Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: April 20-26
Peruvian government and CIA shoot down civilian aircraft
Socialist Party wins in Portuguese elections
75 years ago:
500,000 Spanish workers strike against Franco dictatorship
Reza Khan crowned Shah of Iran
2. APWU president Smith on USPS financial crisis: “nothing to see here”
The American Postal Workers Union bureaucracy is telling postal
workers that the financial crisis at the United States Postal Service is
not a crisis at all—but a “situation,” and that “victory is only a
phone call away.”
That was the central message of APWU President Jonathan Smith’s livestream last Tuesday, an exercise not in organizing
opposition to the massive concessions being prepared against postal
workers, but in getting out in front of rank-and-file resistance in
order to smother it.
The reality is far different from Smith’s
complacent claims. Earlier this month, Postmaster General David Steiner
warned Congress that USPS is approaching a liquidity crisis so severe
that, “At our current rate we’ll be out of cash in less than 12 months.”
Without new borrowing authority, he said, “the postal service would be
unable to deliver the mail.”
*****
The crisis is already being paid for by workers. USPS has suspended its
biweekly employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement
System—roughly $200 million every two weeks—to preserve cash,
effectively looting workers’ deferred compensation and using it as an
emergency reserve.
*****
Corporate America is salivating over the prospect of privatizing
USPS. [Postmaster General] Steiner’s appointment itself—he comes from FedEx’s board of
directors—is a signal of what is under consideration. Last year, a
five-point Wells Fargo memo laid out the steps needed for privatization:
Higher prices, route restructuring, removal of regulatory constraints
and greater emphasis on parcel delivery over universal service. Much of
this is being carried out under the guise of resolving the present
“financial crisis.”
The “Delivering for America” restructuring
launched under former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was aimed, though
thus far without achieving profitability, at reorganizing USPS along
Amazon-style logistics lines and making it more attractive to investors.
USPS
is increasingly being transformed from a public service into a
last-mile delivery contractor for private corporations. In many areas it
already functions as Amazon’s de facto delivery service partner.
Similar arrangements are being pursued elsewhere, undermining the
universal service obligation and creating privatization in fact if not
yet in name.
Smith’s attacks on “headlines” and “panic” were in particular a response to warnings raised by the World Socialist Web Site and by growing opposition among postal workers, especially through the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
The
same day as Smith’s webinar, the Springfield, Massachusetts [Rank-and-File Committee] issued a
statement declaring, “USPS is a public service, not a profit-making
enterprise.” That statement explained:
“This manufactured
‘liquidity emergency’ is the product of the 1971 corporatization of the
service and recent restructuring programs such as ‘Delivering for
America,’ which have increased precarious non-career staffing,
intensified workloads, and produced unsafe workplaces and massive losses
in first-class mail revenue. Meanwhile, management and both parties in
Congress demand further austerity.”
The committee explained that
it was founded because workers “reject the current, non-democratic union
structure and strive to build a movement that is by the worker, for the
worker.”
Smith was clearly determined to prevent any such
opposition from emerging. During the livestream Q&A, he explicitly
told workers to keep their questions “germane,” shutting down broader
discussion of restructuring, layoffs and the political causes of the
crisis.
*****
The unions have worked hand in glove with management for years. They
backed the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act, which rescinded the
prefunding mandate for retiree health benefits while requiring future
retirees to enroll in Medicare. NALC and the rural carriers union
(NRLCA) openly support Delivering for America, which has eliminated
thousands of routes for their own members, while signing side agreements
allowing invasive electronic monitoring and massive pay cuts.
There
is no doubt that when attacks on jobs are openly announced, the union
apparatus will support them as unfortunate but necessary “shared
sacrifice.”
In reality, this is a manufactured crisis created by
decades of deliberate policy. USPS’s $9 billion net loss last year
amounts to only a few days’ worth of munitions in the imperialist
assault on Iran. It is a class policy: To free up resources for Wall
Street and for war by carving them out of the backs of the working
class.
And it is international. Canada Post is preparing to eliminate 30,000
jobs out of a workforce of little more than 50,000 and slash home
delivery, a sign of what is being prepared in the United States.
The APWU webinar underscores the necessity for rank-and-file
organization. The bureaucracy functions to enforce the dictates of
management and anti-democratic strike bans even as the ruling class
violates every law at will under the Trump administration.
The
answer is not “common sense” appeals to Congress, but the class
struggle. Conditions for this are rapidly emerging as workers across the
country radicalize in response to dictatorship, war and austerity, and
as major strikes break out.
Postal workers must find new channels
that they themselves control, giving them real agency over their own
struggle. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
(IWA-RFC) and the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee are fighting
to build those channels.
3. Mass protests by workers in northern India against price hikes due to US-Israeli war against Iran
Tens of thousands of unorganized workers employed in manufacturing
industries in the National Capital Region (NCR) in northern India have
been engaged in explosive strikes and protests, which began on April 10,
against price hikes driven by the US-Israeli war against Iran. Workers
are demanding an increase in minimum wages to keep up with the sharp
increase in rent, utilities and food prices.
The eruption in
northern India is part of a global wave of resistance to unbearable fuel
and food price increases due to Trump’s criminal war against Iran and
the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. In recent weeks, mass protests by
workers and farmers have hit the Philippines, Haiti and Northern
Ireland.
The NCR is a region surrounding the nation’s capital,
New Delhi. It includes metropolitan New Delhi, the older Delhi city and
adjacent industrialized districts in the states of Haryana, Uttar
Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
It is home to about 15,000 small, medium
and large domestic and transnational manufacturing industries that
employ around 4.5 million workers, most of whom are contract or
temporary workers. Before the war, the NCR—along with the Bombay
metropolitan region—had one of the highest costs of living in the
country. Workers across the region are demanding uniform minimum living
wages of around Rs. 23,000 ($247) per month.
