Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Oakland, California schools axe 421 jobs following sellout contractThe California Teachers Association, which boasts of having synchronized contracts across 32 districts through its “We Can’t Wait” public relations campaign, did everything in its power to prevent those districts from uniting. It stalled for months after the contracts expired, refused to coordinate walkouts across district lines and shut down each struggle one by one—without ratification votes in some cases, without even a tentative agreement in others.
In San Francisco, 6,000 educators launched the city’s first teachers’ strike in nearly 50 years on February 10. After four days on the picket line, the United Educators of San Francisco accepted a two-year deal on February 13 that included a thoroughly inadequate 5 percent raise. The deal was followed by layoffs.
In Oakland, following a 91 percent strike authorization, the OEA bargaining team signed its tentative agreement on February 27, which stipulated an 11 percent raise for most educators and 13 percent for senior teachers over two years—below the rate of inflation in the Bay Area. Two days later, the school board voted 4-to-3 to cut 421 positions, roughly 10 percent of the OUSD staff.
In Los Angeles, on April 12, with a three-union strike of nearly 80,000 workers scheduled for April 14, United Teachers Los Angeles signed a tentative agreement with LAUSD just 48 hours before the planned walkout. SEIU Local 99, representing bus drivers, cafeteria workers and classroom aides, settled hours before the deadline. Democratic Mayor Karen Bass personally intervened in the last-minute talks. This was a reflection of the joint campaign by Democratic politicians and union officials to contain the movement of workers before it could escape bureaucratic control.
In nearby Berkeley, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers ratified an even more miserable contract on February 20, providing a 3 percent annual raise over two years and a modest increase in healthcare contributions—for teachers who routinely spend $500 of their own money on classroom supplies out of wages already inadequate to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the United States.
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The Democratic Party is carrying out austerity across California. Governor Gavin Newsom and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi play an outsize role in framing school cuts as fiscal necessity.
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Among those losing positions in Oakland are literacy and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) coordinators, custodians, recruitment specialists, counselors and social workers for English language learners, and college and career readiness coordinators. The layoffs eliminate half of elementary schools’ elective programs, reduce an already stretched-thin school nursing staff, and cut positions in food service, counseling, tutoring and attendance.
The job cuts hit support staff particularly hard, including staff responsible for easing newcomer students’ transitions to their new schools. These transitions have become extraordinarily difficult with brutal ICE sweeps in the Bay Area. “Many of them have left family behind,” one teacher noted. “Many of them are living in intense terror that their family could get torn apart at any moment.”
Some schools are already scrambling to raise money through parent-teacher associations (PTA) to replace what has been cut. At Glenview Elementary, one parent reported the PTA would need to raise an additional $305,000 to fund reading intervention, mental health counselors, enrichment and music classes. “Cuts do not land equally,” the parent said. “They create a two-tiered system: schools that can privately subsidize programs and schools that cannot.”
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Oakland already loses roughly 400 teachers every year. Nearly one in three educators in their first or second year of teaching last year did not return. Sixty percent of district teachers cannot afford to live in the city where they teach.
Oakland’s student population has shrunk from 54,000 to 34,000. Thirty percent now attend privately-operated but publicly-funded charter schools.
The remaining students are disproportionately those with the highest needs: children with disabilities, English language learners and newcomer students whose families are targets of federal immigration enforcement.
Deindustrialization gutted the port and manufacturing economy that once sustained a stable working class life in East and West Oakland. The tech boom that followed enriched a narrow stratum while driving up rents and forcing working class families out of the city they built. The median home value has soared to $730,000; 59 percent of the population rents, many facing severe cost burdens.
The public school is the last institution standing between many of these children and complete social abandonment. That institution is now being systematically dismantled.
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Oakland teachers have a genuine tradition of militancy. The city produced the 1946 General Strike, one of the most powerful labor actions in American history. Teachers struck for seven days in 2019 and again in 2023—each time with overwhelming community support, and each time the OEA shut down the strikes before workers’ demands were won.
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This past February, 91 percent of OEA members voted to authorize a strike—a near-total mandate. The bureaucracy suppressed it, just as it suppressed the two strikes before that.
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The fight for public education as a social right requires organizations independent of the union apparatus and both major political parties—rank-and-file committees in every school, coordinating across district lines, capable of waging the kind of unified struggle that the conditions, and Oakland’s own history of militancy, show to be entirely possible.
2. Why Los Angeles teachers must vote “no” on the UTLA-LAUSD contract
The World Socialist Web Site urges educators to reject the tentative agreements reached last week with Los Angeles Unified School District. They impose stagnant wages, leave layoffs and austerity fully on the agenda and codify a divide-and-conquer policy that pits teachers against each other.
Voting is currently ongoing for United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA)/ Teamsters 2010 members; Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 has not yet announced its ratification vote.
The deals were used to cancel what would have been the first simultaneous walkout of all 77,000 district employees, which was called off hours before it was set to begin on April 14. They are also the product of the Democratic Party, acting through both the district and city government and the trade union functionaries, to prevent all resistance from below, which they fear much more than they do Trump.
The specific aim of the contracts is to block all resistance to massive austerity which will begin, in all likelihood, soon after the agreements are ratified. The district is currently operating under a “fiscal stabilization plan” with a projected $877 million deficit and already announced layoffs in February.
A new budget proposal is expected in mid-May, only a few weeks from now, which will likely contain sweeping new cuts.
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What is needed is a fight not just against district administrators but the union bureaucracy, which has proven it cannot be trusted to organize a struggle. The WSWS urges workers in the school district to take the initiative into their own hands by forming a network of rank-and-file committees unifying schools across the city, to prepare independent action to enforce the overwhelming democratic mandate for a strike.
A new bargaining team, consisting solely of working educators must be formed to fight for what the district’s employees and students urgently need, not what the corporate elite who control the district claim they can afford.
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For teachers, the headline wage figure of 11.65 percent over two years is being touted as a major gain. In reality this is largely eaten up by inflation in Los Angeles, currently at 3.4 percent. Moreover, only 4 percent of this figure is retroactive to the expiration of the last contract in July 2025.
In the area, transportation costs are up 9.1 percent year over year, food up 3.2 percent and energy up 11.2 percent. Gas costs $5.99 per gallon this week, up nearly 23 percent over the past year, driven by the US attack on Iran. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,532 per month.
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Under the new pay scale, most teachers will receive 3.25 percent for each year of service up to 10 years. After that, the increase falls to 2.5 percent for years 11 through 19, and then to only 1.5 percent for 20 years and above.
This is justified on the basis that higher pay increases for newer teachers are needed to improve retention. But rather than financing this by laying hands on the immense wealth of the corporate and financial elite, the increase comes at the direct expense of older teachers, deliberately pitting one section of the workforce against another.
The UTLA summed up its strategy in this infamous phrase: “The foundational principle behind the new fair wage scale is equity. It is not mere equality, but equity [emphasis added].” In other words, the UTLA is not only supporting lower pay raises for experienced teachers. It is explicitly rejecting the principle of equality itself as a governing principle among its own members.
What they derisively refer to as “mere equality” is in reality the most revolutionary principle in history. It has toppled monarchs and dictators all over the world and animated the struggles of countless millions to build a better world. Among them include those generations who fought and gave their lives to build the trade unions against the concentrated governmental and economic power of the ruling elite.
The open hostility to the idea of equality shows just how far removed and hostile the union bureaucracy is to the workers they claim to represent.
The attack on equality in favor of “equity” has become widespread in identity politics circles, where it is used to justify affirmative action programs and other forms of preferential treatment based on race or gender. Again, the logic is deeply reactionary because it pits workers against each other on the basis of personal identity in a struggle over control of their declining share of national income, rather than uniting them in a common struggle against their exploiters.
