Australian government’s universities report outlines pro-business and war restructuring

Mike Head

The Labor government’s Universities Accord final report, released last Sunday, was cynically presented by Education Minister Jason Clare and the corporate media as a call for greater equity. Supposedly, it was designed to boost participation by students from low socio-economic, outer suburban and regional areas, as well as indigenous students.

Education Minister Jason Clare with Professor Mary O’Kane AC [Photo: X/@JasonClareMP]

In reality, the report’s core axis is a further restructuring of universities to satisfy the employment and research demands of the corporate elite and preparations for war. In part, that means funneling more students, including from working-class suburbs, into courses to meet the “skill shortages” designated in employer-government “national priorities,” not least the preparations to join a US-led war against China.

That message is clear enough from the opening words of the report. The government’s review panel, which featured Australia’s highest-paid CEO, Macquarie banking group’s Shemara Wikramanayake, declared: “[A] central tenet of the Review is that all parts of Australia’s education system need to work together to meet Australia’s future skills challenge.”

The report nominates “areas of national priority like clean energy, critical technology, minerals and defence,” saying they “will need more skilled professionals.” All these fields are related to the geo-strategic interests of Australian imperialism and its commitment to US war plans.

In launching the report, Clare would not commit the government to adopting the report’s 47 recommendations, and certainly not to increasing funding for the financially-starved universities. But he fully endorsed its restructuring agenda, while paying lip service to giving “disadvantaged” students “a crack” at tertiary education.

The report shows just how much the universities must milk international students, who pay exorbitant fees, in order to survive. In 2022, Australian higher education providers enrolled almost 450,000 international students. That was more than a quarter of total enrolments. International student fees contributed more than a fifth of overall university funding, while constituting Australian capitalism’s “fourth largest export,” after iron ore, coal and gas.

Among the pro-business programs that the report proposes are a shift to “micro-credential” courses tailored to meet the needs of employers and “work integrated learning” (WIL) to embed students in industry throughout their courses, featuring tied “degree apprenticeships.” A Research Investor Forum of big business peak bodies would direct university research into corporate partnerships.

The report advocates “skills coalitions” of tertiary education providers, industry and trade union “partners” to “create a basis for scaling skills delivery on a sector basis.” The examples it gives of such “innovative approaches” already underway are revealing. They feature:

• The University of Wollongong’s Cyber Academy, a “3-year professional apprenticeship program” that offers students a Bachelor of Computer Science (Cyber Security) while “providing work experience with Deloitte, an industry partner, or a government department.”

• To support AUKUS, the University of South Australia is partnering with the South Australian Government, the Australian Industry Group and the defence industry to develop university degree apprenticeships to support the construction of nuclear-powered submarines.

The AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) military pact, which involves spending hundreds of billions to acquire US and UK nuclear-powered attack submarines, long-range missiles and other hi-tech weaponry designed for use against China, is a spearhead of the Labor government’s plans for a “all of nation” war economy, with universities on the front line.

The report calls for the introduction of an even more business-oriented funding system than the “demand-driven” one imposed by the Gillard Labor government in 2012‒13 after an earlier similar tertiary education review. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s “education revolution” forced universities to compete against each other for enrolments and rely on international student fees. This has had disastrous consequences, including the wholesale casualisation of academic and professional workforces.

The proposed revamped scheme would tie funding to universities “negotiating mission-based compacts” with a new Australian Tertiary Education Commission. These compacts would, first and foremost, require universities to “deliver Australia’s future skills needs.” Some “compacts” would be tied to financing “demand driven places for equity students.”

On every front, universities’ funding would depend on delivering courses and research that match the “national priorities” set by the ruling class.

A “Solving Australia’s Challenges Fund” would be established to “reward universities that demonstrate effective use of their research expertise and capability and application of their research findings to big national challenges by governments, business and industry.”

Governments, industry bodies and employers would also “establish targets to increase the number of doctoral candidates employed in industry undertaking a PhD relevant to their company.”

Clare highlighted the report’s statement that at least 80 percent of the workforce will need a vocational education and training (VET) or university qualification by 2050. Currently, it sits at 60 percent. Far from any genuine concern for equity, the anxiety in ruling circles is that such a goal could not be met without slotting students from less privileged backgrounds into the designated “skills shortages.”

Gillard’s “demand-driven” regime is credited with lifting the participation rate to the current level, but it failed in its pledge to increase the enrolment of disadvantaged students. For all the talk of “equity” that is unlikely to change, because social inequality is widening at a rapid rate, not least in the two-class school system, where public schools are starved of resources while private schools are being more generously funded than never before.

The report suggests some changes to the HELP fees system and student income support programs to overcome what it terms “placement poverty,” which “deters tertiary participation and successful completion.” That is, many students, often trying to survive in low-wage work, simply cannot afford university study.

Again, the report’s concern is not social justice but finding ways to draw students into industry-tied courses. Some such programs would offer students payments for unpaid placements that are currently required, notably in the areas of nursing, aged care, child care and teaching, where there are massive staff shortages due to poor wages and conditions.

The report points in a veiled fashion to a critical political fear in the ruling class—that staggering social inequality will exacerbate social and political unrest. It identifies “threats to our social cohesion” as one of “the major problems we face.” Hence, the misleading political packaging of the report as one addressing educational inequity.

Similarly, as a sop to student discontent, the report recommends a national student charter covering student welfare, safety and wellbeing, and a National Student Ombudsman to address student complaints.

Instead of guaranteed government funding for university infrastructure, the report recommends a Higher Education Future Fund (HEFF). It would be funded by co-contributions from universities’ own revenues and the government, with the aim of reaching $10 billion in assets, depending on the vagaries of the financial markets. Distribution of returns would be invested in projects selected on the advice of a pro-business “independent board.”

