Australian Labor government’s industrial relations bill aims to block strikes

Martin Scott

Last Thursday, the federal Labor government’s minister for workplace relations, Tony Burke, introduced a bill that would make repressive changes to Australia’s already draconian anti-strike industrial relations law.

Burke’s claim that the legislation is intended to “get wages moving” is utterly false. The “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” bill is designed to enhance the powers of the pro-business Fair Work Commission (FWC) to intervene in disputes, shut down strikes and impose upon workers the demands of the corporate elite.

Tony Burke holding a newly-printed copy of the “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” bill [Photo: Tony Burke]

The bill is also aimed at expanding trade union coverage over sections of the working class to enable the union bureaucracies to play an even greater role in suppressing workers’ struggles.

The union bureaucrats, whose fortunes are intertwined with finance capital, have enforced decades of attacks on jobs, wages and conditions, especially since the union Accords with Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983–96. But membership has plummeted as a result of these betrayals, leading to ruling-class concerns that the unions’ efficacy as an industrial police force is slipping.

Workers confront soaring increases in the cost of living, only partially reflected in the official inflation rate of 7.3 percent, and at least two more years of real wage cuts, as outlined in the Labor government’s first budget last week. With industrial action already at a level not seen in Australia for almost two decades, the government is seeking to prevent an eruption of working-class unrest.

The bill is a critical component of the broader agenda of Labor and the ruling class to slash jobs, wages and social spending in order to drive up corporate profits, recoup years of massive handouts to big business—accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic—and finance a major escalation in military expenditure in preparation for war with China.

This is reflected in last week’s austerity budget and successive interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank of Australia, aimed at driving up unemployment to push down wages.

A central objective of the bill is “to de-escalate disputes before industrial action is taken and after industrial action has been authorised.” To achieve this, the FWC will be granted greater powers to undermine the extremely limited right of workers to strike over wages and conditions.

Under the bill, after the FWC approves an application from workers for a “protected action” ballot, it will set down a voting period of at least two weeks, during which union and employer representatives must attend a “mediation and conciliation conference.” If a union does not attend, the workers it covers will be legally prohibited from taking industrial action over the dispute.

These conferences “must be conducted in private,” underscoring their purpose as a mechanism for unions and management to negotiate behind the backs of workers to prepare regressive deals stamped with the authority of the industrial court.

Currently, after workers vote to take industrial action over an enterprise agreement, they have 30 days to begin that action before another ballot is required. Once started, the action can continue indefinitely. Under the new bill, workers will have three months in which they can take protected action after a successful ballot. The explanatory memorandum states that the intention of this is to “remove a perverse incentive for employees to take immediate industrial action,” i.e., to give the union bureaucrats more opportunity to delay strikes.

At the end of the three-month period, a new ballot, and therefore another union-management-FWC conference, will be required for industrial action to continue.

The bill will empower the FWC to declare a dispute “intractable,” which would prohibit workers from taking further industrial action and allow the court to determine the contents of a new enterprise agreement.

Multi-employer bargaining is the aspect of the bill that has been the subject of most discussion in the financial press. Three types of multi-employer bargaining are specified in the bill, each with different rules.

One, the “supported bargaining stream,” is an overhaul of the existing, but never used, “low-paid bargaining stream.” It is primarily intended to cover “low-paid industries such as aged care, disability care, and early childhood education.” Unions will be able to ask the FWC to order businesses with “clearly identifiable common interests” to negotiate a single agreement covering workers performing similar roles.

While non-union employee representatives also can apply for workers to be covered by these agreements, the FWC will not authorise “supported bargaining” unless at least one union is involved. This points to the real purpose behind multi-employer bargaining. It is not about improving the wages of highly-exploited workers in the care sector—in which wages are in any case largely determined by government funding—but about expanding the coverage of the unions to serve as an industrial police force.

“Cooperative workplace agreements” will replace existing provisions for multi-employer agreements, with workers still prohibited from taking industrial action. “Single-interest employer agreements” which have mainly covered franchisees, will allow unions or employers to seek FWC approval to negotiate, rather than be required to obtain ministerial approval.

Workers covered by supported bargaining or single-interest employer agreements will be allowed to take industrial action during negotiations, but must give employers five days’ notice, rather than the three currently required.

Some business lobbyists and corporate bosses have decried the changes to multi-employer bargaining, claiming they could set off a wave of industry-wide strikes. Conscious of the increasingly intolerable living and working conditions faced by workers, the ruling elite fears that strikes by highly-exploited workers previously not legally allowed to take industrial action could develop into a broader movement of the working class.

The unions are determined to prevent anything of the sort. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the unions “don’t want to see more strikes.” She noted favourably that the bill “adds more red tape” for workers applying to strike.

