Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump, Epstein and the Democrats: A criminal ruling class
The release of more than 20,000 emails from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein throws fresh light on the depraved and criminal character of the American ruling class. What the documents reveal is not simply the private perversions of a single individual but the character of the entire capitalist elite—its interlocking networks of finance, intelligence, media and politics—and the depth of its descent into moral and social rot.
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The entire financial aristocracy subscribes to the goals of the Trump administration, but there is growing fear that Trump is too widely hated and too erratic, or too oblivious of the dangers, to successfully carry out his class war program. The seemingly unstoppable rise in government debt, the gyrations in the financial markets and the rise in both layoffs and inflation are all symptoms of an onrushing economic crisis of global dimensions.
In this context, it is revealing that the Democrats decided to surrender to Trump on the government shutdown but fight him on the Epstein scandal. After the “No Kings” protests and the Republican debacle on November 4, the Democrats chose as their battleground, not the defense of jobs and social programs, but rather the squalid relationship between Trump and the convicted sex trafficker.
Trump is also facing mounting defections within the Republican Party. House Speaker Mike Johnson, after weeks of delay, abruptly announced Thursday that the House will vote next week on a resolution to compel the DOJ to make all Epstein documents public. Johnson’s reversal came after it became clear that support for the measure had reached a critical mass.
The measure will likely be blocked by the Senate or vetoed by Trump, but the focus on Epstein will serve to conceal the bipartisan dealmaking over slashing federal spending, US aggression against Venezuela and stepped-up attacks on immigrants and refugees.
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The working class must not be drawn behind either faction in this struggle within the ruling class. The Epstein case does not indict Trump alone—it indicts the entire bourgeoisie. It lays bare the corrupt physiognomy of a ruling class that long ago abandoned any connection to democratic principles or social progress. It has handed power to gangsters, frauds and predators.
The working class must intervene in the mounting political crisis on the basis of its own interests, through its own program. The crimes of Epstein are manifestations of a social system that defends private property, class privilege and the political monopoly of a corrupt elite. The same system that covered for Epstein is now waging war abroad, cutting food stamps for tens of millions and unleashing police and intelligence agencies to repress opposition at home.
The Epstein case is not merely about the past. It is about the present and the future. The ruling elite is morally and politically bankrupt. It cannot be reformed or “held accountable” through the existing institutions. It must be overthrown. What is required is a movement of the working class—armed with a revolutionary socialist program—to put an end to the rule of oligarchs and to build a society based on equality, truth and human dignity.
2. Growth of private credit a “ticking time bomb”
One of the claims of the would-be reformers of the capitalist system and its market mechanisms is that the explosive consequences of its contradictions, especially in the financial system, can be contained through oversight and regulation.
The ever-louder warnings about the growth of private credit, which has taken off in response to attempts to regulate the banking system following the global crisis of 2008, give the lie to these assertions.
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... the boom in private credit markets “has its roots in the tighter regulation placed on banks following the global financial crisis. That has channeled more credit through the less transparent and less regulated shadow banking system.”
The stated aim of the regulations, such as the Dodd-Frank Act in the US and the so-called Basel standards advanced by the Bank for International Settlements, was to introduce measures which would supposedly prevent a repetition of the 2008 crisis and the massive bailouts organized by the US government and the Federal Reserve.
But these efforts have run into a foundational contradiction of capitalism: that an economy and financial system based on private ownership, private profit and the anarchic market relations arising from it cannot, by their very nature, be subject to conscious control.
This means that attempts to contain the destructive effects of the private profit market system by closing one door means that sooner or later they will come in through another.
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The call from those expressing concern about the role of the private credit market, and what is universally described as its opacity, is for greater oversight and regulation.
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Private credit assets under management had “tripled over the last decade, a growth rate far outpacing that of most other forms of credit.”
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A note by the Fitch ratings agency at the end of September also underscored the growing risks, noting that a shock to the financial system could reveal the extent to which the private credit sector had moved from being a niche for “sophisticated investors to an increasingly relevant component of global capital markets.”
It then elaborated on what the consequences could be.
“Private credit’s pervasiveness could amplify a systemic shock and impact a wide range of investors and lenders, including pension and sovereign wealth funds, banks, insurance companies, foundations/endowments, high net-worth individuals and, increasingly, retail investors. This could result in far-reaching consequences for capital formation, credit availability, consumer confidence/spending, social safety nets, national development, depositor stability and insurance availability.”
What is set out in this scenario is not mere financial turbulence, but a collapse of the economy and its financial system.
Like all those who have probed the risk of private credit and its implications, Fitch called for close monitoring and increased oversight and transparency. But this is under conditions where the very rise of private capital has shown the capacity of finance capital to escape the effects of regulation, and where whatever control mechanisms remain are being systematically scrapped under the Trump regime.
3. Trump signs Democrat-backed spending package to end longest government shutdown in US history
While essential workers went unpaid, the repressive apparatus of the state continued to operate normally. Federal immigration agents, who continued kidnapping and detaining workers throughout the shutdown, were fully funded and paid on time.
The shutdown is ending on Republican terms. The Democrats provided the votes needed to pass the bill in the Senate without getting any guarantees that Affordable Care Act subsidies, the central plank of Democrats’ demands during the shutdown, would be restored. Instead of restoring subsidies, Republicans in the Senate only promised a vote by mid-December on extending them. There is no guarantee the measure will pass, with many Republicans already coming out in opposition. House Speaker Mike Johnson has not committed to bringing a similar vote in the House. And any bill that passed Congress would face a Trump veto.
If a deal to restore the subsidies is not reached by the end of the year, health insurance premiums will spike on January 1, 2026 for an estimated 24 million people who receive their insurance through the marketplace.
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Playing their assigned role as “loyal” opposition, the Democrats intervened to end the shutdown at precisely the time the Trump administration was at its weakest. Last week, Democrats swept gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, while a self-declared “democratic socialist,” Zohran Mamdani, garnered over a million votes in the New York City mayoral election.
A CNN/SSRS survey conducted at the end of October, shortly after some 7 million people participated in the “No Kings” protests, found Trump’s approval rating was only 37 percent, while 63 percent of respondents disapproved. Nearly 7 in 10 surveyed, 68 percent, agreed that things in America were “pretty/very bad.” Outrage over Trump’s attacks on immigrants is growing every day in the US, as more workers and community members are organizing independently against the kidnapping operations.
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In a special carve-out for Republican senators implicated in Trump’s failed coup, the legislation includes a payout for eight senators whose phone records were legally subpoenaed as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s aborted investigation into January 6. In addition to making it virtually illegal to subpoena a senator’s phone data without public disclosure, the bill would retroactively impose a $500,000 fine for each record subpoenaed.
