Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Labor Day 2025: The union apparatus covers for dictatorship
2. “Silence implies consent”: The Democratic Socialists of America and Trump’s coup
The old Latin maxim qui tacet consentire videtur—“he who is silent is taken to agree”—has a long history. It was recognized in Roman law and later codified in canon law during the Middle Ages. The principle has echoed through legal and political history, invoked in situations where an individual or institution is expected to object but does not.
The broader meaning is clear: silence in the face of grave crimes is not neutrality, but complicity. To say nothing where objection is expected is to give approval by default. It is precisely in this sense that one should understand the refusal of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its leading publications to write on and oppose Trump’s ongoing coup.
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The DSA are not babes in the woods. For more than half a century, the organization and its predecessor, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), have functioned as a faction of the Democratic Party and of the capitalist foreign policy establishment. Its founder, Michael Harrington, declared that socialists must operate as the “left wing of the possible”—that is, adapting themselves to whatever policies the ruling class deemed acceptable at any given time. This has remained its guiding principle.
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The DSA, moreover, is not alone. Left Voice, the publication of the Morenoite tendency, has published all of one article on the deployments, under the headline, “Trump Is Openly Militarizing His Political Agenda,” which mentions the National Guard takeover of Washington D.C. in passing. The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) has written one statement, almost a month ago, which frames the occupation of D.C. entirely in racial terms.
The role of these organizations only underscores the basic political fact that opposition to fascism and dictatorship is, at its core, a class question. The defense of democratic rights cannot and will not come from the Democrats or their pseudo-left allies. It depends on the independent mobilization of the working class, in the US and internationally, fighting not only against dictatorship but against the capitalist system itself.
3. Income and wealth inequality in Canada reach a new record
Behind the numbers, a stark portrait emerges: a society in the throes of a deepening social crisis. Skyrocketing home prices and rents, especially in major urban centers, continue to push housing out of reach for many Canadians, fueling homelessness and financial strain. Homelessness in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, has more than doubled in the last three-and-a-half years.
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The response to the latest Stats Canada report by the press has been muted and predictable. The liberal-leaning newspapers made appeals to the Liberal Mark Carney government to make the tax system more progressive, increase the benefits for the less affluent and build affordable housing. Pseudo-left outfits made similar appeals in addition to suggesting that the solution lies in increasing workers’ unionization rates.
Such appeals are deceptive and politically bankrupt. A question must be asked: what is the economic and historic trajectory that led to the current situation? It is certainly true that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated current economic trends—but the path was laid decades ago.
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The trade union bureaucracy has served as a key mechanism for the enforcement of the ruling class’ onslaught, because it has worked to systematically demobilize all worker opposition as social inequality has exploded over the past four decades. The bureaucracy’s nationalist basis and pro-capitalist outlook means that their first loyalty is to the state. The bureaucracies maintain close ties to the NDP and the Liberals. They have embraced the former central banker Carney as a defender of “Canadian jobs,” as he has followed his predecessor Trudeau—who oversaw the banning a succession of strikes, including at Canada Post—by criminalizing the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike.
The primary concern of the well remunerated upper echelons of the trade union bureaucracies is the defense of their own privileges, which rest on a corporatist partnership with the state and big business. In the present stage of economic development, trade unions are not a bulwark against inequality. Their heyday—when the trade unions led workers to important victories by way of militant struggles within the nation-state framework—is in the distant past. Today, job actions isolated to a single country and a specific industry cannot be effective against powerful multinational companies.
The Canadian economy is facing strong headwinds due to the rising levels of debt, stagnant labor productivity, the impact of trade wars, and sharpening antagonisms between the imperialist powers amid an intensifying redivision of the world. The Canadian ruling elite is desperate to reach some sort of accommodation with the fascist government of President Donald Trump, which it views as the preferable way to wage war in pursuit of Canadian imperialism’s global predatory interests. But with Trump threatening to annex Canada as part of American imperialism’s preparations for an escalating world war, the new Liberal government is expanding its economic and military ties with European imperialism as a hedge.
