UPS pushing forward with automation and facility closures, threatening thousands more jobs

Alex Findijs

UPS Velocity warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. [Photo: UPS Media]

During a Third Quarter earnings call last week, UPS management announced “progress” in the company’s plans to reduce capacity, automate operations and slash jobs. Management said it has reduced capacity by 1 million packages so far this year, the product of the closure of 45 operations, including nine full buildings.

Part of the “Network for the Future” cost-cutting plan, the closures resulted in a reported 8 percent improvement in the number of parcels processed per work hour, equivalent to “an efficiency gain of 11 million hours.”

This reduction in capacity is aimed at re-sizing UPS’s operations to shrink the company’s surplus capacity of an average of 12 million parcels a day, double the surplus from years before the pandemic. The surplus capacity is due to both the expansion of operations to meet increased demand during the height of the pandemic and a steady decline in demand over the past few years. Daily volume in quarter three 2021 was 23.4 million but declined to 20.3 million the same time last year.

Reductions in capacity really means a reduction in jobs. By levering automation to increase efficiency, management is seeking to cut labor costs and boost profitability at the expense of the working class.

Towards this end UPS announced earlier this year that it would close around 200 facilities in the US while tripling the number of automated facilities to 400 by 2028. In preparation for this the company is laying off more than 10,000 people in middle and lower management, and it already employs tens of thousands fewer workers than it did a few year ago. But this is only the start of a larger jobs bloodbath.

Closures will be joined with consolidation. UPS is boasting plans to consolidate four facilities in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and has highlighted its operations in Chalk Hill, Texas, and its New York Capital Village Center hub for closure.

Earlier this year UPS reported its “volume-per-resource” ratio—calculated as the average daily volume divided by the number of US employees—as 51. The company plans to increase that ratio to 59 by 2026, a 15.7 percent increase. With UPS looking to reduce capacity to match lower demand, that ratio can only come through mass layoffs.

These changes are already yielding increased profits for company shareholders. UPS reported a 5.6 percent increase in revenue in quarter three with a 22.8 percent increase in “non-GAAP adjusted operating profit,” a measure of income that excludes non-recurring costs. The quarterly report also reported a 4.1 percent decrease in “cost per piece,” demonstrating the effect automation is having on the reduction of the company’s operational costs.

This year CEO Carol Tomé reported that “We now process 63 percent of the volume in our hubs in some sort of an automated way. That’s up five percentage points from a year ago.”

These changes are not isolated to UPS. Rival FedEx is also implementing automation schemes at 50 locations as part of its “Network 2.0” plan, aiming to save $2 billion in costs by 2027 through these changes. Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is seeking to consolidate its operations into large hubs, eliminating many smaller offices, particularly in rural areas as part of the “Delivering for America” plan, which threatens the jobs of tens of thousands of postal workers.

In the US the auto industry is slashing thousands of jobs after the phony “stand up strike” of the UAW bureaucracy sold out 150,000 autoworkers. This year Stellantis cut over 2,000 jobs at its Warren Truck facility, while Ford has cut 1,400 jobs at its electric truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Internationally, Volkswagen has announced that it will be closing at least three plants in Germany, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, while Stellantis is looking to cut 25,000 jobs across Italy. Volkswagen has also demanded a 20 percent pay cut from its 120,000 workers in Germany to save 2 billion euros a year.

Boeing has also announced plans to lay off 17,000 workers across its global operations, and thousands of writers and actors in Hollywood face being replaced by AI after their strikes were betrayed last year.

The changes underway at UPS further expose the bankrupt claims of the Teamsters bureaucracy that the 2023 UPS contract was a “historic” victory for workers. Instead it was a historic betrayal, which is being used to carry out some of the deepest cuts in the company’s history.

The Teamsters bureaucracy has maintained a guilty silence over the last year as job losses continue to mount, outside of occasional references to a “contract enforcement campaign,” which is cover for the fact that the deal contained no protections against layoffs. Last year, the Teamsters bureaucracy also abandoned 22,000 Yellow freight workers who lost their jobs when the company went bankrupt.

The collaboration between management and the union bureaucrats is so close that Tomé boasted of the deal last year: “[W]e can put together plans to mitigate that cost [of pay increases], plans to drive productivity inside of our business through automation, which, oh, by the way, we retained the ability to do so.”

The union bureaucrats are doing nothing to mobilize opposition to layoffs because they accept the company’s so-called “right” to profit and are working with management to impose them. Bureaucrats like Sean O’Brien, who is one of 160 Teamsters officials who make more than $200,000 a year, have aligned their interests with management to preserve their inflated salaries and their positions as labor contractors for corporations. This finds further expression in O’Brien’s courting of Donald Trump and fascist Republican Senator Josh Hawley as a servant to capitalist reaction.

Netanyahu fires Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, signaling escalation of war

Jean Shaoul

On Tuesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing significant disagreements between them over how Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon should be managed.

