Wednesday, August 5, 2020
As COVID-19 surges, infected Turkish workers forced back to work
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/turk-a05.html
By Barış Demir
5 August 2020
As coronavirus spreads again in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government re-opened the economy on June 1, backed by bourgeois opposition parties like the Republican People’s Party (CHP), businesses are forcing even infected workers to work.
Last week, a canned fish company, Dardanel, in the western city of Çanakkale, forced all workers into its factory for 14 days after more than 40 workers tested positive for coronavirus. According to a Bianet report, “All workers of the factory, including those who were in quarantine in their homes and those on annual leave, were placed in student dormitories. Also, workers diagnosed with Covid-19 were brought to the factory with shuttles and worked.”
“Our psychology deteriorates in the workplace, we cannot breathe in the bands, even going to and from the toilets is a problem. Managers, supervisors always keep an eye on us,” one worker told the daily Evrensel, adding: “Our life is almost hostage. The final decision is already a concrete example of this. They throw us all into the fire so that the boss’s job is not interrupted.”
The company’s move came after the Çanakkale Governorate Provincial Public Hygiene Committee declared: “The personnel of enterprises that operate in a closed system shall be taken to the factory and then to the place they will be isolated.” This decision was approved not only by the office of the governor, but also by city’s CHP mayor.
This reactionary collaboration shows how workers are forced to remain at work under deadly conditions and exposes the anti-working-class character of the middle-class parties and trade unions that lined up behind the CHP as an alternative to Erdoğan. Their focus is not to contain pandemic and save lives, but to restrain growing anger and opposition within the working class and divert it into safe channels—even as the pandemic spreads and living conditions plummet.
News of forced labour in Çanakkale came just a few weeks after the CHP supported a massive attack on the working class in parliament. With CHP votes, the Erdoğan government extended the forced “unpaid leave” process until July 2021 for hundreds of thousands or millions of workers. They have been forced to take unpaid leave, receiving only 1,170 Turkish liras (about US$170) per month from the state unemployment fund. After the pandemic, the number of unemployed rose to over 17 million in Turkey, an all-time record.
The criminal practice in Çanakkale follows a stated project by the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MÜSİAD). In May, MÜSİAD announced a project to build “isolated production bases” to avoid stopping production amid this pandemic and continue exploitation of the working class.
Coronavirus reports continue to increase from other factories. In the Vestel factory in Manisa, workers report that there are hundreds of infected employees; seven have already died. This white goods factory employs more than 16,000 workers. It is the largest factory in Turkey and one of the largest in Europe. “Workers continue to work. Everyone is very nervous. Cases are coming out, but there is no quarantine application,” one worker told daily BirGun .
At Uğur Konfeksiyon, a factory in the Istanbul İkitelli organised industrial zone, 96 workers have been reportedly infected within two weeks.
Companies are running rampant, imposing criminal policies on their employees. At the end of June, though 40 workers working in railway construction in the southeastern city of Mardin had been infected in one week, Cengiz Holding threatened workers if they refused to keep working. In May, in the same workplace, 118 workers were fired after they protested against working under unsafe conditions.
Growing reports on positive cases and factory deaths come amid an escalation in the pandemic across Turkey amid the international back-to-work campaign.
As the total number of cases in Turkey reaches 232,000, with more than 5,700 deaths, the proportion of COVID-19 patients in intensive care in Turkey rose from 2 percent on July 1 to nearly 12 percent at the end of July. In this period, the number of active cases fell from around 30,000 to less than 12,000, but the number of patients in intensive care nearly doubled.
Despite these signs of serious spread of COVID-19 disease, the Health Ministry’s official figures remained almost the same. The total daily new cases were between 900 and 1,000 since July 14, and death toll was 15-20.
On July 29, the Turkish Health Ministry stopped announcing figures on intensive care and intubated patients, amid growing suspicion and anger among workers that the government is hiding the true scope of the coronavirus crisis in Turkey so as to keep promoting tourism and extracting profits from workers. As of July 28, there were 1,280 patients in intensive care. This amounts to 11.8 percent of active cases, with 403 patients on ventilators.
There are growing warnings from scientists that the COVID-19 pandemic is spiraling out of control due to a “herd immunity” policy implemented by the government with tacit support from local governments led by so-called opposition parties.
Turkish Medical Association (TTB) official Prof. Sinan Adıyaman said, “They do not want to give the number of patients in intensive care. Because we could make inferences by looking at them. We were dividing the number of active patients into the number of patients in intensive care. We have explained that this proportion is over 10 percent in Turkey but it is around 1.5 percent in the world.”
