KEYNESIANISM 2.0

UK to unveil record £400 billion borrowing plan next week

PRIME THE PUMP, END AUSTERITY

THIS IS WHAT ALBERTA SHOULD DO

END KENNEY'S CUTS

By David Milliken
Fri, 20 November 2020

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is seen at Downing Street in London


By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi Sunak will announce the heaviest public borrowing since World War Two when he spells out his spending plans next week after the biggest economic crash in over 300 years.

With Britain in the midst of a second wave of COVID-19 cases and economic recovery on hold, Sunak has postponed longer-term plans for the public finances.

Spending on the pandemic is on track to exceed 200 billion pounds this year after the extension of job protection programmes, and other costs are likely to spill into the 2021/22 fiscal year.

Only the armed forces will receive a multi-year increase in funding as Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks to boost Britain's profile outside the European Union.

Sunak's other spending announcements on Wednesday are likely to be dwarfed by the scale of new borrowing forecasts which will underscore the need for future tax rises.

"Events next week might... prove an important prelude for a pivot to a tighter fiscal approach in the spring budget," economists at Citi said in a note to clients.

As Sunak starts to look for ways to begin reining in the huge surge in borrowing, media reported that he plans to freeze pay for public-sector workers other than health staff.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to commit to maintaining spending on overseas aid.

Britain's economy shrank by 20% between April and June, more than any other major economy, and it has been slower to recover.

The Bank of England has pencilled in an 11% fall in GDP for 2020, a drop last seen in 1709.

Government borrowing this financial year is likely to be around 400 billion pounds, according to Citi, while HSBC has forecast 365 billion pounds.

This is equivalent to between 17% and 20% of GDP, well above its 10% peak at the height of the global financial crisis.

Data published on Friday showed 215 billion pounds of borrowing in just the first seven months of this financial year, nearly five times more than at the same point in 2019.

This is likely to fall as emergency pandemic spending is scaled back but HSBC expects it will be a still unsustainable 8.5% of GDP in 2021/22.

Citi predict an extra 800 billion pounds of borrowing over the next five years, compared with forecasts in March.

TAX RISES

Sunak has warned of hard decisions ahead to get the public finances "on a sustainable path" over time.

Big spending cuts are less likely than after the financial crisis because public service have undergone a decade-long squeeze and pressures from an ageing population are growing.

The scale of any tax rises will not become clear until the economy is on a more even keel.

The Resolution Foundation think tank says tax rises raising 40 billion pounds a year will be needed before the 2024 election just to stabilise the public finances and fund social care.

For now financial markets are happy to fund the borrowing at almost record low interest rates. Britain's Debt Management Office will publish bond sale plans on Wednesday.

HSBC sees a further 100 billion pounds of gilt issuance this financial year, taking the total to a record 480 billion pounds, and up to 300 billion pounds more in 2021/22.

The government will also publish a delayed review on when to phase out the RPI measure of inflation used to calculate payments on inflation-linked bonds, which now overstates price rises.

(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Toby Chopra)

UK coronavirus job losses: the latest data on redundancies and furloughs

Antonio Voce, Ashley Kirk and Richard Partington
Thu, 19 November 2020 THE GUARDIAN



Tens of thousands of people are being made redundant in the UK as the coronavirus pandemic stalls the economy.

After a nationwide lockdown was imposed on 23 March to try to halt the spread of the virus, all non-essential retail and hospitality had to stop, putting intense pressure on companies to stay afloat.

Britain’s economy plunged into the deepest recession since modern records began. Gross domestic product fell by 20.4% in the three months to the end of June, the biggest decline of any major nation, following the later imposition of lockdown than in other countries and slower relaxation of restrictions. Almost three-quarters of a million jobs have been lost from company payrolls since the start of the crisis.

Even now, with the economy slowly reopening, many businesses fear that they are no longer viable with social distancing measures limiting customer numbers and behaviour.

As a result, companies have announced tens of thousands of redundancies, and with millions more people on furlough, experts say this number will get higher. The government’s economics forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), has said unemployment could more than double by the end of this year to the highest levels since the 1980s. Aviation, retail, hospitality and leisure are among the hardest-hit sectors.

In the coming months, the Guardian will track these redundancy numbers as they are announced.
Furloughs point at more to come

While the UK’s number of redundancies is high, the number who have been furloughed is far higher. More than 9m jobs at more than 1m companies in Britain have been furloughed since the launch of the government’s wage subsidy scheme in March.

The coronavirus job retention scheme is being scaled back from August and will close entirely at the end of October, at which point experts warn that furloughs could become permanent redundancies.

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This is particularly the case in at-risk sectors such as hospitality which, without a vaccine or treatment that limits the need for social distancing, will face low labour demand and significant revenue hits for the foreseeable future.

When the furlough scheme ends, some think that the redundancy count will get higher. The OBR estimates that at least 10% of furloughed workers will become unemployed.

