Britain battles a worsening social care staffing crisis, with an estimated 105,000 vacancies nationally and thousands of patients facing long delays for care.

Care workers recruited from overseas to look after elderly and disabled people in Britain are being charged thousands of pounds in illegal fees and forced to work in exploitative conditions to pay off their debts. By law, agents cannot charge a fee for finding or trying to find a candidate work. 

But the fees are often disguised as a “processing”, “service” or “admin” charge, with many workers unaware they are illegal. Often, the breakdown of fees or full amount is not fully disclosed until the worker has reached the UK, by which time they have already paid for flights and relocation.

Workers from India, the Philippines, Ghana and Zimbabwe are among those charged for their recruitment, with fees ranging from £3,000 to £18,000.

Some have become trapped in debt bondage – a form of modern slavery – as a result of the fees. Suspected victims described how agents had deducted money from their salaries and withheld their passport or residence permit until they repaid the sum owed.

Others claim to have been subject to abuse and threats or paid less than the minimum wage. They cannot speak up because the sponsorship system for care workers means their visa is tied to their employer.

Many of the care workers used a government visa scheme introduced in February which added care workers to the shortage occupation list to attract international candidates. But evidence collected by the Observer – including interviews with suspected victims, charities and labour experts; conversations with agents; and analysis of payslips, contracts and online chat groups – reveals the new visa route is being widely abused by agencies and traffickers, leaving workers open to exploitation. Modern slavery in the care sector is a growing problem, with several raids by the government’s labour abuse agency recently, and data from charities and the Care Quality Commission suggesting a rise in cases.

Todd Maforimbo, who studied the supply of labour in the UK health sector and now campaigns on labour abuse, explains, “People are coming to look for a better life but they’re ending up in worse situations.”

An internal report from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority said more monitoring was needed to “prevent debt bondage and highlight potential traffickers”.

Revealed: Migrant care workers in Britain charged thousands in illegal recruitment fees | Social care | The Guardian

 A surge in the cost of corn-based Latin American staples such as tortillas, tamales and arepas risks fueling food insecurity and hunger from Mexico to Argentina.

Corn prices hit nine-year high, partly due to Ukraine war

Cost of Latin America’s staple tortillas and tamales jumps

Some 267 million people face food poverty in the region

The surge in the cost of corn – which is used to make Mexico’s staple tortilla – forced Marco Antonio Jimenez to raise the price of his tacos by two pesos (10 U.S. cents), but he said many of his mainly low-income customers could no longer afford the 20-peso snack.

“When the price of tortillas increases, I have to increase the price of tacos. Many people prefer not to buy anything anymore.”

Latin America had the biggest increase in food poverty globally between 2014 and 2020 due to the reduction of economic growth rates, extreme inequality and serious climate events that predated the pandemic. In Mexico, longer and more frequent droughts have forced farmers in some corn-growing areas to switch to less thirsty crops in recent years. Such factors mean the region is especially vulnerable to the impact of higher grains and fertilizer costs linked to the war in Ukraine. Rising fertilizer prices can lead farmers to cut their usage, causing production to fall. 

As the pandemic wreaked havoc on the region’s already weak economies, the prevalence of food insecurity rose to 40.9% from 31.9% between 2019 and 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the latest FAO data. Accelerated inflation is expected to push 7.8 million people more into food insecurity this year, according to new estimates released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Food and drink inflation in six countries – Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay – hit double digits in March, with women and people with informal jobs set to be hit hardest, ECLAC said. Central American countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, which rely on corn-based foods like tamales and pupusas, are particularly at-risk from rising grains prices after the 2020 hurricanes Eta and Iota wrecked crops and exacerbated hunger. Caribbean countries, which are heavily dependent on imported grains and fuel, are also threatened by food insecurity due to an increase in debt burdens during the pandemic.

We are seeing the perfect storm,” said Carolina Trivelli, senior adviser for strategic analysis at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “We need a package of temporary and focalized social policies for the most vulnerable populations and measures to support food production,” said Trivelli.

Governments are taking emergency measures to rein in inflation. Mexico has suspended import duties for a year on a range of essential goods including corn, while Argentina – where inflation could top 70% this year – proposed a bill this month to tax companies that earn “extraordinary income” as a result of the fall-out from the war in Ukraine – mainly commodities firms. Biden pledged $331 million in funding for food security in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Colombia.

The food crisis looks set to last until well into 2023, calling for public policies such as direct welfare payments or school lunch programs to help the poorest.

Corn price hike forces Mexicans to cut back on tortillas (trust.org)

 Water is so low in large stretches of the Po, Italy’s largest river that authorities fear that if it doesn’t rain soon, there’ll be a serious shortage of water for drinking and irrigation for farmers and local populations across the whole of northern Italy.

