Oct 2, 2025

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today: 

1. Chancellor Merz’s declaration of war on Russia

“We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday at an event hosted by the Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf.

These words, from the head of government of the world’s third-largest economy, should be understood not as a warning but as a declaration of war. For weeks, leading political figures in Germany and other European powers have been stepping up their war propaganda against Russia and turning the Baltic Sea into a future theater of war.

Incidents that used to be settled with diplomatic protests—such as the alleged violation of Polish airspace by Russian fighter jets over Baltic waters or the sighting of drones of unknown origin over Denmark—are serving as a pretext for rhetorical and military escalation against Russia.

“Russia is becoming more and more of a danger for NATO,” declared German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius over the weekend at the Warsaw Security Forum before 2,500 high-ranking participants from 90 countries. He said Russian President Putin was trying to provoke NATO and probe the alliance’s vulnerabilities. What was needed, he said, was unity, clarity of action, and cooperation.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul claimed without the slightest evidence that Moscow’s violations of NATO airspace were “not errors, but deliberate grey-zone attacks” with the aim of “testing our resolve.” “We leave no doubt whatsoever that we are determined and ready to repel any threat together,” he stressed. 

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In Poland... a veritable war hysteria now prevails, stoked by the government. The program “Safe Poland,” a joint initiative of public broadcaster TVP and the government, gives advice every morning from 9 to 12 on how to behave in the event of war. Survival backpacks filled with special rations, powdered energy drinks, water filters, flashlights, compasses, and other items for surviving wartime are sold out. With a military budget of 4.7 percent of GDP, Poland ranks first in Europe.

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EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pushing for the construction of a “drone wall” against Russia, as advocated by the Baltic states. The EU intends to provide billions of euros for this. As the FAZ summarizes the EU’s thinking: the war of the future can “no longer be fought with the weapons of the past: tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft... The use of drones has changed everything.”

The plan is supported by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich. CDU defence politician Roderich Kiesewetter is even calling for the formal declaration of a state of tension in order to speed up procurement of drones and other armaments and give the Bundeswehr more options for countering drones over Germany.

In the Baltic itself, one NATO exercise against Russia follows another. In the Quadriga exercise currently underway, 8,000 German soldiers and 400 troops from other NATO states are rehearsing the “large-scale redeployment of forces” to Lithuania. Everything is being practiced—from the involvement of civilian agencies and transport by road, rail, and sea to combat and sabotage operations.

As part of Operation Eastern Sentry, which began on September 12, NATO has intensified control of the airspace over the Baltic Sea and other countries along NATO’s eastern flank. Germany, France, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have sent additional fighter aircraft for this purpose.

Military units are also being deployed for ostensibly civilian purposes. For example, the German Navy sent the frigate Hamburg to Copenhagen to protect an informal EU summit there from Russian drones.

The war build-up against Russia has nothing to do with “defence.” The claim that Russia wants to militarily subjugate all of Europe is propaganda, comparable to the narratives that prepared the First and Second World Wars. Moscow’s war against Ukraine is a reactionary response to NATO’s encirclement of Russia, which the Putin regime perceived as an existential threat. Unable to appeal to the Ukrainian masses, the Kremlin’s oligarchic regime hoped to force NATO to back down with a “special military operation”—a catastrophic miscalculation. 

2. Florida executes Victor Jones, School for Boys torture victim, as state shatters record for government-sanctioned killings

The state of Florida carried out its latest act of state violence on Wednesday, September 30, proceeding with the execution of Victor Tony Jones, a survivor of horrific state-sanctioned child abuse at a Florida school for boys, even after the state formally recognized him as a victim. 

As Governor Ron DeSantis drives executions to a modern-era record for the state, Jones’ case lays bare the systemic failures and political expediency defining Florida’s death penalty system. Jones’ execution was the 13th so far this year, and the state is on track to put to death a record 15 individuals in 2025.

Jones, 64, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison near Starke. Pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. ET, Jones is now the 34th inmate executed in the US this year, the highest number of annual executions in the nation since 2014, and the 13th in the state of Florida so far in 2025.

Jones was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 for the December 1990 murders of his employers, Matilda Nestor, 66, and Jacob Nestor, 67, during a robbery at their Miami-Dade business. 

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In Jones’ final appeals for a reprieve, his attorneys argued that newly discovered evidence concerning the abuse he suffered at the notorious Okeechobee School for Boys should warrant a life sentence. They also raised arguments regarding their client’s intellectual disability. On September 24, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal in a 5-1 decision, declaring the arguments about abuse “procedurally barred” because the abuse occurred nearly 50 years ago and was not raised at trial or in prior postconviction proceedings.

Attorneys subsequently filed a petition for certiorari with the US Supreme Court, urging it to stop Jones’ execution and challenging the state’s minimization of their client’s mitigating evidence. The nation’ high court refused to grant a stay, clearing the way for Jones to be put to death.

The most egregious element of Jones’ case lies in Florida executing a man it has already compensated for state-inflicted torture. Jones is an intellectually disabled black man who survived brutal abuse while confined at the Okeechobee school. 

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Victor Jones’ traumatic past is intrinsically linked to the dark history of the Florida School for Boys system, which included the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna (1900–2011) and its overflow campus in Okeechobee (opened 1955). For 111 years, the schools gained a grim reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture and even murder of students by staff. 

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The most chilling evidence of the schools’ operations emerged after the state closed Dozier in 2011. Forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida (USF) documented nearly 100 deaths at the school from 1914 to 1973. Between 2012 and 2016, USF researchers found the remains of 55 bodies in unmarked graves, many located outside the official cemetery boundaries, including under a roadway and brush. The bodies included children listed as missing, and some remains exhibited signs of blunt force trauma or gunshot wounds. Historically, black boys died and were buried three times as often as white boys.

Jones’ execution comes amid a rapid acceleration of state killing under Governor DeSantis. As the 13th person executed in Florida in 2025, his death shattered the state’s modern-era record, which previously stood at eight executions, set in 2014. Florida has executed more people this year than any other state, followed by Texas with five. 

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The sharp increase in executions in Florida under DeSantis has driven a national increase in 2025. A total of 33 people have been put to death in the US this year, surpassing the total of 25 executions carried out in 2024.

This dramatic ratcheting up of state killing coincides with President Donald Trump’s urging prosecutors to aggressively seek the death penalty. Experts note that governors may be signing warrants now because the death penalty “seems to matter to the president,” implying a political motivation.

By continuing this rapid pace of execution, Florida—and consequently the US—maintains its status among the countries—alongside Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt—that carry out the highest number of confirmed executions. 

