EU foreign ministers pledge to train 15,000 Ukrainian troops for war with Russia

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

Yesterday, European Union (EU) foreign ministers met at a summit in Luxembourg and pledged a massive escalation of their participation in the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine. This decision confirms that EU countries are at war with Russia and, by the admission of top EU officials, raises the danger of direct military conflict between EU states and Russia.

The EU Foreign Affairs Council web site reported that the EU foreign ministers “agreed to establish an EU Military Assistance Mission (MAM) to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The mission will train around 15,000 troops on EU soil. They also agreed to allocate a further €500 million under the European Peace Facility to finance deliveries for the Ukrainian defence forces, thereby bringing EU military assistance for Ukraine to a total of €3.1 billion.”

With this decision, the EU is committing itself to waging long-term, large-scale land warfare against Russia. The EU MAM to Ukraine is to last two years, after which EU authorities can renew its mandate. While the EU did not say precisely what weapons it would give the Ukrainian regime, EU officials have previously said they are providing arms up to and including heavy artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft missile batteries.

This decision came barely a week after US President Joe Biden told a meeting of private donors that the escalating war between NATO and Russia could lead to “nuclear Armageddon.” The EU’s response at the Luxembourg summit made clear that, like Washington, the European imperialist bourgeoisie intends to escalate the conflict even if it leads to all-out nuclear war.

Indeed, the EU Foreign Affairs Council emphasized that it would not be deterred by warnings from Russia that its actions are unacceptable and could trigger a Russian nuclear attack. It wrote: “The EU is unwavering in its support to Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. … The nuclear threats made by the Kremlin, the military mobilization and the illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine will not shake the EU's resolve.”

The utterly reckless, unhinged character of European foreign policy emerged in EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s threats last week to “annihilate” the Russian military. He made this remark after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia had “various means of destruction” available to respond to against attacks on its “territorial integrity,” warning, “It’s not a bluff.”

Borrell replied: “It has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the member states, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing either. And any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer—not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side—that the Russian army will be annihilated …”

Given the scope of the mass murder Borrell was proposing—the Russian armed forces contain an estimated one million active-duty and two million reserve personnel—it is difficult to see how such an attack could not involve the use of nuclear weapons.

In line with Borrell’s reckless tone, the Luxembourg summit also adopted aggressive positions towards several other countries, especially Iran. After widespread reports in NATO media of Russian use of Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine, the EU denounced the “reported use by Russia in the war in Ukraine of drones allegedly supplied by Iran.”

Passing over in silence its own record of police violence against social protests, the EU cynically seized upon the mass protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody to posture as a friend of the Iranian people. It adopted financial sanctions on “11 individuals and 4 entities … linked to the death of Mahsa Amini and to the violent repression of the peaceful protests.”

The summit identified China as “a partner with whom the EU must engage, a tough competitor, and a systemic rival,” and agreed to send 40 EU monitors to the Azeri-Armenian border. This area of the Caucasus, on Russia’s southern flank, has seen bloody conflicts in the last two years and the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops.

It is apparent that the EU, following in the footsteps of Washington and London, is dropping any pretense of not being fully engaged in the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine.

After the announcement of the EU training mission, the German Ministry of Defence rushed to assure on Twitter: “Defence Minister Lambrecht [Christine, SPD] clarifies: With the training mission of the Ukrainian soldiers, Germany will not become a war party. Training is needed for self-defence capability with state-of-the-art equipment. We support Ukraine in protecting its sovereignty.”

This is a pack of lies. In March, an expert opinion of the Scientific Service of the Bundestag stated that the training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil was a participation in war under international law. And obviously, the imperialist powers are not concerned with the “defence” and “protection” of a sovereign Ukraine in their war offensive. NATO is waging war and arming the Ukrainian army to the teeth in order to defeat and subjugate resource-rich Russia.

A recent commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung entitled “Reality as it is” states this openly. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's claim that “NATO is not a party to this conflict” is, “with respect, factually simply wrong,” the SZ wrote. “Ukraine is only surviving militarily because the West is massively supporting it. The Ukrainian soldiers are doing the fighting—but they are doing it de facto on behalf of the rest of Europe, which is equipping them, training them and supporting the war's goal, the defeat of Russia.”

The leading EU powers, above all Germany and France, play an increasingly aggressive role in the NATO war against Russia. Berlin is flooding Ukraine with weapons and announcing new deliveries almost daily. At the same time, the ruling class is using the war to make Germany once again a leading foreign policy and military power after the crimes of the First and Second World Wars.

On Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) visited a live tank combat exercise of the German Armed Forces on the troop field in Bergen. On site, he praised “special assets of the Bundeswehr,” that is, the €100 billion defence fund he had launched. With this sum, the Bundeswehr “must now be equipped in such a way that it has the weapons and ammunition, the instruments it needs to carry out its mission.” Once this had been “achieved,” however, “we must not stop, [but] permanently equip the Bundeswehr with what is necessary to fulfil its mission.”

French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the end of last week that Paris is “currently working on the delivery of Caesar howitzers: We have delivered eighteen. We are currently working on the delivery of six additional howitzers.” France would also soon deliver “air defence radar, systems and missiles,” he said. Germany already delivered the first Iris-T air defence system to Kiev last week.