This latest working class eruption began in the Noida industrial
township but rapidly spread across the NCR. So desperate are the
conditions of India’s toilers that even domestic workers employed by
individual middle class households joined the agitation.
Wages are
so low that a majority earn a mere Rs. 10,000 ($107) to Rs. 15,000
($160) per month for six days a week of intense work lasting 10–12 hours
a day. Current wages have largely remained unchanged for about a
decade.
The government responded to the protests with violent police
repression, which reached a high point on April 13-14. Both local and
state government authorities sent huge contingents of police forces to
suppress any opposition by workers to their daily misery.
After
firing large quantities of tear gas and beating many protesters
mercilessly, police arrested over 350 workers on April 14. The angry
workers fought back by throwing stones and firecrackers and overturning
several police vehicles.
In addition, the Hindu-supremacist Chief
Minister Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh—who has a long history of
unleashing police violence against Muslims and the poor—branded this
worker uprising as a “Naxal” and even “Pakistan-linked” conspiracy. The
Naxalites were Indian Maoists who began armed peasant uprisings in the
late 1960s. They have largely been stamped out by the murderous violence
of the Modi government.
Despite his threatening rhetoric,
Adityanath was compelled to announce a 21 percent hike in minimum wages.
Even as he announced the paltry wage increase, the chief minister
ordered the police to maintain “vigilance against disruptive elements”
and told workers to be thankful that their oppressive employers “provide
employment opportunities.”
*****
Even with the wage hike announcements of 35 percent by the Haryana
government and 21 percent by the Uttar Pradesh government, the workers
can barely make a living. There is deep ferment among the Haryana
workers over these meager increases. They are, however, being held in
check by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which is associated
with Stalinists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Two factors have largely driven this spontaneous uprising. The first
is the impact on the Indian economy by the US-Israeli war against Iran.
India, which imports large quantities of crude oil, fertilizer, and
cooking gas from Persian Gulf countries, has been severely impacted by
shortages and price increases, which in turn have driven up food prices.
The second major factor is the new set of four “Labour Codes”
implemented last November by the pro-business Prime Minister Narendra
Modi–led BJP national government. This was a further step by the
fiercely anti-worker Modi government to enhance the “Ease of Doing
Business,” an utterly reactionary concept initiated and energetically
promoted by the World Bank.
The Stalinist trade unions—the CITU
and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), which is associated with
the older Communist Party of India (CPI)—appear to have been caught
flat-footed by the uprising. Both the CITU and AITUC have a long history
of betraying strikes,
especially in the state of Tamil Nadu, where they have significant
presence. They are now scrambling to bring the movement under control by
sending delegations to intervene in the strikes and protests.
*****
Despite the Indian elite boasting of having the highest economic
growth rate, the condition of workers in India reflects that of the 19th
century. According to the 2025 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS),
only 23.6 percent are employed on regular salary or wages. Of the rest,
56.2 percent are “self-employed,” a glorified term used to describe
people making a living by selling fritters on the sidewalk, while 20.2
percent are casual laborers who work whenever they can find some kind
of manual job.
The CITU, which claims to represent 6.2 million
workers, has called for nationwide protests on April 16 in support of
the NCR workers. But the record of both union federations, which have
allowed the national and state governments to escalate their anti-working
class policies, points to the necessity of workers breaking the grip of
the labor bureaucracies and developing their own independent means of
struggle, including rank-and-file committees controlled associated with
the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
4. The Pitt: The medical drama whose social realism and honesty have gripped millions
The Pitt, to its considerable credit, is different. While
Season 2 does not shy away from contradictory and flawed characters, it
is largely life-affirming. The makers set out intentionally and in a
sensitive manner to engage with the social problems of our time and how
they shape the human material.*****
The Pitt takes place in a big city hospital, and, thus by its
very nature, the staff and patients are multi-national, multi-ethnic,
multi-racial. Yet identity politics is absent from the program. The
racial and ethnic differences aren’t significant issues. The viewer is
struck by the high level of solidarity among the physicians, many of
them from widely different backgrounds. A broad cross section of America
is here, and yet there’s no racial storyline. In a similar vein, when
inter-generational conflicts arise, they are not presented as
insurmountable. The characters are drawn according to the common
problems and challenges they encounter.
*****
The difficulties faced by the central character, an attending
physician in crisis, also have a more general meaning. Dr. Robinavitch
is attempting to fight through the serious, at times intractable
problems in the hospital and in his life without losing his sanity.
Although The Pitt has resonated especially strongly with healthcare workers, this is something to which the broader population clearly relates.
Workers
are the ones who keep society functioning in all its aspects, but they
come up against obstacles created by the existing social framework every
day. How can we have decent transportation, quality education, safe
construction and industrial projects, a functioning electricity grid, a
working service sector and so forth, if workers are driven to
exhaustion, budgets are slashed, positions are cut and conditions are
generally made impossible? Workers can see and feel the effects of the
system on themselves and on others in myriad forms, and they are looking
for ways to not “succumb” to these pressures.
The Pitt has risen in popularity as the official political
institutions and big business sink lower and lower in the public
estimate. Of course, this is not simply a matter of one television
program. Nurses have been named the most trusted profession in the US
for 24 consecutive years as of 2026, according to annual polling from
Gallup. Approximately 75 percent of American adults rate nurses’ honesty
and ethical standards as “high” or “very high.” Medical doctors and
pharmacists also receive the approval of the majority, typically being
considered trustworthy by between 53 and 62 percent of those surveyed.
On
the other hand, capitalists and business executives are generally
disliked, if not despised. Recent data shows only about 12 to 15
percent of the public views such individuals as having high ethical
standards: “They are often viewed more negatively than positively.”
