Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Perspective: Why has Hegseth summoned military commanders to Washington?
The summoning of the generals must be assessed in the context of Trump’s escalating efforts to establish a fascist dictatorship at home. National Guard troops already occupy Washington D.C., following Trump’s August 11 declaration of a state of emergency over a nonexistent “crime wave” in the US capital. This past weekend, Trump and his inner circle staged a grotesque memorial for fascist agitator Charlie Kirk in Arizona, transforming it into a Nuremberg-style rally. [US Secretary of War Pete] Hegseth himself addressed the gathering, declaring the United States to be in the midst of a “spiritual war,” while Trump vowed to unleash the National Guard against American cities.
In his remarks to the press Thursday afternoon, after signing a presidential memorandum targeting “antifa” and the “radical left” as “domestic terrorists,” Trump reiterated his plans to send federal agents and National Guard troops into Chicago and Memphis, while pushing lie after lie about the need to do the same in Portland, Oregon, which has the biggest drop in murders of any city in America. He portrayed the city as in the grip of “antifa,” which does not even exist as an organization but is cited endlessly by Trump and his aides as a justification for military-police takeover of urban America.
Carrying out such actions on a wide scale would require the deployment of regular troops along with the police and National Guard. Top Pentagon officials opposed his plans to declare martial law during the mass protests which followed the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020, and Trump has never forgiven or forgotten that. The principal lesson Trump and his advisers drew from the failure of his violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021 was the necessity of bringing the military under his direct personal control.
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Hegseth’s extraordinary order recalling virtually the entire senior command to Washington must therefore be seen as a test of loyalty, a warning and potentially the prelude to a purge of any figures considered unreliable.
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The Washington Post reported the summoning of the generals and admirals to Quantico in a report prominently displayed on its website Thursday morning. By Thursday evening, no prominent Democrat had so much as issued a statement on the matter. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a press conference devoted to the impending federal shutdown in which he made no warning of the imminent threat to democratic rights and constitutional processes.
The principal concern of the Democrats is to reach an agreement with Trump to continue and intensify the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the keystone of the foreign policy of the Biden administration. If Trump shifts in that direction, as indicated in his remarks at the UN, the Democratic Party will not quibble over efforts to slash social spending and turn the First Amendment into a dead letter.
The silence of the Democrats stands in sharp contrast to the mounting opposition among working people and broad sections of the population to the Trump administration’s rampage against democratic rights. This opposition must be consciously developed, for the Democrats’ prostration before Trump’s ongoing and escalating coup underscores the necessity for the working class to intervene independently into the political crisis, breaking with the corporate-controlled two-party system and launching a struggle on the basis of a socialist program.
2. Peru: Union leaders end 14-day strike by 60,000 EsSalud healthcare
The end of the strike brings relief to tens of thousands of EsSalud affiliates where medical appointments, including surgeries, were delayed. Union leaders had emphasized the fight for better services for the 13 million members of the public health system, but this critical issue receives little attention in the signed agreement.
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The majority of the 13 million Peruvians served by EsSalud are from the working and middle classes—both professionals and non-professionals—who rely on EsSalud for their families’ healthcare. In contrast, wealthier families tend to opt for more expensive private health insurance.
EsSalud has become a significant target for corrupt politicians and entrepreneurs seeking to enrich themselves. With annual funding of about 17.477 billion soles (approximately US$5 billion) from member contributions, many exploit the system by diverting these funds to private contracts instead of investing in necessary medical equipment.
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The union leadership shut down the strike as it became apparent that its continuation would lead to a confrontation with the bourgeois state. The Ministry of Labor declared the strike unlawful, warning of potential dismissals for those who failed to return to work. Although emergency services were operational, securing appointments became increasingly challenging, causing public anxiety.
The dictatorial government of President Dina Boluarte signaled its aim of exploiting delays in medical treatment as a pretext to declare a state of emergency and deploy the military against healthcare workers and silence their demands for an end to corruption and theft at EsSalud.