If some of the weapons Kiev is demanding are being withheld, it is mainly with the argument that they weaken its own armies. Macron, for example, recently explained that Paris could not always respond to the aid Kiev requested for this reason. “When President Zelensky sometimes asks me to deliver massive amounts of equipment, I am forced to keep some for ourselves in order to protect ourselves or our eastern flank,” Macron explained.

New government takes power in Sweden with backing of far-right Sweden Democrats

Bran Karlsson & Jordan Shilton

After a month of talks following the September 11 election in Sweden, the right-wing Moderate Party has come to power with the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats. Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson won the backing of parliament on Monday to become prime minister by 176 votes to 173. He will be officially made prime minister following a ceremony with the king of Sweden on Tuesday.

Ulf Kristersson on his way to the speaker of the Riksdag on 12 October 2022 [Photo by Frankie Fouganthin / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

Kristersson’s election marks the first time a Swedish prime minister has relied on the votes of a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots to become prime minister. The Sweden Democrats were founded in the 1980s by neo-Nazis seeking to form a party capable of gaining representation in parliament. They have succeeded in capitalising on the sinking popularity of all the other capitalist parties, the Social Democrats in particular, as they oversaw the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state, tax cuts for the rich and a major military buildup. The Sweden Democrats secured more than 20 percent of the vote in last month’s election and have the second-largest group in parliament behind the Social Democrats.

Kristersson’s coalition consists of three right-wing parties: the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. However, the Sweden Democrats will exercise significant influence over the coalition. In the new government’s policy document, called the Tidö Agreement, the Sweden Democrats were able to secure support for most of their law and order, anti-immigrant demands. They also have ensured that their party has representatives in all governmental departments to supervise the work of the new government.

The leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, heralded the new government as a “paradigm shift.” This follows celebratory comments from fascists and neo-Nazis across the world since the election, including from close allies of fascist-minded former US President Donald Trump.

The stated policies of the new government include the following:

• The creation of zones in working class, migrant areas where the police can search people indiscriminately for no reason or warrant.

• Tripling of minimum income required for labor-based migration, disqualifying poorer migrant labourers.

• The drafting of plans to criminalise begging throughout the country.

• Substantial increases to police funding and surveillance cameras throughout the country.

• The abolition of permanent asylum for refugees and more than a four-fifths reduction in refugees allowed per year.

• All new residency applicants will be required to give DNA samples for a state-wide DNA registry of foreigners.

• A new round of tax cuts for businesses.

• Anyone without Swedish citizenship suspected of being a gang member can be deported without being found guilty in a court of law of a crime.

• General increase in the severity and duration of punishments, including youth convicted of crimes being handled by the prison system and increased sentencing for people convicted of multiple crimes.

• Consideration of registering EU citizens if they stay longer than three months.

• Consideration of asylum “transit zones,” i.e., holding camps for migrants seeking asylum.

• Inquiry to more than double the time it takes to qualify for Swedish citizenship—moving it to eight years—and adding stricter language and cultural knowledge qualifications. This could also include a new oath of loyalty to the Swedish state.

The proposed political agenda of the new government makes clear that the Swedish ruling class is turning ever more openly towards authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule. This development can only be explained by the staggering growth of social inequality, which has convinced the ruling class that it must resort to more aggressive methods to defend its wealth and privilege, and the transformation of Sweden into a frontline state in the US-NATO war with Russia.

Having applied to join NATO and undertaken a vast expansion of its armed forces since 2014, the Swedish ruling elite has abandoned the last vestiges of its historic policy of neutrality. The vast amount of financial and material resources Stockholm intends to plough into the US-led drive to subjugate Russia to the status of a semi-colony can only be squeezed out of the working class using the brutal methods associated with the far right.

Over the past three decades, successive governments, chiefly those led by Social Democratic prime ministers, have gutted Sweden’s relatively generous welfare state, undermined pension rights and privatised public services. The Sweden Democrats sought to capitalise on the growing anger towards the political establishment produced by these policies by blaming mounting social problems on immigrants.

While the Sweden Democrats have pioneered this chauvinism, the Social Democrats have effectively adopted their positions. Right before the election, the outgoing Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson complained that she did not want any “Somali towns” in Sweden.

The social problems confronting large numbers of immigrants to Sweden, which the fascistic Sweden Democrats reduce to “gang violence” and blather about, are inseparable from the general onslaught on workers rights and public services since the 1990s. Over the last decade, Sweden had one of the highest rates of refugee migration within the European Union (EU). About a quarter of all Swedish residents are foreign-born. The systematic slashing of state revenues through tax handouts to big business and the wealthy, and the opening up of health care, education and other key public services to private profit have denied many of these new arrivals the services needed to help secure a decent standard of living.

The relaxation of labour regulations has created large swaths of low-paid, insecure employment, not least in sectors like health care and elderly care. Large numbers of immigrants live in neighbourhoods of major cities, like Stockholm and Malmö, where rates of unemployment and poverty are significantly higher than the Swedish average.

A recent Oxfam report on global inequality found that “inequalities in Sweden have increased significantly” in the last decade. Suzanne Standfast, Oxfam Sweden’s general secretary, stated, “Sweden is one of the OECD countries where economic inequalities have increased the most in recent decades.” She continued, “We have a high tax burden, yes, but assets are taxed considerably lower in Sweden than in many other countries. This means that people with a low income sometimes pay a higher percentage of tax than people with greater assets.”

Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, is the seat of the second largest tech boom in the world—only outpaced by Silicon Valley in California. Sweden has the highest number of billionaires per capita of any major EU country.

