Firefighters exposed to toxins at Grenfell Tower fire diagnosed with incurable cancers

Margot Miller

Twelve firefighters among the 1,300 who attended the June 2017 Grenfell Tower inferno in London have developed incurable cancers—possibly the result of exposure to deadly contaminants released by the blaze. Some are relatively young men in their forties.

Exhausted firefighters rest next to a wall as they take a break in battling the inferno that raged in Grenfell Tower, London, June 14, 2017. [AP Photo/Matt Dunham]

A Mirror investigation reported that the majority are suffering from digestive cancers and leukaemia, and that their number could rise to 20 as a list of firefighters at the scene who now have cancer is being compiled. It is feared this is “only this tip of the iceberg” as cancer can take up to 25 years to develop.

Grenfell underwent “refurbishment” on the cheap in 2014, during which the exterior was covered with highly combustible cladding, permitting a small kitchen fire to spread with exceptional ferocity—72 people died.

The blaze burned for 60 hours, releasing a thick black smoke so dense it was impossible for those trying to escape to see even their hand in front of their face. It contained carcinogens released from the burning cladding.

Firefighters continued the rescue even as they ran out of oxygen, forced to breathe in the fumes.

Pictures taken at the time show them exhausted, clothed “in soot-covered personal protective equipment on the grass, drinking and eating,” which can lead to cancer of the digestive system.

Exhausted firefighters rest as they take a break in battling a massive fire that raged in Grenfell Tower, London, June 14, 2017. [AP Photo/Matt Dunham]

The Mirror noted, “A 2019 study by the University of Central Lancashire (UClan) found soil contamination from the disaster caused by the fire could lead to an increased risk of cancer and respiratory problems of those living in the area.

“Analysis of soil, debris and char samples of insulation boards used on the tower revealed heightened concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals and proven carcinogens, including benzene, within 200m of the tower.”

Brian Flanagan, 47, a firefighter who attended the emergency, said, “What is out of the ordinary was the length of time we were there, and this is the problem. In a standard fire you would be there not more than four hours. When you get to that mark you get a relief crew. But I was at Grenfell for eight hours, twice as long as I should have been.” Many firefighters were on duty for 12 hours.

Research commissioned by the Fire Brigades’ Union from the UClan found firefighters are twice as likely to develop cancer if they remain in their personal protective equipment longer than four hours. They face a similar risk if they notice soot in their nose or throat.

Another firefighter, a father in his 50s, who, “risked his life as he and his colleagues led a trapped family to safety” spoke anonymously. Grenfell “left him suicidal and suffering from scarred lungs,” reported the Mirror.

“We were quite early on the scene and got held in this underground car park and we were breathing all the toxins for ages,” he said.

The newspaper reported that the firefighter has “failed several medicals since the blaze because of his lung function and now needs inhalers.”

He told the Mirror, “Before Grenfell my health was great. I passed all the medicals and had no problems at all… It literally was within a month or so I started to get this cough and for me that’s when it started to go downhill.”

Long-term occupational health hazards for firefighters are severe. Another study by UClan, “Scottish Firefighters Occupational Cancer and Disease Mortality Rates: 2000-2020”, found they had a mortality rate higher than the general population by a multiple of 1.6, based on data from the National Records of Scotland.

The study revealed the higher incidence of the following cancers among firefighters:

·      Prostate3.8 times higher than the general population

·      Leukaemia—17 times higher

·      Oesophageal—2.42 times higher

·      Cancers of unknown origin—6.37 times higher

The rate of heart attacks is five times higher than the general public, and three times higher for strokes.

Yet, as FBU national official Riccardo la Torre pointed out in response to the news of the Grenfell responders’ illness, “Firefighters are left in the dark due to the lack of regular health surveillance and proper monitoring of exposures in the UK.”

Inside Housing reported Friday on a memo from the company Celotex, sellers of the combustible insulation used in the Grenfell cladding, revealing that the company “had research which demonstrated that it produced acidic, toxic smoke when burned, 18 months before the blaze.” Studies were commissioned comparing toxicity of its material to others on the market.

A fire expert reviewing the memo told Inside Housing, that “All smoke is toxic… They [Celotex] seemed interested in a plastic that is toxic in fire than their competitors. They were not looking for a product that was of low toxicity. The difference is important.”

During phase one of the inquiry into the fire, the company declared, “Celotex (PIR) insulation is an organic material and… releases a variety of gases on combustion. This information was well known by construction professionals and was clearly stated in Celotex’s health and safety datasheet which was readily available to those responsible for the design and installation of the cladding system on Grenfell Tower.”

It has already been revealed that Celotex falsified the results of tests so their product would pass the minimum standard of limited combustibility—adding fire resistant boards to a fire test.

Another conglomerate, Arconic, manufactured the cladding’s outer rainscreen aluminium composite panels (ACM)—a layer of polyethylene sandwiched between two aluminium skins, which has been likened to solid petrol.

The suffering and illness of a significant number of the Grenfell firefighters makes even more filthy the moves by the authorities and Grenfell Inquiry to scapegoat them for the disaster. Both first and second phases concentrated disproportionately on the efforts of a cash-strapped London Fire Brigade (LFB) to respond to a catastrophe created by rampant criminality in corporate and political circles—part of a clear agenda to pin the blame for Grenfell almost exclusively on the LFB.

Many responded to the news of the suffering firefighters with outrage.

Some asked why they had not been given sufficient protection:

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Others warned of the still to be discovered impacts on local residents:

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Many demanded that those responsible be held accountable and prosecuted:

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The official inquiry hearings ended last November. It was set up as a government cover-up with no powers of prosecution, barred from investigating causes of a “social, economic and political nature.”

Even as it prepares its final report, more crimes are being revealed. Over five years after the fire not a single person in corporate and political circles responsible for turning the building into an inferno has been arrested or prosecuted. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to reside in unsafe high-rise buildings covered in dangerous cladding.

