Large majority of Berlin voters back expropriation of German property companies

Markus Salzmann

A clear majority of voters in the German capital of Berlin has expressed support for the expropriation of major German property companies. In a referendum on Sunday, 56.4 percent voted in favor, and only 39 percent against. The referendum took place on the same day as the federal election and the state election to the Berlin House of Representatives.

A total of 1,034,709 eligible voters voted yes. The required quorum of 25 percent was achieved well before all votes were counted. The vote in the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was particularly decisive. There, 72 percent voted yes. Likewise, 64 percent in the Mitte district and almost 61 percent in Neukölln and Lichtenberg each voted for expropriation. In almost all districts there was a majority in favor of expropriating rental sharks. Only in Steglitz-Zehlendorf and Reinickendorf did the no vote win by a narrow margin.

This clear vote in favor of the expropriation of the large landlords is to be welcomed. It is an expression of the widespread opposition to the intolerable rents in Berlin and other large cities. Rents in the capital have doubled over the past 10 years, and the price of undeveloped land has increased eightfold. Especially in districts like Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg or Mitte, the displacement of people who can no longer afford the horrendous rents occurs on a daily basis. At the same time, corporations like Deutsche Wohnen, Vonovia or Akelius are reaping vast profits.

The signatures collected in the run-up to the referendum showed, even before the votes were cast, how widespread the anger is over the unrestrained enrichment of the rental sharks. In a short time, over 360,000 signatures were collected, far more than the 175,000 necessary for the referendum to be held.

The referendum demands the expropriation of all private housing companies with more than 3,000 apartments, with the exception of cooperatives. According to the referendum’s initiators, the measure affects 240,000 of the 1.5 million rental apartments in the capital. “Compensation well below market value” should be paid out, which is legally permissible. The initiators estimated a sum of €7.3 billion to €13.7 billion would be required to cover these costs.

While the majority of voters voted in favor of expropriation, the Social Democrats and the Greens, who emerged victorious from the election for the House of Representatives, made it unmistakably clear on election night that they would continue to represent the interests of the property sharks.

Franziska Giffey (SPD), who is expected to become the new mayor, spoke out very sharply against the referendum during the election campaign. In her opinion, expropriations do not contribute to the construction of the new housing that is needed. One day before the election, she said, “I don’t want to live in a city that sends the signal that we expropriate here.”

She reaffirmed this position on the Monday after the election. Knowing full well that the referendum does not have a specific bill as its subject matter and is therefore not legally binding for the Berlin State Senate, Giffey left no doubt that it will not be implemented under her leadership. On Monday, she only said that the feasibility of the referendum would be examined on the basis of a draft law. “If that’s not constitutional, we can’t do it either,” she added.

The top candidate of the Greens, Bettina Jarasch, whose party will in all likelihood form another coalition with the SPD in Berlin, made a similar statement. She wants to “take the result of the referendum seriously,” but there are still “many legal and practical questions to be clarified.”

In the summer, Jarasch announced that she would vote yes, but that the referendum was simply a means of exerting pressure on the housing corporations to voluntarily expand the residential sector geared to the common good. “The expropriation card is only played if a cooperative solution fails,” she said at the time.

Since then, she has come under massive pressure from the leadership of the Greens and has retreated accordingly. As an “alternative,” she proposed a voluntary pact between politicians and landlords for new buildings and fair rents, under the catchphrase “rental protection umbrella.” “It’s in the hands of the housing companies,” said Jarasch.

That is hard to beat in terms of cynicism and contempt for the will of the electorate. According to the will of the Greens, those responsible for the misery that has plundered the population for 30 years should continue to determine housing policy and “voluntarily” provide affordable housing. In 2004, the SPD and Left Party gifted tens of thousands of apartments to private real estate groups at bargain basement prices. Since then, they have done nothing to curb the steadily rising rents.

On the Friday before the referendum, the property giant Vonovia succeeded in taking over Deutsche Wohnen, which has 110,000 apartments in the capital, at the third time of asking. Despite the overwhelming vote in favor of expropriation, Vonovia’s shares rose by over 4 percent on Monday, making them the biggest winner on the German DAX stock exchange. On Sunday, the Swedish real estate giant Heimstaden announced that it had acquired around 14,000 apartments in the capital.

This clearly shows that the boardrooms of the real estate companies rely on the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party, who are expected to continue to govern in Berlin. The previous red-red-green Senate has worked closely with the real estate sharks. The governing mayor, Michael Müller (SPD), and the Senator responsible for housing, Sebastian Scheel (Left Party), supported the merger plans of the two real estate groups and emphasized the good cooperation with them.

Vonovia boss Rolf Buch made it clear that he wants to continue this close cooperation against the tenants once Giffey heads the Senate. “Vonovia is ready to take on the challenges on the Berlin housing market with a new state government and the relevant social actors in the city,” he said.

Expropriations would not solve the problems on the Berlin housing market, said this head of a housing company that distributed more than €350 million to shareholders in 2019. That was €2,100 per apartment, which flowed directly from the pockets of the tenants into the shareholders’ bank accounts.

The referendum on Sunday was preceded by several demonstrations against insane rents, some of which drew tens of thousands of participants. At the same time, there are more and more strikes and protests against low wages, mass layoffs and precarious working conditions. In Berlin, nurses from the state-owned Charité and Vivantes clinics have been on strike for three weeks, demanding more staff and reasonable wages.