4. Kennedy’s attacks on mRNA vaccines and science threaten global public health
[His] Harms Research Collection is not simply sloppy science. It is an intentional artifact of disinformation. By cloaking cherry-picked and distorted data in the trappings of research, Kennedy can claim to be “listening to the experts” while in fact substituting lies for evidence. This is the pseudo-scientific foundation on which he is building the case to strip away one of the most vital public health tools of the 21st century.
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Meanwhile, the [Covid-19] pandemic is not over. According to the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC), the United States is amid its 11th wave, with at least one in every 93 people currently infectious. That translates into 3.6 million new weekly infections—more than 500,000 a day—even before the return of tens of millions of students to classrooms. The result is projected to be 1,300-2,100 excess deaths each week and up to 720,000 new Long COVID cases over the coming months.
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Kennedy’s reliance on pseudo-scientific compilations and distorted statistics is not confined to rhetoric. It is being codified into policy in real time through sweeping budget cuts, institutional purges and the installation of loyalists in positions once held by scientific experts.
The scale of destruction is staggering. More than 20,000 HHS employees, including thousands of scientists and public health specialists, have been forced out. The NIH faces a $18 billion reduction, while CDC faces $3.6 billion in cuts, crippling their ability to conduct surveillance, manage outbreaks, or develop next-generation treatments. Internationally, Kennedy has cut US funding to Gavi, a decision projected to cause over one million preventable child deaths worldwide, while the defunding of USAID threatens millions more lives.
The damage goes far beyond COVID. mRNA cancer vaccines, such as Moderna and Merck’s melanoma treatment, which in trials reduced recurrence risk by nearly 50 percent, are now imperiled. Trials for lung, pancreatic, and kidney cancers that depend on the same infrastructure are at risk of collapse. HIV vaccine research, already showing promising immune responses in early trials, has been dismantled by Kennedy’s NIH leadership under Jay Bhattacharya. Scientists who signed the “Bethesda Declaration” condemned these moves as an ideologically driven attack on decades of biomedical progress.
Backlash has been fierce. Six Nobel laureates and 27 members of the National Academies have called for Kennedy’s removal, warning that his actions will cause a “deadly loss of confidence in vaccines.” Hundreds of CDC, NIH, and HHS employees signed a letter after the August 8 Atlanta CDC shooting, accusing Kennedy of fueling the climate of mistrust that led directly to violence. Their message laid the blame directly on Kennedy for dismantling America’s public health infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Kennedy is making vaccines harder to obtain and laying the groundwork for their removal altogether. Pharmacies are already requiring prescriptions or refusing to carry COVID vaccines. Advisory panels are stacked with ideologues. The peer-reviewed but deeply flawed work of Ioannidis now provides a veneer of legitimacy for the claim that vaccines saved “only” a few million lives.
5. UK Starmer government proclaims its anti-immigration plans to be the “central issue”
Britain’s Labour government announced policies Monday and Tuesday stepping up its assault on asylum seekers.
This was the Starmer government’s response to the furor whipped up by the far-right, backed by a xenophobic media, after the Court of Appeal decision to allow asylum seekers to remain in a hotel in Epping—reversing an earlier legal ruling that they had to leave.
On Monday, in the first statement from the government as Parliament returned from recess, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper suspended new applications under the existing family reunion route for refugees—which historically applied to spouses, partners, and children under 18. Families of refugees are now barred from entering, with Cooper telling MPs that this will allow the government to formulate an even stricter border regime.
Refugees will only be able to reunite with family members under standard family visa rules, with much stricter requirements such as earning a minimum £29,000 per year which millions of workers in the UK are nowhere near earning. The sponsor would have to demonstrate that they have adequate housing for their family and that a family member has a sufficient grasp of the English language.
