Egypt’s Brutal Crackdown on Workers’ Rights

Robert Fisk 

Khaled Abol Naga – an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government – stands accused of treason (AFP). It was comical, farcical, droll. An actor’s dream if you were going to put the drama on stage or screen – but the three principal characters were actors themselves. The lead player, as usual in Egypt, was His Excellency Field Marshal President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the theme of this theatrical production was an old and familiar one: the power of trade unions and the fear of real revolution.

But we’ll start with the latest act, virtually ignored in the west where freedom of speech, workers’ rights and liberty are “precious”, “sacrosanct”, “close to our hearts”. This week, two prominent Egyptian actors, Amr Waked and Khaled Abol Naga, were expelled from the government-controlled Egyptian actors’ union for “treachery”. They were condemned for “betraying the nation” and working for “the agenda of conspirators against Egypt’s security and stability”. The head of the union told AFP that the two men “will no longer be allowed to act in Egypt”.

Although Waked won the best actor award at the Dubai film festival five years ago and starred in 2005 film Syriana with George Clooney, the starring performance of both men came last Monday when they used the platform of a US congressional hearing to condemn the worsening human rights situation in Egypt and the extraordinary legislation which may allow Sisi to stay in power until 2034.

Film actor Amr Wake is also accused of treason by Egypt (AP) Naga, a star of many Egyptian movies, described a country whose people were either imprisoned or lived in fear of arrest. Waked said that the regime run by Sisi, who staged a military coup against the first elected Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in 2013, had developed an “allergy” to the truth, a claim which contained its own painful irony. For both Waked and Naga – like dozens of novelists, artists, journalists and other Egyptian literati – were among those who originally and naively supported the bloody coup which brought Sisi to power. Waked, whose criticism of the government earned him, this month, a sentence of eight years in an Egyptian prison (in absentia, of course, because he lives in Europe) pointed out that the union’s prohibition on his acting hardly mattered. “If I go back to Egypt, I won’t even have time to act,” he has said – because he’d be locked up at once.

But now we enter a more serious drama: Sisi’s crushing of all dissent within Egypt’s traditionally powerful trade union movements, which have historically fought the British colonial power as well as the Nasser and Sadat regimes, and which played a powerful but tragically disregarded role in the revolution which destroyed the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.

Just over a year ago, the Egyptian authorities excluded independent trade syndicates from participating in the first trade union elections to be held in 12 years. Amnesty has complained about the Egyptian government’s “punitive campaign against workers and trade unionists to deter and punish them from mobilising or going on strike”.

Romantics like to portray Egypt’s independence struggle as a battle for freedom by a nationalist, anti-colonial people who demanded democracy, free elections and dignity after years of oppression under a succession of dictatorships financed by Britain, Russia and then by the United States. But this is only partly true. It was also a religious struggle (hence the brief Morsi interlude after Mubarak’s overthrow) and, less well publicised, it was also a workers’ demand for freedom and a living wage.

Egypt’s great cotton industry in the Delta north of Cairo has been the centre of this often forgotten revolution, an export centre whose workers have great industrial power – if and when they are permitted to exercise it. They struck under British rule and they staged successive rebellions under Mubarak. The most important of these occurred in 2006 when women cotton workers led their menfolk in an uprising against the regime in the big industrial city of Mahalla. They used social media to bring tens of thousands of workers from the countryside into the central square of the city – it was, in fact, also called Tahrir Square – and set up tent encampments under fire from police tear gas.

They even called for the overthrow of Mubarak – a demand typically ignored by most of us journalists, who were only interested in Islamist opposition to Egyptian government rule – but it impressed the dictatorship of the time, which immediately gave the citizens of Mahalla pay rises, improved conditions, new workers’ canteens and shorter hours. And, although we reporters did not identify this when it happened, the cotton workers of Mahallah were among the first industrial groups to arrive in Cairo’s far bigger Tahrir Square when the uprising really got under way in January of 2011.

The Egyptian army, which stage-managed the aftermath of the revolution, realised very shrewdly that working class solidarity could be just as dangerous as Islamic unity. The Muslim Brotherhood, which was not a “terrorist” organisation – despite Sisi’s present-day accusations – was poorly led, politically unorganised and internally divided. The independent trade union of Egyptian workers who had now thrown off the official union movement of government stooges, was a quite different creature. For it, too, was an army; and every bit as much a child of the Egyptian people as the soldiers who were entrusted to “guide” the future of the post-2011 revolution.

Official realisation of this was all too clear by 2015 when the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court decided that the right to strike “goes against Islamic teachings and the purposes of Islamic Sharia” law. This ruling came only a day after Sisi had attended a labour day celebration alongside the regime’s own General Federation of Egypt Trade Unions, whose president, Gebali Al-Maraghi, described Sisi – who would win the supposed presidential election last year with 97.08 per cent of the “votes” – as a hero and “Egypt’s saviour”.

In case the workers’ masses had missed the point, “trade unionist” Maraghi said that Sisi had restored Egypt’s dignity, a claim which even Sisi found deeply embarrassing. “This is not proper,” he said, insisting that millions of people had saved Egypt. But then Maraghi handed Sisi a “code of honour” of ‘his Egyptian workers whose second article rejected strikes and committed the union to “dialogue with the government and business owners”.

Even more shocking, Maraghi gave a newspaper interview in which he said that “our task is to carry out all the demands made by the president in his meeting with workers, increasing production and fighting terrorism”. From then on, all talk of independent unions was over; workers’ representatives were imprisoned or threatened with arrest.

It took a petition for the UK to complain about Italian Giulio Regeni’s death In case anyone should underestimate the regime’s fear of union power, let us remember the case of Giulio Regeni, the 28-year-old Italian student who, in 2016, was studying the very same independent trade unions which frightened Sisi. A few weeks before his death, Regeni had written that “the [Egyptian] unions’ defiance of the state of emergency and the regime’s appeal for stability and social order – justified by the ‘war on terror’ – signifies…a bold questioning of the underlying rhetoric the regime uses to justify its own existence and its repression of civil society.”

