Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Mobilize the working class to fight Trump’s hunger plan!
The Trump administration’s threat to cut off food stamps for tens of millions of people is one of the most brutal assaults on the American working class in history. Beginning Saturday, 42 million people—one in eight Americans—who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will be suddenly confronted with the immediate prospect of hunger.
This massive assault on the working class must be met with a mass movement of workers, uniting the fight against Trump’s developing dictatorship with the struggle against the capitalist oligarchy and the staggering social inequality that underlies his rise to power.
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The attack on SNAP benefits is part of a broader social counterrevolution that is rapidly intensifying. Funding is also expiring Saturday for the Women and Infant Children (WIC) food assistance program, which supports 7 million people. Head Start, the early childhood education program, will also run out of funds.
At the same time, the open enrollment period for Obamacare health insurance begins Saturday, and the expiration of federal tax credits will have a devastating impact on millions. Health insurance premiums are set to skyrocket, with costs for many families more than doubling and some households forced to spend up to a quarter of their income just to keep basic coverage.
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At the start of the shutdown, the Socialist Equality Party wrote: “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 is the essential issue. Trump represents an oligarchy that is waging war on society, overseeing the largest transfer of wealth in American history. On Friday afternoon, with millions scrambling to find out how they will eat this weekend, this representative of the criminal underworld spent his time posting dozens of pictures of his refurbished gold and marble bathroom in the White House.
The administration's move to establish a dictatorship expresses the drive of the ruling class to enforce starvation wages, maximize corporate profits, and the domination of a tiny financial elite through military and police repression. It is a government—and a social order—that is completely out of control.
Across the country, the National Guard is being mobilized in preparation for mass opposition. Plans are being finalized to establish “quick reaction” forces of roughly 500 soldiers in each of the 50 states, ready to deploy within 24 hours to suppress “civil unrest” in American cities. The ruling class is preparing to respond to the deepening social crisis, including the possibility of food riots, with state violence to defend the wealth and power of the financial oligarchy.
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The Socialist Equality Party calls for the development of mass opposition to the Trump administration’s program of starvation and dictatorship through the independent mobilization of the working class. Rank-and-file committees must be formed in every neighborhood, workplace, and school to organize resistance, unite the struggles of workers and youth across industries and regions, and prepare a coordinated counteroffensive against the capitalist oligarchy.
Democracy and oligarchy are incompatible. In opposition to the program of dictatorship and social regression, a movement must be built, rooted in the working class, for equality and genuine workers’ control. The coterie of billionaires who form Trump’s real social base must be expropriated, the trillion dollar corporations nationalized and placed under workers’ control.
This struggle cannot be defined by or subordinated to the Democratic Party, the other party of Wall Street and US imperialism. The Democrats are motivated solely by the need to keep a lid on the massive social opposition that is bubbling up across the country. They limit themselves to impotent finger-wagging while begging Trump and his right-wing conspirators to come up with a “bipartisan” deal—that is, one which ratifies historic cuts to social spending.
At the “No Kings” demonstrations, the Democrats who bothered to show up urged attendees to do nothing except write their congresspeople and wait for midterm elections that might never take place.
The trade union bureaucracy is increasingly lining up with Trump. On Thursday, the heads of ten major unions, including Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and AFGE President Everett Kelley, met with JD Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, alongside several airline executives. The meeting, officially focused on likely Thanksgiving travel chaos due to the shutdown, was used to denounce the Democrats and demand that Congress surrender completely and reopen the government on Trump’s terms.
This expresses the true function of the union bureaucracy as a prop of class rule. The corrupt, upper-middle class lackeys that populate the apparatus work with the government and the corporations to hold back, frustrate, and betray workers, preventing social anger from coalescing into a mass movement.
This is why the Socialist Equality Party calls for the building of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, neighborhood and school—linked through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)—to coordinate the growing struggles of workers and youth. These committees must demand the immediate restoration of food assistance, an end to all layoffs, and the reorganization of economic life to meet social needs, not private profit.
Workers must demand the dismantling of the Pentagon war machine and the reallocation of its more than $1 trillion annual budget to meet urgent social needs—ensuring food, housing, healthcare, education, and decent-paying jobs for all. The entire apparatus of repression must be abolished, beginning with the dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an immediate end to the anti-immigrant raids and deportations that have terrorized working-class communities across the country.
The fight against hunger, poverty, and dictatorship is inseparable from the fight against capitalism itself. The working class, united internationally, must take power into its own hands, expropriate the oligarchs, and build a socialist society based on equality, human dignity, and genuine democracy.
2. UN accuses US of violating human rights laws in Caribbean and Pacific airstrikes
On Friday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said airstrikes conducted by the United States against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific were a violation of international human rights law and must cease immediately.
“Over 60 people have reportedly been killed in a continuing series of attacks carried out by US armed forces against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific since early September, in circumstances that find no justification in international law,” Türk said in a statement.
For the last two months, the US government has been conducting an illegal murder spree in international waters under the pretext of combating “narco-terrorists.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump have presented zero evidence that any of the over 60 people killed in at least 14 strikes presented a threat to anyone in the United States or anywhere else.
In his statement, Türk said the ongoing attacks “and their mounting human cost are unacceptable.” He continued: “The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”
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The strikes have taken place thousands of miles from the United States coastline. None of the boats targeted, many of which carried only a dozen people or less, are large enough to reach US shores.
The criminality of the US government is seemingly limitless. In instances where there have been survivors following missile strikes, the US government has refused to take them into custody and prosecute them for their alleged “narco-terrorism.”
The US is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and has spent the last two years politically, military and economically backing the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank.
Türk called on Washington to “adhere to international law” in “accordance with the fundamental rule of law principles of due process and fair trial, for which the US has long stood.”
In fact, the US has repeatedly violated international law. Since the creation of the United Nations following World War II, the US government, in the name of combating communism, has supported right-wing coups, fascist dictatorships and death squads around the world. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the US, in an attempt to stave off economic challengers, embarked on a global campaign of aggressive and illegal wars in South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The US continues to lie about the strikes as it prepares regime-change operations in Venezuela and possibly Colombia. On Friday, the Miami Herald reported that the Trump administration has “made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment.”
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As of this writing, some 10,000 US Marines and sailors are in the Southern Caribbean and Puerto Rico, including some 4,000 on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the US Navy.
The Trump administration has yet to go to Congress to seek a formal declaration of war or resolution authorizing use of force against Venezuela or the drug cartels allegedly in its employ. On Thursday, Senate Democrats revealed that they had been excluded from a secret military briefing the prior day in which military lawyers reportedly provided the legal justification for the boat murders.
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The Democrats, who pioneered extra-judicial murder under the Obama administration, with its “Terror Tuesdays,” are incapable of and unwilling to propose any concrete action to stop the Trump administration’s war drive. If the initiative is left to the parties of the ruling class and their adjuncts in the trade union apparatus, the same military that is murdering fisherman in the Pacific and Caribbean will soon be massively deployed on the streets of America.
The city of Nuremberg in Germany is censoring an event organized by Mehring Verlag at the 30th Left-wing Literature Fair, which will present two recent books by David North and discuss a socialist perspective on the genocide in Gaza and the danger of a third world war. The authorities claim that criticism of militarism and war is “illegal.”
