Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. “Workers Lives Matter!”: IWA-RFC holds initial hearing on death of autoworker Ronald Adams Sr.
On Sunday, July 27, approximately 100 workers and youth attended the first public hearing held by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) as part of its investigation into the death of autoworker Ronald Adams Sr. The 63-year-old skilled trades veteran was killed on April 7 at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex when an overhead gantry crane suddenly activated and crushed him.
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The hearing was a powerful response by rank-and-file workers to the months-long silence from Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and state safety officials. It concluded with the unanimous adoption of a resolution to continue and expand the investigation, support other victims of workplace hazards, and build rank-and-file committees to enforce safe working conditions as part of an international campaign to end the sacrifice of workers’ lives for profit.
Lawrence Porter, a leader of the Socialist Equality Party and former autoworker, chaired the meeting. He denounced the capitalist system for treating the annual deaths of 140,000 US workers from traumatic injuries and occupational diseases as a mere “cost of doing business.” He compared the death of Ronald Adams to other preventable tragedies, including the killing of Antonio Gaston at the Toledo Assembly Complex and 19-year-old Brayan Canu Joj, killed in a meat grinder at a burrito factory in California.
These deaths, Porter said, were “casualties in a class war,” effecting workers of all races, nationalities and genders. “We are here to sound the call: Workers’ Lives Matter!” he declared, to audience applause.
2. The Thane of Bluster greets sycophants Starmer and Von der Leyen in Scotland
“So foul ... a day I have not seen.” The line belongs to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but it might as well describe the fog of vanity and menace surrounding Donald Trump’s latest visit to the United Kingdom. Less a tragic figure out of Shakespeare than a swaggering mob boss from a Scorsese gangster flick, Trump held court on the manicured moors of his Turnberry golf course in Scotland—his personal Dunsinane, outfitted with sand traps and taxpayer-funded Secret Service villas.
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However, such grotesqueries must not conceal the importance of the issues discussed between Trump, von der Leyen and Starmer, which pose a grave threat to working people all over the world.
Trump’s 40-minute meeting with von der Leyen was used to announce a US-EU trade deal that was a ruthless assertion of US imperialist interests over its rivals.
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The US president’s grand tours and the fawning of various heads of state and the media will continue. He will soon return to the UK for an unprecedented second state visit, where he will be flattered by the company of the decrepit King Charles III. What is fundamental for the working class is to see through such masquerades.
No diplomatic manoeuvres will halt the ever deeper descent into trade and military war by imperialist governments, whose brutal agenda is being written in the blood of the Palestinians. This depends on the independent political mobilization of a unified European, American and international working class in a socialist anti-war movement.
3. UFCW blocks Northern California Safeway strike with sellout deal
In the early hours of Sunday, July 27, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) announced a tentative agreement (TA) with Safeway, a subsidiary of Albertsons, aimed at blocking a strike by 25,000 grocery workers in UFCW Locals 5, 648 and 8-Golden State in Northern California.
The strike, scheduled to begin the same day, would have marked the first regional walkout against Safeway in nearly 30 years. The previous contract expired April 12 after more than five months of fruitless “negotiations” that the union deliberately prolonged to prevent any genuine mobilization.
Workers at Safeway, like their brothers and sisters at other chains, are demanding substantial wage increases, expanded healthcare coverage, secure scheduling and stronger job protections. They face soaring rents, food prices and utility costs in one of the most expensive regions of the country, while corporate profits hit record highs. (Safeway’s 2024 adjusted net income was $1.38 billion.)
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Many Safeway workers are immigrants, now facing intensifying threats under the Trump administration’s stepped-up deportation campaigns. In recent weeks, workers have reported incidents inside stores—provocations orchestrated by management to create fear and disrupt organizing. The UFCW has remained silent, refusing to defend its own members from harassment and intimidation.
4. Anti-corruption protests shake the Zelensky regime in Ukraine
The protests were the largest to take place in Ukraine since the beginning of the NATO-backed proxy war with Russia that began in February 2022 and defied the country’s ongoing martial law status. In contrast to earlier and smaller protests by relatives of soldiers demanding that their husbands, brothers and sons be allowed to return from the front, these protests were widely covered in the pro-imperialist media, which made no reference to the immense human toll of the war.
