Saturday, July 11, 2020
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Supreme Court rules against Trump on releasing tax returns, but allows delay
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/10/supr-j10.html
By John Burton
10 July 2020
The Supreme Court’s October 2019 term ended yesterday with pair of 7–2 decisions rejecting Donald Trump’s assertion of absolute presidential immunity from subpoenas. The two closely watched cases were the subject of telephonic oral arguments last May that lasted more than three hours.
Any remaining chance that Trump’s tax returns might become public before the November election, however, seems dashed by the court’s failure to order that the financial documents, which are in the possession of Trump’s accountants and lenders, be turned over forthwith. Instead both cases were remanded to the lower courts burdened with various instructions to consider additional factors before compelling any production of documents. Trump’s legal team will have no problem running out the clock.
Trump not only asserted absolute presidential immunity from subpoena, he sought to extend that immunity to cover third parties like banks and accounting firms with which he did business before becoming president. The court majority rejected his arguments, but the practical result of the decision is to push back any release of compromising financial information until after the election, the main short-term goal of the White House.
The tax returns and other financial documents no doubt reveal extensive financial chicanery and tax avoidance by Trump himself, family members and the complex network of entities they control.
Both controlling opinions were authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and supported by what seems to be a carefully assembled political coalition: the four more liberal associate justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, all joined without issuing separate opinions, and both associate justices appointed by Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, voted with the majority as well. Only associate justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented and would have quashed all the subpoenas, effectively placing the president above the law.
It seems clear that Roberts, who is dedicated to preserving what remains of the wilting credibility of the Supreme Court, wanted to pose as a defender of the traditional separation of powers, which strictly limits the president’s authority, while at the same time delaying the release of the records until after the election, calculating that otherwise, Trump might defy the court openly and challenge it to enforce its ruling.
Trump v. Vance overruled Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from the Manhattan grand jury subpoenas directed to his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, that sought financial documents relating to what Roberts delicately characterized as “business transactions involving multiple individuals whose conduct may have violated state law.” In fact the District Attorney opened a criminal investigation following the federal conviction of Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen for orchestrating payoffs made illegally with campaign funds to silence women with whom Trump supposedly had sexual affairs.
Roberts began his analysis with the 1807 federal prosecution of Aaron Burr for treason. Following the infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton, the former vice-president allegedly schemed to raise a private army and seize territory from Spain, and then foment a rebellion to form an independent nation out of the Louisiana territory recently purchased from France.
Burr subpoenaed correspondence from President Thomas Jefferson, who objected on the basis of executive immunity and state secrets. In a biting rejection of Trump’s claim to absolute immunity from subpoenas, Roberts quoted at length from Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion overruling Jefferson’s objection.
Marshall, according to Roberts, wrote that the president does not “stand exempt from the general provisions of the Constitution.” Citing the “common law” of England on which United States jurisprudence is based, Marshall identified as the “single reservation” to the duty to testify in response to a subpoena was “the case of the king,” whose “dignity” was seen as “incompatible” with appearing “under the process of the court.”
Roberts continued, “But, as Marshall explained, a king is born to power and can ‘do no wrong.’ The President, by contrast, is ‘of the people’ and subject to the law.”
“In the two centuries since the Burr trial, successive Presidents have accepted Marshall’s ruling that the Chief Executive is subject to subpoena,” Roberts concluded.
Roberts addressed Trump’s back-up argument that at minimum grand jury subpoenas directed to papers of sitting presidents “must satisfy a heightened need standard,” in other words that the evidence is “critical,” “not available from any other source,” and needed “now, rather than at the end of the President’s term.” Roberts called Trump’s argument a “double standard that has no basis in law.”
Rather than ordering the accounting firm to turn over the papers immediately to the grand jury, where they would still be subject to secrecy, Roberts sent the case back to the lower court with an invitation for Trump to raise more procedural and legal hurdles.
Trump “can challenge the subpoena as an attempt to influence the performance of his official duties, in violation of the Supremacy Clause,” or “argue that compliance with a particular subpoena would impede his constitutional duties,” Roberts wrote.
In Trump v. Mazars USA, the president sued to block subpoenas served by the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform, Intelligence and Finance Services Committees on the accounting firm and two of Trump’s biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Capital One. These subpoenas sought, according to Roberts’ description, “a decade’s worth of transactions by the President and his family,” ostensibly to “guide legislative reform in areas ranging from money laundering and terrorism to foreign involvement in US elections.”
