ILO – Depressing Future

Uncategorised No Comments
Almost half the global workforce – 1.6 billion people – are in “immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed” by the economic impact of Covid-19, the International Labour Organization has warned.



Of the total global working population of 3.3 billion, about 2 billion work in the “informal economy”, often on short-term contracts or self-employment, and suffered a 60% collapse in their wages in the first month of the crisis. Of these, 1.6 billion face losing their livelihoods, the ILO warned .



“It shows I think in the starkest possible terms that the jobs employment crisis and all of its consequences is deepening by comparison with our estimates of three weeks ago,” the UN agency’s director general, Guy Ryder, told a briefing, foreseeing a “massive” poverty impact. “For millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future. Millions of businesses around the world are barely breathing,” said Ryder. “They have no savings or access to credit. These are the real faces of the world of work. If we don’t help them now, they will simply perish.”

North and South America were the worst affected regions following the rapid spread of the virus through the US and Brazil, but self-employed and contract workers in Europe were also in imminent danger of seeing their livelihoods disappear. n the Americas, the loss of working hours in the second quarter is expected to reach 12.4% compared with the pre-crisis level. In Europe and central Asia, the decline is estimated at 11.8%.



This translates into a drop in the incomes of informal workers of 81% in Africa and the Americas, 21.6% in Asia and the Pacific, and 70% in Europe and central Asia.



The deepening crisis in many other parts of the world left more than 436m businesses facing high risks of serious disruption, the ILO said. These employers are operating in the hardest-hit economic sectors, including 232m in the wholesale and retail sectors, 111m in manufacturing industries, 51m in accommodation and food services, and 42m in real estate and other business activities.
Ryder said he hoped governments would recognise that they needed to reconstruct their economies around better working practices and “not a return to the pre-pandemic world of precarious work for the majority”.



He said: “The pandemic has laid bare just how precarious, just how fragile, just how unequal our world of work is. It is commonly said that this pandemic does not discriminate, and in medical terms that is right. We can all be struck by the pandemic. But in terms of the economic and social effects, this pandemic discriminates massively and above all it discriminates against those who are at the bottom end of the world of work, those who don’t have protection, those who don’t have resources and the basics of what we would call the essentials of a normal life.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/half-of-worlds-workers-at-immediate-risk-of-losing-livelihood-due-to-coronavirus

Boom Times for Some

Uncategorised No Comments
Amazon’s market capitalization has ballooned by over $90 billion to record highs since mid-February, adding $5 billion to the fortune of founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. Reflecting changes caused by the coronavirus, the average analyst estimate for Amazon’s quarterly revenue has increased by over $1 billion since the end of January. Analysts on average expect Amazon’s March quarter revenue to have jumped 23% to $73.61 billion, with adjusted earnings of $6.25 per share, according to Refinitiv.



With hand sanitizers, groceries, office chairs, home exercise equipment and other products selling out on its website as millions of people around the world shelter at home.



Critics, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, have accused Amazon of taking inadequate measures to protect warehouse workers from catching the illness. 



Overall, about 50 S&P 500 stocks are up since Feb. 19, a few of them directly because of the coronavirus outbreak and related changes in consumer behaviour. Some of those have risen more on a percentage basis than Amazon.



  Gilead Sciences, which on Wednesday gave an encouraging update on a potential COVID-19 treatment, has jumped 25% since Feb. 19, adding $21 billion to its market capitalization. 



 General Mills and Conagra Brands have both climbed 15% as consumers stocked up on food and other consumer staples. 



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-stocks/amazon-is-wall-streets-biggest-winner-from-coronavirus-idUSKBN22B2ZU

Will COVID-19 Change the World?

Uncategorised No Comments
CAPITALISM’S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS How is it possible that countries with the largest economies in the world can’t even organise enough protection to safeguard their nurses and doctors in the frontline? How have food manufacturers and retailers build food supply chains that are so fragile and inadequate that the slightest hint of panic-buying leaves supermarket shelves empty or diminished for weeks or months? How have we allowed ourselves to become so detached from reality and addicted to all sorts of superficial distractions such as Netflix?



 Without transformative change humanity is at risk. Let’s rebuild the new society that we need. Let us construct a fairer and less destructive world. We can build better and stronger. After coronavirus, there should be no return to ‘normal’. When we say no going back to business–as–usual this time, we must really mean it. Whatever happens, our future world must be profoundly different. Communities are helping each other out in this pandemic. At every level, neighbourhood and city, let’s encourage and support this powerful spirit and create funding for communities to rebuild together. A plethora of hard-working community project groups have been created, unlocking stimulus and energy. Greedy capitalists and sociopathic politicians have all the power in the modern world. We can do more to publicise the capitalist and market-driven roots of these issues.Instead we can make life the central raison d’être. Socialists speak of the reinvention of society. Socialists want more equitable future to arrive and a more humane world for ourselves and for others.