*****
In opposition to short-staffing, low wages and harsh working conditions,
healthcare workers have dug in their heels in fierce battles with
management in recent times, including in Providence, Rhode Island, and
Grand Blanc, Michigan. Tens of thousands of nurses were blatantly sold
out at Kaiser Permanente and in New York City by their unions. This is a
major battlefield in the class struggle. It is not for nothing that the
ultra-right City Journal recently (and nervously) headlined an article, “Why Are So Many Nurses Left-Wing?”
*****
The success of The Pitt coincides with the participation of
millions upon millions of people in every sizable community in the US on
March 28 in the “No Kings” protests against ICE, war and dictatorship.
The population is moving to the left, to an ever more critical view of
the status quo, of the gang of criminals and murderers who rule the US
and of capitalism itself.
5. Trump threatens to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges after IRGC closes the Strait of Hormuz
The Sunday television interview programs of April 19, 2026 are a
portrait of a ruling class with no significant opposition to mass
murder. The sitting president threatens the destruction of the civilian
infrastructure on which 90 million people depend. His ambassador to the
United Nations defends the threat by citing the fire bombing of Dresden
in World War II. A former senior Biden official admits on camera that
the previous administration had war-gamed the same strikes.
The
war on Iran is the policy of both parties of American capital, backed by
their German, British and French partners, against the peoples of Iran,
Lebanon and Palestine. The struggle against this war cannot be waged
through the existing two-party framework, entirely controlled by
corporate America. It requires the independent mobilization of the
American and international working class, on a program of socialist
internationalism, led by the International Committee of the Fourth
International.
6. Tensions between Israel and Türkiye escalate
Israeli and Turkish leaders have launched the most extraordinary rhetorical attacks on social media against each other.
On
April 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on X of “massacring his own Kurdish
citizens”, “accommodating Iran’s terror regime and its proxies” and
undermining regional stability.
Erdoğan had earlier warned that “provocations” could derail the
US–Iran ceasefire and criticized Israel’s actions in the region. Turkish
officials described Netanyahu as the “Hitler of our time”, citing
Israel’s military actions in Gaza and across the region, and stating
that Israel was manufacturing Türkiye as its next enemy. They accused
him of destabilizing the region for his own political survival.
Presidential advisor Burhanettin Duran accused Netanyahu of committing
genocide in Gaza and dragging the region into chaos.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called Erdogan a “Muslim Brotherhood man,
who massacred Kurds”. He criticized the Turkish president for failing to
respond to Iranian missiles fired into Türkiye, calling him a “paper
tiger”, accusing him of antisemitism and declaring “field trials in
Türkiye against Israel’s political and military leadership”. The fascist
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted in Hebrew, “Erdogan,
do you understand English?” before adding, in English: “F*** You.”
Several
Israeli politicians, within the government and the opposition,
including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, have publicly described
Türkiye as a new regional threat, comparable to Iran. These were references to Erdogan’s earlier threats against Israel
when he said that Türkiye could “enter Israel” just as it had
intervened in Libya and Karabakh—Türkiye’s interventions to support
Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia and in the Libyan civil war.
Turkish
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of deliberately trying to
portray Türkiye as its next enemy. Netanyahu was trying to “undermine
peace negotiations” in the region as he continues “his expansionist
policies”.
*****
Turkish criticisms of Netanyahu function largely as an attempt to
channel rising domestic anger over soaring living costs and intensifying
state repression toward an external rival. Recent surveys in Türkiye
show most of the population opposes the Iran war. Yet Ankara cannot
afford a direct confrontation with the United States. It joined the
Riyadh Declaration in condemning Iran and redirected much of its public
response on the war against Israel, drawing on domestic opposition to
the war to reinforce the narrative that Israel provoked the conflict.
*****
These latest rhetorical attacks followed an announcement that caused
uproar in Tel Aviv: Istanbul’s chief prosecutor filed indictments
against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 34 other Israeli
officials—including Defense Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister
Bezalel Smotrich, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, National
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, and
former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen. The charges relate to Israel’s naval
interception of dozens of vessels in the Global Sumud Flotilla, seeking
to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in late September and early October
2025.
Israel detained and later deported all activists aboard the 39 boats,
including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and 24 Turkish citizens.
Ankara condemned the interception as “an act of terror” that endangered
civilians. The indictments include allegations of crimes against
humanity, genocide, torture, and unlawful deprivation of liberty—charges
that, if upheld, would carry cumulative sentences amounting to
thousands of years.
Ankara has consistently criticized the mass civilian deaths in Gaza
since October 2023, yet it has maintained significant economic and
logistical ties with Israel. Azerbaijan’s oil exports still transit the
pipeline running through Türkiye, and US bases in Türkiye have remained
available for military intelligence-gathering operations that benefit
Israel.
Erdoğan was also a signatory to the rotten agreement at
Sharm el-Sheikh last October advanced by the Trump administration for
Gaza. The plan envisaged Gaza being administered by a “Peace Council”
chaired by the US president, without recognizing any political rights
for the Palestinians in the territory, while granting Israel a permanent
security role controlling borders.
*****
Today’s rapid escalation in Israel–Türkiye tensions reflects a
long-running rivalry that has now transformed into open hostility,
driven by developments in Gaza, Syria, Iran, and domestic politics in
both countries.
The rivalry between two allies of US imperialism
in the region primarily concerns their shares in the carve-up of the
Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. While both governments
support aspects of Washington’s drive for dominance in the Middle East,
Ankara has grown increasingly concerned about Israel’s expanding
partnerships, particularly in Cyprus and Syria.
