Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar has set out a plan for Ireland to start to reopen over 15 weeks from May 18 but until then most of the current restrictions will remain in place.

r Varadkar said thousands of lives have been saved and Covid-19 infections prevented by the sacrifices people have made.

He said: "Let's finish what we started".

Mr Varadkar added: "While there is still so much that we do not know. Tonight there is hope.

"Hope will drive us forward as we plan to emerge safely from this crisis."

Mr Varadkar said that the coronavirus crisis has been "dispiriting", there has been the "frustration" of living with the restrictions and "uncertainty" of when life will return to normal.

He said there's also been fear of the virus itself, people are lonely in isolation and many have lost their jobs.

He said many fear losing businesses.

And he said many people have lost their lives.

He said: "I yearn for the day when it stops."

But he explained why the decision has been taken to leave most of the current restrictions in place.

He also confirmed that schools wont re-open until September.

It means the only students who may return to classrooms in the next few months will be Leaving Cert candidates.

Education Minister Joe McHugh is still hoping to bring Leaving Cert students back in July subject to adequate planning and public health advice in order to do the State exam in July and August, his spokesman said.

Planning for the Leaving Cert is still being discussed, including through the Advisory Group set up by the Department involving education stakeholders, the spokesman said. It is still hoped to bring just Leaving Cert students back in July, subject to adequate planning and public health advice.

Higher and further education colleges will also remain closed until the autumn, Mr Varadkar confirmed, but there is no surprise about that as the academic year is coming to a close.

Schools and colleges have been closed since March 12.

Schools were concerned about the practicalities of reopening in May or June.

In explaining why most restrictions will remain in place until then Mr Varadkar said "we have not yet won this fight"

He added: "every day we have too many new cases... and every day we have too many deaths".

He said that scientists and doctors have said that if restrictions are relaxed too soon the health service could be overwhelmed and "everything we've achieve could be lost".

"We must go on for a short time more," he added.

He said there is a plan to ease lock-down from May 18 but two more weeks of "tight restrictions" are needed to "weaken the virus further so it doesn't have the strength to come back".

He said the plan is to reopen the country in a "slow, staged way" of three week intervals, with the fifth phase beginning on August 10.

Mr Varadkar warned that the risk of a second wave of the virus is "ever present" and the country can only move from one phase to the next if the virus stays under control.

In the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment hygiene procedures and social distancing must be maintained.

He said "it will take some time for our lives to get back to normal, a new normal".

Mr Varadkar also said: "not long from now on some summer night we will see our friends again".

The first phase of easing restrictions will begin on May 18, when open air workers, such as builders, landscapers and roofers, will return to work in two weeks time under new plans being discussed by the Cabinet.

Among the measures that could take place then - depending on progress in fighting the spread of the virus - would be the reopening of construction sites.

Garden centres and hardware stores could also reopen on that date.

Social distancing would have to be practised at such businesses.

That date could also see people being allowed outside in groups of four including being able to meet up with non-family members.

Outdoor activities like fishing may also be allowed.

The second phase of easing restrictions will begin on June 8 when some retail outlets, marts and libraries are due to reopen.

Weddings may once again be able to take place in mid August under the governments plan for reopening the country.

Larger social gatherings, including weddings, will provisionally be permitted in the fifth phase of the lockdown exit strategy.

Garden centres, hardware stores, construction sites and other outdoor workplaces are to reopen in the first phase on May 18.

Meanwhile, older people who have been 'cocooning' are advised they can take exercise away from their homes under proposed new coronavirus regulations being discussed at Cabinet.

Over 70s will be told there is a low risk to their health if they exercise from next week but they will be urged to stay in their homes as much as possible.

And the 2km limit on travel and exercise for the wider population will be extended to 5km from next Tuesday.

The previous coronavirus restrictions were due to expire next Tuesday, May 5.

The chairman of NPHET, Mr Holohan said that if there is continued progress in suppressing the virus the group has a "high degree of confidence" restrictions can start being eased on May 18.

Health Minister Simon Harris said the "indicative roadmap" may be varied depending on the progress in fighting the disease.

"If it's possible to move more quickly of course we will," he said.

He confirmed that under the plan people won't be able to visit family who live more than 20km away until the phase that's due to begin in July.

But he suggested that some children will be able to visit grandparents who are over-70 from phase two which begins on June 8.

Mr Holohan was asked about small weddings, which are due to be allowed in August.

He declined to specify how many people would fall into the definition of a small wedding, saying: "it will depend on the progress we're making."

Mr Harris said: "We are not going to leave one restriction in place longer than it takes to save people's lives."

He confirmed that he is to sign an order tonight to extend the powers of garda to enforce restrictions until May 18.

Mr Holohan was asked about use of face coverings by the public.

He said medical-grade face masks must be reserved for health workers and patients.

But he said face coverings for the general public in certain circumstances he said they have been recommended in other countries and may form "an important part in easing restrictions" here.

He said the advice may be to use them on public transport and in certain retail settings where social distancing is difficult.

Mr Holohan said work would continue on developing guidance for face coverings in the next two weeks.

He said: "We're not saying rush out and start using them now."

Meanwhile, a number of universities have released details of their re-opening arrangements in the autumn, running into November for first years, eight weeks later than usual.

Dublin City University (DCU) will re-open for continuing students and new postgraduate taught students on Monday October 5.

DCU said the start date for incoming first years remained unclear, but it would be November at the earliest - that is based on the Leaving Cert kicking off on July 29, which is subject to public health advice.

The university said it would bring students and staff physically onto campus only when, and in a manner, that is safe to do so and would continue to be guided by the HSE and the Department of Health.

DCU has also announced that it is planning for dual-mode delivery of teaching, involving both online and face-to-face delivery as appropriate, which will involve revisions to the academic calendar, changes to programme structures, and new approaches to the use of space on campus.

And, in anticipation of social distancing requirements operating through the rest of 2020 and into 2021, DCU said it was unlikely to be able to run any large-group, campus-based activities in the first semester at the very least.

Arrangements across the higher education sector are expected to be broadly similar.

The University of Limerick (UL) also expects to welcome its first years at the beginning of November, but said it would depend on a number of factors including when the Leaving Cert takes place and the CAO offer/acceptance process.

Most other UL undergraduate and postgraduate students will begin on September 28, although some programmes, such as education and health will have different dates.

UL is also planning for a blended approach to teaching and learning, with a combination of online and face to face, such as for laboratory c lasses, studio time and some seminars and tutorials.

This will be limited in order to insure the health and safety of our community and to work within the government restrictions. Any planned approach will need to take account of the possibility that future full or partial closures may well be called for at short notice, the university stated.

UL has also announced that Erasmus and Non EU Exchange mobility programmes will be suspended for the first semester and alternative programmes will be put in place for those students who had been scheduled to study abroad for their autumn semester.

NUI Galway has also pencilled in September 28 as the start state for returning students.

The government has been cautioning all week that changes - if any - to the extraordinary limits on everyday life will be minimal amid continuing concern over the numbers of people still contracting the virus.

With many restrictions on public movement to remain in place, the Cabinet is also agreeing to extend two social welfare measures that were due to expire on May 9.

The enhanced Covid-19 illness benefit of 350 paid to people diagnosed with the disease or who are a suspected case will now be paid until June 19.

The temporary abolition of the three-day waiting period for jobseekers' benefits has also been extended until the same date.

Ministers have been informed that the extension of illness benefit by further seven weeks will cost the exchequer "in the region of" 30 million and the waiving of the waiting period for jobseekers will cost approximately 2.7m. The money for both will be drawn from the social insurance fund.

The Cabinet was informed that the temporary wage subsidy scheme is due to expire on June 19, while the special pandemic unemployment payment is due to expire a week earlier. Ministers expect that both schemes will have to be extended with some adjustments given the ongoing emergency.

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Leo Varadkar Announcement: Country will start to slowly reopen on May 18 but schools wont return until September - Independent.ie

ROCKS will melt in the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scotlands students. So said the former First Minister, Alex Salmond, before the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections. Well, theyre not exactly melting, but the rocks of Scottish higher education are looking decidedly squiffy.