This clash was literally unprecedented, according to Roberts. He outlined instances of Congress seeking documents from the president at least as far back as 1792, but “Historically, disputes … have not ended up in court. Instead, they have been hashed out in the hurly-burly, the give-and-take of the political process between the legislative and the executive.”
“This dispute therefore represents a significant departure from historical practice,” Roberts wrote. “We recognize that it is the first of its kind to reach this Court.”
Roberts then announced that lower courts “must perform a careful analysis that takes adequate account of the separation of powers principles at stake, including both the significant legislative interests of Congress and the unique position of the President,” listing four factors: the legislative need, the breadth of the request, the validity of the legislative purpose and the burden imposed.
“Other considerations may be pertinent as well; one case every two centuries does not afford enough experience for an exhaustive list,” Roberts concluded.
Under a more democratic view of the balance of powers, the House of Representatives should itself determine whether subpoenaed documents relate to legitimate legislative concerns. Roberts’ ruling inserts the entire federal judiciary, stacked with Trump-appointed reactionaries, between the House and the executive branch to arbitrate the legitimacy of Congressional actions and is itself an anti-democratic interference with the balance of powers.
Trump immediately tweeted his reaction to the rulings with his typical cocktail of ignorance, mendacity and grievance, complaining that “Courts in the past have given ‘broad deference.’ BUT NOT ME!” adding, “This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”
Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, contradicted his client. “We are pleased that in the decisions issued today, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked both Congress and New York prosecutors from obtaining the president’s tax records,” according to a statement. Confirming the stonewalling will continue, Sekulow added, “We will now proceed to raise additional constitutional and legal issues in the lower courts.”
Fiat Chrysler ends third shift at Windsor, Ontario plant eliminating 1,375 jobs
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/10/fcac-j10.html
By Carl Bronski
10 July 2020
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) announced last week that the end of the third shift at its Windsor, Ontario auto assembly plant is irrevocably slated for next Monday, July 13. The announcement finalizes earlier plans to eliminate the shift and the 1,375 jobs assigned to it.
About 700 senior workers have accepted a buyout retirement package. Lower seniority workers will simply be laid off and placed on a list for possible rehire as Temporary Part Time workers (TPTs) when such openings occur and at significantly reduced pay and benefits.
When the initial announcement was made in 2019, Unifor officials claimed to have been blindsided by the planned layoffs. The union then did nothing to organize opposition to FCA’s aggressive corporate downsizing, which is driven by its determination to boost profitability. Instead, it parroted the company’s justification for the move so as to reinforce the sense of inevitability about the process. This no doubt played a role in encouraging many workers to accept buyouts.
Talking like a corporate executive, Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy said the cuts were “strictly a business decision based on the Pacifica.” He rejected any comparison to the then impending shutdown of the Oshawa GM plant.
Right-wing Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford then issued a demagogic statement claiming his government “stood behind” Fiat Chrysler workers. He went on to boast that his government was dedicated to boosting corporate profits. “Our government is lowering taxes, lowering electricity rates and slashing red tape. There has never been a better time for auto manufacturers to invest in the province of Ontario,” declared Ford.
The New Democratic Party issued similar hollow statements of solidarity with Windsor autoworkers, while Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Navdeep Bains, simply expressed his “disappointment” with FCA’s decision.
The Windsor plant, which builds the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, Pacifica Hybrid, Grand Caravan, and Chrysler Voyager, has operated on a three-shift schedule since 1993. The plant is the largest employer in Windsor, which has been devastated by a steady reduction of auto production in the city, once called the automotive capital of Canada. There are about 5,900 workers currently employed at the facility, which underwent retooling in 2015 to build the Pacifica. The plant can build up to 1,500 vehicles per day.
The job cuts will have an immediate knock-on effect in the city’s auto parts sector. It is expected that local FCA suppliers Flex-N-Gate and Syncreon will shed at least 200 jobs due to the Chrysler retrenchment.
The announcement of a final layoff date had been expected by autoworkers at the plant for some time. FCA has revised the shift’s end date five times since the initial announcement was made last year. In the ensuing months the company delayed issuing a conclusive end date as it calibrated production volumes with the plummeting sales figures of its Grand Caravan and Pacifica models and then, more recently, recalibrated once again to adjust for lost production during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Sales numbers for the facility’s main product, the Chrysler Pacifica, have steadily declined in recent years. Last year, purchases of the model dropped by 17 percent in the vital US market and by 38 percent in Canada. Sales of the Grand Caravan were down by 19 percent in the US and by 15 percent in Canada.
