Canadian workers launch work-safety job actions amid rapid spread of coronavirus

Carl Bronski

A series of job actions in Canada over the past week has pointed to mounting anger among workers over the unsafe working conditions they are being forced to confront by the ruling elite amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus crisis.

Late last Wednesday, Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) afternoon-shift workers assigned to clean streetcars at the city’s Roncesvalles Yard refused to carry out their duties. They cited the employer’s failure to “maintain reasonable precautions to protect workers” from the spread of the potentially lethal virus. As a result of their action, a number of streetcars due to deploy Thursday for morning rush hour were delayed and buses were pressed into contingency service.

For several weeks, TTC workers have been demanding that management waive strict uniform requirements to allow transit drivers, ticket booth employees and others to wear personal protective equipment. They have also pressed for increased access to hand sanitizing stations while on the job. Until the work stoppage forced management’s hand, the TTC had refused to move on this basic health and safety issue.

When pressed further on the matter after the job action, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green acknowledged that the Commission’s contingency plans included scenarios to alter transit schedules should more broad-based worker actions ensue.

In neighbouring Mississauga, a city of 800,000 people, seven bus drivers and 21 cleaners were potentially exposed to the virus after an infected commuter traveled on their vehicles over a three-day period. The city has refused demands that the endangered workers be paid for any necessary quarantine period.

As the affected Toronto streetcars were returning to the streets Thursday, afternoon shift workers at the giant Windsor, Ontario Fiat Chrysler assembly plant stopped work over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at their plant. Production did not start up again until Friday afternoon after the federal Ministry of Labour with the Unifor union intervened to review health and safety issues and declare the plant “safe.” Windsor Assembly is the largest FCA plant in Canada employing 6,000 workers, currently in a three-shift operation.

The action taken by the Windsor workers echoes that of their brothers and sisters at Fiat Chrysler’s Italian plants. A burgeoning strike wave in Italy began Tuesday at Fiat Chrysler’s Pomigliano plant in Naples, which also employs 6,000 workers. Autoworkers, kept on the line to produce luxury Alfa-Romeo cars for the super-rich, walked out spontaneously, protesting unsafe conditions. As disruptions spread, FCA announced Wednesday the closure of the Pomigliano plant, along with facilities in Melfi, Atessa and Cassino, until at least Saturday.

On Friday morning, Canada Post workers in Peterborough, Ontario, invoked their right to refuse unsafe work, delaying mail delivery in the city. The workers refused to enter their postal station due to concerns about a manager who had recently returned from an overseas coronavirus “hot spot” and had reportedly exhibited some signs and symptoms of infection.

Over the weekend, the plight of millions of low-wage and part-time workers was highlighted when attendants at Tim Horton’s, Canada’s largest coffee house chain, participated in a social media campaign. It highlighted that many Tim Horton’s franchise owners were still requiring doctor’s sick notes before workers could book-off work sick, although public health authorities were instructing anyone who was sick or feared they had come into contact with a potential coronavirus victim to self-quarantine.

In most provinces, workers can be forced to pay out-of-pocket for sick notes from their physicians, and those who book-off sick without such a note can be disciplined.

Most of the approximately 80,000 employees of Tim Horton’s Canadian operation are allowed no more then five days per year of unpaid medical leave under conditions where any loss of pay can severely impact basic needs. Well before the coronavirus outbreak, the Canadian Medical Association had characterized the sick note requirement “an unnecessary public health risk.”

The anger among workers across Canada, which has been replicated around the world in job actions by British postal workers and French private bus drivers, is entirely justified. The coronavirus is a highly infectious disease which has spread rapidly and can be deadly. Experts have repeatedly warned that combating it requires strict quarantining measures for those infected, a dramatic reduction of social contact, a comprehensive program of testing, and high quality and well-funded health care systems.

Canada’s ruling elite has no intention of ensuring any of this. On the contrary, the corporate executives and shareholders view the pandemic primarily as a market event. The preeminent concern has always been the impact of this disease on the value of stock portfolios and shares.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a meagre $1 billion for the government’s COVID-19 Response Fund last week, including just $500 million for emergency front-line health care, Finance Minister Bill Morneau unveiled a program 10 times larger to provide loans to businesses. The Bank of Canada added to the bonanza of cheap money for the financial elite by slashing interest rates by another half a percent to 0.75 percent—the second half percent cut in the last two weeks. Additional funds were also allocated to buy up “bankers’ acceptances”—an instrument banks use to provide loans to small and medium-sized businesses—and the amount of capital that the country’s banks are required to hold as insurance against a financial collapse has been lowered.

The Liberal government’s reaction to last week’s market volatility has been, as it was under Stephen Harper and his Conservatives during the 2008-09 financial crash, a massive infusion of money into Bay Street. The Canadian response has echoed US President Trump’s announcement of a $1.5 trillion bailout of the financial system, a figure twice as large as the original size of the 2008 US bank bailout and over a thousand times larger than the emergency coronavirus funding the World Health Organization pleaded for last Friday.

The malign neglect displayed by the Trudeau government and the entire ruling elite towards working people in the coronavirus pandemic must serve as a summons to action. Workers can only protect themselves and their families from this deadly virus by taking up a struggle for urgent measures to combat the coronavirus on a global scale. These should include:

• Accessible and universal testing! No expense can be spared in making available free testing to all those who show symptoms.
• Free high-quality treatment and equality of care! The most advanced medical care must be made available to everyone, regardless of income or insurance coverage.
• Paid sick leave for all workers! No one must be forced to work if they are sick or have been exposed to the coronavirus, endangering themselves and others.
• Protect refugees, prisoners and the homeless! Everyone must have access to high-quality and clean living conditions to prevent the spread of the disease.
• Safe working conditions! All workers must have a safe work environment and be protected against the spread of the virus. Where there is a danger, workplaces and schools must be closed and full compensation paid by the employers and the state. Health care and other essential workers must be provided all the equipment and resources necessary to protect them from the coronavirus.

