Nigeria: Live ammunition fired at anti-police brutality protesters

Jean Shaoul

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s security forces have used live ammunition against the nationwide anti-police brutality protesters, killing at least 56 people and injuring hundreds more across the country, according to Amnesty International.

The human rights group said, “In many cases, the security forces had used excessive force in an attempt to control or stop the protests.”

A man holds a banner as he demonstrate on the street to protest against police brutality in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday Oct. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Last week, Buhari called on demonstrators to go home, making no mention of the military’s firing live ammunition at peaceful protesters blocking the toll gate at the Lekki-Ikoye bridge in Lagos on October 20. At least 12 people were killed, including two near the statehouse in Alahausa, with a further 50 wounded. The protesters had been sitting down on the road, waving the Nigerian flag, and singing the national anthem.

While the military denied any involvement in the shootings, Amnesty International disputed this, saying that its investigation had tracked army vehicles leaving their Lagos barracks at Bonny Camp en route to Lekki Toll Gate using photographs and videos of the soldiers’ movements culled from social media. A Lagos-based soldier, speaking anonymously to Reuters, said soldiers from the army 81st Division’s 65th Battalion, based at Bonny Camp, had fired on unarmed civilians at the toll gate. Amnesty described the events as “The Lekki Toll Gate massacre”.

Osai Ojigho, Amnesty’s Nigeria director said, “What happened at Lekki Toll Gate has all the traits of the Nigerian authorities’ pattern of a cover-up.”

Buhari called for an end to the demonstrations, warning Nigerians against “undermining national security” and urging them to “resist the temptation of being used by subversive elements to cause chaos.”

He heightened tensions on Friday by claiming security forces have exercised “extreme restraint” in handling the situation, even as he was forced to concede that 51 civilians had been killed, along with 11 police officers and seven soldiers, since the protests began. A statement from his office the following day blamed the deaths and injuries on the “hooliganism” of the past weeks.

For four weeks, protests have raged nationwide against Buhari’s government that, like its predecessors, is a cabal of billionaire kleptocrats sitting atop the country’s vast oil wealth, none of which percolates down to the Nigerian people. Nearly half the 206 million population live on less than $1.50 a day and around one third are unemployed. The lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the pandemic have created widespread hunger and destitution.

Buhari, the 77-year-old former general and military head of state from 1983 to 1985, who was elected in 2015, has remained largely invisible and impervious to the obvious plight of the vast majority of Nigerians during the most serious political crisis since the 1999 return to civilian rule. Mindful of the Nigerian army’s role in organising countless coups, he is doubtless watching his back.

The protests—under the hashtag #EndSARS—in Africa’s largest economy and most populous country started after a video clip went viral of the killing of a young man by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). SARS is an elite police unit notorious for the kidnapping, extortion, torture and killing of young people. Uniting Nigeria’s youth—the median age of the 200 million strong population is 19—across ethnicities, tribal groups, and religions, they gathered support from the Nigerian diaspora throughout the world.

The government’s pledge to replace SARS with a new unit, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), only inflamed the protests. They encompassed opposition to the widespread brutality of the police and security forces—the worst in the world according to International Political Science Association’s World Internal Security and Police Index—rampant corruption, banditry and organised crime syndicates and the government’s economic mismanagement and handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite curfews imposed in at least 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states, protests—albeit smaller—have continued. Crowds set fire to police stations, banks, TV and media buildings and government offices and looted shopping malls and government food warehouses storing food.

There had been widespread accusations of the federal government misappropriating pandemic relief funds, with little distributed during the months of lockdown that stopped millions of people from earning their living. While the authorities denied that they were hoarding food to share with their family and friends, the BBC reported that some of the COVID-19 aid has been found in politicians’ homes. One politician, whose house was raided in Lagos state, claimed that he intended to share the items on his birthday—two days after his home was looted.

Video clips showed people carting away bags of rice, noodles and sugar among other items, with reports that people had died as they crowded into the warehouses or in some instances were crushed under the weight of the 50kg bags of food. Some videos showed looters handing out items to beggars, the aged and disabled people, who could not join in the raids.

In some cases, the looters were not the protesters, but were the government’s armed thugs hired to disrupt the demonstrations, causing the death of some and injuring others and acting in cahoots with the police, who looked away. In one video posted online, “looters” were seen negotiating with armed military, while in the capital Abuja, security men were seen joining in the looting.

There has been no let-up in the suppression of the anti-police brutality movement as tensions remain high across the country. On Saturday, Nigeria’s police chief ordered the immediate deployment of the entire force in a bid to suppress the protest movement, with extra police and resources mobilised throughout the country. Lagos state’s police chief Mohammed Abubakar Adamu said, “Enough is enough to all acts of lawlessness, disruption of public peace and order and wanton violence,” adding that the police would “use all legitimate means to halt the further slide into lawlessness and brigandage.”

This was an all-out declaration of class war against workers and youth faced with social misery and hunger in the interests of Nigeria’s sated financial elite.

The authorities are reportedly considering some form of clampdown on social media following the worldwide spread of images, videos, and an Instagram live feed of the deadly shootings at the Lekki toll gate on October 20. Information Minister Lai Mohammed said that “fake news” was one of the biggest challenges facing Nigeria and that “the use of the social media to spread fake news and disinformation means there is the need to do something about it.”

The broad based protests demonstrate that the social and class questions in Nigeria, as elsewhere, outweigh the regional, religious and ethnic divides in the country that successive governments have manipulated to divert mass social unrest and defend the monopoly of wealth and power exercised by a narrow wealthy layer.

This financial elite, whose figurehead is the aging and ailing Buhari, is completely dependent upon foreign capital and incapable of implementing even limited measures to raise the living standards of the population. Buhari’s government presides over a militarised state serving the interests of US and European banks and transnational energy corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell, Agip, ExxonMobil, Total S.A. and Chevron, that has demonstrated its willingness to employ mass repression against the working class.

These conditions, 60 years after Nigeria—an artificial construct of the British Empire—obtained formal independence amid hopes of economic development and democracy, are replicated across the continent and in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. They are testimony to the inability of the national bourgeoisie in the epoch of imperialism to satisfy the most basic needs of the working class and peasant farmers.