The Social Democrats have played a key role in presiding over these developments with the support of the Left Party and Greens. The ex-Stalinist Left Party backed the outgoing Social Democrat government throughout its eight years in office as it enforced huge increases in military spending and implemented budgets dictated by the right-wing parties.

As COVID-19 spread around the world in 2020, the Social Democrats and Left Party played a criminal role in promoting the false idea of “herd immunity,” implementing policies of mass infection that led to a significantly higher fatality rate in Sweden than its Nordic neighbours. Sweden’s “herd immunity” policy was embraced by the most reactionary political figures around the world, including Trump.

Amazon engages in job cutting as economic crisis worsens

Ray Coleman

People arrive for work at the Amazon distribution center in the Staten Island borough of New York, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. [AP Photo/Craig Ruttle]

After two years of breakneck expansion, Amazon is scaling back its warehouse operations as the economic downturn weighs on its main marketplace business.

Amazon has closed down or canceled plans to open 44 facilities in the US in 2022, according to MWPVL International, which maintains a tally on Amazon’s facilities. These are mostly its last-mile delivery stations. Amazon has also delayed the opening dates for some 25 facilities. Amazon has also announced closures in Europe.

Combined, the square footage for all closures is over 53 million square feet, or 1.9 square miles of space.

Many facilities are located in California, New York and New England, with five facilities set to close in Massachusetts alone. Additionally, multiple facilities planned for logistical hubs near major population centers like Atlanta and Cincinnati will be affected.

In addition to renegotiating leases on warehouses it does not own, Amazon has been exploring subleasing 10 million or more square feet of warehouse capacity.

In addition to closures, mass layoffs have accumulated. Earlier this month, Amazon announced it was freezing all new hires for corporate positions in its retail division. Outside of its direct retail operations, Amazon announced the closure of all its US-based call centers except one, along with closing all its brick-and-mortar books and pop-up shops and the end of Amazon Care telehealth services.

At the end of the March quarter, Amazon had 1,608,000 full- and part-time employees, excluding contractors. By the end of the June quarter of this year, Amazon slashed that number to 1,523,000, a drop of 99,000 people.

It is uncertain how many people will end up without jobs due to these closures or delays, but in the Baltimore, Maryland, metro area, Amazon announced in August it had opted to close two delivery stations. One, in Hanover, has 190 workers while the other, in Essex, has 163 workers. The closures are set to start October 25.

For its part, Amazon claimed, “No employees were laid off in Maryland and every one of the employees was offered a position at a nearby facility.” Nevertheless, these forced transfers came with the caveat that workers would have to switch to night shifts or accept new shift start times and hours that may conflict with their responsibilities outside of work.

“My friend worked at [the Hanover] location. Amazon ended up firing her,” a worker at a Baltimore warehouse told the International Amazon Workers Voice. “They changed the schedule up at the last minute and told her that she had to work 12-hour days or she could quit.”

Workers who cannot make these shift changes fit into their schedules will not receive accommodation; they will have to find other jobs. Another worker outside the nearby BWI5 facility in Dundalk, Maryland, told the IAWV that he had noticed Amazon was issuing more reprimands for minor infractions such as the dreaded “Time Off Task” in order to enforce speed-ups with the intent of pressuring more workers to quit.

At the end of 2019, Amazon’s warehouse footprint spanned about 272 million square feet in the United States. By the close of 2021, Amazon had almost doubled its size to occupy over 525 million square feet of warehouse space.

Amazon found itself unprepared for the slowdown in e-commerce demand as inflation began to accelerate in 2021 and 2022, putting pressure on shoppers and business customers alike as prices rose. Rising fuel and labor costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine further impacted investors, hitting Amazon’s profitability.

In April, after releasing its first-quarter earnings, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky stated on a call with investors, “We have too much space right now versus our demand patterns.” Olsavsky continued, “As the [Omicron COVID] variant subsided in the second half of the quarter and employees returned from leave, we quickly transitioned from being understaffed to being overstaffed, resulting in lower productivity. This lower productivity added approximately $2 billion in costs compared to last year.”

The company has responded by announcing various measures aimed at slashing costs and reducing the scope of expansion plans made at a time company bosses believed double-digit rates of growth would continue.

CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder and longtime multi-billionaire Amazon chief Jeff Bezos last year, has made it his priority to restore a “healthy level of profitability” at Amazon, calling the past two years “incredibly unusual” at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in late May.

Since its inception in the 1990s as an online book seller, Amazon has reliably delivered investors double-digit annual sales growth. In 2022 that pace of growth slowed to a single-digit rate for the first time since 2001, threatening the assumptions of future profitability that underlie its share price.

Along with this slowing top-line growth, Amazon has swung from record profitability to net losses over the past year.

The company lost $3.8 billion in the first quarter and $2 billion in the second, the first time in seven years it hasn’t posted net profits. While the broader stock market has also fallen over the year as global central banks hike interest rates, Amazon shares are down about 33 percent since the start of the year, its worst year since the market crash of 2008.

At an all-hands meeting on October 10 at its corporate headquarters in Seattle, Jassy told assembled employees, “Good companies that last a long period of time, who are thinking about the long term, always have this push and pull. There are some years where they’re expanding really broadly. Some years where they’re checking in and working on profitability, tightening the belt a little bit.”

Of course, it will not be Jassy or Amazon investors who are expected to tighten their belts, but Amazon workers. Despite the company’s announcing $1 pay increases for its warehouse associates, far below the current rate of inflation, the company is notorious for its exploitative and Dickensian working conditions.

