US cuts off free COVID-19 rapid testing

Patrick Martin

The Biden administration confirmed Monday that it will “pause” its program to send millions of Americans free rapid antigen test kits through the mail at the end of this week. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made the brief announcement on its website, blaming Congress for failing to provide the necessary funds.

In addition to an end to postal delivery of free kits, the administration will stop free testing in schools, homeless shelters, shelters for victims of domestic violence and prisons. Children and the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class will be “flying blind” into conditions of a spreading pandemic with new and likely more infectious and lethal variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The HHS will conserve the relatively small number of test kits that remain, planning to distribute them in the fall when a new upsurge in COVID-19 infections is expected, agency officials said. In other words, while the number of free test kits goes down to zero, the number of cases of infection will rise significantly.

Under the program established last January, every American could request a total of 16 free test kits through a federal government portal. Free testing will now be limited to state and federal government “pop-up” test sites and to those who have private insurance plans that cover that service.

The HHS action is only one of many steps being taken by the White House to shut down all efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and give the virus free rein to do its deadly work. Under slogans like “learning to live with the virus,” the Biden administration has fully adopted the mass infection policy of the Trump administration that came before it. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Blum recently wrote that the Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to bring an end to the Public Health Emergency (PHE) first declared in 2020 in the initial stages of the pandemic, even though infections, hospitalizations and deaths are at far higher levels. He wrote: “In the meantime, CMS encourages healthcare providers to prepare for the end of these flexibilities as soon as possible and to begin moving forward to reestablishing previous health and safety standards and billing practices.”

Masking is gone, social distancing is gone, contact tracing is gone, lockdowns and remote schooling are gone, rapid testing is going. Schools are reopening this month to full-scale in-person education, with overcrowded classrooms serving as Petri dishes for mass infection and the development of new and more dangerous variants.

The terrible consequences of this policy have already been demonstrated. Under Trump, 400,000 Americans died of COVID-19. Under Biden, another 670,000 have died, with the cumulative death toll expected to pass 1.2 million in the fall. All these figures are likely to be significant undercounts. On a world scale, while the World Health Organization officially tallies the dead at 6.5 million, published estimates by such conservative sources as The Economist magazine place the global death toll at more than 20 million.

The HHS statement and innumerable White House declarations have sought to place the blame for the end of free testing on Congress, and particularly on the intransigent opposition to further COVID-19 funding on the part of the 50 Republicans in the US Senate. They have blocked passage of additional COVID-19 funding to pay for the purchase of test kits, prophylactic treatments like Pfizer’s Paxlovid, and new vaccines, modified to deal with new mutations of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

This is a transparent effort to cover up the decision by both capitalist parties to allow all COVID-19 funding to expire. Biden and Senate Democratic leaders repeatedly slashed the amount of COVID-19 funding, which they had paired in the same legislation as additional military aid to Ukraine to ensure its passage. Eventually, in the course of protracted wrangling in the Senate, the Democrats dropped the COVID-19 portion of the bill entirely, passed the Ukraine military aid, a whopping $40 billion, and then claimed they had been unable to overcome Republican objections.

Then a different legislative vehicle, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, became available, providing more than $400 billion in funding for Medicare and climate change alleviation. This was immune from a Republican filibuster because it was enacted through budget “reconciliation,” a once-a-year process that requires only 50 votes. But Senate Democratic leaders and the White House declined to incorporate COVID-19 funding into the bill.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha has made it clear that the Biden administration is dropping any pretense of fighting the pandemic as it surges in the fall. Speaking at a US Chamber of Commerce function this month, he said, “One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months, and we’re going to continue this work, and you’ll hear more from the administration on this, is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the U.S. government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests.”

He added, “My hope is that in 2023, you’re going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead.” 

No doubt his business audience was appreciative of the decision to turn over pandemic testing, vaccination and prophylactic treatment to the private sector, giving pharmaceutical companies and health care providers a guaranteed market of tens of millions of people. Those who can afford to pay, either out of pocket or through insurance, will provide a lucrative source for profits. Those who cannot afford to pay—the very people who are old, poor and sick and most vulnerable to COVID-19—will do without, perhaps paying instead with their lives or health.

Even those who can afford to pay may find the needed vaccines and tests unavailable. Without the federal government providing a guaranteed buyer for billions of doses of vaccines, and providing the funds to finance the massive costs of developing, conducting trials and bringing the products to market, Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and other pharmaceutical companies could not have developed the original vaccines so quickly.

The dwindling of federal support for new vaccines and new tests is already being felt, hampering efforts to develop modified vaccines to keep up with the new variants and subvariants generated by the uncontrolled spread of a highly adaptable virus. The funds currently allocated would pay for new boosters for only half the US population, and the trendline is going down, not up.

Ultimately, the pharmaceutical industry, on the basis of market considerations, not the imperative to save every life, will develop only those medicines and treatments that are profitable, regardless of how many millions are excluded—not only in the United States but around the world.

Savage UK energy bills pauperise millions, threatening many deaths

Robert Stevens

Within hours of UK average household annual energy bills shooting up Friday by a staggering 80 percent to £3,549 a year, latest projection from independent forecasters are for savage rises to £5,400-a-year in January and to £7,200 by April.

The latest rise already makes bills unaffordable for many. The annual energy price cap as recently as October 2020 was £1,042.