Boluarte’s government, along with its corrupt allies in Congress, attempted to blame and intimidate strikers. Boluarte’s disapproval rating exceeds 80 percent nationwide. Known as “Dina Asesina [Murderer],” her order to shoot protesters after she took power in December 2022—following a CIA-supported coup against democratically elected President Pedro Castillo—resulted in 49 deaths, including eight youth.
3. Book Review: “Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War” by Michael Vorenberg
... [E]very contemporary issue, from the genocide of the people of Palestine and escalating global war to skyrocketing social inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s efforts to establish a dictatorship, shows that there is no genuine opposition to the destruction of democracy from any faction of the ruling class. Unlike in the 1860s, there is no progressive political representative of American capitalism.
A key political lesson must be drawn from this historic fact: The task of defending the democratic and egalitarian essence of the American Revolution and Civil War falls to the working class. Marx understood this as early as 1865. As he wrote to Lincoln on behalf of the First International that year: “The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes.”
4. The Stalinist counterrevolution during the Spanish Civil War
This is a lecture that was delivered by Alejandro López, a writer on Spain and other topics for the World Socialist Web Site, at the Socialist Equality Party (US) International Summer School, held August 2-9, 2025. It is the final part of a three-part lecture on the Great Terror in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Part 1 is posted here and Part 2 here.
5. US bankrolls fascist Milei regime ahead of Argentine elections
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday a potential $20 billion currency swap arrangement with the government of fascist President Javier Milei in Argentina in a brazen act of election meddling.
Using the funds of the US state to prop up a regime whose support is collapsing ahead of the October 2025 legislative elections and already casting a shadow over the 2027 presidential contest, Bessent was unambiguous in framing the intervention as a direct “endorsement” of Milei.
The Argentine president’s approval rating fell below 40 percent for the first time this month amid an unraveling corruption scandal involving paybacks to his sister through the National Agency for the Disabled.
For Argentina, the swap means the US Treasury would transfer US dollars to Argentina’s central bank, with Argentina supplying pesos in return. This acts as a line of credit or liquidity support—Argentina gets access to the dollars it desperately needs to pay debts and import, and prevent a currency run.
Bessent confirmed that the Trump administration is also preparing to buy up Argentine sovereign bonds and provide massive emergency financing through the US Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). Established in 1934, the ESF is a US Treasury slush fund designed to intervene in currency and bond markets to “support allied economies” and “mitigate monetary instabilities”—typically in crisis situations, as with the $20 billion swap extended to Mexico during the Tequila Crisis of 1995.
Every aspect of the US-Argentine deal is characterized by naked political interference in the name of “market reforms,” with the chief aim of reasserting US imperialist control in the face of China’s growing influence across the continent.
This intervention must be read in the context of increasingly open threats of economic and even military retaliation by Washington against governments across Latin America that present the slightest resistance to its domination. This includes new sanctions and tariffs against Lula da Silva’s administration in Brazil for the conviction of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro—paired with a military buildup in the Caribbean aiming to orchestrate a putsch or military intervention against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro government.
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Bessent’s glowing reviews of Milei’s record—insisting that Argentina is “doing a fantastic job” and that his “broad liberalization of prices” and “deregulation” constitute “important strides toward stabilization”—are patently absurd when confronted with the reality of Argentina’s deepening financial disaster.
Far from stabilizing anything, Milei’s “shock therapy” has hit the working class with unprecedented austerity: collapsing wages, a steep recession, mass layoffs, social spending cuts, and a spike in poverty, all amidst “critically low” reserves acknowledged by the IMF. Only last week, the central bank spent $1.1 billion in reserves in three days to prop up the peso, following another wave of devaluations, merely months after Milei loosened currency controls in line with IMF diktats.
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This massive backstopping is the clearest evidence of Trump’s—and by extension the American ruling class’s—elevation of the “loco” Milei as “a systematically important ally,” in the words of Bessent. It is the forging of an axis of brittle, authoritarian regimes ruthlessly determined to crush working class opposition, from the Southern zone to Washington.
6. Germany: Thyssenkrupp Steel: IG Metall union promotes sale to Indian billionaire
Shortly after the IG Metall union and its works council representatives pushed through the elimination of almost one in two jobs at Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE), the Indian corporation Jindal International Steel submitted a takeover bid. The trade union apparatus immediately welcomed it. Their concern is not the long-term safeguarding of jobs, as they claim, but solely their own privileges.
