Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump’s government shutdown aimed at social counterrevolution
On Thursday morning, US President Donald Trump said he intends to use this week’s government shutdown to impose, through dictatorial means, mass layoffs and the destruction of social programs in line with the plans outlined in the far-right Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan.
Trump announced in a social media post that he would meet with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame,” to determine “which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
What are the “Democrat Agencies” Trump refers to? While the Democrats long ago abandoned any genuine support for social programs, the New Deal programs such as Social Security, and the later “Great Society” programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, were passed under Democratic administrations. The elimination of these programs will throw tens of millions into poverty.
Project 2025 is a program of social counterrevolution years in the making. Anchored in the right-wing “unitary executive” theory of unchecked presidential power, it aims to usurp Congressional control over the budget in order to “deconstruct the Administrative State,” i.e., to destroy agencies created by acts of Congress and enforce personal loyalty of government employees to the president.
This program, already partially implemented through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” and other measures, includes:
- Dismantling the Education Department and ending federal funding for low-income schools.
- Decimating regulatory enforcement powers over big business, including the gutting of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the effective termination of even the most limited climate change measures.
- Sharply limiting Medicaid benefits, shifting cost burdens to states and individuals, and allowing states to impose or increase premiums.
- Shifting Medicare recipients towards private Medicare Advantage plans.
- Lowering corporate taxes and income taxes for the wealthy.
- Dismantling civil rights protections, such as Title IX and federal consent decrees with local police departments notorious for violence.
Even if Social Security funding itself is not immediately touched in the shutdown, the layoffs and furloughs at the Social Security Administration will greatly limit accessibility to benefits.
Trump is carrying out a jobs massacre under the cover of the shutdown. On Thursday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that firings could be “in the thousands.” This is likely a vast undercount. Permanent layoffs have been preceded by mass furloughs.
*****
Resistance to dictatorship must be centered in the working class, because the working class is its main target. The social content of Trump’s program is the destruction of millions of jobs, the lowering of life expectancy and the dismantling of programs won through decades of struggle on which tens of millions rely.
The trillions clawed from workers are to be redirected to war and financial swindling. Ominously, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the government is demanding a doubling of missile production for war with China. At the same time, federal mediators have intervened to end the two-month strike by Boeing defense workers.
The reforms of previous generations were not granted out of charity. They were concessions won by the working class when US capitalism, at the height of its industrial and political might, was prepared to dispense limited reforms in order to stave off the threat of social revolution.
Now, at a point of deepest decline, American capitalism is abandoning such concessions and resorting to more brutal methods. The policies of the Trump government are not the result of a deranged individual. They express a turning point in the forms of class rule in the United States.
Democracy has become incompatible with capitalism. This is why the Democrats, the other capitalist party in America, exclude any mention of fascism in their statements on the shutdown. Even their posturing over restoring Medicaid cuts will amount to nothing. Their overriding priority is to chloroform the population to the seriousness of what is happening, divert anger and prevent the eruption of social opposition, which they dread.
Tellingly, Trump concluded his statement Thursday by declaring, “They [Democrats] are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
*****
But the working class cannot accept cuts that would reduce them to industrial slaves. The social interests of the working class make it the leading force in the fight against dictatorship. This, however, requires complete independence from the Democrats and their political satellites.
It also means independence from the union bureaucracy, which either aligns openly with Trump or confines itself to mealy-mouthed statements that commit to nothing. Trump has ripped up the collective bargaining rights of 1 million federal employees, and Trump’s ally Steve Bannon called teachers “terrorists.” But AFGE, the American Federation of Teachers, and the rest of the American union bureaucracy have done nothing to mobilize the country’s 14 million union members and the working class as a whole in defense of their own members.
The Trump administration is carrying out a historically unprecedented assault on the working class. The working class must answer with mass resistance. New organizations—rank-and-file committees—must be built in every workplace, school and neighborhood to lead the fight. These committees must become centers of resistance, including among government workers but uniting all sections of the working class and student youth in a common struggle against Trump’s dictatorship, against war and inequality, and for the defense of jobs, living standards and democratic rights.
The mobilization of the working class requires the combination of social and democratic demands, which have become inextricably linked together. The fight against dictatorship is impossible without the fight for equality.
In addition to the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights—the right to free speech, protection against unlawful search and seizure, and other basic democratic freedoms—workers must insist upon and fight for their inalienable social rights, which are essential to life in a functioning modern society.
The Socialist Equality Party first elaborated the concept of social rights in its 2010 program, “The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the United States.” These include:
The right to a job and a livable income
The right to leisure
The right to decent and affordable housing
The right to utilities and transportation
The right to high-quality healthcare
The right to a secure retirement
The right to education
The right to a healthy and safe environment
The right to culture
These rights, everywhere under assault, can be guaranteed only through the expropriation of the billionaires and the nationalization of major industries under workers’ control. Under the present circumstances, this is not only a social but also a democratic demand. The support of considerable sections of the ruling elite for Trump shows that the domination of society by the oligarchs and major corporations makes a democratic society impossible.
Genuine democracy is possible only when the majority, the working class, runs society in the interests of all, not private profit. That form of society is socialism.
2. Israeli documentary filmmakers support boycott of Israeli film industry over genocide
Over 50 Israeli documentary filmmakers issued an open letter September 15 supporting an appeal by thousands in the international cinema world for a boycott of official Israeli film institutions because of the role of the Zionist government in committing a genocide in Gaza.
*****
Their letter begins:
We, a group of documentary filmmakers in Israel, feel profound shame, pain, daily torment, and helplessness in the face of the horrors of mass murder, destruction and internal transfer (for now), and starvation that the State of Israel is carrying out in our name in Gaza.
We reject with disgust all attempts at denial, silencing, and whitewashing, with the systematic use of euphemisms—preferring to speak of “hunger” instead of “starvation” and “war” instead of “genocide.”*****
In a significant appeal to documentary filmmakers around the world, the letter addresses the complicity of the imperialist governments in the assault on Palestinian lives and fundamental rights:
We call on the international documentary community, our artistic home, to hold itself to the same standards and focus on its domestic role: resisting the silence and complicity of European and American governments in the massacre in Gaza. Our [Israeli] government thrives and gains audacity by the backing of Donald Trump, who also makes a point of neutralizing the protests of European leaders; without him, this accursed war could not have lasted so long.
Last week, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) club at Australia’s University of Melbourne held its Annual General Meeting (AGM), allowing the club to remain affiliated and continue its activity on campus next year.
The meeting was one of a series being held by the IYSSE, including a successful AGM at the University of Newcastle, in New South Wales.
The Melbourne meeting, titled “Charlie Kirk and the promotion of the far right,” drew over 50 students, in person and online, surpassing the 20 required to reach quorum. Many students were attending their first IYSSE meeting and signed up to become members. The meeting was an indication of the growing interest among students in a socialist and anti-war perspective.
*****
At the AGM, Morgan Peach, who was re-elected club president, delivered a report on the Trump administration’s glorification of Charlie Kirk, a fascist agitator, as part of its efforts to establish dictatorial rule in the United States.
He said, “Kirk’s funeral in Arizona, which was transformed into a fascist rally, was an unprecedented event in American history: the mobilization of the far right by the highest levels of the White House itself. The beatification of Kirk is being used to galvanize the most reactionary forces in the country and prepare a massive counterrevolutionary assault on the working class, its democratic rights and social conditions.”
*****
Peach pointed out that “Trump’s drive to create fascist rule in the US is not a question of Trump as a deranged individual, although he certainly is that, nor is it a question of specific American conditions. The accelerating lurch to the right by governments is a global process, arising from the historic crisis of world capitalism.”
He explained that the Albanese Labor government is part of that process, as it cracks down on mass opposition to the ethnic cleansing in Gaza and aligns itself with the Trump regime. “The fight against fascism will not be taken up by any of the official parties of capitalist rule, such as the Democrats in the US, or Labor here—all institutions that exist to protect the privileges of the financial oligarchy.”