Demonstrators hold up placards and cards as they protest outside the British energy regulator Ofgem, which put up the price cap for gas and electricity by around 80 per cent for most households, in London, August 26, 2022. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

The price cap is set by energy regulator Ofgem. The overall costs cited in the media are based on typical usage on a default (standard variable) tariff. But in reality there is no upper limit for the 24 million households in England, Scotland and Wales. The cap only puts an upper limit on the price per kilowatt hour (kWh) used, which has now risen from 28 pence to 56 pence per kWh. It is predicted that for many households, particularly large families with extra energy needs, next April’s energy cap increase could see them paying £10,000 or more for their annual fuel use.

According to research by the Trades Union Congress, energy bills in the last three months of this year will soar 35 times faster than wages and 57 times faster than benefits. While monthly bills could be around £500 a month in January for those on an average tariff; for around 4 million mainly poor households forced to use pre-payment meters, bills will rise faster still. The Resolution Foundation think tank predicted that for prepayment meter users, “Typical energy bills in January alone could hit £714—over half of their monthly disposable income.”

A low-income family will be forced to hand over 46 percent of their income on energy bills, four times more than last year. For a single parent family on a low income, 66 percent of their income will go on energy. A pensioner will lose 40 percent of their disposable income on energy bills and a single adult on a low income faces a plunge into debt, losing a staggering 120 percent of their income to pay energy bills. Vulnerable layers, including the 75 percent of already indebted households with a disabled person will go under.

The rise in prices is plunging many households into penury, unable to shop, heat their homes, or even wash.

Last week, National Health Service chiefs made an extraordinary intervention, warning the Conservative government that thousands will die due to unaffordable energy bills. At least 10,000 people already die annually in Britain as a result of “fuel poverty”.

Fuel poverty charity National Energy Action (NEA) said that compared with a year ago, the number of households in fuel poverty would double to 8.9 million in October. NEA chief executive, Adam Scorer, warned, “We will have a million more homes that will not be heated this winter… that leads to more ill-health, it leads to more death.”

In April and May, financial expert Martin Lewis warned that unless people were fed and able to keep warm, there would be civil unrest. His prognosis in May was based on projections of bill rises “in the middle of October to £2,600 in the middle of winter…” The October rise to £3,549 announced already dwarfs Lewis’s worst case prediction and the rise in January of up to £5,400 will bring the suffering of millions to unheard of levels.

Speaking on Friday to BBC Radio’s Today programme, Lewis said, “I've been accused of catastrophising over this situation. Well, the reason I have catastrophised is this is a catastrophe, plain and simple.”

The rise in bills is a significant factor in the surge in inflation with the most accurate measure RPI at nearly 12.5 percent, with estimates from US financial service group Citi that it will soar to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2023.

Meanwhile, price gouging means Britain’s main energy suppliers have raked in super-profits of over £15 billion this year so far this year. The Edinburgh-based Harbour Energy PLC, the UK’s largest independent oil and gas business, has recorded a gigantic 12-fold increase in profits. Last week it announced that half-year profits for 2022 had reached $1.3 billion and that it would pay out an extra $200 million to shareholders.

A Unite union report, “Corporate Profiteering and the Cost of Living Crisis” noted, “Even excluding energy firms, profits of the UK’s biggest listed companies increased by 42%... The average profit of the 230 non-energy FTSE 350 companies, excluding investment trusts, that have filed 2021 results increased to £385m in 2021, up from £271m in 2019.”

Energy costs are rising exponentially throughout Europe, but UK corporations are still outliers. The euronews website reported, “Even before today's hike was announced, UK households faced some of the highest prices in Europe—nearly double France. Only the Czech Republic was higher than the UK, which was followed by Italy and Estonia.”

The British ruling elite is impervious to demands that immediate relief be made available to alleviate suffering, with the energy conglomerates refusing to give up a penny. From the ruling class the message is: “There is a war in Europe which Britain is in up to its neck, we are handing over billions in military aid to Ukraine and it has to be paid for by the working class.”

Speaking from Kiev last Wednesday to mark Ukrainian independence day and wallow in the continuation of NATO’s proxy war, outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared, “We know that if we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood.”

Armed Forces Minster James Heappey said that backing Ukraine’s war against Russia means that a “really expensive winter lies ahead” and has to be borne by working people, “whatever the short-term pain and cost might be”.

On Sunday, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi doubled down declaring, “The reality is that we should all look at our energy consumption. It is a difficult time. There is war on our continent…. We have to remain resilient.”

Thatcher clone Liz Truss, who is expected to be named the new Tory leader and replace Johnson as prime minister in a week’s time, is offering nothing in the face of the pauperisation of tens of millions. Even the Conservative-backing Sun newspaper was forced to criticise her energy “plan” that is based on scrapping a few green levies and will save households just £11 a year!

There are only plans for repression as anger grows among millions, expressed in a growing strike wave. Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid wrote, “As the crisis spirals, the Sun on Sunday can reveal ministers are planning for a cost of living crime wave and possible riots.

Water companies pour raw sewage into English waterways and onto beaches

Paul Bond

Raw sewage is being pumped onto Britain’s beaches with rainwater overspill.

Britain has experienced its hottest, driest summer for 50 years with farmers warned of serious impact to potato and carrot crops, while even drought-resistant crops like maize are suffering. Drought was declared in several areas, with water restrictions like hosepipe bans being imposed.