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The rest of the contract is characterized by demands that were either dropped entirely or reduced to unenforceable gestures. Use of phrases like “make every effort to” or “collaboratively advocate for” abound, committing the district to nothing. Other issues are referred to joint labor-management task forces—the “Climate Literacy Task Force,” a professional growth task force, and “Community Housing Task Force”—that will do nothing except give union officials more opportunities to rub elbows with district administrators.
The last of these is particularly noteworthy because it will oversee the opening up of school-owned land to real estate developers, under the guise of creating “affordable housing.” It will organize “industry forums” which “may include Non-Profit Developers and Community Land Trusts [emphasis added].” To be blunt, this type of arrangement is highly favorable for bribery.
The contract does not include a provision to hire additional elementary school physical education teachers, as members demanded. Special education also remains critically understaffed. The agreement introduces a still-inadequate 20:1 caseload cap for Resource Specialist Teachers, but only at schools where 80 percent of special education students are in general education settings for 80 percent of the school day.
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Mental health counseling services are addressed through vague commitments to increase staffing, with no binding guarantees, no dedicated funding, and no implementation timeline.
Substitute teachers receive nothing. Adult Education counselors remain on a lower pay schedule than K-12 colleagues despite identical credentials. Coordinator stipends are eliminated. AI language creates a procedural obligation but no prohibition on displacement.
Highly touted language on immigrant students and families amounts to nothing. It essentially only confirms the existing language from LAUSD’s policy bulletin from last year. That bulletin prohibits teachers from interfering with ICE raids on schools, only allowing them the right—but not the duty—not to actively assist. The contract merely “commits” the district to “increasing and enhancing partnerships” with immigrant non-profit groups. Yet another joint “District Immigrant Support Committee” will meet on a quarterly basis. It also promises to “seek opportunities to secure additional funding” to expand existing immigration resource centers.
Finally, the agreement says nothing about the fiscal stabilization plan or any meaningful protections against layoffs. The supposed prohibitions on reductions in force contain exceptions big enough to drive a school bus through. Layoffs are still permitted due to “actual or anticipated declines in enrollment”—the district has pointed to a 46 percent decline in enrollment as a primary justification for cuts—or due to reductions in program offerings, or changes in class size tables.
In other words, layoffs are “restricted” except in any conceivable situation where the district would actually choose to lay people off.
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The contract must be rejected. But rejection is only the start. What is required is a new strategy, a new political perspective, and new organizational channels through which workers can conduct a real fight.
This contract expresses the total integration of the bureaucracy which controls the unions with corporate America through the Democratic Party. In almost every major city in the country, overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats, massive cuts are being imposed to close municipal, school and transit deficits. The administration of California Governor Gavin Newsom is itself preparing cuts tied to a $21 billion state deficit.
After calling off the strike last week, union bureaucrats said they would join hands with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and district officials to make an “appeal to Sacramento” for the state government to give LA schools more funding. This is a cynical fraud. They know very well that this money will not be given up. It is designed only to provide themselves with political cover once the cutting in LA schools begins.
This framework has played out again and again. Cuts followed the four-day strike in San Francisco and are taking place in Oakland following ratification of new deals there earlier this year. Massive cuts also followed the ratification of the new Chicago school contract last year.
Everyone knows the money exists. The problem is that trillions are tied up in the hands of the corporate oligarchy and diverted into the military.
American society is being picked clean to pay for wars aimed at controlling global supply chains and strategic resources—while schools suffer, Trump is requesting a 50 percent increase in military spending next year and $200 billion for the war on Iran. Meanwhile, the biggest Wall Street run-up in history has produced a surge in billionaire wealth to $8.4 trillion—around nine times what the country spends on K-12 public education each year.
The working class has to take hold of this wealth, created through its own labor, and redirect it to high-quality schools, healthcare and every other social need. That means building a mass movement independent of the entire political establishment. It also means building new organs of workers’ power—rank-and-file committees—which can override the sellouts of the union bureaucracy and unite workers in a common struggle.
This is what the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is fighting to build all over the world, as struggles by workers continue to break out internationally against austerity, inequality and war.
The US-Israeli genocide in Gaza has proven a nodal point in political and cultural life. It has opened the eyes of millions to the barbarism of imperialism, for which there are no longer any “red lines.” And there is no returning from this point, either for the ruling classes or the global population.The violent, anti-democratic operations of ICE added fuel to the fire of popular anger, now further inflamed by the murderous US-Israeli war against Iran and Lebanon.
The accumulating outrage and horror are inevitably finding expression in artistic circles, with greater or lesser clarity depending upon the artist or group.
4. United Kingdom: Starmer’s Mandelson/Epstein crisis deepened by Olly Robbins’ testimony
Laying waste to [Prime Minister Keir ] Starmer’s story that no-one told him anything about what was going on, [Sir Olly] Robbins explained that the Foreign Office had to insist, against a hostile Downing Street, that [Peter] Mandelson go through security vetting.
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Robbins said that when he took up his post in the Foreign Office, the decision to appoint Mandelson had already been announced by Starmer and there was “constant pressure” to get Mandelson to Washington. There was a “strong expectation” from Downing Street that Mandelson “needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”.
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The Parliamentary Labour Party is the only body which can affect his removal as prime minister, because of the government’s unassailable majority. They have at this stage decided not to move against him because the damage resulting from his being brought down on this issue could not be confined to Starmer.
The widely discussed intention is that, with Labour expected to lose the local elections by a landslide in May—currently sitting fourth place in the polls—this could be used to engineer a leadership transition.
This, it is hoped, would maintain the “stability” demanded by the capitalist class after over a decade of political and social turmoil under four different Conservative prime ministers, especially important at a time of acute difficulty for British imperialism centered on the breakdown of relations with the White House.
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The events of the last days are a salutary lesson for the working class. They expose the hollowed-out, diseased body politic—serving the selfish interests of a grasping capitalist oligarchy—which has spawned the likes of Mandelson. Yet, despite widespread public revulsion, it is the likes of Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson who are left to crow.
Only the upsurge of the class struggle that will come from the radicalizing impact of the Iran war, as the ruling elite imposes ever greater austerity on the working class, enforced by savage repression and attacks on democratic rights, can change this situation. Only the building of a genuine socialist party can give workers the alternative to Starmer’s rotten government they want and need.
5. In last-minute reversal, Trump extends ceasefire with Iran
Acting only hours before expiration of a two-week ceasefire in his war of aggression against Iran, US President Donald Trump announced an extension of the pause in the war for an indefinite period of time.
His statement on social media reads:
Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.
While Trump claimed that the extension was to allow time for negotiations, Iranian officials warned that the pause might merely be a screen for a second US attempt to decapitate the regime, following on the February 28 strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top aides and family members.
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The extension of the ceasefire is to be accompanied by a continued US naval blockade on shipping to or from Iran, enforced in complete defiance of international law. In the latest act of piracy, US Marines seized control of an Iranian oil tanker in international waters off southeast Asia Tuesday.
In declaring that the ceasefire would continue “until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other,” Trump was recalling the genocidal language of statements leading up to the ceasefire, when he threatened to bomb every bridge and power plant in Iran, and even to destroy Iran as a civilization.
US Vice President JD Vance had been set to travel to Pakistan Tuesday to resume talks with Iran that broke off after only one day, when Iran rebuffed demands that amounted to a complete surrender on all issues and the transformation of Iran into a US semi-colony. This included direct US control of Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile, which was largely buried by the previous US-Israeli bombing campaign last summer.