Instead, Peach emphasized that the struggle against dictatorship, genocide, and war can only be taken forward by the international working class—the revolutionary force in modern society—based on a socialist strategy. “That means students who want a future free of nuclear war and fascism must turn their attention towards workers in the factories, in logistics, in the universities, and build a political movement against capitalism.”
*****
After the meeting, reporters from the WSWS spoke with students.
[Read what the students had to say.]
Musicians and staff at the world-famous La Fenice opera house in Venice are continuing to threaten strike action over last week’s announcement that Beatrice Venezi would be the new music director of the company.
The 35-year-old Venezi is a favorite of Italy’s neo-fascist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Meloni has praised Venezi, describing her as “a talented and courageous artist who refuses to bow to the dictatorship of thought and language.” Meloni, closely allied with Donald Trump, is copying the US president’s campaign to impose a fascistic stamp on cultural life, characterized by ultranationalism, superpatriotism and undisguised hostility to the left-wing views of the majority of artists. A recent exhibit on Futurism was organized so as to present the Mussolini regime in a positive fashion. Certain high-profile museum and musical appointments saw Italians replacing international figures.
Venezi, who is already music adviser to the culture ministry in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy coalition government, is also the daughter of a former regional leader of Forza Nuovo, another Italian neo-fascist party. She is scheduled to take over in Venice in October 2026, for a term ending in March 2030.
*****
La Fenice’s history goes back 250 years, and it was among the most well-known venues for performances of works by the 19th century’s four most famous Italian opera composers—Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and the greatest of them all, Giuseppe Verdi. With 1,126 seats, it is significantly smaller than the typical opera house, and is especially renowned for its acoustics. The name translates as “the Phoenix,” which is apt, considering the fact that it has been destroyed three times by fire, most recently in 1996, but has risen from the ashes each time.
*****
Solidarity with the musicians of La Fenice came from the rest of staff, who gathered in an assembly and said they reserve the right to call strikes, demonstrations and sit-in to “defend the professionalism of its artists and respect for democratic rules in the management of the Foundation.” They demanded “the immediate revocation of the appointment, which was made in a manner that trampled upon every principle of dialogue and transparency.”
The Turin and Milan opera houses issued statements coming in defense of their colleagues in Venice. As reported on OperaWire, the statement from Turin declares, “…Teatro Regio in Turin expresses its full solidarity with the workers of the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice, who have recently been openly protesting the appointment of director Beatrice Venezi. This appointment was imposed from above, without consultation, and is in direct conflict with the internal professionalism and the very dignity of those who daily build the theater’s artistic identity.” It added, “We are convinced that culture, if it is to remain alive, cannot be reduced to a stage to please the powers that be. Instead, it must return to being a critical, open and communicative place. And this can only happen if workers—the true guardians of the continuity and identity of institutions—are listened to and respected.”
La Scala Milan, the most famous opera house in Italy, “expressed full and sincere solidarity with our colleagues at the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice, who are currently carrying out their protest with determination and courage against the appointment of the Music Director, which was made without transparency… Opera houses are common goods, the heritage of the community, built over time thanks to the work of artists, technicians, and craftsmen. The choices that shape the future of such important institutions must arise from dialogue and respect for internal expertise, not from decisions imposed by logics unrelated to art and culture. Under these conditions, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to build the relationship of trust and artistic harmony that is the essential prerequisite for any authentic cultural project.”
The president of La Fenice, Luigi Brugnaro, has called a meeting at the theatre for next week in order, he says, to “promote dialogue” and “find a solution.”
The threat of strike action in Venice coincides with the strikes and protests across Italy in response to the Gaza genocide and, specifically, the illegal interception of the latest flotilla by the Israeli navy. The unions have called for a general strike for Friday.
The ongoing US military buildup near Venezuela’s coasts threatens to ignite a regional war following the extrajudicial mass murders of at least 17 passengers aboard four vessels sunk by the US expeditionary force deployed in the Southern Caribbean.
The White House made its most alarming escalation yet by declaring a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels, according to a memo to Congress obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.
The term is a pseudo-legal attempt to evade the War Powers Act which reserves to Congress the authority to declare war. At the same time, the idea that war across the hemisphere is “non-international” both expresses the neo-colonial ambitions of the Trump administration for the region and provides a euphemism for the Nazi concept of “Total War” waged against the regime’s domestic and foreign enemies alike.
The declaration of war on cartels takes place as it becomes clearer by the day that many, if not all, of the victims of the boats sunk were fishermen accused without any evidence of drug trafficking by the Pentagon.
The New York Times reports that the first boat destroyed on September 1 (with the attack gleefully announced by Trump on social media the following day) carried people from the Paria Peninsula in Sucre. Times regional correspondent Julie Turkewitz interviewed a widow of a passenger killed, who recounted, “My husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back.”
Other journalists have stressed that this stretch of Caribbean coast is not just a corridor for cocaine but also for migrants, human trafficking victims and the smuggling of government-subsidized gasoline. Local sources, independent reporters, and relatives of victims have all indicated the absence of any evidence linking those killed to organized drug trafficking and have widely denounced the sinking of their vessels as acts of murder.
*****
During an unprecedented assembly of hundreds of generals and admirals near Washington on Tuesday, Trump boasted of the obliteration of unarmed vessels in the Caribbean as a precedent of the homicidal violence expected from the military. “If you try to poison our people, we will blow you out of existence,” he declared.
*****
In contradiction to the rhetorical justifications around “saving American lives from drug cartels,” US government data and independent reviews confirm that Fentanyl—the main killer in US overdose deaths—is neither produced nor transported through Venezuela. Only a small fraction of cocaine is shipped from Venezuela, a fact acknowledged by the US State Department and corroborated by the DEA.
In the first instance, these attacks and buildup are aimed at provoking the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged in the US with leading the non-existent “Cartel of the Suns.”
Interviews and on-the-ground reporting by the New York Times have revealed that opposition forces, led by far-right politician Maria Corina Machado and her circle, are openly coordinating with the Trump administration on post-coup plans. Machado’s adviser, Pedro Urruchurtu, bragged to the Times of a “100-hour” transition blueprint involving “international allies, especially the United States.”
*****
Drug interdiction is invoked as a fraudulent pretext for aggressive military maneuvers akin to the “weapons of mass destruction” in the war against Iraq. A US official admitted, “The strategy is still very keyed in on defending against China … [and] drug cartels that are tied to China,” making clear the so-called war on narco-terrorism is primarily a tool for imperialist intervention.
The shadow of war extends further. In Brazil, President Lula’s government is conducting the largest military exercise in the country’s history, from October 3 to 9, in the Amazon region bordering Venezuela, involving 10,000 troops and advanced weaponry. This unprecedented buildup, while publicly pitched as an exercise supporting “regional stability,” clearly reflects growing anxiety over US intervention and the potential spillover of war into neighboring states.
*****
The current wave of extrajudicial killings, provocative military deployments, and open plotting for coups across Latin America goes hand in hand with the declaration of war against the American working class at home and the deployment of troops to US cities. Only by uniting across borders in opposition to capitalism, the root cause of fascist dictatorship and war, can workers across the Americas defend their lives, livelihoods and democratic rights.
6. Stark wealth inequality in New Zealand
Statistics released late last month show that New Zealand’s richest households have expanded their wealth significantly, even as the country’s economy has gone into reverse and the majority of workers are experiencing a major decline in their real incomes.
According to Stats NZ, New Zealand households increased their wealth by an average of 33 percent between June 2021 and June 2024. This largely reflects a bubble in the housing market, driven by low interest rates that have fuelled speculative activity, as well as a share market boom.
The vast majority of the gains went to the richest layers of society. For the bottom 40 percent of households—i.e., those less likely to own a house, let alone financial and other assets—there was no statistically significant change.
The poorest 20 percent of households own a median of just $11,000 in assets. Some 109,000 households, the poorest 5.4 percent, own less than zero assets, indicating large amounts of debt.
The wealthiest 20 percent of households, meanwhile, increased their wealth by 19 percent, or $386,000, to a median $2.4 million. This layer holds around two-thirds of New Zealand’s total household wealth.
Wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of the richest 1 percent—about 40,000 people—who control 17.5 percent of the country’s wealth, down slightly from 19.9 percent in 2021. People in this super-rich group last year had a median net worth of $7.191 million—47.6 times that of the median worker, who owns just $151,000 in assets.
The top 1 percent have increased their fortunes by about 16 percent since 2018, when they had a median $6.2 million in assets, according to researcher Max Rashbrooke.
The official statistics, however, understate the concentration of wealth because Stats NZ’s surveys do not count the very richest. Rashbrooke pointed out in his 2021 book Too Much Money that the largest fortune counted in the 2017–2018 Household Economic Survey was $20 million, but the National Business Review “Rich List” profiled hundreds of people worth more than $50 million. He estimated that the top 1 percent actually controlled 26 percent of New Zealand’s wealth.
*****
The Salvation Army released a report on food insecurity last month which noted that “the rate of food insecurity among households with children almost doubled in the two years to June 2024.” While New Zealand exports enough food to feed 40 million people, more than one in four children, 27 percent, live in households “where food runs out sometimes or often.”
At the time of the 2023 Census, 112,496 people were “severely housing deprived,” either homeless or living in overcrowded or unsafe conditions. The situation has worsened since then, as the government has restricted access to emergency housing and cancelled hundreds of projects which would have built 3,500 new public houses.
Auckland Council has found that homelessness in the country’s major city increased by 90 percent in the past year. Last month the government announced it would lease 300 housing units nationwide to accommodate homeless people in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch, but in Auckland alone more than 800 people are sleeping rough, according to the City Mission.
Soaring social inequality and poverty are driving working people into significant struggles. Tens of thousands of nurses, doctors and teachers have all held nationwide strikes over the past two months after receiving pay-cutting offers from the government. A one-day strike scheduled for October 23 by education and healthcare workers could involve more than 100,000 people, making it the biggest stoppage in more than 40 years.
The objective of the union bureaucracy, however, is not to lead a sustained industrial and political fight against austerity. It is seeking to impose sellout agreements which will not address the cost of living crisis or the running down of public services. The well-paid union officials are promoting illusions that workers can simply wait until next year’s election and vote for the Labour Party and its allies, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
*****
The last Labour government refused to increase tax on the super-rich, despite evidence that the country’s wealthiest 311 billionaires and multi-millionaires were making enormous profits during the COVID-19 pandemic while paying an effective tax rate of just 8.9 percent—less than half what the average worker paid.
The Labour Party and the Public Service Association, the largest union, are also supporting the government’s decision to double military spending to prepare New Zealand to join US-led wars, above all against China. The diversion of $12 billion to the military over four years is being paid for by the working class through cuts to public services.
7. Long Island Rail Road union defied 99 percent of its membership to cancel strike
Last week, after a delay of 10 days, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) finally posted on its website the vote totals from its members to authorize a strike at the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). Engineers voted 476 to 5 in favor of a walkout, a margin of 99 percent.
Instead of abiding by the will of the membership and organizing a strike, the labor bureaucrats at the BLET and fellow LIRR unions appealed to President Donald Trump to intervene, which he did through an executive order that prevents a work stoppage for at least four months.
The union’s web posting also repeated BLET General Chairman Gil Lang’s statement at a press conference that the union coalition had to be “the adults in the room,” a telling admission that the union apparatus has no intention of fighting for the interests of workers it supposedly represents. Instead, they are actively functioning on behalf of the political and social forces that are lined up against the working class.
*****
The attempt to impose below-inflation wage increases is the immediate issue at stake in the LIRR contract struggle. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is offering a 9.5 percent wage hike for three years, a deal that many of the other LIRR unions pushed through to their membership. The LIRR workers holding out have not had a raise since 2022, at a time when inflation climbed to 9 percent.
Federal law mandates that the president appoint this emergency board if either party in the railroad dispute requests it. This could have been done by New York State Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, who would not do so herself but constantly demanded Trump do it. Ultimately, the union leaders provided political cover for both by calling for an emergency board themselves.
Shortly after the strike was called off, Governor Hochul told reporters, “We have to get away from the strike language and the White House and others should be using their power to say ‘you’re not allowed to strike.’” On September 22, she ratcheted up demands that LIRR workers accept concessions to offset even modest wage increases, saying “work rules that have been put in place for a long time need to be reexamined.” Her demand for work-rule concessions, which the MTA has backed, has been repeated nonstop in the corporate media.
*****
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with New York City transit workers, who work for the same employer, the MTA, as LIRR workers, giving a sense of opposition and desire for a struggle.
“Trump is destroying everybody’s rights,” a subway cleaner said. “It’s even affecting my neighborhood with ICE and cop raids all over the place. They’re just grabbing people. MTA workers without permanent work visas are being affected, too. A lot of people are leaving the job because of that, which is sad.”
*****
A subway conductor remarked, “Everything that makes America America is not what Trump is doing—he’s going against everything. Like on immigration, America is literally built on immigrants.
*****
A train operator commented, “Trump has done a lot of damage. People will wise up to him soon. The Democrats will not stop him. No Democrat is standing up."
8. Crisis in the German auto industry: Layoffs, plant closures and insolvencies
Not a day passes without grim tidings for workers in the automotive and supplier industries. The major manufacturers have announced large-scale job cuts in the high four- and five-digit range: Volkswagen, Mercedes, Bosch, ZF, Porsche, Ford, Audi and others. At the same time, hundreds of jobs are being lost daily at countless medium-sized companies.
The IG Metall union has over 2 million members—most of them in the car industry, and through its numerous works council representatives and shop stewards, it is fully informed about every development in the various factories. But instead of mobilizing this industrial power against the mass destruction of jobs, it helps enforce these attacks against its own members.
The shelf life of studies on the expected job losses in the automotive and supplier industries is shorter than that of an unstable nuclide. When the German Economic Institute (IW) reported at the beginning of September, on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, that a further 18,000 jobs would be eliminated in Germany by the end of this year and a total of 98,000 by 2030, that forecast had already been overtaken by reality.
*****
The job cuts are being driven by falling profits. On 14 September, finance daily Handelsblatt reported—citing a sector analysis by consultancy EY—that profits at the world’s 19 largest carmakers had fallen by 50 percent in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year (down 49.2 percent) but were still a respectable €42.8 billion.
*****
The victims are tens of thousands of workers, as the following incomplete list (with announcement dates) shows:
- Bosch (announced 25 September)—By 2030 at the latest, an additional 13,000 jobs will be cut on top of the 9,000 already announced in the Mobility division, mostly in Germany.
- Stellantis/Opel (25 September)—The Stellantis group is temporarily halting production at several European plants, including Opel’s plant in Eisenach, Thuringia. Production will be “adjusted through a temporary closure on two days in October.”
- Kiekert Heiligenhaus (25 September)—Lockmaker Kiekert AG, inventor of the modern central locking system, has filed for insolvency. The roughly 700 workers in Germany will receive insolvency pay until November; what happens afterwards is unclear.
- Goodyear Fulda (25 September)—On 30 September the Goodyear plant in Fulda will shut down for good after 125 years of industrial history. All 1,050 former employees of the tire manufacturer will by put out on the street.
- ZF Koblenz (19 September)—Supplier ZF announced last week that about 450 jobs will go at Koblenz by 2030. “The bulk of the remaining reductions should be completed by the end of 2026.”
- Stabilus Koblenz (19 September)—The pneumatic spring manufacturer is cutting 450 jobs worldwide and consolidating office and production space in Germany, US, Singapore and Thailand. The measures are to save €19 million by September next year.
- MAN Salzgitter (18 September)—An unspecified number, likely several hundred, of jobs will be eliminated through relocations or closures at the Lower Saxony site. The axle assembly, pipe and crankshaft operations are affected.
- Ford Cologne (16 September)—The Cologne main plant is moving from two shifts to one, with a further 1,000 jobs lost. Just two weeks earlier, IG Metall had pushed through cuts of 2,900 jobs.
