You are here

Home » capitalism, colonialism, and fascism » capitalism » neoliberalism

privatization

NUMSA statement on Eskom CEO’s resignation

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 11/22/2016 - 18:33

By Irvin Jim and Patrick Craven - NUMSA, November 16, 2016

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa welcomes the resignations of Eskom CEO Brian Molefe and Board member Mark Pamensky, and calls for the resignation of the entire board and divisional executives who are all implicated in the many serious allegations against Eskom in the former Public Protector’s report, the State of Capture, which include:

1. Irregularities in an Eskom deal with a Gupta-0wned mining company, Tegeta, which won a R2-billion profit from a transaction involving Glencor’s sale of Optimum Coal Mine and its holding company to Tegeta.

2. Eskom letting Tegeta sell off part of Optimum Coal Terminal — a deal which Ajay Gupta told the public protector had netted him a profit of R2-billion, which might constitute a contravention of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) as Eskom “acted solely for the benefit of one company”.

3. Eskom’s authorisation of a R660-million coal prepayment to Tegeta at a special board meeting, hours after the Gupta company informed Glencor they were R600-million short of the money to buy the mine and that banks had refused to come up with the cash. This could violate the PFMA and amount to fraud as the money was not used to fund the mine but to buy the shares of the holding company — contrary to what Tegeta said publicly.

4. A 10-year contract with Tegeta to supply 1.35 million tons of coal a year to Majuba power station at roughly R284 per ton from their Brakfontein mine, despite evidence that Eskom’s technical team were concerned about the coal’s quality. Eskom paid R134-million to Tegeta for substandard coal it knew it could not use in its power stations.

Eskom has even victimised two Numsa members whom they are trying to make scapegoats for this Brakfontein deal. One has been dismissed and the other suspended for over a year and Numsa will continuously fight for justice for these members.

5. Molefe’s “cosy” relationship with the Guptas which are substantiated by cell phone records which show that he phoned Ajay Gupta 44 times, and Ajay Gupta called him 14 times, between August last year and March this year. Between August 5 and November 17 2015, he was placed in Saxonwold on 19 occasions.  Atul Gupta admitted to Madonsela that Molefe was a “very good friend”, yet Molefe had not declared his relationship with the Gupta family.

All these are allegations which the proposed Commission of Enquiry must investigate, but they are sufficiently serious to make it impossible for Molefe and the Eskom Board to continue with business as usual and they must stand down.

This however raises the question of who should replace them, and also who should be on the boards of other state-owned entities about several of which the State of Capture report also expresses concern, including Transnet, Denel, SAA and the SABC.

Numsa has consistently opposed privatisation of public entities, called for the renationalisation of Arcelor Mittal SA and Sasol and the nationalisation of other strategic industries. But it is now clear that SOEs all need to be run in a far more democratic and socially responsible way.

Public utilities should have an entirely different set of objectives from private companies – to produce commodities and deliver services which people need, as efficiently, safely and economically as possible and to protect the environment and the economic prospects for future generations.

This is impossible however when SOEs are run as they are today, as if they are private businesses, motivated exclusively by the pursuit of maximum short-term profits, regardless of the impact their activities have on local communities, the environment, their workers and the long-term future of the economy, and also as auxiliary service providers to the dominant private capitalist system.

The underlying problem at the heart of all Madonsela’s allegations is that SOEs have become entangled with the corrupt private sector through outsourcing of ancillary activities and thus been infected with the disease of corruption, which is inherent in the capitalist system.

While Eskom itself remains state-owned, it has done huge deals with private companies, in particular those in the coal mining industry, many of which feature in the former Public Protector’s allegations.

This leads to a particularly blatant form of corruption arising from the SOE directors’ close relations with the state, corrupt politicians and private companies, which creates the crony capitalism which Madonsela has exposed.

When challenged by Numsa about Eskom’s outsourcing of coal mining, Molefe argued that he was not interested in owning the bakery but only in the delivery of the bread.  But coal mining and electricity generation are inextricably linked together.

If public ownership is to achieve the social objectives as defined above it will have to embrace all the key sectors of the economy so that they can be integrated into a coherent development plan of production.

This will however be impossible if their boards are full of profit-motivated business men and women. The new Eskom Board must reverse this trend and comprise of democratically elected representatives of the workers, communities and civil society, so that they are run in the interests of South Africa as a whole and not their selfish interests and those of corrupt cronies.

This should then set the pattern for all SOEs and other industries which need to be nationalised so that we can create a socialist South Africa based on the Freedom Charter in which the wealth of the country is really transferred to the people.

