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Washington, May 6: At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed them, multi-national companies in America are laying off workers while paying cash dividends to their shareholders. Thus making the workers bear the brunt of the sacrifices while the shareholders continue to collect.

The Washington Post said in one of its reports that five big American companies have paid a combined USD 700 million to shareholders while cutting jobs, closing plants and leaving thousands of their workers filing for unemployment benefits.

Since the pandemic was declared an emergency, Caterpillar has suspended operations at two plants and a foundry, Levi Strauss has closed stores, and toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker has been planning layoffs and furloughs.

Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer, and World Wrestling Entertainment have also shed employees.

Executives of those companies told the Post that the layoffs support the long-term health of their companies, and often the executives are giving up a piece of their salaries. Furloughed workers can apply for unemployment benefits.

But distributing millions of dollars to shareholders while leaving many workers without a paycheck is unfair, critics argue, and belies the repeated statements from executives about their concern for employees' welfare during the coronavirus crisis.

Caterpillar, for example, announced a USD 500 million distribution to shareholders April 8, about two weeks after indicating that operations at some plants would stop. The company however declined to divulge how many workers are affected.

"We are taking a variety of actions globally, but we aren't going to discuss the number of impacted people," spokeswoman of the company, Kate Kenny, said in a reply to an email by the Post.

This spate of dividends is also likely to revive long-standing debates about economic rewards.

"There are no hard-and-fast rules about this," said Amy Borrus, deputy director of the Council of Institutional Investors, a group that argues for shareholder rights and represents pension funds and other long-term investors.

Many large US companies choose to issue a regular, quarterly dividend to shareholders, often increasing it, and they boast about these payments because they help keep the share price higher than it might otherwise be. Those companies might be reluctant to announce that they are cutting or suspending their dividend during a crisis, Borrus was further quoted as saying.

But "companies have to be mindful of the optics of paying dividends if they're laying off thousands of workers," she added.

On March 26, Caterpillar had announced that because of the pandemic, it was "temporarily suspending operations at certain facilities." Two plants, in East Peoria, Ill., and Lafayette, Ind., were coming to a halt, as well as a foundry in Mapleton, Ill., according to news reports.

"We are taking a variety of actions at our global facilities to reduce production due to weaker customer demand, potential supply constraints and the spread of the covid-19 pandemic and related government actions," Kenny said via email.

"These actions include temporary facility shutdowns, indefinite or temporary layoffs," she added.

Similarly, Levi Strauss announced April 7 that the company would stop paying store workers, and about 4,000 are now on furlough. On the same day, the company announced that it was returning USD 32 million to shareholders.

"As this human and economic tragedy unfolds globally over the coming months, we are taking swift and decisive action that will ensure we remain a winner in our industry," Chip Bergh, president and chief executive of the company, also told the Post.

Stanley Black & Decker announced on April 2 that it was planning furloughs and layoffs because of the pandemic. Two weeks later, it issued a dividend to shareholders of about USD 106 million.

The notion that a company's primary purpose is to serve shareholders gained prominence in the 1980s but has come under attack in recent years, even from business executives, the newspaper reported.

Corporate decisions to suspend dividends and buybacks are complex, however, and it is difficult to know whether these suspensions of dividend and buyback programs were motivated by a desire to conserve cash in anticipation of bad times, and how much they are prompted by a sense of obligation to employees.

Over recent decades, the mandate to "maximize shareholder value" has become orthodoxy, for many, and it is often unclear what motivates companies to pare dividends or buybacks for shareholders, said William Lazonick, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, who has been one of the leading critics of companies that distribute cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends rather than reinvesting the profits into employees, innovation and production.

Beijing, May 9: Mounting a strong defence of the ruling Communist Party of China, President Xi Jinping has said the COVID-19 fight has once again shown that the CPC leadership and the country's socialist political system can overcome any challenge.

Xi's comments came as China faced global criticism for its initial inaction to act against the novel coronavirus, which according to Chinese officials emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year.

Pressure is also mounting on Beijing to agree for an international probe on the origins of the vicious virus, including from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as claimed by the US leadership.

China curbed the spread of the coronavirus in over a month and brought COVID-19 under control at its first epicentre in Wuhan in about three months, Xi, also the General Secretary of the CPC, said at a symposium held on Friday to get suggestions from non-ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) parties on COVID-19 prevention and control.

