The Grenfell Tower landlord held a secret meeting to cut refurbishment costs – including discussing the switch to cheaper cladding – despite being warned by lawyers that it would break procurement law.

David Gibson, head of capital investment at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), which operated the council tower block for its owner, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, organised a “secret” and “offline” meeting with the contractor Rydon in which they agreed more than £800,000 in savings.

Rydon subsequently agreed to drop landscaping works, cut the cost of windows, and switch more expensive zinc cladding panels for the aluminium alternatives which became the main cause of the spread of the June 2017 fire that claimed 72 lives. Rydon had already quoted a price cheaper than two rival bids and £800,000 less than estimated by the landlord’s own advisers. But the inquiry heard the landlord still wanted increase savings before awarding the contract. Neither the architect nor the landlords’ construction advisers were told about the meeting.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/15/grenfell-tower-landlord-had-secret-meeting-on-cost-cutting-inquiry-told

 Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees temporarily housed in emergency accommodation across the UK are being “unfairly and inaccurately” blamed for the national housing crisis, according to a coalition of more than 100 housing organisations.

Charities including Shelter, Homeless Link and the Big Issue say the housing emergency is the fault of the government, not those asylum seekers who have fled trafficking, violence and conflict.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Our country is in the grip of a housing emergency that has been caused by the failure of successive governments to build the social homes we need. It has not been caused by refugees. We must call out the lies that certain groups tell in order to sow division between people and communities for their own ends. We must stand up to hate when we see it.”

Sarah Taal, director of Birmingham-based Baobab Women’s Project, says asylum seekers are being unduly blamed for the social housing crisis by far-right groups.

“Asylum seekers aren’t entitled to social housing, so they’re not taking homes from anyone.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/16/call-out-the-lies-uk-charities-hit-back-over-bids-to-blame-refugees-for-housing-crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding economic upheaval and in-depth reporting  from the Associated Press show that the coronavirus crisis is also undermining two decades of gains against child labor in the developing world, where an entire generation of impoverished children lacking access to safe education opportunities are being driven by economic necessity to work alongside their parents or in place of unemployed caretakers.

“With classrooms shuttered and parents losing their jobs, children are trading their ABC’s for the D of drudgery,” wrote María Verza, Carlos Valdez, and William Costa in AP. “Reading, writing, and times tables are giving way to sweat, blisters, and fading hopes for a better life.”

Author and commentator Nathan Robinson said that the dire situation demonstrates the depravity of the global economic system and its inability to guarantee the well-being of all the world’s inhabitants despite there being more than enough resources to do so. “Capitalism is monstrous,” he said. 

Robinson also noted that it’s a “good time to remember that a number of free market economists defend child labor as being a good thing because it’s ‘freely chosen’ and work is good, so prohibiting it would be ‘coercive.’ ” , Robinson cited multiple examples of economists defending the alleged virtues of child labor, which Jeffrey Tucker of the right-wing think tank American Institute for Economic Research for instance described as an “opportunity taken away from kids” by compulsory schooling. 

 Instead of going to school Children in Kenya are grinding rocks in quarries. Tens of thousands of children in India have poured into farm fields and factories. Across Latin America, kids are making bricks, building furniture, and clearing brush.

“These children and adolescents,” AP noted, “are earning pennies or at best a few dollars a day to help put food on the table”—putting in long hours at jobs that used to be after-school activities but have in recent months been transformed into full-time work. 

Astrid Hollander, UNICEF’s head of education in Mexico explained that “child labor becomes a survival mechanism for many families.”

“We have seen new children and adolescents selling in the street,” Patricia Velasco, manager of a city program for at-risk people in La Paz, Bolivia, told AP. “They’ve been pushed to generate income.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/resurgence-child-labor-amid-global-pandemic-offered-proof-capitalism-monstrous

 American  families struggling to make ends meet during the coronavirus pandemic according to two separate poverty studies at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy and one out of the University of Chicago and Notre Dame.

The Columbia study found that eight million more Americans are now poor than were in May—signaling that the pandemic has plunged more people into poverty than before the crisis.

The University of Chicago and Notre Dame study found that six million people have fallen into poverty in the past three months.

 Both reports found that the number of children living in poverty is rising, with 2.5 million more poor children since May.