Australian governments invoke emergency powers amid COVID-19 disaster

Mike Head

After delaying for weeks taking any effective action to prevent the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus, Australia’s federal, state and territory governments are activating draconian emergency laws.

These contain powers only previously used in wartime, such arbitrarily detaining, imprisoning or imposing massive fines on people, to be imposed now in the name of protecting public health.

While anxious people are being denied coronavirus tests, hospitals report shortages of vital facilities, and public schools and universities are being kept open, governments and the corporate media are using the worsening health crisis to create a wartime atmosphere, with police-state conditions.

Governments unveiled the states of emergency as a result of last weekend’s first meeting of a previously unheard-of bipartisan “national cabinet,” comprised of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his state and territory counterparts, both Labor Party and Liberal-National Coalition. A “senior government source” told the Australian: “We are now effectively on a war footing.”

The extraordinary measures are being officially justified as essential to shield the population from a catastrophe, but they establish precedents, and an atmosphere, for the wider imposition of such powers. Police powers are being bolstered, displayed and trialled amid rising anger over the indifferent and contemptuous government response to the pandemic, on top of the summer bushfire calamity.

Since Sunday, emergencies have been declared in South Australia, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, and the governments in the other states triggered similar legislation, permitting police to fine or imprison people who defy bans on gatherings or quarantine orders, such as self-isolation.

In Victoria, Labor Party Premier Daniel Andrews declared a “public health emergency” for at least four weeks under the state’s Public Health and Wellbeing Act of 2008. By that legislation, governments have far-reaching powers to impose a state of emergency “arising out of any circumstances causing a serious risk to public health.”

Andrews said fines of up to $20,000 could be imposed on anyone refusing to comply with a “public health order” issued under the legislation and warned of spot checks by police on people placed under 14-day self-isolation orders.

The laws, never used before, give “emergency powers” to police and other “authorised officers” to detain people, restrict people’s movements, ban access to designated areas and “give any other direction” that is considered “reasonably necessary to protect public health.”

In addition, “public health risk powers” hand “authorised officers” broad powers to close premises, search premises and seize anything without a warrant. People, can be directed to “take any other action” deemed necessary to reduce a “risk to public health.”

According to a statement from Andrews’s Department of Premier and Cabinet, entire suburbs, businesses or professions could be quarantined if deemed necessary.

Last week, Andrews warned people to expect “extreme measures,” saying: “We will need to ask Victorians things we have never asked them before.”

Similar measures have been activated in each state and territory. New South Wales (NSW) Liberal-National Premier Gladys Berejiklian told a media conference: “Whilst the chief medical officer can issue notices, police can enforce that and there are penalties in place for people who don’t respect what we’ve done, through the Public Health Act.”

Section 70 of the NSW Public Health Act, introduced in 2010, created an offence not to comply with a public health order, and section 71 says police may arrest a person who contravenes a public health order.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard declared: “Individuals who fail to comply could face up to six months in prison or a fine of up to $11,000 or both, plus additional penalties for each day the offence continues.”

These “public health emergency” measures are additional to the emergency powers invoked by state governments during the months-long bushfire disaster.

The “state of emergency” legislation activated by the NSW and Victorian governments during the fires allowed state premiers and/or police chiefs to override any law, including supposed human rights protections, issue whatever orders and directives they deemed necessary, and arrest anyone who failed to comply.

Those powers can be utilised to suppress popular unrest and outlaw strikes. The Victorian Emergency Management Act’s definition of “emergency” specifically includes “a hi-jack, siege or riot” and “a disruption to an essential service.” The government can proclaim any service to be “essential.”

The federal Coalition government, backed by Labor, has already exploited the bushfire disaster to push for national powers to declare states of emergency—powers currently confined to the states—and mobilise the military.

That call seeks to strengthen the powers of the police-military apparatus to suppress the discontent brewing over ever-widening social inequality and the decades-long assault on working class living standards, working conditions and social services.

Emergency powers cannot alter the appalling lack of public medical, hospital and other basic civilian resources laid bare by the bushfires and now the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, they would allow the federal government to impose virtual martial law, with sweeping authority to call out the armed forces.

Prime Minister Morrison’s proposed national emergency declarations would place immense power in the hands of the prime minister and the military, intelligence and police chiefs. This would be on top of the expanded powers that the Coalition pushed through parliament in 2018, backed by the Labor Party, to rapidly call out the armed forces to deal with “domestic violence”—that is, civil unrest.

In part, the latest emergency measures are desperate acts of political damage control. They are an attempt to head off the developing outrage over the official response to the Covid-19 catastrophe and whitewash the responsibilities of all the governments involved.

These measures also are intended to divert attention from the root causes of the unprecedented global crisis—the capitalist system’s subordination of every aspect of life, including public health, to the dictates of corporate profit and the interests of each national-based ruling class.

At the same time, the resort to emergency powers signals an increasingly authoritarian reaction, to boost the powers and resources of the police, military and intelligence agencies to deal with rising political discontent and acclimatise public opinion to martial law conditions.

Scandinavian Airlines lays off 10,000 airline workers as coronavirus triggers global jobs massacre

Jordan Shilton

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) announced Sunday that it will throw around 10,000 employees out of work as it halts almost all operations amid the spread of the coronavirus. The callous decision, which confronts tens of thousands of workers and their families with financial ruin, comes as cases of the infectious disease increased rapidly in all Scandinavian countries over the past week.

The job cuts will impact 90 percent of the airline’s workforce, including pilots, cabin crew, and ground staff. SAS, which is partially owned by the Swedish and Danish governments, stated Sunday that it does not intend the layoffs to be permanent. But chief executive Rickard Gustafson commented at a Stockholm press conference: “Demand for flights into, out of and within Scandinavia has more or less disappeared.”

coronavirus cases have shot up across Scandinavia over the past week. In Norway, where total confirmed cases rose to 1,368 today, with three deaths in a country with just 5.3 million inhabitants, Prime Minister Erna Sollberg announced the closure of the borders and all airports as of yesterday in a bid to slow the rate of transmission. The only exemptions are for Norwegians returning home, and the import and export of goods. Schools, kindergartens, and universities have also been closed.