Steve Turner, the assistant general secretary of the Unite union, told the Commons business select committee: “I am fearful of a tsunami of job losses. Firms are now starting to cut their cloth to meet their needs, which will be devastating for jobs, skills and long-term resistance.”
What’s been included?

The number of redundancies shown in the visualisation are, where possible, for UK employees. In the few instances where it is not possible to break down a company’s announcement of global redundancies, we have included this number but have marked it out.

The Guardian has sourced information on company redundancies from their own announcements and media reports. While every effort has been made to include every redundancy we are aware of, the numbers listed will be an underestimate and will miss announcements from smaller companies.
Tell us more

If you are aware of any redundancies that are not included on our tracker, please fill in the form below and we will look into it.

NIGERIA
Nigerian soldiers assault civilians with flogging and forced hair-cutting


Issued on: 16/11/2020 -

Viral online images posted on Twitter on November 1 and 2 show Nigerian soldiers aggressing civilians in Ibadan by flogging and hair-cutting.

 © Twitter

Text by:Diana Liu

Viral images posted to Twitter on November 1 and 2 show Nigerian military officers assaulting civilians in the Beere area of Ibadan: flogging a woman for “indecent dressing” and forcibly cutting the hair of at least six men while taking their money. Oyo state government officials claim to have apprehended the soldiers responsible.

On November 1, a few days after the End SARS protests against police brutality had been put on hold in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, Nigerian soldiers from Operation Burst (a joint security team deployed by Oyo State governor Seyi Makinde to protect protesters from violent hoodlums) assaulted civilians in Beere for reasons that remain unclear.

@seyiamakinde, i don't do this oo, but i'll do.. Operation busrt u deployed to Beere/Mapo are just abusing their power. Why on earth will you choose to barb my haircut which is not even full or too much. Sir with all due respct i can't take it. It is totally wrong sir pic.twitter.com/uIuzdbSfW9— Ojo oluwatobi (@MrBabatea) November 1, 2020

This November 1 post shows pictures of Twitter user Ojo Oluwatobi’s hair after he was harassed by Operation Burst military officers.

Deji, a man who had his hair forcibly cut by a military officer, shared his story with FRANCE 24's Observers.

“Before I could say anything, I felt the cold steel of the scissors parting my hair”

It was around 6pm, and I was going to work. Upon arriving at the bus stop, I heard a military man on the other side of the road say “Hey, you, come”. He ordered me to sit on the floor and said that he will have to cut my hair and that I will pay him for the service rendered.

I knew I was in for a serious thing, although I had committed no crime. I started begging him, saying that I did nothing and didn’t have money to pay for his so-called haircut. He got angry and said that he would call on his fellow soldier to beat me up if I continued arguing. Military men in Nigeria have no regard for your fundamental human rights, so I just had to obey. During this time, he also stopped another guy and ordered him to sit on the floor to have his hair cut.

He ruined my haircut. As if that wasn’t enough, he ordered me to take off my shoes, squat, and do ten frog jumps. At that moment, I almost cried. In the end, he did not take money from me, but I’m certain he tried to collect money from the other guy he stopped.

After he let me go, I asked around for a nearby barber shop to remove the rubbish he left on my head. I heard people saying “so they barbed yours too, they have been doing that since morning.

Now I'm forced to enter a barber just to make amendment to the hair, which is already late. @seyiamakinde @oyostategovt please call these men of the @HQNigerianArmy to order. This happened just now at Beere, Ibadan. @connectIBADAN @connectibadan2 @Ibadan247 pic.twitter.com/3Z1tq671Wj— Ayodeji d'boss (@Aytobay) November 1, 2020

This November 1 Tweet shows images of Deji at the barber and a picture of his hair right after it was cut by the military officer.

After Deji posted about his assault on Twitter, he began to see posts about similar cases of violence that day. A video posted to Twitter on November 1 showed a soldier flogging a woman for “indecent dressing” outside what appears to be a gas station as others look on.

Flogging this innocent lady for indecent dressing. We have problems in Nigeria pic.twitter.com/MfgzNt7YMV— Sam6ix (@SamNotPeters) November 2, 2020

On November 2, another video was posted showing soldiers cutting a man’s hair.

Nigerian soldier cutting a citizen's hair. I don't knw the motive behind this pic.twitter.com/uo6mNmBOac— Sam6ix (@SamNotPeters) November 2, 2020

Given the similarity of the buildings in the background, both assaults appear to have happened at the same location — according to Deji, a gas station near Beere’s main bus stop on Orita Aperin-Beere road. Deji affirmed that he also encountered the officer in the same place.

At least three more people tweeted about being assaulted in Beere on November 1. User PrimalHubLtd wrote in a Twitter thread that he was coming back from church when military officers accosted him in the street, cut his hair, and forced him to pay 500 Naira (1,11 Euros).

