International Labour Organisation warns of massive job losses from COVID-19

Nick Beams

There could hardly have been a clearer expression of the deepening class divide. Yesterday the US Fed announced new financial stimulus measures of $2.3 trillion, as another 6.6 million American workers filed for unemployment benefits, bringing the total number to almost 17 million over the past four weeks.

As workers face ever-greater hardship and the real economy goes further into slump, the financial markets celebrated on the announcement that money is still going to be pumped out, including through the purchase by the Fed of high-yield corporate junk bonds.

And there could be even more to come with Fed chairman Jerome Powell declaring during a Brookings Institution webcast that the central bank would use its powers “forcefully, proactively and aggressively.”

In this Oct. 1, 2019, file photo people wait in line to inquire about job openings with Marshalls during a job fair at Dolphin Mall in Miami. On Friday, Dec. 6, the U.S. government issues the November jobs report. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

The S&P 500 index, which is already up 25 percent from its mid-March lows, rose by another 1.4 percent, with big banks and real estate companies enjoying the biggest increases.

Earlier this week the International Labour Organisation published an update on the impact of the pandemic and lockdown measures on the global labour force. Official statistics lag far behind the actual situation, such is the speed of the economic plunge, and so the ILO had to use changes in working hours to make some estimate of the state of the labour market.

Using this approach, it said the COVID-19 crisis is expected to wipe out 6.7 percent of total working hours globally in the second quarter of this year—equivalent to 195 million full-time workers.

It said the eventual increase in unemployment for 2020 would depend on economic developments and policy measures but there was a “high risk that the end-of-year figure will be significantly higher than the initial ILO projection of 25 million.”

Currently 81 percent of the global workforce of 3.3 billion is affected by the full or partial workplace closures.

“Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe, in both developed and developing economies,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.

The ILO found that 1.25 billion workers are employed in sectors of the economy identified as being at high risk of “drastic and devastating” increases in job losses, wage cuts and reductions in working hours.

“Many are in low-paid, low-skilled jobs, where a sudden loss of income is devastating.”

Emphasising the speed of the pandemic, the ILO noted that since its preliminary assessment on March 18 global COVID-19 infections had risen six-fold with an additional 47,600 people having lost their lives.

It said those still working, especially health workers, were most at risk together with workers in transport and essential public services.

“Globally there are 136 million workers in human health and social work activities, including nurses, doctors and other health workers, workers in residential care facilities and social workers, as well as support workers, such as laundry and cleaning staff, who face serious risk of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace.”

While the ILO did not make the point, those risks have elevated to unnecessarily high levels because of the decades of savage cuts to health and hospital services, leaving staff without necessary protective equipment. The resources of society have been siphoned to its upper echelons via the mechanisms of financialisation that have boosted the stock market.

There are around two billion people working informally, mainly in less developed economies, and tens of millions of them are now being directly affected by the pandemic. Informal workers, the report said, lack basic protection, are disadvantaged when it comes health care but are also involved in areas that “not only carry a high risk of virus infection but are also impacted by lockdown measures.”

The ILO is clearly of the view that there is not going to be some kind of “snapback” or V-shaped recovery when the immediate effects of the pandemic pass.

Characterising the outlook as “highly uncertain,” it said the rapid and far-reaching developments that had already taken place “bring us into uncharted territory in terms of assessing labour market impacts and in forecasting the severity of the shock.”

Economic organisations and institutions around the world are offering forecasts but none of them has an accurate gauge either of the depth of the slump or its duration.

Speaking ahead of its spring meeting next week, International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said; “We anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.”

The IMF releases its economic forecast next Tuesday which Georgieva said would show how quickly the coronavirus had turned the year into one of deep downturn. There was no doubt 2020 would be an “exceptionally difficult” year.

The IMF head warned that low-income countries in Africa, Latin America and in Asia were at high risk.

“With weak health systems to begin with, many face the dreadful challenge of fighting the virus in densely populated cities and poverty-stricken slums,” she said.

The problems confronting these countries are being intensified by the operations of the global financial system. Right at the point where additional resources are needed, money is being withdrawn at a record pace, putting pressure on currencies and government budgets.

Over the two months, according to Georgieva, capital outflows from emerging economies have totaled more than $100 billion. This is more than three times the outflows at the start of the global financial crisis. The IMF has received calls for emergency assistance from more than 90 countries so far.

The dire economic situation in Europe was reflected in two forecast published on Wednesday

One of Germany’s major economic forecasting bodies warned that the economy would contract by 10 percent in the second quarter, double the size of the biggest quarterly drop during the global financial crisis.

The Banque de France has warned that the lockdowns aimed at trying to contain the spread of the virus are slicing 1.5 percentage points from the French growth rate for every two weeks they continue.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said an index designed to identify turning points in the economic cycle showed its biggest drop on record in March. But worse may be to come. The OECD said its latest index only reflected the current situation, not how long or how severe the contraction would be.

World coronavirus cases surge past 1.6 million

Bryan Dyne

Yesterday marked the end of the first 100 days of the coronavirus pandemic, from when the World Health Organization was first notified of a “pneumonia with unknown cause” in China. Since then, there have been 1.6 million officially confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world and more than 95,000 deaths. There have been more than 300,000 new cases and at least 25,000 deaths since this week began.

The United States itself has had 462,000 cases, more than three times those in Spain, the second-worst country, with 152,446 cases. The US also has 16,114 deaths, and is poised to overtake Italy, the country with the highest number of deaths at 18,279, within five days. And the pandemic has begun to make inroads into the heavily populated less developed countries: India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt.

Within the United States itself, there has been no let-up in the rate of infections and deaths. In the New York metropolitan area, the epicenter of the crisis, there have been nearly 160,000 cases and 7,067 deaths, with more than 1,500 new deaths reported in the last two days. New York City has begun to dig mass graves on Hart Island as the death toll becomes unmanageable for the city’s funeral homes and cemeteries.