In northern Norway, which relies heavily on income from tourism to the Arctic circle, many local operators have laid off workers and halted their activities for the entire season. The news site Euractiv described the potential impact on the region as an “economic meltdown.”

Norwegian Air, a budget airline, announced plans to lay off 50 percent of its workforce.

In neighbouring Sweden, which has recorded 1,125 cases with seven deaths, Scandic Hotels Group announced the firing of 2,000 employees, about half of the company workforce. Across the country, regional health authorities are already warning that they lack protective gear and test kits for coronavirus patients.

On Monday, the Swedish government unveiled a 300 billion kronor (€27.8 billion) package for businesses, including plans for the state to cover sick pay from day one and pay a share of wages for temporarily laid-off workers. However, these measures are only set to last through April and May. Companies were also granted tax breaks.

In Denmark, where 960 cases and four deaths have been recorded, the government announced a programme to pay 75 percent of the salaries for workers if their employers pledge not to lay off staff. This programme will run only until June 9. The Danish Chamber of Commerce projected in a report that 47,000 people in the tourist industry alone are threatened with losing their jobs in the immediate future.

In Finland, where 294 cases have been reported, the government has come under criticism for its strict testing policy. According to the Helsinki Times, Prime Minister Sanna Marin ordered that tests of patients will only be carried out on the authorisation of a doctor, who must first consult with an infectious disease specialist. This means that the official number of cases is certainly an underestimation of the true figure. The country’s Institute for Health and Welfare claimed that it is not worth testing people for mild symptoms, but the Hospital District for Helsinki and Uusimaa, one of the region’s worst hit by the outbreak, acknowledged that the restrictive practices are due to a shortage of resources.

Over recent years, Finland’s healthcare system, as well as all other public services, have been subject to strict austerity policies.

While workers bear the brunt of the coronavirus crisis, governments in Scandinavia, like their counterparts internationally, have rushed to provide virtually unlimited funds to prop up the banks and the financial elite. Sweden’s central bank announced loans to the country’s financial institutions of around €45 billion, while Norway’s central bank cut interest rates by 0.5 percent and promised further measures.

The devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers in the travel industry and related sectors is not confined to Scandinavia, but is unfolding on a global scale.

Airlines around the world are cutting thousands of jobs as their revenues dry up due to the coronavirus pandemic. Air New Zealand, which employs some 8,000 workers, announced the axing of its long-haul flights and the laying off of an unspecified number of employees. British Airways, which warned Friday that it is threatened with total collapse, is reducing its flights by 75 percent, Air France/KLM by 40 percent, and American Airlines by 75 percent. Swiss International announced it would take half of its fleet out of service, while Europe’s largest budget airline, Ryanair, stated it may force employees to take leave starting Monday.

British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz ominously warned staff that job cuts would be implemented “perhaps for a short period, perhaps longer term.” KLM announced yesterday that 2,000 jobs will be cut.

The airline industry, which over the past decade has funneled tens of billions of euros into the pockets of its wealthy shareholders on the basis of a savage intensification of exploitation of airline employees, is thus offloading the full burden of the health and social crisis triggered by the global pandemic onto the backs of workers and their families.

Airline executives warned that without billions in government aid, the entire industry could collapse. Budget airline EasyJet has appealed for a coordinated action plan by European governments to support airlines, while Lufthansa, one of Europe’s largest airlines, announced it would likely request government aid.

Job cuts at leading airlines are just the tip of the iceberg for the travel industry. Millions of jobs are at risk worldwide.

In Germany, leading global tourist company Tui announced an effective halt to all its travel operations late Sunday. The number of workers affected by the move remains unclear. In addition to employees working directly for the company, independent hoteliers and tourist service providers will also suffer.

The Washington Post reported last week on a wave of thousands of job cuts in transportation, travel, leisure, and tourist sectors across the United States, including the firing of 145 drivers at the port of Los Angeles, dozens of workers at travel agents in Atlanta and Los Angeles, and over 100 workers at a national stage lighting company.

“This job was my paycheck,” said Sam Creighton, a worker at a Chinese visa processing center in Los Angeles. “I really don’t know what to do next.”

Army enters Paris as Macron announces coronavirus lockdown in France

Alex Lantier & Jacques Valentin

Last night, military vehicles entered Paris as President Emmanuel Macron announced in a televised address that the French population would be placed under confinement amid the coronavirus pandemic. The total number of SARS-CoV-2 cases in France grew by 1,210 yesterday to 6,663, with 148 deaths.

For weeks, French political authorities have downplayed the dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic, and taken disjoined, belated and insufficient actions, wasting precious time for combating the disease. Until last Thursday, the government’s main concern was to reassure the financial markets that all economic activity would continue as usual.

“Beginning tomorrow at midday, going for a walk and meeting friends in the park or on the street, will no longer be possible,” Macron said. “It is a matter of limiting all contacts outside the house to a minimum. On all French territories, overseas and here, only necessary travel will be allowed: To go shopping, while maintaining a one-meter separation from others, without holding hands, without hugging. Obviously, this includes travel to work, when working from home is not possible.”

Macron did not place any restrictions on the operations of large non-essential companies, except vaguely referring to requirements that employers put in place safe conditions.

After the speech by Macron, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that 100,000 police and gendarmes would be deployed to the streets to maintain the quarantine. To leave their homes, people must carry forms that can be downloaded from the interior ministry website to certify that they are going out for authorized reasons: shopping, medical care, helping a dependent person, or work. Police will give 38-euro fines, soon to be raised to 135 euros, for violations.

The lock-down is to last 15 days but will be renewable by Macron’s order. Given that the incubation period of the disease lasts 14 days, it is likely that the number of cases will rise rapidly throughout the first period of containment; the health services would then need to renew the containment in order to identify and diagnose all the patients.

As in Italy and Spain, the French army is being mobilized. It will build a field hospital to treat coronavirus patients in the east of the country, which has been particularly affected. As Macron spoke, images were published on social media showing armored personnel tanks and other military vehicles arriving in Paris.

