IATSE movie and television workers vote overwhelmingly to strike

Hong Jian

Around 60,000 production workers in the movie and television industry voted to authorize strike action, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced on Tuesday. Over 90 percent of the membership turned out to vote, with 98.6 percent voting in favor of a strike.

IATSE workers picket (IATSE Local 700 Organizing Department)

As if on cue, within hours of the announcement of the results of the strike vote, both IATSE and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced they would be resuming negotiations on Tuesday, October 4, after a two-month hiatus brought on by the renegotiation of the COVID-19 protocols just as the Delta variant was surging across California and the country as a whole.

Those loosened protocols, which were set to expire on September 30, were further extended until the end of October, according to management, though the union leadership stated that there was merely a “tacit agreement” to extend them.

When the studios wanted to make it easier to carry out production work by loosening the restrictions in place to keep workers safe during a global pandemic, IATSE not only agreed, but they put the contract negotiations on hold to do so, and gave the AMPTP a two-month extension. During that time, IATSE claims that AMPTP refused their last offer and refused to come back to the table, yet they waited.

IATSE President Matthew Loeb and the rest of the leadership waited to hold a strike authorization vote until over two weeks after the extension of the original contract expired. This delay took place even after the AMPTP said that they wanted to more than double the number of hours required yearly before IATSE members can qualify for the pension.

After the announcement of the results of the strike vote, the AMPTP said that it “remains committed to reaching an agreement that will keep the industry working. We deeply value our IATSE crew members and are committed to working with them to avoid shutting down the industry at such a pivotal time, particularly since the industry is still recovering from the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. A deal can be made at the bargaining table, but it will require both parties working together in good faith with a willingness to compromise and to explore new solutions to resolve the open issues.”

In response to this statement, one worker had this to say: “‘We deeply value our IATSE crew members’—just not enough to guarantee a humane lunch hour. Or humane working hours. Or to admit that streaming services aren’t ‘new media’ and haven’t been for a really long time. But yeah, we deeply value you all! But pity the poor Hollywood producers. It’s been a rough year for them with covid. They’re only pulling in billions of dollars of profit. How dare IATSE ask for humane conditions! Now’s not the right time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Say it with us now, ‘Next time.’ Pity these poor Hollywood producers, most of whom identify as liberals. Who ‘like’ posts on Facebook from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Who virtue signal with a retweeted AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] story. Pity them for they know in their hearts of hearts that they’re corporate shills, doing the bidding of their overlords to drain the life out of the middle and working classes.”

Immediately after the vote, Loeb stated: “The ball is in their court. If they want to avoid a strike, they will return to the bargaining table and make us a reasonable offer.” Asking for a reasonable offer from the AMPTP is an open signal that the IATSE leadership is more than willing sacrifice workers’ demands, which include an end to excessively unsafe and harmful working hours, a livable wage for the lowest paid workers, reasonable rest during meal breaks, between workdays and on weekends, and equitable pay and conditions for those working on “new media” or streaming projects.

IATSE workers voted to strike for the first time in its 128-year history because the conditions to which they are subjected are untenable, including constant 12-16 hour days, no rest, no sleep and poverty wages.

One worker, commenting on a statement from someone in management, replied: “I’m sure that 2nd (walking) meal of cold pizza that you approved from your tower office sounds delicious. It’s not. Neither is the cereal I’m going to have for dinner when I get home from my 17 hour day. Cereal because I only have an 8 hour turn around and I don’t have to time to cook. Also because I haven’t had time to shop for groceries since it’s my 4th 17 hour day in a row.”

After the resumption of negotiations was announced, Loeb said: “The members have spoken loud and clear. This vote is about the quality of life as well as the health and safety of those who work in the film and television industry. Our people have basic human needs like time for meal breaks, adequate sleep, and a weekend. For those at the bottom of the pay scale, they deserve nothing less than a living wage.”

If Loeb and the rest of the IATSE leadership were truly interested or if they truly cared about the health and safety of their membership, they would not have agreed to a loosening of the COVID-19 protocols as the Delta variant was surging, nor would they “tacitly” agree to extend those loosened protocols while they were attempting to negotiate a new contract. Nor would they have recommended the membership to vote yes on the previous contract, or the one before, the conditions under which the leadership now admits are intolerable. Loeb, who takes home a yearly compensation package of more than $500,000, has been sitting atop the union and every negotiation since 2008.

The pandemic and the associated slowing down of production that it entailed left IATSE workers with more bargaining power than ever. However, each day that production is allowed to continue squanders this opportunity weakens the effects of any future strike activity by giving the producers breathing space to wait out any possible strike.

BJP provocation against Indian farmer protest leaves nine dead

Kranti Kumara

Four protesting farmers and a local journalist were killed Sunday in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after a convoy of SUVs—including one owned by Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni, the minister of state for Home Affairs in Narendra Modi’s far-right BJP government—deliberately ploughed into them.

Toyota workers and Karnataka farmers stage joint procession in Bengaluru (Credit: WSWS)

The driver of one of the SUVs and three BJP workers were killed when farmers outraged by the wanton attack set upon them and beat them to death. Two SUVs were also set alight.

The deadly altercation occurred near Lakhimpur Kheri on the Tikonia-Banbirpur road about 130 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow.