The coronavirus has hit Scottish higher education deep in the finances. Vice-chancellors are begging anyone who will listen to pop a million or 10 into their outstretched mortar boards. They say theyre about to lose half a billion through the loss of international student fees, commercial activities and events like the Edinburgh Festival (nearly half of all Fringe shows are in Edinburgh University venues)

Actually, that figure of 500 million is on the optimistic side. Reform Scotland estimates that Scotlands universities are in the hole for around 1bn, more than a quarter of their annual income. Vice-chancellors are said to be trying to downplay the truth of their finances so as not to frighten the politicians. Unlike big American universities, Scottish academic institutions do not have wealthy endowments to fall back on.

This Covid crisis could not come at a worse time. University bosses have been awarding themselves telephone salaries. The Office for National Statistics said recently that half of Scottish graduates are working in jobs that do not require university degrees. Josephine Public just hears stories of students and staff stamping out freedom of speech and ostracising academics who still think biological sex exists.

This is unfair, of course. Universities do a lot of valuable research, as the Covid-19 crisis has confirmed. But Scotlands universities have done a poor job in recent years of demonstrating their relevance. As a former Rector of Edinburgh University, I am only too aware of how insular many academics have become.

But that experience also made clear to me just how valuable our universities are. Higher education is one of the few things Scotland still does very well. We have at least five world-class universities that produce some of the best academic research in the world. Scotlands 19 universities are an 11 billion chunk of the Scottish economy and employ 140,000 people.

But St Andrews University says it is facing a 25m black hole. At least six others are running out of cash. This comes at a time when all sectors of the economy are requiring bail-outs at the same time. The Treasury is spending hundreds of billions on replacing lost incomes and trying to save small businesses.

Westminster has told the universities that theyre on their own. The Scottish Government is trying to put together a package of support, but it faces an unprecedented funding crisis of its own, post-pandemic. Tax revenues are shredded, public services are impoverished following a decade of austerity, the Barnett Formula is being squeezed. Are universities going to be saved at the expense of social care, hospitals or schools?

Universities are clearly better able to cope than primary and secondary schools with social distancing. The Open University showed the way to distance learning half a century ago, and universities have managed to move relatively seamlessly to internet learning during the current crisis.

Truth be told, theres not much formal teaching going on in humanities departments at the best of times. A handful of lectures and seminars a week is all the actual contact time that many students receive. Students do most of their work in libraries, and while that is problem right now, it should be possible to put a lot of course material online very soon.

There is of course a lot more to universities than lectures. Higher learning is a collective activity, and there is no substitute for face-to-face encounters with leading academics. Isolation was a problem for students before coronavirus came a long, and now it threatens to seriously damage their mental health.

Anyway, putting lectures online isnt going to address the funding crisis. Staff still have to be paid and science and medical degrees are very costly because of the advanced equipment they need. Teaching is a relatively small part of a modern universitys work. Over the last couple of decades, theyve have been judged largely on their research.

So what is to be done? Most vice-chancellors opposed the abolition of tuition fees, and there are many who believe free higher education is now a luxury Scotland cannot afford. But restoration is not on the cards for two reasons.

Free tuition is one of the SNPs signature policies and helped it win the 2011 landslide. More importantly, fees would not stave off the financial crisis. Students dont start paying fees until they graduate, and only then when they are earning over 25,000. The universities need cash now, not in four or five years.

There will likely be mergers, redundancies, the loss of some departments. Universities specialising in what they do best rather than offering the whole nine yards. Theyve been doing this anyway over the past few years. Many temporary staff will be quietly sacked.

Eventually someone is going to ask if a small country like Scotland can justify 19 universities, twice as many as comparable countries like Denmark and Norway. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that the higher education sector in Scotland has neglected vocational education.

Germany, which has demonstrated its strengths during the Covid crisis, doesnt generally rate elite higher education. It focuses much more on jobs-led science and technical colleges and has a much more diverse and less centralised educational landscape. It has also phased out tuition fees

But whatever happens, it seems likely that universities will lose much of their autonomy as a consequence of whatever bailout is arranged. The Scottish Government will want assurances on equal access for less-well-off students, more courses that lead to proper jobs and the retention of graduates in Scotland. Many leave Scotland as soon as they graduate because the pay is better in the south or abroad.

In recent years, universities have liked to style themselves as private companies, even calling vice-chancellors CEOs. Theyve been paying themselves private sector salaries too. Well, they are about to discover that, unlike the banks, they are not too big to fail.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.

Read more: Adults need a timetable for normality, not indefinite house arrest

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Opinion: Iain Macwhirter: Our universities will learn that they're not too big to fail - HeraldScotland

Ministers have failed for more than a year to publish a report they commissioned into the barriers facing disabled people who want to achieve elected office.

The report by two leading academics includes a series of recommendations on how to tackle and reduce the barriers disabled people face when trying to become local councillors and MPs.

The governments failure to publish the document will add to concerns that ministers have no interest in reducing those barriers and increasing the number of disabled politicians.

Disability News Service (DNS) has learned that the report, co-authored by Dr Elizabeth Evans, of Goldsmiths, University of London, and Dr Stefanie Reher, of the University of Strathclyde, was delivered to the Government Equalities Office (GEO) in April 2019.

The government has so far failed to publish the report, which is believed to contain damning evidence about the barriers facing disabled politicians.

In an email sent earlier this month to Mary Griffiths-Clarke (pictured), a disabled politician who fought the north Wales seat of Arfon for Labour at the 2017 general election, Evans said: To update you on the progress of the report we submitted it to the GEO last April and we have been waiting since then (!) for them to publish it.

Obviously things got delayed with Brexit, the election and now Covid-19.

When it first announced that Evans and Reher had been commissioned to carry out the research, Goldsmiths said they would be interviewing disabled candidates, activists and elected politicians across all parties, as well as independents.

After being contacted by DNS, GEO and Dr Evans said the report was a draft version and that they had continued to work on it after April, and that its publication was delayed by Decembers general election.

Only two months ago, DNS learned that successive chairs of the Conservative party snubbed a request from their own equalities minister, after she asked them to explain how they intended to support more disabled people to become MPs and councillors.

And earlier this month, DNS revealed that GEO had permanently closed the temporary EnAble fund that was set up following the closure of the short-lived Access to Elected Office fund to support disabled people with the extra costs they faced in running for office.

Griffiths-Clarke said there was no excuse for the delay in publishing the report, which showed that empowering disabled candidates was not a priority.

She said: If the report does indeed contain damming evidence of systemic barriers such as lack of adjustments and bullying of disabled candidates, why not do something about it?

If the government is genuinely serious about tackling barriers to public office and to empower a diverse range of candidates to become elected representatives, so parliament is reflective of society, then they need to be taking action.

Sadly, by looking at what is being done as opposed to what is being promised, the UK has a long way to go before barriers to inclusion are removed for disabled people.

Without supporting more disabled people to become candidates and empowering them to win at the ballot box, disability will never be truly understood in parliament.

She added: From the abolition of Access to Elected Office to the stubborn refusal to publish this report and take action on the many barriers faced by disabled politicians and activists, it reveals the government and political parties are in charge of the biggest barrier of all: that disabled people are viewed with contempt and [as being] incapable of becoming leaders, therefore they are not worth the investment.

Whilst disability continues to be perceived as a weakness, not a difference, such barriers will remain.

This is something that needs to be addressed not just within government but within society, as an electorate.

Deborah King, co-founder ofDisability Politics UK, said: The delay in ensuring disabled people have better access to elected political office seems deliberate.

It is as though disabled people are, in the eyes of elected politicians, the least important group to be entitled to get fair representation.

She said the COVID-19 crisis showed that different ways of working are possible, and that if online voting for MPs in the House of Commons which is currently being tested was combined with the right to job share in elected political office, more disabled people could become paid politicians.

A GEO spokesperson said the version of the report that was delivered in April 2019 was a first draft and that GEO policy officials and academics had continued to work on it until a final version was completed in December.