3. Trump’s renewed threat of 100 percent tariffs on foreign films: An attack on culture and the working class

On Monday, President Donald Trump once again threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on all films made outside the United States, in a rant on his Truth Social platform. His latest declaration exposes the authoritarian character of his administration and points toward the devastating impact such policies will have on workers in the US and internationally.

“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit. Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The notion that the film business has been “stolen from the United States of America” is reactionary, incendiary nonsense, an attempt to play on the most backward, chauvinistic sentiments. 

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Tariffs are regressive taxes that fall most heavily on the working class. A 100 percent tariff on films would not revive Hollywood’s declining fortunes, nor would it generate secure jobs for entertainment workers. Instead, it would raise ticket prices while cutting into studio budgets and inviting retaliatory measures from other countries, intensifying global tensions. 

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While Trump cynically scapegoats foreign competition, Democratic officials like Governor Gavin Newsom peddle their own reactionary “solutions.”

Newsom rushed to posture as Trump’s chief opponent, responding on X with the quip, “PAY MORE AND ENJOY NOTHING. That’s Donald Trump’s America.” Yet Newsom has consistently sought to collaborate with Trump and the entertainment corporations. He previously called on the administration to expand California’s $750 million film and television tax credit program into a national incentive scheme.

California’s tax credits are marketed as tools to fight “runaway production” to states like Georgia, New Mexico and New York, or to Canadian hubs. But the beneficiaries are the studios, which pocket millions in public subsidies while continuing to cut jobs, outsource production and impose deteriorating working conditions. Newsom’s reaction to Trump is not opposition but an appeal to big business for a more efficient mechanism to defend corporate profits.

Trump’s tariff threat is part of his administration’s escalating assault on culture, art and political dissent. Throughout his presidency, Trump has denounced public cultural institutions, cutting funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and seeking to eliminate public broadcasting.

He derided pandemic emergency funds for the Kennedy Center as “wasteful,” then intervened to impose state-sanctioned programming against “degenerate art.” He targeted the Smithsonian for addressing racism and inequality, labeling such exhibits “toxic propaganda.” His so-called “National Garden of American Heroes,” along with his “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” executive order epitomize his aim to enforce patriotic kitsch while censoring any critical or oppositional voices. 

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The entertainment unions have thrown their lot in with the corporations and the state. The Entertainment Union Coalition (EUC)—comprising IATSE, SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild, Teamsters Local 399 and Laborers Local 724—fully supports Newsom’s tax credit giveaways to the studios.

In May, the unions went further, co-signing with far-right actor Jon Voight a letter to Trump himself, pledging their willingness to cooperate with his administration. Voight, who has openly promoted Trump’s fascistic policies, has been reported as one of the inspirations for the tariff scheme.

On Tuesday, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien announced his embrace of Trump’s foreign film tariffs, revealing the union bureaucracy’s character in full: as collaborators with fascistic nationalism.

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Trump’s announcement is a serious warning. The working class cannot place any confidence in the Democratic Party or the unions, both of which have demonstrated their complicity with Trump’s agenda. The defense of jobs, wages and cultural freedom requires the independent organization of workers themselves.

Film, television and cultural workers must take the initiative to form rank-and-file committees, independent of the pro-corporate unions and both big-business parties. These committees must link the struggle of entertainment workers with those of autoworkers, educators, logistics workers and the entire working class, which confronts the same attacks in every sector. The fight against censorship, repression and economic exploitation is inseparable from the fight against the capitalist system itself.

The global character of film production expresses the international character of the working class. To defend their interests, workers in the US must unite with their counterparts in Canada, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The alternative to Trump’s reactionary nationalism is not Newsom’s corporatism but a socialist program: placing culture, as with all of society’s resources, under the democratic control of the working class, to serve human need and artistic development rather than private profit. 

4. California immigration bills expose the fraud of Democratic opposition to Trump

In a carefully choreographed ceremony in Sacramento on September 20, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of immigration bills—SB 98, AB 49, and SB 81—proclaiming California’s defiance of President Donald Trump’s escalating campaign of mass raids and deportations.

Praised by the Democratic Party and liberal press as a “bold defense” of immigrants and a “model for national resistance,” these measures have been hailed as a demonstration of the state’s autonomy and values.

Such claims are a fraud. Far from constituting a genuine obstacle to the fascist program emanating from Washington, the bills are empty gestures designed to project opposition while leaving the repressive machinery of the federal state untouched.

They accept the deportation system itself, the existence of ICE and its power to arrest and deport millions as permanent and legitimate, treating mass expulsions not as an intolerable assault on democratic rights but as an inevitable feature of American life.

Each of the new measures is carefully crafted to appear combative, while, in fact, conceding the fundamental ground to the Trump administration.

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The cynicism of this charade is underscored by the role of Newsom himself. Among leading Democrats, he has been the most vocal in warning of Trump’s authoritarian trajectory. In recent months, he has publicly accused the former president of seeking to undermine American democracy.

Yet this rhetoric only exposes the depth of Newsom’s hypocrisy and the fraud of California’s so-called “sanctuary” status. He fully supported Obama and Biden’s brutal deportation policies and now passes toothless measures that cannot halt a single federal raid, while simultaneously deepening the assault on immigrants through his own policies.

Crucially, he makes no appeal to the immense power of the working class, no call for demonstrations, strikes, or independent mass mobilization, precisely because the Democrats fear that such a movement would escape their control and threaten capitalist rule itself. Newsom’s most recent state budget slashed more than $5 billion in social programs, impacting undocumented workers and families by stripping away healthcare, housing and social services.

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The increasingly authoritarian character of the federal government is evident not only in the deportation campaign but also in the rhetoric and actions of its leading officials. After Newsom signed the immigration bills, acting US Attorney Bill Essayli publicly accused the governor of threatening the federal government.

“We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials,” Essayli wrote on X, announcing that he had requested a “full threat assessment” by the US Secret Service.

The Democratic Party’s role in this process is doubly reactionary. First, it has collaborated for decades in building the legal and institutional apparatus of repression. The Obama administration deported more people than any previous presidency, vastly expanded ICE’s powers, and militarized the border. Congressional Democrats have repeatedly voted to increase funding for immigration enforcement and detention.

Second, the Democrats now use symbolic gestures like SB 98, AB 49, and SB 81 to maintain the illusion that the state apparatus can be pressured to protect democratic rights. In reality, these measures are not intended to stop Trump’s fascistic policies, but to contain and demobilize mass opposition to them. This fraud is reinforced by the trade union bureaucracy, which functions as an appendage of the two big business parties and the capitalist state.

Major unions, including the California Nurses Association and SEIU, cynically hailed the bills as historic victories for immigrant workers and patients, presenting Newsom as a champion of the oppressed. In fact, such endorsements sow dangerous illusions and disorient workers in the face of escalating attacks.

