Sunday, May 10, 2020
'About As Evil As It Gets': As State Reopens, Ohio Urges Employers to Snitch on Workers Who Stay Home Due to Covid-19 Concerns
Less than a week after some industries reopened, about 1,200 workers across the state have been reported to the government.
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
80 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/08/about-evil-it-gets-state-reopens-ohio-urges-employers-snitch-workers-who-stay-home
Ohio officials are encouraging employers to report what they've designated "Covid-19 fraud" as the state begins reopening some industries. Workers who refuse to report to work in light of the pandemic, which has killed more than 1,300 Ohio residents so far, can be reported via a government website and have their unemployment benefits taken away.
According to the Washington Post, less than a week after the state reopened manufacturing and distribution facilities, construction, and offices, 600 employers have "turned in" about 1,200 workers for not reporting to work.
"'Turned in' is a really fucked up way to even begin thinking about this," tweeted labor journalist Sarah Jaffe in response to the Post's report.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services set up a website this week where employers may use a form "to report employees who quit or refuse work when it is available due to Covid-19."
With retail stores expected to reopen on Monday, employees in that sector could be reported as early as next week for not returning to work.
In an email sent to employers across Ohio, officials told companies that "Ohio law prohibits individuals from receiving unemployment benefits if they refuse to accept offers of suitable work, or quit work, without good cause."
By designating a deadly public health crisis an insufficient cause for staying home, as health experts have consistently urged for nearly two months, the Ohio government is giving residents a "near-impossible choice," according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
Ohio workers must now choose between "going to work and earning income to put food on the table, and protecting their health," senior policy analyst Alex Camardelle told the Post.
Critics on social media accused Ohio officials of encouraging employers to "snitch" on workers for following the recommendations of public health officials.
Other Republican-led states have also aggressively pressured workers to report to their jobs with threats of having unemployment benefits taken away. As Common Dreams reported last month, Iowa officials are designating failure to report to businesses in reopened industries as a "voluntary quit," while Texas's reopening order carried the same message.
The Century Foundation, a progressive and non-partisan think tank, noted that the focus on so-called "Covid-19 fraud" in Republican-led states stems from a fixation at the U.S. Department of Labor on rooting out workers who are using unemployment benefits when work is available to them. According to the Labor Department, nearly 90% of people who received unemployment benefits in Ohio between 2016 and 2019 used the system correctly.
"The driving activity of the U.S. Department of Labor for the last six to seven years has been unemployment fraud," Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the foundation, told The American Prospect.
Ohio's website represents a "bright flashing light of 'fraud, fraud, fraud' that for me is just like another example of the system's overemphasis on unemployment fraud, rather than making sure we pay people who are out of work," he added.
'What a Rigged Economy Looks Like,' Says Sanders, as Stock Market Enjoys Best Month in 33 Years Despite 20%+ Unemployment
"We need to start valuing human life over corporate profits," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
60 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/08/what-rigged-economy-looks-says-sanders-stock-market-enjoys-best-month-33-years
While a record 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs and one-third of people were unable to pay their rent or mortgage by the end of last month, the stock market in April enjoyed its strongest month since 1987—again supporting the common critique that Wall Street wealth is not the same as economic health.
The stock market has long been President Donald Trump's favored measurement for the wellbeing of the country, but as the pro-wealth tax group Patriotic Millionaires wrote on Twitter Friday, "The stock market is not the economy."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 300 points at opening Friday, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq continued to steadily climb from a low point in late March, when states across the country were imposing economic shutdowns.
The Dow also increased by 250 points right after the Labor Department released its May jobs report Friday, which showed an official unemployment rate of 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression. Economists estimate that including people who lost their jobs in the last two weeks and people who have not filed for unemployment, the actual unemployment rate is likely higher than 20%.
At New York magazine, Eric Levitz wrote that the incongruous response of Wall Street to the coronavirus pandemic while nearly one in five Americans are out of work is due to an economy which places corporate profits ahead of workers.
"Long before the pandemic hit, e-commerce was displacing retail, robots were replacing warehouse workers, and an erosion of labor's bargaining power was putting downward pressure on service-sector wages," wrote Levitz.
Amazon, for example, spends millions of dollars per year lobbying lawmakers to pass legislation that would make it easier to maximize its product-delivery abilities as cheaply as possible, pushing to extend the maximum length of trucks and for approval of autonomous delivery vehicles.
"The companies most immune from the shuttering of public space and, to a lesser extent, from declining working-class purchasing power—capital-intensive technology firms—were already laying claim to an outsize share of the S&P 500 before the coronavirus hit our shores," Levitz wrote.