She said: The report was commissioned alongside an evaluation of the EnAble Fund, and we intend to publish the two documents in due course.

She declined to say when the evaluation report on the EnAble Fund was sent to GEO.

In a statement, Evans said: We presented an early version of the report to the GEO in April 2019.

Following feedback, we worked on a revised version while awaiting information on a likely publication date.

We were originally told the completed report would be published in December 2019, but this wasnt possible because of the pre-election period.

Im very grateful to all those who contributed to this research and I am looking forward to sharing the findings with them once the report is published.

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS

The rest is here:

Ministers have sat for months on elected office report, government admits - Disability News Service

Of course, selective enforcement of the Constitution was not exactly new in the 1920s. The 11 states in the old Confederacy had essentially voided the 14th and 15th amendments through Jim Crow laws and state-sanctioned terrorism by white supremacists. The 14th Amendments right to equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendments abolition of whites-only voting laws were little more than cruel jokes in the South and in other states as well.

But Smiths defiance of the 18th Amendment was of another order, in part because there was greater national support for Prohibition than there was for equal rights for African Americans, and in part because of who he wasa child of the city, a Roman Catholic, and the grandson of immigrants at a time when the country was about to close the country to most immigrants. A newspaper in upstate Auburn said of Smiths flouting of federal law, The opening gun at Fort Sumter did not echo a more outright defiance.

Smiths decision to flout a government order he despised transformed him from a regional curiosity to a national figure just as he was beginning to prepare for the 1924 presidential campaign. He would seek the White House three timesin 1924, 1928 and 1932and while he never won the prize, he became a beloved symbol of the new America that was taking shape in the nations cities as the children of Ellis Island came of age, politically and culturally, in the 1920s. Breaking the rules worked for Smith.

***

The 18th Amendment, which outlawed the manufacture, transportation and salebut not consumptionof intoxicating spirits, was ratified in January 1919 and took effect the following January. Congress then passed the federal Volstead Act, which gave Washington the power to enforce the amendment and set penalties for those caught in the act, and it defined intoxicating spirits as any beverage containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. It became law over Woodrow Wilsons veto in October 1919.

After Republicans took control of Albany in the Warren Harding landslide of 1920, they passed several bills that mimicked most aspects of the federal Volstead Act, empowering police in New York to enforce Prohibition. Many considered the statute unnecessary, but the dry forces in New York were intent on making a statement, and indeed included even tougher language than the federal law. For example, the New York enforcement bills, known collectively at the Mullan-Gage Act, declared that possession of a hip flask containing booze was the equivalent of carrying an unlicensed handgun.

The legislation pleased the powerful Anti-Saloon League and rural portions of upstate New York, where evangelical voters and the Ku Klux Klan looked askance (to put it mildly) at the growing power of Catholics and Jews in the states urban areas, particularly New York City. The dry forces associated drinking with foreign cultures. Prohibition, they argued, would help Americanize these alien peoples.

Suffice it to say, this didnt sit well with people like Al Smith, who embraced city life and all its racial, ethnic and religious complexities. He recaptured the governors office in 1922 after losing reelection two years earlier, and his fellow Democratsmany of whom were Catholics and Jews from the citieswon control of the Legislature, thanks in part to urban opposition to Prohibition.

Lawmakers did not waste time. A bill to repeal Mullan-Gage was introduced on January 3, 1923, as the new session was beginning and on the same day that the newly elected governor of Connecticut, Charles Templeton, declared that Prohibition was one of the greatest sociological experiments ever undertaken by any nation.

The repeal bill passed the Legislature in early Maythe Senates back-slapping majority leader, Jimmy Walker, helped win over some crucial but wavering votes in his chamberand was dispatched to Smiths desk. And thats when the eyes of the nation turned to the governors second-floor office in New Yorks state Capitol.

Smith despised Prohibitionhe continued to serve cocktails in his office in the state Capitoland resented the self-righteousness of its advocates. Passage of the Mullan-Gage repeal would have sent a signal far and wide that New York would no longer enforce laws it detested.

But thats precisely what worried Smith. Smith was a consensus-seeker who, as governor, found ways to work with Republican majorities in the Legislature. But there was no room for splitting the difference now. A Tennessee newspaper compared New Yorks attitude toward Prohibition to South Carolinas assertion in the early 1830s that it could void federal lawsmore specifically, tariffsit didnt like. The bitter nullification crisis was a precursor to South Carolina secession in 1860, and most Americans knew how that ended. While nobody was predicting that Smiths decision would lead to civil war, some feared repeal of Mullan-Gage would lead to more widespread defiance of the Volstead Act, leading to the kinds of bitter divisions Smith preferred to bridge rather than exacerbate.

There was another complication as well. Smith intended to run for president in 1924, and he would need support from the Democratic Partys dry-as-dust factions in the South and West to win the nomination. Then again, his base in the cities of the Northeast and the Midwest expected him to sign the repeal. If he failed to stand up for those who saw him as their champion, theyd be unlikely to stand up for him at the convention.

There was little question that he wanted to sign, but hed have to think it over.

During a month of deliberation, the national press focused intently on the looming rebellion in Albany, and some of the countrys leading political figures warned Smith of the stakes in play.

This disposition of the Mullan-Gage repeal bill will show the mettle of the man, Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter wrote to Smiths closest political adviser, Belle Moskowitz. If he vetoes the repeal, he will be damned for a comparatively brief time if he signs it, he would be damned for good.

Franklin Roosevelt, who would one day succeed Smith as governor and would, as president, appoint Frankfurter to the Supreme Court, was more sympathetic to Smiths dilemma. He wrote: Frankly, it is going to hurt you nationally a whole lot to sign the Repealer Bill. On the other hand I well realize that the vote in all the cities of this state will shriek to heaven if you were to veto the Bill.

Ultimately, Smith took the advice of his political mentor, Tammany Hall boss Charles Francis Murphy, a saloonkeeper by tradebefore, that is, his trade was declared illegal. Al, Murphy said at a summit meeting with the governor on Long Island, you must sign this bill. Murphy was a taciturn sorthe saw no reason to explain his reasoning because it was obvious. The people who put Smith back in the governors office knew they were voting for the wettest of the wet, and they expected him to act accordingly, the presidency be damned.

Smith went through the motions of holding a public hearing in the state Assembly chamber in Albany. The dry forces packed the house, some of them bringing along sandwiches and beveragessoft, of courseas they settled in for the political equivalent of a revival meeting. One of the many anti-liquor speakers said the governor had to choose between the Star-Spangled Banner and The Sidewalks of New Yorka song celebrating New York City that was long associated with Smith.

Toward the end, though, a prominent Republican, Thomas Douglas Robinson, a nephew of Theodore Roosevelt, delivered an impassioned speech denouncing the Prohibitionists as bigots who claimed to have a 100 percent mortgage on law and order and Americanism. He had voted in favor of repeal, Robinson said, and did so as an American. Robinsons rebuke was noteworthy given his lineage, for he was saying that the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who dominated the dry movement had no monopoly on the countrys values and culture.

Less than 24 hours later, on June 1, 1923, Al Smith signed the repeal bill. It contained the caveat that New York police would cooperate with federal agents if requested to do so, but officers would no longer enforce Prohibition on their own. In cities across the state, drinkers tripped the light fantastic long into the night. In the heartland, however, New Yorks defiance inspired fear and resentmentlaw, order and the very foundations of what made America great were breaking down in the nations immigrant-filled cities. Smith, thundered the Kansas City Star, had done an anarchistic thing.

William Jennings Bryan, the spiritual leader of the Democratic Partys influential evangelical faction, took to the pages of the New York Times to pronounce his judgment of Smith and his ilk in the cities he had made a career denouncing. Smith, Bryan said, should expect resistance from the defenders of the home, the school and the Church.

Smith had been uncharacteristically silent in the face of the onslaught from beyond the Hudson River, but he couldnt resist taking Bryans bait. He issued a statement condemning the narrow and bigoted dry agenda, and then took note of Bryans three failed attempts at the presidency. Whenever the so-called Great Commoner presented himself to voters, Smith wrote, a wise and discriminating electorate usually takes care to see that Mr. Bryan stays at home.