According to farmers who witnessed the attack, one of the four farmers was shot dead by BJP Minister Ajay Mishra’s son, Ashish Mishra. The latter, however, claims he was not part of the convoy.

The dead farmers—Gurwinder Singh, 19; Lovepreet Singh, 20; Daljeet Singh, 35; and Nachattar Singh, 60—were among a crowd that had gathered to protest the BJP’s pro-agribusiness farm laws. Ajay Mishra, the local MP, was a particular target of the protest because he had recently made threatening statements against the now nearly year-long agitation against the BJP’s farm “reform” laws.

The speeding SUVs also injured 12 farmers, and a further 50 sustained injuries, some serious, when the Uttar Pradesh police intervened with their customary savagery.

Sunday’s murderous attack on the farmers has prompted an outcry across India and fury in the Lakhimpur Kheri district. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government, which is led by close Modi ally Yogi Adityanath, has placed the district under the draconian Section 144 of the Indian Criminal Code, outlawing all gatherings of more than four people. It has also deployed paramilitaries, and, without any public announcement, suspended Lakhimpur Kheri’s internet and cellphone service. Opposition leaders who have attempted to visit the area to speak with the farmers, including the Congress Party’s Priyanka Gandhi, have been barred from doing so and detained.

Such tactics—which have long been employed by Indian governments, whether led by the Congress or BJP, in Indian-held Kashmir—are increasingly being used to suppress social opposition across India.

The Lucknow Journalists’ Association has sent a letter to the UP government demanding a judicial inquiry into the death of local television journalist Raman Kashyap and the laying of murder charges against those responsible. It is also seeking financial compensation for his family. There are conflicting reports as to how Kashyap died. According to some accounts, he was beaten to death by BJP goons for having filmed the SUVs deliberately mowing protesters down.

Media reports say the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh has announced a 4.5 million rupee (about $61,000) compensation package for the families of the dead farmers.

The exact details of the attack are unclear, but there is no question it arises out of the increasingly violent atmosphere being whipped up against the protesting farmers by the BJP government at the centre and in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Chief Minister Adityanath is a virulent Hindu supremacist who routinely runs roughshod over basic democratic rights and unleashes state violence to terrorize government opponents, Muslims and other minorities. He has denounced the farmers’ protests—an agitation that has galvanized farmers especially in the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab and won the sympathy of working people across India—as “a conspiracy to destabilize the country.”

In a tweet, the UP chief minister vowed Sunday’s events will be “thoroughly investigated and the involvement of antisocial elements … brought to light.” “Antisocial elements” is a phrase Adityanath and other BJP leaders often use to smear those opposing their pro-big business and Hindu supremacist agenda.

Relatives of the deceased farmers and their supporters remained at the site of Sunday’s murderous attack, with their battered corpses on display, for much of Monday. While the UP government mobilized state security forces, it ultimately relied on the leaders of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU—Indian Peasants Union) to help defuse the situation. They urged farmers to “maintain the peace” and not descend on Lakhimpur Kheri. After meeting with top UP officials, BKU spokesperson Rakesh Tikait convinced those at the attack site to disperse. He told them they had won a major “victory” as murder charges have been laid against Ashish Mishra, and the state government has agreed to appoint a retired state judge to investigate Sunday’s events.

Criminal charges have also been laid against Minister of State Ajay Kumar Mishra. Neither Modi nor Home Minister Amit Shah have made any comment on the affair, let alone asked Mishra to resign while he is under criminal investigation.

In September, Mishra threatened local farmers when they displayed black flags during a previous appearance in his home constituency. “Fix yourselves or face me,” declared Mishra. “I will fix you in a matter of minutes.” Boasting about his thuggish past,” he continued. “I am not just a minister or an MLA (state assemblyman) or an MP. Those who know me from before I became a legislator would also know I never retreat from challenges.”

Since late November, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on the outskirts of India’s capital Delhi to press their demand for the repeal of the three pro-corporate farm laws the BJP rushed through parliament in September 2020. India’s agriculture sector has been in crisis for the past two decades or more with wide swaths of the rural masses, both small farmers and agricultural labours, living in grinding poverty. Although about half of the country’s 1.39 million people billion depend on agriculture for their livelihood, it produces just 15 percent of the country’s $2.9 trillion dollar GDP.

The government’s greatest fear is that the farmers’ agitation will intersect with growing popular anger over the Indian ruling elite’s criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of worker struggles against the BJP government’s pro-investor policies—austerity, privatization, the gutting of environmental and labour standards and the promotion of precarious contract labour employment.

Sunday’s murderous attack is indicative of a Modi government and BJP that are increasingly angered and frightened by the mounting popular opposition. To their dismay, they have failed in their attempts to wear down the farmers or to engineer a significant split in their ranks through offers of token amendments to the three farm bills.

Increasingly, Modi and his BJP are seeking a way out through violence. In the state of Haryana, one of the hotbeds of the farmer agitation, the BJP state government under the leadership of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar ordered police to violently attack a farmers’ protest in late August. A 55-year-old farmer named Sushil Kaja died after being savagely beaten by the police and scores of other farmers were injured.