Iranian officials made it clear, however, that they were not prepared to resume the talks in Pakistan until the US halted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
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The Pentagon has sent out urgent requests to US weapons manufacturers, but refilling the stockpiles for a major war could take several years. Unnamed Pentagon and military officials as well as Democrats with close connections to the military-intelligence apparatus, such as Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA agent and Pentagon official, have suggested that the war in Iran is degrading the US ability to fight China, which all factions in the US ruling elite regard as the main threat to US global domination.
“The Iranians do have the ability to make a lot of Shahed drones, ballistic missiles, medium range, short range and they’ve got a huge stockpile,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said last month. “So at some point … this becomes a math problem and how can we resupply air defense munitions. Where are they going to come from?”
Democratic Party commentary has shifted sharply, dropping criticism of Trump’s open threats to commit war crimes, and instead warning that the main danger is that he will abandon the war too quickly, claiming victory when he has failed to accomplish the goals of US imperialism.
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Opinion polls show that nearly two-thirds of the American people oppose the war against Iran and a staggering 59 percent regard Trump as unreliable in terms of the potential use of nuclear weapons.
6. Germany summons Russian ambassador and escalates confrontation with Moscow
The German government on Monday summoned Russia’s ambassador in Berlin, raising the confrontation with Moscow to a new level. The Foreign Ministry justified the step by alleging “direct threats by Russia against targets in Germany” aimed at “weakening our support for Ukraine.” Berlin’s response, it declared, was “clear”: Germany would “not be intimidated.”*****
Summoning an ambassador is among the most confrontational actions in diplomacy. In a situation in which Germany already plays a central role in the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, it constitutes a political signal of considerable significance. It does not stand for “dialogue,” but for its systematic termination. The summoning is a harbinger of further steps—up to and including the complete severing of diplomatic relations.
It must be stated clearly: Nearly 85 years after the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazi regime, Germany is once again de facto at war with Russia. This development has nothing to do with the defense of “freedom” and “democracy” against a “Russian aggressor,” as official propaganda would have it. It is the result of a long-term policy pursued by the ruling class, which is asserting its imperialist interests with increasing aggressiveness.
At the beginning of 2014, Berlin, in close alliance with the United States, organized a coup in Kyiv and, relying on fascist forces, brought a pro-Western regime to power. This regime intensified the confrontation with Russia and, in close coordination with NATO, effectively provoked the Russian invasion in February 2022. Since then, the NATO powers have continuously fueled the war against Russia in Ukraine and made clear that they are not seeking a diplomatic solution, but rather the military capitulation of Moscow.
The visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Berlin a few days ago marked another decisive step in this escalation. The signed “strategic partnership” institutionalizes military cooperation at a new level. It includes concrete armament projects aimed at enabling Ukraine to carry out long-range strikes deep into Russian territory. At the same time, German corporations and state bodies are securing influence over key sectors of the Ukrainian economy, particularly its extensive raw material resources.
Ukraine thus functions as a geostrategic bridgehead of German imperialism. Similar to Israel in the Middle East, it serves as an outpost for the enforcement of imperialist interests across an entire region—from Eastern Europe far into the Eurasian landmass. This orientation is part of a broader “drive to the East,” harking back to the historical expansionist ambitions of German imperialism in the 20th century, which culminated in the greatest crimes in human history.
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The growing tensions among the European powers themselves do not alter this fundamental trajectory. On the contrary, they intensify the pressure to rearm militarily and to position themselves in the struggle over spheres of influence and resources. The war in Ukraine and the escalation against Russia are central arenas of this global redivision.
Against this background, the stance of the German government toward the US-Israeli war against Iran is also a warning. When Chancellor Merz defended the threats of annihilation issued by US President Donald Trump as legitimate negotiation tactics, he made clear that the ruling class is prepared to support—and itself again employ—the most extreme forms of military violence. Criticism from Berlin is not directed against these barbaric methods, but against the danger that an escalating war in the Middle East could weaken the strategic offensive against Russia.
The consequences of this policy are enormous. An open war against Russia requires the complete militarization of society. Already, democratic rights are being eroded, social spending drastically cut, and the economy oriented toward war production. The reintroduction of conscription aims to recruit hundreds of thousands of young people as cannon fodder. A direct war against the nuclear power Russia would inevitably raise the danger of nuclear escalation, threatening the existence of all humanity.
Workers and young people must face this reality. The ruling class is prepared to plunge the world into catastrophe once again in order to enforce its imperialist interests. This can only be countered through the building of an international socialist anti-war movement. The working class must organize independently, mobilize against militarism and war, and fight for a society based on social needs rather than profit interests.
7. Hungary’s election winner Peter Magyar announces government of experts
Days after his election victory, Peter Magyar announced the formation of a government of experts by mid-May. Instead of the announced “democracy,” Hungary will get a government consisting of representatives of the banks, the economy and the European Union, which will continue the right-wing, anti-social and undemocratic policies of the ousted Orbán government.
Magyar’s Tisza party won the election last weekend by a landslide, with over 53 percent in a record turnout of 78 percent. He has the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments in the new parliament. Orbán’s Fidesz slumped sharply with 38.3 percent of the vote.
Magyar has announced a change in policy and rapid reforms. The priority is the release of €19 billion in funding withheld by the EU, €10 billion of which expires at the end of August. In view of Hungary’s tense budgetary and economic situation, these funds are of great importance for the new government. Even before officially forming his administration, Magyar entered into talks with the EU Commission to discuss the conditions for the release of the EU funds.
The composition of the government is not yet official, but several people are considered certain to be given posts in the new cabinet. Almost without exception, these are figures who are closely linked to the political and economic interests of the European powers. Former top managers are also earmarked for central posts.
It can be assumed that the appointment of ministers will take place in close coordination with the European Union, which had vigorously supported Magyar’s election campaign. In particular, the European People’s Party (EPP), to which Magyar himself belongs in the European Parliament, played an important role in this.
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In terms of domestic policy, Magyar is adopting the right-wing policies of his predecessor. A reversal of the authoritarian restructuring of state institutions, a more just social policy or a departure from the inhumane refugee policy cannot be found on the new government’s agenda.
Just last week, Magyar called on the presidents and heads of almost all relevant institutions—the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Competition Authority—to resign.
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Magyar is no less abrasive when it comes to influencing the media than Orbán, under whose government critical media were silenced. On public television, he announced that as one of its first steps his government would suspend the news programmes of “propaganda media.” Magyar did not respond to the presenter’s remark that the discontinuation of the news broadcasts violated the law.
The new government wants to continue the Orbán government’s brutal refugee policy and maintain the border installations in the south of Hungary, on the so-called Balkan route. His country would neither take in refugees nor make payments, Magyar declared. Instead, Hungary could help other states to build up their “defence.”
On the issue of immigration, Magyar goes even further than his right-wing extremist predecessor. He has already announced that he will completely stop the recruitment of workers from non-EU states, which has been strictly limited up to now. Orbán had permitted this due to the urgent need for skilled workers.
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Like Orbán, Magyar will rely on the most right-wing elements to push through his policies against the population. In view of the pressure from Brussels, the difficult economic situation and the planned cuts, resistance in the population will grow rapidly.
8. Twelve killed in two school shootings in Türkiye
Türkiye was shaken last week by two successive school shootings, in Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş, that left 12 people dead, including the armed attackers, and dozens injured.
These unprecedented attacks cannot be explained as isolated eruptions of individual pathology. They are a tragic product of the social crisis rooted in the capitalist system, and of the normalization of widespread violence and mass death.
On Tuesday, April 14, a former student armed with a pump-action shotgun opened fire at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in the Siverek district of Şanlıurfa, injuring 16 people before taking his own life.