Hello Nigerians, it seems @HQNigerianArmy are really confused. I'm here 2 share my ordeal in d hand of Nigerian army today on my way coming 4rm church at bodija area of Ibadan where I had to pass Beere axis where operation burst under the directive of Gov @Seyimakinde stationed. pic.twitter.com/KNbcGdduIP— 🐥🦃🐤PRIMAL CHICKS🐤🦃🐥 (@PrimalHubLtd) November 1, 2020


“Harassment, extortion, brutalizing and killing of innocent citizens by the armed forces is not new. Police and SARS brutality is like the order of the day, but military brutality is rare and not an everyday thing. The hair-cutting is new in recent years, especially here in Ibadan. We had some cases 7 to 8 years ago.”


The Nigerian Army has not responded to inquiries from FRANCE 24's Observers.


“Abuses of power sometimes come into play, especially when military officers are rotated.”

The France 24 Observers team spoke to Dr. Jumo Ayandele, a researcher specialising in African militaries and counterterrorism, who said that a number of factors, including occupational privilege and officer training, could help explain the assaults.

“When it comes to the Nigerian military, officers are really put on a pedestal. So a lot of recruits enlist not because of patriotic duty, but for the salaried job and for the privilege of being a soldier over a civilian. So abuses of power sometimes occur, especially when military officers are rotated.

We also have to consider if these troops were adequately trained to respect human rights and humanitarian intervention, and how that affects the way they interact with civilians. There are different degrees of professionalism across the three branches of the Nigerian military. The air force is seen as more professional — you wouldn’t hear of any acts of violence against civilians from them or from the navy. But you do hear about incidents perpetuated by the Nigerian army.

The military has long been trying to change its image of being able to protect the community, for example with the Nigerian Army Transformation Agenda [Editor’s note: implemented from 2010 to 2014]. However, I’m not aware of more recent campaigns.”

The Oyo State government apologizes and promises justice

In a Twitter post on November 2, Seun Fakorede, the Commissioner for Youth & Sports in Oyo State, reported that Captain Usolo, commander of the Operation Burst team, admitted to the allegations against his officers in Beere. An officer named Adesina was identified as the man who was filmed flogging a woman in the video above. Mr. Fakorede also wrote that the commander “apologised to the families of those assaulted by the erring officers”.

Mr. Fakorede then claimed that “the men involved in this distasteful operation have been arrested and taken to the barracks. This [incident] will not repeat itself again in Oyo State.”

My ears are full with news of the unlawful activities of some Soldiers of the Nigerian Army, over the weekend.

I have immediately reached out to the Commandant of the Operation Burst and I've been assured that the men involved in this distasteful operation have been arrested...— A S I W A J U (@TheSeunFakorede) November 2, 2020

The France 24 Observers team contacted Mr. Fakorede and Kazeem Bolarinwa A., another state official who tweeted about the incident. Neither have provided evidence of these arrests or of charges against the soldiers.

Like many of the Twitter users who responded to Mr. Fakorede’s posts, Deji remains skeptical.

“It’s one thing to come out and address people, and it's another thing to fulfill the promise. The present Oyo State governor has been trying. He says they will face justice, but what about accountability? Maybe we should keep our fingers crossed for the justice.”

POSTMODERN SURREALISM

THAILAND
How giant rubber ducks became shields for Thai 

pro-democracy protesters

Issued on: 18/11/2020
  

A Twitter photo posted on November 17 shows Thai pro-democracy protesters brandishing large rubber ducks as protection in the streets of Bangkok.

© Twitter @OldMan_b1

Text by:Diana Liu


On November 17, Thai pro-democracy protesters faced off against royalist demonstrators and the police in violent clashes near the country’s riverside parliament in Bangkok. Fifty-five people were injured in the clashes. A curious addition to the protest were large, inflatable rubber ducks, used by protesters as safety shields as police bombarded them with water cannons and tear gas.

Since July, a youth-led protest movement for democratic reform of the Thai government and monarchy has mobilised tens of thousands of people across the country.


เก่งมากเจ้าเป็ด ขอบคุณนะ เจ้ามีประโยชน์สำหรับพวกเราจริงๆ🐣#ม็อบ17พฤศจิกา #whatishappeninginthailand pic.twitter.com/V6QOhJ5LWk— บ้านกัซโควท (@GOT7_Quote) November 17, 2020

A series of photos posted on Twitter on November 17. The caption reads: “Good job, duck. Thank you. You are really helpful for us”.

The November 17 protests took place near the Thai Parliament, which was blocked off by concrete blocks and razor wire while lawmakers debated seven bills to reform the constitution.

Amidst escalating violence between the different parties, the ducks made their appearance.