In a recent video-speech to BJP members, Khattar urged them to form goon squads armed with lathis (wooden truncheons) to go around the state to beat up protesting farmers. He was quoted as saying: “In every district, particularly the northern and northwestern districts, we will have to raise groups of 500-700 kisan (farmer) volunteers and then [mount] Sathe Shathyam Samacharet (tit-for-tat).” In the video the audience of BJP members are heard laughing at this open call for violence.

From the get-go, the BJP central, UP and Haryana state governments sought to repress the farmers’ agitation. They succeeded in preventing the farmers from entering Delhi at the start of their agitation last November, but they could not prevent hundreds of thousands from making it to the city’s outskirts. And as the protest stretched into weeks and became a rallying point for broader popular opposition, the BJP government was visibly thrown into crisis. True to their authoritarian instincts, Modi and Home Minister Shah laid the groundwork for violently dispersing the protesting farmers, mobilizing tens of thousands of security forces and mounting a propaganda campaign to smear them as “anti-national.”

The Supreme Court has sanctioned one anti-democratic and communalist action of the BJP government after another. However, due to fears among broad sections of the ruling class that a violent crackdown could backfire and serve to galvanize the working class to intervene in the mounting political crisis, the court balked at greenlighting the BJP’s plans to suppress the farmers’ protests by declaring them “illegal.” Later, it sought to provide the government with a mechanism to defuse the situation, by ruling that application of the three farm laws should be suspended while the farmers and government negotiated.

However, like the BJP and clearly reflecting mounting pressure from big business for speedier implementation of its pro-investor policies, the Supreme Court’s attitude towards the farmers is hardening. When farm protest leaders recently approached the court for permission to enter the capital to stage a rally, a panel of Supreme Court justices denounced the farmers’ agitation. “You have strangulated Delhi,” the court declared, “by holding sit-in protests on highways ... even blocked movement of armed forces and jeered them. Now you want to come inside the city and create chaos?”

On Monday, just hours after the BJP’s violent provocation against the Lakhimpur Kheri farrners, another Supreme Court bench openly questioned the legitimacy of the farmers’ agitation. It chastised the farmers for mounting protests when the farm laws are stayed and for protesting, while challenging the laws’ constitutionality in the courts. “When farmers are in court challenging the laws, why protest in the street?” asked the judges. Ominously, India’s highest court announced that on October 20 it will rule on whether there is an “absolute” right to protest—all but announcing that it intends to provide the government with a legal fig leaf for employing state violence to end the farmers’ agitation.

‘Pandora Papers’ points to major tax evasion by global financial oligarchy

Jacob Crosse

On October 3, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in coordination with 600 journalists from 117 countries, began publishing the “Pandora Papers” a series of articles based off of 11.9 million leaked financial services files—totaling nearly three terabytes of data—from 14 companies that provide tax evasion and money laundering services to the financial oligarchy.

A view of the entrance of the Chateau Bigaud, in Mougins, southern France, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

The ICIJ claims to have “uncovered financial secrets of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories, and a global lineup of fugitives, con artists and murderers.” Included in this list are 130 Forbes billionaires, as well as celebrities, athletes and royalty. Just 100 of the billionaires identified in the Pandora Papers had a combined fortune of more than $600 billion in 2021.

Some 150 news outlets participated in the investigation, including the Washington Post, the BBC, the Guardian, Radio France Morocco’s Le Desk and Ecuador’s Diario El Universo.

The ICIJ analysis identified 956 companies specializing in offshore tax havens with ties to 336 “high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.” The ICIJ found that “more than two-thirds” of the companies identified were “set up in the British Virgin Islands.”

This is the third major exposé on the dealings of the international bourgeoisie published by the ICIJ. In 2016 the ICIJ published the Panama Papers and in 2017 the Paradise Papers. The latter actually contained more files, 13.4 million compared to 11.9 million, however the amount of data contained in the Pandora Papers is more than the Panama or Paradise leaks.

Whereas the Panama Papers dealt primarily with with Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, the Pandora Papers encompass records from 14 financial-services companies operating throughout the world, including in Switzerland, Belize and the United Kingdom. The leak also demonstrates the key role US states such as South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Delaware have assumed in the global tax avoidance scheme.

The files were analyzed for nearly two years, and include private emails, secret contracts, bank statements, passports and confidential spreadsheets exposing the intricate money laundering schemes employed by princes, kings, prime ministers, presidents the world over employ in order to protect their ill-gotten wealth and pass it on to their heirs. Among the tools examined by the ICIJ were the use of trusts by the bourgeoisie to ensure that their property remains in their family, tax free, for generations.

However, like the previous exposures by the ICIJ, there is a startling gap between the financial details revealed concerning those who are official enemies of US imperialism, compared to Americans. Of the 336 politicians identified in the leaks, none are from the United States, while 19 Russian politicians and 38 Ukrainian politicians were identified. The lack of US politicians named is even more noticeable considering the ICIJ found over $1 billion held in US-based trusts, integral tools for tax avoidance and money laundering.