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The following day, a second attack at Ayser Çalık Middle School in Kahramanmaraş turned into a massacre. A 14-year-old student opened fire with guns taken from his father, a police officer, killing one teacher and ten students, including himself. Dozens of students were reportedly injured, five of them admitted to intensive care. The weapons reportedly included five guns and seven magazines.
After the attack, it emerged that the 14-year-old attacker had set his WhatsApp profile picture to an image of Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in California in May 2014. Before carrying out the attack, Rodger had uploaded a “revenge” video to YouTube and written a lengthy manifesto. His family had alerted police before the massacre. In Kahramanmaraş, however, the sequence of events was different.
According to media reports, the 14-year-old attacker, who was known to have psychological problems, had practiced shooting the previous day at a police firing range with his father. His father, a police inspector, was arrested after the attack, while a police officer at the range was suspended.
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Following the attacks, several teachers’ unions called work stoppages across Türkiye on April 16–17 and organized protests outside the Ministry of National Education and local education directorates.
On Thursday, police blocked a march by teachers from various cities across Türkiye to Ankara. The teachers, who were demanding the resignation of the Minister of National Education, held a sit-in late into the night.
Zülküf Güneş, general secretary of the Eğitim-Sen union, said, “The lack of a future and the hopelessness imposed on these children, the fact that they go to bed hungry due to malnutrition and poverty, and that they are left to face insecurity and death instead of being in a safe educational environment is unacceptable.”
The debate in the mainstream media, however, has focused on violent content in video games and television series, family and psychological problems, and school security. Such discussions serve to obscure the fact that an entire socioeconomic and political system has collapsed.
According to an Anadolu Agency report based on Ministry of Justice data, the annual number of juveniles pushed into crime has risen from around 150,000 a decade ago to more than 180,000, an increase of approximately 20 percent. In 2025, the most common offenses involving juveniles pushed into crime were intentional assault, theft, insult, threats and property damage.
In the latest survey conducted by GÜNDEMAR Research between January 21 and 24, 2026, involving 2,255 participants across 60 provinces, respondents were asked, “To what extent do you agree with the view that young people in Türkiye look to the future with hope?” Some 77 percent said they disagreed, while only 10 percent said they believed young people look to the future with hope. Asked what problem the rising sense of hopelessness among young people would most likely lead to in the future, 59 percent answered, “an increase in crime and violence.”
Both attacks occurred in provinces devastated by the 2023 earthquake, which caused a massive number of preventable deaths and widespread social trauma. While more than 53,000 people officially died in Türkiye, no high-ranking official has been held accountable in court.
The spread of violence and crime among children is a social and global issue rooted in the capitalist system. Under conditions of massive social inequality, the younger generation, deprived of any hope of securing a decent job or a peaceful future, is growing up amid mass death caused by imperialist aggression, genocide and the pandemic.
Children born in Türkiye in 2011, now 15 years old, have lived through the wars in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, and now the war against Iran. Just a few weeks ago, they witnessed the leader of an imperialist power, the United States, threaten to destroy Iran, an oppressed nation with an ancient civilization, while facing no sanctions and continuing to be treated with respect by governments around the world, including Türkiye.
Social resources that should be used to ensure a decent future for children are instead being poured into war and military buildup, while the ever-rising costs are covered through cuts to social spending, including public education and healthcare.
This social crisis, a global phenomenon, finds one of its sharpest expressions in the United States, where children and educators face one of the highest rates of school shootings in the world. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, there were a total of 80, 82, and 83 school shootings, respectively.
9. 110 miners detained in Türkiye amid Iran war
The detention of 110 coal miners by police on Tuesday morning in Ankara, Türkiye’s capital, as they staged a peaceful protest and hunger strike outside the Ministry of Energy demanding unpaid wages and other rights, is a warning to the international working class. The miners were released after 14 hours, but their demands were not met, and the threat of violent state repression has not been removed.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi–Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party–Fourth International) call on workers, youth and intellectuals in Türkiye and internationally to defend the miners.
The Erdoğan government’s brutality toward the miners stands in stark contrast to the sentiments of broad sections of the population. While the miners were in custody, numerous prominent artists published solidarity videos on social media that drew widespread support. A protest was held in Istanbul against their detention.
Workers at Doruk Mining, owned by Yıldızlar SSS Holdings, were arrested in the midst of the US-Israeli imperialist war against Iran, Türkiye’s neighbor. Governments preparing for war everywhere will respond in the same repressive fashion to growing workers’ struggles.
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The miners set out from Eskişehir on April 13 and reached Ankara on Monday after a nine-day march of approximately 180 kilometers (112 miles). The problems and demands faced by miners are shared by countless other workers around the world. Their demands include payment of months of unpaid wages, severance and notice pay for dismissed workers, an end to the imposition of unpaid leave, safe working conditions, reinstatement of workers dismissed for union membership, and the nationalisation of the mine to guarantee job security.
One miner expressed the mood within broad layers of the working class: “If we have taken to the streets, it means that it is not bearable anymore.”
Türkiye’s ruling class is sitting atop a social powder keg. The 2026 net monthly minimum wage was set at 28,000 lira (US$620), well below the minimum subsistence level. Even with three minimum-wage earners in a household, a family of four cannot reach the poverty line of 97,000 lira (US$2,159). Approximately half of workers in Türkiye gets the minimum wage. Against this backdrop, the combined wealth of Türkiye’s 30 billionaires has reached $73.8 billion—more than the total assets of 44 percent of the population, approximately 38.5 million people.
Türkiye ranks among the top countries in Europe in terms of income and wealth inequality and comes first among European, OECD and G20 nations in inflation. While the official annual inflation rate stands at 31 percent, the independent research group ENAG calculates real inflation at over 57 percent.
Miners occupy a critical position in global production and supply chains while working in one of the deadliest sectors. Due to inadequate reporting, estimates of the global annual death toll in the mining industry range between 7,000 and 14,000. According to the Work Accident Investigation Commission (İSİG), 1,267 workers were killed in Turkish mines between 2013 and 2025. The conditions of brutal exploitation and precarity that claimed 301 lives in Soma in 2014 have grown worse today.
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The government’s response to this developing independent movement within the working class has been an escalating wave of arrests.
On Friday, 10 workers from Temel Conta—who have been on strike in Izmir for about a year and a half—were taken into custody after their homes were raided. In mid-March, Mehmet Türkmen, leader of the independent textile union BİRTEK-SEN, was imprisoned for a speech he gave to workers. Esra Işık, who opposed the plundering of the Akbelen Forest and surrounding villages by mining companies, was arrested in late March, while Başaran Aksu, Organizing Specialist of Bağımsız Maden-İş, who protested the arrest on social media, was held in custody for days. This was followed by the detention of the union’s lawyer for almost one week. This wave of repression was tacitly endorsed by official union confederations—including the “opposition” Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK)—by their ignoring it entirely.
The integration of the union apparatus with the state and corporations makes it imperative for workers to build independent rank-and-file committees to fight for their social and democratic rights. Workers face a global capitalist offensive that can only be countered with a global strategy. The construction of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is necessary to unite and coordinate these struggles across national borders.
10. US detains and deports Chinese scientists at Seattle-Tacoma Airport
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a safety alert to its citizens on April 16, warning them of “malicious” interrogation and harassment by United States border authorities. The advisory explicitly urged Chinese nationals to avoid traveling through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
The immediate trigger for this extraordinary diplomatic warning is the recent detention and deportation of approximately 20 Chinese scholars at the Seattle airport. According to the Chinese ministry, these scientists, who were traveling to the US to attend an academic conference, were subjected to “unreasonable questioning” and denied entry by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), despite holding valid US visas. The precise number of scholars, the date of deportation, and the location and subject of the academic conference they were planning to attend have not been reported.