- Breyden Lollar (12 September)—The brake disc maker is closing its site in Lollar, Hesse, with 230 employees this year. The foundry workers, once part of the Bosch empire, have feared for their jobs for over three years. Now the end is being targeted within months.
- BorgWarner Darmstadt / Offenbach (8 September)—The US supplier intends to cut nearly half the workforce at Darmstadt and Langen. “According to management, around 40 percent of [300] engineering posts (BTC) and 45 percent of [500] plant jobs are to go by January 2026,” reported IG Metall.
- Musashi Hann. Münden / Lüchow (8 September)—The Japanese supplier plans to cut headcount and close two German plants. Sales of forged parts produced by Musashi have slumped by 40 percent. Plants in Hannoversch Münden (Lower Saxony) and Leinefelde (Thuringia) will close; staff will be cut at Lüchow (Lower Saxony). Hundreds of workers are affected.
IG Metall has made it its business everywhere to push through the attacks and break workers’ will to fight.
The unions are actively working to isolate the affected sites, leaving workers to fight on their own. Union officials negotiate so-called “social contracts” that drive workers out of jobs via early retirement, part-time work for older workers, severance packages and the use of temporary employment companies. Even “compulsory redundancies,” the exclusion of which in the past unions always traded for massive cuts to jobs and wages, are now being implemented.
*****
When union bureaucrats do respond with feigned anger to the announced attacks, they do so solely to blunt growing militancy. For example, while the IG Metall’s regional secretary in Darmstadt claims the works council and IG Metall will “not accept without protest the plans at BorgWarner,” nothing will happen—beyond a few whistle-and-placard protests or the tired, demoralizing ritual of carrying cardboard coffins through the streets. The talk of “opposition” is never followed by concrete, effective resistance.
On the contrary, IG Metall and all the mainstream unions support the corporations’ attacks. Corrupted by lucrative supervisory board seats and works council posts, the bureaucrats share the view of top management and the shareholders: to safeguard profits, jobs must go and personnel costs—i.e., wages, bonuses, extras, sick pay, occupational pensions, etc.—must be cut.
Workers in the car industry must be clear: The IG Metall apparatus and its works council reps are on the other side of the barricades. Growing opposition must therefore be organized independently of—and against—the bureaucracy.
9. Germany: IG Metall union agrees to cut in real wages for steelworkers
The IG Metall union has agreed to a cut in real wages for around 60,000 workers in the northwest German steel industry. Just minutes before the no-strike period in the old contract expired midnight Wednesday, it subjected already beleaguered steelworkers to the diktats of the steel corporations.
There is to be no increase covering the months of October to December. Starting in January 2026, workers will receive a pay raise of only 1.75 percent. Apprentices’ pay will rise by €75 a month. The agreement runs for 15 months, until December 31, 2026.
Knut Giesler, lead negotiator and district leader of IG Metall North Rhine-Westphalia, claimed that “Project Responsibility for Steel” had almost failed. “Fortunately, in the end everyone lived up to their responsibility.” He said the negotiating parties had thereby made an important contribution to employee security and to stabilizing the steel industry.
That is to twist the facts. IG Metall has once again lowered steelworkers’ real wages to save the profits of the steel companies. For the union, the only responsibility is towards the interests of the shareholders and owners.
*****
As recently as Monday, IG Metall issued a press release in which North Rhine-Westphalia district secretary Knut Giesler spoke out against industrial action and appealed to the companies: “Germany’s steel industry doesn’t need warning strikes right now. Employers and employees should pull together to make the sector fit for the future.” That, he said, is why the union had taken an “unusual path” in this bargaining round. “But if employers don’t want to walk this constructive path, things will get confrontational from Wednesday and there will be warning strikes.”
On Monday, Giesler knew he would abandon steelworkers to the steel companies’ demands a day later. He and the entire IG Metall apparatus do not want strikes, which—given massive layoffs and cuts at the steel companies—could easily get out of their control. Thyssenkrupp wants to cut 11,000 of 27,000 jobs, ArcelorMittal has cancelled its “green steel” investments in Duisburg, and the only steelworks in the state of Hesse, Buderus in Wetzlar, is being broken up.
*****
The field must not be left to the IG Metall apparatus. Rather, union officials and their works council reps must be held to account. All negotiating mandates must be taken away from them. That task must be assumed by trustworthy colleagues elected from the action committees.
Action committees across the still numerous steel companies, despite ongoing cuts, must network with one another and coordinate joint measures, including strikes. The downward spiral in which workers pay the costs of trade war, rearmament and war in the battle for profits must be stopped.
This can be done if steelworkers in Germany do not look for allies in the IG Metall apparatus—and certainly not in the companies—but among steelworkers in Europe, the United States and China, all of whom are facing the same attacks.
10. Judge rejects government’s attempt to delay again in Will Lehman’s UAW election case
In a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s handling of rank-and-file autoworker, Will Lehman’s complaint over the 2022-2023 United Auto Workers elections, Judge David M. Lawson on Thursday denied the Department of Labor’s effort to use the government shutdown as an excuse to stall compliance with a court-ordered deadline. The ruling forces the Department to deliver, by October 31, a formal statement of reasons for why it rejected Lehman’s election complaint.
The decision exposes the government’s repeated efforts, under both Biden and now Trump, to obstruct the case and shield the UAW bureaucracy from accountability.
The lawsuit filed by Lehman seeks judicial review of the Labor Department’s refusal to rerun the 2022-2023 UAW national elections, which were marred by widespread disenfranchisement of rank-and-file workers. Lehman’s complaint charges that the election violated the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) after the Department of Labor dismissed his grievances despite evidence that hundreds of thousands of workers never received ballots.
After Judge Lawson’s September 24 scheduling order set the October 31 deadline, the government filed a motion seeking to suspend proceedings, citing the federal shutdown triggered October 1. Government attorneys argued that the Anti-Deficiency Act barred them from working on the case without appropriations and that no staff could prepare the statement of reasons until funding was restored.
Lehman’s attorney, Eric Lee, filed a sharp opposition October 1, stressing that the Department had already had “well over a year to provide Mr. Lehman with the statement of reasons to which he has long been entitled.” He pointed out that the government’s filing failed to show that all staff at the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) had been furloughed, making the shutdown argument a transparent excuse for yet more delay.
*****
Judge Lawson’s October 2 order sided with Lehman. He acknowledged the general prohibition on unpaid government work during appropriations lapses but noted that other federal courts have rejected similar requests, holding that legal work becomes “authorized by law” once ordered by a court. He also stressed that lawyers practicing in the Eastern District of Michigan are bound by professional conduct rules requiring continued representation when ordered by a tribunal.
Crucially, Lawson pointed to the Department’s long pattern of delay. He recalled that in Lehman’s previous lawsuit, the court had already found the Department acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in dismissing the election grievances without examining their merits. Since Lehman first filed on March 29, 2023, more than two years have elapsed, much of it due to the Department’s stonewalling.
“The plaintiff — and the Court — have justifiable concerns about allowing further delay to elapse, when the merits of the grievances ought to have been addressed in the first instance years ago,” Lawson wrote.
*****
Lawson’s ruling underscores the extraordinary obstacles rank-and-file workers face in asserting their democratic rights. The Department of Labor first rejected Lehman’s complaint in August 2025—without issuing reasons. Only under direct order from the court did it promise to produce them. Now, after trying to exploit the shutdown as another excuse for inaction, the Department has been ordered once again to comply with the law.
The government’s conduct exposes its fundamental alignment with the UAW apparatus against the rank and file. The reality, Lehman noted earlier, is that the Department rejected his complaint first and has been scrambling ever since to manufacture justifications after the fact.
The context of the case is the UAW’s 2022-23 election, conducted under court supervision after a corruption scandal sent more than a dozen top officials to prison. Out of more than 1 million members, only about 104,000 ballots were cast, a turnout of less than 10 percent.
The low vote paved the way for the installation of Shawn Fain as president, presented as a “reformer” but in fact a long-time apparatus functionary who has since aligned the union with the corporations as well as the Biden and Trump administrations. Lehman’s campaign, which called for abolishing the bureaucracy altogether and transferring power to workers on the shop floor, won nearly 5,000 votes despite systematic voter suppression.