Like the fight for higher wages and better working conditions, the fight against intolerable rents can only be successfully waged against the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party and the other established parties.

Sunday’s referendum is a first step, but it is nowhere near enough. Even the realization of the referendum’s demands would not solve the pressing problems, but at best alleviate them somewhat. This is due to the fact that the initiators themselves come largely from the ranks or surroundings of the Left Party and trade unions. Their whole strategy is geared towards getting the Senate to change course, which is obviously not possible.

COVID-19 cases surge among school children in Spain

Santiago Guillen

Two weeks after all schools in Spain reopened after the summer break, COVID-19 is clearly infecting growing numbers of children. Children have the highest incidence rates of the virus, due to the reopening of schools by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, and the fact that this age group is still unvaccinated.

Incidence rates in the past two weeks among children below 11 years of age stands at 113 per 100,000. Those under 11 years are followed by the 30–39-year bracket (70.12 per 100,000); 40-49 (64.61); over 80 (63.83); 20-29 (63.12); 12-19 (57.11); between 60 and 69 (49.69); between 50 and 59 (49.46); and between 70 and 79 (48.64).

Data on contagion in schools and the numbers of schools and classes closed or in quarantine are scant. Spain’s regional governments, who are in charge of public education, are scarcely disclosing information. In the north-western region of Galicia, educational centers reported 364 active cases, more than double the number of active COVID-19 cases a year ago (161).

Catalonia has gone from having 836 infected students on September 12, the day schools reopened, to 2,439 two weeks later. The number of classrooms closed due to infections are also growing. In the first week after schools reopened, there were 127 quarantined classrooms. According to the Confederation of Teaching Trade Unions, there were over 1,000 classrooms quarantined in the last three weeks of September.

In Catalonia, schools recorded 246 quarantined groups yesterday, 26 more than the previous week. There are 7,176 people from the educational community in quarantine, 690 more than in the previous count: 6,871 students, 293 educators and 12 external workers.

Valencia authorities confined 64 classrooms at 44 educational centers in the fourth week of September.

The surge in cases is the result of a deliberate policy implemented by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government in collaboration with the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and General Union of Workers (UGT) trade unions. The aim is to ensure that schools remain open, so parents can continue to work and pump out profits for the ruling class.

This policy is supported by the entire ruling establishment—including right-wing Popular Party (PP), Catalan and Basque nationalist or Podemos-backed PSOE regional governments—along with the corporate media, which is barely covering the spread of the virus among children.

The rise in cases was entirely predictable. Spain reopened most of its schools in the second week of September, a month after the US and UK. There, cases surged among kids after schools reopened.

In Scotland, schools reopened on August 16 after the summer break. Two weeks later, as the WSWS reported on August 30, 34 percent of cases were under 19 years old. Public Health Scotland reported a threefold rise in case rates for 16-17-year-olds since August 8, and a fivefold rise for 18-19-year-olds—compared to the national average, which doubled. Test positivity rates for children aged 2-17 stood at nearly 20 percent.

In the US, on August 29, roughly two weeks after some states had reopened schools, the WSWS reported that there were 180,000 child COVID-19 cases in the week ending August 19, a 50 percent increase in just one week. The prior week had seen 120,000 child cases.

All this information was readily available. The PSOE-Podemos government, however, decided to ignore the scientific evidence and reopen schools in pursuit of its “herd immunity” policy of prioritizing profits over human lives, which has already claimed 100,000 lives and infected 10 percent of Spain’s population.

Fernando Simón, director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, is making clear that the government has no intention of eliminating the virus. Last week, Simón said, “If the objective is to completely eliminate transmission, let’s forget it, it is impossible.” Earlier, he called on the Spanish population “to normalize the situation” and denounced social distancing measures like lockdowns as an overreaction, comparing it to “shooting a fly with a bazooka.”

Mass opposition, however, is mounting throughout Europe, the US and internationally to the homicidal policy of school reopenings, which has found powerful expression in the school strike set to take place in the UK and other countries this Friday, October 1.

The call was initiated by British parent Lisa Diaz statement via Twitter calling for a nationwide school strike in the UK on October 1. Nearly 60,000 British children have been infected with COVID-19 in just the first two weeks of school reopenings. Diaz has been supported by parents and educators in the UK, the US and internationally.

The anger of teachers, students, parents and the rest of the working class must find expression in the formation of rank-and-file committees, leading opposition to the policies of the PSOE-Podemos government and fighting for a policy of eliminating and eradicating of COVID-19.

Such an opposition can only be carried out against the CCOO and UGT trade unions. The unions, along with the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and pro-Podemos organizations such as the Students in Movement or the Student Union, make up the State Platform for Public Education (Plataforma Estatal por la Escuela Pública—PEEP). PEEP has become a key accomplice of the herd immunity strategy.

In a September 2 statement, it declared: “The educational community, as it did last year, continues to demand the safe return of students at all stages of education.” It also noted that education authorities had eliminated social distancing measures, making education patently unsafe. CCOO released a token statement in late August stating that “it is unacceptable that, in the midst of a pandemic, the course begins without sufficient safety measures and with 5,000 fewer teachers than last year.”

All the PEEP organizations defend the return to class though they themselves recognize that it is not safe. They have not organized any significant national action to oppose the return to work.

As for the CGT (a minority union claiming to be an alternative to the CCOO and UGT), and for the pro-Podemos Student Union and Students in Movement, they have not even bothered to comment on the pandemic and the return to schools.