Workers will be excluded from multi-employer bargaining if they are covered by a union with “a record of repeatedly not complying with the Fair Work Act.” Specifically, this could be used to shut out workers with any court findings against them over the previous 18 months.

This has been described in the media as targeting the supposedly “militant” Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU), but the implications are far broader. This provision will be used by the unions to justify shutting down or limiting industrial action by all workers, whether in relation to multi-employer agreements or not.

The exclusion rule is particularly significant in relation to recent legal action by the New South Wales government, directed against striking workers. The state government has taken the Rail, Tram and Bus Union to court seeking millions of dollars in damages stemming from industrial action this year and has imposed more than $100,000 in fines over “illegal” stoppages by teachers and nurses.

The unions not only defend and enforce these laws, but they also rely on them as a basis upon which to tell workers that a genuine struggle is impossible. The new measures will provide the bureaucrats further ammunition to block strikes.

Business groups have welcomed the bill’s changes to the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) for enterprise agreements, which already does not prevent employers from slashing wages and conditions. The test merely requires that workers will not be worse off than if they were employed under an industrial award setting out the bare minimum wages and conditions permissible in a sector.

The FWC will be able to approve agreements that could leave workers earning less than the award if their circumstances change after the agreement is approved.

Workers could later ask the FWC to reapply the BOOT, meaning they must monitor every roster change, calculate the implications and apply to the FWC for a reassessment. This would take place outside an enterprise bargaining period, so workers would be barred from taking industrial action over such an attack.

Employers will no longer be required to provide workers with a copy of a proposed enterprise agreement seven days before they are asked to vote on it, thus hiding all the details. This will be replaced with a vague requirement for the FWC to be “satisfied” that workers “genuinely agreed” to the offer.

The bill will further tighten the stranglehold of the pro-business FWC. Established by the Rudd Labor government in 2009, the FWC already enforces some of the most draconian anti-strike laws of any advanced capitalist country.

Studies indicate that new Omicron subvariants could cause devastating COVID-19 surge in US

Benjamin Mateus

Over the past month, the United States has seen a steady rise in the prevalence of the dangerous new immune-evading Omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2, threatening yet another surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks, and potentially millions more cases of Long COVID.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the highly immune-evasive BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants increased in prevalence from 11 percent to more than 27 percent in just two weeks, or a doubling time of 10 days. By mid-November, these two subvariants will likely be dominant across the country.

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

The anticipated COVID-19 surge will take place amid a flood of pediatric hospitalizations across the country for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and an unusually harsh beginning to the influenza season. The simultaneous surge of these three respiratory airborne pathogens will severely impact health care systems during the winter months, under conditions in which the industry is already on the verge of collapse three years into the COVID-19 pandemic.

While so far the crisis in children’s hospitals has been most acute, the elderly are particularly predisposed to complications with RSV and flu due to declines in their immunity. Among those 65 years and older, RSV leads to 177,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths annually.

The typical flu season causes upwards of 16,000 deaths among adults. However, a severe flu season can be far worse. In 2017-18, the US experienced 41 million flu-related illnesses, 19 million flu-related medical visits, 710,000 flu-related hospitalizations and 52,000 deaths. Data from the CDC for the first four weeks of October shows that outpatient medical visits for flu-like symptoms are two to three times higher than the five-year average baseline.

The exact magnitude of the next surge of COVID-19 is impossible to predict, but a number of recent studies indicate that it could potentially be the third catastrophic winter of the pandemic.

First, a preprint study by Dr. Yunlong Richard Cao and his team at Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center at Peking University, first released last month and updated regularly since then, found that the new Omicron subvariants render ineffective the monoclonal antibody drugs Evusheld and Bebtelovimab. The 9 million immunocompromised Americans eligible for these previously life-saving drugs will now have virtually no added protection against COVID-19.

Furthermore, the same study demonstrated that immunity induced from currently existing vaccines will barely stand a chance in protecting against infection with the latest variants. The researchers procured antibodies from individuals previously vaccinated three times with the Sinovac vaccine who were subsequently infected with the Omicron BA.1 subvariant last winter and tested their serum against the new Omicron subvariants. Roughly 7.5 months after the individuals were infected with BA.1, their antibodies were almost entirely unable to neutralize the BQ.1.1 and XBB subvariants. Even individuals infected with BA.5 this summer showed a similar lack of protection against the new subvariants.

Dr. Cao noted, “Results from mRNA vaccines should have overall higher neutralizing titers. But the immunity waning trend and immune evasion pattern should be highly similar.”