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Solidarizing herself with the far-right led protests that have besieged asylum seekers in hotels for weeks, [Cooper ] added, “I understand and agree with local councils and communities who want the asylum hotels in their communities closed, because we need to close all asylum hotels—we need to do so for good.”
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Worshiping the English and UK flags is emblematic of Labour’s transformation into a political cesspit, ready to do whatever it takes to carry out an agenda of rearmament, war and austerity. “I’m the leader of the Labour Party who put the union jack on our Labour Party membership cards,” Starmer declared. “I always sit in front of a Union Jack. I’ve been doing it for years, and it attracted a lot of comment when I started doing it.”
6. Turkish parliament passes hypocritical resolution condemning Israel over Gaza genocide
On Friday, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey convened with an extraordinary agenda at the request of the opposition parties to discuss Israel’s attack on Gaza, the genocide against the Palestinian people, and the deliberately imposed famine.
The General Assembly meeting came after the United Nations officially declared a famine in Gaza last week and Israel accelerated its operations to seize and ethnically cleanse Gaza City with the support of the imperialist powers.
The resolution, which is nothing more than a hypocritical and deceptive statement reiterating the Turkish bourgeoisie’s so-called opposition to the Gaza genocide, was passed “by consensus” according to the speaker of the Turkish parliament. However, the deputies of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) and the Labor Party (EMEP), who entered parliament in alliance with the DEM Party, announced that they did not participate in the vote and did not vote “yes.”
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In recent days, many countries have criticised Israel in response to the worsening famine in Gaza, an evident war crime, in which they are directly implicated and which has fueled massive political opposition in their own countries. However, despite their rhetorical statements, these same states continue to trade with Israel, including by supplying it with weapons that enable it to continue its genocide, and continue to suppress anti-genocide opposition utilizing fabricated accusations of anti-Semitism and police repression.
Ankara itself continues to fuel the Zionist regime in Israel with oil coming from Azerbaijan through Turkey, and allows US use of military bases in the country for Israel’s benefit. Moreover, Turkey’s trade with Israel, including military materials, officially continues through Palestine.
The reaction of Turkey’s capitalist establishment parties to Israel has nothing to do with principled opposition to the genocide against Palestinians. Since 2002, while the Erdoğan government has played a critical role as an ally of the US and NATO in bloody wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria that have killed millions and turned countless others into refugees, the bourgeois opposition parties have remained loyal to the line of US-NATO imperialism, regardless of their tactical differences.
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While Turkey continues its military occupation in northern Syria against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and allied Kurdish forces (YPG-SDF), Ankara’s strong political and ideological ties with the new Damascus regime are seen as a threat by Tel Aviv. Israel, in response, supports and encourages the autonomy of minorities in Syria. While providing protection to Druze groups in the south, it views the Kurdish nationalist forces controlling Syria’s oil-rich northern and eastern regions as “natural allies.” Recently, Alawites also demanded an autonomous region in western and central Syria, covering the provinces of Tartus and Latakia, as well as some parts of Homs and Hama.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week, “I am not a naive person... I understand who we are dealing with, what we are dealing with [in Syria], and that is why we used force,” adding that his government was “under no illusions” about who controlled Syria. It is no secret that this statement was primarily aimed at Ankara.
Erdoğan warned Kurdish forces in Syria last week, threatening them over possible cooperation with Israel and their quest for autonomy: “Those who turn their direction towards Ankara and Damascus will win… Those who seek foreign patrons will lose. If the sword comes out of its sheath, there will be no place left for words and speech.”
The intensification of the imperialist war of redivision in the Middle East and the growing competition between Turkey and Israel have led Ankara to seek an agreement with the PKK since last year. The World Socialist Web Site explained from the outset that this has nothing to do with a democratic solution to the Kurdish question and is a reactionary attempt at an agreement between the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisies. The Erdoğan government, with the support of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, has officially confirmed this analysis by putting forward an equally reactionary “Turkish-Kurdish-Arab” alliance perspective to counter Israel’s expansionist ambitions in the region.