New report outlines accelerating inequality in Australia, amid rising social distress

Linda Tenenbaum

The University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) has joined with the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) to produce “a new analysis of inequality in Australia pre-COVID-19, providing a baseline to measure the impact of the pandemic on income wealth and inequality.”

The report has been organized in two parts: Inequality in Australia 2020: Part 1, which has just been released, with Part 2, to be forthcoming.

Part 1 begins by citing 2017–18 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, revealing that prior to the pandemic, a growing income divide between rich and poor was already well underway. The incomes of the top 20 percent were six times higher than those in the lowest 20 percent. A year earlier, in 2015–16, the income gap was significantly less—just five times higher—revealing a substantial growth of income inequality since then.

Workers queuing at a Centrelink office in Sydney in March [Credit: World Socialist Web Site]

The distribution of wealth has likewise become increasingly unequal. As the report notes: “the average wealth of the top 20 percent was a staggering $3,255,000, around 90 times that of the lowest 20 percent ($36,000).” On the other hand, those in the lowest 10 percent held an average of $8,000 in net wealth, while the bottom 5 percent held net debts of $5,000.

What this signifies is a massive divide between Australia’s haves and have-nots, with the result that millions of people are being forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence, with few, if any social supports.

In 2017–18, for the first time, average household wealth exceeded $1 million. But that wealth has also been distributed unequally, expressed in the fact that the wealthiest 20 percent hold almost two thirds of all household wealth (64 percent), more than all other households combined.

From 2003 to 2017, in another index of mounting inequality, the average wealth of the highest 20 percent grew by 68 percent, while that of the lowest 20 percent grew by only 6 percent.

According to ACOSS CEO Dr. Cassandra Goldie, even prior to the onset of COVID-19, millions had virtually no financial buffer to pull them through.

Goldie noted that many this year had depended on the JobKeeper wage subsidy and increased JobSeeker government payments to stay afloat. With a reduction in both already having been implemented, and further decreases to come, she warned, that “there is a real danger in now expecting people to spend down on their already meagre savings to survive. We need to support people’s incomes to prevent dramatic widening in both income and wealth inequality and serious health, economic and social disadvantage that occurs.”

In June, for example, the official unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, forecast to rise to 10 percent in December. According to the report, the outlook for employment and incomes remains uncertain. It makes clear that the pandemic “had the greatest impact on those in lower paid jobs.” Even before it erupted, the average wage of the most affected industries was half that of those in the industries least affected by the pandemic.

Dr. Goldie has advocated continued government assistance for those without paid work; an economic stimulus to fund decent jobs, and the removal of disincentives to receiving regular income support, in order to “inoculate us against an increase in both income and wealth inequality.”

But “inoculating” the most vulnerable and impoverished layers of society from poverty will not occur under a Morrison government. While providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the largest corporations, the government has presided over job destruction and wage cuts. It is already rolling back inadequate pandemic subsidies for those thrown out of work, leaving millions to face desperate circumstances into Christmas and the New Year.

Moreover, the many homeless and/or unemployed workers and young people, struggling to survive, will receive nothing from Labor leader Anthony Albanese or the trade unions. Labor has marched in lockstep with the government throughout the pandemic. It has supported the “National Cabinet,” composed of federal and state leaders, Liberal and Labor alike, which has overseen a pro-business response to the crisis.

In the Morrison government’s recent budget, both Labor and Liberal supported $50 billion worth of major tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy, at the direct expense of workers and working class youth. The SPRC/ACOSS report noted that the budget “slashed the short-lived wage subsidies and welfare payments that had kept about five million households barely surviving since March.”

In response, Mission Australia (one of the country’s largest national charities, annually providing community services to many thousands of the most vulnerable) expressed its outrage at the Budget’s “shocking failure to address rising homelessness or the serious shortage of social homes, particularly given COVID-19 impacts.”

Further data related to the impact of the pandemic and associated lockdowns on employment and incomes, confirms that COVID-19 has, above all, had a major impact on workers in lower paid jobs—those who have failed to receive the level of support necessary to pay their bills and deal with their health, housing, utilities and other social needs.

Those most affected, including women and young people, received just half the average wage of those in the least affected industries—even before the pandemic erupted.

The economic hardship being suffered by millions is expressed in multiple ways. According to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), 94,000 electricity customers had applied and been accepted for payment plans, up to the end of March 2021, with more than 1,000 others requesting assistance every week.

In September, AER data showed more than 45,000 residential and small business customers had deferred their bills due to the pandemic, worth about $23 million in total. These AER debt deferrals will remain in place “until at least the end of October.” After that, presumably, householders will be on their own.

Energy Consumers Australia (ECA) chief executive, Lynn Gallagher, cited research showing that electricity bills were the most pressing issue for households, with three out of four listing power prices as one of their top three cost-of-living concerns.

According to Craig Memery from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), many people were reporting “bill increases in the hundreds of dollars.”

“The nub of the problem,” Memery explained to the ABC, “is that people have been required to be at home, they’ve lost jobs, they’ve lost income and, at the same time, are using a lot more energy.”

Energy bill increases had soared by up to $200 per month, (i.e. $600 per quarter), especially in the winter months.

“We see people going without essential energy use for heating, for cooling, for heating water so they can clean and shower,” Memery said, adding that many were signing up for payday loans and other unsustainable loan options, which would only place them in “worse and worse debt.”

A similar crisis, closely related to the social costs of the pandemic, has confronted renters.

In the largest such study ever, “The Renting in the Time of COVID-19 report,” prepared by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), focused on 15,000 renters across Australia. Its researchers found that “around half of all renters reported stress and anxiety.” In addition, “a third said they had asked or would ask for a rent reduction or deferral to get through the pandemic.”

The report found that many renters were “on the brink of a financial precipice,” facing housing uncertainty and the constant threat of homelessness, with a significant proportion only protected from the full effects of the pandemic by whatever savings, superannuation and rent deferment they still owned.