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Zelensky, a former comedian with no military background, is viewed with disdain by Ukraine’s far-right who play an essential role in the Ukrainian state and especially in conducting the country’s ongoing war with Russia. Should Zelensky completely alienate the educated middle and upper-middle classes and his EU backers, it may well be the final nail in the coffin of a regime already in profound crisis.
The government has made no secret of its intention to use the takeover of the boards to ramp up its drive to gut public spending. In a statement, it declared that it is concerned with “growing deficits, depleting reserves and mismanagement,” while conceding that there is no question of any financial malfeasance on the part of the boards or the elected school board councillors.
Education Minister Paul Calandra accused the four boards of running “unsustainable deficits,” and warned the government is prepared to seize control of other boards to slash spending. “All school boards across the province should be put on notice,” he declared.
The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives noted in a report that the Ford government has cut public education by $6.3 billion since coming to power in 2018. The TDSB alone has faced cuts just shy of $900 million since 2018, according to the same report. Billions more in cuts are planned by the end of this decade.
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The destruction of public education is happening across Canada. The chauvinist, “Quebec first” CAQ government of François Legault has taken greater control over public schools by eliminating elected school boards and replacing them with regional “school service centers”. The CAQ regime has also demanded hundreds of millions in cuts for the 2025-2026 school year, which will devastate students and staff.
The attacks on education and other public services at the provincial level are a key component of the ruling-class onslaught on social spending to pay for imperialist war. At the beginning of June, the federal Liberal government announced a massive 17% increase in military spending, so as to reach NATO’s minimum 2 percent of GDP military-spending target in the current fiscal year. Since that announcement was made, NATO’s heads of government, including Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, have agreed to raise the target to 5 percent. This would mean, Canada spending $150 billion each year on the military. These vast sums must be squeezed out of the working class through stepped-up exploitation and the destruction of public services on which workers depend.
6. Minnesota cops delayed an hour after witnessing Democrat lawmaker shot by Trump fascist
New reporting from the Star Tribune and Minnesota Reformer concerning the targeted shootings of Minnesota state legislators last month by far-right Trump supporter Vance Boelter have raised serious questions about the police response to the assassinations.
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The refusal of the police to pursue Boelter allowed him to evade capture for some 43 hours. For nearly two days, the north Minneapolis suburbs surrounding the shootings and Boelter’s rural home in Green Isle were placed on lockdown by authorities as heavily militarized police and federal units searched for the fascist assassin.
In statements that point to a massive cover-up, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley claimed that the reason the cops did not pursue is because they thought the shooter was “holed up” and “barricaded” inside the residence. This is the same lying justification Uvalde and Texas police trotted out to cover for their inaction during the Uvalde school massacre.
In a show of utter contempt for the population, Bruley claimed in an interview with the Minnesota Reformer earlier this month the reason police did not pursue was because to do so would go against “their deescalation training.”
7. World court’s “advisory opinion:” States obliged to prevent climate change harm
The ICJ’s opinion affirmed that to live in a “clean, healthy and stable environment” is a basic human right, laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The “urgent and existential threat” to humanity posed by climate change is undermining this right, it stated.
Thus, countries had an obligation under international law “to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence and to use all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment.”
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Last year, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestine was unlawful, that countries must not “render aid or assistance in maintaining” the occupation. In a separate ruling, it stated that “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive” in Gaza and cease actions that “inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The imperialist powers, led by the United States, have flatly ignored these rulings as they continue their support for Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza. Moreover, they have openly participated in or supported the illegal US and Israeli attacks on Iran, alongside the advanced plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
With this in mind, the closing sentence of the ICJ’s advisory opinion—that it hopes “its conclusions will allow the law to inform and guide social and political action to address the ongoing climate crisis”—is an illusion. International law has not prevented the capitalist classes from enabling the mass murder in Gaza, and it will not stop them from continuing to profit from fossil fuel emissions that are threatening the planet and its people with increasing climate disasters.
8. Stellantis Sterling Stamping worker buried as questions remain over work-related death
Little has been made public about the accident or how exactly Tom [Thomas Eugene Cornman Jr.] was injured, due to the stony silence maintained by the company and the United Auto Workers union. UAW Local 1264 officials posted a death notice and funeral information on their Facebook page last week without the slightest suggestion that it was work related.