Tags: 
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA)
privatization
coal
mine workers
green unionism
ESKOM

Cities and civic workers: The union role in building better cities

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 10/05/2016 - 17:29

By Jim Silver - Rabble.Ca, October 5, 2016

Although Carlo Fanelli's book Megacity Malaise: Neoliberalism, Public Services and Labour in Toronto is not about Winnipeg, it offers many insights applicable to Winnipeg and to other Canadian cities. Fanelli is a former Toronto civic employee who looks at civic issues from the point of view of city employees and their unions. His central argument is that the fiscal problems confronting Toronto and all major Canadian cities are not caused by over-spending on civic services nor by excessive union wage demands, although this is what is typically claimed.

The basis of Canadian cities' fiscal problems is in Canada's Constitution, which does not give cities the taxing powers to generate sufficient revenue to do all of the things for which they have responsibility. Cities are forced to over-rely on property taxes, which "is unsustainable in the long run." Property taxes are regressive, and don't grow with the economy, leaving cities in a constant state of fiscal crisis. This is made worse by the fact that federal commitments to civic issues have been sporadic and insufficient to meet cities' needs.

This has been worsened further by the ideological dominance in Canada of neoliberalism. This ideology has driven massive cuts in taxation and in public spending -- by 1999 Ontario's Mike Harris government, for example, had made 99 different tax cuts; by 2013 Stephen Harper's government had cut federal taxes to the lowest rate in 70 years -- followed by the downloading of responsibilities from senior to lower level governments. Cities have borne the brunt of this offloading, and have not had the capacity to generate the revenues needed to deal with it.

Toronto and Winnipeg have responded with a host of policy measures that do not get at the real root of the problem. Like Winnipeg, Toronto has allowed suburban sprawl to grow, on the grounds that more suburban housing will mean more property tax revenue. But this doesn't get at the underlying structural problems, and in fact generates more costs in the longer run. Selling off valuable public assets to the private sector creates profits for private interests, but produces a one-time only injection of cash that is no solution to the underlying problem and that diminishes future revenue flows. The same is the case with privatization and contracting out and the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs).

There is a great deal of evidence that PPPs, to take that example, do not generate the savings that cities claim. Ontario's auditor-general produced a major report on 74 PPPs completed between 2003 and 2014 and found that these cost Ontario some $8 billion more than traditional public financing. Contractors benefit, cities' budgets do not, yet Toronto and Winnipeg continue to make use of PPPs on the largely false grounds that they save public money. The contracting out of city work continues unabated, and any "savings" it produces are typically the result of non-union contractors exploiting vulnerable workers. This is the case with the privatization of Winnipeg's garbage collection service in 2012. The hard work of lifting garbage cans and dumping them into trucks is done by temporary day labourers -- many of them young Aboriginal men -- hired on a day-by-day basis at minimum wage with no benefits. Described in an expose by Aboriginal Peoples Television Network as "Winnipeg's dirty little garbage secret," this exploitative process is how Winnipeg "saves" money via privatization and contracting out

Spending on valuable public services continues to be cut on the largely false grounds that cities have a "spending problem," while the already massive infrastructure deficit balloons ever further. Roads, bridges, underground pipelines and transit services continue to deteriorate, while parks and recreation facilities, libraries and other essential civic services remain underfunded. The urban fiscal crisis grows unabated.

City governments, desperate for solutions and driven by their ideological orientation, point the finger at out-of-control spending and excessive wage demands by civic unions. Many in the right-wing media promote this simplistic and largely false explanation.

Fanelli points to data showing that incomes have stagnated over the past three decades of neoliberal governance. "In Canada's three largest cities the bottom 90 per cent of income-earners made less in 2013 than they did in 1983." Toronto's 2007 Independent Fiscal Review Panel found that the average wage of City of Toronto workers, including overtime, was "less than $40,000 in 2007." Toronto's unionized workers and their unions are not the cause of the city's fiscal problems.

Yet one of the great "successes" of neoliberalism and its adherents has been to redirect the anger of many modest-income earners at civic employees and their unions. Civic employees are seen as being paid too generously, despite their relatively modest earnings. As Fanelli points out, "the vitriol directed at them is intense, often as if they live lavish lives at the expense of non-unionized workers."

Tags: 
green urbanism
green unionism
globalization
disaster capitalism
privatization

This October, All Hands On Deck to Stop the TPP

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 10/03/2016 - 17:49

By Steve Brown - Labor Notes, September 30, 2016

The White House is hell-bent on forcing the Trans-Pacific Partnership through Congress during the lame-duck session immediately after the election, when political accountability to constituents is at its lowest.

That’s why it’s critical that workers and unions demand that waffling members of Congress state their opposition to the TPP this October, before the election—while we still have some leverage.

