COVID-19 rages through food processing plants, warehouses and manufacturing facilities

Jerry White

The coronavirus continues to spread through factories, warehouses and other workplaces as the number of COVID-19 cases rises sharply in US states that have reopened businesses and abandoned social distancing guidelines.

Twenty-nine states and US territories logged an increase in their seven-day average of new reported cases on Monday, with nine states—California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia—reporting record average highs. Disturbingly, many of the new cases are among younger people, with the median age for newly diagnosed coronavirus cases in Florida falling to 37.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported yesterday, Florida’s agricultural regions—where migrant workers pick fruit and vegetables next to each other and are cramped into crowded busses, trailers and apartments—have been major vectors for the spread of the deadly disease.

Workers in a hog slaughter and processing plant (Wikipedia Commons)

Immokalee, Florida, the country’s winter tomato capital, has 1,207 reported cases. With the harvest season over, thousands of migrant workers are now making their way up the East Coast and to the Midwest, with many of them taking the virus to Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and other states.

The meatpacking industry continues to be the largest spreader of COVID-19. It is esimated that more than 24,000 workers have been infected and at least 91, including more than 25 at facilities owned by Tyson Foods, have died. Both figures have increased five-fold since Trump used the Defense Production Act to reopen infected slaughterhouses and meat processing plants in late April.

In North Carolina, where cases were found in at least 23 meat processing plants, the Raleigh News & Observer noted the comments of State Representative Jimmy Dixon, a staunch ally of the hog industry. During a recent committee meeting he said a policy of “herd immunity” would be better for the economy. “We’d better start addressing the economic health of this state," he said. "In my opinion, we’re all going to get [COVID-19], and the sooner we get it the better off we are.”

The wave of infections in the meatpacking industry is a global phenomenon, with major outbreaks last week in Wales in the UK, in Germany, where officials said 1,331 workers tested positive at a Tönnies Group slaughterhouse in North Rhine-Westphalia, and Brazil, where almost 24 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Brazil's southern Rio Grande do Sul state are workers in the meat industry.

The construction industry, which was exempted from lockdowns in many states or prematurely opened in others, is another hotspot. Fifty-five out of the 153 construction workers at a site on the Texas A&M campus in College Station, Texas tested positive last week.

Construction workers building new stadiums or renovating old ones for professional football teams are also contracting the disease. This includes at least 18 workers at the SoFi Stadium construction site in Los Angeles; 15 workers at the Allegiant Stadium site in Las Vegas; and at least 32 of the 275 construction workers at the renovation site for the Mercedes Benz Superdome in New Orleans—which Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, has declared “essential.”

In Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, there were 10 confirmed cases and more than 30 potential exposures reported at one Mountain View construction site, near Google headquarters, along with several other cases at San Jose and Milpitas construction sites.

Restaurant, retail and public transit workers are in peril as major cities reopen. Some 300,000 people are expected to return to work in New York City this week, as city and state officials allow the reopening of outdoor dining at bars and restaurants, in-person retail, hair salons and barbershops and more office-based jobs. Although subway ridership is only 17 percent of pre-pandemic levels, it is being ramped up under conditions where more than 130 transit workers have died from COVID-19.

Large crowds are expected for the July 4th weekend at casinos in New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada. Cases spiked in Nevada after the initial reopening of casinos in early June. Two employees at the Flamingo Casino tested positive last week, along with at least eight restaurant employees on and off the Strip.

Outbreaks of the disease have also hit major factories and warehouses. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has announced that it will investigate conditions at Amazon facilities in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where at least 60 workers have tested positive. The giant corporation, whose CEO Jeff Bezos has gotten $33 billion richer since the pandemic began, has sought to conceal information about the spread of the virus, but former Amazon employee Jana Jumpp has compiled a list of nearly 1,600 infections and at least nine deaths in Ohio, California, Missouri, New York, Texas, Illinois and Indiana. She recently told the WSWS, “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The auto industry, which reopened on May 18, continues to see outbreaks. BMW has acknowledged 14 cases at its Spartanburg, South Carolina facility, and Toyota has confirmed 40 cases at its US plants, including in Georgetown, Kentucky. Previously, Hyundai acknowledged one death at its Montgomery, Alabama plant.

At General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, the corporate management of the Detroit Three automakers, with the full backing of the United Auto Workers union, has concealed information about the spread of the virus in an effort to prevent a repeat of the walkouts and other job actions by workers that shut down the industry in mid-March.

Workers at GM’s Wentzville, Missouri plant, just outside of St. Louis, have reported to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that at least 10 coworkers have tested positive. “When a manager tested positive, 36 people in trim walked out," one worker said. "They ended up staying out for three days so that they could get tested. It's resulted in a lot of manpower issues.”

A worker at GM’s Ft. Wayne, Indiana plant, which produces the company’s most profitable vehicles, reported, “People are gradually getting sick and it’s moving closer to my area. GM isn’t telling us real numbers. I know people that are sick and are home for quarantine. The UAW is also looking the other way. Today there were so many that were sent to the hospital to get tested that we couldn’t run the first half. The results take 2-3 days! No one wants to talk about the numbers. They even told us that people just had the flu... Secretive here.”

Workers in the auto parts industry also described their unsafe workplaces. “Conditions at Flex N Gate LLC Of Battle Creek are bad," said one worker. "We have cleaners who are supposed to be sanitizing the plant each shift, all shift, with alcohol, but on 3rd shift that’s not really likely. The cleaner isn’t using the alcohol, but is just wiping things with a rag! They have super-stupid one-way directions and the heat is unbearable in there, but yet we still have to wear a mask! They won’t clean the fans that they put out on the floor! We only have limited cold water! This sucks, as workers have to go in there and risk our health and safety just for some cars and trucks that most likely won’t even be purchased anytime soon.”

In an effort to counter large absenteeism rates among auto, meatpacking and other workers who do not want to infect themselves and their families, companies are restricting sick leave policies, and the Trump administration has announced it will not renew the $600 a week supplement to unemployment benefits when it runs out the week ending July 25. The removal of the subsidy, which many workers, including undocumented immigrants, never received, would throw millions of families into destitution.