In mid-March, North American automakers temporarily closed their plants for two months after autoworkers in Canada, the United States and Mexico began to refuse unsafe work and carry out other job actions that included walkouts and wildcat strikes to protest the lack of protections against the spread of the coronavirus in their plants. In fact, it was a day and a half work refusal at the FCA operation in Windsor that began the cascade of job actions across the continent.
Windsor-Essex County, which includes the City of Windsor, remains one of Ontario’s COVID-19 hotspots with infection rates skyrocketing amongst migrant farm worker populations.
Work refusals have once again gathered steam in plants located across the river in Detroit, where virus infections are spiking. In recent days, autoworkers at FCA Jefferson North and FCA Sterling Heights have staged work stoppages over recurring infections. In both plants workers formed their own rank-and-file safety factory committees in opposition to the joint United Auto Workers (UAW) and FCA drive to force workers to continue production regardless of the deadly virus threat (see: Fiat Chrysler threatens to fire workers who stop production over COVID-19 concerns).
There was one other contributing factor to the previous delays in finalizing the third shift closure date in Windsor—the upcoming contract negotiations at the Canadian operations of the Detroit Three automakers.
It is no coincidence that the Windsor layoffs will take effect only two months before contracts expire at FCA, Ford, and General Motors facilities in Canada for about 16,000 autoworkers. It is expected that vehicle production in Canada on the part of the Detroit Three automakers will fall another 27 percent over the life of the next contract. The latest layoffs will be used as a threat by FCA to bully and intimidate autoworkers into accepting sweeping concessions, including wage and job cuts.
The future of 160 jobs at FCA’s Etobicoke casting plant is already in doubt. At the company’s Brampton assembly operation, which employs 3,400 workers, production capacity is currently significantly underutilized, as the future of the Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans remain in limbo.
This strategy is not limited to FCA. Just weeks before the Canada Detroit Three contract negotiations are set to begin, analysts are reporting that Ford may be planning to phase out its Oakville assembly plant by 2023 due to the cancellation of its Edge cross-over program. Ford has axed more than 1,000 jobs in Oakville over the past year. For its part, General Motors laid down the gauntlet last year with the shuttering of its keystone assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario that saw 2,300 assembly jobs slashed and thousands more auto parts jobs destroyed.
Unifor President Jerry Dias has already signalled that he will once again do everything in his power to suppress worker job action and to prove to the Detroit Three automakers that Unifor can be relied on to ensure that their Canadian plants are among their most profitable anywhere in the world.
In a May interview with Automotive News Canada previewing the contract negotiations, Dias went out of his way to proclaim his opposition to a strike. If “after months and months and months of reduced volume based on the pandemic” things are “starting to get back to a resemblance of where they were pre-crisis, no one is going to want a disruption,” said Dias. “And I mean nobody; both the workers and the automakers.”
With workers having been driven back into the plants in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need for workers to build rank-and-file safety committees independent of and in opposition to the union. These committees must ensure that health and safety precautions are enforced and production is immediately shut down when infections occur. In opposition to the automakers’ demands for layoffs to boost investor payouts and corporate profitability, they should also take up the fight to defend all jobs.
These committees must be the springboard to seize the conduct of the fight for a new contract out of the hands of the Unifor bureaucrats, forge unity with autoworkers in the US and Mexico , and organize a counteroffensive against all concessions, two-tier wages, and job cuts.
Neyveli Thermal plant explosion in southern India kills 13 workers
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/10/nlcb-j10.html
By Arun Kumar
10 July 2020
The massive July 1 explosion in a thermal power plant which killed 13 workers at the government-owned Neyveli Lignite Corporation India Ltd (NLC) in Tamil Nadu was the second fatal blast at the company in just two months.
The latest tragic loss of life was not simply an accident, but an industrial catastrophe waiting to happen and the result of management’s criminal refusal to take action following the death of eight workers in the previous explosion on May 7. As in previous accidents, this month’s blast further underscores how capitalist production places profit interests above the lives of workers, disregarding even the most basic safety requirements.