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The Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group), the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, appeals not to imperialist and capitalist governments, but to the international working class—the only social force capable of ending genocide and imperialist war—and strives to mobilise it in the struggle for political power. In this struggle, the following demands are essential:
Turkey must leave NATO and close its bases in the country.
End Azerbaijan’s oil shipments to Israel through Turkey.
Halt the shipments of weapons to Israel.
Boycott all trade and other economic activity with Israel.
US, European and other corporations assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide must be indicted and prosecuted.
Arrest Israeli officials for war crimes.
- End all repression of opposition to the Gaza genocide.
7. 82nd Venice International Film Festival: Thousands protest against the genocide in Gaza
Thousands of protesters, including festival participants and members of the public, took part in a large demonstration in Venice last Saturday to express their opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The demonstration, called by a collection of Italian and international film professionals under the name of Venice4Palestine, was timed to take place in the opening days of the Venice Film Festival, which continues until September 6.
Organizers of the anti-genocide rally described it as “possibly the largest protest ever seen at a major film event.” The main roads of the Lido, the barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon where the festival is held each year, were closed off by police as the march forcefully made its way to the principal festival area. Bearing a sea of Palestinian flags, protesters chanted “Free, Free Palestine” and “End the Genocide,” accompanied by blasts from foghorns and music playing from speakers.
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As evidence of their readiness to address the situation in Palestine, festival organizers cited the world premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania. The film, which features in the festival’s main competition, centers on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, along with six of her family members and two paramedics who came to her rescue, by the IDF in January 2024.
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The mass demonstrations and protests by filmmakers in Venice testify to the fact that broad layers of the population are not prepared to accept that events such as the film festival on the Lido remain “isolated from reality”.
8. Australian PM defends planned mass deportations to Nauru
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took to national television on Monday to defend his Labor government’s plan for mass deportations to the tiny remote Pacific island state of Nauru, while refusing to provide any details of the scheme.
Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Afternoon Briefing” TV program that the previously unannounced treaty his government signed with Nauru’s president last Friday was “hardly a secret”—despite the intense secrecy surrounding it. He refused to disclose how long the deal would last or how many people would be subjected to it.
In effect, Albanese doubled down, defying condemnation of the plan by refugee and legal organizations. Lawyers from these organizations have pointed out that, under Labor’s laws, the Nauru scheme could extend to removing more than 80,000 people currently living in Australia on temporary and insecure bridging visas.
There is no real difference between Labor’s plan and the mass deportations being conducted by the Trump administration in the US. There thousands of working-class people have been seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and thrown into detention prisons for deportation to grim locations without any due process.
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Nauru, with a population of around 12,000 people, is the third smallest statelet on earth, following the Vatican and Monaco. It has been impoverished by decades of phosphate mining under British, Australian and New Zealand colonial rule before nominal independence was granted in 1968.
The mining has left about 80 percent of the small island uninhabitable. Moreover, rising sea levels caused by global climate change are forecast to force 90 percent of its residents to relocate.
9. Battle lines harden in US defense industry strikes at Boeing and GE Aerospace
The strikes at Boeing and GE Aerospace are entering a decisive phase as defense workers in the St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati, Ohio, area plants seek to overturn decades of union-backed concessions and win substantial improvements in wages, benefits and time off.
On Monday, GE Aerospace announced it had already delivered its “last, best, and final” offer to more than 620 striking UAW workers at its facilities in Evendale, Ohio and Erlanger, Kentucky. The company boasted of a so-called “record offer” that would raise wages by just 12 percent over three years, hand out paltry bonuses and add 82 jobs. This would be contingent on union leaders ending the strike and forcing workers to ratify the entire package, which would include sharp increases in already unaffordable out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
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By isolating the strike and forcing workers to live on $500 a week in strike pay, the UAW bureaucracy hopes to wear down the resistance of the rank and file and ram through another sellout deal. Lowering expectations, UAW L. 647 President Brian Strunk told local media, “We would just like to sustain our healthcare where we’re at now, because it’s a high deductible plan, and our members are already struggling to take their kids to a doctor and things like that.”
