Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Charlie Kirk and the concealed legacy of American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell
In the days since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration and its allies have unleashed a torrent of threats against the “radical left,” branding dissent as “domestic terrorism” and effectively declaring that educators, nurses and federal workers are potential enemies of the state. Corporations have joined in the purge: airline employees, teachers, journalists and other workers have been fired simply for making critical remarks about Kirk.
All of this is being done while elevating, to the stature of a national hero, an individual whose political positions were undeniably fascist. If there is any individual whom Kirk most closely resembles, in terms of persona and political tactics, it is George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party in the 1960s. While his name has long been forgotten by the broad public, Rockwell remains a source of inspiration for the extreme right.
He created the playbook that Kirk later followed: traveling to universities—wearing a suit and tie rather than his Nazi uniform—to “debate” ideas with students and posturing as a defender of “free speech.” Rockwell, smoking an ever-present corncob pipe, presented himself as a political philosopher, thoughtful intellectual and man of ideas, unafraid to argue with his enemies. Though a savage racist, Rockwell even attended a rally of the Black Muslims in 1961. He used such media events to attract attention and recruit to his Nazi organization.
Rockwell was eventually shot to death by a disgruntled member of his own party in August 1967. Though the killing was front page news, the coverage was focused on the exposure of his politics. Flags were not lowered to half staff, and not even the right-wing senators from the South delivered eulogies for the would-be American Hitler. The president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, took no official notice of Rockwell’s death.
But those were different times. Little more than two decades had passed since the end of World War II, and the racist politics and crimes of the Third Reich were still fresh in people’s memories.
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While the violence of the Trump administration’s rhetoric has produced a sense of shock among millions of people who, if they had even heard of Kirk, despised everything he stood for, it is inevitable that outraged opposition to the White House’s effort to legitimize fascism, not only in words but in practice, will emerge. The development of this opposition into a political movement that is capable of opposing the escalating assault on democratic rights requires a clear understanding of the underlying social and political causes.
The words and actions of the Trump administration cannot be reduced to the fascistic personality of the present occupant of the White House. In the final analysis, Trump is the representative of a capitalist oligarchy, whose policies and actions are a response to the intersecting crises confronting American capitalism.
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The economic position of American capitalism is increasingly untenable. The United States carries nearly $40 trillion in public debt, and there are mounting signs of recession, rising inflation and threats to the global position of the US dollar. Internationally, the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza are component parts of an escalating global war, including the advanced preparations for conflict with China. The scale of imperialist violence that is being prepared is not compatible with democratic forms of rule.
Most significantly, the ruling elite fears the growth of opposition within the United States itself. The extreme and historically unprecedented growth of social inequality has produced enormous levels of social and political anger. A staggering $6.6 trillion is concentrated in the hands of US billionaires, just one of whom—Oracle’s Larry Ellison—increased his wealth by over $100 billion in a single day last week.
The American oligarchy feels itself under siege, perceiving around every corner the specter of revolution and an existential threat to its wealth. Hence the ever more hysterical denunciations of the “radical left,” of Marxism and of socialism.
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The Socialist Equality Party insists that the decisive task is to build within the working class a conscious political movement that breaks free from the entire straitjacket of official politics. In the United States, this means a break with the Democratic Party and all those organizations that exist to maintain the stranglehold of the Democratic Party. The apparatus of the corporatist trade unions, moreover, functions as a suffocating block on working class struggle—diverting workers either into support for the Democrats or into the nationalist poison of Trump’s trade war demagogy.
The SEP fights for the construction of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, independent of the union bureaucracy, to serve as centers of organization not only for the defense of workers’ jobs, wages and conditions, but also for the defense of the most basic democratic rights.
This must be connected to a revolutionary program that takes direct aim at the social foundation of fascism and dictatorship: the capitalist oligarchy. The SEP fights for the expropriation of the billionaires’ wealth, the transformation of the giant corporations into publicly owned utilities and workers’ control over production. Only through such measures can society be reorganized to meet human needs, not private profit. The immense social power of the working class, mobilized on this basis, provides the only real foundation for the defense of democracy and the securing of a future for humanity.
On Monday, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation targeting Memphis, Tennessee, one of the largest majority-black cities in the United States, as the next city to be occupied by federal police forces and National Guard elements. Trump signed the proclamation creating the “Memphis Safe Task Force” in the Oval Office surrounded by top cabinet officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, as well as Tennessee Republicans, including Governor Bill Lee, Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn.
As in Los Angeles and Washington D.C., the surging of troops and police into Tennessee’s second largest city has nothing to do with “fighting crime” or promoting public safety. Instead it is aimed at normalizing the deployment of armed soldiers in public spaces, suppressing protests and strikes and intimidating the working class, particularly immigrants being targeted as part of the ongoing “mass deportation” operation.
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Whether or not Trump declares an “emergency,” Republicans are swiftly moving to establish police state rule, using the nation’s capital as a testing lab for their draconian measures. The House of Representatives is taking up four bills this week centered on expanding the ability of police to conduct deadly chases, increasing prison sentences for minors and young people, and limiting the ability of D.C. residents to elect local judges.
One of the bills, the Washington Post reported, would allow prosecutors to try 14-year-old children as adults. Another would prevent judges from issuing so-called “lenient” sentences to anyone over 18. The third bill eliminates restrictions on police vehicle pursuits, while the fourth would eliminate the city’s Judicial Nomination Commission, which provides the president a list of judge candidates for him to select. Restrictions on police pursuits were implemented following the murder of Karon Hylton-Brown during a 2020 police chase. Trump pardoned the officers involved in the killing earlier this year.
3. New York Democratic governor endorses Zohran Mamdani after he kowtows to billionaires
On Sunday, after a delay of 12 weeks, New York Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June. This comes only a few days after Mamdani met with billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg, the wealthiest Democrat in the city.
Bloomberg did not himself endorse Mamdani, but the meeting was the latest in a series of friendly get-togethers between the so-called socialist—Mamdani is a member of the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America—and Wall Street and real estate moguls.
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Mamdani is the frontrunner in the four-way November 4 election that includes former Governor Andrew Cuomo—defeated by Mamdani in the Democratic primary but running again as an independent—incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, also running as an independent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
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Hochul’s endorsement, published as an op-ed in the New York Times, despite the insincere promotion of a common front with Mamdani against Trump, emphasized that she had put the Democratic candidate through his paces, notably, “making it very clear that our police officers should have every resource to keep our streets and subways safe. I urged him to ensure that there is strong leadership at the helm of the N.Y.P.D.—and he agreed.”
This could well mean an agreement to retain New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch, daughter of entertainment and real estate boss James Tisch, whose family holdings, based on Loews Corporation, come to at least $10 billion.