 The CARES Act has been recognized as a significant piece of anti-poverty legislation, saving 12 million people from being pushed into poverty when it was passed in March. The Columbia study found that in May, 18 million people were being kept out of poverty thanks to the direct payments and $600 per week enhanced unemployment benefits. A major shortcoming of the CARES Act, Columbia researcher Christopher Wimer told the Times, “was its temporary nature.” 

“It wasn’t perfect, but hands down it’s the most successful thing we’ve ever done in negating hardship,” H. Luke Shaefer, a researcher at the University of Michigan, told the New York Times, which reported that millions of people—including undocumented immigrants and families who don’t have large enough incomes to file tax returns—were left out of the package.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/8-million-forced-into-poverty-since-mcconnell-let-relief-expire-studies/

Despite reforms in many states aimed at restoring ex-felons’ voting rights, an estimated 5.2 million Americans will remain disenfranchised and unable to vote in the 2020 elections.  Setbacks in some states have reversed some gains.

“The bedrock of any democracy is the right to vote,” said Amy Fettig, executive director of The Sentencing Project, in a statement introducing the study. “Laws that exclude people from voting have destabilized communities and families in America for decades by denying them a voice in determining their futures. Voting is a vital responsibility of citizenship that must be encouraged and defended.”

According to the new report released by The Sentencing Project—titled “Locked Out 2020” (pdf)—one out of every 44 U.S. adults is disenfranchised due to current or previous felony convictions. The rate of disenfranchisement is highest in Southern states, the analysis found, where ballot restrictions enacted during the Jim Crow era in order to prevent Black men from voting and holding office remain in effect. In three states—Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee—more than 8% of the adult population, or one of every 13 people, has had their right to vote taken away. In seven states—Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming—more than one in seven Black Americans is barred from the ballot box, twice the national average.

The estimated 5.17 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, represent a 15% decline since 2016 due to states enacting measures to restore voting rights. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, 5.85 million in 2010, and 6.11 million in 2016.

One in 16 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.7 times greater than that of non-Blacks. Over 6.2% of the adult Black population is disenfranchised, compared to 1.7% of the non-Black population.

560,000 Latinx Americans, or over 2% of the voting eligible population, are disenfranchised.

1.2 million women are disenfranchised, comprising over 20% of the total disenfranchised population.

Only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow currently incarcerated felons to vote. Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ukraine allow convicted felons to vote, even while they are incarcerated. 

In Florida, for example, nearly 900,000 people who have completed their sentences remain unable to vote despite the passage of a 2018 referendum that restored their voting rights. The following year, Republicans undermined this historic reform by passing a law—later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court—requiring former felons to pay all their outstanding court fees in order to regain the right to vote.

https://commons.commondreams.org/t/nearly-5-2-million-americans-will-be-disenfranchised-in-2020-election-due-to-felony-convictions-study/83206/6

 In 2016, barely half of eligible U.S. voters actually voted.

Texas, for example, only allows absentee voting if voters are 65 or older, disabled, or incarcerated but eligible to vote. Even during COVID, the state won’t expand absentee voting to more of the state’s population, and they’ve fought tooth and nail in court to prevent counties with millions of residents from opening more than one drop-off point.

 Wisconsin requires the signature of a witness on absentee ballots. During the primary, the state threw out 14,000 absentee ballots because they lacked witness signatures. In a general election, those 14,000 votes could swing the entire result.

Eight states require witness signatures—and three even require a notary to sign it.

 Arkansas and Alabama require voters to mail a photocopy of their ID along with their ballots, a burdensome requirement.

 Milwaukee, had only five polling places in the primary. Voters had to stand in long lines and literally risk their lives to exercise their right to vote.

 Already, states like Georgia are seeing 10 and 11 hour lines even for early voting in the general election. Some areas, especially where there are large numbers of voters of color, have few polling places and long lines.

Then there are the ID requirements.

 Wisconsin is among the six states with the strictest photo ID requirements to vote. It’s no big deal if you have a Wisconsin driver’s license, state ID, or passport —  but a very big deal if you don’t. In the 2016 election, in two Wisconsin counties alone, voter ID law kept 17,000 people from voting. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,700 votes.

Elections are held on a Tuesday, when most people work. 

 Most progressives and liberals consider Trump much like a surgeon views a malignant tumor. Cut it out and the patient’s health will improve. But the cancer is capitalism and it has spread to all parts (and parties) of the body politic. Excising Trump is no cure.

