Berlin Senate prepares widescale social and cultural cutbacks

Markus Salzmann

The last few years in Germany have been marked by drastic austerity measures with funding diverted to finance a massive military build-up. The collapse of the German coalition government will further exacerbate this development. The Berlin state government (Senate), a coalition of the CDU and SPD, is already anticipating the budget cuts to be implemented at a federal level.

Senators in the Berlin House of Representatives [Photo by Sandro Halank / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Berlin Senate wants to save three billion euros next year alone. Cuts of at least another 1.8 billion euros are planned for the years 2026 and 2027. To this end, the CDU and SPD have agreed on a fiscal policy freeze, with all budget items to be frozen at the 2025 level. Currently, the city’s total budget is around 40 billion euros.

In September, the Senate administrations were instructed to stop making firm funding commitments for 2025. To this end, a “circular letter to secure the 2025 budget” was sent out to all departments, Finance Senator Stefan Evers (CDU) explained. The aim was “not to raise false expectations among recipients of grants and subsidies for the coming year, for example,” according to the finance administration.

Former state governments, which were led by the SPD for 22 years and included coalitions involving the Left Party and the Greens, had already made massive cuts in the areas of health, education and social services, making Berlin a centre for widespread poverty.

The drastic nature of the planned cuts is made clear by the statement of a spokeswoman for the finance ministry, who explained: “We have to reduce government spending to a normal, sustainable level after the spending explosion of the last five years.”

The state government had already decided on significant cuts for the current year with each department called upon to reduce its budget by around two percent, saving around 550 million euros.

In the Berlin Senate, there is talk of “the most severe budget crisis since the bank scandal.” In 2001, the billions in losses incurred by the state supported Bankgesellschaft Berlin were passed on to the population through brutal austerity measures implemented by the Senate (a coalition of the SPD and the Left Party/PDS) headed by Klaus Wowereit (SPD). Today, much more far-reaching cuts are on the agenda under even more stringent conditions.

The Senate is currently deciding on the specific cuts behind closed doors and they will not be made public until the end of November. Little has been revealed so far. What is certain, however, is that almost all areas will be affected by the cuts.

There are to be massive savings in the sector of education and child care. Berlin schools are already no longer allowed to book school trips. Senator for Education Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) justified this by saying that it was necessary to stabilise the budget. Here, both the costs for the teachers involved are to be saved, as are subsidies for poor families. Around 30 percent of pupils from poorer families were until recently entitled to these subsidies. Other costs for business trips and trips for teachers are also to be cancelled.

Further savings are planned for the renovation of schools and daycare centres, which are in a dilapidated state across the board. New buildings could be smaller than planned. According to press reports, the additional construction of urgently needed daycare centres could be cancelled.

The twelve Berlin music schools are particularly affected. The permanent employment of 1,800 teachers, which is laid down by law, has been delayed for months. Finance Senator Evers has stated that funds would only be made available if they were financed by reducing the services offered by the music schools. As a result, about 25 to 30 percent of music students would lose their places. Around 18,000 students would be affected.

Severe cuts are also expected in the areas of health and social services. Around 40 health care institutions and similar independent organisations have already submitted a document to the Senate, as they justifiably fear for their continued funding and survival.

The majority of them provide important services on behalf of the state, such as pastoral care, hospice work, support for people with chronic illnesses or care for people without health insurance. As a rule, these organisations are completely dependent on funding from the state.

For many years and decades, these services have been hopelessly underfunded and it is not uncommon for them to be maintained only through the commitment of employees. But the planned austerity measures threaten to be devastating.

“Even now, public funds for health care for homeless and homeless people and people without health insurance in Berlin are insufficient,” said Peter Bobbert, President of the Berlin Medical Association, warning against destroying the city’s social infrastructure.

The CDU and SPD are also planning severe cuts in the cultural sector. Senator for Culture Joe Chialo (CDU) has so far refused to comment on how much will be saved and where. Overall, the targeted cuts amount to a volume of around 120 million euros.

There are already fierce protests against the planned cuts. In an open letter to the Berlin Senate, the signatories warn of the consequences of drastic cuts. Opera, concert and theatre institutions would have to cut back their operations and reduce jobs, and some would probably have to close. Among the well-known signatories are conductor Daniel Barenboim, actor Lars Eidinger and theatre director Frank Castorf.

The fact that a scenario of well-known concert houses closing is not out of the question was confirmed by the governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) as early as the summer of this year. In connection with a possible sale of the Komische Oper, Wegner stated that the situation of the state budget “allows no room for manoeuvre.” Currently, the renovation of the building, which has been urgent for years, is being postponed again with reference to the alleged necessary savings.

Further cuts are also expected in the area of climate protection, although the city has hardly any significant expenditure here. At the beginning of the year, the so-called climate special fund, which had previously been announced with great fanfare, was scrapped at the instigation of the tax authorities. Now measures such as the planned installation of solar panels on state-owned buildings will also fall victim to the red pencil.

This devastation of the city’s social fabric can only be enforced against the resistance of the population. It is therefore considered certain there will be no cuts affecting the police, secret service and security apparatuses. Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) has spoken out clearly against any savings in this area and has been supported by the entire Senate.

Australian government determined to slash international student numbers despite rejection of enrolment cap bill

Mike Head

The Albanese Labor government has vowed to keep drastically cutting the number of international students in Australia, regardless of the impending defeat in the Senate of its reactionary bill to impose caps on enrolments at universities across the country.