The eight Republican senators eligible for the taxpayer-funded payday are Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Tuberville, Lummis and Hawley all voted against certifying the 2020 election after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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Notably, as of this writing, not a single Democratic senator, including “independent” Bernie Sanders (Vermont) has called for Schumer’s removal following the vote. This is because the Democratic Party as a whole, not just Schumer, supported reopening Trump’s fascistic government so the administration could continue its attacks on the working class.
4. Turkish President Erdoğan's rival İmamoğlu faces up to 2,400 years in jail
The indictment in the “corruption” investigation, in which Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been arrested since March, was finalised Tuesday.
The CHP won the most votes nationwide in the 2024 local elections. But the charges in the indictment portray its municipal work, election activities, and presidential candidate as criminal.
Increasing pressure on the CHP through the judiciary occupies an important place in the agenda of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to eliminate fundamental democratic rights, including the right to vote and be elected, the right to a fair trial, freedom of the press and expression, as he builds a presidential dictatorship. However, this authoritarian regime, built not in the interests of one person but of the ruling class, primarily targets the working class amid growing class tensions and social inequality.
The 3,900-page indictment named 402 people as “suspects,” 105 of whom are prisoners. İmamoğlu faces charges for 142 offenses, with sentences ranging from 828 to 2,430 years in prison.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office alleges that İmamoğlu established and led a “criminal organization.” The allegations date back to 2014, when he was elected mayor of Beylikdüzü district. All the accused are charged with establishing and managing a criminal organization, bribery, laundering criminal proceeds, fraud against public institutions and organizations, bid rigging, and other crimes. The indictment alleges that the accused caused 160 billion Turkish lira (approximately US$3.8 billion) in financial damages to the state and the loss of an additional $24 million in foreign funds. In addition, the prosecution said it had identified 95 real estate properties suspected of being linked to the case.
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İmamoğlu denied the allegations in a statement posted on his X account, saying: “The issue has gone beyond the alleged corruption and bribery slander and has become an attack on the CHP, the founder of our Republic... The indictment you wrote consists of lies that threaten people, hold them hostage, and coerce them into making false accusations under pressure... Broadcast the trial live so everyone can see your lies and slander!”
CHP leader Özgür Özel said on X, “This time, the coup plotters didn’t come with tanks or combat boots, but with judicial robes... This case is not judicial, it is entirely political. Its purpose is to stop the Republican People’s Party, the leading party in the last elections, and to prevent its presidential candidate from running.”
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The Constitutional Court in Turkey has a long record of closing down left-wing parties, particularly Kurdish political parties. However, in 2008, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) also faced a closure case on the grounds of “actions contrary to secularism.” The AKP was not closed because a qualified majority could not be achieved in the court members’ vote (six in favor, five against). The most recent Kurdish political party to be closed was the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in 2009, accused of having links to the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In Turkey, municipalities serve as an important steppingstone for bourgeois politicians in terms of enrichment and political career advancement. Erdoğan’s political career took off with his position as mayor of Istanbul. However, the aim of the İmamoğlu case is not to “fight corruption.” In this investigation, alongside normal municipal activities, the tender and rent seeking processes found in every municipality are being selectively evaluated and combined with fabricated allegations.
Thus, while the results of elections in which millions of people participated are being discredited, the change in CHP leadership during the congress process, running for president, and conducting normal election campaigns are being portrayed as crimes. İmamoğlu’s imprisonment and designation as the leader of a “criminal organization” essentially stems from his status as Erdoğan’s main political rival.
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In the weeks before the indictment was finalized, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Erdoğan. Their agenda did not focus on the escalation of attacks on democratic rights in Turkey, but rather on increasing military cooperation with Erdoğan.
The open or tacit approval of these imperialist powers for the increasing pressure exerted by Erdoğan on the CHP, a pro-NATO party, is closely linked to their growing cooperation with Turkey in the Middle East. This includes Ankara’s complicity in the Gaza “peace” agreement. However, it is not only Trump but also the major European powers who are pursuing the establishment of dictatorial regimes similar to that in Turkey against the working class in their own countries.
On Wednesday, October 8, a massive explosion ripped through a munitions factory in Bucksnort, Tennessee (outside of Nashville), killing 16 workers. After expressing our sympathy for those involved in the tragedy, we must unfortunately admit that the conditions leading to the disaster have a lot in common with what has happened here at National Steel Car in Hamilton, Ontario.
Accurate Energetic Systems is a privately held company that operated the munitions plant. It produces explosives like RDX (cyclonite), TNT, and PBXN-series explosives for the US Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and commercial demolition clients. The company employs roughly 75 people in an economically depressed rural region, typical of much of the southeastern US.
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As we all remember only too well, Cowan was one of three workers who lost their lives here at NSC between late 2020 and the middle of 2022. The other two were Colin Grayley and Quoc Le. All three deaths were bound up with cost-cutting and the refusal by management to implement adequate safety precautions. Not a single company executive was charged, let alone convicted, for these industrial murders.
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We can testify based on first-hand experience what it’s like to be strung along with official promises of investigations and stronger workplace protections, by government officials and United Steelworker (USW) bureaucrats alike. The very building in which we labor is structurally unsound, as we’ve previously noted, but management is doing next to nothing about it. This committee therefore wholeheartedly agrees with the demand for an independent workers’ inquiry into what happened at the AES plant in Tennessee. No faith can be put in any organization within the structure of the US government that might look into the cause of this explosion to hold anyone accountable.
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For those reading this in Canada thinking this explosion happened in the US and thankfully it cannot happen here, they should look soberly at what our former central banker and current prime minister is doing without any real pushback....
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What is required is a class conscious movement of the working class, which is the class that produces all goods and services and all wealth. The recent “No Kings/ No Tyrants” protests and the wave of strikes that have swept across Canada over the past three years show that mass social opposition is beginning to emerge.
What is lacking is the necessary leadership, alongside a political party, coupled with a proper class-based perspective to galvanize the working population in an independent and international fashion. A complete break is needed from the political parties and organizations that keep us tied to the dying hulk that is capitalism and the degraded class that principally has benefited from it.
To assist in that, the working class requires new organizations of struggle, independent of the current trade union apparatus, that can bring working people together across different trades and countries. These would be democratically run rank-and-file committees, affiliated with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees ( IWA-RFC).