Bipartisanship offers what the economic elites like best, namely government policy based on no political principles whatever – not even the phantom principles of Democratic and Republican party platforms – all the better to directly serve the interests of corporate capitalism. The ruling class get on with the business of enriching itself without having to busy itself with actual government policy. Whether the Democratic or Republican parties identifies the “national interest” and “public good” with the needs of investors, bankers and shareholders for maximum corporate profit. Bipartisanship means the two parties working together to screw working people. Government under capitalism does not act to protect a “level playing field” to give working people a fair chance. 

 Corporate interests organize and contend for special favors, subsidies and tax advantages, privileged access to markets — all of which is bought and paid for in political contributions and other forms of (mainly legal) bribery to both parties. The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. With either of those parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class hold the reins and the working class are under the lash. 

The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties—differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests—they have the same principles and are equally corrupt and are united as one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.

The capitalists made no mistake in endorsing Trump. They know him well and he has served them well. They know that his instincts, associations, tastes and desires are with them, that he is in fact one of them and that he has nothing in common with the working class. And Biden is near enough alike in his support for the fundamentals of capitalism to pass for Trump’s twin brother. Both adopt the Wall street brand.

Trump and Biden are both good Republicans, just as they are both good Democrats. The Democratic Party are hopeful of success because of the personality defects of Trump rather than any merits of its own or virtues of Biden.

The capitalists are combined against you. Both Republican and Democratic parties are capitalist parties. There is not the slightest doubt about it. It can be proved in a hundred different ways. There will be no change as long as you continue to support the prevailing capitalist parties.

As long as the votes of working people are divided between the Republican and Democratic parties capitalism has nothing to fear, as both these parties are its equally subservient tools. Whichever of these parties is in power capitalism has nothing to fear. As a matter of fact there is no real difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Both are supporters of the existing competitive economic system and it is now very difficult to distinguish a Republican from a Democrat by any policy that he or she favors or opposes. Regardless of what some high-profile liberals and progressives might claim it is not going to make a vital difference to the country whether the Republicans or the Democrats win this year.

The World Socialist Party knows neither color, gender nor race. It knows no aliens among the oppressed and downtrodden. It is first and last the party of the workers, regardless of their nationality, proclaiming their interests, voicing their aspirations, and fighting their battles. People are turning with loathing and disgust from the Republican and Democratic parties under whose past administrations appalling conditions have been brought upon the people. The message of socialism, which, for many years  was spurned by these people, increasingly falls today upon eager ears and receptive minds.

Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the World Socialist Party position is a plain and simple declaration of principles. They were not framed merely with a view to winning votes. There is no ambiguity; no evasion, no attempt to compromise and no effort to maintain the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The working class will obtain little relief through defeating Republicans simply to elect Democrats in their stead.

The World Socialist Party is the only party of the people, the only party opposed to the rule of the plutocracy, the only truly democratic party in the world, the party of an awakening working class. The education, organization and co-operation of the workers, the entire body of them, is the conscious aim and the self-imposed task of the World Socialist Party for the socialist commonwealth. The World Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce

California’s Proposition 22 is a state ballot measure that would exempt gig companies from AB5, a landmark labor law passed in 2019 that extended employee protections to gig workers. In other words, Prop 22 would allow these companies not to treat gig workers like employees.

The official name of the ballot measure is the “Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act”. The measure, if passed by the majority of voters on 3 November, would apply to app-based drivers, including those who work for Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash. 

California is the birthplace of the gig economy, and how it is regulated in its home state may have effects on how regulation plays out in the rest of the country, and the world.

The companies behind Prop 22 have indeed made billions on the contractor-based business model. When Lyft went public in 2019, it was valued at $22bn and had 1.9 million drivers working through its app. Uber was valued at $82bn ahead of its initial public offering in May 2019 and had 3.9 million drivers.  The businesses have spent more than $184m on campaigns promoting Proposition 22. Tactics used to promote Proposition 22 have been aggressive and persistent: Uber and Lyft both sent out a number of emails and push notifications within their apps encouraging riders to vote yes. Instacart has encouraged workers to advertise the ballot measure with stickers.