*****
It is above all the criminal US-Israel attacks on Iran that have
provoked consternation among Türkiye’s ruling circles. They fear that,
as a NATO member hosting US bases and providing intelligence for
US-Israeli forces that have been targeted by missiles, possibly as false
flag operations, Türkiye could be drawn into the war.
The global rise in oil and natural gas prices caused by the conflict
will exacerbate the already severe cost-of-living crisis, intensifying
class tensions.
While
Erdogan declared the attacks on Iran were illegal and called for a
ceasefire and negotiations, Türkiye’s military, economic and financial
dependence upon its alliance with Washington means aligning with
President Donald Trump’s “new Middle East” policy. To do otherwise would
invite a coup against him, as the 2016 NATO-backed coup attempt
demonstrated. For this reason, he refrained from condemning the US under
the leadership of his “friend” Trump.
*****
Tensions between Israel and Türkiye are also rising in the Horn of
Africa, a vital strategic area for the Middle East powers. The region’s
ports, military bases, and political alliances shape access to the Bab
el-Mandeb straits—the southern gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez
Canal—which functions both as Israel’s maritime lifeline via the
Eilat–Ashdod corridor and as Türkiye’s access point to the Indian Ocean.
Over
the past decade, the two states have cultivated opposing regional
blocs: a Türkiye–Qatar–Somalia axis on one side and an
Israel–UAE–Eritrea/Ethiopia axis on the other.
Somalia is the most
visible front in this rivalry. Türkiye has become Mogadishu’s primary
political patron, military trainer, and economic partner. It operates
its largest overseas military base in the capital, trains Somali forces,
and controls key infrastructure including the port. Ankara has
dispatched the Çağrı Bey vessel and supporting ships to begin deep-sea
drilling at the Curad-1 well, 250 miles off Somalia’s coast, a move that
signals its long-term geostrategic interests in the region.
Israel,
by contrast, has sought influence through Somaliland. Last December, it
became the first and only UN member state to formally recognize
Somaliland as a sovereign state, a step widely interpreted as an effort
to secure access to the port of Berbera and one that antagonized both
Ankara and Mogadishu.
In Sudan, Türkiye had secured a long-term lease on Suakin
Island—viewed by some analysts as a potential naval foothold on the Red
Sea—before the Sudanese army ousted President Omar al-Bashir in a
pre-emptive coup amid a mass uprising. In Djibouti, Ankara has expanded
its diplomatic and commercial presence as part of its broader Red Sea
strategy.
Israel’s footprint in the Horn is older and more
discreet. It has long maintained intelligence and security ties with
Ethiopia, including around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD),
which Egypt and Sudan fear could reduce Nile flows during a drought.
Israel has reportedly used Eritrean ports and islands for intelligence
gathering in the Red Sea. Its partnership with the UAE—a major actor in
Eritrea, Somaliland, and southern Yemen, and a backer of the Rapid
Support Forces in Sudan’s civil war—has extended its reach.
The
Iran-aligned Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping linked to Israel,
carried out in support of the Palestinians, have forced vessels to
reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, underscoring the strategic value
of the Red Sea corridor. This has become more pronounced as Iran
threatens to close the Red Sea if the US continues to block the Strait
of Hormuz.
*****
On Friday, Türkiye held a three-day Diplomacy Forum in Antalya, which
more than 150 countries were expected to attend, including more than 20
heads of state and government, among them Syrian President al-Sharaa and
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The foreign ministers of
Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were to meet on the sidelines
of the forum to discuss the war and the blockade of the Strait of
Hormuz.
7. Starmer government facing collapse over Mandelson/Epstein scandal
UK Labour government Prime Minister Keir Starmer will deliver a
statement to the House of Commons Monday to “correct the record”
regarding the vetting of Peter Mandelson prior to his appointment as UK
ambassador to the US.
Before handing Mandelson the job in December
2024, though he is still attempting to deny this, Starmer was fully
aware of his intimate connections with the billionaire child sex
trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson continued his relationship with
the pedophile even after he was convicted and served jail time.
On Thursday, an investigation by the Guardian revealed that
“A formal decision to deny him clearance was made by [UK Security
Vetting (UKSV)] on 28 January 2025… According to sources, UKSV informed
the Foreign Office that the risk factors involving Mandelson meant that
his clearance should be denied.”
Starmer claimed on Friday that he
was not informed until as late as Tuesday evening this week that
Mandelson failed vetting. Even if a man who has served at the highest
levels of the state and was formerly the UK’s Director of Public
Prosecutions were to be believed, it would reveal a level of
incompetence beyond comprehension.
*****
The Independent reported—fully seven months before the Guardian—in
the article, “Concerns Mandelson did not pass MI6 vetting for US
ambassador role – but Starmer appointed him anyway,” that it was told by
sources “that MI6 failed to clear the Labour peer largely because of
concerns over his business links to China. However, there were also
worries that his past links to the disgraced financier and convicted
paedophile Jeffrey Epstein ‘would compromise him’.”
Starmer therefore knew. Yet much of the media coverage, particularly the pro-Labour Guardian,
has still focused on what Starmer knew and when. This is because there
is a fear that his downfall will bring to a head a far broader political
crisis of rule for the British bourgeoisie, possibly claiming the
Labour government as its victim.
*****
Among the figures being touted as Starmer’s replacement should he
fall, whether now or after May’s local elections—expected to be
disastrous for Labour—is Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Another
Blairite, Streeting is equally compromised, having already been forced
to delete a batch of photos of himself with Mandelson, including one in
which Streeting fawns over the “legend Lord Mandelson.”
Sections of the media, including the Financial Times,
have warned in recent months that whatever Starmer’s decline in
political fortunes, he still represents the “stability” sought by the
bourgeoisie after a period of crisis-ridden Tory rule—which saw the
Conservative Party burn through a staggering four prime ministers and
five chancellors in the space of just eight years.