Prof. Dr. Bengi Başer also attacked the government’s deliberate neglect in a tweet on Monday, stating: “We only use PCR tests for those who show symptoms; so we do it to only 30 percent. … The diagnostic value of the test is 60 percent. … We do not apply tests to those who come from abroad. We also no longer make a test for close contacts of positive cases.” She warned, “Focus on reality, not on numbers.”
In an interview on Monday, Halis Yerlikaya, a TTB official, also declared that the official figures are not true: “On the day of death of 8 patients in one night in Diyarbakır, the number of deaths announced throughout the country was 17.” Warning of a serious spread in many cities, Yerlikaya claimed intensive care units in Diyarbakır, Mardin and Şanlıurfa—the Kurdish-majority cities in the southeast—are already full. The daily number of cases in Diyarbakır or Urfa alone is somewhat more than 300, though the official figure across all of Turkey is barely over 900.
As coronavirus spreads unrestrainedly in Turkey and internationally due to the ruling class’s deadly response to the pandemic, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the only way forward for the working class is to intervene independently. Autoworkers in the US, who built rank-and-file safety committees in their factories independent of pro-capitalist trade-unions, show what is can be done to save millions of lives by workers around over the world.
COVID-19 surges in Spain as government pushes reopening of schools
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/spai-a05.html
By Alejandro López
5 August 2020
The COVID-19 virus is resurgent across Spain and Europe. On Sunday the Ministry of Health confirmed 1,525 new COVID-19 cases had been detected in Spain in the last 24 hours. This was 300 more than Saturday’s record-breaking total, the first time daily new cases topped the 1,000 mark since early May, when Spaniards were confined to their homes and even daily walks and exercise were still not allowed.
There are now officially over 500 outbreaks of the virus, though the real number is likely larger. New infections are concentrated in three areas: Aragón, Catalonia and Madrid. However, the incidence of the virus this week has risen in almost all of Spain’s 17 regions. Hundreds of thousands of people in various towns and regions have been recommended to remain at home.
In this resurgence, the average age of the infected are younger than in the spring. It has fallen from 60 in March-April, to 45 for men and 41 for women. Data from the last three weeks show that figure is even lower: 36 and 38, respectively.
The political establishment and the media have blamed the youth for this rise, blaming parties and other social gatherings or nightlife that undermine social distancing for the recent surge. María Jesús Montero, the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government’s spokeswoman, sent a message last week to “people who are younger, because some of the outbreaks are linked to the behaviour in nightlife venues or places where a large number of people gather.”
However, the main reason for the spread is not risky partying, but the criminal policies of the PSOE-Podemos government.
In May and June, Spain was able to contain the virus due to a strict lockdown imposed to gain control over one of Europe’s worst outbreaks, after mass anger erupted at the slow response and a strike wave in major industries erupted in Italy and throughout Europe.
Spain halted all nonessential activity for two weeks and gradually started deescalating. Instead of using this time to rapidly invest in tracers and mass testing, however, the government started lifting measures only in order to open the economy. The aim was to “save” the tourism season, which represents 12 percent of Spain’s GDP, so the extraction of profits from the working class could continue unabated.
While the rise in infected youth highlights the need for more testing and contact tracing, especially as many seem to be asymptomatic, the government ignored the issue. According to data collected by daily El País from the regional authorities, only 3,500 contact tracers have been hired, though international health authorities recommended Spain hire at least 8,000 to control the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amid this resurgence, the Spanish political establishment is promoting a campaign to reopen schools across Spain in September—as are Britain, France, Germany and other countries across Europe. Most have been closed since mid-March. This threatens to further escalate the soaring levels of COVID-19 infections.
The return to school is a criminal policy exposing children, teachers, families and neighbourhoods open to serious illness and death. It has nothing to do with concern for children. Teachers and children are being sent into unsafe environments that will become breeding grounds for COVID-19. It is the other side of the coin of the back-to-work policy of the ruling class. The back-to-school entails sending children to be kept in confined spaces so millions of parents can be sent to work in nonessential industries.
A hasty reopening of schools has been singled out as a key factor behind the catastrophic resurgence in South Africa and Israel. Israel had 6,800 students of various ages and teachers in quarantine in early July, just two weeks after the centres reopened. South Africa has closed its schools for four weeks to limit the spread, but will once again reopen.
In Spain, testament to the criminality of this policy is the fact that they have yet to plan the reopening of schools. Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced in parliament that he would call a conference with all the regional premiers at the end of August to finalise the “back to school.”
He said, “We have to meet at the end of August to prepare or finalize, rather, the return to school of our sons and our daughters, I think that is also very important.” Education Minister Isabel Celáa put the whole responsibility on the regions, stating that they “must provide the measures and establish a provision of the spaces that allow the distances to be observed.”
