Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Israel resumes killing Palestinians in first phase of Trump’s “peace plan”
The fact that the Israeli military has begun firing on and killing Palestinians before the first phase of the cease fire is even complete, exposes Trump’s agreement as a sham designed to maintain imperialist domination of Gaza and to deny Palestinians their fundamental rights.
The killings in Gaza are undeniable proof that the Trump-brokered “peace agreement” is not worth the paper it is printed on. The shootings in Shejaiya and Khan Yunis, right after the ceasefire supposedly went into effect, reveal how the entire arrangement does nothing to restrain Israeli violence.
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As analyzed by the World Socialist Web Site on Tuesday, Trump’s Gaza ceasefire is a calculated political campaign aimed at institutionalizing Israel’s occupation of Gaza and entrenching US imperialist control of the Middle East. The WSWS stated that the agreement “turns Gaza into a colonial protectorate, supervised by a board led by the American president,” under conditions that guarantee the “permanent Israeli occupation of a large portion of Gaza.”
The WSWS also called the agreement a “return to the open colonial domination of the Middle East that prevailed in the 19th century,” emphasizing that under Trump’s plan, Gaza would be governed by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump and including Britain’s Tony Blair—a structure that “ensures the exclusion of Palestinian voices from the decision-making of Palestinian futures.”
The hollowness of the bogus peace deal has been further exposed by the ongoing Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid before, during and after the supposed ceasefire. The Rafah crossing—Gaza’s only direct land connection to Egypt—remains closed, even after the agreement promised renewed aid flows. Israel slashed the daily number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to 300, half of the already inadequate quota of 600 previously agreed.
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Eyewitnesses describe a climate of fear and despair that permeates Gaza. “Every day we wait for trucks that never arrive. Our children are starving, and the hospitals have no medicine left. They promised peace, but all we have is more suffering,” said Dawoud al-Khalil, a father waiting at a distribution site near the Rafah crossing.
Despite the ceasefire provisions including a promise to restore infrastructure and hospitals, aid organizations report that deliveries remain “a fraction of what is needed,” and widespread famine and malnutrition persist unaddressed. While 55 detained healthcare workers were released as part of the prisoner exchange, at least 115 remain imprisoned, and hospitals in Gaza remain desperately short of resources.
The Trump administration—with the support of the Democratic Party and the corporate media—continues to tout the agreement as a world historic breakthrough. Yet the facts on the ground—continued killings, restricted aid, unaddressed displacement—reveal a picture of ongoing imperialist barbarism.
In other developments that expose the Gaza ceasefire agreement as a cruel hoax, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has sharply escalated in the past three days. Dozens of Palestinians—including journalists—were injured by assaults carried out both by settlers and Israeli soldiers, notably during the olive harvest season around Nablus and villages like Beita, Huwara, and Deir Sharaf.
Settlers, often armed and sometimes accompanied by soldiers, attacked farmers, set vehicles and property on fire, and committed acts of physical violence against civilians and members of the press. In Bardala (Jordan Valley) on Monday, settlers destroyed 150 olive trees essential to local livelihoods, while similar attacks occurred in Beit Fajjar south of Bethlehem, where assailants unleashed dogs on Palestinians and set fire to vehicles.
The Palestine Red Crescent treated multiple injuries, and witnesses described the aggression as coordinated and intended to intimidate and displace Palestinian communities.
UN and humanitarian groups have documented an unprecedented wave of settler attacks in recent months. Over 1,000 such assaults have taken place in the first eight months of 2025 alone, primarily concentrated in governorates like Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. Since October 2023, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 10,000 injured in the West Bank due to actions by Israeli settlers and armed soldiers, with 178 Palestinian fatalities recorded in 2025 alone.
This violence is part of the broader strategy of Israeli settlement expansion and de-facto annexation of Palestinian land, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid reporting that at least 3,400 Palestinians have been displaced by settler violence and access restrictions throughout the Gaza genocide and the subsequent ceasefire.
2. Trump, China tariffs and the Wall Street bubble
From tariffs and trade to the financing of AI and the growth of private credit and the financing of a debt-led boom, the signs are starting to flash red on Wall Street.
3. 46,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers strike across the West Coast
Tens of thousands of nurses, pharmacists, therapists, and other essential healthcare workers began a strike Tuesday, October 14, against Kaiser Permanente across California, Oregon, Southwest Washington and Hawaii. The walkout by 46,000 workers is one of the largest healthcare strikes in US history. It is a sign of growing opposition in the working class to capitalist inequality and the emerging Trump dictatorship.