But as any veteran autoworker can confirm, statements from company and union officials should be treated with more than a healthy dose of skepticism. One worker with 20 years of experience, who knew Tom, told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, “When something like this happens, the company tries to brush everything off like it’s not their fault. It’s a shame what the union allows them to get away with... They don’t have our backs at all.”
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After high school, Tom joined the military. When he returned from his deployment, he picked up the nickname “Airborne” in reference to his time as a paratrooper in the US Army. He then pursued a career as an assemblyman in the automotive industry, which allowed him to build a life and a home in Michigan. Cornman was well-liked and respected by his co-workers. He was known for having an infectious smile and a kind word to offer for everyone.
Pastor Myra Moreland, who gave the eulogy at Tom’s funeral, suggested that his nickname was an appropriate way to characterize his contagious joyful nature, which was also “airborne.”
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When introducing the three union executives who were present at Cornman’s funeral, Pastor Moreland awkwardly referred to them as “his coworkers.” This was perhaps an honest mistake, since the relationship between union officials and rank-and-file autoworkers is unclear to many outside the auto industry. But experienced autoworkers are increasingly seeing their union “reps” for what they are: management’s enforcers of job-cutting, the slashing of benefits, exhausting hours, line speed-ups and unsafe conditions.
When addressing the memorial, Barrymore said, “For six years of me being Tom’s steward, [my phone] never rang for a problem or an issue” with Tom. This may have been because, as one of Tom’s actual co-workers told us, “If you complain to a committeeman, nothing really changes.”
9. Automotive supplier Segula files for insolvency: The tip of the iceberg
On July 9, Segula Technologies GmbH, based in Rüsselsheim, Germany, filed for insolvency in self-administration with the Darmstadt Local Court. This means that a further 500 jobs for engineers, technicians and developers are at risk.
Segula only came to Rüsselsheim eight years ago, when Opel was taken over by the French PSA Group. The French engineering service provider took over both the Opel development center in Rüsselsheim and the traditional test site in Rodgau-Dudenhofen.
Two years later, when the merger between PSA and Fiat-Chrysler created the third-largest global group Stellantis, Segula, with the support of IG Metall, promised to permanently secure 2,000 jobs, but this never materialized: At most, just under 900 people were employed at Segula before it rushed to downsize again.
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The Segula insolvency is also the tip of the iceberg for the entire German automotive and supplier industry. Automotive service providers such as Bosch and ZF have announced massive job cuts, and groups such as VW and Mercedes are cutting jobs. Daimler Truck—just one of the more glaring examples—plans to cut 5,000 jobs in the sites in Wörth and Gaggenau, which will also affect hundreds of jobs on the French side of the border. Just since the beginning of 2025 the employers' association Gesamtmetall has recorded a reduction of 60,000 jobs in the metal and electrical industries.
And as is usual in the entire automotive and metal industry, the so-called “employee representatives” from the IG Metall union are indispensable when it comes to job cuts. They have helped to draw up and then signed the redundancy plans practically everywhere they represent workers, often before even informing the workforce, and see their most important task as preventing any expression of resistance from workers during implementation. The Segula insolvency again throws a spotlight onto role the unions play in this.
10. Israel’s Netanyahu claims there is “no starvation” in Gaza
The series of lying statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there is “no starvation” in Gaza has produced a powerful backlash by masses of people around the world who are horrified by the evidence that more than 100 Palestinians—the majority children—have died from lack of food and nutrition.
On Sunday, Netanyahu denied the starvation in Gaza while speaking at a Christian conference in Jerusalem. Speaking at an event hosted by Trump supporter and prominent evangelical pastor Paula White, Netanyahu declared:
There is no starvation in Gaza—and there is no policy of starvation in Gaza. We facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the conflict. If not, there would be no Gazans left. The sole entity obstructing the flow of humanitarian aid is Hamas. They are reversing the truth.
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These denials by the fascist Israeli prime minister are directly contradicted by Gaza health authorities and international agencies who track hunger deaths daily. As of Monday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports at least 147 Palestinians—including 88 children—have died from malnutrition and starvation since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023.
Al Jazeera reported Monday that in the last 24 hours, 14 more people, including two children, perished from hunger and malnutrition. Health officials warn the true toll is likely far higher due to communication breakdowns and the isolating chaos imposed by ongoing strikes.
