1. Death rate for US children surges 25 percent in 10 years
The death rate for US children has surged by 25 percent over the past decade, according to a study published last month by pediatrician Dr. Christopher Forrest and colleagues in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Even as the child mortality rate has slowly fallen in other developed countries, it has surged in the US, along with every other indicator of chronic illness.
The research underscores the American ruling elites’ complete disregard for children’s well-being and safety, especially for the children of the working class.
In 2014, US children were about 1.6 times more likely to die than their counterparts in peer countries. By 2022, that gap had widened dramatically: American children were now 2.3 times as likely to die.
The authors estimated that between 2007 and 2022, an additional 316,000 US child deaths were attributable to the gap in mortality compared to other developed countries. This is equivalent to a staggering 54 excess child deaths per day in the US.
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The study also documented alarming trends in mental health and chronic conditions. Major depression among children increased by 230 percent from 2010 to 2023, while sleep apnea tripled, eating disorders increased by 220 percent, and childhood obesity rates rose from 17 percent in 2007-2008 to 20.9 percent in 2021-2023.
For infants under age one, respiratory infections, prematurity, congenital anomalies and sudden unexpected infant deaths were common factors in their demise, speaking to the broader issue of maternal healthcare and medical issues surrounding childbirth in the US. The US mortality disadvantage was driven largely by sudden unexpected infant death and prematurity—conditions directly linked to inadequate prenatal care, maternal health disparities and poverty. US infants were 2.2 times more likely to die from prematurity and 2.4 times more likely to die from sudden unexpected infant death compared to peer countries.
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Much of the increase has occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscoring not only the deadly nature of the pandemic but also the failed social and political response that has steadily eviscerated public health and healthcare.
The pandemic itself continues unabated, with more than 350 Americans still dying weekly from COVID-19 as of May 2025, and the US is now in the grips of its 11th wave of mass infection. Since the start of the pandemic, there have now been over 1.38 million excess deaths in the US, with the working class disproportionately affected. Among children, an estimated 4 percent have now developed Long COVID, according to recent RECOVER Initiative research, translating to approximately 6 million children in the US alone. This condition, which can cause lasting damage to multiple organ systems and dramatically reduce life expectancy, represents a generational health catastrophe that will burden these children throughout their lives.
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As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles observed nearly two centuries ago, class divisions shape every aspect of childhood, and children of the poor suffer the harshest fates in capitalist society. The founders of scientific socialism correctly saw genuine child welfare as impossible under capitalist social relations and advocated for a proletarian revolution to end the exploitation of the working class and social inequality, thereby securing the well-being of future generations.
2. Trump and Putin make no meaningful announcements at Alaska summit
Despite the lack of announcements, the summit marks a shift in the United States’ treatment of Russia. For years, Washington has sought to make Russia a pariah state as part of a campaign to shatter its military, overthrow its government and ultimately dissolve the country.
After three years of war, it is clear that this effort has so far failed. Russian forces are advancing all down the front, and Ukraine, facing a major manpower shortage, is facing a military catastrophe.
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Despite the show of civility Friday, Trump emphasized that significant differences remained between the Russian and US positions. Trump said, “A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” adding, “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
In his remarks, Putin emphasized that “in order to make the settlement lasting and long-term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict, and we’ve said it multiple times, to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world on the whole.”
That, however, is the rub. The United States is the world’s foremost imperialist power, bent on global domination of the former colonial world and the territory of the Soviet Union. To the extent that factions of the US political establishment are seeking a thaw in relations with Russia, it is in an effort to concentrate all their forces in a conflict with China, which would itself be the prelude to the total imperialist carve-up of the whole world.
3. United States: Hundreds attend viewings for Timothy Quinn, steelworker killed in Clairton explosion
Hundreds of workers, family, friends and community members lined up for the viewings on Friday, at times stretching out of the church and into the parking lot. Alongside many of Quinn’s coworkers from the Clairton plant, where he had worked for 17 years, were steelworkers from other mills across the Mon Valley, including U.S. Steel’s Irvin and Edgar Thomson plants.
New evidence has emerged that workers were given only five seconds’ notice to evacuate before the explosion. Workers told the World Socialist Web Site that management had refused to take the necessary 14 hours to shut down the batteries and purge the pipes of explosive gases before ordering repairs on the valve.
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According to local reports, officials now claim the investigation will take 18 months, while OSHA has stated it will not issue even its initial report for six months.