The Fletcher Exhibit, hosted annually at ETSU’s Reece Museum since 2013, was founded by the family of Fletcher Dyer–an art student who died in 2009–to encourage socially conscious art and provide a platform for political and personal expression. Its 11th and final showing at ETSU in 2024 featured 60 works critiquing inequality, militarism and the far right. Among them were pieces depicting Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, Senate leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson, juxtaposed with fascist symbols and Christian iconography.
These works triggered a torrent of denunciations from Tennessee Republicans and media outlets associated with Turning Point USA, the fascistic organization with close ties to Trump.
Within days of the 2024 exhibition’s opening, State Rep. John Crawford and State Sen. Jon Lundberg, both Republicans from Bristol, issued statements condemning the show as “hateful” and “divisive,” demanding that the university “take action.” US Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who represents the region in Congress, denounced the works on social media as “an attack on faith and our values.”
The ETSU chapter of Turning Point USA accused the exhibition of “espousing hate rather than criticizing it.” Their campaign was amplified by right-wing media outlets, which circulated images of a collage featuring Kirk and a piece depicting Johnson against a background of swastikas and crosses.
Under this coordinated McCarthyite barrage, the university administration predictably capitulated. In November 2024, the university began asking visitors to sign a liability waiver to view the exhibition. At the beginning of 2025, the Dyer family was informed that the Fletcher Exhibit would no longer be hosted at ETSU.
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The university’s retreat is not an isolated act of cowardice. It reflects a national pattern of growing subordination of cultural institutions to far-right political forces.
In February 2025, Donald Trump transformed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington into a political weapon of his administration, purging trustees, appointing loyalists and naming himself chair, an act that symbolized the subordination of art to state power. The Kennedy Center has subsequently experienced a massive loss of support and declining ticket sales. (The Washington Post recently reported that according to its analysis of ticket sales data from early September through mid-October, 43 percent of tickets for Kennedy Center productions remained unsold.)
Trump’s aim, as the World Socialist Web Site explained, is to enforce a “patriotic, national art … dishonest and insincere by definition” that glorifies American capitalism and militarism.
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Drawing on research from the Nuremberg Municipal Museums, the World Socialist Web Site has compared Trump’s policies to the Nazi program of Volksgemeinschaft, an attempt to “reverse modern society” and replace class divisions with a mythic “people’s community” bound to a single leader and national destiny.
Trump’s cultural agenda mirrors this conception almost point for point. His invocation of a “golden age of American art” devoted to celebrating national greatness, his purging of “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and Kennedy Center, and his demand that art and history serve the glorification of the nation all reproduce the ideological content of the Hitlerite Volksgemeinschaft.
The suppression of political art is not confined to Trump’s administration. It reflects the reactionary character of the entire American ruling elite, which cannot tolerate any challenge to its policies.
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In response to Trump’s widening crackdown, scores of artists and writers have called for nationwide events under the banner of “The Fall of Freedom,” scheduled for November 21–22. Organizers are calling on museums, libraries, theaters and bookstores to host readings, screenings and exhibitions opposing the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic rights.
The World Socialist Web Site has warned that such actions, while principled and courageous, cannot halt the drive toward dictatorship if they remain confined to protest politics or subordinated to the Democratic Party. Figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will attempt to channel this movement back into the dead-end of electoral reformism.
The fate of the Fletcher Exhibit in Tennessee is a warning. A university’s capitulation to censorship today foreshadows what awaits artists, educators and workers everywhere if the ruling class succeeds in stifling dissent.
The defense of art and culture cannot be separated from the defense of all democratic rights. It requires the mobilization of the working class, the only social force capable of breaking the grip of the corporate and financial oligarchy over political and cultural life. Artists must turn consciously to this social power, linking their struggle for creative freedom with the fight against war, inequality and capitalist oppression.
7. New Zealand blocks $30 million in aid to Cook Islands
New Zealand’s National Party-led government has suspended two years of aid payments—around $NZ30 million—to the Cook Islands, amid a deteriorating diplomatic and political relationship with the country’s impoverished neo-colony.
One News reported on November 9 that it had obtained a letter under the Official Information Act, dated October 13, from NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters to Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, confirming that an $18.2 million grant withheld since June will continue to be “paused,” along with a second payment now due, taking the total to $29.8 million.
Peters, leader of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party in the ruling coalition, blocked the initial payment after the Cook Islands signed strategic deals with China without “consulting” Wellington. Peters claimed prior approval was required under the terms of the Cook Islands’ constitutional position as one of New Zealand’s semi-dependent “Realm” countries.
The Core Sector Support aid is a grant given to the Cook Islands government to boost its budget. It critically supports sectors such as education, tourism and health. Following the withdrawal of the initial tranche, Brown said that the punitive decision would “harm the country’s most vulnerable citizens.”
Peters told Brown that “the gravity of the Cook Islands’ breach of trust” raised concerns about its “approach to the constitutional realities which impose clear limits on your freedom to act on foreign affairs, defence and security matters without reference to New Zealand’s interest or those of the Realm.” An NZ foreign affairs spokesperson told One News: “Our concerns about the Cook Islands’ actions need to be addressed and trust restored before we can release this funding.”
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Since 1992, the UN has recognized the Cook Islands as a state with full treaty-making capacity, and it now has diplomatic relations with 65 countries. At an anti-China summit with Pacific leaders in Washington in 2022, US President Joe Biden declared, without reference to Wellington, that the US would recognise the Cook Islands and Niue as “sovereign states.” China established formal ties with the Cook Islands in 1997 and is now a major donor.
Peters’ withdrawal of essential aid funding is a case of diplomatic bullying. New Zealand maintains neo-colonial domination over the Cook Islands along with its other so-called “Realm” countries, Niue and Tokelau. While the Cooks, with a population of just 15,000, has limited self-government, Wellington provides oversight in foreign affairs and defense.
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The breakdown in relations points to the extremely sharp geopolitical tensions in the Pacific, created by the advanced US-led preparations for war against China. New Zealand and Australia—both imperialist allies of the US—are seeking to block China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence and are presenting Beijing in increasingly hysterical terms as a military threat. They are militarizing the region while pressuring Pacific countries to cut economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing.
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Like all the region’s impoverished countries, the Cook Islands depends on international aid and loans. Aid is an essential component of imperialist pressure on the fragile states. Washington’s suspension of its USAID program and withdrawal from the World Health Organisation earlier this year has created a deep funding gap across the Pacific.
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New Zealand is an imperialist power which regards the southwest Pacific as its “backyard.” Peters is playing a particularly belligerent role in demonising China as an “outside power,” advocating for a stronger US military presence and agitating to pull the Pacific nations into line. The NZ government is meanwhile almost doubling its military spending to 2 percent of GDP at a cost of $12 billion over four years.