The strike was called only after weeks of delay by the Alliance of Health Care Unions (AHCU), which waited well beyond the contract’s expiration to act. Out of 500 Kaiser facilities, only 23 were reported to hold pickets for the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP), the largest component of the Alliance representing 31,000 members.
The bureaucrats have also limited the strike to five days in advance, limiting its power and impact. Kaiser is offering a 21.5 percent raise over four years; the Alliance now demands 25 percent, having already retreated from its initial 38 percent demand. Both sides are signaling that a deal is near, one that will inevitably leave intact the overwork, understaffing and unsafe conditions that define daily life in America’s hospitals.
The mood among Kaiser workers, however, is explosive. On the picket lines Tuesday, healthcare workers were determined to fight not only for adequate wages and safe staffing, but in defense of the rights of all workers against the attack on health science by the Trump administration.
4. Mamdani channels growing opposition into the dead end of the Democratic Party
Mamdani’s rejection of conflicts between social interests means the continued subordination of the working class to the interests of the capitalist class, through the mechanism of the Democratic Party. This is the essential function, not merely of the Mamdani campaign, but of all the efforts of the Democratic Party “left,” including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America.
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Like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Jacobin magazine—the unofficial organ of the DSA—Mamdani has maintained near-total silence on the Trump administration’s moves to establish a police-military dictatorship in the United States.
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Asked directly by reporters on other occasions, Mamdani has declared that his response to the deployment of troops against the people of New York City would be to hire 200 lawyers and file lawsuits—relying on a court system where all roads lead to a Supreme Court controlled by the far right, with three of the nine personally selected by Trump.
The politics of Mamdani are the politics of the Democratic Socialists of America, which functions as a faction of the Democratic Party. The DSA’s “left” rhetoric conceals its real function: to disarm and demobilize the working class in the face of the greatest danger to democratic rights in modern American history.
Analyzing the significance of Mamdani’s primary victory in June, the World Socialist Web Site noted that it shattered the myth that socialism is “toxic” to American workers and youth and that Trump’s re-election marked a right-wing shift in the American population. It also refuted the claim that criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is “antisemitic” or politically suicidal, as Mamdani won majorities among younger Jewish voters.
However, the enthusiasm for Mamdani combines political naiveté and a lack of basic historical knowledge. The description of this fairly conservative and affluent middle class semi-reformist as a “socialist” is a reflection of the very low level of political consciousness. In fact, even by the standards of Great Society Democrats and progressive Republicans of the 1960s, Mamdani’s program is rather conservative and certainly not “socialist.” His various maneuvers with oligarchs and real estate tycoons are merely setting the stage for his inevitable post-election abandonment of his promises and principles.
5. German government attacks the welfare state: Basic support payments to be abolished
On October 8, the coalition committee of the Merz-Klingbeil Christian Democrat/Social Democrat government abolished Bürgergeld (“Citizens’ Income” basic welfare payments). The decision reveals the true character of this government, which is preparing for war abroad and class war at home. As early as August, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union—CDU) declared, “We can no longer afford the welfare state.”
With the new, harsh rules for basic social security, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is now directly following the dictates of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). On September 24, AfD leader Alice Weidel had ranted in the Bundestag (parliament) that Bürgergeld had “degenerated into immigrant money, the costs of which are completely out of control.” It was, she said, “a self-service shop in which freeloaders can enrich themselves without shame.” She shrieked: “Abolish Bürgergeld once and for all!”
The government has now complied. “Bürgergeld is history,” declared Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Markus Söder at a federal press conference on Thursday morning. Chancellor Merz confirmed that “the chapter of Bürgergeld is thereby closed.” The federal minister for labor and social affairs, Bärbel Bas (SPD), announced: “We are tightening sanctions to the limits of what is constitutionally permissible.”
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Given the ongoing mass layoffs in Germany, this is an unmistakable threat. At a time when hundreds of thousands of workers in the car and supplier industries are losing their secure, decently paid jobs, men and women who have worked in industry for decades are now to be forced—after a short period of unemployment—into any available low-paid job.