The offer does not come directly from the listed Jindal Steel company, but from the unlisted Mauritius-based holding Jindal Steel International. Finance daily Handelsblatt reports: “This company is active in several countries, but its financial position is difficult to assess.”
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Naveen Jindal’s company produced 8.1 million tonnes of steel last year, according to the World Steel Association, generating revenue of around €4.8 billion and a profit margin of 19 percent—significantly more profitable than Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe. With 10.3 million tonnes of steel, Thyssenkrupp achieved revenues of €10.7 billion, but with a profit margin of less than 3 percent.
Reports suggest that Jindal initially wants to take a 60 percent stake and later acquire all of TKSE. Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, who holds 20 percent of the company and wanted to increase this to 50 percent, has not yet commented on Jindal’s offer. Thyssenkrupp’s steel division is valued at €1.2 billion, but pension liabilities most recently stood at €2.5 billion, which Jindal, like Křetínský, will not take on without compensation. It is therefore assumed that parent company Thyssenkrupp AG will pay extra to rid itself of the steel division.
The takeover of Thyssenkrupp’s steel division is part of the expansion strategy of the Indian billionaire, who since last year has also sat in parliament for the Hindu-chauvinist ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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To defend the traditional Thyssenkrupp steelworks along the Rhine and Ruhr, a fight against the union apparatus and its works council reps is necessary.
The first step requires new fighting organisations: rank-and-file action committees controlled by workers themselves. IG Metall works council reps have no place in them. These committees must fight for the broadest mobilization of the working class in Germany, Europe and internationally. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) and the World Socialist Web Site offer their support in this fight.
UPS issued the customary perfunctory statement following the preventable death: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of one of our team members… Our thoughts are with their family, friends and colleagues during this difficult time.”
Behind these empty phrases lies the grim reality: UPS, the Teamsters bureaucracy, and the political establishment have collectively fostered a system in which workplace deaths are routine and workers’ lives are treated as expendable. Guerrero’s death is the predictable outcome of a safety regime subordinated to corporate profit through speed-up and understaffing.
8. Deaths in America's industrial slaugtherhouse continue as OSHA faces axe
Despite increasing signs of an economic slowdown there is no indication of a similar stagnation in America’s industrial slaughterhouse. Nearly six months after the death of Ronald Adams Sr. at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in southeast Michigan, there have been hundreds of more deaths in workplaces across the the US.
Comprehensive numbers are hard to come by due to the lack of government monitoring and spotty news reports, but on average, more than 100 workers are killed at work each week. This, even as the Trump administration is moving to impose drastic cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) charged with overseeing workplace safety.
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The deaths continue across all regions and states, impacting workers both young and old, native born and immigrant. While injury, illness, and fatality rates have declined substantially since the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1971, there are still over 5,000 deaths on the job annually. Estimates put annual deaths from occupational diseases, due to chronic exposure to chemicals and other toxins, at as many as 20 times the official figure.
Trump’s moves against OSHA are paired with sweeping deregulatory initiatives that will further erode already limited safeguards for millions of workers. The proposals include slashing agency funding, eliminating record-keeping requirements for COVID-19 cases, shelving long-promised new safety standards, and gutting the agency’s interpretation of the General Duty Clause—its principal tool for addressing hazards not explicitly covered by existing rules.
OSHA’s oversight and enforcement powers have always been extremely limited. The agency is chronically underfunded and understaffed. In recent decades funding and staffing have been pared back further under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
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Trump’s attack on OSHA is not the result of mere bureaucratic incompetence, but a conscious class policy dictated by the corporate and financial elite. For decades, successive Democratic and Republican administrations have starved OSHA of resources, leaving the agency with fewer inspectors today than almost any time since its founding in 1971.
As it currently stands, even if companies are cited for serious, willful safety violations leading to death, the maximum fines OSHA can levy are paltry, amounting to a rounding error in relation to the profits of major corporations.
