Thursday, May 7, 2020
The American oligarchy decides for death (as usual)
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/05/pers-m05.html
5 May 2020
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Trump administration has embraced an approach to the pandemic that will—and that it knows will—result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the coming weeks and months.
On Sunday night, Trump nonchalantly stated that he now expects 100,000 people to die from COVID-19 in the United States, up from his previous estimates of approximately 60,000.
Referring to death numbers like he was negotiating a real estate deal, Trump stated, “I used to say 65 thousand, and now I’m saying 80 or 90. And it goes up and it goes up rapidly. But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the very lower end of the plane.” He added separately, “And look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100 thousand people.”
That is, an additional 40,000 people, by Trump’s own count, will die—40,000 people with children, spouses, families and loved ones, who would not have died if appropriate measures were taken to contain the virus.
This is, in fact, a vast underestimate. The president’s remarks were followed Monday by the publication by the New York Times of an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report that projects that there will be 200,000 new cases per day by the end of this month, and by June 1 an expected 3,000 daily deaths.
Graphe 1This would push the death toll into the hundreds of thousands, as the report shows that actual daily deaths have consistently outpaced government projections. At that rate, more than a quarter million people would be dead by the end of the summer, and more than a million within a year.
The CDC figures make clear that the Trump administration’s guidelines, released in mid-April, marked the abandonment of any official effort to contain the pandemic. As the World Socialist Web Site warned on April 17, the White House and the ruling class were seeking to “normalize death on a massive scale, in which outbreaks of COVID-19 are seen as the cost of doing business.”
Graphe 2As the death toll mounts, the Trump administration’s internal calculations are being released in dribs and drabs. At the end of March, when the US death toll had just surpassed 4,000, Trump declared that a total of 100,000 deaths would be “a good job” by his administration. Today, the official death toll has surpassed 70,000 and is still climbing at an average pace of more than 1,750 per day.
However, even this is a significant undercount of deaths that have resulted from COVID-19 infections and the stress that has been put on health systems by the pandemic. Excess deaths, those on top of the average number of weekly deaths, exceed reported deaths by as much as two times in many states. On top of this, Florida and Tennessee, two states that have already moved to reopen, are actively suppressing their official death tolls.
It must be stated again: The White House is deliberately and consciously implementing measures that it knows will lead to tens of thousands additional deaths. There is a sociopathic character to these policies, but they follow a ruthless class logic. The gangster in the White House expresses the demands of the financial oligarchy, which controls the entire political system.
The pandemic gave the ruling elite the pretext to carry out policies that otherwise would have come under extreme scrutiny and been met with popular hostility. Without the crisis caused by COVID-19, it would be difficult to justify a $10 trillion handout to the rich—unanimously supported by the entire political establishment, Democratic and Republican.
With the bailout secured, it is, as far as the ruling class is concerned, time to get back to the business of extracting surplus value from the working class, regardless of how many will die.
There are only two concerns that the ruling class has in implementing this policy.
First, there is the problem of how to get workers back to work under unsafe conditions. The response here is economic blackmail and impoverishment. Millions of workers who have been thrown out of work overnight will never see an unemployment payment. With many states now lifting all restrictions on business operations, workers will be forced back to work under the threat of being cut off from all aid if they refuse to do so.
Second is the problem of legal responsibility on the part of companies for the death of their workers. Trump set the agenda last month by using the Defense Production Act to order slaughterhouses, a center of the outbreak with thousands of workers already infected and dozens of workers dead, to remain open and to indemnify the corporations from being sued for any worker deaths.
On Monday, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News Radio that any future bailout package should indemnify all employers. “We have brave health care workers battling the virus, entrepreneurs who will reopen their economy, all of whom deserve, in my view, strong protections from the opportunistic lawsuits… arguing that somehow the decision they made with regard to reopening adversely affected the health of someone else.”