Emma Baker, professor of housing research at the University of Adelaide, noted: “The first thing that really struck me is the absolute scale of the effect of COVID and how it has affected people’s lives.” More than a third of people, she raised, were doing things like not being able to pay their bills and skipping meals. Many were unable to pay their rent, and were afraid of being evicted and thrust into unknown territory.

Just under 40 percent of renters had no money left, after paying rent, for the other requirements of life: such as utility bills, clothes, transport and food. Some 30 percent were planning to request a rent reduction or deferral and just over 5 percent had received an eviction notice since the start of the pandemic.

Many are facing the threat of homelessness, with around 116,000 people sleeping rough in Australia every night.

COVID-19 has affected the lives of millions throughout the world. The ruthless indifference of governments, the corporate world and the wealthy elite to the lives and needs of the vast majority of the population, both before and during the pandemic, is daily being expressed in the unprecedented levels of wealth and income inequality that are set to deepen even further.

Germany: Public service workers up in arms against Verdi contract

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Journalists, politicians from all the main political parties and trade union representatives, whose lives are far removed from the concerns and problems of the majority of the working population, have spread the fairy tale that the contract deal reached last weekend represents a victory for public service workers. Those affected, however, are angry and outraged.

The deal, which has nothing in common with the union’s original demand, will mean a reduction in real wages for most of Germany’s 2.5 million municipal and federal public sector workers. Over a period of 28 months, salaries will increase in stages by just 3.2 percent.

The United Services Union (Verdi), which signed off on the deal, had the nerve to state in its press release that the new contract represented a “Significant increase for those on lower incomes and health care professionals.”

None of the editors of Germany’s major daily newspapers and online publications, radio and television stations sought to differ. They all reacted according to their respective political orientation.

“Expressed as a percentage, this represents a considerable increase for nursing staff,” commented the Berlin-based daily newspaper taz. Spiegel Online wrote: “Despite the coronavirus crisis, the public service unions have negotiated a decent wage increase.” The fact that nursing staff are receiving significantly more than others, they wrote, shows “that the system works.”

Business-oriented media complained about the deal. “Corona special bonuses for administrative staff who had little to do in the spring while on full pay; disproportionate wage increases of up to 4.5 percent for low-skilled auxiliary staff,” moaned the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In future, it would no longer be possible to claim that nursing staff “fail to earn any appreciation apart from clapping.”

We have already commented elsewhere on the so-called “significant increase” for lower income groups—Verdi refers to a figure of 4.5 percent. Firstly, however, the increase is extremely small in view of the 28-month pay-out term. The original demand was 4.8 percent in 12 months. Secondly, it only benefits those few workers who receive less than €2,000 gross monthly, i.e., around €11.40 gross per hour.

But the claim that nursing staff will receive a powerful boost to their incomes is also, on closer inspection, misleading. The truth is that only a few of the health professionals referred to by Verdi will profit from the 8.7 percent raise for nurses and up to 10 percent for intensive care workers.

Stefan Sell, Professor of Economics, Social Policy and Social Sciences at the University of Koblenz, drew attention to this fact in an article on his blog. Logically, he said, the deal only applies to nurses who fall under the collective bargaining umbrella of the public service (federal/local government). Following a wave of privatisations in past decades, however, only a small number of health staff are covered by this rule.

For example, the percentage of hospitals under public ownership (including those under the auspices of federal state and social security institutions that are not covered by the collective agreement) has fallen from 44.6 in 1992 to 28.7 in 2018. “More and more frequently, municipalities or even federal states (university hospitals) are selling their facilities to private, profit-making companies,” Sell writes. “Their share has increased from 15.5 percent (1992) to 37.6 percent (2018), i.e., more than doubled.”

The situation is even more serious in nursing care for the elderly. “Of the 14,480 nursing homes reported by nursing care statistics for the end of 2017, only 599 were still under municipal ownership, i.e., 4.1 percent of all nursing homes in Germany. Of the 14,050 outpatient nursing services, only 154 are still under municipal ownership.

“In this respect the direct effects of the collective agreement on ‘the’ nursing staff are manageable and more than limited,” Sell continues. In any case, the impression that, by playing around with figures such as “10 percent more,” the financial situation for “the” nursing staff in Germany is now finally improving significantly, has to be corrected.

In short: The contract being celebrated by Verdi is a sell-out and just window dressing. The deal only applies to an extremely small section of workers, who allegedly “clearly” benefit. And the “compromises” that other occupational groups had to accept so that “nursing care” will allegedly get the recognition it deserves turns out, on closer inspection, to be a wage cut. The minimal pay increases for a few have been bought at the expense of real wage cuts for the vast majority. No wonder the public employers’ side is satisfied.

Those affected by the deal have seen through this charade. One nurse tweeted: “Unfortunately, Verdi has left all the people in rescue services and staff in kindergartens in the lurch. This result cannot be called a success. To postpone the adjustment of incomes in West and East Germany once again for another two years is a slap in the face for everyone who went on strike.”

For his part, Daniel Merbitz, head of collective bargaining at the German Trade Union for Education and Science (GEW), which organises not only teachers but also many kindergarten teachers, rejoiced: “This is a respectable result in these difficult corona times.”

The answer from workers on Facebook was not long in coming, with one writing: “As always, the labour dispute was broken off and 80 percent of demands not met. All the little extras are presented once again as a success. In fact, we lose out. Even for nursing staff ... it doesn’t even cover rising costs. It’s sad. The one-off payments are ridiculous. This deal belongs in the garbage can.”

In particular, all the praise surrounding the allegedly juicy coronavirus premium, a single payment of between €300 and €600 per wage group has drawn a hail of criticism: “Juicy premium! Dude! Can we get it monthly,” asks a GEW member. “You’ve got to be crazy! No wonder nobody joins trade unions. Poor negotiation results are one thing, but to reinterpret them positively is complete bullshit!”

Dominik tweets: “Unbelievable! This is a slap in the face. 50 euros more per month, how much do I have left? Nurses should start to wake up and fight back, go out on the streets and strike!”

