French police assault students protesting Macron’s pension cuts, arresting 20

Samuel Tissot

On Monday evening, French police arrested 20 students who peacefully occupied a building on the Condorcet campus in Aubervilliers, just outside Paris. These students were protesting Macron’s pension cuts and falling living standards throughout France. By Tuesday evening, all 20 were still in custody in four police stations across the Aubervilliers area.

Condorcet students march against Monday's arrests [Photo: WSWS]

Monday’s crackdown came after an assembly of protesting students at the University of Strasbourg was raided and cleared by heavily armed riot police on January 19, as 2 million workers marched against the cuts throughout France. During the January 19 demonstration in Paris, protesters and a journalist were also violently assaulted by police.

The students arrested on Monday were members of Solidaires union but seem to have begun this occupation independently. Once again exposing the union leadership’s subordination to the state, despite the peaceful nature of the student’s occupation at their own university, Soildaires has so far not made any comment on their members’ arrest or continued imprisonment, let alone any complaint.

The police crackdown against this emerging movement is being directed by the Macron government, which fears a massive rebellion of workers and youth against the reactionary framework of the unions’ “social dialog” with Macron. The president calculates that a swift crackdown will intimidate students and block a wider mobilization in support of strikers outside the control of the union bureaucracies and pseudo-left parties.

On Tuesday afternoon, a general assembly was called at the Condorcet campus to demand the release of the students, which was attended by WSWS journalists. Around 300–400 students gathered at l’Espace Françoise Héritier before marching to the building that houses the university president’s office. The peaceful protest took place surrounded by dozens of heavily-armed police, backed up by multiple vans full of riot police waiting in reserve in the streets around the campus.

At the protest we spoke to a Condorcet student called Léo, who said he is an occasional reader of the WSWS. He explained that Monday’s protest was “mainly [about] the law on pension reform that mobilizes students, but there is also the whole situation of higher education in France which is extremely degraded. There are demands which are specific to this campus, including that of having a common space for the students to meet and discuss things.”

Léo stated that Tuesday’s assembly had “the same demands as yesterday but reinforced by the fact that students were arrested,” and raised “the general question of why the police are at the faculties all the time, and why they repress us each time there is a movement.”

Asked about police violence against protests, Léo said, “It’s the only answer they have because they [the Macron government] haven’t backed down on their policy. At the slightest protest, they send the police. They’re not even afraid to do it on young people like we saw at the time of the ‘yellow vests,’ when they sent the police in high schools. From there, they are capable of anything and everything.”

Tuesday's assembly was met with a heavy police presence [Photo: WSWS]

Léo spoke against the role played by the student unions: “[We need] organizations which don’t try to negotiate with the university presidents. … In fact the problem is not the president of your university, it’s the whole situation.”

“In the student environment, we see that most of the unions are already there. They sit on the university councils, so they go directly to discuss the law with those who enforce it. They then argue ‘at least we know what’s going on in the councils,’ when in fact it just amounts to giving the [university] president guarantees.” Léo explained how many of the students suspect that the university president worked with police to suppress the protests.

The WSWS said that the role played by the student unions in the universities seemed similar to that played by the national union bureaucracies in the wider class struggle, to which Léo replied: “I agree with you this is what we see in France… the unions don’t do their job. Well, maybe in one sense they do their ‘job’ very well to go and negotiate with the government, to go and have consultations and so on, but that’s it. It’s always the same story. Then, the government can say well yes, you were represented, your union was there when the law was decided.”

Léo also pointed to the role played by unions in dividing the class struggle: “The strike movements are never simultaneous in all the universities. When there are strikes, it’s branch by branch, company local section or company local section. It’s one strike a day or one strike a week at the most.”

“These government offensives always involve police repression, and behind this is the question of the class struggle and the response of organizations that are historically workers or students organizations. Well, they are not up to the task because it’s also a whole system of class collaboration. That’s my opinion.”

The WSWS asked Léo if he saw any connection between the war in Ukraine and Macron’s pension reform. He replied, “Yes, because there is a lot of money for the war. It’s for the tanks, some of which are offensive weapons. It’s the question of imperialism. The bourgeois government is not going to put money to, say, make social reforms, it’s going to put it to defend its interests. And therefore, it’s necessary to mobilize in Ukraine because it’s in the framework of American imperialism and its alliances in Europe.”

Pentagon presses Latin America to ship arms to Ukraine

Bill Van Auken

In an increasingly frenetic search for arms to pour into the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the United States has turned to Latin America, the senior US commander for the region has revealed.

Southcom commander Gen. Laura Richardson reviewing Panamanian troops in the Darién Gap, October 2022. [Photo: US Embassy Panama]

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) chief Gen. Laura Richardson told an online forum held last week by the Washington geopolitical strategy think tank Atlantic Council that the Pentagon is trying to convince several unnamed Latin American governments to “donate” Russian-made military hardware to the US-backed regime in Ukraine.