Amidst the moves to cut off the $600-a-week lifeline to workers, both parties have handed over trillions of dollars to Wall Street and other giant corporations by passing the CARES Act in near-unanimous votes and sanctioning the Federal Reserve’s purchase of corporate bonds. Both corporate-controlled parties are now herding workers back into the factories and other workplaces to produce the profits needed to pay for the vast increase in government and corporate debt.

There is growing opposition to this homicidal policy and the plans to use the pandemic and the creation a vast pool of jobless workers to accelerate the assault on the jobs, wages and conditions of workers. In opposition to this, the Socialist Equality Party calls on workers to elect rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace to unite workers across the US and internationally in an industrial and political counteroffensive to protect lives and living standards. The fight for safe workplaces requires a fight against the capitalist system, which sacrifices workers’ lives to corporate profit.

Understanding Pyongyang’s Belligerence towards Seoul

Sandip Kumar Mishra

On 16 June, North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Gaeseong. This is being seen as symbolic of South Korea’s failure to engage North Korea over the past few years. Effectively, North Korea has walked out of all agreements and understandings that have taken place between the two Koreas since the first half of 2018, including the Panmunjom Declaration. Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, who is first vice department director of the Workers’ Party Central Committee, used the occasion of the anniversary of the first Trump-Kim summit, to lambast President Moon Jae-in and South Korea with sharp rhetoric.

North Korea’s recent belligerence towards South Korea began with an over-reaction to ‘objectionable’ leaflets that called Kim Jong-un a “devil” who would meet the “same bloody fate as Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.” A few South Korean conservative civil society groups were responsible for these leaflets. Pyongyang was not pacified even after Seoul announced a crackdown on such activities—the former characterised them as “provocations graver than gun and artillery fire.” North Korea threatened to break all relations with South Korea, suggesting that “the next action against the ‘enemy’ will come from the army.”

These developments are indicative of a larger trend over the past few weeks, in which North Korea has deliberately tried to ruin relations with South Korea. Leaflets and other materials such as Bibles, dollar bills, small radio sets, and memory sticks have been sent by South Korean civil society groups into North Korea, through air and sea routes, and using balloons and water bottles, from more than two decades. It had not elicited such an oversized reaction until now because Pyongyang has been well-aware of Seoul, or the state, playing no part in these activities.

However, this time, North Korea has chosen to go the route of issuing unusually strong, provocative, and often humiliating statements. On 4 June  Kim Yo-jong announced North Korea’s consideration of destroying the Inter-Korean Liaision Office, and nullifying the defence agreement between the two countries.  On 9 June, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the regime would cut off all communications with South Korea. Jang Kum-chol, who heads the United Front Department, warned on 12 June of possible military action against South Korea as a result of the break in trust between them. North Korean Foreign Ministry official Kwon Jong-gun said the following day that South Korea’s call for “denuclearisation must be abandoned” as they are “nonsensical.” On 16 June, North Korea destroyed the Liaison Office, and announced that troops would be sent to the Mount Geumgang and Gaeseong areas as well as sentry posts, and military exercises in border areas would be restarted.

The Moon Jae-in administration’s engagement policy towards North Korea has since come under heavy criticism. To avoid political fall-out, the South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul resigned on 19 June, taking all responsibility for this so-called failure. The South Korea Defence Ministry, in a show of toughness, said that Pyongyang would pay a price if it took military action. The South Korean Blue House declared on 17 June that Seoul would not tolerate North Korea’s “unreasonable words and actions.” While Seoul is clearly trying to publicly respond to Pyongyang’s provocations, it is also aware that North Korean aggression is motivated by other important reasons that have little to do with their bilateral relationship.

One, North Korea is desperate for the removal of economic sanctions, which the US administration under President Donald Trump does not appear at all interested in. By being belligerent towards a neighbour and US ally, Pyongyang seeks to draw Washington’s attention to its own demands.

Second, North Korea has recently gone through internal political changes. Kim Jong-un appears to be suffering from health issues, and Kim Yo-jong has emerged in this time as the second most important leader in the regime. Kim Yo-jong is keen on a tough approach—she was involved in North Korea’s rapprochement with South Korea and the US, which unfortunately did not yield a wholly favourable outcome from their perspective. A tough image could help Kim Yo-jong rescue her image, and legitimise her ascendence.

Thus, North Korea’s recent provocations do not necessarily imply a failure of South Korea’s engagement policy. Rather, they are to suggest that the relationship, although bilateral, features an important third party, the US. Of course, political changes within the regime will also have a bearing on its approach towards inter-Korea relations. For these reasons, South Korea is best advised to be militarily prepared and positionally firm, even while maintaining a constructive policy approach.

North Korea and the US Disembark from a Summit Train Going Nowhere

Manpreet Sethi 

China has dominated headlines across the world in June 2020. This is not just because of the global fight against COVID-19, whose virus originated in China, but also because the country has simultaneously activated prickly issues with India, the US, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, to name but a few of the relationships that have been trending this summer owing to Beijing’s aggressive behaviour.

For India, this manifested in the form of a tense military face-off in eastern Ladakh. The matter had been simmering since mid-April and turned particularly bloody mid-June. Caught up in these developments, India paid little attention to another event that was taking place in northeast Asia. This was the rather grim commemoration of the second anniversary of the historic Trump-Kim meeting that took place in Singapore on 12 June 2018.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) chose this day to bid farewell to the summit process that had generated much excitement only two short years ago. It vowed instead to further build its nuclear and military force to counter perceived threats. While there is little reason for India to be overly concerned with these developments, there are indirect implications that should not be ignored. And, of course, China, which seems to be everywhere these days, has more than just a finger in the North Korean nuclear pie, from where clandestine nuclear business has been known to have been done in the past.