Labor is intent on outdoing the Liberal-National Coalition opposition in making overseas students, along with immigrants and refugees, scapegoats for the intensifying cost-of-living, housing and social crisis affecting millions of working-class households.

The Coalition announced on Monday that it would join the Greens in voting in the Senate against Labor’s signature plan to cut migration numbers by slashing international student enrolments. Labor’s response was to demagogically accuse the Coalition of being “soft” on the anti-immigrant witch hunt.

Australian federal Minister for Education Jason Clare [Photo: X/@JasonClareMP]

Education Minister Jason Clare told reporters on Monday that the Coalition’s decision to block the bill would destroy opposition leader Peter Dutton’s credibility on migration. “You can’t talk tough on immigration and then go soft on this,” Clare said.

Clare vowed to continue cutting international student numbers by denying them visas through the government’s December 2023 directive known as Ministerial Direction 107, supposedly designed to block “high-risk” students coming to live in Australia. 

Under this regime, the Labor government also more than doubled non-refundable student visa application fees from $710 to $1,600—the highest in the world—slowed visa processing and imposed harsher English language requirements and “genuine student” tests.

These measures have already cut the student arrival numbers from 577,295 in 2022-23 to 376,731 in 2023-24, and led to more than 60,000 visa refusals so far in 2024. This has triggered thousands of job cuts in universities and private education colleges. 

The attack on international students forms part of Labor’s plans to halve overseas migration to 235,000 annually for the next three years. The Coalition has vowed to cut annual net migration even further, to 160,000, which could reduce annual international student inflows to less than 15,000.

Both parties are ramping up their anti-immigrant agitation, seeking to divert in a poisonous nationalist direction the growing working-class hostility to the devastation of living conditions. The ruling classes globally are on the same path, now spearheaded by US president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to mobilise the military to deport millions of immigrants.

Coalition shadow finance minister Jane Hume accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government of “opening floodgates to record levels of international students” and claimed that this had exacerbated rental shortages in inner city areas.

In truth, international students make up only 4 percent of the rental market, yet rents have soared, as have home mortgage repayments, due to a combination of billionaire property developer profiteering and government-backed interest rate hikes to try to suppress workers’ wage demands.

Under Labor’s enrolment cap plan, 15 universities were to have had their numbers reduced for 2025, particularly targeting those with the highest numbers of Chinese students. Across the country, enrolments were to be cut overall by more than 50,000, to 145,000, for publicly-funded universities, with severely damaging consequences.

Labor is also continuing to starve the universities of adequate funding, exacerbating the crisis produced by their ever-greater reliance on exorbitant international students’ fees because of years of funding cuts by successive Labor and Coalition governments.

Those fees and the flow-on effects of student spending on housing and other services have become a $51 billion-a-year revenue-earning industry for Australian capitalism, making it the ruling class’s fourth-highest export earner after iron ore, coal and gas.

International students have been treated as cash cows as a direct result of the education “revolution” imposed by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013. This “revolution” created a corporate-style market, which forced universities to fight each other for full fee-paying international enrolments.

The bill’s rejection, just weeks before the start of 2025, has now thrown the country’s 39 public universities into chaos. While the bill was still pending, some proceeded with 2025 enrolments, while others paused international student applications and established waiting lists to avoid going over the caps that the Albanese government had announced.

In October alone, universities announced more than 1,000 job losses, while others resorted to staffing freezes and/or the decimation of contract and casual staff, especially in the humanities and arts. Those cutting hundreds of jobs included the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, James Cook University, the University of Southern Queensland and the University of Wollongong.

Greens education spokeswoman Senator Mehreen Faruqi described the rejection of the Labor government’s bill as “a big win for the tertiary education sector” and international students. In reality, the assault will continue.

Faruqi also underscored the Greens’ hopes of propping up the Labor government after the next election, due by May. Since barely scraping into office in 2022, Labor’s support has further disintegrated among workers and youth because of the gutting of living standards and its backing for the US-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Faruqi told the media: “We know there is a very good chance that there will be a minority government, with the Greens in balance of power or having influence in that minority government, we can actually push Labor to be better and to support the tertiary education sector.”

This flies in the face of the historical record. The Greens formed a de facto coalition with the last minority Labor government, that of Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, as it slashed university funding, cut welfare entitlements and joined the Obama administration’s military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to confront China.

Today, the cuts to international students are also aimed at forcing the chronically under-funded universities to integrate themselves more fully with the demands of big business and the military, as set out earlier this year in the Albanese government’s Universities Accord. 

The Accord insists that universities must reshape both their teaching and research in partnership with employers, and in line with the building of a war economy, including through the AUKUS pact, in preparation for a US-led war against China.

While starving the universities of funds, the government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AUKUS military spending, as well as backing the Zionist barbarism in Gaza and Lebanon and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

The main campus trade unions, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), have been complicit in Labor’s assault. In September the NTEU asked its members to sign a petition to the government calling for “phase-in periods for any caps” on international students, not the reversal of them.

The NTEU falsely claimed that the enrolment cuts could be implemented without any job losses and that vice chancellors’ warnings about thousands of job cuts were just “scare mongering.”

Trump’s tariff threats bring warnings of “recession, poverty and conflict”

Nick Beams

Even before he officially takes office on January 20 and begins implementing his policies, the ascent of Donald Trump to the US presidency has sent tremors through the world economy.