“We are working with the countries that have the Russian equipment to either donate it or switch it out for United States equipment,” General Richardson told a virtual audience last Thursday.

Diplomatic relations are either nil or sharply curtailed between the US and the three countries in the region that have the closest military-to-military ties with Moscow -- Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. All of them, like Russia, are subject to US sanctions.

While Richardson declined to name them in the forum, titled “On Security in the Americas,” she said that six other countries in the region have significant stockpiles of Soviet or Russian-made weaponry, and that talks were “in the works” on getting them “to donate it to Ukraine or the ongoing cause.” Such deals to send Russian-made equipment into the Ukraine war would include pushing the Latin American countries to replace the Russian gear with US-made armaments.

While the US Southern Command also declined to say which countries were in talks on such weapons transfers, the Pentagon has kept careful track of the inflow of Soviet and Russian arms to the region.

In testimony last July before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Evan Ellis, the US Army War College’s chief expert on Latin America and a vocal proponent of Washington viewing the region as a battlefield in the preparations for world war, gave a detailed list of such weapons systems.

Significantly, the Latin American country—outside of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua —with the largest number of such arms, he testified, is Peru, which began importing Soviet weapons in the 1970s under the nationalist military regime of Gen. Velasco Alvarado, and as recently as 2013 bought 24 Mi-17 military helicopters and two Mi-35 attack helicopters from Moscow. In the intervening years, including under the right-wing dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori, Lima bought Su-22 fighter bombers, Mig-29 fighter jets and other equipment, while its armed forces received Russian military training.

The December 7 parliamentary coup that ousted President Pedro Castillo and brought in a regime dominated by the Peruvian right and the security forces under Castillo’s former vice-president Dina Boluarte may well have greased the wheels for the kind of deal being promoted by General Richardson. A day before the coup, the US ambassador in Lima, Lisa Kenna, a veteran CIA agent, met and reached an understanding with the country’s defense minister to support Castillo’s ouster. Since then, the security forces have been unleashed against protesters, killing at least 60 of them.

Other countries with significant stocks of Soviet/Russian weapons include Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina. The weapons include tanks, armored vehicles, multiple-launch rocket systems, surface-to-air missile systems, MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) and various fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

In her remarks, Richardson stressed that the Pentagon was moving “aggressively” to exploit the obstacles imposed by anti-Russian sanctions on Moscow’s providing parts for its weapons systems and financing for Latin American customers.

From the standpoint of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, the shipping of the weapons from Latin America serves a definite purpose. While international attention has been focused on the provocative and potentially world catastrophic decisions to provide Kiev with advanced US M1 Abrams and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks, the reality is that it will take months before these weapons can be fielded with trained Ukrainian crews. The Soviet/Russian stockpiles in Latin America, on the other hand, are virtually identical to the arms already familiar to the Ukrainian military and can be deployed immediately.

In terms of Washington’s aims in Latin America itself, removing Russia as a competitor and restoring the Pentagon’s monopoly on weapons provisions would provide US imperialism with increased political leverage throughout a region in which the military has repeatedly intervened to overthrow governments seen as insufficiently subordinate to US and national profit interests.

Increased weapons sales mean greater numbers of US military advisers on the ground in these countries and more of their own officers being sent for their military training to the US. This works to forge military-to-military ties that are far deeper than those existing between diplomats or elected officials, putting in place the organizational infrastructure for the kind of US-backed military coups that swept the continent over the course of the last half century.

While Richardson presented Russia’s operations in the region as an acute threat to US interests, in reality they pale in comparison and are largely a response to the massive US-NATO encirclement of Russia itself.

As the general made clear in her remarks, Washington and the Pentagon view China, which she described as a “malign state actor,” as the more consequential challenge to US imperialist interests in the region.

Using the alarmist rhetoric of war propaganda, Richardson warned of “the invasion and the tentacles of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] in the Western Hemisphere countries so close to the United States.” China’s presence, she said, had reached “right here on the 20 yard line to our homeland—right here in the red zone.”

The general’s language echoes the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which the US first employed to ward off European imperial interlopers in the hemisphere, and later invoked in defense of military coups, police state dictatorships and bloody counter-insurgency wars conducted in the name of defeating “communism.”

She, like her predecessors, has the arrogant habit of viewing the countries to the south of the US border as American imperialism’s “own backyard.” But she is compelled to admit that Washington has lost a great deal of its grip over these territories.

“In a lot of our countries in this region, [China] is the number one trade partner, with the United States number two in most cases,” Richardson said. In reality, China is already South America’s largest trading partner. In the space of barely two decades, total trade between China and the Latin American region as a whole has leapt nearly 20-fold, from $17 billion in 2002 to $315 billion in 2019.

Twenty-one of the region’s 31 countries have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has already produced significant infrastructure development, including 17 port facilities, highways and railways designed to direct the flow of Latin America’s vital raw materials across the Pacific to China. Meanwhile, in defiance of US pressure, the Chinese multinational Huawei has taken the lead in telecommunications and the provision of 5G networks.