The ICIJ worked with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in producing the report. According to ICIJ, more than “75 journalists” from OCCRP’s network helped comb through the data. The OCCRP is supported by grants from the United States Agency for International Development, the US State Department, Google Ideas as well as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

In a comment from Russia’s RT, Kit Klarenberg asked, “Could the CIA be behind the leak of the Pandora Papers, given their curious lack of focus on US nationals?” Likewise, the editor of the Chinese-based Global Times, Hu Zijin, suggested that US and Western “intelligence agencies” were involved in the leaks, writing on Twitter that “They are creating new tools for their political intervention in developing counties.”

Seemingly backing Zijin’s perspective, in a statement on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterated President Joe Biden’s commitment to “fighting corruption as a core national security interest.”

Psaki also reiterated Biden’s pledge to “work with partners and allies to address issues such as the abuse of shell companies and money laundering…” Coming from the former senator from Delaware, one of the most corporate friendly and opaque states in the nation when it comes to shielding financial records of the wealthy as it provides every loophole and benefit to credit card companies while eliminating bankruptcy protections for credit card and student loan defaulters, this statement is more than just a little hypocritical.

While the ICIJ failed to find any “corrupt” politicians in the US, it did uncover large numbers of trusts established within the US that have been used by the bourgeoisie to shield their assets from tax liabilities. In South Dakota, where Republicans have controlled the state government since the 1970s, trust companies have been allowed to flourish, allowing the financial oligarchy to stash almost $360 billion in assets through secretive trusts.

Amid ever-widening levels of inequality and more open forms of financial parasitism, the use of trusts, popular in the Middle Ages for English aristocrats, has skyrocketed in recent years, especially in the United States, where several states have passed laws eliminating rules against perpetuities, allowing for the creation of “dynasty trusts.” Of the trusts identified in the papers, South Dakota had the most, with 81, followed by Florida, 37, Delaware 35, Texas, 24 and Nevada, 14.

Politicians named so far in the investigation include:

• King Abdullah II, 59, has ruled Jordan since 1999 and is a close ally of the US. The papers reveal that Abdullah II owned “36 front companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.” These companies were used to disguise the purchase of “at least 14 luxury homes in the United Kingdom in the U.S.” These holdings included the hidden purchase of a $33.5 million mansion in Malibu, California in 2014, along with properties in London and Washington D.C., totaling more than $106 million from 2003 to 2017.
• Nirupama Rajapaksa was a former member of parliament and deputy minister of water supply and drainage from 2010 to 2015. She is the cousin of current Sri Lankan president, Gotabaya Rajapakse. Nirupama, along with her husband Thirukumar Nadesan, controls a shell company that was used to buy luxury apartments in London and Sydney, while another company, Pacific Commodities, was used to transfer 31 paintings and other art pieces to the Geneva Freeport, a warehouse complex in Geneva Switzerland where the bourgeoisie stores their assets to avoid taxes. According to the specialist art journal Connaissances des Arts, in 2013 the Geneva Freeport held around 1.2 million artworks.
• Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister from 1997 through 2007. Blair, along with his wife Cherie, registered a UK company named Harcourt Ventures Ltd. to buy a British Virgin Islands entity named Romanstone International Ltd., which owned a building in London valued at $8.8 million. The Romanstone property was a subsidiary of a real estate firm owned by the family of Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani, Bahrain’s industry and tourism minister. By simply purchasing the company that owns the property, the Blairs were not obligated to pay property taxes, saving them more than $400,000 according to the Guardian.

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2022

Application Deadline: 30th October 2021

To be Taken at (Country): African countries listed below

About the Award: MTN’s Global Graduate Development Programme seeks to source, develop, and accelerate top graduates from across MTN’s footprint in Africa and the Middle East. The programme offers a privileged experience that fast-tracks talented individuals into critical roles at MTN. The MTN Graduate Development Programme combines both formal development in partnership with Duke Corporate Education and the MTN Academy, as well as on-the-job development through full employment and placement into a strategically aligned role.

The formal component includes modules at MTN’s 3 regional learning centres, located in Southern, Northern and Western Africa.

Type: Job

Eligibility: You should be

• An African in the following countries
• 27 years

You must have completed or be studying towards a qualification with the following:

• minimum 65%
• bachelors degree
• 14 disciplines

You must have experience with the following

• Digital Marketing
• Commerce
• Economics
• Marketing
• Business Administration

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Financial rewards for performance
• Global induction
• Free or subsidised mobile phone
• Medical Aid
• Laptop/tablet
• Staff discounts
• Career development resources
• Pension scheme
• Subsidised canteen services
• Flexible working hours

Duration of Award: Fulltime.

How to Apply: Click your country’s link below:

• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Zambia
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – eSwatini
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – RSA
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Nigeria
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Rwanda

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Equal Opportunity Employment Commission sues Ford for pregnancy discrimination

Jessica Goldstein

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is suing Detroit-based automaker Ford Motor Company for pregnancy discrimination, stemming from its alleged refusal to hire a woman after she disclosed that she was pregnant, according to a press release on the EEOC’s website. The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division on Monday.

“This alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against applicants or employees because of their sex, including pregnancy,” the EEOC press release said.

According to the lawsuit, Edwina Smith was qualified to work at the Ford Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights, Illinois and was given a conditional offer of hire by Ford in June 2019 “subject to passing a physical, drug test and background check.” A Ford physician administered a pre-employment physical in August 2019, during which she disclosed that she was pregnant, and the physician still cleared her for hire. Ford never scheduled her for her first day of work in spite of its own physician’s approval, the lawsuit alleges.