This indifference for human lives is equally shared by pseudo-left organizations such as the Morenoist Revolutionary Current of Workers (CRT).

The CRT’s Izquierda Diario website, in a September 15 article on the new school year, claims the main issue facing public education is the budget. It mentions the pandemic only to state: “The isolation protocol for students in the event of COVID or contact [with someone infected] has also been modified, and only students who are not vaccinated will be confined, which may imply a violation of their rights. Furthermore, as the CGT points out, ‘without clear guidelines and without increasing the budget, they intend to create a new hybrid class system (face-to-face / virtual).”

The lack of budget and safety are important problems issues facing public education internationally. But CRT ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that even if there were sufficient masks, social distancing, and other policies in schools, this would still not entirely halt the transmission of a deadly virus that has already claimed over 15 million lives worldwide. The CRT’s only concern is to ensure that anger in the working class and parents does not escape the confines of the union bureaucracies.

US Congress faced with deadline to prevent federal shutdown

Patrick Martin

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer moved Wednesday to push through a continuing resolution to avert a shutdown of the federal government at midnight Thursday. In a bid to obtain Republican support in the House and Senate, the Democrats agreed to separate the question of spending authorization from a measure to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Senate Republicans blocked passage of a bill Monday that combined the temporary spending authorization with the lifting of the debt ceiling, carrying out a filibuster that Democrats failed to break. The vote to invoke cloture and end debate failed by 48-50. A cloture motion requires 60 votes and, in a Senate divided 50-50 between the two capitalist parties, requires bipartisan support.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., walks to the chamber for a vote, joined at left by actor Woody Harrelson, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

While the new version of the continuing resolution drops the issue of the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter to Congress Tuesday that the Treasury will exhaust by October 18 the various expedients it has been using to keep the federal debt below the ceiling of $21 trillion. At that point, the federal government will have to hold back payments for which it no longer has borrowing authority, including Social Security checks due to be sent out October 20.

The US government has never defaulted on its debt or social benefit payments, and even the prospect that it may do so in three weeks’ time has begun to affect the financial markets.

The current 2021 fiscal year ends on September 30, and without new spending authorization, most federal agencies, except the vast military-intelligence apparatus, would be required to shut down or operate with only a skeleton crew. The legislation to be introduced Wednesday night or Thursday morning in the Senate would allow agencies to spend at current levels until December 3, giving Congress two additional months to complete work on budget authorization for Fiscal Year 2022.

On Wednesday afternoon, Senate leaders in both parties said that the continuing resolution would not be approved until Thursday, only hours before the deadline, because of insistence by several Republican senators on including specific provisions in the bill, including US military aid to Israel and tighter screening of Afghan refugees brought to the United States after the collapse of the US-backed regime in Kabul last month. Negotiations were continuing into the evening Wednesday, however.

Passage of the resolution requires unanimous consent to suspend normal Senate rules, so any one senator can torpedo it. Only Republicans, however, are availing themselves of this leverage.

Schumer’s introduction of a new continuing resolution stripped of the debt ceiling increase represents yet another Democratic capitulation to a Republican filibuster. This is in keeping with the policy enforced by Biden since the beginning of the year, in the name of seeking bipartisan collaboration with “our Republican colleagues,” who backed Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election and blocked any investigation into the storming of Capitol January 6 by fascist Trump supporters.

Biden opposes any overturning of the filibuster, a longstanding anti-democratic procedure which requires 60 votes to take any legislative action in the Senate. This has become an all-purpose pretext for abandoning his election promises: a voting rights bill, legalization of DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants, and cosmetic measures against police violence have all failed to get the necessary 10 Republican senators.

The September 30 deadline for the continuing resolution and the October 18 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are among several such deadlines facing Congress. In each instance, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership face intransigent opposition from congressional Republicans and from right-wing factions within the Democratic Party itself, and in each case, their response has been to grovel and conciliate.

In the case of the debt ceiling, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who repeatedly backed increases in the debt limit when Republican Donald Trump was president, said he would not do so with Democrat Joe Biden in the White House and the Democrats in control of Congress.

Schumer called on Republicans to allow passage of an increase in the debt ceiling by unanimous consent, with all the Democrats voting for it and all the Republicans abstaining, but this could be blocked by any one Republican voicing an objection, so it is highly unlikely. The Democratic leadership has been counting of pressure from the financial markets, particularly the major banks and hedge funds, to force the Republicans to give way on the debt ceiling, but so far this strategy has been a failure.

McConnell said that the Democrats could incorporate a rise in the debt limit into the social spending legislation they are planning to pass under a filibuster-proof procedure known as budget reconciliation. However, the budget resolution which permits passage of the reconciliation bill, passed by the House and Senate in August, did not include a provision for raising the debt ceiling.

Schumer said that there was not sufficient time to revise the budget resolution and then enact a reconciliation bill before the October 18 deadline. As a practical matter, this may be true, but the real problem for the Democrats is that a right-wing faction within their own party, in both the Senate and the House, objects to the $3.5 trillion price tag and wants to cut it in half, if not scuttle the reconciliation bill altogether.