*****
All the political mechanisms of rule established over more than a
century are falling apart at the seams—above all the Labour Party.
Under
conditions of entrenched and growing social inequality and mounting
class conflict, political minnows such as Lammy, Kendall and
Streeting—who all agreed with Mandelson, as a leading architect of New
Labour, that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy
rich”—are incapable of reversing a perilous situation for the ruling
class.
Labour is today hated by millions of workers and youth.
Indeed, it is only due to the betrayal carried out by the nominally left
Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party for more than four-and-a-half years
from September 2015, that the Blairites have survived at all, and
Starmer handed leadership of the party.
Starmer went on to win a landslide in the 2024 general election under
Britain’s undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, despite
having won just 33.7 percent of the vote—the lowest share for any
single-party majority government in post-1945 UK history.
Starmer was eased into power due to the betrayal of the trade union
bureaucracy, who quelled a mass strike movement as they backed a
Blairite whose hostility to the working class was made clear by his ban
on shadow cabinet ministers supporting workers’ picket lines and his
support for genocide in Gaza.
Thanks to the
continued refusal of
Corbyn and the “left” to wage political war on the Blairites, almost two
years of Starmer’s government of austerity and militarism has mainly
benefited the most right-wing forces—including the far-right Reform UK.
*****
Following Corbyn’s betrayal and the debacle of his Your Party
vehicle, and the prostration before Starmer of Labour’s parliamentary
left-wing of a few dozen MPs, the Green Party has seen a surge in
support in recent months—and now polls in second place behind Reform.
But whatever vaguely leftist rhetoric is spouted by new leader Zack
Polanski, the pro-capitalist Greens also represent no alternative to Starmer’s collapsing party.
If Reform, and the most vicious anti-working-class representatives of the super-rich they represent,
are to be stopped in their tracks, then there is no time to waste: the
working class must adopt the program of socialist internationalism.
As the WSWS noted on Mandelson’s arrest:
Mandelson’s
career epitomised the transformation of the Labour Party into a naked
instrument of finance capital and architect of illegal wars of
imperialist plunder, most infamously against Iraq in 2003. Having now
resigned five times from various positions in his career, including
being forced from office twice in the Blair years due to earlier
scandals, he was welcomed back to the summit of political power by
Starmer. Not only did Mandelson epitomize the New Labour agenda of
serving every requirement of the banks and corporations, but his close
relations with Epstein were seen at the time as an asset that would
facilitate efforts to woo the Trump administration.
For the working class, the central issue is not holding Mandelson or [Andrew] Mountbatten-Windsor
to account through parliamentary debates, humble addresses, or official
inquiries—including the public inquiry into Mandelson’s appointment as
US ambassador advocated by Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The
fundamental task is the building of a new, independent political party
of the working class and making a decisive political break with the
entire parliamentary set-up and all its rotten parties. It is the
capitalist system they all defend that enabled the financial
oligarchy—and figures such as Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor—to
thrive.
8. Union officials call off strike of 34,000 New York City doormen, porters and maintenance workers
On Friday, union officials abruptly cancelled what would have been a
major strike of 34,000 doormen, porters and maintenance workers in New
York City. The deal between 32BJ SEIU (Service Employees International
Union) and the Realty Advisory Board (RAB), which represents the
landlords, was decided without any vote by the membership on whether to
call off the strike.
Only two days earlier, around 10,000
residential building workers had rallied in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The rally was a forceful demonstration of the workers’ willingness to
wage what would have been the first strike of New York’s building
workers since 1991. More than 550,000 residents live in the buildings
that would have been affected.
The 32BJ bureaucracy’s abrupt about-face is an effort to prevent a
struggle and appease the landlords. In a statement released on Friday,
32BJ SEIU President Manny Pastreich said that the union had “found a
common path forward with the RAB.” This comment is unintentionally
revealing. The RAB “wanted to have labor peace,” its president and CEO
Howard Rothschild told Bloomberg.
This was the second
major strike called off last week. Early Tuesday morning, education
unions called off a city-wide strike in Los Angeles schools after
negotiating inadequate deals that pave the way for planned budget cuts.
This
underscores the fact that workers confront not only a ruthless
corporate America and its two parties, but a trade union bureaucracy
which functions as a labor police force. The better the conditions for
class struggle—major strikes in America’s two largest cities would have
had a galvanizing impact on workers across the country—the more open
their efforts at sabotage. Workers must prepare new channels of struggle
by forming independent rank-and-file committees, to impose their
democratic will and give themselves genuine agency.
*****
During last week’s mass rally, Pastreich physically embraced Mayor
Zohran Mamdani, who had come to address the workers. The rally heard a
slew of speeches from union and Democratic Party officials with the
typical slogans and chants of “solidarity” and that New York City is a
“union town.” But it was wholly devoid of a fighting strategy for
rank-and-file workers.
*****
Mamdani highlighted the extreme inequality that exists between building
workers and wealthy tenants and landlords at the rally, but the
self-described socialist had traveled to the White House months before
to fawn over Donald Trump and request billions of dollars in funding for
new real estate projects. Having campaigned on a platform centering
affordability, he is now touting the mere $40/week increase for low-paid
workers as a win.
9. Australia: IYSSE speakouts opposing war against Iran draw support from university students [with videos]
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in
Australia has held speakouts on university campuses opposing the
escalating US-led war against Iran. Events have taken place at Western
Sydney University (WSU) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT),
with a further speakout scheduled at the University of Melbourne.
IYSSE
speakers condemned the criminal and unprovoked US-Israeli war, which so
far has claimed the lives of an estimated 2,000 people, largely
civilians, and threatens to escalate into a global conflagration.