It remains unclear what measures are being taken to support workers and small business by these major restrictions on economic activity. Macron claimed that 300 billion euros would be used to assist businesses, including by exempting them from rent and payroll taxes that fund social spending. Macron also pledged that “partial unemployment” payments would be expanded to cover all workers who lose their job due to the pandemic at 84 percent of their net wages, according to government statements to the press.

Nor did Macron explain why Europe is not mobilizing hundreds of billions of euros to support the public healthcare system in the treatment of the sick, while Italy, devastated by the virus, desperately needs international support. In contrast, the European central bank has already announced the provision of 120 billion euros directly to the financial markets.

As part of a destructive, nationalist reaction by governments internationally faced with a pandemic whose treatment urgently requires international coordination, research and funding, Macron announced that the EU member states had agreed to close the bloc’s external borders.

Like Prime Minister Philippe in his speech last Saturday, President Macron used his speech to berate the population for failing to adhere to directions from medical authorities, and to hold it responsible for the failure of the government to take any substantial action to address the virus.

This is an attempt to justify the government’s assertion of vast state powers, not only to isolate people as necessary during a pandemic, but to suspend democratic rights in the face of a “national emergency.” In fact, only three days ago, the government was maintaining that it was safe for the population to stand in long queues and vote in the municipal elections, which the government insisted must go ahead, and which saw a record level of abstention as voters sought to avoid the virus.

Macron had regularly repeated for more than a week that the country would move “inevitably” onto the highest stage of an epidemic, meaning that the virus would saturate large portions of the population, while the media and government maintained a silence about the catastrophic implications of such a massive spread of the fatal disease.

On Thursday, Macron announced the closure of all schools, universities and creches beginning yesterday. On Saturday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced the closure from midnight that evening of non-essential businesses. Last night, Macron reversed the government’s plans to continue with the municipal elections, postponing the second round indefinitely, meaning that the first round will also have to be repeated as well.

The decision by the governments of France, Italy and Spain to announce complete confinement is at the same time an expression of their own bankruptcy. Had quarantines taken place weeks ago, they could have saved thousands of lives, and prevented tens of thousands from contracting the illness. A complicit inaction prevailed in the highest political levels in Europe as in the United States.

The Italian government in Italy was the first to adopt quarantine measures last Wednesday. Over the following three days, wildcat strikes spread across the country in the automotive, metal and logistics industries, as workers demanded the idling of factories and the right to stay at home if their work was not essential to the fight against the disease. Similar strikes erupted among auto workers in Canada, postal workers in Britain, and bus drivers in Paris.

The fears of a social explosion by workers, after a wave of strikes and “yellow vest” protests that has lasted two years in France, played a major role in the calculations of the corporate and financial elite. Their strategists know that the pandemic has laid bare the disaster produced by the policies of austerity in Europe that have slashed hospital budgets for decades. The anger in the working class explodes regularly across Europe.

Pointing to the danger of “disorder,” Macron said that after the end of the pandemic, “We will win, but this period will have taught us a lot. A lot of certainties and convictions are being swept aside and placed in doubt. A lot of things that we thought were impossible are occurring. Let us understand that the day after, when we will have won, it will not be like the day before. We will be stronger morally, and we will have won much.”

Macron also pledged to suspend all the austerity cuts currently in course. “Nothing must divert us,” he said. “This is why I’ve decided to suspend all the reforms underway, including to the pension system.”

Workers cannot take in good faith the promises of the European Union or Macron, the president of the rich, who, only a few weeks ago, was tear-gassing protests of nurses and healthcare workers—the same workers the government now labels as heroes. The lockdown in France and the recourse to the army point to the threat of a major expansion of the police state that has been used against the “yellow vests” and strikers.

The working class must mobilize to demand a humane and equal treatment of all those who are sick, full wages and decent living conditions for all workers and small business-people affected by the quarantine, and the end of austerity across Europe.

Spain deploys army to impose coronavirus lockdown

Alejandro López

The Spanish army is being deployed in major cities under the state of alarm as deaths linked to coronavirus have gone up from 136 to 329 in the past 48 hours. Spain has registered more than 9,191 infections, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health, becoming the second country after Italy with most newly registered infections.

Riot police used in France

The army has deployed 1,100 soldiers from the Military Emergency Unit (UME) in 13 provinces throughout Spain. Army personnel have also been dispatched to clean up swathes of Madrid, which health officials fear may have been infected by large crowds, and to the borders. Madrid has closed its borders with France and Portugal.

According to the state of alarm, soldiers will be considered “representatives of authority” which implies that they may issue orders to civilians and that those who fail to comply with them or resist them may be accused of disobedience or resistance to authority.

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government will deploy the army in the streets for control and surveillance, to ensure compliance with the regulations limiting freedom of movement under confinement. The government has also taken control of state, regional and local police, including that of Catalonia and the Basque Country, while private security officers will be under the command of the police.

Anyone violating “non-compliance or resistance to the orders of the authority” faces fines of €600 to €30,000, according to the Citizen Security Law. They also face up to four years in prison. The same law that the PSOE and Podemos promised to remove once in power, is now being implemented under a state of alarm.

The turn to the army is a warning to workers and youth.

The UME was created 13 years ago by the PSOE government with the claim that it would serve to fight natural disasters and emergencies. In fact, it represented the militarisation of a service which until then was implemented by civilians. While successive governments cut the budgets of civilian units struggling against fires and natural disasters, UME’s budget increased to the point it currently has 3,500 troops, armoured personnel carriers, helicopters, motorbikes, military police vehicle and a mobile command centre. In 2017, UME even inaugurated the Military School of Emergencies, unprecedently meaning the militarisation of job training of emergencies.

In a country which suffered over half a century of military dictatorships during the 20th century, where the army launched a coup in 1936 which plunged the country into a war during which they allied with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and sealing their victory with mass executions of 200,000 political oppositionists and militant workers, there is wide opposition to militarism and fascism. UME became one of the main vehicles of the ruling class to legitimise the role of the army in domestic and foreign affairs.