At this stage, the only guidance the government has given for the reopening of schools this September was posted in June. The guidance even goes against the general COVID-19 precautions. Social distancing requirements have been reduced from 2 metres to 1.5 metres, while those aged 10 and younger will not be required to social distance or wear a mask in school. Older children will only need to wear masks when the 1.5-meter distance cannot be maintained.
Recommended class capacity has been set at 15, but could be a maximum as 20. However, due to the EU-backed austerity policies implemented by successive right-wing and Socialist Party-led governments, average class sizes are 25 in primary and 35 in secondary education in Spain.
Educators are also expected to use available areas throughout the school area to ensure the latest safety guidelines can be met, including cafeterias and gyms. Classes will supposedly be aired out after each use and windows in classrooms will need to remain open as long as possible throughout the day, even amid cold weather.
Directors of each school will also nominate one staff person responsible to establish a health protocol for each centre. How teaching staff without medical qualifications will be able to differentiate COVID symptoms from others like the flu is also unclear.
The recklessness reopening of schools is provoking growing opposition amongst parents, educators and working people.
Raimundo de los Reyes, director of a Murcian institute and president of Fedadi, the largest association of directors of secondary schools in Spain, told eldiario.es: “They tell us that there should be no meetings of more than 15 people, but they plan a return to class with 35 students in 50 square metres.”
In Galicia, protests have been taking place since last Wednesday, when hundreds of teachers surrounded the regional Education Ministry in a human chain.
In Andalusia, 150 centres have sent a letter to the Ministry of Education rejecting instructions that they write a protocol explaining that they cannot open their doors under current conditions and with the current means.
In Castilla y León, the León Teaching Personnel Board and the parents federation issued a statement criticising Ministry of Education officials for “washing their hands” of the pandemic and “turning over responsibilities to the schools.”
Teachers must be warned, moreover, that the unions do not oppose reopening the schools. They aim to isolate teachers region by region and channel their opposition into empty protests. Just as the unions were the chief enforcers of the reckless back-to-work policy implemented by the PSOE-Podemos government that provoked the resurgence of the virus, now they are also key implementers of the back-to-school policy.
Education workers and parents must act independently by forming action committees to ensure the safety and well-being of children, staff, families and communities. Rank-and-file action committees must do everything possible to ensure the maximum safety and well-being of children.
The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality parties throughout Europe propose the following demands as a basis for waging such a fight:
· • Schools must remain closed for all pupils to prevent the spread of COVID-19 until scientific advice establishes that it is safe to reopen. Any teacher refusing to work for health reasons, related to themselves or their family, must be provided a full wage and protected from victimisation.
· • Adequate personal protective equipment must be provided, regular deep cleaning carried out and all activities risk-assessed to protect staff and children from cross infection, and maintain social distancing. Staff must be involved in the drawing up of these measures through elected representatives.
· • All cases of COVID-19 must be immediately reported to staff and families and affected schools closed until testing and contact tracing establishes that it is safe to reopen.
· • Vulnerable staff must have the right not to return to work without any loss of pay or disciplinary action.
· • Casual staff who could not to work and did not receive income during the lockdown must receive full back pay. They must be defended against schools’ demands that they cover for teachers who refuse to work in unsafe conditions.
· • Free, high-quality computer and internet access must be guaranteed to every family, to ensure that accessibility to online learning is not dependent on wealth.
· • A massive increase in government funding must be advanced to overcome the gutting of educational services.
Zimbabwe: Government repression as social unrest mounts
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/zimb-a05.html
By Stephan McCoy
5 August 2020
The ZANU-PF government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has deployed the police and military to shut down the capital Harare, having ordered people to stay indoors ahead of rallies planned for July 31.
In Bulawayo, the streets were equally deserted with only security forces seen roaming the city centre.
The security forces have arrested dozens of opposition critics, including one involved in organising the rallies, and journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, investigating corruption allegations involving Health Minister Obadiah Moyo. More than a dozen others were forced into hiding.
The pro-imperialist Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) and smaller opposition parties had called the rallies opposing the deteriorating economic situation, the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, rampant corruption, and the wave of arrests and abductions over the last few months.
While the main rally could not go ahead, the security forces arrested dozens of people participating in smaller protests, including Fadzayi Mahere, spokeswoman of the MDC-Tsvangirai, and the prominent author Tsitsi Dangarembga, whose new book This Mournable Body has been long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Security forces also kidnapped Tawanda Muchehiwa, a 22-year-old student and nephew of Mduduzi Mathuthu, editor of the newspaper Zim Live, and two other relatives, after a raid by armed men—believed to be Zimbabwe Police—did not find Mathuthu at home.