Thirty hours before the fair opened on Friday evening, the city of Nuremberg sent an email to the organizing team demanding that the text announcing the event be “REVISED IMMEDIATELY.” If this was not done, the city threatened to “reserve the right to EXERCISE OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS and exclude the event in question from the program of the Left-Wing Literature Fair.”
This is an act of blatant censorship aimed at suppressing criticism of the German government’s rearmament and war policies and the war crimes of the Israeli government.
The city objected to the fact that the event text accuses the German government of committing “bloody war crimes again, 80 years after the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis.” The event text justifies this accusation by stating: “It [the federal government] supports the genocide in Gaza, is fueling NATO’s proxy war against Russia, and is pursuing the largest military buildup since Hitler.”
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The view that the Israeli government is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza is now shared by numerous human rights organizations, high-ranking international institutions, governments and the overwhelming majority of the world’s population.
The killing of at least 67,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians and children, the multiple displacement of 2 million people, the destruction of 90 percent of the infrastructure, the systematic starvation of the civilian population, and the murder of nearly 200 journalists cannot be described as “self-defense,” even by the most generous interpretation of the term. Israeli government officials and military leaders have openly admitted to their genocidal goals.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), whose authority is recognized by Germany, issued arrest warrants a year ago for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister Yoav Galant. The charges are serious war crimes and crimes against humanity. The independent commission of inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council considers four of the five elements mentioned in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide to have been fulfilled.
To describe the accusation of genocide as “relativizing historical crimes,” as the letter from the city of Nuremberg does, is absurd. If there is one lesson to be learned from the Shoah, it is that such crimes must never be repeated—not even by an Israeli government that includes declared racists and fascists. That was the central message of the war crimes trials that began 80 years ago in Nuremberg. Now the ruling class in Germany is once again linking itself to these historical crimes and wants to silence anyone who opposes it.
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The trade fair team has changed the event text of Mehring Verlag on its website in accordance with the city’s requirements so as not to jeopardize the event. It will take place on Sunday, November 2, at the Künstlerhaus Nürnberg, Königstraße 93, in the KOMM Kino on the 1st floor.
Mehring Verlag will present two books by David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board and chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), which are of great importance for the struggle against war and militarism. They can be purchased on site or ordered on the Mehring Books website in English.
The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to Genocide in Gaza exposes the lie that rejection of Zionism is tantamount to antisemitism. It traces how the nationalist ideology of Zionism arose in the struggle against international socialism, which had a major influence among Jewish workers and intellectuals. A large section of the Jewish people linked their own emancipation to the overthrow of capitalist class society, not to the establishment of a nation-state serving as a bridgehead for imperialist powers in the Middle East.
Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War contains May Day speeches delivered by David North from 2014 to 2024. They trace the dramatic escalation of militarism, the growing danger of a nuclear Third World War and the rise of Donald Trump. They show that the same contradictions to which the ruling class responds with war and dictatorship also create the objective conditions for the intensification of the class struggle and for socialist revolution. What is necessary is the building of a party that gives the working class an international, socialist perspective.
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The censorship measure in Nuremberg is one of countless attacks on fundamental democratic rights. Congresses have been banned, cultural centers closed and artists and scientists persecuted for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. The German state is resorting to the same methods as the Trump administration when it comes to suppressing widespread resistance to its war and austerity policies.
This makes Sunday’s event in Nuremberg all the more important. We call on all readers to attend our event in large numbers and thus oppose the attempt to censor opposition to war and genocide.
4. Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush: A century after its release
A century after its release, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) remains one of the most remarkable achievements in world cinema—a work in which the great filmmaker and actor fused his peerless pantomime with moving drama and a profound identification with the poor and dispossessed, for which Chaplin drew on his own childhood experience of hunger and extreme poverty in the slums of London.
In creating his Little Tramp character, Chaplin took a social type that was reviled by official bourgeois society—the vagrant, the unemployed man, the person without property—and turned him into arguably the most beloved character in the world, recognized by millions as the embodiment of humanity itself: resilient, tender, always yearning (for food, security or romance), and with a deep sense of justice that sometimes compels him to kick a cop in the rear, to the utter delight of working class audiences everywhere.
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Chaplin’s ability to mix laughter and pathos was rooted in personal experience. Born in 1889 in South London to impoverished music-hall entertainers, he knew the humiliations of poverty firsthand. His father, who suffered from alcoholism, left the family; his mother, Hannah, was institutionalized after years of hardship. The young Charlie spent time in workhouses, surviving through performance—first as a child entertainer in the music halls, later as a vaudeville comedian with Fred Karno’s troupe, which took him to the United States, where, in 1914, Chaplin began appearing in and soon directing short films.
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Although The Gold Rush lacks the overt social criticism of Modern Times (the Great Depression and factory life) or The Great Dictator (fascism), it was a decisive step toward them. It taught Chaplin how to balance the comic and the dramatic within a single work, and how to create characters who mirrored the experiences of millions.
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Chaplin’s life after The Gold Rush reflected the growing contradictions of his time. In 1952, while traveling to London for the premiere of Limelight, he was barred from re-entering the United States in what was a deliberate McCarthyite attack on the left-wing filmmaker. He lived the rest of his life in exile in Switzerland, returning to America only once, in 1972, to receive an honorary Academy Award.
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A century after its release, The Gold Rush remains an astonishing achievement—poetic, hilarious and humane. Chaplin himself once said that it was the film by which he wished to be remembered. Watching it today, one understands why. Its images—of hunger and hope, of a man eating his shoe and dreaming of love—continue to move audiences to laughter and, perhaps, tears.
In today’s world of ever deepening levels of social inequality, Chaplin’s vision is again urgently relevant. Chaplin’s genius lay in showing that laughter itself could be an act of defiance. To laugh in the face of the inhumanity of capitalism, not to downplay it, but to show the absurdity of the social order, and to imagine something better.
Stellantis autoworkers in Canada and the United States have denounced Trump’s trade war measures and called for a unified, cross-border struggle to defend jobs and living standards. Their statements come as mass layoffs mount and global automakers deploy AI and automation to extract more production from a shrinking workforce.
On October 14, Stellantis announced it was scrapping plans to build its new Jeep Compass in Brampton, Ontario, and shifting production to its long-shuttered Belvidere, Illinois, plant to shield the company from Trump’s tariffs. The decision threatens 1,500 Brampton jobs and may lead to the plant’s closure.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain immediately hailed Stellantis’ move, praising Trump’s tariffs for bringing “back thousands of good union jobs to the US.” Fain also pointed to General Motors’ $4 billion investments in Michigan, Tennessee and Kansas as proof of the supposed “gains” from the UAW’s alliance with Trump’s nationalist policies.
Barely a week later, GM announced new job cuts. Factory Zero in Detroit will be reduced to a single shift in January 2026, eliminating about 1,200 jobs. Battery-cell production at Ultium plants in Ohio and Tennessee will pause for six months, affecting another 2,100 workers. Ford is threatening to idle its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which has already been cut from three shifts to one.
Neither the UAW nor its Canadian counterpart Unifor has lifted a finger to oppose the layoffs. The job losses are the direct result of Trump’s cancellation of EV consumer tax credits and the global collapse of EV demand. Instead of organizing resistance, Unifor is allying with the right-wing Liberal government of Mark Carney to promote Canadian nationalism and counter-tariffs.