8. Australia: Growing unrest among teachers amid union-government talks in Victoria
Negotiations have begun in Victoria between the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the state Labor government for a new three-year enterprise agreement covering teachers, school principals and education support staff.
These talks occur amid growing educator opposition, not only in Victoria but nationally, as teachers in Queensland and Tasmania also fight real wage cuts, intolerable workloads and the worsening crisis in public education.
Across Australia, teachers report burnout, untenable workloads, mass resignations, rising violence in under-resourced schools and severe staff shortages. Many schools now function as holding facilities rather than centers of learning.
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These conditions are the result of Labor and Liberal governments alike inflicting restructuring, budget cuts, privatization and testing regimes such as NAPLAN, enforced by sellout union agreements that serve government austerity, not educators.
The outcome is a two-tier system. Elite private schools have Olympic-grade sports centers and top-tier facilities, while public schools are forced to fundraise for basic resources.
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While public schools deteriorate, billions flow into policing, corporate infrastructure and construction subsidies. Military-linked programs in schools are expanding, including training programs linked to the AUKUS pact preparations for war against China. The state government has partnered with BAE Systems and signed a memorandum with Rolls-Royce to develop “nuclear skills” academies.
As “defense career pathways” are promoted, teachers are told there is “no money” for education.
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The fight to defend public education is inseparable from confronting the political and economic order of capitalism that prioritizes profit, elite private schools and military spending over the needs of society.
Teachers, support staff, parents and students must form rank-and-file committees in every school, democratic organisations that are independent of the union bureaucracy, through which they can unite with teachers and other workers nationally and internationally who confront similar appalling conditions.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the educators’ rank-and-file network, calls for:
A 40 percent wage increase, indexed to inflation
Class size caps of 15–20 students
At least 8 hours of in-school planning time weekly
The hiring of thousands of teachers and education support staff
Fully funded psychologists and welfare staff in every school
An end to all public funding for elite private schools
9. Hansen builds a world network of agents
World Socialist Web Site reporter and political analyst Andrea Lobo, who often writes on Latin American affairs, delivers the second part of a fascinating three-part lesson at the 2025 Socialist Equality Party Summer School. Lobo describes how Joseph Hansen, exposed as an FBI agent, perverted the international operations of the US Socialist Workers Party. Workers and youth must learn this history if they are to defend and promote genuine socialism.
11. French budget crisis exposes bankruptcy of New Popular Front
Macron’s installation of a second government under Sébastien Lecornu in October, together with the frenzied budget negotiations now unfolding in the National Assembly, has laid bare the anti-democratic role of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP - Nouveau Front Populaire). By blocking the development of the class struggle, the NFP has enabled Macron to continue ruling against the people.
While negotiations are still ongoing, the basic outlines of the 2026 budget are already clear. So far, the Assembly has:
Rejected the Zucman tax, which would have imposed a mere 2 percent levy on the wealth of the super-rich;
Approved a €64 billion military budget—double what it was when Macron first came to power—while French chief of staff General Fabien Mandon openly predicts a “shock” military confrontation with Russia within four years, demanding even more military spending;
Proposed to extract tens of billions from workers through a pension freeze and draconian austerity targeting Social Security, including doubling medical co-pays and taxing doctors in ways that could trigger an upward spiral of doctors’ fees.
At the start of the autumn, one million people demonstrated, and a broad majority of the French population wanted Macron’s resignation and a profound political transformation. The Lecornu-Macron agenda—refusal to tax the financial aristocracy, calls to send troops to Ukraine, and austerity continuing the 2023 pension reform—is massively rejected. How, then, does France find itself again saddled with a government bent on imposing precisely these policies?
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Events have exposed the political lies that Mélenchon defends the people’s interests or that he is trying to lead a “citizen revolution.” Ninety-one percent of the French people reject pension cuts, and 89 percent of Western Europeans reject Macron’s call to prepare to send European troops to Ukraine to fight Russia. Yet the French bourgeoisie continues these policies in defiance of public opinion thanks to the PS and union leaderships, who themselves depend on Mélenchon’s support.
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As strikes spread across Europe and “No Kings” protests shake Trump, it is time to draw the lessons of the recent political experience in France. Appeals to defend democracy through the parliamentary and union machinery of the capitalist state have failed. Defending democracy requires, as Marxists have always explained, the mobilization of the working class in a struggle for workers power and socialism.
For this, workers must build rank-and-file organizations of struggle, independent of the union apparatus tied to the NFP. The social gains now targeted by Macron were won through the resistance struggles of factory committees and workers’ militias such as the FTP against Vichy and Nazism. France is not, of course, miltiarily occupied as it was in the 1940s; however, only the construction of a new network of workers’ organizations, independent of the union bureaucracies, can overcome the political obstacle posed by the NFP to the working class.
To launch the fight to build such organizations, the working class needs a revolutionary Trotskyist vanguard, irreconcilably hostile to the opportunism and cowardice of the NFP. That vanguard is the Socialist Equality Party, French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Calling on workers in France to join the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, it appeals to all who support this perspective to join its ranks.
10. Why is Mélenchon hailing the victory of the “democratic socialist” Mamdani in New York?
The election of Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as mayor of New York is an event of international significance. Over a million workers and youth backed his candidacy, despite decades of anti-socialist and anti-communist propaganda in the United States. This reflects a developing radicalization of the working class, marked by growing hostility to capitalism and increasing support for socialism, even as the Trump administration is attempting to impose dictatorship.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Unbowed (La France insoumise -LFI) hailed Mamdani’s victory, presenting it as a validation of their so-called “left-wing rupture” strategy. In reality, the event is far more a refutation of their perspective. It underscores the appeal of socialism—which Mélenchon dismisses as outdated, instead promoting populism—while the politics pursued by both Mamdani and Mélenchon serve to block a genuine struggle of workers for socialism and for the overthrow of Trump in the US and Macron in France.
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Mamdani capitalized on mass hostility to the establishment. He presented himself as a “democratic socialist” advocating tax justice, affordable housing and opposition to the genocide in Gaza. He successfully channeled this wave of indignation, particularly among youth—70 percent of voters under 45 supported him. Yet his strategy is firmly embedded in the Democratic Party, the direct instrument of the American financial oligarchy.
After his victory, Mamdani quickly shifted to the right. He sought to reassure the financial elite and the repressive apparatus, even apologizing to the New York police and praising bankers such as Jamie Dimon. He went so far as to declare his willingness to “collaborate” with Trump in the interests of the city. He is working not to emancipate the working class but to neutralize as much as possible its radicalization.