The Democrats do not want to incorporate the debt ceiling increase into the reconciliation bill because it is not at all clear that the reconciliation bill will actually pass the Senate, since that would require the support of all 50 Democrats plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Two right-wing Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have so far refused to support the bill, while declining to publicly declare their objections. Manchin has indicated general opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag, without specifying a counter-proposal. Sinema is reported to oppose any tax increase on the wealthy, the principal mechanism through which the social spending in the reconciliation bill is to be financed. Both Manchin and Sinema have made repeated trips to the White House in recent days for talks with Biden and other administration officials.

The stalemate over the reconciliation bill is holding up House passage of the infrastructure bill passed last month by the Senate by a bipartisan majority, including 19 Republicans, among them McConnell. As part of a deal with a right-wing (aka “moderate”) faction of House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had promised a House vote on Monday that would send the legislation to the White House for Biden’s signature, but she had to reschedule the vote to Thursday after half the members of the House Progressive Caucus said they would vote against the bill unless there was Senate action to advance the reconciliation bill.

The vote on the infrastructure bill was rescheduled for Thursday, but there were reports that it could again be postponed. Any delay, however, would result in the shutdown of federally financed construction projects all over the country, since the legislation includes a budget extension for the Department of Transportation, which was separated out from the continuing resolution for the rest of the federal government.

While both capitalist parties portray the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as a vast effort at social reform—the Republicans screaming about socialism, the Democrats claiming another “New Deal”—the scale of the bill is drastically overstated. Spread out over ten years, the social spending package is less than half the gargantuan sums earmarked for the Pentagon, which at the present level of spending would amount to nearly $8 trillion.

The bill does not create any new social programs, but extends certain federal benefits, such as the child tax credit, to more families and makes it permanent, rather than rolled over year after year. Medicare would add dental, vision and hearing benefits, although these would be phased in over many years. Medicaid eligibility would be expanded and Head Start broadened to become a universal pre-K program for three- and four-year-olds. Other funds will pass directly into the hands of private businesses or local institutions—community colleges, child care centers, and companies providing home health care for seniors and weatherization for homes.

Given the ten-year scope and the phased-in character of the benefit increases, when the Democratic Party loses control of Congress, which could take place as soon as next year, a Republican majority could repeal the social benefits and any tax increases on corporations and the wealthy immediately.

Public anger over cover-up of Pike River mine disaster

Tom Peters

There is widespread anger at the New Zealand government’s decision to seal Pike River coal mine, ending the manned underground investigation into the 2010 disaster that claimed 29 lives. The Pike River Recovery Agency is currently working on a permanent concrete seal at the mine entrance.

The Labour Party-led government, including its then-coalition partner NZ First and the Greens, promised before and after the 2017 election to re-enter the mine to look for bodies and examine physical evidence. Its stated aim was to prosecute those in Pike River Coal’s management responsible for the appalling lack of safety in the mine, which led to the series of underground explosions. More than a decade later, no one has been held accountable for this preventable tragedy.

Family members and supporters protest on July 9, 2021, on the road to the Pike River mine. (Credit: Kath Monk)

The majority of the victims’ families opposed the decision to seal the mine without exploring the mine workings to establish the precise cause of the explosions. Their wishes, supported by international mining experts and thousands of ordinary people, have been disregarded.

Every party in parliament supports this cover-up, as does the trade union bureaucracy. The corporate media is complicit; it has completely blacked out the broad opposition in the working class to the government’s actions.

Malcolm Campbell, whose son, also named Malcolm, died at Pike River, responded in the Facebook group Uncensored Pike to the September 18 WSWS article reporting on the sealing of the mine:

“Now we have come to the end of our fight for justice and recovery of our loved ones killed doing their jobs for these incompetent so-called mine managers and corrupt government.” He asked how the dangerous mine got approved and was allowed to operate.

“So sad for all the families it has come down to our loved ones [remaining in this] hellhole, they deserved better,” Campbell said. “We as a family thank all our family and friends here and around the world for their everlasting support and kind words over these difficult years, so sorry we couldn’t get Malky home, thinking of you all xx.”

In the Facebook group Underground Miners, which includes thousands of mineworkers from around the world, the WSWS’s article received more than 200 reactions and 50 comments, almost all denouncing the NZ government.

Troy Reynolds wrote: “Very disappointing for the families and yes it feels a little like a cover up. Even if there is no fault to be had I am sure there are some poor mums and dads who will now go to their grave without closure.”

Jamie Harris commented: “The government should give the families some closure over this. They want to know. They also want other companies to learn from this, so others don’t have to go through it. No family should have to go through waiting for their loved ones to come home from work.”

In the Uncensored Pike group, Karyn Stewart was one of hundreds of people who commented, opposing the sealing. She questioned the role of Andrew Little, minister responsible for Pike River re-entry, who was leader of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) when the mine exploded.

“Isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Karyn asked. “How can Little front the recovery when he was a part of the union that allowed the health and safety violations?” She added: “The issues with Pike have been beset with corruption from beginning to end and one of the problems seems to be that the mainstream media are silent (have been silenced) over publishing anything.”

The union took no industrial action that could have prevented the disaster and made no public criticism of the life-threatening conditions in the mine. Little’s immediate response following the first explosion was to defend the company’s safety record.

Marc Thomlinson, who worked at Pike River mine, wrote a statement on Little’s Facebook page on September 23, highlighting that Little was aware of Pike River’s violations in 2009:

“I remember the first time I met you Andrew. I was a union delegate at an EPMU meeting held in Reefton, 2009. [...] You shook my hand at the conclusion of the meeting where we both shared a concern with the Pike River Mine in regards to the [inadequate] ventilation and secondary egress.” In violation of the law, government regulators allowed Pike River to operate with no proper emergency exit.