Last week, supporters of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) distributed the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter at Stellantis’ Windsor Assembly Plant, across the river from Detroit. The newsletter included a statement by Mack Trucks worker and IWA-RFC leader Will Lehman, who denounced Fain’s claim that “cutting the jobs of our Canadian brothers and sisters is a win for American workers” and called for the defense of the jobs of Brampton workers.
“Fain is allied with a fascist president who sends ICE thugs against immigrant workers, threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to establish military rule, and is destroying public education and health care to enrich the oligarchy he represents,” Lehman said. “Just as trade war preceded World War II, trade war today is the prelude to a new world war for global domination—from the Middle East and South America to Russia and China.”
Lehman concluded:
Our greatest strength is our international unity. The only way to defend our jobs is through cross-border solidarity in struggle. In every factory, workers must build rank-and-file committees, controlled democratically by workers themselves. This can only succeed if it is independent of the UAW bureaucracy and the two parties of big business, which offer only poverty, war, and dictatorship.”
Stellantis workers in Windsor responded enthusiastically to this call for unity.
“It’s time to form one union across the global auto industry,” said a veteran Windsor worker. “We used to be in the same union with the American workers, but we were split up. The industry operates all over the world. It doesn’t matter if it’s Democrats or Republicans in the US, or Liberals and Conservatives here—none of them are for the workers. We need politics for the working class.”
6. Senate confirms Trump nominees to head US safety agencies as worker protections face the axe
The Senate confirmation of Trump’s appointments for the two top occupational safety posts in the United States on October 7, one week into the government shutdown, presages a deepening assault on workplace safety.
David Keeling, a former executive at Amazon and UPS, was confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) along with veteran Republican operative Wayne Palmer as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health (MSHA). The two were approved in a bloc, along with 22 other nominees, in a single party-line vote, with 51 Republicans voting in favor and 47 Democrats against.
As head of safety at both UPS and Amazon Keeling blocked the implementation of basic safety measures, such as the installation of air conditioning on delivery trucks, which contributed to thousands of illnesses and even deaths. Amazon in particular is notorious for its high rate of on-the-job injuries, more than double that of other warehouse workers.
For his part Wayne Palmer has no training in mine safety. Immediately prior to his confirmation, Palmer served as Executive Vice President of the Essential Minerals Association (EMA), a trade group representing mining and mineral-extraction companies. There, he pushed for “streamlined permitting” and the rollback of “burdensome regulations.”
During his previous tenure at MSHA during the first Trump administration, Palmer oversaw a sharp decline in inspections and enforcement actions. His reinstatement now signals the administration’s intention to align the agency even more closely with the coal, metal, and mineral conglomerates. In 2018, his first full year in office, US mine deaths nearly doubled according to a Newsweek report.
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The confirmation of Keeling and Palmer—both longtime servants of corporate America—under conditions of mass workplace deaths, growing deregulation, and an ongoing shutdown underscores the contempt of both capitalist parties for the lives and safety of workers. The defense of the most basic protections on the job cannot be entrusted to the agencies of the capitalist state but must be organized independently by the working class itself through rank-and-file committees and the fight for socialism.
7. Pacific Defense Ministers escalate militarization across the region
The 10th annual South Pacific Defense Ministers’ Meeting (SPDMM) convened in Viña del Mar, Chile from October 22-24, amid the escalating imperialist war drive across the region, led by the United States, aimed against China.
Defense Ministers or their representatives attended from Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji and Tonga, along with observers from Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Baron Waqa, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), also attended.
The SPDMM declares it is “the premier defense ministerial dialogue in the South Pacific, enhancing cooperation and driving Pacific-led responses to shared regional security challenges.” Beyond token concerns about the need for “joint responses” to climate disasters, humanitarian emergencies and transnational crime, the summit’s real agenda was devoted to developing “operational collaboration” between the region’s militaries to face “new trends in security challenges.”
While not directly naming China, Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles, a leading Labor Party hawk, emphasized that the Pacific “is a place of growing geostrategic contest.” New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins, fresh from visiting the CIA’s Langley headquarters in the US, told Radio NZ the SPDMM helps “set our defense and security goals to ensure we are ready to meet the challenges our region will face from increasing strategic competition.”
Marles falsely declared that SPDMM members “share values as democracies, as countries which respect freedom of speech, and which seek to uphold a rules-based order.” He claimed that such rules give “countries of our size” agency. “In a world which is only about power and might, it is hard for smaller countries to be able to deal with the issues around them.”
This is a deliberate inversion of reality. The “rules-based order” is the post-World War II financial, diplomatic and military arrangements established by Washington to ensure its global hegemony.
In the Indo-Pacific region, the Trump administration has accelerated a protracted military build-up against China, which US imperialism views as the chief threat to a world in which it sets the rules. US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth has predicted imminent war with China over Taiwan and demanded allies in the region dramatically hike their military budgets.
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Australia and New Zealand—minor imperialist powers, allied with the US—view the Pacific as their own colonial back yard and are playing a leading role in militarising the region. Australia has invested $200 million to train police in PNG, and has effectively taken over security and defence policy for the tiny island nations of Tuvalu and Nauru. These moves are exacerbating tensions throughout the region, which the decisions made at the defence summit will further inflame.
Those nations outside the SPDMM, including the Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Samoa, Kiribati and Vanuatu, all have significant funding, economic, security and policing links with China that Canberra and Wellington constantly seek to undermine. Diplomatic tensions erupted at the Pacific Islands Forum summit held in the Solomon Islands in September, after the Solomons government sought to exclude 21 dialogue partners, including Taiwan’s government, from taking part. The Australian media published numerous articles hysterically denouncing Chinese “influence” in the Solomons.
The role of imperialism remains deeply contentious among many Pacific nations. The region, which witnessed some of the bloodiest battles during World War II, is being drawn into the maelstrom of US-led preparations for a third world war.
8. United States: Soaring electricity rates become key issue in New Jersey governor’s race
Rising electricity bills have emerged as a major issue in New Jersey’s 2025 gubernatorial race between Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, and Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Workers in New Jersey are now confronting electricity prices that are 22 percent higher than they were one year ago.
Electricity bills are starting to climb nationally as well. The average monthly rate for US residents increased 5 percent and is expected to continue rising exponentially for the foreseeable future. As electricity rates rise, the Trump administration is sabotaging investments in renewable energy, the generation of which encompasses far lower costs than the generation of fossil fuel energy. This sabotage only benefits the fossil fuel industry.
The rise in utility prices is just one aspect of the affordability crisis facing workers across the country. The prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs, for example, have risen by 5.2 percent over the last year. This affordability crisis stems from the debt-ridden corporate oligarchy’s need for greater profits. As both major parties serve the interests of this oligarchy, they support efforts of the super-rich to bail themselves out at workers’ expense. They are incapable of implementing rational and efficient energy policies.
The causes of the sudden electricity rate hikes are multifactorial but begin with the regional grid operator PJM (Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland), which manages the power grid for 13 states and Washington D.C. The private, nonprofit organization is minimally overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
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The sharp rise in electricity demand results from an explosion in the number of data centers in PJM’s region, which includes Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley,” the largest grouping of data centers in the world. Data centers are notoriously energy-hungry, with some consuming enough energy to power a large city or small state. This demand puts enormous strain on an already fragile electrical infrastructure.