The company has already offered the victims’ families paltry financial settlements, and it is clear that by dragging out the investigation they hope the tragedy will fade from public attention.
The United Steelworkers apparatus bears equal responsibility for this tragedy as U.S. Steel. Workers must ask themselves: What has the USW done in the 16 years since the 2009 explosion to improve safety and protect workers’ health and lives? The answer is nothing.
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The lives lost and the families shattered must not be swept under the rug through endless investigations and token fines! To uncover the truth and hold those responsible to account, workers themselves must take the initiative.
An independent rank-and-file investigation into the Clairton disaster, led by steelworkers and supported by workers throughout the region, is necessary. Only such a workers’ inquiry can expose the full extent of management’s negligence, the complicity of the union apparatus and lay the basis for a genuine fight for safe workplaces and the protection of workers’ lives.
Without explanation, the US Department of Labor has again rejected Will Lehman’s complaint against the 2022-2023 United Auto Workers national union elections, which provided evidence of widespread disenfranchisement and suppression of workers’ votes.
The decision comes amid a major crisis within the UAW bureaucracy, with union president Shawn Fain being drawn up on charges by another section of the apparatus.
Lehman, a rank-and-file worker at Mack Trucks and candidate for UAW president in the elections, was sent a cursory letter, dated August 1, by the DOL’s Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) informing him of the decision. The letter stated:
Following a review of the investigative findings by this office and the Office of the Solicitor, Division of Civil Rights and Labor-Management, a decision has been made that those findings do not provide a basis for action by the Department to set aside the protested election.
It added that a “statement of reasons” for the decision would be sent at an undetermined “future date.”
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Lehman has an ongoing lawsuit against the Labor Department, filed June 19 this year, over its refusal to comply with Lawson’s 2024 order. The suit explained that the DOL’s delay in responding to Lehman’s complaint “effectively leaves a rank-and-file autoworker like Lehman with no meaningful remedy for alleged election violations,” despite well-established legal principles that time is “axiomatically of the essence” in election-related matters.
For months, the DOL repeatedly stonewalled Lehman’s efforts to elicit any update on its investigation.
Responding to the letter, Lehman told the WSWS Friday, “The Department of Labor under both Biden and Trump has repeatedly shown total disdain for workers’ rights, including the fundamental right to a free and fair election.”
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The decision by the Trump administration—continuing the policy of Biden—to paint the UAW elections as legitimate comes amid a serious crisis for the union apparatus.
Current UAW President Shawn Fain ran in the election as a self-described “reformer” who would restore credibility to the union after a corruption scandal brought down much of the union’s top leadership. Fain enjoyed the support of most of the American pseudo-left, and figures from the Labor Notes publication became top figures in his administration.
The role of the federal government in upholding Fain’s victory and stonewalling Lehman’s complaint, under conditions where more ballots were marked undeliverable than actually cast, underscores that the American government saw the rehabilitation of the UAW bureaucracy as a key political issue.
The union bureaucracy plays a crucial function for American capitalism by working to frustrate and divert rank-and-file opposition, and help to prevent or limit strikes and impose contracts which sign off on layoffs, stagnant wages and other concessions. The importance of the bureaucracy in preparing the “home front” for war was expressed last year by Biden’s declaration that the AFL-CIO was his “Domestic NATO.”
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The sellout of the 2023 Big Three contract struggle was part of an unbroken pattern of betrayal of workers’ struggles, including at Mack Trucks, Clarion, Lear, as well as at University of California and other universities where the UAW has established a presence.
5. United States: Zohran Mamdani’s establishment credibility gets a boost from Obama
The revelation that former President Barack Obama held a lengthy call with Zohran Mamdani following the mayoral candidate’s victory in June is the latest indication that a powerful section of the Democratic Party establishment is prepared to back the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member in the November election in New York City.
It also provides a clear signal that Mamdani, whatever his rhetoric, represents the same fundamental profit interests that Obama so steadfastly defended while in office.
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Mamdani’s dominant primary victory threw the Democratic Party establishment and its sponsors on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms into turmoil. More than the improbable promises to enact a modest tax on the wealthy to fund free childcare and buses, the party’s leadership fears that encouraging opposition to inequality and war could create explosive conditions transgressing the party’s control.