With companies being freed of any responsibility for the lives of their employees, the strategy of the ruling class now is to withhold as much information as possible about the growing number of infections and deaths, and to give the impression that it is safe to return to work and to normal life, even as the coronavirus rampages through communities across the country.
Workers will and must reject the false choice being put forwarded by the ruling elite—starve or risk death from COVID-19. This “choice” is premised on the idea that the capitalist system is inviolable and that the interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy will dictate the response to the pandemic.
The development of opposition in the working class requires the formation of independent rank-and-file safety committees in every workplace and factory to ensure safe working conditions and to fight for the closure of all non-essential production. The organization and operation of workplaces cannot be left in the hands of the capitalists, whose only interest is in producing profits!
The effort of the working class to fight for life over profit, for a scientific and rational response to the pandemic that mobilizes all social resources to combat the coronavirus, will bring workers into an ever more direct and open conflict not only with the Trump administration, but with the corporate and financial oligarchy that is dictating policy—and the capitalist system upon which its wealth and power rests.
Niles Niemuth
Layoffs and corporate bankruptcies spread as US workers face mounting hardship
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/05/jobs-m05.html
By Shannon Jones
5 May 2020
US clothing retailer J. Crew filed for bankruptcy and US Steel and GE Aviation announced major job cuts as the economic catastrophe engulfing US workers continued to grow amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Along with a general meltdown of brick and mortar retail, manufacturing, health care and public services face deep cuts.
Despite the push by the Trump administration to abandon social distancing standards and reopen wide sections of the US economy, the official US COVID-19 death toll is holding steady at about 2,000 daily. By the latest count, cumulative US deaths are near 70,000, with over 1.2 million confirmed infections.
A report by the Centers for Disease Control published in the New York Times Monday contradicted the rosy official reports by the White House suggesting that the virus is in decline. It predicted that the US daily death rate would reach 3,000 by June 1, with 200,000 new cases daily as the virus spreads into less urbanized areas that previously had been only lightly impacted. While the Trump administration has distanced itself from the report, the numbers were based on modeling solicited by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The health crisis is being compounded by a continuing meltdown of the US economy, with 30 million having filed for unemployment benefits and unknown millions more either not eligible for jobless pay or unable to file due to overloaded state offices. This does not take into account the millions of small businesses facing ruin due to the drying up of customers.
On top of the millions impacted by temporary business closures, major corporations are announcing permanent job cuts in anticipation of a protracted recession.
US fashion retail chain J. Crew filed chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 4, the first national retail casualty of the pandemic. It has agreed to turn over effective control of the company to its creditors in exchange for the cancellation of $1.7 billion in debt. It said it had no plans at present to close stores, but its future, like that of many retail businesses, remains highly uncertain.
Other major retailers could follow. Neiman Marcus and J.C. Penney are reportedly struggling to raise cash and are likely considering following the examples of J. Crew.
Meanwhile, US Steel said in a filing Friday that it is preparing for the layoff of as many as 6,500 employees, although it expects the actual number affected to be about 2,700 of the 27,500 it currently employs. Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the company faced slowing demand as auto sales stagnated.
The company has now idled seven out of its 10 blast furnaces in the United States. These include three at the Gary Works site in Indiana, one at Granite City in Illinois, two at Great Lakes Steel in Michigan and one at the Mon Valley Works south of Pittsburgh.
On Monday, General Electric said it planned to cut the global workforce in its aviation division by 25 percent, impacting up to 13,000 jobs. The cuts come amidst a collapse in air travel and a likely sharp fall in orders for new planes from struggling airlines. The cuts will involve both voluntary and involuntary layoffs.
GE said the cuts were permanent, as it expected a prolonged depression in air travel. In a letter to employees, GE Aviation CEO David Joyce said, “To protect our business, we have responded with difficult cost-cutting actions over the last two months. Unfortunately, more is required as we scale the business to the realities of our commercial market.”