According to PJM, 70 percent of the growth in demand, equivalent to $9.6 billion in rising consumer costs, is attributable to data centers. The National Resources Defense Council predicts that “by 2028, an average family in the [PJM] region will be paying around $70 a month extra on their electricity bills because of forecast data center growth.”
However, the proliferation of data centers is not just an issue for states in PJM’s region; Bloomberg determined that wholesale electricity costs skyrocketed by 267 percent over the past five years in areas of the US that are close to data centers.
Furthermore, the cost of connecting data centers to the grid through power lines and substations is imposed on all utility customers. Tech companies are not required to contribute funds that are proportionate to the tremendous energy demands their data centers place on the grid. Hence, the economic and environmental burdens of the AI boom are being placed on the backs of the working class.
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In New Jersey, both gubernatorial candidates propose ineffective reforms that fail to acknowledge, let alone address, the root causes of the price hikes.
Sherrill promises to freeze rates for one year, which will do nothing to stop the surge in prices. Industry experts predict that they will continue for at least a decade. She also vows to file lawsuits against the Trump administration’s rollback of federal clean energy programs, but dependence on the judicial system, headed by the far-right leaning U.S. Supreme Court, has already proven to be futile.
For his part, Ciattarelli blames the Democratic state government for the rising rates, backs Trump’s war against wind turbines and promises to implement an “Energy Master Plan” that lacks substantive detail.
The current spike in utility prices places a significant burden on the working class and underscores the chaos and irrationality of capitalism, which prioritizes profit above all other considerations. The crisis of energy prices and inadequate energy supply can be resolved only through workers’ control of the energy infrastructure and socialist planning.
9. Milei’s mid-term election win in Argentina exposes bankruptcy of Peronism and pseudo-leftist FIT-U
Argentina’s fascistic President Javier Milei scored a surprise victory in the country’s October 26 mid-term elections, held amid deepening social, economic and political crises at home and escalating US imperialist aggression across Latin America.
Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), gained seats and obtained over 40 percent of the vote nationally across both houses, while the nominal “opposition,” the Peronist coalition Fuerza Patria, and its allies, secured around 30 percent of the vote. LLA won in most provinces, including Buenos Aires Province, which historically has been a Peronist stronghold.
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While the outcome is being touted in the media as an endorsement of Milei’s economic agenda of harsh austerity—symbolized by his wielding a chainsaw—the mid-terms saw the lowest turnout (67 percent) since the fall of the dictatorship in 1983. In other words, one-third of the electorate did not go to the polls, which is a legal obligation in Argentina. In the contests for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, approximately 59.3 percent and 57.8 percent of the vote, respectively, went to parties other than the LLA.
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After LLA suffered a loss of about 13 to 14 percentage points to Fuerza Patria in the provincial elections held on September 7 in Buenos Aires, the most populous province of Argentina, concentrating 40 percent of the national electorate and over 30 percent of the country’s GDP, markets panicked, and the value of the peso plummeted. Argentina’s Central Bank was forced to spend $1.1 billion of its foreign currency reserves in just three days to prop up the peso and prevent a collapse, and the United States intervened with a massive $40 billion financial bailout package that includes a $20 billion currency swap and an additional $20 billion in financing from sovereign wealth funds and private banks.
Less than 48 hours before the legislative elections, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and former economic adviser to both Barack Obama and Trump, arrived in Argentina amidst ongoing discussions about the broader financial assistance package meant to back the Milei government. JPMorgan Chase was evaluating participation in this credit line of $20 billion. Aside from Milei, ministers and local businessmen, in attendance at the events hosted by Dimon were also war criminals Tony Blair, current head of JPMorgan’s international council, and Condoleezza Rice, a partner of the financial group.
Significantly, Milei’s minister and vice minister of economy and the president and vice-president of Argentina’s Central Bank all made their fortunes working for JPMorgan in New York in the 1990s and early 2000s, helping wring profits out of the immiseration of the working class in Argentina and across the region.
The US aid package constituted more than election interference; it amounted to blackmail. Only 12 days before the vote, US President Donald Trump shamelessly conditioned the bailout on Milei’s victory. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump declared, amid predictions of the worst economic crisis since 2001. In reality, the bailout will flow directly into the coffers of the major banks and hedge funds, including some of Trump’s closest supporters, while Argentine workers are forced to pay the price.
The Argentine events must be viewed within the context of the Trump regime’s drive to revive the Monroe Doctrine and reclaim Latin America as the “backyard” of US imperialism. This has been expressed most clearly in the extrajudicial murders off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia under the false pretext of combating drug trafficking, together with Trump’s authorization of CIA operations in Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro government and the imposition of sanctions against Colombian president Gustavo Petro for criticizing US aggression.
There are also plans to establish an FBI anti-terrorism center on the triple frontier between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, based on an agreement signed between the US and Paraguay. Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s recent visits to Ecuador and Peru to pitch the deployment of US mercenaries to train local police and military forces are also cause for concern.
On September 29, some days after it became known that Trump would provide a financial lifeline to Milei, bypassing congressional authorization, Milei signed a Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) authorizing the entry of US military personnel (including Navy Seals) for unprecedented joint exercises at strategic naval bases in the South Atlantic (Mar del Plata, Puerto Belgrano and Ushuaia), called “Operación Tridente,” between October 20 and November 15, overlapping with the elections.
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Far from representing a genuine opposition, the Peronists enabled Milei’s rise to come to power and facilitated his agenda. The low voter turnout is an indication of the Argentine working class’s deep disillusionment with the Peronists as they negotiate some of Milei’s most brutal attacks on social institutions and democratic rights and as the Peronist-led union bureaucracies, like the General Labor Federation (CGT), block demands for general strike action.
The lack of an alternative to both Peronism and Milei is mainly the responsibility of the so-called Left and Workers’ Front (FIT-U) coalition. Employing pseudo-leftist and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the FIT-U closed its legislative campaign by holding a rally in front of the US Embassy in Buenos Aires on October 22 to denounce the “colonial pact” between Milei and Trump. Nicolás del Caño of the Morenoite Socialist Workers Party (PTS), a FIT-U deputy for Buenos Aires Province, declared, “We are the only force that will fight not to be just another star on the Yankee flag.”
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The FIT-U is disarming the working class by not offering a coherent international socialist perspective and program which would require acknowledging the unresolved questions of the 20th century and drawing the historical parallels between the counterrevolutionary program of the military dictatorships in Latin America and Milei’s program today. These critical tasks must be fulfilled through the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class, a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
10. German government prepares assault on social spending, scapegoating immigrants
On October 14, Chancellor Friedrich Merz denounced immigrants as a “problem in the urban environment” that had to be solved through more deportations. Since then, debate over his statement has not subsided and it is becoming ever clearer what the chancellor aimed to achieve with his racist tirade.
Merz and his government, a coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), are preparing for ferocious conflicts with the working class. They are planning a frontal assault on social benefits on which millions depend for their existence. Such an offensive cannot be carried out by democratic means. They are therefore making migrants the scapegoat for the consequences of their own policies and drawing deeply from the propaganda arsenal of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In doing so, they are deliberately strengthening the far right, because they need it to divide and suppress the working class.