Nearly two months after the primary election, virtually all of New York’s Democratic leadership, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand, and House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, have continued to withhold endorsements in the race. Only four of 10 House Democrats in New York City have endorsed the party’s candidate.
Obama’s intervention might help to change that. So too might the lack of viable alternatives. New York’s party machine and its favored candidate, Andrew Cuomo, proved incapable of landing any appeal with significant sections of the electorate despite the tens of millions of dollars at its disposal during the primary.
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The New York City mayoral election reflects a deepening crisis within the Democratic Party and bitter divisions about how to respond.
The party is deeply discredited, responsible for decades of stagnating wages and social cuts, while the amount of wealth accumulated at the top has reached obscene levels. Amid this poisonous growth of extreme inequality, the central focus has been on pursuing disastrous wars abroad.
Obama himself was emblematic of this process. He came into office amid mass opposition to the criminal wars of the Bush administration and the financial collapse in 2008, offering “hope” and “change” as the first African American president.
Obama’s time in office, however, accelerated the transfer of wealth from the working class to the super-rich. The fresh face of the Democratic Party continued illegal wars throughout his entire term, deported more immigrants than any president before him, and tore up bedrock democratic rights with targeted assassinations, including against US citizens, paving the way for the emergence of Donald Trump.
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Obama’s embrace of Mamdani reflects the party’s desperate need for a pseudo-left makeover, one that appeals to those becoming radicalized by the crisis while covering up the fundamental capitalist character of the party. The content of Mamdani’s proposals can be brushed aside by the likes of Obama and Axelrod because, in the end, they don’t amount to much. The danger of encouraging opposition outside the Democratic Party’s control is weighed against Mamdani’s ability to appeal to youth, especially those facing economic uncertainty, and persuade them to avoid more radical alternatives.
6. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko facing continued blacklisting threat
In a continuation of the ongoing campaign to blacklist the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, a group of British MPs, both Tory and Labour, has joined with more than 50 Ukrainian writers and artists who support the proxy war against Russia, sending a letter to the Guardian newspaper urging the Royal Ballet and Opera to cancel Netrebko’s forthcoming appearances at the Royal Opera House. Other signers of the letter include Bernard-Henri Lévy, the right-wing French writer and “public intellectual.”
The attempt to ostracize Netrebko and to sabotage her singing career began immediately after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Netrebko criticized the reactionary invasion, issuing two statements within a week. She expressed sorrow over the suffering caused by the war, and called for its end.
For Peter Gelb, the managing director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, this was not enough. He pointed to her past association with Vladimir Putin and arrogantly demanded that she denounce Putin by name. He fired the soprano immediately, and she has appeared only once in the United States since then, with the small but well-regarded Palm Beach Opera in Florida last winter. She has also not been back to Russia since that time.
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The Guardian, which has strenuously supported the longstanding warmongering campaign against Russia as well as the ensuing proxy war in Ukraine, eagerly highlights the call to cancel Netrebko’s appearances and adds its own sinister features. For instance, the report includes a 17-year-old photo of Netrebko next to Putin. A second photo shows Putin, Netrebko and several other figures, including musical luminaries, at an opera gala at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg—from 12 years ago. This is meant to prove that Netrebko is Putin’s supporter and a “symbol” of war crimes.
7. United States: ICE raids intensify in San Diego as Democrats, trade unions do nothing
The coastal city of San Diego, California, with its standing as one of the nation’s prominent urban military hubs and its close proximity to the Mexican border, has been a target in Trump’s nationwide deportation campaign.
Since the start of the year, the city has experienced multiple militarized raids that have sparked widespread outrage in a community where over a quarter—344,000 of out a total population of 1,386,932—are foreign-born residents.
To enforce this mass deportation campaign, the administration is using not only Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but all the armed reserves of the capitalist state, including various federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with the California National Guard and the FBI.
Over the past month the raids have increasingly escalated in their violent and criminal character. Deportation police are under immense pressure from Trump administration officials to meet daily arrest quotas. The administration has abandoned the pretense of fighting “criminal” and “terrorist” elements by targeting areas where workers, students, parents and residents congregate, such as worksites and schools.
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The most explosive confrontation in San Diego so far between residents and immigration thugs occurred on May 30, when heavily armed agents in military-style tactical gear detained and arrested four workers from an Italian restaurant in the South Park area. The operation immediately sparked outrage.