False hopes are also being planted in the 2026 elections, assuming that they will even be held. The aim is to convince workers that salvation lies in the courts, in the legislature, or at the ballot box, even as those very institutions are being transformed into instruments of dictatorship. 

5. United States:  Eric Adams leaves New York City mayoral race, as Trump steps up attacks on Mamdani

A right-wing political gang-up against New York City Democratic mayoral candidate and self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani took place this week in a coordinated series of moves, as the November 4 election nears. 

On Sunday, incumbent mayor Eric Adams announced he was dropping out of the race after polling in single digits, far behind Mamdani, who is leading by double digits, and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani and is now running as an independent. Adams trailed even Republican Curtis Sliwa, who is also under pressure to quit the race and throw his support to Cuomo.

In a video announcing his withdrawal, Adams launched into a thinly veiled attack against Mamdani, repeating the chorus of right-wing attacks depicting modest but left-sounding social reforms as extremist and anti-American.

“I must also sound a warning: extremism is growing in our politics. Our children are being radicalized to hate our city and our country. Political anger is turning into political violence,” Adams said. “Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer [is] to destroy the very system we built together over generations.”

Cuomo contributed his own diatribe against “extremism” only an hour after Adams’s withdrawal, applauding his decision. “We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them,” he said.

Following the Adams pullout, Trump launched an anti-communist tirade against Mamdani on social media. “He is going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great City. Remember, he needs the money from me, as President, in order to fulfill all of his FAKE Communist promises. He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him?”

This type of intervention in a mayoral election by the sitting US president, threatening to withhold all federal funding if a political opponent wins, is wholly unprecedented. 

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Despite their anti-communist hysterics, however, Mamdani is no threat to the political establishment or the capitalist system. Since winning the Democratic primary, he has only moved to the right and gone through great pains to meet with and reassure leading representatives of Wall Street and big business that he can be trusted to serve their interests. 

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While Mamdani reassures the ruling elite, however, the significant popular support he has won by centering his campaign on the affordability crisis, fighting Trump and opposing the Gaza genocide is an indication of the radicalization of the working class and youth throughout New York City. 

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Most recently, former Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris endorsed Mamdani, which he enthusiastically accepted. Harris—who bears responsibility for the genocide in Gaza and the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which could trigger a nuclear war—called Mamdani for a 10-minute discussion last week. One topic they discussed was “the importance of joy amidst the struggle of our politics,” according to the New York Times. 

6. The real issue in the government shutdown: Mobilize the working class against Trump’s dictatorship!

The Trump administration, acting as a representative of the capitalist oligarchy, is using this week’s government shutdown to implement an unprecedented assault on the working class, including mass layoffs and attacks on social programs, at the center of which is the erection of a military-police dictatorship.

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. 

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The present actions are a massive escalation of the assault already underway since Trump’s return to power. Since coming to power, the administration has wiped out 200,000-300,000 federal jobs while gutting public health, dismantling environmental and workplace safety regulations, and moving to eliminate the Department of Education.

Facing mounting debt and deepening economic crisis, the Trump administration is preparing to slash the core social programs on which tens of millions rely—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—while targeting WIC, food stamps and other vital assistance programs for the poor.

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The denunciations of the “enemy within,” Trump’s declaration of war on American cities, and the vilification of the “radical left” express the recognition by the capitalist oligarchy that its program will provoke mass opposition from the working class. 

Under these conditions, the Democratic Party is absolutely incapable of and unwilling to pose the issues as they really are. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared meekly on Wednesday, “Democrats remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. But we need a credible partner.” 

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peaking for the Democrats, the New York Times published an editorial on Wednesday afternoon. Purporting to identify “the real stakes of the shutdown,” the Times claimed, “What the two parties are fighting about is whether Americans should have access to affordable health care.” 

The Times avoided any mention of Trump’s moves to deploy the military to occupy American cities, criminalize opposition and establish a dictatorship. It concluded with a plaintive appeal: “Now that it is too late to avert a shutdown, it is incumbent on the president and Congress to reopen the government as soon as possible—and commit to preventing Americans from having to pay too much for health insurance next year.”

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The Democrats are not “negotiating,” let alone “fighting,” over access to healthcare. Their real and sole concern, the subject of discussions behind the scenes, is the war against Russia in Ukraine. On the essential issues of class policy, the Democrats, a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, are in agreement. 

Given the extraordinary, criminal and unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration, the basic question is how to remove him from power. When the Democrats impeached Trump in 2019, it was not for his fascistic threats but over a delay in sending weapons to Ukraine. Today, there are not even suggestions of impeachment from the Democratic Party over actions that make Watergate appear like child’s play. This is itself an act of complicity in Trump’s dictatorship.

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For the trade union apparatus, the central principle and article of faith is that, under any and all conditions, workers must do nothing. The apparatus functions as an industrial police force, deployed to enforce the dictates of the corporations and the state by blocking any struggle by the working class it claims to represent.

The working class cannot stand passively by as Trump plots military dictatorship and a war on the working class! The Socialist Equality Party calls for workers to respond to the government shutdown and Trump’s conspiracy through mass, collective action.

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Whatever the maneuvers of the Democratic Party during the shutdown, Trump will still be in power, and all the criminals who make up his administration will continue to rule on behalf of big business. Tens or hundreds of thousands of workers will have lost their jobs. 

The working class must intervene in this unprecedented crisis with its own program. This requires organization. As the SEP explained in its September 19 statement, “Trump’s fascist conspiracy and how to fight it: A socialist strategy,” a central element in the strategy of the working class must be:

The building of a new form of organization that can unify the working class and mobilize its vast industrial and economic power against the Trump regime. This new form of organization proposed by the Socialist Equality Party consists of rank-and-file committees. They must be established in every factory, workplace, school and neighborhood to organize resistance to Trump’s dictatorship. These committees must become centers of resistance, uniting all sections of the working class (in industry, logistics, transport, restaurants and fast food, social services, legal defense, education, arts and culture, entertainment, medicine, health care, sciences, computer technology, programming and other highly specialized professions) and student youth against Trump’s fascist government, the complicity of the Democrats, and the broader assault on democratic rights and living standards.

The creation of rank-and-file committees is indispensable to break the stranglehold of the trade union bureaucracies, transfer power into the hands of the workers themselves and create new centers of coordinated social power for the defense of democratic rights. This is the path forward: the independent mobilization of the working class for socialism against dictatorship, war and capitalist exploitation.

7. Teachers union president preaches calm as educators back call for mass strike against Trump dictatorship

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten spoke at a “Public Education Town Hall” in the Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, Michigan, Monday night. Weingarten, who recently authored a book titled, Why Fascists Hate Teachers, made no proposal to mobilize the AFT’s 1.8 million members against Trump’s ever more apparent attempt to establish a fascist dictatorship.