The state’s reliance on the army and UME reflects its slashing of resources for public health and research, whose bitter costs are being revealed by the pandemic. While successive right-wing Popular Party and PSOE governments imposed massive cuts in healthcare and research, they showered the army with billions of euros. Now, the ruling class, desperate and isolated in the face of economic meltdown, strikes and growing anger at their mismanagement of the virus, are deploying the army because it views every social problem as a military-police problem.

From Monday on, millions of people will be confined to their homes for at least two weeks. The government has already said it will extend the state of alarm beyond the 15 days mandated by law. Under the state of alarm, people can only go to specific shops individually, and stay in them for the time “strictly necessary”, avoiding crowds and stay at least one meter away from other people. Only food, beverage, products and essential goods establishments will remain open such as pharmacies, medical supply stores, opticians, shops for orthopaedic and hygienic products, press, fuel and pet food stores.

Millions of other workers who cannot work from home are being forced to go to their workplaces, travelling in unhygienic conditions and working in an unsafe environment. These are not health workers, nurses, pharmacists or supermarket staff, but factory and construction workers whose companies have decided not to stop production during the following 15 days.

Images have circulated of hundreds of workers crammed in buses, subways and trains in Spain’s major cities as workers try to desperately get to work under conditions where public transport service have been drastically reduced—violating one of the main recommendations of the World Health Organisation of maintaining at least one metre and a half separation from other people.

One subway worker in Bilbao, the Basque Country, told eldiario.org: “It was really crazy. They have shortened the schedules of the subway lines and all those who go, especially to the factories on the left bank in the early hours have had to pile up to wait for the train.”

El País noted, “The subway’s early morning carriages, the transport services of the working class were full.” One deliveryman delivering toys and video games said, “I’m risking my life for stupid things ... I’m delighted to deliver medicines to hospitals or whoever needs them. If someone needs something from the pharmacy, I’ll take it to them. But it doesn’t seem right to risk one’s life for things that people don’t need.”

Vast solidarity exists among workers for a genuine struggle against the virus. Numerous videos have shown quarantined citizens in Spain and Italy coming together on social media to go out to their balconies and clap for a minute in support of healthcare workers and others who continue to work and risk their lives.

Seeing the capitalist class is incapable of managing the crisis, and is even continuing to prioritize profits over lives, workers are starting to mobilize calling for factories to close.

The Mercedes-Benz plant in Vitoria, the largest factory in the Basque Country with over 5,000 workers, stopped production yesterday after workers stood before the line of departure of finished vehicles to demand that management prioritize the health of workers over production.

In Barajas, Getafe and Illescas, thousands of workers in the world’s largest airliner manufacturer, Airbus, are being called by the unions to not attend work. The union’s actions came after widespread anger erupted after a coronavirus case was detected. The same unions are currently negotiating redundancies for the workforce.

In Valladolid, workers from the industrial vehicle manufacturing plant of Iveco shut down the factory, saying that the company was not taking the appropriate safety measures. The company’s management asked for more time to negotiate the conditions of an eventual shutdown, but workers decided to take action after 4 days of work.

Thousands of workers of car manufacturer Renault and tire manufacturer Michelin have also forced the shutdown of their factories in Valladolid, Palencia and Seville.

It is to suppress this growing anger that the ruling class is preparing to use the army. In October 2017, at the height of the secessionist crisis in Catalonia, Madrid sent thousands of paramilitary Guardia Civil to repress peaceful gatherings and protests. The Spanish government even contemplated declaring the state of alarm and deploying the army.

UK: NHS anticipates year-long coronavirus crisis and 8 million hospitalised

Thomas Scripps

A leaked document by Public Health England (PHE) for senior National Health Service (NHS) doctors and officials has given the lie to all previous official discussions of the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact.

The PHE expects that the UK’s coronavirus epidemic will last a year and that up to 7.9 million people will require hospitalisation in this time.

A commuter covers her face in London, Monday, March 16, 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

The number of cases is forecast to increase rapidly over the next 10 to 14 weeks, reaching a roughly one-month peak from the end of May to mid-June. A 10-week decline in cases and deaths is expected to follow, falling to a relatively low level during the summer months. The authors of the report are concerned that the virus could then resurge in autumn and winter.

According to the document, obtained by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, “As many as 80 percent of the population are expected to be infected with Covid-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15 percent (7.9 million people) may require hospitalisation.”

Assuming a fatality rate of just 1 percent, the infection of over 50 million people would mean 531,100 deaths. Even by Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty’s estimate of 0.6 percent, the death toll would be over 318,000. But the global fatality rate is currently around 3.4 percent.

This staggering assessment is yet another indictment of the government’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic and their worthless assurances that services will be able to cope. The UK, along with much of the rest of the world, faces a prolonged social emergency which will affect the lives of millions. Over the weekend, a new-born baby in London tested positive for coronavirus. Italian doctors are reporting that a new wave of younger patients is now being hospitalised.

Dr. Luca Lorini, head of anaesthesia and intensive care at a northern Italian hospital, said, “The type of patient is changing. They are a bit younger, between 40 to 45 years old. People are arriving who got ill six or seven days ago and treated themselves at home, and then their conditions became more and more critical.”

The PHE document is explicit in its fear that the overstretched NHS and other social services will be unable to cope. Work considered vital—“in essential services and critical infrastructure” such as the NHS, social care, policing, transport and the fire brigade—will not be able to function normally. The document warns, “it is estimated that at least 10 percent of people in the UK will have a cough at any one time during the months of peak Covid-19 activity,” meaning they would have to self-isolate for at least seven days under the government’s guidelines. This equates to a shortfall of half a million vital workers.

PHE admit that the health service cannot come close to testing everyone with suspected symptoms for the virus, including NHS staff. Only the very seriously ill in hospital or those in prisons or care homes where the virus has already been detected will be tested.