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This mass deportation is part of a US government witch-hunt against visiting Chinese scientists that has already included the jailing and deportation of at least six researchers, five at the University of Michigan (U-M) and one at Indiana University, and led to the suicide of a U-M scientist. The Trump administration, in collaboration with the Democratic Party, is seeking to whip up anti-Chinese sentiment in preparation for war with China.
Over the past year, the Department of Justice has coordinated with U-M to jail and deport plant biologists Yunqing Jian, Chengxuan Han, Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang. They were arrested, prosecuted, and deported on unscientific, trumped-up charges of “smuggling” common nonhazardous research materials.
At Indiana University, Youhuang Xiang was similarly targeted by federal agents in coordination with the university administration, jailed for over four months, and sentenced to time served. His research supervisor, distinguished plant biologist Professor Roger Innes, called the prosecution “100 percent politically motivated.” While Xiang was sentenced on April 7, he has not yet been deported and is being held in an ICE detention center near Kokomo, Indiana. This two-week delay follows a five-week delay between Xiang’s plea agreement and sentencing, ordered by Chief Judge James R. Sweeney II, a Trump appointee and member of the far-right Federalist Society.
This campaign has claimed a life. Dr. Danhao Wang, a brilliant 30-year-old postdoctoral researcher at U-M, took his own life on the night of March 19, falling from an upper floor in the atrium of his place of work on the Ann Arbor campus, just hours after he was subjected to interrogation by federal investigators. The Chinese government has called upon US authorities to investigate the suicide of Wang.
After two weeks of silence from the university, the World Socialist Web Site was the first to report the identity of Wang on April 2. The university refuses to comment on its investigation and has issued no statement to the broader U-M community on the death of Wang. Articles by the WSWS calling for an independent investigation led by U-M researchers, students, staff and faculty have been subjected to political censorship on the University of Michigan r/uofm subreddit. While the story has been covered by some national and international media, the New York Times and Washington Post have yet to write about the suicide of Danhao Wang.
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Both Republican and Democratic administrations have weaponized immigration, customs and the national security apparatus to disrupt scientific ties with China and terrorize immigrant researchers on campus and at ports of entry. Michigan Democratic Representative Haley Stevens sponsored a bill that would amend the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act to vastly expand the definition of partnership with “malign foreign talent programs,” exposing researchers to federal scrutiny for routine academic exchanges, shared research data, and even co-authorship of papers.
The scientific research of Danhao Wang is critical to developing the next generation of microprocessors made from a new class of advanced materials known as wurtzite ferroelectric nitrides. His landmark 2025 paper in the journal Nature solved a physical contradiction that had long stumped the scientific community.
Ferroelectric materials are heavily studied because they can maintain an electrical polarization, a collective ordering in the material’s lattice structure in which positive and negative charges throughout are offset in a preferred direction, a direction that can be reversed when the material is placed in an electric field. A ferroelectric crystal can thus be engineered to be divided into “domains,” regions in which the polarization points one way, separated from neighboring regions in which it points another. Where two domains meet with their positive ends facing each other, an intense sheet of positive charge accumulates at the boundary that should, in principle, tear the crystal lattice apart.
Wang and his colleagues showed how this seeming contradiction is resolved. The intense positive charge at the interface pulls mobile electrons out of the surrounding crystal and draws them to the boundary. These electrons do double duty: they neutralize the overwhelming repulsion, stabilizing the structure, and they collect into a two-dimensional sheet, a superhighway for electricity. This channel, theoretically carrying at least 30 times the charge-carrier density of a standard gallium nitride transistor, can be dynamically tuned, moved, and switched on or off.
Gallium nitride is the indispensable material for the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars on US Navy warships, the Marine Corps’ AN/TPS-80 systems, and the Patriot and THAAD missile defense networks. Wang’s discovery provided the theoretical architecture for a massive leap in this technology. Furthermore, because ferroelectric nitrides can integrate memory and logic processing within the same material, Wang’s research could serve as the physical substrate for neuromorphic “edge AI” computing, enabling AI processing on local devices rather than the cloud.
The US defense apparatus is desperate to monopolize these capabilities. China currently controls roughly 98 percent of the global production of raw gallium, and has already begun using export restrictions in retaliation against the US tech blockade. The Pentagon, acting through agencies like the Army Research Office (which partially funded Wang’s work), is frantic to engineer its way out of this strategic vulnerability.
The ultra-efficient microelectronics made possible by Wang’s theoretical breakthroughs must be physically manufactured, etched and assembled. This process rests entirely on the exploitation of a massive, globally interconnected industrial working class. The workers in the massive semiconductor fabrication plants across the globe—at TSMC in Taiwan, at Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea, at Intel and GlobalFoundries in the United States, and at SMIC in China—are the ones who turn the theoretical breakthroughs into material reality.
The global semiconductor and high-tech industries rely on a multilayered international labor process: theorists and lab researchers in universities; skilled technicians and assemblers in fabrication plants; logistics workers in ports and airports; and service and maintenance personnel who keep production running.
The political assault on Chinese scientists is an attack on the democratic rights of all immigrants and working people. Deportations, visa revocations and workplace raids are signals that any worker can be treated as disposable when corporate and military imperatives demand it.
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We call on semiconductor workers, technologists and students to build rank-and-file committees independent of the corporate-controlled trade union bureaucracy, to establish lines of communication across national borders. The capitalist military-industrial complex must be dismantled and the giant tech monopolies must be expropriated and placed under the democratic control of the working class. The discoveries of materials science must be liberated from the grip of imperialism. Only the socialist transformation of society can ensure that the genius of researchers like Danhao Wang serves the flourishing of humanity, rather than its destruction.
11. Japanese government ends ban on lethal weapons exports
Amid the escalating US-driven wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, Japan’s far-right government has taken another significant step toward full industrial re-militarisation.
On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced that her government will permit the country’s arms manufacturers to sell lethal weapons abroad. This effectively marks a further major reversal of what is left of Japan’s post-World War II pacifist constitution.
The change allows Japanese companies to sell arms, initially to 17 countries with which Japan has signed military equipment and technology transfer agreements. These include the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and several Southeast Asian nations with whom Tokyo is expanding military ties.
Until now, Japanese companies were allowed to export military equipment under five “non-lethal” categories: rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and minesweeping. With the new guidelines, exports of all types of military weaponry will be permitted.
According to Japan’s Defense Ministry, such exports to countries in active combat will not be allowed, but there may be exceptions if the Japanese government determines there are national security reasons to do so.
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A global remilitarisation is underway. Japan’s government is rushing to match the huge increases in military spending and other war preparations being made, not just by Donald Trump’s administration—backed by the Democrats—but by every European and other imperialist power.
Japan’s weapons exports ban was first implemented in 1967 and broadened in 1976 to formally align with Article 9 of Japan’s 1947 constitution, drafted under US occupation, which makes it illegal for Japan to maintain a military or wage war abroad. The export ban was introduced as governments faced widespread anti-war opposition among workers and youth, though exceptions existed for things such as technology transfers to the US.
Takaichi’s announcement, made via a tweet on X, accelerates a turn to rearmament that was taken up by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government in 2014 when it allowed sales of “non-lethal” equipment.
In 2023, Fumio Kishida’s government went further, permitting finished products to be sent to countries that held the item’s license. That paved the way for shipping Patriot missiles to the US to replenish Washington’s supply depleted by the arming of Ukraine in the US/NATO-instigated war against Russia, thus making Japan an indirect supplier of arms to Kiev.