Members of a privately-funded non-governmental organization working with county officials disinfect a street to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, during the dusk-to-dawn curfew in Nairobi, Kenya Thursday, April 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

The death tolls in New Jersey and Michigan are 1,700 and 1,076 respectively, while the case numbers in Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana and Maryland are accelerating. In addition, the New York Times reports that hundreds of rural counties across the country that had been virus-free two weeks ago are now reporting infections and deaths.

Yet even as the pandemic continues its bloody rampage in virtually every corner of the globe, the Trump administration, the corporate media and the entire US political establishment are declaring they can discern “glimmers of hope,” that the fight against COVID-19 has “turned a corner,” that there are “reasons for optimism.”

According to US President Donald Trump, “We’re at the top of the hill, pretty sure, and now we’re going downward. In some cases we’ve already started that process.

To that end, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published “interim guidance” that provides the justification to force tens of millions of “critical infrastructure workers” back to work. These include law enforcement, janitorial staff and workers in agriculture, manufacturing, information technology, transportation, energy and government facilities.

In the United States, there are an estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, 12.85 million manufacturing jobs, 2.5 million janitors, 4.6 million IT workers, 5.2 million transportation workers, 8.1 million workers in transportation-related industries, 6.4 million energy workers and 10 million government local, state and federal employees.

Along with the 18 million health care workers and 3 million grocery store workers in the country, the Trump administration is calling for at least 73 million people to be sent back to their jobs or continue working in the midst of a deadly and highly contagious pandemic. And the guidelines are so vague that millions more could be ordered back to plants, warehouses and offices with the claim that they are “essential.”

Moreover, the CDC only recommends that employers “should” ensure that their workplaces are sanitary and that their workers are healthy. The entire document paves the way for corporations to resume exploiting their employees without expending a cent on ensuring that their workers don’t succumb to the pandemic.

When asked at yesterday’s coronavirus task force briefing if a nationwide testing system for the virus is necessary before sending workers back to work, Trump snapped, “No. We have a great testing system. We have the best testing in the world. There are certain sections in the country that are in phenomenal shape already. Other sections are coming online. Other sections are going down.”

Trump is engaging in crude charlatanry. While the official statistics indicate that the number of new cases may be the same from day to day, that does not mean the epidemic has stabilized. On the contrary, the number of coronavirus cases is still increasing by an average of 30,000 each day. And there is no guarantee that even extreme social distancing measures ultimately hold: Italy has seen an uptick in its new case figures in the past two days, despite weeks of a nationwide lockdown.

Another form of this argument was taken up by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who during his daily press conference on Thursday cited the decreasing number of new hospitalizations and new admissions to intensive care units as a sign that the pandemic was slowing down. Cuomo did not state, and no reporter questioned, whether or not this is a reflection of hospitals reaching a saturation point and being unable to take new patients or people simply afraid to go to hospitals for fear of being infected.

Neither Trump nor Cuomo was asked about the discrepancies between the fatalities declared as caused by the coronavirus and the sharp spike in deaths of people at home in New York City. Mark D. Levine, a member of the City Council’s health committee, has noted that there are currently 200–215 people dying in their homes each day, up from 20–25 a year ago. This suggests that thousands of people who have died from COVID-19 are not being counted.

It was also announced that the administration plans to be able to do 750,000 tests per week, this will not happen for 4–8 weeks. By that time, likely hundreds of thousands more will be infected and tens of thousands will be dead. Only the rich and their hangers-on will be tested quickly.

The numbers that Trump and the American ruling class are focused on, however, are not the toll of sick and dying—about whom they could care less—but the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other figures indicating their continued accumulation of wealth and profits.

The Dow has shot up more than 5,000 points since its low on March 23, a rise sparked by the trillions of dollars that have been pumped into corporations and the financial markets as well as predictions that factories and workplaces will soon reopen and the process of extracting profit from the labor power of the working class would resume with full force.

Wall Street is also being buoyed by promises that the Federal Reserve will continue pouring unceasing trillions into their gaping maws, even as the Trump administration and congressional Democrats haggle over the terms in which rations will be doled out to workers and small businesses who face poverty and bankruptcy from the ongoing economic collapse.

The working class faces an irreconcilable class conflict. Thousands of workers have carried out strikes and protests over being forced to work under unsafe conditions with the spread of the coronavirus epidemic. It was this resistance that forced corporate America to accede to the shutdown of the auto plants, factories and many other work locations. The efforts by Trump and his Democratic Party accomplices to declare America “open for business” again, under conditions of a rising toll of infections and deaths, will trigger a social explosion.

Social and economic catastrophe intensifies as 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment

Jerry White

According to the US Labor Department, 6.6 million workers filed for unemployment benefits last week, as the health crisis produced by the coronavirus pandemic develops into the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s.

Over the past three weeks, 16.8 million Americans filed for jobless claims in the largest and fastest wave of job cuts in the US on record. During the 2008-09 global financial crash, it took 44 weeks—roughly 10 months—for national jobless claims to reach as high as they now have in less than a month.

As staggering as these numbers are, they are an underestimation of the full scope of the catastrophe. Millions of undocumented workers who lost jobs in restaurants, construction, service jobs and other sectors cannot qualify for unemployment benefits and are therefore not counted in the figures.

People wait in line for help with unemployment benefits at the One-Stop Career Center in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Moreover, the surge of applicants over the last three weeks overwhelmed state unemployment offices, clogging phone lines, crashing web sites and leaving hundreds of thousands unable to file their claims.