The main issue, at least to this point, is the effect of the tariff hikes Trump has advanced—a 60 percent imposition of all goods from China and a 10 to 20 percent tariff on imports from other countries.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Community (APEC)—an organisation established in 1989 to promote free trade—held in Lima, Peru, over the weekend was dominated by a man who was not even there.

As Bloomberg reported: “At first, speakers tiptoed around saying his name for the first few hours of the two-day conference… Once the floodgates opened, however, Trump was just about all people talked about.”

Delivering a keynote address, without directly naming Trump, Vietnam’s president Luong Cuong, drew attention to the key concerns, warning that “isolationism, protectionism, and trade wars lead only to recessions, conflict and poverty.”

He was not just making a general defence of the free trade order but would have had in mind the position of Vietnam. In recent years it has generated the fourth largest trade surplus with the US—after China, the European Union and Mexico—as a result of the shift of some manufacturing from China.

Its trade surplus now makes it a target for an attack by Trump who told Fox Business in 2019 that Vietnam “takes advantage of us even worse than China.”

In the course of discussion and commentary, the protectionist US Smoot-Hawley legislation of the 1930s and its disastrous consequences are increasingly being recalled. It is estimated to have led to a 14 percent contraction in world trade, setting off economic conflict that played a significant role in creating the conditions for World War II.

In a meeting with outgoing US president Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC meeting, China’s president Xi Jinping stuck in the main to his usual phrases about the need for global cooperation to overcome the difficulties facing humanity for which “neither decoupling nor supply chain disruption is a solution.”

He told Biden he was ready to work with Trump to improve the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

But he did deliver a warning: “If we treat each other as an adversary or an enemy, viciously compete with and harm each other, the Sino-US relations will encounter twists and turns or even regression.”

He specifically took issue with the US policy of denying China access to the most advanced AI chips and other technology on “national security” grounds. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has characterised the ban as a “small yard, high fences” policy.

Xi told Biden this policy should not be pursued by major economies. His warning carried some weight because, as a number of analysts have noted, while China may have been caught somewhat on the backfoot by the tariffs of the first Trump administration it is much better prepared for the second.

As the Financial Times (FT) noted in a recent article, China has introduced anti-foreign sanctions laws against firms deemed to be acting against its national interests.

“An expanded export control law,” the article continued, “means Beijing can also weaponise its global dominance of the supply of dozens of resources such as rare earths and lithium that are crucial to modern technologies.”

It cited remarks by Andrew Gilholm, head of China analysis at a consultancy firm, who said the damage Beijing could inflict on the US in retaliation had been underestimated.

“I keep telling our clients: ‘You think you’ve priced-in geopolitical risk and US-China trade warfare, but you haven’t, because China hasn’t seriously retaliated yet.’”

China is not the sole target of Trump tariff warfare. Europe is very much in the firing line. While US stocks have surged ahead since the election, albeit with something of a downturn in recent days, European markets have taken a hammering because of fears of what US tariffs will bring.

“Investors fear that Europe will be in the front line of the coming trade war,” Chris Turner global, head of markets at the financial firm ING, told the FT.

Markus Hansen, a portfolio manager at another firm, told the newspaper: “Trump’s not messing around. His administration wants to get going on tariffs from day one.” European companies “will find themselves in the crossfire.”

The tariff war comes as European manufacturing firms, especially in the continent’s largest economy, Germany, have had the cheap energy basis of their growth over the past several decades shattered by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. German manufactured prowess was in no small part powered by cheap Russian energy. That has now gone.

Europe is being hit on two sides. On the one hand, it faces a direct attack from the US as Trump deepens the measures against the EU he initiated in his first term. At the same time, it could be caught in the pincers of the US-China conflict. One of the consequences of US measures will be that China will seek to increase its exports to Europe.

Some of the geo-economic problems confronting the EU were outlined in a recent article on the major US foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs.

It said that in recent years EU officials had announced a series of measures to strengthen the bloc.

But the new situation required more than “drafting agendas and appointing well-meaning leadership.” The EU was hamstrung by numerous institutions and 27-member states and suffered from “internal dysfunction when it comes to geoeconomics.”

Those conflicts were recently on display when the European Commission decided to impose a 40 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The move was opposed by five countries, spearheaded by Germany, where the vitally important auto industry opposed the move fearing retaliation would hit its Chinese export market. Another 12 countries abstained.

Pointing to the global economic warfare, still in its initial stages, in which Europe is embroiled, the article said the bloc’s policy was largely reactive.

Adopting the language of the foreign policy establishments of the major imperialist powers, it said policy focused on “protecting Europe from China’s unfair trade practices, Russian aggression, or the United States’ potential imposition of sweeping tariffs.”

“And even in these points, there is little agreement among EU member states or even within European institutions. European policymakers say they aim to ‘de-risk’ from China, but they cannot settle on a definition of what that concept means or what it would entail in practice.

Record homelessness in London, surge in rough sleepers since Labour took office

Simon Whelan & Robert Stevens

Several reports attest to a massive increase in homelessness in London, with another surge since Labour came to power in July.

A report published last month by London Councils group, a cross-party organisation representing London's 32 borough councils and the City of London—estimated that there were now more than 183,000 Londoners homeless and living in temporary accommodation, costing local boroughs around £4 million per day. “London is grappling with the most severe homelessness crisis in the country,” it declares.