On July 1, six NLC contract workers—Ramanathan, Nagaraj, Venkatesa Permal, Silambarasan, Arun Kumar and Padmanabhan—died on the spot and 17 employees, including permanent and contract workers, a junior engineer and two supervisors, were badly injured and hospitalised. Seven out of the 17 later succumbed to their injuries having been initially taken to an NLC-run hospital in Neyveli and then shifted to the private Appollo hospital, in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu state capital.
The NLC is a highly-profitable, central government-owned corporation, which mines lignite and generates electricity. It has four open cut mines with an annual capacity of about 30 million tonnes in Neyveli, and an open cut operation at Barsingsar in Rajasthan state. NLC also owns four thermal electric power stations in Neyveli and one at Barsingsar.
The May 7 explosion occurred after NLC resumed operations on April 8 at the plant without carrying out mandatory maintenance and safety procedures after the national government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended lockdown measures. This callous disregard for workers safety and the Indian government’s determination to “reopen the economy” has seen a rapid spread of the coronavirus in Tamil Nadu and across the country.
According to hotindiareport.com, the July 1 explosion was in Unit V of TPS II, an outdated boiler that had shut down late on June 30. Workers and engineering staff were “attempting to revive the unit when a fire reportedly broke out in the boiler, resulting in the explosion” at 10 o’clock the next morning.
As the WSWS previously noted in its report on the May 7 explosion, NLC has a notorious record of ignoring basic safety measures.
The downtoearth.org website has stated that over the past five years NLC has had two major accidents and one minor one that have exposed serious maintenance and safety problems in the old units being used in the company’s thermal power stations.
The efficient and safe-operating life of a thermal power plant is around 25 years. Despite calls by the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment, however, NLC has delayed commissioning new units. Its power stations have been running with units that should have been retired between 2011 and 2015. In fact, some of its units have been in operation for as long as fifty-seven years.
A report on this month’s explosion by newsclick.in included comments from NLC management, the trade unions and the Indian government.
In an attempt to diffuse widespread anger over the catastrophe, management has suspended a senior official and India’s coal ministry initiated a high-level inquiry and internal probe. An NLC official told the media that at least 3 million rupees ($US40,000) will be given to each family of the workers killed and 500,000 rupees ($6,770) to those injured. Regular employment will also be provided to an eligible member of the family of the deceased.
Additionally, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami has announced 300,000-rupee compensation for the families of workers killed, along with 100,000 rupees ($1,330) and 50,000 rupees ($665) to those who suffered serious and mild injuries respectively. India’s home minister, Amit Shah, offered condolences for those killed and said the victims and survivors will be given “all possible help.”
Shah and Palaniswami’s crocodile tears and the pittance in compensation packages given by NLC and the state government are an attempt to dissipate the growing anger of workers and their families and to cover up company and government responsibility for the repeated industrial accidents.
The NLC’s two recognised unions are affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the Labour Progressive Front (LPF)—federations of the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and its ally the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the main state opposition party, respectively. These organisations are complicit in the tragedy, having refused to seriously demand mandatory safety measures at NLC plants.
While the last explosion forced leaders of these unions and affiliated parties to make some “criticism” of safety conditions at NLC plants, this rhetoric was so much hot air.
C. Amirthalingam, general secretary of the NLC General Workers and Employees Union, which is affiliated to the Stalinist CITU, told the media: “The cleaning of boilers used to happen on each shift till a few years back. Now, with the decreasing workforce, daily maintenance has almost stopped. The privatisation of maintenance work and the consequent improper maintenance work have led to recurring accidents.”
CPM state secretary K. Balakrishnan declared: “The private contractors have failed in proper maintenance of the boilers leading to the accident. The details on the process of allocating contracts for maintenance works need immediate enquiry by a high-level committee and action on the culprits.”
Amirthalingam and Balakrishnan’s comments are bogus and cynical. These union officials and the organisations they head have blocked any mobilisation of workers in strikes or other industrial action to demand the decommissioning of outdated and dangerous plants and the establishment of basic safety standards and modern procedures.
Arrested Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell being monitored by federal officials over suicide concerns
[HER POWERFUL 'JOHNS' MAY VARY THE PLAYBOOK SLIGHTLY THIS TIME. FOR EXAMPLE, THEY MAY BLAME ANOTHER INMATE FOR HER SUSPICIOUS DEATH.]
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/10/epst-j10.html
By Kevin Reed
10 July 2020
Ghislaine Maxwell was given paper clothing to wear upon her entry into the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn this week because federal officials feared the long-time confidante of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein might attempt to take her own life while in jail.