People who are able to invest heavily in the stock market as tens of millions of Americans are out of work, "in their view...haven't lost touch with reality—equity values simply no longer depend on the functioning of society," he added.
A number of progressives on social media wrote that Wall Street's performance amid the pandemic shows that the economy must be "fundamentally" changed into one that works for working families.
"This is what a rigged and corrupt economy looks like," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote.
Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission and a former economic adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), wrote that Congress and the Federal Reserve must begin centering working people in its efforts to provide relief during the coronavirus pandemic, rather than focusing on propping up large corporations.
"We can do better than a long, slow recovery for workers while capital rebounds in weeks," wrote Ramamurti. "This crisis has exposed cracks in the foundation of our economy. Instead of papering over them, we should fix them now."
Fears of Bolsonaro's Threat to the Amazon Realized as New Data Shows Rainforest Destruction Up 55%
"Bolsonaro is not only turning a blind eye as land grabbers, illegal loggers, and miners continue to plunder Indigenous territories during the pandemic, he plans to make things easier for them."
by
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
9 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/08/fears-bolsonaros-threat-amazon-realized-new-data-shows-rainforest-destruction-55
Greenpeace on Friday warned of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's attacks on environmental law in his country as new data showed that deforestation has "skyrocketed" in the Amazon rainforest this year, particularly in Indigenous territories.
A Greenpeace Brazil analysis found that deforestation on Indigenous lands within the Amazon from January to April 2020 rose by 59% compared with that same four-month period last year. Based on data from the Brazilian Space Research Institute's DETER monitoring system, the environmental advocacy group accounted for deforestation alerts across nearly 3,259 acres of Indigenous territories so far this year.
Preliminary data released Friday by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) also revealed a surge in deforestation throughout the country's portion of the world's largest rainforest. The 2.7 million square mile Amazon spans nine nations, but the majority of it is in Brazil.
"Destruction in Brazil's portion of the Amazon increased 64% in April, compared with the same month a year ago," Reuters reported Friday, citing INPE data. "In the first four months of the year, Amazon deforestation was up 55% from a year ago to 1,202 square kilometers (464 square miles)."
Bolsonaro took office in January 2019 and immediately got to work on his agenda targeting the environment and Indigenous Brazilians. As international scientists have warned over the past year that "human activities are drying out the Amazon," the Brazilian president has faced global condemnation for rising deforestation and his attempts to open up the Amazon to more agribusiness and mining.
According to Reuters:
The new coronavirus outbreak has complicated efforts to combat deforestation, with environmental enforcement agency IBAMA sending fewer agents into the field due to health risks. The agency has said it will scale back field agents in other areas but not the Amazon.
As deforestation soars, Bolsonaro on Thursday authorized the deployment of armed forces to combat deforestation and forest fires in the region. Environmental advocates say the measure may help in the short term but is not a lasting solution.
Last week, as reporters and activists anticipated the announcement that eventually came Thursday, Marcio Astrini of the Brazilian advocacy group Climate Observatory said that "sending the military to the Amazon is like medicating a disease of the government's own creation."
"It's a medication that has a short-term effect, it will resolve the problem now," Astrini said. "It won't cure the disease. The disease that exists in the Amazon today is Bolsonaro."
Greenpeace pointed out Friday that "Bolsonaro is urging the Brazilian Congress to vote on a law designed to hand illegally deforested land over to land grabbers."
Greenpeace also noted that while Indigenous groups have called for greater efforts to protect their territories from land invaders and the pandemic, the Brazilian government has taken take steps backward.
"Bolsonaro is not only turning a blind eye as land grabbers, illegal loggers, and miners continue to plunder Indigenous territories during the pandemic, he plans to make things easier for them," said Carolina Marçal, a forest campaigner at Greenpeace Brazil.
"Whole groups and communities with no means of combating the virus are at risk of being wiped out if intruders carry Covid-19 into their territories," Marçal added. "Bolsonaro's actions are criminal and must be stopped. Those who best protect the forests must be protected."
While Bolsonaro has provoked international outrage for both his attacks on environmental protections and his handling of the pandemic, Greenpeace USA forest campaigns director Daniel Brindis explained that the Brazilian president isn't alone in shouldering the blame for the destruction of the Amazon.
"The international market is also complicit in this destruction—and profiting off this crisis," said Brindis. "As international banks invest in high risk infrastructure in the Amazon, corporations import products like timber, minerals, and cattle products that drive deforestation."