The promise of 82 new jobs is a cynical fraud. Over the last three decades, GE Aerospace—with the full complicity of the UAW and IAM bureaucracies—has eliminated more than 3,000 jobs at the Evendale facility alone. Each round of layoffs, outsourcing and wage concessions was justified by the unions as necessary to “save jobs” or “stay competitive.” The result has been the decimation of the workforce.
Meanwhile, GE Aerospace has handed $16 billion to shareholders in just two years, while its CEO Larry Culp pocketed $89 million in 2024 alone. Workers are determined to stop the corporate blackmail.
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At the same time, 3,200 Boeing workers at plants in St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri and Mascoutah, Illinois, have been on strike since August 5. Talks were suspended until Tuesday, with Boeing openly signaling it has “no rush to settle” since the strike affects only its defense division, not its much larger and more profitable commercial aircraft business.
A report in Bloomberg noted: “Defense work doesn’t make or break Boeing’s finances like the commercial unit does. ... The last time District 837 machinists went on strike, in 1996, the walkout lasted 99 days. If the company ends up sweetening its offer, it won’t be by much.”
But this claim requires an important qualification. While Boeing has no intention of retreating on its demands for wage caps and concessions, a prolonged strike threatens to disrupt the rollout of the new F-47 fighter jet and other key military projects.
Both Boeing and GE Aerospace are linchpins of the US military-industrial complex, supplying not only the Pentagon but also the Israel Defense Forces and other US allies. The St. Louis area plants build the F-15, precision bomb kits and are preparing to build the new F-47 fighter, while GE Aerospace produces the engines for America’s fighter jets, helicopters and drones, many of which are deployed in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific theater.
The Trump administration is undoubtedly monitoring both strikes closely. The White House will not hesitate to use the full powers of the state to break these strikes if the UAW and IAM bureaucracies fail to shut them down quickly enough to protect military production and corporate profits.
In the face of this, the IAM leadership at Boeing has openly appealed to Trump to end the strike. “I would request the president of the United States get involved in these negotiations and get this company back to the table since they are the ones who are building the military planes for his military,” IAM President Bryan Bryant told reporters last month.
Any intervention by the fascist president, who is deploying military troops to occupy major American cities, would only be to crush the strike and impose terms that are acceptable to the corporate-financial oligarchy and military establishment.
10. Zionist group sues two Australian academics for opposing the Gaza genocide
A group of pro-Zionist staff and students, backed by a high-profile legal team, is suing University of Sydney academics Nick Riemer and John Keane in the Federal Court of Australia for making public statements opposing the Gaza genocide.
If the case is upheld, it will set a legal precedent that could outlaw any opposition to the worsening US-backed Israeli mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Gaza as “antisemitic.” It therefore has far-reaching implications for free speech and other basic democratic rights in Australia and internationally.
11. Death toll in Afghanistan earthquake exceeds 1,400
According to Taliban authorities, over 1,400 are confirmed dead, more than 3,100 are injured and at least 5,400 homes have been destroyed. Entire villages in Kunar province are reported to have been flattened, with countless people remaining trapped beneath the debris.
Rescue operations are hampered by rough terrain and landslides, which blocked roads into the worst-hit districts and prompted authorities to deploy commando units and helicopters for evacuation. The destruction is overwhelming, with food scarce, medical supplies insufficient, and the transportation of the wounded and survivors possible only on foot or by makeshift stretchers.
Eyewitness reports have revealed the depth of the catastrophe. Residents in Dara Noor, near Jalalabad, described frantic searches for loved ones beneath the wreckage, using shovels, their bare hands and whatever tools they could find to reach the trapped. “I lost my wife and two sons. I am half-buried and try to get others out,” one survivor told CNN.