LFI applauds Mamdani as a political model. Mélenchon and his associates—Mathilde Panot, Clémence Guetté and Manon Aubry—hailed him as an “American counterpart,” claiming to share with him a “concrete and popular” program of rupture with the existing system.
In fact, the lesson of the class struggle in France is precisely the opposite. To fight the dictatorship Trump seeks to erect, the working class must break free from parties that speak of socialism or “the people” while blocking independent mobilization of workers. Only the construction of rank-and-file organizations of struggle, and the fight for workers’ power and socialism, can defeat the capitalist oligarchy as it turns toward dictatorship.
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The leaders of LFI reject any perspective of breaking with the capitalist state, glorifying the bourgeois Republic while refusing to call for a general strike or the construction of independent organs of workers’ power. Mélenchon long ago turned his back on Trotskyism and Marxism, replacing class struggle with rhetoric of a “citizens’ revolution” confined to the national framework, without a fight by the working class for power.
Mélenchon comes out of the Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI), which broke with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in 1971 to ally with the Socialist Party. This meant the integration of the OCI into the framework of French capitalism. He participated in Mitterrand’s “austerity turn” of the 1980s, opening the way to decades of social cuts. Today, his left populism serves the same function: channeling social anger and blocking a turn of the working class towards revolutionary politics.
His alignment with Mamdani and the DSA confirms this continuity. These formations, rooted in the petty bourgeoisie, seek to preserve capitalism by making themselves the arbiters of social protest and opposition. Their aim is to pacify working-class anger, claiming that progressive reform of the capitalist system is possible. But experience proves the opposite: every time they come to power, such movements submit to the demands of the financial oligarchy.
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Such political treachery by the pseudo-left plays a decisive role in the rise of the far right, with figures like Trump in the US or Marine Le Pen in France. By avoiding class confrontation, they disarm workers and allow the far right to strengthen itself by exploiting the social anger provoked by their own policies.
12. COP30 begins in Brazil as Lula faces criticism over environmental policies
With the world marked by increasingly intense and frequent extreme weather events caused by global warming, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party – PT) has dedicated immense resources and political attention to holding the event, aimed at showcasing the Amazon region and its environmental and climatic importance to the world.
The PT government’s rosy discourse is sharply at odds with reality. Its own policies are driving deforestation and the use of fossil fuels, with a particularly harmful impact on the region’s indigenous and riverine populations.
The Brazilian and world leaders gathered in Belém will do no more than throw out platitudes and empty proposals without addressing the real cause of the planet’s climate and environmental crisis: the capitalist profit system. Such feebleness and hypocrisy would have made COP30 a mere repetition of its earlier editions.
But COP30 is being held under conditions of the breakdown of the post-war capitalist order. As the imperialist powers are engaged in a tariff war and actively preparing for a new world war, the capitalist ruling classes are abandoning any pretenses that they will fight climate change.
Notably absent from this year’s ongoing Climate Summit are China and the United States, the two main carbon emitters, as well as other top emitting countries such as India and Russia.
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The idea that the imminent dangers of world war and environmental catastrophe confronting humanity can be solved through a pacific restoration of “multilateralism” via the UN is a gross illusion. The current crisis is rooted in the essential contradictions of the capitalist system—those between globalized production and the outdated national-states system, and between private profit interests and the social needs of the global masses.
As a faithful representative of the Brazilian and international bourgeoisie, Lula advances the claim that capitalism can be renewed and benefit all classes through a “fair transition” to a new sustainable economy. By “fair” he means an imaginary scenario in which the advanced capitalist countries commit to a “green economy” while allowing for the so-called developing countries, such as Brazil, to develop their national economies to advanced heights.
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Lula’s desperate search for viable channels for his bourgeois nationalist program in the crumbling imperialist order also finds expression in a criminal promotion of figures like the reactionary French President Emmanuel Macron, a main star at the COP30 event. Macron—who is engaged in building dictatorial rule in French to crush the mass working-class resistance to his program of brutal social austerity and war against Russia—is criminally presented by Lula as a “green” and democratic opponent of “obscurantism.”
The class logic of Lula’s policies was expressed at the opening of the Leaders’ Summit on November 6, when the Brazilian president launched the Tropical Forest Fund Forever (TFFF) with great fanfare. Having already raised US$5.5 billion from countries such as France, Norway and Indonesia, it will be an investment fund managed by the World Bank. According to Lula, it “will generate returns for investors, and part of those returns will finance countries that maintain their forests.”
This proposal has been widely criticized by environmental organizations and activists. The Global Campaign for Climate Justice (DCJ) stated on its website that it is a “false solution” that “reflects the same extractivist and profit-driven logic that created the climate crisis.” In one of several statements by environmental activists against the proposal on the DCJ website, Chief Jonas Mura, of the Gavião Real Village, stated: “The [Lula] government talks about saving the forests, but what they are doing with this TFFF is putting a price on our lives. The forest is not a commodity.”
13. Food crisis in Indianapolis as SNAP benefits are reduced by 35 percent statewide
Indiana’s SNAP crisis is especially acute in Indianapolis, where a significant portion of the population—about 150,000 in central Indiana—depend on food assistance programs for basic nutrition. Statewide, current figures indicate 274,000 households receive SNAP, with more than half being families with children.
Some families have now received 65 percent of their expected monthly benefit, a fact confirmed by the governor’s office and by local organizations wrestling with an unprecedented surge in demand.
Long before the SNAP program was disrupted by the shutdown, food insecurity in Indiana was at record highs. A recent survey from the Indy Hunger Network found that over half of central Indiana households experienced food insecurity during the year preceding the benefits cut, with 37 percent missing meals due to lack of food.
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The SNAP cutoffs have had profound effects on families and children. As documented in the Mirror Indy, Richelle Williams, an Indianapolis resident and mother of three, described her family’s struggle as they went a week without their SNAP benefits. “It should not be so hard to live,” Williams said, detailing sleepless nights spent calculating bills, stretching meals, canceling gymnastics lessons and forgoing outings—all in an effort to feed her children.
The anxiety and uncertainty, exacerbated by constantly changing government guidance, left Richelle feeling overwhelmed: “I’m over it. Too many families are suffering.” Williams’ case is one example of the crisis facing thousands of Indianapolis families now forced to rely on charitable food distributions to supplement the SNAP support.
The shutdown of SNAP is the latest of the US government’s assault on the most vulnerable. The Trump administration has refused to take emergency steps to continue the funding, even defying federal court orders mandating the release of emergency aid to families in crisis. A judge warned this policy would instantly put 16 million children at risk of hunger, but the White House used mass deprivation as a bargaining chip to press its political agenda and erect measures of repression.