“Rubber ducks became protesters’ shield to protect themselves from the water and the tear gas”

“Crystal”, a pro-democracy protester in Bangkok who requested anonymity, said that the rubber ducks were initially designed to mock the military-backed government.

Since the Parliament House is located by the Chao Phraya River, the protesters were saying that they would gather and ride the rubber ducks to the pier as an insult to the government – not that they would actually ride the ducks. [Editor’s note: the Parliament was otherwise inaccessible due to the barricades.]

However, when the water cannon was brought to the scene, rubber ducks became the protesters’ shields to protect themselves from the water and the tear gas.

A November 17 Twitter video shows pro-democracy protesters, kitted out with helmets and protective goggles, and brandishing rubber ducks, coughing after being hit by tear gas. The caption reads: “The sound of the protesters coughing from a sore throat, stinging nostrils, and tearing gas was clear. The protesters only had rubber ducks without weapons. But the police took measures that were too extreme.”

เสียงไอของผู้ชุมนุมจากอาการเจ็บคอแสบจมูกที่โดนแก็สน้ำตาชัดเจนมาก ผู้ชุมนุมมีแค่เป็ดยางไม่มีอาวุธ แต่ตำรวจใช้มาตรการขั้นรุนแรงเกินกว่าเหตุมาก โคตรเหี้ย!!!#ม็อบ17พฤศจิกา pic.twitter.com/lnXhba7ICX— ᴮᴱJK₇ 🐰🥕นูน่าของบังทัน Life goes On 💜 (@PutMeDown6) November 17, 2020

The pro-democracy protesters also used the ducks as shields when a violent clash broke out with yellow-shirted royalist demonstrators, the first of its kind during the ongoing protests.

A Twitter video posted on the same day shows royalist demonstrators throwing water bottles and other small items at pro-democracy protesters, who use a rubber duck to block the flying debris.

pic.twitter.com/4WMOvPF8lj— จีมชวี่มายสวี้ตตี้ #JIMIM 🤧 (@Tyhjg4) November 17, 2020

Clashes. #WhatHappensinThailand #Thailand #ม็อบ17พฤศจิกา pic.twitter.com/0T7nQTsGEH— Pravit Rojanaphruk (@PravitR) November 17, 2020

In a more zoomed-out video of the scene posted by Thai journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk, Rojanaphruk narrates that “they are telling people to stop, they say we are all Thais, but some are still throwing water bottles and bricks. Both sides are still throwing things”.

Among the 55 people injured during the protest, medical officers said that six suffered gunshot wounds, although it is not clear who was responsible for the shooting. The police denied using live rounds or rubber bullets during their operations

Rubber ducks: a new symbol in Thailand’s pro-democracy movement

After fulfilling their duty to protect protesters yesterday, the ducks have emerged in a new day of protests as another symbol of Thailand’s pro-democracy movement.

Twitter images posted on November 18 show the ducks lined up en masse and protesters holding duck signs that read “Salute Yellow Ducks”.

In Yellow Ducks, We Trust. 💛
Thank you for standing by and protecting Thai people.#18พฤศจิกาไปราษฎร์ประสงค์ #WhatsHappeningInThailand pic.twitter.com/k77ZeuyU6N— For the future of Thailand (@matchalover97) November 18, 2020

A Twitter video posted on the same day shows the ducks being lifted in the air amid cheers from protesters


#WhatsHappeningInThailand: 19:45: After being tear gassed and water cannoned by police during pro-democracy protest yesterday, rubber ducks are now being taken to police forensic center on Henri Dunant Road #ม็อบ18พฤศจิกา #Thailand pic.twitter.com/ZfxpEx2aq2— AG (@ag_fidh) November 18, 2020

The Thai Parliament is voting on November 18 on which constitutional amendment bills are to be further debated. The most popular proposal among the pro-democracy protesters, presented by Thai NGO iLaw, would replace military-appointed senators with elected officials and allow changes to be made in constitutional articles regarding the monarchy.

The protesters' key demands are the resignation of prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, (a former military leader who seized power in a 2014 coup and was elected in the disputed 2019 general election), greater scrutiny of and limits on the monarchy, and the democratic revision of the current constitution. None of the six other proposals include provisions for monarchical reform.

As the voting continues, CNN reported that almost all the senators and coalition party members had either abstained from voting or rejected the bill proposed by iLaw.

New York City educators and parents must take control over online learning! Schools must stay closed until the pandemic is contained!

New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee

WSWS

This statement was adopted unanimously by the New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee at its weekly meeting on Wednesday, November 18. We urge all educators, parents and students in the city and surrounding region to join and help build the committee today! Sign up today.

The announcement Wednesday that New York City schools will switch to remote learning marks a significant turning point in the bipartisan campaign to open schools and businesses across the United States amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

The closure of schools in the largest school district in the country will stimulate calls to halt in-person instruction in districts across the US that remain open or plan to reopen, including in other Democrat-led school districts such as Los Angeles, Houston, and Salt Lake City, as well as Republican-led districts and states that have most ruthlessly pursued the “herd immunity” policies of the Trump administration.