9. Australia: Meeting of teachers opposes demolition of Melbourne public housing towers
On September 11, members of the Neighbourhood Action Committee (NAC), formed to fight the demolition of 44 public housing towers in Melbourne, spoke at a meeting of teachers at Footscray High School. The school is in an adjacent suburb to three of the five towers facing immediate demolition in Flemington and North Melbourne.
The Victorian Labor government is carrying out the demolition as part of a broader austerity offensive to force workers to pay for the state budget deficit. The demolitions are a class-war measure, aimed at driving low-income workers and other vulnerable people out of the inner-city suburbs, with the valuable land to be turned over to private developers.
10. Australian working class faces rental affordability crisis
A recent report on the housing crisis in Australia reveals a broken system of soaring rental costs, stagnant or declining wages, and the evisceration of public and social housing.
The report, “Out of Reach: Australia’s Rental Crisis and the Decline of Social Housing” was produced by Everybody’s Home, a national campaign organisation dedicated to raising attention to the housing crisis. It is based on SQM Research Weekly Rents Index, which tracks advertised rent prices across the country.
The report shows, through a comparison of current rental prices with those of three and ten years ago, that renters are “being pushed to the brink” as housing costs are not only outpacing wages, but are increasing at an ever faster rate.
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The “Out of Reach” report notes that the sharp rises in rent have emerged amid a “national failure to grow and maintain social housing.” The Australian Institution of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has reported that the proportion of social housing to total housing has declined from 4.7 percent in 2013 to just 4.1 percent in 2024, with some experts stating that the current social housing stock is as low as 3.8 percent.
The federal Labor government has promoted its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) as the “single biggest investment to support social and affordable housing in more than a decade,” with the aim of building 30,000 “social and affordable” homes over five years. Even if fulfilled, this represents just 5 percent of the estimated affordable housing shortage of around 600,000.
However, after being forced to confess earlier this year that not a single new home had been built under the scheme, Labor now claims that a meager 5,000 dwellings have been “completed,” more than three years after the HAFF was a central election promise. The government has not stated how many of these were newly built, rather than purchased and refurbished.
Meanwhile, state Labor governments are in fact worsening the housing crisis through the wholesale destruction of public housing.
11. United Kingdom: Starmer government plans privatization and destruction of National Health Service
Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting has made a series of high-profile interventions exposing the reality of the Starmer government’s “10 Year Health Plan for England”.
Claiming to want to save a National Health Service (NHS) in “critical condition” and “standing at an existential brink”, Labour intends to ramp up privatization by stealth and other measures that will end in the death of the state-run service.
Launched in July, the 10 Year Plan claimed it would make the NHS in England “Fit for the future” under conditions in which Streeting was denouncing resident doctors (formerly junior doctors) for demanding a pay increase after being underfunded for years.
The document dressed up Labour’s real plan for cuts, massive productivity increases and ramped-up privatization behind a swarm of buzzwords. Its core components include a “new care model” centered on community rather than hospital settings, and the creation of a “Neighbourhood Health Service, designed around you.”
The NHS would be shifted from “From analogue to digital”, so that “patients will have a ‘doctor in their pocket’ in the form of the NHS App, while staff will be liberated from a burden of bureaucracy and administration.”
The abolition of “bureaucracy” runs like a red thread throughout the document. What this means is the loss of thousands of administration workers whose jobs are in fact critical to the running of the NHS. “NHS England, the headquarters of the NHS,” will be combined “with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), reducing central headcount by 50%.”
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The fight to defend the NHS cannot be left to the unions, which have betrayed countless struggles of their members. Neither can it be left to what remains of the “left” within the Labour Party or those gathered around Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in Your Party.
These forces cannot defend the NHS because they refuse to challenge the capitalist system and call only for the mildest reforms—as the ruling elite is demanding the destruction of every social gain of the working class to fund a vast military rearmament. As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn opposed the development of a mass strike movement within the NHS against the Tories, consistently calling for the unions and management to negotiate deals preventing a genuine fightback.
What is required is a unified fight by all NHS grades—doctors and nurses, ambulance workers, hospital support staff including porters and caterers, and admin workers—who are kept isolated from one another by the various health unions.