Instead, she reassured attendees that “it never gets to the point where fascism gets here.” Her remark came a day before Trump told top generals that US troops should use American cities as “training grounds” for war against the “enemy within.” Targets of this repression will include hundreds of thousands of teachers and students. Just last week, Trump adviser Stephen Bannon declared at the Charlie Kirk rally that “a third of the teachers are terrorists.”

Although opposition to Trump is immense, Weingarten addressed fewer than 100 people, mainly union and Democratic Party officials. Far from warning of dictatorship or calling for action, her remarks dripped with complacency. 

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As in her book (which the World Socialist Web Site will review soon), Weingarten spoke in vague generalities, never naming Trump, Bannon, or Stephen Miller as fascists. Public schools once suffered from “neglect,” she said, but now there was “intentionality” to destroy them. The aim was to “create so much chaos, fear and cruelty so that people will just give up.” Her advice: attend school board meetings. 

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Above all, she insisted teachers belonged in their classrooms, not out on strike. “By making schools a safe and welcoming place,” she said, teachers were “showing politicians that it was their job to protect our schools.”

The absurdity of this was highlighted by the decay of the 100-year-old Eastpointe High School where the event was held. At schools in Eastpointe Community Schools, 59.7 percent of students are eligible to participate in the federal free and reduced price meal because of poverty.

After decades of bipartisan defunding and privatization schemes, the American public school system is on the brink of complete collapse. The Trump administration, aided and abetted by the Democrats, is trying to drive the final nail in the coffin, and convert the schools into centers of religious, nationalist and fascist indoctrination.

What the AFT president did not and could not say is that defending public education and democracy requires a fight of the working class against the corporate and financial oligarchy. Weingarten is a political hack, and not a workers’ leader. A multimillionaire and longtime leader of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) until her recent resignation, Weingarten fears above all an independent mass movement of the working class.

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Fascists may fear teachers, as the title of her book suggests, but they have nothing to fear from Randi Weingarten. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, she allied herself with right-wing anti-vaxxers against teachers opposed to reopening COVID-infested schools.

Functioning as a State Department asset, she helped provide a “democratic” veneer to Ukrainian neo-Nazis which spearheaded a Western-backed coup in 2014. Today, these forces have their own units in the Ukrainian Army and their outsized political influence is bound up with the official rehabilitation of World War II-era Nazi collaborators. She is also an avid Zionist who supports Israel’s genocide in Gaza, notwithstanding occasional statements for public consumption.

Weingarten herself is not a Nazi, and her Jewish background no doubt makes her a target of the extreme right. But her adaptation to such forces flows from the class logic of her position and the union bureaucracy as a whole. They were long ago integrated with the state and corporate boardrooms, and these connections and their six-figure incomes depend on their ability to prevent significant organized resistance in the working class.

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But the massive growth of opposition has forced some tactical adaptations on Weingarten’s part. While a longtime supporter of “establishment” Democrats, she is now working alongside the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a faction of the Democratic Party, and has endorsed DSA member Zohran Mamdani for mayor. Since winning the party primary, Mamdani has walked back his populist campaign rhetoric to reassure Wall Street and the party leadership that they have nothing to fear from him.

Her decision to resign from the Democratic National Committee was over factional disagreements related to the party’s increasing inability to channel and sideline mass opposition with left demagogy, one of the party’s core traditional functions for American capitalism.

Her support for the October 18 “No Kings” demonstrations is aimed at corralling opposition behind Democrats, like JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom, and limiting it to endless protests which do not change anything. “If there’s five to 10 million people… it’s going to send a message to Donald Trump that people don’t like the loss of freedom,” she said. 

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Serious educators in attendance at the Detroit area event backed the Socialist Equality Party’s call for mass action by the working class. One handed out an open letter addressed to Weingarten recalling the 1942 Norwegian teachers’ resistance to the Nazification of their schools in German-occupied Norway. Despite arrests and deportations, 10,000 educators refused to join the fascist-controlled union, forcing the collaborationist Quisling regime to drop its plans to incorporate the schools into the fascist state.   

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In this article, the author Jerry White describes Weingarten's answer to a question of his:

“I’m not opposed to a strike,” Weingarten claimed. “A strike is one of the vehicles that one does. They are normally an economic vehicle against a boss.” Her evasive statement that she is “not opposed to a strike” against Trump is undermined by her refusal to raise it on her own.

What she is saying is that workers should limit themselves to purely “economic” struggles over wages and benefits—which the AFT has also worked to sabotage. To the extent that they concern themselves with politics, it should be limited to support for the Democrats and various Democratic Party campaigns.

8. Bubble fears mount over Nvidia-OpenAI “circular” deal 

Fears of a possible meltdown have been heightened by the recent deal between the leading AI chipmaker Nvidia and OpenAI, which sparked the AI surge with the release of ChatGPT towards the end of 2022.

Under the deal, Nvidia is to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to assist it in building massive data centres using Nvidia chips.

The deal is raising questions about the way in which Nvidia is making investments to finance the AI boom to ensure that companies are locked into the use of its chips.

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The scale of the investments is unprecedented. The Nvidia-OpenAI deal calls for “at least” 10GW of computing power. According to the International Energy Agency, 10GW in AI data centres would consume as much energy as consumed in a year by 10 million typical US households.

But there is no certainty about how this massive outlay will be recouped. Last year, OpenAI recorded a loss of $5 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue. This year, according to a report by the business channel CNBC in August, revenue is on track to pass $20 billion. But this is not enough to put the company in the black, and losses are expected to continue.

At that time, CEO Sam Altman told CNBC on the release of ChatGPT-5, “As long as we’re on this very distinct curve of the model getting better and better, I think the rational thing to do is just be willing to run the loss for quite a while.”

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The Nvidia strategy, as exemplified in its deal with OpenAI, is to ensure that however the market develops, its chips, graphic processing units (GPUs), will be at the centre of AI development. Before the latest deal was announced, it had already entered into similar smaller agreements with smaller companies.

The deal with OpenAI is a qualitative leap. Concerns have been raised that it involves “circular” financing of the kind developed in the dot-com bubble, which led to billions of dollars in losses when it collapsed.

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The Nvidia arrangements bear a close resemblance to those engaged in by telecom equipment makers 25 years ago. Firms such as Nortel, Lucent and Cisco lent money to telecom companies. But the bubble collapsed because the supply of equipment exceeded the demand, and the networking companies lost as much as 90 percent of their value over the next decade. 

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Investment in AI and other technologies, accompanied by a share market surge, is being carried out because it is claimed the economy is “strong.” But outside that investment, growth is essentially zero.