Smith pursued Ford for weeks to get answers to when she could begin working at the stamping plant, according to the lawsuit, but was continually given the run-around until October when the company answered that Ford was no longer hiring. The lawsuit also alleges that other workers were hired and sent for orientation during the same time period, demonstrating that Smith was discriminated against based on her disclosure of pregnancy.

The press release does not name the parties involved with Ford with whom she was in contact, but it is clear that neither the company nor the United Auto Workers union (UAW), which supposedly represents workers at the plant, did anything to ensure that she was given an equal opportunity for employment.

If the allegations of the lawsuit are proven, it will show that Ford is in violation of the 1978 US Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which forbids discrimination based on pregnancy for any aspect of an individual’s employment, including hiring, pay, termination, job assignments and benefits.

The US has also signed, but never ratified, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1980. The Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and prohibits dismissal on the grounds of maternity or pregnancy and ensures the right to maternity leave or comparable social benefits.

This is not the first sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Ford by workers. In 1997, 14 women who worked at Ford in the US filed a class action lawsuit against the company for sexual harassment. In November 2014, more than 30 workers, all who were women, filed another class action lawsuit against Ford, alleging routine sexual and racial harassment on the job by both management and United Auto Workers union officials at the Ford Chicago Assembly and Stamping plants. The allegations in the 2014 suit ranged from suggestive comments and unwanted touching to attempted rape.

In both aforementioned lawsuits, the EEOC has played a particular role in making sure that Ford did not face serious repercussions. The EEOC created a “Conciliation Agreement” with Ford in response to the 1997 lawsuit, which required “workplace monitoring” for three years. The essentially toothless agreement did nothing to stop the rampant abuse against workers at Ford plants across the US, as workers soon found out in the years that followed.

In 2017, Ford settled harassment claims brought by workers with the EEOC for $10.1 million, a drop in the bucket compared to its annual profits. Ford tried to cite the EEOC case settlement in an attempt to brush off the 2014 lawsuit, which was separate from the 2017 EEOC case. Keith Hunt, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the 2014 lawsuit, referred to the EEOC settlement as an attempt by Ford to “circumvent the class-action process.”

Workers of all genders and races face harassment by company managers and union officials alike, according to workers at the Ford Chicago Assembly plant who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter about the 2014 allegations.

“It’s more than sexual, because there’s a lot of men here that have been harassed. Their jobs have been manipulated, their overtime has been manipulated and threats made against them,” one worker recounted in 2015.

The worker continued, “They’re manipulating people, period. If they can’t get what they want from you, they totally manipulate you. If it’s sex they want, and you’re not giving it, they’re going to manipulate your job. You’re not going to get any overtime, you’re going to get the hard job.”

The conditions that workers are faced with today are similar to, and in some ways are worse, than those that autoworkers in the 1930s faced. Before rank-and-file workers carried out the historic sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan, which led to the formation of the United Auto Workers, the exploitation of women workers by management ran rampant. In one department of an AC Spark Plug plant, all of the women workers had to go to the hospital to be treated for a sexually transmitted disease that was traced to one foreman. Men who worked at these plants suffered as well, and were threatened with their jobs if they tried to individually stand up for the women that managers exploited.

Workers at both Ford Chicago Stamping and Ford Chicago Assembly plants have spoken to the WSWS about the ways that management and the union foster a hostile working environment to maintain control over the workers and suppress any organized opposition by the workers against the sweatshop conditions in the factories. Workers are routinely written up and threatened with their jobs for minor attendance infractions, given little to no protection from safety hazards (including the spread of the deadly COVID-19 infection) and targeted for retaliation when they speak out against their conditions.

What the lawsuit shows is not just the abuses of management, but that they are allowed to run rampant by the UAW. The UAW has completely turned its back on its history as a workers’ organization built to protect workers from exploitation at the hands of management. It now either ignores harassment that goes on before its very eyes, or directly engages in it along with management, and the two are nearly indistinguishable from one another in their treatment of workers.

Thailand cuts COVID quarantine measures ahead of borders re-opening

John Braddock

Thailand will waive its mandatory quarantine requirement in Bangkok and nine regions from November 1 to vaccinated arrivals, as authorities desperately try to revive the moribund tourism sector. Like its counterparts around the world, the Thai military-backed government is placing business profits before the health and lives of working people.

Besides Bangkok, the regions targeted for opening include tourist areas Chiang Mai, Phangnga, Krabi, Hua Hin, Pattaya, and Cha-am. Before the pandemic hit, Thailand's tourism sector attracted nearly 40 million visitors annually and generated $US60 billion per year, accounting for 20 percent of the country's economy.

A mother tries to comfort her son refusing to get the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Southeast Asia is under imperialist pressure to remove control measures to free up trade and global supply chains. Bloomberg lists Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines at the bottom of its Covid Resilience Ranking. Data from 53 countries underscores where finance capital deems the virus is being handled with the least economic and social upheaval, on the basis of virus containment, “the economy” and “opening up.”