The Associated Press (AP) quoted an anonymous official Thursday who said, “they took away her clothes and bedsheets” and put in place other measures at the federal jail in New York City that “extend far beyond the measures federal officials took when they first arrested her in New Hampshire last week.”
In addition to suicide concerns, the federal official told the AP that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) “has added extra security precautions and placed federal officials outside the Bureau of Prisons in charge of ensuring there is adequate protection for Maxwell” in order “to help prevent other inmates from harming her.”
The AP report said, “The other protocols put in place for Maxwell’s confinement include ensuring that she has a roommate in her cell, that she is monitored and that someone is always with her while she’s behind bars, the official said.”
The official also told the AP that the special precautions are being taken with Maxwell, in part, because Epstein, 66, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The AP source said that Epstein had “killed himself,” but his death “spawned conspiracy theories” despite “a medical examiner ruling it a suicide.”
From this description, it appears that the leaked details of Maxwell’s imprisonment are aimed at reinforcing the official line that Jeffrey Epstein died from suicidal hanging instead of being murdered, as much of the evidence surrounding his death indicates and has been determined by independent medical experts who were present for the autopsy the day after he was discovered unconscious in his jail cell.
That Maxwell was given paper clothing and federal officials were fearful she might take her own life was also confirmed by ABC News with “two federal law enforcement sources.” The ABC News report also said, “It’s unclear whether Maxwell has been placed on suicide watch,” and that the paper clothing requirement “is standard procedure for high-profile inmates or new inmates.”
On Wednesday, ABC News spoke to Attorney General William Barr about the DoJ’s handling of Maxwell, who was arrested on July 2 and accused of facilitating Epstein’s crimes and participating in the abuse of teenage girls as young as 14 between 1994 and 1997. Also going on about the death of Epstein, Barr said he is keeping a close watch to make sure that Maxwell makes it to trial.
“We have asked [the Bureau of Prisons] to tell us specifically the protocols they’re following, and we have a number of redundant systems to monitor the situation,” the Attorney General said. Barr claimed he was “livid” about Epstein’s death while in custody on August 10.
“I believe very strongly in that case,” Barr told ABC News. “And I was very proud of the work done by the department, the Southern District [of New York], on that case. And as you will recall, after he committed suicide, I said that I was confident that we would continue to pursue this case vigorously and pursue anyone who’s complicit in it. And so, I’m very happy that we were able to get Ms. Maxwell.”
Except it took Barr and federal law enforcement officials 47 weeks to pick up Maxwell, who was known for decades to be Epstein’s closest associate in planning and hosting high-society social gatherings on his private Boeing 727-200 passenger jet—dubbed the “Lolita Express”—and at his multimillion dollar residences in New York City, Palm Beach, Paris, New Mexico and the private Little St. James Island in the Caribbean.
Maxwell was picked up on July 2 at a $1 million 156-acre secluded residence in Bedford, New Hampshire that she had purchased for cash “through a carefully anonymized LLC” in December 2019. According to prosecutors in New York City, Maxwell went to great lengths to conceal her whereabouts and has been hiding out mostly in New England.
“In particular, the defendant has effectively been in hiding for approximately a year, since an indictment against Epstein was unsealed in July 2019,” prosecutors say. Maxwell also moved at least twice, switched her phone number and registered it under the name “G Max,” and changed her email address and ordered packages under a different name.
Prosecutors also disclosed in unsealing the indictment of Maxwell that she has 15 different bank accounts, some with balances of more than $20 million and she holds other accounts in foreign countries containing more than $1 million. The court documents show that Maxwell moved large amounts of cash last year, including $300,000 from one account to another last July when Epstein was indicted.
Given the electronic and geolocation surveillance capabilities of the DoJ and FBI, even with official FISA Court authorized spying on individuals, none of the above actions by Maxwell represent a credible reason for why it took so long for federal authorities to “locate” her. It also does not explain why no one else has been arrested in connection with Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse and trafficking of underage girls internationally to his elite friends and associates.
A more plausible explanation for the delay in picking up Maxwell is that the DoJ needed time to work out who, among the long list of well-connected individuals associated with Epstein’s international sex ring, is going to take the fall and how his victims are going to be compensated.
One indication that these details have already been arranged is the agreement announced on Tuesday that Deutsche Bank would pay $150 million in fines to settle with the New York State Department of Financial Services because it “inexcusably failed to detect or prevent millions of dollars of suspicious transactions” within Jeffrey Epstein’s accounts going back to 2013.