Not surprisingly, business groups immediately welcomed the report. The Business Council of Australia (BCA), representing the largest companies operating in the country, said the document “offers a unique opportunity to reshape the higher education sector into one that is agile and responsive to industry.” It emphasised: “The BCA is very supportive of the report’s emphasis on skills—we have long called for job-ready graduates who have the targeted and practical skillsets businesses need when they leave the tertiary sector.”

The report’s content exposes the role of the leaders of the two main campus unions, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU). They have repeatedly urged workers and students to support Labor’s review, promoting illusions that it would improve university conditions.

The truth is that the unions share Labor’s pro-business and militarist agenda. The NTEU’s submission to the Accord panel called for a higher education sector that “provides the graduates with the necessary skill sets for future productivity.”

For years, the union bureaucrats have suppressed educators’ hostility to the corporatised transformation of universities, blocking any unified mobilisation against it while pushing through enterprise agreements that enable such restructuring.

Paris war summit prepares for direct deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine

Alex Lantier

French President Emmanuel Macron, center right, delivers a speech at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 [AP Photo/Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool via AP]

European Union (EU) heads of state gathered in Paris Monday for a summit on the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine. Facing the imminent collapse of NATO’s Ukrainian proxy forces amid massive losses, the summit was called to lay the groundwork for the introduction of troops from NATO and EU member countries to fight Russia in Ukraine.

Before the summit, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico warned, “NATO and EU member states are considering that they will send their troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.” He added, “I cannot say for what purpose.”

These warnings were confirmed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared last night that “everything is possible” to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine, and that individual European countries sending troops to Ukraine is “not excluded.”

He pledged to give Ukraine “medium- and long-range missiles and bombs” for use against Russia. That is, Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other top EU officials agreed to the framework for a full-scale EU-NATO war against Russia.

The statements of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke to the Paris conference via video link, epitomize the official lying aiming to obscure the catastrophic implications of this EU-NATO escalation. “31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war,” Zelensky claimed. “Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us.”

Zelensky’s statement exposes his contempt for the Ukrainian people, who know he is lying. If the NATO powers are now advocating sending their own troops to the battlefield, it is because so many Ukrainian soldiers have been killed that the Ukrainian army has run out of manpower.

In November 2022, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed or wounded, though the New York Times wrote that “officials said privately the numbers were closer to 120,000.” Last August, the Times cited US officials claiming Ukraine had lost 70,000 killed and 120,000 wounded.

US officials critical of the Ukraine war and with access to classified intelligence reports said these August 2023 figures in fact understated Ukrainian losses, so as to limit opposition to the war.

US Colonel Douglas Macgregor said, “The Ukrainians now, we think, have lost 400,000 men killed in battle. We were talking about 300,000-350,000 a few months ago. Within the last month of this supposed counteroffensive which was to sweep the battlefield, they lost at least 40,000 killed.”

Ukrainian casualties today are far higher than they were last August. Indeed, Ukraine’s failed “counteroffensive”—which involved throwing troops against well-prepared Russian fortifications backed by mines, heavy artillery and drones—was not called off until November. Ukrainian forces have since suffered catastrophic defeats all along the front line, most recently abandoning Avdeevka amid reports they were suffering 1,500 casualties per day.

A recent Washington Post report on the Ukrainian front found several infantry battalions with only 40 of 200 men left. One battalion commander warned the Post that “the front will collapse somewhere.”

Ukraine’s catastrophic casualties are a warning: Other European countries will also take horrific losses if they wage war on Russia. It is worth recalling the September 2023 study in the US Army War College Quarterly, which called on the United States to reinstate the draft so as to be able to absorb the losses it would suffer in a war with Russia. It projected that the US Army would take 3,600 casualties per day, or 1.3 million per year, in this looming war.

Moreover, the deaths and casualties will not be confined to the battlefield. The direct introduction of NATO forces into the war against Russia would almost certainly escalate into a nuclear conflict, with deaths and casualties running into the tens and hundreds of millions.

If Zelensky lies so brazenly about the number of war dead, what else are he and his NATO allies lying about? The answer is: Everything.

The entire narrative the NATO powers have concocted around the Ukraine war, to justify plans for military escalation worked out behind the backs of the population, is a tissue of lies that must be rejected. Workers and youth must instead be politically mobilized to stop the war.

US and European ruling circles lie relentlessly about the origins of the Ukraine war, claiming it is a case of unprovoked Russian aggression. But this weekend, the New York Times, to justify its call for the US Congress to pass legislation providing $60 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine, published an article detailing how Ukraine serves as a valuable asset for CIA spying and assassination programs against Russia. “The details of this intelligence partnership, many of which are being disclosed by the New York Times for the first time, have been a closely guarded secret for a decade,” it wrote.

Thus, the “closely guarded secret” of complicit US and European media is that NATO provoked the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev that installed Ukraine’s current regime, the NATO powers have spent tens and hundreds of billions of dollars to build up Ukraine as a military base. The bankrupt post-Soviet capitalist regime in Russia invaded Ukraine as an essentially defensive maneuver, trying to pressure what it calls its “Western partners,” that is, the NATO imperialist powers, to drop their most aggressive policies against Russia.

Since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991, the NATO powers have waged wars across the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa, killing millions. This bloody rampage enabled the NATO powers to plunder the world, while imposing social austerity and strengthening the military-police state against the workers at home.