On 12 June 2020, a strongly worded statement was issued by DPRK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It drew attention to the Singapore Summit, where US President Donald Trump and DPRK Premier Kim Jong-un held the first-of-its-kind bilateral meeting between these two countries caught in a hostile relationship since the 1950s Korean War. Pyongyang had long indicated its desire for direct negotiations with the US for resolving their relations, including addressing concerns about its nuclear programme. Washington, however, had preferred the trilateral, quadrilateral, and six-party talks formats. However, an out-of-the-box President Trump decided to take the plunge for a direct tête-à-tête with Supreme Leader Marshal Kim Jong-un. The world waited with bated breath, and expectations ran high.

The meeting went well as far as the personal chemistry between the two heads was concerned. They even managed a joint statement that made a mention of denuclearisation. The details of the process, however, were to be worked out at lower levels, where unfortunately nothing concrete could be achieved. To give the process another push, the two leaders met again in Hanoi in 2019. The meeting, however, ended abruptly, as differences over sequencing of sanctions removal and steps towards denuclearisation were found to be irreconcilable. Even though both leaders continued to express their admiration for each other and optimism for the bilateral relationship, 2019 yielded nothing. In any case, it appeared that President Trump had lost interest in the issue as other more pressing and immediate domestic and international concerns kept landing on his table fast and furiously.

The recently issued statement by North Korea now openly expresses a sense of disappointment with the Summits. It laments that over “not a short period of 732 days” since the first Summit, even a “slim ray of hope of peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula has faded away into a dark nightmare.” Therefore, “it is futile to continue maintaining” the relationship with President Trump. Expectedly, DPRK draws attention to the many steps that it had undertaken, such as total shutdown of its nuclear test site, return of US prisoners, non-conduct nuclear tests, and suspension of further testing of its inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), even though it had received nothing from the other side.

As US-DPRK relations nosedive, those between the two Koreas, too, have worsened over the last few months. Military hotlines between the two were severed by Pyongyang earlier in June. As this column was being written, news came in that North Korea had blown up the Inter-Korean building, the joint liaison office at Kaesong, which was symbolic of their cooperation. The step was reportedly taken to express anger with the propaganda war being allegedly waged from South Korea through balloons and leaflets carrying anti-regime messages.

With this, another short episode of attempted détente seems to have stalled. Having expressed its unhappiness and anger with both Washington and Seoul, Pyongyang’s message is loud and clear as voiced in its statement. It reportedly carries the endorsement of the Fourth Enlarged Meeting of the Seventh CMC of the Worker’s Party of Korea: the strategic goal and national strategy for nuclear development of the country is now to “build up more reliable force to cope with the long-term military threats from the US.”

Perhaps, having realised the limits of what President Trump can do in the last few months of his presidency, Pyongyang sees greater benefit in ramping up its strategic capability in order to strengthen its bargaining position for when the next occupant of the White House is ready for another round of negotiations. During this time, when US attention is sure to be elsewhere, North Korea has a safe period to improve its nuclear deterrent, including conducting more nuclear and missile tests if it feels the need. The fear of more sanctions that may follow any such move is allayed by the friendship DPRK enjoys with China, which in any case has been its saviour over the years. That backdoor has always been open for the regime, even if the sanctions may have caused suffering to the ordinary citizens.

Meanwhile, what should be a matter of concern for all, and particularly for India, is the possibility of leakage of nuclear material, technology, or equipment from DPRK. Reeling from the pandemic’s impact (Pyongyang has reported complete control over the virus though the claim cannot be substantiated in the absence of independent verification), suffering from the effects of sanctions, not allowing any international oversight on its nuclear activities, and making use of a distracted international community, DPRK may be tempted towards clandestine nuclear transfers to interested state or non-state actors. It may be recalled that it has been involved in such actions in the past with Pakistan and China.

So, even though both the US and DPRK appear to have disembarked from the train of summit diplomacy that seemed to be going nowhere, it is imperative that a close watch be maintained to obviate the possibility of Pyongyang embarking on a train of nuclear proliferation that would certainly lead to disaster.  

Draconian changes to India’s labour laws!

Rashme Madhavan

Labour “reforms” – India goes back in time

Given the COVID-19 situation, though not with the same enthusiasm, nevertheless the entire world celebrated workers May Day recently. Ironically, here in India in the same month of May, antithetical to the ideal of May Day the major states of India moved to destroy the hard-won gains of the working class. The states ruled by BJP have amended the labour laws heavily favouring the capitalist class. The other state governments in India are also planning to implement these draconian changes in labour laws.

Ever since the lockdown began the plight of all the sections of working-class increased drastically. The anti-poor Modi government started to use the corona crisis as a trump card to cover its inefficiencies.

The New Socialist Alternative has already come up with articles explaining as to how the migrant labourers suffered because of the mismanagement of the Modi regime. It took a toll on the workers of other sections as well. The sanitation workers were forced to work without proper protective equipment. The public sector workers were forced to sacrifice a part of their salary for the “PM Cares” fund. Many private and IT sector workers had to take a wage cut. Employers took extreme lay off measures in order to save their profits.

Though this is a global scenario the authoritarian BJP government has taken a greater step in order to take the society backwards. After having ideological debates one may have clarity that the change in the “production method” will only lay the foundations for a societal change. i.e when the productive force reaches a certain level it will come into conflicts with the relations of production which will lead to new economic condition & societal change (when the production ceases the workers will come in conflict with the owners which will lead to a change in society). But the dilution of the labour law has paved the way for a backward societal change.

Failure of the Modi’s regime

The severe violation of workers’ rights is euphemistically termed as “labour law reforms”. Reform for the benefit of whom? The amendment of the labour laws in the pretext of attracting investments will push the workers to sub-human levels & it’ll bring back the slavery officially.

The Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996; The Workmen Compensation Act, 1923; The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and Section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 (the right to receive timely wages) are the only major labour laws that will remain undiluted while others will be suspended for 3 years.

The term “employer” in the BOCW Act is defined to include both contractors and owners. So, the owners and the contractors pass the responsibility to one another. Similarly, other laws are not being implemented properly. If we don’t fight for our rights now this will not be revoked even after 3 years.

That is to say, the workers will be deprived of their rights. The employers can hire and fire workers as per their wish without paying any compensation. The workers will not have any association with the trade unions and they’ll not have a say in their wage and working conditions.