“I worry about these dual-use, state-owned enterprises that pop up from the [People’s Republic of China], and I worry about the dual-use capability—being able to flip them around and use them for military use,” Richardson said.

As she continued, however, the SOUTHCOM commander made it clear that the real concern is securing US domination over the region’s strategic resources and being in a position to deny them to China.

Explaining “why this region matters” to US national security, the general proceeded to catalogue its “rich resources,” including the vast oil reserves of Venezuela and the discovery of huge deposits off the coast of Guyana, copper, silver, gold and other minerals, as well as 31 percent of the world’s fresh water supply. She noted that today, China depends upon Latin America for 36 percent of its food.

General Richardson laid particular stress on the so-called “lithium triangle”—Argentina, Bolivia and Chile—which accounts for most of Latin America’s estimated 60 percent of global lithium reserves. The strategic metal is a key component in the transition to electric vehicles and is utilized in virtually every modern weapons system. The struggle for control of lithium reserves in the region may soon resemble the fierce and bloody battles for control over Middle Eastern oil. Today, China accounts for over half of the world’s lithium refining capacity and produces 79 percent of lithium-ion batteries, compared to just 6.2 percent for the US.

Richardson recounted that just the previous day she had convened a Zoom meeting of “the US ambassadors to Argentina and Chile, and then also the strategy officer from Livent [Tesla’s US lithium supplier] and also the VP for global operations from Albermarle [the largest US lithium company] to talk about the lithium triangle in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and the companies and how they’re doing and what they see as challenges and things like that in the lithium business. And then the aggressiveness and coercion from the PRC.”

The aim, she said, was “to figure the problems out and box out our adversaries.”

The SOUTHCOM commander offered no details as to how Washington intends to “box out” China from a region and a strategic industry where it has already emerged as the dominant economic force.

The fact that it is the Pentagon’s regional commander who is convening a meeting of ambassadors and big business executives to discuss how to wrest control of Latin America’s lithium reserves from China provides the answer. US imperialism is turning to expanding militarism in its attempt to offset the erosion of its global economic hegemony. It views Latin America as a target for imperialist plunder and a key battlefield in the march to World War III, even as it attempts to build up and tighten its control over the region’s armed forces to confront the rising threat of social revolution throughout the region.

Right-wing extremist head of Germany’s secret service co-authored a standard legal text on the constitution for years

Justus Leicht

Hans-Georg Maassen, the notoriously right-wing former president of the Verfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence agency) co-authored a standard legal commentary on the German constitution for 13 years.

Maassen was made to take early retirement in 2018 by the then-grand coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) because his defence of a far-right, xenophobic demonstration in Chemnitz had caused a storm of outrage. But since 2009, he has been responsible for Article 16 (protection against extradition) and Article 16a (right to asylum) in “Epping/Hillgruber,” the standard legal work on the German constitution.

Hans-Georg Maassen as head of the Verfassungsschutz [Photo by Bundesministerium des Innern/Sandy Thieme / CC BY-SA 3.0]

“Epping/Hillgruber” and other standard works from the C. H. Beck publishing house are found on judges’ desks and are usually the only ones approved for use in state legal exams. They therefore essentially determine how the constitution is interpreted.

The fact that one of Germany’s leading right-wing extremists held this influential position sheds light on the rightward turn of the ruling class. Even after his dismissal as president of the Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is called), Maassen remains very well connected and enjoys much influence. Despite public criticism, the publisher and editors of the legal commentary held on to him, defending him against criticism until Maassen finally resigned on January 17 of this year.

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in August last year, Stefan Huster, a professor of constitutional law who also writes in “Epping/Hillgruber,” declared that he no longer wanted to make Maassen’s positions acceptable by jointly commenting on the constitution with him. He questioned whether Maassen still stood on the foundations of the constitution at all.

He wrote of Maassen: “Whoever, as a CDU member, formulates sympathy for cooperating with a party [the far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD] that is under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, calls for a ‘Covid vaccination bans,’ invoking coronavirus deniers who can no longer be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination, derides the rescue of refugees from distress at sea as a ‘shuttle service,’ accuses the federal minister of health of mental illness or drug use, seizes on the bizarre conspiracy theories surrounding the World Economic Forum, and also announces his views on questionable ‘lateral thinker’ platforms, must expect to be questioned as to whether he can still be counted among the reliable supporters of the liberal order given the type, content and context of his statements.”

The editors of “Epping and Hillgruber,” professors in Hanover and Bonn, then accused Huster in a circular letter to the other authors of “placing the publishing house and the editors under undue political pressure and discrediting them.” C. H. Beck finally parted company—with Huster! The publisher publicly declared that Maassen’s commentary on the asylum articles in the constitution was “not objectionable from a professional point of view.”

Behind the scenes, however, C. H. Beck seems to have tried to give its long-time contributor a face-saving farewell. The public pressure was likely too great.