London’s homelessness emergency notes that this represents the highest level of homelessness ever recorded in the capital, equivalent to one in 50 Londoners.

London’s homelessness emergency report [Photo: London Councils group]

Child homelessness has reached staggering levels with the report stating, “The number of Londoners in temporary accommodation includes almost 90,000 children. London Councils estimates this is equivalent to one out of every 21 children living in the capital and means on average there is at least one homeless child in every London classroom.”

An enormous 320,000 households are on waiting lists for social housing in London.

London’s population is almost 9 million (8.9 million) and its wider metro area almost 15 million. The report extrapolates on the basis of the 8.9 million figure.

The study explains, “London is the epicentre of a national emergency--homelessness is a major concern across the UK. However, London accounts for over half of England’s homelessness figures. As the situation in the capital worsens, the impact is increasingly felt beyond its boundaries. This is demonstrated by the number of out-of-London homelessness placements boroughs must make due to the chronic shortage of affordable accommodation in the capital, which in turn can exacerbate housing pressures elsewhere in the country”.

A homeless man sleeping in a shop doorway in Romford, London, December 2022

The huge increase in homelessness is stretching the resources of local councils, many already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, to breaking point. London “boroughs’ collective spend is around £114m each month--or £4 million every day--on temporary accommodation for homeless Londoners. It warns, “London boroughs are currently forecast to overspend on their homelessness budgets this year by £250m despite an increase in funding.”

In the first months of the Labour government the number of people sleeping rough in London has risen by almost a fifth, to a new record high. A total of 4,780 rough sleepers were seen on the capital’s streets between July and September, according to the latest figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain). 

This represents an increase of 18 percent from 4,068 people in the same quarter of 2023, and up 13 percent from 4,223 in the weeks between April and June this year. Chain’s data showed nearly half, 49 percent (2,343) of those counted between July and September, were new rough sleepers. The number of rough sleepers it recorded between July and September was the highest quarterly figure since their records began in 2009.

Almost 12,000 (11,993) people were witnessed rough sleeping in the UK capital in the year to March 2024, according to Chain’s statistics--the highest ever recorded by Chain for a single year. The total number of rough sleepers in the year to March was up by 58 percent on the 7,581 people seen rough sleeping 10 years ago, in 2014-15.

The Glass Door Homeless charity, which operates emergency shelters across London are preparing for a hectic winter. Its shelters opened November 4 and will remain so until April. There were more than 1,500 applications for its shelter spaces last winter, an 80 percent increase on the previous year that saw the waiting list for men seeking emergency shelter closed three times due to excess demand.

Chain’s figures reveal almost half of rough sleepers in London are UK nationals, 8.1 percent are Romanian nationals and Polish nationals make up 5.1 percent. There has been a 41 percent increase in the number of young people aged between 18 and 25 sleeping rough compared to 2023. Of the total of rough sleepers, 52 percent of those assessed were experiencing mental health issues, with another 35 percent having issues with drink and class A drugs.

Reporting on the record breaking number of rough sleepers, the Daily Mail noted, “Westminster--a hub for luxury shopping and late-night entertainment--had by far the highest number of rough sleepers”. 

It said of a recently evicted migrants rough sleeper encampment in Park Lane, “Opposite their home are the luxury Park Lane Hilton and The Dorchester hotels where room rates can start from more than £1,000 a night. Top of the range cars such as McLarens, Bentleys and Ferraris line the streets nearby and an Aston Martin showroom has pride of place next to the five star Grosvenor House Hotel.”

Grotesque inequality is illustrated not to elicit sympathy. The migrant rough sleepers are demonised for being poor and for blighting the life-styles of the super-rich. “Tycoons” the article complains, “who look out on the camp from their penthouses are infuriated to see people drinking at 7am and using Hyde Park's shrubberies as toilets.”

Before the general election the then ruling Conservatives sought to implement new laws that could have seen “nuisance” rough sleepers arrested for how they “smelt”. Under the proposed legislation, those deemed a “nuisance” would have been fined as much as £2,500 and/or jailed if they refused police orders to shift from a certain locality.

In the prelude to Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London (2023), Caroline Knowles of Queen Mary University of London notes how in contrast to the silence on the vast siphoning off of societies wealth by the super-rich, the “Media and political attention focus on the habits of the poor, with impecunious migrants and refugees providing a focus for popular discontent... 

“Plutocrats are a tiny proportion of London’s population, yet their wealth is extraordinary… Yet as wealthy residents increase so do the ranks of the dispossessed. The number of homeless people in London without a fixed residence, some of them rough sleepers, increased sharply from 2010, when, following massive public investment to forestall financial collapse threatened by the banking crisis of 2008, a politics of austerity hit the public finances and the budgets of local councils.”

“A direct line can be drawn between London’s housing and social welfare crisis and the super-rich,” writes Knowles “including international developers and investors who have bought up the city’s real estate, and wealthy residents who--permitted to do so by permissive governments--avoid making a fair contribution to the public finance.”

Rising homelessness is the most naked expression of entrenched poverty. Stephanie Ratcliffe of St Mungo’s homeless charity said the record rise in new rough sleepers over the last year is being driven by the cost-of-living crisis and a shortage of suitable housing in the capital. “People who have never been at risk of homelessness before--that’s never been a tangible possibility for them--are finding themselves in that position and sleeping on the street, which I think is very shocking and heartbreaking”, said Ratcliffe.