Though the health crisis was unpredicted, the economic crisis is man-made. Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman announced that all PSUs in non-strategic sectors will be privatized, while in the strategic sector, there will be only one PSU, at the minimum and four PSUs, at the maximum, fully owned by the Govt. This move, instead of promoting self-reliance, will destroy the Indian economy.

At a time when money should be used to protect the workers (the real wealth creators), Modi plans to rebuild the parliament. More than Rs 600 crore is spent on dropping flower petals as a gesture of gratitude to doctors, nurses, and other workers on the frontline fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic. Even this was an utter flop. Around 150 medical professionals of the Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore, were forced to assemble in front of the hospital. After waiting for half an hour they realized that the fighter jets didn’t turn up for honouring them.

The Union government special COVID relief fund wasn’t used for transporting the migrant labourers. The hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers who were stranded in cities without wages or access to food had to pay their train fares. They weren’t just charged for these trips, they had to pay higher fares than usual. Ironically, even the Indian Railways had donated Rs 151 crore to the fund. Despite all this, the Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has the audacity to claim that “nobody starved in the last 3 months”.

The so-called Rs “20-lakh-crore stimulus package” is being widely criticized by famous economists and radical thinkers. It is nothing but an imaginary number. The jobless migrant workers need money to buy milk, vegetables, and cooking oil and to pay rent. In the name of relief, the government is giving loans to the already economically burdened working people and it continues its bailout packages for the rich.

How to build a fight back?Mere sloganeering of workers unity, opposition to Modi and lampooning of the regime will not suffice. Challenging the rabid right-wing regime of Modi needs a combative programme which is methodical in its approach taking into account the consciousness of the working class, especially of the advanced and combative layers. Such a programme should be clearly linked to fighting for a socialist alternative with transitional demands.
* Reject changes in working hours duration, must remain 8 hours only.* Stop all changes to labour laws and legislations.* Say no to all attacks on workers’ rights.* Minimum Wages must be raised to Rs.25,000 per month, with ₹100/ an hour minimum for all workers* Stop all privatization plans; we demand renationalization of all public sector industries and services.
* Trade Unions must organise a robust resistance against these draconian changes.
This is a do or die battle for the working class of India. While the 3rd July All India Protest by the Central Trade Unions is welcome, nothing short of an all-out political General Strike will deter the right-wing capitalist regime of Modi.

Workers of all sections, including public, private and other migrant workers, must unite as one class to fight back against this onslaught by the Modi regime.

We shall fight & we will win – Workers’ unity zindabad.

Australian government steps up attack on university students and workers

Mike Head

University students, as well as staff, are under mounting assault by the Australian government. It is attempting to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to impose a major pro-business slashing and restructuring of higher education.

Last Friday, the government unveiled plans to more than double the fees for humanities and communications students, alongside 28 percent higher fees for law, economics and commerce, putting them all in the highest price band of $14,500 a year.

Students could pay as much as $43,500 for a three-year undergraduate humanities degree, up from $20,400. This would financially punish young people, and mature-aged workers seeking further education, who wish to study potentially intellectually stimulating courses as history, geography, politics, sociology, film studies, behavioural sciences and journalism. Creative arts fees would rise by 13 percent to $7,700 a year.

By this move, the government is seeking to further transform universities into vocational businesses, churning out “job-ready graduates” to meet the immediate profit-making requirements of employers. Addressing the National Press Club, Education Minister Dan Tehan said the plan would “incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices.”

This is antithetical to genuine education, which requires critical thinking and the exposure to new ideas. Young people, now facing an unemployment and under-employment level of 48 percent, are being denied the basic right to decent education.

Fees for courses that big business regards as vital, such as science, maths, agriculture, IT, engineering, teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages, would be reduced. But the government funds for most of these degrees would be lowered too, leaving the universities with less money overall and therefore forced to cut costs, including by increasing class sizes. There is no guarantee against students in those courses paying higher fees in the future.

Despite the corporate media fully backing this offensive, there is clearly outraged opposition among young people, including this year’s school leavers, and university educators, reflected in social media posts and comments published by some media outlets.

One student told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “I am a business/politics (humanities) student. I am the first in my family to attend university, and all this does is make university (for the most part) unattainable. My degree is now going to be on par with the cost of a medical degree … Poorer kids are going to move away from economics, humanities and law.”

Another message stated: “Truly devastating news. What the world needs now more than ever is for young people to learn to think deeply, critically, and creatively about the complex issues we face as a global community, to challenge the status quo, learn from the past and understand other cultures and points of view.”

Tehan denied that students would be priced out of degrees, saying “no student pays a single dollar upfront” due to the HECS-HELP fees loan scheme. Because of lower income thresholds introduced in 2018, however, graduates must start repaying their fee debts when they earn more than $46,000 annually—only about $730 a week after tax.

Many students will be saddled with a life of debt. By January 2019, about 3.2 million graduates had outstanding student loan debts, totaling over $66 billion.

After a three-year funding freeze, Tehan said an extra 39,000 university places for domestic students would be funded by 2023 to cope with the extra demand caused by the collapse of job prospects, but without any overall increase in government funding for universities. The plan would lift student contributions to the overall cost of degrees from 42 percent to 48 percent.

The latest measures will need to be legislated and pass the Senate, where the Liberal-National Coalition government holds only a minority of seats. But no reliance can be placed on the other Senate parties, including Labor and the Greens, which have helped decimate university funding over the past decade.

The government has been emboldened by the role of the university staff and student unions. They have assisted the government and the university managements to inflict the burden of the financial crisis triggered by the pandemic on staff and students.

Because of the loss of international student fees, the 39 public universities expect to lose revenues of $16 billion between June this year and 2023, with up to 30,000 jobs to be eliminated as a result. This is on top of years of multi-billion dollar funding cuts by the current Liberal-National Coalition government and the previous Greens-backed Labor government.