In a TikTok video that went viral last month, an Amazon delivery driver in Florida went on a tirade after having to deliver more than 170 packages on a day when Hurricane Ian was pummeling the state with heavy winds, rain and storm surges. A pregnant Amazon worker in Liverpool, New York, was sent to clean up the facility parking lot for 10 hours this summer after attempting to talk to coworkers about organizing.

Indeed, conditions in Amazon can be fatal. Between July 13 and August 4, four Amazon employees died while working at Amazon facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Injuries at Amazon warehouses are also far above industry averages.

To this day, it also remains unknown how many Amazon workers who contracted COVID-19 while at work died because of it. Amazon’s decision to end all safety accommodations, mask mandates, ventilation and testing is part and parcel with its goal of squeezing every last ounce of labor out of its army of workers to satisfy the stock market’s demand to restore conditions required for continued profitability.

Amazon workers, rightly deemed “essential workers,” have not taken these attacks lying down. Amazon workers in Illinois and Georgia and California walked out last week in protest during Amazon’s second “Prime Day” sales event of the year. On June 1, at the company’s DEW8 facility in Bellmawr, New Jersey, workers walked out in protest over Amazon’s decision to close the warehouse by the end of the month.

Earlier this month, workers at Amazon’s JFK8 facility in Staten Island initiated a mass protest after the company tried to herd them back into the warehouse after a fire broke out in the trash compactor.

Amazon responded to this protest by suspending dozens of workers. In April, workers at JFK8 voted to become the first unionized Amazon facility in the country in April. The IAWV has responded to this firing by calling on Amazon workers to demand their co-workers be reinstated with back pay.

Australian report documents cold conditions for renters

John Harris

A recent report entitled “Cold and Costly” has underscored the difficult and dangerous conditions confronting many people who rent properties in Australia.

The report, by the Better Renting organisation, cited a 2015 Lancet study which found that more people die from exposure to the cold in Australian homes than in colder countries like Sweden and Canada.

Public housing in Sydney inner-city suburb. [Photo: WSWS]

The study said that approximately 6.5 percent of all mortalities (or about one in fifteen) between 1988 to 2009 were attributable to winter cold exposure in Australia. That compared with 3.69 percent in Canada and 4.46 percent in Sweden. Cold weather claims more lives than hot weather, with the study reporting that heat contributed to only 0.5 percent of overall mortality in Australia over the same period.

This is extraordinary considering the climatic differences between the countries. Australia’s winters tend to be relatively mild, with daily mean temperatures in capital cities Sydney and Melbourne generally between 11.0 and 13.4 degrees Celsius in July, (52 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit) the coldest month of the year, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

By contrast, Sweden’s capital Stockholm experiences mean January winter temperatures of -1.0°C, and Canada’s capital Ottawa −10.2°C (30°F and 14°F respectively).

The Better Renting report highlighted some of the factors responsible for Australia’s surprising level of cold-related mortality.

The report entailed a study of 70 renters from across Australia. Participants were given smart thermometers which monitored the temperature and humidity in their homes at one-minute intervals.

The report cited the World Health Organization (WHO), which recommends that 18°C (64.4° F) is the minimum healthy indoor temperature. Over the recording period from June 13 to July 31, the study’s participants reported indoor temperatures dropping below 18°C on average 75 percent of the time, that is approximately 18 hours per day.

For some households, there were days where the indoor temperatures did not rise above the 18°C temperature threshold. For those so affected, the incidence was around 39 percent of the time. In the state of Tasmania, one person reported temperatures of 0.2°C on July 21.

In Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the average temperatures recorded were 13.9°C and 14.2°C respectively and in both Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) the average temperature was 15.4°C.

The report cited a study from March this year which found that eliminating cold in Australian homes, through adding insulation and proper heat containment measures, could lower rates of heart and cardiovascular disease, and increase life expectancy by an estimated 1.6 years per 1000 people.

The report found that those who reside in poorly built homes were consistently colder by about 4°C and saw temperatures decrease faster overnight and increase slower during the day compared to those who lived in well insulated homes.

The report presents the difference as simply being between rental and owned homes, but this obscures the extent of the crisis. A November 2021 report from PowerHousing Australia estimated that approximately 8 million (out of a national housing stock of 10.6 million) existing homes have “energy inefficient” designs, meaning they “are cold in winter, hot in summer, and prohibitively expensive to cool and heat.”

Participants in the Better Renting study reported that many were hesitant to turn on their heating because of energy costs. The privatization of the power industry has resulted in a crisis where millions of households pay more for energy costs.

The federal Labor government in July authorised payments of an estimated $1.5 billion to electricity generators to avoid blackouts caused by companies’ refusal to supply power because of high coal and gas prices. These payments are being imposed on regular people via increased energy bills.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) revealed that wholesale costs of electricity in the National Electricity Market (NEM) averaged $264 per megawatt-hour between March and June, a 203 percent increase on the first three months of the year. This was double the previous high of $130 in the first quarter of 2019, and three times higher than the average price in the June quarter of 2021, which was $85.

Gas prices averaged $28.40 per gigajoule in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, up 246 percent on 12 months, and almost triple the previous record of $10.74/GJ set in the September quarter last year. 