Netanyahu said, “In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the defence minister. Unfortunately, although in the first months of the campaign there was such trust and there was very fruitful work, over the past few months this trust has cracked between me and the defence minister.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken inspects progress of the Gaza genocide during a visit to the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Iseral and Gaza. Behind him walks Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who called the Palestinians "human animals." (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP) [AP Photo]

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fascistic National Security Minister and leader of the Jewish Power Party, applauded the move, saying that Netanyahu had “made the right decision” and that it was “impossible to achieve a total victory” as long as Gallant was Defence Minister. His comments express the government’s intention to pursue an even more aggressive stance in Israel’s wars on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Gallant is to be replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party who is publicly opposed to a Palestinian state in any form. Gideon Sa’ar, a former Likud member who split with Netanyahu to form his own party New Hope and joined his coalition last September, will become foreign minister.

Responding to calls from opposition leaders, anti-Netanyahu protest groups and hostages’ families, thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest. In Tel Aviv, they marched on the Ayalon Highway where the police blocked them. In Jerusalem, around 1,000 demonstrators gathered near Netanyahu’s residence. Other protests took place in Haifa and Be’er Sheva.

That Netanyahu and Gallant were barely on speaking terms was well known. Netanyahu had tried to sack him in March 2023 over Gallant’s opposition to his plans to neuter the judiciary and establish an authoritarian regime and had only backed down in the face of mass opposition to his move.

Gallant is a vicious war hawk, whose disagreements with Netanyahu are over how best to assert Zionism’s interests militarily. In the immediate aftermath of October 7 he infamously ordered a “complete siege of Gaza, no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” saying, “We are fighting human animals.” He had earlier warned Lebanon saying in August 2023 that Israel would not hesitate to attack Hezbollah and “return Lebanon to the Stone Age” if Israel was attacked. Days after the start of Israel’s all-out war on Gaza, he threatened, “What we can do in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut.”

In a speech, on his sacking, Gallant declared, “The decision to dismiss me comes after a series of impressive achievements, unprecedented in the history of the State of Israel. Achievements of the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad and the entire security system. We struck in Gaza and Lebanon, in Judea and Samaria. We eliminated terrorist leaders across the Middle East and, for the first time ever, carried out a precise and lethal strike in Iran, among other operations. I am proud of the security establishment’s achievements. I trust the commanders and the soldiers. Israel’s security has been and remains the mission of my life, and I am committed to it. Since October 7, I have focused on one and only one issue: victory in the war.”

He said he had been fired over disagreements on three issues: the need to end an exemption from conscription for almost all ultraorthodox Jews, the importance of a deal to free hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, and the need for an immediate, all-encompassing commission of inquiry into the failings that allowed the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 incursion, including into those of the Israel Defense Forces, the security services and the government, including Netanyahu.

The row over ending the ultra-orthodox Jews’ (known as Haredim) exemption from compulsory military service if they are studying in religious seminaries (yeshivas) was placed centre stage by Gallant. It has roiled Netanyahu’s coalition, amid increasing concern over the IDF’s lack of manpower to prosecute war simultaneously on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Iran and its allies in Syria and Yemen.

Gallant insisted that “everyone of conscription age must serve in the IDF and defend the State of Israel. This issue is no longer just a social matter; it is the most critical matter for our existence—the security of the State of Israel and the people living in Zion. In this campaign, we have lost hundreds of soldiers, we have suffered thousands of wounded and disabled, and the war is still continuing. The coming years will present us with complex challenges; wars are not over, and the sound of battle has not ceased… Under these circumstances, there is no choice—everyone must serve in the IDF and participate in the mission to defend the State of Israel.”

At least 772 soldiers and security personnel have lost their lives in the genocidal assault on Gaza and at least 12,000 more have been injured—while tens of thousands of reservists have been forced to do months of reserve duty, provoking anger among secular Israelis already alienated by the increasing dominance of the religious authorities over daily life.

Last June, the High Court ordered an end to the Haredi exemption by November this year, with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara later ruling that draft evaders would not be entitled to government allowances and day-care subsidies. The ultra-Orthodox do not work and rely on the allowances negotiated by the ultra-religious parties as the price for their support for keeping Netanyahu in power.

A government-supported bill to overturn the Attorney General’s ruling, and subsidize day care for children of full-time yeshiva students who dodge the draft at a cost of $54 million—in return for the support of the religious parties for the 2025 budget—prompted uproar. When at least nine members of his own coalition members, including Gallant, threatened to vote down the bill, Netanyahu was forced to withdraw it.

Netanyahu has refused to consider any deal to rescue the remaining hostages, believed to number around one hundred, still held in Gaza. Last week, a court partially lifted a gag order on an investigation into the leaks over discussions with Hamas over a deal to release the hostages that were published last August by a fake journalist in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s Bild to undermine negotiations. Five people, including one of Netanyahu’s media advisors, have been arrested. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum expressed their “outrage and deep concern at discovering” that officials had “worked to undermine public support for the hostage deal.”

Gallant’s sacking comes amid increasing concerns within the military establishment that the war in Lebanon and Gaza has exhausted itself and risks heavy troop losses if the IDF is required to remain there. Sections of the military would prefer a deal to secure a ceasefire to concentrate on the conflict with Lebanon and Iran.