Global organizations, including the World Health Organization, have described the growing mortality toll as “mass starvation,” with over 2 million still at risk as food supplies remain throttled by the Israeli blockade and bureaucratic hurdles. Testimonies from Gaza highlight desperate families unable to find food, with malnourished mothers unable to produce breastmilk and fatal shortages of baby formula.
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The severity of the public outrage over the starvation of Palestinian babies has also forced hypocritical statements from leading representatives of the imperialist countries who have backed the genocide in Gaza since it began.
While visiting Scotland, President Donald Trump unconvincingly said, “Those children look very hungry. That’s real starvation, and you can’t fake that. The kids need to be fed.” Vice President JD Vance also feigned sympathy saying, “the United States aims to ensure that starving children receive nourishment.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron jointly referred to the “egregious” actions in Gaza but took no action to stop them. Starmer’s government has even claimed in court that there is “no serious risk of genocide in Gaza.”
In its own public relations maneuver, Israel announced on Sunday a “tactical pause” in its military campaign. The army said it would suspend combat operations for 10 hours each day in three areas—Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Muwasi—to “facilitate” aid delivery.
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As images and reports of starvation in Gaza continue to circulate, the world’s population is becoming aware of these events which recall the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the 20th century during World War II. The crimes against humanity now being committed by Israel in Gaza, with the complicity of leaders like Trump, Starmer and Macron, will be remembered as harbingers of revolutionary struggles by the working class that will overthrow the world capitalist system.
11. Trade deal between the EU and US: Another stage in an escalating trade war
The trade deal agreed to on Sunday by US President Donald Trump and European Union (EU) Commission President Ursula von der Leyen marks a further stage in an escalating trade war that is being waged on the backs of the working class and dragging the whole world into the abyss.
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The US will impose tariffs of 15 percent on most goods from the EU, while imports from the US into the EU will remain duty-free. The existing US tariff of 50 percent on European steel and aluminum will remain in place. Only a few goods will be exempt from the tariffs. According to von der Leyen, these include aircraft and aircraft parts, certain chemicals, generic medicines, agricultural products and critical raw materials.
Exact details are not known, as the text of the agreement has not been published. It is also unclear whether pharmaceutical products, which account for a significant portion of European exports, will be subject to the 15 percent tariff or charged at a higher rate.
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Contrary to the hopes of its supporters, the agreement between Trump and von der Leyen will not slow down the trade conflict with the US. This is not only due to Trump’s capriciousness, someone who can change his position at any time, but also to the deep crisis of US and world capitalism. As in the First and Second World Wars, the struggle of the imperialist powers for raw materials, markets and profits is once again taking on increasingly extortionate, destructive and military forms.
Trump is not the cause but the consequence of this development. The rise of the fascist-minded gangster from the real estate and casino industry to the top of the American state is a consequence of the rottenness of US and world capitalism—the unbridgeable gap between the ruling oligarchs and the masses of the population, the subordination of all social needs to the profit interests of a parasitic minority.
Europe is not a victim of the US—on the contrary. The old imperialist powers of Britain and France, as well as Germany, which tried to become the ruler of Europe in two world wars, have never resigned themselves to playing second fiddle to the US. They have supported all the crimes of US imperialism—from the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to the recent genocide in Gaza and the attack on Iran. They are working hard to regain their military independence.
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One reason why von der Leyen agreed to a deal with Trump, apart from fears of an uncontrollable escalation of the trade war, is the continuation of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine. The fear that Trump could reach an agreement with Putin over their heads in order to focus more on the conflict with China has been haunting the European powers for months.
12. Australian Labor government threatens Signal encrypted messaging system
Meredith Whittaker, the president of the foundation for widely-used global Signal encrypted messaging app, has said it will shut down the system in Australia if forced to hand over its users’ encrypted data to the country’s political surveillance agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.
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The Labor government’s moves are now threatening the existence of a vital encrypted communications platform. Signal, a free, open-source service, is used by millions of people worldwide to protect their privacy and free speech, shielding their communications from government, spy agency and corporate surveillance and data collection.