On January 18, the publishing house announced it had decided “to use our options to terminate the publishing contract with Dr. Maassen.” The 60-year-old then terminated the contract himself. “Irreconcilable positions had taken on a life of their own,” which were “damaging to the commentary on the constitution, its editors and the publishing house,” the statement said.

C. H. Beck is one of the largest and most traditional German publishing houses. It has been publishing legal digests and commentaries since the first half of the 20th century. This was not interrupted even by Nazi rule. On the contrary, some of its standard works bore the names of Nazi jurists well into the 21st century.

For example, from 1938 to 2021, the commentary on the German Civil Code (BGB) bore the name of Otto Palandt, a member of the Nazi Party and president of the Reich Justice Examination Office. It was not until 2021 that “Palandt” was renamed “Grüneberg.” The legal digest with the highest circulation was also called “Schönfelder” until 2021, named after the Nazi jurist Heinrich Schönfelder. It is now called “Habersack.”

Another constitutional commentary from C. H. Beck also renamed in 2021 was called “Maunz/Dürig” until then. Its founder, Theodor Maunz, had been an influential law professor during the Nazi era. After the fall of the Hitler regime, he was a member of the Constitutional Convention in Herrenchiemsee, then Bavarian minister of culture for the Christian Social Union party (CSU). In 1964, he had to resign because of his Nazi past, but then for years advised the right-wing extremist German People’s Union (DVU) of Munich-based publisher Gerhard Frey, writing under a pseudonym for the latter’s newspaper.

In an editorial on Maassen that appeared before his exit from C. H. Beck, the Süddeutsche Zeitung drew attention to another racist scandal. In the Neue Zeitschrift für Arbeitsrecht (New Journal of Labour Law), published by C. H. Beck, 90-year-old lawyer Rüdiger Zuck declared that “it is okay to make the ‘ugah ugah’ monkey sounds at a black works council representative.” The publishing house distanced itself and took the text off the Internet only after receiving a letter of protest signed by numerous lawyers.

A key figure in the right-wing conspiracy in the state apparatus

Born in 1962, the lawyer Hans-Georg Maassen personifies the right-wing turn of the establishment parties and the state apparatus over recent decades like no other. Beginning in 1991, Maassen enjoyed a stellar career in the Interior Ministry, having been promoted by ministers from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the CSU and the SPD. In 1997, he argued for an extremely restrictive refugee policy in his doctoral dissertation on “The Legal Status of Asylum Seekers in International Law.”

In 2002, under SPD Interior Minister Otto Schily, Maassen provided him and the then-head of the Federal Chancellery (responsible for the secret services), now German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with a legal justification ensuring that Murat Kurnaz, a native of Bremen, was not allowed to return to Germany and had to spend five years in the US prison camp at Guantánamo. This was despite the fact that the German and US secret services had convinced themselves early on that Kurnaz was innocent.

Maassen argued at the time that because the Turkish citizen (taken to the torture camp and incarcerated there) had been outside of Germany for more than six months and had failed to report to the German authorities, his residence permit had “expired by law.” This view did not withstand subsequent scrutiny by the Bremen Administrative Court.

In 2003, Maassen became head of the Aliens Law Department. From August 2008, he headed the Counterterrorism Staff in the Public Security Department of the Interior Ministry.

In 2012, Maassen was appointed president of the Verfassungsschutz in order to cover up its close ties to violent neo-Nazi networks. Shortly before his appointment, it had become known that the National Socialist Underground (NSU) had carried out 10 racist murders as well as several bombings and bank robberies between 2000 and 2007 under the eyes of the security authorities. At least two dozen of their undercover agents had been active in the NSU’s immediate periphery during this period, all of whom claimed afterwards that they had not noticed anything.

As head of the Verfassungsschutz, Maassen cultivated relationships with all of the parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament) and was invited by the Left Party to a public discussion meeting. He regularly met with the leaders of the far-right AfD for consultations. His agenda centered on attacks on democratic rights and the systematic persecution of journalists and socialists.

Among other things, Maassen slandered whistle-blower Edward Snowden as a traitor. In 2016, he speculated that Snowden might be an agent of the Russian intelligence services, something that even senior US intelligence officials do not claim. Maassen had shown how serious he was about prosecuting whistle-blowers a year earlier when his agency launched criminal investigations into two journalists for treason.

It was also Maassen who ensured that the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) was included in the Verfassungsschutz annual report and denigrated as “left-wing extremist.” The Verfassungsschutz justified this by saying that the SGP was fighting “for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society.” The SGP filed a lawsuit against this and has since filed a constitutional complaint.

When Maassen publicly defended a far-right march in Chemnitz in the fall of 2018, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) and then-SPD leader Andrea Nahles wanted to promote him to a higher post in the Interior Ministry. It was only when he described his own government’s refugee and security policies as “left-wing” and “naive” in front of European intelligence representatives in Warsaw and complained of “radical left-wing forces” even “within the SPD” that he was made to take early retirement.