The disintegration of the Ukrainian front comes under conditions where the lies used to justify these wars are deeply discredited. The Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” Washington invoked as a pretext to invade oil-rich Iraq in 2003 did not exist. The NATO wars launched in Libya and Syria in 2011, supposedly to defend democracy against authoritarian regimes tied to Russia, have been followed by the NATO powers’ backing for Israel’s genocide against Gaza. Amid growing social anger and strikes against inflation and austerity, mass protests against the Gaza genocide are unfolding in America, Europe and internationally.

The European ruling class is reacting to this crisis by shifting far to the right. Fearing that a Ukrainian defeat would blow apart the entire edifice of lies used to justify its imperialist wars abroad and class war at home, it has opened a path for World War III to explode across Europe and the world.

New York Times report demolishes the narrative of the “unprovoked war” in Ukraine

Patrick Martin

Volunteers from Social National Assembly take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine before being sent to the eastern part of Ukraine to join the ranks of special battalion "Azov" in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 3, 2014. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

For the past two years, nearly every reference in the US media to the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been preceded with an obligatory word—“unprovoked.”

The public was told that this was a war without cause, that Ukraine was blameless, and that the invasion was to be explained entirely in terms of the intentions and psychology of one man, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, on the weekend of the second anniversary of the war, the New York Times has published a lengthy article revealing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was instigated by a systematic and widespread campaign of military-intelligence aggression by the United States.

The article details longstanding Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations in Ukraine, in which the agency sponsored and built up the Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR, using it as a weapon of spying, assassinations and other provocations directed against Russia for more than a decade.

The Times writes: 

Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.

The Times report demonstrates that this Russian intelligence assessment was absolutely true. For more than a decade, dating back to 2014, the CIA was building up, training and arming Ukrainian intelligence and paramilitary forces that were engaging in assassinations and other provocations against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, against Russian forces in Crimea and across the border into Russia itself.

In a critical passage, the Times writes:

As the partnership deepened after 2016, the Ukrainians became impatient with what they considered Washington’s undue caution, and began staging assassinations and other lethal operations, which violated the terms the White House thought the Ukrainians had agreed to. Infuriated, officials in Washington threatened to cut off support, but they never did.

In other words, the Ukrainian paramilitary forces armed, funded and led by the United States and NATO were systematically assassinating forces supporting closer relations with Russia.

The newspaper’s account begins with the Maidan coup of February 2014, when right-wing and neo-Nazi forces backed by the US and European Union overthrew a pro-Russian president and installed a pro-imperialist regime headed by the billionaire Petro Poroshenko. 

This coup was the culmination of two decades of imperialist inroads into the former Soviet bloc, with the expansion of NATO to include virtually all of Eastern Europe, in violation of pledges made to the leaders of the former Soviet Union. The Times is silent on this earlier history, as well as on the role of the CIA in the Maidan events.

Maidan set the stage for a massive escalation of the CIA intervention, as detailed in the Times report. The intelligence agency played a central role in fueling conflict between Ukraine and Russia, first as a low-level war against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, then as a full-scale war after the Russian invasion in February 2022. Three US administrations were involved: first Obama, then Trump and now Biden.

According to the Times account, CIA operations included not only widespread spying but assisting direct provocations like the assassination of pro-Russian politicians in eastern Ukraine and paramilitary attacks on Russian forces in Crimea.

The Times reported that a Ukrainian unit, the Fifth Directorate, was tasked with conducting assassinations, including one in 2016. The Times writes:

a mysterious explosion in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, ripped through an elevator carrying a senior Russian separatist commander named Arsen Pavlov, known by his nom de guerre, Motorola.

The C.I.A. soon learned that the assassins were members of the Fifth Directorate, the spy group that received C.I.A. training. Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency had even handed out commemorative patches to those involved, each one stitched with the word “Lift,” the British term for an elevator.

The report describes another such operation:

A team of Ukrainian agents set up an unmanned, shoulder-fired rocket launcher in a building in the occupied territories. It was directly across from the office of a rebel commander named Mikhail Tolstykh, better known as Givi. Using a remote trigger, they fired the launcher as soon as Givi entered his office, killing him, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

Since the outbreak of full-scale war, the Ukrainian HUR has extended these assassination operations to the whole territory of Russia, including the killing of Darya Dugina, a leading pro-Putin polemicist in the Russian media, and Russian government and military officials.

The CIA found its Ukrainian allies very useful in collecting vast amounts of data on Russian military and intelligence activity, so much that the HUR itself could not process it, and had to forward the raw data to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for analysis. An earlier, less detailed report on this intelligence collaboration, in the Washington Post, cited a Ukrainian intelligence official’s estimate that “250,000 to 300,000” Russian military/intelligence messages were being collected each day. This data was not just related to Ukraine but concerned Russian intelligence activity all over the world.

Long before the Russian invasion, the CIA was seeking to broaden its attack on Moscow. The Times reports:

The relationship [with the Ukrainian HUR] was so successful that the C.I.A. wanted to replicate it with other European intelligence services that shared a focus in countering Russia.

The head of Russia House, the C.I.A. department overseeing operations against Russia, organized a secret meeting at The Hague. There, representatives from the C.I.A., Britain’s MI6, the HUR, the Dutch service (a critical intelligence ally) and other agencies agreed to start pooling together more of their intelligence on Russia.

The result was a secret coalition against Russia—and the Ukrainians were vital members of it.

All these activities occurred well before the Russian invasion of February 2022. The outbreak of full-scale war led to even more direct CIA engagement in Ukraine. CIA agents were the only Americans not covered by the initial evacuation of US government personnel from Ukraine, removing only to western Ukraine. They continually briefed the Ukrainians on Russian military plans, including precise details of operations as they were unfolding. 