San Diegans and asylum seekers seized from their workplaces and homes by the immigration Gestapo are eventually confined at the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center. Operated by the private corporation CoreCivic, the facility often holds detainees incommunicado for weeks at a time.
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Far from being filled with “criminals” and “rapists,” ICE data shows 954 of the 1,104 men and 241 of the 258 women held at the Otay facility currently are labeled as “noncriminal detainees.”
The developments in San Diego are only a microcosm of a much larger process that is taking place all across the United States. In a measure of the explosive social anger against Trump’s attacks on immigrants and plans for dictatorship, on June 14 in San Diego, two weeks after the South Park raid, over 60,000 people marched downtown for the “No Kings” protest.
San Diego, like the state of California as a whole, is a major stronghold of the Democratic Party, yet the most brutal anti-immigrant crackdowns have been held there with virtually no opposition organized by Democrats at either the state or local levels.
The complicity of the Democrats in these attacks is matched by the trade unions, who have done nothing in response to these violent attacks on workers. Despite the fact that more than 2.3 million California workers are unionized, not a single trade union has called for a work stoppage in opposition to the raids even though they have specifically targeted workers.
8. United States: Boeing workers: Organize to expand the strike under rank-and-file control!
The strike by more than 3,200 Boeing defense workers in St. Louis, St. Charles and Mascoutah is a direct clash of irreconcilable social forces.
On one side stands Boeing management, the American state and the union bureaucracy, determined to defend the profits of one of the world’s most powerful and politically connected corporations. On the other stands the working class, whose fight for decent wages, job security and safe conditions is inseparably bound up with the struggle against the drive to world war.
This strike marks a significant stage in the developing confrontation between the American ruling class and the working class. Across the country, mass anger is building over stagnant wages, the destruction of pensions, unsafe working conditions and rising prices fueled by tariffs and the costs of militarism.
These economic grievances cannot be separated from the political reality: The corporate oligarchy rules through both Democrats and Republicans, and it is mobilizing all the resources of the state for war abroad and repression at home.
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The mobilization of American society for war production depends on the brutal exploitation of defense workers, whose labor is being used for the aims of global conquest.
Boeing’s corporate leadership consist of criminals who knowingly concealed deadly design flaws in the 737 MAX airliner, leading to the deaths of 346 people in two crashes. No executive was ever held accountable, while whistleblowers who spoke out have died in suspicious circumstances.
The F-47 contract, handed to Boeing by the Trump administration, was effectively a bailout to shield the company’s bottom line from the fallout of the scandal. Boeing has the full backing of Wall Street and Washington, which will give management every opportunity to break the strike.
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Workers’ real allies are not warmongering politicians from either party, but the working class of the United States and the world.
The 2024 strike by 33,000 Boeing commercial aircraft workers in Washington and Oregon offers critical lessons. Then, as now, workers confronted not only the corporation but also the IAM bureaucracy, which blocked the expansion of the strike, kept workers in the dark during closed-door talks, and pushed through a sellout agreement.
That contract included wage increases below inflation, preserved the two-tier pension system and failed to address unsafe workloads. Unless workers take control of their own struggle, the same outcome will be imposed in St. Louis.
The IAM’s strategy of appealing to capitalist politicians and keeping the strike isolated is recipe for defeat. Boeing workers must turn to their real allies: workers in other defense plants, commercial aerospace facilities and industries throughout the region and internationally.
9. EW4D holds Indianapolis rally to dissipate opposition of Kroger workers to UFCW sellout contracts
On Sunday, August 3, Essential Workers for Democracy (EW4D), a reform faction of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) bureaucracy, organized a press conference and rally in a parking lot next to a Kroger store in the East Gate neighborhood of Indianapolis.
This event, which attracted a handful of workers from the 8,000-member UFCW Local 700, was held in the aftermath of the overwhelming rejection by central Indiana Kroger workers on July 11 of a second sellout contract negotiated by UFCW officials. Although the union never released totals on the second vote, the first sellout deal had been rejected on May 31 by 74 percent.
At the press conference, rank-and-file workers took the microphone and criticized Kroger’s greed and the poor working conditions at the multibillion dollar corporation’s grocery stores. They denounced the low wages at Kroger, noting that pay has barely risen from “nickels and dimes” to “quarters” over the past two decades.
They spoke of the contracts they had voted down with disgust. The workers explained that the agreements presented to them by the UFCW would have most employees earning far below a living wage for Indianapolis and cleaning workers would be making just $13.75 [an hour] by the year 2028.