The government has refused to rescue the public universities, while handing JobKeeper wage subsidies to private universities. It has been aided by the fact that as soon as the pandemic began to hit, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) rushed into backroom national talks with the managements, offering wage cuts of up to 15 percent while still agreeing to the destruction of at least 18,000 jobs.

The NTEU thus made clear its commitment to help the managements impose cuts and restructuring on university workers and students. For two months, while the closed-door negotiations continued, the union stifled any struggle against the offensive, permitting hundreds of job cuts, particularly of casual workers.

Since the NTEU-management “Job Protection Framework” was finally revealed to university workers last month and collapsed in the face of intense opposition, the NTEU and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) have intensified their efforts to inflict similar job- and pay-cutting agreements on university workers at individual universities.

Likewise, the National Union of Students has opposed any mobilisation of students against the attack on jobs and conditions, which also means lower quality education, larger classes and worse services and facilities for students.

This escalating offensive underscores the call issued by the Committee for Public Education (CFPE) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) for a unified struggle by university workers and students for the defence of jobs and conditions and for the right to decent, free and first-class education for all, including international students, and full-time jobs for all university workers.

This will require the formation of democratically elected rank-and-file committees of university workers and students. These must be completely independent of the unions, which have shown they are nothing but political and industrial police forces.

Instead of big business being bailed out with billions of dollars, and billions more being handed to the military, resources must be poured into healthcare and education funding. That means challenging the capitalist profit system and turning to a socialist perspective, based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy.

Tens of thousands rally in French-occupied Mali for resignation of president

Will Morrow

Tens of thousands demonstrated at Independence Square in central Bamako, the Malian capital, on Friday to demand the immediate resignation of French-backed president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (known as IBK). It was the second mass protest for the removal of Keïta this month, after tens of thousands demonstrated on June 5.

The protests have been called by the official bourgeois opposition coalition, which has named itself the June 5 Movement: Rally of Patriotic Forces, many of whose leading figures are either former government figures or supporters. The widespread and growing demand for the removal of the government in the population, however, is driven by anger over rising inequality exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the decline of social services, corruption and the government’s role in sectarian killings and extrajudicial executions by security forces backed by the French-led occupation. IBK became president in 2013 and is closely associated with the French intervention in the country.

The protesters carried signs including “IBK resign,” “The dictator will not stay,” as well as banners calling for the release of political prisoners, “more money for education” and “an end to the coronavirus.” A protester, Diawara Issaka, told Le Monde: “We should not be here, because there is the coronavirus. The president has promised a mask for every Malian, but no one here has received one; he is a liar. So we have come here to challenge this lie like all the others.” A group of protesters with him added: “We have had enough of it. We, heads of family, have not received wages for three months.”

The protest in Bamako on Friday

So far 109 deaths have been confirmed in Mali and 1,933 cases of coronavirus.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters, who responded by erecting barricades to prevent the security forces from advancing.

The government had ordered the reopening of schools on June 2 despite the pandemic, but thousands of teachers boycotted school and refused to turn up. They demanded not only measures to protect teachers from the pandemic but also wage increases that had been formally announced by the government four years ago but never provided. According to the teachers’ unions, only 35 percent of public schools opened on June 2.

President Keïta offered this week to form a government of national unity incorporating leading members of the opposition, and also pledged to provide the promised wage increases to teachers, in an attempt to defuse the growing movement. The official opposition has refused Keita’s offer and on Friday reiterated its appeal for him to resign.

The leading figure in the official opposition is Islamist cleric Mahmoud Dicko. Dicko has been a leading figure in the regime for many years. Between 2008 and 2019 he led the Islamic High Council, and he supported Keïta’s election in 2013. In September 2019 he created an opposition movement amid rising opposition to the French occupation and to the Keïta government in the population. An adherent of conservative Wahabi Islam, he had also served as an interlocutor between the government and Islamic insurgent forces.

On June 9, French media reported that Dicko had met with a group of unnamed international officials, including representatives of the United Nations in Mali (MINUSMA), from the Economic Community of the States of West Africa, and the African Union.

The French government has not made any public statements either supporting or opposing the protests against Keïta. But there is no doubt that it is actively intervening to ensure the continued defence of French imperialist interests in the geo-strategically important Sahel region.

France intervened in Mali in January 2013, against separatist and Islamist forces who came from Libya in the aftermath of NATO’s regime-change war in that country in 2011. It has maintained more than 4,000 troops in Mali, increased to more than 5,100 since the beginning of the year, as part of an international coalition that includes Germany, Canada, the US and the so-called G5 force of troops from Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Mali is Africa’s third-largest gold producer after Ghana (which is located to Mali’s south) and South Africa. It also borders Niger, where France has stationed military forces including drone bases and from where it sources the majority of its uranium supplies required for nuclear power production in France.

In February, the Macron administration announced a significant escalation in the intervention, increasing the number of French troops in Operation Barkhane from 4,500 to 5,100, some of them being deployed to fight directly alongside the G5 troops.

The stepping up of the French intervention went hand-in-hand with a surge in the number of ethnic massacres and extrajudicial killings and war crimes reported by human rights groups. The French-backed government and G5 security forces are widely reported to be supporting ethnic Dogon militia in massacres of Muslim Fulaini communities, on the grounds that they are suspected of supporting Islamist forces. On March 23, 2019, a Dogon militia massacred 160 Fulani villagers, which triggered a reprisal attack killing at least 95.

A recent Amnesty International report provides evidence that the G5 security forces operating side-by-side with French soldiers are guilty of extra-judicial executions and war crimes.

Entitled “Human rights violations by security forces in the Sahel,” it reports at least 199 such incidents in just three months between February and April 2020, immediately after the expansion of the French-led intervention.

It cites the example of a reprisal attack carried out by security forces against an entire town following the killing of 20 soldiers on January 26 by Islamist groups. Malian soldiers intervened one week later in the town Kogoni-Peuhl on February 3, killing one herder and arresting two others. A witness stated, “When the soldiers arrived, they started shooting. Many villagers fled, those close to the mosque sounded the alarm and many others fled to the bush….”