The student held meetings with some of these union representatives, in Mahalla as well as in other Delta cities and in Cairo, and then was found by the side of a Cairo suburban ring-road, his face and body hideously disfigured by the torture under which he died. Sisi’s cops waffled about gang murders and “evil people”, and even suggested poor Regeni was killed in “a lover’s argument”. He was not. The Italian government concluded he had been murdered by the regime’s state security police because his enquiries – innocent enough, in the context of his University of Cambridge thesis – brought him too close to the men running the workers’ committees which so terrified the regime.

Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent MindsHe had indeed met these men: some of them took videotapes of Regeni asking them questions and, in return, being asked for foreign support for their syndicates. And so the police picked up Regeni and he was never seen again.

The British Foreign Office only bothered to complain about the murder after it had received 10,000 signatures of protest from within the UK; and we all know right now – today — how much signatures count for British governments. But the Italian government exploded in anger. Regeni’s mother would not release photographs of her son after death because his wounds were too terrible. Western embassies in Cairo, including the British, did nothing – even though they were given the name of the senior police officer in charge of Regeni’s torture and murder.

So the little fandango over two Egyptian actors this week had far darker historical and murderous roots than we might have thought. They stretched back into history and they still exist beneath the carapace of Egypt’s present government authority. The Egyptian actor’s union may be a farce but the power of workers is an ever-present danger to Middle East regimes.

One day, Regeni’s successors will complete his PhD work and write their own theses on the Arab awakening of 2011; and it will likely be a different story to the one we wrote eight years ago from Tahrir Square. Meanwhile, it would indeed probably be a good idea if messrs Waked and Naga stayed abroad.

2019 Indian General Election: Manifesto Demand for Indefinite Moratorium on GMOs

Colin Todhunter

A new ‘Political Manifesto’ has demanded an indefinite moratorium on the environmental release of GMOs in India pending independent and rigorous biosafety risk assessment and regulation.

The documents states:

“GMO contamination of our seeds, our foundation seed stock, will change the structure of our food at the molecular level. Any harm or toxicity that there is will remain, without the possibility of remediation or reversibility.”

Signed by high-profile organisations and individuals, including farmer’s organisation Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU), the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, Aruna Rodrigues (Lead Petitioner: Supreme Court GMO PIL), Kavitha Kuruganti and Vandana Shiva as well as dozens of co-signatories, the manifesto demands the introduction of a biosafety protection act, which would prioritise India’s biosafety and biodiversity and implement the GMO moratorium, while preventing the import of any GMOs into India.

The manifesto also calls for a ban on the herbicides glyphosate and glufosinate as well as for national consultations and a parliamentary debate to formulate policy to establish and incentivize agroecological systems of farming as a means of avoiding ecosystems collapse. In addition, the document wants a pledge that farmers’ traditional knowledge and inherent seed freedom will remain secure and that there should be no patents on GMO seeds or plants.

The release of the manifesto coincides with the upcoming 2019 Indian general election, which begins in April.

The current Modi-led administration has presided over an accelerating push within official circles for GM agriculture. There has also been creeping illegal contamination of the nation’s food supply with GMOs. This might seem perplexing given that the ruling BJP stated in its last election manifesto: “GM foods will not be allowed without full scientific evaluation on the long-term effects on soil, production and biological impact on consumers.”

Readers are urged to read the five-page ‘Political Manifesto Demand With Regard to GMOs/LMOs‘. It sets out clear and cogent arguments for the moratorium and contains the list of signatories.

Five high-level reports: no to GMOs 

In India, five high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops: the ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal (2010); the ‘Sopory Committee Report’ (2012); the ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ (PSC) Report on GM crops (2012); the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013); and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests (2017).

These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that existing proper biosafety and regulatory procedures are inadequate. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the TEC was scathing about the prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of GM crops. The PSC also arrived at similar conclusions.

However, the drive to get GM mustard commercialised (which would be India’s first officially-approved GM food crop) has been relentless. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has even pushed the process by giving it the nod, but the cultivation of GM mustard remains on hold in the Supreme Court due to a public interest litigation brought by lead petitioner Aruna Rodrigues.

Rodrigues argues that GM mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests (or no tests) and a lack of public scrutiny: in effect, there has been unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency. Moreover, this crop is also herbicide-tolerant (HT), which, as stated by the TEC, is wholly inappropriate for a country like India with its small biodiverse, multi-cropping farms.

GMOs in the food system

Despite official committees and reports advising against GMOs, they have already contaminated India’s food system. Back in 2005, for instance, biologist Pushpa Bhargava noted that unapproved varieties of several GM seeds were being sold to farmers. In 2008, Arun Shrivasatava wrote that illegal GM okra had been planted in India and poor farmers had been offered lucrative deals to plant ‘special seed’ of all sorts of vegetables.

In 2013, a group of scientists and NGOs protested in Kolkata and elsewhere against the introduction of transgenic brinjal in Bangladesh – a centre for origin and diversity of the vegetable – as it would give rise to contamination of the crop in India. In 2014, the West Bengal government said it had received information regarding “infiltration” of commercial seeds of GM Bt brinjal from Bangladesh.

In 2017, the illegal cultivation of a GM HT soybean was reported in Gujarat. Bhartiya Kisan Sangh, a national farmers organisation, claimed that Gujarat farmers had been cultivating the HT crop illegally. There are also reports of HT cotton (again illegally) growing in India.

A study by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment found that due to lax enforcement, a deeply flawed labelling system and corporate deception, Indian supermarkets are inundated with GM foods. The results show the large-scale illegal presence and sale of GM processed foods in the country.

All of this is prompting calls for probes into the workings of the GEAC and other official bodies which have been asleep at the wheel or deliberately looking the other way. The latter could be the case given that senior figures in India misguidedly regard GM seeds (and their associated chemical inputs) as key to ‘modernising’ Indian agriculture.

Despite reasoned argument and debate against the cultivation of GM crops or the consumption of GM food in India, we are witnessing GMOs entering India anyhow. Rohit Parakh of India for Safe Food says that the government’s own data on the import of live seeds indicates that imports continue, including that of GM canola, GM sugar beet, GM papaya, GM squash and GM corn seeds (in addition to GM soybean) from countries such as the USA, with no approval from the GEAC.