Linking the many sections of health workers together requires the building of a network of rank-and-files committees democratically controlled by workers themselves. These committees will win a powerful response from millions of workers and their families who rely on the NHS.
12. United States: Rail unions throw support behind Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger
Two major rail unions have announced deals with Union Pacific (UP), paving the way for its mega-merger with Norfolk Southern to create America’s first transcontinental carrier.
The bureaucrats of both the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) claim their deals are historic victories. In reality, it amounts to their endorsement of the further monopolization of the rail industry. The merger would reduce the number of major Class I carriers in the US and Canada from six to five, down from seven only three years ago.
The announcement comes after months in which the rail unions have been signing separate deals at other carriers, effectively isolating UP workers from the rest of the around 100,000 national Class I workforce. Currently, BLET and SMART-TD are the only major unions that have not ratified agreements at UP; the only contract ratified by members of either union is by the BLET at CSX.
Worst of all, the deals effectively support a major corporate backer of Trump’s plans to send the military to occupy much of the US and establish a dictatorship. At a meeting to discuss the UP-NS merger, Trump reportedly asked UP CEO Jim Vena which cities he would like the president to send troops to. Vena chose cities which are major choke points for the rail system: Chicago, Memphis and St. Louis.
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A short time after this deal was announced, the BLET requested Trump intervene to block a strike on the Long Island Rail Road, the largest commuter network for the New York City area. Workers voted nearly unanimously to authorize a strike earlier this month.
This is not the first time that the union bureaucrats, joined at the hip with the government and terrified of a struggle from below which would threaten their positions, sought federal intervention through the appointment of a Presidential Emergency Board. Infamously in 2022, they sought a PEB under President Biden for the Class I carriers.
Workers overwhelmingly rejected a pro-company agreement based on the PEB’s proposals, shocking both the White House and the union officials, and workers then pushed instead for a national strike. This was avoided only by the unions stalling for weeks until after the midterm elections, in order to give Congress time to ban a strike and impose the rejected deal.
But to seek intervention from Trump is especially sinister, all the more so given that New York City is one of the places where he is threatening to send the National Guard. It amounts to an endorsement of dictatorship. As for the Democrats, who refuse to fight Trump because they also represent corporate America, New York Governor Kathy Hochul criticized Trump only for not intervening sooner.
Both the BLET and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWED) are part of the Teamsters union, which under General President Sean O’Brien is one of several major unions to embrace Trump on “America First” grounds. Falsely claiming tariffs will save American jobs—in reality, they are already leading to job losses and price increases—they seek to scapegoat foreign-born workers for the social disaster produced by endless union-backed concessions to US corporations.
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Organizing workers independently of the two parties and the corrupt union bureaucracy must be the basis for a powerful movement against Trump and the oligarchy. As the Socialist Equality Party explained in a recent statement, committees “must be established in every factory, workplace, school and neighborhood to organize resistance to Trump’s dictatorship … uniting all sections of the working class.
“These rank-and-file committees, spreading across all workplaces, will create new centers of coordinated social power upon which the defense of democracy throughout the country can be based. The mobilized working class will be able to inspire with confidence and unify all the now disparate elements of protest in a massive social movement against the hated government led and controlled by capitalist oligarchy.”
13. Trump administration prepares mass firings if federal shutdown commences
On Wednesday, the Trump White House issued a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which directs federal agencies to use the “opportunity” of a possible government shutdown to prepare mass firings.
The memo directs the heads of all the various federal agencies to prepare “Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities (PPA)” that will run out of funding on October 1, do not have alternate sources of funding and which do not align with Trump’s “priorities.”
Importantly, the memo calls on agency heads to revise their Reduction in Force plans once a budget is passed to retain only the “minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions,” meaning that even if an agreement is reached before September 30 it is entirely likely there will still be mass layoffs.
Since Trump’s return to the White House just over nine months ago, federal workers have been consistently threatened and targeted with job cuts. Under the guidance of centi-billionaire oligarch Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), tens of thousands of government workers have already been laid off, fired or bought out this year. As of April 2025, Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that DOGE actions were responsible for 280,253 cuts involving federal workers and contractors, impacting 27 agencies.