The implication of these results is that the billions of people infected with BA.1 globally last winter, and even many who were just infected with BA.5 this summer, remain at risk of reinfection with the new Omicron subvariants this winter, compounding their risks of hospitalization, death and Long COVID.

Another recent report from the CDC showed that the efficacy of vaccines in protecting against hospitalization continues to erode with each new variant. The study found that after three doses of the monovalent COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 over just a few months, associated hospitalization declined quickly over a few months this year.

During the surge of the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants last winter and early spring, individuals who had been vaccinated within four months of being infected had a VE of 79 percent. During the surge of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants over the summer, this same figure dropped nearly 20 points to 60 percent. Both figures are much lower than those seen with previous non-Omicron variants.

Significantly, four months post-vaccination, VE fell to 41 percent and 29 percent for the BA.1/2 and BA.4/5 subvariants, respectively. For this group, which now comprises the majority of Americans who last had a booster shot well over four months ago, the CDC authors concluded that “among immunocompetent adults hospitalized … a monovalent booster dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine had limited overall effectiveness against hospitalization caused by currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, likely because of waning immunity.”

They added, “These findings demonstrate the importance of staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations through receipt of booster doses, which currently consist of bivalent mRNA vaccines for all eligible adults.”

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 vaccines have been crucial in saving lives. But to continue to ask the population to get their boosters considering the steady decline in their efficacy is a tough pill to swallow.

Certainly, the working class must take these vaccines in order to prevent severe illness and death. But without a public health initiative to eliminate the virus and stop viral evolution, the “forever COVID” policy is becoming increasingly disastrous. The great danger remains that new variants could evolve that dramatically erode the vaccines’ ability to prevent hospitalization, or cause a higher infection fatality ratio (IFR), which would quickly overwhelm hospitals.

Even more disconcerting news has recently emerged about the benefits of the new bivalent COVID-19 booster shots that have been promoted as the latest and greatest. In two recent studies from Columbia and Harvard, researchers found the bivalent vaccines offered no better protection than the original booster based on the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. David Ho, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia and an author of their study, told CNN, “We see essentially no difference.”

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha quickly sought to counter these findings and continue to promote the bivalent boosters, telling CBS News, “I do think that the protection against infection is going to be better than if you were getting the original prototype booster.” However, he acknowledged that he wasn’t “surprised” by the studies’ findings and offered no data to back-up his claim.

Drawing on studies conducted with the BA.1 subvariant, some scientists have speculated that the BA.5-based booster could potentially cause a “maturation” process in one’s immune system and provide slightly enhanced protection against future variants that descend from BA.5, but this remains to be proven.

The development of the new bivalent booster shots was predicated on warnings made by experts of a severe winter surge. However, without any clinical evidence to inform their decisions, the White House used the last remaining pandemic funds to buy millions of bivalent boosters from Pfizer and Moderna. Since the booster campaign was inaugurated at the beginning of September, less than 10 percent of the US population has availed itself of the vaccines.

One of the most glaring failures of the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic has been its lack of initiative to fund and promote the development of nasal and other vaccines that could potentially provide sterilizing immunity to entirely prevent infection. Since 2020, scientists have been warning about the shortcomings of the current vaccines and the need to explore more viable and enduring treatments to stop viral transmission.

In this regard, a recent study published in Science by Dr. Akiko Iwasaki and her team from the immunology department at Yale University bears mentioning. They showed that in animal models who received intranasal boosting after receiving systemic (a shot in the arm) vaccination, what they term “Prime and Spike,” subjects had a persistent and significant level of immunity against infection, severe disease and death.

The authors wrote, “We find that an intranasal unadjuvanted spike booster can be administered months out from primary immunization and that it offers comparable systemic neutralizing antibody booster responses to intramuscular mRNA boost. … [We] find that prime and spike leads to durable responses with protective vaccine efficacy 118 days from the initiation of vaccination.” However, funding to test these concepts in human trials is still lacking.

As the US enters another deadly winter of the pandemic, New York has once again become the bellwether for the rest of the country. The BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants now make up more than 40 percent of all variants in the state. Hospitalization rates are trending upwards rapidly, leading the New York State Department of Health to issue a warning on the “triple threat” posed by COVID-19, seasonal flu and RSV with hospital capacity in some regions reaching their limits.

Israeli crackdown to crush insurgency in the occupied West Bank

Jean Shaoul

The last four weeks have seen escalating levels of violence—the worst since the Second Intifada that started in September 2000—against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank by both Israeli security forces and far right settler groups, acting in concert.

Few days pass without reports of Israeli forces killing Palestinians, with two killed near the northern city of Nablus on Friday, and another shot in Hebron on Saturday after allegedly killing an Israeli in the southern city that has long been roiled by the provocative actions of religious zealots.

Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians who were among five killed in an overnight Israeli raid, during their funeral in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinian health officials say five Palestinians were killed and 20 were wounded. October 25, 2022. [AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed]

The violence follows months of almost daily wide-scale raids and arrest operations on the northern cities of Nablus and Jenin. These were placed under the security and administrative control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the Oslo Accords. The accompanying curfews, roadblocks and tight restrictions on movement have brought economic life to a standstill.

Operation “Break the Wave” was launched in April by the then Prime Minister Naftali Bennett after a spate of attacks by desperate Palestinians, with little known association to each other or any armed groups, killed 19 Israeli Jews. He put the military on high alert, dispatched extra troops to the West Bank and called on people to carry arms.

Bennett said, “Whoever has a gun license, this is the time to carry a gun,” giving the green light to ultra-nationalist and settler groups to set up militias and go on the rampage. It was a declaration of war on the Palestinians.

At least 175 Palestinians have been killed this year, more than 44 in the last two months, making 2022 the deadliest in the last 16 years. Hundreds more have been injured, while at least 1,500 people have been arrested, leaving detention centres full to overflowing.

Defence for Children International – Palestine reported that 29 children have been killed by Israeli soldiers, explaining, “All of the children were killed after being shot with live ammunition in their upper extremities. This is evidence of intentional killing.”

Jenin has been subjected to almost daily raids that have killed 40 people since March. It was in Jenin that Shireen Abu-Akleh, the US-Palestinian journalist working for Al-Jazeera Arabic, was murdered by Israeli forces as she covered the clashes. The city is home to an impoverished refugee camp and a centre of Palestinian opposition to the repressive regime of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas’ influence has grown.

Nablus, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements, has become a focus of Israeli military activity in support of armed settlers that have staged one provocation after another against the Palestinians, attacking their vehicles, homes, property and olive groves.

Tensions mounted after 100 armed settlers blocked the city’s southern entrance near the town of Huwwara to recite prayers on October 4, at the start of Yom Kippur. Huwwara has been subjected to dozens of attacks over the past year. The provocation—described by the settlers as the “civil besiegement” of Nablus—was closely coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that closed the gate to the city.

These ultra-nationalists have since maintained their siege, preventing Palestinians from entering or leaving the city. Their aim is to force the government to carry out a massive operation against “terror” in Nablus, akin to that carried out against Jenin in April 2002 that killed more than 50 Palestinians.

On October 12, the military seized on the shooting of an Israeli soldier by a militant group known as “Lions’ Den”. The soldier was protecting settlers from Shavei Shomron, west of Nablus, who were staging a blockade of the city. Nablus’ entire population was subjected to collective punishment, with the security forces only allowing Palestinians to enter or leave after checking their identities and belongings, causing hours-long delays.

Such is the ferocity of the opposition the IDF has encountered that Israel has deployed not just snipers but drones—hitherto only used against targets in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria—and planted an explosive device to kill Tamer al-Kilani, a Lions’ Den militant.

The Lions’ Den militia is made up of largely young and politically unaffiliated Palestinians born after the Second Intifada and increasingly frustrated by the refusal of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah-dominated PA to defend them against Israel. It has recently started targeting Israeli soldiers and settlers.

The despotic and corrupt PA is widely reviled as Israel’s subcontractor in enforcing the decades-long occupation and increasing poverty while a handful of the Palestinian elite grow ever wealthier. It has been unable to hold elections to replace the 87-year-old and ailing president and disbanded the Palestinian Legislative Council. The arrest in September by PA security forces of Hamas fighter Musab Shtayyah at Israel’s behest led to widespread demonstrations in Nablus against the PA.

Control status of the West Bank as per the Oslo Accords. Area A (green): full Palestinian control; Area B (dark red): joint Palestinian and Israeli control; Area C (pink): full Israeli control; East Jerusalem (purple): full Israeli control, annexed in 1980 [Photo by SoWhAt249 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

According to a report in Ha’aretz, settlers have taken advantage of the military’s blockade of Nablus to mount more than 100 attacks on Palestinians, mostly around Huwwara.

On October 25, after a two-week siege of Nablus and the surrounding district, Israeli security forces stormed the Old City in one of the largest operations in years, killing five Palestinians and wounding 20. According to the Ma’an news agency, Israeli forces also aimed their fire at PA security forces, injuring four officers.

Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid, speaking on television, said, “Israel will never be deterred from acting for its security.” Defence Minister Benny Gantz pledged that the military would continue its crackdown on the Lions’ Den and other armed groups, tweeting, “There aren’t and won’t be sanctuary cities for terrorists.”