New Zealand Labour Party installs new right-wing PM

Tom Peters

Over the weekend, following the sudden resignation of Jacinda Ardern as New Zealand’s prime minister, the ruling Labour Party caucus endorsed senior minister Chris Hipkins as her replacement. Hipkins was chosen unopposed to head the party and government in the lead-up to the October 14 election.

Chris Hipkins speaking outside parliament in Wellington on January 21, a day before he was appointed New Zealand prime minister. [AP Photo/Nick Perry]

Ardern announced her departure last Thursday, declaring that she was worn out from leading the country during multiple crises and wanted to spend time with her family.

The reality is that despite being glorified in the world’s media as a “liberal icon” and feminist hero, Ardern and her right-wing government have become increasingly unpopular. All of Ardern’s rhetoric about “kindness” and her promises to alleviate poverty and homelessness have been exposed as a fraud.

The Labour government exploited the pandemic to carry out an historic transfer of tens of billions of dollars to big business and the banks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Soaring inflation is now driving hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, while more than 3,000 people have died in the past year as a result of the adoption of the homicidal “let it rip” policy demanded by big business.

In every country, the ruling class is now seeking to impose the full burden of the global economic crisis, triggered by the pandemic and made worse by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, onto the backs of working people.

Ardern’s departure, as the WSWS noted, follows demands for an even more brutal assault on workers’ living standards. The Reserve Bank is seeking to engineer a recession and higher unemployment to drive down wages. Ardern has signaled that she does not feel up to the task of imposing this agenda and confronting the resistance that will inevitably emerge.

Ardern appears to have chosen Hipkins as her replacement. While most of the party was unaware of her impending resignation, she told him prior to Christmas that she was considering stepping down.

Hipkins is widely described as “Mr Fixit,” Ardern’s “attack dog,” and as someone who will shift the government further to the right. His record includes enforcing austerity against striking teachers as education minister, dismantling public health measures as COVID-19 response minister, and imposing so-called “tough on crime” measures as police minister.

In his first media conference, Hipkins distanced himself from Ardern’s slogan that she would make “transformational” changes, saying: “I’m not really interested in those kinds of catchphrases.”

While stating that “many people in New Zealand, many families are struggling… worried about paying their grocery bills and paying their mortgages,” Hipkins sought to dampen expectations of any significant steps to address the cost of living crisis. “New Zealanders,” he said, “understand we cannot do everything and we certainly can’t do everything all at once. They see the global economic pressures that New Zealand is up against.”

Even as more than 50 people are dying and hundreds are being hospitalised each week due to COVID-19, Hipkins talked about the pandemic entirely in the past tense. He declared: “COVID-19 and the global pandemic created a health crisis, and now it’s created an economic one, and that’s where my government’s focus will be.”

After Ardern announced the scrapping of New Zealand’s COVID elimination policy in late 2021, Hipkins oversaw the dismantling of public health measures, allowing the coronavirus to infect millions of people. On Twitter, he soon earned the nickname #LetitRipkins.

As education minister, he undertook the reopening of schools for in-person learning, which played a central role in unleashing COVID across the country. He defended the deliberate infection of children, telling Newsroom on May 18, 2022 that “a proportion of children will get COVID, that’s just the reality of living in a community where COVID is circulating.” He said people concerned about this were “catastrophising.”

Before the pandemic, Hipkins had already established a reputation for ruthlessness, imposing the government’s effective pay freeze and austerity across the education sector in the face of nationwide strikes by teachers in 2018 and 2019. This was done with the assistance of the education unions, which also prevented any organised resistance to the unsafe reopening of schools.

Hipkins’ ministry has also overseen a funding freeze at universities as international student numbers dropped during the pandemic, resulting in hundreds of job losses. About 7,000 university staff held a nationwide strike last October demanding a real wage increase. The ongoing process of merging the country’s 16 polytechnics (training institutes) into a single national entity, Te Pūkenga, is expected to involve more staff cuts.

None of this stopped Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff from congratulating Hipkins on becoming prime minister and declaring that the CTU had “worked closely with Hipkins, and we have been impressed by his commitment to addressing inequity.” The Labour government had “shown it has the wellbeing of working New Zealanders at its heart,” Wagstaff said.

The unions are playing a key role in imposing sellout pay agreements and preventing any organised fight for higher wages. Today, the CTU released a survey of 1,870 union members, showing that 44 percent had received no pay rise in the last 12 months. Three quarters said their incomes were not keeping up with inflation, which soared by 7.2 percent while food prices went up 11.3 percent in the last year.

Hipkins has also been involved in strengthening the repressive powers of the state to deal with the fallout of the social crisis. In June last year, Ardern made Hipkins minister of police following an hysterical “law and order” campaign by the media and opposition parties, which denounced his predecessor Poto Williams for failing to deal with an alleged “youth crime wave” and gang violence. Hipkins introduced new legislation that will give additional powers to police to search properties if they are believed to be occupied or owned by gang members.

There is no sign that a Hipkins-led government will make any significant change in foreign policy. In his press conference yesterday Hipkins declared that “our relationship with China is incredibly important, economically” and a visit to China would be “high on the priority list.”

The Labour government has deepened NZ’s military alliance with the United States, including by sending hundreds of troops to the UK to help train and supply the Ukrainian military in the expanding US-NATO war against Russia. At the same time, Wellington has been reluctant to fully and openly join the far-advanced preparations for war against China, which is New Zealand’s main trading partner. Hipkins’ comments will be viewed with concern in US and Australian ruling circles, which want a much firmer commitment from Wellington to the drive towards another imperialist world war.

Hipkins’ first action over the weekend was to appoint Carmel Sepuloni as the new deputy prime minister. Immediately, the race-obsessed media hailed Sepuloni, who has Tongan and Samoan heritage, as New Zealand’s first Pacific Islander in such a senior position.