The governor also tried to distance herself from Mamdani’s public opposition to the Gaza genocide by saying, “We discussed the need to combat the rise of antisemitism urgently and unequivocally.” By “antisemitism” Hochul means the anti-genocide protests in New York and across the United States, which have included thousands of Jews, over the last two years. Hochul has been a steadfast supporter of supplying weapons and funds to Israel.
Hochul is a thoroughly right-wing figure who, as a member of Congress, opposed granting driver’s licenses to immigrant workers and who began last year to flood New York City’s subway stations with hundreds of National Guardsmen and state law enforcement officers to search bags and deter the poor from entering subway platforms without paying the $2.90 charge. About 1,000 soldiers remain on duty in the subways.
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Mamdani’s endorsement by New York state’s chief executive and his “cordial” meeting with the city’s richest man highlight how ruling class figures and Democratic Party operatives have extracted increasingly blatant concessions from his campaign. These retreats began with the first primary debate on June 4, when he accepted the “right” of the Zionist occupation state to exist, and continued with his recent agreement to abandon the term “global intifada” in relation to the Palestinian struggle.
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The DSA leadership in New York even tells its members to expect Mamdani to betray his promises, and not to make too much of it. A recent article in the DSA-aligned Jacobin magazine declared: “We should resist the mindset that sees our relationship with socialist elected officials as primarily one of holding them accountable to campaign commitments and socialist principles.”
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Mamdani will do nothing to oppose the invasion of New York by federal agents and the National Guard, should Trump order it. As he said to the Times on Thursday, “I think that it is inevitable that [Trump] will seek to deploy the National Guard in New York City. I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to be prepared for that as opposed to treating it as simply a possibility.” Mamdani, like his Democratic counterparts in Albany and Washington, has consistently downplayed the danger of dictatorship. “Preparation,” in this case, means passive acceptance, perhaps with a mild verbal protest.
4. Canadian political establishment mourns fascist Charlie Kirk, fueling far-right blacklist rampage
The Canadian political establishment rushed to eulogize American fascist activist Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally, in the hours after his assassination on September 10 at a Utah university campus. From Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew and Quebec CAQ Premier François Legault, politicians across all parties joined together in mourning Kirk and whitewashing his fascist politics.
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The political establishment’s beatification of Kirk has emboldened far-right elements in Canada to go on the offensive, targeting anyone who dares to criticize Kirk’s racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and white supremacist politics with blacklists, threats, and calls for reprisals.
The Trump administration in the US has seized on Kirk’s killing to escalate its drive to establish a presidential dictatorship, casting his murder as the responsibility of the “left” and vowing to eradicate the “enemy within” through state repression and violence. Kirk is now being elevated as a martyr and icon to push American and world politics even further to the right.
The Democrats, clinging to their bankrupt mantra that “there is no place for political violence in America,” have met this campaign with cowardice and complicity, denouncing purported violence from “both sides.” They are terrified of nothing so much as unleashing mass working class opposition to Trump and the oligarchs who stand behind him.
Carney was among the first international leaders to follow Washington’s lead in eulogizing Kirk. On X he declared, “I am appalled by the murder of Charlie Kirk. There is no justification for political violence and every act of it threatens democracy. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and loved ones.” Carney’s tweet conspicuously ignored Kirk’s record as a central player in Trump’s MAGA movement and his incitement of bigotry. Carney also had nothing to say about Kirk’s support for Trump’s efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship, including as an active participant in the January 6, 2021 coup plot and advocate for those convicted for their role in storming the Capitol.
From a Liberal government that has been entirely silent amid the ongoing trade war on Trump’s coup efforts and fascist agitation against immigrants, the message was unmistakable: Ottawa is eager to reach an accommodation with Trump and American imperialism. In so far as it has any differences with the would-be dictator, they revolve entirely over securing the Canadian ruling class’s predatory interests, not upholding democratic rights.
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Not one of the eulogies to Kirk even hinted at the fascist character of his politics. The same Canadian establishment that gives a standing ovation to a Nazi war criminal, and smears opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “antisemites” now insists that a leading far-right operative be honored as a victim of intolerance.
This whitewashing has served as a green light for Canada’s far right to go on the offensive.
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Invocations of Kirk’s purported defense of “free speech” are a grotesque fraud. Kirk agitated for the repeal of the civil rights legislation that ended legal segregation, the banning of critical race theory and gender studies, the persecution of immigrants and Muslims, and the crushing of left-wing dissent. His “freedom” was the freedom to build a movement for dictatorship. Meanwhile, those who speak out against fascism, imperialist war, or social inequality are smeared as purveyors of “hate” and threatened with professional ruin or worse.
The Canadian ruling elite is adopting authoritarian methods of rule for the same reasons as Trump. It confronts rising working class opposition through strikes and mass protests. It is preparing for war abroad and austerity at home. Carney’s pledge of “austerity and investment” translates into ruthless cuts to social spending paired with massive increases in military budgets. The glorification of Kirk and the blacklisting of his critics are part of creating the political climate necessary to impose these unpopular policies.
Canadian democracy is in shambles. Strikes are outlawed. The growing presence of fascists in the armed forces is downplayed. The government backs fascist forces in Ukraine while suppressing anti-genocide protests at home.
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Workers and youth must draw the sharpest conclusions. The official eulogizing of Kirk and the witch-hunt against his critics are not aberrations but part of the violent realignment of bourgeois politics to the right, driven by the crisis of capitalism and Ottawa’s determination to secure its share of the spoils in a rapidly escalating third world war. The Canadian ruling class is following the path of its American counterpart, accommodating Trump while implementing huge swathes of his socio-economic program and increasingly resorting to state repression.
5. Trump’s war on culture: The authoritarian logic of “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again”
President Donald Trump, returning to a plan he first advanced in 2020 and which was later rescinded by Joe Biden, has again taken personal control over architectural design for federal projects in Washington D.C. and throughout the country. Trump’s new Executive Order, “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” (signed August 28), imposes authoritarian aesthetics for buildings, codifies kitsch and signals a broader assault on cultural freedom.
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Justin Shubow, Trump ally and head of the National Civic Art Society, helped draft the document. Standing on the National Mall, Shubow proclaimed: “This is a city inspired by Ancient Rome—meant to be a new Rome—a timeless republic that will never die.” His language echoes Hitler’s dream of a Thousand-Year Reich.
The Führerprinzip—the Nazi “leader principle,” where all decisions flowed from an infallible ruler—applied not only to politics but also to culture and architecture. Trump’s decree operates on the same logic: the state dictates what is beautiful, permissible and legitimate.
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The executive order must be placed within Trump’s broader cultural offensive. His hostility to the arts and honest artists has been consistent and deliberate.
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The pattern is unmistakable: starve culture, suppress critique and redirect funds to propaganda. Trump wants art that is patriotic, toothless, and banal—“beautiful” in the sense that it flatters the state and comforts the billionaire at the gala.