In another incident, on February 7, in the village of Massabougou, security forces combed houses, arrested 22 people, and executed eight on site. A witness stated: “They arrive around 5pm shooting in the air, and arresting villagers. Many people fled or stayed in their houses after the soldiers arrived. They combed the houses, extra-judicially executed eight villagers and took the rest with them when they left.

Corporations continue to slash workforces in Britain

Barry Mason

Redundancies in the UK are set to explode as the Tory government’s COVID-19 job furlough scheme begins to taper out.

Under the furlough scheme, 9.1 million workers—more than a quarter of the UK workforce—are having 80 percent of their wages paid by the state, up to a monthly maximum of £2,500 a month. These same companies, after having received tens of billions of pounds in free money from the public purse, are making workers pay for the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic.

The numbers of those on company payrolls fell by 600,000 between March and May. The number of job vacancies recorded this quarter was 476,000, down from the previous quarter by 342,000. The quarter also saw a drop in the number of the self-employed of 131,000.

Government financial support will be withdrawn on a tapering system beginning in August, with furlough support stopping completely at the end of October. Companies planning to make redundancies rather than retaining furloughed workers need to give notice to workers slated for redundancy. For redundancies of 100 or more, the length of notice is 45 days, and for redundancies between 20 and 99 the length of notice is 30 days.

To ensure they do not have to make furlough payments from their own funds, companies planning to make 100 or more redundancies had to start redundancy consultations June 15. For redundancies of less than 100 the notice period would need to be given by the end of June.

Institute of Directors chief economist, Tej Parikh, said, “The furlough scheme continues to hold off the bulk of the job losses, but unemployment is likely to surge in the months ahead.”

Workers are facing a return to 1930s levels of unemployment, along with mounting austerity, as they are made to pay for the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. While the furlough scheme has been in operation, unemployment claimant count has still doubled, with 2.8 million workers out of a job. Guardian economist Larry Elliot commented last week that the “challenge for the government is to prevent it from hitting 4 million by the time the wage subsidies come to an end in October.”

Recent job losses announced in manufacturing include:

· Jet engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. It has confirmed 3,000 out of its planned 9,000 worldwide job cuts will be in the UK, with half of those at its Derby headquarters.

· Luxury car producer Aston Martin Lagonda will cut 500 jobs while Bentley plans to cut its workforce by nearly a quarter with a planned 1,000 jobs to go mainly at its Crewe facility.

· Jaguar Land Rover, which produces high-end market models, will cut 1,100 of its contract worker posts at plants on Merseyside and in the Midlands.

· Other manufacturing companies planning to make redundancies include Canadian plane maker Bombardier, which announced 600 jobs will go at its plant in Northern Ireland. Mechanical digger manufacturer JCB is experiencing a 50 percent drop in demand and plans to shed 950 jobs.

· Airlines and aviation firms have announced swingeing job cuts or plans for the same. British Airways plans to cut 25 percent of its posts, meaning 12,000 jobs lost. EasyJet will cut its workforce by nearly a third, with 4,500 jobs to go. Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic will cut its workforce by a third, or 3,000 jobs. More than 300 airport workers employed by Menzies Aviation in Edinburgh and Glasgow have been put on notice of imminent redundancy. The company furloughed more than 17,500 jobs worldwide in March in response to the pandemic.

· Energy companies planning job cuts include Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, which wants to axe 5,000 jobs by simplifying its management structure. Ovo, the UK’s second largest energy supplier, will cut 2,600 jobs and close offices.

· Builders’ merchant Travis Perkins plans to cut its workforce by 10 percent, with 2,500 jobs slated to go. It owns DIY chain Wickes and hire service Toolstation.

· Fashion and clothes chains have also announced cuts, with Mulberry announcing 470 job losses. Fashion brands Oasis and Warehouse, brought out of administration in April by Hilco, will close its outlets with the loss of 1,800 jobs.

· The Restaurant Group outlet chain, which owns Wagamama and Frankie and Benny’s, will cut 1,500 jobs.

· Last November, the Enterprise section of the BT telecommunications group announced that 367 jobs were under threat and in February said that compulsory redundancies would be enforced.

A June 11 Financial Times article warned of large-scale job losses on the horizon: “Close to 100,000 jobs in business with large UK operations hit by the coronavirus crisis are now on the line, according to a Financial Times tally of company announcements and administrations since March. This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with millions of jobs potentially at risk by the year end—and many of them small companies.”

The article points out that of the then 8.9 million workers furloughed, 3 million work in retail and the hospitality industries, which are unlikely to be able to operate normally given social distancing measures, for some time to come. Many redundancies are likely in the retail and hospitality sector.

The FT spoke to a Tory minister, who said many of his Tory MP colleagues were reporting “redundancy notices … being prepared” by local companies in their constituencies.

It quoted Stephen Phipson, head of manufacturing body Make UK, saying, “We have sight of a lot of redundancy programmes across manufacturers … Over the next few weeks we’ll sadly see a lot more job losses coming. The job retention scheme may have simply deferred the job losses, not prevented them.”

In an FT article of June 16, Samuel Tombs, an economist at economic intelligence consultancy, Pantheon Economics, warned, “Unemployment will leap if even a small fraction of employers never bring back furloughed workers.” He noted that the collapse in job vacancies in May—the highest drop since records began—was the harbinger of much greater job losses in the coming months.

Among areas particularly hit are the so-called “red-wall” conurbations. These are constituencies mainly in the Midlands, northwest and northeast of England that have suffered economic and social decline. They had been previously held by Labour MPs but switched to Conservative in the December 2019 general election because of disillusionment with Labour and support for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to enact Brexit.

A Times June 1 article reported on a study by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), using Office for National Statistics data. The report said, “Those areas where people were already struggling to find work were those that were more affected by the crisis. For example, areas with more than 15 claims per vacancy in March had an average increase of their ratios by 21 claims per vacancy, while areas with less than 0.5 claims per vacancy in March had an average increase of 1.5 extra claims per vacancy.”

The Times commented, “The data suggests that the lockdown has made existing inequalities worse. Low skilled, low paid workers living in deprived areas have taken the biggest hit.”