When the weather broke last week, parts of the country saw flashfloods on parched earth under the sheer volume of rainfall. On August 17, Shanklin, on the Isle of Wight, experienced 47.8mm of rain, most of it in a sustained downpour.

The deluge could not overcome the drought after such a sustained dry period. Instead, nearly 40 beach pollution warnings were issued in 48 hours as sewage poured onto beaches in water overflows.

The Environment Agency (EA) warned people not to swim at 17 bathing sites in southwest England because of bacteria levels. The charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), which operates a live interactive map of coastal water quality, highlighted sewage spills or pollution at 37 sites across the south coast and 50 nationally. Some 90 beaches have been affected so far. Affected beaches in the North include Skegness in Lincolnshire and Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire, where warnings not to swim were issued.

The Surfers Against Sewage map and footage shared on social media give a better view of the situation than statements from the water companies. When footage of raw sewage pumping out at Bexhill, East Sussex was tweeted, Southern Water was still advising there had been no local discharges. Southern Water then downplayed the seriousness, saying, “The release is 95-97 percent rainwater and should not be described as raw sewage,” and “Storm releases were made to protect homes, schools and businesses from flooding.”

The EA licences using storm overflows in extreme conditions to relieve pressure on the system, but this has increasingly become standard practice. Terms of the EA’s permits are frequently breached. Last year saw 62 serious pollution incidents, the highest since 2013.

In 2020 there were more than 400,000 raw sewage discharges in England, for more than 3.1 million hours—a 37 percent increase on 2019. Sewage discharge has risen 2,553 percent between 2016 and 2021, according to EA figures.

This is likely an underestimate. In 2021, a quarter of sewage discharges in all waterways, not just bathing designated areas, went unreported because sewage monitors were not working or not installed. In Devon and Cornwall, this included one in eight monitors at designated bathing locations.

EA figures showed 1,717 storm overflows without a monitor installed at all, and 1,802 providing information for less than 90 percent of the time, with possible high discharge during those periods.

This pollution has a catastrophic impact. Only 14 percent of British rivers are considered ecologically healthy. In the mid-1980s, around 20,000 salmon were caught annually in English and Welsh rivers. That has now halved.

In 2020, there were 153 reports of sickness from people using affected sites. Noroviruses can enter shellfish when sewage enters their growing areas. Last year untreated waste was dumped into shellfish-inhabited waters 29,000 times. Three French MEPs have called on the European Commission to take “political and legal” measures against British pollution of shared shellfish waters. The three members of President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche party also warned that sewage leaks risk bathing waters on the French coast as well as in the south.

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The EA has been systematically defunded, particularly regarding surveillance of sewage dumping. Between 2010 and 2020 its environmental protection grant was cut from £120 million to £40 million. Nearly a quarter of this cut was implemented as part of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) “efficiency” plans under Liz Truss in 2014-16. Truss oversaw overall cutting of EA funding by £235 million. A favourite for promotion in any possible Truss cabinet, should she become prime minister, is Lord David Frost, who recently declared there was “no evidence” for a “climate emergency.”

In the first half of this year, the EA failed to attend 12 of the 28 most serious reported pollution incidents.

England and Wales’s water and wastewater services were privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1989, creating 10 regional private companies. Privatisation was proposed in 1984, and again two years later, but faced huge popular hostility. It was shelved prior to the 1987 election for fear of generating opposition. When the Tories were returned to power, however, privatisation was rushed through.

The result was a social, environmental and economic catastrophe for millions, while the companies and their shareholders cashed in. A University of Greenwich study in 2017 estimated that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion per year more for their bills than if water had remained a state provision. The water companies have become sought-after acquisitions by private equity firms. Between 1991 and 2019, the parent companies paid out some £57 billion in dividends, an average of more than £2 billion a year.

The government wrote off all debts on privatisation and speculation has fuelled profits. Yet, by 2019, the companies had still amassed £48 billion in debt—less than they have paid to shareholders.

The government has continued to protect them as this smash and grab raid takes place. Last year an amendment was tabled to the Environment Bill that would have legally forced the companies “to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows.”

The government opposed even this measure. Tory MPs argued that the uncosted amendment would require infrastructure changes costing hundreds of billions—an indictment of the deteriorated state of the water system following privatisation due to the lack of basic infrastructure investment. The usual weasel words about higher water bills were offered up. 

The amendment was rejected 265-202 and triggered a public backlash. The government responded by announcing a plan to cut the number, frequency and length of overflow discharges. On August 11, a week before Britain’s waterways and beaches were once again drowning in excrement, it was announced that the “strategy” was delayed and would appear “in due course.”

DEFRA, responding to the French MEPs’ complaints with the lying claim that the Environment Act “has made our laws even stronger on water quality.” The Independent this week reported that all wastewater companies in England and Wales failed to meet their targets for tackling pollution or sewage floods in the last reporting year.

Fines have occasionally been imposed, like the record £20 million penalty on Thames Water for pumping 1.9 billion litres of untreated sewage into the Thames in 2017. But these are simply transferred to customers. It remains business as usual for the companies, who are once again being investigated for failure to manage treatment works and comply with permits.