This situation was underscored by a report from the payroll assessor ADP yesterday, which said private sector employment in the US fell by 32,000 last month, the largest drop in two and a half years, after economists’ predictions were for a 50,000 increase.

The Nvidia-OpenAI deal needs to be viewed within the framework of the speculative binge, powered by ultra-cheap money which has powered the rise of Wall Street since the 2008 global financial crisis. The S&P 500 index is at around 6,688. At its nadir after the crisis, it was 666 in March 2009.

There has been a 100-fold increase in the index since then, underlining the growing divorce between the stock market and an underlying real economy on which it ultimately depends. The growth of US GDP over the same period has been from $14.48 trillion in 2009 to $30.5 trillion today—little more than double.

Moreover, the rise in the market has been increasingly concentrated in the tech giants—the so-called Magnificent Seven. Together, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla account for around 37 percent of the S&P 500 market capitalization, the highest share on record with Nvidia playing the leading role.

Since October 2022 and the start of the AI stock market surge, its shares have risen 1,350 percent. The development of AI has the potential for a massive boost in the productivity of human labor and the advancement of civilization. But its exploitation within the framework of capitalist social and economic relations, based on private profit, is sowing the seeds for a major financial crisis, which, as the experience of 2008 revealed, will have devastating economic and social consequences.

9. Private payroll data shows consecutive month job losses for first time since onset of COVID-19 pandemic

For the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, private employers in the United States laid off more workers than they hired in back-to-back months, according to payrolls processor ADP (Automatic Data Processing).

The unofficial data, which Wall Street investors are relying on since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job report is unlikely to come out this Friday due to the government shutdown, revealed that private employment decreased in the US by 32,000 jobs in September, staggering economists who had previously estimated gains of as many as 50,000 jobs.

ADP also revised its August 2025 report, which initially reported 54,000 private sector job gains to -3,000. This is the third month this year ADP has reported negative monthly job growth; in June 2025 ADP reported -33,000 private sector job losses, the first monthly decline since March 2023.

President Donald Trump’s claims that the US economy has entered a “golden age” were bluntly rebutted by the report, which noted the “trend was unchanged; job creation continued to lose momentum across most sectors.” Industries seeing declines in hiring included construction, manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, trade, transportation and utilities, as well as professional and business services. The few sectors that saw any growth were mining, education and healthcare services.

*****

The US economy is teetering on the brink of recession with workers in white- and blue-collar industries finding it increasingly impossible to find work. In their September report, Challenger, Gray & Christmas observed that so far this year, private companies in the US have announced “892,362 job cuts the highest year to date since 2020,” when companies laid off nearly 2 million workers. This year’s figures represent a 66 percent increase compared to the first 8 months of last year and 17 percent more job losses than in all of 2024 (761,358). 

*****

Citing gains in artificial intelligence and uncertainty surrounding Trump’s illegal tariff regime, major companies are refusing to hire recent college graduates. The Financial Times recently reported that job opening advertisements focused on college graduates have “plummeted” in the last three years in both the UK and the United States. In the US, job listings for college graduates are down over 40 percent compared to 3 years ago, while it is [down] over 60 percent in the UK.

*****

There is no question more private sector job cuts and layoffs are on the immediate horizon. Newsweek citing data from WARNTracker.com found over 50 major companies are planning hundreds of layoffs in October. WARN, or the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988, requires private employers with 100 or more workers to provide 60 calendar days’ notice of plant closings or mass layoffs.

Among the employers planning layoffs are corporations spanning tech, media, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and finance. These include:

  • Tech / Telecom: Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle America, T-Mobile
  • Media / Entertainment: CNN/Warner Bros., Warner Music Group, Anaheim Arena Management
  • Health and Pharma: Adventist Health, Enloe Health, Providence Health & Services, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Gilead Sciences, Catalent, TriLink Biotechnologie, CooperVision Inc.
  • Financial Services: Farmers Insurance Group, Wells Fargo, Navient Solutions, Dandelion Payments, Inc.
  • Logistics and Transportation: Air Wisconsin Airlines, FedEx, GXO Logistics, J.B. Hunt Transport, Burlington Trailways
  • Retail and Consumer: Fred Meyer, Jack in the Box, Car Toys, Inc., Vistar Green Rabbit
  • Manufacturing / Industrial: Owens Corning, Smurfit WestRock, Silgan Containers, Winnebago Industries, Zeco Systems, Inc., Zumtobel Lighting Inc., PL Developments, Pactiv Corporation

The scale of these layoffs underscores that the labor market contraction is not limited to small firms or isolated industries. It spans from Silicon Valley giants to Wall Street banks, airlines, hospitals and household-name retailers. 

*****

The wide-scale job destruction being undertaken by corporate America and the US government has not prompted any action from the trade union bureaucracies that allege to represent workers. None of the government trade unions have proposed strike action, while virtually all of the major private sector trade unions, including the Teamsters, United Auto Workers and International Longshoremen’s Association have backed Trump’s tariff regime. 

*****

Conclusions must be drawn. The capitalist system is incapable of providing job security or protecting the democratic rights of the working class. The fascistic Trump administration on behalf of the financial oligarchy is initiating a counterrevolution against all the gains previously won by the working class in the last 100 years. 

10. Boeing defense strike in danger as AFL-CIO president visits St. Louis

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler traveled to St. Louis, Missouri on Wednesday to speak at a rally called by the International Association of Machinists, whose 3,200 members in the area’s defense plants have been on strike against Boeing for nearly two months. Other top officials in attendance included IAM president Brian Bryant and Jon Holden, a top leader of IAM Local 751 in Seattle.

Only a small handful of people were in attendance at the rally, in spite of the determined stand taken by the strikers, who have rejected three consecutive sellout contracts. But while few workers took note of her visit, Shuler was there primarily to help IAM bureaucrats shut the strike down.

The presence of Bryant and Holden drove this home. Last year, these and other IAM bureaucrats sold out a strike by more than 30,000 commercial airplane Boeing workers. That strike, like the one in St. Louis, took the form of a semi-rebellion against the union apparatus, with workers rejecting numerous contracts and organizing spontaneous rallies to demand strike action. Afterwards, the company announced 17,000 layoffs worldwide, even as it continues to rake in new manufacturing contracts worth tens of billions.

The Boeing strike is at a decisive phase. Either workers throw out the corrupt apparatus and build a new leadership, organized in a rank-and-file strike committee and based on a strategy for victory, or the bureaucracy will end the strike with a betrayal.

*****

The union bureaucracy, Boeing and the Trump government are converging to force the strikers back to work. The company has already begun hiring permanent replacements, and last week they announced it would relocate its F-18 Service Life Modification program away from St. Louis. Management implausibly claims the move is unrelated to the strike.