The workers described feeling insulted by the company offer—which was passed along to them by the UFCW bureaucracy—of a $200 Kroger gift card instead of meaningful pay raises.
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However, Indiana Kroger workers must be warned that the intervention of EW4D, which is promoting a group called O.U.R. Local 700, will not alter the situation facing Kroger workers. Far from it, the EW4D rally was organized to both dissipate the anger of rank-and-file workers and to promote the falsehood that the corporate stooges in the UFCW bureaucracy can be pressured into fighting the company and advancing workers’ interests.
The UFCW is one of the largest unions in the US and has 1.3 million members in the US and Canada. Like every union within the AFL-CIO system, the UFCW is run by a corporatist bureaucracy that represents the interests of the employers such as Kroger, Alberston’s, Safeway, King Soopers and others.
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Essential Workers for Democracy (EW4D), founded in 2022, is a nonprofit organization that functions as an adjunct to the UFCW bureaucracy. EW4D says it promotes “democratic unions that are accountable to members.” Its leadership, however, is made up of former union bureaucrats and functionaries of pseudo-left political organizations tied to the capitalist Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Labor Notes.
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EW4D has been brought in because the UFCW apparatus knows that rank-and-file workers have a growing awareness that a battle is being fought against both the employer and the union misleaders.
Meanwhile, EW4D has set up its O.U.R. Local 700 organization in direct opposition to the Kroger Workers Rank-and-File Committee that was established to fight against the sellout contract negotiated by the UFCW bureaucracy in 2022.
The purpose of the O.U.R. Local 700 group is to ensure that the Local UFCW leaders do not lose control of the contract fight against Kroger. As part of this effort, EW4D is working to maintain the isolation of Indiana Kroger workers from their brothers and sisters across the country who are facing the very same fight.
10. How the far-right AfD shapes German government policy
The aggressive smear campaign by right-wing media, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) officials, and Christian Democrat politicians, which led to the withdrawal of law professor Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf’s candidacy as a Supreme Court judge, makes two things clear.
First, it reveals the right-wing character of the Merz government, formed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose policies are visibly dictated by the AfD. Second, it refutes the propaganda of the SPD, Left Party, Greens and trade unions, which claim that the AfD can be fought and pushed back through the election and support of nominally “democratic” parties.
In reality, it is exactly the other way around. The governing parties adopt the AfD’s right-wing policies and pave the way for it to take power step by step.
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The Merz government is a government of crisis, staying in power only because it is supported by all other “democratic parties” and the trade union apparatus.
The Left Party plays a particularly cynical role in this. It loudly poses as anti-right, joins protests against the AfD, but at the same time supports the federal government, which is preparing for AfD participation in government. Its specific role is to suppress any serious initiative aimed at an effective fight against the AfD, rearmament, war, layoffs and social cuts at their root—that is, on the basis of an international socialist program opposing capitalism.
It is necessary to face political reality. There is no “lesser evil” among the Bundestag parties. All parties support rearmament, financed through social cutbacks.
The only way to stop the rise of the AfD and the shift to the right in the state apparatus is to build an international socialist movement within the working class and youth—a movement that combines the fight against war, militarism, social cuts and dictatorship with the struggle against capitalism and for a socialist society. This requires building the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), which fights for this perspective.
The National Union of Students (NUS) has moved to punish student officers for demanding it oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over 180 elected sabbatical officers from 52 campuses delivered the NUS an ultimatum: condemn Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, or face mass disaffiliation.
An open letter to the NUS Board of Directors on July 11, protested: “For over 20 months, Gaza has been subjected to the apartheid state of Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate military violence.
“Homes, hospitals, schools and entire communities have been reduced to rubble, with no universities left standing. The true scale of death and devastation remains unquantified, with the Lancet scholars, over one year ago, estimating the actual death toll could be over 186,000.
“NUS, this is not a conflict, or a ‘crisis’. This is the systematic destruction of a people. This is genocide.”
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Long a training ground for Labour Party careerists—Neil Kinnock, John Prescott, Jack Straw and Wes Streeting all began their political careers there—NUS has morphed during the past decade into a direct adjunct of the security and intelligence agencies. A succession of political witch-hunts over this period saw two NUS presidents ousted based on manufactured claims of “antisemitism”.