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The Trump administration, with support from the Democratic Party, has allocated massive sums for military expenditures and preparations for the deployment of a naval, air and Marine forces in the Caribbean, which exposes the priorities of the ruling financial oligarchy.
While Republican officials in Indiana blocked proposals to allocate state surplus funds to backfill the federal SNAP cuts, the Democratic Party has refused to do anything to mobilize the mass opposition that exists to the attacks by the fascists in the White House and the Indiana State House against the working class and poor.
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As the World Socialist Web Site has documented, the SNAP cutoff is part of a deliberate strategy of using hunger as a weapon of class rule. The social deprivation imposed through the cutoff of benefits exposes the criminality of the capitalist system and both parties’ efforts to sacrifice workers and children to the wealth accumulation of a handful of parasites at the top of capitalist pyramid.
Like the undemocratic assault on the rights of immigrant workers, the goal of the attack on the most vulnerable in society is part of a two-pronged strategy to, first, roll back the gains of the entire working class over the past century and, second, use the armed police state apparatus to intimidate and repress any opposition that emerges to the social counterrevolution.
In the shadow of Congress and the White House, food insecurity in the Washington D.C. region has become a chronic crisis for the working class. The government shutdown left thousands of federal workers furloughed or unpaid and lining up at food banks, while the Trump administration’s refusal to release full SNAP benefits for November has deepened the hardship.
On September 26, shortly before the shutdown began, the Capital Area Food Bank released its annual Hunger Report, which makes clear that food insecurity across the region has become an entrenched and persistent crisis. In the past year, 36 percent of households experienced at least one food-related hardship. This level has remained virtually unchanged from 2024, when 37 percent reported food insecurity and is up from 32 percent in 2023.
The number of people suffering “very low food security” has grown sharply, rising from 16 percent of households in 2022 to 22 percent today. This amounts to at least 820,000 residents who regularly face “multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” The report notes that many in this category are federal workers and contractors whose employment has been hit by recent cuts.
Underlying the increase in food insecurity is a decline in real wages and growing unemployment. Over the last five years, real wages in the region have fallen by 12.1 percent, compared to 2.8 percent nationally. During the same period, consumer prices have risen roughly 21 percent nationwide since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal workers have been particularly hard hit. As of May 2025, 41 percent of households with direct or indirect federal government employment that had experienced a job loss were food insecure, compared with 17 percent of similar households who did not experience job loss. Among those who lost work, more than two-thirds now face “very low food security.”
Food insecure households are being pushed to the edge of financial collapse. Eighty-three percent reported exhausting their savings to meet basic needs. Seventy percent are paying only minimums on credit cards, 62 percent have reduced retirement contributions and nearly one-third have already been forced into early retirement withdrawals.
Credit card debt in the region is soaring with the average household now carrying nearly $11,000 in balances as delinquencies rise. Among low-income households, defined as those earning up to $89,000 a year, more than half reported being forced to choose between feeding their families and meeting basic costs like transportation, utilities, housing or medical care.
This deepening crisis stems from the policies of both major parties and the capitalist system they defend, which subordinates every social need to profit.
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While misery deepens for millions, staggering wealth continues to pile up at the top. Oxfam’s recent annual report on inequality found that the 10 richest Americans increased their collective fortunes by nearly $700 billion in the last year. The richest 1 percent now holds 49 percent of stocks, valued at $19.7 trillion, while the bottom half holds only 1 percent.
Oxfam projects that, if current trends continue, at least five trillionaires could emerge within the next decade. During the Biden administration, the wealth of the 10 richest Americans grew by hundreds of billions, with the inflation-adjusted wealth of the top billionaires increasing by more than 500 percent since 2020.
This extreme concentration of wealth shapes the response of the ruling class to the deepening social crisis. Such levels of inequality cannot be maintained through traditional democratic methods. The Trump administration’s cuts to essential social programs such as food stamps, Medicaid and public health agencies are designed to finance tax cuts for the super-rich and sustain a $1 trillion annual military budget. This naked class war program is fully supported by the Democratic Party, which, like the Republicans, is funded by the American oligarchy and is a pro-war party.
Ending hunger in a society on the verge of producing trillionaires requires the independent intervention of the working class. This means building rank-and-file committees in every workplace and community to organize mass action, oppose both capitalist parties and fight for a socialist program that places the needs of billions above the wealth of a few.
15. In the tradition of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, Germany’s armed forces prepare for total war
The solemn oath-taking ceremony in front of the Reichstag (parliament) and the speeches by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (both Social Democrats, SPD) on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) recalled the darkest days of German militarism. They underscored the disastrous traditions and war aims to which German imperialism is once again returning.
Significantly, on the very same day, the governing parties agreed on a new military service law providing for the compulsory registration of all young men—aimed at drafting the necessary cannon fodder for new imperialist wars.
Eighty years after the downfall of the Third Reich and the greatest crimes in human history, the military once again dominates the German capital. In a martial display—shielded from the public—280 recruits marched between the Reichstag and the Chancellery and were solemnly sworn in. The spectacle was shown live on state broadcaster ZDF and celebrated in the news programs, with the obvious goal of spreading the poison of militarism throughout the population. Public oath-taking ceremonies like this have their origins in Prussian militarism, which were expanded under the Kaiser’s Empire and then elevated to a quasi-religious cult under the Nazis.
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Today, the orientation to the traditions of the Wehrmacht is no longer a “tendency” but official policy. German imperialism is systematically preparing for a major war against Russia and has launched the largest rearmament program since Hitler. Pistorius made the direction unmistakably clear during the anniversary ceremony: Germany must now “act decisively and without hesitation,” radically expanding “finances, equipment, and infrastructure” and aligning the Bundeswehr with “national and alliance defense”—a euphemism for the creation of an army for total war.
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The new/old bogeyman is Russia—the same power against which the German military waged two world wars in the 20th century. Under the Nazis, it carried out a barbaric war of annihilation that killed at least 27 million Soviet citizens and culminated in the Holocaust. It is the declared aim of Breuer and the government to once again be ready by 2029 to wage war against this strategically central, resource-rich nuclear power.
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This has nothing to do with “freedom” or “democracy” but with the old imperialist great-power interests: German dominance over Europe and the violent enforcement of its economic and geopolitical goals in Eastern Europe and against Russia. The reactionary Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was deliberately provoked by the leading NATO powers to push through an agenda of total militarization and war preparation.