The companies are supposedly monitored by regulatory body Ofwat. Ofwat’s 2013-17 head, Cathryn Ross, is now a director at Thames Water. Thames Water is losing around 600 million litres of water a day through pipe leakage. Its CEO, Sarah Bentley, receives £1.6 million in salary and bonuses.

The EA was forced to admit, “Over the years the public have seen water company executives and investors rewarded handsomely while the environment pays the price. The water companies are behaving like this for a simple reason: because they can.”

Pfizer’s anti-COVID pill Paxlovid shows no benefit for younger adults

Benjamin Mateus

In its latest guidelines, from August 8, 2022, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave one of its strongest recommendations to Paxlovid for patients at high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19, regardless of vaccination status. The list of underlying medical conditions that raise one’s risk of severe COVID-19 is long and accounts for more than four out of 10 adults (138 million Americans, including 54 million who are 65 or older). Close to 4 million prescriptions have been filled since Paxlovid was authorized.

However, the results of a new retrospective observational study out of Israel published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) seem to place a question mark over the strength of these recommendations, in particular, with the Omicron subvariant.

The report’s authors found that Pfizer’s antiviral medication Paxlovid offered little to no benefit for younger adults. However, it did reduce the risk of hospitalization for high-risk seniors. Notably, supplementary material from the original study of Paxlovid in high-risk non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19 during the Delta wave had demonstrated benefits in those younger than 65, albeit the difference compared to the placebo was much less than in those 65 and older.

The study’s authors utilized the electronic medical records from almost 110,000 patients enrolled in Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest state-mandated health service organization. Nearly 4 percent, or 3,900 of the patients, had taken Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir) after contracting COVID-19.

Among those over 65, there was a 73 percent decrease in the hospitalization rate and a 79 percent reduction in the risk of death. However, patients between the ages of 40 and 65 saw no benefit in taking the antiviral medication in either category, regardless of previous immunity status.

One of the study’s primary limitations is that it was non-randomized, which can introduce bias in its conclusions. The authors remarked: “Our study showed that only a minority of patients who were identified as high risk and eligible for nirmatrelvir [Paxlovid] therapy received the antiviral therapy. We do not know why other eligible patients did not receive treatment, and there may be some selection mechanism that is not explained by the observed confounders.”

These findings have significant implications, as the use of Paxlovid is rising amidst repeated surges of infections that run roughshod over the population, as COVID-19 is allowed free reign as a matter of policy. People are turning to these medications to reduce their risk of severe disease and lessen their symptoms, without a clear understanding among patients, medical providers and pharmacies of the indication for these drugs. This has consequences for the availability of and access to these medications and raises additional issues, such as the potential development of a Paxlovid-resistant variant.

In the context of potential misuse of Paxlovid, the recent announcement before the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation by White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha that the Biden administration will soon be shifting responsibility for procuring tests and therapeutics to the commercial sector has dire consequences for the working class.

Paxlovid (Credit: Kches16414 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

On the near horizon is the lifting of the pandemic emergency measures that cover COVID-related care for all Americans. The implications of returning to the usual business of medicine is that those who are uninsured or underinsured will forgo these life-saving measures when they contract COVID-19 so as to save money for groceries and fuel or pay their rent. Even the new bivalent vaccines will arrive with a price tag. Meanwhile, the more affluent will have no qualms in accessing them, further deepening the class distinctions that the pandemic has exposed.

However, the results of the recent study out of Israel are not surprising. In June, Pfizer announced it was discontinuing enrollment in its EPIC-SR [Evaluation of Protease Inhibition for COVID-19 in Standard-Risk] trial. Preliminary results indicated it had no significant benefits for unvaccinated adults without any risk factors or for previously vaccinated people with at least one risk for progressing to severe disease.

Another critical study from Hong Kong published in Lancet Infectious Diseases on the same day as the Israeli study but which went unmentioned in the press offered further evidence of Paxlovid’s limited therapeutic role. The authors reviewed their clinical experience with Paxlovid and Lagevrio, Merck’s antiviral pill, Molnupiravir, in hospitalized patients. They compared them to hospitalized patients who did not receive those medications during the horrific wave of infections that slammed into the semi-autonomous region in February and March.

Though Lagevrio has been essentially dismissed for its comparatively lower efficacy (30 percent versus 90 percent in initial trials) compared to Paxlovid, a head-to-head test has never been conducted. However, the Lancet study found that hospitalized patients receiving either oral antiviral medication had a reduced chance of dying compared to those who did not receive them.

The mortality risk reduction for Lagevrio was 52 percent, and for Paxlovid it was 66 percent. Those receiving antivirals had a lower risk of their disease progressing, but the drugs did not significantly impact their need for mechanical ventilation or ICU admission. The patients in the study averaged in age from mid-70s to early 80s.

The authors wrote: “Results of our subgroup analyses suggested a possible lack of significant benefit in younger patients (aged ≤ 65 years) and those who had been fully vaccinated, which would support prioritizing the prescription of oral antivirals to older people and those not adequately vaccinated, who are also likely to be at increased risk of progression to severe COVID-19.”

Given the results of these studies, it bears mentioning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently estimated that approximately 95 percent of Americans aged 16 and older have some level of immunity against COVID-19.

Dr. David Boulware, a University of Minnesota physician and researcher, told MarketWatch, “Paxlovid will remain important for people at the highest risk of severe COVID-19, such as seniors and those with compromised immune systems. But for the vast majority of Americans who are now eligible, this really doesn’t have a lot of benefit.”