There were 170,000 new claims in Florida last week, bringing the three-week total to nearly half a million. The state’s automated system broke down at the end of March after 860,000 calls were made in a four-day period. In Hialeah, near Miami, hundreds of laid-off workers were forced to risk their health and line up outside a local library to get paper applications.

California saw a staggering 925,450 initial claims last week, on top of the 1.06 million claims filed the week of March 28 and the 186,000 claims filed the week of March 21. Like the rest of the country, large and small businesses have been shuttered due to the statewide lockdown.

This week, San Francisco Bay Area event-organizing company Eventbrite announced it would cut its workforce nearly in half. Online-review company Yelp told employees it was laying off 1,000 workers and furloughing 1,100 as it imposes “severe cost reductions” to “survive amid the coronavirus pandemic,” the San Jose Mercury Newsreported.

Among other large states, Georgia posted 388,175 new claims, Michigan 384,844, New York 345,246, Texas 313,832 and Ohio 272,129.

In New York City, Corrine Chin, a 23-year-old marketing worker from Brooklyn, told the Wall Street Journal that she sometimes calls New York’s labor department hundreds of times a day but has been unable to collect a penny since being furloughed in mid-March.

Millions of workers were living paycheck to paycheck before the crisis. The one-time $1,200 payment promised under the misnamed Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act will do little, if it ever arrives.

Nearly one in three Americans (31 percent) expect that the stimulus money will not sustain them for a month or help them out at all, according to a new Bankrate.com survey of nearly 1,500 adults. Nearly one third of apartment dwellers could not pay their April rent, and the $1,200 is less than the monthly median rent.

While millions face economic destitution, the stimulus package will provide trillions to the banks and corporations. The same day that the new jobless figures were released, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 shot up on news that the Federal Reserve will use $2.3 trillion to purchase the bad debts of Wall Street and the giant corporations.

Over the last two weeks, as coronavirus deaths rose from 550 to nearly 17,000, the Dow increased by 28 percent, the most rapid rise in history. For the financial oligarchy, there are no lines to wait in to receive its handouts from the US government. While small businesses are finding impossible hurdles to qualify for loans, the assets of the central bank and its money-printing operations have been turned over to Wall Street.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is cynically seeking to exploit the massive economic hardship caused by business closures and lockdowns to argue for a premature return to work under conditions where the pandemic continues to spread rapidly through workplaces.

There is a rising tide of social opposition in the US and around the globe to demand adequate protection from the pandemic and its devastating economic and social consequences. The essential principle that must guide the response to the health care and economic crisis is that the needs of the working class must take absolute priority over the wealth and profits of the rich.

The Socialist Equality Party demands emergency measures to address the economic crisis for workers:

• Full pay for all workers and the cancellation of all rent, utility and other payments for the duration of the pandemic.
  
• The repeal of the corporate-Wall Street bailout. The immediate redirection of financial and industrial resources toward fighting the pandemic and providing health care, service and industrial workers with all necessary equipment.
  
• Free and universal health care for everyone, including all those who are unemployed. Full pay and citizenship rights for all immigrant workers who have been laid off.
  
• Stop the COVID-19 pandemic! The lives of thousands of workers can be saved through emergency measures to expand medical care, testing, and treatment.
  
• All industries that are being bailed out by the government must instead be converted into public utilities under the democratic control of the working class, redirected toward the production of critical necessities.
  
• A massive increase in taxes on the rich and the seizure of the trillions of dollars hoarded by the corporate and financial oligarchs.

The pandemic has laid bare the fundamental class divisions in society. The working class is the essential and progressive force in society—saving lives, producing and transporting food, medicine and other necessary goods and maintaining the infrastructure of a modern, mass society. The ruling class, in its mad fixation on self-enrichment, has proven to be the biggest obstacle to a scientific and humane response to the pandemic.

In every action that it has taken over the past three months, the ruling class has demonstrated its contempt for the health and lives of the working class. The conditions in the United States, moreover, are repeated in different forms in every capitalist country. While the ruling elites utilize their control over the state to hand themselves trillions, workers face death, unemployment and immiseration.

Atlas Corps Fellowship 2020 for Emerging Global Leaders to Serve in USA

Application Deadline: 1st May 2020

Eligible Countries: International (except citizens of the United States)
Special Opportunity: Thanks to the support of the U.S. State Department, Atlas Corps has a special focus on rising leaders from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestinian Territories, and Russia.

To be taken at (country): United States of America (USA)

About the Award: Atlas Corps is an overseas fellowship for the world’s best social change leaders. Our mission is to address critical social issues by developing leaders, strengthening organizations, and promoting innovation through an overseas fellowship of skilled social sector professionals. For those serving in the United States, we will be bringing in new classes every 2 to 4 months. Fellows serve full-time at Host Organizations, develop leadership skills, and learn best practices through the Atlas Corps Global Leadership Lab professional development series and networking opportunities with other Fellows who are talented professionals from around the world. This prestigious fellowship includes health insurance, enrollment in the Atlas Corps Global Leadership Lab, flight and visa costs, and a living stipend to cover basic expenses (groceries, local transportation, and shared housing).

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Two or more years of professional experience
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• English proficiency (oral, writing, reading)
• Age 35 or younger
• Apply to serve in a country other than where you are from
• Commitment to return to your home country after the 12-18 month Fellowship
• Commitment to living on a basic stipend that only covers groceries, shared housing, and local transportation to and from the Host Organization

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: As volunteers, Fellows receive a modest living stipend intended to cover only shared housing, food and local public transportation. The stipend is not intended to cover expenses you may have in your home country; eating out at restaurants; buying new clothes; or emergencies. While Fellows are able to keep their basic expenses (food, shared housing and local transportation) within the allotted stipend, many choose to bring additionalfunds for personal items, such as clothing, or travel and entertainment. We recommend Fellows have a little money saved for emergencies. The amount of additional funds required will depend entirely on your personal spending habits. Monthly budgets vary from city to city, but the monthly living budget for a Fellow in Washington, DC, is as follows:

• Rent & Utilities: $800
• Transportation: $200
• Food and other small necessities: $460
• Total $1,460/month

Atlas Corps provides documentation to secure a J-1, Exchange Visitor visa (trainee designation).