*****
With Lawson’s denial of the stay, the Department of Labor must submit its statement of reasons by October 31. Lehman will then have until November 14 to amend his complaint and continue pursuing judicial review.
For rank-and-file workers, the decision is a vindication of Lehman’s persistence and a warning about the lengths to which the government will go to block democratic rights.
11. WSWS videos of teachers speaking out against Trump’s dictatorship resonate on Facebook and Tiktok
While the Democrats and the media are doing everything to conceal from the population the danger of Trump’s unfolding fascist coup d’etat, the response to recent videos posted by the World Socialist Web Site on social media has revealed a desire in the working class to draw the lessons of history and fight back.
A 30-second video of a teacher speaking out against Trump, posted on October 1, has been viewed over 199,000 times on Facebook as of this writing. It’s been shared over 2,800 times, liked/loved 13,000 times, and it has generated over 700 comments.
In the video, a WSWS reporter speaks to a history teacher outside of a union event in Detroit. “I think people need to study their history,” the teacher says, “and look up what is a dictator, what is authoritarianism, what is an oligarchy, and compare it to what’s going on today. They’ll see it’s a playbook and it’s being played.”
Our reporter then asks the teacher about a general strike, to which she responds favorably, citing recent strikes against pension cuts in France.
Among the major social media platforms, Facebook has the highest percentage of working-class users, and many of the hundreds of comments below this video express strong agreement with the teacher, including explicit support for a general strike.
For example: “I like the idea of everyone going on strike.” “Let’s do a general strike now!” “Strike sounds good to me.” and “A General strike would be good, why can’t that happen?”
*****
These videos have found an audience, despite political censorship on social media, because the opposition expressed in them is shared by millions. Growing numbers of workers and young people want to fight against Trump’s dictatorship.
The World Socialist Web Site fights to give this opposition both a voice and a socialist political perspective. Follow us on social media and share our videos and other material widely.
[Read and view what others had to say at the World Socialist Web Site.]
On October 1, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the Bureau would no longer cooperate with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the foremost private Zionist organizations in the United States. Patel declared, “That era is finished. This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL.”
For decades the ADL has cultivated close ties with the US government and its police agencies. FBI directors, including James Comey and Christopher Wray, have been featured speakers at ADL conferences, and since 2000 the ADL has partnered with the FBI to train new agents on “civil rights” and “hate crimes.”
Moreover, the ADL, along with the entire network of Zionist organizations, aligned itself with the extreme right in the name of defending Israel, including by promoting the slander that opposition to genocide is “antisemitic.” Now these same forces, which include genuine antisemites, are moving against the ADL itself.
The FBI cut ties because the ADL had correctly described Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA (TPUSA) as a conduit for racism, white supremacy and Christian nationalism.
*****
Until last week, the ADL’s “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” included an accurate entry on Kirk and TPUSA. It noted that since founding TPUSA:
Kirk “moved further to the right and promotes conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19.”
He pushed “Christian nationalism: the idea that Christians should dominate the government and other areas of life in America.”
Kirk’s “views have led him to attack the transgender community several times.”
TPUSA “continues to attract racists.”
Numerous TPUSA representatives have “made bigoted remarks about the Black community, the LGBTQ+ community and other groups.”
While TPUSA leaders “say they reject white supremacist ideology, known white nationalist have attended their events.”
Kirk “has created a vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists” and “has raised millions from conservative donors and has played a significant role in [Republican] politics and elections.”
Not only this entry, but the entire “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” was deleted by the ADL under pressure from Elon Musk, Kirk’s followers, Donald Trump Jr. and other neo-Nazis.
*****
While Musk and Kirk pose as the ADL’s enemies, the organization’s real role has been to launder Zionism as a civil rights cause. The ADL insists that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, erasing the reality that Jewish people long predate Zionism as a political ideology.
*****
Prior to his death, Kirk joined neo-Nazis in denouncing the ADL as a “mass purveyor of anti-white hate” and spearheaded calls to #BanTheADL. Kirk, like Musk, Trump and the Republican Party at large, promote the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that inspired the El Paso, Buffalo and Christchurch massacres.
As the World Socialist Web Site warned in September 2023, the original #BanTheADL campaign led by Musk was “the spearhead of a broader effort to legitimize antisemitism, rehabilitate fascism, and intimidate all those who oppose it.”
The WSWS noted at the time that Musk’s attack was not limited to denouncing the ADL for criticizing his Nazification of Twitter. It was part of a conscious strategy of the far right to dismantle what even minimal liberal opposition exists to the normalization of fascist ideology.
*****
The FBI’s break with the ADL comes just weeks after the Justice Department quietly removed a study from its website that confirmed far-right extremists were responsible for the overwhelming majority of political violence in the United States. It said:
Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists...
*****
The removal of the TPUSA entry, the erasing of the DOJ study, and Trump’s executive orders and memorandums attacking “anti-fascism” are part of the same process: The state and its auxiliary organizations are clearing away even the most moderate obstacles to the legitimization of fascist politics.
Far from opposing the normalization of fascism, organizations like the ADL, which posture as defenders of civil rights, are collaborating with the state in Trump’s drive to establish a presidential dictatorship. In this way, the ADL, which supposedly exists to combat antisemitism, has, in service of the Israeli state and the genocide in Gaza, helped to strengthen the far-right and the revival of genuine antisemitism.
13. European summits in Copenhagen and US missile threats against Russia increase danger of world war
The past two days mark a new high point in the European and transatlantic escalation of war against Russia. On Wednesday and Thursday, two high-level meetings were held in Copenhagen: first the informal gathering of EU heads of state and government, followed by the summit of the European Political Community (EPC) with more than 40 European states.
Both meetings made clear that the European powers are determined to escalate the war against Russia under all circumstances. At the center were the construction of a pan-European “drone wall” against Russia, the use of frozen Russian central bank assets to pay for weapons and ammunition, and even closer military coordination. The meetings were accompanied by Washington’s announcement that it would soon provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles—a decision that would mean direct confrontation between the US, NATO and Russia.
At the EPC meeting on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared in person and spread the central war propaganda: Russia threatens not only Ukraine, but all of Europe.
*****
The host, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, called for a radical acceleration of Europe’s militarization. “I would say that by 2030 we must be able to fully defend ourselves,” she declared. What is meant is the creation of an independent European military power capable of operating both against Russia and independently of the United States.
Frederiksen’s words summed up the agenda of the European governments: they are rearming the continent at breakneck speed. With the permanent stationing of NATO combat troops in Eastern Europe, the preparation of intervention forces in Ukraine, the planned “drone wall” along the eastern flank and the demand to shoot down Russian jets if they violate European airspace, the continent is being step by step driven into a state of war.
*****
Germany is pushing this development particularly aggressively. Inspector General Carsten Breuer announced a few days before the summit that the Bundeswehr would make so-called loitering munitions—kamikaze drones—operational by the end of 2025. “In the end it will have to come down to drones being used against drones,” he said.
The new Inspector of the German Army, Christian Freuding—notorious for his ties to Ukrainian neo-Nazis—also announced an escalation of the drone and air war. “We will once again have an army air defense force,” he declared in his first daily order. Time was of the essence, since “the enemy will not wait for our ‘ready’ message.”
*****
Another central topic of the summit was the planned use of frozen Russian central bank assets. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had already called in a Financial Times op-ed a few days earlier for these funds to be used to finance Ukraine. “We must systematically and massively increase the costs of Russia’s aggression,” he wrote.
The EU is thereby carrying out an unprecedented breach of international financial law. Russian reserves worth more than €270 billion were frozen after the start of the war. To now misappropriate them for arms deliveries to Ukraine would not only be a massive escalation against Moscow, but also a signal to all states worldwide: property and reserves are not safe if they conflict with the interests of the imperialist powers.
“We are talking here about plans to illegally confiscate Russian property. In Russian we simply call that theft,” declared Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, threatening consequences.