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There is mass anger among broad layers of the population over Trump’s attacks on federal and immigrant workers. Millions of people, including many who previously considered themselves Democrats, remain outraged that Schumer and nine other Democrats provided the necessary votes in March of this year to keep Trump’s government operating.
Following the passage of that spending bill in March, Trump and the Republicans continued to run roughshod over the democratic, economic and social rights of the working class while consolidating power within the executive branch. Armed with the funds supplied by the Democrats, the Trump administration continued the genocide in Gaza, launched illegal military strikes on Iran, illegally deployed US Marines to Los Angeles, and National Guard troops to Washington D.C. At the same time Trump withheld already appropriated funding for agencies and organizations such as the Public Broadcasting Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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While a few hundred workers have successfully, for now, managed to regain their positions through court action, tens of thousands of workers have not and remain unemployed.
In response to Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce, the major government trade unions, following the lead of the Democratic Party, have done nothing but file lawsuits in court, even as workers continue to lose their jobs and previously won protections.
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While Trump slashes jobs, guts health care and escalates repression against his political enemies, the Democrats posture as defenders of democracy even as they vote for Trump’s war budgets, commemorate his fascist minion Charlie Kirk, and prostrate themselves before his supposedly unstoppable power. The demand for “common ground” is nothing but a demand for workers to submit to the destruction of their livelihoods.
What is required is not “common ground” with the enemies and betrayers of the working class, but the development of independent political action by workers themselves, guided by a revolutionary perspective....
14. Israeli drone strike massacres family in southern Lebanon with ties to Dearborn, Michigan
The targeting of a family car in a town that has become a symbol of Lebanese resistance, in brazen violation of a ceasefire that was supposedly in effect, was a deliberate act of state terrorism. It was a political message aimed at terrorizing a population that has dared to resist Israeli occupation and US imperialist domination for half a century.*****
The Israeli missile that tore through the Charara family’s car in Bint Jbeil also struck the heart of a community 6,000 miles away in Dearborn, Michigan. Of the city’s nearly 23,000 residents of Lebanese descent 10,000 trace their direct lineage to Bint Jbeil, including members of Charara’s extended family. The same US foreign policy that fueled the conflicts that drove generations of Lebanese to seek refuge in Dearborn still provides bombs, missiles and political cover for the Israeli state.
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The immense grief and anger in Dearborn is a powerful expression of a fundamental truth: the working class has no country. The autoworkers, teachers, nurses and small business owners of Dearborn, Michigan have infinitely more in common with the people of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, than they do with the blood-soaked politicians and corporate oligarchs in Washington D.C.
Workers in the United States must join with their class brothers and sisters in Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and across the Middle East and the entire world to build a unified movement against war. This requires the construction of a new political leadership armed with the program of world socialist revolution. This is the only perspective capable of creating a society where families like the Chararas can live in peace, security and dignity.
15. Judge gives US government deadline to comply with order in Will Lehman’s UAW elections case
Ruling in favor of rank-and-file autoworker Will Lehman, a federal judge has ordered the U.S. Department of Labor to finally produce its “statement of reasons” for rejecting his challenge to the 2022-23 UAW International Executive Board elections, which he contends were characterized by widespread suppression of the votes of rank-and-file members and retirees by UAW officials.
The ruling, issued September 24 by Judge David Lawson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, sets an October 31 deadline for the government to provide its explanation, more than a year after it was first ordered to do so.
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In an order dated September 24, Judge Lawson noted the government’s delay and set October 31 as a binding deadline. He further ruled that Lehman, if he wishes, may file an amended complaint by November 14 once the government’s reasons are made public. This ruling effectively grants Lehman what he sought in the most recent lawsuit, namely an order for the government to comply with the law and do what it was ordered to do more than 450 days ago.
Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker and former candidate for UAW president, filed a lawsuit in September 2023 after the Biden administration refused to rerun the election despite overwhelming evidence of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. In that election, barely 9 percent of the membership cast ballots, with more than 90 percent of UAW members excluded through the deliberate suppression of notices and ballots.
