Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
In 98 AD, the historian Tacitus, describing the devastation of Britain by the troops of Imperial Rome, wrote: “They make a desert and call it peace.” Nearly 2,000 years later, these bitter words apply to the brutal terms imposed upon the Palestinian population of Gaza by Israel and its imperialist patrons.
US President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace agreement” for Gaza creates an imperialist protectorate that tramples on the rights of the Palestinians and strengthens American control over the energy-rich Middle East. This was laid bare by Trump’s speech to the Israeli Knesset and the subsequent gathering of accomplices to genocide in Egypt hosted by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Monday.
In a rambling address lasting more than an hour, Trump spoke with the eloquence of Mafia don Tony Soprano. He bragged to Israeli lawmakers about the power of American weapons to achieve “peace,” called for a pardon on corruption charges for the wanted war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and vowed that the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” under US dominance had begun. He positively reveled in the genocidal violence overseen by Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), telling his adoring audience that Netanyahu “would call me so many times” asking for weapons and added that the US had supplied “so many that Israel became strong and powerful. That’s what led to peace.” He added, “We gave you all the weapons, and you used them well.”
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Trump’s gangster-style performance was complete when an opposition Israeli politician held up a piece of paper with the timid demand to “recognize Palestine.” He was swiftly thrown out of the chamber, prompting Trump to respond, “That’s very efficient.”
The American imperialist-imposed settlement recognises no rights for the Palestinians remaining in Gaza whatsoever, not even a meaningless verbal commitment to a “Palestinian state.” The Zionist regime will retain a permanent occupation force with control over the borders and the ability to launch bloody onslaughts at a time of its choosing. Israel’s record over the past five decades of systematically violating ceasefires, from Camp David in 1978, to Oslo in 1993, and last November’s “pause” in the genocide, demonstrates that this prospect is not merely hypothetical. It is only a matter of time.
The rhetoric from Trump, the leaders of the European imperialist powers, and the corporate-controlled media about “peace” in the Middle East is doubly fraudulent. In the first place, the Palestinians who have survived two years of genocide have been left to live in ruins. The more than 300,000 returning to Gaza City confront piles of rubble after Israel destroyed three-quarters of the city’s buildings.
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Gaza is seen as key to the development of the India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor aimed at sidelining China and Russia in the rapidly escalating scramble among the major powers to redivide the world’s markets and resources. The unseemly rush of the leaders of European imperialism—themselves all complicit in the genocide—to the signing ceremony in Egypt underlines that Germany, France and Britain will play their parts in the coming conflicts under the banner of Gaza’s “reconstruction.”
Even if the agreement holds for a longer period, it provides no basis for the democratic and social aspirations of the Palestinians and oppressed masses throughout the region to be resolved. The idea of a “two-state solution” is absurd, given that the present Israeli state is a creation of imperialist-backed slaughter and the illegal confiscation of Palestinian and Syrian land. The bankruptcy of Zionism’s strategy of securing a national homeland as a safe haven for the Jewish people is plain for all to see, including growing numbers of Jews around the world. The Zionist state can only be maintained through genocide and as a garrison outpost of US imperialism.
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Monday’s signing ceremony could not have provided a more devastating indictment of all the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the region that have sought to cast themselves as opponents, or at least alternatives, to the imperialist powers. In the end, they all sacrificed the rights of the Palestinians in favor of an accommodation with imperialism, making possible the Gaza genocide and hailing the filthy agreement promoted by Trump.
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The tragedy of the Palestinians has been that they are deprived of the support of the working class due to the absence of a revolutionary movement in the advanced countries. The only way to realize the democratic and social rights of the long-suffering masses of the Middle East and establish a genuine basis for peaceful coexistence is through the fight for the perspective of the Permanent Revolution. Arab, Jewish, Iranian, Turkish and Kurdish workers must unite in a common struggle against the imperialist domination of the region and for the creation of the United Socialist States of the Middle East as part of a world socialist federation. In this struggle, their allies are not to be found in the pro-imperialist and corrupt Zionist and Arab ruling classes but in the working class in the imperialist centres of North America and Europe.