Since then, although still a member of the CDU, he has operated as a far-right agitator, whose public positions are virtually no different from those of the AfD.

In the pandemic, Maassen positioned himself as a coronavirus denier. He declared on Twitter that the “novel virus” was “comparable in danger to a flu virus,” and called for an immediate end to all protective measures, including a “COVID vaccine ban,” based on the crackpot theories of maverick professor Sucharit Bhakdi.

Most recently, on Twitter, using blunt Nazi rhetoric, he fantasized that the “thrust” of “driving forces in the political-media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites and the burning desire that Germany perish.”

This man headed Germany’s domestic intelligence service for years and, until a few days ago, co-authored a standard legal work on how the German constitution should be interpreted.

And even after Maassen’s dismissal, his essentially fascist policies continue. The German government has largely adopted the demands of the extreme right in its refugee and pandemic policies, and the right-wing extremist networks in the state apparatus and the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) are being courted and protected. They are needed to push through the return of German militarism and associated social attacks against growing resistance in the population.

Australian “Closing the Gap” report reveals worsening conditions for Aboriginal workers and youth

Sue Phillips

The annual “Closing the Gap” report released at the end of last year by the federal Labor government pointed to an alarming economic and social crisis afflicting Aboriginal workers and youth.

Aboriginal child in front of “prescribed area” sign near his family home near Alice Springs during Northern Territory “intervention” in 2008. [Photo: John Hulme/WSWS]

The Closing the Gap program was launched in 2008 by former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd following his parliamentary apology to the “stolen generations”—the many thousands of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. Despite the political establishment’s rhetoric that the apology constituted a historic turning point, more than a decade on, the horrendous conditions endured by the vast majority of Aboriginal people have not only been maintained but have worsened.

In 2020, the federal Liberal-Coalition government of Scott Morrison established a new Closing the Gap “national agreement.” The agreement was endorsed by all state Labor, Liberal and territory governments, the Australian Local Government Association, and the Coalition of Peaks—an alliance of 80 Aboriginal and Islander groups involving legal services, housing associations, media groups and native title organisations.

The purported aim of the agreement was to improve, over a decade, 18 socio-economic outcomes across health, education, employment, housing, justice, safety, land and waters, culture, and language. In numerous areas, the targets were extraordinarily conservative. Nevertheless, two years on, only four of the targets are currently deemed “on track,” while four are getting worse, and the majority reportedly have insufficient data to assess their progress.

Targets assessed as “worsening, not on track” are the number of Aboriginal adults in prison, the number of suicides, the number of children in out-of-home care, and the proportion of Aboriginal children who start school while not being “developmentally on track.” These are all critical social indices, and their further deterioration amounts to a devastating indictment of the Australian ruling elite.

Young Aboriginal family at Hidden Valley town camp, near Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia, 2008. [Photo: John Hulme/WSWS]

The Closing the Gap agreement’s targets assessed as “good improvement and on track” are land ownership, the number of young people in detention, the proportion of children enrolled in preschool, and the proportion of babies born with a healthy birth weight.

The self-satisfied tone of the Closing the Gap report on these statistics is entirely unwarranted. Aboriginal babies are still nearly twice as likely as non-Aboriginal to be born underweight, a condition associated with numerous serious health risks. The number of Indigenous youth, some under the ages of 14 years old in detention continues to stand as an outrage. They comprise 6 percent of the Australian youth population, but make up 48 percent of the youth prison population.

Amid the 164-page gap report, the reality of the terrible situation facing the vast majority of Aboriginal people is largely buried. One statistic alone—the escalating number of indigenous children in out-of-home care—points to the monumental political fraud involved in government apologies for past injustices and pledges to overcome indigenous poverty and disadvantage.

Figures not included in the Closing the Gap report underscore the scale of the crisis. According to a 2020 report from the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Childcare, more than 20,000 indigenous children were living in out-of-home care. This compares with about 9,000 a decade earlier. The report also underlined a growing trend towards permanent placement—81 percent of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care live permanently away from their birth parents until they turn 18.

The Closing the Gap report makes no attempt to explain why this situation continues to worsen. Basic issues of poverty and unemployment are downplayed—for example, data not referred to in the report includes that 30 percent of indigenous households live in poverty and the unemployment rate is twice that for Indigenous compared to non-Indigenous people.

The situation is even worse for those living in remote communities where poor infrastructure, overcrowded housing, and diseases long-eradicated in other areas continue. These are clearly some of the social and economic determinants that have led to the mass removal of children from their families.

The Closing the Gap report revealed that the suicide rate for Aboriginal people increased by 11.6 percent between 2018 and 2020. Indigenous people are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than are non-Indigenous.

Aboriginal man outside his one-room tin home at Whitegate town camp, Northern Territory, Australia, in 2008. [Photo: John Hulme/WSWS]

A similarly appalling situation exists for incarceration rates. The Closing the Gap agreement set a target of reducing the number of Indigenous adults in prison by at least 15 percent by 2031. Even if met, this would leave Aborigines significantly over-represented within the country’s prisons. However, the Gap report acknowledged that the proportion of Indigenous people in prison increased by nearly 4 percent between 2019 and 2021.

