Canada, while the vast majority of indigenous people live in abject misery akin to social conditions in the lesser developed, historically oppressed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—now approaching the end of his seventh year as prime minister and the most conspicuous proponent of “reconciliation”—proposed a palliative measure to the imprisoning of large numbers of native people in the form of a bill to do away with mandatory minimum sentences. Even were Bill C-5 to be adopted by parliament, it would only repeal “certain” minimum penalties and is difficult to enforce by design. Critics of the bill have made clear that the bill will do nothing to reduce the number of indigenous women housed within federal penitentiaries.

Washington bullies Mexico into supporting war against Russia

Andrea Lobo

During recent weeks, as the US and NATO war against Russia in Ukraine spirals toward a nuclear “Armageddon,” as acknowledged by US President Biden himself, and drives inflation to historic highs, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has increased his administration’s appeals for a negotiated settlement, while condemning Russia, Ukraine, the US, the European powers and the UN for escalating the conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico Marcelo Ebrard during the IX Summit of the Americas, in June 2022 (Credit: Gobierno de Mexico)

In his morning press briefing on Monday, AMLO called for a five-year truce and warned about the planned nuclear missile tests by NATO and Russia, stating: “Some of them don’t even have good aim, which is what worries me the most.”

He denounced those “sending weapons to countries where there are conflicts and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries…They already bombed a bridge. They already sabotaged a pipeline. There was already a statement that we are about to press the button.”

The UN is acting as a mere “ornament,” he said, while “it should be demanding a dialogue and peace every day. Have you heard anything from the UN? Nothing!”

López Obrador stressed, “Do not drag us in. We are not warmongers. We have ties with peoples from all over the world. Our policy is against war and for peace. Our policy is neutrality. No, we are not on the side of any hegemonic power in the world… In this case, we have acted and will continue to act in a neutral manner.”

These comments followed those he made during his Independence Day speech on September 16, when he denounced the war in Ukraine, Western sanctions and the massive shipment of weapons to Ukraine as “irrational.” He said in this speech seen by tens of million, “The large powers position themselves before the conflict only to serve their own hegemonic interests… and the interests of the war industry.”

Weapons shipments to Ukraine, he added, “have only served to exacerbate the conflict, create more suffering among victims, their families and refugees, worsen the shortage of food and energy and drive inflation globally—issues that harm the vast majority of people in the world.” After citing the invasions of Mexico by France and the United States, he concluded by calling for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement mediated by Pope Francis, the far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and UN Secretary General António Guterres.

Among other similar statements, on October 5, AMLO denounced the proposal by the European Parliament to nominate Ukrainian President Zelensky for the Nobel Peace Prize. “How could one of the actors of the war receive the Nobel Peace Prize?” he said incredulously.

That day, Zelensky spoke remotely to the General Assembly of the Organization of American States held in Peru and called on Latin American nations to support Ukraine, including through sanctions against Russia.

The following day, AMLO responded to Zelensky indicating that sanctions are “irrational” and only serve to exacerbate “the suffering of the people.” Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil then refused to sign a statement of the OAS summit that condemned solely Russia for the war.

While there is certainly an element of demagoguery and hypocrisy in the statements by AMLO, that the government of America’s neighbor and main trade partner openly blames the United States for escalating the war in Ukraine for its “own hegemonic interests” is a blow for the war propaganda of the United States and NATO, which argues that all would be well with the world if only Putin had not invaded Ukraine.

The same week that the Biden administration announced its National Security Strategy, which sets out a plan for waging world war against Russia and China to “win the competition for the 21st century,” the elected leader of Mexico, whose resources, industries and territory constitute a key pillar for the American economy and military, declared “neutrality.”

Under the headline “Foster Democracy and Shared Prosperity in the Western Hemisphere,” Biden’s strategy states: “Our priority is to work with Canada and Mexico to advance a North American vision for the future that draws on our shared strengths and bolsters U.S. global competitiveness.”