In finishing let’s look at a warning from 10 years ago, when it was predicted that Bt brinjal would fail within 4-12 years if introduced in India. It seems that’s precisely what has happened to Bt cotton in the country. The last thing India needs is another ill thought out GMO experiment pushed through without proper independent assessments that consider health and environmental outcomes or the effects on farmers’ livelihoods and rural communities.

Indeed, a recent paper by Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez concludes that extending implementation of GM technology to other crops in India will only mirror the disastrous implementation of Bt cotton, thereby tightening the economic noose on still more subsistence farmers for the sake of profits.

It is therefore a timely and much needed intervention by a coalition of groups and individuals to put forward a call for a moratorium on GMOs.

Waste pickers – Wretched lives

Sheshu Babu

In cities and towns, one often comes across heaps of garbage on roadsides and poor – mostly slum dwellers, children – hovering around the pile. These people are mostly ignored by authorities as well as rich and middle-class elites. Waste pickers are the lowest in the hierarchy of urban informal occupation.

The term ‘Waste picker’ was adopted in the First World Conference of Waste Pickers in Bogota, Columbia in 2008 to facilitate global networking and supplant derogatory words like ‘scavenger’ .( Informal Economy, Waste Pickers, weiego.org). Work situation differs greatly across countries but the common thing is that this work is their livelihood and often supports their families.

Estimation

Number of waste pickers in the country is not easily available. Some estimates city- wise have been recorded . For instance, in Ahmedabad, they are estimated to be about 30,000 mostly women and children. In the state of Gujarat, according to a study, there are estimated 100 000 waste pickers. Delhi alone has approximately 100 000 waste pickers according to another study. Pune has 6,000of whom 72% are women according to a study.( Waste Pickers in India, WIEGO , Law and Informality, Law project Country Report, www.wiego.org). Brazil is the only nation that systematically captures and reports statistical data on waste pickers. Data collected by Brazil’s official system found that over 229000 did this work in 2008. (Dias 2010). According to statistics published in ‘ Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture’ (ILO – WIEGO 2013) where wastepickers have been identified, they represent less than 1 percent of urban workforce: 0.1 – 0.4 percent in seven West African cities, 0.7 percent in South Africa ( including both formal and informal waste pickers) , 0.1% in India. These small percentages, however, represent large number of people. Because of the challenges of gathering data on waste pickers, the estimates may be low.

According to some estimates, there are about 1.5 million to 4 million waste pickers in India.( Unpaid and undervalued, how India’s waste pickers fight ….by Swetha Dandapani, November 30 2017, the newsminute.com). They segregate, clean, sort and sell waste to make a living.

Working conditions

The IEMS study found that majority of waste pickers had generally low levels of formal education. In many areas, the work was done by disadvantaged groups. For example in Pune, India, the work is largely confined to scheduled castes.

Waste picking is generally a family business with flexible working hours requiring little or no education. It is highly adaptable and can be learned easily with little training. For the poorest of poor in the world, it is one of the only livelihood options

However, waste workers often face social stigma, poor working conditions and they are frequently harassed. They suffer from occupational related musculo-skeletal problems, respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. They face problems from both the police and municipal authorities. They have no social security benefits.

According to a study published in the International Research Journal of Environment Sciences titled ‘Studies on the Solid Waste Collection by Rag Pickers at the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation , India, 94% of the 150 waste pickers interviewed in the Jawahar Nagar landfill in Hyderabad stated that they choose this job as no other alternative was available to them (Unpaid and undervalued,how India’s waste pickers fight apathy to keep our cities clean, by Sweta Dandapani, November 30 2017, thenewsminute.com). Thus, many of them are forced to work picking up waste.

Changing trends

With the concept of ‘ e-waste’, solid waste management, recycling waste, have made the work of these pickers more valuable. As metals like iron, copper, etc can be extracted from the waste thrown out, these rag pickers can be a valuable addition to the chain of environmental protection cycle. By gathering the material, they can help not only cleaning cities from garbage but also assist in the process of recycling and reusing material so that waste can be used without destruction. Society must recognize value of waste picker and must show compassion. Activists should struggle for uplifting these poverty- stricken workers and force governments to take note of their sufferings. Many of them even work without a minimum wage. Decent wage and medical facility must be given to them along with education and nutrition to the children who are forced into working to feed their parents. Collection centers in cities should provide equipment for gathering and disposal of waste. For clean and green cities and towns ( and even villages) , waste pickers are crucial and valuable .

Australian government delivers a callous, anti-working class budget

Mike Head

On the eve of announcing an election for next month, the Liberal-National Coalition government last night handed down a blatant vote-buying budget pitched at satisfying the demands of big business and the wealthy, and appeasing voters in vulnerable electorates, while feigning concern for “low to medium income families.”

The first budget produced since last August’s removal of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, it provides a glimpse of the anti-working class agenda that drove the coup by the Coalition’s “hard right” faction, which installed Scott Morrison as his replacement.

Throughout his speech, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg repeatedly declared “no new taxes.” This was designed to assure the wealthy elite that a Coalition government would continue to slash social spending and corporate taxes, whatever electoral lip-service it felt compelled to make to “fairness” to try to head off widespread discontent and anger.

Households on above-average annual incomes over $46,000, and up to $126,000, were promised cash handouts this year of up to $2,160 for a dual-income family, via income tax offsets. It will do nothing to alleviate the mounting pressures produced by falling real wages, collapsing house prices and deteriorating social services and infrastructure.

But for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, those on less than $46,000, there was nothing at all. For some welfare recipients, there will be small one-off payments of $75 for singles and $125 for couples, supposedly to cover soaring power bills.

All these handouts are cynically aimed at stimulating immediate consumer spending in order to boost retail and related profits, and attempt to stave off a developing economic slump.

With particular cruelty toward hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers, the government rejected calls for a $75 a week rise in the sub-poverty NewStart allowance. The current payment amounts to just $39 a day and has not increased in real terms since the 1990s.