These studies come on the heels of recent reports that First Lady Jill Biden, who was recently infected with COVID-19, was confirmed to be reinfected, having suffered a rebound infection after completing her Paxlovid course. She is in isolation again. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is donning his mask for the proscribed 10 days as a close contact, per the new CDC guidelines.

Though it was assumed that rebound was a rare phenomenon, the repetition of the phenomenon first in Dr. Anthony Fauci, then President Joe Biden and now his wife Jill Biden brings to the fore the question of whether rebound is far more common than most had anticipated in an Omicron-dominant pandemic.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has tasked Pfizer with conducting a trial to be completed by September 30 of next year to see if a second five-day course of the drug would help prevent the “rare” phenomenon. The official request was sent by letter on August 5 during Biden’s second convalescence.

Pfizer responded in an email confirming the assignment, saying: “We are working with the FDA to finalize a protocol to study patients who may be in need of retreatment. We will share updates in due course.” However, as experts have noted, there do not appear to be any additional benefits from the second course of Paxlovid in regard to preventing severe disease and hospitalization.

In April, Bloomberg reported that the Biden administration was “on the hook to pay Pfizer nearly $5 billion for pills it’s already ordered to treat COVID-19.” The White House was planning to use the $10 billion in COVID-19 funding from the Senate to cover the cost of 20 million courses of the COVID-19 antiviral pills. The other half has been designated for purchasing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters. However, as funding has been exhausted, there has been a decisive shift to commercializing these treatments, leaving millions in the lurch as the fall and winter seasons fast approach.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is teaming up with the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Zhejiang Huahai in a five-year deal to manufacture and sell Paxlovid exclusively in China. Huahai announced the agreement on August 17, though Pfizer has remained publicly silent.

In February, the drug was given emergency use authorization in China, where a large part of the elderly population has remained unvaccinated and at risk of severe COVID-19 should an outbreak reemerge in the only remaining country that has maintained a Zero-COVID policy.

South African trade unions organise “stay away” as warning to ANC

Jean Shaoul

Thousands of workers took to the streets of Pretoria, Cape Town and other major cities across the country Wednesday. They were protesting the skyrocketing cost of living, power cuts and widespread unemployment that have made living conditions intolerable for workers and their families.

Mine workers sing as they wait for the start of commemoration ceremonies near Marikana in Rustenburg, South Africa, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. South Africa marks on Tuesday 10 years since the Marikana massacre, where 44 people were killed during a mine strike at a platinum mine near Rustenburg, North West province in August 2012. [AP Photo/Themba Hadebe]

In Pretoria, workers marched on the Union Buildings where South Africa’s presidency is housed, holding placards saying, “Stop Taxing Basic Food Items.” They called on President Cyril Ramaphosa and his African National Congress (ANC) government to bring down the rising cost of living.

One woman told the BBC, “We’re tired. The cost of living is too high now—we can’t afford anything anymore. It’s school fees, it’s transport, it’s rent, it’s everything.”

She added, “We can’t live anymore, and we’ve been without a [pay] increase for four years now, and things are getting hectic now. The government must intervene and do something now.”

Inflation is at its highest rate since the rise in global food prices in 2008-09. Consumer prices rose by 7.8 percent in July, and basic foods have gone up by 10 percent in the last year, with a loaf of white bread now $1.05 compared with $0.91 a year ago and the price of fuel increasing by 56.2 percent from last year.

Last week, the South African rand fell a further 5 percent against the US dollar as the Federal Reserve discussed further interest rate hikes, a move that will exacerbate the economic crisis engulfing the already heavily indebted country.

South Africa is the most unequal society on the planet. A staggering 46 percent of workers have no jobs, 30.3 million of the country’s 59 million population live in poverty and 13.8 million face food scarcity.

It was under these conditions that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), two of the largest trade union federations, called a “mass stay away” of non-essential workers, demanding the ANC take action. The Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) and the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) along with several transport and taxi drivers’ unions, did not join the action, although several civil society and community organisations joined the marches.

The last time COSATU called a National Day of Action was in October 2020 in protest of the government’s response to the pandemic—including curfews implemented with horrific police brutality—that fueled unemployment and poverty while protecting the corporate and financial elite. According to official figures, a gross underestimate given the lack of testing, more than 102,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19.

COSATU has for decades been in a Triple Alliance with the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Together, they worked to suppress workers’ struggles and prevent them taking a revolutionary path to ending apartheid, thereby ensuring the survival of South African capitalism and averting the eruption of political and social conflict in all the former African colonies of the imperialist powers.

Since the ANC’s accession to power after the 1993 elections, COSATU has done everything in its power to keep its members in check. But along with Saftu, it called for a national walkout to stem mounting anger over the government’s lack of response to the cost-of-living crisis. Their hope is that this limited action, combined with left-sounding rhetoric against Ramaphosa’s 3 percent pay award to himself and ministers, will defuse workers’ anger.

COSATU and Saftu are desperately seeking to restore the credibility of the trade unions, guaranteeing the political ties necessary for the capitalists to maintain their exploitation over the working class, and to warn the ANC it is sitting on a social volcano. Ramaphosa is now so widely reviled that the party long associated with the fight against the hated apartheid system could lose the elections in 2024.