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Political conclusions must be drawn. NUS functions as an arm of British imperialism and the state. It cannot be reformed. Instead, students must build a movement turned to the working class, the sole revolutionary force in society. The working class has the power to end genocide, war and all forms of exploitation and oppression through the overthrow of the capitalist nation-state system and the fight for world socialism. To fight for this, join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality!
12. Australia: Deadly Grosvenor coal mine prepares to reopen with union support
Grosvenor underground coal mine at Moranbah, central Queensland, last year the site of a month-long inferno, has been unsealed in preparation for workers to return. The Mining and Energy Union (MEU) has endorsed the reopening drive by owner Anglo American, which is anxious to restart operations to facilitate its pending sale of the mine.
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At around 5:40 a.m. on June 29, 2024, a group of Grosvenor miners working on a longwall face some 500 metres underground saw a flame zip down the tunnel away from them.
At the time, MEU general vice president Steven Smyth noted how close workers came to serious injury or death: “[T]he saving grace is, if there is any in this whole situation, it’s that the flame went down the return and not across the coalface where the workers were.”
The workers then had to “self-escape,” scrambling in near-total darkness—power having been cut to reduce the chance of further ignition—to reach vehicles before making the hour-long journey back to the surface. Another worker, alone in a different section of the mine, was not aware of the fire until he made a chance call to the surface to inquire about the time and was told to evacuate.
While no workers were injured, the fire burned for the entire month of July, spewing vast clouds of toxic smoke from the mine’s ventilation shafts. Local residents were told to stay indoors to minimize their exposure.
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Though the official government inquiry was largely a whitewash, it did reveal that Anglo American enforced a rate of extraction that continually produced methane gas levels more than twice what the mine’s gas drainage system could handle. The company also skipped other safety measures and risk assessments before starting work on the longwall where the incident occurred, in order to avoid costly delays.
Moreover, the company ignored repeated warnings from workers of the dangerous conditions. The inquiry heard that, in the eight weeks before the blast, there were 14 reported “high potential incidents” of methane exceedance at the mine. One of the injured miners, Wayne Sellars, told the inquiry that when workers complained to management about the methane levels, “they’d come back and they’d tell us to keep going.
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The fight for safe working conditions in the mining industry and more broadly should be connected to a struggle by the working class against capitalism itself. This means a fight for a socialist perspective, and to establish workers’ governments to place all essential industries, including mining, under public ownership democratic workers’ control, to meet social need, not private profit.
13. New Zealand teachers to strike over 1 percent pay offer
Secondary school teachers throughout New Zealand have voted to strike on August 20 after overwhelmingly rejecting a derisory one percent pay offer from the far-right National Party-led coalition government. The offer represents a significant pay cut; in the year to March 2025, the annual inflation rate was 2.5 percent.
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The pay cuts are part of a wholesale assault on public services and workers. The teachers’ offers are similar to one rejected by 36,000 nurses. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) last week announced a two-day strike from September 2, following 24-hour strikes last December and in July.
The government’s austerity regime involves brutal cuts to healthcare, education and welfare, a pay freeze across the core public sector, and over 10,000 layoffs with more to come. Its aim is to increase the exploitation of the working class, divert more public money to the super-rich through a shift to privatization, and to fund a vast increase in military spending to prepare for war.
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The main obstacle to workers taking the offensive against the government’s assault is the trade union bureaucracy. Composed of well-paid officials loyal to capitalism, the union apparatus is enforcing the government’s agenda of austerity and militarism.
The modus operandi of the union leadership is to keep each sector of the workforce isolated, calling only short-term, intermittent industrial action to let off steam, while dragging out pay negotiations in order to demoralize workers and persuade them that they have no alternative to accepting the erosion of their pay and conditions.
14. Union Pacific train derails near Dallas, Texas carrying hazardous materials
A Union Pacific train derailed Tuesday afternoon in Palo Pinto county, Texas, about 60 miles east of Dallas. Officials said the derailment was being treated as a “HazMat situation” after 35 rail cars carrying hazardous materials were involved in the derailment.
Kent Farquhar, assistant fire chief for Palo Pinto County Emergency Services District 1, identified the materials as hydrochloric acid, propane, and fuel, according to ABC affiliate WFAA. Officials say none of the cars leaked and no one was injured in the incident, narrowly avoiding a disaster for the environment and public safety.