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Trump’s decree echoes this history. It designates one style as legitimate and all others as suspect. It subordinates architecture to conformist bourgeois ideology. It arrives amid a crisis of capitalism, in which the ruling elite, unable to address inequality and every other burning social problem, is hurtling toward authoritarianism.
For those in power, critical art is intolerable. It inevitably raises questions about war, poverty, exploitation and the unity of workers worldwide—Rivera’s industrial frescos and Picasso’s Guernica, for example. Hence, in “dangerous” art, the elite sees not creativity but threat. Trump’s order expresses this hostility in architectural form but reflects a broader campaign to suffocate culture.
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For the working class, beauty lies elsewhere: in the courage to portray the truth, in the solidarity of struggle, in the freedom to create without censorship or commodification. The two conceptions—oligarchic ornament versus human liberation—are irreconcilable.
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Trump’s “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” order is not about aesthetics but about social exploitation and political power. It proclaims that culture is the prerogative of the state, to be dictated from above. This is dictatorship in architectural form.
Like Hitler’s monuments, it emerges from weakness, not strength. The louder the proclamations of permanence, the more fragile the order they seek to defend. American capitalism is beset by inequality, militarism and crisis.
In a genuinely democratic society, decisions about architecture and culture would emerge from broad discussion, involving artists, workers, and entire communities. In Trump’s America, they are imposed by decree. The result is not beauty but banality, not freedom but obedience.
6. Oppose UAW sellout of GE Aerospace strike! Demand immediate release of full contract proposal!
United Auto Workers officials announced Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement with GE Aerospace and would hold a vote on a new five-year deal on Friday, September 19. Rank-and-file workers have received nothing but the most general claims about the supposed deal reached by the UAW, which several sources admit still has to be “finalized” this week.
More than 640 workers walked out at two Cincinnati, Ohio-area GE Aerospace facilities on August 28 to oppose crushing out-of-pocket health care costs, protect their jobs and overturn years of concessions accepted by the UAW bureaucracy. As of last week, UAW President Shawn Fain and other union officials said they were miles from an agreement and company executives were still pressing for additional concessions.
Now, UAW officials expect workers to believe the company has suddenly caved in and the union “secured victories on all fronts.” According to the UAW’s PR department, “The company will cover nearly all health care premium increases over the term of the contract and workers will receive additional vacation time. The deal also secures strong job security protections for both Erlanger and Evendale locations, including minimum headcount and new work.”
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While the UAW claims the company will cover most premium increases, the fact is GE Aerospace runs the healthcare apparatus. So, while “nearly all” premiums might be covered—a discretionary sum of $3,500 has been touted by some media outlets—co-pays and other member-paid benefits might be greatly manipulated to make up for company money lost on increased premiums. And whether or not this new deal includes all GE Aerospace workers, or only a fraction of the workers in this tiered system or pay and benefits, remains to be seen.
Experience has proven that holiday claims about “historic victories” only conceal the fine print that contain more sacrifices. The same claims were used to cover up a string of betrayals by the Fain apparatus, from Clarios battery in Toledo, Ohio, and GM, Ford, Stellantis and Mack Trucks in 2023, to Daimler Trucks and Allison Transmission in 2024 and General Dynamics Electric Boat and Rolls Royce earlier this year.
The “life-changing” auto agreement, for example, led to the elimination of at least 3,000 jobs at Stellantis alone and the deaths of two workers, Antonio Gaston and Ronald Adams Sr., as a result of job-cutting, speed up and the sacrifice of safety for profit.
UAW Local 647 President Brian Strunk let the cat out of the bag saying the deal “may not be perfect” but “we will build on this momentum into the future.” The UAW has accepted decades of concessions in the name of “saving jobs” and “fighting another day.” That’s how pensions were lost and two-tier wages and other givebacks were justified.
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The UAW bureaucracy never wanted this strike in the first place and is determined to shut it down before it does any further damage to the war plans of the Trump administration and American imperialism.
Under conditions of Trump’s deployment of military troops to US cities and weaponization of Charlie Kirk’s killing to crush left-wing and anti-war opposition, Fain held a livestream event last week where he doubled down on the UAW bureaucracy’s support for Trump’s trade war against the rest of the world.
Hostile to any fight to unite US workers with their class brothers around the world against the transnational corporations, the UAW apparatus has become a pivotal tool for the administration’s wars for global conquest in Latin America, the Middle East and against China.
Striking workers at GE Aerospace produce critical weapons for the US military, Israel, Ukraine and other US allies and the UAW bureaucracy is determined to end the strike as soon as possible. Under Biden and now Trump, Fain has repeatedly praised the so-called “Arsenal of Democracy” during World War II when the UAW and other unions enforced a no-strike pledge against workers looking to fight wartime inflation and speed up by the war profiteering companies.
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If workers are going to defend our living standards and basic rights, including the right to organize and strike, then they must build new organizations of struggle, independent of and against the pro-company stooges in the UAW bureaucracy. This was the fight taken up by Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate candidate for UAW president who won nearly 5,000 votes in 2022 from rank-and-file workers, including solid support from GE Aerospace workers.
As the United States enters the peak of its 11th wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 1 million new infections per day, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to dismantle the nation’s public health system. At the center of this attack on science is the upcoming September 18–19 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), whose agenda and composition now reflect Kennedy’s long-standing promotion of anti-vaccine disinformation.
The stage was set for this war on vaccines with the abrupt firing of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez, who, just weeks into her tenure, reportedly refused to “rubber-stamp” Kennedy’s diktats. Her dismissal was immediately followed by the appointment of new ACIP members, many of whom lack formal immunization expertise and have publicly echoed Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism. With this move, a once-critical scientific advisory body is being recast as a partisan instrument, undermining decades of immunization policy at a moment when viral transmission of COVID, and for that matter, other pathogens, are once more accelerating across the country.
According to the latest September 8 report from the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC), led by Dr. Mike Hoerger, an alarming 1 in 93 Americans are currently infectious with COVID. The model PMC estimated that new daily infections surpassed 1 million on September 6, with the country peaking at 1,006,000 daily cases, although regional variations are considerable.
Dr. Hoerger warned that “significant transmission occurs post-peak,” underscoring the urgent need for sustained efforts that include masking with N95s, use of various anti-viral nasal sprays, and other layered mitigations. At present, transmission is classified as High or Very High in 21 states and territories, particularly in the South and West, with the virus spreading toward other regions. While Very High areas are expected to enter decline, the PMC anticipates renewed surges in states where transmission was previously low.
These high rates of infection and reinfection have known profound public health consequences.
On average, each American has now been infected 4.2 times, and nearly half the population has contracted the virus at least once in 2025 alone. The PMC estimates 1,300 to 2,100 excess deaths per week, totaling 50,000 to 60,000 annual deaths from COVID-19 and related complications. Meanwhile, Long COVID remains a mass disabling event, affecting an estimated 6 percent of those infected, which can have consequences comparable to stroke, rheumatoid arthritis or Parkinson’s disease in severe instances. The current wave alone is projected to produce up to 720,000 new Long COVID cases in the months ahead.