Duration of Fellowship: The Atlas Corps Fellowship typically lasts 12-18 months.

How to Apply: The application is a multi-step process.

1. Online Application – Part 1: You will need to create a login and you can save your responses so you can return to the application at any time. In Part 1 of the application (known as the “short form”), you provide contact information and complete the initial eligibility test, and if you pass the eligibility test, you’ll complete additional background questions and one short essay.NOTE: In order to sponsor candidates to come to the United States for one year as a Fellow, we require detailed information about each applicant. Please answer each question honestly and thoroughly. If you are found to be dishonest in the application, you will NOT be accepted as a Fellow and you will be sent home if you have been accepted.
2. Online Application – Part 2 (by invitation only): Atlas Corps will review Part 1 applications and invite eligible candidates to complete Part 2 of the application (known as the “long form”), which includes additional questions about your skills and interests and several short essay questions. You will also be required to submit contact information for at least two references who know you in a professional capacity and will write a letter of recommendation about your skills and experiences as well as your potential for success as an Atlas Corps Fellow. You will need to send your requests for letter of recommendation directly through the application system. Your recommenders will receive an email that asks for a recommendation. More detailed instructions can be found in the online application form.
3. Atlas Corps Review and Interview Process (by invitation only): Atlas Corps will review Part 2 applications and select top candidates to interview via Skype with the Atlas Corps Selection Board, including Atlas Corps staff and nonprofit sector, government, and business leaders from multiple countries.
4. Host Organization Review Process (by invitation only): Candidates who pass the Atlas Corps interview stage will be designated as Semi-Finalists, which means they are eligible to be reviewed by potential Host Organizations . Atlas Corps determines which of our Semi-Finalists may be a good fit for specific positions at potential Host Organizations based on their interests and skill set and the organization’s needs, and forwards those applications to the organizations.
5. Host Organization Interview Process (by invitation only): Host Organizations conduct Skype video interviews with selected Semi- Finalists.
6. Selection and Visa Process: Host Organizations will make their final recommendations to Atlas Corps, and Atlas Corps will notify the selected candidates. After being selected, Fellows will go to the U.S. Embassy in their respective countries to apply for a J-1 visa. Atlas Corps will provide support in obtaining this visa.
7. Semi-Finalists who are not selected by a Host Organization will be notified and may be given the option to keep their application on file for consideration for the next class of the Fellowship.

For more information, go through the FAQs

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

UNEP/UNESCO/BMU International Short Course on Sustainable Mobility 2020 Scholarships for Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 15th April 2020

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be Taken at (Country): Germany AND/OR Online

About the Award: Participants will learn from each other’s experiences, present the respective national transport policies and develop sustainable processes and measures for their countries. Professors and scientists from the Technical University of Dresden and other renowned research institutions, as well as experts from industry and the German Environment Agency, will elaborate on approaches for holistic traffic planning and concepts for sustainable transport development. Topics include an analysis of the current situation, assessment procedures and manuals, alternative fuels and engines, transport planning, regional planning, pollution and noise, fuel consumption and climate change, public transport, walking, cycling as well as methods for measuring access and the needs of the population in terms of mobility. This interdisciplinary short course provides a solid background knowledge combined with workshops, participatory teaching methods and on-site inspections.

Type: Short course

Eligibility: This course is aimed primarily at senior management experts with a technical background in traffic and urban planning. The training is suited for experts on a managerial level and decision-makers with tasks in environmental-related planning, coordination and management in ministries, authorities, local government and non-governmental institutions of developing countries, including newly industrialised economies. We expect a high motivation to explore concepts for sustainable mobility – as well as working towards implementing them. A first university degree (BA, BSc, e.g.), adequate communication skills in English language and the nomination by the delegating institution are mandatory.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Our International Steering Committee selects the 21 participants of this course by August 2020. Participants stay in our comfortable private studio apartments and receive a stipend to cover basic living expenses. Flights, health insurance etc. will be provided. Our course office provides further manifold assistance. Participants successfully completing this course will be awarded a Certificate of Proficiency in Sustainable Mobility.
• In both scenarios (online and on-site training), after successful completion of the training, you will, of course, receive a certificate detailing your achievements. You will also receive a fellowship of 550 € to support you with any additional expenses you might have had during the training.

Duration of Award: 13 November – 09 December 2020

How to Apply: For more information on the application process, please visit the FAQ section.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Important note: Courses are full-time and attendance of lectures and excursions is compulsory. It is not possible to pursue regular employment at the same time. In the application process, we therefore request confirmation from the employer that the candidate is exempted from his regular duties for the duration of the course. We strongly advise against applying for the courses if the employer does not fully agree to the exemption from the job for the time of the course.

New Zealand government says unemployment will hit “double digits”

Chris Ross & Tom Peters

New Zealand’s Treasury stated last week that the country’s unemployment rate could reach “double digits,” as the crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic continues to deepen.

Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said unemployment would top 6.7 percent, the level reached following the 2008 financial crisis, despite a multi-billion dollar economic stimulus package mainly consisting of subsidies and tax cuts for businesses.

Economists’ forecasts for unemployment range between 8 percent and 30 percent, roughly the same as in the 1930s Great Depression. The OECD expects New Zealand’s economic activity to contract by 28 percent in the June quarter.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern enacted a state of emergency and a four-week lockdown of schools and non-essential businesses on March 26, in an attempt to reduce the spread of the potentially fatal COVID-19 virus. The number of cases in New Zealand reached 1,239 today but limited testing means there could be many undetected cases.