For the past five years as social development minister Sepuloni’s main task has been to justify maintaining poverty-level welfare payments. She has also overseen the children’s ministry, Oranga Tamariki, which has triggered protests for removing babies from young mothers.

The Labour Party’s supporters, while still reeling from Ardern’s resignation, are desperately seeking to promote illusions in Hipkins to save the party from a crushing election defeat.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw, who is the minister for climate change in the Labour-led government, praised Hipkins’ record, telling reporters: “He’s taken on some of the toughest jobs in government and done a really good job of them, so I think he’ll be excellent.”

The liberal Daily Blog praised him as “ferociously bright, principled and clever.” The publication ludicrously painted the politician’s career as “a celebration of NZ egalitarian meritocracy.”

On Interest.co.nz, pro-Labour pundit Chris Trotter cautiously hoped that Hipkins would “correct his party’s currently suicidal political course” by backing away from “contentious” policies based on racial identity politics, such as Labour’s move to give co-governance of water infrastructure to Māori tribes. A reversal on this front is unlikely given the powerful business interests behind the tribes, which successive Labour and National governments have sought to cultivate.

New Zealand Herald politics commentator Bryce Edwards wrote that Hipkins would shift the government “to the right economically” while falsely claiming that such an agenda would resonate with the “average voter” and so-called “middle New Zealand”—the very people who are already suffering from the Ardern government’s right-wing policies.

In fact, while the political establishment lurches to the right, growing numbers of workers and young people are hostile to all the parliamentary parties and the capitalist system they uphold. Underlying Ardern’s departure and the increasing political instability, an historic class polarisation is underway in New Zealand, as is the case internationally, setting the stage for explosive class battles.

Pandemic deaths in China hit 700,000 since end of Zero-COVID policy, according to modeling estimates

Benjamin Mateus

New modeling estimates of COVID deaths in China since December 1, 2022, by Airfinity place the figure at over 700,000 fatalities since the Stalinist regime ended its Zero-COVID policy on December 1 in response to pressure from giant corporations and imperialist governments, particularly the United States.

Although the real scale of death and misery may never truly be known, this analysis nonetheless provides a horrific glimpse into the crisis befalling the Chinese working class.

Patients are checked as they arrive at an emergency hall of a hospital in Beijing, Thursday, January 19, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The figures on infections, deaths and the course of the outbreak by the British-based analytics firm Airfinity were recently revised and updated to take account of epidemiologic data from the more remote inland provinces. Airfinity is now forecasting one longer, more severe COVID wave as Chinese New Year travel will continue to fuel the outbreak that has spread across the country at unimaginable rates.

The group wrote on January 16, “Today’s new forecast considers reports that some provinces including Henan, Gansu, Qinghai, and Yunnan have already seen infections peak. Our analytics indicators suggest that the virus has spread more quickly to rural areas, partly driven by people traveling for the Chinese New Year celebrations. This increased growth rate has changed our forecast from predicting two successive waves to one larger and more severe wave.”

As China’s ministry of transport has noted, more than two billion passenger trips are likely to take place during the 40-day holiday season. Already on Saturday, the eve of the Chinese New Year, the Chinese media reported that more than 26 million passenger trips took place.

A majority of the travelers are thought to be migrant workers on their way home to visit families, many for the first time in the three years since the Wuhan lockdowns took effect and Zero COVID was implemented as the country’s official response to the coronavirus. There are real and justified fears that such travel will only entrench the virus deeper into Chinese society.

According to Airfinity’s calculations, COVID-19 infections could peak at 4.8 million per day, with more than 62 million infections estimated to occur in the latter half of January. Assuming a fatality rate similar to other countries, deaths would peak at 36,000 per day on January 26, with the New Year festivities well underway. The firm estimates that cumulative COVID-19 deaths as of January 20 stand at 708,000.

These figures imply that the health systems across China over the next several weeks can expect to face a more protracted and horrific wave. Dr. Matt Linley, Airfinity’s Analytics Director, said, “Our forecast estimates a significant burden on China’s healthcare system for the next fortnight and it is likely that many treatable patients could die due to overcrowded hospitals and lack of care.”

These estimates were corroborated by China’s chief epidemiologist at their Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Wu Zunyou, who said over the weekend that the current wave of infections “has already infected about 80 percent of the people,” or around 1.1 billion people.

However, these numbers haven’t fazed Chinese health authorities and their Stalinist bosses, who continue to downplay the current crisis that has swept across the country with unprecedented speed. Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said late last week, before the start of festivities, that the virus was at a “relatively low” level and that the number of critical patients in hospitals were in decline.

Major urban centers like Shanghai and Beijing continue to see patients being piled into crowded hospital rooms, hallways and lobbies waiting for treatment, while more people are pouring through the doors who had waited to see how their illness would proceed.

Circumstantial evidence of the ongoing catastrophe is palpable in the comments offered to the media. One woman speaking with an NBC News correspondent said, “Thirty-five people passed away the day before yesterday, right here. Since my mom was here, I’ve come here to see her every day. On the day my father moved into the hospital, almost all patients in the emergency department died.”

Many family members of the deceased have also been critical of the local governments and health systems for failing to acknowledge that the virus caused their deaths. The Financial Times noted that the “lower-than-expected figures” are due to “keeping COVID-19 off the death certificates.” Instead, the deaths are being attributed to pneumonia or heart disease or as unknown, if the deceased were brought in after having succumbed at home.

The clinical director at Raffles, a premier private hospital that caters to the wealthiest Chinese and high-ranking officials and whose pharmacies are stocked with Paxlovid, told the Economist that “local hospitals, especially ICUs, are full and we still seeing patients arriving with complications making it difficult to find ICU beds currently in Beijing. There are less patients but still a lot of serious cases and patients with complications are still arriving to the hospitals.”