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Contrary to the widespread perception that only children with underlying health conditions are at risk of severe COVID-19, data from the CDC reveals a far more alarming reality. In fact, many hospitalized children had no pre-existing medical conditions at all. This is particularly true among the youngest patients. Among infants under 6 months hospitalized for COVID-19, a staggering 71 percent had no known underlying conditions. Similarly, 54 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months hospitalized with COVID-19 were otherwise healthy. Even among children under age 2 admitted to intensive care units (ICUs), most had no prior health issues.
Overall, the data show that one in four children under 18 years old hospitalized for COVID-19 required ICU-level care, a stark indicator of how severe the disease can be, even in children with no recognized risk factors. These findings dismantle the myth that healthy children are largely safe from the worst outcomes of infection and should not receive COVID vaccines. Instead, they demonstrate that COVID-19 remains a serious and unpredictable threat to pediatric health, capable of causing critical illness in previously well children with no medical vulnerabilities.
8. Mass pro-Gaza protest blocks final stage of Spanish Vuelta cycling race
The unprecedented cancellation of the final stage of Spain’s Vuelta a España on Sunday has reverberated internationally, underscoring mass opposition to the genocide in Gaza. One of cycling’s three “Grand Tours” alongside the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, La Vuelta is a 3,100-kilometer (1,926-mile) race, watched by millions.
On Sunday afternoon, the final stage was cancelled as over 100,000 protesters took to the streets in Madrid; thousands flooded the cyclists’ path as they entered Madrid for the final stretch of the race. Protesters knocked down barriers and marched through the course with banners reading “Boycott Israel Genocide No,” chanting “Boycott, boycott, boycott Israel,” “Free Palestine,” and “total embargo.” Police sprayed tear gas and charged the crowd.
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The mass protest in Madrid confirms the overwhelming and explosive popular opposition in Spain and across Europe to the Gaza genocide and NATO imperialist governments complicit in it.
Anticapitalistas presented Sunday’s action as a vindication of their perspective of pressuring imperialist governments to break relations with Israel, declaring: “It shows it is possible to force our governments to completely sever relations with Israel.”
Lucía Nistal, of the Morenoite Workers Revolutionary Current, echoed this sentiment: “They have sent more than 2,300 police against us, they have tried to repress us, they have tried to criminalize us for refusing to be complicit in the whitewashing of Zionism into which they wanted to turn the cycling tour. But today we have stopped the tour. Now it is time to stop everything. Long live Free Palestine!”
This is a dead end for mounting working class anger, in Spain and internationally, against the Gaza genocide. The NATO imperialist powers, including the PSOE-Sumar government, cannot be pressured into halting a genocide they are directly sponsoring and arming. It can be safely predicted that they will continue to arm Israel for the genocide even after the Madrid protest.
9. Labor government announces naval hub in Western Australia aimed against China
On Sunday, the Labor government announced an initial $12 billion commitment to construct a major naval facility in Henderson, south of Perth, the state capital of Western Australia. The facility will be used to build naval vessels, as well as to dock and maintain nuclear-powered submarines.
The facility, together with other military infrastructure around Perth, including the Stirling naval base, has been described by the government as a “hub.” That is a euphemism for what is effectively a massive US military base on the Indian Ocean coast, which will play a central role in Washington’s preparations for an aggressive war against China.
The facility has been depicted as an important step in the implementation of the AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK, under which Australia is supposed to acquire several nuclear-powered submarines from America early in the 2030s.
But, well in advance of that, Washington’s own fleet of nuclear-powered submarines will be docking in Western Australia. There have already been several visits by US submarines over the past two years, and by 2027 they are set to “rotate” through Western Australia on a semi-permanent basis, in what is in all but name a basing arrangement.
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Days before the Henderson announcement, Labor unveiled a plan to develop a fleet of “ghost shark” amphibious drones. The craft, which are being constructed in Sydney at a cost of $1.7 billion, can be launched from a vessel or from land.
Few details were provided, except that their capabilities not only include reconnaissance and surveillance, but also the launching of strikes against targets. Marles did not say how many “ghost sharks” were being constructed, but indicated that there would be “dozens,” with the first to be operational next January.
The two announcements are the first major military commitments by the Labor government since it was reelected in May.
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Since its reelection, however, Labor has been under intense pressure from the US to go even further. In the context of his frothing denunciations of China and declarations that military conflict may be “imminent,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has publicly demanded that allies throughout the Indo-Pacific dramatically increase their defense budgets.
Hegseth has said that the figure must approach 5 percent of gross domestic product, and gave an immediate target for Australia of 3.5 percent of GDP, well above the current allocation of just over 2 percent.
At the same time, Hegseth and Washington have demanded that Australia and Japan commit their military assets, in advance, to participate in a war with China.
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Labor’s announcements are a clear attempt to assuage the concerns of the Trump administration that it is not doing enough to prepare for a conflict with China. The timing is likely related to an upcoming trip by Albanese to the US, under conditions where he has been unable to secure a meeting with Trump since winning the May election.
In the campaign for that election, Labor and the entire political and media establishment buried the issues of militarism and war. Labor did not once mention the plans for the transformation of Perth into the premier naval hub for US-led aggression on the Indian Ocean. That again underscores the reality that the descent into war by the imperialist powers will inevitably provoke widespread opposition and is incompatible with basic democratic rights.
10. Romanian government imposes sweeping austerity program
The Romanian government has launched a sweeping program of austerity and social cuts. Sworn in on June 23 after a protracted constitutional crisis, the cabinet is composed of a broad coalition of all major “pro-European” bourgeois parties: the PSD (Social Democratic Party), PNL (National Liberal Party), and USR (Save Romania Union).
Aligning itself with the global shift of the ruling class toward militarism and attacks on the working class, the government is dismantling social and democratic rights won through generations of struggle. Across Europe, the same pattern is evident: in France, the government is planning €44 billion [$US51 billion] in budget cuts for the coming year, while German Chancellor Merz proclaims that Germany “can no longer afford the welfare state.”
In Romania, 35 years of capitalist restoration and successive waves of EU-dictated pro-market reforms have created an economic and social wasteland. Now the government is determined to destroy what remains of workers’ social rights in order to finance the EU-wide rearmament drive.
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Since 2021, Romania has been governed by variations of the same grand coalition. Even during the so-called “pandemic recovery,” living standards fell as inflation eroded wages. The ruling parties postponed their frontal assault until after elections, hoping for legitimacy. But the elections proved a disaster, with all major parties losing support and the coalition barely maintaining a majority. President Dan only secured victory after repeated annulments of ballots and the barring of his main opponent.