Pistorius stated openly that militarization must encompass society as a whole: “We wanted and still want to make the Bundeswehr more visible throughout the country.” For the 70th anniversary, he said, this visibility was being brought “back to the capital as an expression and recognition of 70 years of readiness, performance, and loyalty.”
That German militarism can once again raise its head so aggressively is due to the fact that all the establishment parties support the war course. Alongside the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose militarist agenda the government is in practice implementing, the Greens and the Left Party have also demonstratively backed the Bundeswehr.
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The only party that opposes German militarism and the pro-war policy, and which gives expression to the widespread opposition among workers and youth, is the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP). It advances the only realistic perspective to prevent a third world war: the building of an independent socialist movement of the international working class, which will overthrow the capitalist profit system—the root of war and fascism.
As a fellow nurse from California, I reach out from nearly 2,000 miles away to express my deep solidarity and admiration for your courage during this pivotal strike. Your unwavering commitment to your patients, your colleagues and your community inspires workers everywhere, including those of us facing similar challenges on the West Coast.
At this critical moment, as you stand on the picket lines of University Medical Center, your actions resonate far beyond the walls of your hospital. You have mobilized not merely as nurses demanding fair wages and humane conditions, but as frontline workers in a movement that challenges the very foundations of exploitation and indifference that plague our society.
Nurses must draw the necessary conclusions from our shared experiences. The strategy of the union officials, limited local strikes at individual hospital systems and even individual facilities, has led nowhere. This is by design, because they function as little more than agents of management.
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I urge every nurse to reject the politics of compromise and subordination. Only through independent, collective action can we secure safe staffing, fair wages and the dignity we all deserve.
Here in California, nurses face similar challenges. In California, more than 65,000 University of California workers—including custodians, patient care assistants, nurses and technical staff—are preparing to strike. Their cause is just: the fight for wages that keep pace with the cost of living, the right to housing and the right to dignity.
For years, the university has lavished riches upon its highest officials, while those who sanitize wards and care for the sick are driven to the brink—priced out of their homes, forced into long commutes, and denied fair compensation. Over 13,000 have left in the past three years.
In Grand Blanc, Michigan, at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital, nearly 750 nurses and case workers have been on strike since September 1, demanding safe staffing and fair pay.
The situation everywhere is the same. Why? The healthcare system is in a state of deep decay. This is the result of deliberate policy. The shutdown used by the Trump administration was a calculated attack on the working class, slashing food stamps and vital programs while funneling billions to war and corporate interests.
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We are engaged in a political, not merely a contract fight, against capitalism itself. Despite unparalleled scientific progress, the American working class faces declining life expectancy and rising mortality. The power of the oligarchy over society has to be shattered. Only by removing the profit motive from healthcare and other social needs, through the nationalization of the healthcare giants and other corporations and placing them under workers control, can genuine social rights be secured for all.
This movement has to be independent from all of the existing institutions, including the Democrats who have refused to fight Trump. This was proven this week by the end of the government shutdown. Eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans, bailing out this fascist administration at the point where it is most vulnerable.
Throughout the shutdown, neither the Democratic Party nor the trade union bureaucracies proposed any collective action to end attacks on the working class.
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The union bureaucrats will never organize the mass movement that is needed because it will jeopardize their relations with the Democrats and management. The recent appearance of Julie Su on the nurses’ strike line must be taken as a serious warning to every nurse. During the West Coast dockworkers’ struggle, she intervened not to support the workers, but to suppress their fight in the interests of management and the state. Her presence on the picket line demonstrates the close collaboration between government officials and the union bureaucracy.
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You have now finished your fifth strike in two years. But nothing has resulted from this strategy of “pressuring” management to see reason, except that 200 nurses have left the emergency room in two years in search of better jobs elsewhere. The union apparatus has refused to mobilize its entire 225,000 membership, leaving the vast majority of nurses on the sidelines while the crisis in our hospitals deepens.
The time has come to escalate the struggle in New Orleans into part of a broad movement uniting nurses across the country in defense of public health. The unions’ refusals to organize mass action and their willingness to accept endless delays in contract talks only serve to strengthen the hand of management.
But California healthcare workers want to join you in building this movement. It’s important to recognize that many UC workers represented by AFSCME Local 3299 are immigrants, facing not only low wages, difficult working conditions and capitalist exploitation, but also the constant threat of discriminatory policies targeting immigrant communities. Their struggle is inseparable from the broader fight to defend public health and democratic rights.
The California Nurses Association (CNA), the affiliate of the National Nurses United (NNU) which represents over 225,000 nurses nationwide, has joined the University of California strike in a gesture of solidarity. But the enormous social power demonstrated by this strike will amount to little if it is limited to a series of short, toothless strikes.
I call upon every nurse, worker and young person to unite in a common struggle. The defense of public health is inseparable from the defense of all social rights won by the working class. Only through collective action, independent of the union bureaucracy and the political establishment, can we transform these struggles into an unstoppable movement for genuine change.
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On Sunday, November 16, at 3:00 p.m. US Eastern Time, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and the Socialist Equality Party (US) are holding an online public meeting to organize the fight against layoffs and hunger. Register here to attend.
17. West Virginia coal miner is found dead after a 5-day search in flooded mine
[Steve] Lipscomb, a lifelong resident of Man, West Virginia, was known among his friends as a dedicated, reliable worker and a loving father of three. He had worked at the Rolling Thunder Mine for over a decade, most recently as a maintenance lead responsible for safety checks and equipment repairs across several shafts.
A post by a friend on Facebook read:
For those who don’t know, Foreman Steve Lipscomb fearlessly returned into a flooded coal mine after an accident, to ensure that no man was left behind. Steve was last seen by his crew members as he treaded into the mine, toward the floodwaters, to ensure the safety of his brothers.
Steve was also an underground EMT-M and during his career in the coal mines, always prioritized protecting and helping others. Steve was a Husband and a Father, and he was a friend to many.
He gave everything he had to protect his brothers both above ground and below.
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The accident that led to the drowning of Lipscomb remains under investigation by both federal and state authorities. According to initial reports, the disaster struck late Saturday afternoon when a routine maintenance shift was disrupted by a sudden inrush of water from an abandoned adjacent mine.
The speed and volume of the flooding overwhelmed recently installed drainage systems and cut off several workers from the main egress. While most of the crew managed to escape, Lipscomb, working to secure electrical panels, was trapped by the rapidly rising water.
Emergency responders battled hazardous conditions in pitch-dark tunnels over the next five days in hopes of reaching a survivable air pocket—a scenario that, while desperately rare, has occurred in previous mining disasters.