The continuing crisis in Beijing, which has by far the most advanced health care resources available to it when compared to other regions of the country, means the consequences for rural and smaller metropolitan areas are nothing short of dire. For instance, Paxlovid, the anti-viral medication manufactured by Pfizer for prevention of severe disease, is known to be selling on the black market. It would cost an average Chinese worker two months of salary to procure these lifesaving treatments.

Many in rural China have access only to rudimentary health care and, if required, the severely afflicted require transport to townships where more up-to-date health systems are available. In other words, anyone infected is essentially left on their own to see if the course of their illness will take a fatal turn. People have to cope with their symptoms and hope for the best.

As the Economist noted, even in these rural areas, where symptomatic cases remain high and health systems are under strain, local residents have said that many have experienced COVID-19 recently from the massive surge in cases in December that washed across the country after the lifting of all mitigation measures.

David Rennie, the Economist’s bureau chief in Beijing, who recently visited a remote village in the central rural region of China in Henan province, wrote, “They talked about how everyone basically got sick in late December. The sheer speed of that wave, which I think was much faster than maybe we were expecting has clearly had a really brutal impact, although, we may never know exactly how many deaths … I spoke to a funeral worker who said he was three times busier than usual and at the crematorium … is handling 100 cremations a day and went up to 150 to 160 at the peak of the sicknesses. Before the pandemic, they were doing 30 or 40 cremations a day.”

He then added that doing the math means seeing hundreds or thousands of excess deaths for just the one county and then multiplying it by 66 times to account for the entire Henan Province. “You get some very big numbers very soon,” he observed.

Ben Cowling, chair professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health in Hong Kong, said, “For the next two or three weeks, we know the virus is going to find its way to every last corner of the country. That means in rural areas they’re going to have lots of infections, most likely within a short space of time, and the impact may be greater because of that lack of resources.”

The rapidity with which the Chinese Communist Party has embraced the “herd immunity” policy and essentially forced the population to accept mass infection has been nothing short of a criminal policy of social murder. It is as though the Stalinist regime is seeking to catch up with the Western powers in infections and deaths, after having kept the virus out for the last three years and protected the lives of millions of people.

The demands placed by finance capital on China’s leadership were bound to supersede any nationally based public health policy aimed at maintaining Zero COVID.

In that regard, China’s Vice Premier Liu He’s appearance before the world’s billionaires at Davos to tell the world that China was open for business was a revealing indictment of the bureaucracy’s orientation. Without flinching, he told the elite audience, “Life has been restored to normal in China.”

Long wait times in emergency rooms lead to deaths and poor health outcomes across North America

Liz Cabrera

Hospitals throughout Canada and the United States have experienced an alarming surge of respiratory viruses in infants, children and adults, predominantly respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID-19. Hospitals in both countries have been operating at or above capacity for several months with no end in sight due to the homicidal “forever COVID” policy which has been overseen by the Trudeau Liberal government in Canada and the Biden administration in the United States. 

In this Thursday, August 19, 2021, photo, EMTs bring another patient to the Emergency Department in the Critical Care Unit at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center in Grants Pass, Oregon [AP Photo/Mike Zacchino/KDRV via AP, Pool]

The rapid spread of the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant across Canada and the United States is overwhelming an already stretched health care system. The risk of death and other serious health care outcomes from long wait times in emergency rooms (ERs) will increase due to lack of beds and staff and increased boarding time (the total time required to treat patients in the ER). Hospital staff are exhausted and suffering from moral injury and are leaving in droves, which will only exacerbate the shortage of health care workers. 

According to a report by the Canadian CBC News, ER deaths are at a six-year high in the province of Nova Scotia; 558 people died in ERs in 2022, up from 505 in 2021 and 393 in 2020. 

The most recent death was that of a 37-year-old woman who had sought medical treatment for excruciating abdominal pain at Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre in Amherst, Nova Scotia. The patient, Allison Holthoff, waited six hours in a wheelchair or lying on the floor in the waiting room before being brought into an exam room. Her husband, Gunter Holthoff, told CBC News that at one point he told medical staff that his spouse was not doing well, and she felt like she was dying, but there was no response or action. After more time passed the nurses prepared Allison for an X-ray, but she subsequently went into cardiac arrest before the test could be performed. She was resuscitated three times but later died in the intensive care unit. 

The day before Allison Holthoff’s death, 67-year-old Charlene Snow died after returning home following a seven-hour wait in the ER at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. Snow had been ill for several days with intense jaw pain and flu-like symptoms before seeking treatment, but left without being seen. Snow suffered a cardiac arrest and died an hour after leaving the hospital, according to Global News.

According to the Annual Accountability Report, in 2021-2022 there were 536,666 total visits to emergency departments (EDs) across Nova Scotia and during this same time period 43,142 patients (8.0 percent) who visited EDs left without being seen (LWBS) by staff at an ED. The EDs with the greatest number of patients LWBS are South Shore Regional (15.0 percent) and Cape Breton Regional (14.8 percent), the hospital where Charlene Snow sought medical care. 

The head of emergency medicine for Halifax, Nova Scotia, Dr. Kirk Magee, recently told Global News that emergency care was “in a state of crisis” amid a shortage of nurses, physicians and hospital beds, and an increased volume of patients with complex needs. The shortage of primarily nursing staff has forced closure of ERs across Canada, causing more pressure on an already collapsing health system. 

In addition to the nursing shortage, there is a shortage of primary care physicians which has increased the use of ERs for chronic medical issues. According to Nova Scotia Health, as of January 1, 2023, 129,321 Nova Scotians are on the family practice registry, that is 13 percent of the population are looking for a family practice physician. 

Similar situations are unfolding in ERs across the United States. Shortages in staff and beds and increased boarding are plaguing emergency departments around the country and contributing to long wait times. 

On October 14, 2022, 12-year-old Meiah Tafoya was brought to Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a fracture she sustained from a fall at school. Meiah waited 10 hours before she was told by staff that she could not be adequately treated at Presbyterian Hospital and would need to be transferred to another hospital. She was transferred to University of New Mexico Hospital where she underwent four surgeries which included the amputation of her injured leg. 