Forging this alliance into an independent political and industrial movement of the international working class capable of putting an end to capitalism—the root cause of genocide, imperialist war and all forms of colonial-style oppression—is possible only on the basis of the revolutionary socialist program fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its daily organ, the World Socialist Web Site.
2. 46,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers begin 5-day strike
Tens of thousands of nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, therapists, and other healthcare professionals across the western United States are preparing to launch a five-day strike Tuesday against Kaiser Permanente. The walkout by 46,000 workers organized in the Alliance of Health Care Unions (AHCU) expresses the explosive anger of healthcare workers confronting intolerable conditions amid soaring corporate profits and social inequality.
The strike encompasses a wide range of essential personnel: registered nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, anesthetists, pharmacists, rehabilitation and respiratory therapists, speech-language pathologists, dietitians, acupuncturists, surgical and laboratory technicians, and dozens of other specialists indispensable to modern hospital operations.
Their grievances are the same as healthcare workers across the US and the world, including chronic understaffing, unsafe patient-to-staff ratios, crushing workloads and wages that have fallen far behind inflation.
The very professionals hailed as “heroes” during the pandemic now confront layoffs, pay suppression, and burnout in a collapsing healthcare system.
Kaiser Permanente, a multibillion-dollar “nonprofit” giant, is responding with threats and intimidation. In mid-September, it laid off more than 200 workers across California, citing a need to “rebalance resources.” The cuts affected administrative, IT, and food services across 15 hospitals and clinics from Oakland to San Diego.
But the main obstacle to a real fight against Kaiser is not management alone but the union bureaucracy that collaborates with it. The AHCU, including the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP), has long enforced corporate dictates through joint programs such as the so-called “Labor Management Partnership” (LMP), created in 1997 to institutionalize cost-cutting under the guise of “cooperation.”
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The struggle by Kaiser workers unfolds amid a rapid escalation of the class struggle and the breakdown of democratic forms of rule in the United States. President Donald Trump is openly preparing to invoke dictatorial powers under the Insurrection Act. Under the guise of restoring “order” and defending “national security,” such measures are directed above all against the working class.
The shutdown of the federal government is already disrupting essential healthcare services, with Medicare and Medicaid telehealth appointments suspended. These interruptions, under conditions of mass poverty and aging, threaten the most vulnerable layers of the population. According to one study, Americans over 60 with low incomes die on average nine years earlier than their wealthier counterparts, a staggering expression of class inequality in life expectancy.
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California’s deepening nursing shortage underscores the irrationality of the for-profit healthcare system (Kaiser Permanente, officially a non-profit, reported a “net income” of 12.9 billion). The state faces a projected deficit of 60,000 nurses within a decade. They have been driven out of the field by overwork and poverty wages. Hospitals have deliberately understaffed units, closed facilities, and increased patient loads to the breaking point..
These conditions are the product of decades of bipartisan policy: the defunding of public health, privatization of hospitals, and funneling of pandemic relief into corporate hands. During COVID-19, Kaiser and other health giants received billions in government subsidies while workers labored without adequate protective gear, contracted the virus by the tens of thousands, and saw no improvement in wages or staffing.
Now, as inflation erodes living standards, these same corporations are demanding further “cost containment.” Both the Biden and Trump administrations have overseen the dismantling of pandemic-era safety nets, while the unions have ensured that no national mobilization of healthcare workers takes place.
The crisis at Kaiser parallels mounting opposition in the working class as a whole. But the bureaucracy is working might and main to prevent these struggles from expanding and developing into a broader fight against fascism and inequality. As the Kaiser strike begins, 3,200 Boeing defense workers have been on strike for more than 2 months at major plants in the heart of the defense industry. Teachers in cities across the state of California are working on expired contracts and pressing for strike action in the face of sabotage by the California Teachers Association, hypocritically keeping them on the job under a campaign they have named “We Can’t Wait.”
Pharmacy and grocery workers represented by the UFCW are also preparing strike action, but the union is seeking to limit it to a toothless “unfair labor practice.” Over the summer, the UFCW isolated and rammed through contracts for tens of thousands of grocery store workers across America who were pressing for strikes against poverty wages.