Frankfurters bleak assessment of Smiths future proved incorrectfor the most part anyway. While Smith did not become the Democratic Partys presidential nominee in 1924, he was reelected as governor in a landslide over Theodore Roosevelt Jr. that year. And four years later, he won the prize that eluded him in 1924, becoming the first Catholic to win a major partys presidential nomination. Herbert Hoover trounced him in the general election, but it was Smiths religion more than his position on Mullan-Gage that became a defining issue of the campaign. Then again, urban Catholicism and defiance of the 18th Amendment were considered variations on the same un-American theme, at least in some portions of the country.

Smith is remembered today not only through the annual charity dinner in his name, but as one of the great governors of the 20th century, never mind that he was assailed as a virtual secessionist in 1923. The current governor, more than most of his predecessors, has kept Smiths memory aliveand not just through a virtual shrine in his inner office.

During his decade in Albany, Andrew Cuomo has overhauled New Yorks archaic restrictions on alcohol sales and production, leading to a tripling in the number of wineries, cideries, breweries and distilleries in the state.

And when he issued his stay-at-home orders last month, Cuomo not only declared liquor stores an essential business, but he allowed bars to serve drinks to go.

Al Smith would have signed that one, too.

Continue reading here:

The Time a New York Governor Disobeyed the Federal Government - POLITICO

I know a lot of people who are consumed with anxiety about whether they, their family, America, and the world will be ruined by the Pandemic Panic. I don't blame them. Our politicians, both Donks and Pachys, terrify me, too, by their ignorance of what works. They are flirting with creating a new Dark Ages.

I've seen this before, back in the 1970s. Have they learned nothing?

There are countless examples of how smart leaders have taken a country from ruin to sustained prosperity. I've written about or alluded to some here , hereand here. There's lots more. Generating prosperity is simple. So, it's up to us. Email your Congressperson and tell them how!

Step up and help guide our officials' footsteps onto the Paths of Righteousness. And Affluence? Because, you know, I cannot do it alone. (Believe me, I've tried.) Let's together exercise our Citizen Superpower and rescue America from its leaders. The good news? I actually know how. During my lifetime America tentupled (if that's a word) the size of its real economy. I was watching! Apparently our pols missed it.

The St. Louis Fed's chart from around the time I was born, 1952, shows that then real GDP was around $2 trilliongrowing to over $21 trillionin 2019. (Not adjusted for population, which has about doubled, yet quintupling per capita GDP.)

From 1980 my team, the Supply-Siders, drove world GDP up from $11 trillion to $88 trillion(anoctupling.)The Dow soared from 814 on the day in 1979 Reagan declared for the presidency to >20,000 today. Twenty-sixtupling in nominal terms.

Back in 1986 I founded the Prosperity Caucus. Last year I co-authored The Capitalist Manifesto and co-founded The Capitalist League and the Prosperity Coalition. So we know how to pull the economy out of its tailspin. Not only do we know. We've done it. Let's do it again.

If you'd like to see America rescued from economic ruin and hear the economy roar again it's all up to us to get our leaders to embrace the Ten Commandments of Capitalism. Find the Big Ten all here. I've written about the First here, the Secondand Third.

Today: the Fourth: "No gift, estate, or inheritance tax shall have a top rate of more than 10% and no such tax shall be imposed on any such transfers of $10 million or less, annually adjusted for inflation."

This is one of my personal favorites because it is the antithesis of the Third Commandment of The Communist Manifesto which calls, verbatim, for the "Abolition of all rights of inheritance." I'm an old school anti-Communist. I fought in the Cold War. USA! USA! USA!

And, also, because I despise grave robbery.

Another reason is that I, a constitutional lawyer, consider the death tax unconstitutional. I once pointed out its unconstitutionality to the late, great, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on a flight we shared from Albany N.Y. to D.C. Moynihan professed interest. Nothing came of it.

I never give up.

The most obscure provision in the U.S. Constitution states that "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood." Only legal history geeks like me know what "Corruption of Blood" is.

Per lawstack exchange, "In English law during the late Medieval and early modern period it was possible for Parliament to pass a "Bill Of Attainder."This declared a person guilty of a crime, often treason, by legislative act, without any trial or other legal process. Often a Bill of Attainder confiscated the convicted person's property, preventing his (or rarely her) heirs from inheriting"

The statesmen who wrote the Constitution believed that preventing heirs from inheriting their ancestor's property was so heinous that they prohibited it even as a punishment for the most vile crime they knew: high treason. Yet Congress now can ghoulishly hijack as much of our life savings as it likes currently up to 40%,but 77% between 1941 and 1976 merely for the offense of having lived the American dream and grown wealthy.

Abominable! Griswold vs. Connecticut found penumbras to Constitutional rights. The prohibition against Corruption of Blood surely deserves its own penumbra.

The Fourth Capitalist Commandment honors the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and gives a Big Diss to Marx and Engels by severely constraining the estate tax. Admittedly, I don't much care for trust fund prep school princelings. Yet the right to leave your estate to your overprivileged suburban monster children is a small price to pay for prosperity for the rest of us.

To regain prosperity all we have to do is take our elected officials by the ear and teach them the Ten Commandments of Capitalism. End the Death Tax!

Ralph Benko, co-author of"The Capitalist Manifesto"and chairman and co-founder of"The Capitalist League,"is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $83T. He served as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House, has worked closely with the Congress and two cabinet agencies, and has published over a million words on politics and policy in the mainstream media, as a distinguished professional blogger, and as the author of the internationally award-winning cult classic book "The Websters' Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World." He has served as senior adviser, economics, to APIA as an advocate of the gold standard, senior counselor to the Chamber of Digital Commerce and serves as general counsel toFrax.finance, a stablecoin venture. Read Ralph Benko's reports More Here.

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Use Capitalism to Stop the Grave Robbers, End the Pandemic Panic - Newsmax

Americans are paying dearly as they suffer through the coronavirus epidemic. The costs of inadequate testing, poor medical care and even death in isolation are only compounded by the nations staggering economy, mounting unemployment rate and uncertainty of recovery. Making matters worse, there has been an increase in domestic violence.

My husband wont let me leave the house, a victim of domestic violence told a representative for the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH). Hes had flu-like symptoms and blames keeping me here on not wanting to infect others or bringing something like COVID-19 home. But I feel like its just an attempt to isolate me. The NDVH representative notes that a growing number of callers say that their abusers are using COVID-19 as a means of further isolating them from their friends and family.

I spoke to the [NY] state police this morning and there is a reported uptick in domestic violence cases, Melissa DeRosa, Gov. Andrew Cuomos top aide stated at a recent press briefing. Some reports are as high as 15 to 20 percent. Its unacceptable on any day. I want people to know that every single case that is reported, the state police is going to investigate fully.

This assessment was confirmed by Cecile Noel, commissioner of New York Citys Office to End Domestic Violence and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV). COVID-19 puts into sharp focus the vulnerabilities that many people in our city face every day, especially gender-based violence survivors, she said. And added, it highlights the barriers and challenges that we know keep people from seeking help and finding safety.

The same story is playing out in San Francisco. Shortly after shelter-in-place was implemented, the SF district attorneys office reported an initial 60 percent increase in referrals to its Victim Services Division, compared to the same week last year. Mayor London Nicole Breedand DA Chesa Boudin announced that the city has secured 20 furnished apartments for survivors of domestic violence.

Kathy Black, executive director, La Casa De Las Madres, pointed out that one of the most common battering tactics is to isolate somebody from their support network friends, family, coworkers, agencies where they may go to get assistance or support. Going further, she noted, So being locked in with your abuser is, as I have called it, kind of a perfect storm.

Domestic abuse or intimate partner violence is an endemic feature of American social life, one example of the all-pervasive sexual or gender violence. A recent report on domestic violence from the National Center for Biotechnology Informationpaints a grim picture:

Family and domestic violence (including child abuse, intimate partner abuse, and elder abuse) is a common problem in the United States. Family and domestic health violence are estimated to affect 10 million people in the United States every year. It is a national public health problem

Under conditions of the Corvid-19 plague, the number of incidents of domestic violence appears on the uptick.