The spiraling economic crisis is forcing state and local governments to prepare for massive cuts as tax revenue dries up. According to an estimate by the National League of Cities, between 300,000 and one million public-sector workers could be furloughed or laid off, impacting areas such as education, sanitation, public safety and health. The city of Detroit has already reduced hours or furloughed 3,000 workers. The City of Los Angeles has presented a 2020-2021 budget calling for the temporary furlough of 15,000 employees.
Underscoring the irrationality of for-profit medicine, health care providers across the US have carried out massive layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts. Hospitals have seen revenue dry with the cancellation of nonessential procedures, while facing high costs for treating COVID-19 patients, including the inflated cost of supplies such as masks. Some hospitals are concerned that vendors are buying up available supplies to sell them at higher prices.
The onset of the pandemic has seen a wave of bankruptcies, as already struggling firms are pushed over the edge. Among the recent casualties are:
Art Van Furniture, a Warren, Michigan-based retail chain, filed for bankruptcy March 8 and closed all 176 of its retail locations, with the loss of about 3,700 jobs.
Miami, Florida-based CMX Cinemas, a movie theater chain that also runs dine-in restaurants and bars, filed for bankruptcy April 25. All 41 of its theaters located in 12 states had been closed during the pandemic.
The slump in oil prices and demand forced Diamond Offshore Drilling to file for bankruptcy April 27. The Houston, Texas-based company employs 2,500 people and had revenue of $981 million last year.
Another petroleum company impacted by the oil glut, Denver-based shale oil producer Whiting Petroleum, filed for bankruptcy on April 1, though it said it would continue to operate its business. One analyst predicted that it was only “the first domino to fall” in the US energy sector amidst the collapse in oil prices. The US shale oil sector has the highest production costs in the world and needs a $50-$55-a-barrel world price to operate in the black.
Frontier Communications FTR, one of America’s largest telecom companies, filed on April 14. FTR is facing $10 billion in outstanding debt. Private equity firm BlackRock is the company’s largest stockholder, with a 9 percent investment. Vanguard Group and Charles Schwab each hold about 6 percent. Frontier is the fourth largest telecommunications provider, but was loaded up with debt following the acquisition of Verizon wireline services in several states, including Texas, California and Florida.
Modell’s Sporting Goods, based in New York, filed for Chapter 11 on March 11 and said it would close all 153 stores in the northeast. It had been in business since 1889.
Auto parts maker Spectra Premium filed for bankruptcy in Canada on March 10, with a simultaneous filing in the US. The company said that its operations had been hurt by US tariffs against China.
SpeedCast International, a satellite internet company that provides internet service to the cruise industry when ships are out at sea, filed for bankruptcy on April 23. The company serves 80 percent of cruise brands globally.
National fitness chain Golds Gym filed for bankruptcy Monday. It will close 30 gyms, but continue operations at its 700 other locations, including about 63 that are company-owned and operated.
An analysis by Gusto, a support platform for small business, found that young people and low-wage workers are being hardest hit by the economic meltdown. Those earning less than $20 per hour were 115 percent more likely to be laid off than those making $30 an hour or more. In addition, those under age 25 experienced a 93 percent higher rate of job loss than those age 35 and above.
According to their data, “the vast majority of workers in food and beverage, accommodations and salon and spa are paid hourly,” and more than 75 percent earn less than $15 an hour. These industries being hardest hit by state lockdowns.
The so-called stimulus measures by the US government, far from addressing the crisis, have been targeted to line the pockets of the super-rich, not to alleviate social distress. Tens of millions have not received even the meager $1,200 one-time “stimulus” check, and millions more are still waiting for unemployment benefits, assuming they can get through to overwhelmed state offices.
This is not merely the result of bureaucratic incompetence, but part of a policy. The ruling class is using the growing economic distress as a weapon to force workers back in the factories to crank out profit for the corporations, even as the pandemic continues and the death toll mounts.