Fueling the emergence of widespread rough sleeping and homelessness in London and across Britain is the destruction of public housing. Demolition of countless housing estates, gentrification, right-to-buy legislation, the marketisation of housing associations, and a failure by government of all political stripes to invest in substantial new public housing since the 1970s has created a disaster for the working class. 

Nearly 60,000 public housing units have been demolished in England in the last 10 years. Over 161 London council estates have been demolished since 1997 and another 123 estates are set to go. Deliberately, brick by brick, London’s working class is being deprived of public housing and frequently kicked out onto the pavement.

Mass layoffs announced in France at Auchan and Michelin

Anthony Torres

Farmers are beginning nationwide protests in France and rail workers have announced strikes starting December 11, as workers face a wave of mass layoffs announced across Europe and internationally.

The empty parking lot of an Auchan hypermarket is seen in Plaisir, France. [AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere]

Supermarket chain Auchan has announced an unprecedented slashing of thousands of jobs in France. This comes amid mass sackings in the auto industry, with tens of thousands of jobs threatened at Volkswagen in Germany, as well as at Stellantis in the United States and internationally.

Beyond the 2,400 jobs threatened at Auchan, auto parts maker Michelin has announced the closure before 2026 of two factories in western France, Cholet and Vannes, threatening 1,254 jobs. Michelin nevertheless recorded a record €3.6 billion operating profit in 2023.

The restructuring planned by Auchan includes rationalizing Auchan-France’s and Auchan-International’s customer support services, as well as the international products department. Some 784 jobs are threatened, including 138 that are currently vacant. The rationalizing of Auchan’s logistics operations for home deliveries threatens to close three warehouses that are to be replaced by drive-ins, axing 224 jobs.

In Auchan’s supermarkets, 915 jobs would be cut. Three stores are to close—at Clermont-Ferrand, Woippy and Bar-le-Duc—as well as a smaller store at Aurillac and six shops. These would impact 466 jobs.

In the last quarter, France has lost 25,000 jobs. Milee, the distributor of publicity brochures, formerly known as Adrexo, has gone into bankruptcy. Currently, no one is offering to buy its operations. After several waves of mass sackings in 2024 the 5,000 remaining jobs are also threatened. France’s Insee national statistics office confirms an economic downturn that is unprecedented since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Official projections are that unemployment will rise back over 8 percent this coming year.

These mass sackings are the response of the capitalist class to the international economic and political crisis triggered by the pandemic and the NATO war with Russia. As the pandemic began, trillions of euros in public funds were handed over to financial markets and major corporations for speculation to enrich the financial oligarchy and build a war economy. These policies, together with Europe’s decision to cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas, has triggered an inflation crisis and vastly intensified the budget and debt crises of the major European states.

Trump’s election victory in the United States has accelerated the decision of the European bourgeoisies to carry out mass sackings in Europe, amid mounting fears of the trade war policies Trump will employ against both China and Europe.

In a question-and-answer session at the National Assembly on November 5, Prime Minister Michel Barnier hypocritically declared: “I am not proud, ever, of a policy that would destroy jobs. I want to know what corporations have done with money we gave them. We will ask these questions, and we will see whether the money was well spent or badly spent, in order to draw lessons for the future.”

The owners of Auchan are the Mulliez family, whose net worth of €28 billion makes them the 7th-largest fortune in France, according to the 2024 list established by financial magazine Challenges. Between 2013 and 2018 alone, this corporation benefited from €83 million in grants of public funds.

French Economy Minister Antoine Armand, while on an official visit to Calais, tried to lull Auchan workers to sleep, claiming: “The state will ensure that the defense of jobs remains at the center of the corporation’s strategy, and that the priority during this transformation remains with jobs.”

The Barnier government’s promises are so many lies designed to hide its complicity in corporate jobs cuts. Already in 2020, as the pandemic began, the Mulliez family carried out one restructuring plan and used Macron’s labor law reforms to declare bankruptcy, slash jobs and buy up other stores. This included the 98 stores of the Casino supermarket chain, whose total value is estimated at around €1 billion.

Now, to justify its almost 2400 layoffs, the corporation is claiming: “Since 2012, Auchan has undergone a constant fall in the number of customers in its supermarkets and a fall in its operating revenues. Over this period, and before the purchase of Casino supermarkets, its market share fell from 12.1 to 8 percent, its profits were reduced by €2.26 billion, and its EBITDA was divided by six. Given these results and in an ultra-competitive climate, Auchan must react.”

Mass redundancies at auto parts suppliers Schaeffler and Continental in Germany

Marianne Arens

With the help of the IG Metall union, many companies are currently pushing through long-planned mass redundancies and site closures. In Hesse, in addition to VW Baunatal and Opel/Stellantis, this particularly affects the automotive suppliers Schaeffler and Continental. The latest IG Metall contract in the metal and electrical industries, which guarantees two years of “industrial peace,” has given management the green light.

Continental plans to close its sites in Schwalbach am Taunus and Wetzlar by the end of 2025. Some of the workforce there are to move to Frankfurt or Babenhausen, with 630 jobs also being destroyed at the Frankfurt site. One hundred and ten jobs are also to be cut in Babenhausen. In total, Continental is cutting 1,200 of the remaining 8,000 jobs in the region, and 1,100 workers are to be forced to relocate. Continental plans to cut 7,150 jobs worldwide in order to reduce personnel costs by €400 million annually.