TPP is like a giant version of NAFTA, covering 12 countries around the Pacific. This multinational treaty poses an urgent threat to our democracy, jobs, health, environment, drug prices, and the Internet.

Communications Workers (CWA) Local 3611 member Grant Welch hadn’t even heard of the TPP until he attended a union training in June. Now he’s helping his local to phonebank, asking every member to call their Congressperson. CWA held a national call-in day September 14.

“People are eager and willing to learn,” says Welch, a telecom worker in Raleigh, North Carolina. “We have a group of very passionate young workers who have visited every work center and every yard to tell workers about the TPP.” He and fellow activists have also passed out flyers at Moral Monday rallies, and they’re spreading the word to family and friends.

Tags: 
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP)
globalization
privatization
austerity
greenwashing

Privatization of Public Education: This Changes Everything

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/27/2016 - 17:51

By Morna McDermott - Educational Alchemy, January 16, 2016

“The process of taking on the corporate-state power nexus that underpins the extractive economy is leading a great many people to face up to the underlying democratic crisis that has allowed multinationals to be the authors of the laws under which they operate …. What is a democracy if it doesn’t encompass the capacity to decide, collectively, to protect something that no one can live without” (Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, p. 361)

I recently read Naomi Klein’s new book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. I was struck by how many similarities there were between the struggle to abate massive climate disaster and the current fight for public education. I think this is a good analogy because like climate change, education “reform” (aka privatization) is everywhere and nowhere. While the issues are clearly related to human and civil rights, there are no lunch counters to sit at, no visible or tangible signs of du-jure segregation. Rather … like the emissions, fracking and melting of ice caps, the erosion of public education is slow, insidious, and difficult to pin point by location or single origin. The problem feels just “too big” to tackle on some days.

I noted many marked parallels in both the nature/cause of the problem (between Klein’s book and education reform), as well as visions for a solution to both. They (ed reform and the capitalist/big oil co’s) are both “extrationist” in nature: We are mining the earth for coal, oil, natural gas, and other resources just as we are mining children’s data for profit, mining our children’s bodies as “human capital,” and mining schools of our tax dollars to line the pockets of corporations. They share an ideology of money, and the money to fund the ideology.

Fast forward to the conclusion: In order to 1) wrest public education from the hands of privatizers/corporate control ….and 2) to create PUBLIC schools that are sustainable, equitable and meaningful for all children (something we have never done before), we must be willing to completely revolutionize the way in which we think about, and act, in the world. Simple. But a tall order.

Naomi Klein says as much; that in order to truly address climate change, we must critically re-examine the entirety of the socio political and economic values embedded within a deregulated, global free- market paradigm. Ecological justice is social justice, just as education justice is tied to ecological and economic and cultural justice.

Think … lead in water in Flint MI and the effects on educational opportunities for those children.

IT’S ALL CONNECTED: The corporate interests that are driving privatization and global control of health services, access to food and water, and management of other public institutions (i.e. prisons) are the SAME corporations, using the same playbook, to dismantle public education.  And this issue is GLOBAL.

Tags: 
teachers
privatization
just transition
green unionism
Naomi Klein
climate justice

Capital Blight News #122

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/20/2016 - 18:38

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 20, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Green is the New Red:

Tags: 
capital blight
Eco Unionist News
climate justice
climate change
ExxonMobil
greenwashing
Green is the New Red
privatization
Donald Trump

Capital Blight News #121

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/13/2016 - 15:03

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 13, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
capital blight
greenwashing
Green is the New Red
climate justice
climate change
Koch Brothers
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
disaster capitalism
privatization

Capital Blight News #120

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 09/06/2016 - 22:55

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 7, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Green is the New Red:

Greenwashers:

Disaster Capitalism:

Tags: 
capital blight
Eco Unionist News
fracking
greenwashing
Green is the New Red
climate change
climate justice
disaster capitalism
privatization
Hurricane Katrina

Capital Blight News #119

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/29/2016 - 19:10

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 31, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Greenwashers:

Disaster Capitalism:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Tags: 
capital blight
Eco Unionist News
climate change
climate justice
greenwashing
Green is the New Red
disaster capitalism
privatization

Capital Blight News #118

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/23/2016 - 19:25

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 24, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Green is the New Red:

Tags: 
capital blight
climate change
climate justice
Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump
Barack Obama
greenwashing
Green is the New Red
disaster capitalism
privatization
Eco Unionist News

As Flint Water Crisis "Emergency" Ends, Bigger Heads Need to Roll

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 08/21/2016 - 12:18

By Michele Oberholtzer - Occupy.Com, August 18, 2016

This week, the emergency is officially over following the Flint Water Crisis. One year ago, the city of Flint, Mich., joined the ranks of Sandy Hook, Ferguson and other previously obscure cities that became a metaphor for man-made tragedy. In Flint the trauma came not at the barrel of a gun but through the faucet of a sink, as the infrastructure that was meant to provide life-sustaining water was made toxic through a negligent cost-cutting measure that altered water sources and treatment procedures. Flint entered a Federal State of Emergency to respond to the crisis, and that emergency expired this week.