Northern Italy hasn’t seen rainfall for more than 110 days and this year’s snowfall is down by 70%. Aquifers, which hold groundwater, are depleted. Temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above season average are melting the tiny snowfields and glaciers that were left on the top of the surrounding Alps, leaving the Po basin without its summer water reservoirs.

The drying up of the Po, which runs 652 kilometers (405 miles) from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice, is jeopardizing drinking water in Italy’s densely populated and highly industrialized districts and threatening irrigation in the most intensively farmed part of the country, known as the Italian food valley.

“We are in a situation where the river flow is approximately 300 cubic meters (80,000 gallons) per second here in (the riverside village of) Boretto, while normally in this area we have almost 1800 (cubic meters, 476,000 gallons),” explained Meuccio Berselli, secretary general of the Po River Basin Authority.

Berselli is frantically working on a resiliency plan to guarantee drinking and irrigation water to millions of households and to the Po valley farmers, who produce 40% of Italian food. Parmesan cheese, wheat, high-quality tomatoes, rice and renowned grapes grow in huge quantities in the area. The plan includes higher draining from Alpine lakes, less water for hydroelectric plants and rationing of water in the upstream regions. The Po drought comes at a time when farmers are already pushing both irrigation and watering systems to their maximum to counter the effect of high temperatures and hot winds.

The Italian farmers confederation estimates that wheat yields could drop by 20% to 40% this year. Wheat is a particular concern for farmers as it’s completely reliant on rain and does not get irrigated.

The irrigation system is also at risk. Usually, river water is lifted with diesel fueled electric pumps to upper basins and then flows down in the vast fields of the valley through hundreds of waterways. But now, pumps are at risk of failing to draw water and excavators are frantically working to constantly dredge dedicated waterways to ensure the water necessary for irrigation. The water shortage won’t just hamper food production, but energy generation, too. 

If the Po dries up, numerous hydroelectric power plants will be brought to a halt, at a time when the war in Ukraine has already hiked up energy prices across Europe. According to a state-owned energy service system operator, 55% of the renewable energy coming from hydroelectric plants in Italy comes from the Po and its tributaries. Experts fear that a lack of hydroelectric power will contribute to increased carbon dioxide emissions, as more electricity will have to be produced with natural gas.

As Po dries up, Italy’s food and energy supplies are at risk | AP News

 If it is not heatwaves and droughts, it is downpours and floods from the changing climate patterns.

Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and unleashed devastating floods that left millions of others stranded. Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability. Relentless downpours over the past week have inundated vast stretches of Bangladesh’s northeast. Forecasters said the floods were set to worsen over the next two days with heavy rains in Bangladesh and upstream in India’s northeast.

Water levels in all major rivers across the country were rising. The country has about 130 rivers.

Dozens dead, millions stranded as floods hit Bangladesh, India | Floods News | Al Jazeera

Thousands of people are taking part in a march in London in protest against the cost of living crisis. At Parliament Square a rally will be held, with speakers including Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, which is organising the event.

The TUC said there was “harrowing” evidence of the impact the crisis was having on families, with workers suffering the “longest and harshest” squeeze on earnings in modern history.

O’Grady said: “Prices are skyrocketing, yet boardroom bonuses are back to bumper levels. Everyone who works for a living deserves to earn a decent living, but UK workers are suffering the longest and harshest squeeze on their earnings in modern history.

“If we don’t get pay rising across the economy, we will just keep lurching from crisis to crisis. This cost of living emergency has not come out of the blue. It is the result of more than a decade of standstill wages.” O’Grady said it was “gut-wrenching” to hear how workers were struggling, with no safety net to fall back on and the pay slump showing little sign of slowing.

Workers have lost an average of almost £20,000 in cumulative earnings since 2008 because pay has not kept pace with inflation, the TUC said, adding that it was the biggest loss of “real wages” since the 1830s.

Thousands march in London over cost of living crisis | Cost of living crisis | The Guardian

Out of a total of 211.7 million Brazilians, 116.7 million are experiencing some level of food insecurity, 43.4 million do not have enough food, and 19 million were facing hunger, reveals a June 2022 report by the Brazilian Research Network of Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security (Rede PENSSAN).

 Its national survey shows that less than half of Brazilian households (44.8%) were food secure, while 55.2% of households were experiencing some level of food insecurity, and 9% of households were facing hunger (severe food insecurity).

The situation is even worse in rural areas, where 12% of households are affected by hunger, reveals the survey, while explaining that in rural areas, severe food insecurity is twice as high in households without access to water for food and livestock production compared to those with access to water.

 Households with income of up to half of a minimum monthly salary per capita face severe food insecurity at levels 2.5 times the national average.