Kaiser workers must draw the lessons of these experiences. The fight for safe staffing, decent pay, science-based public health policies, and humane conditions cannot be waged through the corrupt AHCU, UNAC/UHCP, or UFCW apparatuses. It requires independent, rank-and-file organizations controlled by workers themselves. To win, Kaiser workers must take control of their struggle out of the hands of the union officials and into their own—through democratically elected rank-and-file committees in every hospital and clinic that unite all healthcare workers on the basis of their shared class interests.
The Kaiser Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which opposed the 2021 betrayal, must be the example for how to organize to coordinate action across the entire healthcare network. Such committees can link up with autoworkers, teachers, logistics workers, and others confronting the same corporate assault.
3. Zohran Mamdani schmoozes with executives and landlords, praises Trump’s phony Gaza “ceasefire”
On Monday, the New York Times published a highly revealing article laying bare the class character of the Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor. The article, headlined “Mamdani Seeks to Charm New York’s Most Powerful Capitalists,” revealed that since winning the primary earlier this year, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member has been relentlessly reaching out to New York’s wealthiest, including landlords and pharmaceutical executives, to assure them his election poses no threat to their wealth or political monopoly.
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Nothing could more thoroughly expose the falsity of Trump’s fascist diatribes that Mamdani is a “communist” than this reporting. Mamdani is not “seeding” relationships with broad sections of workers to launch mass action to reverse rent hikes and expropriate the property of billionaire landlords. He is instead seeking the approval of New York’s developers and landlords—some of the most parasitic gangster elements of the ruling class, denizens of the underworld out of which the current occupant of the White House crawled.
Mamdani’s meeting with New York City’s wealthy landlords and developers is not a one-off, but part of an ongoing “charm” offensive Mamdani has embarked on since winning the primary. In addition to landlords, the Times quoted Sally Susman, a senior Pfizer executive, on her experiences with Mamdani. “When I met him the first time, I shared with him a quote by Aristotle,” she told the paper. Susman said in the first of two “sessions with business executives,” Mamdani “repeated the quote back to her.”
Mamdani, the Times reported, has also spoken with Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, the largest bank in the United States; Robert Wolf, former UBS Americas chairman and Obama adviser; and Kenny Burgos, head of a powerful landlord association representing rent-stabilized buildings.
Commenting on the story for the Times, Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec confirmed that Mamdani is “willing to meet with anyone—including those who disagree with him—to advance his affordability agenda.”
Mamdani’s “affordability agenda” is not socialism in any genuine sense, but warmed-over Bernie Sanders reformism. In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Mamdani explained:
My journey into calling myself a Democratic Socialist begins with Bernie’s run in 2016. And his campaign was a formative one for me and for many across this country, both in giving us that language, but also in explaining the core tenet of it, which to me continues to be a belief in dignity as the cornerstone of politics.
Like Sanders before him, Mamdani exists not to wage a “political revolution” but to channel mass anger over inequality and war back into the Democratic Party and the dead-end of electoral politics. Asked whether there was any real difference between a social democrat, a democratic socialist, or a liberal Democrat, Mamdani replied: “It often comes back to whether you’re willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.”
In other words, his “socialism” is merely a question of attitude—not of property relations, not of history, not of class struggle, not of political clarification, not of revolution. And even by this hollow standard, Mamdani has already abandoned many of his previous “ideals”: he has dropped his call to defund the police, pledged to keep billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch, an ardent supporter of Israel, as police commissioner, and assured business leaders that he would discourage the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Mamdani’s pragmatism seemingly has no limits. In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week, Mamdani was asked if Trump, who, like Biden before him provided Israel all the weapons and diplomatic cover it needed to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, “deserves credit for brokering the ceasefire?”
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Collins asked if after a “week ... if the hostages have been returned” and if the “fighting” had “ceased” if “maybe at that point you would give him credit for this?”
Mamdani affirmatively replied, “If it sustains, yes.”