First, the good news. Reports have showed significant improvements to water quality in a large number of Flint homes. State money amounting to $25 million and additional federal money is under consideration to address the temporary and long-term needs of residents, while charges have been brought against nine past and current state employees for their involvement in the crisis.

However satisfying one's reaction to this might be, the reality is that the water emergency in Flint continues. The ending of the state of emergency and the felony charges have a mollifying effect on the accumulated outrage, but no amount of federal appropriations or scape-goated employees can begin to address the root of the crimes that transgressed human rights in Flint.

Before considering the charges now being brought again Michigan employees, consider the true crimes of the Flint Water Crisis. First, there was the poisoning of the water itself, which involved switching from treated Detroit water to improperly treated water taken out of the industrial and highly polluted Flint River. Second, there was the failure of local and state governments to identify the problem or heed the immediate vocal outcries coming from residents and local businesses for over a year. Third, there was the capitalization of government that started with “emergency management” and ended with single-bottom-line decisions like the water conversion.

The charges brought against these individuals address a small aspect of issue number two: specifically, that government officials destroyed emails with incriminating evidence of lead level tests. Those emails revealed that the information about the low water quality was known and not acted on. According to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, “Each of these individuals attempted to bury … information that contradicted their own narrative… and their narrative was ‘there’s nothing wrong with Flint water.'”

There appears to be convincing evidence of a coordinated effort between Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) employees (those who received the lead reports) and Department of Environmental Quality employees (those who issued the lead reports) to delete emails that contained alarming and actionable data showing high levels of lead in the blood of Flint residents.

What reason could these people have for deleting emails that contained such alarming information? A person is not guilty of neglect unless s/he fails to act, yet these emails contained new and vital information that the recipients could have conceivably acted on and avoided any need for burying information. The destruction of the emails suggests that either the employees already considered that they had previously ignored information, or knew that they would be unable to correct the problem (since that would involve acknowledging the city's failed water system). Righting this kind of wrong would be terribly expensive, and the whole premise of Flint’s new water system was to cut costs. Delete.

As offensive as the willful neglect of these individuals has been, the fact is that the charges against those people refer to events that took place in July 2015, when the water crisis had already been ongoing for more than a year.

Conspicuously absent are charges against the engineers of the water switchover plan – including Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, the architect of Flint's subverted democracy, and Gov. Rick Snyder – not to mention the premise that these individuals represent government-as-business and profit-over-people. Those pillars will go unshaken regardless of whether a few middlemen take the heat. A recent report by the Water Advisory Task Force placed the responsibility for the crisis on the state (specifically the DHHS). Note: This task force was appointed by Gov. Snyder.

Michigan can lock up the guys who buried the dirt, but people should not be distracted from the individuals who created the mess in the first place. The cognitive leap here, for the Attorney General’s investigation, is not to necessarily uncover hidden actions but to consider the crimes that took place in broad daylight. The decision of Flint leadership to switch from Detroit to Flint water sources was a financial one, made under the guardianship of emergency management. (“Emergency” in this case refers to a financial emergency, not a human one, which only came later). In this crisis, it is clear that decisions to prioritize money over people were not incidental, but rather inherent in the emergency management process.

Much has been said about the destruction to the physical infrastructure of Flint in recent years. But just as important was the destruction to the political infrastructure that began deteriorating not when the water sources were switched, but when emergency management was declared. The checks and balances between government and constituents were dismantled across cities in Michigan, with a direct hierarchy that led all the way to the governor. While a total of nine former state employees spend time awaiting trial, the architects of democratic deconstruction rest easy. Meanwhile, the rest of Michigan dreams of a world where “emergency management” is only used for human crises, not financial ones – in which case it may be about time find an Emergency Governor.

Tags: 
Flint
privatization
disaster capitalism
water
water pollution
capital blight

Pages

The Fine Print I:

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) unless otherwise indicated and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s, nor should it be assumed that any of these authors automatically support the IWW or endorse any of its positions.

Further: the inclusion of a link on our site (other than the link to the main IWW site) does not imply endorsement by or an alliance with the IWW. These sites have been chosen by our members due to their perceived relevance to the IWW EUC and are included here for informational purposes only. If you have any suggestions or comments on any of the links included (or not included) above, please contact us.

The Fine Print II:

Fair Use Notice: The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of scientific, environmental, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc.

It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal or technical advice.