According to the Times:

Within weeks, the C.I.A. had returned to Kyiv, and the agency sent in scores of new officers to help the Ukrainians. A senior U.S. official said of the C.I.A.’s sizable presence, “Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they helping with targeting? Absolutely.”

Some of the C.I.A. officers were deployed to Ukrainian bases. They reviewed lists of potential Russian targets that the Ukrainians were preparing to strike, comparing the information that the Ukrainians had with U.S. intelligence to ensure that it was accurate.

In other words, the CIA was helping direct the war, making the US government a full participant, a co-belligerent in a war with nuclear-armed Russia, despite Biden’s claim that the United States was only aiding Ukraine from afar. And all this without the American people having the slightest say in the matter.

The Times account also provides an inadvertent indictment of the American media, as it writes: “The details of this intelligence partnership, many of which are being disclosed by the New York Times for the first time, have been a closely guarded secret for a decade.” This admission means that these secrets were “closely guarded” by the Times itself. As former Editor Bill Keller once observed, freedom of the press means freedom not to publish, and “that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity.” Particularly, we might add, when it comes to the crimes of US imperialism.

The Times article is not so much an exposure as a controlled release of information. The US “newspaper of record” reports that the two authors of the piece, Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, conducted “more than 200 interviews” with “current and former officials in Ukraine, elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States.” This activity could hardly have taken place without the knowledge, permission, even encouragement of the CIA, as well as the Zelensky regime and Ukrainian intelligence.

In the meantime, a real journalist, Julian Assange, is awaiting the decision on his final appeal against extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison or even a death sentence. The crime of Assange and WikiLeaks, which Assange founded, is that they did not obey the rules of bourgeois journalism and did not seek the permission of the military-intelligence authorities before publishing their revelations about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the efforts of the US State Department to subvert and manipulate governments, and the spying activities of the CIA and National Security Agency.

The exposure of a decade of CIA operations in Ukraine—clearly at the request of the agency itself—appears to be linked to the ongoing conflict within the US ruling elite over what policy to adopt in that war, in the wake of the debacle suffered by the Zelensky regime in last year’s offensive, which gained little and suffered colossal losses. Congressional Republicans have blocked further military and financial aid to Ukraine, effectively declaring that the US must cut its losses there and concentrate on the main enemy, China.

By reporting the virtual control of the Ukrainian regime by the US military-intelligence apparatus, the Times is seeking to pressure the Republicans to support the war funding. It is arguing that this money is not going to a foreign government, in a foreign war, thousands of miles from US borders, but to a subcontractor of American imperialism, waging an American war in which US personnel are deeply and directly engaged.

In so doing, the Times has revealed its own coverage of the Ukraine war over the past two years to have been nothing more than war propaganda, aimed at using a fraudulent narrative to dragoon the American public to support a predatory imperialist war of aggression aimed at subjugating and dismantling Russia.

Mass layoffs sweep Canada as interest rate hikes push economy toward recession

Niles Niemuth

Bell Canada Enterprises announced on February 8 that it was slashing nine percent of its workforce, accounting for 4,800 jobs, adding to a rising wave of layoffs sweeping the country as Canada’s economy edges closer to an official recession. 

The Bank of Canada has been driving up interest rates since 2022 with the support of the NDP-backed, Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government and the entire political establishment. Their aim is to manufacture an economic downtown which will drive up unemployment and thereby suppress workers’ increasingly militant demands for inflation-busting wage increases. Last year saw a wave of militant worker struggles, including strikes by more than 100,000 federal government workers, dockworkers in British Columbia, supermarket and autoworkers in Ontario and over half-a-million Quebec public sector workers. 

The Bank of Canada’s high interest policy—the current five percent “policy rate” is the highest in more than two decades—is part of a global offensive by the capitalist ruling elites against the working class which has been picking up pace in every country and across industries. An international survey by ResumeBuilder found that 38 percent of executives think layoffs are likely at their company in 2024 and half foresee a hiring freeze.

Canada’s media sector has been eviscerated in recent years with this being just the latest round of layoffs at Bell Media. Last year, Canada’s largest private media company eliminated six percent of its workforce. 

The telecommunications and media monopoly is carrying out a bloodbath at its Bell Media subsidiary, eliminating local CTV News broadcasts and selling off dozens of community radio stations in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. However the bulk of the layoffs will come from other sections of the company including telecom, where most of the 800 Unifor union members are expected to lose their jobs. 

Despite posting a $2.3 billion profit last year, Bell said the cuts were made necessary due to financial pressure from onerous federal regulations and ongoing negotiations with Google and the social media platforms over compensation for Canadian news corporations. However, the company is projected to receive $40 million in relief this year from the elimination of online streaming licensing fees. It is also slated to share in the $30 million that the search giant Google has negotiated with the Liberal government to pay in order to avoid regulation under its new Online News Act.

The largest layoff at Bell in more than three decades sparked populist posturing from the political establishment with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling reporters he was “pissed off” and that the company’s move was a “garbage decision.” British Columbia’s NDP Premier David Eby denounced Bell and other executives as “corporate vampires.” 

The NDP-backed Trudeau government bears a significant share of responsibility for the bloodletting in the media. The federally-funded public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada announced in December that it was cutting 10 percent of jobs nationwide, amounting to 600 layoffs and the elimination of 200 vacant positions, as it confronts a $125 million shortfall for 2024.

After the Public Policy Forum found that 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers had either folded or merged between 2010 and 2017, the Canadian Heritage Ministry established a $50 million Local Journalism Initiative fund to support local reporters. While it has supported 400 journalists at 300 news outlets, these funds are set to run out at the end of March with no indication from the Trudeau government that it will be renewed, placing hundreds more media jobs at risk. 