HuffPost reports that between March 27 to April 2, as shelter-in-place laws spread to nearly every state, there were at least 19 murder-suicides, including four attempted ones. As it states, almost all of the incidents involved a man killing his wife or child before taking his own life.

***

A new book, The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Harm, Ending State Violence, by Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners (Verso), provides a valuable overview analysis to better understand interpersonal violence and offers a progressive approach to addressing this deep-seated problem. The authors advance a radical critique that reframes the current debate about sex offenders, including domestic abusers. However, they raise a simple, cautionary note: Experts agree that most sexual and gender violence is not reported. In fact, almost 80 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a 2016 analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The authors take a clear, uncompromising stand as to what constitutes sexual abuse, especially rape. As far as we are concerned, if it is not consensual, it is rape, they write. If all partners are able to consent, and do consent, it is not rape.

However, the authors decry what they identify as the sex offense legal regime. They note that in 2007, sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein coined the term carceral feminism to denote the commitment of feminist activists to a law and order agenda. The consequence of this was a drift from the welfare state to the carceral state as the enforcement apparatus for feminist goals.

Levine and Meiners identify this as an expression of neoliberalism. It reflects a logic that blames social problems on individuals rather than on larger economic forces and systemic racial, gender, or geographic inequities and privatizes formerly public, tax-funded institutions and services, leading to their underfunding and deterioration.

The authors reconceive the debate among feminists and other elements of the womens movement between those who want to put abusers and rapists in prison and those who want to abolish prisons and find nonpunitive, nonviolent responses to harm. The former made adoption of punitive legislation, exemplified by the Violence Against Women Act, their priority; the latter, the abolitionist feminists, are engaged in practices of restorative and transformative justice.

For Meiners and Levine, these two movements also stand, for the most part, on two sides of a racial divide. They remind readers that women of color, poor women, people with disabilities, and queer, gender-nonconforming, and transgender people experience higher rates of sexual and gender violence than their cisgender, white counterparts. Digging deeper, they note that entire categories of sexual assault were invisible. No statute recognized marital rape; sex on demand was a husbands prerogative and a wifes duty. There were few indictments, much less convictions, for sexual violence.

The authors, like many commentators on the prison system, reminder readers that among the biggest predictors of interpersonal violence is male underemployment a social, not a personal, deficit, and one that is exacerbated by neoliberal austerity. This is a condition made even worse today under conditions of shelter-in-place.

Nevertheless, they point out that in the U.S., the carceral state imprisons more of its population than any other nation in the world, including those with far higher murder rates. More troubling, they argue that the US carceral state, which imprisons more of its population than any other nation in the world, including those with far higher murder rates.

They note that the number of names and photos on federal, state, and territorial sex offender registries approaches 900,000. Those with a sex-related offense may be prohibited from working as a retail clerk, fishing in a public park, volunteering at a polling place, putting up Halloween decorations, or (as recently happened in Tennessee) living with his own children.

In addition, punishment of the 20th-century sex offender recalls Nathaniel Hawthornes1850 tale of the Puritan colonies, The Scarlet Letter. Under theInternational Megans Law (2017), the State Department marks the passport of registered offender with a unique identifier. The U.S. has come a long way to end up where it began.

***

In 1961, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower made his legendary farewell address warning of the military industrial complex:

[the] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence economic, political, even spiritual is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. [W]e must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

A decade later, Pres. Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs in response to an alleged increase in drug use in the U.S. This led to an enormous increase in arrests, longer sentences and the swelling of the U.S. prison population. The led to increase the number of jails and prisons throughout the country and the privatization of a once public institution, incarceration.

In 79, Congress passed Prison-Industries Act establishing the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP or PIE), incorporating the private sector into the prison system. PIE was originally promoted to help prison inmates to earn wages in private sector jobs. More telling, it enabled private companies to sell and transportation commercial goods across state lines.

In 1999, Angela Davis published her landmark study, ThePrison Industrial Complex. Drawing from her own prison experience and that of friends and comrades, she revealed that deep links between capitalism, racism and the prison system. Now, two decades later, the prison system plays a parallel role to the military system in U.S. society. The scope and scale of the nations systems of confinement is staggering. The Prison Policy Institute (PPI) summarizes the system in 2020 accordingly:

The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.

The PPI estimate this system of mass incarceration cost Americas $182 billion in 2020. The PPI makes clear one often overlooked factor: The criminal justice system is overwhelmingly a public system, with private prison companies acting only as extensions of the public system. The government payroll for corrections employees is over 100 times higher than the private prison industrys profits.

The value of Levine and Meinerss timely book, The Feminist and the Sex Offender, is to point a way out the tyranny of the prison-industrial complex. They rightfully argue, we need paradigm shifts: from justice as retribution to justice as healing, from conviction to accountability, punishment to repair, and rehabilitation to transformation. They advocate for what they call abolition feminism, a melding of anti-racist prison abolitionismwhich is part of the Black radical traditionand feminism.

The mounting levels of infections and deaths in prisons due to the coronavirus makes clear that the old way of American (in)justice doesnt work. The authors examination of sex offenders needs to be extended to a larger critique of the entire mass incarceration state, one in which restorative justice replaces punitive punishment.

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Coronavirus and the Increase in Domestic Violence - CounterPunch

On April 15, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a detailed notification outlining the conditions under which economic activities could be restarted in non-containment zones.

The order imposed a string of mandatory dos and donts such as social distancing, the arrangement of private transportation for workers and medical insurance. The violation of any of these directives, the order noted, could attract severe penalties including imprisonment under the National Disaster Management Act, 2005 (NDMA).

Two days before that, on April 13, Indias central trade unions (CTUs) sent a letter to the Union labour minister that expressed their opposition to a proposal that would amend the Factories Act, 1948 (FA), a move which was reportedly being considered by the Centre.

The alleged amendment would have allowed companies to extend a factory workers daily shift to 12 hours per day, six days a week (72 hours) from the existing eight hours per day, six days a week (48 hours).

This move is controversial, because 48 hours per week is what is mandated by global and ILO norms. In fact, the first convention that ILO adopted was the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1) which India ratified in 1921 and it proclaimed 48 hours of work in a week.

While the Centre hasnt yet amended the FA, at least four state governments Rajasthan (April 11), Gujarat (April 17), Punjab (April 20) and Himachal Pradesh (April 21) have issued notifications in the last few days to increase the working hours as mentioned above.

Incidentally, this has become the most popular strategy of carrying out labour law reforms in India both historically and recently.

Labour market reforms at the national level are often opposed stridently by a rather united trade union movement through massive strikes involving crores of workers and in the tripartite forum also. These are supported, on-and-off, by opportunistic opposition political parties. Reforms such as easy hire-and-fire rules create negative outcomes like unemployment, which have adverse electoral costs for ruling parties. This is why core labour law reforms at the national level then becomes problematic for the Centre. What, then, becomes the way out for the Union government? Since the subject of labour figures in the Concurrent List, the Central government allows willing state governments to adopt these reforms and the presidents assent, which is in essence a Union Cabinet decision, is granted for them.

Thus, the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition Act, 1970 was liberalised by the then united Andhra Pradesh in 2003, by Maharashtra in 2017 and by Rajasthan in 2014. Chapter V-B was also liberalised by the Rajasthan government to make it applicable to industrial establishments employing 300 workers in place of 100 in 2014, following which others like Jharkhand did it in in 2016.

The juggernaut of heavyweight labour law reforms therefore moves forward as states dared to effect hard labour law reforms that the Union government otherwise shies away from. The Centre then typically expresses its helplessness by saying that the state governments are well placed to effect these reforms and nothing can be done about it.

A similar strategy has been adopted here with respect to increasing the hours of work during the COVID-19 context.