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Earthquakes are frequent in Afghanistan because the country sits atop a series of active fault lines created by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. This collision causes intense crustal deformation, resulting in numerous major faults, such as the Chaman Fault system, which runs through eastern Afghanistan and produces large, shallow and destructive earthquakes.
Afghanistan’s northeastern and eastern regions have experienced powerful, shallow quakes in recent decades. The nation had deadly earthquakes in 1998 (4,000 dead in Takhar Province), 2002 (over 1,000 dead in Nahrin), 2015 (over 400 dead), and most recently the 2022 Paktika quake (over 1,000 dead).
However, Afghanistan’s vulnerability to devastating quakes has not only a geological but a social and political source. The overwhelming majority of homes are from materials that offer no protection against seismic shocks. The lack of basic infrastructure, roads, medical facilities and engineering expertise, itself a legacy of decades of destruction and underinvestment, intensifies the impact of moderate disasters.
The country’s exposure to repeated disasters is inseparable from four decades of war and occupation led by the US and its allies. US imperialism invaded the country in 2001, launched a 20-year occupation and unleashed a campaign of bombing, night raids and assassinations that not only killed tens of thousands of civilians but destroyed basic infrastructure, healthcare and agriculture.
The withdrawal of US and NATO troops in August 2021 has precipitated an economic crisis amid an intensification of sanctions, isolation and asset seizures.
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As of this writing, the US government has not issued a formal statement pledging aid or support to Afghanistan following the earthquake. The US State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs instead expressed “heartfelt condolences to the Afghan people” via a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Meanwhile, Britain has offered a paltry emergency funding package of £1 million (approximately $1.3 million) for earthquake aid, with funds split between the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
Other European countries, coordinated through the European Commission, have pledged about €1 million (approximately $1.16 million) in humanitarian emergency funding, in addition to tents, clothing, medical supplies and other essential aid to the affected areas.
12. Ukraine blocks website of daily newspaper junge Welt
The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) was already blocked by the authorities in Ukraine more than a year ago, in June 2024, because it exposed the reactionary character of the regime and fought for an international socialist perspective to end the war.
Previously, Bogdan Syrotiuk of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL) had been unlawfully imprisoned because he published articles on the WSWS advocating unity between Russian and Ukrainian workers against the regimes in Kiev and Moscow. Based on the brazen lie that Bogdan was spreading Russian propaganda, the socialist was charged with high treason. He has now spent over a year in prison under the harshest conditions.
Thousands of opponents of the war in the country are sharing his fate. The Zelensky regime responds to growing resistance to the war with brutal repression. Masses of young people who try to avoid conscription are being dragged to the front by force, every voice against the war is banned as Russian propaganda, and those who refuse to comply are jailed. The more hopeless the situation at the front becomes, the more aggressively the regime cracks down on any opposition.
junge Welt (jW) has come into the crosshairs of the Ukrainian censors because it reported on the government’s close collaboration with fascist forces, contradicted the NATO war narrative and informed readers about repression inside the country.
The sweeping censorship of any dissenting opinion and the suppression of the flow of information expose as a lie the claim that the war in Ukraine is about defending freedom and democracy. Quite the opposite: Zelensky is establishing a brutal dictatorship to continue sacrificing the Ukrainian population in a war fought for NATO’s geostrategic supremacy.
But the censorship of a purely German-language publication inside Ukraine cannot be explained solely by the regime’s repressive measures. The readership within Ukraine is likely to be marginal. It must be assumed that the measure was taken in close consultation with German authorities and is intended to serve as intimidation.
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If the puppet regime in Kiev is now banning German-language anti-war publications that are already under attack from the German state, it must be assumed that Zelensky is acting on the direct instructions of his paymasters in the German government. It is telling that at a press conference on August 27, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the banning of jW. The official claimed such a case was “not known” to him.