Those investments from large financial institutions have continued despite warnings from scientists and activists that—as Mercy for Animals managing director Sandra Lopes said last year—"the Amazon rainforest is a fundamental ecosystem for the planet and the climate." The forest helps limit global heating by serving as a massive carbon sink.
"The alarm has been sounded about the crisis in the Brazilian Amazon for years," Brindis said, "yet corporations purposefully ignore the fact that their profits are violating human rights and perpetuating climate disaster."
To Prevent 'Monopoly Free-for-All,' Congress and Fed Urged to Bar Use of Covid-19 Funds for Corporate Mergers
"We can't afford to allow big corporations to further consolidate power in this moment of crisis."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
13 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/08/prevent-monopoly-free-all-congress-and-fed-urged-bar-use-covid-19-funds-corporate
A diverse coalition of nearly 30 progressive advocacy groups is demanding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer act quickly to bar companies from using Covid-19 bailout money to finance a "tsunami of corporate mergers that will devastate workers, small businesses, and the communities they support."
In a letter (pdf) to the Democratic leaders on Friday, the groups specifically demanded that the next coronavirus stimulus package include legislation by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would impose a moratorium on corporate mergers and acquisitions by large firms for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.
"Amid a growing economic crisis in which 26 million people have filed for unemployment insurance, the Federal Reserve and Treasury programs constitute the largest financial response to the coronavirus crisis and they represent a massive, enduring transfer of power to billionaires and big corporations," reads the letter.
The CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late March, handed the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve control over a $450 billion corporate bailout fund, which the central bank can leverage into $4.5 trillion. Under the law, the Fed and Treasury have wide discretion over how the taxpayer funds are used—and what, if any, conditions are attached to them."Yet for the most part, large corporations and financiers with access to this credit still have free rein not only to fire workers, enrich their CEOs, or buy back their own stock, but also to merge or buy up their smaller competitors," the letter continues. "Without safeguards like Senator Warren's and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act, the problem of monopolies and corporate power will become even more dire."
Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the congressional oversight panel tasked with monitoring how the Trump administration uses the CARES Act funds, pointed out on Twitter earlier this week that there is currently "nothing stopping big companies from taking taxpayer support" while continuing to lay off workers and reward their shareholders.
Advocacy groups said Friday that a moratorium on corporate mergers is essential to prevent a "monopoly free-for-all."
In a statement, American Economic Liberties Project president Sarah Miller said that "passing the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act, which is supported by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Americans, is the very least Congress can do."
Evan Weber, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, warned that "the unchecked power of monopolies is quite literally killing the planet."
"We can't afford to allow big corporations to further consolidate power in this moment of crisis."
In a separate letter (pdf) sent Thursday, nine advocacy groups—some of which were signatories to Friday's letter to Congress—called on the Fed and Treasury Department to require a "freeze on all mergers and acquisitions activity" by corporate beneficiaries of taxpayer bailouts in order to avoid a repeat of the "merger wave" that followed the 2008 financial crash.
David Segal, executive director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that "corporate concentration begets and exacerbates crises, and the Federal Reserve must put strings on the bailout to make sure that recent trends towards increased concentration don't accelerate during and after the pandemic."
"Too-big-to-fail firms helped cause the 2008 crisis," said Segal, "and lending practices by big banks are making it harder to address needs of small businesses and ordinary people as we confront the coronavirus."
Depression USA
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/09/pers-m09.html
9 May 2020
Yesterday, the US Labor Department released its April unemployment report, revealing a level of joblessness that is without historical precedent. On the same day, the stock market rose sharply, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing up more than 450 points, or nearly two percent. Wall Street continues not only to feast on death, as the toll from the coronavirus continues to grow, but to profit from the mass social misery that the pandemic has produced.
The Labor Department report recorded a drop of employment of 20.5 million people. Not only is this the largest monthly collapse in history, it exceeds the previous record more than 10 times over. The official unemployment rate increased from under 4 percent to 14.7 percent, far above anything seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As bad as these numbers are, they significantly underestimate the scale of the social dislocation. The April report is based on estimates calculated during the middle of last month, so they do not take into account the millions of people who have lost their jobs over the last three weeks. Some 33.5 million have filed for unemployment claims since the beginning of state and federal lockdowns seven weeks ago.
According to the report, moreover, 6.4 million additional workers have left the labor force entirely and are not counted as unemployed, bringing the labor force participation rate to its lowest level since 1973. Another 11 million workers reported that they were working part time because they could not find full-time work, an increase of 7 million people since before the pandemic.
When all factors are taken into account, something in the area of one third of the work force is out of work.