Amid this crisis, the ruling elite is turning to fascist forces. The far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) remains the only parliamentary opposition, moving motions against the government while advocating its own program of Trump-style cuts. Meanwhile, the mainstream parties—led by the PSD—are adopting AUR’s xenophobic rhetoric. Recent attacks on foreign workers underscore the danger facing the entire working class.
Educators are the first to resist the new measures, but confront the same union apparatus that betrayed them in 2023. Over the summer, union leaders signed a collective labor agreement with the government without consulting the rank and file, erecting further legal barriers to strikes. “There are many who want a general strike, but the general strike has to satisfy some requirements. There are some very ugly restrictions that we have to solve,” said Anton Hadar, head of “Alma Mater.” In reality, the bureaucracy is working to block any strike.
On September 8, the first day of the school year, around 20,000 educators rallied. The unions responded by organizing a so-called “boycott,” where teachers supervise but do not teach classes. Such token actions are designed to exhaust and demoralize educators while exposing them to government pressure.
The defense of democratic and social rights—above all quality public education—is inseparable from the fight against war and capitalist rule itself. The first step is breaking the stranglehold of the union apparatus. Teachers and other workers must study the example of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and build independent committees, free from the control of the bureaucracy and its pseudo-left allies.
Above all workers and youth in Romania—as across all of Eastern Europe—need their own party: sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The ICFI is the only tendency which has been defending the perspective of international socialism—the only viable path forward in the fight against austerity, fascism and war—against Stalinism, Social Democracy and all forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism.
11. Teamsters shut down University of Minnesota strike, seeking to ram through sellout deal
Shortly after midnight early Saturday morning, Teamsters Local 320 announced that it had reached a tentative agreement with the University of Minnesota (UMN) administration and was ending the less than weeklong strike by 1,400 service workers. The strike involved mechanics, grounds workers, facilities maintenance, sanitation workers and food service workers.
Trampling on workers’ democratic rights, the Teamsters apparatus quickly shut down picketing Saturday, without releasing the full terms of the agreement to the rank and file. Union officials have stated that the offer includes paltry wage increases of 3.5 percent annually for two years, followed by 3 percent for a third year. Under conditions of rising inflation and escalating tariffs, this will result in a cut in real wages.
Workers must reject this agreement on principle. The union bureaucracy has shut down the strike in an anti-democratic effort to force workers into accepting the deal, repudiating the old labor maxim of “no contract, no work.” As one worker put it on social media, “Well, I have questions. Shouldn’t we not be going back in there until the contract is voted on.”
The strike was shut down precisely because it was garnering wide support among workers, students and the broader population. Organizers of the Farm Aid concert, featuring Willie Nelson and other prominent musicians, had stated in the past week that their crews and performers would not cross the service workers’ picket line for the scheduled September 20 concert.
The Teamsters have yet to publicly announce when the vote will take place, but workers must demand adequate time to carefully study, discuss and organize opposition to it. UMN service workers should follow the courageous recent example of striking Boeing workers in St. Louis, who defied an effort by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union to force through a third sellout deal last week.
12. Collapse of car lender Tricolor sends out a tremor
The collapse last week of the Texas-based subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings and its filing for bankruptcy, stating it was going out of business rather than undertaking a restructuring, has raised concern that it could be the harbinger of similar events.
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Tricolor’s business model was a repeat of the sub-prime mortgage operation that played a central role in sparking the financial crisis of 2008.
While most media commentary noted this fact, there were reassurances that Tricolor was an outlier rather than a harbinger of a broader crisis and that the subprime auto lending market was only an eighth of the size of the subprime mortgage market at the time of the crash.
But there were concerns, nonetheless, because major banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, and the regional US bank Fifth Third, each of which has around $200 million in exposure to Tricolor and were named as secured lenders in its bankruptcy filing.
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The immediate cause of the collapse was the announcement on Tuesday last week that the Justice Department was investigating possible fraud on the basis that Tricolor had used the same collateral on multiple loans.
The filing for bankruptcy said the company had more than 25,000 creditors and between $1 billion and $10 billion in liabilities—a disparity that would seem to indicate a chaotic accounting system.
The company made loans to people often in very straightened circumstances, desperate in need of transport to obtain work and leading a precarious existence. Tricolor’s average loan of $21,381 carried an interest rate of more than 16 percent.
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Subprime lenders such as Tricolor, a report by CNN explained, actually expected borrowers to default on their loans because they could quickly repossess the car in question and then resell it. Some even installed GPS tracking devices to enable repossession teams to quickly find them, and in some cases, could even disable the ignition systems once there was a default on a loan.
The Tricolor collapse is an indication that beneath the hype about the strength of the American economy, there is a very different situation for many of the poorest sections of the population, and more broadly, the growing divorce between the financial markets and the underlying real economy.
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It said that because of the rise in so-called shadow banking—the growth of non-bank private credit institutions—what is called a “mini-drama” involving a company little known outside a few states in the US, had “maxi-implications for banks everywhere.”
While the amounts involved at Tricolor were small in relation to the overall financial system, they were still significant. The underlying process was part of a wider trend.
“So-called asset-based lending, which involves slicing and dicing things such as auto debt, student debt, airplane leases, and mortgages, is a linchpin of the private credit revolution sweeping Wall Street.”
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Two “worrying possibilities” to emerge from the demise of Tricolor were that the “American consumer, notably the lower-income segment that Tricolor served, is in rougher shape than imagined” and that lenders who dole out auto loans and the like have not been careful in their underwriting choices, and their bank backers have not been asking the right questions.
13. Austin school district latest target in wave of Texas school closures and cutbacks
The prospect of extensive school closures looms over the Austin Independent School District (AISD) after 12 of its schools received failing marks from the Texas Education Agency (TEA). As a result, the affected schools will need to either close or make significant changes to improve their ratings based on performance on the state’s Assessments of Academic Readiness, a form of standardized testing.
Most of the schools with failing marks are in poor and ethnic minority communities. They have been starved of funds, and now deal with the threat of ICE and border patrol agents arriving to take away their students and family members.
The TEA’s plans have nothing to do with actually improving student outcomes. So-called turnaround plans typically involve firing teachers and administrators at affected schools and relinquishing campus space to private charter school operators.
In addition to the 12 schools in AISD, roughly one-third of the district’s 116 campuses also received “unacceptable” ratings. Many of those will also need to submit turnaround plans by November as well.
The plight of the Austin school district is part of a nationwide attack on public education at all levels of local, state and federal government. Trump’s billionaire education secretary, the wrestling magnate Linda McMahon, has overseen the termination of more than 1,400 workers from the Department of Education as part of Trump’s efforts to dismantle the agency altogether.
The funding cuts for education are accompanied by a campaign of political indoctrination of young school children. As Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, the fascistic Stephen Miller, stated in May, “Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots.” Miller further clarified that any schools the administration believes to be promoting “communist ideology” and left-wing ideology in general will have federal government funding withheld.
