Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Trump, the media, and the COVID-19 disaster
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/14/pers-a14.html
14 April 2020
On Saturday, the New York Times published a lengthy exposé documenting the failure of the Trump administration to act on repeated warnings from within the federal government that the United States was facing an imminent disaster that threatened hundreds of thousands of lives.
The Times noted, “The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.”
These warnings were repeated by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even cabinet-level White House officials. Yet despite these warnings, the Trump administration failed to carry out the most basic measures to contain the pandemic. On March 2, nearly two months after Trump received initial warnings that the pandemic would strike the United States, less than 500 people had been tested for COVID-19 throughout the country. By that time, it had been spreading uncontrolled for over a month.
In public, Trump deliberately downplayed the severity of the disease, falsely claiming the pandemic was no worse than the flu. He argued that it would go away by itself and declared that the disease was a “hoax.” On Sunday, Trump retweeted a posting urging him to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, his leading scientific advisor, who publicly stated that initiating measures earlier would have saved lives.
Clearly unnerved by the exposure of his administration’s incompetence, Trump as usual lashed out wildly at the press on Monday, insulting reporters in another display of ignorance, brutality, backwardness and self-aggrandizement. As usual, Trump spent most of his press conference praising himself and denying all responsibility for the disaster now unfolding.
While the Times’ report presents an important account of the Trump administration’s incompetent response to the pandemic, a very significant part of the picture is left out. It does not explain why the ruling class as a whole was so unprepared to deal with the pandemic.
Trump’s disastrous series of mistakes flowed naturally out of policies adopted by the whole political establishment and prior administrations. After all, the Bush and Obama administrations gutted public health preparedness, slashing funding year after year. Despite warnings of the danger of a pandemic for at least two decades, no action was taken to build up stockpiles of necessary equipment.
From January to the present, moreover, no section of the US political establishment seriously called for a major expansion of public health spending and a massive program of testing, quarantining and contact-tracing that could have stopped the pandemic and saved tens of thousands of lives. And yet, in a matter of just weeks, both parties were able to work together to secure a multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and major corporations that sent the stock market soaring, even as millions lost their jobs.
Nor does the Times’ account explain the fact that the record of the Times and other major media outlets is just as miserable as that of Trump.
Despite numerous warnings of the novel coronavirus in the international media, beginning in early January, the New York Times did not devote its first editorial to the topic until January 29. The newspaper that so often serves as a conduit for “anonymous sources” within the intelligence apparatus did not report the “intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States” as one of the “bombshells” it has so often emblazoned in banner headlines.
In its January 29 editorial, the newspaper warned that “distrust” in “institutions”—a word the newspaper uses to refer to both itself and US intelligence agencies—is the greatest risk factor for the spread of COVID-19. It did not call for any emergency measures to combat the disease, or for an expansion of testing, quarantining and contact tracing capabilities.
Then, a general silence took over for an entire month, during which the New York Times did not write a single editorial on the pandemic. It was not until February 29, when there were 63 documented cases in the United States and confirmed community transmission, that the Times editorial board revisited the issue.
During the intervening period, which spanned the conclusion of the abortive efforts to impeach Trump on the basis of false allegations of “collusion” with Russia, the Times presented its readers with the usual fare of allegations of “Russian meddling” in American society, prowar propaganda, #MeToo hysteria and demands for expanding the power of the US intelligence agencies.
During the month of February, US stock markets continued to hit new highs. Trump has repeatedly made clear that his primary concern in dealing with the pandemic was its impact on the economy, and in particular, the stock markets. It is not difficult to surmise that similar concerns motivated the Times editorial board in seeking to downplay “bad news.”
In fact, when its editorial board returned to the subject on March 3, it was with a new focus: “If the federal government fails to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and the economic outlook darkens, such a broad-based stimulus may well become necessary.”
While the Times was silent on the COVID-19 pandemic, Democratic and Republican politicians were preparing a bipartisan stimulus bill that included $450 billion in corporate bailouts and financed the Federal Reserve’s $5 trillion payouts to Wall Street and major corporations.
The silence of the Trump administration and the Democratic Party contrasts with the extensive warnings by the World Socialist Web Site.
A January 24 article by Benjamin Mateus noted that “evidence has emerged that person-to-person infection is occurring,” and that “cases have now been confirmed in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and the United States.”
In a January 28 Perspective column titled, “The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and the global threat of infectious diseases,” the WSWS noted: “The outbreak has exposed the enormous vulnerability of contemporary society to new strains of infectious disease, dangers for which no capitalist government has adequately prepared.”