Following decades of integration of the North American supply chains to facilitate the competition by US and Canadian imperialism against its economic rivals in Europe and Asia, the initial shutdowns during the pandemic proved that all major US industries depend on Mexican suppliers.

After a US-Mexico High-Level Security Dialogue in Washington D.C. on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced AMLO’s statements on the war. “There is no neutrality when we are speaking about annexations,” he said. “What’s important is to ask oneself if the U.N.’s values are reflected in Mexico’s position.”

Undoubtedly, these comments give only a glimpse of much more severe threats and bullying behind the scenes. This was reflected in Mexico’s vote in support of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of four new territories in eastern Ukraine. The Mexican ambassador to the UN, Juan Ramón, said in a speech that the annexation “represents an escalation of the armed conflict, including a nuclear threat or a nuclear accident” and called for an immediate truce. On March 2, Mexico had also voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a joint press briefing on Thursday, Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard also felt compelled to clarify that an agreement on space exploration with Russia that was announced last weekend was actually from September 2021 and is not in effect.

In a speech on Monday, the EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell denounced Turkey, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Indonesia as “swing states, voting on one side or the other according to their interests” and “creating this messy multipolarity.” Then, he singled out AMLO, declaring, “Look at Mexico’s President’s recent speech. Who is our Mexico delegate? Is he here? You heard what the Mexican President said about us recently.” He made these bullying remarks seconds before denouncing Putin’s supposed “imperialism.”

Walking the tightrope, AMLO then declared Wednesday that he had no problem with Ukraine’s president speaking to the Mexican Congress. As early as June 10, Mexico had signed a joint statement with the US and Canada condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Our coordinated responses to Russian aggression against Ukraine, including calls to establish a diplomatic path forward, demonstrate the importance of North American solidarity,” the statement said, vowing in the same paragraph to “strengthen our relations, which is key to our collective security and prosperity.”

At the same time, US and Canadian imperialism seek to further consolidate the North American supply chains as a platform to wage economic and shooting wars. Ultimately, this presents new profit opportunities to the Mexican ruling class that AMLO represents.

A crucial element of this process has been semiconductors and advanced chips, most of which are produced in Taiwan. The Biden administration has not only placed Taiwan at the forefront of its war provocations against China, but last week banned the export to China of advanced computer chips and equipment to produce them.

On September 12, Blinken and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo met with AMLO and other top Mexican officials to indicate that, handed major incentives to move production to the United States, semiconductor manufacturers “would like to see the rest of their supply chain in North America, Mexico specifically.” In other words, they want a greater access to Mexico’s cheap labor and resources.

At the meeting, AMLO responded positively to the announcement of investments in semiconductors, which is a blatant measure in preparation for war.

In the final analysis, the capitalist government in Mexico will seek to use geopolitical tensions to extract investments and other concessions from the US and Europe for the Mexican corporations and banks, which are entirely beholden to their imperialist patrons.

Floods, hunger, disease and IMF austerity devastate Pakistan’s workers and poor

Sampath Perera

The catastrophic climate change-linked floods that have ravaged Pakistan since June and peaked in late August continue to inundate vast swathes of the country.

Torrents of water produced by melting glaciers in the Himalayas combined with an unusually heavy rain season have devastated substantial portions of the country. Millions have been displaced, often with their homes completely destroyed, and tens of millions more are being impacted by the destruction of crops and livestock and much of the country’s limited infrastructure.

Since mid-June more than 1,700 people have officially lost their lives due to the floods, among them 615 children. A further 12,000 are reported as injured.

Over 33 million people are variously affected by the floods. As grim as these official figures are, they provide only a pale reflection of the true human toll.