 Positioning gig workers as permanent contractors would pose a major blow to workers’ rights. Drivers and labor groups oppose Prop 22, saying it allows companies to sidestep their obligations to provide benefits and standard minimum wages to their workers. Many drivers say they have created a lot of the value for these companies but have seen very little of the profit. “Uber is paying drivers poverty wages and continues to slash wages while executives make millions,” one driver told the Guardian.

 The Proposition 22 coalition estimated workers would make $25-27 per hour. Another study from Univeristy of California, Berkeley, said earnings could still be well below the minimum wage, at $5.64 per hour. California’s minimum wage will be $15.60 in 2021.

The official “No On Prop 22 Coalition” is made up of four driver groups: Gig Workers Rising, We Drive Progress, Mobile Workers United and Rideshare Drivers United. The Service Employees International Union also joined the fight against Prop 22.Cumulatively these groups represent more than 55,000 workers in California.  The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and a number of California papers including the Sacramento Bee, the Fresno Bee, the Modesto Bee, Merced Sun Star, and San Luis Obispo Tribune have called on voters to reject Prop 22. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have spoken also against it, while Bernie Sanders has also condemned the ballot measure, tweeting: “I’m opposed to Prop 22 because people working full time deserve decent wages and good benefits.”

If Proposition 22 passes, workers will retain their status as independent contractors. They will not be provided health insurance through Lyft or Uber but will get stipends towards insurance. It will also be difficult to change or overturn in the future, because that would require a 7/8 supermajority – difficult to attain in the California legislature.

If Proposition 22 doesn’t pass companies will not be exempt from AB5 and drivers would then be entitled to healthcare, minimum wage, and other employee benefits. However, Uber and Lyft have threatened to pull out of California if the bill is passed

Amid economic austerity measures and the costs of the pandemic, Sweden has decided that the Russian threat deserves spending on its defence.

The military budget would be increased between 2021 and 2025, an increase in the military budget of 27.5bn Swedish kronor ($3.10bn) by 2025, a rise of 40% which would fund an expansion of military personnel to about 90,000 from 60,000 people, including a new mechanised brigade with updated artillery.

The navy will get an extra submarine, increasing the number to five, and the corvette fleet will be updated, while the army and air force will get upgraded weapons systems. Sweden is already buying Patriot missiles from the US.In addition, the draft will be expanded to 8,000 a year by 2025, up from 4,000 in 2019. Sweden ended conscription in 2010, but reintroduced compulsory military service for a limited number of men and women in 2017.

 Child poverty has shot up in towns and cities across the north and Midlands of England fuelled by stagnating family incomes and the spiralling cost of housing. The figures predated Covid, they showed alarming rates of child poverty even before the pandemic led to large numbers of people losing their jobs.

Although deprived inner-London boroughs such as Newham and Tower Hamlets continue to have the highest levels of child poverty in the UK, the most striking increases have been in Middlesbrough, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and parts of Birmingham.

The north-east saw the most dramatic rise in child poverty, up nine percentage points between 2014-15 and 2018-19, taking it from the English region with the joint second-lowest rate to the second highest, behind London.

Eight of the 10 UK local authorities suffering the sharpest child poverty increases over the period, which covered the peak years of austerity, were in in the north-east, headed by Middlesbrough, where 41.1% of children were in poverty in 2018-19, up from 28.6% five years earlier.

“This data reveals the true extent of the hardship experienced by families on low incomes – the majority of which were working households before the pandemic. The children affected are on a cliff edge, and the pandemic will only sweep them further into danger,” said Anna Feuchtwang, chair of End Child Poverty. Feuchtwang continued, “During the pandemic we’ve seen unexpected increases in house prices, coupled with rising unemployment and a surge in people forced to make benefit claims, and we worry that a steep rise in child poverty is on the way.”

In 2018-19, 30% of UK children were in poverty, defined as children in households with incomes after subtracting housing costs of less than 60% of the median. In England, 31% of children were below the breadline, compared with 28% in Wales, 25% in Northern Ireland and 24% in Scotland.

Tower Hamlets had the highest percentage of children in poverty in the UK, at 55.4% after housing costs, according to the analysis, followed by Newham at 50.3% and Barking and Dagenham at 49.9%. Birmingham (41.6%) had the highest child poverty rates outside London.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/14/child-poverty-increases-in-england-across-the-north-and-midlands