A major part of the stimulus package is a “wage subsidy” scheme that pays a wholly inadequate $585.80 a week per full-time worker and $350 for part-time workers, before tax. Businesses whose revenue falls by a 30 percent decline in any month of 2020 can claim the subsidy. As of Tuesday, $6.6 billion had been paid to employers, covering over a million employees, one fifth of the population.

This has not prevented mass redundancies and wage cuts. The payments effectively keep workers on belt-tightening budgets, some not knowing whether they will be able to cover basics such as rent or mortgage payments, food, power and other costs or debts.

Ardern told the media on Monday she wouldn’t rule out taking a pay cut to her salary of $471,000 a year, and reducing MPs’ salaries, in a bogus gesture of solidarity with workers affected by the crisis.

As in the US, Europe and Australia, everything is being done to prop up big businesses and the banks and protect the fortunes of the super-rich. No policies have been announced to prevent a major reduction in living standards of the vast majority.

There is widespread hardship, particularly among low-paid workers and insecure migrants who have been thrown out of work. Demand for Wellington City Mission’s food parcels has quadrupled since the lockdown began. Charities in Auckland and Christchurch have reported similar sudden increases in demand.

The union bureaucracy is playing a key role as enforcer of the cutbacks. The unions, which support and frequently help to fund the ruling Labour Party, are acting as adjuncts of the government and big business, as they did following the 2008 crisis.

Air New Zealand plans to lay off a third of its 12,500 workers, despite the company receiving a $900 million government loan. The union E tū, which covers 5,000 airline workers, agreed with cutting jobs, only suggesting in a March 31 statement that the company didn’t need to “lay off as many people as quickly as they have proposed.”

Similarly, after Air NZ confirmed it wanted to sack 387 pilots, the NZ Air Line Pilots’ Association agreed on the need for job losses. President Andrew Ridling said on April 7: “we have been working closely with the airline… [and] will continue to negotiate on getting this number reduced and finalising the agreement process.”

Flight Centre has made 250 NZ-based staff redundant and closed 33 shops following the closure of 100 outlets in Australia.

German-owned media publisher Bauer NZ last week ended publication of its NZ magazines including Woman’s Weekly, The Listener and North and South, resulting in over 300 job losses. The magazines are not being published during the lockdown, but the media sector was already facing economic problems. Chief executive Brendon Hill stated that reduced advertising revenue made it “highly unlikely that demand will ever return to pre-crisis levels.”

Media company NZME closed one of its radio stations, Radio Sport, following the suspension of professional sports, and has warned of job cuts at NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. MediaWorks, which owns TV3, asked staff to accept a “voluntary” 15 percent pay cut otherwise the company would begin widespread redundancies.

On March 31, Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive Paul Blair threatened that the construction sector could shed 30 percent of its workforce in three months. The industry employs one in ten NZ workers.

Fletcher Building, one of the country’s largest and most profitable companies, accepted the government’s wage subsidies while announcing that 9,000 workers will face an initial wage cut of 20 percent, rising to 50 percent if the lockdown continues after four weeks, and then 70 percent if it is further extended.

On April 2, the Amalgamated Workers Union described Fletcher’s proposal as “disgraceful,” while at the same time praising other companies that had cut pay to 80 percent as an example of “a fair outcome” achieved in collaboration with the unions. Similarly, FIRST Union appealed to the government to intervene and instruct Fletcher to “make every practicable effort to pay their workers 80 percent of their normal wages at a minimum.”

SkyCity, a casino and convention centre business with over 5,000 workers, has also cut wages by 20 percent and last week announced 200 planned redundancies. The company said it was losing $90 million a month in revenue during the lockdown. However, in the last two financial years alone it made $314.1 million in profits.

Some employers are pressuring workers to use annual leave to “top up” their wages. FIRST Union reported that this included bus companies Ritchies and Go Bus, which have been involved in protracted disputes over low wages and long hours.

Local government is also beginning to impose drastic spending and job cuts. Auckland Council, whose mayor Phil Goff is a former Labour Party leader, announced on Tuesday that it would cut as many as 1,100 temporary and contractor jobs. Goff told Stuff the cuts were necessary “with a recession looming perhaps as big as the 1930s.”

In an attempt to maintain the ruling elite’s fiction of shared sacrifice, Goff declared that he would be willing to take a pay cut to his $296,000 salary.

The central government is no doubt preparing even more drastic cuts to force workers to pay for its unprecedented bailouts of big business. On March 31, Finance Minister Robertson told Newstalk ZB “generations” would be paying back the debt incurred by the government.

Sri Lanka government intensifies crackdown on social media

Vimukthi Vidarshana

Sri Lankan police have arrested more than seven individuals, including several university students on allegations of publishing “false” information on their Facebook accounts and “maliciously” criticising public officials involved in COVID-19 prevention programs. Authorities claim that such news “impedes” the work of officials attempting to contain the pandemic.

The crackdown follows an April 1 directive by the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) ordering the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and all police stations to arrest accused individuals. Deputy Inspector General of Police Ajith Rohana later told the media that anyone sharing “false” information would also be charged.

It is yet another sign that President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government is preparing even more repressive attacks on freedom of expression in response to rising social discontent.

Peradeniya University student Tharindu Avishka was arrested for allegedly making false claims on his Facebook account that the hospital affiliated to the Kotalawala Defense University had been reserved as a coronavirus quarantine centre for VIPs.

It is no secret that while the general public is being held in quarantine centres with minimal facilities, wealthy layers returning from overseas are allowed to quarantine themselves in their homes or other comfortable places of their own choice.