While Muchehiwa’s relatives were released without charge, Tawanda was later dumped near his home after being severely tortured. Doctors who treated him said they were “alarmed” by the extent of his injuries that included deep cuts and severe kidney damage.
This follows a spate of arrests and kidnappings by plainclothes government thugs that began in May, giving the lie to the claims that Mnangagwa, one of long-time ruler Robert Mugabe’s closest political associates who succeeded him in 2017 after a military coup, would bring an end to tyranny, corruption, and social misery.
The Mnangagwa government’s assault on democratic rights has given rise to mounting opposition, to the extent that it has been necessary to deny that the military that brought it to power was plotting a second coup. Last month, security forces in the Joint Operations Command (JOC) made up of heads and senior personnel of the military, police, and secret services sidelined the government and shut down mobile money transactions and the stock exchange, amid charges they were being used for black-market activities, collapsing an already falling currency.
Mnangagwa, speaking on television Tuesday, threatened opposition figures and human rights campaigners, condemning the planned protests as the “machinations of destructive, terrorist opposition groupings.” He pledged that “security services will continue to carry out their duties with appropriate astuteness and resolve.”
Officials from his ruling ZANU-PF party, which has encouraged greater investment and trade with China, have portrayed the planned rallies as a Western plot, calling US Ambassador Brian Nichols a “thug” and suggesting that he might be expelled for criticising the government’s response to the protests.
With the ongoing collapse of the currency against the dollar, foreign currency reserves are vanishing. According to Bloomberg, following the removal of Old Mutual from the stock market, which paved the way for the reopening of the stock market on August 3, the main index tumbled 4.5 percent.
The annual rate of inflation has shot up to 800 percent, devaluing already paltry wages and making basic commodities unaffordable. The price of fuel has gone up 150 percent and there are severe shortages of basic household goods. Some 90 percent of Zimbabweans work as day labourers in the informal sector that has been devastated by the lockdowns and curfews.
The economic situation has been exacerbated by US and European Union sanctions, maintained since 2003. The sanctions and restrictions target specific individuals, including Mnangagwa, and some 56 companies and organisations, making it difficult for Zimbabwe to obtain loans.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the economy will contract by 10 percent this year. The World Food Programme (WFP) is appealing to donors for $250 million to prevent 8.6 million people—a staggering 60 percent of the population—becoming food-insecure this year due to the pandemic, drought, and the dire economic situation.
WFP Regional Director for Southern Africa Lola Castro said, “Many Zimbabwean families are suffering the ravages of acute hunger, and their plight will get worse before it gets better.”
So far, the country has recorded more than 4,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 80 deaths, both likely to be a vast underestimate. Parliament was forced to suspend sessions recently after two legislators and a driver and journalist travelling with them tested positive.
A leading secret service official and the agriculture minister, former Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, have both died of the coronavirus. Shiri played a major role in the planning of the Gukurahundi massacres, carried out by Mugabe’s ZANU forces against his ZAPU opponents in Matabeleland, that killed 20,000, commanding the Fifth Brigade responsible for widespread torture and mass executions.
Health care conditions are atrocious. There are serious shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect medical staff, and a lack of key drugs and blood supplies.
Last week, pictures released by Dr. Peter Magombeyi, the former head of the doctors’ union, showing the bodies of seven stillborn babies at Harare Central Hospital caused widespread horror. He tweeted, “We have been robbed of our future, including our unborn babies. Please stop the looting.” One doctor told the BBC the deaths were just “the tip of the iceberg.”
Mnangagwa was forced to sack Health Minister Obadiah Moyo following his involvement in a corruption scandal—revealed by detained journalist Hopewell Chi’nono. Moyo had awarded a $60 million contract to an unknown company that had overcharged the government for COVID-19 medical supplies. Moyo is to be replaced with a military doctor, Air Commodore Jasper Chimedza.
At Mpilo Central Hospital in Bulawayo, a further 32 nurses have tested positive for COVID-19, while across the city 115 nurses have tested positive, as have 300 nurses nationwide. Nurses have been on strike for 46 days, demanding PPE and calling for their salaries to be paid in US dollars. They have vowed to continue their strike until their demands are met.
While the Health Services Board maintains that the nurses’ month-long strike is illegal, the government is trying to recruit more nurses to break the strike. Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said, “More nurses will be urgently recruited from the available pool of qualified nurses, while processes to resolve those on industrial action continue.”