Thomlinson said to Little: “You looked me in the eye and affirmed to me that you were aware of the situation.” He urged the minister to “bring our men home to where they belong, because it is the right thing to do.”

The World Socialist Web Site has also received a statement supporting the Pike River families from Professor Maan Alkaisi, whose wife, Dr Maysoon Abbas, was one of 115 people who died in the collapse of the CTV building in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

In late 2017 Brendan Horsley, then deputy solicitor-general, advised police not to lay any charges against those responsible for the building’s design, despite a mountain of evidence that it violated numerous laws and regulations and was essentially a death trap.

“After more than ten years the victims of the CTV building collapse are still waiting for accountability and justice,” Alkaisi said. “We have been let down by the very people who are supposed to protect us and apply the rules of law. The similarities of the CTV case with Pike River tragedy [show] that our legal system is dysfunctional when it comes to ensuring justice for victims.

“This is demonstrated by the delay in starting the investigation, by ignoring significant evidence, relying on irrelevant matters, the decision not to prosecute anyone for the loss of lives, the silence of government and legal officials, the lack of accountability when it comes to influential, well-connected wealthy culprits, and not answering our legitimate questions.”

He believed Crown Law, the state’s solicitors, “avoid going through cases of national or even international significance” because they are part of an “old boys’ club” and are “incompetent and scared” of facing lawyers hired by the wealthy.

On February 23, 2021, the day after the tenth anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in parliament that New Zealand would continue to “stand with” the victims.

However, Alkaisi said that the day before, “when I asked our PM to meet to explain to her in private our concerns regarding the decision not to prosecute, and victims’ mistreatment, she refused to meet with me. How do you expect us to trust the politicians? How do you expect us to trust the decision Crown Law made not to prosecute was the right decision? Why were decisions made behind closed doors and without documentation? Why not conduct a just trial in front of a Judge and Jury?

“Our government has both a legal and moral responsibility to uphold our justice system to ensure it protects all citizens, and to ensure in situations where lives were lost, that those responsible will be held accountable in accordance with the rule of law. That is justice.

“The CTV collapse and Pike River tragedies will only end, when those responsible are held to account, when there is proper closure for victims and when justice is done.”

The Human Costs of iPhones

Mike Ferner

Like many of you, I use an iPhone. It is a technological wonder and allows me to do things unimaginable even a few years ago; it has more computer power than NASA had to put men on the Moon in the late 1960s-early 1970s. These phones are designed by Apple, Inc.

Yet, how many of us users ever ask what are the conditions under which these iPhones are produced?  What are these conditions doing to China’s workers, who assemble such wonderful instruments?

These are questions rarely asked in a world where the “free market” reigns.  Actually, the free market is an ideological construct, where basic questions about the impact on workers or upon the environment are precluded by definition:  the whole game is to focus concentration on consumption.  In other words, as long as you have the money (or access to credit), you can get whatever your heart desires, and issues of size, style, color, texture, etc., prevail. But just don’t ask about the workers, or the environment.

Until now, the fate of the workers (and the environment) in the production of the iPhone has been ignored.  However, with Dying for an iPhone:  Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers, those days are over:  Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai examine in great detail the lives of workers of a company called Foxconn, the company that produces the overwhelmingly large number of Apple’s products.  (Foxconn also produce for other American companies, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and others, but the overwhelming focus in this book concerns production for Apple.)

Because Foxconn is based in Taiwan, with much production in China that is produced for consumers in the United States, this is a global study of labor discipline, and we need to keep that perspective in mind.  But it’s strength is the detailed examination of production within China.

Motivating this study was a number of suicides by Foxconn workers during early 2010:  workers were killing themselves to spare themselves further misery of working in these factories.  The authors begin the book with a statement from a Chinese worker’s blog:

To die is the only way to testify that we ever lived.  Perhaps for the Foxconn employees and employees like us, the use of death is to testify that we were ever alive at all, and that while we lived, we had only despair.

These workers were largely migrants from rural parts of China, seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones.  Their paths took them into Foxconn’s factories.  Not all survived, but factory life took a toll on all of them.

Foxconn’s parent company was started in 1974 and has become a corporate behemoth.

Within four decades, Foxconn would move evolve from a small processing factory to become the world leader in high-end electronics manufacturing with plants extending throughout China and, subsequently, throughout the world.  Foxconn has more than two hundred subsidiaries and branch offices in Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

Foxconn is the world’s largest industrial employer, with over 1 million workers, mostly based in China.  This book focuses on working conditions in China:  “Foxconn’s largest customer by far is Apple,” and “Apple’s success is intimately bound up with the production of quality products at high speed.”

With this understanding and beginning in the summer of 20l10, researchers from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong began undercover research in Foxconn’s major manufacturing plants in nine different Chinese cities.

Theirs's is a sophisticated study, not only looking at different plants in China but in recognizing the differences—and lower wages—for workers in the interior from those working in coastal regions.  Accordingly, these looks at the developmental processes by the Chinese government as it seeks to improve the lives of Chinese people throughout the country.

Accordingly, this book looks at the intersection of Apple’s products, Foxconn’s production facilities, and Chinese development policies—and how, together, they affect Chinese workers, especially in Foxconn’s factories.