By contrast, thousands of workers and poor people confront immense hardship because the government’s lockdown and curfew measures fail to provide any real plan for ordinary people to obtain daily food essentials and medicines or safe conditions for health workers.

Police also raided the home of another university student in Maharagama, near Colombo, following allegations that he criticised the appointment of Basil Rajapakse—the Sri Lankan president’s youngest brother—to head the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, on his Facebook account.

According to media reports, a dance teacher was arrested on Sunday for reportedly claiming on Facebook that President Gotabaya Rajapakse was “infected with the coronavirus.” A youth has also been arrested by Uppuweli police in Trincomalee on claims that he criticised on his Facebook the area’s divisional secretariat for injustices that occurred during the coronavirus eradication and quarantine program.

Police Media Spokesman Superintendent of Police Jaliya Seneviratne said that the accused were arrested under Section 6 of the Computer Crimes Act and the Penal Code, but gave no specific details. According to media accounts, many of those arrested have not received any legal assistance. Anyone arrested under this law must be tried by a High Court.

The new directive can be used, not just against social media activists but any internet publishers and to witch hunt journalists. The clear message is, “Do not criticise the government!”

The IGP’s directive and these latest arrests are illegal and undemocratic. The publication of so-called “false” news and defamation, however, are not criminal offences in Sri Lanka and, according to records, no one has previously been arrested for allegedly publishing such information.

Last year, the Sirisena-Wickremesinge government attempted to introduce legislation criminalising “fake news” with fines of up to one million rupees and a maximum prison sentence of five years. The bill was not passed in the face of widespread opposition by civil rights groups.

In Sri Lanka, successive governments and extreme-right formations have launched anti-democratic attacks on the media and individual journalists. Under former President Mahinda Rajapakse—Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s oldest brother—many journalists were singled out and targeted, including Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was shot and killed, and Prageeth Eknaligoda who disappeared.

These assaults continued under the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration. One year ago, on April 1, police arrested and remanded well-known writer Shakthika Sathkumara, falsely accusing him of insulting Buddha in a short story published on his Facebook account.

The latest anti-democratic attacks on social media are occurring amid rising criticism of the government’s refusal to introduce mass testing to trace and contain the highly-contagious coronavirus or provide sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) to medical workers and basic healthcare and daily necessities to the masses.

Public health inspectors, nurses, officials providing Samurdhi welfare assistance, and village officers have threatened to withdraw their services unless authorities provide them with enough PPEs and other facilities.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and the self-employed in urban areas have been pushed back to their home villages, many without any means of financial support while the rural poor confront major difficulties cultivating and selling their crops.

After Colombo’s three-decade war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and years of successive government attacks on jobs and social conditions, the current Rajapakse regime is sitting on a social and political tinderbox.

Currently there are almost six million social media users among the island’s 21 million-strong population, many of them young people who recognise that mainstream capitalist media function as mouthpieces of the government.

Sensitive to this fact, and the rising anti-government denunciations, Rajapakse issued a tweet last weekend warning the public to “beware of fake news & messages being circulated” under his name on social media platforms. All of his announcements, he declared, “will be published only through official channels of Presidents’ Media Division.”

The Sri Lankan government’s actions against social media users coincide with the increasing attacks on the media internationally. Last week, the Indian government secured a legal mandate from the country’s Supreme Court to crack down on the media over “false” news. The court ruled that media outlets could only report what it termed “the official version” of developments. This was coupled with a threat that media outlets that failed to do so could be prosecuted for spreading “fake news.”

The Rajapakse government’s increasing censorship is in line with the expanding militarisation of its administration and the appointment of retired military generals to key positions, including Army Commander Lt. General Shavendra Silva to head National Task Force on prevention of COVID-19.

None of the parliamentary parties of Sri Lanka’s ruling elite, including the United National Party (UNP), Tamil National Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has raised any objection to the recent arrest of social media users and, notwithstanding various tactical differences, have backed Rajapakse’s militarisation of its administration.

Germany: Weighing economic interests vs. human life in the coronavirus pandemic

Peter Schwarz

Although the number of coronavirus infected and dead in Germany, Europe and worldwide continues to rise, there are increasing voices urging a rapid lifting of social distancing and a return to work. Journalists, economists, politicians and some medical doctors are preparing the public for the fact that more people will have to fall ill and die from COVID-19 in the interest of the economy.

The abhorrence of the crimes of the Nazis, who destroyed “worthless lives” and worked millions of forced labourers to death, was previously considered a high moral hurdle in Germany against measuring the value of a human life in euros and cents. But now the media are again openly discussing how much a human life is worth and how many lives should be sacrificed to the interests of the economy.

Ten days ago, the news magazine Der Spiegel published an editorial with the provocative title: “Yes, one may weigh the economic damage against human lives.” In it, Christiane Hoffmann asks the question, “Is it possible to weigh the economic damage of the lockdown against the human lives that would be lost if the coronavirus were to spread?” Her answer: “Yes, you may. You have to.” It is “neither immoral nor cynical to state what has to be weighed against each other.”

Hoffmann demonstrates how cynical it really is three paragraphs later. She claims that “the question of the price of life” had also been raised before the coronavirus crisis. “Every decision to reduce hospital staff or to equip an emergency room more poorly indirectly decides on life and death; every discussion about expensive cancer drugs at the end of life is about the same question.” So she uses the massive cuts in health care that are now forcing nurses and doctors to treat COVID-19 patients in understaffed departments without the necessary protective equipment, at the risk of their lives, as an argument for letting even more people die!

Hoffmann, who has enjoyed a long career as a journalist at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Spiegel, is married to a high-ranking Swiss diplomat and is richly rewarded, so she does not have to worry about adequate treatment if she becomes infected with the coronavirus. She pleads for an open debate on “what risks we are taking to get the economy back on track” mainly because she fears a revolt against a social system whose blatant social injustice becomes more apparent with each day of the pandemic. There is a danger, she writes, that “a wave of rejection, a real hatred of ‘those up there’” will follow.