Gallant had played a key role in discussions with the Biden administration which has funded and directed Israel’s war of annihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza, and its war on Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. He was sacked on the day it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidency. Netanyahu congratulated Trump effusively for what he called “history’s greatest comeback” and called his campaign “a huge victory” and “a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”

Trump, who draws significant support from the US Evangelical Christian movement which has long support the Zionist project, has made contradictory remarks on the campaign trail about the war in Gaza, alternately condemning the anti-Israel protests while promising peace in Gaza and Lebanon to US voters of Arab origin. But Netanyahu calculates that he will be backed by Trump once he becomes president.

During his 2017-2021 term of office, Trump gave Netanyahu his full support—closing down the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s office in Washington; recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; moving the US embassy to Jerusalem; recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights; withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council; cutting $200 million funding to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank; unilaterally abandoning the nuclear treaty with Iran; negotiating the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco; designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organisation; assassinating its leader General Qassem Soleimani; and strengthening US ties with the dictators in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Recognising the threat posed by Trump’s call for Israel to end its wars in Gaza and Lebanon before he takes office in January, in sacking Gallant, Netanyahu is following Israel’s well-worn policy of “creating facts on the ground”—preparing for an even more aggressive military policy now so that the incoming Trump administration will have to support him.

An insight into China’s high-tech development and its implications

Nick Beams

A major article published on Bloomberg at the end of last month provides a detailed analysis of the US high-tech economic war against China, and draws the conclusion, as indicated in the headline, that “US efforts to contain [Chinese president] Xi’s push for tech supremacy are faltering.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping [AP Photo/Maxim Shemetov]

The consequences, as indicated in the article at least to some extent, are that the US drive against China will assume ever more aggressive forms, bringing the prospect of war even closer.

The article began by noting that “at a glance” the US campaign appeared to be successful given that Chinese tech giants had been cut off from access to the highest level of chip making capacity.

This was because the US has been successful in pressuring the Dutch firm ASML into refusing to supply China with its “one-of-a-kind” machines necessary to make the most advanced chips.

But deeper research showed that despite export controls and financial sanctions China was making “steady progress” in developing the industries of the future and that the Made in China 2025 program launched a decade ago by Xi, “has largely been a success.”

“Of 13 key technologies tracked by Bloomberg researchers, China has achieved a global leadership in five of them and is catching up fast in seven others.”

The article cited comments by Adam Posen, president of the Washington-based think tank, the Institute for International Economics, who said: “China’s technological rise will not be stymied, and might not even be slowed, by US restrictions.” The only exception would be “draconian ones” that slow the pace of innovation in the US and globally.

It pointed to the vast transformation that has taken place over the past three decades in the very structure of the world economy, noting that China’s “manufactured goods trade surplus is the largest relative to global GDP since the US right after World War II.” China had taken the lead in the making of electric vehicles (EVs), batteries and solar panels.

The battle would continue whoever won the White House in the presidential election with the US focused on trying to prevent China from catching up in the manufacture of cutting-edge chips.

It is not confined to the economic sphere. As the article continued: “For policymakers in Washington and Beijing, the push to win the technology race is driven by a number of considerations, including a desire to drive development, create jobs and secure supply chains. But officials in both capitals say another factor is playing a bigger role in economic policy these days: Preparation for a potential war, even if one isn’t imminent or planned.”

On the US side, it cited remarks by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in a major speech in 2022 in which he outlined a series of areas, including semiconductors, clean energy and biotech, in which he said the US would seek to “maintain as large of a lead as possible.”

Sullivan said export controls, which have increasingly been used by the Biden administration, going well beyond the tariffs and other measures introduced during the Trump presidency, were a “new strategic asset” that would be used to impose costs on adversaries and “degrade their battlefield capabilities.”

In their official statements, Chinese authorities pursue a different tack. They insist they are seeking to uphold the international free trade order which the US is in the process of upending.

But they know that US strategic planning is not only directed at trade but involves war in which the US would seek to cut off vital supplies of raw materials, particularly energy and so are seeking to develop Chinese capacity in alternative energy sources.

This means, the article noted, that “the possibility of an all-out conflict means China has no intention of degrading its manufacturing power, despite US demands that Xi’s government reduce overcapacity and rebalance the economy more towards consumption.”

There is no doubt the US bans on the export of the most developed computer chips and highly complex chip-making equipment is having an impact. But the analysis said that despite this “China continued to climb the ladder of manufacturing dominance and technological advance” and that if the US wanted to win the competition it would need to “run faster or try harder to trip China.”

This portends ever increasing economic warfare. But at a certain point this will develop into the increased use of military methods. This is because, as Shen Meng, a director at the Beijing investment bank Chanson, told the researchers while “the efforts to contain China worked in the short term” in the long run “China will find ways to circumvent this containment.”

This is not idle speculation but is reflected in the case of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. In 2019 the Trump administration put a ban on the company denying it access to advanced chips necessary for its mobile phones and its sales slumped.

But it poured money into research and development and worked with domestic suppliers to develop a more advanced chip which the US considered would not be possible. While the Chinese developed chip is not top of the range, according to the article: “Huawei’s smartphone business has since recovered and is now challenging Apple.”

Paul Triolo, an analyst at a Washington-based advisory firm said that while Huawei’s AI chips were not as advanced as those produced by Apple and Nvidia “they are capable enough for many applications.”

He said China had made “major progress” towards manufacturing without the use of US tools, but this process would be slow and challenging “as the US continues to ratchet up controls targeting both tool makers and front-end manufacturing facilities.”