The Palestinians responded to this latest assault by bringing the West Bank to a halt, closing schools, businesses and offices, with the funeral processions drawing thousands of mourners, and leading to clashes with the security forces.

Tensions have also been rising in East Jerusalem:

 * Jewish extremists were allowed into the al-Aqsa mosque compound in record breaking numbers during the recent Jewish holy days. This and restrictions placed on the entry of Muslim worshippers has raised fears of an attempt to take over the compound.

* The killing of an Israeli soldier and the wounding of another on October 8 by Udai Tamimi at a checkpoint in Shuafat, a refugee camp, led to raids, the closure of the camp, the spraying of foul-smelling skunk water and the firing of tear gas as the IDF sought Tamimi. Remaining at large for 11 days, he emerged to shoot at Israeli soldiers guarding the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement before being killed by the IDF. His death prompted angry demonstrations and a general strike on October 20 that hit businesses, schools, universities and transport across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

* Israeli settlers, led by the fascistic legislator Itamar Ben-Gvir, have poured into Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighbourhood. Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power has been gaining support in opinion polls and is aligned with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking a return to power in the November 1 elections. The settlers’ aim is to terrorize Palestinians out of the city. Jewish Power has already established an armed militia in southern Israel and is seeking to form another in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, which has witnessed several violent attacks on Palestinians by far-right groups.

Columnist Amos Harel warned in Ha’aretz, “There’s a danger that the events will slither across the Green Line again, including possible clashes in the mixed (Jewish-Arab) cities,” as occurred in May 2021 when Israel’s pounding of the densely populated and impoverished territory of Gaza with bombs, missiles and shells led to widespread unrest in Jerusalem and Israel’s mixed towns and cities.

Tensions have been deliberately whipped up by Israel’s promotion of communalist and ethno-religious politics, including the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Israel’s Arab citizens and migrant workers. This is in no small part due to the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor—one of the most extreme in the OECD group of rich countries—that has made the state reliant on the right-wing settlers and extreme nationalist zealots that now dominate the political arena. It testifies to the moral bankruptcy of the Zionist project and the dead-end of its reactionary perspective of carving out a sectarian Jewish capitalist state in the Middle East.

Russia accuses Britain of blowing up Nord Stream pipelines

Robert Stevens

The Russian government has accused Britain of playing a major role in the September 26 blowing up of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.

Powerful underwater explosions blew gaping holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas 760-miles under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The pipelines have a joint annual capacity to provide 110 billion cubic metres of gas, more than 50 percent of Russia’s normal gas export volumes.

Map of the Nord-Stream pipelines [Photo by FactsWithoutBias1 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

On Saturday, a spokesperson for Russia’s defence ministry said, “According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.” The “unit of the British Navy” referred to, as the spokesperson later detailed, were British operatives “in the city of Ochakiv, Mykolaiv region, Ukraine.”

The explosions destroyed tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure vital to financing Russia’s economy, and powering and heating European industry and households. Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom is the main owner of the pipelines. The leaks took place on international waters, but of the four explosions two of them were in the Danish exclusive economic zone and two in the Swedish zone, close to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.

Nord Stream 1 had been operating for nearly 11 years, while Nord Stream 2 contained gas but had not yet been brought into commercial operation, owing to pressure by Washington on Germany and other EU powers.

The spokesperson also alleged UK involvement in Saturday’s attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea. He stated, “At 4.20am today, the Kyiv regime carried out a terrorist attack on Black Sea Fleet ships and civilian vessels.

“Preparation for the terrorist act and training of military personnel of the Ukrainian 73rd Special Operations Centre Marine Unit was carried out under the guidance of British specialists who were in the city of Ochakiv, Mykolaiv region, Ukraine.

“It should be stressed that the Black Sea Fleet vessels that suffered the terrorist attack are involved in ensuring the security of the grain corridor as part of the international initiative to export agricultural products from Ukrainian ports.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defence denied the accusations, saying they were made to distract from Russia’s “disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine”.

Russia’s statement comes after weeks of insinuations by Britain and other NATO allies that the blowing up of its own pipeline was an act of sabotage by Russia. The incident has been used to further ramp up hostilities between NATO and Russia, with the activation of NATO's Article 5 collective defence clause being mooted.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said just days after the explosions that an Article 5 response could not be ruled out, adding, “I’ll reiterate that we have been in touch with our European allies and partners about the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. We are supporting European efforts to investigate this.”

Before the NATO defence ministers’ meeting earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg threatened, “Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response… We have doubled our presence in the Baltic and North Seas to over 30 ships, supported by maritime patrol aircraft and undersea capabilities.” He pledged “further steps” would be taken to protect Western infrastructure, before also stating, “We will never give up the privilege of defining exactly where the threshold for Article 5 goes. That will be a decision we make as allies taking into account the precise context.”