Under Trump, ICE agents and border patrol agents are invading the areas around public schools, terrifying innocent children, parents and teachers alike.
In response, the trade unions have done absolutely nothing to mobilize workers against these horrific attacks. The Democrats, for their part, have responded to Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard by claiming that local police forces are sufficient for a crackdown.
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In Austin, staff and parents at Guerrero Thompson Elementary told the Austin American Statesman how teachers shepherd immigrant parents and children to dark classrooms and supply closets until ICE agents depart, akin to the hiding of Jews in Nazi Germany.
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Although the Texas state government loudly trumpeted a new public education funding bill in May, the bill does nothing to offset massive long-term cuts.
Prior to the bill’s passage, the state of Texas had not increased the basic funding allotment to public schools since 2019, despite the fact that overall inflation rose by 26 percent during the same period.
But the bill only increased the basic allotment by $55 per student per year. A previous state bill, which would have increased the basic funding allotment by $220 per student, was vetoed by far-right Texas Governor Greg Abbott earlier this year. Abbott also vetoed $60 million in funding for summer lunch programs for low-income children in the latest bill.
Abbott also signed into law this year a private school voucher program, one of the largest in the country, providing up to $10,000 per family with taxpayer funds to attend private schools, including religious schools.
Other regressive measures recently passed by the Abbott administration include bans on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies in K-12 schools and encouraging ultra-right parents and school boards to ban books and attack science.
In a blatant attack on the separation of church and state, the Texas state government has also attempted to make displays of the Ten Commandments mandatory in public school classrooms. The recently passed Senate Bill 11 allows district school boards to dictate policies allowing time during the school day for students to read the Bible and other religious texts.
Union officials of five Long Island Railroad (LIRR) unions announced Monday that they have called off a potential strike for Thursday. Instead, they are asking fascistic President Donald Trump to intervene in their contract struggle against the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
This declaration came as news broke that members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike action. The almost 600 engineers carry about 250,000 riders each weekday between Long Island and New York City. The members of the other four unions have also voted for strike action.
However, instead of organizing a walkout, the five union heads are asking Trump to appoint a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), which could postpone a legal strike for 60 days. After that, if another PEB is activated, it would delay any job action until mid-May of next year.
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In appealing to Trump, the union chiefs have aligned themselves with the would-be dictator preparing to deploy troops all over the country, including New York City, to crush resistance in the working class.
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The wage improvements that the LIRR unions are fighting for are, if anything, extremely modest given the cost-of-living crisis and prospects for massive further cost increases due to tariffs. There are 60 craft unions in the LIRR, most of whom settled for a 9.5 percent wage hike over a three-year period. The workers of the five unions holding out are demanding more than that, considering the high cost of living and what other railroaders in the country are making.
The MTA has already stated that it is willing to agree to higher wages but only in exchange for offsetting work-rule concessions. This is similar to the contract which ended the three-day New Jersey Transit engineers’ strike in May of this year.
This is not the first time that the rail union bureaucrats have asked the federal government to intervene to block a strike by their own members. In 2022 talks with Class I freight carriers, they requested a PEB from the Biden administration, claiming that the White House would take the workers’ side and force the companies to back down from their demands.
Instead, the PEB proposed a sellout contract, touching off a rank-and-file rebellion. A national strike was only narrowly averted by the unions stalling for time long enough to allow Congress to pass a bipartisan law to ban a strike and impose the deal which workers had rejected.
But to make this request to the fascist Trump, who is openly working with rail executives to determine which cities to send troops into next, represents a new stage in the utter hostility of the bureaucrats to the workers they claim to represent. They are essentially auditioning for a role as labor police under the new regime Trump is attempting to construct.
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To deflect anger over its own betrayals, the BLET has launched a racist campaign blaming Mexican rail crews for threatening railroad jobs in the US.
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The Democratic Party, which has completely accepted the right-wing narrative in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting, has also openly appealed to Trump to intervene against the railroad workers. Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “The Trump administration can prevent this right now by ordering both sides back to mediation. If they refuse, LIRR riders should know exactly who is to blame.” Hochul attacked him for not moving more aggressively against the workers: “The White House already intervened, and they screwed us in the process. They never should have given license to stop the negotiations. They never should have shut it down and given authority to strike.”
The MTA, which is part of the state government, had also prepared a plan to use bus operators to act as strike-breakers, a plan that none of the unions objected to.
Hochul’s statement shows how the cowardice of the Democrats in the face of Trump flows from their defense of the interests of the ruling class whom Trump also represents. They are far more terrified by the working class than they are even of an American dictatorship.
On Sunday, the governor also penned a guest essay for the New York Times officially endorsing Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for mayor of New York City. To the shock of the party establishment and Wall Street, Mamdani won the Democratic primary this summer by campaigning against poverty and inequality. Since then, he has done everything he can to reassure corporate America that he is no threat to their interests.
Significantly, Mamdani has said nothing about the potential strike, despite or rather because of the galvanizing impact that the shutting down of the city’s most used commuter rail system would have on the working class in New York City and nationwide. In 2022, members of the DSA in Congress voted to ban a rail strike.
15. Horrific death of UK worker after falling into silo
A worker died on September 8 after falling 30 feet into an empty silo at his place of work, Dugdale Nutrition, in the Speke area of Liverpool.
Merseyside Police, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) and North West Ambulance were called at 7.20 p.m. A hazardous response team from MFRS were seen entering a silo behind Dugdale Nutrition wearing breathing apparatus to check for gas. Readings were at normal levels.
Police said the 43-year-old man, who has not been named, was pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation will be carried out between Merseyside Police and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The Liverpool Echo newspaper reported that the company is currently being prosecuted by the HSE for alleged safety violations unrelated to this tragedy. The first court hearing at Liverpool Magistrates Court, under Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety Work Act 1974, will take place on October 9.
On its website, Dugdale Nutrition describes itself as a family-owned business with a long history selling animal feed. It operates on sites in Speke and Clitheroe, Lancashire.
It is not yet known what job the victim occupied, but the company is presently advertising a “skilled Production Operative” job. The work appears arduous—a “fast-paced environment”, working in a small team involving a 4-days-on, 4-days-off shift system, working days and nights alternately. A “commitment to complete daily targets are a priority.” The “competitive” salary is not stated.
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The death at Speke highlights the toll of workplace deaths suffered by the working class every year.
The latest figures for work-related deaths for 2024/25 published by the HSE are 124 fatalities. They report that “92 people who were not at work were killed in work-related incidents in 2024/25. This refers to members of the public who were in a workplace but were not working themselves.”
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Figures released by the HSE in November for 2023/24 showed 138 fatalities in incidents related to work and 604,000 non-fatal self-reported injuries compiled by the Labour Force Survey. Under the UK regulation RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences) employers reported 61,663 work related non-fatal injuries.