Global history instructor Alis Anasal prepares to leave West Brooklyn Community High School after the school’s principal announced to students, teachers and staff that the school would be closing “until further notice” in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020.(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

The immediate impetus for the closure of schools is the fact that the citywide seven-day rolling average test positivity rate has surpassed three percent, the unsafe threshold agreed upon by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew. The underlying cause of the shutdown, however, is both parties’ recognition of the mounting opposition among educators, parents and students, which found expression in the mass absenteeism across the city and growing denunciations on social media, and threatened to break out of their control.

The New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee warns that the closure of schools is a temporary maneuver, and the unions and Democratic Party will work together to ensure that schools reopen as soon as they deem it politically viable.

We call on educators, parents and students to demand no resumption of in-person learning until a proven vaccine has been verified and distributed free of charge. All non-essential production must be halted, essential workers must be fully protected and all workers and parents isolating at home must be provided with all the resources they need to survive.

Both de Blasio and Mulgrew have signaled that they intend to reopen schools once the test positivity rate declines, with Mulgrew tweeting Wednesday, “Now it’s the job of all New Yorkers to maintain social distance, wear masks and take all other steps to substantially lower the infection rate so school buildings can re-open for in-person instruction.” De Blasio was even more blunt, tweeting, “We’ll return to in-person learning as soon as possible.”

The shutdown of schools follows weeks in which increasing numbers of classrooms and whole schools were quarantined. According to the Department of Education website, between September 14 and November 17, 2,306 COVID-19 cases were reported in district schools, including 1,067 teachers and 1,239 students.

Before today’s announcement, 78 schools across the city were already closed, with their entire school communities quarantined for two weeks due to multiple positive cases within a short span of time. Over 1,450 individual classrooms in hundreds of other schools were shut for quarantining due to positive cases, usually discovered days after the potential exposure took place.

The testing regime put forward by the city and endorsed by the UFT of 10-20 percent of individuals in schools every few weeks was analyzed to be flawed to the point where it could miss major outbreaks, and our committee has emphasized that the testing system was doing more to conceal outbreaks than expose them.

The plan by Democratic Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to shut down individual schools within the city and “quarantine” neighborhoods, or so-called microclusters, was always an unscientific policy designed to keep as many schools open as possible. Across the region, cases have been rising for the last month, with New Jersey and Connecticut experiencing higher positivity rates than New York, underscoring the porous character of city and state boundaries and the ability of the virus to spread rapidly due to the reopening of businesses and schools.

Oppose the unsafe reopening of schools! Save lives not profit!

Moreover, the American Academy of Pediatrics has reported as of Monday that over 1 million children have been confirmed to have had COVID-19, or one in 11 infected individuals in the US.

The unplanned, citywide school closures will disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in New York City, forcing parents to stay at home with their kids, risking unemployment and poverty. The terrible conditions that educators teaching remotely have faced, including massive under-staffing that has produced class sizes upwards of 60 students, will be worsened in the coming days.

The massive infusion of resources necessary to provide universal access to high quality remote learning—and to secure the livelihoods of parents and all workers—will not be provided by the pro-corporate Democrats and their trade union lackeys. Only through the independent organization of workers, in opposition to the Democratic Party, the trade unions, and all groups in their orbit such as the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), can the interests of the entire working class begin to be fought for.

Accordingly, the NYC Educators Rank and File Safety Committee puts forward the following demands, which are updated since our committee was founded on September 10:

We demand an end to all plans to reinstate in-person learning across K-12 public schools and for the suspension of all in-person instruction for public, private and charter schools and colleges in New York City and the Metropolitan area.

We demand that all decisions on reopening schools be determined democratically by rank-and-file committees of educators, school workers, parents and students in each school in collaboration with trusted scientists and health experts, and in coordination with representatives from Educator Rank-and-File Safety Committees across the city.

We demand teachers and students be guaranteed the technology necessary to participate in their studies for the duration of the pandemic, including high-quality computer hardware and software and all other accessories. High-speed internet access must be provided to all families free of charge, by using the untapped resources of the telecommunications corporations.

Halt all nonessential production! Until the pandemic is contained, only key industries such as food production, medical care and logistics should remain open. Workers in those industries must be provided with the most advanced safety measures to prevent infection. All nonessential workers and laid-off workers must be provided with full unemployment benefits and access to free health care.

We demand full employment security and wages for all workers in New York City and a reinstatement of the increased federal and state unemployment benefits and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance that came from the CARES Act. The threat of layoffs, reduced hours and pay, and forced retirement issued by the mayor and cynically repeated by the UFT and Transport Workers United, the union of MTA workers, underscores the reactionary character of the Democratic Party and its backers in the trade unions. We reject any form of austerity in the home of Wall Street and the center of world capitalism. The vast wealth of the financial oligarchy must be heavily taxed to pay for the health and safety of all workers and the education of the younger generation!