The WSWS stated, “While the situation in China is dire, the so-called first-world countries are no more prepared to deal with an outbreak on the scale currently occurring in Wuhan.”
The perspective continued:
Put another way, while the governments of the world, particularly the United States, have made meticulous plans for large-scale war during the past quarter-century, no such resources or forethought have been devoted to combatting the rash of epidemics that have plagued the planet over the same period. Since 1996, there have been 67 epidemics across the world, including the outbreak of mad cow disease from 1996 to 2001, influenza in 2009, Zika in 2015-2016, and the continuing HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has killed at least 30 million people since it first emerged in 1960.
These disasters are at every turn preventable. Medical science has advanced to the point where it is capable of identifying new viruses within weeks and developing vaccines within months. And yet, as then-WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan noted in 2014 in relation to the Ebola outbreak, “a profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay.” …
The short-term, mercenary profit schemes that are inherent to capitalism are incapable of allocating the resources necessary to plan ahead and prepare for global risks.
Over the next month, in the period during which the New York Times editorial board was silent, the World Socialist Web Site wrote four major statements on the pandemic in addition to its daily news coverage.
In “The coronavirus pandemic: A global disaster” on February 11, the World Socialist Web Site condemned the nationalist and xenophobic policies of the Trump administration and the statements of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that the pandemic will “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.” It warned, “As with every other social problem—including the ever-widening social inequality, accelerating climate change and the heightened threat of war—the coronavirus epidemic is a global problem that requires an international solution.”
On February 27, the WSWS published a Perspective titled, “The coronavirus pandemic and the need for global socialized medicine.” Alex Lantier wrote, “It is critical that the world’s health system be able to isolate patients, limit the speed of the disease’s spread, and devote the necessary resources to provide intensive care for those patients who develop pneumonia from the infection.”
The next day, the WSWS published a statement by the International Committee of the Fourth International that declared, “The US government is completely unprepared for a major outbreak. There is no system in place to even systematically test for the virus.”
It concluded: “The working class must demand that governments make available the resources required to contain the spread of the disease, treat and care for those who are infected, and secure the livelihoods of the hundreds of millions of people who will be affected by the economic fallout.”
The World Socialist Web Site does not have the vast financial resources available to the New York Times. And yet we were able to warn the public about the disaster that was about to unfold.
This is because the WSWS is motivated by an entirely different political orientation. The preoccupation of both the Trump administration and the New York Times, the main media outlet of the Democratic Party, is the preservation of the financial and economic interests of the ruling elite. The concern of the WSWS is the defense of the working class and the broad mass of the population.
Just as they failed to warn the public about the dangers posed by the coronavirus as it was spreading throughout the country, both the Trump administration and the New York Times are seeking once again to downplay the pandemic to create a climate for a premature return to work. The World Socialist Web Site is focused on warning against such moves, arguing that human lives must take precedence over the profits of the ruling elite.
For more than two decades, the World Socialist Web Site, the publication of the International Committee of the Fourth International, has proven itself an indispensable tool in defending the social and political interests of the working class.
Andre Damon
German airline Lufthansa receives multibillion-euro bailout, prepares to cut 18,000 jobs
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/14/luft-a14.html
By Dietmar Gaisenkersting
14 April 2020
Lufthansa, Europe’s largest airline, is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to implement long-planned attacks on their workforces. Almost all sections of the Cologne-based airline will be impacted.
Due to the travel restrictions imposed in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, global air travel has virtually come to a standstill. Around 700 of Lufthansa’s 763 planes have been taken out of service. Lufthansa has requested or plans to request short-time work for 87,000 of its 135,000 workforce.
The company has said nothing about the amount of state support it has received from Brussels, Berlin, Vienna and Bern. But according to trade union sources, the airline is receiving assistance amounting to hundreds of millions of euros per month. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on April 6 that loans of up to €10 billion were being discussed.
In a company press release on April 7, Lufthansa noted that it would take months for the travel restrictions to be lifted, and years before the demand for flights reaches pre-crisis levels. Therefore, the board “adopted wide-ranging measures to reduce the capacity of air travel and administration over the long-term.”
Planes will be taken out of service at Lufthansa Airlines, Lufthansa Cityline, and EuroWings. Lufthansa added that the “already initiated restructuring programmes at Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines will be intensified due to the coronavirus crisis.” At these airlines, as well as Swiss International, the size of the fleet will be reduced.
The daily Die Welt cited a company spokesman as stating that the airline would end up cutting 10 percent of its capacity. With a combined fleet of 763 aircraft, this would mean the elimination of between 70 and 80 planes. According to Die Welt, a rule of thumb in the airline industry states that around 220 jobs are connected to each large passenger plane, from the crew to caterers and ground staff. This would translate into the loss of between 15,000 and 18,000 jobs.