The scale of the crisis is so apparent that Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to announce a series of new measures yesterday that were previously scheduled to come into force in several weeks’ time. These include advising whole households in which one member has a cough or fever to self-isolate for 14 days; telling people to avoid pubs, theatres and other social venues; to avoid “non-essential” contact with others and “unnecessary” travel; and to work from home “where they possibly can.” People in “at risk” groups will soon be asked to be “largely shielded from social contact” for 12 weeks.

In a sign of what is to come, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said the NHS will cancel or delay all non-emergency operations.

Social services are so stretched that the effective and humane implementation of Johnson’s measures is impossible.

Isolating the elderly for three months would, in many cases, be as effective a death sentence as catching Covid-19. Britain’s 500,000 care home residents and 548,000 over 65s receiving long-term social care are already criminally under-resourced. According to executive chairman of the National Care Association, Nadra Ahmed OBE, the sector is already suffering 120,000 staff vacancies. She told the Sun, “The potential of self-isolation and the impact of that is fundamentally going to render services unable to continue.

“If we don’t have the workforce to deliver the services then we are going to be substantially challenged. People with the highest need will receive the care but people with medium needs who need the support may be waiting.”

The normal sickness rate among care workers is 3 percent. If 10 percent are forced to self-isolate during the peak of the epidemic (and the number is likely to be higher), then the sector will be short a further 100,000 workers.

This reduced workforce will then be forced to spend extra time dealing with the coronavirus crisis, the policy director of the United Kingdom Homecare Association Colin Angel has warned. Social workers’ home care visits would take “well longer than the usual expected time while dealing with people who are unwell.”

His concerns echoed those of Professor Martin Green, chief executive of the charity Care England, who said last week, “Domiciliary care services are really important. If we get a lot of domiciliary care workers off ill that will be a big problem. People who need that care will not be getting support, they won’t get fed, and they won’t get washed or toileted.” He criticised the government for showing “no evidence of a plan” to address these needs.

Responding to these criticisms, ministers passed responsibility onto local councils, who were told on Friday to design plans for supporting the most vulnerable and high-risk people in their areas. Councils in England lost 77 percent of their funding from central government between 2015-16 and 2017-18 and cut 75,891 jobs in the five years up to 2019.

Lack of resources for social care and the NHS could also create a vicious circle. Helen Buckingham from the Nuffield Trust said, “With hospital beds so squeezed, patients will really need care services to keep functioning well enough to stop people being admitted if it can possibly be avoided.”

Ian Hudspeth, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board (LGA), warned that the stretched demand for adult social care “could be further impacted by hospitals needing to discharge people even sooner than at present owing to the pressures on them.”

The government’s response to this danger has been pitiful. Besides aimless and empty calls for an “army of volunteers,” officials have suggested redeploying care workers to look after the elderly in virus hotspots. They are also reviewing whether criminal record background checks, required to work in close contact with vulnerable people, can be loosened to fill vacancies.

As one care worker explained to the Guardian, plans to parachute care workers into affected areas ignores the fact that the people they look after often have highly complex individual needs and threaten to exacerbate the problem of staff sickness. “You are going to be putting people into a hot zone where people are infected. It creates a vicious circle.”

She warned that universally low-paid care staff would feel pressured to lie about whether they felt ill: “They fear they won’t be paid. Nobody can survive on statutory sick pay.”

The spread of private, profit-seeking concerns throughout the health and social care services in recent years has turned this problem into a mass concern. Last Friday, cleaning, portering and catering staff walked out of Lewisham Hospital after the outsourcing firm ISS refused to pay them properly.

As lockdowns mount over COVID-19 worldwide, WHO pleads for more testing

Bryan Dyne

There are now 183,000 cases of the coronavirus in 162 countries and territories worldwide, meaning that the number of active COVID-19 cases now exceeds the number of recovered patients. This includes more than 600 new deaths, bringing the total toll to over 7,200. The cases outside of China, which is now relatively stable, have now exceeded those within, as Europe has emerged as the new epicenter of the global pandemic with the United States not far behind. Emergency measures across entire nations are now commonplace as the virus shows little signs of being contained.

Travelers wearing protective masks arrive to the main bus station in Bogota, Colombia, March 13, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Fernando Vergara]

France, Italy, Spain and Germany are under lockdown, a condition now affecting more than 250 million across Europe. Those four countries alone are collectively dealing with upwards of 52,000 cases, of which 2,663 have resulted in deaths. Fifty-seven countries on every inhabited continent have some form of travel restriction, many of them directed against Europe or the United States, in an attempt to stem the pandemic that is accelerating across the globe.

In the United States, California, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington, Kentucky, Maryland, Indiana, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have all issued orders to close schools, restaurants and/or bars. The 6.7 million people living in the six counties including and surrounding San Francisco are now under a “shelter in place” order for the next three weeks, which will be enforced by local police to “ensure compliance.” New Jersey residents are now being “strongly discouraged” from leaving their homes after 8:00 p.m., which will be enforced by the state’s contingent of the National Guard.

These bans are in addition to a nationwide directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Monday recommending against any gathering of more than 10 people.

As the World Health Organization (WHO) noted, however, such actions in and of themselves are insufficient to stop the spread of the disease. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday that governments were not doing enough to combat the pandemic and urged them to step up their testing programs.

“[W]e have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing—which is the backbone of the response. … You can’t fight a fire blindfolded and we can’t stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected,” he said at a news conference in Geneva. “We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.”

The organization has also repeatedly stressed that the magnitude of the pandemic “does not mean countries should give up. The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous. … This is a controllable pandemic. Countries that decide to give up on fundamental public health measures may end up with a larger problem, and a heavier burden on the health system that requires more severe measures to control.”

Nowhere can this breakdown of a public health system be seen more clearly than in the United States, where the Trump administration is only this week beginning to roll out mass, nationwide coronavirus testing. On Monday, during the administration’s now daily coronavirus press briefing, US President Donald Trump tried to excuse the lack of testing in the country by claiming, “We have an invisible enemy. We have a problem where a month ago no one even thought about.”