Ukraine is therefore not only the theatre of NATO’s war against Russia; it is also becoming a precedent for a European police state. In Ukraine, the European imperialists are implementing measures they are planning for the entire continent.
13. Sri Lankan union leaders support government restructuring of electricity board
The Sri Lankan government has begun the process of breaking up the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) into four government-owned companies (GOCs), into which employees will be transferred by the end of October.
The formation of these companies—National System Operator, National Transmission Network Service Provider, Electricity Distribution Lanka, and Electricity Generation Lanka—to unbundle the CEB is a key demand of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to the Director General of Power Sector Reforms, these institutions will be further divided into several companies in about two years.
Under the new Sri Lanka Electricity (Amendment) Act, passed last month, the government has issued letters to all employees indicating the companies to which they will be transferred.
There is widespread opposition to the breaking up of the CEB among the institution’s 22,000-strong workforce. Workers are concerned about their jobs and working conditions, and threats to rights won through past struggles since the board’s establishment in 1969. They have been reluctant to accept the government’s letters of assignment.
The ruling Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government, which is fully committed to the IMF program, has only been able to prepare its attack on this key section of the working class because of repeated betrayals by the trade unions.
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The rising anger and militancy of Sri Lankan workers was clearly demonstrated in the August 17 national strike of 17,000 postal workers fighting for 19 demands. After the government deployed the army and police to crack down on the workers, the postal union leaders quickly caved in to the government’s threats and shut down the strike after a week without winning a single demand.
Militancy alone is not enough. Workers must understand that they cannot fight for their rights within the framework of the trade unions. The Dissanayake government and the Sri Lankan capitalist class are mired in a deepening economic catastrophe and are determined to make working people bear the burden.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) insists that there is no solution for workers within the capitalist system and the trade union apparatuses that defend it.
14. Australian pseudo-lefts block socialist perspective at student meetings opposing Gaza genocide
At two university meetings in Melbourne last week, members of the pseudo-left Socialist Alternative (SAlt) resorted to flagrantly anti-democratic methods to prevent the discussion of a socialist perspective to end Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The attendance reflected the upsurge of hostility and anger more broadly to the genocide and the federal Labor government’s complicity. Last month 300,000 marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and subsequent anti-genocide protests have been attended by hundreds of thousands across the country.
The growth of popular hostility, combined with Israel’s rapid escalation of its ethnic-cleansing operation, poses more sharply than ever the question of how to end the genocide.
SAlt, which has played a leading role in the protest movement, was determined to prevent such a discussion. Its perspective of endlessly issuing plaintive appeals to the Labor government has manifestly failed. Labor continues to fully back the Zionist regime, including through weapons exports and a vicious crackdown on opposition, which it defames as “antisemitic.”
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While the meeting was held under the auspices of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), SAlt leader Bella Beiraghi, a co-convenor of their “Students for Palestine” group was permitted to chair it.
Prior to the meeting, IYSSE club president Morgan Peach had asked an UMSU official whether students would be permitted to speak freely during the meeting. When Peach raised that Beiraghi was likely to block all oppositional voices, the UMSU official said that would be a breach of the rules governing an SGM.
But that is precisely what Beiraghi did, trampling on any semblance of democracy. The event, which lasted less than half an hour, could hardly be described as a meeting. The gathering was essentially an anti-democratic hand-raising exercise.
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It was not only Peach and the IYSSE that were silenced, but the vast majority of students present. When students not affiliated with the IYSSE raised that they wanted to present an alternative motion, they were told they were “speaking out of order” and were shut down.
Beiraghi put the official motions to a vote, without any further discussion. They passed and the meeting ended with chanting. A number of students approached Peach afterwards to express their anger over the blatant censorship and to ask what he had wanted to raise.