Workers also suffer from mental health issues related to work. According to the HSE, 1.7 million people self-reported work-related ill health, similar to the previous year, and higher than the pre-pandemic level—possibly indicating the incidence of long COVID cases. These ill health statistics translate to 33.7 million working days lost.
Half of that number, or 776,000, reported illness associated with stress, anxiety or depression.
Stress-inducing factors relating to work include speed-ups and working to targets, long hours, staff shortages, problems juggling childcare with work commitments, an expectation that workers who are ill should drag themselves into work including with COVID, poor pay and fear of redundancy.
Other work-related illnesses include 543,000 self-reported sufferers of musculoskeletal disorders, the result of previous or recent work-related wear and tear on the body.
The industry with the most work-related deaths in 2023/24 was construction, most related to falling from a height. In this timeframe 51 workers died. The number of agricultural deaths was 23, the next highest, then manufacturing with 16.
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The Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has no intention of addressing dangers at work. With mounting national debt, governments throughout Europe are concluding they can no longer afford the welfare state, including spending money on occupational health and safety.
As long as the safety and well-being of workers is subordinated to production for profit, avoidable deaths and injuries at work will continue.
These figures are an indictment of capitalism, and all parliamentary parties, including Labour, and the complicity of the trade union bureaucracy. While the Trades Union Congress provides training for health and safety representatives, the collaboration of their affiliated unions with employers to increase profitability comes at the expense of the safety, health and well-being of members.
16. Abiy opens Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam amid escalating tensions in Horn of Africa
On September 11, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed officially opened the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a $5 billion megaproject that has been under construction since 2011. Operations started in February 2002, with the reservoir gradually filling behind the massive concrete dam.
The 1.8km wide and 145 metres high dam across a section of the Blue Nile in western Ethiopia, 30km from the border with Sudan, contains nearly double the volume of water in China’s Three Gorges Dam. While the latter is largely a water management project for China’s Yangtse basin, the GERD, which impacts the Nile’s flow to Sudan and Egypt, was designed as a hydroelectric power station, Africa’s largest.
It is expected to produce around 5,150MW of electricity, more than doubling Ethiopia’s present output, under conditions where nearly half of Ethiopia’s 130 million live without electricity, and enable Ethiopia to export power to Kenya, Tanzania, and Djibouti, to the tune of $427 million in export revenues this fiscal year, eventually bringing in $1 billion a year.
Abiy declared on the completion of the dam in July, “To our downstream neighbors, Egypt and Sudan, our message is simple: the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity.” But the dam, which has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and East Africa, is mired in toxic geopolitics.
Denouncing the dam as an “existential” threat, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said he would use “all available means to defend Egypt’s interests”.
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Cairo fears that in times of drought, a now recurring event, Ethiopia may reduce the flow to Sudan and Egypt, plunging millions of farmers into penury. It pointed to the 1929 and 1959 treaties—orchestrated by Britain, the colonial power in Egypt and Sudan—that granted Egypt authority over Nile waters and, under the 1959 treaty, 66 percent of the Nile’s flow, to the detriment of the upstream countries of the Blue Nile and the White Nile.
For decades, Egypt was able to marshal its international support, combined with military threats and diplomatic pressure, to sustain its control. But the upstream countries rejected the colonial era treaties, arguing that they privileged Egypt and Sudan at their expense. In 2010, they adopted the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) for the Nile Basin that committed its signatories to using the river “in an equitable and reasonable manner” and to “achieve optimal and sustainable use” while protecting the resource and respecting each other’s interests. Under this agreement, the CFA must resolve disputes about the use of Nile water resources. But years of negotiations have failed to produce an agreement on how they will share the water from the Nile, particularly in times of drought
As yet only Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi have signed the agreement, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya still to do so. Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan rejected it outright. Egypt tried to take the case to the United Nations Security Council in 2021, to no avail. The reduction in the Nile flow makes water-intensive crops like rice, a staple food in Egypt, uneconomic and has increased the cost of irrigation, threatening Egypt’s food security.
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Those attending the official inauguration of the dam last week included Kenyan President William Ruto, African Union chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf and Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh. Also attending was Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who has drawn closer to Egypt, preparing to welcome Egyptian troops to Somalia, ostensibly to fight Al-Shabaab.
Egypt and Sudan refused to send representatives, releasing a joint statement warning that the dam “breached international law and would cause grave consequences to the two downstream countries”.
In recent talks with US CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla, el-Sisi insisted the Nile was a “national security issue” and expressed his appreciation for President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker an agreement. Trump pledged swift resolution of the dispute, saying the dam was “closing up water going to the Nile”, which he described as “a very important source of income and life … to take that away is pretty incredible.”
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The GERD project has become entangled with Ethiopia’s efforts to gain access to a port on the Red Sea, drawing in Somalia and Eritrea, where tensions are rising over issues of national sovereignty, water disputes, historical border disputes and the rival interests of the major as well as regional powers.
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Ethiopia, the headquarters of the African Union, the Horn of Africa’s powerhouse and for a long period the region’s anchor state on behalf of US imperialism, is sited at the crossroads between Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
The Red Sea, a vital global trade route connecting Asia and Europe, has become a geopolitical hotspot drawing the attention of international naval forces. The US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Israel and China—which paid for the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway as part of its Belt and Road Initiative and gained significant control over Ethiopia’s main import-export route—are all jockeying for position, backing rival states and competing factions within them.
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As the world’s most populous landlocked country, Ethiopia is reliant on neighboring countries to provide trade access, with 95 percent of its trade by volume going through Djibouti, following Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war.
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Ethiopia’s GERD and demand for Red Sea access reflect its growing economic aspirations and strategic insecurities that threaten to destabilize the entire region. More fundamentally, they are rooted in objective structural contradictions deriving from the private ownership of the means of production and the outmoded and reactionary nation-state system. They can only be resolved by the advance to a new and higher form of global society, international socialism.
17. German auto supplier ZF: IG Metall trade union and management plan drastic cuts
Just one month ago, the IG Metall trade union and the works council at ZF organized nationwide protests, involving 12,000 employees, against planned job cuts. Now union officials are planning the cuts together with the ZF executive.
While ZF workers demonstrated their readiness to fight for their jobs, the protests merely served as leverage for the works council and IG Metall to become involved in the development of the restructuring program.
“On the sidelines of a supervisory board meeting,” reported Wirtschaftswoche, the ZF works council led by Achim Dietrich and IG Metall, whose district official in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Barbara Resch, is deputy chair of the ZF supervisory board, drafted a document together with the company executive. The grandly named “Alliance for Competitiveness and Job Security” is due to develop proposals by the end of September.
Anyone familiar with IG Metall knows that workers will foot the bill for more than doubling the company’s profit rate in the wake of the crisis.
