Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
United Teachers of Richmond (UTR) announced a tentative agreement with the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) on Wednesday, ordering teachers back to work Thursday morning and calling for ratification votes to begin immediately, before teachers had read a single line of the contract.
The undemocratic way in which the union bureuacracy has shut down the strike demands a NO vote by itself. But this is only the first step. Teachers must take control of the struggle from the union bureaucracy by building independent rank-and-file committees to expand the fight across California and link it to the broader working class.
The deal comes after nearly ten months of stalled negotiations, finally culminating in a joint strike launched last Thursday between UTR and Teamsters Local 856 in WCCUSD. But on Sunday, the Teamsters bureaucracy ordered its members back to work, breaking the unity of the struggle. UTR has now followed suit, shutting down a fight that emerged because conditions have become intolerable: soaring living costs, chronic understaffing, overwhelming workloads, and the degradation of public education. The unions’ coordinated betrayal has produced a deal whose purpose is to end the strike, not to meet workers’ needs.
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Even after this agreement, WCCUSD has 71 classes without permanent teachers. Nothing in the deal guarantees full-time qualified instructors in every classroom, mandates reductions in class sizes, or rebuilds the special education system. Mental health and support staff shortages go unaddressed. The district will continue its reliance on substitutes, contractors and part-time workers.
The deal accepts the framework of “what the district can afford,” a trap constructed by Democrats in California who insist that public education must operate under austerity. This logic has for decades produced underfunded schools, reduced staffing, unsafe classrooms and poverty wages—and it guarantees more of the same.
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The joint strike with Teamsters Local 856 represented a threat to the union bureaucracy, whose bloated salaries and connections with corporate politicians depend upon their ability to provide “labor peace” to the school district.
UTR is affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA), which has spent the fall semester blocking strikes in almost every major school district in the state, under its hypocritical “We Can’t Wait” campaign. In district after district concessionary agreements that lock in austerity are being prepared.
But this is beginning to break down, as shown by the WCCUSD strike itself and by the 99 percent strike vote in San Francisco, and by impasses in talks declared in Los Angeles and other school districts. This is precisely why the bureaucracy is shutting down the strike: because it could serve as an example and galvanize support for a state-wide strike by teachers in other districts.
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The strike must be renewed, but on the basis of a new strategy based on mobilizing teachers and the whole working class in an independent movement against oligarchy. Educators should take up the following demands:
- Major wage increases that meet and exceed inflation, with immediate full strike pay funded by the unions’ considerable financial assets.
- Full staffing and safe learning conditions in every school, with drastic reductions in class sizes.
- Massive increases in education funding through expropriation of the wealth of California’s tech billionaires and corporations.
- No layoffs and job security guarantees for the life of the contract!
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Voting NO is essential. But by itself it is not enough. The next phase of the struggle has to be prepared through new organs of struggle: independent rank-and-file committees controlled by workers themselves.
These committees would fight to end the closed door talks, with full control by teachers over negotiations and the livestreaming of every bargaining session. They would place the needs of educators and students—not the district budget—at the center of the struggle. Most importantly, they would link teachers with other sections of the working class, starting with Teamsters 856 members battling their own sellout. And they would end the district-by-district isolation by sending delegations of the rank-and-file statewide to coordinate a united educators’ movement.
2. European powers strive to prolong war in Ukraine
After four years of war, hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed and millions of refugees displaced, NATO’s war against Russia has reached an impasse. Despite providing Ukraine with military logistics and €400 billion since the start of the conflict, NATO has failed to drive back Russian forces. They are advancing slowly but steadily.
The Ukrainian regime is collapsing under the weight of corruption scandals. President Zelensky was forced to dismiss his closest confidant, Andriy Yermak, and only 20 percent of the population would vote for him again. Several hundred soldiers are deserting the army each day. Despite brutal conscription methods, the Ukrainian military is unable to obtain the necessary cannon fodder for the front lines.
The US now appears determined to withdraw from the war. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, has negotiated a “peace plan” with Russia—over the heads of both the Ukrainian government and Washington’s European allies—that combines the cession of Ukrainian territory with lucrative deals for American corporate interests.
Trump’s new National Security Strategy, released last week, no longer identifies Russia as an adversary but instead attacks the European Union (EU). It accuses European leaders of having “unrealistic expectations of the war,” welcomes the rise of far-right parties in Europe as “a cause for great optimism” and calls for the breakup of the EU.
On Monday, Trump reinforced this stance in a lengthy interview with Politico, where he denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people who don’t know what to do. “They talk, but they don’t accomplish anything, and the war just goes on and on,” he railed.
The European powers—led by Germany, France and the UK—are responding by doing everything possible to prolong the bloodshed in Ukraine and block Trump’s plans. They are not interested in peace, but the continuation of war. In recent days, there have been summit talks with Zelensky, phone calls to Trump, counterproposals to his “peace plan” and efforts to escalate military action.
The European powers aim to achieve two goals in particular. They want to prevent Ukraine from permanently ceding territories to Russia that it would not be able to reclaim later if the balance of power were to change. And they want so-called “security guarantees” for Ukraine. Even if the country renounces formal NATO membership, it is to be developed into a heavily armed NATO outpost that keeps the region in a permanent state of tension and can reignite the war at any time.