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SAlt’s unprincipled methods and hostility to the IYSSE’s motion expose the real character of this organization. Its occasional socialist rhetoric is window-dressing. In reality, this pseudo-left party collaborates closely with a Labor-aligned trade union bureaucracy that has not called a single strike against the genocide, or deviated in its support for the Labor government throughout the onslaught on Gaza.
15. Australian students speak on mobilizing workers to stop the Gaza genocide
“A capitalist government is not going to be persuaded by a letter saying, ‘We’re not happy with you.’ That’s been ineffective so far. I think we need to hit them where their heart lies most, and that’s their wallet. We need targeted industrial actions, interrupting supply chains, and workers’ strikes.
“As for the meeting today, it’s all well and good to do rehearsed chants and put it on social media. But if you want actual practical change and an end to the genocide, you need to target the capitalist system. The organization of strikes and workers’ action, that’s a realistic way to stop war.”
16. Greece: Strike against tightened disciplinary law and 13-hour day
On Thursday, public sector employees in Greece held a one-day strike to protest against a anti-worker law introduced by the right-wing New Democracy (ND) government. The law allows working hours of up to 13 hours a day and tightens disciplinary measures against public sector employees.
The new disciplinary law was passed in parliament on Thursday with the votes of the governing party, while outside on Syntagma Square hundreds of workers gathered. A rally was also held in Thessaloniki, the country’s second-largest city.
With these legal changes, the ruling class is preparing for a turbulent autumn–not only in Greece, but across Europe. From Berlin and Paris to Athens, all governments are carrying out a general assault on workers’ social and political rights in order to finance massive military rearmament. In France, mass protests are scheduled in September against the austerity budget.
In Greece, the latest strike takes place against the background of a deep social and political crisis, which has intensified since the beginning of the austerity dictates and has now reached boiling point. Anger among Greek workers and students over high living costs, low wages and long working days is erupting.
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The new labor law includes several changes aimed at intensifying capitalist exploitation and cementing it legally:
- Introduction of the 13-hour day. The law allows the extension of the daily working time to up to 13 hours. In addition to the standard 40-hour week, up to eight hours of overtime per week may be added.
- Introduction of a four-day week, with 40 hours spread across four days of ten hours each. Last year, a six-day week had already been legalized for certain sectors.
- Short-term hiring of seasonal and temporary staff is to be made possible via a smartphone app.
- Tightened disciplinary law for civil servants, aimed at criminalizing political opposition.
The labor ministry justifies the measures with the usual clichés of “cutting bureaucracy”, tackling the “shortage of skilled workers” and making the labour market more “flexible”–all terms that thinly veil the fact that the law is designed to systematically worsen working conditions and undermine labour rights in the interests of the corporations. The eight-hour day, already largely undermined during years of austerity, is now being formally abolished.
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Teachers are particularly concerned: in future, it will be considered a disciplinary offense if they refuse to take part in performance evaluations. The government has introduced an evaluation system in schools to monitor and pressure teachers through regular assessments. In 2021, this step triggered mass protests among teachers and students. At the time, the education minister was Niki Kerameos–now labor minister and responsible for the draconian labor law.
At its core, the harsher disciplinary measures are aimed at intimidating workers, bringing them politically into line, and criminalizing those who engage in union or left-wing activities.
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The scale of social hardship is especially clear in summer: while many Greeks work in tourism, almost half of all Greeks over 16 (46 percent) could not afford even a one-week holiday in 2024. Greece thus ranks second to last in the EU, just ahead of Romania. The main reasons are high prices, rising housing costs and stagnant wages.
At the same time, more and more workers are falling victim to brutal exploitation. Overwork, deregulation and lack of workplace safety frequently leads to fatal accidents in Greece–as in the US and Italy. The true extent is not reflected in official statistics. According to the Greek statistics office, 51 people died in workplace accidents in 2023. But the real number is far higher, since only around 30 to 40 percent of accidents are recorded. The Federation of Technical Company Trade Unions (OSETEE) counted 179 workplace fatalities in 2023 and around 150 last year–three times the official figure.
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