The propaganda that Russia is an imminent danger to NATO’s security and energy infrastructure fed into claims that a “foreign power”—and everyone knows this means Russia—may have sabotaged the German rail network, halting train services across northern Germany on October 8. Services were grounded after two cables critical to the running of the network were cut in two places. Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht, while visiting German troops in Lithuania, demanded that NATO bolster security against Russia. “The fact is that we, Nato, must do more for our common security because we cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go,” she declared.

From the standpoint of who benefits, the accusation that Britain was responsible, or played a critical role in the bombing of Nord Stream, is far more credible than claims of Russia rendering inoperable tens of billions of dollars’ worth of key infrastructure it has been developing over almost three decades since 1997. Moreover, given the UK’s intimate relationship with the United States on military and intelligence operations, it is impossible to conceive of Britain blowing up Nord Stream without the direct approval of Washington.

Well ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, British ships were involved in major provocations against Russia in the Black Sea. In June 2021, a British warship entered waters claimed by Russia near Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea. In response, a Russian border patrol boat fired several warning shots and a Russian fighter jet bombed the path of the British destroyer HMS Defender.

The Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender leaves Portsmouth naval base on May 1, 2021 for exercises in Scotland, prior to deployment to the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Indo-Pacific region as part of NATO's UK-led Carrier Strike Group 21. Just over seven weeks later, on June 23, 2021, HMS Defender was involved in a major provocation with the Russian armed forces in the Black Sea. [Photo: WSWS]

Since 2019, the Royal Navy and forces from other NATO countries led by the US have held a series of operations in the Baltic Sea region. On June 25, 2019 the Royal Navy reported, “A British-led expeditionary group that includes the Baltic states will carry out a series of integrated military activities across their part of northern Europe.” Britain’s expertise in sea operations in the Baltic would mean its forces would have no problem disabling Nord Stream. The Royal Navy statement continued, “Covert amphibious raids, urban ambushes and counter-mine training will mark an action-packed third stage of Baltic Protector, on which more than 3,000 British troops and 16 navy ships are currently deployed.”

Just two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Defence Minister Ben Wallace  announced after a summit with the British led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF)—involving Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden—“We have ... agreed to undertake a series of integrated military activities across our part of northern Europe, at sea, on land and in the air.” He added, “For example, we will shortly conduct an exercise demonstrating JEF nations freedom of movement in the Baltic Sea.”

In June, just three months before the Nord Stream explosions, NATO conducted its BALTOPS 22 exercise with Britain playing a major role. NATO listed “Fourteen NATO allies, two NATO partner nations, over 45 ships, more than 75 aircraft, and approximately 7,000 personnel” which took part. The Royal Navy said, “Destroyer HMS Defender provides the firepower and leading-edge technology, while six of the smallest craft in the Royal Navy’s inventory – Archer, Charger, Explorer, Exploit, Ranger and Smiter – provide the speed, agility and numbers to swarm around participants in Baltops 22.” HMS Defender was the destroyer involved in the June 2021 standoff near Crimea.

The claims that Russia destroyed the pipelines are an important second string to NATO’s propaganda against Moscow, reinforcing claims that a Russian nuclear attack is the main threat to the world, allowing for an escalation of the war in the naval arena—in which the UK is already playing a leading part.

On October 3, days after the Nord Stream attacks, the Royal Navy sent a frigate to the North Sea. The ship would work with the Norwegian navy “to reassure those working near the gas pipelines.” Wallace said at the time of the operation, and after meeting again with the JEF, “the group condemned the blatant attacks against civilian infrastructure.”

He stated that Britain will acquire two specialist ships to protect undersea cables and pipes, with the first “multi-role survey ship for seabed warfare” operational by the end of 2023.

Corporate donors pump billions into 2022 US midterm elections

Alex Findijs

The 2022 US midterm elections have seen a vast influx of corporate money into key races around the country.

According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data published last week by the Washington Post, the total volume of campaign donations for the current election cycle is nearly double the total for 2018. Data from AdImpact, an ad tracking company, has put the figure at $7.5 billion. This is nearly as much as the $9 billion spent during the presidential election cycle in 2020.

The flood of money has poured into the campaigns of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Under conditions of an escalating war against Russia, near-double-digit rates of inflation, an ongoing pandemic, a looming recession, and the transformation of the Republican Party into a platform for fascist violence while the Democrats serve as the premier party of imperialist war, the elections are increasingly devoid of genuine democratic content.

They have the character of a financial arms race between rival factions of the ruling class, with top donors investing tens and hundreds of millions from their vast fortunes to install in positions of power the bribed politicians of their choice.