Bus drivers who were also involved in the labour dispute, but who are treated completely separately by Verdi, expressed their discontent with the alleged “Corona bonus”: “The biggest affront is this 600 euro bonus,” writes one driver. “They can pay out 1,500 euros tax-free and then give us a ridiculous 600 euros that not everyone will receive. I am very disappointed in Verdi.”

Josip tweeted to Verdi: “Thank you very much for your efforts. My resignation is in the post. I can do better things with the membership fees.”

Another commented: “Celebrating this pathetic deal clearly shows that you have served your time as a union. I can only advise every Verdi member to resign from the union. Above all the timeline of the contract is a slap in the face for workers.”

This mood against Verdi is widespread in social media groups. “I will draft a letter of resignation this week,” writes one user. “Verdi is history for me,” another one writes,” adding, “Everyone should resign immediately, it’s a slap in the face for the membership.”

Another commentator echoes: “Everyone should leave the union. Maybe then they will return to their senses.”

The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site welcome the rebellion against Verdi and its sell-out of the wage struggle in the public service, but the energy expressed in the current rage and spirit of rebellion must be directed in the right direction. Verdi will not “return to its senses.”

Like all other trade unions, Verdi is not an organisation that in principle represents the interests of the workers, but somehow fails to do so due to its corrupt and cowardly functionaries. Rather, it is unreservedly committed to the defence of capitalism and defence of the profits of the rich.

The caste of trade union functionaries, which socially stand miles apart from most union members, pursues political goals that benefit themselves and the class they represent. The union bureaucracy is much closer to the ruling class politically and socially than to the workers they supposedly represent, and they are all members of the same political parties.

The former long-time head of Verdi is a member of the Green Party, and his successor, Frank Werneke, is a member of the Social Democratic Party. They negotiate with fellow party members in public service. The chief negotiator for the public employers’ side, the mayor of Lüneburg, Ulrich Mädge, has been a Social Democrat and Verdi member for many decades. Verdi shares the standpoint of the ruling class that workers have to pay for the billions handed out previously to the banks and big business. The current deal is eloquent testimony to this fact.

The explosion of new cases of COVID in the Northern Hemisphere will fuel massive social unrest

Benjamin Mateus

On Wednesday, the world saw more than 507,000 cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours, bringing the worldwide total to 45 million cases. As of this writing, there are 485,418 new cases of COVID-19 with several hours before the clock on the Worldometer dashboard resets, implying that tomorrow this record will be shattered.

It was only six days ago that there were 400,000 new daily cases, and 22 days since new daily cases surpassed 300,000. Europe has seen more than a tenfold rise since the summer lows and now accounts for almost half of all global cases, as cases in the Southern Hemisphere appear to be receding. Meanwhile, the seven-day moving average in the US has reached over 75,000 new cases a day, a dramatic rise in just a few short weeks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci in June, 2020 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

As predicted, deaths have begun to follow this massive surge. Yesterday saw once again more than 7,000 deaths worldwide. Since the beginning of October, the seven-day moving average has been steadily climbing from a low of 4,993 to its present high of 6,095 deaths per day.

The last time such an average in deaths was seen was back in April, when the world witnessed the calamity of COVID pandemic ravage health systems in numerous nations across the globe as country after country shut down schools and nonessential businesses and implemented stay-at-home orders to bring the epidemic under a modicum of control. The Dow Jones plummeted more than 10,000 points over a few weeks from a high of 29,000 in February, leading President Trump to echo Thomas Friedman’s slogan, “the cure can’t be worse than the disease,” thereby inaugurating the policy of reopening the economy regardless of the cost in health and lives.

Every world leader, prominent political figure, government agency, as well as crucial financial sector, had been briefed early in the course of the pandemic that the virus was highly contagious and virulent and the significance of its airborne route of transmission was made clear. This makes the Democratic Party leaders in Congress complicit in this massive betrayal of the population.

Instead of heeding the advice and counsel of epidemiologists and public health officials to formulate an international response to protect the global population’s lives and livelihoods, the pandemic was used to further to enrich the financial oligarchy and their political defenders.

Health care systems were left to flounder as hospitals and morgues filled with the recent dead. Health care workers fell ill and paid with their lives for caring for the sick and infirm. The entire project to develop therapeutics and material supplies for combating the pandemic was politicized and financialized.

In light of these recent experiences, Trump’s claim that “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” was one of his significant accomplishments must not be taken only as a mere provocation and brazen disregard for the population’s safety. Like his previous comments—“it will just go away,” “like a miracle it will disappear,” or “we have turned the corner”—Trump’s bald-faced lies means that despite the massive health crisis there will be no future shutdowns. He is essentially attempting to assure the markets that the pandemic will no longer impact their financial interests.

In this regard, the White House chief of staff’s comments last week on CNN’s State of the Union program openly corroborated this fact that there is no intention to bring the pandemic under control.

The health crisis posed by the pandemic is on a catastrophic trajectory that poses a severe threat to the working class. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as well as a member of the White House coronavirus task force, offered a more sobering perspective, stating, “Unfortunately we’re right now in the middle of what’s going to be referred to, I think historically, as the mother of all outbreaks over the last hundred years. And we’re not even close to being finished with it yet.”

The number of states seeing record cases has been climbing, and reports from numerous regions worldwide are seeing health care systems reach or surpass capacity. According to the World Health Organization, a strategy of mitigation without bringing the pandemic under control is a recipe for disaster.

To state the matter bluntly, there is no approved vaccine at the present moment, and to deliver hundreds of millions of doses when one proves efficacious and safe will take several more months. Trump’s claims that a vaccine is “imminent” is just another lie, timed for the election. There are no other therapeutics proven efficacious outside of oxygen, dexamethasone and supportive care by health systems.

Even remdesivir, recently approved by the FDA, has failed to decrease mortality or the need for a ventilator, or reduce hospitalization, according to trial results. The only proven measures are those related to public health: to maintain social distancing in combination with robust testing and contact tracing. There are only two purposes for testing: to accurately diagnose a person to treat them and to assist in tracing contacts. Yet, these comprehensive strategies have been wholly abandoned if they were ever really attempted.