The Schaeffler Group, an important manufacturer of drive technology, has also announced job cuts in Schwalbach am Taunus. Schaeffler only took over Vitesco Technologies Group AG, the automotive supplier spun off from Continental, in October 2024. Just three weeks later, Schaeffler announced 139 job cuts at Vitesco in Schwalbach. The company plans to cut 3,700 jobs across Europe, 2,800 in Germany.

The company, which employs 120,000 people worldwide, wants to “utilise synergies” and “increase the savings potential to €290 million per year” over five years—in other words: lay off employees.

There is great anger and a willingness to fight among those impacted. A faint reflection of this can even occasionally be seen in the local press. For example, a young Continental worker from Wetzlar told Hessenschau regional news programme “All our plans for the future have been turned upside down. We only got married last year, now have a child and wanted to build a house. That’s all in limbo now.”

Another called it a “slap in the face,” adding, “It’s sad that this is coming to an end.” Employees in administration, research and development have been particularly hard hit.

In the protests and warning strikes of recent weeks and months, the workforce has been almost totally united. There can be no doubt about their determination to fight. However, IG Metall is refusing to lead the necessary fight. It made this clear with its latest wage agreement where it committed to preventing industrial action at least until the early elections in February.

In addition, IG Metall chairwoman Christiane Brenner, who stands behind the agreement, has been a deputy chairwoman on Continental’s Supervisory Board for years at an annual salary of €270,000. With its officials in the pay of management, IG Metall blocked any resistance three and a half years ago when Continental destroyed over 10,000 jobs and flattened its large Aachen plant,

Many still remember the dispute at Continental in Karben and other branches in Hesse. Each was left to fight on its own. At no point did IG Metall organise serious industrial action uniting workers at all locations. Instead, it helped ensure the closure of one location after another. Karben will also be finally wound up next year.

Workers must draw definite conclusions from this experience. They need their own, independent rank-and-file action committees to overcome the division fostered by IG Metall between sites, groups and sectors and unite all employees, whether permanent or contract workers. The ultimate goal must be to take control of such important global production companies themselves, to put them at the service of society and to expropriate their current owners.

These owners and their managers are waging a ruthless class war. The so-called “social partnership” has turned into a one-way street: The trade union, through its networks in the workplace, ensures that any resistance is nipped in the bud. The attacks on jobs and wages are part of a global capitalist offensive and a new wave of trade war paving the way for armed conflict.

The captains of industry and shareholders belong to a class of the super-rich. This applies above all to Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler and her son Georg Schaeffler, who are in 27th place on the list of the 500 richest Germans, with a fortune of over €7.7 billion. The Schaeffler family is also the main shareholder of Continental AG and recently acquired its spun-off automotive division Vitesco.

The management boards of both companies were paid bonuses totaling millions, and in July, Continental shareholders decided to pay out around €440 million in dividends. Of this sum alone, 46 percent—more than €200 million euros—will once again end up in the Schaeffler family’s bank account.

Both Continental and Schaeffler owe the origins of their wealth to crimes committed under Nazi rule culminating in the Second World War. Here are some historical facts:

• At Continental, immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933, all managers were obliged to join the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The Executive Board, Supervisory Board and Works Council were purged of Jewish members and opponents of the regime. The company described itself as a “Christian and purely German company.”
• The war brought an unexpected economic upswing, as production—aircraft tyres, fuel tanks and a wide range of troop equipment—was geared entirely to the needs of Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht. Continental was a “company important to the war effort” and a “model National Socialist [Nazi] company.”
• The exploitation of tens of thousands of forced labourers, including prisoners of war, “civilian workers from occupied territories” and concentration camp inmates, was particularly profitable. Continental did not even shy away from having the rubber soles of Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners tested for wear, which meant that people were hounded to death on the “shoe test track.”

The origins of the Schaeffler fortune also goes back to the Nazi era. The company, which was officially founded in Herzogenaurach in 1940, actually had a Jewish predecessor: the “Davistan Krimmer, Plüsch und Teppichfabriken AG” owned by the Frank family, who had to flee Germany in the 1930s. This company, which was quickly renamed “Wilhelm Schaeffler AG,” also produced armaments for the Wehrmacht during the war and profited from the proximity of its owners, the direct ancestors of the current owners, to the Nazi regime.

Thousands of new buildings found unsafe as UK flammable cladding crisis worsens

Robert Stevens

If anything confirms the fact that Britain’s ruling elite, as with their counterparts internationally, could not care less about the safety and lives of millions of working-class people, it is the Grenfell Tower inferno.

Not only have the seven-year-long police investigation and a now completed public inquiry resulted in precisely zero arrests or prosecutions for the deaths of 72 people in June 2017, but hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tower blocks covered in the same flammable cladding that caused those deaths.

An example of the type of cladding used on the Grenfell Tower is displayed during a news conference in Philadelphia, Tuesday, June 11, 2019. A lawsuit filed in the United States says faulty building materials helped spread a fire at London's Grenfell Tower in 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The financial resources allocated for remedial action are vastly below what is required to make thousands of buildings safe. Since the Grenfell fire, just £2.3 billion had been spent by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on the remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding as of August 2024.

In September, in the first release of data since the Grenfell Inquiry, MHCLG reported that no work has been done on more than half (2,400) of the 4,770 high-rise and mid-rise buildings in England designated as having “life-critical” cladding or fire safety defects since 2017. Only 29 percent of works have been fully completed, while 21 percent more remained unfinished and unsafe.