Numbers of participants described the experience in their homes as “Dickensian.” One person said: “We burn tissues, pages of old books, shoe boxes for kindling. We eat two meals a day… I have to reduce groceries to pay the electricity and gas bill. We share 1 chicken breast between 3 people (9, 11, adult) and my kids are really thin.”

Prolonged exposure to the cold can have long-term health consequences and has been found to increase the likelihood of maladies such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Another participant reported that “every tiny headcold… I’ve caught has evolved into full-on bronchitis thanks to the lack of heating in this room… I’ve had to go to a doctor and get a stronger inhaler just to get through everyday coughs and cold.”

The report cited a Scotland study which found “that the risk of high blood pressure was two times higher below 18°C, and four times higher below 16°C.”

Many working-class families are forced to reside in poorly built homes. A December 2020 report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) which sampled 14,486 households across Australia, said: “Over 23 percent of renters reported that they were unable to keep warm in their home during cold weather,” and “27 percent reported problems with mold, and 21 percent reported problems of dampness.” Households reported “cracks in the walls/floors were even more common (52%)” and other “common issues included plumbing problems (42%) and electrical faults (27%).”

The AHURI report added that “in privately rented dwellings 39 percent of couple-headed families with children and 42 percent of single parent-headed families” reported “living in homes with three or more building condition problems.”

Despite these problems, families often pay exorbitant rents. The Guardian reported in July that rental costs had increased by 9.1 percent in cities and 10.8 percent in regional areas over the previous 12 months, spurred on by skyrocketing inflation and the decreasing availability of rentals.

Domain reported that the national vacancy rate for rental properties in August was at a record low of 0.9 percent, down from 1.7 percent last August. The proportion of vacant rentals in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had halved over the previous year.

For homeowners, mortgage repayments continue to climb as a result of the series of interest rate hikes imposed by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) with the complete support of the Albanese Labor government.

These rapid rate increases are deepening a crisis confronting homeowners. Some homeowners have already seen their monthly repayments increase by $1,000 or more since the hikes began in May this year.

Workers die in extreme heat during China’s summer

Lily Zhao

Amid the hottest summer in over six decades in China, reports of workers’ deaths and injuries due to heatstroke emerged around the country. The deaths, which were entirely preventable, are an indictment of the Chinese government and its failure to end the often onerous and dangerous conditions in which workers are forced to toil.

Low-paid workers transporting goods on tricycle carts in Beijing, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The three deaths examined below provoked widespread discussion and criticism on social media in China. However, the death toll and the impact of the extreme heat on the working class would have been far larger.

Construction worker in Xi’an

On July 5, Wang Jianlu, a 56-year-old construction worker from Xi’an, capital of the northwestern Shaanxi Province, fainted due to a heatstroke on his way home and was declared dead the next morning in the hospital. His body temperature reached 43°C (109.°F) when he was taken to the hospital and the cause of his death was determined to be multiple organ failure due to extreme heat.

Before coming to Xi’an, Wang was a peasant in Ningqiang County on the southwestern corner of the province. More than a decade ago, Wang left home and went to work on construction sites in Xinjiang Province so that he could send more money to his children. He was only able to come home for a month or two around the New Year. His cousin took care of his children while he was away.

In 2015, Wang’s son was admitted to a university but gave up the opportunity so as to start working and share the family’s financial burden. Wang’s son took part in the National College Entrance Examination again this year and was able to get into another university. To help pay for his son’s college study, Wang left for Xi’an to find work about a month before his death.

Wang worked as a temporary worker on construction sites and was paid one to two thousand RMB (about $US200) monthly for living expenses. His real wage, which was supposed to be more than this meager “stipend,” would not be calculated until the end of the year. Often this wage was in arrears.

In Wang’s case, by the time of his death, his 60,000 RMB wage from 2021 was still in arrears. He received a mere 260 RMB ($US36) for his nine hours of work, just before he passed out from the heat.

Wang lived an austere life in Xi’an, renting a room in an urban village (a working class neighborhood, usually very crowded with limited infrastructure) for 260 RMB a month. When his family collected his belongings after his death, there was virtually nothing in the room except for a fan, which he had only bought after repeated urging by his family.

During the previous month, Xi’an had experienced the hottest June ever since 1951. The day before the incident, the highest temperature reached 39°C (102.2°F) with a humidity around 50 percent. This hot, oppressive weather was exacerbated by the terrible working conditions at the construction site. Wang had worked in a basement from 6:30 a.m. removing wooden frames from just-molded concrete.

A fellow worker of Wang’s commented that despite the slight rain before July 5, they hardly felt any drop in temperature in the basement. The concrete itself released a lot of heat into the room.

Initially, the construction company refused to pay any compensation to the family, insisting that they had held no responsibility as Wang fainted on his way home not at work. Even if Wang’s family filed a case for labor arbitration, Wang had no legal employment relation because he was temporary and had signed no contract. The media mentioned that the company had contemptuously expressed disbelief that one could die of heat.

Wang’s tragic death triggered widespread comment on social media and anger that workers were being forced to work in excessive heat. Only after public criticism widened did the construction company finally agree on July 17 to pay Wang’s funeral expenses and compensation to his family. The amount remains unknown.

Freight handler in Zhejiang

On the night of July 14, Zhang Gongqian, a 34-year-old freight handler passed away in his rented home in Yuyao, a city in the southern province of Zhejiang.

Two days before his death, Zhang was feeling unwell and showing symptoms of heat stroke. He considered taking a few days off but was told by his supervisor that part of his salary would be deducted.