While much of the focus has been on the media and telecom job losses, cuts are beginning to mount in manufacturing, transport, energy, tech and retail as companies seek to squeeze more profit from their workers. 

On Thursday, low-cost carrier Lynx Air announced it was ceasing all operations as of next Monday and seeking bankruptcy protection. More than 160 pilots and flight crew are losing their livelihood as a result of the shutdown, which Lynx management has blamed on rising operating costs.     

Workers in Canada’s pulp and paper industry, already diminished after decades of closures and cutbacks overseen and approved by the nationalist trade union bureaucracies, are experiencing yet another devastating contraction. Domtar announced the closure of its paper mill in Espanola, Ontario, late last year, resulting in 450 workers losing their jobs in a city of under 5,000 residents. And the Powell River, British Columbia, paper plant, idled since 2021, was permanently closed by Paper Excellence in August 2023, axing 260 jobs.

Quebec-based cardboard manufacturer Cascades announced last week the permanent closure of its mill in Trenton, Ontario and the shuttering of converting facilities in Belleville, Ontario, and Newtown, Connecticut, resulting in the layoff of 310 workers. This follows the announcement by AV Group in January that it would be indefinitely idling its Terrace Bay pulp mill in Ontario, forcing 400 workers onto Employment Insurance and economically devastating the rural town of 1,500 on the northern shore of Lake Superior.

Enbridge, the transnational energy and pipeline giant based in Calgary, Alberta, announced in January that “increasingly challenging business conditions” had forced it to announce 650 layoffs. Suncor Energy, also based in Calgary, had announced last summer that it was eliminating 1,500 jobs before the end of the year. 

In the tech sector, major layoffs notices have gone out to Google employees in Canada who are among the 12,000 being eliminated globally by parent-company Alphabet. Other companies which have announced layoffs in Canada include 7shifts, a scheduling app based in Saskatoon, which is cutting 68 people, or nearly 20 percent of its workforce; BlackBerry, which is eliminating 200 workers; and AI biomedical startup BenchSci which has cut 70 jobs, or 17 percent of its total employment.

In retail, home renovation and construction-store chain Rona announced in January the closure of two distribution warehouses in Terrebonne, Quebec, and Calgary, Alberta, and the layoff of 300 workers. The cuts come in the wake of the company’s acquisition in 2022 by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Another retailer, Mastermind Toys is firing 272 workers after it was bought out by Unity Acquisitions. Layoffs have also been carried out at Staples Canada and Indigo Books.

On Monday, Nova Bus, a Volvo Group subsidiary, said it will eliminate 125 jobs at its St-Eustache, Quebec, factory by the end of the year. The layoff announcement came just days after the Quebec government revealed that it had given Nova Bus a $19 million subsidy to “improve its productivity” and “ensure the sustainability of its operations.”

In January, Canada’s jobless rate stood at 5.7 percent up 0.7 percent from a year before. January was the first month in over a year in which the jobless rate fell, but the marginal 0.1 percent decline was more than offset by a 0.2 percent drop in the labour force participation rate. For youth aged 15 to 24 the participation rate was down three percent year-to-year in January, indicating that young people are dropping out of the labour force because they are finding it increasingly difficult to find work.

New Zealand working class faces deepening social crisis

John Braddock

New Zealand’s National Party Prime Minister Christopher Luxon used his first “state of the nation” speech on February 18 to bluntly warn that he will need to make unpopular decisions to turn around the country’s “fragile” state.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon delivering state of the nation speech [Photo: Christopher Luxon Facebook]

Luxon heads a far-right coalition consisting of National and two highly unpopular minor partners, the libertarian ACT and the anti-immigrant populist NZ First. The three parties took office after five weeks of secretive horse-trading following the general election last October.

The incumbent Labour government saw its support plummet from 50 percent in the 2020 poll to just 26.9 percent. This result was not a popular endorsement of National but was primarily due to mass abstention and anger towards Labour after years of rising homelessness, soaring living costs, and the decision in late 2021 to let the COVID-19 pandemic rip across the country.

Throughout his speech, Luxon referred to “tough choices,” repeatedly coming back to attack so-called welfare dependency, pointing to the additional 70,000 on the unemployment benefit compared to 2017. The government will be targeting those who have been on welfare for many years, he said, declaring: “the free ride is over.”

At a subsequent press briefing, Social Development Minister Louise Upston said that the full force of benefit sanctions will be imposed. The Ministry for Social Development (MSD) already has the ability to cut the incomes of beneficiaries if they fail to meet certain “work ready” or “social” obligations.

The existing sanctions are bitterly opposed in the working class. Research from MSD said there was little evidence that sanctions were an effective tool for getting people into work faster. Charities, anti-poverty organisations and the Children’s Commission have criticised them being imposed on parents, saying it ultimately harms children.

Even more draconian measures are looming. Upston has foreshadowed “more comprehensive” sanctions, particularly aimed at young people. They will include mandatory reapplication for Jobseeker Support every six months instead of each year, “job coaching,” needs assessments, a “traffic light” warning system, new non-financial sanctions, and “consequences” for those who repeatedly fail to comply with “work obligations.” National plans to slash the welfare budget by $2 billion.

The attacks on the most vulnerable sections of the working class are an expansion of vindictive measures activated during the government’s first 100 days of office. These include a cut to the minimum wage by lifting the annual adjustment by just 2 percent, less than half the current inflation rate of 4.7 percent, the reinstatement of 90-day work “trials” for all businesses, enabling bosses to sack new employees without any excuse, and major cuts to public services, including thousands of sackings.