The subsidiary GermanWings is shutting down operations entirely, eliminating 1,400 jobs and grounding 30 planes. For 18 years, the airline was Lufthansa’s most important budget carrier, or, to put it more accurately, low-wage carrier. For the past four years, it was no longer an independent airline, but was gradually integrated into the Lufthansa subsidiary EuroWings. GermanWings flew the domestic routes for EuroWings.
The plan now is to integrate all EuroWings’ partner airlines under the EuroWings umbrella. This is due to the fact that at EuroWings, which is based in Austria, the wages and workplace benefits are much lower than those at Lufthansa and even GermanWings.
The Independent Flight Attendants’ Organisation (UFO) trade union, together with the services union Verdi, agreed a contract for EuroWings employees based in Germany last year that permits shifts to last up to 14 hours. Employees face wage cuts if they get sick, because Austrian contract regulations apply to their agreement.
The current round of attacks on thousands of jobs is just the beginning, with Lufthansa’s board declaring that this is a “first restructuring package.” This suggests that further attacks are to come.
The Cockpit Association (VC) trade union and UFO pointed to the “indecent proceedings at GermanWings” in a press release last week. They knew what was coming, because Lufthansa had refused to sign contracts that had already been distributed for short-time work, which included a job guarantee. Lufthansa deliberately avoided applying for short-time work at GermanWings and continued to pay wages in full so it could evade the job protection requirement. The following day, the announcement of the job cuts and winding up of GermanWings was made.
The well-rehearsed show then commenced: the company announced job cuts and the unions protested against them. Shortly thereafter, both parties reported the “success” that the job cuts will not result in “compulsory redundancies.”
On behalf of the employer, Lufthansa announced last Tuesday that it would seek to offer “further employment within the Lufthansa Group for as many as possible,” i.e., not everyone. The unions launched a toothless protest with an online petition to the board. VC president Markus Wahl accused Lufthansa chief executive Karsten Spohr of seizing on “a favourable situation” to “push ahead with the restructuring of the company at the expense of the workforce.”
By this point, UFO had already announced its willingness to do precisely that in partnership with the board. Spokesperson and former union head Nicoley Baublies said that no flight attendant would have to leave “if clever collective solutions are achieved and we exploit natural attrition.” The union is ready to enter talks soon, added Baublies.
One day later, new UFO President Daniel Flohr expressed his satisfaction to the daily Junge Welt that more than 11,000 people had signed the petition “for the retention of flights at GermanWings.”
“In addition, the trade union protest immediately resulted in compulsory redundancies being abandoned and the workers should keep their jobs,” Flohr claimed, however, no details have been presented in writing.
The policy of the trade unions is the direct product of their pro-capitalist orientation. UFO and VC were established and expanded due to widespread anger among workers at the close ties between Verdi and other unions affiliated with the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) to management. For example, Verdi official Christine Behle is deputy chairwoman of the company’s supervisory board.
But UFO and VC identify just as much with the company’s concerns as Verdi. As soon as Lufthansa offers the smallest indication that it is prepared to negotiate with UFO and VC, the union representatives throw themselves at the company’s feet. This is because their top priority is to be recognised by the board as a trade union rather than waging a genuine struggle against it. When they organise strikes or other job actions, they always do so only against one part of the company, making it easier for the board to compensate for any lost revenue by deploying strike-breakers.
The most recent strike was a three-day stoppage by GermanWings flight attendants over the New Year. The outcome of this strike was that Lufthansa accepted talks, which resulted in a joint statement of intent at the end of January. Both parties, i.e., the company and UFO, “agreed to a multi-part procedure to resolve the conflict,” including a “major” arbitration process, “until the conclusion of which labour peace will prevail at Lufthansa.”
As recently as March 16, representatives of UFO and other unions spoke at an “air travel conference” in Berlin on how the airlines could make it through the coronavirus crisis unscathed. “To an unprecedented degree, employer associations, trade unions and other industry representatives were in agreement today that the emergency measures adopted by the government were welcome, but far from sufficient,” Baublies, who participated on behalf of UFO, enthusiastically reported.
“Profession-based unions with their detailed knowledge of the branch can now use their advantage and will fight to ensure that the particular requirements of the airline sector are protected and special problems resolved,” added UFO president Flohr.
Three weeks later, Europe’s largest airline then announced how it intends to resolve those special problems: with a multibillion-euro bailout from the government and billions more in savings through the elimination of up to 18,000 jobs.
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