Legal defects

But there are a few issues with these notifications. Firstly, the legal justifications given for pushing through a 12-hour shift come with their own defects. Section 51 of Factories Act, 1948 (FA) stipulates that no adult worker should work for more than 48 hours in a week and within this framework no worker should be allowed for more than nine hours a day (S.54). In addition to this, the total spread-over time inclusive of rests should not be more than 10.5 hours a day (S.56) and subject to S.51 and S.54, more hours worked will be paid at the rate twice the ordinary wage rate (S.59).

The reasons given by these governments for extending working hours include labour shortage due to curfews because of the pandemic, specifically trying to reduce manpower requirement by 33% and limiting worker movement (Rajasthan) and for safety and social-distancing (Gujarat). In the meanwhile, several industry leaders have been complaining of labour shortages. Himachal Pradesh has not mentioned any reason for the extension in its notification.

Also read: The Streets Are Empty. How Are Hawkers Surviving This Lockdown?

While all of them have increased the maximum working hours to 12 hours a day and 72 hours a week, Rajasthan and Punjab have provided for overtime (OT) pay Punjabs notification specifically mentions that OT pay will be double the normal wage rate as per Section 59 of FA.

Gujarats notification however says, wages shall be in proportion of the existing wages. This means, as the notification points out, that if wages for eight hours are Rs 80, then the proportionate wages for 12 hours will be Rs 120. Thus, the OT wages provided for by Gujarat is less than what is stipulated by S.59 of FA and to that extent it is legally deficient.

While Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh governments have exercised the powers conferred by S.5 and the Punjab government S.65 of FA, Rajasthan did not specify any provision at all. The exercise of S.5 by Gujarat is also questionable as it empowers the state governments on the grounds of public emergency to exempt factories from all or any of the provisions of FA save S.67 (which deals with prohibition of employment of children).

Public emergency means a grave emergency whereby the security of India or any part of the territory thereof is threatened, whether by war or external aggression or internal disturbances (introduced with effect from 26/10-1976). The crisis due to COVID-19 is for biological health hazards and surely is not covered by the definition of public emergency under S.5 of FA even under internal disturbances grounds which must affect security of India.

S.65(2) (3) empower the state governments to amend Sections 51-52, 54 and 56 subject to conditions, viz. (a) the total number of hours of work in any day shall not exceed 12; (b) the spread-over, inclusive of rest intervals, shall not exceed 13, (c) the total number of work-hours in any week, including OT, shall not exceed 60. Punjab only has correctly exercised S.65. However, all the government notifications provide for a total of 72 hours in a week, which is questionable.

Worker health, productivity and employmentopportunity

Apart from these legal issues, serious industrial relations concerns exist.

Shortage of labour and social distancing principles legitimise the extension of working hours as it optimises the deployment of existing workforce and thus partly tackles the extra costs involved in complying with the MHAs order.

But is the extension of working hours needed for all industries? Why arent the existing provisions in the FA adequate to be used to tackle contingencies mentioned above?

After all, where necessary, employers and unions (wherever they exist) could together determine the labour shortage, extra workload and accordingly calculate the over-time that would be required. The issues arising out of labour deployment will differ across industries and cannot be generalised for the manufacturing sector as a whole, which is what these amendments assume.

What is important to remember is that a 12-hour shift effectively reduces the demand for labour. In the absence of company-worker dialogue, employers may unilaterally take calls, and hence provide room for discrimination regarding employee choices and income distribution among workers. These issues may lead to labour unrest. To be sure, social dialogue could mitigate any adverse effects of a 12-hour shift.

Beyond this, there are several practical issues that affect factory workers. Increased hours of work, especially when the tasks are repetitive and mechanical, will raise fatigue and work stress, hence affecting productivity adversely. In cases where workers thanks to social distancing are performing multiple though related tasks, the possibilities of work-related stress will be much higher. It is also plausible that errors could occur, with even accidents at the workplace cannot be ruled out.

Also read: Treat Sanitation Workers Like Health Workers, Pay Them At Least Rs 20,000 Per Month

The most serious setback arising out of a 12-hour workday, though, is that it will place women workers at a disadvantage thanks to their multiple roles in the workplace and homes, and womens employment might be reduced. Women workers are more unlikely to prefer employment which requires them to stay at the workplace, and 12 hours plus travel time will mean less time for family life. Hence, they are least likely to self-select and their economic capacities will be affected.

All these have adverse gender implications. Even for male employees, being away for 12 hours plus travel time in case of travel-based work, scheduling their work-life balance will be affected. Alternatively, in cases of shelter-based work scheduling, their absence from home at a stretch might affect their emotional state, assuming that they will be provided home-like shelter and food.

Also, these notifications will greatly reduce the employment opportunities of precarious workers as when there is a likelihood of non-employment of some regular workers, the question of precarious workers does not arise. However, given the labour flexibility drive of employers, it may be that some cost-optimising employers may prefer these precarious workers.

Taking one step back though, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown has thrown up a wide range of questions that have grave implications for Indias blue-collar factory workforce.

Also read: Is India Neglecting Its Migrant Workers Abroad?

For instance, what if non-employed workers do not get full wages even if they are ready to offer their services or should they be paid lay-off compensation? Is a pandemic a legally valid clause for lay-offs? Even assuming that lay-offs are legally allowed, as per Chapter V-A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 workers employed in factories employing 50 or more workers only are eligible for it. One may argue that factories employing less than 50 workers may not start production at all, as some reports indicate.

But as a legal principle, how will the non-employed workers be compensated, whether for eight hours or 12 hours of work? All these could be left to social dialogue at the firm level. Issuance of legally defective and macro-based notifications are ill-advised and should be withdrawn. In these sensitive circumstances, talk of labour law reforms in terms of introduction of labour codes will be injudicious and even counter-productive.

The first socio-economic task is to balance lives and livelihoods. There are better state interventions to consider, like wage subsidies.

The vexatious question is: Why is there not greater engagement with trade unions at this troubling time? This might help with governance of the world of work and the crises brewing in it.

K.R. Shyam Sundar is Professor, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur. He can be contacted at krshyams@xlri.ac.in

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Factory Workers Can Now Legally Be Asked to Work 12-Hour Shifts. How Will this Change Things? - The Wire

Written by Arjun Ram Meghwal | Updated: May 1, 2020 9:36:27 am The proposed change in work culture through adaptability, efficiency, inclusiveness, opportunity and universalism will open up more avenues for workers to build New India. (File Photo)

International Labour Day is celebrated on May 1 to honour workers. Labour has an undeniable role in shaping the nations fortune. Since the times immemorial, the working class has struggled and sacrificed for greater causes first for Independence and then building the nation brick by brick. The ongoing fight against COVID-19 has brought temporary hardship for everyone, including workers. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi has weighed life as being greater than livelihood and has now provided a blueprint for turning this crisis into opportunity in the post-corona world. The proposed change in work culture through adaptability, efficiency, inclusiveness, opportunity and universalism will open up more avenues for workers to build New India.

Many leaders have been a beacon for workers and B R Ambedkar was one among them. As the representative of the Depressed Classes in the Round Table Conference, Ambedkar forcefully pleaded for living wages, decent working conditions and the freedom of peasants from the clutches of cruel landlords. He also fought for the removal of social evils that blighted the lives of the downtrodden.

He went on to form the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1936 with a comprehensive programme to meet the needs and grievances of the landless, poor tenants, agriculturists, and workers. In the polls held in 1937, the first election under the newly enacted Government of India Act of 1935, the ILP achieved spectacular success by winning 15 of the 17 seats it had contested for the Bombay Legislative Assembly. On September 17, 1937, during the Poona session of the Bombay Assembly, he introduced a bill to abolish the Khoti system of land tenure in Konkan. He opposed the introduction of Industrial Disputes Bill, 1937 because it removed the workers right to strike.

His profound knowledge of labour matters was universally acknowledged and demonstrated during his term as Labour member of the Viceroys Executive Council from 1942 to 1946. When the world order was in flux during World War II, Ambedkar was guiding Indian labour. The changing economy provided opportunities for the expansion of industries. While entrepreneurs and managers could hope for prosperity, labour was not given its due share. Ambedkar piloted and introduced measures for labour welfare by laying the foundation for the basic structure for the governments labour policy. He tackled the knotty problems and won esteem and respect from employees and employers alike. The Indian Trade Union (Amendment) Bill, introduced by Ambedkar on November 8, 1943, compelled the employers to acknowledge trade unions.