It would be simplistic to assume that an outbreak of a pandemic in itself could automatically could propel and produce change but there is no denying that the current crisis has laid bare the numerous fault-lines within the capitalist system. The COVID crisis has magnified a reality of capitalism’s failures. For example, one of many examples of the failure of the profit driven system is health care.  COVID-19 exposes the fact that essential workers who provide food, healthcare, and deliveries to our homes are mistreated and underappreciated. Workers are underpaid and are not being provided with protective equipment or allowed sick leave. The COVID-19 rescue laws have given trillions in funding to investors and Big Business.



We must help mobilise people. When people are in the movement, a union, or an organisation, they are ready to be part of a mass action in achieving change. It’s a stupidity and arrogance that allows us to believe that we can continue to plunder our environment and devour non-renewable resources.



Workers are thrown to the wolves by politicians and an economic system. For those people who live in countries where there is no social security system whatever, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens consequences infinitely worse and condemns a whole families to deprivation, because wages are so low, that daily life is a relentless struggle to survive as it is without the added complications of COVID-19.



The IDPs

Uncategorised No Comments
In its annual report, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) warns a record 50.8 million people worldwide are internally displaced due to conflict or disaster, with coronavirus posing a new threat. The IDMC says Covid-19 may add further risks to millions of already vulnerable people.
 Over 45 million have been forced to abandon their homes due to violence. A further five million have been displaced by natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, the IDMC says.



It adds that the number of people internally displaced – those who flee conflict or disaster but remain in their own countries – has now reached a record high. 

The new coronavirus is likely to make the lives of many of these people – some already living in cramped, unsanitary conditions such as makeshift emergency shelters, informal settlements and urban slums – more difficult. Such overcrowded conditions make it hard to implement the physical distancing and hygiene measures required to prevent the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. The pandemic also compromises their “precarious living conditions by further limiting their access to essential services and humanitarian aid,” the director of the IDMC, Alexandra Bilak, said.
But even without the pandemic, the number of internally displaced people across the globe is a sign, the new report says, of collective failure.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52450031

The future does not bode well

Uncategorised No Comments
The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause – the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted, Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizio, the world’s leading biodiversity experts have warned.



“There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,” they said. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones.”



In an article with Dr Peter Daszak, who is preparing the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) next assessment, they write: “Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases.”



These activities cause pandemics by bringing more people into contact and conflict with animals, from which 70% of emerging human diseases originate, they said. Combined with urbanisation and the explosive growth of global air travel, this enabled a harmless virus in Asian bats to bring “untold human suffering and halt economies and societies around the world. This is the human hand in pandemic emergence. Yet Covid-19 may be only the beginning. Future pandemics are likely to happen more frequently, spread more rapidly, have greater economic impact and kill more people if we are not extremely careful about the possible impacts of the choices we make today,” they said. “It may be politically expedient to relax environmental standards and to prop up industries such as intensive agriculture, airlines, and fossil-fuel-dependent energy sectors, but doing so without requiring urgent and fundamental change essentially subsidises the emergence of future pandemics.”



Daszak added, “The health of people is intimately connected to the health of wildlife, the health of livestock and the health of the environment. It’s actually one health…Business as usual will not work. Business as usual right now for pandemics is waiting for them to emerge and hoping for a vaccine. That’s not a good strategy. We need to deal with the underlying drivers.”



The biodiversity experts conclude: “We can emerge from the current crisis stronger and more resilient than ever, by choosing actions that protect nature, so that nature can help to protect us.”



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/halt-destruction-nature-worse-pandemics-top-scientists

Prepare for the worse

Uncategorised No Comments
“There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe.” – Noam Chomsky explained,



 Between 1980 and 2013, the number of annual epidemics has gone from fewer than 1,000 to over 3,000. Infectious diseases such as Zika, MERS-CoV, SARS, cholera, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, influenza, and Ebola kill millions every year, and their outbreaks have decimated economies and triggered aftershocks and panic around the world.



A few billionaires have contributed to the fight against Covid-19. But Luke Hildyard, Executive Director of the High Pay Centre, says, “Very generous individual grants can obscure the fact that on the whole, wealthy people’s charitable giving is pretty minimal.” In the most flagrant example of disregard for the rest of us, one company has installed private ‘doomsday’ bunkers in New Zealand with “luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.”



The richest 5% have an average net worth of over $5 million. They came away with nearly $35 TRILLION dollars in the past ten years, mainly by waiting out the stock market, which has more than tripled in value since the recession. In the ten years from 2009 to 2019, the average member of America’s richest 5% more than doubled his/her wealth from $2.6 million to $5.4 million.



Capitalist leaders have failed us, both in the past and in our current crisis. We’re not “all in this together” when so few people own so much of the wealth.

Lebanon Unrest Mounts

Uncategorised No Comments
The crash of Lebanon’s national currency that sent food prices soaring has boiled over into street violence in the northern city of Tripoli  where a man wounded in clashes between protesters and security forces is now dead.



Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, has soaring unemployment and poverty, and protesters hurled petrol bombs at several banks and caused wide damage. Protests also erupted elsewhere in Lebanon. In Beirut,  cash machines were set on fire.  Anti-government protests resumed as authorities began easing the weeks-long lockdown to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Lebanon, which has reported 710 cases and 24 deaths so far.



Over the weekend, the Lebanese pound hit a record low, with 4,000 pounds to the dollar on the black market, while the official price remained at 1,507 pounds.  The Central Bank of Lebanon instructed currency exchange shops not to sell the dollar for more than 3,200 pounds. On Monday, most exchange shops were not selling dollars, saying clients who have dollars are refusing to exchange their currency at such a low price. The dollar surged on the black market to 4,300 pounds on Tuesday.



It is the poor who pay the price.

Uncategorised No Comments
Britain’s lowest-paid workers, women and young adults have jobs with the biggest health and economic risks during the coronavirus lockdown, according to a report into the uneven impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.



The Resolution Foundation thinktank said jobs in shutdown parts of the economy were lower paid than average, with as many as one in four of the lowest earners in society working in sectors forced into temporary closure, compared with less than one in 20 of the highest paid.



8.6 million key workers have been putting their health at risk to keep the country running, the study found women were more than twice as likely than men to occupy these roles. Dominated by almost 4 million health workers, as well as education, food and pharmaceutical retail staff, parents are also more likely to be key workers, including as many as two in five working mothers.



The thinktank said key workers, such as nurses, teachers and care workers, typically earn less than employees further away from the centre of the crisis, with the bottom 30% of earners in Britain more than twice as likely to be in such jobs than the top 10%.



As well as health risks facing women and low-income workers in sectors where staff are still going into work, the Resolution Foundation identified 6.3 million people in areas of the economy that have been ordered to shut down, including in hospitality, retail, arts, travel and leisure. It said jobs in sectors that have been effectively forced to close were typically lower paid than average, putting workers in these areas at greater risk of financial hardship as redundancies mount.

One in four of the lowest 10% of all UK earners work in sectors where activity has ground to a halt amid tight restrictions on social and business life across Britain, compared with less than one in 20 of the highest paid.



Young people are particularly likely to work in mothballed sectors, given the higher numbers of young adults in hospitality or retail, where their employers have been forced to close. As the generation to experience the toughest squeeze on pay following the 2008 financial crisis, the report warned that almost a quarter of millennials – born between 1981 and 2000 – currently work in shuttered sectors, compared with 16% of working baby boomers and other older adults born before them.



Although the government is providing billions of pounds of emergency financial support to companies and individuals, millions are still expected to fall through the safety net.

Maja Gustafsson, a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said, “Women, young people and the low-paid are most likely to be bearing the biggest health and economic risks from the crisis, which has shone a spotlight on the vitality of work that has been undervalued and underpaid for far too long,” she added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/uks-lowest-paid-most-at-risk-during-covid-19-crisis-report-finds



Discord – The solution is still socialism.

Uncategorised No Comments
The Socialist Party points out that as a democratic, leader-free socialist party we are committed to the exchange of ideas with others who are interested in changing society. 



The Party has recently introduced Discord, an online tool, with the aim of breaking down the sense of isolation felt by many socialists across the world. If you want to join please don’t delay. And if you know anyone who might want to join, tell them about it.

Details of Discord – See the Party’s website homepage

Talks, meetings, debates – contact Forum Admin for special invite or email H.O.







Can Capitalism Deliver the Vaccines?

Uncategorised No Comments
Nobel laureate and immunologist Professor Peter Doherty said the world needed to change its funding model for vaccine development.
“There is just not enough profit margin in it for pharma companies,” he said. “They live by profits and the rules of capitalism. And capitalism has no interest in human beings other than as consumers.”
Professor Mark Sullivan, managing director of Medicines Development for Global Health, a vaccine development company based in Melbourne, described the vaccine development landscape as a “market failure”.
“The problem is this market failure is our only method of developing medicines,” he said. 



The final study needed for a vaccine to be approved is much more expensive than a similar study for a drug because the study needs to be huge to definitively show prevention of a disease – “tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of participants”, said Professor Sullivan. Three SARS vaccine projects, which may have yielded important insights for a COVID-19 vaccine as the viruses are closely related, stalled at this stage.

And manufacturing a vaccine is much more expensive than making a drug because it often involves modifying yeast or bacteria to produce a vaccine – a difficult and costly process.
Because of all those factors, the enthusiasm of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in vaccines has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years.
Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi which works to distribute vaccines to the poor, said it was very difficult to get funding for research on vaccines for viruses that have not yet become pandemics. “We have enough land-based nuclear missiles to destroy the world. And in case that does not work, we keep air-based missiles and submarines. And that’s to prevent something much less likely than the evolutionary certainty that is a pandemic virus.”
“Without immediate additional financial contributions the vaccine programmes we have begun will not be able to progress and ultimately will not deliver the vaccines that the world needs,” Dr Richard Hatchett,  Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation‘s CEO, said in a statement.







Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

All content on this website CC BY-ND 4.0 with additional translation permissions

MENU

Navigation