In another tragic incident, 23-year-old William “Billy” Miller died in the ER after being transported to Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut after ingesting a white, powdery substance he believed was laced with fentanyl. The patient was given naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdose, by firefighters and then transferred to New Haven ER where he was designated a Level 2 patient, meaning staff were required to reassess him every hour. According to a press report, hospital staff did not check on him for seven hours and he was later found to be in full cardiac arrest.

Decades of research have long demonstrated that overcrowding in E’s can lead to worse outcomes for patients receiving emergency treatment, and this overcrowding impacts patients in other areas of the hospital as well.  

In an article published last month in the journal Health Services Research, researchers from Penn State and the University of California, San Francisco examined five million discharge records from hospitals across California between October 2015 and the end of 2017. They found that patients throughout a hospital were 5.4 percent more likely to die of any cause on days when that hospital’s emergency department was the most crowded.

The researchers note that since the causes of death have not yet been explored, it is too early to say whether people are dying because of emergency room crowding. Still, the results show that more people at the hospitals die when the emergency rooms fill up. 

Moreover, since the data was collected in California, where legislation regulates the minimum staffing levels for nurses, the impact of ED overcrowding in other states is likely even greater. This data was also collected prior to the pandemic. One can assume that the overwhelmed emergency departments during the pandemic, and now with the confluence of multiple respiratory viruses, have only resulted in even higher rates of inpatient deaths at hospitals.

The overlapping surge of multiple viruses circulating in the population could have been prevented. There were numerous warnings by experts months before but nothing was done to prepare. 

The unfolding tragedy is a consequence of the “herd immunity” and “forever COVID” policy now pursued by both the Biden administration and the Trudeau Liberal government which over the past year have systematically dismantled all anti-COVID protection measures based on science.

The capitalist policy of prioritizing corporate profit over every other social need has produced horrific results for which the recent ED deaths and poor outcomes are only one aspect. All public health measures during the pandemic have been subordinated to the profit interests of corporations, resulting in the unnecessary loss of millions of lives.

New warning strikes at Deutsche Post

Marianne Arens

A nationwide strike at Deutsche Post was extended through Saturday evening. It had begun at 5 p.m. Thursday afternoon, when the walkout by the night shift paralyzed sorting centres. And on Friday, parcel and letter delivery workers went on strike all day. The Verdi service union, which called the strike in two stages, is responding to the enormous willingness to fight that is spreading at Deutsche Post.

Postal workers are fighting for a wage increase of 15 percent over a period of 12 months. Trainees are to receive an extra €200 a month. According to a spokesman for Deutsche Post, some 16,700 postal workers had already joined the strike by midday on Friday, including 2,700 in Berlin and Brandenburg alone, 2,000 in southwest Germany, 2,500 in Bavaria and 5,500 in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. As a result of the strike, about 2.3 million parcel shipments and 13 million letters were left behind on Friday, which is more than half of the average daily volume.

Postal cart [Photo by Bernd Schwabe / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Despite the problems involved, a large proportion of the population supports the postal strikes as being justified. This is expressed, among other things, in the comment sections of the media.

For example, a worker writes in the comments on broadcaster RBB’s website: “Am I responsible for inflation? Am I waging war? Is it all my decisions? What are 15 percent wage demands compared to the reality of our expenses for living, livelihoods and pensions!”

Another writes that it is “more than justified and more than necessary to give workers a share of the profits and the increase in productivity, all the more so because otherwise the profits simply flow to the shareholders.”

The Deutsche Post corporate board has dismissed the workers’ pay demand as “unrealistic.” However, it has reported profits of more than €8 billion in each of the last two years. At the same time, it refused to pay employees the tax-free bonus of €3,000 made possible by government funding. Now the board, backed by the union, wants to continue its policy of enriching shareholders at the expense of the workers.

The previously state-owned Deutsche Post—now, “Deutsche Post DHL Group”—has pushed through an unprecedented reduction in wages and deterioration in working conditions since privatization. Entire divisions have been outsourced to subsidiaries and subcontractors. Today, almost 88 percent of the workforce—140,000 out of 160,000 on union-agreed contracts—are classified in pay groups 1 to 3, which range from €2,108 to €3,090 monthly gross. However, many distribution centres are located in expensive major cities, where rents and living costs are constantly rising.

In December, figures from the Federal Statistical Office showed that salaries in the postal and parcels sector have risen much less than in the economy as a whole since 2011. In those 10 years, they have increased by only 6 percent, while average incomes in the overall economy have increased by nearly 24 percent.

At the same time, night work and overtime have increased. In 2021, about 60 percent of mail carriers and sorters also had to work weekends. And one-in-seven postal employees also worked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Furthermore, the Federal Statistical Office data revealed a high level of atypical employment relationships. In 2021, nearly one-in-three postal, courier and express drivers (31 percent) was either employed on a temporary or part-time basis, in marginal employment or temporary agency staff. Thus, sorters and parcel and letter deliverers are fobbed off with low wages for hard back-breaking work, while the corporation, like the other logistics groups, profits not least from the growth in online shopping. This explains the great willingness to strike in the postal and distribution centres.

However, the strikers confront the danger that Verdi will sell them out again this time. The union’s chief negotiator, Verdi’s deputy chairwoman Andrea Kocsis, is deliberately vague in her demand for “inflation compensation” and a “share in the company’s success.” This functionary, who collects more than half a million euros a year from supervisory board bonuses alone, is preparing to strike a rotten deal in the third round of negotiations to be held on February 8 and 9.

The current demand for a 15 percent pay increase was made against the will of the union. In a survey in which more than 43,000 members took part last autumn, the 10.5 percent demand currently being tabled by Verdi for the public sector was rejected by postal workers as insufficient. Sixty-five percent of Deutsche Post union members rejected that demand as too low, and some 91 percent said they were ready to strike.