On February 8, 1944, in the legislative assembly during the debate on the Lifting of Ban on Employment of Women on Underground Work in Coal Mines, Ambedkar said: It is for the first time that I think in any industry the principle has been established of equal pay for equal work irrespective of the sex. It was a historic moment. Through the Mines Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill 1943, he empowered women workers with maternity benefits.

Addressing the Indian Labour Conference held in New Delhi on November 26, 1945, Ambedkar emphasised the urgent need to bring progressive labour welfare legislation: Labour may well say that the fact that the British took 100 years to have a proper code of labour legislation is no argument that we should also in India take 100 years. History is not always an example. More often it is a warning.

Ambedkar did not accept the Marxist position that the abolition of private property would bring an end to poverty and suffering. In Buddha or Karl Marx, he writes: Can the Communists say that in achieving their valuable end they have not destroyed other valuable ends? They have destroyed private property. Assuming that this is a valuable end, can the Communists say that they have not destroyed other valuable end in the process of achieving it? How many people have they killed for achieving their end? Has human life no value? Could they not have taken property without taking the life of the owner?

Inspired by Ambedkar, the current government has taken steps to improve the quality of life of workers. For example, the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-Dhan Yojna was launched in February 2019 to ensure protection of unorganised workers in their old age. Through technological interventions like Shram Suvidha Portal, transparency and accountability are ensured in the enforcement of labour law. The government is working to simplify, amalgamate and rationalise the provisions of the existing central labour laws into four labour codes Labour Code on Wages, on Industrial Relations, on Social Security & Welfare and on Occupational Safety, Health & Working Conditions.

In the extraordinary circumstances brought on by the COVID pandemic, the labour fraternity deserves a special salute. During his Mann ki Baat broadcast on March 29, the PM apologised for the inconvenience: I extend a heartfelt apology to all countrymen. And I strongly feel from the core of my heart that you will forgive me since certain decisions had to be taken, resulting in myriad hardships for you. And when it comes to my underprivileged brothers and sisters, they must be wondering on the kind of Prime Minister they have, who has pushed them to the brink! My wholehearted apologies, especially to them. PM Modi has championed the fight against the pandemic and been acclaimed globally. Much of the credit for this goes to the perseverance of the labour fraternity.

As we recall the innumerable contribution of the countless labourers in nation-building, with an ever-increasing spirit of Shramev Jayate, we must remember the contributions of Ambedkar.

This article was first published in the print by the title Labours leader. The writer is Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. He is the Lok Sabha MP for Bikaner

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B R Ambedkar laid the foundation for workers rights, social security in India - The Indian Express

In every dark cloud there is a silver lining, or so weve been taught to believe. With the current pandemic, there seems to be more rain than promises of sunshine to come. A small positive so far however, is the way in which ideas for the worlds direction are rapidly shifting further and further left. There is now growing talk and movement towards community centred growth and coordination that is not confined within the walls of our schools, places of work and worship. The opportunity for holistic changes to the systems that make up our society is nigh, but only if the necessity of these changes is recognized and worked towards.

If we are genuinely interested in moving forward together then we must ensure that no population is left behind. While many of us are wont to disregard it, the prison system and the incarcerated will also need to come along on this journey with us. Prisons are not a separate entity from the rest of society even though many may wish it were. This partially has to do with how prisons were set up and operated on the basis of restricting the rights and freedoms of minority populations. Removing ourselves from this legacy would mean a strengthening of rehabilitative and community service avenues.

Under normal circumstances, prisons are cesspools for the spread of infections and violence. The incarcerated often live literally on top of each other. Our addiction for incarcerating people created a ripe environment for the rapid spread of any virus that finds its way in its walls. There cannot be an encouragement towards social distancing when the principle that informs it are not allowed to be followed by the incarcerated. Police should be utilizing strategies of warnings rather than imprisonment as to do otherwise would further exacerbate an already dire situation. The form these warnings take should also be paid attention to as variations are already apparent in the way in which persons across the socioeconomic divide are treated.

With increased police presence during the time of corona, there is even more urgency for there to be a reassessment of the way in which the police, judicial and prison system operate. It is well known who the usual targets of these state agents are. Many exist in the prison system not necessarily for some proven crime but because they match a criteria for criminality or are unable to afford fees that would see them freed.

It is understandable that we are hesitant to fully broach conversations surrounding prison abolition and judicial reform. We live in a world in which punishment and retribution are prioritized and seen as just. But have we ever truly considered how irrational a response this is and the limited things it achieves? I believe that there should be movement towards fostering awareness amongst ourselves on the conditions and experiences that leads to persons being harmed and those doing the harming. In recognizing that there is more than one person or situation that must be held accountable, we would begin to see the clear cracks in our societal practices and understandings surrounding crime. As we seek to ease the numbers of those incarcerated during corona, we must analyze why so many persons were incarcerated in the first place.

Looking forward, we must aim to consider the ways in which we classify and punish real or perceived crimes and whether our responses are working.

Those who commit criminal acts are usually themselves victims of crime and violence. Nothing occurs in isolation. The ills we face in society are cyclical and this cycle does not stop unless we begin addressing the root causes rather than being satisfied with retribution. Were we to begin shifting towards collective healing, the future we envision can be so much easier to grasp. The incarcerated also need care and consideration, they need strategies in which to grow and develop their selves so that the harm theyve done is not constantly replicated. Failing to address and adjust failing systems so that clear patterns do not remain in place, is just one way in which we will meet our certain downfall.

This does not mean a doing away with the prison system clearly we are not at that stage as yet but we could be if we begin to make adjustments. We need to work together to create new and improved models of living and this means creating and envisioning caring environments that can aid in stable communities centred on understanding of collective traumas and how to move past it.

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The limits of retribution - Stabroek News

Empires fall a little bit at a time and then all at once. Over the last two decades, America has provenitself to be well along on that journey. The coronavirus pandemic has simply pushed our nationfurther alongthat downward spiral.

Ultimately, thepandemic has further exposed and exacerbated for those still somehow in denial about the decades-long reality of America as a decaying empiredeep political, social, economic, culturaland other societalproblems.

The country's infrastructure is rotting.Trump presides overa plutocratic, corrupt, cruel, authoritarian, pathological kakistocracy. The commons is being reduced to rubble while the ultra-rich extract ever more wealth and other resources from the American people. Excessive military spending has left the United States incapable of attending to the basic needs of its people. Aculture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Ourpublic educational system does not teach critical thinking skills. Radical right-wing Christians, white terrorist organizationsand otherneofascist paramilitaries and extremists are engaging in a campaign of thuggery, intimidationand violence against multiracial American democracy.

Writing at the Atlantic, George Packer described this woeful state of affairs:

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state.

In theNew York Times, Pulitzer-winning authorViet ThanhNguyen diagnosed the health of America's body politic in the age of Trump and thepandemic he has empowered and accelerated:

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If anything good emerges out of this period, it might be an awakening to the pre-existing conditions of our body politic. We were not as healthy as we thought we were. The biological virus afflicting individuals is also a social virus. Its symptoms inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities were for too long masked by the hearty good cheer of American exceptionalism, the ruddiness of someone a few steps away from a heart attack.

Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer-winning journalist, author, and philosopher,is not surprised by America's decline. In places such as the former Yugoslavia, he has personally witnessed what happens when societies fall apart. In his most recent book, "America: The Farewell Tour," Hedges both detailsthe country's many cultural and political crises and what could potentially happen next. The coronavirus crisis has shown his analysisto be eerily prescient.

In this conversation, Hedges warns that the tumult and pain of Trump's coronavirus crisis is but a preview of far worse things in America's future, as social inequality and political failure combine to create a fullcollapse of the country's already declining standard of living, as well as its ailing democracy.

Hedges also explains how the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, will likely not be able to respond to the Age of Trump and the economic and social destruction created by gangster capitalism, in combination with the coronavirus pandemic. Why? Because the Democrats are also part of the plutocratic establishment that has failedthe American people.