In 2017, COSATU backed Ramaphosa as the successor to Jacob Zuma, who was forced to resign amid mounting allegations of corruption, as ANC president. Ramaphosa, who once headed the country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers before exploiting the structures of the ANC’s Black Economic Empowerment to become a multimillionaire, used his position as a non-executive director of the mining conglomerate Lonmin to call for the government to take action against striking miners in 2012. The ANC responded, sending in security forces to close down the strike. In the resulting clashes, they shot and killed 34 miners and wounded 78 others.

Since then, the “Butcher of Marikana” has done everything he could to prop up South African capitalism, cutting corporate taxation as he drove down workers’ pay, reneging on public sector wage deals and slashing living standards. It has earned him the undying hatred of South African workers.

Striking gold miners at Sibanye-Stillwater booed Ramaphosa—COSATU’s guest of honour off the stage at the May Day rally in Rustenburg, the centre of the country’s mining region. While COSATU spokesperson Sizwe Pamla apologized for such “regrettable” and “unacceptable” actions, he said it was an understandable expression of workers’ frustration with the ANC government.

He warned the ANC, “Historically Worker’s Day is a day where workers reflect on their struggles and push for change. This is a message that the ANC cannot claim to misunderstand and that cannot be ignored anymore. The Marxist revolutionary and political theorist Leon Trotsky once said: ‘The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave’.”

Ramaphosa and the ANC government ignored the warning and continued with business as usual, using the security forces to intimidate workers and suppress protests.

In the last week, council workers on pay strike in Middelburg, Mpumalanga faced violence at the hands of security guards employed by the council. The council suspended 100 workers who walked out on August 15 demanding an increase to salary scale level 5. When workers entered the council premises to collect their letters of suspension, security guards opened fire, leaving one dead and hospitalising three more.

It follows the killing of at least four workers and the wounding of thousands by the police during protests over service delivery, high taxes and the exorbitant cost of electricity in Thembisa township, Johannesburg, after the authorities cancelled free electricity and water.

Last month, hundreds of ANC supporters marched through Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital and largest city, with a list of economic demands and calls for Ramaphosa, now mired in scandals, to go. In the most recent scandal, he is accused of covering up the alleged theft of $4 million hidden in his Phala Wildlife farm, with the help of Namibian officials and his personal security guards who are accused of kidnapping and torturing the thieves. The ANC rally followed calls by opposition parties for Ramaphosa to step down, with the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EEF), Julius Malema, calling for his impeachment over the affair. The EEF was set up by Malema, a former African National Congress Youth League, in 2013.

Former ANC President Thabo Mbeki issued a rare criticism of Ramaphosa, saying he had no plan to address the poverty, unemployment and inequality, and predicted civil unrest that might “spark our own version of the Arab Spring.”

Despite the widespread unrest, COSATU and Saftu made little effort to build for the “mass stay away,” issuing few substantive demands on the government. Saftu’s General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi even told reporters the unions were not expecting large numbers of people to join marches, blaming this on the abysmal state of public transport. He said that it was more important that workers took part in the nationwide strike. In the event, the call received a limited response from workers. 

Britain’s TUC launches farcical campaign for £15 an hour minimum wage by 2030

Laura Tiernan

On Wednesday afternoon, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) proclaimed with great fanfare that it would make an “announcement TONIGHT 10:30PM”, advising on Facebook and Twitter “STAY TUNED” in glowing neon font.

Safe to say, the TUC’s trailed announcement passed unnoticed by tens of millions of workers. Its complacent pronouncements have long been a matter of complete indifference to those who have experienced decades of betrayals rubberstamped by Britain’s trade union federation.

For several hours though, speculation among left-wing followers of the TUC’s social media accounts ran hot. A Twitter poll posted by a Rail, Maritime and Transport union member asked, “Do you think the announcement is for a General strike?” with 58 percent of 3,904 respondents voting “yes”.

Comments included: “This had better be an announcement of a general strike. You lot need to get up and fight for us”, “Nothing less than an announcement for a General strike will do. No half measures! Blow that whistle!!” Another, invoking the TUC’s refusal to call a general strike in support of striking miners in 1984-85 wrote: “Anything other than a general strike and it's the miners all over again”.

Amid the most devastating cost-of-living crisis since the 1930s that has fueled a wave of strikes, such comments reflect widespread sentiments in the working class for a general strike to oust the Tories, “General strike beginning the day Truss enters No10?” asked one, a reference to Liz Truss who is expected to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister next month.

Others demanded the TUC end its support for Labour, with comments including, “General strike and defund the red Tories please”, “De-fund the Shadow Tory Party” and “Let's get all of these blue and red Tories back from the Maldives......... GENERAL STRIKE!!” and “Please all unions disaffiliate from the Labour Party under [Sir Keir] Starmer. Why don't you use your power.”

To describe such comments as wishful thinking is generous, but the pseudo-left Socialist Party’s intervention was politically mendacious. The Socialist Party, an organisation dedicated to bolstering the grip of the trade union bureaucracy, tweeted, “Tell the TUC that you want to see workers out on STRIKE TOGETHER”.