The involvement of federal mediators means the involvement of a government that is carrying out plans for dictatorship. On Tuesday, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke to a crowd of hundreds of generals, and declared that the military will be ordered to send troops to American cities to crush the “enemy within.” Trump is also using the government shutdown, which began early Wednesday morning, to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers and seize control over the budget from Congress.

The fight of the working class against corporate oligarchy, inequality and exploitation must become connected to a political struggle against dictatorship and war. The ruling class fears that the stand taking by Boeing workers, in a strike which raises fundamental political issues, could encourage resistance by workers elsewhere and even escape the control of the IAM bureaucracy. Indeed, St. Louis is one of the cities subject to possible military deployment, with Union Pacific’s CEO asking Trump to send troops to the critical rail hub. 

*****

The central issue now is how Boeing workers respond. As the World Socialist Web Site has stressed, a genuine struggle requires the creation of new organizations, independent of the IAM and all the pro-corporate unions. Rank-and-file strike committees, democratically elected and controlled by workers themselves, must be established.

These committees can link defense workers with Boeing’s commercial plants, coordinate actions across the industry, and connect with workers across Boeing’s operations and at other defense contractors. They can unite with autoworkers, educators, logistics and health care workers—all confronting the same alliance of corporations, the state and the union bureaucracy. 

*****

The Boeing strike poses the most fundamental questions before the working class. Workers are told they must accept endless sacrifices in order to fund Washington’s wars abroad and guarantee corporate profits at home. Every maneuver by the union apparatus to contain and wind down the strike expresses its integration into the capitalist state and its hostility to an independent movement of the working class.

The alternative lies in the conscious initiative of the workers themselves. Rank-and-file committees must be established in every Boeing plant, linking defense workers with autoworkers, teachers, logistics and healthcare workers, all confronting the same alliance of corporations, the state and the union bureaucracy. 

11. Israel illegally intercepts aid flotilla bound for Gaza

In an ongoing military operation in the Mediterranean, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have intercepted at least thirteen vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which had been attempting to break the siege of Gaza.  

The IDF’s actions are part of Israel’s flagrant offensive against international law. The vessels were attacked and taken over in international waters, on the basis of maintaining Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is itself illegal.

The attack on the flotilla has intensified mass popular hostility to Israel and its genocide in Gaza. Protests are being held in capital cities around the world, and in Italy a general strike has been called for Friday. 

*****

Among those arrested is the well-known Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. The flotilla includes numbers of other prominent figures, such as former South African MP Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, and several European politicians from France, Spain and Scandinavian countries.  

*****

The interceptions and the circumstances leading up to them underscored the bogus character of such posturing. With the flotilla and its fate of particular interest in the Mediterranean nations of Italy and Spain, both countries dispatched military vessels on the pretext of protecting it from any aggression.

On Tuesday evening, however, organisers stated they had been told that “the frigate escorting the fleet will ask the participants to turn back,” well before they had approached Gaza. They told media outlets, “What Italy is doing is not protection but sabotage, and an attempt to undermine the mission, as it acts as a tool in the hands of Israel instead of safeguarding the volunteers.” 

The Spanish government similarly called on participants to turn their vessels around and warned against breaching Israel’s maritime exclusion zone around Gaza.

*****

The latest developments underscore the reality that protests, no matter how courageous, are insufficient to halt the unfolding war crimes. 

The independent strength of the working class must be brought to bear, including through strikes and industrial action aimed at halting all military supplies to the imperialist-Zionist war machine. That in turn must form one component of the development of an international anti-war movement, uniting the working class globally, in opposition to a capitalist system hurtling towards barbarism and war.

12. Australia: NSW Labor government imposes real wage cut on nurses and midwives

The New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) announced on September 4 that an “interim” offer from the NSW Labor government for a 3 percent nominal wage “increase” had been accepted by its membership.

With the monthly inflation rate climbing to 3 percent in August, the latest meager offer will amount to yet another real wage cut. It will do nothing to resolve the dire conditions confronting nurses and midwives, including chronic understaffing and overwork, and leave almost every demand advanced by workers unaddressed.

*****

This year’s pay offer was pushed through by the union bureaucracy without so much as a suggestion of a fight. Nurses and midwives were effectively told that the choice was between taking the meager pay rise and waiting for the IRC, or refusing the meagre pay rise and waiting for the IRC.

Despite the NSWNMA’s promotion of the “interim” offer, opposition among nurses and midwives prompted the bureaucracy to employ an anti-democratic voting process to engineer a favorable result.

*****

Following the announcement that the interim offer had been accepted, the NSWNMA social media pages received hundreds of comments from nurses and midwives expressing their opposition to the deal, stating that they and their coworkers had voted “no” and wanted to fight back against the Labor government’s attack on wages.

One worker commented, “We should just reject everything until they actually listen. The government got exactly what they wanted.”

*****

Similar mechanisms have been and are being used by the other health unions to impose the Labor government’s attacks on wages and conditions throughout the NSW public sector.

The Health Services Union (HSU), which covers radiographers, orderlies, cleaners, security guards, catering workers and administrative staff, among others, also recently concluded a deal with the state Labor government, which includes a miserly 4 percent per annum wage increase for 2025 and 2026.

The offer was promoted favorably by the union bureaucracy, who made clear that if workers rejected the deal, the union would not organize any fight back and would only “revert back to the IRC” for a determination.

A three-day statewide strike by doctors in April was shut down by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF), which promoted illusions that they could improve their conditions through IRC arbitration. Last month, the doctors again voted overwhelmingly to reject the Labor government’s latest meager pay offer, but ASMOF has not organized a single action, instead proceeding with its legal manoeuvres.

To fight for real improvements to their wages and conditions, nurses and midwives need to turn to these other sections of workers for support. They must reject the union lies that their interests can be advanced through the pro-business industrial courts.

*****

The fight for better wages and conditions for nurses, midwives and other health workers is inseparable from the struggle for a high-quality public health system, and against the chronic underfunding and staff shortages responsible for the appalling conditions and dangerous delays confronting patients.

What is required is a socialist program and perspective, to establish a workers’ government that places healthcare as well as the banks and corporations under public ownership and democratic workers’ control, to direct resources to meet human needs, not private profit. 

13. United Kingdom:  Starmer and the Labour Party roll in the nationalist gutter

It has become impossible to picture Prime Minister Keir Starmer without a Union Flag backdrop. But this week’s Labour conference in Liverpool took the party’s jingoism to a new and repulsive level.

Delegates were all provided with small Union Flags, English St George’s Crosses, Scottish Saltires and Welsh Red Dragons, which they waved as “proud patriots of great nations” as Starmer delivered a keynote speech seeking to compete with Reform UK, especially on immigration control.