Zhang attempted to “pull through” despite his physical discomfort. At one point, Zhang even vomited the heatstroke medicine he just consumed. His work intensity remained extremely high even though the temperature was around 40°C (104°F ). The next morning, he was found dead on his bed by his fellow workers.

Zhang worked as a freight handler for more than five years. From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, he and his coworkers would load and unload heavy items such as air conditioners or refrigerators at a train station, making roughly 6,000 RMB ($870) a month.

He lived a frugal life so as to send money to his wife and young daughter. His rented room was has just 12 square-meters. Despite the extremely hot and humid weather in Yuyao, he only had two old fans in the room.

After his death, the logistics company refused to compensate his family because Zhang died neither during work hours nor at the workplace. His wife thought about applying for an autopsy to determine if the cause of death was heatstroke. However, she was informed that even if the cause of death could be determined, labor arbitration still would not recognize his death as work-related.

After weeks of negotiation and with the intervention of the local government, the company eventually agreed to pay 83,000 RMB ($12,000) out of “humanitarian considerations.”

Dish-washing worker in Henan

Wei Qiaolian, 54, was a dish-washing worker in Kaifeng, Henan in central China. Not long after she left the factory on the afternoon of June 25, she fainted in the street. After struggling for days in a hospital ICU, Wei died from multiple organ failure induced by heatstroke.

A former worker at the same factory commented that the shop floor, with only one air conditioner, was very hot in the summer. Where Wei worked was particularly oppressive with the stench of rotten food. Workers did not have any time off on weekends or national holidays. One day not at work was a day without pay. There was no contract or insurance of any kind.

The company was highly exploitative. Workers had to hand in their cell phones when coming into work. They often had to work overtime but were only paid if they worked a full extra hour. Work hours are also uncertain. Workers were on call 24/7.

Wei thought about quitting in early May because she was overworked and exhausted. However, the management told her that it would take a month for her resignation to be approved. If she left sooner, the company would withhold her wages from the previous 18 days. She made just 3,000 RMB ($435) a month.

On the day she collapsed, Wei called her husband during her lunchbreak and told him that she felt unwell and wanted to take the afternoon off. Her supervisor forced her to stay on the job till at least 3:30 p.m. Her workload was even greater than usual as the factory was understaffed. Wei felt very ill around 3 p.m. and was allowed to rest in an air-conditioned office. She left for home an hour later and passed out outside the company’s front door.

The company only paid for a fraction of her medical expense and this with multiple delays. Management then stopped payments altogether, claiming there was no point anymore in trying to save her. After Wei’s death, the company gave her family 230,000 RMB out of “humanitarian considerations,” but of that 140,000 RMB went on hospital bills.

The three tragedies have striking similarities: low wages, being forced to stay on the job despite feeling unwell, poor living conditions, no contract and the criminal disregard of the employer for the life and health of the workers. These deaths provide a glimpse into the appalling conditions facing broad layers of workers.

On July 15, a road worker in Hubei laying asphalt died of heatstroke after working in high temperatures for multiple days. He was feeling sick the night before his death but was still assigned work.

In early July, several truck drivers in Henan, Zhejiang and Shaanxi provinces reportedly passed out due to the heat. Another truck driver in the southwestern city of Chongqing was found dead in his driving seat. On that day, the local temperature remained above 30°C (86°F) throughout the evening.

Tower crane workers have also suffered. Throughout the summer, multiple reports emerged in Shandong, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces of crane workers who had either passed out or were literally paralyzed in their seats.

The deaths were all avoidable. According to a regulation published by State Administration of Work Safety and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in 2012, no outdoor work should take place once the temperature is above 40°C. When the temperature is between 37° and 40°, there should be no outdoor work during the hottest three hours of the day and no-one should work more than six hours outside.

Many companies simply ignore the regulation and treat workers’ lives as expendable. Nor is the regulation ever seriously reinforced by the state apparatus. Despite the illness and deaths of many workers, no company management has been even fined or warned, let alone charged.

The drive for profit by companies operating with the complicity of the government and the state apparatus is now being compounded by the impact of global climate change.

The intensity of the heat wave during the summer of 2022 was at the highest level since China started systematic record-keeping in 1961. The number of consecutive days with a maximum over 32°C (89.6°F) also reached a record high.

The hardest hit region was the southwestern province of Sichuan and the adjacent city of Chongqing. Areas of Chongqing suffered under temperatures over 40°C for more than a week. The electric grid came under immense pressure as it depends upon usually abundant hydroelectric power. As rivers dried out in the heat, there was a power crunch when local residents especially needed air conditioning.

Over a million excess deaths in Britain due to decades of social inequality

Robert Stevens

Several reports published in Britain over the last few years attest to the fact that staggering levels of social inequality, fueled by austerity policies, have claimed the lives of around a million people.

Earlier this month a paper led by the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), found as a “a conservative estimate” that there were 334,327 excess deaths beyond the expected number in England, Wales and Scotland over the eight-year period from 2012 and 2019. GCPH is a partnership between NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Glasgow City Council and the University of Glasgow.

A homeless man near Euston railway station in London [Photo: WSWS]

The report by authors David Walsh, Ruth Dundas, Gerry McCartney, Marcia Gibson and Rosie Seaman, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, notes, “Mortality rates across the UK stopped improving in the early 2010s, largely attributable to the “UK Government’s austerity policies which have cut both the income of the poorest and a range of important public services.”