He termed the curbing of the COVID-19 pandemic as "hard-won achievements" for the world's most populous country and the second-biggest economy.

The COVID-19 fight has once again shown that the CPC leadership, China's socialist system and its governance system can overcome any challenge and make big contributions to the progress of human civilisation, he said.

Xi said China had basically curbed the spread of the virus in over one month, managed to bring the daily number of new domestically-transmitted cases down to single digits in about two months, and secured decisive achievements in protecting epicentres Wuhan and Hubei province in about three months.

"For a huge country with 1.4 billion people, these are hard-won achievements," he said

Besides the top CPC officials, the symposium was attended by members of the central committees of non-CPC parties in China, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, and persons without party affiliation.

The speakers at the symposium praised the Chinese leadership in handling the crisis, saying it fully demonstrated the political advantage of China's socialist system and showed that China was a major responsible country.

Xi, who is also the head of the People's Liberation Army, praised China's one-party political system governed by the CPC.

His comments on the country's political system came as Beijing is also defending the role of the CPC as US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have blamed the ruling party for not being transparent in the fight against the pandemic.

Both Trump and Pompeo have been pressing Beijing to allow American experts for a probe on whether the virus emerged from the WIV, China's premier research lab where viruses of different types are reportedly researched.

At the symposium attended by the top CPC officials, Xi's leadership came for praise for successfully handling the situation, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

"Attendees noted the major strategic achievements in the COVID-19 fight under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core," the report said.

The meeting was held amid reports of murmurs of internal criticism within the CPC about Xi's handling of the coronavirus crisis.

While China's move of handling the coronavirus from January 23 by locking down Hubei province and its capital Wuhan to prevent the spread of the virus and curbing it by deploying 42000 medical personnel has been praised, Beijing is criticised for its slow reaction after it emerged in December last year.

China used less than a week to identify the full genome sequence of the novel coronavirus and isolate the virus strain, produced various testing kits and swiftly selected a number of effective drugs and treatments. Different types of vaccines have also entered clinical trials.

President Xi said during the COVID-19 fight, China upheld the centralised and unified leadership of the CPC and concentrated the nation's best doctors, the most advanced equipment and the most needed resources to treat patients, with all treatment expenses covered by the state.

It managed to maximise the testing and cure rates while minimising the infection and fatality rates.

As of Friday, the COVID-19 death toll in China remained at 4,633 with no new fatalities reported for several days while the total number of cases stood at 82,887. In contrast, Chinese officials point out the death toll in the US which has crossed 75,000 with over 1.2 million cases, besides the mounting global toll.

Almost all countries in the world have been under lockdown for weeks to control the spread of the virus.

Xi called for mobilising the whole society, leveraging the institutional strength of concentrating resources to get things done and tapping the composite national strength as well as closely relying on science and technology.

On international cooperation, Xi said China had helped countries and international organisations to the best of its ability, demonstrating the nation's sense of responsibility as a major and responsible country.

Xi also stressed fixing the shortcomings in the country's major epidemic prevention and control mechanism and for the national public health system to raise the ability to deal with major public health emergencies.

He emphasised on targeted and effective measures to guard against the importation of cases and prevent a resurgence of the epidemic.

The total number of global coronavirus cases has topped 15.4 million, while the deaths have increased to over 631,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As of Friday morning, the total number of cases stood at 15,439,456, while the fatalities rose to 631,926, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 4,034,831 and 144,242, respectively, according to the CSSE.

Brazil came in the second place with 2,287,475 infections and 84,082 deaths.

In terms of cases, India ranks third (1,238,798), and is followed by Russia (793,720), South Africa (408,052), Peru (371,096), Mexico (370,712), Chile (334,683), the UK (298,721), Iran (284,034), Spain (270,166), Pakistan (269,191), Saudi Arabia (260,394), Italy (245,338), Turkey (223,315), Colombia (218,428), France (216,667), Bangladesh (216,110), Germany (204,881), Argentina (148,027), Canada (114,398), Qatar (108,244) and Iraq (102,226), the CSSE figures showed.

The other countries with over 10,000 deaths are the UK (45,639), Mexico (41,908), Italy (35,092), France (30,185), India (29,861), Spain (28,429), Iran (15,074), Peru (17,654) and Russia (12,873).