Labour organised the spectacle after a year in which the display of the St George’s Cross has been associated with an unprecedented campaign of far-right agitation against migrants. What this proved, Starmer explained, was that Labour is the party of “national renewal”, “secure borders” and of listening to “reasonable concerns about immigration”. A party prepared to “smash the gangs”, “crack down on illegal working” and “remove people”. 

As these words were spoken, US President Donald Trump was sending more National Guardsmen to US cities, advancing his plans for dictatorship, under the pretext of repelling an “invasion” by illegal migrants. 

*****

Starmer’s nationalist and anti-migrant diatribe was grotesquely cast as the politics of “decency” versus the “division” represented by Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, named four times as someone “sowing fear and discord across our country.” A “moral line” between the two parties meant Labour celebrated Britain as a “tolerant”, “compassionate country” which rejected “racist violence and hatred”.

Starmer’s was a pitch for a slightly more multi-ethnic nationalism, just as jingoistic but coupled with a caution not to get carried away and attack British Blacks and Asians.

His criticisms of Farage were an attempt to win over his voter base, whose views he portrayed as both legitimate and the genuine voice of the working class.

*****

As always, the appeal to a national community was cover for the waging of a vicious social war by the super-rich minority against the working-class majority.

Like Margaret Thatcher in drag, Starmer promised to “unleash British enterprise”, grow “productivity” and “confront the blockers that strangle a thriving private sector.” Attacking the idea of “a wealth tax that somehow solves every problem,” he declared he would replace “handouts or help” with “wealth creation”.

*****

Starmer’s second major attack on Reform was to indict Farage as one of those who “equivocate on Putin and Ukraine”. Labour, on the other hand, was committed to carrying on the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine—to “investment in defense” to “defend our continent from Putin’s aggression”. His boast of “Our support—iron clad and never wavering—for the brave people of Ukraine”, with “The yellow and blue flag flying on churches and village halls”, earned him a standing ovation from an audience of politically deranged warmongers. 

The UK government has made some efforts in recent weeks to distance itself from the other bloodbath it supports, the genocide in Gaza, including by recognizing a Palestinian state. At conference, Starmer moved seamlessly from this empty commitment to welcoming Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s slavery or death ultimatum to Hamas to accept the ethnic cleansing and US takeover of Gaza.

Liverpool was billed as the relaunch of Starmer’s premiership, the most unpopular in British history, and a turning point in his government’s political fortunes. But it only demonstrated that Labour is a party utterly divorced from the sentiments of the vast bulk of the working class, and especially young people, whose reaction to Starmer’s version of the Last Night of the Proms will have been one of disgust.

A party that functions solely as a transmission belt between the banks, the corporations and the military and policymaking in parliament is doomed to electoral and organizational collapse.

What Labour thinks it knows of the working class is what it is told about it by Reform and its own “Blue Labour” faction: that its guiding principles are Blue Labour’s own slogan of flag, faith and family. The same goes for the media figures spilling pages of ink speculating whether Starmer’s newfound “passion” will be enough to win voters from Farage.

One would hardly know from reading the mainstream media that Reform represents less than a third of voters in the polls, and the Tories and Reform combined less than half. Among people aged 25-49, they muster barely a third between them; among 18-24-year-olds, fewer than one in five.

For most workers and young people, Starmer’s speech will only have convinced them that he and Farage are equally reactionary, and that the claims of Labour’s remaining Corbynites such as John McDonnell that there would be a turn to the left at conference were outright lies.

The mood among millions is for a fight to bring down this government of genocide, militarism, flattery for the far-right and the fascist in the White House, and vicious hostility to the working class and its social conquests like the National Health Service.

*****

Around the world, the ruling class is waging a reactionary offensive unprecedented since the 1920s and 1930s, mobilising the full force of the state to wage war and crush domestic resistance. Fighting back will require the mobilisation of the full social force of the international working class. For this, a revolutionary socialist and internationalist party is required. 

14. United Kingdom: Metroline bus drivers continue strike as Unite and Labour Mayor Andy Burnham shut down unified Greater Manchester action

Strike action by 2,000 Greater Manchester bus drivers at Stagecoach, First Bus and Metroline scheduled for Tuesday to Thursday this week was largely suspended at the last minute by Unite in collusion with Labour Mayor Andy Burnham.

Last weekend Burnham convened closed-door talks with Unite officials and bus company executives which cooked up revised offers to be voted on to avert a repeat of the coordinated strike action between September 19–22. That action by drivers at all three companies against derisory pay offers shut down two-thirds of the Bee Network bus services, operated by private firms under franchising arrangements with the Labour authority. 

*****

Unite’s collusion with Burnham failed to stop 1,000 Metroline drivers striking at depots in Sharston, Hyde Road, Ashton and Wythenshawe. The revised offer—from 3.5 per cent to 8.8 percent—is a repackaged, substandard deal spread over two years. Stagecoach is using the same sleight of hand, with Unite agreeing to ballot 1,000 drivers on a deal the company cynically describes as “an almost nine percent pay increase by April 2026.”

No details have been released about the new offer at First Bus. Its 110 drivers previously rejected an “improved” offer of a 6 percent increase for this year to an 8.8 percent over two years—as they are currently paid just £15 an hour, the lowest rate in the region. The World Socialist Web Site contacted Unite’s press office to ask how the new offers compared with those already rejected but received no response.

Stagecoach, First and Metroline are raking in profits from drivers’ labour and that of transport workers globally, with the three transnationals enjoying outsourcing deals worldwide like those in Greater Manchester.

FirstGroup’s operating profit for last year was £204 million and share dividends were increased by 45 percent on the previous year. Stagecoach reported pre-operating profits of £51 million for last year, up from £33 million. Metroline’s parent company, Singapore-based ComfortDelGro, recorded a £60 million operating profit from its UK and European bus operations in the first half of 2025—boosted by new Greater Manchester contracts worth £422 million over five years.

Unite is once again carving up a struggle it promised would be coordinated, bending it into the Labour mayor’s franchising framework, which sacrifices pay and conditions for corporate profit. 

*****

As the defiance of Metroline drivers already shows, Burnham relied on his connections with the Unite bureaucracy to undermine the rank-and-file to buttress a corporatist framework with the private operators. What he calls “affordable and sustainable for the Bee Network” are crumbs for bus workers while Stagecoach, First and Metroline rake in millions from contracts with the Labour authority. 

*****

Establishing a joint strike committee of trusted workers from the shop floor—not full-time bureaucrats—would provide the basis for appealing to workers beyond Greater Manchester, both nationally and internationally at the three companies and other private operators.