We demand the immediate freezing of college tuition and abolition of student loan debt, as well as free housing and meals to all international students and others in need wishing to remain as residents on campuses during remote learning.

We demand the immediate retrofitting of all classrooms and school buildings to ensure they have modern, high quality ventilation systems and air purifiers. The high rates of asthma and autism in the poorest parts of the city have been linked to terrible quality of air in poorly built buildings, with asbestos and lead residue being the most common. Such conditions in school buildings should not be tolerated.

We demand all homeless and home-insecure students and families be provided free, safe, and dignified housing for the duration of the pandemic, in a system that expands on the city’s current program for housing mainly homeless individuals. The expense of all such housing and technological development must be taxed out of the billions of dollars in profits accumulated by the financial oligarchy.

We demand full protection for undocumented immigrant workers and their children, including full income support or unemployment benefits while they are unable to work or choose not to work in unsafe conditions. We demand a halt to all imprisonment and deportation by the federal authorities and the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Gestapo.

On the basis of these demands, we appeal to all DOE educators, staff, students and parents in New York City to join our committee and to form a rank-and-file safety committee in your school. Our citywide committee is the central organizing group of the independent activity of educators across New York state, New Jersey and Connecticut, and we urge you to get involved!

The story of Palestinian olives

The story of Palestinian olives: Olives trees are a symbol of Palestinian heritage and identity. It's no wonder they make the best olive oil in the world

Pet adoption booming amid pandemic – but workers accuse retailers of abuses

Michael Sainato THE GUARDIAN
Thu, 19 November 2020

Photograph: Mark Peterman/AP

As the coronavirus pandemic has led to higher demand for pets and pet supplies, workers at the two largest pet retailers in the US, PetSmart and Petco, say their companies have denied granting hazard pay throughout the pandemic, cut staffing, and increased workloads for remaining employees, while planning decisions to enrich their Wall Street investors.

Demand for pet supplies has increased through the pandemic as Americans working remotely and socially distancing have contributed to a surge in pet adoptions around the US.

In September 2020, Bloomberg reported the owners of Petco, private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, are weighing an initial public offering or sale in 2021, with the retail chain’s estimated value at $6bn, including debt.

The private equity firm that owns PetSmart and Chewy announced plans in October 2020 to split the two companies three years after a merger acquisition. Workers say the deal will leave PetSmart with more debt while siphoning $11bn to Wall Street investors by transferring PetSmart’s stake in Chewy to themselves. Chewy saw their stock price more than double over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

Retail worker TJ Daniels, who has worked at Petco in Dillon, Colorado, for about four years saw his hours and workloads significantly increase when the pandemic hit, as several employees were either furloughed, took medical leave, or had to quarantine. All Petco retail stores remained open throughout the pandemic.

“The lack of employees made it really hard and stressful to work, because you have to do the workload of extra workers while dealing with the extra people in the store because everybody was stockpiling dog food and coming in to buy animals,” said Daniels.

He had a scheduled raise of 50 cents an hour which was revoked, and received only a 30 cent an hour raise recently. “We didn’t receive any hazard pay. They tried giving us small bonuses here and there, one of mine was $24. Managers got 200 bucks and regular store employees received $75. That doesn’t help at all,” he said.

Daniels pushed for better coronavirus safety protections throughout the pandemic, for the store to limit hours and staff an employee to monitor and enforce capacity, and for paid time off for quarantining. He said workers only receive one paid week to quarantine, with the second week forcing employees to use their accrued paid time off or they would be lent paid time off workers would have to pay back to the company.

He was one of several workers with United for Respect who signed a letter to Petco’s owners in response to the announcement of a possible initial public offering or sale, asking Petco to provide workers with hazard pay, healthcare and a voice on the company board of directors.

Kris Blotzer, who works as a Petco warehouse in Greenville, South Carolina, also signed the letter. He explained during the pandemic, workloads significantly increased, while his pay remained at $9 an hour.

“I was making $9 an hour to kill myself,” said Blotzer. “I was picking and packing 100 orders a day alone and most days couldn’t finish them.”

Phil Andrews, who has worked as a dog groomer at Petco for 13 years in Miami, Florida, also detailed tough conditions.

“We don’t have the staff to keep up and enforce mask-wearing and cleaning,” said Andrews. “They’re rolling out new ad campaigns, they want us to sell their pet insurance plans now, but have never talked about hazard pay. They’re asking us to do more and not being strict about safety for us.”

A spokesperson for Petco claimed the company has provided ample personal protective equipment to its 27,000 employees around the US.