The authors do not see workers as passive victims; they seem them as active subjects trying to maintain their personal dignity, their unity, and their sanity while working under extremely demanding conditions.  Obviously, not all survive.  Yet these workers often seek opportunities to engage in collective efforts, and strikes are not unheard of.  One example provided was a strike during 2011:  workers struck in one plant when Foxconn was under pressure to produce a new model of the iPad.  Within 10 minutes after workers walked off the job in one action, senior management was down on the shopfloor talking with the workers about their demands after previously refusing

Yet the typical response is quick:

In massive strikes, either the employer or government officials require workers to elect representatives, generally limited to five, to engage in talks.  Once worker representatives are elected, the company moves to take control.  Their intervention typically marks the beginning of the fragmentation, co-optation, and crushing of worker power.  Frequently, the worker representatives are identified as troublemakers and dismissed.

Yet the workers also learn.  When this strike took place, instead of sending up a few representatives, the workers’ cried, “We are all leaders,” and refused to back down.  It was interesting to see the Chinese workers provide an answer to management that was the same used by Wobblies in the US in the early 1900s!

There are also environmental problems affecting workers’ lives.  For example, the shiny aluminum MacBook cases need to be grinded down, putting aluminum dust in the air, harming workers’ respiratory systems.  There are also chemicals used in production that are discharged into the environment, and toxic wastes are often untreated before discharging.

In short, this is not just about China, Taiwan, or the United States:  it is a very sophisticated study of the development of capitalism—whose key is control of labor—in modern electronics factories around the world.  There is much to learn from it.

This is the latest in a growing literature on China and Chinese workers under the Chinese Communist Party.  It shows there are major inequities still remaining, and like said above, much of it is based on labor being controlled.  This book is a major contribution to understanding the situations of Chinese workers and it is extremely well done.  I give it my highest accolade:  I wish I had done this study.

Yet, following, there are two things I think the growing globalization from below literature shows:  Chinese workers need to be able to extend their organization not only within particular regions, but across regions of the countries; they must learn from others’ experiences as how to do this.  Yet I doubt they can solve their problems alone.  At the same time, American and other workers around the world, and especially those within unions, need to develop links to these Chinese workers’ organizations as they develop, and build on-going and practical solidarity with these workers:  my thinking is that seafaring, longshore, and transportation workers in particular need to further organize among themselves, and be prepared to support Chinese workers’ efforts.

The Untold Story of Why Palestinians Are Divided

Ramzy Baroud

The political division in Palestinian society is deep-rooted, and must not be reduced to convenient claims about the ‘Hamas-Fatah split’, elections, the Oslo accords and subsequent disagreements. The division is linked to events that preceded all of these, and not even the death or incapacitation of the octogenarian, Mahmoud Abbas, will advance Palestinian unity by an iota.

Palestinian political disunity is tied to the fact that the issue of representation in Palestinian society has always been an outcome of one party trying to dominate all others. This dates back to Palestinian politics prior to the establishment of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, when various Palestinian clans fought for control over the entire Palestinian body politic. Disagreements led to conflict, often violent, though, at times, it also resulted in relative harmony – for example, the establishment of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) in 1936.

These early years of discord duplicated themselves in later phases of the Palestinian struggle. Soon after Egyptian leader, Jamal Abdel Nasser, relinquished his influential role over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) following the humiliating Arab defeat in 1967, the relatively new Fatah Movement – established by Yasser Arafat and others in 1959 – took over. Since then, Fatah has mostly controlled the PLO, which was declared in Rabat, in 1974, to be the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.

The latter caveat was arguably added to ensure Arab rivals do not lay claim over the PLO, thus impose themselves as the benefactors of the Palestinian cause. However, long after the danger of that possibility had passed, Arafat and Fatah continued to control the PLO using the phrase as a moral justification for dominance and the elimination of political rivals.

While it is easy to jump to conclusions blaming Palestinians for their division, there is more to the story. Since much of the armed Palestinian struggle took place within various Arab political and territorial spaces, PLO groups needed to coordinate their actions, along with their political positions, with various Arab capitals – Cairo, Damascus, Amman and even, at times, Baghdad, Tripoli, Algiers and Sana’a. Naturally, this has deprived Palestinians of real, independent initiatives.

Arafat was particularly astute at managing one of the most difficult balancing acts in the history of liberation movements: keeping relative peace among Palestinian groups, appeasing Arab hosts and maintaining his control over Fatah and the PLO. Yet, even Arafat was often overwhelmed by circumstances well beyond his control, leading to major military showdowns, alienating him further and breaking down Palestinian groups to even smaller factions – each allied and supported by one or more Arab governments.

Even Palestinian division has rarely been a Palestinian decision, although the Palestinian leadership deserves much blame for failing to develop a pluralistic political model that is not dependent in its survival on a single group or individual.

The Oslo Accords of 1993 and the return of some of the Palestinian groups to Palestine in the following months and years was presented, at the time, as a critical step towards liberating Palestinian decision making from Arab and other influences. While that claim worked in theory, it failed in practice, as the newly established Palestinian National Authority (PNA) quickly became hostage to other, even greater influences: Israel, the United States and the so-called donor countries. This US-led apparatus linked its political and financial support to the Palestinians agreeing to a set of conditions, including the cracking down on anti-Israel ‘incitement’ and the dismantling of ‘terrorist infrastructures.’