Another $2.1 billion will be gouged out of welfare recipients over the next five years by yet another Centrelink “data matching” crackdown on people trying to augment their pitiful benefits by working in low-paid casual, temporary or part-time jobs.

Equally callous is the massive “underfunding” of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which is the result of disabled people and their carers being unable to access assistance packages, or facing cuts and long delays. By some calculations, the NDIS “underspent” about $3 billion this financial year and the same next year—almost equivalent to the government’s projected $7.1 billion surplus for 2019–20.

“We are six years into the [NDIS] rollout and we have heard of people waiting two years for a wheelchair,” Kirsten Dean from disability advocate group Every Australian Counts told the media.

More “savings” totalling several billion dollars have been achieved by paying out less for aged pensions, as the eligibility age steadily increases to 67, and by cutting thousands of people off welfare payments altogether.

On every front of dire social need, such as the mental health crisis, the dental health disaster, the lack of affordable housing, the chronic under-funding of public schools, hospitals and universities, the budget offered little or nothing. Refugee support services were further cut by nearly $80 million a year.

A $525 million “skills package” supposedly offering training to youth and jobless workers, contains only $55 million in new money over five years, and follows a $200 million cut last year.

By contrast, the corporate elite has been promised yet more tax cuts. Planned multi-billion-dollar corporate tax cuts will be brought forward by a year. An immediate tax write-off for asset purchases will be raised from $20,000 to $30,000 and extended to companies with annual turnovers of $50 million, up from $10 million.

By 2024, the government pledged to introduce income tax cuts for the wealthiest layers. Its virtual “flat tax” plan would lower the rate to 30 percent for all income from $45,000 up to $200,000 a year. This would give households on and above that level $11,640 in annual tax savings.

In another effort to shore up big business, government corporate regulators will be given $600 million over five years to “restore public confidence” in the financial sector. A royal commission exposed systemic predatory practices and abuses by the banks and finance houses, all permitted by the same regulators.

Under the phony banner of “easing congestion,” a promised 10-year $75 billion infrastructure program will be boosted to $100 billion, primarily satisfying business transport and freight requirements. This spending also features flagrant pork-barrelling. It is highly targeted to local projects in electorates, many in rural and regional areas, that the government fears losing in next month’s election.

More electoral bribes are certain to be offered during the election campaign. The budget sets aside $3.2 billion for handouts, under the heading “decisions taken but not yet announced.”

All the budget’s projections are likely to be blown out of the water, however. Treasurer Frydenberg’s speech began with a patent lie. He became the fifth consecutive treasurer—Coalition and Labor alike—to claim to be delivering a budget surplus. “Back in black,” he proclaimed.

In reality, the accompanying Treasury papers point to an array of “downside risks”—further housing price falls, a deepening construction slump, slowing growth in China, the US-China trade war, the Brexit crisis, and stagnating economies in Japan and Europe. A temporary rise in global iron ore prices, mainly caused by a mine disaster in Brazil, is expected to go into reverse, potentially halving the projected surplus.

The Treasury warned of “ongoing risks to the global economy” and “major economic and financial shocks that may be encountered in the future.” It demanded “strong fiscal management.” In other words, regardless of which party heads the next government, further austerity and profit-driven measures will be unleashed against the population.

In order to prepare for social unrest, the repressive apparatus of the state is being strengthened. Millions more dollars will be poured into further increasing the staffing, resources and surveillance capacities of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the electronic spy agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

These agencies have been vastly enlarged already since 2001, as part of the fraudulent “war on terrorism.” Now they are being taken to a new level, in the name of combating “foreign interference” and “cyber warfare.” These are code words for heightened political surveillance, enforcement of the anti-democratic “foreign influence” laws passed last year, and censorship of on-line activity.

ASIO and the AFP will get an additional $571 million, raising their staff numbers by 107 and 312 respectively over the next financial year, plus $35 million to set up a “Foreign Interference Threat Assessment Centre.” The ASD will receive $4 billion through to 2023 for a Cyber Security Response Fund, ostensibly to protect the “integrity” of elections from “foreign meddling.”

These measures also feed into preparations for war, including by demonising China and Russia. Military expenditure will increase by $1.3 billion to $38.7 billion in 2019-20. This will keep rising every year, to reach 2 percent of gross domestic product in 2020–21, to meet commitments made to the US to boost preparations for potential conflicts with China. Procurement of submarines, frigates, warplanes and other weaponry over the decade will cost more than $200 billion, which could build hundreds of schools and hospitals.

UNHRC ignores Sri Lanka’s failure to investigate war crimes

Pradeep Ramanayake

The 40th session of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) last month adopted a new resolution giving the Sri Lankan government two more years to implement its unfulfilled pledges on “transitional justice and accountability”—i.e., war crimes related to the brutal three-decade war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Entitled “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka,” the March 21 resolution was initiated by the UK and co-sponsored by Colombo, with behind the scenes negotiations by India, Washington’s regional strategic partner.

The resolution praised the Sri Lankan government’s “positive steps” towards the protection of human rights, commitment to release military occupied lands to civilians, and repealing of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

The “positive steps” are a fiction. Ten years after the end of the war the North and East of the country remain under military occupation. While some land has been handed back to civilians, the military has refused to release all occupied land, citing unspecified “security reasons.” As for repealing the PTA, Colombo plans to replace the repressive legislation with an equally draconian Counter Terrorism Act.

The war against the LTTE, which began in 1983, was the culmination of systematic discrimination by Colombo’s ruling elite against the island’s Tamil minority since formal independence in 1948 aimed at dividing the working class along ethnic lines.

The war ended in May 2009 with the military annihilation of the LTTE and, according to UN reports, the killing of more than 40,000 civilians in the final months of the conflict. Other allegations include the disappearance and torture of thousands of Tamils. Successive Colombo governments, which depend heavily on the political support of the military, have desperately sought to prevent any investigation into these crimes.

Washington, the world’s biggest violator of human rights, initiated UN resolutions on Sri Lankan human rights violations after the war ended. Its concerns had nothing to do with democratic rights but were to apply political pressure on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse who purchased weapons and established close economic relations with Beijing. The US, as part of its efforts to isolate China, wanted Sri Lanka to end its ties with Beijing and align itself with Washington’s geo-strategic plans.