Last week, the Thai government raised the public debt ceiling to about 70 percent of GDP. In an another attempt to kick-start the economy, a new scheme aims to attract as many as 1 million people on special 10-year visas, hoping to lure “high end” tech workers and retirees who cannot roll over short term stays elsewhere. Potential applicants have to invest up to $US250,000 in Thai government bonds or property.

Though Thailand managed to contain COVID-19 throughout 2020, it has experienced its most severe wave over recent months, after the Delta variant spread quickly through slum housing, markets, and factories.

The country’s manufacturing and export sectors have been seriously disrupted. By late July, the Industry Ministry reported the virus had spread to 518 plants with 36,861 workers infected. They were spread over 49 of the country’s 77 provinces, and included food processing, electronics, apparel, metal works and plastics manufacturers. The situation is now much more serious.

While case numbers are currently on a downward trend, on 2 October, 11,379 new cases were recorded, with the seven-day average at 11,046. Over 1.6 million people have been infected, with 16,937 deaths, most of them since April. There are 112,251 active cases, including 3,324 that are critical. Fewer than 100 fatalities occurred last year when the pandemic first hit the country.

The country’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) cut quarantine mandates from 14 days to seven on October 1. It also approved the reopening of businesses, including theatres, sports venues and nail salons in 29 provinces with high infection rates classified as “dark red”. A nightly curfew in many parts of the country has been cut by one hour.

Bangkok is aiming to reopen to tourists by November 1 if double-dose vaccinations cover at least 70 percent of the city’s population. By late last month, just 42 percent of Bangkok’s 7 million residents are fully vaccinated and the capital was still logging high numbers of daily cases, including 2,455 infections on September 22.

The decisions by the CCSA, chaired by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the former military head and 2014 coup leader, are part of its “living with COVID” strategy to restart the economy. The moves come after the pace of inoculations was ramped up in major population and economic centres, with 1 million doses administered daily in the past two weeks.

The vaccination rollout has been belated and chaotic. Only 33.1 percent of the country’s 69.8 million people are fully vaccinated. The CSSA has recently approved a plan to procure 3.35 million doses of vaccines, although no delivery timeframe was provided. It is seeking to buy 2.79 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines and 165,000 AstraZeneca shots from Spain and 400,000 AstraZeneca doses from Hungary.

The Southeast Asian nation has delayed and changed its tourism reopening several times due to low vaccination rates amid concerns that the easing of rules would see infections surge again, overwhelming the health-care system.

In July, the government promoted its “Phuket sandbox” pilot, reopening the tourist resort island to fully vaccinated visitors from designated “low risk” countries. Flights into Phuket soon arrived from Singapore, Israel and the Middle East with hundreds of visitors. Tourists were able to roam the island, but not travel to other parts of the country for 14 days.

The regime’s “living with the virus” strategy is, however, provoking determined social opposition. Street demonstrations that predate COVID have recently evolved into pandemic-related rallies.

Last year’s mass protests saw thousands of mainly young people demand an end to the regime, including the removal of Prayuth as prime minister, changes to the military-devised constitution, reform of the monarchy and abolition of the draconian lese majesté law. This movement was temporarily stifled by police repression and COVID restrictions.

The latest wave of protests began at the end of June and has escalated, despite police crackdowns. More than 10 demonstrations were broken up with force over the last month.

Bangkok’s Din Daeng district has become the site of a two-month long uprising by young people. The area has turned into a battleground with nightly clashes between protesters, mostly students from vocational colleges and poorer neighbourhoods, and police, who routinely respond with rubber bullets and teargas.

More than 1,000 people currently face legal charges for political activities, including at least 132 for lese-majesté, or insulting the monarchy, which can lead to 15 years in prison.

One protester, a 19-year-old trainee electrician, told the Guardian that the economic situation and the government’s management of public funding cannot be tolerated. He declared: “Everything has culminated, everything has exploded now during COVID.”

A 17-year-old said: “It’s as if they look at us not like a citizen, it’s as if they see us as slaves.” Two of his family members died after becoming infected with COVID. “They don’t have connections, so they had to wait and wait [for a hospital space],” he said, with one dying at home.

The wider population, including locals offering protesters protection from the police, are increasingly sympathetic to the young protesters. Prajak Kongkirati, a professor at Thammasat University, told the Guardian: “They are below 18 years old, some of them are only 13 or 14… Many of them lost their parents because of COVID, many of their parents lost their jobs, so they had to quit education.”

According to Prajak, the government could face a “dilemma” over fully lifting COVID restrictions. The Din Daeng protests remain small, he noted, but reopening the country could lead far larger numbers of young people taking to the streets. “Their ideology hasn’t changed, their commitment to political struggle hasn’t changed,” he declared.

Canada’s meatpacking workers face dangerous conditions and ruthless exploitation

Frédéric Charlebois

Strikes in recent months at Olymel and Exceldor slaughterhouses in Quebec have highlighted the terrible conditions in which meatpacking workers in Canada operate, as well as their growing determination to fight against these conditions.

Faced with increased competition in international markets, which consume 50 percent of the beef and 70 percent of the pork produced in Canada, the big meat companies, like Cargill, Olymel and Maple Leaf, have consolidated their operations into ever-larger plants in order to reduce production costs.