The attack on Bürgergeld is part of a budget that allocates billions for rearmament and war. The federal budget, which rose from €476.8 billion in 2024 to €502.5 billion this year, will increase again next year to €520.5 billion. Added to this are annual allocations from the “special funds” for the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and infrastructure to improve Germany’s “readiness for war”, allowing borrowing of up to €1 trillion. Including these special funds, total federal expenditures will exceed €600 billion in 2026—an increase of nearly 26 percent over 2024. Most of this money is going to the military.
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Not a single party, from the AfD to the Left Party, has questioned the federal budget or its basic premise: that Germany must become a major military power again and be “fit for war” against Russia by 2029. The “special funds” worth over €1 trillion were made possible only thanks to the active support of the pro-war Greens. The Left Party approved these plans in the Bundesrat (upper chamber of parliament) and has since backed their implementation in parliamentary committees. It also paved the way for Merz’s swift election as chancellor.
The social cutbacks and massive state debt differ little from the conditions that have already led to repeated government crises and mass protests in France. A similar revolutionary situation is rapidly developing in Germany.
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What is required is a determined, independent and international response by the working class. The struggle against social devastation must be linked to the struggle against war and fascism. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) call for the building of independent action committees in all workplaces, as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), to unite workers in the fight against capitalist exploitation, war and for a socialist program.
6. Executions in Florida and Missouri as 4 days of state-sanctioned killings begin
The machinery of the state killing apparatus in the US continues this week, fueled by the accelerating fascistic agenda of the Trump administration.
7. Mass layoffs at the Department of Education target special education
As part of Trump’s nationwide reductions-in-force (RIF) of federal employees beginning October 10, the Department of Education (ED) was cut by another 466 positions, threatening to decimate the programs that sustain disability rights in America. Nearly all personnel responsible for enforcing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have been terminated, abandoning 8.4 million students with disabilities. These cuts follow the earlier elimination of 2,000 ED workers—half its workforce.
IDEA, first passed in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, grew out of the civil rights struggles and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. It guaranteed children with disabilities the right to free public education and specialized services. The destruction of this framework marks a conscious effort to return to the days when working class children with disabilities were institutionalized, excluded from schooling or pushed into menial labor.
8. Trump preparing target list of “semi-communist” federal programs to be eliminated
The White House will announce Friday a list of “socialist” federal programs targeted for massive cuts, Trump declared in remarks Tuesday. The would-be dictator did not elaborate, but clearly further massive cuts are being planned for New Deal and Great Society-era programs of the 1930s and 1960s such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, on which tens of millions rely.
“We’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,” Trump said in comments to the press. “And they’re never going to come back in many cases.” He reiterated that he would go after “the most egregious, socialist, semi- communist, probably not full communist,” programs and added that his administration could “do things that we were unable to do before.”
These statements underscore that the Trump White House is seizing upon the government shutdown, now at the start of its third week, to accelerate a social counter-revolution long in the works.
The roughly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs contained in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passed during the summer is only a down payment for what is to come. Trillions of cuts at the expense of the working class will be redirected to prop up a teetering financial system, further enrich the oligarchy and fund a massive military buildup to prepare for war with China.
The ruling class is working with a definite timetable. A leak from the spy agencies of the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand pointed to the development of a new command and control system for all-out war against China, which will come online as soon as 2027.
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Trump’s attempt to equate the Democrats with “socialist” and even “semi-communist” policies is false. In fact, Democratic administrations enacted these programs many decades ago in order to stave off the threat of revolution. But the Democrats long ago abandoned limited reforms and have been full partners in austerity cuts.
Today, they refuse to state openly what Trump is doing because to do so would invite a mass movement which would inevitably challenge American capitalism. In the corporate media, reporting of Trump’s statements targeting social programs were largely buried.
The union bureaucracy has either refused to mobilize its members or has openly joined Trump. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has only filed a few lawsuits which Trump is simply ignoring. They have not responded to Trump’s comments on their website, as of this writing.
However, Trump’s incessant denunciation of “socialism” and “communism” reflects a ruling class which is gripped with fear of revolutionary upheavals, a principal factor behind Trump’s policies.
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The fight against these massive austerity measures must be combined with the fight against dictatorship, war and their source, the capitalist profit system. This fight can only be led by the working class and its fight for equality, including the expropriation of the billionaires who support Trump, the nationalization of the banks and industry, and running society in the interests of human need, not profit. That is the program of socialism.
On Tuesday the Trump administration staged a grotesque and openly fascistic ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to canonize the racist propagandist Charlie Kirk as a “Christian martyr,” for the MAGA-Republican Party.