In 1992, one in seven prisoners were Aboriginal. The ratio is now more than one in four, with Aborigines comprising 29 percent of the adult prison population but only 3 percent of the overall population.

The terrible disadvantage of the vast majority of Aboriginal people sharply contrasts with the conditions of a layer of the Aboriginal elite, including CEOs, academics, politicians, and business operators who are enriching themselves. They represent a growing Aboriginal capitalist class.

This process has been encouraged by governments for several decades. The Gap report promotes this process, described as “empowering” Indigenous business, “capacity building” and driving an “entrepreneurial spirit.” 

The Indigenous Procurement Policy, first introduced by the Liberal-Coalition government in 2015, established annual targets for all government departments for contracts to be awarded to Indigenous enterprises. Government agencies are mandated with targets to make Aboriginal organisations and businesses the “preferred service provider for relevant grants where all requirements are met.”

Since 2015, 41,000 contracts worth $6.2 billion have been made to 2,800 indigenous businesses. The Gap report noted that since the 2020 agreement, there has been a “marked increase in the number and value of contracts to First Nations business.”

The Department of Defence is one of the larger procurers of goods and services, awarding $3.2 billion in contracts to Indigenous businesses in 2020–21. In addition to this drawing together of Aboriginal-owned corporations and the military-industrial complex, the mining and fossil fuel energy industries represent an important sector for Indigenous corporate “partnerships.”

To take one example, the Jawun Partnership is a capitalist enterprise developed by Noel Pearson and the Cape York Institute in 2001. Jawun aims to foster partnerships between the corporate sector, the local Aboriginal leadership, and all levels of governments. Its founding members were the Boston Consulting Group and Westpac Bank. Among an array of other multi-billion dollar enterprises, Jawun is partners with Rio Tinto, the second biggest mining company in Australia operating in 35 other countries, and Woodside, Australia’s largest oil and gas company.

These developments underscore the reality that the fundamental “gap” in society is that of class, not race. The claim that the Closing the Gap measures will overcome the atrocious conditions confronting the mass of Aboriginal people is a lie.

Australian Labor government slashes access to mental health services

Aditya Syed

The Australian Labor Party began the new year by cutting the number of publicly subsidised psychologist appointments available per person each year from 20 to 10.

Victorian mental health workers protest on August 3, 2021 [Photo: Health and Community Services Union Facebook]

This deeply regressive measure is bound up with the government’s drive to reduce debt and its budget deficit by cutting public spending, including to vital public services. It is also part of the campaign to depict the COVID-19 pandemic as a thing of the past. Subsidised sessions were initially increased from 10 to 20 in 2020, in response to a Productivity Commission report on mental health that was issued amid concerns over workforce shortages during the pandemic.

The need for subsidised psychological treatment, like the pandemic itself, has not gone away. COVID-19 infections continue, globally and in Australia, causing debilitating long-term effects and deaths. The worsening social crisis, fueled by escalating costs of living and declining living standards, has seen the demand for mental health support grow, not lessen.

More than 20 percent of the Australian population experiences some kind of mental health disorder. Young people are especially burdened by the mental health crisis, with around 40 percent of 16–24 year-olds experiencing some kind of mental health problem. There are many more people who would benefit from psychologist appointments without a formal diagnosis, in addition to those who do not seek out a diagnosis. Just 5 percent of the adult population received one or more subsidised psychologist session last year.

The halving of subsidised appointments will cause further harm and suffering. While the affluent upper-middle class will be unaffected, being able to afford private treatment as required, working-class people will be hard hit.

Labor Health Minister Mark Butler attempted to cover his tracks by absurdly claiming the policy of slashing subsidies was aimed at improving health services. He insisted that the 20 available sessions had “aggravated existing waitlists and aggravated barriers to access,” with “lowest income Australians” especially affected by shortages of available psychologists.

This situation ought to trigger a massive expansion in government funding for mental health services. When a system is failing to serve some of the people who require it, the answer is to increase the resources available, not reduce them.

Butler also insisted that a government-commissioned review found that providing 20 rather than 10 sessions to people made no difference, because “self-reported baseline mental health was almost identical for those who did and did not receive the additional sessions.”

Numerous mental health experts have rejected this, and denounced the government’s cuts to subsidised treatment.

Dr Katrina Norris, director of the Australian Association of Psychologists, wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “As a psychologist working in private practice, whose clients have directly benefited from these additional sessions, I am disappointed, saddened and angered by this decision. […] The additional sessions gave those who were able to access services, the opportunity to have more frequent treatment as needed. For those in crisis or with complex mental health needs, the additional sessions allowed them to receive adequate treatment without reliance on the public health or community health systems. It allowed them security, stability, and choice in their mental healthcare.”

She added: “Ultimately, this decision is likely to cost lives and this is why psychologists and other mental health practitioners are outraged.”