Labour Party social development spokesperson Carmel Sepuloni told the media: “Rather than being stingy on the minimum wage and bashing beneficiaries, the coalition government should be focused on lifting incomes for the poorest New Zealanders.” The Greens’ Ricardo Menéndez March said the new rules “confirms the government’s goal of pushing more people into poverty via benefit sanctions.”

This is sheer hypocrisy. The latest assault comes after six years of attacks on living standards under Labour-led governments, which included both the Greens and NZ First. Labour maintained poverty-level welfare benefits and oversaw soaring reliance on foodbanks and homelessness. The number of applicants for public housing increased fivefold under Labour from 5,000 to 25,000.

Wages for workers in the public and private sector failed to keep up with rising living costs. The trade unions played a crucial role in imposing the burden of the economic crisis on workers by suppressing any struggle against austerity, shutting down and selling out strikes involving thousands of healthcare workers, teachers and others.

Research published last August showed 55 percent of New Zealanders struggling with their financial situation. New child poverty figures from Statistics NZ (Stats NZ) show that in the year to June 2023—i.e. while Labour was in office—the proportion of children living in households below the poverty line increased from 14.4 to 17.5 percent (an increase of 36,000 children).

The full-frontal assault on living standards is the product of deliberate class policies, overseen by the Reserve Bank (RBNZ). In November 2021 the RBNZ told a parliamentary committee that it was deliberately engineering a recession and lifted the official cash rate to 5.5 percent through 12 consecutive rises over the next year.

RBNZ’s high interest rate regime is set to continue, with unemployment used as a battering ram against any wages push by the working class. Unemployment officially lifted to 4 percent in the December quarter and is expected to increase to more than 5 percent this year.

The Salvation Army last week released its latest “State of the Nation” report, highlighting growing problems for the lowest-income households. The number of children in households receiving a benefit has now reached 222,500, the highest since 2012. Nearly one in five children are in households relying on welfare support. Households with children reporting some level of food insecurity rose sharply last year, including 40 percent of Pacific households. People are also facing rapidly rising rents, of up to 15 percent a year in some places.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) meanwhile has released a report revealing that over 15,000 high school students, mainly in working class areas, are putting their education on hold in order to feed their families. Using data from the Education Review Office, CPAG calculated students were working 20 to 50 hours a week on top of study.

Students from Otahuhu College in South Auckland told Radio NZ of working long and unsociable hours, including night shifts, to “put food on the table.” One Year 10 student, River, said she worked from 4.00 p.m. -10.00 p.m. every day plus all weekend—a full 40 hour week. Another said her family was struggling even though her father was working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.

As the working class deals with an escalating cost-of-living crisis, the National-ACT-NZ First government has unveiled a series of measures designed to transfer millions into the pockets of the wealthy, particularly “mega landlords.”

According to figures released by the Council of Trade Unions, over the next five years National’s tax cuts will give $1.3 million to every landlord owning more than 200 properties. A tiny privileged group of 346 property owners will collectively gain nearly half a billion dollars in tax breaks. Luxon himself is a private sector landlord, owning seven rental properties.

National’s overall tax policy favours the wealthy. Those on higher incomes will benefit from a change in the tax brackets. For example, a household on a combined income of $200,000 with two children will get $40 a week more. Meanwhile anyone earning less than $45,000 a year gets only $2 a week in tax relief. 

During the election campaign, National claimed its tax cuts would deliver $250 a fortnight to the average household, but later it was revealed that just 3,000 households would get the much-vaunted benefit. Meagre tax cuts will moreover be paid for by a raft of cuts to public services and sweeping “user pays” policies, such as the removal of public transport subsidies; including those that apply to people on low incomes or with disabilities. If a family relies on the bus and has children travelling to school and back, such extra costs will cancel out any tax “relief.”  

Above all, spending on militarism and war is increasing exponentially. Last week the government announced further support of nearly $26 million for Ukraine to mark the second anniversary of the US-NATO war against Russia. Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins marked the occasion with a package of support and sanctions that brings New Zealand’s total support over the last two years to more than $NZ100 million.

New study finds hundreds of rural hospitals at risk of closure in the US

Benjamin Mateus

A crisis is brewing in rural healthcare systems in the United States, upon which an estimated 60 million people rely. The immediate trigger is the drying up of federal pandemic funding that has kept many rural hospitals afloat.

A study released earlier this month by Chartis Center for Rural Health found that 50 percent of the country’s 1,810 rural community hospitals are operating at a loss, and 418 are vulnerable for closure. Many of these facilities are having exceptional challenges in hiring and keeping nurses and physicians, who do not feel supported or have access to additional medical assistance to perform their duties.

Dr. Bradley Serwer, an interventional cardiologist and chief medical officer at hospital contractor VitalSolution, told Consumer Affairs: “A large percentage of rural community hospitals are losing money on an annual basis. Reimbursement for inpatient hospitalization is not sufficient to cover [operating] expenses. Hospitals are monetarily penalized for readmitting patients within 30 days of their initial discharge. Many times, these readmissions occur due to a lack of sufficient resources to care for patients in their homes.”

Michael Topchik, national leader of the Chartis Center for Rural Health, put the situation directly: “America’s rural hospitals have been battling against drivers of instability for more than a decade. But this newest research suggests this crisis has accelerated quickly to previously unseen levels. To learn the percentage of rural hospitals in the red has shifted seven percent and now includes half of all rural hospitals is startling and should serve as an urgent call to action for everyone invested in rural healthcare.”

It is highly significant that, in what is supposedly the wealthiest and most technologically advanced country on earth, the healthcare system is at risk of disintigrating due to its “unprofitability.” This underscores the irrational character of the for-profit healthcare system in the US, as well as the complete subordination of all social questions to the capitalist profit motive.