At the ceremony, aspiring dictator Donald Trump awarded Kirk’s widow the Presidential Medal of Freedom and proclaimed October 14, his birthday, a “National Day of Remembrance” for “Charlie—a father, a husband, a Christian martyr, and a titan of the American conservative movement.”
The canonization of Kirk is being used to accelerate the criminalization of political opposition to capitalism and the transformation of the United States into a police state.
Tuesday’s state event was attended by virtually the entire cabinet, Republican congressional leadership, top intelligence and military officials, billionaire donors, far-right media figures and even Argentine President Javier Milei. The event served two main purposes: (1) To whitewash Kirk’s racist and white supremacist legacy; and (2) To use his death as a pretext for outlawing political opposition and criminalizing dissent against the financial oligarchy.
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Laying the groundwork for police-military intervention against the upcoming “No Kings” protest set for October 18, Trump also claimed that all the signs at protests against him were made with “beautiful wood” by “anarchists.”
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The United States is not a totalitarian state. But the scaffolding of such a state is being erected piece by piece. All of this proceeds with the acquiescence, silence and active complicity of the Democratic Party. Following Kirk’s assassination, Democrats in both the House and Senate backed resolutions drafted by Republicans praising Kirk.
While the Democrats hold the occasional protest against the Trump administration, they refuse to mobilize mass opposition to Trump’s fascist drive.
Instead, as the government shutdown enters its third week, leading Democrats continue to plead with their “Republican colleagues” to “come to the table” and negotiate a deal to reopen the government so the Trump administration, fully funded, can continue its dictatorial rampage on the democratic, social and economic rights of the working class.
The fight to protect democratic rights and jobs cannot be left to the Democratic Party. As the World Socialist Web Site explained earlier this month:
The working class must intervene in this crisis, mobilizing its immense social power, to force the Trump administration from office and put an end to its criminal conspiracies. This struggle cannot be defined by or subordinated to the Democratic Party, which is opposed to any popular mobilization against Trump’s ongoing coup d’état.
10. A socialist response to Turkey’s complicity in the imperialist-Zionist takeover of Gaza
On Monday, in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, those who signed the so-called “peace agreement” for Gaza proposed by US President Donald Trump included the leaders of the US, Egypt, and Qatar, as well as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In his remarks after the signing ceremony, Trump thanked Erdoğan, saying, “He is my friend, and he is always there when I need him.”
The agreement means that these countries are committing to Trump’s four-stage plan placing Gaza under full new colonial rule. Gaza will be governed by a “Peace Council” led and chaired by Trump. Trump’s roadmap does not recognize any rights for the Palestinians remaining in Gaza. It grants the Zionist regime the status of a permanent occupation force that controls the borders and can carry out bloody attacks at will.
Erdoğan’s signing of this dirty agreement is the culmination of the Turkish ruling class’s complicity and hypocritical stance in the ongoing genocide over the past two years.
Despite its rhetorical statements, the Erdoğan government has aided the Zionist regime’s genocide of the Palestinians by maintaining trade with Israel “through Palestine”, allowing oil to flow from Azerbaijan to Israel, and the use of US bases in Turkey for the benefit of Israel.
The agreement was conditional on Hamas disarming and relinquishing control over Gaza. Exposing its political bankruptcy and impasse as a bourgeois nationalist movement, Hamas was instructed to accept this surrender agreement by countries such as Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar.
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The Turkish ruling elite, which has been involved in and supported the bloody wars waged by US-NATO imperialism in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans, and North Africa, especially after the Stalinists dissolved the USSR in 1991, has added Gaza to this long list of crimes.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which could not have been carried out without the support of Washington and its European allies, is one front in the global war waged by US imperialism. The US war, which primarily targets Russia and China, is directed against Iran and its allies on the Middle East front, which possesses strategic energy resources and major trade routes. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is part of imperialist/Zionist aggression targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen. Gaza is of critical significance in plans to develop the India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor.
11. Indonesian government promotes phony police reform following protests
In the aftermath of the two-week long protests in Indonesia that began at the end of August, the government of President Prabowo Subianto is pursuing so-called “police reform” and other measures meant to give the impression that it is responding to issues that led to the demonstrations.
This week, Prabowo is planning to inaugurate a nine-member committee dubbed the National Police Reform Committee. The specific issues the committee will address have not been made clear, but discussions by figures close to the government have raised the need to change the “culture” within the Indonesian National Police (Polri).