During a University of Melbourne panel discussion, Fauci said he hoped that a vaccine would be available in the next few months but cautioned that “a substantial portion of the people” would not see a vaccine until late next year. “I think it will be easier by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year, before we start having some semblances of normality,” he said. Five companies in the final phases of their trials won’t have data until December.

According to CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, “If we continue our current behavior, by the time we start to go down the other side of the curve, a half a million people will be dead.”

Across the US states, budget shortfalls have amounted to $434 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, a sum greater than the total K-12 educational budget in 2019. Under the pressure of the pandemic, cuts to all aspects of state functions that include education, as well as the furloughing of state employees which include teachers, firefighters and other emergency workers, and cuts to their pay, retirement and benefits, the political impact will be to fuel social unrest.

US Senate hearing on Section 230 law devolves into demands for social media censorship

Kevin Reed

The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc., the corporate parent of Google and YouTube, were questioned at a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The hearing was called by the Republican-dominated committee to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that protects online service providers from liability for the content published on their platforms by users.

The four-hour virtual hearing, entitled “Does Section 230’s Sweeping Immunity Enable Big Tech Bad Behavior?” featured testimony by Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet. The advertised purpose of the hearing was to examine whether Section 230 “has outlived its usefulness in today’s digital age” and “examine legislative proposals to modernize the decades-old law, increase transparency and accountability among big technology companies.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)

However, per standard operating procedure in these stage-managed Washington D.C. hearings, each faction of the ruling establishment—Republicans, Democrats and the tech executives—sought to use the platform to promote their respective political agendas and market interests.

There was no genuine review or examination of the Section 230 provisions. Instead, after the committee chair, ranking member and each tech CEO delivered their prepared remarks—available online ahead of time in transcript form—the Republican and Democratic Senators proceeded to attack freedom of speech online from slightly different but equally right-wing standpoints.

The Section 230 provisions of 1996 are widely recognized by speech rights activists and legal scholars as among the most important of US laws protecting freedom of expression and innovation in the age of the internet. The language of Section 230 states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

This means that the technology providers hosting the speech of others are protected from laws that could be used otherwise to hold them legally liable for what users on their systems say and do. Among the protected intermediaries are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as wireless carriers and cable companies as well as a range of “interactive computer service providers” such as social media platforms and any other online service that publishes third-party content.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an example of how Section 230 works is “its legal shield to bloggers who act as intermediaries by hosting comments on their blogs. Under the law, bloggers are not liable for comments left by readers, the work of guest bloggers, tips sent via email, or information received through RSS feeds. This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments.”

Rather than discuss the substance of the law, Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, Republican from Mississippi, managed in his opening remarks to combine the claim that tech platforms are singling out “conservative” publishers for censorship with a denunciation of the publication of “hacked materials” such as President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

After pointing out that two weeks ago both Facebook and Twitter censored a New York Post article regarding Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Senator Wicker revealed that “both presidential candidates Trump and Biden have proposed repealing Section 230 in its entirety.”

Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, Democrat from Washington, used her opening statement to repeat the completely unsubstantiated claim that the tech corporations enabled “Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential elections. Cantwell then demanded to know “exactly what they have been doing to clamp down on election interference” and then openly called for online censorship and demanded to know, “what kind of hate speech and misinformation that they have taken off the books.”

Never even mentioning Section 230 at all, Cantwell went on to a lengthy advocacy for “local news”—a euphemism for traditional corporate news publishers and broadcasters—and absurdly claimed that the tech giants, by monopolizing the available advertising dollars, are a barrier to “a very healthy and dynamic news media across the United States.”

In their opening statements, all three tech CEOs did their best to act like they were both advocates of the free speech provisions of Section 230 and doing everything they could to provide “transparency” and “consistency” to their content moderation policies.

Among the notable statements by the tech executives—whose companies have a combined Wall Street value of nearly $2 trillion—were the following:

• Jack Dorsey: “Eroding the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies.” Dorsey made this comment because his company is worth a miniscule, by comparison to the other two, $41.5 billion.
  
  
• Mark Zuckerberg: “I look forward to continuing to work with you and other stakeholders to ensure that we provide consumers with the transparency, control, and accountability they deserve.” Although unnamed, the “other stakeholders” that Zuckerberg is referring to are the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street investors in Facebook, such as Vanguard Group and BlackRock, who own substantial shares and have a controlling interest in the company.
  
  
• Sundar Pichai: “Let me be clear: We approach our work without political bias, full stop. To do otherwise would be contrary to both our business interests and our mission, which compels us to make information accessible to every type of person, no matter where they live or what they believe.”

In fact, as has been shown, Google has been suppressing content from the World Socialist Web Site from surfacing in top results of general search in favor of so-called “authoritative sources.” When pressed on the issue of censorship Pichai, as in a previous hearing, cited the WSWS as an example of its supposedly evenhanded approach to all political views. “We have had compliance issues with the World Socialist Review [sic], which is a left leaning publication,” Pichai remarked.

During the questioning of the tech CEOs by Senate Commerce Committee members, the Republican and Democratic Party lines were repeatedly evident. Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas took an aggressive posture and accused Twitter of functioning as a “Democratic super PAC” when it blocked and fact-checked pro-Trump content. “Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report?”

Twitter CEO Dorsey responded by saying, “I hear the concerns and acknowledge them,” but he said Twitter was not favoring Democrats on its platform.

Picking up on Cantwell’s introduction, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut went on about foreign interference from Iran and Russia, who are “making 2016 look like child’s play.” Blumenthal called on the companies to take steps to “curbing misinformation and disinformation” that would assist Trump win reelection.

The Senate hearing on Wednesday shows that the positions of the Democrats and Republicans with regard to online speech, while appearing to be opposed to each other, are actually demanding censorship from different starting points. The Democrats, including the presidential campaign of Biden-Harris and its ostensible house organ the New York Times, are demanding outright censorship from the big tech platforms by removing posts deemed “disinformation” and “lies.”

On the other hand, the Republicans are calling for changes in the language of the Section 230 protections such that social media and other platforms can be labeled “publishers” instead of online services, removing their immunity from prosecution for user content and thereby forcing them to impose more stringent content moderation policies.