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Merz’s reference to the “urban environment” was not accidental. The devastating consequences of the federal government’s austerity policy are most evident in the municipalities. With annual spending of €363 billion (as of 2024), the municipalities spend only €100 billion less than the federal states and €200 billion less than the federal government. However, they can finance only a small part of these expenditures from their own revenues and are dependent on substantial transfers from the federal and state governments.
Years of austerity and the impact of the debt brake have reduced these transfers, while new tasks are constantly being transferred to the municipalities. As a result, social spending—mandated by federal laws—has more than doubled since 2009. It now accounts for over 40 percent, and in some regions up to 65 percent, of municipal budgets.
As a consequence, hardly any municipality is still able to make the necessary investments in dilapidated schools, crumbling roads, libraries, leisure centers, nurseries, social services and other socially essential facilities. The situation has deteriorated dramatically over the past two years. The combined deficit of all German municipalities reached €25 billion in 2024—a fourfold increase in just twelve months! For this year, a shortfall of €35 billion is expected.
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The cuts at municipal and state level are only the tip of the iceberg. The most sweeping attack on the welfare state is being prepared at the federal level.
Business associations and the media are pushing for massive cuts to pensions and health spending. “Even stabilizing social expenditure will be difficult enough without benefit cuts; anyone wishing to reduce it must proceed drastically,” writes finance weekly Wirtschaftswoche, calling for the abolition of the mothers’ pension and early retirement without deductions, and for a reduction in the benefit level. “The same applies to health and care; costs are rising almost unchecked.” There are dozens of similar articles and studies.
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In August, Chancellor Merz declared: “We can no longer afford the welfare state.” The government, however, is proceeding step by step so as to dampen the expected resistance. It has outsourced the dismantling of pensions and healthcare contributions to commissions that are to draw up proposals, and as a first measure, decided to abolish Bürgergeld (welfare support) and replace it with a basic allowance.
The purpose of this measure—which will save at most €5 billion—is to pressure the unemployed into accepting virtually any job, no matter how poorly paid. Otherwise, they face cuts or the complete withdrawal of benefits. The same method was used by the “Hartz” laws twenty years ago, which laid the foundations for a massive low-wage sector.
The government’s concern is not only the three million already unemployed, but also the tens of thousands losing their jobs each month. They are to be forced into taking low-paid work immediately. Labour Minister Bärbel Bas publicly calculated that the state saves €850 million per year if 100,000 fewer people claim basic support.
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So far, the government relies primarily on the trade unions to suppress resistance to the job destruction and social cuts. Their well-paid officials and full-time works council representatives draw up redundancy plans and suffocate every opposition to them. They present job and wage cuts as being necessary to keep German companies “competitive” in the global market.
But their lie that workers and bosses are “in the same boat” becomes more transparent by the day. While workers’ living standards have stagnated or fallen for years, stock prices, great fortunes and executive pay have exploded.
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Stock prices remain high despite the economic crisis because speculators trust that the state will “bail them out” in any future financial crash, just as in 2007. Since then, virtually all wealth gains in Germany have gone to the richest layers. The number of billionaires has quadrupled from 42 to 171. Ten percent of households now own 56 percent of total wealth.
At the same time, poverty is rising. In 2024, 15.5 percent of the population—or around 13 million people—were poor. Among young people aged 18 to 24, the rate was 25 percent.
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The assault on social spending and the danger of war and dictatorship can only be stopped if the working class breaks with all the establishment parties and their accomplices in the trade unions, unites internationally, and takes up the struggle to overthrow capitalism and build a socialist society.
11. Kurdish PKK withdraws its forces from Turkey
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced Sunday, October 26, that it had decided to take “new practical steps” to remove “all its forces in Turkey” to move to the second stage of negotiations with the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The statement said, “the laws necessary for freedom and democratic integration to participate in democratic politics must be enacted without delay.”
Following the statement, Sabri Ok, a member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council, answered questions from the press and listed their demands as follows: 1) “Special laws specific to the PKK or the process” should be enacted. 2) “Leader Apo [imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan] ... must be granted physical freedom as soon as possible.” 3) “The Parliamentary Commission must go to Leader Apo immediately and listen to him.”
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Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan described the decision as “historic” in a statement, saying: “At this point, the first phase of the process has been completed. With the completion of the withdrawal, a new page has been turned... It is time to move on to the second phase, which is a much more critical and vital phase. That is, it is time to transition to social peace through legal and political steps.”
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The DEM Party İmralı Delegation, which last met with Öcalan on October 3, held talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Director İbrahim Kalın on Thursday evening as part of the negotiation process.
A statement released by the DEM Party explained, “During the meeting, we conducted comprehensive assessments on the stage reached in the Peace and Democratic Society Process and what needs to be done going forward. We are pleased to note that we are in mutual understanding and agreement on taking steps to ensure the process progresses more quickly and healthily.”
The negotiations have nothing to do with the pursuit of “peace and democracy.” This is evidenced by Thursday’s statement by Selahattin Demirtaş, the imprisoned former leader of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), predecessor of the DEM Party.
Demirtaş, who supported the negotiations, expressed his disappointment at the failure of his expectations as follows: “So it wasn’t enough; the operations targeting the opposition, and especially the CHP, have further deepened the division. Political prisoners who have served their 30-year sentences, even sick prisoners, have not been released from prison. Not a single municipality under trustee has been returned to the people. Without strengthening Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood, Turkish-Turkish division has been added on top of it.”
Turkey’s ruling elites have approached the negotiations from the outset as a security issue within the framework of the “terror-free Turkey” discourse. In a speech made one day before the PKK’s statement, Erdoğan said, “Have we saved our country from the scourge of terrorism? Will we continue to work together, hand in hand, to save 86 million people from the swamp of terrorism? At this point, we are patient, sincere, and calmly moving towards our goal... First, we will achieve a terror-free Turkey, and then a terror-free region as our most lasting achievement.”
While Ankara acts in line with US imperialist plans in the Middle East, it is trying to strengthen Turkey’s hand in its growing competition with Israel. Erdoğan sought to cement his “friendship” with US President Donald Trump by giving his full support to Trump’s “deal” on Gaza. At the same time, Ankara is trying to turn the PKK-led Kurdish movement from an enemy into an ally with the critical help of Öcalan.
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Under conditions where Israel is increasing its influence in Syria and declaring Syrian Kurds as “natural allies,” Ankara is demanding that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the sister organization of the PKK, also lay down their arms and submit to the Al-Qaeda-rooted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) regime in Damascus. Otherwise, Ankara threatens to launch military operations against the SDF. According to press reports, an agreement has been reached between HTS and the SDF on integration. Under this agreement, the SDF will be integrated into the Syrian army, receiving three divisions, three brigades, and a 30 percent share under the general staff command.
The US, which still has armed forces and bases controlled by the SDF in northeastern Syria, supports negotiations between Ankara and the PKK and advocates for the SDF to reach an agreement with Damascus. The policy of Washington, which invaded Iraq in 2003, provoked the regime change war in Syria in 2011, and has been the main force behind the genocide in Gaza since October 2023, is driven by the urge to bring the Middle East under its full imperialist domination. This means uniting its allies in the region against Iran, which is in the crosshairs, and eliminating the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East. The fact that Turkey and Israel, two critical allies of US imperialism in the region, are on a collision course that could lead to war could upsets all of Washington’s plans and interests.