Mamdani’s remarks to CNN—expressing “hope” and even offering that Trump might “deserve credit”—are not just politically bankrupt but obscenely false. As Palestinians continue to document, Israeli tanks are still firing on civilians, drones continue to strike refugee camps and residential neighborhoods, and the siege remains intact. Nothing about this situation constitutes a genuine ceasefire. It is a temporary pause, cynically branded as “peace” while the machinery of genocide and ethnic cleansing continues to operate, in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Mamdani is not just reassuring real estate barons like James Whelan and Jed Walentas—he is also reassuring the imperialist state and its allies that his “socialism” poses no barrier to US foreign policy or to the continued destruction of Gaza. It’s the same fundamental function he and the Democratic Socialists of America serve domestically: to disorient, demobilize and divert popular anger into harmless parliamentary channels.
Early voting in the mayoral race begins on October 25, with November 4 being the last day to cast an in-person ballot. The latest polling from Quinnipiac University found Mamdani with a sizable lead over fellow Democrat and establishment favorite Andrew Cuomo, 46 percent to 33 percent. Republican Curtis Sliwa registered a distant third with 15 percent.
4. Political censorship of art exhibition at California’s Pepperdine University
The forces of political reaction continue their efforts, in countless forms, to stamp out opposition. A ruling elite, along with leading institutions, that has lost its head, feels besieged and sees nothing but a universal “state of rebellion,” lashes out in many cases even against relatively mild protest.
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Officials at Pepperdine University, a private Christian institution in Malibu in Los Angeles County, censored and then closed down an art exhibition at its Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art recently, charging some of the artists with including “overtly political content” in their works.
The exhibition, Hold My Hand in Yours, according to Hyperallergic, featured “a range of artwork that centers hands as symbols of labor, identity, care, and connection. Curated by Weisman Museum Director Andrea Gyorody, the exhibition opened on September 6 and was slated to run until March 29.”
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On October 8, after various negotiations failed, the university announced that the exhibition was being shut down, months early.
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Pepperdine University, established in 1937 by “entrepreneur and Christian philanthropist” George Pepperdine, is affiliated with the Churches of Christ and requires nine credit hours of coursework in the Christian religion for graduation. It is listed by one website among the “top 30 conservative Christian colleges and universities” in the US.
Broken and cracked valves, 70-year-old, antiquated equipment and more dangers were found by the Chemical Safety Board, which is investigating the deadly explosion at U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works on August 11 that killed two steelworkers and injured 10 others.
The investigation update released by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) provided new and important details about the catastrophe, which further proves it could have been prevented had U.S. Steel taken the most elementary steps to upgrade its equipment and protect its workforce.
The CSB is considered by many to be the gold standard in investigating and reporting on accidents and explosions at chemical and refining facilities throughout the country. Its reports and recommendations are used throughout the world. It is also an agency the Trump administration is determined to eliminate.
In one of the World Socialist Web Site’s initial statements on this tragedy, it was referred to as “social murder,” meaning that U.S. Steel prioritized production and corporate profits over the lives of steelworkers.
The United Steelworkers (USW), whose members make up the majority of the 1,300 workers employed at the Clairton Coke Works, shares equal responsibility. As the CBS update shows, the deteriorated condition of the mill has been known to all involved. Rather than fight on behalf of the workers, the USW functions as a second line of management, constantly justifying U.S. Steel’s refusal to upgrade the deteriorating mill.
The investigation update was issued just before the government shutdown furloughed all the employees at the agency who were investigating the deadly blast.
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The Clairton Coke Works, located about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River, is listed as the largest coke works in the country. Coke is made from heating coal to about 2,000 degrees in an oxygen-free environment to burn off impurities from the coal. The coke is then used to power the blast furnaces that produce steel.
The coal is baked in collections of ovens called batteries. Gases given off during the baking process are very valuable and can be used in other industrial processes. A portion of the coke gases are piped back and used as fuel to heat the ovens.
“Coke oven gas is highly flammable, toxic, colorless, and has a sulfurous odor,” the report notes. The gas is primarily made up of hydrogen and methane, from 60 to 90 percent of the gas by weight. Nitrogen and carbon monoxide make up most of the rest with small amounts of other compounds.