It called on workers to “Rally with Sharon Graham [General Secretary of Unite], Mick Whelan [General Secretary of ASLEF] and more” at a public event called by its National Shop Stewards Network titled, “Strike Together, Coordinate the Action” being staged during the TUC Congress at the Brighton Conference Centre venue. Its listed speakers are the same officials working to suppress and divide industrial action and block a general strike.

At 10.30 pm, the TUC’s social media team put their followers out of suspense, with the announcement: “BREAKING… We’ve just launched our campaign for a £15 an hour minimum wage”. TUC President Frances O’Grady (annual salary package £167, 229) retweeted the demand, “It’s time to put an end to low-pay Britain”.

Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O'Grady speaking at the TUC "We demand better" demonstration in London on June 18, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

This was bad enough, but on closer inspection the TUC’s call was for a raise in the minimum wage to £15 only by 2030. This would be achieved by setting “a new minimum wage ‘bite’ target at 75 per cent of median hourly pay” by “the end of the decade”. The TUC politely suggested, “The Low Pay Commission should be tasked with progressing the minimum wage to this higher target based on prevailing economic circumstances.”

On social media the response was scathing. “Min wage of £15 per hour – BY 2030? That’s exactly like something weasel Starmer would come up with, to let bosses off the hook – is that it? You don’t want to piss off Amazon, Starbucks?” Another wrote, “Won't bother in future”, and “underwhelmed”, with someone else pointing out, “The way inflation is going—still bound to be a pay cut.”

The TUC’s announcement reveals an organisation deeply hostile to the working class, and indifferent to the social distress gripping millions. Last week National Health Service (NHS) chiefs warned thousands will die this autumn and winter from fuel poverty in what it described as a looming “humanitarian crisis”. Average annual energy bills will rise to £3,576 from October 1, likely nearly doubling to £6,552 in April 2023.

The TUC’s £15 minimum wage by 2030 is a slap in the face that will do nothing to address this emergency.

Inflation, at a 40-year high of 12.3 percent (RPI)—fueled by energy companies’ profiteering from NATO’s proxy-war against Russia—and is predicted to reach 21 percent by early next year. In the three months to June, workers suffered a pay slump of 4.1 percent. This follows the longest period of wage suppression in 200 years. More than a decade on from the global financial crisis, workers are earning £88 a month less in real terms than they did in 2008. Similar indices could be cited internationally.

More than two million workers are forced to survive on the National Minimum Wage for adults of £9.50 per hour (£361 per week before tax), £6.83 for 18–20-year-olds, and £4.81 for under-18s and apprentices. By the time the TUC’s higher £15 minimum wage is introduced in 2030, it will amount to a real terms pay-cut as it is dwarfed by inflation.

Yet for the Guardian, the voice of desiccated English liberalism, the TUC’s announcement was a masterstroke. Its online edition led with the headline, “Minimum wage should be increased to £15 an hour as soon as possible, says TUC”, alongside a separate article, “TUC picks opportune moment to call for rise in minimum wage”. Martin Kettle, the newspaper’s associate editor and columnist, described £15 as an “ambitious target”.

Neither Kettle, nor his fellow Guardian writers would be willing to submit to such an “ambitious” hourly rate now, let alone in 2030. Their real concern was made clear in the newspaper’s editorial, “The Guardian view on raising the minimum wage: winning the fight for £15 an hour”, which warned, “Britain may be as close now to a general strike as it has ever been. To resolve industrial tensions means thinking big.”

It concluded, “Sir Keir [Starmer] won’t stand on a picket line to show solidarity. But Labour should express its affinity with working people in clear policy terms, by backing a higher minimum wage.”

The Guardian’s promotion of the TUC proposal is driven by fear. They are ransacking their cupboards, searching for something—anything—to throw to the angry hordes below. They view the trade unions as a bulwark against the class struggle and are eager to promote the TUC’s pitiful announcement, urging Starmer to embrace it.

German workers pay the cost of war as gas and electricity prices skyrocket

Peter Schwarz

A tsunami of price rises is racing toward working class households, spelling ruin for many. After the price of natural gas, which many families use to heat their homes, the price of electricity is now also going through the roof. This weekend, the rebate on gasoline and diesel expires and average producer prices have risen by 37 percent in a year, which will inevitably impact consumer prices.

Gasoline prices soon to rise above two euros a litre again

Experts predict that the official inflation rate at the end of the year will be 10 percent, several times higher than the wage settlements agreed by the trade unions. In this way, the “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens is forcing working people to shoulder the costs of the Ukraine war, which it intends to continue (in the words of Ukrainian President Zelensky) until complete “victory” over Russia.

Meanwhile, the energy companies are celebrating a profits bonanza. Previously unimaginable record prices on the energy exchanges are bringing them speculative profits in the billions. On the European Energy Exchange (EEX) in Leipzig, the price for a megawatt hour of electricity climbed to over €550 last week. That is a good 2,000 percent more than a year ago. At that time, the price fluctuated between €20 and €80 per megawatt hour (MWh). In France, over €1,000 per megawatt hour was even offered on the futures market.

High speculative profits are also being made on natural gas, which has become extremely scarce due to the sanctions imposed on Russia and the non-operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. European futures reached a record €292.50 per MWh on Monday. The average gas prices in the European Union have thus doubled in just one month and are 14 times higher than the average value of the last 10 years.