While there were 235 slaughterhouses in Ontario in the early 2000s, there are now only 120. According to a 2009 report by the Food Processing Labour Sectoral Committee, “from 1995 to 2007, the proportion of hogs slaughtered in all of Canada by the four largest plants increased from 77 percent to 90 percent.”

This concentration of production is even more significant in the beef industry, where two plants, Cargill in High River and JBS in Brooks, both in Alberta, account for 70 percent of beef processed in the country. If you add Cargill’s Guelph, Ontario plant, that figure rises to 85 percent.

At the same time, there has been an ever-intensifying assault on meatpacking workers, who have had major concessions imposed on them in contract after contract, making conditions in the industry increasingly intolerable.

According to Statistics Canada, the average wage in the meat packing industry was $21.51/per hour in 2019. Many workers earn less than this grossly inadequate wage. For example, the hourly rate was $20.10 at Cargill after three years of service in 2019, and it was just $14.85 after 2 years for Class 1 workers at duBreton.

In recent years, workers have been subjected to wage freezes and outright pay cuts, with the result that a significant proportion of workers now need a second and even third job to support themselves and their families.

The conditions in the meat processing plants are among the worst imaginable. Workers work in a wet and cold environment with large temperature variation. The smell of blood and animal waste is omnipresent.

The slaughter industry has the usual hazards associated with heavy manufacturing and manual labor. Added to this are the physical and biological hazards inherent in handling stressed animals about to be slaughtered.

These conditions, combined with ever-increasing production quotas, result in high workplace accident and injury rates. Data from the province of Alberta, for example, shows that the manufacturing sector had the third highest rate of injuries in 2019, with the largest proportion (19 percent) involving meat processing and packaging. Among the worst plants was Olymel’s Red Deer, Alberta plant, which had 283 injuries in 2019 and 248 injuries in 2020.

The arduous conditions that prevail in slaughterhouses lead to high turnover and understaffing, resulting in overwork for those employed in the industry. Even before the pandemic, there were 28,000 vacancies nationwide. To fill this labor shortage, companies are turning to temporary foreign workers, one of the most exploited sections of the working class.

According to Canada’s Department of Employment and Social Development, the governments of Justin Trudeau in Ottawa and François Legault in Quebec launched a pilot project in early August that calls for “a 10 to 20 percent increase in the maximum number of temporary foreign workers employed in low-wage positions.”

A temporary foreign worker’s right to remain in Canada depends on their keeping the job with the employer named on their work permit. This reality makes it almost impossible for foreign workers to challenge horrendous working conditions. In addition to receiving lower wages than their Canadian counterparts, they often live in crowded conditions. Some are employed by employment agencies that pay them less than the “regular” workforce and fail to provide proper training to avoid injury.

The pandemic has been particularly difficult for these workers because of their precarious status. As infections increased in the factories, fear of the virus was combined with fear of protesting their conditions and having their employers terminate their contracts. During temporary closures, foreign workers were often abandoned. At duBreton in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, during a temporary closure due to an outbreak, the employer reportedly went so far as to tell some foreign workers, who had no money to eat, to go to a food bank.

Meat industry workers have been the victims of such callous disregard throughout the pandemic.

Meat processing plants are ideal environments for airborne virus transmission, as is the case with COVID-19, because of their cold, damp environment. In addition, because of the way the facilities are designed and how space is allocated to allow for assembly line work, distancing is nearly impossible. Despite these significant hazard factors, so-called “essential workers” were forced to work in crowded factories without any protection throughout the first wave of the pandemic.

Following the May 2020 award of $77 million in federal grants to “help protect” workers, the meat industry—which never shut down its plants—used the government’s back-to-work policies to bring production back to pre-pandemic levels.

As all levels of government abandoned the most minimal measures to limit the spread of the virus, workers were forced to put their lives at risk to fatten the bosses’ stock portfolios.

In the next two pandemic waves, companies hid infections in factories and tried to blame workers when they contracted the disease. Press reports have revealed that some companies insisted workers who had been in contact with the virus return to their jobs while they were waiting for test results or had not completed their quarantine.

After a year and a half of the pandemic, thousands of meat processing workers have contracted COVID-19. At Cargill High River alone, an outbreak in late April and early May 2020 infected 949 of the plant’s 2,000 workers. Authorities said the outbreak was responsible for more than 1,550 additional cases.

Hundreds of workers had to be hospitalized, many of whom will retain long-term effects from the disease. There were also more than a dozen deaths among workers or their families, including three at Olymel in Red Deer, three at Cargill in High River and one at Olymel in Vallée-Jonction, Quebec.

This human and social catastrophe unfolded with the full complicity of the pro-capitalist unions. While workers demanded protective measures and equipment and the closure of plants unable to guarantee their safety, the unions constantly suppressed their opposition. They actively collaborated with employers and governments to keep factories open that had become death traps and denounced calls for job action as “illegal.”

Sri Lankan workers and poor hit by escalating costs of essential items

Saman Gunadasa

On Monday the Sri Lankan cabinet withdrew a September 2 government gazette notice imposing price controls on rice, the country’s staple food. The decision opened the way for big business rice mill operators to announce an increase of 115 rupees per kilogram ($US0.5), or 17 percent in the lowest grade nadu rice, and 145 rupees, or a 37 percent hike per kilogram for samba rice.