The role played by the growing conflict of interests between Turkey and Israel in the initiation of the Ankara-PKK negotiations is clear. However, just like Israel, the policies of the Turkish and Kurdish elites, who serve US imperialism and pursue their own reactionary interests, have no progressive role. They are inherently incapable of and opposed to realizing the aspirations of the Turkish, Kurdish, and other peoples for peace, democracy, and social equality. Far from consistently opposing imperialism and Zionism, they collaborate with them.
Opposing imperialism and Zionism and fighting for genuine peace, democracy, and social equality requires uniting and mobilizing workers in the Middle East with their class brothers and sisters in the imperialist countries, independent of all capitalist parties and interests, on the basis of a socialist program. This is the perspective for which the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) is fighting.
12. Grey Wolves fascists attack leftist students at a university in Ankara, Turkey
Students at Hacettepe University’s Beytepe Campus in Ankara, Turkey were physically attacked last week by a fascist group calling themselves the “Hacettepe Grey Wolves Organization.” The masked group entered the university with machetes and meat cleavers to attack students, and at least one was reported injured. University students have staged protests against a new “reservation system” introduced in the cafeteria.
The injured student was admitted to Bilkent City Hospital for treatment. In a statement issued by the Ankara Medical Association (ATO), it was said that despite the attending physician’s decision to keep the student under observation while his treatment continued, he was requested to be taken to the police station. Meanwhile, 28 other students who wanted to visit their injured friend at the hospital were detained. The injured student was also detained later that day.
On Monday, October 27, the day of the attack, the far-right group held a “handover ceremony” by unfurling a banner of Alparslan Türkeş, the historical leader of the fascist movement in Turkey, at a café opposite the Faculty of Literature. The attack sparked anger among students against the university administration and private security units. Students demanded an explanation as to how the group was able to enter the school with such weapons. The university administration has not yet made a statement.
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In a statement published by the Hacettepe University administration in 2024, it was stated that the group named “Hacettepe Grey Wolves Organization” is not an officially established and active student group, and that the students involved in this group have taken actions that have negatively affected educational activities and peace within the university for nearly three years. However, there is no information indicating that the university administration has taken any measures against the fascist group or imposed any penalties.
The attackers at Hacettepe University have a direct link to the Grey Wolves (Ülkü Ocakları), an organization founded by Türkeş and affiliated with the MHP. Utku Sürenler, who is said to be the Ankara Grey Wolves Provincial Deputy Chairman in charge of universities, posted a threatening message on his social media account saying, “This flag will not fall to the ground, not until we die, last lamb.” Fatih Aydın, Deputy Chairman of Grey Wolves, claimed responsibility for the attack, posting, “Greetings to the brave grey wolves of Hacettepe.”
The increasing crackdown on universities has been a key part of the construction of a presidential dictatorship in Turkey by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, together with its de facto partner, the MHP. Government-aligned figures were appointed to university administrations, suppression of left-wing students intensified, and leftist academics purged on a large scale. The NATO-backed 2016 military coup attempt was used as a pretext for this unlawful crackdown.
In the recent period, universities have been the scene of significant protests. Students played a major role in the mass demonstrations that began with the arrest of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu on March 19. The government responded by sending riot police to the universities.
Two years ago, on October 25, 2023, protests erupted in the western city of Aydın following the death of a university student, Zeren Ertaş, who lost her life when an elevator malfunctioned due to negligence at a state-run dormitory. These protests spread across the country, and riot police attacked students to suppress demonstrations at universities.
The ongoing climate of repression at universities, police operations, or fascist attacks carried out under the supervision of the police and private security units—as in the case of Hacettepe University—confirm that the fragile negotiations between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have no connection whatsoever with “peace and democracy.” These negotiations, in which Erdoğan and MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli have been declared “doves of peace,” are supported by almost the entire political establishment.
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As the World Socialist Web Site has explained from the outset, the negotiations between Ankara and the PKK have emerged under pressure of the growing rivalry between Turkey and its ally, Israel. This is a reactionary attempt by the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie to reach an agreement in line with US imperialism’s “new Middle East” plan. The negotiations, taking place amid the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, an imperialist-backed regime change in Syria, and an imperialist-Zionist attack on Iran, are accompanied by increasing attacks on political opposition, including the CHP, and democratic rights in Turkey.
The increased repression at universities is not unique to Turkey. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, increasing social inequality and intensifying global imperialist war have led to a growing drive to authoritarianism worldwide. For example, in May, 78 students from Columbia University in the United States were violently detained for protesting against the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza. The State Department revoked the visas of thousands of students who were said to have participated in the Gaza protests.
13. Deaths of homeless in UK reach new high under Starmer government
A report by the Museum of Homelessness project-Dying Homeless Project 2024 into the deaths of homeless people in the UK provides evidence that homelessness and linked deaths will continue under this Labour government.
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Since 2017, the Museum of Homelessness has aimed to document and remember every person who dies while homeless in the UK. Since that year there have been documented 8,523 deaths of homeless people. Data published October 8 by the Dying Homeless Project 2024, showed that 1,611 people who were homeless died in the year 2024, an increase of 9 percent on the previous year.
A good portion of these deaths—from July 2024 onwards—were on Labour’s watch. Matthew Turtle, director of the Museum of Homelessness said the deaths, “show how homeless people continue to be deeply failed”.
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Most deaths were linked to suicide or drug use, with an increase in the number of people dying from the use of spice or nitazenes. Of the 1,611 who died, three quarters were men and included two thirds who were living in temporary or supported accommodation, while 169 were sleeping rough. Eleven of the 169 were children including six children under the age of five, and one was murdered weeks before his eighteenth birthday.
Homelessness is surging. In the years 2023-24, local councils across the UK assessed 178,560 households as homeless, an increase of 12.3 percent on the previous year. The Shelter charity estimate that in 2024 the number of homeless people in England stood at 354,000 plus, that included 161,500 children.
There are 169,000 children living in temporary accommodation, with many having to live in hotel rooms, and bed & breakfast accommodation that do not have access to basic facilities, including kitchens, desk space or areas for children to play in. Such accommodation can often be out of area with people losing access to schools, support networks and places of worship.
The number of young adults who have perished while homeless remains high with at least 54 people under the age of 25 dying. Many of the young people experiencing acute trauma due to homelessness have left local authority care, with a significant number fleeing serious youth violence and exploitation.
The figures for 2024 include 88 people aged over 75,” with 73 percent of those living in Northern Ireland at the time of their death. Though most of the people who had died were living at the time in some form of accommodation, there was one case of an 84-year-old woman who died in England of no fixed abode.
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The report uses a specific definition of those who died in “deaths of despair”, defined as those who have died from drug alcohol use (including overdose) and suicide. Deaths of despair represent the highest proportion of those who died, representing 43 percent of deaths in 2024. This definition includes those who are experiencing homelessness that happen at the intersection of severe exclusion and destitution, leading to a state of despair.
14. Two new books on Marx and Marxism
To be sure, [Bruno] Leipold’s Citizen Marx and [Andrew] Hartman’s Karl Marx in America reflect genuine sympathy for Marx and his critique of capitalism. Yet in seeking to render his ideas congenial to present academic and petty-bourgeois political sensibilities—Leipold more the first and Hartman more the second— both books underscore how contemporary scholarship has distorted rather than grasped Marx’s ideas. Leipold reinterprets Marx through the narrow lens of republicanism, draining his revolutionary theory of its class content, while Hartman reduces Marxism to a shifting current of American intellectual moods culminating in the pseudo-left reformism of Jacobin and the DSA.