The energy companies’ orgy of enrichment takes place with the blessing of the traffic light coalition. It introduced a gas surcharge that compensates intermediaries for the difference between high stock market prices and the previous low import prices for Russian gas and thus flows directly into the bank accounts of the large energy corporations. It is levied on all gas customers as a kind of war tax. For a family household with a consumption of 15,000 kilowatt hours per year it means an additional burden of around €400. Added to this is the rising gas price, which is horrendous, especially for new customers.

So far, 12 companies have filed claims for compensation from the gas levy, totaling €34 billion. That is more than the sum of the two “relief packages” adopted by the German government this year to ease the burden of inflation.

Among them are groups that operate as both intermediaries and energy suppliers and report high profits. OMV, for example, made a profit of €5.6 billion and Gunvor €2 billion in the first half of 2022. Both have applied for money from the gas surcharge. Uniper, which is the biggest importer of Russian gas to date and claims around two-thirds of the gas levy, had been split off in 2016 from energy group E.ON, which made a profit of €5.3 billion last year.

The German government explicitly supports the enrichment of energy companies. Asked why profitable companies could also pocket the gas levy, Susanne Ungrad, spokeswoman for Economics Minister Robert Habeck, replied at a press conference on Tuesday: “Our position is that a company must also make profits.”

A windfall tax, which would skim off at least part of the horrendous profits, is being strictly rejected by the traffic light coalition. With the gas surcharge, it is doing the opposite—financing the billions in profits of corporations with money that it extracts from working class households via the utility bill.

What the explosion in energy prices means for individual households can currently only be estimated.

Households that heat and cook using gas will face triple-digit price increases due to the gas surcharge of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, despite the subsequently announced reduction in value added (sales) tax. From October, two further levies will also come into force: 0.57 cents per kilowatt hour for so-called balancing energy costs and 0.06 cents for filling gas storage facilities before winter, which means an additional annual burden of more than €100 for an average household.

The biggest cost increase, however, comes from the rise in the price of gas itself, which experts say has by no means peaked. According to the Federal Statistical Office, power plants paid 235 percent, industrial consumers 195 percent and resellers 187 percent more for natural gas in July than a year earlier. It is only a matter of time before these increases are fully passed on to private households. For new customers, this is already partially the case.

The price increases for electricity are just as dramatic. The consumer comparison website Verivox assumes that the average price in the coming year will be over 45 cents per kilowatt hour. That would be around 50 percent more than in the last three years, when the average price ranged between 30 and 32 cents.

Some energy suppliers have already raised their prices. For example, EnBW customers will have to pay 31.1 percent more for household electricity under the basic tariff from October. Verivox registered 123 price increases from basic suppliers for August, September and October, with an average increase of 25 percent. For a three-person household with a consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours that means on average annual additional costs of €311. Check24, another comparison website, reports a price increase of 47.4 percent.

Here, too, the peak is far from being reached. In addition to the high price of natural gas, which is used to generate about 13 percent of Germany’s electricity, other factors are contributing to the rise in electricity prices. The extreme drought has led to the failure of hydroelectric power plants and cooling systems. Coal and oil for power plants can no longer be transported on rivers due to low water levels. In France, which gets 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, 29 of 56 nuclear reactors are currently idle because they cannot be properly cooled or need urgent maintenance. The country, which otherwise exports electricity, is currently importing larger quantities of gas-generated electricity from Germany.

The electricity supply is also particularly susceptible to crises because it cannot be stored in large quantities and even minor voltage fluctuations can lead to the failure of computer networks and internet applications or even to the collapse of power grids. Grid operators are therefore urgently dependent on buying the required quantities as the need arises to meet demand, which makes the power exchanges correspondingly susceptible to speculation. The current crisis underscores how absurd it is that a basic social necessity such as the supply of electricity is subject to private profit interests and is at the mercy of speculators.

The rise in energy prices is only the tip of the inflation iceberg. According to the Federal Statistical Office, overall producer prices in July were 37.2 percent higher than a year earlier. Although energy prices contributed the most, with an average increase of 105 percent, producer prices of consumer goods also rose sharply by 16.2 percent. Food items were as much as 21.1 percent more expensive than a year earlier—butter 75.2 percent, milk 32 percent, coffee 31.6 percent and meat 23.5 percent.

Gasoline prices will also climb above €2 per litre again in September when the fuel rebate, the three-month reduction in energy tax, expires. The €9 ticket, enabling travel throughout Germany on local and regional trains, also ends this month. For working people who rely on their cars or public transportation, this means yet another painful burden.

The price explosion is a direct consequence of the proxy war that NATO is waging against Russia in Ukraine. Although Germany’s energy supply was heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies, for which no substitute was available for the foreseeable future, the German government decided to isolate Russia economically and not bring the completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline into operation.

The Ukraine war was not triggered by President Putin’s decision to attack the country militarily, as reactionary and short-sighted as this was. The US, Germany and other Western powers had been systematically preparing and provoking it since 2014, when they brought a pro-NATO regime to power in Kiev through a right-wing coup and massively rearmed the country. Now, they are sabotaging any approach to a negotiated settlement, supplying billions worth of weapons, and directing the war in the background.

Their stated goal is not to let up until Russia is defeated and they can subjugate, divide and plunder the giant, resource-rich country, even at the risk of a nuclear world war. Germany’s ruling circles are using the war to carry out their long-cherished rearmament plans and to triple military spending.