In 2020, the last time there was industrial action at Deutsche Post, the union thwarted the willingness to strike and made the cuts in real wage possible with its settlement. The last agreement stipulated that wages and salaries would not rise at all in 2020 and then only by 3 percent on January 1, 2021, and by another 2 percent on January 1, 2022. By agreeing a contract period of 28 months, Verdi gave Deutsche Post almost two-and-a-half years of industrial peace.

In the meantime, the Verdi leadership, like the entire union bureaucracy in Germany, supported and went along with the profits-before-lives policy in the coronavirus pandemic, the escalating armaments spending and war policy of the coalition government. While the profits of the rich and shareholders have skyrocketed like never before, inflation has eaten away at wages with unprecedented increases in food and energy prices.

South Africa: Electricity outages compound ANC government crisis

Jean Shaoul

African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to abandon his planned trip to the World Economic Forum’s (EEF) annual meeting in Davos. His government faces growing anger over the widespread power outages by Eskom, the state-owned electricity company that generates that 90 percent of South Africa’s power.

Last week, Eskom announced its worst ever power cuts are set to last indefinitely, surpassing last year’s record when it imposed at least 100 days of rolling blackouts that left factories, workplaces, schools, hospitals and households without electricity for up to 11 hours a day. The power cuts are believed to be costing around $235 million a year.

Ramaphosa with American President Joe Biden, September 2022. [Photo: The White House]

Unable to work amid an unemployment rate of 33 percent, many have lost their income. The streets remain unlit, traffic lights don’t work and there is massive disruption on the roads, while railways have almost ceased to function. Frustration and anger have grown as workplaces are forced to close, food has rotted amid disrupted supply chains, and crime has soared, amid the severe heat of the southern hemisphere summer and lack of water.

Adding to workers’ fury, the regulatory authorities have allowed Eskom to raise its prices by up to one third over the next two years as it faces insolvency. This comes as South Africa’s annual inflation rate is running at 7 percent in December, its highest rate since the rise in global food prices in 2008-09, with basic foods prices increasing by 12 percent over the last year. A loaf of white bread now costs 16.18 rand compared with 13.55 a year ago and the price of fuel has risen by 56.2 percent.

The rand has fallen from 15 to the US dollar to 17 in the last year, amid fears that instability could hold back the “reforms” demanded by the international financial institutions and markets as national debt rises to 84 percent of GDP. The South African central bank has sought to shore up the rand by raising interest rates seven times in the last year and is expected to raise them again his month.

People have taken to the streets after being left without electricity for more than 40 hours. In the eastern port city of Durban, residents put tyres and trees along the road and set them alight.

In a bid to alleviate Eskom’s financial crisis and allow it to import diesel to run its power stations, the ANC government has announced it will take over most of its $25 billion debts.

The company’s problems are a devastating indictment of the ANC, whichalong with the National Union of Mineworkers of South Africa (NUM), the country’s largest and most powerful trade union co-founded by Ramaphosa, and the Stalinist South African Communist Party—sought to suppress black South African workers’ struggles and prevent a revolutionary struggle against the hated apartheid regime, thereby ensuring the survival of South African capitalism. Its policy of “black empowerment” was a cynical cover for anti-working-class politics aimed at creating a thin layer of black capitalists, of whom Ramaphosa, one of South Africa‘s richest men, has been the prime beneficiary.

While the coal industry was previously under the control of large, white-owned corporations, after the ANC came to power in 1994, black businessmen were steadily given ownership of more than half the industry along with many associated activities. Its operations are subject to widespread racketeering as criminal gangs divert coal bound for power stations and sell it abroad for a far higher price, sending discarded inferior coal—mixed with rock and scrap—to the power stations that wrecks the generators.

Eskom and the coal industry have created vast fortunes for a handful of black business leaders at the expense of workers forced to pay extortionate prices for electricity.

The ANC, whose interests are inextricably bound up with Eskom’s monopoly and the commercial viability of coal has until recently restricted Eskom’s supply from private providers, including suppliers of other sources of energy, and its ability to purchase diesel. Eksom now operates just half of its nominal capacity.

Andre de Ruyter, Eskom’s outgoing chief executive, famously declared that when he took on the job in 2020, he was congratulated on becoming “the head of South Africa’s biggest crime syndicate.” Having failed to clean up the corruption, de Ruyter has resigned citing a lack of political support. Police are now investigating claims that he was poisoned, after reportedly drinking a cup of coffee laced with cyanide.

ANC chair and Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe, who declares himself a “coal fundamentalist” opposed to renewable energy such a solar and wind power, even accused Eskom of seeking the overthrow of the government.

The power outages have vastly exacerbated Ramaphosa and the ANC’s political crisis. Last year’s local elections saw the ANC lose its majority amid increasing anger over its corrupt rule, while opinion polls show the ANC’s support declining further as next year’s elections approach.

A dark passage during a power outage in a Johannesburg shopping centre, South Africans are struggling in the dark to cope with increased power cuts that have hit households and businesses across the country. The rolling power cuts have been experienced for years but this week the country’s state-owned power utility Eskom extended them so that some residents and businesses have gone without power for more than 9 hours a day. Thursday, June 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Denis Farrell]

At last year’s May Day rally in Rustenburg, a major mining centre, where he was the Confederation of South African Trade Unions’ (COSATU) guest of honour, Ramaphosa was booed off the stage by striking gold miners at Sibanye-Stillwater. There have been strikes and protests over the cost of living, power outages and widespread unemployment, forcing COSATU and the rival South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) to call a “mass stay away” of non-essential workers in August demanding the ANC take action.

Ramaphosa managed to retain his leadership of the party in December despite a damning parliamentary report into the theft of a vast sum of cash at his Phala Phala game farm that recommended a parliamentary investigation.