The article points out that prior to the COVID-19 crisis, in many of the deprived “legacy towns,” where there were around five job seekers for each vacancy, that number is now around 12.

IES head director, Tony Wilson, told the BBC, “It’s clear … that this crisis is hitting many poorer areas hardest—with coastal towns and ex-industrial areas seeing particularly big increases in unemployment.” According to the IES, among the hardest hit areas are Blackpool, with one in eight workers claiming work-related benefits, and Thanet in Kent and Birmingham, where the figure is one in 11.

Employers are using every opportunity to exploit the pandemic crisis and further slash costs as they cut their workforce. As workers are only being paid 80 percent of their wages, with most companies not paying the other 20 percent, some firms are already attempting to make redundancy payments based on the lower rate of furlough pay—not the full wage that workers earned before.

For a worker earning £30,420 this would mean losing £507 if they had a one-month redundancy notice period, or £1,521 over a three-month period. The Sun newspaper reported, “Employment lawyers say they have received plenty of calls from people whose bosses have tried to pay them less based on their furloughed rate of pay. It cited Kate Palmer, an employment lawyer at Peninsula UK, who said, “We have not had clear government guidance on whether redundancy pay can be based on one’s furlough pay.”

Suspected assailant in Reading terrorist attack was known to UK intelligence agencies

Robert Stevens

Within 24 hours of the stabbing to death of three people in a park in Reading on Saturday evening, it emerged that the alleged assailant was known to the intelligence agencies.

The assailant stabbed six people in Forbury Gardens, located in the centre of the Berkshire town, and three injured had to be airlifted to hospital. Two of the injured have been discharged and the other is in a stable condition under observation. The first victim to be named was teacher James Furlong. He was the head of History, Government and Politics at the Holt school in nearby Wokingham.

Witnesses and police officers immediately tried to help those stabbed, performing CPR as they lay dying and covered in blood.

Police forensic officers outside Forbury Gardens_ a day after a multiple stabbing attack in the gardens in Reading (AP photo/ Alistair Grant)

Following the attack, police arrested a 25-year-old man in nearby Friar Street, a short distance from Forbury Gardens, after receiving a call at 18.56 BST from a member of the public.

Although the authorities have not yet confirmed the name of the person arrested, multiple news sources identified him as Khairi Saadallah, a 25-year-old man understood to be a Libyan national. According to reports, Saadallah had been granted asylum to live in the UK and had previously been in prison in the UK for a minor conviction, not related to a terrorist offence.

Citing a source, the Guardian reported Sunday evening, “The Libyan refugee held over the multiple killings in Reading was on the radar of the security services in the middle of last year…

“Khairi Saadallah, 25, was under investigation as a person who might travel abroad ‘for extremist reasons’, but sources indicated that the inquiry was closed relatively quickly without any action taken as no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified.

“The intelligence agencies believe Saadallah had mental health and violence problems, the sources said.”

The BBC reported that the attacker was made known to MI5 in 2019. Saadallah was brought to the attention of the security services, a source told the broadcaster, as they understood he had aspirations to travel abroad, “potentially for terrorism.”

The BBC added, “When the information was further investigated, as the first stage of looking into a potential lead, no genuine threat or immediate risk was identified. No case file was opened which would have made him a target for further investigation.”

After stating Saturday that they are not treating it as a terrorism incident, the local police force, Thames Valley police, declared the attack a terror incident Sunday morning. The investigation is now under the control of Counter Terrorism Policing South-East. The head of counter-terrorism policing, Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, said, “From our inquiries so far, officers have found nothing to suggest that there was anyone else involved in this attack and presently we are not looking for anyone else in relation to this incident.”

It is known that the attack began shortly after 7 p.m., after the assailant entered Forbury Gardens in central Reading and started stabbing people.

It is reported that the attack was witnessed by over 40 people.

Lawrence Wort, a 20-year-old eyewitness, said, “The park was pretty full, a lot of people sat around drinking with friends, when one lone person walked through, suddenly shouted some unintelligible words and went around a large group of around 10, trying to stab them.

“He stabbed three of them, severely in the neck, and under the arms, and then turned and started running towards me, and we turned and started running.

“When he realised that he couldn’t catch us, he tried to stab another group sat down, he got one person in the back of the neck and then when he realised everyone was starting to run, he ran out the park.”

Police officers chased the man, tackled him to the ground and arrested him.

Later Saturday evening, armed police officers and counter-terrorism forces entered a block of flats on Basingstoke Road in Reading. A loud controlled explosion at the flats was heard by bystanders just before 1 a.m.

If the assailant is Saadallah, it would be the second terrorist attack carried out in Britain by a Libyan national—who was known to UK intelligence agencies—in the space of three years.

On May 22, 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a shrapnel-laden improvised explosive device in the foyer of Manchester Arena after a concert by Ariana Grande, killing 22, many of whom were children, and wounding 116. Salman Abedi and his brother, Hashem—who helped to plan the operation—were both well known to the intelligence agencies prior to the attack. Salman Abedi was first investigated by UK intelligence services as far back as 2014. In January 2017, four months before the Manchester bombing, the FBI—after it had placed Abedi on its terrorist watch list—informed MI5 that that Abedi was part of a North African cell plotting to strike a political target in the UK.

The Abedis were protected assets of the British state, allowed to travel to and from Libya without hindrance because they were part of a network of Libyans who were working as proxy forces for British imperialism. The father of the Abedi brothers, Ramadan Abedi, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Al Qaeda-linked group opposed to Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. Ramadan Abedi was one of a number of LIFG members based in the south Manchester area. He participated in the 2011 military operations to overthrow Gaddafi in a regime-change operation carried out at the behest of the US and Britain.

The most damning evidence on the protection afforded by the British state to the Abedis was revealed by a Daily Mail article published in 2018. It reported that as the civil war intensified, Abedi and his brother, Hashem, received British government assistance and fled Libya onboard a Royal Navy vessel, the HMS Enterprise . This rescue operation happened in August 2014, less than three years before Abedi bombed the Arena. The newspaper reported, “The information [on the soldiers’ lists of who boarded HMS Enterprise] was subsequently passed on to Number Ten [Downing Street], the Foreign Office and the Home Office.”