It may be slow but there is no denying the direction of development. Goldman Sachs has estimated that China could lift its chip self-sufficiency to 40 percent by 2030, nearly double its present level. Even though this development may not yet be top of the range it will provoke an even more aggressive response from the US.

The development of Chinese high-tech, and the increasingly bellicose response of the US towards it, underscores the utterly reactionary character of the nation-state system in which the capitalist system is rooted and the historic necessity for its abolition by the international working class in the struggle to take political power and establish socialism.

High-tech development, which like every other advance in the productive forces, is not the product of one nation but is a global product, involving the labour of workers, scientists, engineers, programmers etc., drawn from all over the world.

It contains the potential for a tremendous advance in social conditions and living standards for the world’s people. But so long as this contradiction, between its global scope and the division of the world by the nation-state system, remains, this very development brings ever-closer the danger of world war and the destruction of civilisation as the major imperialist powers seek to resolve it by establishing themselves as the dominant force.

UK budget: a pittance for crumbling, asbestos riddled schools

Margot Miller

The UK Labour government’s first budget since coming to office in July does nothing to reverse the cuts to education since 2010 or make schools safe.

The UK school estate is in a dangerous, dilapidated state, with ill maintained buildings, some literally crumbling and many thousands riddled with deadly asbestos.

A UK school building in 2015 [Photo by PeterMHertsHeritage100 / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Large class sizes of children from increasingly impoverished families, diminishing support for special needs, a proscriptive curriculum creating work overload for stressed-out teachers exacerbated by punitive government Ofsted inspections--all has led to a crisis in recruitment and retention of staff.

Two recent reports underline the crisis in UK schools. The National Audit Office (NAO) concludes by noting that the provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is “financially unsustainable”.

Another report exposes the enormous dangers facing staff and pupils due to the widespread use of asbestos in school buildings.

The School Cuts website, run by the education trade unions with the support of charity Parentkind and the National Governance Association, estimates a sum of £12.2 billion is needed to restore spending on education to just 2010 levels.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an increase in funding for schools of just £2.3 billion next year. This is not a genuine increase. The amount includes £1 billion towards the high needs funding deficit local authorities accrued providing SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) education.

The “remaining increase to the schools budget”, according to the Education Hub on the government’s website, is to pay for the 5.5 percent pay rise for teachers this year and to “help cover pay awards in 2025-26.”

The education unions pushed through the last substandard pay award--after ending industrial action--with claims that a Labour government would address the crisis in education after years of underfunding by the Tories. Reeves budget exposes these claims as false.

The budget offers nothing to address the dangerous state of the school estate. The Education Hub lists an extra £1.4 billion for the school rebuilding programme, to keep “on track to rebuild 518 schools” over 10 years. £2.1 billion is allocated to maintain existing schools, an increase of just £300 million. A further £300 million is earmarked to maintain colleges.

But everyone knows that many billions of pounds are needed, not only to build new schools but to make the existing estate safe for pupils and staff. The National Education Union’s (NEU) Daniel Kebede noted there had been a “£40 billion cumulative cut to school capital funding [for school buildings] since 2010.”

A cheap form of concrete, RAAC, was used extensively in public buildings between 1950-1980. In contact with damp in an ill-maintained building, and life-expired after 30 years, walls and ceilings are liable to collapse, posing risk to life. Despite the problem being known about for years, action in schools was only taken last year when shortly before the start of the autumn term three school buildings experienced sudden roof collapses.

Reinforced Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (RAAC), close-up view [Photo by Marco Bernardini, own work / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Even deadlier is the threat of asbestos in many public buildings, including schools. Inhaling tiny asbestos fibres causes lung diseases asbestosis or mesothelioma, a particularly aggressive cancer. A massive refurbishment of the entire school estate is long overdue.

Knowing the social and potential political impact of the scale of the crisis, the Conservative-supporting Daily Mail last month launched one of its “hot button” campaigns: “Asbestos: Britain's Hidden Killer”. Calling for the removal of asbestos in public buildings, it was launched following a “bombshell report” following an investigation by the Joint Union Asbestos Committee representing eight trade unions.

The committee found the prevalence of asbestos in hospitals and 21,500 schools built since the 1960s. Asbestos was used for insulation and as a fire retardant until banned in 1982. Hundreds of thousands of staff and pupils exposed to the invisible fibres face an untimely death, the authors predict. A period of up to 40 years may pass between exposure and the onset of mesothelioma. Death follows diagnosis after about 18 months.

Since 1980, at least 1,400 educators and 12,600 former pupils succumbed to mesothelioma after inhaling asbestos in schools. Asbestos is the UK’s biggest industrial killer, claiming 5,000 lives each year. According to the committee, “Their deaths would be the consequence of ineffective asbestos regulations and a cost-cutting culture that wrongly implies ‘asbestos is safe as long as it is not disturbed’”.

This horrific number of preventable deaths is set to grow as schools are allowed to fall into disrepair exposing more children and staff to danger. The report says that most of the UK’s 32,000 schools, except those built after 1999 when asbestos was finally banned, probably contain asbestos.

The education capital spending announced in the budget won’t even touch the sides.