In a bid to placate domestic and international apprehension, Takaichi wrote yesterday: “There will be no change whatsoever to Japan’s postwar path as a pacifist nation for over 80 years, nor to its fundamental principles.”
Yet her claim flies in the face of the record.
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There are other signs that the US and Japan are preparing to expand the Gulf war into an even larger conflict, above all aimed at China. This includes the further joint militarisation of Japanese islands in the East China Sea and the Pacific, which has been underway since Shinzo Abe was prime minister from 2012 to 2020.
Missiles, radar installations and garrisons have been established on Ryukyu islands, including Miyako, Ishigaki, Amami and Yonaguni, the last of which is just 110 km east of Taiwan.
On March 31, for the first time, the Japanese military deployed long-range missiles within the country capable of striking China and North Korea. It plans to soon extend the deployments to islands in the southern Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa, giving Japan the capability of firing deep into Chinese territory.
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Just as the US and NATO goaded Russia into the conflict in Ukraine, Washington and Tokyo have been at the forefront of provoking Beijing over Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland by force if it were to declare independence.
Beijing is conscious that an independent Taiwan would become a staging ground for US military actions against China, while setting a dangerous precedent for the further occupation of Chinese territory, as Japan did in the 1930s.
Japan is not simply acting as a loyal junior ally to US imperialism. It is using the Gulf crisis to reassert itself as an imperialist power capable of projecting military power abroad again in an attempt to offset its economic crisis and decline.
That also means securing greater access to energy resources, as Tokyo sought to do in the lead-up to World War II. Today, Japan remains exposed on this front. It receives nearly 95 percent of its oil from the Middle East.
Tokyo’s involvement in any war could spark mass anti-war protests like those that erupted in 2015 against the passage of legislation allowing Japan to go to war overseas to fight alongside an ally. Abe, the prime minister in 2015, specifically referred to the blockading of the Strait of Hormuz as an example of such a situation.
The Japanese ruling class is terrified that its pro-war agenda will spark opposition from the working class. That is why the Takaichi government is also planning to clamp down on dissent by pursuing a so-called anti-espionage bill and boosts to Tokyo’s intelligence agencies.
Other changes being pursued include a state-of-emergency clause in the event of foreign invasion or “domestic rebellion,” and a proposal to allow the military to be deployed on the streets to “maintain public order.”
For workers, the war on Iran is exacerbating a significant social crisis, with fuel prices soaring. Workers have suffered years of stagnant or declining real wages and dramatic increases in prices on major food items like rice. Massive increases in military spending will mean deeper cuts to social services, intensifying political discontent.
12. Virginia voters approve Democratic Party-backed redistricting amendment to shift congressional seats
Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday in a special election that will redraw the state’s congressional map, potentially shifting the state’s delegation from 6-5 in favor of the Democratic Party to 10-1 Democratic, ahead of November’s midterm elections. The passage of the measure—which has survived months of legal warfare, intense lobbying and bipartisan recrimination—marks a significant escalation in the two parties’ mutual gerrymandering arms race.
As of this writing, the margin of victory for the “yes” vote is 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent for “no,” with about 3 million votes counted. Numerous publications, including the New York Times and NBC, have called the vote in favor of redistricting, while the Associated Press has yet to pronounce the projected results.
The victory is well within the 3 percent margin which can trigger a recount. Additionally, the amendment already faces numerous court challenges which the state supreme court has yet to hear.
The amendment temporarily transfers congressional redistricting authority from Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting commission to the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, allowing a new congressional map signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger to govern elections through 2030, after which authority reverts to the commission.
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The referendum was conceived as a response to Republican-led efforts in the national gerrymandering war. Trump publicly called on red states to redraw congressional maps mid-decade to lock in Republican advantages and retain control of Congress—where Republicans currently hold razor-thin majorities of 219–212 in the House and 53–47 in the Senate. Republican officials in Texas, Ohio, Tennessee and elsewhere moved to do exactly that. California Democrats responded first, producing five new Democratic House seats through aggressive redistricting approved in a statewide vote last November. Virginia now follows suit.
Republican opposition has been fierce—and not without hypocrisy. There were repeated legal challenges: A circuit court judge blocked the amendment in January, the Virginia Supreme Court reversed that ruling and allowed the election to proceed in March, pledging to take up further Republican lawsuits after the vote. On the eve of the election, Republicans filed yet another legal challenge targeting the state’s voter ID rules.
The “no” campaign also ran into controversy in March, when a Republican-aligned dark money group sent mailers to black Virginia voters featuring Klan imagery, falsely invoking the history of black disenfranchisement to argue that the redistricting referendum was itself a form of voter suppression. The claim was doubly cynical given that it was the Virginia Republican Party that pursued an illegal redistricting scheme in 2011 packing black voters into majority-minority districts—a map the Supreme Court later struck down as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The amendment’s proponents, including Governor Abigail Spanberger and former President Barack Obama, have framed the vote as a defense of democracy against Republican power grabs. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called redistricting the key to “restoring democracy” and retaking the House. Such language rings hollow from a party whose senators and congressmen have funded Trump’s war machine and bankrolled the ICE apparatus now terrorizing communities across the country.
Democrats and Republicans alike have erected virtually insurmountable legal barriers against third parties and independent left-wing candidates, ensuring that the two major capitalist parties enjoy an effective political monopoly.
On Tuesday morning, April 21, 4,000 graduate student workers at Harvard University walked off the job, indefinitely suspending teaching, grading and laboratory research at one of the world’s wealthiest institutions. Harvard Graduate Student Union–United Auto Workers (HGSU–UAW) pickets went up at Harvard’s main campus in Cambridge and at Harvard Medical School in the Longwood Medical Area, with workers carrying strike signs, megaphones and distributing leaflets to passing undergraduates calling for solidarity.
The workers are fighting for fair pay, with raises that keep up with inflation along with a series of specific political demands, including protections for non-citizen workers. On wages, the gap between what Harvard offers and what workers need is stark. Teaching Fellows earn between $18 and $21 per hour—so little that many qualify for state food assistance—while Harvard holds a $53.2 billion endowment. Harvard has countered workers’ demands with an insulting 2.5 percent annual raise, against a documented need for a 74 percent increase just to achieve pay parity between Teaching Fellows and Research Assistants.
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In a statement issued Tuesday, Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for UAW president Will Lehman welcomed the strike, calling it “part of a growing movement of workers and young people… entering into struggle against exploitation, repression and war.”
Lehman stressed that the significance of the strike “goes far beyond a contract dispute,” noting that Harvard workers are raising not only demands for higher wages but also political demands, including “the defense of international students and immigrant workers, opposition to ICE repression, the protection of democratic rights and academic freedom, and opposition to the integration of universities into the military-intelligence apparatus.”
“These are not separate issues,” Lehman said. “They are all bound up with the same underlying reality: the deepening crisis of capitalism.”
At the same time, Lehman issued a sharp warning about the role of the United Auto Workers apparatus. Union officials have been at the bargaining table for 14 months and have kept graduate students on the job for nearly a year without a contract, while delaying strike action.
“This was not an accident,” Lehman warned. “It reflects a deliberate effort to contain the struggle and prevent it from developing into a broader confrontation.”
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World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to Cynthia, a graduate student who is supporting the strike but not presently in the union. She said, “Everybody has a different situation, so there’s no one size fits all for all grad students. Some maybe come from more affluent families; others have food insecurities, housing insecurities, supply insecurities. There are all kinds of things from the bare necessities that are just not available to all grad students, for example, a food pantry.
“We don’t have a centralized food pantry. Everything is kind of in silos and stigmatized for students that have food insecurities, where they can’t really access it. I tried to create some sort of university-wide system for more grad students specifically, because all of the other Ivy Leagues have one food pantry area for all grad students. Brown has one, Yale has one. They all do, but we don’t at Harvard.”