In June 2024, Judge Lawson issued what Bloomberg Law described as a “rare rebuke” of the Labor Department. He found that the Biden administration had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in throwing out Lehman’s complaint on narrow procedural grounds. Lawson ordered the department to reopen the case and, at minimum, produce a supplemental statement of reasons why his complaint was being denied.
Instead, both the Biden and Trump administrations have stonewalled. For more than a year, the government failed to comply with Lawson’s order. In early September, government attorneys admitted in court filings that no statement of reasons had yet been produced, even while arguing that Lehman’s lawsuit was “premature” because there was not yet an official decision to review. This Catch-22 was transparently aimed at running out the clock until the next UAW election in 2026, nullifying Lawson’s ruling and shielding the union bureaucracy.
The UAW has been under federal supervision since 2021, when a consent decree was imposed following a corruption scandal that sent more than a dozen top officials to prison. Direct elections of officers were hailed as a “reform,” but in practice the 2022-23 vote was manipulated to keep power in the hands of the apparatus. Shawn Fain, a longtime UAW bureaucrat, emerged as president and has since carried out one betrayal after another.
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Responding to the latest decision by Lawson, Lehman said, “The court has just ruled in my favor, giving a deadline for the government to comply with the law and take the elementary step of actually providing reasons for rejecting my complaint over the blatant defects in the 2022 elections.
“The whole course of this lawsuit, which was the third I have had to file, demonstrates the absurd lengths to which rank-and-file workers must go just to have their complaints addressed, even when they are entitled to answers by law. The government’s repeated delays expose its contempt for the democratic rights of workers and the extent to which the deck is stacked in favor of the bureaucracy and against the rights of the rank and file.
Despite initial pledges of transparency and openness, both US Steel Corporation and the United Steelworkers have remained quiet on the August 11 explosion at the company’s Clairton Coke Works that killed 52-year-old Steven Menefee, and Timothy Quinn, age 39.
Their silence is an indication that both US Steel and the United Steelworkers are working to cover up the explosion and the company’s record of putting profits before workers’ safety.
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The silence by the United Steelworkers only ensures that the company will continue its practice leading to further accidents, injuries and death.
The United Steelworkers has long since become an agent of the companies, working with management to help maintain the profitability of US Steel against its competitors.
For decades, the USW has promoted nationalism and chauvinism, working to divide steelworkers in the United States from their class brothers and sisters in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, the companies cut tens of thousands of jobs, closed mills and imposed concessions.
Today they are allied with the Trump administration and support the imposition of tariffs. They say steelworkers must support Trump’s agenda of “America First” directed against China and in preparation for war.
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Steelworkers must reject the toxic nationalism of the USW in favor of a global strategy uniting steelworkers in every country against the corporate oligarchs in each country. Workers must reject the slogan of “America First” in favor of the slogan, “Workers of the World, Unite!”
17. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Egypt:
Aluminium workers in Qena on strike over cut in profit share
Aluminium workers in Qena on strike over cut in profit share
Namibia:
Production workers on strike
South Africa:Union agrees to sellout deal and calls off strike at Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality
Union agrees to sellout deal and calls off strike at Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality
Uganda:
Striking Ugandan teachers threatened with dismissal
Europe
Malta:
Bank workers at HSBC stage sit-down strike to protect pay after change of ownership
Bank workers at HSBC stage sit-down strike to protect pay after change of ownership
Portugal:
Union calls off airport workers’ strike after government’s arbitration court declares it illegal
Union calls off airport workers’ strike after government’s arbitration court declares it illegal
Spain:
Bus drivers in Oviedo strike for better working conditions
Bus drivers in Oviedo strike for better working conditions
United Kingdom:
Drivers at two First West of England’s City Line bus depots walk out over pay
Drivers at two First West of England’s City Line bus depots walk out over pay
Academic staff at University of Nottingham, England begin strike over job cuts
National Coal Mining Museum workers continue strike over low pay
Academic staff at University of Nottingham, England begin strike over job cuts
National Coal Mining Museum workers continue strike over low pay
Iran:
Arak Aluminium Company workers call off hunger strike as protests over wages and conditions escalate nationally
Arak Aluminium Company workers call off hunger strike as protests over wages and conditions escalate nationally
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