While such a new political regime forced Palestinian groups to yet another conflict, only Hamas seemed powerful enough to withstand the pressure amassed by Fatah, the PA and Israel combined.

The Hamas-Fatah feud did not start as an outcome of Oslo and the establishment of the PA. The latter events merely exacerbated an existing conflict. Immediately after Hamas’ establishment in late 1987, PLO parties, especially Fatah, viewed the new Islamic movement with suspicion, for several reasons: Hamas began and expanded outside the well-controlled political system of the PLO; it was based in Palestine, thus avoiding the pitfalls of dependency on outside regimes; and, among other reasons, promoted itself as the alternative to the PLO’s past failures and political compromises.

Expectedly, Fatah dominated the PA as it did the PLO and, in both cases, rarely used truly democratic channels. As the PA grew richer and more corrupt, many Palestinians sought the answer in Hamas. Consequently, Hamas’ growth led to the movement’s victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. Conceding to a triumphant Hamas would have been the end of Fatah’s decades-long dominance over the Palestinian political discourse – let alone the loss of massive funding sources, prestige and many other perks. Thus, conflict seemed inevitable, leading to the tragic violence in the summer of 2007, and the eventual split between Palestinians- with Fatah dominating the PA in the occupied West Bank and Hamas ruling over besieged Gaza.

Matters are now increasingly complicated, as crises of political representation afflicting the PLO and the PA are likely to soon worsen with the power struggle under way within the Fatah movement. Though lacking Arafat’s popularity and respect among Palestinians, Abbas’ ultimate goal was the same: singlehandedly dominating the Palestinian body politic. However, unlike Arafat who, using manipulation and bribes kept the Fatah movement intact, Fatah under Abbas is ready to dismantle into smaller factions. Chances are the absence of Abbas will lead to a difficult transition within Fatah that, if accompanied with protests and violence, could result in the disintegration of the Fatah movement altogether.

To depict the current Palestinian political crisis in reductionist notions about a Hamas-Fatah ‘split’ – as if they were ever united – and other cliches, is to ignore a history of division that must not be solely blamed on Palestinians. In the post-Abbas Palestine, Palestinians must reflect on this tragic history and, instead of aiming for easy fixes, concentrate on finding common ground beyond parties, factions, clans and privileges. Most importantly, the era of one party and a single individual dominating all others must be left behind and, this time, for good.

Child Labor: Which Side are Democracies On?

Timothy Ryan

Two years ago, when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro favorably promoted the idea of labor for children as young as eight or nine, his minister for Human Rights, Family, and Women shot back: “Let us be clear that for children to work is a violation of their rights, something that cannot be allowed.” The Brazilian National Forum for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour publicly expressed “its vehement repudiation of the statement of Mr. Jair Bolsonaro…The declaration reveals a total disregard for the 1988 Federal Constitution…which prohibits all forms of child labour under the age of 16.”

According to the International Labor Organization’s latest report last fall, despite years of declining rates worldwide, child labor is indeed on the rise again. And the increase began before COVID exacerbated the situation.

Shortly before Bolsonaro issued his statement, more than a dozen anti-child labor organizations from Central and South America came together in Costa Rica to take stock of the struggle and make plans for 2021, the UN-designated Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. One challenge had become clear: the surge in right-wing authoritarian governments across Latin America has threatened years of progress.

“This is particularly worrying,” said Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Global March Against Child Labor, in 2019, “since Latin America has seen some of the most significant progress over the past decade to eliminate child labor.” Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his decades of rescuing tens of thousands of child laborers and advocating for the rights of children.

From the viciously anti-civil rights platform of Bolsonaro to the string of authoritarian governments coming to power in Central America, child labor activists in the region feel embattled and under pressure. The forum participants from Nicaragua said flatly they would not be able to hold such a meeting of child labor groups in the current atmosphere in their country. Fortunately, the government of Costa Rica remains committed to this process and aspires to be the first country in the world to eliminate child labor.

But this trend isn’t limited to the Americas. It’s been axiomatic that everywhere right-wing authoritarians have recently gained power they have attacked basic civil liberties including human and labor rights. And child labor is the canary in the coal-mine of all other labor rights violations.

This year’s focus on child labor by the UN affords organizations like the Global March important advocacy opportunities. Two that were discussed in advance of the UN General Assembly meeting in September, and one now on the agenda of the International Labor Organization, offer democratic countries the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the authoritarians and dictators.

The first of these, promoted by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the trade union umbrella organization representing 200 million workers worldwide, is the Global Fund for Social Protection. This is an effort to institutionalize more defined social safety net investments by governments and help poorer countries to protect marginalized workers. “The time has come to extend social protection to the half of the world’s people who have none and to the almost 20 percent who only have only partial coverage,” says Sharan Burrow, ITUC general secretary. “Many governments are finally having to recognise the urgency of social protection—including unemployment protection for people who have lost their livelihoods, paid sickness benefits, and access to healthcare.”

The second campaign, led by Satyarthi and supported by child labor groups around the world including the Global March, is the call for a “Fair Share for Children.” Such provisions in the national budgets of all governments would address child rights, including child labor, and provide universal quality education for all.

The inequities and inequalities these initiatives were formulated to address were immensely important pre-COVID. Now with child labor again on the rise and the pandemic affecting hundreds of millions of workers and their families, the adoption of these policies is critical.