Others have publicly discussed the events of the past week and done so without concealing their identity. Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represents several of Epstein’s victims in Palm Beach, Florida, said he believes Maxwell will either take her own life or be silenced by powerful people.
“It may be that she can’t handle the fear of what’s going to happen to her and takes matters into her own hands or there will be people who are very afraid of what she has to say,” Kuvin told the U.S. Sun. He then added that Maxwell is not “going to get out of jail alive. I think she knows way too much information—I just have this gut feeling.”
On Tuesday at the time of Maxwell’s transfer from New Hampshire to New York City, Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at the MDC, told Reuters, “You go from living a life like Maxwell to all of a sudden being in a situation where you’re being strip-searched and having people look into your body cavities. That is a crushing experience.”
Lindsay said MDC officials had to decide whether to keep Maxwell in her 10-foot-by-12-foot cell alone or house her with another female prisoner. A cellmate might help prevent her from attempting suicide, but Lindsay said the nature of her charges and her high profile also makes her a target for other prisoners. Injuring Maxwell, “would be a badge of honor,” said Lindsay.
Maxwell is scheduled to be arraigned via video stream from the Brooklyn jail to a Manhattan courtroom on Monday. If convicted on all six counts, she faces up to 35 years in prison. Maxwell’s attorneys have made no public statements about the indictment of their client and have not responded to requests for comments from news media.
CUNY students and faculty call for resistance to layoffs and cuts
“A large-scale struggle and strong opposition is needed”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/10/cuny-j10.html
By Elliott Murtagh
10 July 2020
The City University of New York (CUNY) recently laid off 2,800 adjunct professors, slashed hours and pay of part-time staff, and cut hundreds of academic classes in response to both implemented and impending cuts in funding due to the pandemic-triggered state and city financial crisis.
While an update on the extent of the state budget cuts from Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is still pending, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Democratic-controlled New York City Council recently cut over $112 million from CUNY’s budget. Fifty-three percent of CUNY’s funding is from New York state aid and 16 percent is from city support, while 19 percent is from student tuition.
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with students and faculty at CUNY about these cuts and their effects, as well as the way forward.
Kristen, an advanced doctoral student in the environmental psychology program at CUNY’s Graduate Center, noted that these layoffs are taking place in the middle of a deadly pandemic and an economy dominated by unemployment. “The layoffs threaten people’s ability to care for themselves with housing, food, health care” and “may also affect mental health.
“I am worried about people, including myself. I personally am trying to work through my dissertation work, have no work lined up after August, no way to pay for my housing after December, and am sitting under a lot of student debt. I am very worried about my future.”
Kristen strongly opposes a rush for CUNY’s campus to reopen amidst the health dangers of COVID-19, stressing that reopening requires “people to take public transit and sit in closed spaces with others—two of the most dangerous places to be right now. Requiring people to do that would be a form of state-sanctioned violence. Already, I hope that one day we are able to hold current officials accountable for the mass death their negligence and bad decisions have caused.”
On the possibility of paying full tuition for online courses, Kristen thought that this raised a larger question about why students at a public university are paying tuition at all.
While she strongly supports the rehiring of adjuncts and the reversal of cuts, Kristen fears that these are “a short-term solution to the much larger problem of our exploitative capitalist political economy.” She stated that real harm was taking place in higher education before the pandemic and hopes that the widespread anger and fear over these cuts is channeled into a “fight for deeper and broader structural changes that ultimately will lift all of us up.”
“My hope is that those experiencing fear around all of this right now are able to come to the larger questions about our society and fight on that collective basis.” Kristen emphasized the need to unite across different areas of struggle, because “while our grievances may be different, they are all connected.” She added, "I totally support independent rank-and-file committees."
“It’s devastating,” said a rising senior at the College of Staten Island studying media and design, who preferred to remain anonymous, about the adjunct layoffs and cuts. “Adjunct faculty make up a huge proportion of my department, and to see them axed just like that is beyond heartbreaking. Adjuncts work very hard for very little pay as it is.”
She said the effects of these cuts and layoffs will be widespread and long-lasting. “Students and their families are going to suffer from this. Fewer faculty members mean fewer course offerings and larger class sizes, which in turn impacts the quality of education students are receiving.”