Mass joblessness is impacting nearly every sector of the working class. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was the most extreme, falling by nearly 50 percent, or 7.7 million people. There were 2.1 million job losses in business and professional services, 2.1 million in retail, 1.3 million in manufacturing and 1 million in construction.
Stunningly, amidst an expanding pandemic, there were 1.4 million job cuts in health care. And under conditions of an enormous social crisis, there were 650,000 job cuts in the social assistance sector.
The report notes, moreover, that mass unemployment has impacted workers of all races and genders. The unemployment rate among adult men soared to 13.0 percent, adult women to 15.5 percent, and teenagers to 31.9 percent. The rate was 14.2 percent for whites, 16.7 percent for blacks, 14.5 percent for Asians and 18.9 percent for Hispanics.
While a large number of the job cuts are categorized as “temporary,” a growing proportion are permanent, as corporations begin to implement mass layoffs. Indeed, there were two million permanent job losses in April. This, taken by itself, would be the largest increase in unemployment in post-World War II American history.
Tens of millions of workers live paycheck to paycheck and rely on credit cards and other forms of debt to make up for the difference between their income and their expenses. Household debt rose by 1.1 percent in the quarter ending March 31, to $14.3 trillion, a new record. This does not take into account the piling on of debt by tens of millions of people as the economic crisis intensified in April and into May.
With no savings and no government assistance, workers are turning in record numbers to food banks, which are running out of basic goods. A report by the Hamilton Project earlier this week found that 41 percent of families with children under the age of 12 are experiencing food insecurity—that is, they are unable to afford enough to eat.
The ruling class has no policy to deal with the social catastrophe. On Friday, the Trump administration declared that the jobs that have been destroyed “will be back and they’ll be back soon.” He added that “we’re in no rush” to pass a bill that would provide some assistance. The administration’s top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said that talks over further “stimulus” measures are “in a lull right now.”
As for the Democrats, while mouthing phrases about additional aid, they are haggling over minor measures that they know will never be passed by Congress. Both parties display a combination of indifference, bewilderment and reaction in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Their proposals in response to this crisis make the US in the era of Herbert Hoover appear almost philanthropic.
Mass social immiseration is, in fact, a deliberate policy, supported by the entire political establishment. It is aimed at creating conditions in which: 1) the ruling class can force a return to work even as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States; and 2) workers will be compelled to accept sharp reductions in wages and benefits and an increase in exploitation to pay for the massive handout to the super-rich.
To pressure workers to endanger their lives by returning to work, the majority of the population is being systematically starved of resources. Six weeks after the passage of the CARES Act—the massive boondoggle to the corporations adopted unanimously by the Democrats and the Republicans—the majority of Americans have not received their $1,200 “stimulus” check.
States are going bankrupt and beginning to implement brutal austerity measures. A report from the Economic Policy Institute earlier this month found that 50 percent more people are unemployed than have even been able to file for unemployment benefits—the result of overburdened application systems and onerous restrictions. Millions who have filed for benefits have not received anything.
The approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are excluded from receiving any benefits. Millions of workers in the “gig economy,” while supposedly able to qualify for federal assistance, face impossible barriers to obtaining it. In the state of Illinois, for example, these workers will be able to start applying only on May 11, and they will not have any possibility of getting assistance for several weeks thereafter.
At the same time, the ruling class has utilized the pandemic to organize a transfer of trillions of dollars to the financial markets through the Federal Reserve. The total assets on the balance sheet of the US central bank rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion to buy up assets from banks and corporations to fuel the market rise.
The enrichment of the oligarchy through rising share values is premised on mass impoverishment and an intensification of the exploitation of the working class. The profits and wealth of the corporate-financial elite have been saved at the expense of society.
Two agendas stand opposed to each other. One is the defense of the financial oligarchy, which means both an expansion of the pandemic, with all the horrific consequences this will bring, and a further immiseration of the population. The other agenda is that of the working class, which wants to fight the pandemic, save lives and defend the interests of the vast majority of the population.
The fight against the pandemic is not just a medical question. It is a political struggle to mobilize the working class against the Trump administration, the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.
This is the political basis upon which the Socialist Equality Party is conducting our work and waging our election campaign. We call on all those who agree with this perspective to join and build the SEP today.
Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president
The author also recommends:
Wall Street feasts on death
[15 April 2020]
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[8 May 2019]
US state and municipal governments plan massive austerity to meet COVID-19 budget shortfalls
[8 May 2020]
Over 40 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under are now food insecure in the US
[7 May 2020]
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