It states, “Such policies—introduced from 2010 onwards, and following ‘the great recession’ of 2008—have removed billions of pounds from both social security and vital services, and have thus particularly impacted on poorer, more vulnerable, populations. Similar adverse effects of austerity measures on population health have been seen in other high-income countries.”

The study presents important information but is weakened by several factors. It identity politics slant is expressed in the title of the report, “Bearing the burden of austerity: how do changing mortality rates in the UK compare between men and women?” The word “class” is not mentioned once.

Even on this question, the report’s “overall findings and implications” state that “Compared with what previous trends predicted, an additional c.335,000 deaths were observed across Scotland, England and Wales between2012 and 2019.” The majority of these deaths were for men and “analyses of trends showed very few differences in break points between men and women.” Only among “those living in the most deprived 20% of areas in Scotland and England” did “mortality rates between 2010 and 2019 increased to a greater degree among women compared with men.”

Summarizing their findings, the GCPH states, “Without support, people have been swept up by a rising tide of poverty and dragged under by decreased income, poor housing, poor nutrition, poor health and social isolation – ultimately leading to premature death, now quantified by this new study.”

Prof Ruth Dundas, Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow, said, “This study shows that in the UK a great many more deaths are likely to have been caused by UK Government economic policy than by the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to reverse the austerity policies and protect the income, and therefore the health, of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.”

A section of the 500-metre-long National Covid Memorial Wall in May 2021, which had 150,000 hearts on representing the number of people who have lost their lives to COVID. The wall is opposite the Houses of Parliament in London. In the months since the UK death toll has risen to above 200,000. [Photo: WSWS]

There is no genuine separation between the policies enacted by the ruling class in the years preceding the pandemic, leading to such a vast loss of life, and the social murder carried out during three years of the pandemic since. In its assessment of the mass deaths inflected globally as the result of the almost completely unhindered spread of COVID-19 , the International Committee of the Fourth International explained from its outset, “The response to the pandemic would be determined by pre-existing social conditions.”

These were “decades of unending war, financial parasitism, deindustrialization, the corporatist degeneration of the unions, the evisceration of democratic rights, and the cultivation of far-right politics…”

In 2010, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron ushered in the “age of austerity”. His agenda had already been set by the Brown Labour government, which set in place a trillion-pound bailout of the banks and corporations following the 2008 global financial crash.

This brutal policy of profits before lives was deepened during the pandemic, as the ruling elite declared that nothing could be done to stop the spread of COVID. “It’s not possible to stop everybody getting it and it’s also actually not desirable because you want some immunity in the population,” said Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Valance, with then Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson declaring that everyone “could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population.”

This has resulted so far in the deaths of over 200,000 people, with hundreds of thousands more suffering from the debilitating impact of Long COVID. Those hardest hit were the working class and poorest, with the most deprived communities were more than twice as likely to die as those in the wealthiest districts, and males in manual jobs four times more likely to die than those in professional occupations.

The Glasgow research builds on a body of work proving the link between entrenched social inequality and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. In 2019, a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) revealed that the reversal of public health initiatives since 2012 led to 130,000 preventable deaths.

In 2021, The BMJ Open journal published findings from the largest study yet of its kind into the cost in human lives of the savage austerity spending cuts. Researchers from the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York found that a combined impact of cuts to healthcare, public health and social care in the four years between 2010 and 2014, resulted in 57,550 more deaths than would have been expected.

The most ground breaking study, “Premature mortality attributable to socioeconomic inequality in England between 2003 and 2018: an observational study”, by the University College London was published in 2019 in The Lancet Public Health. It found that between 2003 and 2018, a staggering 877,000 people died as the result of rocketing social inequality. The authors concluded that “nearly 900,000 deaths in England could have been avoided in a more equal society, according to a UCL study of 2.5 million premature deaths over the last 16 years.” Over the 16 years, the number of deaths annually averages 54,812. This is significantly higher than the 41,790 annual average of the GCPH.

The researchers utilised Office for National Statistics on all deaths between the ages of zero and 74 in England between 2003 and 2018. Mortality rates were calculated for 33,000 neighbourhoods, graded in terms of levels of deprivation.

As a result of de-industrialisation, most of the urban areas of Britainwith many in the north of England, Scotland and Wales—are now wastelands. The report notes, “Northern towns and cities had the highest number of premature deaths associated with social inequality. In Manchester, Blackpool and Liverpool, there was more than double the number of premature deaths than in the best-off parts of the country. Cambridgeshire, Dorset and Hampshire had the lowest number of premature deaths.”

Lead author, Research Fellow Dan Lewer (UCL Epidemiology & Health Care), commented, “We have known for a long time that poverty and inequality have a major effect on people’s health and life expectancy. Our study shows how this translates into actual numbers of deaths. If everyone in England had the same mortality rate as people living in the best-off areas, there would have been 877,000 fewer premature deaths between 2003 and 2018. That’s one death every 10 minutes.”

Tens of thousands of young children were killed as a result. Lewer said, “When we look at the figures across the life-course, we show that there could have been 22,000 fewer deaths in children aged under 10 if everyone had the same life chances as the best-off.”

An important aspect of the UCL report is that seven of the years it covers were during the 1997-2010 Tony Blair/ Brown Labour governments. Today, both main parties of the ruling elite are united in their determination to shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto the working class, which can only result in an intensification of social inequality and its attendant deadly impact.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has committed the party to taking office “determined to reduce debt as a share of our economy. Every policy we announce will be fully costed… That’s what responsible government looks like.”