This is a bald-faced lie. Based on the highly contagious and deadly nature of the virus, the WHO designated the virus a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on January 31, the day that officials confirmed human-to-human transmission in the US. By mid-February, South Korea was able to test 10,000 individuals per day while keeping hospitals and clinics supplied and staffed to receive and isolate any individual who tested positive. Italy, where the health system has become largely overwhelmed by more than 28,000 cases, has still been able to perform at least 60,000 coronavirus tests. The US, by contrast, has so far done less than half of that number.

Instead, the Trump administration has opened the spigot of the Federal Reserve and provided $2.2 trillion to the financial sector in an attempt to bolster the stock market. This sum, compared to the resources asked for by the World Health Organization, could provide enough masks, gowns, ventilators and other critical medical supplies to contain the pandemic 3,000 times over.

At the same time, Trump has tweeted, “I ask all Americans to band together and support your neighbors by not hoarding unnecessary amounts of food and essentials.”

In response to these words, a worker from West Virginia, who is pregnant and has to visit a potentially infected hospital twice a week, wrote to the WSWS: “These dipshits caused this panic through their criminal misinformation, response delay, and ransacking of our public health infrastructure. And now they have the gall to point at the scared person who bought extra toilet paper as if they’re the problem.”

Moreover, such resources could have stopped the coronavirus from becoming a pandemic in the first place. Comprehensive testing and isolation could have been done to people infected inside and outside of China, in addition to providing the necessary medical care to allow them to recover. It would have also been more than enough to compensate those people who lost wages while they were out sick. And COVID-19 would have been remembered as a dangerous but ultimately contained disease.

Instead, it has become the policy of governments in North America and Europe that millions will become infected and die. The CDC estimates that up to 216 million people in the United States alone will contract the virus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, bluntly stated that “it’s possible” that hundreds of thousands or millions of people will die as a result.

This has been echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who announced last week that she expects 70 percent of the German population to get the virus. The government of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that the best solution to combat the virus is to gain “herd immunity” by potentially getting “up to 80 percent of the population” infected.

These statements are a prescription for mass manslaughter. As the example of Italy makes clear, the health care systems of even the supposedly “first-world” countries essentially disintegrate with only a few tens of thousands of cases, at which the mortality rates for the virus become about 5 percent because of the lack of critical medical supplies. The governments of the United States, Germany and Britain are suggesting that the only way to defeat the pandemic is for 10 million to 15 million people to die.

Climate Change: A National Security Threat Multiplier

Yash Vardhan Singh


Environmental risks arising from climate change are now considered to be powerful threat multipliers. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2020 identifies five of the top ten global risks as being of an environmental nature, owing to the confluence of climate change and ecological degradation. Recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports point to extensive impacts of climate change despite prevailing mitigation efforts, particularly for countries like India.

Even if one considers the IPCC’s middle ground predictions for temperature and rainfall variations, India will be highly vulnerable to droughts, heat stress, sea level rises, and extreme weather events including cyclones, floods etc. Furthermore, factors such as the enormous population size, socio-economic inequality, extreme poverty, agricultural dependency and high density of population along coastal areas would compound physical threats. What then would the domino effect of climate change on national security be, particularly arising from potential interactions with: a) insurgencies; b) critical infrastructure, especially nuclear installations; and c) public health? As these three domains are relevant to traditional security, infrastructure, and overall human security, they are useful case studies to gain insights on the multifaceted security implications that climate change could pose.

InsurgenciesEnvironmental stress has the potential to exacerbate ongoing insurgencies. Northeast India and areas in Central India affected by left wing extremism (LWE) are ecologically sensitive regions experiencing protracted insurgencies. Climatic stress combined with weak state capacity leads to deterioration in people’s livelihoods. For example, water stress and land degradation in dry land agrarian regions impacts small farmers in central India. Armed groups tactically exploit this situation for recruitment to their cadres and to exert and maintain local control, as was seen in the case of LWE actors in Central India. Meanwhile, Northeast India’s vulnerability to extreme weather events and natural disasters such as cloudbursts, floods etc could result in livelihood stress, displacement etc—all of which are phenomena the multiple ongoing insurgencies in the region could potentially exploit to their benefit.

International instances where the climate change-insurgency link has been identified include the case of Boko Haram. Climate change around Lake Chad leading to water scarcity and land degradation was a factor that contributed to local support for and recruitment to Boko Haram. Studies have also shown how increased aridity and droughts in Syria resulted in large-scale rural to urban migration and contributed to socio-economic conditions becoming conducive for domestic instability. This in turn culminated in a civil war with devastating effects. Additionally, climate change induced natural disasters could also exacerbate organised crime, whose relationship with insurgencies are well established. To accurately understand and predict potential future trajectories of insurgencies in India, climate change must be factored in.

Critical InfrastructureCritical infrastructure such as nuclear installations along the coasts, ports, defense establishments, the national electricity grid etc are all vulnerable to impacts of climatic stress. For example, India’s nuclear facilities located along coasts are specifically vulnerable to storm surges, cyclones and sea level rises. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was caused by a tsunami and provides a glimpse into challenges that nuclear facilities might face in the future. Furthermore, recent climate change models show that previous predictions underestimated the scale of climate change impact, especially regarding sea level rises and extreme weather events. Structural and functional safety standards as well as contingency plans created a decade ago might be inadequate to deal with the fast-changing physical environment of today and tomorrow. Moreover, given how nuclear installations are time-intensive projects with long life cycles, long term climate change threats must be factored in during planning.

Public HealthIPCC reports have predicted the spread and intensification of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, and chikungunya due to global warming. There is also a possibility of increase in new zoonotic diseases due to increased human-wildlife interaction arising from natural habitat loss. Epidemic induced public health crises could easily become a national security issue. Given the high population density and limited public health management capacity, pandemics and large-scale epidemics can be catastrophic for India. Diversion of physical assets and human resources from the security apparatus may be required to manage all-out medical/health crises. Military, paramilitary and other security personnel will be needed to assist civilian administration in logistics and emergency response. This will create vulnerabilities in standard areas of national security like border security, domestic law and order, industrial security, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations etc. Vulnerabilities of this nature are susceptible to exploitation by adversarial state and non-state actors alike. Perception wars during such crises cannot be ruled out either. There is a risk of adversarial state and non-state actors using disinformation to intensify panic and/or discontent arising from any public health crisis, leading to potential internal instability as well as legitimacy challenges for the state.