Professor Caroline Hunt, president of the Australian Clinical Psychology Association, and Associate Professor Christopher Lee from the University of Western Australia wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald: “This move cannot be justified through a healthcare lens and the federal government seems comfortable reserving the highest-quality expert mental health care exclusively for the wealthy few who may be able to privately fund it. […] These cuts won’t just mean reduced access to vital care; in some cases psychologists may have to turn away vulnerable patients with more complex mental health conditions because we know delivering only half the required treatment will not provide beneficial outcomes. This is an enormous ethical dilemma for mental health professionals.”

The Labor government has ignored all these pleas. This is consistent with its earlier dismissal of recommendations made in a report it commissioned, reviewing the Better Access initiative (the program under which people can access subsidised psychologist appointments).

On December 8, a team of University of Melbourne researchers—led by Professor Jane Pirkis, Associate Professor Dianne Currier, Associate Professor Meredith Harris and Professor Cathy Mihalopoulos—provided the government with a 337-page report. It reviewed the history and record of the initiative, and collated numerous statistics and surveys. It specifically recommended that the increase to 20 sessions be maintained, explaining: “The additional 10 sessions should continue to be made available and should be targeted towards those with complex mental health needs.”

Complex needs refers to the most vulnerable, those who suffer from debilitating mental health problems that prevent them from functioning in society without regular specialised care.

The report contained numerous statistics pointing to the class issues within the mental health crisis. Working class and poor people are the worst affected by mental health problems, and the least able to access proper treatment. Within the poorest 20 percent of the Australian population, 22 percent suffer high or very high levels of psychological distress. This is more than double the level of distress in the wealthiest 20 percent of society.

Wealthy layers are significantly more likely to access psychological treatment. The report explained: “Those on the lowest incomes are least likely to access services. The wait times to treatment for those who did progress from a [mental health] plan to treatment were also longer for those in the lowest income quintile; their median wait time was 22 days whereas the median wait time for those in the highest quintile was 17 days. All of these indicators have worsened over time.”

Lower access for working people partly reflects fewer available psychologists. The report found that 1 in 3 psychologists in 2022 were unable to take on new patients, compared to 1 in 5 in 2021.

Cost is a major barrier to treatment. Nearly two-thirds of subsidised sessions require patient “co-payment,” with median out-of-pocket cost per service now $90. A survey included in the report found that of patients who ceased psychological treatment early, nearly one-third, 31.7 percent, reported that they did so because “co-payment” charges were unaffordable.

One person told researchers: “It’s really just the financial side that’s difficult, having to take like time off work and things to go to appointments. That also has a financial impact but there’s not really any way around that, and I’m casual at the moment so it’s unstable to begin with.”

The Labor government’s cut to psychological services is a ruthless, anti-working class measure that underscores its role as an instrument of finance capital and big business.

New Stellantis absentee policy punishes workers for getting medical treatment and taking their kids to the doctor

James Brewer

The employees of Stellantis Corporation were notified in January 17 letter posted in their plants that planned medical appointments and other medical occurrences will no longer be excused. Signed by Human Resources Manager Joe Boyer and Christy Shephard of Labor Relations, the letter cites the authority of Letter M8 of the 2019 Fiat Chrysler (FCA) Bargaining Agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

The letter posted by Stellantis announcing their new absentee policy [Photo: WSWS]

The letter states that as of January 30 of this year, “the M8 language as it was nationally negotiated” will be applied. According to that section of the contract, only “urgent and immediate medical treatment” will be considered an excusable reason for absence, regardless if the employee called in ahead of time. According to the posted letter:

“Examples of what is not accepted may include, but not limited to: annual physical, colonoscopy, headaches/migraines, mammogram, physical therapy appointments, planned dentist/oral surgery (emergencies could qualify), pre-planned or follow up medical appointments with family doctor for yourself, or your child.”

The UAW agreed to this policy in the 2019 bargaining, but the above-mentioned examples of unacceptable absences do not appear in Letter M8 of the agreement. The UAW, however, is silent on this brutal attack on workers and their right to necessary health care for themselves and their children.

No reference is made to the COVID-19 pandemic, which began early in 2020, barely a month after the December 16, 2019 signing date of the contract with FCA, Stellantis’ predecessor. The company, with the active complicity of the UAW, has spent three years covering up the extent and deadly consequences of the spread of the coronavirus inside their factories. It was only due to March 2020 wildcat strikes by FCA workers who refused to work under conditions where they were risking theirs and their families’ health that production was shut down for almost two months ending in May of 2020.

At that time, the company issued public statements declaring that the health and safety of their employees is their “number one priority.” Today, in response to Stellantis’ letter, one supplemental employee told the World Socialist Web Site, “the company now says that COVID is over. What do you do if you catch it? According to them, you’re supposed to come in and work sick and infect everyone else.”

An unexcused absence is deemed an “occurrence” by management. As such it is counted against the employee. After four occurrences, temporary forced layoffs are imposed until seven such occurrences accrue within a year when it results in termination.