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The contract expiration has had immediate, material consequences. Since the previous contract expired in June 2025, graduate student workers have been without access to benefit funds that can be used for childcare and medical expenses. For workers already stretched to the breaking point by Boston’s high cost of living, this a daily crisis.
Lehman connected these conditions to a broader offensive against the working class. Universities, he noted, have become “a central battleground” amid mass opposition to war, repression and austerity, and the attempt to brand opposition to war as “anti-Semitism” is aimed at silencing dissent.
It would be a serious mistake, Lehman warned, to view the Harvard strike in isolation. “The decisive question is how to expand and unify this struggle,” he said, stressing that academic workers must link up with autoworkers and other sections of the working class. “We are all part of the same class, facing the same enemies.”
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Harvard is applying the classic divide-and-conquer strategy of capital with an attempt to settle with the weakest or most pliable union first, then use the precedent to hold the line against the rest. HUCTW’s tentative deal, if ratified, will be cited by Harvard’s lawyers at every subsequent bargaining session—with HGSU-UAW, HAW-UAW and HUCTW.
Lehman warned that workers cannot rely on the UAW apparatus, describing it as “a bureaucratic structure made up of hundreds of officials who collect salaries of more than $150,000 a year, including UAW President Shawn Fain ($276,000), Secretary Treasurer Margaret Mock ($250,633) and Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla ($233,450). Their social position separates them from the rank and file and ties them to the institutions of corporate management and the state.” Their role, he said, is to isolate struggles and subordinate them to the political establishment.
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Harvard’s administrators would have workers believe the institution is under extraordinary financial strain—citing frozen federal funding, endowment taxes and capital expenditure pressures. This narrative must be rejected. A university with a $53 billion endowment and record-breaking fundraising numbers is not in financial distress. It is engaged in class warfare, using the language of austerity to extract concessions from workers while protecting the interests of the financial oligarchy represented on its governing boards.
Harvard’s real vulnerability is operational. The university’s reputation, its research output, its ability to attract students, faculty and donations, depends entirely on the labor of the workers. Workers have the power, but what is needed is the strategy and the organizational independence to use it.
14. Australia: Industrial court orders further real wage cut for NSW nurses
A New South Wales (NSW) Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) ruling handed down last week deepens the assault on the wages and conditions of nurses and midwives by the state Labor government.
The decision marks the culmination of more than a year in which the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) has enforced a strike ban under the phony pretext that the industrial tribunal would reverse years of real wage cuts.
The NSWNMA shut down statewide mass strikes by nurses and midwives in late 2024 to launch its “special case,” appealing to the IRC for a 35 percent wage increase over three years. Even on the face of it, this figure would not have come close to recouping past losses and keeping up with soaring inflation.
In reality, the 35 percent claim was only ever an illusion. The NSWNMA knew full well that the IRC is not an “independent umpire,” but a pro-business court tasked with enforcing the punitive wage policies of the Labor government. This is the same tribunal that has repeatedly banned strikes by nurses and midwives—as well as teachers and other public sector workers—and imposed Labor’s real wage cuts throughout the public sector.
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The IRC ruling will leave third-year RNs earning a base salary of $87,690 per annum. This is just 42 percent of the $206,751 per year required to service the average mortgage in NSW, according to Finder data.
Following the “one-off reset,” nurses and midwives will be locked into 3 percent “increases” in July this year and next—in line with the original government offer that nurses decisively rejected. Even at the current official inflation rate of 3.7 percent, that would mean two years of real wage cuts, during which nurses and midwives are stripped of the right to strike. But that inflation figure is based on February data, before the US launched its war of aggression against Iran and triggered a global fuel crisis that has already sent prices skyrocketing. Inflation in Australia is widely tipped to exceed 6 percent within months.
Just as significantly, the award is only backdated to 2025 rather than 2024, when negotiations on the award first began and Labor and the NSWNMA bureaucracy pushed through the first 3 percent “interim” increase, at a time when inflation was at 3.8 percent.
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Nurses and midwives have reacted with anger to the IRC decision as well as to the response of the union, which attempted to present the ruling as “a step forward.”
Comments on the NSWNMA Facebook page include: “You’ve just silenced us for 2 years for less than inflation,” “I feel like the government won” and “Why did we have to go to court to get scraps?”
Other comments reflect the determination of nurses to continue a fight through industrial action: “We need to strike and cost them as much as they failed to pay us,” and “We walk out. There’s a solution for you.” Multiple comments indicated nurses either had or were considering ending their union membership.
These comments reflect a sentiment of anger and frustration among health workers, not just over the IRC decision, but the drawn-out betrayal perpetrated by the NSWNMA bureaucracy over the past several years.
In 2022, statewide strikes by tens of thousands of nurses and midwives were atomised by the NSWNMA into hospital-level demonstrations, and then effectively folded into a campaign to elect a Labor government that had already made clear it would not deliver pay increases above inflation or implement minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, a longstanding safety demand.
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A unified struggle involving public hospital workers across the state would be a powerful start to what is required—a political struggle against Labor and the unions, and a fight for a socialist alternative to capitalism under which even the most basic public needs, including health care and decent wages, are subordinated to the profit demands of big business and the banks.
Dear Colleagues,
Despite unprecedented action by resident doctors—our latest six-day strike the longest yet—we are still no closer to pay restoration or securing specialty training posts to keep us in employment. This is not due to any lack of resistance from below. It is the result of a dead-end strategy pursued from above, by union leaders who isolate our struggle in closed-door negotiations with an unmoving Labour government.
We do not take industrial action lightly; we strike because the erosion of pay, the chronic shortage of training posts and collapsing staffing levels are causing real harm to our colleagues and patients, and threatening the NHS itself.
After fifteen strikes over three years, the facts remain unchanged:
Real terms pay has been cut by 21 percent since 2008.
There has been no meaningful rise in specialty training posts. Tens of thousands of doctors will remain jobless this year. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has taken away even the 4,500 repurposed jobs he offered over three years.
Working conditions have deteriorated: long hours, lack of breaks, and single-handedly covering the jobs of two or three doctors are routine.
So, why have over 50 days of strike action not delivered results? We must look to the strategy of our “leaders” in the British Medical Association (BMA). Our ranks have shown great strength despite threats and intimidation, including Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer denouncing our action as “reckless” for opposing a 3.5 percent award—another pay cut over three years. Yet our leadership, the BMA Resident Doctors Committee (RDC), has only sought a settlement with the very government that attacks us so viciously.
When we came out in force with a 93 percent mandate for renewed strike action in the last ballot, RDC chair Jack Fletcher said they would continue talks in “good faith” and made clear they were not seeking full pay restoration “in one go, overnight.” When we demanded more specialty training jobs, he said the government’s offer of 4,500 repurposed posts and a divisive prioritization bill was “progress”. Historically, when junior doctors fought against Jeremy Hunt’s 2016 contract that slashed pay and increased working hours, the BMA sold us out, calling it a “good deal.” They seek accommodation with the government, rather than waging a fight against it.
This offers only further betrayals in the face of a Starmer government that plans to increase cuts, force productivity, and expand the private sector. Streeting boasts that the service “maintained 95 percent of planned care” while we were on strike. In reality, it is only through our efforts and those of other NHS staff that the service is kept alive every day. It is our sweat and tears as we face unpaid overtime, unsafe staffing levels and exhaustion.
Streeting can only remove blame from the government, and scapegoat us, because the BMA does not defend us against his vile attacks that devalue our role. The BMA’s meager responses do nothing to portray the depth of anger we feel in our everyday work.