In comments reported by the Daily Mail Saturday, “a cousin” of Saadallah, who lives in Libya and did not wanted to be named, said, “Khairi had been to the UK a number of times but at the end of 2012 he traveled there as a tourist and decided to stay and claim asylum.

“He was at risk of extremists in Libya because he liked to drink and socialise and didn’t really lead a strict religious life at all.

“He did get in trouble in England and could be aggressive but I can’t ever imagine him getting drawn into something as serious as this.”

He claimed that Saadallah had converted from Islam to Christianity two or three years ago. “He started going to church and had tattoos all over his body including one of a cross on his arm. I haven’t had contact with him since that time.

“He lived in Manchester first and now lives in Reading. I think the authorities in Britain have tried to send him back to Libya but he doesn’t want to go back. He’s been in the UK for about seven years so is practically British now.”

Saturday’s attack is the third terrorism incident in the UK in just over six months to have involved mass public stabbing attempts.

As with all such instances, the government is already moving to clamp down further on democratic rights. Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded to the attack saying, “If there are changes that need to be made to our legal system to stop such events happening again, we will not hesitate to take that action.”

NATO grants Ukraine enhanced status as US steps up military aid

Jason Melanovski

On June 12, NATO officially recognized Ukraine as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner. According to the imperialist alliance, Ukraine will now benefit from “enhanced access to interoperability programs and exercises, and more sharing of information.”

Ukraine is the sixth country to be offered special partner status, along with Georgia, Jordan, Australia, Finland, and Sweden. Kiev has already sent its military forces to a number of NATO’s operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky stated that he was “grateful to the members of the Alliance for recognizing Ukraine’s significant contribution to joint peacekeeping operations in the world.” The deputy prime minister for European integration, Olga Stefanyshyna, announced that, on the basis of its new status, Ukraine will “be able to exchange operational information [with NATO] previously closed to us.” According to Stefanyshyna, Ukrainian delegates could now also participate in special NATO bodies as liaison officers for interaction and information exchange.

Zelensky and NATO general secretary Stoltenberg in Brussels, June 2019 (Photo: Ukraine's Presidential Administration)

Unsurprisingly, Russia has reacted negatively toward the announcement. Russian Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov stated that Ukraine’s new status does not “contribute to the strengthening of security and stability in Europe.”

The Ukrainian government has been engaged in a now six-year-long civil war against Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine that has claimed the lives of over 14,000 people, including over 3,000 civilians. The war has also displaced over 2 million from their homes. A 2019 UNICEF report found that over half a million children in the country “continue to face grave risks to their physical health and psychological well-being.”

The US and NATO heavily funded the Ukrainian military in this conflict, providing some $18 billion in military and other aid to the country since the 2014 US- and German-backed coup in Kiev, which triggered the outbreak of the civil war.

The move to more closely integrate the Ukrainian military into NATO structures further heightens the risk of a full-scale war between Russia and NATO on Ukrainian soil. It is taking place amid the most profound economic and social crisis since the Great Depression, making clear that the imperialist powers are responding to the growing class tensions by escalating their drive to war.

Coinciding with the NATO status change, the United States approved a $250 million military aid package that was supported by both the Trump administration and Congressional Democrats and Republicans. A US military official told the Military Times that the military aid “keeps a fair amount of Russian forces tied down that would otherwise be doing things directly against U.S. interests.”

Just days later, the United States announced that it had sent another $60 million in military aid to Ukraine including Javelin anti-tank missiles. Shortly thereafter, the US State Department announced it had cleared the sale of 16 naval patrol boats and other military equipment weapons, sensors, and communications gear worth $600 million to Ukraine.

While US President Donald Trump has, in some respects, displayed an ambivalent attitude toward Ukraine, mostly because of tactical considerations bound up with the raging infighting within the American state, he has in reality not diverted from the long-term goal of the American ruling class to turn Ukraine into a proxy in a potential war against Russia.

Despite being criticized from the right for being a Russian “secret agent” and impeached for holding up military aid to Ukraine, Trump was the first US president to openly send Ukraine lethal military aid in April 2018 with the initial delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the country.

According to some estimates, the United States has given approximately $7 billion to Ukraine since 1992. Ukraine is regularly the top recipient of foreign aid from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the region. Based on the figures by the US State Department, Ukraine has received $2 billion just from USAID since the 2014 coup.

Within Ukraine itself, the prospect of NATO membership has long generated controversy, with little support for the move among the Ukrainian working class, especially in eastern Ukraine, which shares close economic and social ties to Russia.

Prior to 2014, several public opinion polls demonstrated that while Ukrainians supported EU membership in hopes of improving their impoverished living standards, support for NATO membership was significantly lower.

Former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the 2014 coup, opposed seeking NATO membership. However, since the 2014 coup, the entire Ukrainian ruling class has moved fully toward increasing the country’s ties to NATO.

Despite garnering much of his support for criticizing the brazenly nationalistic and militaristic regime of former President Petro Poroshenko and declaring that he sought an end to the war in eastern Ukraine, since taking office Zelensky has continued to modernize Ukraine’s military forces in order to meet NATO standards.

Zelensky has also called for the country to receive full NATO membership, which he well knows would drastically increase the possibility of an all-out NATO-Russia military conflict. It would eliminate any possibility for a negotiated settlement to the ongoing civil war in eastern Ukraine. His government has reportedly worked since the fall of 2019 on the enhanced opportunities partner status.

Following months in which Zelensky faced intense pressure from sections of the oligarchy and the country’s far right over his engagement in the Normandy talks about the conflict in East Ukraine with Germany, France, and Russia—but not the US—in a surprise government reshuffle in early March, Zelensky brought in a series of officials with close ties to Washington.

While Ukraine remains Europe’s poorest country, according to the IMF, its defense spending now amounts to approximately 5.5 percent of the country’s GDP. Prior to the Western-backed coup in 2014, Ukraine’s military spending accounted for just 1 percent of GDP.