“Clearing the Air”, a report published last year by Mesothelioma UK, made clear that “Based on the current speed of school and hospital rebuilding programmes in England it will take over 400 years to remove all the asbestos from schools and hospitals.”

It notes, “Previous research has found that asbestos is present in 80% of schools and 94% of hospital trusts in England. In particular, there are a large number of school and hospital buildings constructed between 1945 and 1980 using system build techniques, for example CLASP schools, where asbestos was used as an integral part of the building and cannot usually be removed without demolishing the building.”

Mesothelioma UK “estimates a total cost of removing asbestos of around £3.2 billion for removal from schools and £1.3 billion for removal from hospitals, making a total removal cost of just under £4.5 billion…. It notes, that the “Demolition of system-build schools and hospitals is estimated to cost an additional £11.2 billion on top of this.”

The record of successive governments shows they could not care less about safety in schools. Staff and pupils were among the first rushed back into schools at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to ensure their parents got back to work in offices and factories. Then opposition Labour leader and now Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer led the charge insisting that schools stay open in a pandemic, “No ifs, no buts”.

Despite the continued horrific consequences of the pandemic, schools are denied the technology to keep the air clean and disinfected—meaning the spread of the mutating COVID virus and other respiratory illnesses.

In the budget Reeves offered peanuts in comparison to overall public spending, for rolling out of free breakfast clubs for primary school children (4-11 years) in disadvantaged areas. While this would triple investment triple for breakfast clubs, its costs is just over £30 million. Schools will still have to pay 25 percent of the cost of running them.

Reeves also announced “£15 million to begin delivery of 3,000 school-based nurseries.” The government describes the programme as “quality, affordable childcare.” The nurseries the government has in mind is not quality early years education for 3–4-year-olds--which requires substantial investment in appropriate settings led by trained nursery teachers and staff--but holding pens while parents/the “workless” are driven into cheap labour jobs.

The National Education Union has instructed Leigh Day solicitors to challenge the longstanding government position that asbestos is safe in situ unless damaged, but their record shows that whatever rhetoric they come up with, they and the other education unions will not mobilize their members to fight back.

The education unions welcomed Labour’s budget. This despite education and infrastructure spending announced being vastly below what is required and Reeves putting through ongoing spending cuts. Moreover, the accompanying Red Book to the budget states that the government “will need to carefully consider the trade-offs required to afford pay awards. Over the medium term, above-inflation pay awards are only affordable if they can be funded from improved productivity.”

If necessary it states that the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies (PRBs) could be ignored. The document warns: “If the PRBs recommend pay awards above the level departments have budgeted for, the government will have to consider the justification--for example where there are especially acute recruitment and retention demands, or where productivity improvements can unlock further funding.”

The Times on Monday reported a Treasury source who doubled down saying, “The government is clear that any future above-inflation pay rises must come alongside productivity reforms… That is the right position for both public sector workers and the taxpayer.”

ProVeg Grants for Innovators Transforming the Global Food Industry 2025

Application Deadline:

The application deadline for the ProVeg Grants for Innovators Transforming the Global Food Industry 2025 is 1 December 2024.

Tell Me About The Award:

ProVeg Grants offers funding to organizations and projects focused on promoting dietary changes that align with ProVeg’s mission to reduce global animal consumption by 50% by 2040. Interested applicants should review the application criteria before registering their interest via a brief five-minute form. The Grants team will evaluate your submission, and if it meets the criteria, you will receive a link to a full application form.

Which Fields are Eligible?

The following fields are eligible:

• Schools & University Engagement
• Influencing Dietary Guidelines
• Healthcare Interventions
• Food Industry Events
• Corporate Engagement, including Corporate Rankings and V-Label
• Addressing Labelling Restrictions
• Political Outreach
• Movement Building, including Challenge Campaigns and Veg Festivals
• Public Outreach & Social Media

Type:

Grant 

Who can Apply?

• Also, the eligibility criteria include:
  Priority is given to proposals outside the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Czechia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Belgium, Nigeria, Malaysia, and the United States.
• Proposals from individuals or organizations focused on improving the welfare or conditions of farmed animals are not eligible.
• Priority is given to organizations led by and employing women, people of colour, and other marginalized groups.
• Grantees must align with ProVeg Grants’ safe space and respectful workplace values.

Which Countries Are Eligible?

All countries 

Where will the Award be Taken?

All countries 

How Many Awards?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of the Award?

Additionally, the benefits of the grants include:

• Financial support between $5,000 and $50,000 per year, awarded at ProVeg International’s discretion.
• Access to a network of over 200 experts in the food-system transformation space.
• One-on-one consultations covering organizational structure, strategy, impact initiatives, and more.
• Access to additional resources such as reports, research, webinars, and events throughout the year.

How to Apply:

• Register to receive a submission form if you meet the application criteria.
• Receive a detailed submission form link if your details match the criteria.
• Submit your full application by the quarterly deadlines: 1 March, 1 June, 1 September, or 1 December.
• Expect a response from ProVeg Grants within eight weeks of the deadline regarding your application status and the support offered.

Israel’s war budget points to a deepening economic, social and military crisis

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fascist cabinet has approved a budget for 2025 with some of the biggest spending cuts and tax increases to finance the war that Israel has ever seen.