It becomes explosive at levels of just 4.4 percent.
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Even under ideal conditions, the rated life of cast iron valves is typically 20 years, not the 73 years of those in use at Clairton Coke Works.
Anyone who has ever added coolant to their car’s radiator would know that the engine has to be cold. This is because of the danger of coolant boiling when hitting the hot engine block, creating back pressure and a geyser of steam and hot water. Furthermore, putting cold water in contact with a hot engine block can cause it to warp or crack.
This is apparently what happened.
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There were a total of 22 people working in the area at the time. The report locates four workers at the top of the batteries when the explosion occurred. It is not clear where each of those injured were located.
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The CSB is planning to continue its investigation to determine the cause and source of the gas release and the source of ignition. They want to conduct a metallurgical analysis of the cast iron coke oven gas valves, examine U.S. Steel’s use of cast iron in piping and review US Steel’s policies, procedures and safety management systems.
However, the CSB is currently closed as part of the government shutdown. A call and email for further information were returned with auto replies.
Even if the CSB does reopen, it will only be for a few days as the Trump administration has eliminated all funding for the CSB in the 2026 budget which officially starts on November 1. At the time it was announced that their funding would be cut, CSB officials said they have about $800,000 in reserve to complete their open investigations. It is not clear if that included the Clairton investigation.
The elimination of the Chemical Safety Board has long been a demand of the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, which wants to see cuts to safety standards and regulations that interfere with their profits. Calling for a system that “minimizes interference with the operation of the free market and free enterprise,” the Trump administration is installing corporate executives to oversee the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and further reducing safety inspections.
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The CSB’s findings are a damning indictment of the United Steelworkers bureaucracy, which immediately ran to the corporation’s defense after the fatal explosion. On August 22, Richard Tikey, the vice president of USW Local 1557, denied that the explosion had been caused by antiquated equipment and rejected his own members’ statements that U.S. Steel had been warned about gas leaks at least a month before the fatal blast.
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For decades, the USW bureaucracy has functioned as a second layer of management, overseeing the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, forcing through contracts with massive concessions and working to suppress workers struggles even as the company piles up one safety violation after another.
The lives lost and the families shattered must not be swept under the rug through toothless investigations and token fines! To uncover the truth and hold those responsible to account, workers must take the initiative themselves.
An independent rank-and-file investigation into the Clairton disaster, led by steelworkers and supported by workers throughout the region, is necessary. Only such a workers inquiry can expose the full extent of management’s negligence and the complicity of the union apparatus and lay the basis for a genuine fight for safe workplaces and the protection of workers’ lives.
6. All 16 victims identified in Tennessee munitions factory explosion
The names of the 16 victims of the massive explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) munitions factory in Tennessee were released by local authorities on Monday. The October 10 blast, which registered as a 1.6 on the Richter scale, was felt more than 20 miles away and completely obliterated the building where the victims were working, leaving no survivors.
The 1,300-acre AES complex is located near the rural community near Bucksnort, Tennessee, on the Hickman and Humphreys counties line, 60 miles southwest of Nashville. In 2021, 20 area residents were killed in the Waverly Flood, one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history.
The victims were young and old, recent hires at AES and veteran workers, and like so many other workplace fatalities in America and around the world, they leave behind grieving spouses, children and other loved ones and friends.
[The World Socialist Web Site provides photos and brief biographies of the workers who were killed.]
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The 16 fatalities at Accurate Energetic Systems was the largest death toll in any single workplace disaster in the United States since 2010, when 29 coal miners were killed at the Upper Branch Mine in West Virginia. Though one of the worst industrial disasters in decades, the national corporate media in the United States has all but dropped the story. Indeed, there is far more detailed coverage by the BBC than the New York Times, the Washington Post and other national news outlets.
As the World Socialist Web Site commented Monday:
This silence exposes the contempt of the corporate media and political establishment for the lives of workers, along with a fear that the unending carnage in the industrial slaughterhouse of American capitalism will fuel mass anger and rebellion. The media blackout coincides with the deliberate downplaying of Trump’s plans to invoke the Insurrection Act and establish military rule to crush opposition.