Workers must oppose the antisocial, homicidal policy of the corporate elite with its own strategy, based on the unification of workers globally in the fight for socialism. The resources to fight the pandemic must be mobilized by seizing the vast fortunes of the billionaires to provide economic relief to workers and small businesses and the implementation of mass testing and other measures needed to stem the pandemic.
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Global automakers press ahead with reopening in midst of coronavirus pandemic
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/05/auto-m05.html
By Marcus Day
5 May 2020
The global automakers are moving ahead this week with either restarting production or finalizing plans to reopen operations, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread. At the same time, the blatant disregard for workers’ health and safety by capitalist governments, the corporations and their accomplices in the trade unions is generating widespread resistance to the back-to-work drive.
The auto giants have already begun to bring production in Europe back up. Last week, Fiat Chrysler (FCA) restarted its van plant in Atessa in Italy, the country hardest-hit by COVID-19 in Europe, even before the official lockdown was lifted. The company is starting up other Italian plants this week.
In addition, luxury automakers Ferrari in Italy and Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin in the UK are all resuming operations this week.
Ford Motor Company demonstrates a temperature scan to be used to screen workers. Credit: FordIn North America, the Detroit Three auto companies are now targeting a restart date of May 18, less than two weeks away, despite the center of the auto industry, Michigan, continuing to be hammered by the pandemic. FCA has already begun erecting medical tents outside its Windsor and Brampton assembly plants in Ontario, Canada, along with some plants in the Detroit area. FCA, Ford and General Motors in recent weeks have solicited workers to return and beginning prepping factories to reopen in the US.
However, other automakers such as Hyundai, Kia, BMW, and Daimler have already restarted their factories in the US South, reopening plants in Montgomery, Alabama; West Point, Georgia; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Vance, Alabama, respectively. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru are reported to be planning US production restarts next Monday, May 11.
The automakers confront virtually unprecedented challenges in restarting and coordinating vast supply chains across North America. Much of US assembly relies on parts produced in Mexico, where COVID-19 cases continue to rapidly climb. Like their brothers and sisters in the US, workers in Mexico confronting a lack of protective equipment and safety measures have rebelled in a series of walkouts at maquiladora sweatshops just across the border in recent weeks.
However, the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is collaborating closely with the US manufacturing industry and the Trump administration in order to ensure that there is no disruption of supplies and parts to US corporations, regardless of the death toll. The president of Katcon, a global auto supplier, told the Detroit Free Press, “The feeling in Mexico, based on the statements from the government and the president of Mexico himself, have been very clear and sensible, balancing health and economic concerns as best as possible.” AMLO, the company executive added, “has said if the US and Canada are going to reopen, we will allow the automotive industry to reopen. Dialogue in Mexico is very positive and encouraging.”
On the part of the Detroit Three, press releases and public statements by company executives and union officials have ritualistically repeated talking points on the careful preparation of “safety protocols,” and concern for workers’ health being the “highest priority.” The facts, though, speak otherwise. It was not until workers launched a wave of wildcat strikes in March across Ontario, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio that the companies were forced to idle production. Even so, the belated shutdown of plants still allowed the virus to spread unhampered for weeks, resulting in at least two dozen workers succumbing to COVID-19 at the Detroit Three companies to date, and many more seriously sickened by it.
The Detroit News reported Monday that four workers from FCA’s Warren Truck plant had died, including 65-year-old Catherine Bright Pace, who worked in the paint shop where workers conducted a job action over the spread of the virus on March 16.
Both the companies and the United Auto Workers union are touting measures such as temperature checks as supposedly ensuring the conditions will be safe for workers to return. However, scientific reviews of the pandemic continue to provide evidence that large percentages of those who are contagious show no signs of fever or other symptoms, with a study in Iceland finding 50 percent of cases were asymptomatic.