The study also pointed to persistent inequalities among regions, including disparities in household income, which are important determinants of food access.

The increasing sharp inequalities between Brazilian regions and between urban and rural populations, economic inequality in Brazil has reached extreme levels, despite being one of the largest economies in the world, reports OXFAM International.

The Latin American giant is still listed as one of the most unequal countries on the planet.

In Brazil, someone earning the minimum monthly wage would have to work 19 years to make the same money a Brazilian from the richest 0.1% of the population makes in one month.

At the current rate inequality is decreasing in Brazil, it will take the country 75 years to reach the United Kingdom’s current level of income equality and almost 60 years to meet Spanish standards.

Compared to its neighbours, Brazil is 35 years behind Uruguay and 30 behind Argentina.

Brazil’s six richest men have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the population; around 100 million people. The country’s richest 5% have the same income as the remaining 95%.

If Brazil’s six richest men pooled their wealth and spent 1 million Brazilian reals a day (around $319,000), it would take them 36 years to spend all their money. Meanwhile, 16 million Brazilians live below the poverty line.

At the current pace of progress, Brazilian women will close the wage gap in 2047. Black Brazilians will earn the same as whites in 2089. Brazil is decades away from wage equality

 An internal document from Amazon, the online retail giant, warns that “if we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the U.S. network by 2024.”

 The report’s findings are the company “was expected to exhaust its entire available labor pool in the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area by the end of 2021, and in the Inland Empire region of California, roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles, by the end of 2022.” The internal research also identified the regions surrounding Memphis, Tennessee, and Wilmington, Delaware, as areas where Amazon was on the cusp of exhausting local warehouse labor availability

“This is crazy. Amazon burns through workers so fast there might be none left soon,” tweeted New York City organizer and writer Joshua Potash, adding that he “can’t imagine how anyone defends a system that treats people like expendable parts like this.”

Amazon’s own data shows that its attrition rate was 123% in 2019 and 159% in 2020, which are high figures compared with the federal government’s estimates for those two years in the U.S. transportation and warehouse sectors (46% and 59%) and retail (58% and 70%).

California Labor Federation’s Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher told Amazon that “maybe it’s time to improve working conditions and allow your workers to unionize.”

Longtime labor reporter Steven Greenhouse similarly suggested that “IF AMAZON LETS ITS WAREHOUSES UNIONIZE, they could become far less grueling places to work and worker turnover could decline greatly.”

“It turns out that low wages and unsafe working conditions are [Amazon’s] biggest labor problem, not unions,” declared Doug Bloch, political director for Teamsters Joint Council 7. “Gee, aren’t those the problems that workers join together in unions to fix?”

Critics Say Amazon Must Improve After Leaked Doc Reveals ‘Looming Labor Crisis’ (commondreams.org)

With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the whole world is discussing the question of war and peace. Europe stands on the verge of the abyss. The danger of a wider war is growing from day to day.

Capitalism has brought upon the people of the world numerous wars, including two disastrous world wars. Wars have caused the people heavy suffering, but have also educated them. More and more people have come to understand that to defend world peace it is imperative to wage struggles against policies of war. Socialists throughout the world are duty-bound to promote the peace sentiments of the people and to stand for world peace. They are duty-bound to expose their deceptions and defeat plans for war. They are duty-bound to educate the people, raise their political consciousness and guide the struggle for world peace in the proper direction.

Total war, with its horrible outrages upon civilians, including children, as distinct from the armies engaged in combat, is not the hellish invention of a few individuals; it is the logical expression of present-day capitalism in military conflicts. ”War,” said Clausewitz, “is a continuation of politics by other means.” And politics, we would add, are a continuation of economic conflict by other means.

War is also an industry. The means of production are now mainly utilised to produce the means of destruction: the wage slaves  employed by their masters in producing and using the implements of war. Capitalism is run for profit. War is embarked on by the capitalist class because it is considered by one capitalist group or another that this course of action is the only course open to them in the circumstances in which they find themselves. They calculate they can retain or obtain what they desire only by war.

Whilst war is in the future is given much consideration by those who live on rent interest and profit; they try to discover ways and means of repaying themselves for the trouble and inconvenience the war has entailed. The plans of the profit band are formulated with the above objects in view. It is well to note that neither in war nor peace does the exploiting class produce; labour applied to the natural resources of the earth brings into being all exchange values; this being the case, the recipients of profit do not give to the cost of the war anything more than they have previously wrung from the working class.

Nationalism and patriotism groups people according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner.

Socialism groups people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. Patriotism in every nation masks class antagonisms to the great profit of the leading class. Working people have no country. The differences which exist between the present countries are all superficial differences. The capitalist regime is the same in all countries. There is only one war which is worthy, that is class war, the social revolution.

To the poor, the propertyless mass of both sexes, falls the lot of loathsome toil in dangerous or unhealthy trades, long hours which make one disgusted with work. To them starvation wages; to them the insecurity of employment, the rigours of the law at the slightest fault, and if illness, old age, or unemployment comes, privations and dark misery with its procession of sorrows and shame. That’s what a country is – a monstrous social inequality, the shameful exploitation of a nation by a privileged class. There is nothing natural nor logical, than that in every country the poverty-stricken, disinherited, the overworked beasts of burden, ill-fed, badly housed, badly clothed, badly educated, march at the first call of the bugle to war.  Is it not possible for humanity to find a different plan for living, one that would give us security and peace? Then may it be that socialism will take its rightful place in the consciousness of the workers.

The only way in which humanity can bring about social change and build a fraternal society, free of war, is to establish socialism. This will not come about as an expression of non-violence but as the conscious act of a socialist working-class. The attitude of pacifism can be, and has been, adopted by people of all manner of opinions—for example, by members of the British Labour Party, by Christians and so on—all of whom support the capitalist social system which produces violence and which therefore makes pacifism an empty dream. Any organisation which accepts the continuance of capitalism, the cause of war in the modem world, is standing in the way of political parties like the Socialist Party, which seek to end capitalism and with it war.

 The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference ended Friday with an agreement on patent rights that campaigners said would do virtually nothing to address vast global inequities in coronavirus vaccine and treatment access, a failure they attributed to relentless obstruction by rich countries and the pharmaceutical industry. To date, just 18% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.

Dr. Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders, added that while “a few changes were made” to an earlier draft text that advocates panned, the final agreement “fails overall to offer an effective and meaningful solution to help increase people’s access to needed medical tools during the pandemic as it does not adequately waive intellectual property on all essential Covid-19 medical tools, and it does not apply to all countries.”

“The measures outlined in the decision,” Christou added, “will not address pharmaceutical monopolies or ensure affordable access to lifesaving medical tools and will set a negative precedent for future global health crises and pandemics.”

 One conference attendee, Anna Marriott of Oxfam International, said she heard that some national delegations did not even get a chance to see the text before it was adopted by the WTO. 

After marathon negotiations, the narrow deal clarifies governments’ ability to use compulsory licensing to ramp up vaccine production without the consent of patent-holding pharmaceutical companies. The agreement also temporarily eases restrictions on the export of vaccines produced under compulsory licenses.

“The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful,” said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “The E.U. has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The U.K. and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the U.S. has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement.”

“This so-called compromise largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances,” Lawson added. “And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce Covid-19 vaccines. Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives.”

The coronavirus has killed an estimated 30,000 people each day on average since India and South Africa unveiled their proposal in October 2020. The two nations’ waiver plan was backed by more than 100 WTO member countries, but rich governments derailed every attempted advancement of the text, offering alternatives that would leave in place—and even bolster—intellectual property restrictions that have hindered vaccine production throughout the pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry, which has raked in huge profits throughout the deadly pandemic, also lobbied aggressively against India and South Africa’s proposed waiver.

“Once again, the shameful, undemocratic WTO process allowed rich countries representing corporate interests to strongarm a sham agreement that bears no resemblance to the original waiver proposal and will do nothing to help save lives for this or future pandemics,” said Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen.

WTO Deal on Vaccine Patents Decried as a ‘Sham’ Dictated by Rich Nations, Big Pharma (commondreams.org)

 Healthcare debt is “far more pervasive” in the United States than previously known, currently impacting 41% of U.S. adults and more than 100 million people across the country, according to a joint study by Kaiser Health News and NPR.

Previous attempts to assess the extent of the medical debt crisis have understated the problem because “much of the debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers.”

The investigation found. “A quarter of adults with healthcare debt owe more than $5,000. And about one in five with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.”

Dr. Rishi Manchanda, the CEO of Health Begins, explained that, “We have a health care system almost perfectly designed to create debt.”

“Now, a highly lucrative industry is capitalizing on patients’ inability to pay,” KHN reported.

 “Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing millions into credit cards and other loans. These stick patients with high interest rates while generating profits for the lenders that top 29%…Patient debt is also sustaining a shadowy collections business fed by hospitals―including public university systems and nonprofits granted tax breaks to serve their communities―that sell debt in private deals to collections companies that, in turn, pursue patients,” the outlet noted.

“It’s barbaric,” lamented Dr. Miriam Atkins, a Georgia oncologist who told KHN that she has had patients stop their treatment due to fear of racking up massive debt.

‘Barbaric’ System Saddles Over 100 Million in US With Healthcare Debt (commondreams.org)