Accurate Energetic Systems supplies explosives and demolition charges for the US Army and major defense contractors. It has received more than $120 million in recent contracts for TNT and plastic-bonded explosives.
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As military.com noted, “The explosion in Tennessee is part of a cycle the United States has repeated for more than a century. Each time national or global demand for weapons rises, production expands faster than oversight can. The risks shift from the battlefield to the factory floor. Today, as the Pentagon leans more heavily on private firms to arm both American forces and allied nations, those dangers are getting closer to home.”
The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is spearheading a global campaign to defend workers’ lives and halt the endless sacrifice for corporate profit and war. This means building rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace so workers can fight for control over production and safety, shutdown unsafe operations and hold to account those responsible for workplace fatalities and injuries.
7. Subu Vedam, falsely imprisoned for 43 years, seized by ICE for deportation
The case of Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam would defy belief were we not living under the fascistic drive toward dictatorship under Donald Trump. For 43 years, Vedam endured the brutality of a Pennsylvania maximum-security prison, wrongfully incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. After lawyers from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project discovered new evidence proving his innocence, his conviction was vacated, and all charges against him were dismissed.
But moments after his release on October 3 from Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, the 64-year-old man of Indian origin was seized and arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), citing a “legacy deportation order” dating back to the 1980s, before his wrongful murder conviction. He was immediately transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, facing deportation to India, a country he barely knows.
Vedam’s ordeal—shifting from wrongful imprisonment, to exoneration and release, to punitive detention—highlights the overlap of legal injustice and Gestapo-like immigration enforcement, compounding an injustice his family rightly calls a “terrible wrong.”
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ICE described Vedam as “a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1980” and “a convicted controlled substance trafficker,” stating that individuals with standing removal orders are priorities for enforcement. The claim that Vedam was a career criminal is preposterous, as he was behind bars at the state prison during this supposed “career.”
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A spokesperson for the family noted that Vedam’s ICE detention completely blindsided them, as his entire family—including his sister and nieces—are US citizens and his family relationships are established here and in Canada. Vedam’s family and supporters have launched a major protest demanding his release, highlighting the cruelty of his current detention and threat of deportation.
His niece, Zoe Miller Vedam, stressed the devastating impact of deportation: “He left India when he was nine months old ... He hasn’t been there for over 44 years ... to send him to the other side of the world, to a place he doesn’t know, away from everyone who loves him, would just compound that injustice.”
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Vedam’s wrongful conviction was symptomatic of the arbitrary and vengeful character of the US justice system. Collectively, the 2,795 exonerees tracked by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989 have served more than 25,000 years in prison for crimes they did not commit, with the average time lost for a murder exoneration being 14.1 years.
Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 201 people sentenced to death and incarcerated have been exonerated, according to Death Penalty Information. These include individuals who were wrongfully convicted and later cleared of all charges.
The most common reasons for exoneration include official misconduct (such as prosecutors concealing evidence, as happened in Vedam’s case), mistaken eyewitness testimony, perjury and false or discredited forensic evidence (such as bite-mark analysis, faulty hair analysis, and “junk science” testimony).
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Subu Vedam’s exoneration and immediate seizure by ICE for deportation are an indication of the type of retaliatory “justice” the Trump administration is seeking to cultivate. Despite being cleared of his crime, Vedam has been targeted as a result of the anti-immigrant hysteria that is being mobilized to not only target individuals like him, but as the unconstitutional basis of the deployment of federalized National Guard troops to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland to counter supposed “domestic terrorism” and violent unrest.
It is the same timeworn approach. A corporation announces the elimination of a large number of jobs, in ZF’s case 14,000 by 2028. The [IG Metall union] apparatus then complains about the unilateral approach, organizes protests, only to subsequently save the costs required by the job cuts in other ways. As a result, the cost reductions that would have been achieved by cutting 14,000 jobs at ZF will be almost completely implemented by the end of 2026, rather than 2028.Further cuts in the coming years cannot be ruled out. Decisions are pending in numerous areas that have not been cancelled, but only postponed....