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This is one of nearly 30 derailments in Texas so far this year, a state which is a leader in train derailments. In June, Texas saw a large train derailment on the same day that a separate rail accident killed one rail worker. Last December, Texas also saw a major train derailment that killed two and injured three.
Since 1975 there have been nearly 12,000 derailments in Texas, more than any other state, with Illinois a close second. Both stand well above all other states, with third place California at just under 6,000. In recent years Texas takes an even stronger lead, with 1,554 since 2015 compared to Illinois at 1,007.
Texas has the most miles of rail in the country, at over 10,000 miles. While it does not have the highest rate of derailments per thousand miles, it still averages a high rate of 15 per thousand miles each year, comparable to other states with high rates of derailments.
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The effects of reduced and delayed maintenance and infrastructure improvements can have disastrous effects. Train derailments with hazardous materials can pose a serious risk to public health and safety.
Most famously, the East Palestine, Ohio incident was the result of neglected railway maintenance that produced one of the largest environmental disasters in recent US history as the company set fire to vinyl chloride to speed up the process of clearing the track for other freight trains and the generation of profits for the company.
According to research from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, pollutants from the East Palestine disaster spread over 1.4 million square kilometers (540,000 square miles) through rain and snow.
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Safety is also under attack through the assault on jobs as rail companies push to eliminate thousands of positions and transition conductors into road utility positions as part of the effort to implement one-person crews on trains. Further attacks will come as Union Pacific begins the integration of Norfolk Southern, which it acquired in a $85 billion deal.
The merger will create organizational redundancies that will result in thousands of layoffs and further the monopolization of the rail industry as safety standards wane to help pay for the cost of the acquisition.
15. Trump orders Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels
Citing anonymous sources, the New York Times reports that President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to “begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels,” claiming they threaten the peace and security of the US.
The Mexican cartels targeted are the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Cartel del Noreste, the Gulf Cartel and the Nueva Familia Michoacana.
The August 8 report did not say whether specific strikes have been suggested to the Pentagon, although these plans are already being drawn up by military officials, according to the Times.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded quickly to the report. “We were informed that this executive order was coming and that it had nothing to do with the participation of any military personnel or any institution in our territory,” she said, adding that the directive referred exclusively to actions within US territory, although Trump has already sent close to 10,000 troops to the border.
“No,” she said, “absolutely not. The United States is not going to send its military into Mexico. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. That’s ruled out … because, in addition to what we’ve stated in all our conversations, it’s not allowed, nor is it part of any agreement.”
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When pressed further to explain if the reporting was inaccurate, Sheinbaum demurred, suggesting she had not seen the directive. “Well, we’ll have to see how the executive order is [written],” she said, “but there’s no risk that they’ll invade our territory.”
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A US invasion of Mexico could rupture relations between the two countries, blow apart the USMCA trade agreement, and lead to another US forever war, with millions of US residents of Mexican origin also up in arms. The economic fallout would be on a huge scale.
Facing an upsurge in the class conflict stemming from deepening economic and geopolitical instability, Trump seeks to browbeat Mexico City into an even greater militarization to secure key suppliers to US industry while making preparations for direct US involvement in the repression of Mexican workers.
Sheinbaum’s strategy for dismantling the cartels differs little from the failed strategies of the last four Mexican presidents, at least two of whom were likely corrupted by the cartels.
Her government falsifies the figures on deaths and disappearances. It also maintains pacts of impunity for politicos bought off by the cartels.
16. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Asia:
Bangladesh:
Thousands of MPO private education teachers demand federal recognition
Garment workers protest unpaid wages and factory closure
India:
IDBI bank workers hold national strike against proposed privatization
Karnataka ASHA workers hold three-day protest in Mysuru
Chenai corporation conservancy workers’ strike enters third week
Telangana: Telugu film industry workers remain on strike
Sri Lanka:
Public sector workers protest
Public sector workers protest
Australia and the Pacific:
WesTrac heavy machinery maintenance workers in New South Wales strike
Townsville City Council workers hold rolling stoppages for pay increase
Opal Specialty Packaging workers in NSW strike for improved pay
Getinge electricians remain locked out after 8 weeks, without pay
Glencore Ulan underground coal miners continue industrial action
Schindler Lifts locks out its NSW electricians
Crown Sydney casino workers strike for pay parity
Qantas engineers strike over low pay
Hydro Tasmania electricians prepare for industrial action
Brophy Family youth workers in Victoria strike for pay rise
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