Leading the pack is George Soros, who has donated a total of $128.5 million, mostly to Democracy PAC II, a Democratic Party-aligned super PAC (political action committee) created by Soros himself in 2021. Soros is the PAC’s only listed donor.

George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management, USA, during the session 'Redesigning the International Monetary System: A Davos Debate' at the Annual Meeting 2011 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27. [Photo by World Economic Forum / CC BY-SA 2.0]

He also oversees a large network of other PACs and organizations through which he funnels money to the Democratic Party. The Soros-backed Democratic Fund for Policy Reform has donated $25 million to Democratic candidates.

The top Republican donors are Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the billionaire owners of Uline, a privately held shipping and packaging supply company. Together they have given $70 million to Republican candidates this election cycle, on top of the tens of millions they have given to the GOP in previous elections.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. [Photo: Uline (Screengrab WSWS)]

They back far-right politics and politicians, promoting fascistic candidates such as Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Most recently their political activities have included attacking anti-COVID policies, including calling on the Wisconsin legislature to remove Governor Tony Evers for his lock-down orders, long since lifted.

Other major Republican donors include Kenneth Griffin, the founder and owner of Citadel and Citadel Securities, two of the largest investment groups in the world. Griffin has donated nearly $66 million, mostly for House and Senate races around the country.

Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and owner of Citadel and Citadel Securities. [Photo by Paul Elledge / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Jeffrey Yass, a wealthy investor and leading member of the Cato Institute, has donated over $48 million to Republican candidates. The Cato Institute is a right-wing libertarian, free market think tank founded by, among others, the billionaire Charles Koch.

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone Group, is another top Republican donor. He has donated $32.7 million this election cycle.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Blackstone Group, USA, at the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2008 [Photo by World Economic Forum/Remy Steinegger / CC BY-SA 2.0]

While the list of top donors is predominantly Republican aligned, the Democratic Party has received its share of support from corporate oligarchs beyond Soros.

The second largest Democratic donor is Sam Bankman-Fried, a billionaire investor and founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. He donated over $39 million, with $27 million going to the Protect Our Future PAC, an organization that ostensibly exists to support policies that will help prevent another pandemic.

Of course, the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled Congress have carried out essentially the same “let-it-rip” policies as Trump and the Republicans, allowing over a million Americans to die and countless more to be permanently scarred by Long COVID in the interests of corporate profit and the stock market.

The Democratic Party has also received large donations from unions such as the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, which has given more than $31.4 million to Democratic candidates and Democratic Party-aligned groups, according to the campaign finance tracker Open Secrets. The carpenters’ union is closely followed by the National Education Association, which has handed over $31 million.

Other major union donors include the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, and the Communication Workers of America, each of which has donated $10 million.

Unions in the transportation industry have donated a combined $10 million to Democratic candidates and PACs, even as the Biden administration and Congress have worked to force pro-corporate contracts on rail workers that fail to meet workers’ demands for adequate time off and paid sick days.

The teachers’ unions, for their part, have worked hand-in-glove with both big business parties to isolate and sell out strikes by educators driven by opposition to the reopening of unsafe schools in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

The campaign finance data for this election cycle further demonstrates the fact that the Democratic Party is not a party of labor or democracy, but a party of Wall Street and the US military-intelligence apparatus.

During the Republican primary elections this year, the Democratic Party funneled millions of dollars into ads designed to boost the campaigns of far-right, pro-Trump election deniers and defeat more moderate Republicans, cynically calculating that Democratic candidates would fare better against Trump acolytes in the November general election. Not only has this exposed the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and its inability to advance any policies that address the needs of working people and defend their democratic rights, it appears to have contributed to a Republican surge that may result in the take-over of one or both houses of Congress and many key state offices by Trump allies.

It has also exposed the pseudo-left organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who promote “progressive” frauds like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez based on the lie that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.

Macron calls to impoverish French workers by keeping wage rises below inflation

Alex Lantier

In an interview Wednesday evening on France2 television, President Emmanuel Macron set the course for his second term. Citing NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine and its expansion into Europe, he refused to index French wages to the rapid inflation that is devastating the global economy and promised to slash pensions by raising the legal retirement age to 65.

With 500 French people dying every week from COVID-19, and a new deadly wave expected this winter, Macron did not mention any measures to stop the contagion.

French Communist Party (PCF) National Secretary and Member of Parliament Fabien Roussel shakes hands with France's President Emmanuel Macron after talks at the presidential Elysee Palace, in Paris, Monday, June 21, 2022. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]

His interview confirms the Marxist warning that imperialist war abroad goes hand in hand with class war against the workers at home. As over 10 percent inflation staggers Europe, Macron’s refusal to raise wages and his attack on pensions are evidence of his plan, shared by all the capitalist states of Europe, to massively reduce living standards. As during the two world wars of the 20th century, the capitalist system works for the immiseration of the working class.