With the war, already the longest and most expensive Israel has ever fought, now expanding to Lebanon and Iran, the proposed tax hikes and spending cuts will likely deepen before the Knesset approves the budget in three months’ time.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, with commanders and soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2023. Netanyahu has said Israel will continue with the offensive until a "final victory" achieves all of its goals. [AP Photo/Avi Ohayon/GPO]

According to the Finance Ministry, by the end of last September the direct cost of the war had reached $29 billion. Since then, it has soared with the assault on Lebanon, the heavier fighting in Gaza and the strikes on Iran. Tens of thousands of reservists have been called up and ammunition is being used up at an immense rate. The daily costs have risen from $110 million to $135 million, a sum that would build a dozen much needed schools.

The ratings agencies have downgraded Israel’s credit rating, while foreign investors have reduced their exposure to Israeli debt. The economy, which has still not recovered from the collapse suffered during the first months of the war, when some 350,000 reservists were called up, is now smaller than it was on October 7, 2023. Israel’s much vaunted high-tech sector is struggling. Intel Israel is to lay off hundreds of workers. Investment in plant and equipment is down. The travel and tourism industry is at a standstill as flights are cancelled due to the war.

Last month, following Iran’s missile attack, Chevron, which operates Israel’s Leviathan gas field, announced it was suspending work on a $429 million expansion project due to the “security situation.” Further Israeli attacks on Iran, particularly its oil facilities, could trigger a far wider war, creating a global oil shortage and raising the cost of imported petroleum with ripple effects throughout the economy.

The 2025 state budget at $163 billion is about $4.8 billion more than this year and includes a massive $27.2 billion increase for the military that could rise to $40.1 billion. It follows the 2024 budget that, despite the war, contained no tax increases or significant spending cuts, ran up a big budget deficit and postponed the bill till later.

Finance Minister and Religious Zionist leader Bezalel Smotrich is proposing steep spending cuts as well as tax increases to finance the war—currently estimated to cost $66.8 billion by the end of this year—and plug a $10.7 billion deficit in 2025. Nevertheless, the budget deficit will reach 4.4 percent of GDP, higher than the planned 2.25 percent due to the rising cost of the war.

The measures to be borne by the working class include a freeze on public sector wages and welfare benefits for the elderly, people with disabilities and Holocaust survivors. Even wounded soldiers and the families of fallen soldiers will not be spared. As consumer prices rise by nearly 4 percent a year, Israelis will pay more taxes—VAT is set to rise and workers in the lowest income tax band will see their tax rate rise from 10 percent to 14 percent —while the value of welfare benefits will fall in real terms.

With Israel one of the most unequal countries in the OECD group of advanced countries, the budget will have a devastating impact. According to the National Insurance Institute, even before the war poverty had risen with 1.98 million Israelis (around 21 percent of the population) in poverty in 2022, of whom 949,000 were working. This particularly affects children, of whom almost one in every three lives in poverty. Food prices have risen, with vegetable prices jumping by 18 percent and fruit prices by 12 percent, due to agricultural shortages, making it especially hard for those struggling with food insecurity.

Every ministry except defence will see its funding cut, with education and public transport taking the biggest hits. But Smotrich is also taking $73 million from the health budget and $26.7 million from the welfare budget and closing five ministries he considers superfluous.

Arnon Bar-David, the leader of the Histadrut, after spending hours talking to the Ministry of Finance and Smotrich, said that the corporatist trade union federation would support the proposed budget—having secured two days additional paid leave in return for a freeze on public sector wages.

The austerity budget follows the ever-rising cost of the now 13-month-long war in Gaza, near daily mass raiding operations in the West Bank, escalating fighting in Lebanon and the strikes on Iran, with no end in sight. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), having mounted a ground invasion of Lebanon with the aim of pushing Hezbollah back to the Litani river, has been unable to hold ground more than two kilometres from the border and had to stage frequent retreats when casualties became too high.

Netanyahu has insisted he will defy global pressure and continue pursuing Israel’s war goals—“total victory” against Hamas and the degradation and defeat of Hezbollah—while warning Iran that “there is no place” in the Middle East that “the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”

According to reports from a committee examining future defence needs, the military will need nearly $100 billion extra over the next decade, meaning higher taxes to finance it and more regular and reserve army service, reducing economic output. This is for a country that even in 2022 had the world’s 15th-largest military budget, far higher than countries with a much larger population and economy.

The army is desperately short of manpower. According to a recent study by the Institute for National Security Studies, the IDF will need about 20,000 combat soldiers and other personnel. This is fueling the furious debate that threatens Netanyahu’s coalition over ending the exemption of ultra-orthodox Jews (known as Haredim) from compulsory military service if they are studying in religious seminaries (yeshivas).

Last June, the High Court ordered an end to the Haredi exemption by November this year, with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara later ruling that draft evaders would not be entitled to government allowances and day-care subsidies. This would be a serious blow to the ultra-Orthodox, who do not work and rely on the allowances negotiated by the ultra-religious parties as the price for keeping Netanyahu in power. The IDF has done little to respond to the Court’s ruling and to recruit the ultra-orthodox, thereby allowing the Haredim to avoid conscription without losing their allowances.