Of the mid-rise buildings over 11 metres tall, work on nearly all (98 percent) still has not begun. On high-rise buildings over 18 metres with Grenfell-style ACM cladding, remediation work had not started on 3 percent. On high-rise buildings with other types of dangerous cladding, work had not begun on 36 percent.

The problem was actually getting worse each month, with more buildings identified as needing remediation than were being fixed. Some 42 remediations were completed and another 78 begun between the end of July to the end of August. But another 141 buildings had been found during the same time.

Earlier this month, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that it could cost up to £22.4 billion to make England’s multistorey residential buildings safe from dangerous cladding. That is the higher-end estimation, but even the NAO’s lower end estimation is a staggering £12.6 billion.

This contrasts sharply with overall funding by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) which agreed to provide £9.1 billion to fund upfront costs. The Labour government plans to reduce these costs to the taxpayer to £5.1 billion through a levy—first announced by the Conservative government in February 2021—on the property sector.

Yet as the NAO points out, all of this remains essentially a pipe dream, as it is unclear how much the levy can even generate—on top of the fact that builders won’t even start paying it until autumn 2025 at the earliest.

With police saying they need another two years before even considering charges for the crimes at Grenfell, the date for completion of remedial work on buildings more than 11 metres tall is set more than a decade into the future, the year 2035, fully 18 years after Grenfell. But the NAU warned in its findings: “Remediation of buildings over 11 metres is not currently on course to complete by 2035 and there are significant challenges to overcome.”

Even worse: “Of the 9,000 to 12,000 buildings over 11 metres that MHCLG estimates will need remediating, 4,771 buildings have been identified and included in its portfolio, leaving up to 60% of affected buildings still to be identified. Of those identified, remediation work has yet to start on half and has completed on around a third. Of all the buildings that may be in scope, work has completed on only 12–16%.”

The government responded to the NAO by stating that “the pace of remediation to make homes safe has been far too slow” and that this would be addressed in its “Remediation Acceleration plan.” The plan, announced by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in September, was not accelerated fast enough to be available by the time of the NAO report.

This is criminal delay. According to the NAO, there are an estimated 258,000 people living in the 4,771 buildings over 11 metres requiring urgent remediation.

Even that figure is an underestimation. Analysis by the i newspaper published in September concluded, “More than a million people could be living in potentially unsafe properties seven years after the Grenfell fire,” with housing correspondent Vicky Spratt explaining, “the analysis suggests more than double the number of residents could be affected by dangerous cladding than previously thought.

“This is because the latest official data does not include thousands of properties yet to be fully assessed. The Government statistics also exclude hundreds of thousands of people living in flats less than 11 metres tall that face a possible fire risk.”

Sprat continued, “At present, the official number of flats in social and private residential blocks which have unsafe cladding is 256,000. However, campaigners believe this could rise to about 600,000 because many buildings are yet to be properly assessed. The average dwelling has two residents—meaning more than a million people could be living in dangerous properties.”

Fears have only been heightened by recent tower block fires, like the one this summer in Barking and Dagenham in which flammable cladding again played a role.

London Fire Brigade continue to contain the fire in Dagenham on Monday afternoon

The crisis has also left thousands of residents in massive debt and unable to sell homes that are designated as dangerous but have not been fixed. An example was provided in a Channel 4 News expose.

Leaseholder Racheal Loftus from the Leeds docks neighbourhood is still waiting for the freeholder to make her building safe four years after problems were identified. Holding a piece of the wall’s insulation that had been sawn off as a test, she said, “I couldn’t believe that this was all it was made of.” The presence of the flammable insulation material was a major safety issue, “As you can see, it’s used to let light in, but actually what we’re told that if it did catch fire, the likelihood that it would melt would actually be problematic because this is our main exit route in case of fire.”

When asked if she could sell her property, Racheal observed it was now “valued at zero pounds until the work is done, but I have to continue paying my mortgage. Everybody in this building is stuck until they decide to act.” Temporary fixes have already cost her £20,000, with Racheal saying she and other first time buyers “are stuck living in this nightmare constantly.”

There are billions to spend on war, with armed forces top brass now insisting that the election of Donald Trump as US President means far more must be squandered on the military. Conservative and Labour governments have backed the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine to the tune of more than £12 billion already—an amount that would have met the National Audit Office’s lower-end estimate for all the critical remedial work on buildings above 11 metres.

Australia’s school system increasingly integrated into war drive

Carolyn Kennett

The federal Labor government earlier this year announced an extension of the School Pathways Program, which encourages high school students to pursue careers with weapons manufacturers.

The AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) alliance has already driven significant changes to the education sector in Australia, initially focused on the universities. The government’s University’s Accord, released earlier this year, had as its central agenda the further restructuring of universities to meet national priorities, namely the profit demands of the corporate elite and the government’s preparations for war.

Lockheed Martin stall at National Youth Science Forum [Photo: National Youth Science Forum]

Courses are being tailored to industry needs as universities have become increasingly tied to the military-industrial academic complex, including via multi-million-dollar research and development deals with the world’s largest arms manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems.

That is one component of Australia’s transformation into a frontline state for the US-led plans for conflict with China, which is viewed as the chief economic threat to the hegemony of American imperialism. Australia has been involved for more than a decade, under successive governments, but this agenda has been qualitatively escalated under the current Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

One expression of that is the increasing promotion of militarism in primary and secondary schools. The corralling of students into defence industry careers is now the open aim of the Labor administration. The influence of major weapons manufacturers and the Department of Defence on curriculum, in particular STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum, is designed to ensure a pipeline of students ready and willing to contribute to the war effort.