Doctors have also downed tools, demanding their salaries be paid in US dollars, which the government derided as “insane.” Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights Secretary-General Norman Matara responded with fury to Mnangagwa’s demand that they return to work and sacrifice their lives for the “national interest.” He said, “Health workers cannot work on empty stomachs and without protective clothing simply because they save lives.”
The ZANU-PF government has caused outrage for signing an agreement with white farmers, whose lands were seized by Mugabe’s government, awarding them $3.5 billion in compensation even as the health care system is in complete collapse with nurses being paid as little as US$30 a month and the country is in the midst of a dire economic crisis. Mnangagwa said of the signing, “This momentous event is historic. It brings closure and a new beginning.”
Indian PM Modi to lay cornerstone for Hindu temple at site of razed Ayodhya mosque
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/ayod-a05.html
By Deepal Jayasekera
5 August 2020
In a nationally-televised event, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to lay the foundation stone today for a temple devoted to the mythical Hindu god Ram on the site of the former Babri Masjid (mosque) in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
The razing of the 475-year-old Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 was an historic crime, perpetrated by Hindu fanatics incited and organised by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and allied Hindu supremacist groups. It precipitated weeks of communal violence across much of northern and western India that resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people, most of them poor Muslims.
Today’s ceremony has been timed to coincide with the first anniversary of another monstrous political crime. One year ago today, Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, working in close concert with the high command of the military-security apparatus, carried out a constitutional coup, illegally rewriting India’s constitution by executive fiat to abrogate the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. They then divided Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories, effectively placing the region under permanent central government control.
To suppress mass popular opposition to these dictatorial actions, the Modi government imposed a months-long state-of-siege on the Kashmir Valley, with blanket curfews, mass detentions without charge, and the suspension of cell phone and internet service. Fearing an explosion of popular anger, many of these measures have been re-imposed in the run-up to today’s anniversary.
The building of a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Majid and the assertion of unfettered Indian central government control over the disputed Kashmir region have been central to the communalist agenda of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, for decades. Modi intends to use the coincidence of the official inauguration of the Ram temple’s construction and the anniversary of Jammu and Kashmir’s “full integration” into the Indian Union to trumpet a supposed new era of Indian “assertion,” and otherwise advance the BJP-RSS agenda to transform India into a Hindu state, where Muslims and other minorities live in sufferance.
The Modi government is ratcheting up communalism in response to its apprehensions that its ruinous response to the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling mass anger and opposition among India’s workers and toilers. The government’s ill-conceived, hastily imposed ten-week COVID-19 lockdown and its subsequent back-to-work drive have produced a health and socio-economic disaster. Tens of millions have lost their jobs and hundreds of millions have seen their meagre incomes slashed.
Meanwhile, the pandemic is surging across India. When Modi’s “unlockdown” officially began on June 8, India had just over 250,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 7,200 deaths. Today, less than two months later, the official cases have almost quadrupled to 1.85 million and the deaths have increased by more than five times to 38,938.
Facing popular anger over the spread of the pandemic and its attempts to “kick start” the economy by implementing a new wave of “pro-investor” measures and by forcing workers back on the job in unsafe conditions, the Modi government is doubling down on its Hindus supremacist agenda. Its aim is to confuse and split the working class, and mobilize its fascistic base to intimidate and threaten its opponents.
Today’s ceremony is the direct outcome of a ruling by India’s Supreme Court last November that validated the Babri Masjid’s destruction, rewarding those who had orchestrated it—in defiance of the Court’s own express orders—with effective sole ownership of the disputed sited. Indeed, the court, in what it provocatively proclaimed an act of “national reconciliation,” officially “ordered” the BJP to oversee the construction of a Ram temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid.
This shameful ruling underscores the extent to which all the institutions of the still nominally secular Indian state have become infused with Hindu communalism.
No less reactionary and revealing is the response of the BJP’s ostensible establishment political opponents.
The Congress Party, the only all-India rival to the BJP and until 2014 the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of national government, has furiously attacked the Ram Mandir Trust, the body officially charged with the temple’s construction, for not inviting its party leadership for the temple’s bhoomi pujan (ground-breaking) program and turning it into an “exclusive BJP-RSS ceremony.”
One Congress leader after another has accused the BJP of stealing “credit” for the Ram temple, citing their own party’s despicable record of conniving with the Hindu chauvinist campaign to raze the Babri Masjid. Most notoriously, in December 1992 the Narasimha Rao-led national Congress government stood by and allowed the historic Ayodhya mosque to be destroyed, although it was forewarned of the BJP-RSS conspiracy to raze it to the ground.