This includes workers at Greater Manchester’s Metrolink tram and light rail service who have rejected a below inflation offer of 3.2 percent. Unite has organized a strike ballot of its 200 members which closes October 1, claiming to be organizing action across Greater Manchester. But the suspension of the bus strikes shows that a coordinated fight can only be waged by the rank-and-file in opposition to the union apparatus.

The Metrolink is part of the Bee Network, but is run under franchise by the private consortium Keolis/Amey—exposing the Labour authority’s claim to be running a public transport system rather than a glorified outsourcing operation.

15. Unison claims victory over NHS England “pause” on private subsidiaries: Beware the fine print

A strike ballot at Dorset’s three National Health Service (NHS) Trusts opposing the transfer of 1,700 NHS staff into a subsidiary company (subco) produced a 94 percent vote for industrial action by staff. The results were announced last Wednesday.

Launched on August 27, the ballot involved Unison members at Dorset County Hospital, Dorset Healthcare, and University Hospitals Dorset. Porters, housekeepers, catering, maintenance, and some administrative staff were involved. The 74 percent turnout reflects mass opposition to the subco, a fire-and-rehire scheme by NHS England aimed at gutting pay, terms, conditions and pensions.

On Thursday, one day after the ballot result, Unison claimed it would “meet to discuss and plan upcoming strike action.” But the next day, Unison issued an “urgent message for members” claiming sudden victory in the fight against the mass transfer of staff into a private company.

Unison claimed to have secured a win for all NHS staff in defeating the subcos agenda. It claimed, “This is incredible change—not only have you led the fight for you and 1,700 of your colleagues to remain in the NHS, you have won the fight to protect thousands of NHS staff just like yourselves, across England.”

No such victory has been secured.

*****

NHS England’s agreement with Unison confirms the preferred strategy of the Starmer government: inflict attacks on all NHS workers via collaboration with the health unions.

Labour’s 10 Year Health Plan for England states the government will “continue to work with trade unions and employers to maintain, update and reform employment contracts and start a big conversation on significant contractual changes that provide modern incentives and rewards for high quality and productive care.”

Streeting has announced a “relentless focus on productivity”, declaring, “The NHS will no longer receive emergency top-ups to plug deficits”. Hospital services will be slashed in favour of “community care”. Local GP clinics will be established via Private Finance Initiatives, imposing crippling debt repayments aimed at further crashing the NHS.

The fight at Dorset is against a decades-long assault on public health. Systematic underfunding and privatization began under Blair, was accelerated through the Tories’ Health and Social Care Act, carried out with union complicity. Across the country, dozens of subcos have already been imposed, devastating the pay, terms, and conditions of the lowest-paid workers. 

*****

Unison’s declaration of “victory” is a smokescreen. The Starmer government has signaled its intention to wage all-out war on the NHS and its workforce. But the health unions are working to divide and suppress the opposition of health workers and prevent a political confrontation with the Labour government’s pro-market agenda.

Unison, Unite, GMB and the British Medical Association are organising separate strike ballots or consultative ballots for pay among NHS nurses, midwives, resident doctors and paramedics. The strategy is divide and rule, aimed at blocking any challenge to the agenda of cost-cutting and privatization.

To overcome the divisions being imposed by the bureaucracy and their collusion with NHS England, workers must organize independently. Rank-and-file committees must be built in every hospital, trust, and care setting, uniting doctors, nurses, paramedics, and support staff in a common fight to defend the NHS as a public service, free from privatization and corporate control.

The way forward requires a fighting program:

  • Scrap the subsidiary companies and transfer all workers back onto NHS contracts with full compensation for pay and benefits lost!
  • Defend NHS pensions, pay, and conditions—stop the jobs cull!
  • Billions for health and patient care, not for rearmament and war!
  • Scrap Labour’s 10 Year Plan, designed to accelerate privatization and corporate control of the NHS!
  • Organize a unified, independent struggle to defend the NHS and its workforce!

16. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East

Africa

Madagascar: 

Protests topple government over poverty living standards

Nigeria: 

Oil workers in nationwide strike over job losses

South Africa:

Residents of Ventersdorp protest for jobs, suffer brutal police attack

Uganda: 

Teachers resume strike over pay

Europe

Belgium:

Thousands in Namur protest regional and national austerity measures

Workers strike for improved redundancy payments at food manufacturer

France:

Energy workers in continuing strikes for wage improvements and a reduction in energy tax

Greece:

Thousands of workers demonstrate during general strike to protest anti-worker laws

Italy:

Airline workers strike for improvements in pay and conditions and in solidarity with Palestine

United Kingdom:

Workers at the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, England continue pay stoppage

Lecturers at University of Leicester, England begin stoppage over job cuts

National Coal Mining Museum workers continue strike over low pay

Middle East

Iran:

Protests and demonstrations spread over wages, pensions and conditions

17. How the GPU Murdered Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the October 1917 Revolution, was assassinated in Mexico on August 20, 1940. Security and the Fourth International, launched by the International Committee of the Fourth International launched in May 1975, was the first major investigation into the circumstances of his murder.

This volume, published in 1981, presents documents from the investigation’s first year, which uncovered abundant and long-concealed evidence of GPU penetration of the Trotskyist movement. These revelations exposed how Stalin’s agents orchestrated the murders of Trotsky, his son Leon Sedov, and comrades including Rudolf Klement, Erwin Wolf, and Ignace Reiss, as part of the broader counterrevolution that followed the Moscow Trials.

The World Socialist Web Site will be publishing sections from this volume over the coming weeks, to accompany Lecture 5-7 of the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2025 Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025. An epub version of the text is available for purchase through Mehring Books here.

18. How the GPU murdered Leon Sedov and other Trotskyists

 

This lecture by Tom Peters will  be followed  by one by Andrea Peters. Both review how the Trotskyist movement was infiltrated by a network of Stalinist agents of the GPU-NKVD who organized the murders of leading figures including Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov, and ultimately Trotsky himself. (The likely murderer of Leon Sedov later came to the United States, retiring in San Francisco, California.)

19. Turkey:  The Historical and International Foundations of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International)

The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International), unanimously adopted this document at its founding congress on June 13–15, 2025. It traces the central historical experiences of the working class and Marxist movement in the 20th and 21st centuries, and establishes the principled foundations for the building of the Trotskyist movement in Turkey and throughout the region. 

New sections of the document will be published  in coming days. Here are the latest published sections of a total of 33:

4. Stalinism and the Left Opposition

5. The 1925-27 Chinese Revolution

6. Trotsky’s Expulsion to Turkey

7. The Victory of Fascism in Germany and the Collapse of the Comintern

8. Turkey Before World War II

9. The Fourth International and World War II 

20. 

Free Bogdan Syrotiuk! 

The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.

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