Victims of heavy flooding from monsoon rains carry relief aid through flood water in the Qambar Shahdadkot district of Sindh Province, Pakistan, Sept. 9, 2022. Scientists have said climate change no doubt helped swell monsoon rains this summer that dumped three-and-a-half times the normal amount of rain, putting a third of Pakistan underwater. [AP Photo/Fareed Khan]

Relief workers are warning of an explosion of disease and hunger in the coming weeks and months, yet Pakistan’s ruling elite and the major imperialist powers are doing virtually nothing to provide emergency aid.

Despite the urgent need for billions of dollars to deal with the social disaster and help people rebuild their lives, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has rejected any relaxing of the stringent austerity conditions it attached to the release of the latest $1.16 billion tranche of its loan program with Islamabad in September. “Policy commitments made by the Pakistani authorities as part of the Seventh and Eighth review under their IMF-support program continue to apply,” its resident in Islamabad, Esther Pérez Ruiz, callously told Reuters last Monday.

The government’s “policy commitments” mean that it must slash the remaining price subsidies, raise prices of energy products and impose taxes on hitherto exempted products including essentials and medicine. In addition, the provincial governments must produce a budgetary surplus. The unstated assumption behind these stringent orders is that the government must not spend on relief programs, since these would violate the IMF’s stipulations.

Assistance from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)-led government has been limited to payments of 25,000 rupees (less than $US 115) to 2.6 million families, reported the Dawn earlier this week.

Officially 7.6 million are listed as displaced. Yet according to UN data only 600,000 are living in official relief camps. While some may have found refuge with relatives or friends, millions have been left to fend for themselves, living in makeshift camps and often in the open air, without drinking water and sanitary facilities.

The absence of toilets has forced the displaced to relieve themselves in the open. After losing what little they owned, many flood victims are now threatened by diseases such as malaria, dengue and scabies, child morbidity and malnutrition.

Indicative of the authorities’ disorganized and indifferent response to the human tragedy playing out across much of the world’s fifth most populous country, there is no systematic government collection of data on the floods and the health and well-being of its victims with a view to mobilizing and distributing desperately needed resources.

Newspaper reports are largely limited to harrowing accounts from victims and aid-workers. BBC spoke to Dr. Ammara Gohar, a member of a medical team that visited several villages in rural Sindh, still cut-off by flood waters, by wooden boat. She spoke of tending to a “severely malnourished” nine-month-old, adding, “there are so many people like this baby.”

AFP spoke to parents of an unresponsive child of seven treated for suspected malaria in a “desperately rundown emergency clinic.” The child’s mother described the squalid conditions in the camp where they are living. “From early evening until dawn, throughout the whole night, the mosquitoes are overwhelming,” she said. They and other flood victims are drinking from a well suspected to have been contaminated by flood water. Due to rising flood waters, the family had had to flee twice before settling in the current relief camp. According to the AFP report, Sindh has reported 208,000 cases of malaria in 2022, a substantial increase from last year.

The estimated damage from the flooding has already surpassed $40 billion. Over 750,000 homes have been destroyed and 1.3 million damaged. 13,000 kilometres of roads, 410 bridges, 2,000 hospitals and health care facilities and 25,000 schools are said to have been destroyed or damaged.

The floods have also devastated the country’s crops, with Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman estimating that 50 percent of the country’s breadbasket has been destroyed. The Guardian reported on October 12 that four million acres of crops have been destroyed nationally, including rice and cotton. The decimation of crops will directly compound the food supply crisis and hit Pakistan’s textile industry hard. Textiles are one of the country’s most important exports.

The disruption of agriculture will continue for years to come. In addition to the destruction of this year’s crops, farmers report that they cannot sow wheat, rice, and other crops for next year because water levels have yet to recede. “[W]e have no dry land left,” one landowner in Baluchistan’s Sohbatpur district told the Guardian. Another farmer from Sindh province added, “People have lost their crops and some have also lost their seeds of wheat, which they had kept for new seasons in storerooms and factories.”

Amid a slew of reports of widespread disease, hunger and poverty, entirely predictable for an impoverished country such as Pakistan, the United Nations has increased the meagre “urgent” relief fund target it set last month five-fold, from $160 million to $816 million. In an October 5 press release, the UN said it was doing so in response to the “growing lifesaving needs of the people.” According to Reuters, the UN was able to raise just $90 million by the time it renewed the appeal, little more than half of the initial woefully inadequate sum.

Even before the floods, Pakistan was reeling from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and the US-NATO proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. Decades of IMF austerity and “structural adjustment” programs implemented by all of the parties of the Pakistani elite, including the PML (N), the Pakistan People’s Party and Imran Khan’s PTI, have placed the overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s 225 million people in poverty or one crisis away from it.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned a public health disaster is in the making. “The water has stopped rising, but the danger has not,” he said last week. “Many more lives than were lost in the floods could be lost in the coming weeks if we don’t mobilize greater support for Pakistan.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that 5.7 million flood survivors will face a serious food crisis between September and November. This adds to some 38 million Pakistanis–more than 16 percent of the population–estimated by the WHO to have been in moderate to severe food insecurity even prior to the floods.

Aid agency Save the Children estimated that 3.4 million children in Pakistan are facing chronic hunger. Its country director in Pakistan, Khuram Gondal, said, “As well as dealing with the wreckage, the country is now facing a full-blown hunger crisis. We simply cannot allow a situation where children are starving to death because we did not act quickly enough.”

The World Bank, which is working hand in hand with the IMF and Islamabad’s elite to push ahead with privatization, including in the energy and education sectors, warned of a sharp increase of poverty as a result of the floods. It noted that “without decisive relief and recovery efforts to help the poor,” between 5.8 and 9 million people will be pushed into poverty–which it defines as living on less than $1.90 a day.

While the warning is certainly valid, the projections are an underestimate.

General Zafar Iqbal, the coordinator of the National Flood Response and Coordination Centre set up by the government and the military to coordinate relief efforts, said the aid received so far was “a drop in the ocean… If you send 100 planes, they would take 1,600 tonnes, or 2,000 tonnes or maybe 2,500 tonnes of aid material, but we require 300 to 400 tonnes of food every day.”

In other words, most of those affected are hungry, sick and desperate for assistance but hardly anything is coming their way.

The total assistance provided by the United States since the beginning of the year to Pakistan, its Cold War-era ally and still a major non-NATO partner, amounts to a pittance of $56 million.

Between 2002 and 2017, the United States paid Islamabad a staggering $33.4 billion for the dirty work it rendered to sustain the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. While a minuscule portion of this sum trickled down as humanitarian assistance, the vast majority went to pay for various war-related expenditures, including fattening the pockets of the single most important decision-maker in the country, Pakistan’s military. Washington used these large sums of aid as leverage to pressure Islamabad into serving as a US satrap to strengthen American imperialism’s position in Central Asia.

The military aid provided to Pakistan over a 15-year period is outstripped by the vast quantities of advanced arms, military hardware and financial aid Washington has flooded into Ukraine. Just the latest shipment on October 4 cost the US $625 million, bringing the Biden administration’s direct “military assistance” to Kiev to $17.5 billion. The US president, who has authorized over $66 billion for Ukraine to escalate the war against Russia, recently warned an audience of billionaires to prepare for nuclear Armageddon.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan’s PML (N)-PPP coalition government allocated a massive $7.5 billion, or 16 percent of its total budget, to defense for the 2022–23 financial year, a 12 percent increase over the previous year. While pursuing its own reactionary military-strategic rivalry with India, Pakistan’s ruling elite relies upon the military as the bulwark of the capitalist state machine that upholds its privileges and ruthlessly suppresses the democratic, social and economic aspirations of the working class and rural toilers.

At least 25 miners killed in a blast in Turkish coal mine after lack of precautions

Ulaş Ateşçi

At least 25 miners were killed and dozens injured in yesterday’s firedamp explosion at the state-owned Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises’ (TTK) Amasra Plant Directorate mine in Bartın on the Black Sea coast. At the time of writing, several miners were still underground.

Miners carry the body of a victim in Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin, Turkey, Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. (Nilay Meryem Comlek/Depo Photos via AP) [AP Photo/ (Nilay Meryem Comlek/Depo Photos via AP)]

“An explosion occurred at the Amasra Hard Coal Plant Directorate at minus 300 [meters] level around 6:15 p.m., with no cause yet,” the Bartın Governor’s Office said in a statement yesterday, adding that a large number of rescue teams were sent to the scene. “There are 44 workers at minus 300 level and 5 workers at minus 350 level,” Bartın Governor Nurtaç Arslan announced.

The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) of the Interior Ministry later deleted a tweet claiming that the explosion was “caused by a transformer.” However, Hakan Yeşil, the chair of the General Mine Workers Union (GMİS) affiliated to the pro-government Türk-İş confederation, to which the miners in Amasra belong, also said that it was a “transformer-induced firedamp explosion.”

A worker who came out of the mine after the explosion said, “We don’t know anything. There was dust and smoke, we don’t know what happened. We couldn’t see it. I got out by my own means. It was probably an explosion. Since we were a little behind, there was only pressure. Because of the pressure, there was a mass of dust, you couldn’t see anything.”

“According to the information we have, there was a firedamp explosion,” said Fatih Dönmez, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, who arrived at the scene in the following hours. Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu also announced that there were 110 workers in the shift; 61 workers were unharmed, but 49 miners were in the risk zone. At midnight, the Bartın Governor’s Office announced that 36 of these 49 miners had been extracted from underground and the death toll had risen to 25.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ claimed that “Amasra Public Prosecutor’s Office has started an investigation into the explosion. The incident will be investigated in all its dimensions.” This statement was made to appease the anger of millions of working people who were waiting for the miners to be brought out unharmed. This anger was based on previous experiences, notably the Soma mine disaster in 2014, in which miners were sacrificed to the profit motive through the lack of precautions.

As the World Socialist Web Site then explained, the catastrophe in Soma “was not an unexplainable ‘accident’ but the inevitable result of privatization, government neglect and the capitalist profit system, which sacrifices the lives and limbs of millions of industrial workers around the world every year.” Failure to take precautions by a private mining company close to the Erdoğan government and the connivance of state officials and the union cost the lives of 301 miners. Following the massacre, mass protests erupted across the country and the government was forced to introduce new legislation on mines. However, the mining company’s chairman Can Gürkan was released from prison in 2019, and no one is currently imprisoned due to Soma mining disaster.

It soon became clear that a similar situation existed in Amasra. Deniz Yavuzyılmaz, Zonguldak deputy of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), posted the 2019 Court of Accounts report on Twitter, stating that “The Court of Accounts warned! The Court of Accounts says that the production depth in Bartın, Amasra has reached 300 meters; that the gas content is high in the mineral veins worked and the risk of sudden eruption of gas and coal, and firedamp explosion is increasing!”

The official report stated: “In 2019, the plant’s stabilized production depth was 300 meters. This deepening leads to increased risks of serious accidents such as sudden eruption of gas and coal, and firedamp explosion. It is known that the gas content is high in all of the mineral veins worked, therefore the degassing capacities are also high, and the risk increases even more in failure zones. For this reason, in addition to the provisions of the relevant legislation, the provisions of the ‘Institution Degassing Directive’ must be meticulously implemented in the mines of the plant.”

The daily Evrensel reported that “According to the report of the Court of Accounts on the Amasra Hard Coal Plant, while 190 work accidents occurred in 2019, 164 workers were injured in 164 work accidents in 2020, 157 of which occurred underground and 7 above ground.”

It quoted the Court of Accounts’ report for the General Directorate of TTK and five plants in 2021, which revealed that in 2019 and 2020, inspectors from the Labor Inspection Board of the Labor and Social Security Ministry did not visit the plants and did not conduct audits and inspections.

In the first hours after the explosion, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, “We will do our best to reduce the painful news and give good news to all of Turkey.” What nonsense! A government minister announces that they are “trying to reduce the painful news” after an explosion that had been warned of by state officials.

Shortly before this tragedy, on September 20, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez had visited the Amasra mine with a large delegation. It included TTK General Director Kazım Eroğlu, Türk-İş Confederation President Ergün Atalay, GMİS Union President Hakan Yeşil, GMİS executives and the governor and mayor of Bartın.

The statements made during this visit, in the face of official warnings of such a mining disaster, and the concealment of the facts from the workers instead of taking immediate measures, are an indictment of the state and union bureaucrats.

In his speech, GMİS President Yeşil said in a wheedling fashion, “Mr. Minister [Dönmez] took time out of his busy schedule to visit you [miners] where you work. He is here with us today. I thank him on behalf of all of you.”

Türk-İş President Atalay also thanked the government, stating: “The two ministries I knock on the door of when our miners have a problem are the Labor Ministry and the Energy Ministry. A short while ago, there was a problem with a site in Soma. Mr. Minister solved that issue immediately.” He added that, “We also had the opportunity to talk about this place [Amasra].”

What the union bureaucrats, who function as an extension of the state and the companies, told the ministers had, of course, nothing to do with defending the vital interests of the miners, including their safety. The only demand of the union bureaucracy, as they stated during this visit, was to hire more workers to increase production.

During the visit, Minister Dönmez also confirmed that they have the same goal as the union bureaucracy, saying, “We have a target to increase production.” Dönmez’s remarks to the miners who will be sent to their deaths in a few weeks are particularly staggering in terms of their level of hypocrisy. He claimed: “First of all, let me say this: safety first. We would not trade the safety of your lives for the entire plant. When we appoint managers, the first instruction is that production may be slightly disrupted, we will compensate it, but not a single hair or nail of one of our workers should be harmed.”

Dönmez also said, “Following the Soma accident, special measures were taken for those working in the mining sector, especially underground. Working conditions were improved, working hours were shortened. Weekend vacation was provided. At least two minimum wage requirements were imposed on miners working underground,” before adding: “After these measures, work accidents have quickly decreased. Yes, we did not achieve zero [accidents]. We would like our goal to be zero fatal work accidents. But unfortunately, the mining sector is one of the most risky industries in the world.”

The minister’s attempt, with his last sentence, to persuade miners to accept fatal work accidents as inevitable, brings to mind the notorious statement of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the massacre of miners in Soma: “These are normal things. It is in the nature of this business.”

However, Dönmez’s claim that “work accidents have quickly decreased” since 2014 is also untrue. According to data from the Health and Safety Labour Watch (İSİG) in Turkey, a total of 386 miners in Turkey fell victim to “industrial accidents” in 2014, after 301 miners lost their lives in the Soma disaster. In 2013, this figure was 93. 67 miners died in 2015, 74 in 2016, 93 in 2017, 66 in 2018, 63 in 2019, 61 in 2020 and 70 in 2021. As of October this year, the number of miners killed at work is 53. Moreover, in the last five years, an average of 2,052 workers have been killed at workplaces in Turkey.

Kroger announces purchase of Albertsons for $25 billion in deal to make grocery superchain

Alex Findijs

Supermarket giant Kroger announced the purchase of rival chain Albertsons early Friday morning. Expected to be completed by 2024, the merger would combine the first and second largest grocery chains in the United States. Kroger, which owns regional chains like King Soopers, Ralph’s and Fry’s, would add other dominant regional subsidiaries like Safeway, Vons and Acme.

The deal will reportedly cost Kroger nearly $25 billion dollars using available cash and $17.4 billion in debt financing. Kroger will pay $34.10 per share, about 33 percent more than the current stock price of Albertsons.