These increases, along with higher costs for other staple foods and essentials, will drive up the already exorbitant cost of living in Sri Lanka, and heavily impact on workers and the poor, struggling to cope amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Even though testing rates are being reduced in Sri Lanka, COVID-19 has infected more than half a million people and killed almost 13,000.

Dairy and cooking gas importers are now lobbying the government to grant large price rises for their products. They want to increase the cost of a 12.5-kilogram cooking gas cylinder by 800 rupees, or 54 percent, and a kilogram of milk powder by 350 rupees or 37 percent. Fearing the eruption of protests, Cabinet postponed making a full decision on these price hikes, which will trigger scarcities and increase black market trading.

The price of essential foods, such as lentils, yellow gram, chilies, canned fish, onions, green gram and sprats, has risen continuously over the last 12 months, with increases in these items of between 25 percent to 150 percent.

Colombo’s decision to withdraw the price controls, makes clear that President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s declaration of a state of emergency on August 30, had nothing to do with ending shortages and price hikes in rice, sugar and other essentials.

The Socialist Equality Party warned on September 11: “The real target of the emergency laws is the working class and rural masses, who are confronting enormous hardships, as the burden of the country’s economic crisis is directly imposed on them.”

The government’s actions expose it as an apparatus to protect big business and its exorbitant profits, not the lives of the working class, farmers and other oppressed people.

Currently, 800 containers of essential food items, such as lentils, sugar, garlic, sprats, canned fish and milk powder, are being blocked in the port, due to the scarcity of foreign currency. The Central Bank, under government pressure, has just announced that it will provide the required US dollars to release these goods.

Even though the official year-on-year food inflation rate was around 11 percent for August, the real rate is over 30 percent, according to independent economic estimates. The latest increases in rice, dairy goods and cooking gas prices, will further erode the real value of workers’ wages and see a further escalation of strikes and other social struggles by workers and the rural poor.

Up to 250,000 teachers are continuing their three-month online learning strike, to demand higher wages. On Monday, 90,000 public sector health workers struck in protest against cuts to a pandemic-related special allowance, and for several other demands. Plantation workers have also been involved in protests over back-breaking production demands by big business estates, following an abysmal daily wage increase of about 250 rupees.

Hundreds of thousands of low-paid production workers in the free trade zones, mainly in the apparel, rubber and electronics industries, have also suffered wage cuts, lay-offs and increased workloads, since the pandemic began. Around half a million workers in the tourist sector have been laid off, as a result of dramatic falls in tourist arrivals. Thousands of import sector workers are also unemployed, after the government placed import bans on automobiles and other foreign-made goods, in an attempt to prevent further declines in foreign currency reserves.

While the Sri Lankan economy already had a widening budget deficit and crippling debt repayments, the coronavirus pandemic has drastically worsened this crisis. According to a September 16 Moody’s report, Sri Lanka will have to pay between $4 and $5 billion in annual debt repayments until 2025. With its foreign currency reserves just $3 billion at the end of August, the government’s priority has been avoiding an international debt default.

The rupee has been effectively devalued by 27 percent since early last year, while printed money stock has increased by 35 percent, to 2.8 trillion rupees ($14 billion). The running budget deficit is reportedly around 12 percent of GDP and continuously increasing.

As workers and the poor suffer from these ongoing social attacks, various government cronies and big businesses are reaping windfall profits. After coming to power, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse sharply reduced most corporate taxes by between 15 and 24 percent. In the last business quarter—from April to June 2021—nine top companies amassed 364 billion rupees ($1.82 billion) in earnings, collectively pocketing 21 billion rupees ($105 million) in net profit.

Sri Lanka’s recently appointed finance minister, Basil Rajapakse, the younger brother of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, has instructed government ministries to stop “unnecessary allowances” to state employees and “save money.”

The government is intensifying its moves to privatise state institutions, such as the Colombo Port, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) and Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). On September 17, it signed a deal with the US-based New Fortress Energy, which will buy a 40 percent share in the Yugadanavi Power Plant at Kerawalapitiya, near Colombo. The Western Jetty at the Colombo Port is to be privatised and a 13-acre plot sold to a Chinese company.

Legislation, covering Sri Lanka’s petroleum supply and distribution, is being amended in order to privatise CPC, while negotiations are underway for a $500 million credit for petroleum imports from India, and facilities from the United Arab Emirates. The government is also in the process of selling key real estate in Colombo city.

At the same time, President Rajapakse is militarising his administration and moving rapidly towards a presidential dictatorship, based on the military and Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist forces. A draconian essential service act, banning strikes in most of the public sector, has been imposed and emergency rule declared, with military generals being placed in key government ministries and the military being put on stand-by in every district across the island.

These measures, which are directed against the working class, are supported by all of the opposition parties, including the pro-US United National Party (UNP) and its break-away group Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the Tamil National Alliance and the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP).

The SJB and the UNP have urged the government to appeal to the government for assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The previous UNP government, under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena was defeated in the presidential and general elections in 2019 and 2020, after ruthlessly imposing IMF-prescribed austerity measures. The JVP, and its breakaway group, the FSP, argue that capitalism can be reformed by curbing corruption.