As COVID surges in Germany, studies show more risks from infections for children

Tamino Dreisam

As a massive coronavirus wave develops in the autumn and hospitalization rates skyrocket, more and more studies are revealing the dangerous consequences of COVID infection, even for children.

The number of coronavirus infections in Germany has increased exponentially in recent weeks, with more than 100,000 people becoming infected daily. On Thursday alone, 145,000 infections were reported to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Just a week ago, an average of “only” 62,000 people were being infected every day. According to official figures, 1.4 million people in Germany are currently infected: about one in 60 inhabitants.

The actual figures are much higher. Only positive PCR tests are included in the RKI statistics. However, many people do not take a PCR test after a positive lateral flow test. The testing infrastructure and mandatory testing have been almost completely scaled back. The high positive test rate of 47.8 percent gives an indication of the high number of unreported cases.

As the number of infections increases, the number of those who experience a severe illness also skyrockets. The adjusted hospitalization incidence rate is now almost 20 per 100,000 inhabitants, which corresponds to 15,000 hospitalizations per week, meaning it has doubled in less than two weeks. At latest count, the number of people being treated in intensive care is 1,706.

The German Hospital Association (DKG) warns of hospitals becoming overloaded. Compared to the previous week, bed occupancy for those with COVID “increased by 50 percent,” the chairman of the board Gerald Gaß told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. Things will be “extremely difficult in the weeks ahead,” he said.

The drastic situation is the result of the government’s policy of deliberately allowing the contagion to run wild. With the current Infection Protection Act, which came into force on October 1, the federal coalition government has eliminated almost all remaining protective measures. New measures—most notably lockdowns, such as the closure of schools—are now prevented by the law.

The president of the Standing Conference of State Education Ministers, Karin Prien (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), recently emphasized that as in all other areas of life, the motto “living with the virus” now applies to schools as well.

Recent studies on the long-term consequences of a coronavirus infection, especially for children, have revealed the criminal results of this policy. A recently published study by the Erlangen University Hospital, which examines the long-term consequences of COVID infections in children and adolescents, concludes that minors experience enormous changes to their lungs due to infection.

Through examinations with a special MRI, researchers determined that in study participants the air and blood flow of the lungs no longer functioned properly. “In the recovered group, the V/Q (ventilation/perfusion) ratio was 62 percent, and in the group with Long COVID, it was 60 percent—both a significantly lower value than the ratio of 81 percent in the healthy control subjects,” explained Dr. Ferdinand Knieling, a specialist in paediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital at Erlangen University Hospital.

This means that the air and blood flow of those infected was significantly lower than in uninfected children and adolescents. How long ago the infection had occurred did not matter, according to Dr. Knieling; lung function was lower in all cases.

Another recent study by the University Hospital of Düsseldorf and health insurer AOK found that children from poor families had a significantly higher risk of contracting severe COVID-19 than children of wealthy families.

The study looked at the period from the beginning of the pandemic to July 2021, before the start of the Delta wave. Data from nearly 700,000 children and adolescents insured via the AOK were included, with 1,600 of them (0.2 percent) being hospitalized due to coronavirus.

The study found that children whose parents were unemployed or had low-paying jobs were 1.4 times more likely to be hospitalized. For children living in a deprived neighbourhood, the risk is as much as three times higher. Both figures are independent of pre-existing conditions—i.e., they emerge from social conditions.

The study is a follow-up to one in which the AOK looked at the risk of severe illness among the long-term unemployed in the early months of 2020. Using data from 1.3 million insured persons, the study concluded that recipients of unemployment benefit have a 17.5 percent increased risk of coronavirus-related hospitalization. Recipients of the lower unemployment benefit have an 84 percent increased risk. The results are independent of age and gender in both cases.

Official RKI figures also show a clear link between social status and deaths from COVID-19. During the second coronavirus wave in the winter of 2020/21, an average of about 45 out of 100,000 men and 30 out of 100,000 women died in wealthier population groups, whereas nearly 80 out of 100,000 men and about 40 out of 100,000 women died in poorer population groups.

“Social disparities have a significant impact on health outcomes. This is also evident in the Covid pandemic. But an individual’s health should not depend on social status,” Günter Wältermann, CEO of AOK Rheinland/Hamburg, said after the first study was published. “We have known for a long time that poverty and health are linked,” said Prof. Nico Dragano of Düsseldorf University Hospital.

In fact, poor men live on average 10 years less than rich ones. For women, the figure is eight years. Poor people also suffer more frequently from diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses. They often do not have the means to obtain adequate or optimal medical treatment.

The pandemic has significantly exacerbated the class issues in health. Workers live predominantly in cramped housing conditions. Working from home is not possible for many, without a suitable room, sufficient space and adequate IT equipment, or a job that can be done remotely. The trade unions have also played a crucial role in forcing workers back to workplaces in unsafe conditions, where coronavirus outbreaks occur regularly.

In the last week alone, the RKI recorded 65 outbreaks in workplaces and 45 outbreaks in training centres. However, due to a lack of infrastructure and recording capabilities, the actual numbers are far higher.

The increasing knowledge about the dangerous consequences of COVID infections and the again exploding infection and death figures underline the criminal character of the policies of the ruling class: The health and life of the population are being sacrificed to capitalist profit interests. In Germany alone, more than 150,000 people have already succumbed to the virus.