She mentioned the recent CUNY demonstrations and petitions opposing these cuts, and emphasized that, going forward, “We need to unite all the CUNY campuses under a common cause. There are so many people in CUNY, and we need to take advantage of our numbers” and “remind students that these cuts will affect them greatly.”
Commenting on the fact that these austerity measures are coming from the leadership of the Democratic Party through Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio, she said, “They are our opponents in this struggle. It was our mayor who proposed the cuts to CUNY ASAP [Accelerated Study in Associate Programs]. And we also have our governor working with Bill Gates to ‘reimagine education,’ which makes me think he’s always been trying to push CUNY to be fully online—this pandemic may just be the catalyst he needed.”
Aisha, a second-year graduate student in education at Baruch College whose name was changed for the sake of anonymity, said that laying off thousands of adjuncts leading to class overcrowding is not an acceptable solution.
“A first-level microeconomics class at Baruch or biology class at Hunter has over 100 students. As a result of the layoffs, we can only expect the quality of education to go down and create an unfathomable workload that faculty would have to bear across all course levels.”
In response to these cuts targeting the school’s most vulnerable—”the adjuncts, part-time staff, college assistants, lab assistants, office aids, mail-room staff and graduate assistants”—Aisha said that “a large-scale struggle and strong opposition is needed,” and that “this will be a continuous struggle for many.”
Aisha also raised the Democratic-controlled state and city governments, saying, “These two governments are failing CUNY and making access to public education difficult for low-income and marginalized students by imposing their own agendas and supporting yearly tuition increase.”
Aisha spoke about how the amount of student loans is soaring in the trillions of dollars without sufficient relief, and that students across the country place no trust in the government. “Education is not the priority of this [presidential] administration nor the past administrations.
“The federal bailout clearly shows a prioritization of businesses such as airlines and corporations over health and education,” When asked about the country’s rush to reopen and force workers back to work, she said this demonstrated a prioritization of, “capital over human capital.”
KC, a professor at Brooklyn College who teaches twentieth century US political, diplomatic, and legal history, said that reducing the number of courses CUNY offers “will clearly have a negative effect—especially since current enrollment trends show relatively stable enrollment figures.”
KC also shared health concerns about reopening campus. “Students and faculty are reaching campus overwhelmingly via either the subway or bus, and thus collectively encounter many thousands of people before they even set foot on campus. Under the circumstances, I don’t see how full on-campus instruction could be safe in the fall.”
KC laid primary responsibility for the cuts on Governor Cuomo, “who has been at best indifferent and at worst hostile to CUNY since assuming office.” He also sharply critiqued the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty and staff union, saying, “The union’s ineffectiveness, which in prosperous times has served CUNY faculty poorly, has had tragic consequences in recent months.”
“[PSC president Barbara] Bowen,” he said, “has embraced performative tactics—a ‘car caravan’ protest, an agreement with CUNY to delay the inevitable non-reappointment letters—that have had no practical effect. In coming weeks, Bowen doubtless will start issuing vague strike threats, but she’s done that so many times during her two decades running the union that no one takes her threats seriously anymore.”
While KC supports the interests of both full-time and part-time faculty, he brought up how they often conflict under the current structure. Being at CUNY since 1999, he stated that, aside from research support becoming non-existent and workload increasing, the much-needed adjunct pay hikes have been at the expense of stagnating wages for full-time faculty and that adjunct health care benefits have been won by shifting funds from and weakening the full-time faculty’s Welfare Fund.
Tom, an undergraduate student studying computer science at Hunter College, said that “there have been many cuts to CUNY over the years, and I’m opposed to all of them.” He emphasized that “there can’t be a better investment to make than in public education.”
Tom, who is 59, described how crowded the Hunter campus is and how he has serious health concerns about returning to in-person classes should the campus re-open. If it does, he thought that courses should be an in-person/online hybrid, and students and faculty should be given a choice as to whether to attend in person.
Asked about the way in which the US government has responded to the pandemic and the current rush to reopen, Tom said, “It’s dreadful. Those who still have to work are at the bottom of the economic ladder and so they are basically told, ‘We don’t care if you die, just do your job.’ They’re looked on as literal pawns who are going into battle—If they die, another row of pawns will replace them.”
Tom also spoke about his frustration with the general state of the economy. “Nobody would design the economy that we have now. Nobody wants this number of poor and homeless people, especially given the fact that there is enough money and enough food for everyone—it’s just in the wrong pockets. We need change.”
He added, “But one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it is exposing how broken things are.”
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