The tech platforms themselves have been collaborating with both factions of the ruling political establishment in the imposition of censorship on left-wing and socialist publishers. Regardless of whatever differences exist between them, the tech monopolies are working with the Democrats and Republicans in an effort to keep the political crisis in the US from developing outside of the two party system and becoming a generalized struggle of the entire working class for political independence on the basis of the fight for socialism.

What is behind the crisis in New Zealand’s National Party?

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s conservative National Party, one of the country’s two major parties of big business and imperialism, remains in a state of crisis following its second-worst election defeat ever on October 17.

The party got just 26.8 percent of votes and 35 seats in the 120-seat parliament, compared with 56 seats in the 2017 election where it won 44.4 percent of the votes. National leader Judith Collins announced there will be a review into “what went wrong” in its campaign and over the past three years in which the party was riven with in-fighting. The Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, increased its share of the votes from 36.9 percent in 2017 to 49.1 percent, enough to get 64 seats in parliament.

Judith Collins launched as leader of the National Party, July 2020 (source: Facebook)

The election was held amid a global surge in coronavirus cases and the growing danger of dictatorship and war, centred in the United States. Working class struggles are erupting in country after country to demand safe working conditions and oppose social inequality.

The Labour Party is negotiating a deal to bring the Greens into the government, in an attempt to provide a “progressive” fig leaf for its right-wing agenda, which will inevitably provoke opposition among workers and young people. The Ardern government’s unprecedented multi-billion dollar handouts to the banks and corporations, accompanied by a wave of pro-business restructuring and mass redundancies, have already produced soaring poverty and inequality.

Labour has replaced the National Party as the preferred party of big business and the rich, with many wealthy areas switching their support to Labour in the election. Labour benefited from overwhelmingly positive media coverage, in NZ and internationally, of Ardern’s pandemic response. In fact, the government’s lockdown in March, which prevented mass deaths, was imposed due to fears of a developing movement in the working class, not the benevolence or wisdom of Ardern.

The National Party’s turmoil contributed greatly to Labour’s landslide victory. For several years, National has been the target of a destabilisation campaign by sections of the ruling elite which oppose its advocacy of close business links with China.

The Ardern government has greatly strengthened New Zealand’s integration into US preparations for war against China. The drive to war is accelerating rapidly in response to the economic breakdown triggered by the pandemic. In the lead-up to the November 3 US election both Republicans and the Democrats are continually demonising China, which is viewed as the main economic rival to the US and the chief obstacle to its global hegemony.

New Zealand’s support for the US build-up to war was not discussed in any of the four pre-election debates between Ardern and Collins, although both leaders pledged to continue working closely with Washington. The political and media establishment fears that open discussion about the danger of war would trigger an anti-war movement even more explosive than the mass protests that erupted in 2003 against the US invasion of Iraq.

The 2008-2017 National Party government led by Prime Minister John Key significantly strengthened trade and investment ties with China, which became New Zealand’s largest trading partner. Since 2007, two way trade has increased from $10 billion to $30 billion.

At the same time National maintained a strong alliance with US imperialism; it continued New Zealand’s participation in the criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, invited the US military to train in New Zealand and expanded NZ’s role in the US-led Five Eyes mass surveillance network—all with bipartisan support from the Labour Party.

This fraught balancing act became increasingly untenable as the US ramped up its economic and military encirclement of China under President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” strategy, demanding that US allies fall into line. After 2016, President Trump announced trade war measures against China and stepped up military threats.

Beginning about 2012, the National government came under increasing attack from the Labour Party and the right-wing nationalist NZ First for encouraging Chinese investment and immigration. In the lead-up to the 2017 election this developed into a full-blown McCarthyite campaign, with sections of the media promoting the pro-US academic Anne-Marie Brady, who accused National of being a tool of Chinese interests.

The September 2017 election was marked by blatant US interference aimed at strengthening the alliance against China. When neither Labour nor National gained enough votes to govern alone, both parties spent four weeks trying to form a coalition with NZ First. This rabidly anti-Chinese party was able to choose the government, despite only getting 7.2 percent of the votes.

While coalition talks were underway, US ambassador Scott Brown made extraordinary public statements criticising National Party leader Bill English for voicing misgivings about Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea. Brown made clear that Washington expected New Zealand to align more firmly with its moves against North Korea and China.

NZ First then announced it would form a government with the Labour Party and the Greens, despite the National Party having significantly more votes. Ardern rewarded NZ First with the positions of foreign affairs minister and defence minister. Her government significantly strengthened the alliance with the US and released a defence strategy in 2018 that labelled China and Russia the main “threats” to the international order.

NZ First leader Winston Peters, as foreign minister, urged the Trump administration to send more US military forces into the Pacific to push back against China’s economic and diplomatic influence. The Ardern government also boosted New Zealand’s military presence in the region to defend its interests as a minor imperialist power. According to Stuff political reporter Andrea Vance, the National Party was “shaken by Winston Peters’ decision” in 2017. “There was disappointment and some anger at those who failed to strike a deal” with NZ First.

Divisions over China fueled factional warfare and leadership spills. Bill English was replaced as leader in February 2018 by Simon Bridges. Nine months later Bridges was attacked for allegedly failing to declare a political donation from a Chinese businessman.

Senior National MP Jami-Lee Ross, who revealed the donation, was expelled by the party. This year he became a co-leader of the far-right Advance NZ, declaring that “big political parties are bought and sold by Chinese foreign money.” Advance NZ was promoted internationally by Trump’s fascistic advisor Steve Bannon.

The attacks on Bridges from the media, the Labour Party and its allies continued in 2019, particularly following his visit to China aimed at boosting trade. Bridges and his deputy leader Paula Bennett were both rolled in a leadership spill in May 2020. Bridges’ replacement Todd Muller resigned after just 53 days, citing mental stress, and was replaced by current leader Judith Collins in July, just three months before the election.