The Australian Labor government is supporting and complicit in the war
crimes against Iran. Australian military personnel were aboard the US
submarine that torpedoed and sank the unarmed IRIS Dena in international
waters, killing 140 sailors. Labor has deployed
missiles, a warplane and personnel, including SAS commandos to join in a
war aimed at regime-change and the annihilation of Iranian society.
10. Germany: Say No to the Verdi Collective Bargaining Agreement—Join the independent Transport Workers Action Committee
Excerpts from a statement by the [Public] Transport Workers Action Committee in Germany on
the sellout deal between the Verdi union and the Berlin Transport
Company:
Verdi has stated that the long timeframe for the contract—four years
until the end of 2029—protects against attacks by the BVG. “The employer
side made it very clear in these collective bargaining negotiations
that they want to tamper with many provisions of the framework
agreement,” reads a Verdi statement on the collective bargaining outcome
from March 31. “We must prevent this, and a longer term helps in doing
so.”
In plain language: Anyone who rejects this sellout can expect
even greater attacks. “Take it or leave it!” This demonstrates once
again the role of the Verdi apparatus and its defenders as the ones
serving up these attacks to us workers.
*****
Public transportation is facing brutal cuts. The federal
transportation budget was slashed from 38.3 billion euros last year to
28.2 billion this year—a reduction of nearly 28 percent. According to
the transportation contract, the BVG receives around 1.3 billion euros
annually, which, however, does not cover actual needs. The BVG’s debt is
set to skyrocket from 1.4 billion euros in 2024 to over 3.7 billion
euros by 2028 because the Senate is forcing the BVG to take out
loans—only to then claim that there is no money for staff and better
working conditions.
Ultimately, this will pave the way for the
complete privatization of the BVG. Even now, following the privatization
of the Ringbahn here in Berlin, other transport systems such as the
S-Bahn subway network—the North-South subnetworks and the Stadtbahn—are
also slated for privatization. RTHey are to be awarded to a private
consortia comprising S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, Siemens, Stadler and other
corporations, thereby further fragmenting the system.
The same
thing is happening to colleagues in many other countries. In Paris,
19,000 employees of the RATP public transit network—with 308 lines and
over 4,500 buses—are set to be sold to global corporations by the end of
this year. In Chicago, more than 40 percent of the Chicago Transit
Authority’s public transit system faces dismantling because the Trump
administration will no longer cover the $771 million deficit. In Madrid,
a strategy to liberalize the EMT urban bus sector has been underway for
years, opening it up to private capital and outsourcing individual
services.
And everywhere, the union bureaucracies play the same
role: They limit protests to symbolic actions, agree to lousy
compromises, push through cutbacks and prevent workers from uniting
across companies, cities and countries. In contrast stands the
International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC),
with which we collaborate. It fights to unite transport workers in
Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Madrid and worldwide to organize joint struggles
against social cuts, war and fascism.
*****
The conclusion is clear: The union leaders act as co-managers in the
interests of the government and corporations. They support the
government’s arms buildup and war policies and suppress any serious
resistance to them.
Outrage over this is growing—yet within the
Verdi apparatus, pseudo-left organisations in particular ensure that
this opposition is defused and kept under control. They present
themselves as “reformers” of the union, but in reality they nip every
independent movement from below in the bud.
Representatives on bargaining committees and shop stewards like
Manuel von Stubenrauch—who, as a tram driver and Verdi shop steward,
sells the new “transparency” and “feedback” as a democratic
breakthrough—serve precisely this purpose: They give the bureaucracy’s
maneuvers a seemingly “left-wing” and grassroots veneer, but at the
decisive moment defend the course of the Verdi leadership, which
enforces the directives of the Senate, the government and the companies.
These
pseudo-leftists receive political backing from the Left Party, which
has been and remains actively involved in cuts and privatizations in the
Senate and in the districts.
The Action Committee must be
consciously developed against these maneuvers by the Left Party and its
union proxies as an independent alternative that pits the interests of
the workforce against the demands for “restraint” and “austerity” aimed
at keeping the war chest full, and that does not divide us as BVG
employees from our colleagues in other transit companies, in the public
sector, in the private sector, in administration and in industry.
*****
We counter the Verdi agreement with our own immediate demands, which
stem from our daily experience and the real needs of our colleagues:
1)
Mandatory introduction of the 30-hour workweek with full wage
compensation for all driving staff. Only a significant reduction in
weekly working hours with full pay can end the constant work overload.
2)
Abolition of six-day shifts and a maximum of eight hours per
shift—including in split shifts. The formal “37-hour workweek” obscures
the actual time on duty, which rises to over 50 hours in a six-day shift
week, destroys our health and endangers passenger safety.
3) At
least 10 minutes of paid turnaround time after one hour behind the
wheel—even in the event of traffic jams, detours, or other traffic
chaos. Rest periods at the terminal must be guaranteed in the schedule
and in practice, and not split up or shortened if the driving time is
shorter; a digital tachograph is necessary for this.
4) Reversal
of the reduction in bus service and simultaneous extension of rest
periods between individual shift days to at least 12 hours. The
necessary increase in staff and vehicles per route reduces stress and
prevents overcrowded buses and long wait times.
5) The equipping
of all terminal stations with high-quality restroom facilities and
air-conditioned break rooms. The current conditions—a lack of toilets,
filthy containers, or mobile “outhouses”—are unacceptable and harmful to
health.
6) Illness must not be punished: Abolish the reduction of
the Christmas bonus for prolonged illness, abolish the so-called
“negative prognosis” for prolonged illness, and put an end to dismissals
due to illness.
7) Prepare for a full-scale strike through
democratically run staff meetings. Only an indefinite joint strike by
all local transit workers—including S-Bahn, U-Bahn, and private
operators—can achieve our demands.