But in a war that has cost the lives of at least 772 soldiers and security personnel, injured at least 12,000 more—figures opposition leader Yair Lapid said were a vast underestimate—and forced tens of thousands to do months of reserve duty, this has provoked fury and disgust among secular Israelis already alienated by the dominance of the religious authorities over everyday life.

Now the religious parties have put forward a bill that has government support to subsidize day care for children of full-time yeshiva students who dodge the draft at a cost of $54 million and made approval of the law the condition for their support for the 2025 budget.

Other divisions are opening up. According to Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel, Israel’s defence establishment believes that the war in Lebanon and Gaza has exhausted the troops and risks heavy losses if the IDF is required to remain there. The military would prefer a deal to secure a ceasefire and the release of all hostages still held in Gaza.

While the majority of Jewish Israelis support the defeat of Hamas, the toll of the war—for both Israelis and Palestinians—is driving some Jewish Israelis to leave the country. Of those who left in October 2023, 12,000 had not returned by last June, according to official statistics. One in four Jewish Israelis and four in 10 Arab Israelis say they would emigrate if given the opportunity, according to a survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute. Its president, Professor Yedidia Stern, said, “The findings indicate a deep crisis of trust between the public and the security and political leadership. This is a significant challenge at any time, but particularly crucial during a crisis.”

Middle East Eye cited a report showing that an increasing number of Israeli soldiers are becoming disillusioned with the fighting, with some refusing to return to the battlefield. One soldier told HaMakom that missions were being “done halfway” due to the lack of manpower. “The platoons are empty; those who aren’t dead or physically wounded are mentally broken. Very few come back to fight, and even they aren’t fully okay,” the soldier said.

Last month, 130 Israeli soldiers and reservists signed an open letter addressed to Netanyahu conditioning their continued service on the signing of a deal for the release of hostages and an end to the war, the first mass wave of Israeli soldiers refusing service in protest of war and occupation in recent years.

Trudeau slashes immigration as part of a lurch still further right

Keith Jones

The Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government is dramatically reducing both the number of new permanent residents Canada will accept over the next three years and the number of people allowed to temporarily reside in the country.

Amid a mounting wave of worker struggles, the right and far-right have been agitating for the federal government to slash the number of new entrants to the country on the grounds that “excessive immigration” is responsible for soaring housing costs and homelessness and the breakdown of public services.

The Liberal government’s embrace of this filthy Canadian nationalist argument goes hand-in-hand with its waging of aggressive war in alliance with the United States around the world, which requires the subordination of society’s resources to military spending and the whipping up of a fake “national unity” against external enemies. Workers across Canada must repudiate the pervasive anti-immigrant agitation now being mounted by the entire ruling class.

At an October 24 press conference, Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced changes to Canada’s immigration targets and policies whose net outcome will be the first ever decline in Canada’s population.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for the 19th Francophonie Summit, at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, October 4, 2024. [AP Photo/Louise Delmotte]

The number of persons admitted as permanent residents—the immigration category that provides a path to citizenship—is to be cut 21 percent next year and by 27 percent by 2027, falling from half-a-million this year to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

The government’s curtailing of so-called temporary migration is even more drastic. Thanks to the regressive changes it has made to the “temporary foreign worker” and “international student” programs over the past year and the erection of new barriers to those seeking refugee status, the government aims to slash the total number of people temporarily residing in Canada by 900,000 by the end of 2026 or more than a quarter.

As a result of these changes, said Miller, Canada’s population will fall by 0.2 percent by the end of 2026, and the government projects 670,000 fewer new homes will be built over the next three years.

At their joint press conference, Trudeau and Miller tried to distance themselves from the most virulent far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric, claiming their aim was not to bar immigration but ensure continued “support” for it.

However, this was only a matter of degree. They promoted the lie that immigration is responsible for much of the social crisis roiling the country. Immigration, declared Trudeau, “must be controlled, and it must be sustainable.” Miller said it was “undeniable” that the volume of migration has “contributed” to the “affordability” crisis.

Trudeau—whose government has presided over the worst inflation in decades, imposed high interest rates and used a battery of legal mechanisms to strip workers of their legal right to strike—sought to dress-up his efforts to deflect social anger onto immigrants and migrant workers in phony anti-big business rhetoric. “Businesses,” he proclaimed, “should no longer rely on cheap foreign labour.”

In reality, it is workers who will bear the full brunt of the government’s slashing of immigration levels. Business organizations already report that large numbers of Temporary Foreign Workers are being expelled from the country as the government refuses to extend or renew their work permits. The Bank of Canada and numerous economists are forecasting the dramatic cuts to new permanent and temporary residents will be a major drag on the economy and may help push it into a recession.

The most reactionary forces were quick to celebrate and claim credit for Trudeau’s “U-turn.” However, the far-right Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, Quebec Premier and CAQ leader François Legault and Parti Québécois leader Paul St. Pierre-Plamondon, the latter two who are competing as to who can make the most inflammatory Quebec chauvinist appeals, complained that the cuts in new residents didn’t go far enough.

For its part, the rabidly right-wing Toronto Sun crowed that the Liberals have legitimized their foul anti-immigrant appeals. “We aren’t going to fault Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for admitting his high immigration policies were a mistake that contributed to today’s affordability crisis,” affirmed a Sun editorial, “We do fault him for his government’s false depiction of Canadians who were raising these concerns long before he did, as racists.”