Senior Congress leader and former External Affairs Minster Salman Khurshid complained, “People from across the political spectrum should have been invited just as a courtesy to Lord Ram.” For her part, Priyanka Gandhi, a senior Congress leader in her own right and the daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter of Congress Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, declared, “By Lord Ram’s grace, let this ceremony promote national unity, brotherhood, and cultural confluence.”
Kamal Nath, the former Congress Chief Minster in Madhya Pradesh, boosted the BJP-RSS claim that the campaign to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya enjoys mass support. “People of the country were expecting and wishing for this since long,” said Kamal Nath. “The construction of the temple is being carried out with the consent of every Indian.”
Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh was eager to tout Rajiv Gandhi’s support for the Ram temple movement. He tweeted: “The centre of our faith is Lord Ram!. . . That’s why we all wish that a grand temple should be built at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the same.”
Continuing in this reactionary obscurantist vein, Singh went on to claim that the reason Home Minister Shah recently tested positive for COIVID-19 is because BJP leaders have defied the warnings of a Hindu fundamentalist priest that August 5 is not an “auspicious day” to inaugurate the Ram temple.
The Congress’ response to today’s vile Hindu supremacist celebration flows from its decades of conniving with the Hindu right and instrumentalization of caste and communal divisions. Renouncing its own democratic program for a united secular India, the Congress of Nehru and M.K. Gandhi implemented, in collaboration with South Asia’s departing British colonial overlords, the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim Pakistan.
Despite this record, the twin Stalinist parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—have long promoted the big business Congress Party as a “secular bulwark” against the BJP.
In response to today’s inaugural ceremony, the CPM Politburo has issued a statement reiterating its support for the Supreme Court’s reactionary verdict of last November in what it calls the “Ayodhya dispute.” It then goes on to echo the Congress’ complaint that the bhumi pujan ceremony at Ayodhya has been taken over by the BJP, thus implying that if Modi and Shah were not trying to take sole “credit” for the successful campaign to build a Ram temple, there would be nothing objectionable in consecrating and completing the communalist crime of Dec. 6, 1992.
The Stalinists bear central political responsibility for the rise of the BJP and the Hindu right. For decades, they have justified their systematic subordination of the working class to the Congress Party, various reactionary caste-based regional bourgeois parties, and the putrefied state institutions of the “democratic” Indian Republic in the name of “blocking the fascist BJP” from power. From 1989 through 2008, the Stalinists played a pivotal role in the formation of a succession of governments, most of them Congress Party led, that implemented the Indian ruling elite’s neo-liberal “reform” agenda and pursued closer ties with US imperialism. Moreover, in those states where they have formed the government the CPM and CPI have similarly pursued pro-investor polices. This opened the door for the BJP to cynically exploit growing popular anger over mass poverty, ever widening social inequality, and endemic corruption.
There is mass opposition to Modi and the BJP government and to the Indian ruling elite’s class war agenda and incendiary strategic partnership with US imperialism. But this opposition must find a new political road. This requires the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force, in opposition to all the parties of the capitalist establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI, and the fight to rally the rural toilers and all sections of the oppressed behind it in the struggle for a workers and peasant’s government and international socialism.
“A lot of people really don’t think we should be working right now”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/fair-a05.html
GM Fairfax worker speaks out on spread of COVID-19
By James Tatsch
5 August 2020
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with a worker at the General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kansas, about conditions at the facility that are leading to the spread of the deadly COVID-19 disease.
Last week saw the highest number of new recorded cases for the Kansas City metro area since the start of the pandemic. The ever-increasing level of confirmed cases takes place as infection levels are soaring across both Kansas and Missouri, which have been recording record-breaking highs on a near-daily basis.
The GM Fairfax Assembly Plant is a sprawling 4,900,000-square-foot facility located in the Fairfax Industrial District along the Missouri River. Beginning production in 1988, on the grounds of the former Fairfax Airport, the plant now employees 2,385 workers in the production of the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac XT4 models.
Following the two-month shutdown of the auto industry forced by workers through a series of wildcat strikes earlier this year, production at the Fairfax Plant officially resumed on June 1, with the reinstitution of two full-time shifts. A third shift at the plant was previously cut and roughly 1,000 laid off in 2017, with the company’s move encountering no opposition from the United Auto Workers.
Prior to restarting production this summer, GM and the UAW trumpeted safety protocols such as hand washing, sanitizing, temperature screening and physical distancing, claiming they were adequate to protect workers from infection. All of these would-be preventative measures have amounted to little more than empty talk as demonstrated by the expanding outbreaks of infections across the auto industry since its reopening.
Following the June 1 restart of the Fairfax plant, a GM spokesman was forced to release a statement acknowledging that an employee at the plant had tested positive for COVID-19 on June 11. In the statement, GM claimed that the employee was infected outside work, while providing no evidence to support this claim.