You can also listen to my conversation with Chris Hedges on my podcast "The Truth Report"or through the player embedded below.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What has the sudden shock of the coronavirus pandemic revealed about America? If you were to take a snapshot of this moment, what does it reveal about the country?

These days are the good times, as compared to what is coming next.

How does a society change so fast?

A society can change so quickly because the underlying structures are rotten. There is the patina or the veneer of a functioning system, but the foundations of it are so decayed that they can't take the stress. That was true in the Weimar Republic in Germany, before the Nazis took full control. That was true in Yugoslavia before the civil war and ethnic violence. It is true here in the United States too. This country cannot withstand thestress of the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond the obviousness of what the Republicans are doing, the Democratic Party's response to this crisis exemplifies the problems America is facing as a whole.

Twelve hundreddollars to individuals suffering during this crisis is not sufficient. The Democrats were only really trying to block the equivalent of a $500 billionslush fund that is going into Mnuchin'shands, a man who acts like acriminal. That $1,200 is going to get vacuumed right up by the credit card companies and the banks who hold the mortgages.

This is like a repeat of 2008, where Congress is dumping staggering sums of money into the hands of Wall Street thieves. What happened in 2008? The plutocrats and the corporations gave themselves massive stock bonuses and other income and returns. I do not see how the United States is going to avoid another Great Depression, which in turn will lead to a further consolidation of power by an authoritarian, oligarchic elite. Those elites are not really worried about the coronavirus pandemic because they will have their own ventilators and private medical staff and all the other things that they need to survive. The average person will be left to take care of themselves.

The president, his party, the corporate overlordsand Trump's Christian nationalist cultare now telling the American people to go out and risk deathfrom the novel coronavirus as an act of "patriotism" and "love" for the economy.

I would also add that huge numbers of people are going to die unnecessarily. Profit is always the most important thing for the oligarchs, and because of Fox News and other right-wing outlets a significant portion of the American public will downplay the severity and dangers of the coronavirus. Quite predictably, there is an accompanying spike in racist attacks against Chinese-Americans or any people of Asian descent.

I think the pandemic and the response to it could lead usinto virtually uncharted territory within the United States because as things deteriorate, the violence against nonwhites and other groups who are demonized by Trump and the right wing will increase. The desire for an authoritarian solution will grow more pronounced. I remember speaking to Fritz Stern, the great scholar of fascism, who himself fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. He said that in Germany there was a yearning for fascism before the word "fascism" was invented. We already see that yearning in America. The coronavirus crisis will make that yearning even more pronounced.

What of public memory, especially in the short and the medium term?There are manyvoices who believethe coronavirus will spur positive social change in the United States. I worry that there will be a type of organized forgetting, where several months from now the coronavirus pandemic and what it exposed about the country's underlying rot will be forgotten all of it thrown down thememory hole.

I don't think we're going to be able to go back to a time before the coronavirus pandemic. I believe that the coronavirus is going to trigger a decline unlike anything the country has seen since the Great Depression. That is why the business class and other ruling elites are panicking. It is why Trump, the corporate leaders, Republicans and others aligned with them are telling people to go back to work but to wear masks which may really not keep them 100% safe.

The pandemic was predictable. And yet, of course, especially under the Trump administration, we dismantled the mechanisms through which the United States could prepare. The needed infrastructure, such as hospital bedsand ventilators andother needed equipment, was not there because, like with all decaying empires, the resources go to the defense industry and the military.

The other part of this decay and vulnerability was the assault against public education and the corruption of the media. The fact that Fox News is even considered a news organization is staggering although I don't think CNN is much better. In total, that contributes to a yearning for a system or a figure that can promise to tame the demons that have been unleashed.

I am unsure if we have any mechanisms left in the United States by which we can effectively push back against the elites, the oligarchsand other anti-democratic forces. We don't have any ability to pit power against power. We can beg Pelosi or Mitch McConnell or some other politician all we want for help. We are not going to get it.

Watching Trump stand before the country and speak about the coronavirus pandemic while he is flanked by corporate CEOs never mind how Trump has filled the government with people from some ofthe world's largest corporations really speaks to how the country isa naked plutocracy. The elites do not even try to hide it anymore.

The oligarchs don't care about democracy. They don't care about truth. They are not interested in the consent of the governed. They could care less about social and income inequality. They are not going to rein in the surveillance state. In fact, as things deteriorate,the surveillance state going to expand. The oligarchs do not care about job losses because, as Marx said, unemployment creates greater pools of desperate surplus labor. The oligarchs do not care about the climate. It's all about the primacy of profit and corporate power and those values and systems are extinguishing our democracy.

And of course, they are all thrilled that nobody can go out in the streets because of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing. Mass mobilization and civil disobedience is what is needed to defeat the oligarchs and take those first steps necessary to win back an American democracy.

America's current political system is a corporate political duopoly. A person can either vote for nativists and racists and climate deniers and creationists on one end, or a person can vote for people who speak in the language of tolerance and are willing to put gay people or women or people of color into positions of power as long as they serve the system. Of course, that is the role that Barack Obama fulfilled at the expense of the American people.

American society is in crisis, and in decline. As you pointout, the coronavirus, in combination with Trump's authoritarian, neofascist movement are just symptoms of a deep societal rot. Where do we go from here?

Let's take Biden. What does it mean to vote for Joe Biden? He has this kind of goofy persona which some people find charming. What is Biden's record? What is a person voting for if they back Biden on Election Day 2020?

The humiliation of courageous women like Anita Hill who confronted her abuser. You vote for the architects of endless war. You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. Biden supports those things. With Biden you are voting for wholesale surveillance by the government, including the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You vote for austerity programs. You vote for the destruction of welfare. That was Biden. You vote for cuts to Social Security,which he has repeatedly called for cutting, along with Medicaid. You vote for NAFTA, you vote for "free trade" deals. If you vote for Biden, you are voting for a real decline in wages and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

With Biden you are also voting for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds toChristian"charter schools."With Biden you are voting for more than a doubling of the prison population. With Biden you are voting for the militarized police andagainst the Green New Deal.

You are also voting to limit a woman's right to abortion and reproductive rights. You are voting for a segregated public school system. With Biden you are voting for punitive levels of student debt and the inability of people to free themselves of that debt through bankruptcy. A vote for Biden is a vote for deregulating banking and finance. Biden also supports for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

A vote for Biden is also a vote against the possibility of universal health care. You vote for Biden and you are supporting huge, wastefuland bloated defense budgets. Biden also supports unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy the elections.

That's what you're voting for.

A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for more of the same. The ruling elites would prefer Joe Biden, just like they preferred Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is vulgar and an embarrassment. But the ruling elites also made it abundantly clear about their interests: Many of these people were quoted by name saying that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee or even Elizabeth Warren they would vote for Donald Trump.

One of the dominant narratives in the mainstream news media is that Trump is done. The coronavirus pandemic and his incompetence are dooming his re-election chances; the tide has finally turned.

My response has been that this is too hopeful and borderson the delusional. One, there is no guarantee that there will even be a presidential election in 2020. Trump and the Republican Party are experts at vote-rigging and other ways of cheating to steal elections and subvert democracy. After the coronavirus crisis recedes, I believe that Trump may very well be even more powerful because he leads a cult and will proclaim that he led the country to "victory" over the virus.

Liberal elites offer hope that is not grounded in an understanding of political reality. I do not believe that Joe Biden will necessarily be able to win against Trump. Biden is an extremely weak candidate because he represents the neoliberal gangster capitalist policies that the Democratic Party has embraced and that so many Americans are revolting against.

James Baldwin explained why black people don't have midlife crises. Why? Because they do not buy into the myths of America. Black people know that the system in America is rigged. Black people know this when they are children. By comparison, white people buy into theseillusions of meritocracy and individualism and American exceptionalism and similar beliefs. That is why the highest rates of suicide right now are among middle-aged white men, because they are finally starting to realize that the system does not care about them.

Link:

Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges: These "are the good times compared to what's coming next" - Salon