But this will not stop the European governments. They will use the stolen money to further arm Ukraine to the teeth with tanks, missiles and drones. A current proposal envisages a €140 billion program for weapons and ammunition, partly financed from these funds. “There is a very broad consensus in the European Union to go down this path. Putin should not underestimate our determination,” Merz declared. He expected a decision at the next EU summit in three weeks.
*****
Even now, the imperialist powers are taking military action against Russian ships. French President Emmanuel Macron announced in Copenhagen a coordinated campaign against the so-called Russian “shadow fleet”—tankers transporting Russian oil worldwide despite sanctions.
Last weekend, the French navy detained an oil tanker off its own coast. Two crew members have now been arrested. “This illustrates exactly this policy,” Macron declared. In the coming days, the chiefs of staff of the “coalition of the willing” are to meet to coordinate further measures against the Russian fleet.
*****
With its current rearmament drive and great-power ambitions, Berlin is directly harking back to the war aims of German imperialism in the First and Second World Wars: domination of Eastern Europe, control over Ukraine, and ultimately the subjugation of Russia.
According to government plans, more than €80 billion in arms spending is planned for the next 15 months alone. The list comprises 154 major projects: new armored vehicles, combat drones, air defense systems, warships and submarines.
Even more gigantic are the medium-term rearmament plans: more than €350 billion are earmarked for armaments over the next 15 years. Taken together, the war credits passed in the Bundesrat with the votes of the Greens and the Left Party amount to over one trillion euros.
The return of Germany and Europe to unrestrained militarism is not merely a megalomaniacal and insane policy. It has deep objective causes. It is an expression of the historic crisis of world capitalism.
*****
But the very contradictions that are again conjuring up the evils of dictatorship, fascism and world war also create the objective basis to overcome them once and for all through social revolution.
The gigantic sums for rearmament and war are accompanied by brutal cuts in the social sphere, with attacks on wages, pensions and public services. The Copenhagen summits coincided with new protests and strikes in several European countries. On Wednesday, a general strike took place in Greece, and on Thursday hundreds of thousands protested in France against Macron’s austerity and rearmament plans. This is only a foretaste of the coming social explosion.
This week federal agents carried out a number of raids on homes and shelters in Chicago, kidnapping those suspected of being immigrants, and traumatizing neighborhoods with armed hostile actions, including dropping onto city blocks from helicopters, using flash-bang grenades and chainsaws to enter apartment buildings, and treating everyone as a criminal, including children.
*****
Residents speaking to the local ABC affiliate reported events that are not only grossly unconstitutional but would be classified crimes under the Geneva Protocols governing treatment of civilians in a war zone.
One African American resident explained she was pulled out onto the street in her nightgown, asked her name, date of birth and whether she had any warrants for her arrest. She was handcuffed and not released until 3:00 a.m. “They just treated us like we were nothing.”
*****
The response of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to these gross violations of democratic rights has been to intentionally understate the scale of the kidnappings, which now number in the high hundreds, and the violence against innocent residents that is being carried out all over the state.
Pritzker tweeted on Thursday: “ICE is running around Chicago harassing people for not being white. Just a year ago, that was illegal in the United States and now it’s commonplace. That’s not making America great again.”
Hundreds of responses to this message on X demanded the governor take some action to stop the raids and hold the Gestapo forces accountable.
The Democratic Party leadership nationally is playing down the ignominious collapse of American democracy into authoritarian rule, because they fear a mass movement against the oligarchy backing Trump far more than they fear fascist thugs.
*****
Mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lobbyist who enjoys the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, has actively contributed to poisoning the political atmosphere with anti-immigrant sentiments.
The overwhelming number of recent arrivals to Chicago from Latin America, more than 50,000 people, were bussed into the city from the border state of Texas by its fascist Governor Greg Abbott beginning in mid-2022. Many arrived from Venezuela and are now being targeted by the same forces that cruelly shipped them from the border into cities like Chicago and New York.
Having been dropped off in or near the city with nothing but the clothes they had on, migrant families were treated poorly by local officials, housed in unsanitary decommissioned warehouses and parks district athletic facilities with inadequate food and medical attention. The Johnson administration proposed a “winterized” concentration camp to be erected on contaminated land, until public outcry kiboshed the plan.
Echoing Trump and the far right’s xenophobic lies about crime threats from immigrants, Johnson justified migrant sequestration from residents and subsequent maltreatment: “If we do not create an infrastructure where we’re able to support, and quite frankly, contain these individuals who have experienced a great deal of harm, individuals who are desperate—if we do not provide support for these individuals and these families, that type of desperation will lead to chaos.”
Over the same period, asylum seekers escaping the war in Ukraine were quietly integrated into the city and surrounding suburbs, putting the lie to Johnson’s bigoted claims that asylum seekers from Latin America need to be “contained” in camps guarded by private police and treated as dangerous because they have faced hardship and trauma.
15. Quebec government shifts further right amid collapsing support
The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which has governed Canada’s second most populous province for seven years under Premier François Legault’s hard-right leadership, is presently facing mounting public discontent. According to recent polls, if an election were held today, the CAQ would suffer a crushing defeat and be reduced at best to a rump in the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, the ruling elite has grown increasingly frustrated with what it perceives as the Legault government’s failure to fully implement its reactionary agenda, especially massive social spending cuts.
*****
Declaring his intention to administer “shock therapy,” Legault announced that his government will “cut deeply into bureaucracy.” This is a euphemism for slashing and privatizing what remains of essential public services, particularly public health care and education, and eviscerating all social supports.
He also targeted environmental regulations in a clear signal to big business that it will be given carte blanche to rake in profits by ignoring and trampling on the most basic environmental protections.
The CAQ is also intensifying its frontal assault on immigrants and religious minorities, as part of its ongoing efforts to make them scapegoats for the social crisis engendered by bankrupt capitalism.
*****
The Legault government has already threatened to cut off access to public services for asylum seekers if Ottawa does not reduce the number of refugee claimants entering Quebec. While the CAQ points the finger at one of the most vulnerable sections of society, its austerity policies designed to benefit the rich—massive budget cuts and sharp tax cuts for large corporations—are the true source of the “pressure on public services.”
In order to divert workers’ attention from this social reality, the ruling elite, led by the CAQ and the Parti Québécois (PQ), have for years incited Quebec chauvinism, fueling xenophobia and racism, particularly through their promotion of Islamophobia.
*****
In the coming weeks, the government will either introduce amendments to its Bill 94 or table a new bill banning the wearing of religious symbols in daycare centers and engaging in public prayers. Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge justified the latter measure by pointing to a supposed “proliferation of street prayers.” The government and media have whipped up a furor over the fact that some participants in demonstrations protesting Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide of the Gaza Palestinians have engaged in public prayer as a form of protest and to honour the dead.
*****
The Legault government has been especially provocative and repressive: It has slandered protesters opposed to Israel’s genocide as antisemites, and last spring it pressured the police to intervene and dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments set up on several Quebec university campuses.
Citing the persistent budget deficit and the downgrading of Quebec’s credit rating by the US credit rating agency S&P Global, the CAQ is carrying out devastating austerity measures. It has already announced cuts of around $1 billion in public health care and more than $500 million in education.
Anticipating mass opposition among workers, Legault announced in his September 10 speech that his government will change the rules governing strike votes in order to strengthen state control over the process and further limit workers’ right to strike. “We must have the courage to modernize the trade unions,” he declared.
This new attack on workers’ rights follows closely on the heels of last spring’s passage of Bill 89, which gives the government and the province’s Administrative Labour Tribunal, vast, arbitrary powers to limit workers’ participation in strikes and outright ban them.
As part of its “modernization” of Quebec’s unions, the government is also planning to make changes to the union dues check-off system (the Rand Formula) to limit unions’ ability to launch political campaigns and legal challenges. The Legault government and the Quebec chauvinist far-right are incensed that the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE, Autonomous Teachers’ Federation) has joined and helped finance a Supreme Court challenge to Bill 21, which bars its public school teacher members from wearing the Muslim hijab, Jewish kippah and other religious symbols.