The focus on reform follows the violent response of the police as well as the use of the military to suppress the recent protests. Affan Kurniawan, a twenty-one-year-old motorcycle taxi driver and delivery worker, was killed after being rammed by a police armored vehicle on August 28, stoking widespread anger and fueling additional protests. At least ten people were killed in total.
However, the demonstrations began over widespread inequality in Indonesia after it was announced that members of parliament would receive an exorbitant 50-million-rupiah ($US3,000) housing allowance in addition to other benefits. This alone was more than 20 times higher than the minimum wage in some parts of Indonesia.
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Police reform emerged as one of the “17+8 Demands” put together by student groups and labor unions involved in leading the protests. The name refers to seventeen short-term demands and eight long-term ones. They included an end to police brutality and a commitment from the armed forces not to declare martial law in the event of demonstrations. Others included an end to mass layoffs, tax reform and government dialogue with labor unions.
Any of the demands that the Prabowo government implements will be entirely for show. At the same time, the student groups and unions that have organized the demands did so with the aim of shutting down the protests, not expanding opposition to the government. They have explicitly avoided the fact that it is capitalism that is responsible for the conditions workers and students face.
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What is being kept from the working class and youth is that whatever measures are ultimately enacted will be used to strengthen Prabowo’s grip on power and almost certainly expand the influence of the military.
Before turning to politics, Prabowo spent his career in the Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus, which he led from 1995 to 1998. A United States-trained killer and trusted hand of Suharto, Prabowo has been implicated in numerous atrocities in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh Province, as well as orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of activists as Suharto’s New Order regime was coming to an end.
The Indonesian bourgeoisie elevated Prabowo to power not despite this record, but because of it. Poverty, inequality, and low wages are widespread throughout the country. Even before Trump’s return to office in the US and the imposition of a 19 percent tariff rate on Indonesian exports to America, the economy was in decline. Significant protests against an Omnibus Law attacking workers’ conditions broke out in 2020.
Since his election last October, Prabowo has centralized power in his hands and elevated the military’s role. “One of the clearest features of Prabowo’s presidency is his effort to reorganize Indonesia through [the] centralization of power,” Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told the Financial Times in September.
12. Australia: NSW gallery cancels public discussion with pro-Palestinian curator
In a shameless capitulation to pro-Zionist forces, the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Australia’s oldest state-funded art museum, last week suddenly postponed an “In Conversation” event involving gallery director Maud Page and Hoor Al Qasimi, the artistic director of the 2026 Biennale of Sydney. Al Qasimi is a highly regarded contemporary art curator and a well-known public opponent of the Gaza genocide.
The event was to be a discussion on the form and content of next year’s biennale program, which is titled Rememory. Fifteen Australian artists, including Marian Abboud and Abdul Abdullah, and 22 international artists, as well the Decolonising Art Architecture Project from Palestine, are participating in the biennale.
Scheduled for October 8, the event, and Al Qasimi’s participation in it, were subjected to a vicious and targeted attack by the Murdoch-owned media and pro-Zionist gallery donors, supported by the NSW Labor government.
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Al Qasimi, the daughter of United Arab Emirates (UAE) ruler Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, is president of the International Biennial Association, directs the Sharjah Art Foundation, and is artistic director of Japan’s Aichi Triennale, the first non-Japanese person appointed to the role.
Speaking at Aichi Triennale’s Time Between Ashes and Roses event this year, she emphasized that she would not “shy away from traumatic events.” The show included works dealing with the destruction in Palestine along with art pieces on Hiroshima and indigenous oppression in Japan. Her public commitment to addressing genocide made her an inevitable target for the pro-Israeli elements.
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Last week’s postponement of the AGNSW event, and the gallery’s refusal to condemn the witch-hunting of Al Qasimi or defend the rights of its staff, will encourage the pro-Zionist lobby.
The attempts to clamp down on those speaking out against the genocide, spearheaded by the federal Labor government, will not succeed in silencing mass opposition.
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The increasingly authoritarian measures, including those targeting artistic freedom, cannot be fought through appeals to the powers-that-be. And critical artists cannot take forward the defence of their rights alone.
Instead, what is required is a turn to the working class and the fight for its independent mobilization. The genocide in Gaza and the turn to police-state measures by governments internationally are expressions of the descent by capitalist into barbarism, posing the need for a socialist alternative.