Major highlights of the Chartis study include:

• The percentage of America’s rural hospitals in the red jumped from 43 percent to 50 percent in the last 12 months.

• 55 percent of independent rural hospitals are operating in the red, while 42 percent of health system-affiliated rural hospitals are operating at a loss.

• Medicare Advantage now accounts for 35 percent of all Medicare-eligible patients in rural communities (9.2 million people). In seven states, Medicare Advantage penetration exceeds 50 percent. The authors noted that the deeper penetration of Medicare Advantage could further disrupt rural hospital revenue. Medicare advantage is a semi-privatized scheme with restrictive network access and potentially high out-of-pocket expenses. Medicare Advantage also often does not cover all the services traditional Medicare would. In 2019, the Medicare Advantage organization denied 13 percent of prior authorizations and cost taxpayers $9 billion more than if beneficiaries remained on the original Medicare.

• Access to inpatient care continues to deteriorate, as 167 rural hospitals since 2010 have either closed or converted to a model that excludes inpatient care.

• 418 rural hospitals are “vulnerable to closure,” according to a new, expanded statistical analysis. Of the 453 vulnerable rural hospitals identified in 2020, 30 have closed since, underscoring the very real concerns raised by the authors. Texas has the most vulnerable facilities with 45, followed by Kansas (38), Nebraska (29), Oklahoma (22), North Carolina (19), and Georgia and Mississippi (18 each).

• Between 2011 and 2021, 267 rural hospitals dropped obstetric services. This represents 25 percent of America’s rural OB units.

• Between 2014 and 2022, 382 rural hospitals stopped providing chemotherapy services.

The decline in obstetric services in rural communities has had a devastating impact. Maternal mortality rates have been steadily climbing in both urban and rural settings, but rates of pregnancy-related deaths in rural areas are twice those seen in urban settings and comparable to rates seen in regions like Latin America, Middle East and North Africa.

A study published last year in the American Journal of Public Health on maternal mortality in the rural US found:

Although the reasons for the higher rates of adverse maternal outcomes in rural areas are likely multifactorial, substantial declines in hospital-based obstetric services between 2014 and 2018 in rural counties highlight the importance of policy efforts to ensure access to high-quality and high-acuity care. Previous work has also demonstrated rural-urban differences in individual cardiovascular health factors that may contribute to adverse maternal outcomes, such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, as well as adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Six years later, with more rural hospital closures, these issues remain unresolved and growing even more dire. The repeal of the Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court of the United States will further accelerate access to OB services, especially in states than ban abortions such as Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi and South Dakota.

Statistics also show worse outcomes in rural areas for those who develop cancer, with rural counties reporting higher death rates for all cancer sites combined (predominately among those with lung, breast, colon/rectum and prostate cancers) compared with nonmetropolitan and metropolitan counties. Worse, the trend has been increasing over time.

As the Chartis study notes, in 2023, 28 rural communities closed their inpatient care, surpassing the record set in 2020 with 18 closures of health facilities. Since 2010, the report notes that 167 rural hospitals have closed or adopted an operating model that excludes inpatient care (i.e., conversion to an urgent care center). These closures are concentrated in Southern states like Texas (26), Tennessee (15), Kansas (10), Missouri (10) and Georgia (10).

One other aspect of rural hospital closures not often discussed is the economic ripple effect it has throughout these communities. Many of these facilities are the largest employers and contributors to the local economy. The Chartis study noted, “Our analysis shows that when a rural hospital closes its doors, the loss of hospital jobs is nearly 220 at media. The loss of non-hospital jobs in the community is 73 at the median.”

Many of the nearly 60,000 who lost their jobs in healthcare in 2023 worked in smaller facilities in poor and struggling working class communities, where such healthcare facilities are being gutted for financial reasons. The consolidation of healthcare systems through mergers and acquisition will only threaten the most vulnerable regions of the country first and most acutely where the measure of providing services is profitability and not need.

Amazon argues in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional

Erik Schreiber & Jerry White

In a recent legal filing, Amazon argued that the US federal government’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional. The action is an escalation of the corporate giant’s drive to eliminate any obstacles to its exploitation of its workforce.

The challenges to the NLRB may very well reach the US Supreme Court whose reactionary majority, personified by the unabashedly corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas, could very well move to weaken if not abolish the NLRB. The Court already seems poised to abolish the precedent that requires federal judges to defer to the actions of regulatory agencies that were duly established by Congress.

The company submitted its filing as part of a case in which it is accused of threatening and discriminating against workers who were organizing the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at its JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Despite the ALU’s election victory nearly two years ago, Amazon still refuses to recognize the union.

The ALU’s orientation to the established trade unions, the Democrats and the courts has not led to any improvements for JFK8 workers. Instead it has opened the door for Amazon’s legal counter-attack.

In its filing, the company denied many of the allegations and asked for the complaint to be dismissed. It argued further that the NLRB’s structure violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by infringing on the powers of the executive branch.

To substantiate this claim, Amazon pointed to the limits on the removal of the federal agency’s administrative law judges and five board members, who are appointed by the president. Amazon’s sudden discovery of the supposed unconstitutionality of the NLRB is entirely hypocritical. The company has never criticized the administrative courts when they denied injured employees workers’ compensation.

The company has also argued that NLRB proceedings violate Amazon’s due process rights, deny the company a trial by jury and permit legal remedies beyond what is allowed without a trial by jury. With this argument the company’s lawyers are insinuating that the giant transnational corporation, with its market capitalization of $1.8 trillion and power to buy off governments around the world, is the same as any citizen with the right to due process, jury trials, etc.