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ZF’s high level of debt stems mainly from previous acquisitions, in particular the US automotive supplier TRW in 2015 and the brake specialist Wabco in 2020, which were taken over during the low interest rate phase before the coronavirus pandemic. The subsequent interest rate reversal has led to a significant increase in interest costs, resulting in several hundred million euros having to be paid to creditors each year.
Because the works councils and trade union officials defend this entire capitalist framework, they are also working out the mechanisms and conditions for collecting the debts from the workforce and ensuring ZF’s profitability.
They describe attacks as “painful concessions” and claim there is no alternative. But this only applies as long as business and capital interests are given priority over the interests of the workforce.
This chain must be broken. The several hundred million euros that ZF pays to creditor banks every year must not be the primary goal of production. Production and the economy as a whole must be placed at the service of the working population—at ZF at the service of the more than 50,000 employees in Germany and 160,000 worldwide. The Friedrichshafen gear factory has been built up over 110 years by generations of workers; the employees are the source of all income.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party therefore propose the establishment of action committees based on the principle: workers’ interests before capital interests. Due to the international division of labor and the networking of production, it is necessary to fight for this principle with colleagues at factories, workshops and locations around the world—together with those from other corporations and industries.
From the outset, this excludes trade union and works council officials from these action committees. They vehemently defend capitalism and the primacy of profit interests. Their ultimate goal is “competitiveness.” They therefore reject any cross-border measures and instead work to divide the workforce and push costs below those of the “best-cost countries.” This means the attacks continue unabated.
9. The death of Julia Chuñil in Chile: Boric’s war against the Mapuche people
Gabriel Boric, the President of Chile, issued the following statement last week on the disappearance of Julia Chuñil, a 72-year-old Mapuche Indigenous leader and environmental activist:
I cannot fail to mention the government’s concern and involvement in the disappearance of Julia Chuñil. I mention this because when a person disappears, the state is neither neutral nor passive. We have long, long ago requested that the PDI (investigative police) act; made all resources available for this purpose and asked that all lines of investigation be pursued. We respectfully ask the Public Prosecutor’s Office, as an autonomous body, to act with a sense of urgency in this matter.
The president’s statement is a lie from beginning to end, and an obscenely cynical one at that. Julia Chuñil did not disappear a week or two weeks ago. Her adult children reported their mother’s disappearance on November 8, 2024, at a property that she had occupied as part of a historical struggle by the Mapuche people to reclaim ancestral lands. That is, she went missing more than 11 months ago.
Her children, Pablo, Jeannette, Javier and Andalien, from the beginning pointed the finger at Juan Carlos Morstadt Anwandter. A bourgeois figure in the forestry and agribusiness, he had for years made threats and paid third parties to commit acts against Chuñil in an attempt to kick her off a substantial piece of land that the National Corporation for Indigenous Development (CONADI)—a state body purportedly created to benefit the indigenous population—handed to Morsadt without a cent being exchanged.
In fact, her children reported very early on in her disappearance that Julia Chuñil had warned “If anything happens to me, you know who did it.”
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...[O]n September 30, [2025] the Chuñil family’s lawyers, in the presence of human rights groups including Amnesty International, held a press conference revealing that Morstadt, in an intercepted phone conversation, had admitted to his father that Julia Chuñil “had been burned.”
The lawyers explained that this document had appeared on the public prosecutor’s online platform and then it disappeared along with all the files and history of Chuñil’s case. The lawyers were unable to view the legal proceedings of the case or request meetings with the public prosecutor’s office.
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At first, Ángel Valencia, the right-wing National Prosecutor selected by Boric as an overture to the right-controlled Congress, simply downplayed the implication of Morstadt’s statement and questioned its veracity. At the same time, she said that an investigation would be conducted into how it was leaked.
“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such information… The Los Ríos Prosecutor’s Office also opened an investigation into an apparent leak of information that should have been kept confidential in court, which, I insist, even if it were true, would be very partial and I would even dare to say that it would also be very biased in terms of the content of the ongoing investigation, which is a serious matter, the most serious being that we have not yet found Mrs. Chuñil’s body. Consequently, we cannot deduce what happened to her either.”