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ASIO and the other Australian intelligence agencies, with their US, UK, Canadian and New Zealand partners, operate as part of the global “Five Eyes” mass surveillance network. This worldwide web is now focussed on the Trump administration’s aggressive trade and military confrontations, especially with China, which Washington regards as the major threat to US hegemony.
As the thousands of secret US documents published by US National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden and by Julian Assange via WikiLeaks showed, the Five Eyes partners intercept the communications of millions of people around the globe, routinely exchange data about each others’ citizens, and also supply cyber warfare facilities and targeting information to their militaries.
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The real overriding fear in ruling circles is that working people worldwide use encrypted messages to discuss and organize, free of government eavesdropping, amid mounting anti-genocide and anti-war opposition, social unrest and political disaffection.
13. Australia: NTEU volunteers job cuts at Western Sydney University
Last Thursday, Western Sydney University (WSU) management unveiled a “voluntary redundancy” scheme as part of its plan to eliminate up to 400 academic and professional jobs, or more than 13 percent of the university’s full-time workforce.
Not accidentally, the announcement came just one day after the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) revealed that it had made a similar proposal.
NTEU branch president David Burchell informed its members at the university, via an email, that in backroom negotiations it had suggested a “modest” voluntary redundancy “exercise” to Vice-Chancellor George Williams to cut jobs in “a decent and humane manner.”
This must be a warning of the wider readiness of the NTEU leaders to partner with university executives across the country. They are desperate to quash staff and student outrage over the current mass destruction of jobs—totaling more than 3,000 nationally so far.
This assault is being driven by the Albanese Labor government’s reactionary cuts to international student enrollments and other measures, with a definite agenda: to transform tertiary education to satisfy the requirements of the corporate elite and the development of a war economy.
14. Sri Lankan government’s phony “eradication of rural poverty” program
Earlier this month, Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya ceremoniously unveiled its Prajashakthi (Community Power) policy, declaring it would “eradicate rural poverty.”
This program—part of Thriving Nation–A Beautiful Life, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) election manifesto that promised to transform Sri Lanka into a paradise—was to hoodwink the masses.
The manifesto acknowledged that 5.7 million people live below the national poverty line, 55.7 percent suffered from multidimensional poverty and promised to change all this. It included pledges to increase financial aid for the needy, and hollow phrases such as “social empowerment.”
Notwithstanding its populist slogans, Prajashakthi is yet another Dissanayake government fraud, its real directives dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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The immediate and real agenda of the Dissanayake government is to impose all the IMF’s brutal austerity measures, including restructuring state-owned enterprises, further cuts to education and health spending expenditure, the downsizing of public sector and the further limiting of financial assistance to the poor.
Contrary the government’s claims, these measures will not alleviate poverty but will increase it even more sharply. The root cause of poverty lies within the capitalist system itself, where production is organized for profit, not for human need.
15. Spanish far right intensifies anti-immigrant assaults under PSOE-Sumar government
In Spain, far-right groups are continuing the offensive against immigrants under the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar government.
For two consecutive weekends, fascist groups have mobilized across towns in Spain to assault migrants. From July 12 to 15, several hundred far-right militants attacked Moroccan migrant workers living in the town of Torre Pacheco, in the region of Murcia. Armed with baseball bats and pepper spray, they assaulted residents, smashed vehicles, and vandalized immigrant-owned businesses such as kebab shops.
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The trigger for the fascist assault in Torre Pacheco was a report of a beating of a local resident by individuals of North African origin who were passing through the town. The attack was condemned by townspeople, including local Muslim residents.
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The far right’s claim that crime has increased due to immigrants at the CAED is completely false. Since its opening in October 2023, the 7,000 people who have passed through the center have committed 17 crimes, compared to 14,500 committed by the rest of the local population.
16. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Argentine pensioners and incapacitated people march against Milei
Protest in Argentina’s Neuquén Province over fracking plans
Brazil:
Landless workers and peasants in Brazil demand the redistribution of land
Canada:
British Columbia government workers prepare for strike vote
Mexico:
Mexico City police attack health workers’ protestPeru:
Workers demand the resignation of Peruvian President Dina BoluarteUnited States:
Baltimore Ascension Saint Agnes nurses carry out one-day strike to protest unsafe staffing
Teamsters extend picket lines across 11 states on behalf of strikes by workers in Ohio and New Jersey
Hawaii concrete workers strike over grueling work schedules
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