11. H-E-B grocery warehouse worker dies after workplace accident in San Antonio
Austin Lewis Flores, a worker at a warehouse for the H-E-B grocery chain
in San Antonio, Texas, died after a workplace accident earlier this
month. Reports indicate that on April 4 he was working with a floor jack
when he was hit by a forklift.
Flores was sent to a clinic where an X-ray revealed he had a broken
ankle. Several days later he was later found unresponsive at his home.
An autopsy revealed that he died of a pulmonary thromboembolism that
developed after a blood clot had dislodged and traveled to his lungs.
*****
This follows the death of another H-E-B warehouse worker at the same
location last October. Teresa Dominguez, 27, was found unconscious in a
freezer. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined
that she had died of blunt trauma. Witnesses said that she had exhibited
signs of distress while driving a forklift. After being discovered, EMS
was called and transported her to a local hospital, where she later
died.
“Six months and nothing has changed. No major safety
improvements. Nothing was fixed,” Brenda Flores said. “My son should
have been transported to an ER immediately from hitting that floor at
H-E-B, no excuses, no exceptions. And now my son is gone, too.”
Workplace injuries and deaths are not uncommon in warehouses. Grocery
stores are also hazardous workplaces. Some of the most common causes of
injuries include forklift and other vehicle accidents, falling objects,
slips on wet or cluttered floors, extreme temperatures in freezers and
overexertion and repetitive stress.
According to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, grocery workers experience nearly twice the average
rate of nonfatal workplace injuries compared to other private sector
workers. In 2024, the approximately 2.6 out of 100 workers suffered some
type of workplace injury, while for grocery workers they suffered at a
rate of about 4.0 per 100.
*****
H-E-B workers are not covered by a union, but in unionized workplaces
officials work as little more than agents of management. The United
Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has rammed through pro-company
contracts across the country in the face of worker opposition. In spite
of a history of workplace accidents in the grocery industry, unions have
done nothing to improve worker safety in these environments.
Government
workplace safety regulations are weak due to limited enforcement
mechanisms and low penalties for violations. Occupational Health and
Safety Administration (OSHA) has limited authority and resources. Many
employers consider the low fines as a cost of doing business rather than
a serious consequence that will cause them to change their practices.
Based
in San Antonio, H-E-B is a major grocery chain, operating over 400
grocery stores in Texas and Mexico. The company employs about 175,000
workers and is one of the largest private employers in Texas. In 2025 it
had total revenues of $50 billion, making it the 19th largest retailer
in the United States. H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt was listed 230th on
the Forbes list of billionaires in 2025, with a net worth of over $10
billion.
12. Aldi DX tech workers in Germany fight job cuts: Form a rank-and-file committee!
Over 2,000 employees of the IT company Aldi DX gathered in Essen,
Germany on March 31 and elected an electoral board to prepare and carry
out the election of a works council. Many workers of the discounter’s IT
subsidiary are determined to fight against job cuts and the
deterioration of working conditions.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and World Socialist Web Site support
this willingness to fight. We advocate expanding this growing
resistance and making it the starting point for a broad mobilization of
all employees at all locations.
The attacks on Aldi’s IT workers
are part of the global crisis of the capitalist system. Everywhere, new
forms of production, above all utilizing AI, are being deployed to
massively cut jobs and increase conditions of exploitation immeasurably.
At the same time, the unrestrained enrichment of those at the other end
of society is taking place. A super-rich financial aristocracy is
destroying society. With the same aggressiveness with which President
Trump and the oligarchs behind him are threatening the destruction of civilization in Iran, the ruling class in every country is taking action
against the working class.
In order to successfully fight against
job cuts and deteriorating working conditions, it is necessary to
connect the workplace dispute with a systematic mobilization against the
capitalist profit system.
Only on the basis of a socialist
perspective, which rests on the old principle of the labor movement
that the interests and needs of workers rank higher than the profit maximization of the capitalists, and which strives for democratic
control over production, can workers’ rights be enforced.
Therefore,
the founding of a rank-and-file committee is necessary, which stands in
the tradition of workers’ councils, mobilizes all Aldi DX employees and
creates the organizational framework for a joint struggle. This is the
way to connect the dispute that has begun at Aldi with the many workers
in other sectors who are confronted with the same or very similar
problems.
*****
The German government is driving forward an insane rearmament
program in order to become the leading military power in Europe. It is
using the Ukraine war to prepare an Operation Barbarossa 2.0 (Hitler’s
original invasion of Eastern Europe was named Operation Barbarossa). In
order to finance this war policy, social benefits are being massively
cut. “We can no longer afford the welfare state!” Chancellor Friedrich
Merz declares.
In truth, however, the population can no longer
afford capitalism and its profit system. For the working class, the
much-vaunted “new era” in foreign and military policy means a return to
the class struggle! Just as the ruling class is reanimating its
reactionary traditions of mass dismissals, social cuts, war and
dictatorship, the working class must turn again to its revolutionary,
socialist traditions.
There is no lack of willingness to fight. In
conversations with the World Socialist Web Site, many Aldi DX employees show themselves to
be self-confident, determined and combative. One of them said that if
the new work-from-home regulation was indeed preparation for further job
cuts, “one must also think about strikes.” Another said that there was
much uncertainty in the company, but “The mood is combative. I just
listened to the Internationale on the underground on the way here,” he
reported smiling.
13. Argentine union boss pitches corporatist alliance to US executives and fascistic President Milei
Jorge Sola, general secretary of Argentina’s General Confederation of
Labor (CGT), participated last week in the summit of the American
Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Buenos Aires, a gathering of US
multinationals operating in Argentina. The event brought together
corporate executives, representatives of the US Embassy, fascistic
President Javier Milei alongside members of his cabinet, governors and
other leading political figures.