With such instability, National was incapable of mounting a credible campaign. In addition to the leadership changes, 19 National MPs announced they were retiring at the election. Among them was Jian Yang, a Chinese-born MP who had been accused by Brady, NZ First and the Daily Blog, without any evidence, of being an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.

The bloodletting has not resolved the political establishment’s divisions over China. Asked by Newstalk ZB on October 4 whether she saw China as “friend or foe,” Collins replied equivocally: “Both.” While emphasising that she was “absolutely committed” to the US alliance, she added that China “is our biggest trading partner… it takes most of our agricultural products.” Collins’ husband is a former director of dairy company Oravida, which carried out significant trade with China.

The Ardern government, meanwhile, has signalled its ongoing commitment to the anti-China build-up. A press release two days after the election announced the redeployment of New Zealand air force planes to Japan to support sanctions against North Korea. This places New Zealand’s military on the front lines if war breaks out between the US and North Korea or China.

This was followed by extraordinary police raids, just days after the election, on the homes of two members of the New Zealand-DPRK Friendship Society, a charity that sent about $2000 to North Korea to purchase pandemic supplies such as face masks. The small organisation is absurdly accused of breaching United Nations sanctions against the country’s nuclear program.

These developments should be taken as a warning by the working class. Far from being progressive or a lesser evil to the National Party, the Labour Party-led government is a party of imperialism, which is actively preparing to take the country into a third catastrophic world war.

Three killed in terrorist attack on church in Nice, France

Will Morrow

A terrorist attack yesterday morning killed three people inside the Notre-Dame church of Nice, on the southern coast of France.

A lone attacker entered the building at 8:30 a.m. armed with a knife and attacked churchgoers who were attending the morning mass. The bodies of two people were found inside the church: a 60-year-old woman, almost fully decapitated, and a man. Another 55-year-old woman died from stab wounds shortly after fleeing the church. Police arriving on the scene shot the attacker, who reportedly cried “Allah Akbar.” He is under arrest, reportedly in a critical condition.

The towers of Notre-Dame de Nice (Credit: Wikimedia)

The attacker is reported to be Brahim A., a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant. He reportedly arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa last September after crossing the Mediterranean, and travelled to Paris earlier this month. No connections to any terrorist organisation have been reported, and the police have so far stated they have not found evidence that he had collaborators.

The attack took place two weeks after the October 16 terrorist attack near a middle school in Conflans, northwest of Paris. Samuel Paty, a geography teacher, was stabbed and decapitated. He was targeted for having shown students in his class an anti-Muslim caricature as part of a class discussion on “freedom of expression.”

The latest terrorist attack is likewise a horrific crime. It reveals yet again the bankruptcy and politically reactionary character of terrorism. Not only are three innocent people tragically dead. The attack has handed the Macron administration and the political establishment an opportunity to escalate their ongoing racist anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaign, confuse and divide the population, and to deepen the inroads into the democratic rights of millions of working people.

The government is due to make a series of announcements later today. Macron announced yesterday that more than 4,000 military soldiers from the “Sentinel” operation were being deployed across the country.

Christian Estrosi, the right-wing mayor of Nice, told France Inter that “Islamo-fascism has once again struck.” He called for a violent crackdown, declaring that “it is time that we put away our arms of peace and pass to arms of war.”

Right-wing deputy Eric Ciotti reported that he had requested that the government immediately cease all migration into France, including an illegal ban on all requests for asylum. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the neo-fascistic National Rally, tweeted that the attack “imposes upon our leaders a global response aimed at eradicating Islamism from our soil.”

In his speech yesterday, Emmanuel Macron declared that “if we have been attacked, once again, it is because of the values that are ours, our taste of freedom, for this possibility in our land to believe freely and to cede nothing to the spirit of terror.” This fraud is aimed at covering up the political responsibility of the French ruling class for terrorist attacks.

France, a historic colonial power over much of Africa and the Middle East, has participated in two decades of unending wars across the region, from Afghanistan to Syria, Libya and the Sahel. Paris launched neo-colonial operations aimed at asserting French interests over the region’s natural resources and geostrategic position. Millions have been killed, creating the greatest refugee crisis since World War II as a result.

Starting in 2011, in both Libya and Syria, France backed and helped arm Islamist groups, including groups directly tied to Al Qaeda, as its proxies in the regime-change wars to overthrow the governments of Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. The type of atrocity that occurred in Nice yesterday was a weekly and even daily occurrence amid the sectarian bloodshed unleashed in Syria by the French state’s “democratic” allies. Members of terrorist groups travelled freely between Europe and the Middle East, under the eyes of NATO intelligence agencies.

These two decades of unending neo-colonial wars have profoundly impacted the domestic politics of France and all of Europe. The same period has seen an unrelenting campaign by the French political establishment to persecute and vilify immigrants and Muslims, including the ban on headscarves in schools in 2004, and the ban of the burqa in public places in 2010.

Macron has escalated all these policies since he came to office. He is currently pushing through a law under the banner of “anti-separatism” and “secularism” which imposes restrictions on Muslim religious educational institutions, but no equivalent restrictions on other religious schools, and gives the state the power to dissolve institutions that are declared to be in violation of the “values of the Republic.” Macron declared that Islam was in a “crisis” and “radical Islam” aimed to conquer France.

Since the beginning of January alone, 71 mosques have been shut down by French police, on the basis that they are supposed potential sources of “radicalization” and “terrorism.” Last week, the Pantin mosque just outside Paris was closed on the sole grounds that it had shared the Facebook videos by the parent of one of Samuel Paty’s students criticizing him. The mosque removed the video immediately following the terrorist attack, which it condemned.

These actions serve not only to terrorise and stigmatise the Muslim population. The closure of houses of worship is aimed at inciting a far-right atmosphere in which all Muslims, just under 10 percent of France’s population, are treated as a potential source of terrorist attacks.

Since Paty’s murder on October 16, the Macron administration’s anti-Muslim campaign has reached a fever pitch. It must be stated that if it had set about to incite terrorist attacks, it would not have acted any differently than its escalating anti-Muslim campaign.

Last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin declared he was “shocked” when he walked into supermarkets and saw international—i.e., halal and kosher—foods in dedicated aisles, and insisted that “this is how communalism begins.”