What both books avoid is precisely what Marx insisted upon: that the liberation of humanity requires the political independence of the working class and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. That omission marks the enduring gulf between these academic treatments and Marx’s own project.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) held a public meeting last Sunday opposing mass job cuts at Australian universities and a broader assault on public education, extending to the schools.
The speakers detailed the destruction of 3,500 jobs at universities across the country over the past 10 months, with many more slated to be axed. They explained that this was part of a further transformation of the sector, being spearheaded by the federal Labor government, and aimed at subordinating it even more directly to the needs of the corporations and the military.
They placed this offensive in its global context. David Rye, an educator and socialist from the US, outlined the brutal crackdown on free speech, including at campuses, being presided over by the fascistic US President Donald Trump.
The meeting raised the need for educators to form independent rank-and-file committees, in opposition to the corporatized unions that cover education, which have facilitated the gutting of jobs. The speakers connected this to the necessity for a socialist movement of the working class, directed against the source of the plunge into dictatorship, mass poverty and war: the capitalist system. The full video of the meeting can be viewed here.
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to several attendees afterwards.
[Please visit the article to read their comments.]
16. Australian teachers fight wage cuts and austerity demands
Public school teachers in the island state of Tasmania joined rolling strikes over stagnant pay and intolerable working conditions this week. This is another indication of intensifying discontent among educators and other public sector workers nationally.
The stoppages came after Queensland teachers recently held their first strike in 16 years and then this week voted down overwhelmingly a state government pay cut “offer.” Victorian kindergarten educators recently struck for the first time in more than a decade.
In every case, under Labor and Liberal-National governments alike, educators are confronting below-inflation wage offers, lack of resources, intolerable workloads and a staffing crisis that is driving thousands out of the profession.
Other Tasmanian public sector workers, including health workers and firefighters, also participated in this week’s rolling stoppages, showing the potential for a unified fight against the austerity agenda.
The anger is erupting despite the efforts of the trade union apparatuses to contain and halt strike action.
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Anger has been intensified by the contrast between the government’s 3 percent offer and a recent 22 percent pay rise for state parliamentarians.
As is the case nationally, the Tasmanian dispute is not only about pay but the deteriorating conditions—excessive administrative work, overcrowded classes and a severe lack of support for students with complex needs. This is driving teacher burnout, resignations and staff shortages, creating an escalating crisis in public education.
Teachers describe classrooms containing students on the autism spectrum, in psychological care, or experiencing family violence and trauma, yet with little or no assistance. One teacher at a stop-work rally spoke of letting down students by spending hours outside of paid time “catching up on emails, doing well-being referrals, checking attendance and following up with parents.”
Teachers have reported the impossibility of managing classes of 30 or more where many students require individual learning plans. Classroom violence is cited repeatedly as a key issue. There are demands for year-round employment for teaching assistants, who are currently stood down without pay during school holidays, undermining retention of staff working with the most vulnerable students.
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Tasmanian educators, like their counterparts nationally, are fighting decades of union-enforced sellouts that have left public schools underfunded and staff overwhelmed. Teachers are going into battle with their hands tied behind their backs. The perspective of the unions is to appeal to governments, Labor and Liberal-National, that have already declared their agenda is budget cuts.
To win decent pay and conditions for teachers and students, educators must establish new organisations of struggle—rank-and-file committees, democratically run by educators and independent of the union bureaucracies. A network of committees must be formed to link up nationally, including with other public sector workers, to fight for demands based on real social need, not what capitalist governments or union leaderships deem “affordable.”
17. United States: Mass layoff threat for New York City school bus workers delayed until December
All 52 of New York City’s private school bus operators agreed to one-month contract extensions as of Thursday evening, backing down, at least temporarily, from threats to implement mass layoffs and cut off transportation services for 150,000 school children. The companies, which have been operating on a series of emergency extensions since June, made the threats in an attempt to force the city to grant five-year deals ahead of the mayoral election.
The threat to lay off up to 12,000 bus workers and abandon school children, including 68,000 with special needs, is indicative of the utter contempt for the lives of working people by both the companies and the government. From billionaire ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Democrats Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, successive administrations have overseen a crisis-ridden school busing system, attacking workers and failing to deliver reliable service for the families that depend on it.
The threat by school bus companies to effectively hold students and workers hostage is by no means over. The current agreement resolves nothing, merely pushing back the deadline by 30 days.
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The potential for mass layoffs and a service strike by the companies comes amid a deepening crisis in the privatized school bus industry in New York City, which accelerated after Mayor Bloomberg removed employee protections more than a decade ago. Workers responded with a five-week strike in 2013; however, the Amalgamated Transit Union bureaucracy abruptly shut down the struggle based on a worthless promise from mayoral candidates to restore guarantees that workers would retain their jobs, pay and benefits regardless of which private company won contracts with the city.
In 2011, a court reinforced Bloomberg’s elimination of the Employee Protection Provision (EPP), ruling that under current law new contracts cannot contain job guarantees. Democrats and Republicans in Albany have combined to ensure that the law remains unchanged. Both former Governor Andrew Cuomo, now running for mayor, and current Governor Kathy Hochul have engineered the defeat of bills to restore EPP.
Nonetheless, temporary job guarantees have been maintained for some workers through repeated contract extensions, which follow the conditions in place when the contracts were first issued. However, this unsustainable status quo is reaching an end.
As far back as 2020, New York City took over ownership of one of the largest school bus operators, Reliant, and formed a non-profit NYCSBUS to avoid granting bus workers the pay and benefit package offered to city workers. Officials repeatedly cite the cost of school bus service, nearly $2 billion a year, to justify the drive to make cuts. The same officials, however, rarely raise the fact that in New York City, home to Wall Street and 123 billionaires, vast social resources are available yet monopolized by the corporate and financial elite.
Now, with the school bus companies on the offensive, there are growing signs that this temporary arrangement is collapsing.
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The deterioration in job conditions has contributed to a driver shortage. Routing problems have plagued the network and led to spikes in delays and no-shows. Over the last couple of years, some drivers have seen a doubling or even tripling of routes.
The attack on bus workers and students in New York City is but one element of a broad dictatorial offensive of an oligarchic elite, led by President Trump in collusion with the Democratic Party. While Trump is leading an unprecedented attack on public education, including dismantling the Department of Education, and threatening school children in New York and elsewhere with widespread hunger by cutting off food aid, the Democratic Party has overseen conditions locally where a shocking one in seven public school students lacks a permanent home, and 65,000 live in shelters.
Amid this broader crisis, the threats to jobs and schooling brought on by the inability of the city and the companies to find a way out of the busing quagmire makes it all the more imperative that bus workers, in alliance with parents and students, fight for a resolution based on the interests of the broad masses of workers, independent of both political parties and their backers in the union apparatus.
18. Australia: WSWS speaks to Cobar workers about mine disaster
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to Cobar workers yesterday about the underground explosion that killed Holly Clarke, 24, and Ambrose Patrick McMullen, 59, early Tuesday at Endeavor Mine just outside Cobar in far-west New South Wales (NSW).
Another young woman, Mackenzie Stirling, was injured, transported to hospital in Orange and is now recovering at home.