“As our business began to rebound, we ended our planned furlough and pay cut period early and returned to strategic hiring to account for continued growth across our business,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We also invested $13m in additional compensation for our field teams, including five cycles of Covid appreciation bonuses; we invested $7m in additional Covid-related Paid Time Off; and we established the Petco Partner Assistance fund with more than $2m in initial funding from the company and its leaders.”

Petco and PetSmart would not provide their starting hourly wage for associates, but according to Payscale, the average pay for retail associates at Petco is $9.86 an hour and $10.06 an hour at PetSmart.

PetSmart, owned by the private equity firm BC Partners, has struggled over the past several years with billions of dollars in debt. During the pandemic, PetSmart initially refused to shut down its dog grooming services in many areas around the US, despite the services being deemed as non-essential in some areas.

A PetSmart employee in San Antonio, Texas, for over three years, Alex Ludwig, said her store’s cashiers were laid off in the beginning of the pandemic, while all remaining employees except managers experienced cuts to their work hours.

“My hours personally dropped 10 to 20 hours per week,” said Ludwig. “It has been insane, far worse than any Black Friday sale we’ve had and the customers aren’t abiding social distancing whatsoever.”

Ludwig was one of dozens of current and former PetSmart workers who signed a letter to the company’s ownership in July 2020 requesting hazard pay for workers, healthcare benefits and adequate personal protective equipment.

She resigned in September 2020 after months of her complaints and concerns being ignored by management.

A spokesperson for PetSmart told the Guardian the company has invested millions of dollars to provide personal protective equipment to associates.

“We have paid more than $20m in additional compensation to our front-line associates since the pandemic began. This includes special thank-you bonuses, payment of healthcare premiums, and other healthcare benefits,” they said in an email. “We also made a $1m contribution to the longstanding PetSmart Associate Assistance Foundation to support frontline workers facing personal or financial hardships, and established a $1m scholarship fund for associates of color in furtherance of our commitment to diversity and inclusion.”

AMELIORATING CAPITALI$M

Top UK 25 companies for D&I by McKenzie-Delis Packer Review

The McKenzie Delis Packer Review is the first of its kind to provide a holistic review of all ten facets of diversity and inclusion in the UK workplace across Britain's biggest companies.

Yahoo Finance UK
The most comprehensive D&I report into UK companies just launched

Lianna Brinded
·Head of Yahoo Finance UK
Thu, 19 November 2020

Major diversity and inclusion membership organisation DIAL Global and gold standard polling agency Ipsos MORI just released a benchmark report — The McKenzie-Delis Packer Review — that tracks the D&I efforts of Britain’s biggest companies.

The report, supported by the parent company of Yahoo Finance, Verizon Media, unveiled a number of key stats from the survey of 79 companies and institutions, including brands such as Boots, Tesco (TSCO.L), Natwest (NWG.L), KPMG, Diageo (DGE.L), the NHS, and the Football Association.

The full report looks at 10 distinct aspects of diversity and inclusion — ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, mental health, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, religion, and parenthood. These 10 facets are considered by the network to be key areas of attention for organisations dedicated to improving workplace diversity and inclusion.

READ MORE: How to evolve from ‘feel-good’ optics to creating real and measurable change?

Data for the McKenzie-Delis Packer Review was obtained through an online survey sent by Ipsos MORI to UK Employers from the private and public sectors including the FTSE 500, all NHS Foundation Trusts and public sector departments, and other private companies between June and October 2020.

Of the participating organisations: 44 are in the FTSE 500, 23 are NHS Foundation Trusts, two are public sector departments and 11 in other private sector.

WATCH: What is McKenzie Delis Packer Review

Research partners include — The Parker Review, Stonewall, Hampton Alexander Review, upReach, Centre for Ageing Better, Business Disability Forum, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Minds at Work, and Power of the Parent.

“Diversity and inclusion isn’t just about looking at one or two areas, we wanted to go beyond that and look at many different facets so we can properly track how UK companies are performing and identify areas where change is needed,” said Leila McKenzie-Delis, the founder of the review and CEO of DIAL Global.

“We are delighted so many big names stepped forward to be involved and over the coming years we aim to track how thousands of UK companies are performing.”

READ MORE: Black Lives Matter — 'Now is the time for organisations to prove it'

The report, which was chaired by Lord Simon Woolley and Ipsos MORI’s CEO Ben Page, puts a spotlight on areas that companies need to focus on to make their firms more diverse and inclusive:


89% of companies do not track their employees’ socioeconomic backgrounds


Only 22% of companies say they publish their ethnicity pay gap data

“I have worked nearly 30 years fighting, campaigning and lobbying for greater social and racial justice. The McKenzie-Delis Packer Review is a milestone first step when it comes to giving us a better understanding of who we are, and where we are in the diversity and inclusion space,” said Lord Simon Woolley, chairman of the MDP Review.

“The better we understand this the better we are placed to make bold and brave plans and make change happen.”