After Rajapakse resisted these demands, Washington sponsored a regime-change operation which brought Maithripala Sirisena to power in the January 2015 presidential election. The current Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga were principal supporters of the operation.

After Sirisena and Wickremesinghe shifted Sri Lankan foreign policy towards Washington and New Delhi, the US in October 2015, moved another resolution in the UNHCR. The resolution dropped previous calls for an international investigation into human rights violations and called instead for an “internal judicial mechanism” under international supervision. In March 2017, Washington extended implementation of these demands for two more years.

When the Trump administration quit the UNHRC in June 2018 over its limited criticism of Israel, the UK took the initiative to develop last month’s resolution in consultation with India.

An article in the Wire, an Indian web site, reported that New Delhi “has been kept informed ‘at every stage’ of drafting of the resolution.” It noted that there were concerns about “the very recent turbulent political history and ‘the fraught ties’ between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.”

An unnamed Indian government official said: “It was felt that the government required a break” and decide not to “impose any stringent strictures.” In other words, no pressure should be placed on Colombo about investigating the war crimes and other abuses.

The “turbulent political history” is a reference to Sirisena’s failed coup last October when he removed Wickremesinghe as prime minister and attempted to replace him with Rajapakse. The political manoeuvre was rejected by the US and India who still consider Rajapakse to be pro-China.

When Rajapakse was unable to secure majority support from MPs, Sirisena dissolved the parliament. Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court declared Sirisena’s actions unconstitutional, forcing him to reappoint Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

However, the factional war continues as the ruling elite fights over how best to deal with the country’s mounting economic crisis, the IMF’s austerity demands and increasing strikes by workers, student protests and ongoing unrest among the rural poor. Each faction is preparing dictatorial methods of rule to deal with the mounting anti-government unrest.

Sirisena has withdrawn the support of his faction of Sri Lanka Freedom Party from the UNP’s so-called “unity government” and is seeking re-election as president later this year with the endorsement of the Rajapakse-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).

He has also intensified efforts to secure backing from the military and Sinhala chauvinist organisations, reversing his previous support for an investigation into human rights abuses during the war and openly rejecting war crime allegations against the military. Last month Sirisena hypocritically claimed he was unaware of the latest UNHRC resolution and that he rejected it.

Rajapakse and his supporters are building an extreme-right movement, appealing to the military, Sinhala supremacist groups and the conservative Buddhist establishment, in a bid for power. Rajapakse has accused the government of “betraying” the security forces by agreeing to a war crimes investigation and is whipping up anti-Tamil sentiment to divide the working class. The Rajapakse faction is also trying to convince the US and their allies that they are ready to work with those powers.

Not to be outdone, the UNP-led government is continuing its efforts to whitewash the war crimes. Sri Lankan Minister of External Affairs Tilak Marapana, who led the delegation to Geneva, claims that the UNHRC has “exaggerated” the death toll during the last stages of the war and was unfair for insisting on investigations.

The latest UNHRC resolution is another political warning from Washington and New Delhi to both Sirisena and Rajapakse not to destabilise the close military and political relations they have established with Sri Lanka over the past four years.

The outcome of last month’s UNHRC meeting has also exposed the reactionary politics of the Tamil capitalist parties. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) backed the regime-change operation that removed Rajapakse as president in 2015, claiming that the Tamil people could secure their democratic rights with the support of international powers.

Addressing parliament on March 22, TNA leader M. A. Sumanthiran backed the UNHRC resolution while demagogically declaring that his organisation would take steps to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court if it reneged on its promises to the UN.

Former Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran, who was also a former TNA leader, and several other political groups wrote to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. They urged her not to extend the time frame for the Colombo government to comply with “transitional justice and accountability” requirements and to directly monitor the human rights violations.

Irrespective of their tactical differences, all the Tamil parties seek to secure the privileges of the Tamil elite by serving the imperialist powers. These formations are also nervous about the rising unrest amongst Tamil workers and poor in the North and East and the danger of unified action with their counterparts in the south of the island.

Exposure of the war crimes and human rights abuses of the Sri Lanka’s ruling elite are the concern of the entire working class, Tamil and Sinhala alike. However, prosecution of those responsible for these crimes, and the defence of all democratic rights can only be secured by a unified revolutionary movement of the entire working class for a Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic of workers and peasants as part of a Socialist Federation of South Asia. This is the perspective fought for by the Socialist Equality Party.

Eight miners die from toxic gases in Peru’s northern highlands

Cesar Uco

Eight miners died and three more barely survived after poisonous gases filled the galleries of an informal gold mine in El Toro mountain located in the highlands of the northern department La Libertad, Peru, last weekend. This tragedy is the result of the ruthless drive for profits by the owners of informal mines, operating often without licenses, which have proliferated by the thousands in the Peruvian highlands, from the border with Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south.

The tragedy occurred last Saturday when the miners, after having completed their work, re-entered the mine to collect their belongings. Underlying it are the universally dangerous conditions in which the informal miners operate, without observing minimum safety regulations dictated by the central government.

Most of Peru’s mining sector involves large-scale, capital-intensive operations that are in the hands of transnational companies associated with Peruvian families that have owned mines for decades, investing billions of dollars in Peru.

Such investments are a top priority for Peru’s bourgeois government. Due to its orientation toward international capital, the Peruvian government of President Martin Vizcarra, just like its predecessors, has ignored the needs and conditions of those working in small, informal mines, many of whom are poor peasants working for an owner living in comfort and luxury hundreds of kilometers away in the capital, Lima.

It is reported the toxic gas that killed the miners emanated from a pipeline ruptured as a result of explosive activities that caused a roof collapse in another nearby mine within El Toro mountain itself.

Miners die for the same reasons, facing the same dangerous conditions and exploitation by the capitalist owners all over the world. These latest victims in Peru included Francisco Rondo Baca, Isaias Vasquez Serin, Orlando Valderrama Victorio, Ulises Narro Alva, Cesar Contreras Tandaypan, Hhonatan Fumbajulca Anticona, Jose Sanchez Rodriguez and one more as yet unidentified.