Calls are growing for a national shut down in opposition to Eskom’s blackouts and 18.6 percent electricity tariff hike in April and a further 12.74 percent hike next year. John Steenhuisen, leader of the largest opposition party the Democratic Alliance, said his party was organising a march to ANC headquarters in the commercial capital Johannesburg against the “ANC-engineered crisis.”

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, a former leader of the ANC’s youth section, declared, “We are our own liberators; we must remove the ANC from power but even before that, Ramaphosa must fall with immediate effect and failure to do that, we must push him out of office.”

Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo González held in Polish prison for nearly a year on bogus spy charges

Alice Summers

Next month, Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo González will have been in prison for a year after being arrested for allegedly spying for the Russian government. González was detained on February 28, days after the NATO-provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he covered the refugee crisis in the Polish town of Rzeszow. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Pablo Gonzalez [Photo: #FreePabloGonzález]

On November 24, a regional Polish court in the southeastern city of Przemysl ruled that González’s preventative detention would continue for a further three months—taking his imprisonment to a full year. This is the third time his detention has been extended, after previous court orders in May and August, despite González not having been put on trial or found guilty of any crime. Last week, the appeals court of the Polish town of Rzeszów rejected González’s appeal against the extension of preventive detention.

No proof has been presented that the journalist handed any information to the Russian secret services or that he ever had any intention of doing so. Among the spurious “evidence” cited by the Polish authorities is that González, who has dual nationality, was in possession of two passports bearing different names, one Russian and one Spanish—implying that one was a false identity used for espionage.

González’s Russian passport names him as Pavel Rubtsov, using his father’s surname; his Spanish document identifies him as Pablo González Yagüe, using his mother’s two surnames. Pablo is the Hispanicised version of the Russian name Pavel.

The arrest of a journalist on unsubstantiated espionage charges is an anti-democratic attack on freedom of speech. It is a reactionary measure aimed at intimidating reporters and silencing opposition to the official, state-sanctioned narratives on the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine instigated by Washington and its NATO allies.

It has far-reaching implications for the ability of journalists to report on and criticise the actions of the imperialist powers globally, amid a concerted campaign to obscure and falsify the real origins of the war in Ukraine, presenting it as a one-sided Russian attack on its defenceless neighbour.

In reality, the war in Ukraine is the latest escalation in the imperialist drive to militarily encircle and weaken Russia, which has seen NATO expand hundreds of miles eastward since the end of the Soviet Union, provoke a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and carry out dozens of large-scale military exercises on Russia’s borders.

Since the Russian invasion in February last year, Washington and its NATO allies have funneled billions of dollars in weapons, training and other military aid to Ukraine, and encouraged this country to take direct offensive action targeting Russian territory. Madrid had donated €238 million in military aid to Ukraine by October last year and is now training hundreds of soldiers on Spanish soil.

The Spanish coalition government of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos is fully complicit in the arbitrary detention of González. At the end of July, during an official visit to Poland, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated that the arrest of the journalist had been discussed with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, but refused to provide any specific information about the conversation. Since then, the PSOE-Podemos government has done nothing to secure González’s freedom.

At the end of November, at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers to discuss the war in Ukraine, Spain’s PSOE Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares issued a pathetic appeal to his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, to bring González to trial “as soon as possible … once the investigation is completed.”

But speaking to the Spanish press the same day, Albares made clear that his government would do nothing to defend González: “We have to respect the Polish legal system in this matter. What I am asking is that, as soon as possible, he can be brought to trial, where he has a right to [legal] defence, as he has already had. His lawyer knows the charges, he can present whatever appeals he wants. He [González] has access to him.”

This utter disregard for the democratic rights of its own citizen makes a mockery of any claim by Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government to be a “progressive” or even “left-wing” administration. After making a few perfunctory calls for González’s freedom after his arrest earlier this year, the “left-populist” Podemos, the junior partner in the Spanish government, has largely dropped the issue.

Recent letters, reported in the Spanish press and revealing the appalling conditions of González’s imprisonment, are an indictment of the PSOE-Podemos government. In a letter to the platform #FreePablo received on November 21, but likely written earlier in the autumn, González had expressed his concerns about the Polish winter weather and his poor state of physical and mental health.

“Over here, truthfully, nothing much is new; it’s what solitary confinement is like,” the letter begins. “Most of the time I’m in good spirits, although I sometimes have moments when I’m feeling much lower. It’s been several months in complete isolation and it’s weighing down on me.”

“I suppose that this winter we will not have heating,” González continued. “They [the Polish government] have barely anything for schools, so imagine the prisons. … I asked, and the Spanish Embassy has asked too, for thermal indoor clothing. They refused. On the other hand, the [prison] director did allow me to have an extra blanket.”

Speaking about his cell block, the journalist’s letter added: “In my section [of the prison] the windows don’t open, and there is no way of ventilating; it’s hot in summer and condensation builds up in winter.” As for food, González explained that “I’m lacking protein; what I do consume I have to buy with the money that is sent to me from outside the prison. I’m lacking a lot of vitamins, so I’m fighting to be able to buy them, as well as antioxidants.”

In a separate letter to the Polish interior minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, also towards the end of November, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also described the “particularly hard conditions” facing González.

“He has to use handcuffs at all times when he’s allowed out of his cell, his cell and bathroom are constantly watched by cameras, the prison officers make him undress various times a day and put him through meticulous searches,” the RSF letter explains. It continues: “He is only allowed to shower once a week and he has not received a visit from a dermatologist for weeks for his skin problem.”

Denouncing the “unusually severe preventive methods” used against González, RSF also adds: “The [Polish] authorities have refused to inform him about what the accusations of spying are based on, and the journalist has still not been given a trial.” RSF does not, however, call for González’s release, instead making a tentative plea to the Polish government to “consider if it is necessary to keep a person who is presumed innocent in isolation for such a long time.”