ConclusionSecurity implications arising from environmental risks are wide-ranging and multi-layered. Potential consequences of climate change’s adverse interaction with insurgencies, critical infrastructure and public health highlight the range of threats climate change could pose across diverse security domains. India must urgently recognise climate change’s potential for creating or exacerbating national security threats and invest in enhancing preparedness in a timely manner.

The Battle for the Saudi Royal Crown

Patrick Cockburn

The fear caused by the coronavirus outbreak is greater than that provoked by a serious war because everybody is in the front line and everybody knows that they are a potential casualty. The best parallel is the terror felt by people facing occupation by a hostile foreign army; even if, in the present case, the invader comes in the form of a minuscule virus.

The political consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are already vast because its advance, and the desperate measures taken to combat it, entirely dominate the news agenda and will go on doing so for the foreseeable future, although it is in the nature of this unprecedented event that nothing can be foreseen.

History has not come to a full stop because of the virus, however: crucial events go on happening, even if they are being ignored by people wholly absorbed by the struggle for survival in the face of a new disease. Many of these unrecognised but very real crises are taking place in the Middle East, the arena where great powers traditionally stage confrontations fought out by their local proxies.

Top of the list of critical new conflicts that have been overshadowed by the pandemic is the battle for the throne of Saudi Arabia: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), whose dwindling band of admirers describe him as “mercurial”, this month launched a sort of palace coup by arresting his uncle, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, and his cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, whom he displaced as crown prince in 2017.

The new purge of close relatives by MbS may be motivated by his wish to eliminate any potential rivals for the crown who might step forward upon the death of King Salman, his 84-year-old father. This need to settle the royal succession has become more urgent in the past few weeks because the US presidential election in November might see the crown prince lose an essential ally: Donald Trump, a man who has become increasingly discredited by his shambolic response to Covid-19, and who faces Joe Biden’s emergence as the likely Democratic candidate for the presidency.

Trump has been a vital prop for MbS, standing by him despite his role in starting an unwinnable war in Yemen in 2015 and his alleged responsibility for the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. MbS has denied personal involvement in the killing, but told PBS last year: “It happened under my watch. I get all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch.”

The record of misjudgements by MbS after he established himself as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia five years ago makes Inspector Clouseau seem like a strategist of Napoleonic stature by comparison. Every one of his initiatives at home and abroad has stalled or failed, from the endless and calamitous war in Yemen to the escalating confrontation with Iran that culminated in Tehran’s drone and missile attack on Saudi oil facilities last September.

The latest gamble by MbS is to break with Russia and flood the market with Saudi crude oil just as world demand is collapsing because of the pandemic’s economic impact. In living memory in the Middle East, only Saddam Hussein displayed a similar combination of hubris and erratic performance that inspired disastrous ventures such as the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 and of Kuwait in 1990.

I once asked a Russian diplomat knowledgeable about the workings of the Iraqi ruler’s inner circle why none of his senior lieutenants, some of whom were intelligent and well informed, had warned him against taking such idiotic decisions. “Because the only safe thing to do in those circles was to be 10 per cent tougher than the boss,” explained the diplomat. MbS reportedly shows similar impatience towards anybody critical of the latest cunning plan.

When it comes to the oil price war, the likelihood is that the Kremlin will have thought this through and Riyadh will not. Russian financial reserves are high and its reliance on imports less than during the last price conflict five years ago between the two biggest oil exporters. Inevitably, all the oil states in the Middle East are going to be destabilised, Iraq being a prime example because of its complete reliance on oil revenues. Iran, suffering from the worst outbreak of Covid-19 in the region, was already staggering under the impact of US sanctions.

In time, the Russians may overplay their hand in the region – as all foreign players appear to do when over-encouraged by temporary successes. For the moment, however, they are doing nicely: in Syria, the Russian-backed offensive of President Assad’s forces has squeezed the rebel enclave in Idlib without Turkey, despite all the belligerent threats of President Erdogan, being able to do much about it.

These developments might have provoked a stronger international reaction two months ago, but they are now treated as irrelevant sideshows by countries bracing themselves for the onset of the pandemic. It is easy to forget that only 10 weeks ago, the US and Iran were teetering on the edge of all-out war after the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was assassinated at Baghdad airport in a US drone strike. After ritualistic Iranian retaliation against two US bases, both sides de-escalated their rhetoric and their actions. Rather than drastically changing course, however, the Iranians were probably re-evaluating their strategy of pinprick guerrilla attacks by proxies on the US and its allies: this week, the US accused an Iranian-backed paramilitary group of firing rockets at an American base north of Baghdad, killing two Americans and one Briton. Iran has evidently decided that it can once again take the risk of harassing US forces.

Covid-19 is already changing political calculations in the Middle East and the rest of the world: a second term for President Trump looks much less likely than it did in February. The election of Biden, an archetypal member of the Washington establishment, might not change things much for the better, but it would restore a degree of normality.

Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere has always been less innovative in practice than his supporters and critics have claimed. Often, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was surprisingly similar to that of Barack Obama. The biggest difference was Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear deal with Iran, but even there Trump relied on the “maximum pressure” of economic sanctions to compel the Iranians to negotiate. For all Trump’s bombast and jingoism, he has never actually started a war.

However, this is now changing in a way that nobody could have predicted, because in its political impact the pandemic is very like a war. The political landscape is being transformed everywhere by this modern version of the Great Plague. By failing to respond coherently to the threat and blaming foreigners for its spread, Trump is visibly self-isolating the US and undermining the hegemonic role it has played since the Second World War. Even if Biden is elected as the next president, the US will have lost its undisputed primacy in a post-pandemic world.