*****
Under the cover of Trump’s tariff war and his threats to annex Canada, the ruling elite in Canada has itself made a rapid lurch right.
Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Liberal government had already drastically reduced immigration rates in the name of combating the housing and public services crisis.
Continuing in the same vein, the Liberal government, now headed by the former central banker Mark Carney, has moved to slash the number of new permanent residents, limit the number of temporary residents to 5 percent of the population, and curtail the rights of refugee claimants in flagrant violation of the Canada’s commitments under international law. This has been accompanied by the announcement of a 15 percent cut in federal discretionary spending, and an immediate 17 percent hike in military spending.
*****
Legault’s speech is a serious warning. In order to respond to this declaration of war with their own counteroffensive, it is essential for workers in Quebec to repudiate nationalism in all its forms and recognize the international character of their struggle.
The Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) in California has announced the formation of a new bargaining team to resume negotiations with school district officials after educators took the unprecedented step of rejecting a union-backed deal on September 25. By a decisive margin of 61 to 39 percent, rank-and-file educators rejected the tentative agreement with the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), which included a zero percent raise despite surging living costs.
Union officials have kept 3,700 teachers and support staff on the job under the terms of the old contract, which expired in June. LBUSD, located 25 miles south of Los Angeles, is the fourth largest school district in California with 64,000 K-12 students, about two-thirds of whom come from low-income households.
This vote is part of a growing statewide and national struggle. Across California and the US, teachers face not only attacks on wages and benefits but the drive, spearheaded by the Trump administration, to destroy public education, stifle academic freedom, and convert schools into centers of religious and fascistic indoctrination.
The California Teachers Association (CTA), TALB’s parent union, has worked systematically to smother opposition and promote the Democrats who have functioned as Trump’s enablers and themselves spent decades imposing austerity and promoting charters and other privatization schemes.
The decisive rejection of the union-backed deal in Long Beach underscores the urgent necessity for teachers to take matters into their own hands. This means the formation of independent rank-and-file committees in every school to enforce the democratic decision of educators, link up with colleagues across California and nationally, and prepare a united struggle in defense of public education and against bipartisan budget cutting.
*****
LBUSD justifies its hard line by citing dire budget projections: a $54.2 million deficit for the current fiscal year (2024–25) and more than $101 million for 2025–26. District officials insist that drawing down reserves to cover ongoing expenses would risk insolvency, making a zero percent raise unavoidable.
But this narrative collapses under scrutiny. In 2017, Public Advocates accused LBUSD of misusing $40 million in Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) money earmarked for disadvantaged students, instead diverting it into general operations. More broadly, the state of California itself, controlled by the Democratic Party, has consistently underfunded public schools even as it hands out tax breaks to corporations and pours billions into militarized police forces.
At the same time, the Biden administration decision to allow COVID school funding (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER) to expire has created a “fiscal cliff” for school districts throughout the country. LBUSD received $212 million in such funds over the last few years. Now the Trump administration is slashing billions in federal spending, including Title I and Title III money for low-income and English learners.
Thus, these deliberately manufactured “deficits” are being use to condition the population to endless cuts in the name of fiscal discipline, while immense resources are funneled to the wealthy and imperialist war abroad.
The last and only strike in LBUSD’s 140-year history was not even by teachers but by 100 school bus drivers in 2021. TALB itself has never called a strike, while functioning as a labor police force, dedicated to keeping struggles within the framework acceptable to the district and the state.
*****
While TALB officials criticize the district’s budgetary “priorities,” they fully accept the broader framework that education funding must remain capped. They present the issue as one of reallocating existing dollars, rather than demanding a massive increase in funding for public schools at the expense of corporate wealth and military spending.
This false framework ensures that teachers’ demands are always presented as unrealistic. It conceals the real issue: both Democrats and Republicans have overseen a massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, slashing funding for education, healthcare, housing and pensions while handing trillions to Wall Street and the Pentagon.
In California, where the Democratic Party controls every lever of state government, this policy has been pursued no less ruthlessly. The “progressive” veneer of equity workshops and social justice rhetoric cannot conceal the fact that students and teachers alike are being denied the most basic resources.
*****
In the face of the existential threat to public education, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates have done everything to prevent the eruption of strikes, which could become a catalyst for a far broader movement of the working class against the Trump’s drive for dictatorship.
The blocking of a walkout earlier this year by Chicago teachers, and in recent months across California, has only emboldened the Trump administration to accelerate is war against public education and teachers.
The California Teachers Association (CTA), TALB’s parent union, has postured with its “We Can’t Wait” campaign, supposedly uniting more than 80,000 teachers across expired districts.
Yet not a single strike authorization vote has been held, and LBUSD itself is not even included in the campaign, along with a slew of other districts (Santa Ana, Elk Grove, Capistrano, Garden Grove, Moreno Valley and San Ramon Valley) where teachers have been working without a contract for as long as two years.
Like Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats, the union bureaucracy is far more frightened of a movement from below, which would quickly escape its control and threaten the corporate and financial elite they serve, than accommodating themselves to Trump
*****
The lie that there is no money must be rejected and the full power of educators in Long Beach and across the state must be mobilized to win these demands. The resources to guarantee high-quality public education can only be secured by massively increasing taxes on the corporations and wealthy and expropriating the ill-gotten gains of the oligarchy.
17. Sri Lankan foreign minister opposes United Nations HRC investigation into human rights abuses
Addressing the 60th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on September 8, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath declared that Colombo was “opposed to any external mechanism imposed on the country, such as the Sri Lanka Accountability Project.”
Herath was responding to a key recommendation in the Council’s recent 16-page report on Sri Lanka. Issued on August 12, the report, titled Situation of Human Rights in Sri Lanka, calls for the establishment of an “international mechanism” to investigate war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka.
Herath dismissed this demand, claiming that the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, had made “progress” on human rights and national reconciliation within its first year in office. In reality, the so-called reforms are nothing more than window dressing.
*****
Contrary to Herath’s claims of progress, the UNHRC report documents widespread human rights violations under the Dissanayake administration, including:
- Routine use of torture and ill-treatment, particularly in detention facilities.
- Multiple custodial deaths, allegedly due to torture or ill-treatment. According to government figures, 13 custodial deaths occurred since 2024.
- Lack of effective investigations into custodial deaths, prison deaths, and arbitrary arrests during drug raids.
- Ongoing use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), leading to arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention without charge or trial. As of May 23, 2025, 49 people had been arrested under the PTA. (During the 2024 presidential and national elections the JVP/NPP falsely claimed it would abolish the PTA.)
- Restrictive legal framework created by the combined effect of the PTA and the Online Safety Act, limiting freedom of opinion and expression.
- Targeted arrests of individuals, mainly from Tamil and Muslim communities, for participating in memorialisation events or protests.
The report also highlights surveillance, intimidation, and harassment, especially in the North and East, and the targeting of families of the disappeared, community leaders and human rights activists. Longstanding land disputes with the military and state agencies also remain unresolved.
*****
US-sponsored UNHRC resolutions on war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka since 2011 have not been driven by genuine concern for the rights of oppressed Tamils, Muslims or the working class. For nearly three decades, the US and its allies supported successive Sri Lankan governments in their war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
In the final months of the war, which ended in May 2009, the US and its allies began raising concerns about war crimes—mainly as a geopolitical manoeuvre to pressure then-President Mahinda Rajapakse to distance himself from China.
When that failed, the US backed a regime-change operation—with Indian support—to replace Rajapakse with Maithripala Sirisena in the 2015 presidential election. Sirisena’s government, alongside Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, realigned Sri Lanka’s foreign policy toward Washington. The current JVP/NPP government continues this pro-US orientation, deepening Sri Lanka’s integration into the US-India war drive against China.
*****
Like previous regimes, the JVP relies heavily on the military to maintain power and continues to deny the war crimes. During last year’s elections it formed a so-called Three Armed Forces Collective whose members include majors and other senior officers who led the communal war.
A previous UN investigation estimated that about 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final weeks of the war, many by indiscriminate military fire. Some who surrendered were disappeared while others, including LTTE leaders waving white flags, were executed.