In the government’s Defence Industry Development Strategy paper, released earlier this year, several strategies were outlined to “inspire early learners and primary students across the country to continue to engage with STEM opportunities, while encouraging secondary students to pursue vocational and tertiary STEM studies.”

The strategy document stated: “Meeting the pace of technological change as approaches to warfare evolve is critical to secure our nation.” One of its key action items was to “enhance the Schools Pathways Program by developing new intergovernmental agreements to support critical defence industry skills pathways in South Australia and Western Australia.”

Announcing the relaunch of the Schools Pathways Program in August, the South Australian state Labor government declared, “The Schools Pathways Program provides practical career awareness activities for secondary school students and creates links between schools and defence industry. Students will gain defence industry experience through projects, industry visits, presentations and challenges. Students will connect with mentors and networks of highly skilled defence industry professionals.”

The $5.2 million program is being rolled out in a number of schools in South Australia and Western Australia, particularly in high schools catering to lower socio-economic areas of Adelaide and Perth. The program is designed to promote careers within the so-called defence industry by offering information about career opportunities as well as providing access to military-connected work experience and mentoring.

The Schools Pathways Program is partnered with a number of weapons manufacturers including SAAB, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and BAE Systems, as well as the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG). It includes activities to be undertaken throughout the high school years for students aged 12 to 18, and a range of state and national STEM activities. The DSTG operates under the Department of Defence and is responsible for applying advances in science and technology to defence.

The Department of Defence announced in September an additional $11 million to further extend the schools’ program through a competitive grant project. Defence Minister Pat Conroy said, “The launch of this grant opportunity is yet another example of delivering on the Defence Industry Development Strategy, supporting a resilient, competitive and innovative Australian sovereign defence industrial base, and a future Defence industry workforce to support our national security.”

A similar program is running in schools in the Hunter Region in New South Wales. This connects local high schools to defence industries in the region, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and Thales. The website for the program states that, “Facilitating formal partnerships between Hunter Defence Industry and high schools, the ME Program has a strong focus on development STEM skills in students from years 7 to 12 in readiness for the jobs that industry requires, while ensuring Defence Industry has access to a talent pool with relevant skills.”

The ME program has been further developed into an accredited school course for students in Years 9 and 10 in NSW called iSTEM. According to the curriculum, “students will learn to design and use electronic circuits and systems including microcontrollers, perform experiments using a range of electronic devices to solve real STEM based problems and describe a range of technologies used in satellites, rockets and space communication.”

Another action item in the defence industry strategy document is “outreach.” As the document stated, “Defence will develop a longer-term communication and engagement plan, working with Australian industry to create awareness of the strong career opportunities in defence industry.” The report highlighted one government-sponsored initiative that “aims to build confidence and capacity in primary school educators, enabling them to bring STEM into their classrooms and highlight the breadth of engineering career paths available to their students.”

Weapons manufacturers are deeply embedded into STEM outreach programs in schools. For example, in 2022, the Medical Association for Prevention of War released a report Minors and Missiles—Weapons Companies in Schools, which documented 35 programs associated with weapons manufacturers including BAE Systems, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Part of “Engineering Fairy Tales,” a set of STEM education resources developed by BAE Systems [Photo: BAE Systems]

However, what the Defence Industry strategy makes clear is that the Australian government is an active partner in this infiltration into education. One example of these outreach programs is Beacon, funded by BAE Systems, with activities targeting children as young as 4. Part of the program includes a visit by BAE engineers, who answer questions about careers in engineering. When the program was launched, BAE Systems said that Beacon’s goal was “to raise awareness of future career pathways.” The program is being expanded into 80 schools in South Australia over the next two years.

That many of the programs are targeting regional and low socio-economic areas of the country is akin to economic conscription. Public schools especially in poorer communities and rural and regional Australia have been starved of funds for decades. Lack of resources, infrastructure and expertise means that teachers will jump at the chance of support. Many of the programs mentioned include free professional development for teachers, as well as access to teaching resources.

The various STEM fields are scenes of significant technological and scientific developments, such as artificial intelligence, which could be used to improve the social conditions and lives of working people. Their innovative character, moreover, makes them attractive to youth. Under capitalism though, everything is subordinated to the profit interests of the ruling elite, which are advanced by exploitation at home and militarism and war abroad.

The hijacking of STEM education by the ruling elite for its war agenda is evident at every level of education, and this is not merely an Australian phenomenon. This has been accompanied by the militarisation of the curriculum underway for more than a decade. In 2014, the federal government circulated a range of curriculum resources and educational activities to Australian primary schools in a promotion of militarism and patriotism. The resources were deliberately aimed at miseducation, to inculcate in children an uncritical attitude towards war.

With funding pressures pushing universities and schools to align with government agendas, educators opposing war are facing increased victimisation, silencing and even dismissal. These attacks on free speech and democratic rights are intensifying amid the ongoing Gaza genocide, the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and plans for a catastrophic conflict with China.

The attacks on public education are part of a shift by the world’s ruling elite as it prepares for dictatorship at home and war abroad. And this means every aspect of society must be integrated into the war effort, from the schools and universities to the economy and all workplaces.