Though we are thousands strong, the BMA has isolated our struggle. GPs overwhelmingly rejected the imposed 2026/27 contract with a 99 percent “No” vote, but the BMA has organized separate action for them in April. Consultants and specialist doctors have made the same complaints about pay and conditions, but they are not being balloted until May, closing in early July. Our colleagues in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all been involved in disputes, yet each has been fragmented and kept separate from united action.
Worst of all, the union leadership has not explained the link between all our disputes and the broader crisis of an NHS pushed to collapse. 7.2 million patients are on waiting lists; more than 1,700 wait at least 12 hours in emergency departments each day; and 23,000 people died last year due to long waits or overcrowding in A&E in England alone.
Staff shortages affect every profession, with an estimated shortfall of more than 100,000 staff projected to reach 250,000 by 2030. Yet the wider NHS workforce has been offered an insulting 3.3 percent pay rise this year. The union leadership has failed not only to explain but to organise around the fact that every dispute is inseparable from the crisis of a marketized system that starves healthcare of funds while channeling billions to private profiteers and military spending.
Some senior union officials have even launched a smear campaign against resident doctors, attempting to divide us from our colleagues. In a Guardian article they anonymously complained that we are asking for too much! This is only so they can justify sub-inflation deals for members of their own union. Their statements are indistinguishable from Streeting’s claim that we are “holding the country to ransom.”
Streeting has been emboldened to consider outlawing future industrial action by doctors. This blatant suppression of our right to strike must serve as a warning to all workers. Instead of condemning this threat, Jack Fletcher caved in, saying “we’re not going to call illegal [strike] action,” and that the union has always, “tried, and we continue to try, to talk to the Government without any industrial action.”
We cannot expect serious opposition from other trade union leaders. The Trades Union Congress did not organize a single day of strike action against the Minimum Service Levels Bill introduced by the Tories in 2023. Now the Labour government, having repealed it, openly discusses similar measures to be used against all NHS staff. Similarly, Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, who has spoken out against the Gaza genocide, has been charged with terrorist and public order offenses for defending the right of the Palestinians to self-defense, protected under international law—with no defense of her by the unions.
The union apparatus is bankrupt—it restricts our struggle and protects bureaucratic privilege. We cannot continue in this way. We on the frontline know the real conditions: unsafe wards, unpaid overtime and burnout. We have already shown our resistance. Now we must take responsibility for conducting this fight ourselves.
That means building our own rank-and-file committees, in opposition to a union leadership that kneels before a government preparing the burial of the NHS.
No amount of pressure will force an intransigent government to change course. These policies are rooted in the interests of the corporate and financial elite, prioritizing billions for the ruling class over social need. The defense of universal, publicly funded healthcare cannot be achieved within capitalism. We must adopt a political perspective: independence from all parties that defend capitalist priorities, and an appeal to workers internationally facing the same attacks.
Our six-day strike demonstrated the scale of anger that exists. We need to break out of the control of the BMA bureaucracy and turn towards our colleagues. As 1.4 million NHS workers, we have the strength to unite and organize independently to defend the NHS—for all who work in it and rely on it.
16. Kenya’s Ruto regime suppresses anti-fuel hike protests
The suppression of anti-fuel hike protests by the “broad-based unity” government of President William Ruto in Nairobi this week is one of the first results in Africa of the deepening global social crisis triggered by the US-Israeli led war against Iran.
On Tuesday, the Ruto regime, uniting the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) founded by the late political fixer Raila Oding, moved to crush planned anti-fuel price protests organized by youth under the hashtag #RejectFuelPrices. Anti-riot units sealed off central Nairobi, at least 11 demonstrators were arrested, and the city center was placed under lockdown. Outside the capital, in Embu, hundreds of youths took to the streets and burned tires, blocked roads and forced small businessmen to close their shops. In Kiritiri town, youths blocked the major Embu-Kiritiri highway.
The protests, dubbed “Total Shutdown Tuesday,” were called in opposition to a sharp fuel price hike, raising petrol from 178 Kenyan shillings ($1.30) to as high as 206.97 shillings ($1.60) per litre—an increase of over 16 percent—while diesel surged by more than 24 percent. Although prices were later marginally revised down, the hike, driven by disruptions to global oil supplies by the US-lsraeli war against Iran, has sharply increased the cost of transport and basic goods.
The government’s response testifies to its deep fears of a renewed eruption of the Gen-Z protests that shook the regime in 2024 and 2025, when millions of workers and youth opposed International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed regressive tax hikes and privatizations.
In the days leading up to the protest, senior Ruto officials issued anxious warnings. Deputy President Kithure Kindiki dismissed the demonstrations, insisting that “going to the streets… won’t be a solution,” while government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura urged organizers to call them off. Mwaura asked, “Will it benefit Kenyans? Will it even lower the price of fuel?” He appealed for “dialogue rather than confrontation.”
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Over the weekend, Nairobi Regional Police Commander Issa Mohamud declared the protests “unlawful,” insisting they would not be tolerated. Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes police across Nairobi and other towns were mobilized to block the planned demonstrations. Among them were units from the elite General Service Unit—established by British colonial authorities to suppress the Mau Mau anti-colonial uprising in the 1950s —and the notorious Administration Police Rapid Deployment Unit.
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The pre-emptive crackdown ensured that the mass protest anticipated by the government did not materialize. This also reflects a degree of weariness after years of mass protests, despite the widespread support expressed online for the #RejectFuelPrices mobilization. However, this should not be mistaken for stability. The underlying anger is only growing, as fuel and food prices rapidly escalate.
The recent experience of the Gen-Z protests also demonstrates how quickly the situation can change. In the lead-up to the July 2024 uprising, protests were initially small, involving only dozens of participants, before rapidly escalating into mass demonstrations involving millions. What was contained on Tuesday can erupt again on a far broader scale.
However, political lessons must be drawn. Over the past four years, Gen-Z-led movements have broken out in Kenya, across Africa and internationally expressing deep anger at inequality, corruption, and rapidly deteriorating living conditions. Young people have demonstrated immense courage and a willingness to confront the capitalist state.
However, spontaneity and protest politics aimed at pressuring the bankrupt political establishment is not enough. Kenya’s 2024–2025 protests showed that even the largest and most militant demonstrations in the post-independence period can be contained when they lack organization, coordination, and a clear strategy.
Moreover, social media mobilization cannot substitute for rooted organization. Hashtags and online calls to action can rapidly gather support, but without structures in workplaces and neighborhoods, they lack coordination, and the capacity to resist and take power.
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The decisive force in this struggle is the working class. The Gen-Z protests have mobilized broad layers of youth, but their power can only be realized through a conscious alliance with the working class, acting independently with its own demands. It is the working class—whose labour sustains the economy and who has the capacity to bring it to a halt—that must take the lead.
Workers must see themselves as an international class, not bound by colonial imposed borders. They must reach out across the continent, where the same conditions are provoking mass opposition. In South Africa, protests against fuel prices have erupted in townships amid worsening living conditions, while the government has responded by deploying thousands of troops domestically. In Mauritania, anti-fuel protests earlier this month were met with repression, resulting in dozens of arrests.
This demands the building of a revolutionary leadership rooted in the working class and armed with an international socialist program. It means the formation of independent rank-and-file committees in workplaces, universities, and working-class neighborhoods—democratic organs of struggle, controlled by workers and youth themselves and independent of the union bureaucracy and all factions of the political elite. These committees must serve as the basis for unifying struggles across sectors, tribes and borders, linking up nationally and internationally in a common fight against austerity, repression, and war.
The construction of a Trotskyist party in Kenya, as part of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to provide the political leadership necessary to unite workers and youth in a conscious struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and war is the central task.
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