So, when it comes to child labor, this is an opportunity for democracies to demonstrate which side they are on. Although the challenge is steep for poorer countries, the issue here isn’t about rich countries versus poor countries—it’s about the values of liberal democracy and human rights versus totalitarian impulses in countries that may also be wealthy. Beyond the UN and the ILO, the G20 presents another challenge to address this issue. South Africa, the UK, Germany, and France are some of the democracies that presumably are taking these questions seriously. But the G20 also includes Brazil, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey where relative wealth has little to do with how repressive their regimes are.

With the new Biden administration bringing into the government many progressive voices on labor and human rights, it will be interesting to see which way the United States goes on these questions. The Department of Labor has demonstrated a long-term commitment to supporting organizations fighting child labor. But with these new policy options on the table, will democracies commit to practical, progressive alternatives or side with the authoritarians?

Mexicans protest on seventh anniversary of disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa students

Rafael Azul

Seven years after the disappearance 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teaching college in the southwestern state of Guerrero, workers and youth mobilized in a week of protests across Mexico.

On the night of September 26–27, 2014, 57 students from the school, on their way to a protest rally in Mexico City, were seized after a confrontation with the police and the Mexican Army. In the confrontation, six were killed and 25 injured. Of those who were abducted, 43 went missing. Since then, the partial remains of three of the students have been found and identified.

The days of protests began on September 21, when parents of the 43 missing students marched in the streets of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero State, together with members of the Mexican Federation of Socialist Rural Students (Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de México, FESM). The Chilpancingo demonstrators demanded a resolution to the case of the 43 students who were disappeared by the Mexican state.

"Ayotzinapa Lives" (Credit: Rocío Arias Puga)

This demand was repeated in all the rallies that took place across the country during the week, culminating in a mass demonstration in Mexico City on Sunday, September 26. Thousands of workers and students marched in the capital city and across the country chanting, “Where are they?” and “¡Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!” (They were taken alive, we want them back alive!) and demanding that the government respond.

The parents of the 43 disappeared students denounced the government’s refusal to bring to justice the architects of the “historical truth” about the crime—a fictional account of the events leading up to the disappearance of the 43 students that night, seven years ago—concealing evidence of the involvement of the Mexican armed forces in their disappearance and presumed murder.

In October 2018, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) included uncovering the truth of the events of that night as one of his campaign promises when running for office. Almost halfway into his six-year mandate, this promise is still unfulfilled.

At a recent meeting with the parents, Lopez Obrador declared that the government is pursuing two lines of inquiry: seeking to recover remains and investigating the role played by officials of the Peña Nieto government (2012-2018) who invented the phony narrative misnamed “the historical truth.”

On September 24, as the protests were taking place, it was announced that 40 videos have been brought to light, further exposing the lies of the government’s “historical truth.” The videos, taped by the now-defunct National Investigations and Security Center (Centro de Investigaciones y Seguridad Nacional, CISEN), show government officials in the act of torturing witnesses in 2014 to extract confessions buttressing their false narrative. The videos, compiled by the Special Unit of Investigation and Litigation (Unidad Especial de Investigación y Litigación, UESIL), are further proof showing the initial investigation was manipulated by the Peña Nieto government.

The interrogations were videotaped between October 2014 (just days after the disappearance of the 43) and January 2015. The objective was to torture witnesses and suspects into repeating the government’s manufactured version of the facts. At the center of this plot were Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam and the Director of Criminal Investigations Tomas Zeron, who has since fled to Israel.

As a result of these maneuvers, the government of President Peña Nieto announced that the 43 students had died at the hands of a local criminal drug cartel, Guerreros Unidos, which had burned their bodies at a garbage dump, placed their remains in plastic bags and thrown them into the San Juan River in Cocula, a town near Iguala, where the attack on the students took place.

Federal authorities insisted that their findings were not to be doubted, calling them the “historical truth,” a phrase first used by Murillo Karam. With this incantation, the investigation of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43 was effectively frozen, covering up the role of the military.

Evidence since then has revealed that the Army’s 27th Infantry Division, stationed in Guerrero State, was deeply involved. The disappeared students were taken to the army base, tortured and then delivered to the Guerreros Unidos gang for incineration at a local mortuary. Small pieces of remains were planted in the vicinity of the San Juan River to lend veracity to the official story.

From the beginning, relatives of the disappeared students questioned this official story. Their suspicions were confirmed by an investigation carried out by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) and its Interdisciplinary Independent Experts Group (GIEI) that demolished the government’s account.

A year ago, President Lopez Obrador indicated that arrests would begin of 89 people involved in the case. So far, 40 individuals have been arrested, including Capt. Jose Martinez Crespo of the 27th Infantry, allegedly for conducting the interrogations of the disappeared students. The relatives insist that this is the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile, the armed forces continue to stonewall the investigation.

Twenty-one on the arrest list have either died or been assassinated.

Since 1964, over 90,000 people have been “disappeared” in Mexico. In addition, some 52,000 bodies have yet to be identified out of an estimated death toll of 250,000. This war on society accelerated under the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012). Under the pretext of a “war on drug gangs,” the Mexican government unleashed a brutal class war targeting human rights advocates, left-wing activists and the press. The attack on the Ayotzinapa students was part of this campaign. Only a small minority of the casualties and arrests from this war involved members of drug syndicates.

The so-called war on the drug gangs took place in the context of the Merida Initiative, a US-Mexico military alliance, established in 2007, supporting the Mexican armed forces with training and armaments that have been used mainly to repress the population.