With his arrogant and contemptuous statement, he inadvertently let slip that Julia Chuñil, who up until that point was classified as “disappeared,” was dead. How he knew this he did not say. Up until then, apparently, the State wasn’t looking for a body; they were searching for a living person.
At that point, the state went into damage control. The Boric administration’s ministers, the government’s spokesperson Camila Vallejo—a darling of the international pseudo-left—along with the government’s supporters in congress, made handwringing statements of how horrified they were by the revelations and how the “rule of law” must prevail.
It was in this context that Boric made his grotesque address two days ago about “the government’s concern and involvement in the disappearance of Julia Chuñil.”
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What has been unleashed by Boric’s regime against Julia Chuñil and her family is part of a war against the Mapuche people, among the most vulnerable and destitute sectors in Chilean society, on behalf of mining, forestry and landed property interests.
Almost from the moment Boric assumed power he declared a state of emergency over the regions of Biobio and Araucanía—historically Mapuche territory—imposing virtual martial law and all that it entails. Boric has also employed against Mapuche leaders and the broader indigenous community the authoritarian Usurpation Law and the State Security Law, while also revamping Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Anti-Terrorist Law to use it against the Mapuche as the dictator did.
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Workers and youth must come to the defense of the Chuñil family and the Mapuche people. Marx’s dictum that “labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded,” applies in full measure in this instance.
10. Australian Labor government hails Trump’s neo-colonial Gaza plan
“What they’re testing in Gaza will potentially impact the quality of life and workers’ rights in other countries. The governments are seeing how far they can push and get away with things.”
11. Australia: Inquiry highlights financial ties between building union and big developers
Incolink, a worker entitlement fund jointly controlled by the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union and Master Builders Victoria, has handed over tens of millions in investment returns to those organizations in recent years.investment returns to those organizations in recent years.
12. Protests across Australia oppose two years of the Israeli genocide in Gaza
“What they’re testing in Gaza will potentially impact the quality of life and workers’ rights in other countries. The governments are seeing how far they can push and get away with things.”
13. Australia: Oppose Labor’s “national priorities” university restructuring and job cuts
Labor’s restructuring, combined with steep cuts to international student enrollments, is driving the destruction of some 4,000 staff jobs nationally and radically impacting the education quality, course options and futures of students.
Students in Turkey and around the world are returning to campuses under conditions unprecedented since the dark days of the 1930s and World War II.
Capitalism is dragging humanity into barbarism and destruction. With NATO’s support, Israel has committed genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza; the imperialist powers are embarking on a global war of redivision in which the use of nuclear weapons is threatened; public resources that should be spent on areas such as education, health, and safe housing are being diverted to militarism; social cuts are being imposed to cover massive budget deficits; the working class and broad sections of society are being driven into poverty.
The ruling classes are increasingly turning to authoritarian regimes and fascism to enforce unpopular policies. The Donald Trump administration in the United States is the most extreme example of this trend, which reflects the deepening crisis of the global capitalist system.
However, the contradictions that lead capitalism to these disasters also form the basis for social revolution. Workers and youth everywhere are looking for a way out of war, genocide, the high cost of living, unemployment and anti-democratic attacks.
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Brazil:
Workers protest privatization of Rio de Janeiro Water
Workers protest privatization of Rio de Janeiro Water
Canada:
Windsor Titan Tool and Die workers unanimously reject massive concessions
Windsor Titan Tool and Die workers unanimously reject massive concessions
Cuba:
Mass protests against Gaza genocide
Mass protests against Gaza genocide
Ecuador:
Demonstrations as national strike against Noboa regime continues
Demonstrations as national strike against Noboa regime continues
Mexico:
Veracruz health workers protest
Veracruz health workers protest
United States:
Chicago company to close plant as workers enter 5th month on strike
Contracts expiring for Sysco drivers and warehouse workers in San Francisco and Portland
Cafeteria workers strike Sony Picture Entertainment in Culver City, California
16. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site have initiated a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