Other miners and community members in the area were the first to give notice of the disaster to the police and public officials of the town to start rescue operations. One of the relatives stated, “We had to take them outside, but they are dead.”

One of the survivors, Cesar Rondo Baca, narrated how when they re-entered the mine they began to feel dizzy, suffered headaches and lost their sense of hearing. He was saved because he managed to crawl toward the exit of the tunnel, which eight of his companions failed to do, staying in the sinkhole that filled with deadly gases.

Upon arrival of the Criminal Investigation Section (in Spanish, SEINCRI), prosecutor Henry Espinoza Urbina from the regional capital, Huamachuco, met the refusal of some relatives of the victims who opposed autopsies of their dead, arguing that the owner of the mine had promised them a reward in the event of a deadly tragedy. Only three were taken to the morgue in Trujillo, the departmental capital.

The disaster that claimed the lives of eight miners is a tragedy that is repeated almost every week in the informal mines of Peru. In particular, the El Toro mine is known as one of the most dangerous in illegal mining. The locals warned that “people die buried in holes or by a bullet. ... In El Toro death is a daily occurrence.” A month ago, one miner was killed and three injured when the roof of a tunnel collapsed due to lack of safety measures.

There are more than half-a-million informal miners in Peru. Many have agriculture as their main source of income, but when the price, for example, of potatoes drops, must work in mining under conditions in which they put their lives at risk.

The proposal of the ultra-right Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, founder of the Liberty and Democracy Institute, and follower of the economists Milton Friedman (founder of the monetarist economic policy) and Friedrich Hayek (of the Austrian school that defends classical liberalism), is that the informal miners be formalized obtaining title to their properties. In the past, de Soto proposed applying his “remedy” to pymes (small and medium-size enterprises), but the empirical results discredited his postulates, when it became known that the pymes experiment ended up favoring big capital, due to the high percentage of bankruptcies, with the banks taking over the assets.

Carlos Sánchez, whose brother Gilmer José Sanchez Rodriguez perished inside the mine, demanded justice: “My brother died at the mine. We were notified by the owner of the contract, and we went to the mouth of the mine and picked up the body of my brother. We ask that they close that mine, there are already many dead and everything goes unpunished. We ask for justice.”

For dozens of years these words of demanding “that they close that mine” and “we ask for justice” have fallen on the deaf ears of the centralized bourgeois state in Lima, the capital of Peru.

Informal mining in Peru—and the same can be said for Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile—is the result of poverty, corruption of public servants and ruthless hunger for wealth at the expense of the lives of the miners. Above all, the capitalist state in many Latin American countries limited its presence to the capital and other large cities, ignoring the needs of the natives of Inca and Aymara descent who populate the rural areas. The mine owners operate without respecting safety conditions because they know that it is easy to bribe public inspectors, who themselves receive poverty wages from the government.

The indifference to human life is reflected in an article published in Mining, the magazine of the Institute of Mining Engineers of Peru. On the front page is a photo of the general manager of the main company operating gold mines in El Toro mountain, Jaime Polar, flanked by the flags of Peru and the company. In an interview made a year and a half ago, Jaime Polar indicates that some 5,000 illegal miners exploit the El Toro goldfields.

El Toro is owned by the Corporación del Centro Sociedad Anónima Cerrada (CDC Gold), a Peruvian mining company incorporated in 2010, which houses seven mining concessions and has reserves of 700,000 gold ounces, according to a technical report made by SGS Canada in October 2014.

This reporter called CDC Gold headquarters in Lima asking for information on whether the tragedy occurred in one of its mines. CDC Gold refused to confirm or deny its involvement, refusing to give any information.

In the interview with Mining magazine, Jaime Polar states that his business provided an “example of the transformation of an area where more than five thousand illegal miners operated into a future world-class operation.” This is a transparent attempt to put on a face of decency before national and foreign investors who read the magazine, while on the ground the informality continues because ignoring the lives and safety of the miners, while paying them miserable wages, is the most lucrative way to operate.

The gold-rich mountain has seen conflicts between the owners of CDC Gold and local residents of the region. In May of last year, the Energiminas magazine reported that for several days, protesters “blocked the entrance to the El Toro mining company in Huamachuco, after demanding that they be offered employment, the hiring of personnel from the region and compliance with payment commitments to their suppliers.”

Sears abruptly slashes life insurance coverage for 90,000 retirees

Jacob Crosse 

Beginning March 15, thousands of retired Sears employees were informed via a form letter that their life insurance benefits had been eliminated. Retirees were given two options—either convert all or a portion of the previously held policy into a new plan, and begin making payments, or watch it evaporate. As of this writing, it is unknown how many will be affected; however, the previous policies covered approximately 90,000 retirees across Sears and Kmart.

Sears is at the center of the “retail apocalypse,” which has led to mass layoffs and downsizings throughout the country. In 2019, it is estimated that more than 6,300 stores across the US will close, with tens of thousands of employees losing their jobs. With their employers failing to meet projected profits, workers, pitted against top-performing stores and each other, have been forced to accept wage freezes and benefit cuts, while investors on Wall Street have remunerated themselves fabulously.

Sears staved off liquidation earlier this year in a $5.2 billion February bankruptcy sale to current chairman Edward Lampert, who was also the company’s largest creditor. The sale transferred ownership of Sears Holding Corp. to Lampert and the hedge fund he founded, ESL Investments, which completed the sale. The infamous asset-stripper sold his plan to New York bankruptcy judge Robert Drain as an opportunity to “save jobs,” while operating a “leaner” Sears. This “leaner” Sears has an estimated 40,000 employees today, down from 355,000 in 2006.

The ones made to tighten their belts are not billionaires like Lampert, however. Instead, retirees will be left in the lurch, swindled out of a previously promised benefit, unable to afford a new plan on the “free market.” Life insurance policies increase in monthly premiums as a person ages. This means that a majority of those affected, who are already well into retirement, will be unable to afford a new plan. A vast majority of the 90,000 retirees potentially impacted have been retired for years and are on a fixed income. The previously earned policies ranged in coverage from $5,000 to $10,000.