WATCH: Major British Lord and 'disciple of Martin Luther King' highlights 'ground breaking research' on companies and D&I

UK
As a teacher I need to be able to talk about racism without government meddling


Anonymous
Thu, 19 November 2020,THE GUARDIAN
  
  

Photograph: MBI//Alamy Stock Photo

In October, the women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch made a dramatic intervention in the House of Commons during a session commemorating Black History Month. Schools, she said, that teach students about certain ideas from “critical race theory” as “fact” were breaking the law: “We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt.”

The minister’s words came not too long after guidance for schools in England was published that said schools “should not use resources produced by organisations that … promote victim narratives that are harmful to British society”. It’s safe to say that these two developments, which seemed designed to have a chilling effect on discussing the uncomfortable truths of racism in Britain, have made fellow teachers and myself worried about what we can and can’t say. And the day after Badenoch’s speech, I was due to take a PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) lesson about racism.

Most of the students in my class are white, so before we even started the lesson, I knew that the racial status of whiteness in a white-majority society was going to come up. I felt unsure as to my role – I hadn’t had time yet to absorb Badenoch’s statement – but the intelligence and inquisitiveness of my students led the way. “Can you be racist towards white people, because I told my friend that you can’t?”, asked one. Others began sharing their experiences. A black student talked about how their family members had been stopped by the police in town. Two non-white students explained how a teacher got them mixed up for a year. There was no point during the lesson when any of the white students shared experiences of racism. Isn’t that discrepancy in their experiences an example of “white privilege” in action?

Schools are complex ecosystems. You might be dealing with more than 1,000 students and several hundred staff members. It became evident to me that there were many members of staff who didn’t know or maybe even care about the issues raised during Black History Month. I know that one member of staff said, “All lives matter” at one point, while another drew a false equivalence between Black Lives Matter and the BNP. This highlights both the importance of educating staff about race, as well as the fact that schools are contested spaces for social issues.

Related: Discrimination at school: is a Black British history lesson repeating itself?

Now we are faced with the dilemma of how to teach vitally important concepts without breaking government guidance. Colleagues often have the same worrying scenario in mind: they try to have a nuanced conversation about “whiteness” or the legacy of white supremacy, and a student goes home and tells their parents that they’re learning about how racism is their fault. The government says it is against teaching certain ideas, as if they were “accepted facts”. But no concept in the social sciences is uncontested and surely Badenoch knows this, so the real consequences of her words is probably going to be a chilling effect. I am also unsure specifically what constitutes “critical race theory” or “victim narratives”, from the government’s point of view, and so feel apprehensive about the content of some lessons in the coming weeks.

I don’t want to be complicit in papering over the realities of racism by avoiding these topics for fear of repercussions from senior staff and the wider community, but I also don’t want to put my job at risk. As teachers, we have a responsibility and duty to our students to provide them with comprehensive support and guidance to give them the best chances when they leave school. Race issues and racism are extremely prevalent in our students’ lives, and children are going to have questions. “But why, Miss?” and “Yeah, but how do you know, Sir?” pop up frequently in all lessons. Am I meant to discourage a conversation about stop and search when the only teenager in the room to have experienced this is black and their white peers want to understand why?

There needs to be more resources and training to equip teachers to deliver good teaching on diversity-based topics – I know I am not the only teacher who feels that. I want to see diversity training made a compulsory part of teacher-training programmes; it should be given a similar priority as safeguarding training. Rather than shutting down these conversations and topics, educators should be better equipped to explore these issues in the classroom without fear or ignorance. Creating a climate in which teachers feel it’s safer to avoid these topics of conversation doesn’t make these questions go away – it will force students to go elsewhere in search of answers.

• The author teaches in a secondary school in England

DOWNUNDER
Five people injured in NSW lightning strike

Five people were injured in a lightning strike in the NSW Hunter Valley on Friday.

The New Daily@TheNewDailyAU

Five people have suffered minor injuries after lightning struck the ground near them at Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley on Friday

The ABC in nearby Newcastle is reporting that emergency services were called to the Hunter Valley Resort on Hermitage Road at 12.30pm.

The injured group were four men, aged 59, 38 and 32 and 18, and a 42-year-old woman.

Ambulance sources told the ABC that one of the injured people was taken to hospital. All were conscious and breathing when paramedics arrived.

The other four people were treated at the scene.

A lightning map of the area shows dozens of strikes hitting the wine country region and the storm moving towards Singleton.

The Hunter region has been plagued by storms this week, with more than 1100 lightning strikes on Monday night as high winds and torrential rain brought down power lines and left 20,000 homes without electricity.

More storms, which will bring damaging winds, large hail and heavy rain, were forecast for the area on Friday afternoon.

The BOM issued storm warnings for the areas in yellow just after 4pm (AEDT) on Friday.

-with agencies