The weekly newspaper Die Zeit, whose long-serving editor was former Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, interviewed economist Clemens Fuest, head of the Munich-based Ifo Institute, and virologist Alexander Kekulé of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, to campaign for a quick lifting of social distancing—even if this means additional deaths.

Fuest warns that “the costs of the crisis will increase disproportionately over time.” Extending the lockdown by one week after one month is expensive, he said, “but when it comes after three months, it is much more expensive.”

Kekulé demands that the question should be asked, “How many deaths are we prepared to accept as a result of the pandemic?” After all, in some years 10,000 or 20,000 people in Germany die from influenza. And the measures taken against the pandemic also caused damage that resulted in deaths. He could not understand those who say, “Health always comes first.” It is “urgently necessary to weigh up the economic and medical consequences.” Too little has happened so far.

It is wrong “that we are not prepared to accept that individual people die so that in the end the majority is immune,” the virologist thinks. “If we keep society in lockdown for another three months or more, we are sacrificing everything we understand by our identity and culture.”

The tabloid Bild Zeitung has also found a medical doctor who advocates a targeted spread of the virus. Professor Ansgar Lohse from the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) supports the strategy of so-called herd immunity, according to which, as many as possible from low risk groups must become infected in order to achieve a high level of immunity in society. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson originally advocated this strategy, but then had to back down due to public outrage. Meanwhile Johnson is in intensive care with COVID-19.

“We must allow those for whom the virus is the least dangerous to become immune first through infection,” Lohse told Bild Zeitung. Although in the meantime, many younger people have also died from COVID-19, and it is by no means certain whether infected people will be immune afterwards, Lohse mainly wants to use children to achieve herd immunity. “Both children and the vast majority of their young parents do not belong to the risk group. The faster this group goes through an infection, the better. Therefore, day-care centres and schools should open again soon.” He is “in discourse with many colleagues from very different disciplines who think similarly.”

In his blog, Morning Briefing, former financial daily Handelsblatt editor Gabor Steingart rejoices that “in view of the ban on contact, assembly, demonstrations and extremely restricted freedom of travel in Germany,” “resistance has finally formed uniting lawyers specialising in medical law, writers, cultural workers, business experts and journalists of different stripes in their doubts about the proportionality of this policy.”

Among others, he quotes the writer Juli Zeh, who is a member of the SPD and whose novel Unterleuten (“Sub-people”) was recently broadcast as a three-part series on ZDF. Zeh wrote in the feature section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung that large sections of the professional world agree “that so-called herd immunization must take place, that is, at least 60 to 70 percent of the population must be infected until the pandemic subsides.”

Right-wing extremist journalist Roger Köppel, who heads the unofficial central organ of the xenophobic Swiss People’s Party, Weltwoche, and also quotes Steingart, complains that the cure is worse than the disease. “Stop this self-immolation of the economy,” he demands. “Without the economy, we won’t have coronavirus—everyone starves to death.”

Wolfram Weimer, former editor-in-chief of Welt, Cicero and Focus, demands, “Germany’s enforced coma must end on April 19! The pandemic control by closing down the economy is misguided, because it could mean in the end, the operation was successful, but the patient is dead.”

The demand to weigh human life against the interests of the economy is not limited to Germany. As the WSWS has shown in a recent perspective, this demand is also being made in numerous other countries—by the British Economist magazine, the American magazine Politico and numerous other publications. It means, the perspective argues, “nothing more nor less than sacrificing human lives for the profit interests of the capitalists. From the standpoint of the ruling class, the process of class exploitation through production must continue. And those who die can be replaced. The single overriding concern is the growth and expansion of stock market values for the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.”

It is significant that Germany’s leading stock index, DAX, has jumped by 1,000 points since the beginning of this week and yesterday rose temporarily above 10,500 points. Although there is no end in sight to the crisis, speculators on the stock markets see the opportunities to make a killing. After a decade of cutting social spending and destroying the health care system in the name of “balancing the books,” the federal government is now opening the financial floodgates to business.

The support packages for the coronavirus crisis now amount to almost €1,200 billion, more than three times the annual federal budget. Most of this huge sum is going into the coffers of the large corporations and banks, with only a fraction being spent on the fight against the pandemic and to alleviate its social consequences.

The enormous sums now being pumped into the financial markets must be compensated for by the intensified exploitation of the working class. This is behind the demand for a return to work at the expense of human lives.

Hundreds of thousands of UK jobs threatened as coronavirus spreads

Margot Miller

Hundreds of thousands of UK workers stand to lose their jobs and livelihoods as the coronavirus spreads rapidly. In the last two weeks, a wave of companies have collapsed into administration and closure--meaning that tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs will not have one to go back to after the lockdown ends.

The large Debenhams department store chain began the week by announcing its intention to go into “light touch” administration to fend off legal action from creditors. It is unclear how many of its remaining 40 stores and 20,000 jobs will remain when stores reopen after the coronavirus lockdown. The company had already planned 28 closures in 2021.

As the virus takes its toll, unemployment mounts. Over the weekend, store chain Cath Kidston, which sells everything from furniture and clothing to pet accessories, announced it was going into administration, shedding 847 jobs.

Last week, restaurant chain Carluccio’s and retailer Brighthouse both collapsed into administration putting 4,400 jobs at risk.

The COVID-19 outbreak has precipitated an avalanche of job losses, described by the Financial Times as “economic Armageddon.” The unemployment rate for the quarter ending June is expected to soar to eight percent, up from 3.9 percent in January, to 2.5 million. By September, a figure of at least 8.5 percent is predicted.