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The attacks on jobs and wages that are now being worked out are intended not only to avoid losses, but also to boost profits. The ZF board has set a central target that each factory must achieve a profit margin of at least 10 percent. If this target is not met, closure or sale is imminent.
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Workers at the company headquarters in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, and especially in Schweinfurt and Saarbrücken, fear massive cuts. Around 8,600 people work in Schweinfurt, around 5,900 of them in “Division E.” The local works council chairman, Oliver Moll, said at the end of July that up to 4,000 jobs could be lost. In Saarbrücken, more than half of the 8,500 jobs could go if parts of production are relocated to Hungary as planned by the board. No plant is exempt from the downsizing plans.
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Management and IG Metall have always attached great importance to the fact that ZF is owned by the Zeppelin Foundation of the city of Friedrichshafen and is not at the mercy of aggressive investment funds on the stock market.
Now, however, it is becoming clear that ZF is subject to the same capitalist laws as all other corporations. The workforce faces the same attacks as their colleagues at Volkswagen, Mercedes, Bosch and every other car manufacturer and supplier. The corporate management style, which until recently was emphatically “family-oriented,” is being abandoned and adapted to the necessities of brutal global competition. This is because the goal of the Zeppelin Foundation of the City of Friedrichshafen is, in addition to “exclusively charitable and non-profit purposes,” also the “preservation of the basic assets and the resulting dividend distributions,” as stated on Wikipedia.
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The attacks at ZF are an expression of the international crisis in the auto industry. All over the world, jobs are being destroyed, social gains and democratic rights are being eroded, and the working class is under frontal attack. The money saved is being used to finance genocide, war and an insane military buildup.
18. Jobs massacre in Germany: Establish independent action committees!
A wave of job destruction is sweeping across Germany. The trade unions, led by IG Metall, are closing ranks with corporations and the government. The working class is to pay for the profits of the rich and the corporations—not only in Germany, but worldwide.
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On June 30, 5.42 million people were employed in German industry, 114,000 fewer than 12 months earlier. In the six weeks since, German corporations announced the elimination of more than 125,000 jobs. Germany’s largest steel corporation, Thyssenkrupp, is cutting every second to third job, a total of 11,000. Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) plans to cut 30,000 jobs, and its subsidiary Cargo to cut 5,000. SAP is reducing its workforce in Germany by 3,500 and worldwide by 10,000. Deutsche Post is cutting 8,000 jobs and Commerzbank 3,900.
Auto manufacturers and their suppliers had already announced massive job cuts: VW, 35,000; Mercedes, 40,000; Ford, 2,900; Audi, 7,500; Daimler Truck, 5,000; ZF, 14,000; and Bosch, Continental and Schaeffler, a total of 7,000. Over 51,000 jobs have already been destroyed in the auto industry in the last 12 months.
The apparatus of the trade unions—especially the two largest, IG Metall and the Verdi (United Services Union)—have made it their mission to implement these cuts. The term “trade union” is misleading. They no longer have anything in common with the organizations that were once built to defend workers’ interests. Instead, they serve as an extension of the corporations and act as company police—the Ford workers in Saarlouis spoke of a “mafia”—blocking and sabotaging every struggle.
The union’s “future contracts,” “job security agreements” and “social collective agreements” are the opposite of what their names promise. At Thyssenkrupp Steel, under the banner “Securing jobs for the future,” 11,000 of 27,000 jobs are being cut and wages reduced by 8 percent. One more such “employment security” measure will be the death blow for Thyssenkrupp Steel.
The trade unions are not only on the side of the corporations on the home front, but also in the global economic, customs and trade war. IG Metall immediately welcomed meetings for the auto and steel industries announced by Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU). Christiane Benner, chairperson of IG Metall, is calling on employers to finally end the relocation debate and work together with employees to build a strong, innovative auto industry. While US President Donald Trump bleats “America First,” IG Metall responds with “Germany First,” and euphemistically calls for an “end to the relocation debate.”
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The trillions for armament, war and trade war are to be paid for by a general attack on all remaining social gains.
Citizens’ income is to be cut by €5 billion annually. Funds for refugees have already fallen below subsistence level. The attack on the weakest members of society is paving the way for the dismantling of the entire social system. On September 1, the FAZ newspaper complained that the welfare state was stifling economic growth with “the misguided citizen’s income, the ever-promoted sense of entitlement and high social security contributions.” “Beloved” things must be given up “so that the economy can pick up speed again.”
Everything workers have fought for over the last 150 years is under attack: continued payment of wages in the event of illness, medical care, care in old age, the eight-hour day, retirement at 67. If the ruling class and the CDU-SPD coalition government have their way, all this will soon be a thing of the past.
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The same ruling class that is calling for austerity measures is enriching itself as never before and spending trillions on armament and war. German imperialism is striving for world power for the third time.
19. Harassment of framed-up Alton Estate workers continues in Sri Lanka
On September 10, the Hatton Magistrate’s Court in Sri Lanka took up the case against 26 framed-up Alton Estate workers. The proceedings were postponed, however, until December 10 because the main witnesses—estate manager Sathyamoorthy Subash Narayanan and assistant manager Anushan Thiruchelvam—failed to appear in court.
Police claimed that they were unable to serve summons because Narayanan’s address is unknown and Thiruchelvam is currently abroad. All 26 accused workers, including a mother carrying her newborn infant, were present in court.
The workers are charged with unlawful assembly with the intent to assault Narayanan and Thiruchelvam, causing them serious injuries using hands, feet, and clubs, and damaging the estate manager’s residence.
If convicted under Sri Lanka’s Penal Code, they face up to seven years in prison and heavy fines. The accused have denied all allegations. Despite Tamil being the workers’ mother tongue, the charge sheets were issued in Sinhala, violating their constitutional and legal rights.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the Plantation Workers Action Committee (PWAC) urge the workers across Sri Lanka and internationally to redouble their support in defense of the victimised Alton workers.
20. Opening Report to the Founding Congress of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal
Ulaş Sevinç (Ateşçi), who was elected as national chairman or the newly-formed branch of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in Turkey gives an initial address to its members.
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This report explains the historical and international foundations and political perspectives of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi, placing them in the context of the deepening crisis of the global capitalist system and the struggle for socialist revolution today.
21. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Universities and Garrahan Hospital workers stage protest strike
Canada:
Canada Post union caves in to management demands, lifts overtime ban ahead of holiday season
Canada Post union caves in to management demands, lifts overtime ban ahead of holiday season
Chile:
Rally marks 52 years since Salvador Allende’s overthrow
Rally marks 52 years since Salvador Allende’s overthrow
Peru:
Ecuador retiree protests continue
Ecuador retiree protests continue
United States:
Las Vegas warehouse workers vote to strike Kroger subsidiary
Amazon fires 150 New York contract drivers
22.
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.