“They always say it’s outside of work,” commented Sam, a Fairfax worker, in response to the GM statement (Sam’s real name has not been used as protection against retaliation). Asked if he thought that was the only case at the plant since reopening, he said, “I have a hard time buying that. I’ve heard of a lot more than one person who had COVID.”
The worker continued, “I heard someone had the COVID who works near the main door, the main entrance. Someone who was in the cleaning room. Someone else on the Tech Team, and they’re all over, they go to several areas in the plant throughout the day.” He noted the high volume of workers calling off work every day. “What happens to those that were around that person? If they were exposed why weren’t they quarantined?”
“I think they’re trying to hide as much as they can, and the true impact on the plant. I believe the UAW and GM are in cahoots with each other. There’s no doubt in my mind. Both sides are withholding the truth.”
The cleaning and safety protocols that GM has outlined publicly have largely been ignored inside the plant. “The only thing I know of is that they’re cleaning the bathrooms more frequently. Cleaning ladies wiping down the rails. But that’s about all I see.” He added, “We’re given an additional five minutes to disinfect our work area before the line starts. They give us a spray bottle of something, we don’t know what it is. But now management is starting to complain that it’s damaging the tiles we’re walking on.”
“People are wearing masks, social distancing, but it’s getting worse because you really can’t distance, there’s a lot of jobs side-by-side where it’s impossible to control. People on the line are working two to three feet from each other, you’re right on top of each other sometimes.”
Commenting on the temperature in the plant, he recalled, “Prior to the July shutdown, they did cool some areas down. But since we returned it’s been hot. It was hot enough I was glazing in sweat.” He added, “One of the complaints for me is when you wear safety glasses and the mask, it causes the glasses to fog up, and makes it a lot harder to see. They said to rub some Joy [dish soap] on it, which helped a little bit, but not that much and you end up with soap on your face.”
Another factor he found seriously concerning was the potential for the transmission through the environmental system. “I think no matter what you do, whether manufacturing or in the schools, the heating and ventilation systems are going to spread it. If the virus gets in that system, it’s going to blow it right on you.”
Prior to the pandemic, GM laid off a number of temporary workers before they were to become full-time, Sam said. Such actions render all but meaningless the so-called “pathway” to full-time employment touted by the UAW in the 2019 national contract. “They had a lot of temp workers who were waiting to become permanent, and GM let them all go.” Since then, many of the temps hired to fill in the gaps from absenteeism have quit. “I was told there were about 170 people hired, and after a few days, there were just about 50 people left. It’s very demanding work. The turnaround is huge.”
There is an immense danger that workers may be unknowingly infected on the job and not yet showing symptoms. “A lot of people are very concerned for their families, or their children—afraid of giving it to their grandpas or grandmas, bringing the COVID home and infecting their loved ones.” He added, “We know there is no cure for it, and without a cure, that puts a lot of lives in jeopardy. That’s a lot of lives to put at risk. At what point do lives matter?”
Voicing concerns to management or the UAW or raising safety issues have time and again proved to be a dead end for workers at the plant. The UAW safety reps “don’t do anything,” he said. “They always have some kind of stupid story to help GM out.
“I see retaliation in this plant, I see the union working together with management and people are recognizing that.”
Faced with the intransigent refusal of management and the union to ensure safety, workers at Detroit-area Fiat Chrysler plants and the Ford Dearborn Truck plant have established rank-and-file safety committees independent of the UAW and management to fight for a healthy and safe workplace. These committees have demanded full disclosure of COVID-19 cases; for production to be halted for cleaning when infections occur; and regular, universal testing.
Asked what he thought about workers organizing independently, Sam responded, “We don’t feel like the UAW protects us anymore. We feel like we’re sold out. A lot of people are very angry. The world is changing, and we need to change too.
“We’re starting to break down and get tired of it. It’s just a matter of time before we organize and go after what’s right. That’s where our power is, in numbers.”
For help starting a rank-and-file safety committee at your factory, email the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter at autoworkers@wsws.org.
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Amazon violates its own health and safety rules in COVID-19 coverup
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/amzn-a05.html
By Nick Barrickman and Patrick Smith
5 August 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rip through Amazon warehouses around the United States. The company, which has seen an unprecedented rise in its revenues over the course of the first six months of 2020 due to increased demand, still continues to hide the real human cost of its fortunes in the untold number of illnesses and deaths.
According to Jana Jumpp, an Amazon whistleblower, the company has at least 1,779 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States as of mid-July. To date, the former Amazon employee has mounted the only systematic effort to track cases at the company in the United States. For its part, Amazon has told media outlets that reporting numbers of cases “isn’t particularly useful.”