On March 20, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced the closure of all bars, pubs, restaurants, leisure facilities and high street stores in a belated attempt to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

Italian-owned Carluccio’s, with 71 outlets and 2,000 employees, was the first chain in the dining sector to announce its collapse since being forced to close its doors to the public. Administrator FRP Advisory said it was hoping to mothball the business under the government emergency job retention scheme, which provides 80 percent of employees’ wages.

Even before the outbreak, Carluccio’s was in trouble, due to fierce competition in the industry, rising costs and falling revenues. In 2018, it entered a company voluntary arrangement to renegotiate its debts.

Brighthouse, mainly located in rundown shopping centres, faced difficulties before the pandemic, closing 30 stores last year. The shuttering of its remaining 340 outlets means 3,000 job losses. Preying on the most financially vulnerable, Brighthouse was the UK’s leading rent-to-own retailer, notorious for high interest loans for customers to purchase white goods, TVs and furniture.

The firm was recently hit by new regulations curbing high-cost lending, and compensation claims for failing to carry out credit-worthy checks.

The Mexican restaurant chain Chiquito also went into administration, threatening the closure of 61 restaurants and 1,500 jobs.

Marston's, proprietor of 1,400 pubs across the UK, and Mitchells & Butlers, the owner of Toby Carvery—before lockdown packed with working-class families enjoying traditional roast dinners—and All Bar One are struggling to avoid foreclosure.

On March 17, fashion house Laura Ashley became the first retail casualty of coronavirus, with 150 stores shutting and 2,700 redundancies. Founded in 1953, it became famous for its unique textile and wallpaper designs, furniture and women’s clothing. The company was already struggling and on the verge of securing a £150 million loan to keep afloat, when main shareholder, Malaysian-based investment company MUI Asia Limited, pulled out.

The UK’s retail industry has been particularly hard hit in the recent period, losing 140,000 jobs in 2019. The rise of online-based shopping and companies like Amazon with fewer overheads left department chains unable to compete.

The pandemic has greatly accelerated what was an already advanced decline. Last year, Debenhams shut stores while Mothercare folded completely.

On the same day as Laura Ashley’s demise, Dixons Carphone announced the closure from April 3 of all its 531 stand-alone stores in the UK, with 2,900 posts going. The company plans to sell online or via its 305 “shop-in-shops” in Currys PC World stores when stores reopen. Dixons Carphone said the decision to shutter stores was unconnected to the pandemic.

British clothing chain Mountain Warehouse, an outdoor gear specialist, said it was considering 2,000 redundancies across stores in nine countries following a “catastrophic drop in sales.”

Halfords is another well-known brand cutting back on its High Street presence, announcing it would shut its 22 Cycle Republic stores, which serve mostly city commuters. Some 200 jobs will be lost.

The collapse of these firms and loss of thousands of jobs only confirms that the £370 billion emergency coronavirus bailout fund that the government made available to big business is doing next to nothing to protect the working class from the loss of their livelihoods.

A month ago, regional airline Flybe went into administration, with the loss of 2,300 jobs. The airline provided half the UK’s domestic flights outside of London. Reduced bookings due to coronavirus was the final straw.

Airlines are teetering on the brink as travel is banned.

The UK’s flagship airline British Airways (BA) cancelled all flights out of London’s Gatwick airport and suspended 30,000 staff, who will be paid 80 percent of their wages under a “modified” version of the government’s furloughed workers’ scheme, in agreement with the trade unions. BA boss Mr Cruz explained the industry was faced with a “crisis of global proportions,” immeasurably worse than the fallout of the SARS virus or 9/11, warning that “jobs would be lost—perhaps for a short term, perhaps longer term.”

Speaking like a CEO, Brian Strutton, head of the pilots’ union Balpa, said: “The reality is, with such a loss in forward bookings for the summer—the time when airlines make all their profit—the airlines have had to look at ways to save money to keep the companies afloat.”

BA rival Easyjet has grounded its entire fleet. The BBC reported seeing a memo to Ryanair staff saying that crew may be forced to take unpaid leave.

The Centre for Aviation, an Australian consultancy firm, said the impact on the industry means that “[by] the end of May 2020, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt.”

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade body UK Hospitality, warned that “Our analysis suggests in excess of 1m jobs are now on the line.”

Outgoing chief of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote, warned the Treasury Select Committee that some businesses will “inevitably” fail.

While big corporations were handed a bailout, 800,000, or a fifth of small businesses, are weeks away from going bust. The Corporate Finance Network warned that the government’s coronavirus interruption loans, ostensibly aimed at preventing companies collapsing, are either inaccessible due to bank closures, or businesses report that they are ineligible.

This means thousands more will be thrown into the draconian Universal Credit system—from which nearly a million workers who have already been made unemployed by the crisis are seeking to claim paltry benefit payments.

Two thirds of UK car production ground to a halt as BMW, Honda and Toyota joined Vauxhall and Nissan in shutting plants due to the pandemic. The day before, aerospace giant Airbus stopped production.

Car production, the biggest UK industrial employer with 1.7 million workers, has been haemorrhaging jobs in the past period due to fierce competition in a shrinking world market.

Looking to the future of UK auto production, Chief Executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mike Hawes, warned the industry “stands on the precipice.” Professor Karel Williams of the Manchester Business School said that “lost sales will not be found again and there will be a massive hit in terms of lossmaking in the major carmakers.”

Measured against the scale of the 2008 economic crash, the social and economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis are predicted to be far more severe. According to the International Labour Organization, the coronavirus crisis will slash working hours by almost seven percent worldwide in the second quarter of 2020. It described a “catastrophic” effect that is equivalent to the loss of 195 million full-time workers. This is compared to the 22 million losses after the 2008 global financial crash.