In fact, Amazon is insisting that it should not be subjected to any federal regulations. It might be the NLRB today, but tomorrow it will be the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or any other regulatory body. In other words, the company is insisting that it has the “right” to exercise an unlimited dictatorship over its one million employees in the US whose rights are meaningless in the eyes of Amazon’s corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.

It is noteworthy that similar arguments have been used by right-wing Supreme Court justices in cases like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. to roll back fundamental constitutional rights.

In Citizens United, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to “free speech,” by which the Court meant spending unlimited amounts of money on campaign contributions and buying off politicians.

In Burwell, the Court found that closely held for-profit corporations can exercise religious beliefs and that these beliefs can exempt the corporations from their legal obligations. It thus created a loophole that allows corporations to deny their workers health insurance that covers contraception.

Amazon’s arguments about the NLRB’s unconstitutionality are “radical,” according to Wilma Liebman, a former NLRB chair who spoke to the New York Times. “The constitutionality of the NLRB was settled nearly 90 years ago by the Supreme Court,” she added.

America’s restricted labor relations system

While Amazon is seeking to eviscerate the NLRB, it would be wrong to believe the claims by trade union officials that the federal agency is a pillar of workers’ rights. As the bitter experiences of countless workers have attested, the federal agency regularly dismisses workers’ complaints over management’s trampling over their rights with the collusion of the trade union bureaucracy.

The NLRB, like every other institution of the federal, state and local governments, defends the capitalist system, the “right” of the corporate owners like billionaire Jeff Bezos to control vast industrial and financial monopolies and to extract profit from the unpaid labor of the working class.

Formally established in 1935, the federal agency has its roots in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt the year before in the face of an increasingly explosive movement of the working class that was under leadership of socialists and left-wing militants.

It was part of the policy of relative class compromise and New Deal social reforms, which FDR implemented to forestall the danger of an “American October,” that is. a repeat of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in the United States. Based on the vast wealth accumulated by American capitalism, the Roosevelt administration made certain concessions to the working class, including the passage of Social Security, laws against child labor, and legal recognition of the industrial unions after decades of violent resistance by the employers.

But the new industrial unions were quickly entangled in a restrictive system of labor relations established under the auspices of the NLRA. In exchange for legal protections and an automatic dues checkoff system, union leaders agreed to guarantee “management rights.” This included uninterrupted production and the enforcement of contracts, no matter how egregious the terms, for the length of the agreement.

In a 1956 address to arbitrators, Arthur Goldberg, the general counsel for the United Steelworkers of America (later Secretary of Labor under Kennedy and Supreme Court justice), summed up management’s “inherent rights,” which were “not modified or diminished” by collective bargaining. “The union cannot direct its members to their work stations or work assignments. … The union does not notify people who are discharged to stay put. The union does not tell employees to report for work after a layoff. … Very often union men are disturbed by decisions they consider entirely wrong. Nevertheless, a company’s right to make its own judgments is clear.”

Workers, Goldberg said, had the right to challenge the company’s acts when they violate his or her rights, but “that challenge is made through the grievance procedure, not through rebellion.”

This system regulated class relations throughout the post-World War II period. Facing a historic decline in the world position of American capitalism and increasing challenges from European and Asian rivals, however, the American ruling class jettisoned its policy of relative class compromise and adopted a program of class war and social counter-revolution. This included the campaign of union-busting, begun with Reagan’s firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, and the destruction of millions of industrial jobs. The ruling classes in the US and around the world utilized the globalization of capitalist production to exploit cheaper pools of labor and claw back achievements won through decades of struggle.

The pro-capitalist and nationalist AFL-CIO had no progressive response to globalization. Instead, over the last four and a half decades, they voluntarily accepted massive job cuts and wage concessions to make American capitalism more “competitive.” Throughout this period, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), like OSHA and other federal agencies, were gutted and did little to slow down the corporate onslaught.

Today, the so-called “reform” leaders of the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers sign contracts at UPS and the auto industry that destroy the jobs and living standards of their members and collude with the Biden administration’s ever-expanding wars.

Nevertheless, the billionaire oligarchs like Bezos and Elon Musk do not want the slightest interference with their money-making operations, including having to deal with the NLRB’s wrist-slap penalties or the expense of buying off trade union bureaucrats.

In January, Musk’s SpaceX filed a lawsuit against NLRB, which also asserted that the federal agency’s structure was unconstitutional and that it was depriving the company of its supposed right to trial by jury.

SpaceX filed its lawsuit one day after the NLRB accused the company of firing eight employees for criticizing Musk in a letter to company executives.

A few weeks later, the NLRB held a hearing to discuss accusations that grocery chain Trader Joe’s had retaliated against workers who were seeking to unionize. During the hearing, a lawyer for the company echoed the SpaceX argument that the structure of the NLRB and its panel of administrative law judges is unconstitutional.

It is no coincidence that these three companies are using the same playbook to attack the NLRB. Amazon, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s have faced multiple accusations that they have violated labor law. Amazon alone has been the subject of more than 250 NLRB complaints alleging unlawful labor practices in recent years.

There are tactical differences between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump on these questions. Biden relies on the trade union apparatus to suppress the class struggle and impose the type of austerity and labor discipline necessary to expand US imperialism’s wars for global conquest.

Trump is seeking to build a fascist movement to crush the rising tide of social opposition and the growing support for socialism in the working class. Though their paths of somewhat different, the Democrats and Republicans both offer the working class nothing but a future of war, destitution and dictatorship.

In the face of this, the ALU and its pseudo-left leaders have proven totally incapable of defending workers against the gang-up of the corporations, the capitalist state and the corporatist unions.