Just three days after the tragedy, Polymetals Resources Ltd, which owns the mine, has announced that work will resume next Wednesday, even though the investigation has barely started into what caused the explosion.
A tradesman said he avoided working at Endeavor because of the mine’s reputation: “A lot of wild stuff goes on there. Talking to people that have come back, who have done work blocks out there, I’ve heard enough that I was like, ‘I’m just going to stay away from there.’ I work at all the other mines around, doing maintenance.
“I do know that the guy who died was very much known to be very professional, very skilled and safety-conscious. Everyone knows that, so it’s confusing. It makes you think it must have been equipment or something that’s caused this.
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The small community of Cobar has about 3,500 people, most of them employed directly or indirectly in mining, who are still attempting to deal with the tragedy.
Rachel, a mental health support professional and longtime Cobar resident, spoke about the ongoing effect of a tragedy like Tuesday’s explosion. She explained that her husband’s father had been killed in the mines. “Losing his father at the age of three, down the shaft, has always impacted him.
“Something like this re-triggers every single person who’s ever been affected by any sort of trauma. It’s there for life—it’s not something that goes away. You’re going to see the repercussions of this for years to come. There’s been a few different incidents where there’s been a couple of people gone and it’s devastating to the town.
“Every time someone does pass, it brings up all the old traumas for the families. But we do have a beautiful town, and they all come together. They all do the best they can do for each other and support one another other.”
19. Australia: Polymetals moves to reopen Cobar mine days after fatal explosion
Just three days after two workers were killed and another was seriously injured in an explosion at Endeavor Mine, north of Cobar in far-west New South Wales (NSW), Polymetals Resources Ltd has announced that work will resume next Wednesday.
The blast at around 3 a.m. Tuesday took the lives of 59-year-old mining shift supervisor Ambrose Patrick McMullen and 24-year-old charge-up operator Holly Clarke, and left Mackenzie Stirling, also just 24, badly injured.
Polymetals was careful to emphasize that the return to work will be carried out in stages, beginning with “exploration drilling and concentrate transport” and the “completion of planned statutory electrical works.”
But the reopening is a clear statement of the company’s intent: It’s time to put grieving aside and get back to the business of making money. This should be a stark warning for Endeavor workers that Polymetals is determined to send miners back underground as soon as it can possibly get away with it.
In utterly cynical fashion, the company’s Executive Chairman David Sproule prefaced the reopening announcement with token phrases about “how deeply affected the Polymetals family is by this tragic incident” and empty promises that management would “not rest until we understand what happened.”
In fact, workers are being ordered back on the job under conditions where, as Polymetals notes, “the cause of the incident is unknown.”
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The deafening silence of the union bureaucracies must come as a stark warning to all workers. It means it is complicit with the company in enabling the mine to reopen. Restarting work at the mine before the investigation is completed and its findings are established means the inquiry itself will take a very distant second place.
This means workers and their families will have to take matters into their own hands.
A rank-and-file committee of Endeavor workers should be established as the means for workers themselves to oversee the investigation and determine when and if it is safe to return.
Through such a committee, Endeavor workers can make a powerful appeal for support from their counterparts in other mines, in Cobar and throughout the industry. Until the cause of Tuesday’s tragedy is conclusively determined and rectified, miners everywhere could be in danger.
Miners are in a fight for their lives, and they are up against powerful forces—not just the company and the mining industry, run by the richest billionaires in the country, but their allies and apologists throughout the ruling class. Already, there are the beginnings of a filthy campaign in sections of the corporate media to point the finger towards the victims of the tragedy.
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Endeavor workers cannot be herded back into a death trap to fulfil the demands of management and increase the wealth of Polymetals’ shareholders. Not a step must be taken into the mine until a full explanation for Tuesday’s explosion is found and workers are satisfied that it is safe.
But mining workers, whether in Cobar or anywhere else, cannot entrust their health and lives to the unions, the government or the so-called safety regulators—without whose approval the reopening of Endeavor could not proceed. The role of these organizations is to cover up the underlying cause of all industrial accidents—the capitalist system that puts profits before lives.
This means that the immediate fight against unsafe reopening, which will have to be led by rank-and-file Endeavor workers, must be connected to a broader political fight by the working class, against the pro-business unions, safety regulators, state and federal Labor governments, and capitalism itself.
20. New Zealand online meeting: The way forward in the fight against austerity and war
More than 100,000 public sector workers in New Zealand—teachers, nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers—took part in an historic mass strike on October 23, the country’s largest industrial action since 1979.
The Socialist Equality Group (SEG) is holding an online public meeting at 4:00pm on Sunday, November 9, to discuss the political lessons of the strike and the way forward for workers in the fight against austerity, pay cuts, dictatorship and war. We urge workers and young people to register here to attend this important webinar on Zoom.
The “mega strike” was a demonstration of the potential power of the working class, and an expression of enormous anger towards the attacks on wages and conditions by the National Party-led coalition government. It was part of an upsurge of workers internationally—including the protests by millions of people against US President Trump’s moves to establish a fascist dictatorship, major strike waves in France, Italy and other countries, and global protests against the genocide in Gaza.
In the SEG’s statement distributed to striking workers, however, we warned that as long as workers remain politically subordinated to the Labour Party and its allies—including the Greens and pseudo-left groups—and trapped within the straitjacket of the union bureaucracy, their struggles will be sold out.
All the capitalist parties and unions are complicit in the attacks on public healthcare, education and other services. The unions have not scheduled any further joint strikes and are seeking to demobilise and divide workers. Their aim is to negotiate separate deals with the government that will freeze wages and will not address the crisis facing workers.
The Labour Party and the union leadership also support the diversion of tens of billions of dollars from public funds to double the military budget and integrate New Zealand into US-led plans for war against China.*****
Everywhere in the world, the ruling class is responding to the deepening breakdown of capitalism by grinding workers into poverty, and by launching imperialist wars to redivide the world. The working class must respond with its own socialist program and its own party. There is no time to waste.
The public meeting on November 9 will discuss the urgent need for workers to join the SEG and to build it into the New Zealand section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to provide the necessary political leadership for the working class in the struggles ahead.
21. The Security and the Fourth International investigation deepens
Evan Blake contributes reports to the World Socialist Web Site on a variety of topics, but his greatest contribution to date has been his superb coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the author of COVID, Capitalism, and Class War.
22. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Bangladesh:
Dhaka police attack protesting madrasa teachers
AA Knit Spin apparel workers protest factory closure
India:
Striking ASHA workers in Kerala attacked by police
Punjab power utility contract workers protest in Ludhiana for permanent jobs
Punjab Roadways and PUNBUS contract workers oppose privatisation
Jammu Public Health Engineering casual workers demand permanent jobs
Australia:
Genex Power hydro project workers in Queensland strike over unsafe accommodation
Fire sprinkler installation workers in South Australia strike for multi-employer agreement
TK Elevators technicians in Western Australia begin industrial action
Striking maintenance workers at Woodside in Western Australia reject latest pay offer
Rix’s Creek coal mine workers continue strike after rejecting latest pay offer
Public sector workers hold rolling stoppages across Tasmania
Cash delivery workers in Victoria and Tasmania continue industrial action
Victoria’s forest fire fighters resume industrial action
Flemington racetrack workers’ union ends industrial action and claims a win following court decision
23. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, 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.