Ron Olbrysh, chairman of the National Association of Retired Sears Employees (NARSE), told CBS News that for many former employees life insurance was “the last benefit they had.” And while these “last benefits” were eliminated on the 15th, many have yet to receive a letter. Olbrysh himself didn’t receive notification until five days later.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, former employee Tom Dowd, 76, explained that he was hurt not only by the loss of benefits, but also in how the message was delivered. “I spent my adult life there,” Dowd told the paper, “and if nothing else, that requires a little bit of dignity as opposed to a letter saying your benefits are gone, and here’s how much you can pay to get them back.”

According to NARSE, the average policy is between $8,000 and $10,000 in coverage, while the average policy holder is 80 years old. Continuing his interview with CBS News , Olbrysh detailed the plight of a 91-year-old former employee of 37 years whose benefits were arbitrarily cancelled. To maintain his coverage, he would have had to pay more than $3,000 a year. Already saddled with exorbitant out-of-pocket costs for health coverage, an average of $4,300 a year, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, this added unexpected expense is a cruel insult to retirees who dedicated the best parts of their lives to the massive corporation.

This cost-cutting measure, in the name of maintaining profitability, will no doubt be used to further enrich Lampert and “key personnel” occupying top positions in the company. According to Olbrysh, under the previously held life insurance policies, Sears paid approximately $16.6 million in premiums for eligible retirees for the year that ended Dec. 31, 2017. Meanwhile, as part of the court-approved bankruptcy sale, up to $25.3 million in bonuses were made available to executives and high-ranking employees in December 2018.

Senator and 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sent out a perfunctory tweet chastising the company for its “greed,” while offering no perspective or solutions for those affected. Likewise Olbrysh, who previously served for more than a decade as assistant general counsel for Sears, conceded that while NARSE could take Sears to court, he is already tempering expectations of winning back benefits, pointing out that the company is “dying.”

The choice for workers and youth is clear, the financial aristocracy and the courts that legalize theft cannot be used to win back what was earned or promised. The continued pilfering of pensions, benefits and wages will only stop once workers and retirees take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands and out of the hands of duplicitous capitalist politicians and company lawyers.

Confrontation between Chinese and Taiwanese fighter jets

Peter Symonds 

A 10-minute aerial confrontation between Chinese and Taiwanese fighter jets over the Taiwan Strait on Sunday has once again highlighted the dangers of a war in Asia fueled by the Trump administration, which has deliberately inflamed the region’s volatile flashpoints.

Taiwan condemned what it described as a “reckless and provocative” move by Beijing after two Chinese warplanes crossed the de-facto maritime border in the Taiwan Strait known as the “median line.” The Taiwanese military scrambled its own fighter planes to warn off the Chinese jets.

Taiwanese presidential spokesman Huang Chung-yen declared that China “should stop acting in ways that endanger regional peace and well-being, and not become an international troublemaker.” He said that Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, had been informed and directed the island’s armed forces to “take all necessary combat preparedness measures.”

If Chinese warplanes did cross the median line, it would be the first incursion since 2011 which was judged to be accidental. Beijing is yet to comment on Sunday’s incident, which comes in the wake of a series of US moves that are aimed at bolstering ties with Taiwan and calling into question its adherence to the so-called One China policy.

US President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China in 1972 involved the tacit recognition of Beijing as the legitimate ruler of all China, including Taiwan. In 1979, the US formally established diplomatic relations and ended its ties with the military dictatorship on Taiwan established by the Kuomintang (KMT) after its defeat in the 1949 Chinese revolution. At the same time, Washington committed to opposing any forcible reunification with Taiwan by Beijing and to continuing arms sales to Taipei.

Trump, who on assuming office publicly called the One China policy into question, has repeatedly and deliberately provoked Beijing by boosting arms sales to Taiwan, increasing US naval operations in the tense Taiwan Strait, and by signing the Taiwan Travel Act into law authorising top level contact between US and Taiwanese civilian and military officials.

Prior to Sunday’s aerial stand-off, the US military sent two ships—the Navy destroyer Curtis Wilbur and Coast Guard cutter Berholf—through the Taiwan Strait for the third time this year and the sixth time since it resumed such transits last July. The Chinese foreign ministry stated that it had lodged “representations” with Washington and urged caution by the US “to avoid harming Sino-US relations and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

Last Wednesday, Taiwanese President Tsai used a so-called “transit stop” in Hawaii to launch a broadside against China and call for a beefing up of US arms sales to Taipei in remarks delivered via video link to the right-wing US think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

Tsai accused Beijing of trying to “alter the status quo” and “undermine our democratic institutions.” She dismissed China’s “one nation, two systems” proposal for unifying Taiwan with the mainland and declared that China’s actions “underscored the need for Taiwan to increase our self-defence and deterrence capacities.”

Tsai belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party, which is based on Taiwanese nationalism and does not accept the current status quo in relations with China. While stopping short of declaring formal independence from China, which could provoke a Chinese attack, the DPP, encouraged by the Trump administration, has adopted a more assertive stance for Taiwan.

Tsai was touring the Pacific in a bid to shore up Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with three tiny Pacific Island states—Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands. The three are among the few countries in the world to maintain relations with Taiwan, rather than China.

The most significant aspect of Tsai’s comments was a call for the US to sell more than 60 advanced F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan, as well as M1 heavy tanks, which she said would “greatly enhance our land and air capacities, strengthen military morale and show the world the US commitment to Taiwan’s defence.”

The US has not sold fighter jets to Taiwan since 1992. While the F-16V fighters are fourth generation, not fifth generation warplanes, they are fitted with advanced radar and avionics, unlike Taiwan’s present aging fleet of F-16s. The US has so far refused to sell its fifth-generation stealth fighters, the F-22 and F-35, to Taiwan.

While the sale would not immediately alter the military balance between China and Taiwan, it would be a clear sign that Washington is strengthening ties with Taipei and would enhance Taiwan’s capacity to take part in a US-led war against China. The island’s strategic location just off the Chinese mainland prompted US General MacArthur to describe it in 1950 as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the event of war.