Bernie Monk, whose son Michael was one of 29 workers killed in the 2010 underground Pike River Coal mine disaster, expresses support for the families of the 16 workers killed in the Tennessee Accurate Energetic Systems weapons factory explosion.
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The Pike River tragedy has clear parallels with the October 10 Tennessee disaster—including the reports that the factory was allowed to operate despite known safety hazards, for which AES received minuscule fines.
The World Socialist Web Site has written extensively about Pike River, which was one of the worst industrial disasters in New Zealand’s history, and about the ongoing fight to uncover the full truth about what caused the explosions. Despite overwhelming evidence that Pike River Coal’s management violated health and safety laws and endangered the lives of its workers by placing profit and production ahead of safety, no one has been held to account.
Successive New Zealand governments, with the assistance of the judicial system and the trade union bureaucracy, have shielded the company leadership from prosecution. The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU, now called E tū) played a key role in covering up dangerous conditions at the mine prior to the explosion and then defending the company in the immediate aftermath.
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Bernie Monk:
"I want to warn you from my experience. Do not put your trust in the government or company management. From the first day, demand honesty. Keep your own records. Ask questions. Do not let them control the story. We were told to be patient, to let the process work. Fifteen years later, we are still fighting for truth and justice.
You will hear promises of transparency and accountability. You will be told there will be inquiries and reviews. But without constant pressure, they will protect themselves before they protect you. Stay united. Stand together. The strength of your families will be your greatest power.
We wish someone had told us this at the start. You deserve the truth, not excuses. You deserve justice, not delay.
Our thoughts and prayers are with you all. You are not alone."
14. General strike in Belgium against coalition government’s austerity program
Workers struck on Tuesday in the third, and largest, general strike this year against proposals by Belgium’s right-wing coalition to slash public spending as it finalises next year’s budget.
To save billions of euros, Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s government is seeking to increase the retirement age to 67 by 2030—and increase the number of days Belgians work per year before they are eligible. According to pension service estimates from October 2025, this change would cause workers to lose an average of €318 per month from their pensions.
Another key element of the cuts is to limit unemployment benefits to two years. Other cuts, including to child support and healthcare funding, are being scheduled, plus a rise in VAT sales tax.
Also planned are attacks on workplace protections and a freeze on wage indexation that overwhelmingly hit the working class, especially the lowest paid and shift workers.
The government is seeking to slash public spending by between €10-20 billion by 2029 to bring the federal deficit below the European Union’s 3 percent target. De Wever said that €10 billion cuts would be “the minimum required” by the European Commission, though “more would be better, if at all possible.”
The government is refusing to raise any taxes on the super-rich and the most affluent.
Belgium is also aiming to boost military spending to meet its pledges to NATO. In July, the government announced a €33.8 billion military spending program covering 2026 through 2034. This blew the lid off its previous plan for defence spending to reach 2 percent of GDP by 2029, from 1.3 percent when the coalition took office.
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The government’s class-war agenda has met with sustained opposition, with at least 88 strike days already held this year. These include major national strikes on February 21, March 31 (general strike), April 29 (general strike), May 22 and June 25.
Tuesday’s strike was called by the three largest union federations: the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (ACV/CSC); the General Federation of Belgian Labour (FGTB/ABVV) and the General Confederation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium (CGSLB/ACLVB). Their combined membership is approximately 3.5 million.
The stoppage was, according to Politico, Belgium’s biggest demonstration of workers “in a decade,” since 100,000 were on the streets during a 2014 strike. While trains ran, most metro, bus, and tram lines in Brussels were halted. Disruption to the transport network in the Walloon and Flemish regions was also widespread.
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Demonstrators faced vicious police repression as dozens were arrested. Police deployed tear gas and water cannon on the upmarket Boulevard Pachéco.
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The strike won widespread support from young people with the Brussels Times noting, “Students inside the IHECS university building were seen cheering on the demonstrators as they walk down Rue des Alexiens.” Students are being hit with increases in tuition fees.
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The militant movement in Belgium is part of a continent-wide fightback by the working class. In recent weeks there have been general strikes and mass protests in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands and Britain as opposition spreads against governments imposing austerity and attacks on workers’ rights, supporting genocide in Gaza and preparing to squander vast social resources on wars of conquest.
In every country the trade union bureaucracy is desperate to keep a lid on explosive social discontent, up to and including calling limited general strikes to allow rising anger to dissipate.
15. 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.