Asked whether workers at GM Wentzville’s Assembly plant near St. Louis felt it was safe to return to work, a veteran worker told the WSWS, “No! Everyone I speak to are not with it at all. A lot of folks are saying if they start back up so soon, they are immediately going on sick leave.”
“My plant thinks that a mask and cleaning will keep us safe,” an auto parts worker at Metalsa in Kentucky said. “I have preexisting conditions myself, which are linked to a higher level of death, so I am completely terrified. The UAW will not help, the local union president has never done anything but help himself.”
Workers also continue to take to social media to voice their opposition. Posts on the UAW’s official Facebook page typically attract dozens to hundreds of angry comments, with workers denouncing the indifference of the union to their health and safety.
In response to UAW President Rory Gamble’s letter on April 30 lauding talks with Ford on restart plans, one worker wrote, “Wanna know how we can avoid any infections? Stay shut down. Not even a question, we see the money influencing these decisions.” Another commented, “You can’t even keep the bathrooms clean.”
While it continues to slavishly repeat company PR about safety protocols, the UAW has at the same time begun ominously warning workers about the necessity of “self-reporting” symptoms, seeking to shift responsibility for any future outbreaks from the companies onto workers. Last week, UAW-Ford Vice President Gerald Kariem said, “We also recognize that we all have a role in self-reporting any exposure without repercussions and in following through on implementing these protections.”
The auto companies and broader sections of corporate America are angling to secure the same liability protections granted by the Trump administration to the meatpacking industry, in the hopes of dodging lawsuits for knowingly subjecting workers to hazardous working conditions.
Industry lobbying groups such as the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Manufacturers published a letter to Congress Sunday, writing, “Companies doing their best to control the spread of this disease with the limited guidance available deserve legal protection.”
Attempting to cloak their clutch for their pocketbook with the cover of preventing shortages in goods and services, the letter continued, “Temporarily suspending suits that threaten to shut down vital industries … is a sensible step to ensure every American has access to basic life essentials without creating new shortages and exacerbating the crisis.”
Even as the auto giants are rushing to reopen production and renew the flow of profits, company executives and industry analysts have increasingly signaled their intentions to respond to the collapse in sales with ruthless cost-cutting measures.
On a recent conference call with investors, Ford CEO Jim Hackett said, “One truth, right? Don’t waste a crisis.” Hackett’s remarks reprise the comment made by Obama administration Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in 2008: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” What Emanuel had in mind was to be made clear within a few months, as the Obama administration forced General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, working with the auto companies and the UAW to close down a swath of plants, lay off thousands, and slash pay and benefits for new hires.
And in a recent Automotive News Daily Drive podcast, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas outlined the drastic extent of layoffs and other cost cuts expected by Wall Street if there is not a rapid return to business as usual. He noted that if auto sales remain at the recent level of 11 million a month, the automakers “run the risk of being a zombie industry.” In such a scenario, “most companies to remain viable would have to permanently reduce their headcount and/or fixed cost bases by 30 percent or more [emphasis added].” This would entail tens of thousands of job cuts, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The drive to restructure the auto industry at workers’ expense is already generating opposition.
On Monday, workers at Nissan’s Barcelona plant in Spain began an indefinite strike, the same day the company sought to restart production at the facility. Nissan has thus far refused to release longer-term plans for the future of the plant, raising concerns that it may eventually seek to shutter it.
Autoworkers must reject the false dilemma presented to them of either joblessness and destitution or sickness and death. In every country, workers confront the need to form new organizations, rank-and-file factory and safety committees, in order to protect themselves from the pandemic and ensure that their rights are secured.
In opposition to the demands of the companies and their union partners for profits over workers’ lives, rank-and-file committees must demand the extension of the shutdown of all nonessential production, full compensation and income protection for the unemployed and furloughed, and a massive expansion of testing and medical care. To achieve these demands, the multitrillion-dollar government bailout of Wall Street and the major corporations must be reversed, and the auto industry placed under workers’ democratic control.
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