Bloomberg reported on Monday: “Trump administration officials have given tacit approval to Taipei’s request to buy more than 60 Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16s, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Suggestions that the US sale could proceed have sent shockwaves through Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry last week said that it had lodged “stern representations” with the US, while the defence ministry warned that the sale undermined the One China policy.

Senior Colonel Wu Qian told the media last Thursday: “Any words or actions that undermine the One China policy are tantamount to shaking the foundation of China-US relations, are inconsistent with the fundamental interests of China and the United States and are also extremely dangerous.”

China’s show of air power over the Taiwan Strait was clearly meant as a warning to both Taiwan and the US.

Taiwan, along with the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea, are among the most volatile and dangerous flashpoints in the world. Yet the Trump administration is recklessly disrupting longstanding diplomatic norms as it escalates its confrontation with China over trade and steps up its military preparations for war.

Trump’s aggressive stance towards Beijing is a continuation of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” aimed at encircling China and building up US military forces in the Indo-Pacific. US imperialism is determined to maintain its global hegemony if need be through military force against China, Russia or any other potential rival.

The danger is that a minor incident in the Taiwan Strait, whether deliberate or accidental, could become the trigger for a conflict between nuclear-armed powers that escalates out of control into all-out war.

Amazon Air cargo flight crashes after vicious cost-cutting

Erik Schreiber

It will take more than a year to determine the cause of a recent Amazon Air crash, according to Robert Sumwalt, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). “This seems to be very much a mystery, but the NTSB has 52 years of experience solving such mysteries, and I’m confident we will get to the bottom of this,” Sumwalt told Flying magazine.

Amazon Air was established several years ago as a way for Amazon, the Internet retail giant, to increase profits by cutting its growing shipping costs. In 2015, Amazon began leasing aircraft from companies that also provided employees to fly, maintain and insure them. Amazon owns no planes, and the pilots who deliver its cargo are not legally its employees. In the process of establishing Amazon Air, Amazon has shown its usual disregard for worker training and safety, maintaining its laser focus on the bottom line. The crash is the company’s first.

The accident occurred on February 23. Atlas Air-operated Flight 3591 from Miami to Houston crashed outside of Houston, killing all three people on board. Captain Ricky Blakely and First Officer Conrad Jules Aska were delivering cargo for Amazon and for the US Postal Service. Mesa Airlines Captain Sean Archuleta was riding in the jump seat as a commuter.

After the plane encountered turbulence, its engines increased to maximum thrust and its nose turned upward. Alarmed, the crew pushed the nose down at a 49-degree angle, which caused an exceptionally steep descent. The plane accelerated and dropped from 6,525 feet to 3,025 feet in 30 seconds.

This prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue an alert notice. To steady the aircraft, the pilots pulled it up to a 20-degree angle. Although they did not issue a distress call, they began communications consistent with loss of control of the plane, according to the NTSB’s preliminary review. The plane went down approximately 30 miles southeast of Houston’s George Bush International Airport.

Speaking to the press, pilots have said that the crew’s maneuvers during the flight were unusual, and even counterintuitive. “Obviously, going 49 degrees nose down is beyond a radical move. That’s not something an airplane should be doing, especially at that altitude,” said Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer for Boeing, in an interview with the Associated Press.

The accident is not the first for Atlas Air, which has had several irregularities over the past year. A cargo plane operated by an Atlas Air subsidiary swerved off the runway at the Northern Kentucky Airport in October 2018. Another Atlas Air plane had a hard landing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in July 2018. The flight inspection subsequently found significant damage to the jet.

Mere weeks before the deadly crash, pilots for Atlas Air and Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), which also contracts with Amazon Air, told Business Insider that an accident was inevitable. They said these companies paid so little, they were unable to attract experienced pilots, even though Amazon is requesting more and more flights. The pilots also said the training their companies provided was inadequate. Many pilots were overworked, fatigue was common and employee morale was low.

Atlas Air and ATSG were grinding down their collective workforce before Amazon Air was founded, but the rapid expansion of the latter made the existing problems worse. The exponential growth of Amazon Air has forced pilots who are responsible for training new-hires and educating them about safety to work at reckless speeds.

Business at Atlas Air and ATSG is booming as a result of Amazon, and safety standards are slipping. Veteran pilots are appalled at the companies’ hiring decisions. “We have guys in the [first officer seats] who have no business flying airplanes, and certainly no business flying heavy jets,” a pilot who has flown with ATSG for 23 years told Business Insider.

The quality of training has been deteriorating, according to pilots. The FAA has at least twice warned ABX Air, which is owned by ATSG, about creating “a disruptive and confrontational atmosphere” during pilot training. In a letter to ABX, the FAA alleged that David Soaper, the company’s president, recently interrupted a training session to shout at crew members. Unsurprisingly, one of the workers abruptly walked out of the session.

Pilots for Amazon Air have reported that they do not have regular work schedules. Instead, they are often asked to work mere hours before their flights are due to depart. Pilots have been called in on their days off and forced to work overtime. One pilot for ABX reported that he was away from home for two months at a time in recent years. The schedules are so punishing that some pilots are worried about their peers’ mental health.

Pilots who fly for Amazon Air have been involved in contract disputes with their employers for almost five years. They have not received a raise in almost 10 years, and their benefits have declined.

The last contract for ABX and Atlas was finalized during the financial crisis that began in 2008 and includes many painful concessions. The workers endured a pay cut, lost vacation days, and the freezing of pension contributions and matched contributions to health care plans. On average, Amazon Air pilots with the most experience make approximately 33 percent less than pilots at UPS and FedEx who have the same experience and are flying the same aircraft. Yet the pay of the top four executives at ATSG increased by more than 100 percent from 2015 to 2017.

The Airline Professionals Association, a division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, represents the pilots. For decades, the Teamsters union has collaborated with management at various companies to extract more labor and profit from its members. In October 2018, the union forced a contract with United Parcel Service on members who had rejected it by a vote of more than 62 percent. Union officials, meanwhile, have maintained their political influence and salaries that keep them in the top 5 or 10 percent of earners.