The billionaire would-be dictator and Republican nominee in the Nov. 5 US presidential election Donald Trump also welcomed Trudeau’s announcement, writing in a social media post, “even Justin Trudeau wants to close Canada’s borders.” Trump has placed at the centre of his campaign anti-immigrant incitement, calling for the establishment of internment camps and the deportation of ten million “illegal” migrants.

Anti-immigrant agitation: a spearhead of social reaction  

Workers must beware. In Canada, as in the US and Europe the scapegoating of immigrants is being used to push politics far to the right, cultivate fascist forces and split the working class. Fascist forces like Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France, the AfD in Germany, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party are spearheading the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee incitement. But everywhere, it is being embraced by the ruling class and its traditional parties of government as a means of scapegoating the most vulnerable sections of the working class for the social dislocation and misery caused by the capitalist profit system. Anti-immigrant/anti-refugee agitation also serves to justify the strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus, the militarization of borders, and the whipping up of a strident bellicose nationalism.

Canada is a rich, advanced capitalist country with abundant land and resources. If public services are collapsing and there is a shortage of affordable housing, even in the midst of great wealth and a technological revolution, this is the outcome of a one-sided class war. For decades, the political representatives of the capitalist ruling elite have imposed austerity, eviscerated social housing, slashed taxes on big business and the rich and otherwise gutted all constraints on capitalist exploitation to redistribute wealth upwards. This process has been accelerated in recent years by the massive state bailouts of the financial elite, the ruinous profits-before-lives response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of ever greater resources to preparation for and the waging of war.

In so far as there is a global “migration crisis,” it is directly attributable to the predatory actions of US and Canadian imperialism and their European allies—to the social devastation wrought by decades of US-instigated wars, IMF-dictated capitalist “structural adjustment” programs and capitalist-induced climate change.

Demonstration against the reactionary Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement, which has forced those seeking sanctuary from Trump and Biden’s mass deportations to enter Canada irregularly. [Photo: David Asper, Centre for Constitutional Rights]

Trudeau has long claimed to be a champion of refugees and an “open, diverse” Canada. His call for a hike in Canada’s intake of Syrian refugees at a time when Stephen Harper and his Conservative government were promising to establish a “snitch line” for Canadians to denounce immigrants’ “barbaric practices” played a role in the Liberals’ 2015 come from third-place election victory.

However, Trudeau’s pro-immigrant and refugee posturing was always a fraud. Under his government Canada has continued to have one of the world’s most “market”—i.e. big business—driven immigration policies in the world. The government, especially after the near-total freeze on new entrants to Canada during the first two years of the pandemic, did increase the number of new permanent residents. But far and away the bigger increase over the last two years and throughout the Liberals’ nine years in office was in the in-take of temporary workers, who are denied basic rights and whose right to remain in the country is tied to a single employer. As the result of a comprehensive investigation, the UN Special Rapporteur on Slavery recently condemned Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program as akin to modern slavery.

That said, the Trudeau government’s raft of measures to limit the intake of new permanent residents and expel temporary residents en masse is part of an ever-widening and accelerating lurch to the right. It is giving unstinting support to the NATO-instigated war against Russia, and to Israel’s genocidal assault against the Palestinians and rampage across the Middle East. It has pledged to double Canada’s military budget to $82 billion per year by 2032 and is systematically gutting workers’ right to strike.

In pursing imperialist war abroad and class war at home, the Trudeau government has been able to rely on the political support accorded it by the trade union bureaucracy and the trade union-sponsored NDP. The NDP formally ended the confidence-and-supply agreement under which it had been propping up the Liberal government for two-and-a-half years in September. But it and the unions continue to promote the Liberals as a “progressive” ally in countering Poilievre and his Conservatives, while working to systematically isolate and suppress the mounting wave of workers’ struggles and the opposition to the imperialist-backed genocide.

Trump and the Trudeau government

Asked by the CBC what he thought of Trump’s social media post welcoming the change in Canada’s immigration policy, Immigration Minister Miller reprised the government’s oft-stated position that Ottawa will not comment on the US election campaign and that Canada “will be able to work with” whomever is the next president.

To be sure, the Trudeau government and the Canadian ruling class as a whole would much prefer that the Democrat Kamala Harris succeed Joe Biden. But this is only because they view Trump as untrustworthy in wisely pursuing the common predatory interests of North America’s imperialist powers and fear his explicit plans for the establishment of a fascist dictatorship will incite mass social unrest and class struggle on both sides of the border. However, Ottawa’s response to Trump’s 2020-21 coup plot, which was to remain silent until it was clear that Biden would take power, underscores that they will place an alliance with a dictator Trump before any principled defence of democratic rights.

Over the past year, the corporate media has been full of commentary that the best way to “insulate” Canadian imperialism from a second Trump presidency is to make Canada “indispensable” to Washington, by massively expanding Canada-US military-security cooperation around the world and by ensuring Canada is a linchpin in the US transition to a “war economy.” Such cooperation, as Miller’s comments indicate, would also mean assisting Trump, were he to secure the White House, in his plans to unleash state violence and expel ten million immigrants.