Autoworkers live in unstable living circumstances thanks to the steady erosion of working conditions, wages and benefits forced upon them with the collusion of the UAW over the decades.

Supplemental and temporary employees have it even worse. Though they pay dues to the UAW, they start at the poverty wage of $15.81 an hour, lower than the pay at many fast food restaurants in the area, and have limited medical benefits and no dental or optical care for themselves or their families. They also have schedules that can change from week to week, or even from day to day. A medical appointment scheduled months in advance can easily conflict with the work schedule imposed by the company on a week-to-week basis. Due to poverty level wages, in cases workers are compelled to work two jobs with virtually no time for sleep, let alone medical appointments.

Stellantis workers leave Warren Truck Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit on January 24, 2023 [Photo: WSWS]

Workers at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant outside Detroit made their feelings about the new attendance policy known to reporters from the WSWS on Tuesday.

A young supplemental employee said, “This policy is inhumane. We are humans, not machines. When a machine in the plant breaks down, they send maintenance to fix it. But if you’re not doing well physically or mentally, they say you can’t go to the doctors without getting points for it. We’re in there making $100,000 trucks, but they don’t care about us.”

Another worker said, “People have kids, they’re denying them the chance to go to the doctor! It’s crazy! They’re threatening people with points, and people are already under mental and physical stress here. We’re not making enough, and people are damned broke here.”

A younger worker commented, “I disagree 100 percent with this policy. We all have a life outside of the plant. Going to the doctor’s or taking your kid there should be part of everyday life. Now they’re threatening your job if you take care of your health or your family’s.” 

Another employee, also a supplemental, said, “We can’t take days off or we’ll be fired. I quit another job to come here because they said you would be rolled over to full-time after two years, and that having the Wagoneer model here would guarantee our jobs. Now the crappy practices of the company have led them to shift production of the model to Mexico.” He added, “We have to make changes because the UAW leaders aren’t doing anything for us. We also need to get together with the workers in Mexico and Canada, we’re all going against those on top.” 

A full-time second tier worker told the WSWS, “We have a family who deserve good health care and good dental benefits because these companies have been profiting more and more from the work we do here. Our dental doesn’t even cover half of the stuff it used to anymore. They cut it without a warning sometimes; without us even knowing it’s been cut.

“If you have a doctor’s appointment for your child or even for yourself, sometimes they don’t want to excuse it now. But people use their FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act] when they need things excused. What’s going to happen when more people do that? There goes your attendance policy. And then people can’t get FMLA when they need it later because they already used it. So it’s bad for everyone.”

She added, “Workers get scapegoated for problems with their machines, like it’s their fault that the product isn't coming out right. We get blamed for everything. I think it has something to do with the economy. Like maybe they think we’ll keep putting up with it because we can’t afford to quit.”

The brutal attendance policy is definitely connected to the economic situation and the drive by the US Federal Reserve to increase interest rates and drive the economy towards a recession. With growing demands by workers to pay increases to keep up with the decades-high inflation rate, the corporations want to use mass unemployment to further cut wages and increase the exploitation of the working class.

In the runup to this year’s contract battle by 150,000 GM, Ford and Stellantis workers, automakers have already begun to slash jobs and threaten plant closures. Stellantis has announced the “indefinite layoff” of 1,350 workers at its Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, which begins in February, and has eliminated shifts and slashed jobs at a number of factories, including Trenton Engine, Warren Truck and Dundee Engine.

In October 2022, Stellantis Chief Manufacturing Officer Arnaud Deboeuf visited the Warren Truck plant and said if quality issues and absenteeism did not improve, management would remove any future products from the plant, which employs more than 5,000 workers. Rather than oppose this threat, UAW Local 140 officials sided with management and denounced workers for the “unacceptable” rate of defects and absenteeism. UAW bureaucrats then went along with the elimination of the third shift.

Denouncing the collusion of the UAW bureaucracy in these attacks, a worker with two years in the plant said, “It’s all about leadership. We have to strike and shut down the industry. We can’t accept this. But the UAW has allowed all these tiers and has let the company do whatever it wants.”

Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for UAW president, denounced the company’s new attendance policy. “Stellantis clearly values the profits exploited from the workers above the workers who generate them. Company officials point to the contract negotiated with the UAW in 2019, when some of the worst corruption ever made known to dues-paying members was coming to light. The UAW bureaucrats were taking bribes from Chrysler to sell us out out and former presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones were embezzling millions of dollars in union dues from us. They were selling us out then, and UAW President Ray Curry, International Rep Shawn Fain and the rest of the UAW bureaucracy are selling us out now.

“Autoworkers are facing the same conditions as the railroad workers with the Hi-Viz attendance policy, which forces them to be on call 24/7. Railroad workers were also sold out by union bureaucrats who worked with the Biden administration and Congress to block a strike of 120,000 workers in December and forced them to accept a contract that they had rejected.