French unions impose wage rises well below inflation

Anthony Torres

After millions across France joined a one-day strike against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform on January 19, a confrontation is rapidly emerging between the Macron government and the working class. The leadership of this struggle must be taken away from the trade union bureaucracies that negotiated this reform. The experience of the last year shows how the French union bureaucracies are aiding the ruling class’s systematic attack on workers’ living standards.

People gather on Place de la Republique during a demonstration against proposed pension changes, Thursday, January 19, 2023 in Paris. Workers in many French cities took to the streets Thursday to reject proposed pension changes that would push back the retirement age. [AP Photo/Lewis Joly]

2022 was marked by a global surge in inflation to 9 percent and 10.1 percent in the Eurozone according to Eurostat. France saw inflation of 6.2 percent in 2022, with a peak expected in early 2023 of 7 percent according to The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE).

Workers are the main victims of inflation and the economic crisis. In addition to the difficulties of eating and heating themselves, workers are collectively experiencing a drop in real wages of over 2 percent, even according to understated official statistics. In the Obligatory Annual Negotiations (NAO), where the union bureaucracy negotiates pay scales with employers, workers only obtained an average increase of 3.7 percent in 2022, well below inflation.

Workers will have to oppose the results of NAOs between the union bureaucracies, the state and employers in 2023. In the September-October French refinery strike, the workers of TotalEnergie and Esso demanded a 7 percent pay rise. Isolated by the unions and requisitioned by the state, the refinery workers only got an under-inflation raise in line with what was initially negotiated by the union bureaucracy before the strike.

In 2023, unions in many industries are again agreeing to increases well below inflation, expected to run at 7 percent or more this year. At Stellantis, despite several walkouts and a demand for an 8.3 percent pay rise, the Workers’ Force (FO) trade union group welcomed the final 5.3 percent increase: “We have achieved a fair level of negotiation, and above all one that can be applied immediately to the general increases, whereas management initially wanted to spread them out over the year.”

At Sodexo an all-union settlement only obtained a 4.5 percent pay rise for 2023.

For 2023, Decathlon workers were offered a humiliating 1.8 percent increase, or €24 monthly. In contrast, Decathlon’s deputy CEO, Jean-Marc Lemière, announced that in view of “the company’s economic performance and the stability of its financial situation,” he had decided in June to distribute €453 million in dividends to shareholders, which showed “the good economic health” of the company.

At the RATP, which manages Paris’s mass transit services, FO and the National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions (UNSA) negotiated an increase of €372 gross per month in return for an increase in drivers’ working hours. This will result in a reduction in the number of rest days from 121 to 118 in 2023, then to 115 in 2024.

The surge in exploitation of the working class is leading at the same time to a record explosion of corporate profits in France and internationally. In 2022, companies on the Paris based CAC-40 stock market recorded record annual profits. According to estimates by FactSet, the sum of the profits of the 40 largest companies listed in Paris is expected to reach €172 billion. This is up 34 percent from €128 billion in 2021. Compared to 2019, the last year “before COVID,” total profits have more than doubled.

The 40 companies in the CAC-40 distributed a record €80.1 billion to their shareholders in 2022, in dividends or share buybacks. According to the financial newsletter Vernimmen.net, dividends paid out amount to €56.5 billion, compared to €45.6 billion in 2021 and €28.6 billion in 2020.

This surge in inequality and class conflict is not a phenomenon isolated to France but the product of a global crisis of capitalism. Driven by soaring stock prices, the wealth of the super-rich has soared over the past decade. According to Oxfam’s Inequality Report, of every $100 of wealth created, $54.4 went into the pockets of the wealthiest 1 percent, while 70 cents went to the bottom 50 percent.

Food and energy price inflation is largely the result of the looting of the international working class by financial markets and corporations. According to Oxfam, “Food and energy companies are making record profits and paying unprecedented sums to their wealthy shareholders and billionaire owners.”

Oxfam continues: “For example, the fortune of Bernard Arnault, the richest man in the world, has doubled since the beginning of the pandemic, from €85.7 billion in 2020 to €179 billion in 2022. The CEO of the LVMH group has “a fortune equivalent to that of 20 million French people.” As an example, Oxfam estimates that “2 percent of the current wealth of French billionaires (which stands at €544.5 billion) would be enough to finance the pension system, without having to go through the reform and the planned increase in the legal retirement age.”

The same essential picture emerges across Europe. In the UK, the total dividend paid by the FTSE-100 index is expected to reach a record £79.1 billion in 2022, compared to £78.5 billion in 2021, excluding special dividends. The British bourgeoisie, which is also using the trade union bureaucracy to stifle a wave of strikes, intends to continue its plunder according to the analysis site AJBell: “Pre-tax income is expected to rise by 4% in 2023, while ordinary dividends are seen rising by 8% to £87.7 billion.”

In Spain, a country governed by a PSOE-Podemos alliance, the joint profit of the Ibex index will reach €56.321 billion in 2022. According to FactSet, this is just 2.5 percent less than the all-time record in 2021. According to a BME study, “In this context, there is a positive reading for the Spanish stock market, since the group of companies in the Ibex-35 presents a defensive sectoral structure against environments of inflation and rising real interest rates.”

The rise in inequality cannot be stopped by electing nominally “left-wing” capitalist governments. Elected in 2015 in Greece, Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”) betrayed Greek workers’ opposition to the EU memorandum in a referendum. Despite the mass opposition of Greek workers to austerity, the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras imposed the austerity policy of the European Union and the banks.

Today in Spain, the pseudo-left Podemos party is overseeing the handing out of bailout funds to major corporations and banks, many of which have received billions of euros in direct state aid. This free money has fueled massive inflation in the value of all financial assets and wealth of the ruling class. In return, Podemos is pushing this inflationary crisis and the recession created by the financial aristocracy onto the backs of the workers.

The unions and the pseudo-left are participating in the transfer of record wealth from the workers to a parasitic ruling elite. At the same time the reduction in living standards of the working class is being used to release tens and hundreds of billions of euros to finance the war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine.