South Korea ranks third in highest annual working hours and as of 2015 it was third in workplace deaths among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

Over 40 percent of all workers are considered “irregular workers,”  many of these irregular workers labor in the gig economy, being beholden to tech giants’ apps.

With an economy and society dominated by corporate conglomerates known as chaebol, South Korean people face increasingly bleak prospects. 

The top 10 percent of earners claimed 45 percent of total income in 2016.

 Real estate speculation has led to a housing crisis, and privatization in education and health care are expanding disparities.

On October 20, at least half a million workers in South Korea — from across the construction, transportation, service, and other sectors — are expected to walk off their jobs in a one-day general strike. 

The strike will also be accompanied by mass demonstrations in urban centers and rural farmlands, culminating in a national all-people’s mobilization in January 2022.

 The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s largest labor union umbrella with 1.1 million members, is organizing these mobilizations in a broad-based front with South Korea’s urban poor and farmers. The KCTU said its members from Seoul, the surrounding Gyeonggi Province and the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, will gather in the capital to hold a massive rally.

The three major goals are the abolition of nonregular workers, a full revision of the Labor Standards Act; job security for workers in industries in transition; and increased government support for housing, education, medical care and transportation.

“We have continuously called upon the government to resolve labour issues for workers who suffered the most from Covid-19, but the government tried to muzzle us without giving an answer,” the KCTU said, accusing the government of attempting to restrict freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.

 Foodbank’s annual Hunger Report, released on Wednesday as part of Anti-Poverty Week, suggests the number of people going hungry in Australia has increased since the coronavirus welfare supplement and job keeper payments were withdrawn.

An estimated 1.2 million children in Australia went hungry in the past year, while one in six adults also faced severe food insecurity, the new report says.

It found 17% of respondents could be “categorised as being severely food insecure”, meaning they have “multiple disruptions to their eating patterns and are forced to reduce their food intake”.

“These individuals and families are often forced to eat smaller meals to make the food last longer or skip meals altogether,” the report said.

Brianna Casey, the chief executive of Foodbank Australia, said incomes levels and the cost of living were a big part of the problem.

“Whether you’re struggling in unemployment or underemployment, or the structural supports we have in Australia are not meeting your needs, we know income levels are contributing to food insecurity in Australia,” she said.

The report found one in three people who were struggling to meet their food needs were “new to this situation”.

More than 1m children in Australia went hungry in past year, report suggests | Australia news | The Guardian

The  latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that a record 2.9 percent of the workforce quit their jobs in August, which is equivalent to 4.3 million resignations.

If such a high rate of resignations were occurring at a time when jobs were plentiful, it might be seen as a sign of a booming economy where workers have their pick of offers. But the same labor report showed that job openings have also declined.

 A new Harris Poll of people with employment found that more than half of workers want to leave their jobs. Many cite uncaring employers and a lack of scheduling flexibility as reasons for wanting to quit. In other words, millions of American workers have simply had enough.

Jack Kelly, senior contributor to Forbes.com, a pro-corporate news outlet, has defined the trend as, “a sort of workers’ revolution and uprising against bad bosses and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff.”  Kelly goes on to say, “The quitters are making a powerful, positive and self-affirming statement saying that they won’t take the abusive behavior any longer.”

There is now also a growing willingness by unionized workers to go on strike.  Actual strikes or calls for such are coming so thick and fast that former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich has dubbed the situation “an unofficial general strike.”

Workers are flexing their power and corporate America is worried.

Union representation remains extremely low across the United States—the result of decades of concerted corporate-led efforts to undermine the bargaining power of workers. Today only about 12 percent of workers are in a union.

Workers have more leverage when acting as a collective bargaining unit than as individuals. Take Nabisco workers who went on strike in five states this summer. Mondelez International, Nabisco’s parent company, saw record profits during the pandemic with surging sales of its snack foods. So flush was the company with cash that it compensated its CEO with a whopping $16.8 million annual pay and spent $1.5 billion on stock buybacks earlier this year. Meanwhile, the average worker salary was an appallingly low $31,000 a year. Many Nabisco jobs were sent across the border to Mexico, where the company was able to further drive down labor costs.

After weeks on the picket line, striking Nabisco workers, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, returned to work having won modest retroactive raises of 2.25 percent, $5,000 bonuses and increased employer contributions to their retirement plans. The company, which reported a 12 percent increase in revenue earlier this year, can well afford this and more.

Another example of how union organizing made a concrete difference to working conditions is a new contract that 7,000 drug store workers at Rite Aid and CVS stores in Los Angeles just ratified. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 negotiated a nearly 10 percent pay raise for workers as well as improved benefits and safety standards.

 Business groups are lobbying Democrats to weaken pro-labor measures. 

Why Record Numbers of Workers Are Quitting and Striking (pressenza.com)

 British households will be £1,000 worse off next year from a cost of living squeeze created by rising energy prices and shortages of workers and supplies caused by Covid and Brexit, the thinktank Resolution Foundation said. 

It warned that higher levels of inflation would weigh down workers’ earnings next year, contributing to a hit to the average household income in Britain at a time when the government is cutting benefits and raising taxes. Average household disposable income, after adjusting for inflation, would be about 2% lower by the end of 2022.

“Higher inflation reduces the amount of goods and services that households are able to afford, eroding the real value of incomes,” the Foundation explained.

 On top of the inflation, many households would also have to reckon with cuts to universal credit, while workers and businesses must budget for planned national insurance tax increases.

 A “cost of living crunch” was brewing from the combined impact of inflation, tax rises and cuts, the thinktank said: “Together with a £13bn raid on household incomes from increases in NICs [National Insurance contributions], and sharp cuts to universal credit, there will be major headwinds to families’ spending power in the coming months.”

British households will be £1,000 worse off next year, thinktank warns | Household bills | The Guardian

The statistics keep on coming showing the increasing disparity of wealth accumulated by the mega-rich at a time when most people are experiencing increased hardship due to the Covid pandemic. 

A new report released by Americans for Tax Fairness  (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reveal the 70% surge of wealth among America’s richest individuals since March of 2020 has resulted in approximately 130 new billionaires.

There are now 745 people with “10-figure bank accounts” compared to the 614 that existed when the pandemic first hit.

Those 745 billionaires now hold $5 trillion in collective wealth, having added $2.1 trillion since Covid-19 struck.

The $5 trillion in collective wealth, which the groups note is “two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50% of U.S. households.”

The new analysis notes, explains that most of these huge billionaires’ gains will go untaxed under current rules and will disappear entirely for tax purposes when they’re passed onto the next generation. 

 Good news for billionaires but over the past 19 months almost 89 million Americans have lost jobs, over 44.9 million have been sickened by the virus, and over 724,000 have died from it. 

ATF executive director Frank Clemente, said, “This growth of billionaire wealth is unfathomable, immoral, and indefensible in good times let alone during a pandemic when so many have struggled with unemployment, illness, and death.” 

‘Indefensible’: US Billionaires Became $2.1 Trillion Richer in 19 Months of Pandemic (commondreams.org)

How long will it be before all those critical voices understand that it is not the tax rules that are at fault but capitalism itself? 

 According to the report jointly released by Food Price for Nutrition, Tufts University and the World Food Program the burden of diseases is increasing worldwide due to lack of healthy food. Many people are deprived of nutritious food due to unaffordable food. 300 million people, or 40 percent of the world’s population, do not have enough money to eat nutritious food. A report released by Oxfam on the Hunger Virus Multiplex expressed concern about the global problem of hunger, with around 11 people dying of starvation every minute worldwide.

The report estimates the price of a meal plate in 168 countries and found that the cheapest original dish costs 0. 0.71.  This dish does not include the cost of cooking.  However, this plate does not meet the nutritional needs of the diet.  If protein-rich red meat is included in this plate, its price will increase by 0 1.03.  Similarly, the price of this plate will increase by 1. 1.07 when chicken is included and by 30 1.30 if fish is included.

The report says the international poverty line standard is 1. 1.90 per day but poor families cannot afford to spend that much on meals.  In a quarter of countries where food is not very cheap, the price of a cheap plate is about 6 percent or more of the average daily income.  Eating cooked food increases the price by 20 percent.  If meat is included in the diet, the price increases by 10 percent.  In such a situation, people do not have the ability to buy healthy food.

A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021” estimates that 81.1 million people will face starvation in 2020.  In other words, every tenth person in the world is hungry. 

 Another report jointly released on July 12 by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Program and the World Health Organization explains 3 billion people worldwide are deprived of food due to inflation, poverty and unavailability of healthy food, economic inequality.  The report says that the problem of malnutrition among five-year-olds in Africa and Asia has become very serious. More than half of the world’s hunger victims live in Asia. 

 India is ranked 101st in the recently released Global Hunger Index for 116 countries. Pakistan 92nd, Bangladesh 76th and Nepal equal 76th. 

This blog will weep no crocodile tears over the death of Colin Powell. 

Powell knowingly duped many into believing the conspiracy that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that an armed invasion was required to disarm Iraq. As a veteran of the Vietnam War where one of his roles was to apply damage control limitation to the events of the My Lai massacre of innocent peasants, Powell was skilled at the strategy being practised of destroying a village to save the village. 

Powell served as the convenient camouflage for the US and UK policy of regime change and well before the actual invasion was launched the justifications presented by him at the United Nations had been shown to be false and misleading. There was no mistaken or misinterpreted intelligence. 

Colin Powell deliberately deceived the United Nations and his only regret was that he was later found out to be lying. 

He actively and directly contributed to the death and suffering of millions and is one of those politicians largely responsible for the tragic consequences that our fellow workers are still experiencing today in the region.

This blog does not mourn his passing in the slightest. 

In response to British plans to create an independent state of Malaysia out of its colonial possessions, Indonesia’s left-leaning President Sukarno launched “Konfrontasi”, or Confrontation, an undeclared war that included military incursions over the border into East Malaysia. Sukarno, like many Indonesians, including the PKI, believed the creation of a Malaysian federation was unwarranted regional interference by the British to maintain their colonial dominance. The British were forced to dedicate huge military and intelligence resources to help the emergent Malaysia counter these Konfrontasi intrusions. British policy was to bring an end to the conflict. But the UK’s objectives did not end there.

Like its US and Australian allies, Britain feared a communist Indonesia. The PKI had three million members and was close to Mao’s China. In Washington, the fall of the Indonesia “domino” into the communist camp was seen as a greater threat than the potential loss of Vietnam.

Sukarno’s non-aligned nationalism, anti-colonialism and growing ties to China were viewed as a threat, one that would be lessened if the president and his foreign minister Subandrio were removed from their posts and the PKI’s influence in Indonesia diminished – most plausibly through the actions of the largely anti-communist Indonesian army. In mid-1965 the opportunity arrived. A secret leftwing group, later called the “30 September movement”, coalesced in Indonesia, convinced, with some justification, that the army was planning to overthrow Sukarno and suppress the PKI.

 It is estimated that at least 500,000 people (some estimates go to three million) linked to the Indonesia Communist party (PKI) were eliminated between 1965 and 1966 in one of the most brutal massacres of the post-war 20th century. The campaign of mass murder, now known to have been orchestrated by the Indonesian army, was later described by the CIA as one of the worst mass murders of the century.

Recently declassified Foreign Office documents show British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians,  including army generals, to “cut out” the “communist cancer”. As the massacres started in October 1965 British officials called for “the PKI and all communist organisations” to “be eliminated”. The nation, they warned, would be in danger “as long as the communist leaders are at large and their rank and file are allowed to go unpunished”.  In 1965 specialist propagandists from the Foreign Office’s information research department (IRD) were sent to Singapore to produce black propaganda to undermine Sukarno’s regime. It produced a newsletter purporting to be produced by Indonesian émigrés and targeted at prominent and influential individuals, including army generals. It also operated a radio station broadcasting into Indonesia.

The propaganda advised that “procrastination and half-hearted measures can only lead to… our ultimate and complete destruction”. Over the following weeks, massacres of alleged PKI members, few if any with any involvement in the attempted coup, and other leftists spread across the archipelago. There can be little doubt that British diplomats became aware of what was happening. Not only could GCHQ intercept and read Indonesian government communications, but its Chai Keng monitoring station in Singapore enabled the British to trace the progress of army units involved in suppressing the PKI.

It was policy  “to conceal the fact that the butcheries have taken place with the encouragement of the generals”, in the hope that the generals “will do us better than the old gang”.

The then “coordinator of political warfare”, a Foreign Office propaganda specialist called Norman Reddaway, considered the downfall of Sukarno to be one of Britain’s greatest propaganda victories. In a letter written years later he said “the discrediting of Sukarno was quickly successful. His Confrontasi was costing us about £250,000,000 a year. It was countered and abolished at minimal cost by IRD research and techniques in six months.”

The outcome of the turmoil was a brutal and corrupt 32-year military dictatorship whose legacy shapes Indonesia to this day.

Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists | Indonesia | The Guardian

 More than 100 staff in Clarks’ Shoes main distribution centre in Street, Somerset, where the brand was founded have been on strike for two weeks, having been told they must sign new contracts or risk losing their jobs without redundancy pay. The firm is seeking to cut their wages by almost 15% from the average of £11.16 an hour to £9.50 an hour by using controversial fire and rehire tactics.  They also face cuts to sick pay and reduced redundancy packages as well as the scrapping of paid breaks. 

Clarks – which was taken over by a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, LionRock Capital, in March – closed its last UK shoemaking plant in 2006. But the company’s headquarters and main distribution centre are still in Street.

Many staff fear they will not be able to keep up with their rent or mortgage payments if their pay is cut. Many in the town appear to be turning against Clarks. The workers have been inundated with messages of solidarity, with postal staff refusing to cross their picket line and food donations arriving daily.  Delegations of council workers, firefighters and train drivers have joined the picket lines. 

Dave Chapple, secretary of Mendip Trades Council, said: “Is this really the future for work in this country: no more collective bargaining negotiations, just industrial dictatorship?”

The strike comes as concern grows about employers’ use of fire and rehire. At least 28 firms, including British Gas and British Airways, have been accused since the start of the pandemic of threatening to sack workers who do not accept new contractsA poll for the TUC this year found one in ten 10 workers – three million people – had experienced the tactic.

 A letter addressed to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Chargé d’Affaires ad interim to the United Nations agencies in Rome Jennifer Harhigh signed by nearly 70 groups including ActionAid USA, the National Family Farm Coalition, and Oxfam America is urging the Biden administration’s approach to international food and agricultural policy to break “with the U.S. government’s historical alignment with corporate agribusiness and neoliberal, unregulated trade orthodoxy.”

“For too long,” they wrote, “our constituencies’ needs and interests have been unrepresented, unsupported, and undermined by the U.S. government in these policy-making spaces, as the U.S. government has promoted a policy agenda that reflects the narrow interests of the corporate agribusiness sector.”

The UN Declaration on Rights Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas emphasizes in Article 15.4, when it states, “ Peasants and other people working in rural areas have the right to determine their own food and agriculture systems, recognized by many States and regions as the right to food sovereignty. This includes the right to participate in decision-making processes on food and agriculture policy and the right to healthy and adequate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods that respect their cultures.”

Peasant Agroecology, which is fundamental to ensuring food sovereignty in our territories, is now recognized at the FAO as central to the fight against global warming.

The promoters of the capitalist world order realize that food sovereignty is an idea that impinges on their financial interests. They prefer a world of monoculture and homogenous tastes, where food can be mass-produced using cheap labour in faraway factories, disregarding its ecological, human and social impacts. They prefer economies of scale to robust local economies. They choose a global-free market (based on speculation and cut-throat competition) over solidarity economies that require more robust territorial markets (local peasant markets) and active participation of local food producers. They prefer to have land banks where industrial-scale contract farming would replace small-holder producers. They inject our soil with agro-toxics for better short-term yields, ignoring the irreversible damage to soil health. Their trawlers will again crawl the oceans and rivers, netting fishes for a global market while the coastal communities starve. They will continue to try to hijack indigenous peasant seeds through patents and seed treaties. The trade agreements they craft will again aim to bring down tariffs that protect our local economies.

None of this is new to us. Corporations want to control our lives, whether they’re agribusiness, technology, or big pharma—getting bigger, getting more control, and having too much influence over legislation. They really don’t care about how they make their profits, only how much they make. Those condemned to the peripheries of our societies by a cruel and all-devouring capitalist system have no choice but to fight back. 

Opinion | Food Sovereignty: A Manifesto for the Future of Our Planet | La Via Campesina (commondreams.org)

Coalition Urges Biden to Make ‘Transformative Change’ in Approach to Global Food and Agriculture (commondreams.org)