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer blamed “Islamo-leftism,” i.e., those who oppose the government’s anti-Muslim policies, as “intellectual accomplices” of terrorism.

Macron’s anti-Muslim policies have triggered anti-French demonstrations across Muslim countries, including in Bangladesh, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Mali. Macron has been denounced this week by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid an intensifying geo-political conflict between France and Turkey.

The latest diplomatic standoff followed the publication of a provocative, fascistic anti-Muslim cartoon by Charlie Hebdo. The image depicts Erdogan in his underpants lifting up the skirt of a Muslim woman wearing a veil and exposing her body from behind. Macron cynically declared that its defence of the image is part of its defence of “freedom of expression.”

Macron, who in 2018 hailed France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier,” is consciously working to promote the far right. The impact of this campaign is indicated by reports yesterday of an attempted fascist terrorist attack in Avignon. A 33-year-old member of the fascist “Identitaire” movement, wearing a “Defend Europe” jersey, threatened a North African storeowner with a gun and made a Nazi salute, before being shot and killed by police.

As US smashes records for new coronavirus infections, Ford and Fiat Chrysler report blowout profits

Shannon Jones

In a clear demonstration of the capitalist ruling class’ real priorities in response to the pandemic, Ford and Fiat Chrysler have reported a third quarter surge in profits, beating all expectations, even as the coronavirus continues to spiral out of control.

Ford’s profits rebounded to $2.4 billion in the quarter ending September 30, up from $425 million in the same quarter last year. Fiat Chrysler reported $1.4 billion in earnings in the same period, including record profits in North America despite a fall in sales. General Motors, which does not report its 3rd quarter results until November 5, is expected to also report strong profits.

General Motors “Renaissance Center” Headquarters in Detroit, Michigan (Photo: Crisco 1492/Wikipedia)

Ford also said it had paid off the nearly $15 billion dollar credit lines that it drew down earlier this year, after a wildcat strike wave forced a two-month closure of the Detroit automakers’ North American facilities during the initial wave of the pandemic.

North American automakers built 4.1 million vehicles in the third quarter, the same number as last year. Despite the explosion of COVID-19 cases across the industrial Midwest, Fiat Chrysler and other automakers have no intention of even a temporary pause in production. FCA says it now expects to earn an operating profit of between $3.5 billion and $4.1 billion in 2020.

The financial results for the Detroit automakers starkly reveal how all attempts at a rational and scientific plan to halt the pandemic collide with the capitalist profit motive. The increase in profits is the direct consequence of abandonment, by both management and by the federal and state governments, of serious measures to contain the spread of the virus in favor of a rapid reopening of the economy to repay the trillions pumped into the major corporations by the Federal Reserve.

This is now leading to a massive resurgence of infections and deaths. Yesterday saw more than 91,000 confirmed new infections, shattering the previous record set only the day before.

This has been accompanied by the removal of limited emergency financial aid for the unemployed aimed at applying economic pressure on workers to return to the factories at the risk of their health. This, combined with massive layoffs in the service and travel sector, has resulted since May in an eight percent increase in the number of Americans living in poverty.

The imposition of a such deeply unpopular and homicidal policies is bound up with the Trump administration’s mobilization of far right forces. The right-wing conspiracy to murder Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer was reportedly facilitated by the right-wing protests in Lansing in the spring against the lockdowns, where many of the future co-conspirators met.

Even the largely cosmetic safety protocols introduced in May with the restart of auto production are being systematically discarded, with the full support and collaboration of the United Auto Workers union. Workers report that health screenings are being conducted in a slipshod and perfunctory manner. Even the wearing of masks is not being universally enforced. In September, FCA also eliminated the extra five minutes which had been added to break times to allow for cleaning.

In a stark example of the inhumane working conditions which prevail in the factories, workers on the late shift at a Detroit-area FCA plant told the World Socialist Web Site that the absence of medical staff on their shift meant they had to give first aid by themselves to a coworker who suffered a serious head injury until paramedics arrived. “The workers were using dirty rags to clean his head up and the quality of first aid was not good. If this had been a dismemberment or something where a tourniquet was needed, the worker would have been dead,” one worker told the World Socialist Web Site.

A recently leaked internal FCA report showed that there had been two COVID-19 deaths and 59 infections at Jefferson North Assembly Plant through mid-October, numbers that the UAW and management had kept hidden from workers. Similar cover-ups are occurring at plants around the country.

The profit reports also is a reflection of the way in which the automakers are leveraging the pandemic to accelerate a long-planned restructuring of the workforce. The threat of sickness and death has also been used to drive older, more vulnerable workers out of the factories through early retirements and extended leave, while thousands of low-paid temporary part time workers with no contract rights have been brought in to the plants.

According to a recent reports, wages for temporary workers in the auto industry are so low that the auto industry is struggling to compete with Amazon and other low-wage employers for new hires. The starting wage of $15 an hour for jobs at the retail giant’s fulfillment centers is 20 percent higher than standard pay at most auto parts factories.

As a consequence, auto companies have taken to extracting more labor out of their existing workforce, imposing forced overtime and six-day workweeks. For example, at FCA Sterling Heights Assembly Plant north of Detroit, management is imposing a 12-hour, 7-day work schedule for the skilled trades. Production workers at the plant are routinely forced to work 50 hours a week or more.

Even after the pandemic is over, the industry’s shift to electric vehicles and the launch of electric cars will be used to further drive down costs. Electric vehicles have fewer moving parts than gas driven vehicles and require significantly less labor to build, cutting man-hours per vehicle from 6.7 to 3.7.

There is every indication that investments in new EV plants will be contingent on even further concessions from the UAW which reduce autoworkers to the level of gig economy workers. For example, GM’s new battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, a short distance from the shuttered Lordstown Assembly Plant, will pay wages of just $15-$17 an hour, far less than that currently earned by most assembly workers. General Motors has also invested $75 million in EV startup Lordstown Motors, which will produce the Endurance electric truck starting next year at an expected substandard pay rate of around $17 an hour.