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Republican West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey released a statement shortly after the news broke Thursday morning, stating his “heart breaks for the family and friends of Steve Lipscomb,” and then giving empty promises to “redouble our commitment to mine safety until no one faces such tragedy again.” Such statements have been made for generations by politicians from both capitalist parties while the deaths have continued.
Despite these vacuous assurances, the tragedy at Rolling Thunder Mine is part of a trend in mining fatalities at AMR and throughout the industry. Since January, three other miners have died at AMR-operated sites, triple the number of fatalities in 2024. Nationally, there has also been a rise in coal mining deaths for the first time in a decade, with 25 killed in 2025 so far, up from 18 deaths in 2024 and 15 in 2023. These numbers also do not capture the additional toll of chronic illness and non-fatal accidents that afflict miners in silence each year.
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Steve Lipscomb’s death is by no means an isolated accident. It is part of the broader and accelerating rise in workplace fatalities. The US has witnessed a year-over-year jump in preventable industrial deaths across several sectors, from railways and petrochemical plants to warehouses and meatpacking facilities.
The common denominator in all of the cases is the relentless pursuit of profit for corporate executives and shareholders, which is prioritized above workers’ lives and safety. While corporate stock prices are being bid to astronomical levels, figures like Elon Musk—whose board has approved a $1 trillion compensation package for him—represent the grotesque chasm between the wealth hoarded by a tiny parasitic elite and the price paid in lives lost by those whose labor creates it.
Earlier this year, Ronald Adams Sr., a worker for Stellantis in Dundee, Michigan, was killed on the job in circumstances that were entirely preventable. In the aftermath of Adams’ death, the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy closed ranks with corporate management and state and federal safety agencies to cover up the death. Seven months later officials from the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) say their investigation is “still ongoing.”
The United Steelworkers (USW) bureaucracy is moving aggressively to impose a concessionary contract on more than 650 striking workers at Libbey Glass in Toledo, Ohio, as their walkout approaches the three-month mark. Workers have told the World Socialist Web Site that USW International officials are forcing a vote next Wednesday on a pro-company agreement that the local union bargaining committee has opposed and refused to bring to a vote.
“It was secretly negotiated without our local leadership’s knowledge and was brought to the local leaders last week,” a veteran worker told the World Socialist Web Site. “They were told it will be voted on. The international brass insists the vote will be held at a neutral site and proctored by people of their own choosing.
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Earlier this week, USW local leaders announced they were holding a membership meeting Thursday to discuss why they were continuing to oppose management’s “last, best and final” deal and would not bring it to a membership vote.
Shortly afterwards, the local leaders turned around and sent out a message from USW District 1 Director Donnie Blatt announcing that the union has reached a tentative agreement and listing the times of a vote for each of the three USW locals at the factory.
The USW bureaucracy is attempting to blackmail workers by exploiting the financial pressure on workers—created by the union’s own refusal to provide real strike pay. USW District 1 Director Donnie Blatt, who has not lost a penny during the nearly three-month strike, collected $207,000 in salary and compensation last year, according to the union’s filing with the US Labor Department.
His boss, USW International President David McCall, pocketed $276,455, and presides over a bureaucracy that controls $2.2 billion in assets. These are the forces now lecturing Libbey workers about “sacrifice” and demanding they accept a deal that guts their rights, accelerates speed-up and further undermines living standards.
On November 7, the International Association of Machinists held a non-binding membership vote on a proposal the IAM leadership drafted itself, which it said addressed members’ concerns about mandatory overtime and increased healthcare costs and would “reinstate stability to its Toledo operations.”
It then presented the proposal to management along with an offer to send its members back to work. “The Company flat-out rejected the proposal with no counterproposal or offer to return to the table,” IAM officials said. The union bureaucracy has used the same “pre-ratification vote” stunt during the four-month Boeing strike in St. Louis.
From the beginning the USW and IAM bureaucracies never had a strategy to win the strike. They had a strategy to defeat it by starving workers into submission. The courageous workers have had to defy the company’s strikebreaking operation on their own as the USW apparatus, along with the International Association of Machinists, United Auto Workers and the Toledo AFL-CIO isolated the strike. The USW rushed to sign contracts to prevent strikes at other glassmakers and has kept 2,800 workers at O-I Glass on the job without a contract since March.
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Libbey workers must build a rank-and-file committee to demand the full disclosure of the entire contract and all memos of understanding and side letters, adequate time to study it and a vote conducted under the control of the rank and file—not the International.
The defeat of this sellout would send a message to workers throughout Toledo, the US and internationally, who have also been betrayed by the trade union bureaucracies. Libbey workers can and must win the support of autoworkers at the Toledo Jeep Complex and Dana Driveline who are facing job cuts, long hours of mandatory overtime and deadly conditions, enforced by the UAW; oil refinery workers who have lost their own brothers in workplace fatalities and face exhausting work conditions overseen by the USW; along with Cleveland Cliffs workers, and healthcare workers at ProMedica and Mercy St. Vincent.
The experience of the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike—where mass action, rank-and-file leadership, and unified struggle across workplaces defeated company thugs, police, and government injunctions—must be revived to stop Libbey’s importation of scabs and threats to close the factory and carry out mass layoffs.
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Libbey workers must stand firm and take control of their struggle by forming a rank-and-file committee. The WSWS and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees will assist in building this committee, linking up with workers across Toledo, and developing a strategy to defeat both the company’s concessions and the USW bureaucracy’s sabotage. This strike can be won—but only under the democratic control of the workers themselves.
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On Sunday, November 16, at 3:00 p.m. US Eastern Time, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and the Socialist Equality Party (US) are holding an online public meeting to organize the fight against layoffs and hunger. Register here to attend.
19. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Kenya:
Nigeria:
Senegal:Special educational workers hold protest in Dakar
South Africa:Cabin crew continue pay dispute with South Africa’s airline FlySafair despite lockout
Security guards at Cape Town building project strike over wage arrears
Cabin crew continue pay dispute with South Africa’s airline FlySafair despite lockout
Security guards at Cape Town building project strike over wage arrears
Europe
France:
After-school workers in Paris strike to demand permanent posts and training
Greece:
Doctors in nationwide strike for improved pay and conditions
Portugal:
Tens of thousands of workers march in Lisbon against anti-worker laws and continuing austerity
Turkey:
Swatch workers strike for more pay and better working conditions
United Kingdom:
Academic staff at Dundee University, Scotland and Sheffield Hallam University, England walk out over job losses
Leonardo aerospace workers in UK strike over pay offer
Iran:
Further strikes by oil workers over pay and conditions
20. 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.
