Economy

The bad news for Ohio’s 350,000 public workers is that a new law bans them from striking — the good news is at least they will no longer risk jail for doing so. A March 30 Reuters article said: “Ohio’s legislature on Wednesday passed a Republican measure to curb the collective bargaining rights of about 350,000 state employees, and Governor John Kasich said he will sign it into law.” The new law will ban unions from striking in support of public workers and limit workers’ ability to collectively bargain.

Good politicians are few and far between, but British health secretary Andrew Lansley is among the worst. In 2008, he was forced to apologise after saying recessions brought "good things" such as people being able to spend more time with their families.

Ireland’s new Fine Gael (FG)-Labour Party (LP) coalition government has set out an agenda of continuing the savage austerity and spending cuts of the Fianna Fail (FF)-Greens coalition ii has replaced. The cuts are enforced by the International Monetary Fund-European Union bailout of the Irish government. In the February 26 elections, FF and the Greens were thrashed in a backlash against the bail-out and the anti-worker austerity that goes with it. The Greens failed to win a seat in the Dail (Irish parliament) and FF slumped from 77 seats to 20.

Economists warned on March 31 that the British government’s public-sector cuts will leave a shortfall of more than half a million jobs. The New Economics Foundation (NEF) also warned that nowhere in the budget or “plan for growth“ was there “any evidence that the business tax cuts, regulatory tweaks and relatively minor changes to public-sector investment that are promised will deliver major economic transformation”. Trade Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the findings showed that “in recent years, the market has become the master, not the servant, of society”.

About 500,000 people marched in London on March 26 against the British government’s program of huge spending cuts. Called by the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the march drew people from every part of Britain — a splendid cross section of the country with numbers dominated by the working class.

The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Politics & Power Marie-Monique Robin Spinifex Press, 2010. 373 pages, $44.95 (pb) “What counts for us is making money,” said a Monsanto vice-president to a new employee at an induction session in 1998, reminding the idealistic novice that there is a simple, and crude, capitalist philosophy at the heart of the US chemical and biotechnology giant.

United States President Barack Obama’s visit to El Salvador on March 22 became a focal point for protests. Protests were organised that day by Central American social movement organisations and their North American allies outraged by US trade policy and military meddling in the region. Local environmental and community organisations joined with allies such as US-El Salvador Sister Cities and Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador to mobilise students and workers for rallies in the US and El Salvador on March 22.

The standard of living for the people of Greece has dropped dramatically since the signing of the first “memorandum” — the agreement signed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government with the IMF and European Union (EU) representatives last May. The agreement has meant — among other things — unprecedented salary cuts, a rise in the allowed number of dismissals and a reduction in termination pay, and a cut in the minimum wage for those entering the workforce.

Progressive Indonesian website Berdikari Online said in a March 14 editorial that the recent US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks exposing the corruption of the Indonesian government confirmed what most Indonesians already knew. However, it said the leaks have further delegitimised the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In his two terms of government, the editorial said, Yudhoyono has imposed neoliberal policies and acted as a puppet of US imperialism.

Householders and small businesses who were victims of the floods that hit Brisbane in January are considering a legal challenge against insurance companies “using region-wide hydrology reports to deny thousands of flood-related claims”, the March 10 Courier Mail said. Insurers NRMA, CGU and Comminsure have used the reports to claim many policyholders were subject to riverine flooding, which is not covered by most insurance policies, rather than stormwater or flash-flooding.

For every dollar the Australian government spends on cutting carbon pollution, it spends $11 encouraging it, new research from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has revealed. ACF said on March 1 that its analysis showed: “The Australian government spends $11 billion more on subsidies that encourage greenhouse pollution than it does on programs to tackle climate change.”

Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Iraq on March 4, defying a curfew and repression to demand democracy and economic justice, the March 5 Los Angeles Times said.