From this platform of imperialist
finance capital, Sola articulated a program that lays bare the role of
the Peronist trade union bureaucracy as an instrument for subordinating
the working class to the destruction of living standards and labor
rights and the turn to fascism under Milei.
Speaking on a panel, Sola declared:
Those
of us who represent workers represent the interests of labor power, but
we believe in a strategic partnership between productive investment,
that productive force of capitalism, and labor… Conflicts must be
addressed at a great negotiating table, where the state is also
present—a smart and efficient state, not one that merely serves capital
and legally subordinates everything to it.
In an interview with the right-wing outlet Infobae at
AmCham, Sola reiterated this perspective in even clearer terms: “That
strategic partnership between those who invest productively and those
who generate labor power must exist in Argentina. It has always existed
in Argentina and goes far beyond the ideological affinities of the
government in power.”
These statements were made in between friendly criticisms of Milei’s
“Labor Modernization Law,” approved with the complicity of the CGT,
which blocked any real resistance in exchange for discarding clauses
that affected the bureaucracy’s source of revenue from automatic dues
deductions and other income.
The law imposes longer workdays of
up to 12 hours without overtime pay, slashes severance, guts collective
bargaining, reduces sick pay and vacation time, and effectively
criminalizes strikes in strategic sectors, rolling back protections from
the 1974 Labor Contract Act to 19th-century conditions. Not even the
US-backed military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 dared to go so far.
This
draconian legislation is centered around facilitating mass layoffs even
after Milei’s “shock therapy” has already eliminated 300,000 formal
jobs—including 61,000 in the public sector.
*****
While the CGT was founded in the 1930s as a conglomerate of anarchist,
Stalinist and socialist unions, its transformation into an appendage of
the capitalist state was consummated with the rise of Juan Domingo
Perón, who came to power in 1943 as part of a military junta. During a
period of post-war economic expansion, Peronism sought to reconcile the
interests of industrial capitalists with those of the working class
through state mediation.
The CGT formed the Labor Party that initially secured Perón’s
election in 1946, adopting a model directly inspired by the integration
of trade unions into the fascist state of Benito Mussolini, which Perón
had studied while serving as a military attaché in Italy. This
system—corporatism—subordinates workers’ organizations to the state,
suppressing class struggle in the name of national unity and economic
development.
Today, the CGT is offering its services to Milei,
proposing a similar alliance between the state, union bureaucracy and
corporations. This policy, rooted in fascist ideology, is being advanced
under conditions in which Milei is carrying out a restructuring of
Argentine capitalism rooted in the devastation of workers’ rights and
conditions.
*****
The CGT’s current trajectory is rooted in its long history as an
agent of the bourgeoisie. After Perón’s ouster in 1955, the federation
remained dominated by the right wing of Peronism. When Perón returned
from exile on June 20, 1973, CGT-linked gunmen participated in the
Ezeiza Massacre, opening fire on left-wing Peronist youth and workers.
This
massacre, which left at least 13 dead, marked the consolidation of the
fascistic wing of Peronism and paved the way for the formation of the
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), a death squad responsible
for over 1,500 killings between 1973 and 1976. Organized by José López
Rega and supported by sectors of the CGT bureaucracy, the Triple A
targeted leftists, intellectuals and militant workers.
By
suppressing revolutionary struggles throughout the late 1960s and 1970s,
the CGT played a decisive role in paving the way for the US-backed
military coup of March 1976 and the ensuing dictatorship.
Today,
the CGT continues to support Peronist factions whose representatives in
Congress and provincial governments have facilitated Milei’s austerity
measures. It has also sought closer ties with the Catholic Church, one
of the most reactionary institutions in Argentina, proposing a “new
stage” in relations with its leadership.
*****
Another critical component in propping up the union bureaucracy is the
role of pseudo-left organizations in and around the so-called Left and
Workers Front (FIT-U). Despite covering the AmCham summit, outlets such
as La Izquierda Diario and factions linked to the Partido Obrero failed to mention the CGT’s participation.
*****
Milei, far from his right-wing populist pretense of opposing the
“political caste,” is constructing a corporatist regime in which all
institutions—state, unions and corporations—are integrated to guarantee
the upward transfer of wealth to the financial oligarchy.
He
enjoys the support of virtually every section of the bourgeoisie and is
aligning Argentina’s military and foreign policy with Washington, while
advancing extreme right-wing ideological positions.
Within this
framework, different factions of the union bureaucracy perform a
division of labor: the CGT openly collaborates, while the CTA, FreSU and
pseudo-left currents adopt a more “combative” posture to channel
opposition back into the CGT.
The events at AmCham and Sola’s
statements confirm that the trade union apparatus is not an instrument
for defending the working class, but an instrument of its class enemies.
As Leon Trotsky warned in 1938, in periods of acute class struggle,
trade union leaders seek to “become masters of the mass movement in
order to render it harmless,” often integrating directly into the
bourgeois state.
This process has deepened under globalization, with unions increasingly functioning as partners of corporate management.
*****
In his History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky
documents the rapid growth of coordinated lockouts and factory closures
in the months before the October insurrection—hundreds of plants closed
in successive months, throwing tens of thousands out of work and fueling
the radicalization of workers and factory committees. The Bolsheviks
linked factory committees and soviet power, raising a program that
addressed the social control of industry and the political overthrow of
the capitalist state as the opening shot of the world socialist
revolution.
What is required today is no different: the building
of independent rank-and-file committees, uniting workers across
industries and national borders, and breaking decisively from the union
bureaucracy and its pseudo-left appendages. Such organizations must form
part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees,
which fights to coordinate struggles globally.
At the same time,
the political struggle against capitalism and fascism requires the
construction of a revolutionary leadership in Argentina, as part of the
International Committee of the Fourth International.
14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk in 2015
"Peace for the world! Down with war!"