Macron first linked his desire to increase the cost of living to the supposedly inevitable return of war to Europe. “The war that is returning to Europe has multiple consequences. On energy, we were afraid of not having enough this winter. We managed to get by. On prices, it affects the lives of many compatriots,” said Macron, before predicting a massive increase in the cost of energy: “For households, we will continue to help by adapting things. [Nevertheless] there will be a 15 percent increase in the first months [of 2023] for electricity and gas.”

While inflation in France is already at 7 percent and will rise in 2023 due to the rising cost of energy, Macron refused to defend purchasing power by raising wages to at least the level of inflation.

“The solution is not to re-index wages to inflation ... I don’t want to be demagogic, I'm not here to say we’re going to re-index, otherwise we would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Macron said. He added, “If we want to move forward, we have no choice but to work more.”

To force workers to work more while earning less per hour worked, Macron proposed attacking pensions and unemployment insurance: “Today, there is not a serious expert who tells you that your pensions are funded. So, from the summer of 2023, we will have to shift the legal retirement age by four months a year. So, by 2025 we’ll go to 63, by 2028 to 64 and by 2031 to 65.”

Unsurprisingly, Macron then detailed measures aimed at reducing some of the shock of these measures on the most vulnerable workers and businesses. He announced state subsidies for businesses, particularly small businesses such as energy-intensive bakeries, and the extension of one-euro meals to slightly wider layers of students. But this will not offset the impact of inflation on the collective purchasing power of the working class, including rising prices for imported goods.

Macron has indicated that he will impose misery on workers under cover of nationalism, by stirring up fascistic hatreds against immigrants. Hypocritically claiming he would “never make an existential link between immigration and insecurity,” he made that link three seconds later, saying, “But I want to fight against illegal immigration. When you look at the delinquency in Paris, where there is a high concentration of this illegal immigration, yes, delinquency is very present.”

He boasted that he had “succeeded in sending home 3,000 illegal immigrants who were disturbing public order.”

At the same time, Macron himself admitted that he had no French solution to the crisis in global capitalism. Inflation, he said, is “the consequence of our dependencies, we have controlled it better than many of our neighbors. The crisis we are passing through leaves €85 billion less in revenue for the nation because gas has gone up, electricity too, and all this has spread to all economic sectors, and we must submit to this shock.”

Macron's adoption of a strategy of war, immiseration and fascistic repression raises the most serious political and historical questions for workers. The first is breaking with the narrow national framework of struggle proposed by the trade union bureaucracies, which subordinate strikes and workers’ struggles to their negotiations with Macron. But there is nothing to negotiate with Macron, whose policies run counter to the fundamental interests of working class.

The task facing the working class is to align its modes of struggle and perspectives with the challenges posed by an explosive objective situation. The nationalist, corporatist perspective of the trade union bureaucracies, to negotiate with the capitalist state and the bosses, leads to disaster. Only the formation among the workers in France and throughout the world of rank-and-file committees, independent of the national bureaucracies and taking the class struggle out of their hands, will make it possible to lead the necessarily international struggle against inflation, the pandemic and war.

This struggle can only be waged consciously by building a movement to transfer power to the workers through a socialist revolution.

The isolation of the current refinery strike in France by the ex-Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) bureaucracy is a warning. The CGT and its political allies such as the Communist Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France and Olivier Besancenot’s Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party are not only unable to defend wages. All the political parties and trade union bureaucracies historically linked to Stalinism, which blocked a revolution during the struggles of resistance to fascism in World War II and during the general strike of May 1968, will work to strangle workers’ struggles in the 21st century.

The Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 neither signaled the end of the struggle for socialism by the working class, nor resolved the mortal crisis of capitalism. However, simply declaring that this crisis exists without then fighting to break the influence on the working class of those national bureaucracies that negotiate with Macron means to work within the context of the political debate within the ruling elite, or even within the Élysée presidential palace.

Indeed, in an interview with the British magazine Economist in 2019, Macron admitted that Washington’s threats of war against Moscow were a sign of a deadly political crisis. “What we are seeing, I think, is that NATO is brain dead,” he said, before adding, “When the United States is very harsh with Russia, it is a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria.”

In fact, Macron himself is politically brain dead. Just three years later, he and the other NATO leaders are waging war on Russia in Ukraine, risking nuclear war. In 2019, he had added, “There was a pervasive conception that developed in the 1990s and 2000s around the idea of the End of History, an endless expansion of democracy, that the Western camp had won … [Then] a series of crises showed that it was not true.”