Last month, Amazon reported its year-over-year sales profits stood at $88.9 billion, more than double its earnings from a year ago and far dwarfing its often-touted $4 billion in reported safety precautions it has spent during the pandemic. The corporation has expanded its market capitalization to over $1.5 trillion, and its CEO, Jeff Bezos has added nearly $74 billion to his wealth over the course of the pandemic due to the rising value of Amazon’s stock. Bezos’s wealth currently stands at $189 billion. It is speculated that if his wealth continues to grow at the current rate, Bezos may become the world’s first trillionaire.
Last week, a worker at Amazon’s MEM1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee wrote on social media that 35 workers “walked out of my job … because they tested positive” for COVID-19. This is just one of many locations where workers have reported serious outbreaks. On Saturday, several dozen workers in San Leandro, California protested Amazon’s lack of effective social distancing and meager sanitation measures.
With nearly 5 million confirmed coronavirus infections in the US—the highest in the world--the actual number of cases at Amazon is doubtlessly many multiples higher than even Jumpp’s estimates. The corporation regularly sends texts to its employees reporting that an undisclosed number of “individuals” in the facility have been diagnosed with the highly contagious COVID-19 virus. No further information is given, such as where the worker was stationed, who has been in contact with them, or other such useful health-related facts. Such communications invariably conclude with the company’s claim that its “top concern” is health and safety.
“There is a disconnect between what is being said in the media and what is really going on in [Amazon],” said Jonathan, who spoke to the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) using a fake name out of fear the company would retaliate. “I think it’s disgusting that they make it seem like everything is rainbows and happiness when that’s not the case,” he added, referring to the series of propaganda news reports paid for by Amazon on local news channels throughout the pandemic, which lie to the public about the real situation in warehouses.
A recent investigation conducted in Las Vegas, Nevada further testifies to the company’s lies. According to ABC News, which obtained internal emails from sources inside Amazon warehouses in southern Nevada, “the company’s public relations team deemed local news reports about the situation as ‘inaccurate,’” telling employees “to disregard news stories” about cases accumulating at its locations. The email stated that “hopefully” management would report such cases directly to the workforce.
“It’s hard to say you are sanitizing the place, which is not sanitized, by using it every day, the whole time we’re there,” an anonymous Amazon worker told ABC News. They called on Amazon to “close [a warehouse] down for two days since you hired so many people or allow those who are [sic] sick not to feel threatened with their jobs if they need to take off.”
This, of course, is not acceptable to Amazon’s bottom line. “Management isn’t telling us anything,” Jonathan noted, who experienced symptoms similar to COVID-19 in June. Jonathan was nearly fired last month after complying with the company’s own rules requiring a written doctor’s permission to return to work after he went to get tested for COVID-19.
“I felt like I was having an upper respiratory issue. It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my life so I decided to quarantine and get tested.” After facing the uncertainty of being tested, and thankfully coming up negative for the virus, Jonathan was required to receive a written notification approving his return to work.
The following day he received a UPT (unpaid time off) email notifying him that he was missing work without permission. “I responded to this email telling them I was waiting for my results and gave them my case number that was given to me by HR,” he said. The UPT emails continued to come for a total of three days until, on the fourth day, he got sent a “job abandonment” email.
“All along, I was responding, answering these emails with no response. After I got that email, they locked me out of the email system. It seemed like I was being punished.” Finally, after calling and emailing numerous times to HR and the “Leave Team,” he was cleared to return to work. Jonathan has since taken another leave due to fears that management is continuing to hide the total number of cases of COVID-19 from workers.
Jonathan also noted the hypocrisy of companies like Amazon which have sought to posture as defenders of “black lives” in the wake of massive social protests against police brutality following the May killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “During the funeral for George Floyd, a message came out over the intercom for everybody to stop working for eight minutes, the amount of time the cop had his knee on Floyd’s neck. I couldn’t take it. I had to walk off the job. They don’t care about him or any of their workers. All they care about is their profits,” he said.
Rather than appealing to corporations such as Amazon to defend lives of workers, it is necessary for workers in logistics to form independent rank and file safety committees to take every measure necessary to protect themselves from the coronavirus. These committees must strive to build ties with workers at United Parcel Service and the United States Postal Service, which faces threats of privatization.
“I really appreciate what you guys do. You’re pointing out the fact that it doesn’t matter where you work or what country that you work in, we’re all in the same boat. The pandemic has pulled back the curtain and revealed that the ‘essential’ workers are expendable,” Jonathan concluded in his comments to the IAWV.
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