Should the deal pass regulatory approval, Kroger would expand to over 5,000 stores and 700,000 employees. In order to avoid anti-trust litigation, the chain announced plans to divest from between 100 to 375 stores in a subsidiary called SpinCo.

However, there is considerable overlap between Alberstons and Kroger chains, which have competed with each other for years. This may prompt Kroger to sell off or close many stores and lay off thousands of workers in order to trim costs.

Cost is a primary driver for the merger. Combined, Kroger and Albertsons bring in around $209 billion in revenue. However, retailers like Walmart and Costco still outsell their grocery-focused rivals, and growing competition from Amazon has been a particular concern for grocery chains. Following Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods in 2017, the online retail giant quickly expanded its role in the grocery market, becoming the second largest grocery seller behind Walmart.

Kroger corporate executives have argued that the merger will enable Kroger and its many subsidiary chains to streamline production and distribution across its 66 total distribution centers, making it more competitive.

Ostensibly, this will allow Kroger to cut costs and leverage its market share to lower prices. But anti-monopoly watchdogs have argued that the new merger will only strengthen Kroger’s domination of local grocery markets and drive up prices in an economy that has already seen 13 percent inflation in food items in the last year.

Notably, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said that the merger would “accelerate our position as a more compelling alternative to larger and non-union competitors.”

This is directed at Walmart, the only store chain larger than Kroger, which has maintained a non-union workforce for decades. McMullen’s appeal to customers and regulators as a “union” store is telling. Kroger executives seek to leverage the unionization of their workforce as a selling point, waving it as some kind of moral flag to justify the merger.

However, the gap between union and nonunion chains is being continuously eroded by sellouts engineered by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. This was most recently shown by the contract betrayal in Columbus, Ohio, where UFCW local 1059 forced workers to vote on the same concessionary contract four times before it was ratified, with workers reporting that they were bullied and threatened with termination by union officials if they voted ‘no.’

The merger also explodes the arguments of management and union officials that Kroger cannot afford to pay its workers more. Columbus workers were told that the company had no money to offer more than the measly $1.65 raise they were offered over three years. Yet Kroger has suddenly produced $25 billion in cash to swallow its second biggest rival.

Kroger has amassed such large sums of wealth through the brutal exploitation of its more than 400,000 employees. A recent study by the Economic Round Table found that two-thirds of Kroger employees struggle to afford basic necessities due to low pay and rising costs of living. Three-quarters of Kroger workers are food insecure, meaning that most Kroger workers can barely afford to shop at the store they work at.

Albertsons workers tend to make slightly more than their Kroger counter parts as a whole. Depending on how the merger proceeds, Albertsons workers may find their new corporate overlords attacking wages and working conditions as part of a “restructuring” of the Albertsons chains.

The merger announcement should be taken as a warning to all grocery workers. The consolidation of the grocery market is based on the need of the corporations and Wall Street to extract ever more wealth from the working class at a lower price. Thousands of jobs may be at risk as Kroger prepares to trim the fat from its national grocery empire and further expand its already incredible $4 billion annual profit margin.

If stores are to close, not only will it slash jobs, hours, and pay, it will contribute to the growth of “food deserts,” areas where the poor and marginalized lack access to fresh and healthy food. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 53 million people live in areas with low access to food. As stores continue to consolidate into larger and more dispersed super-centers, the number of people who struggle to reach these stores will increase.

Kroger in particular is known for strangling out competition, including rival chains and smaller stores, establishing itself as a the dominant grocery retailer. Consolidation with Albertsons will only push this further.

Federal regulators will review the merger as part of the government’s anti-trust regulations. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blocked a similar merger between Office Depot and Staples in 2015, despite arguments from the two chains that a merger would help lower prices and aid competition with Amazon.

However, the economic outlook in the US is vastly different now than it was in 2015. Mass working class unrest and constant supply chain disruptions are sparking fear in the financial and political elite. There may be a belief that a consolidated grocery market may allow for greater control over food distribution and worker rebellions, kept in line by the UFCW bureaucracy.