*****
The Tamil bourgeois parties have seized on the UNHRC report to further their pro-imperialist agenda, calling on the US and India to pressure Colombo for justice.
On August 4, four days before the report’s release, a coalition of Tamil political parties and over 100 civil society groups urged the UNHRC to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court....
*****
These parties are not fighting for genuine democratic rights but rather external support from imperialist powers in exchange for limited power devolution. They are fully aligned with the government’s IMF-backed austerity agenda, which has devastated working people.
Tamil workers and oppressed people can secure their rights neither through the Tamil bourgeois parties, nor by appealing to the Sri Lankan government or imperialist powers, all of whom are violators of human rights. The Modi regime in India is itself trampling on the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, as part of a broader offensive on civil liberties.
That is why the Socialist Equality Party is fighting to build an independent political movement of the working class, uniting Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers across communal lines.
As the determined strike by 700 nurses and case workers at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, Michigan, enters its fifth week, the healthcare corporation has escalated its strikebreaking campaign.
In a provocative move, management ordered the striking workers to dismantle their picket line encampments, while the Teamsters union bureaucracy has openly sided with the company, telling the strikers that there is nothing that can be done about it.
The nurses, who have been on strike since Labor Day, are fighting against intolerable working conditions. Their key demand is the implementation of safe, mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios. Their struggle has exposed the reality of the US healthcare system, where patient care is systematically sacrificed for corporate profits.
*****
The response on the picket line revealed a growing chasm between the determination of the rank-and-file and the pro-company orientation of the union apparatus. Upon hearing Glass’s message, one nurse responded with an exasperated, “What about our lawyers?” Her comment was met with laughter from other nurses, a clear sign that trust in the union leadership is rapidly breaking down.
This climb down is not an isolated incident but part of the strategy of the Teamsters union apparatus to isolate the strike and strangle it. While Henry Ford claims it has a “handshake agreement” with the Teamsters to remove the picket line infrastructure, it is clear this agreement was made over the heads of the striking nurses, who remain defiant. As one nurse affirmed, “We’re still going to stand strong out here. You can take every tent, chair, whatever it may be. We’re still out here fighting for the community.”
Interviews with striking nurses paint a picture of a healthcare system in a state of advanced collapse, systematically dismantled in the interest of private profit. The nurses’ struggle is not primarily about wages, but a fight to defend their patients and their ability to provide the quality care they were trained for.
*****
The Genesys nurses are not fighting alone. Their struggle is part of a broader fight against the escalating attacks on the right to quality healthcare. On September 30 the contact for 62,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington state. Among their key demands are safe staffing ratios.
*****
In its public statements, Henry Ford Health has resorted to slanders and lies to discredit the striking nurses. The corporation claims the current contract dispute is not about ratios, but about eliminating “premium pay” provisions that, it alleges, “incentivizes coordinated call-offs”.
Nurses are not engaged in a scheme to get premium pay. They are calling off because they are physically and mentally exhausted and their requests for vacation time are systematically denied due to the chronic understaffing that the hospital itself has created.
Furthermore, they are subjected to mandated overtime every shift. An eight-hour shift becomes 12, and a 12-hour shift becomes 16. Refusing mandatory overtime three times results in disciplinary action. “What if you have family?” one nurse asked. “Doesn’t matter, they don’t care.”
While attacking its dedicated staff, the hospital pleads poverty, projecting a “$50 million loss this year” after a decade of purported “financial challenges”. This claim is rendered absurd by the fact that Henry Ford is spending a fortune on travel nurses to break the strike. These temporary nurses are being paid double what the striking nurses make, and are also provided with housing, food, and other amenities. “They got the red carpet pulled out for them,” one nurse noted with disgust.
*****
The class divide between the nurses, and the healthcare corporate executives could not be starker. An experienced nurse named Jenny said, “The CEOs, they don’t even know what it is to do our jobs. They don’t know healthcare. All they know is the business end of it… Come and walk a day in our shoes.”
19. Imperialist powers tighten the noose around Iran with reimposition of sanctions
The United Nations reimposed sanctions on Iran, September 28—lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—after Britain, France and Germany (the E3) invoked the “snapback” mechanism, accusing Tehran of violating its nuclear obligations under the agreement.
This is the threat to Iran: capitulate to Washington’s diktats, end the nuclear program and the alliance with Russia and China or face another, far more destructive, military assault. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described it as “an act of decisive global leadership on the part of France, Germany and the United Kingdom”.
*****
The reimposed UN sanctions include a ban on: any trade and investment related to Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programme, including an arms embargo and restrictions on ballistic missile production; new foreign investment in Iran’s oil and gas sector; sweeping sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which controls much of Iran’s economy via its affiliated companies; asset freezes and visa bans, as well as a complete halt to uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities previously allowed under the JCPOA. In addition, the snapback reimposes an embargo on all weapons transactions with Iran that had expired in 2020.
These sanctions will pile on the pressure on Iran’s already fragile economy. Protests and demonstrations over unpaid wages, pensions and conditions have been ongoing across the country that has been devastated by years of crippling US sanctions and secondary sanctions, leading to soaring inflation and a precipitous decline in the value of Iran’s currency, with the rial falling to 1,123,000 per US dollar, a record low on the announcement.
There have been frequent planned and unplanned electricity blackouts, while climate change and the government’s chronic mismanagement have depleted groundwater reserves at an alarming pace, with 24 out of 31 provinces experiencing severe water shortages. The government has been forced to designate Wednesdays as public holidays in Tehran and the surrounding areas to reduce energy and water consumption.
Iran is reeling from the impact of the US/Israel’s unprovoked and criminal bombardment in June that targeted its industrial and nuclear facilities and assassinated key politicians, scientists and officials.
*****
The US/Israeli bombing followed nearly two years of Israeli attacks on Iran’s regional allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and the Houthis in Yemen, severely weakening them, and above all on Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza. The weapons embargo on Iran is intended to hinder its ability to arm its allies, including Russia which it supplies with drones for the war in Ukraine. The European powers justified the June war, supporting the specious pretext used by Tel Aviv and Washington to justify their attack on Iran: that it must never have a nuclear weapon or pose a threat to the region’s security. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was still monitoring its nuclear facilities to ensure that its nuclear program was only for civilian purposes and IAEA chief Rafael Grossi acknowledged that it had no evidence that Iran was pursuing westernization.
It is Israel, not Iran, that has for decades attacked its neighbors, including the genocidal assault on the Palestinians in Gaza. It is widely acknowledged that Israel has at least 100 nuclear bombs. As one of only five countries not to have signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), its nuclear facilities are not open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).
*****
The reimposition of sanctions followed the failure of a UN Security Council resolution submitted by Russia and China for a six-month delay to enable further discussions to win a majority. Russia condemned the sanctions, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing the imperialist powers of undermining the Security Council’s authority and pursuing unilateral pressure tactics against Iran.
Russia dismissed the sanctions as invalid and made it clear it would not enforce them. Lavrov said the sanctions “finally exposed the west’s policy of sabotaging the pursuit of constructive solutions in the UN security council, as well as its desire to extract unilateral concessions from Tehran through blackmail and pressure”.
At the same time, the Arab and Muslim states in the region have supported President Donald Trump’s take it or leave ultimatum to Hamas to accept a US takeover of Gaza and their own disarming.
Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said, “The US has betrayed diplomacy, but it is the E3 which have buried it,” telling the Security Council that the snapback was “legally void, politically reckless and procedurally flawed”.
Once sanctions were reimposed, it would be impossible to repeal them at the UN as not one of the powers that supports sanctions—the US, Britain or France—is prepared to veto a resolution to lift the measures. The reinstatement of sanctions means that Iran is deemed to be in breach of international laws and subject to chapter seven of the UN charter, providing the US with the grounds to declare Iran’s entire nuclear program illegal and a threat to international peace and legitimizing an attack on the country.
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:
10. The Split in the Socialist Workers Party and Trotsky’s Defense of Materialist Dialectics
11. Trotsky’s Place in History
12.Wartime and Post-War Turkey
21.
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.