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However, it is unlikely that Washington will go along with Europe’s maneuvers. Political observers now assume that the alliance with the US is irretrievably broken and that Europe will pursue its imperialist interests on its own in the future—and, if necessary, against the US.
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Europe’s insistence on “security guarantees” that are unacceptable to Russia, and its commitment to prolonging the war, not only deepens the suffering and destruction in Ukraine but risks dragging all of Europe into a catastrophic conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. These policies are inseparable from attacks on the working class. In its fight against the “rogue” Trump, the European bourgeoisie is adopting his fascistic methods.
The demand for a continent-wide rearmament for preparation for war with Russia was spelled out by NATO head Mark Rutte—a former prime minister of the Netherlands—in a speech in Germany on Thursday.
He declared, “Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe, and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured. Imagine it, a conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilization, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.”
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Ukraine’s financial needs for the next two years are estimated at €136 billion. The EU wants to use the frozen Russian central bank assets held by Euroclear in Belgium to cover these costs. However, the Belgian government has so far strongly opposed this, fearing that it will be held liable for brazen theft that violates the principle of state immunity under international law.
Added to this are the effects of the global trade war. Industrial production in Germany, the strongest EU member in economic terms, is in free fall. Between the summer of 2024 and the summer of 2025, 114,000 relatively well-paid jobs were lost there within a year—almost 10,000 every month.
The European ruling class is preparing for a major escalation of class struggle. Like Trump, it is responding by stepping up persecution of migrants, building a police state, strengthening far-right parties and persecuting political opposition. Militarism and democracy are incompatible.
Workers must prepare for fierce class struggles. The defense of jobs, the fight against social spending cuts and the struggle against war and militarism are inseparably linked. They require the development of an independent movement of the international working class to overthrow capitalism and build a socialist society.
3. Australia’s social media ban sets global precedent for online censorship
A ban on Australian children under 16 accessing social media came into effect on Wednesday, setting a global precedent for state control of the internet amid rising hostility to inequality, authoritarianism and war.
Social media platforms have been compelled under threat of massive fines to institute age-verification measures and remove children. Potentially all users, including adults, now face new obligations to remain on platforms, such as providing government identification or photographs to the conglomerates.
The measure has sparked mass opposition, including from young people already finding ways to circumvent it.
This is not merely an Australian issue. The Trump administration has introduced a nearly identical policy to the US Congress, and a host of European powers are moving towards a similar ban.
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In December 2024, just days after the legislation for the social media ban was passed, the Five Eyes spying network released a report warning against “youth radicalization.” Five Eyes is led by the US and composed of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The report warned that young people “have grown up online and are technologically savvy.” They were using such platforms to “view and distribute violent extremist content which further radicalizes themselves and others.” This threat had to be combated with a “whole-of-society” effort.
It is clear that the under-16s social media ban is part of that effort, underscored by the fact that the Trump administration and European countries are moving to implement similar measures.
In that context, the warnings of “violent extremism” are a transparent fraud. Trump is seeking to erect a fascistic dictatorship, overturning the Constitution including through the mobilization of far-right and even Nazi forces.
To the extent that the social media companies amplify anti-immigrant and racist content, that is one component of a broader promotion of fascism by the political and media establishment. The connection is exemplified by X/Twitter, increasingly transformed by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, a former member of the Trump administration, into a loudhailer for far-right propaganda.
The assault on online freedom is part of a broader offensive against left-wing opposition. That includes this week’s memorandum by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, classifying as “domestic terrorists,” those who promote “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders” or “anti-capitalism.”
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A key turning point came in 2017, when Google, acting at the behest of government agencies, introduced a new algorithm, suppressing the World Socialist Web Site and other alternative outlets in search results, instead prioritising corporate publications.
The crisis of capitalism is far deeper than when those measures were instituted. The major powers, led by the US, are responding with imperialist war, including not only such crimes as the genocide in Gaza, but also confrontations with Russia and China that threaten nuclear world war. Domestically, they are enforcing social inequality unseen since the days of the French Revolution, through dictatorial measures.
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An alternative political perspective is required. The capitalist program of censorship and ultimately dictatorship can only be fought through a mass movement of the working class, independent of the entire political establishment.
The fight for online freedom and democratic discussion poses nothing less than the dismantling of the repressive capitalist state apparatuses and the placement of all the major productive forces of society, including the technology corporations, under the democratic control and ownership of the working class.
4. Executions in Florida and Tennessee as state killing spree reaches highest level in over a decade
The United States has seen a dramatic acceleration in state-sanctioned killings this year, reaching a total of 46 executions so far in 2025, a level not witnessed in more than a decade. This figure stands in contrast to the 25 executions carried out in 2024, confirming an alarming upward trend driven almost entirely by the political machinations of a handful of states—chiefly Florida, Texas, Alabama and South Carolina, which together account for three-quarters of the killings.
This surge in executions is in line with the deeply reactionary political climate fostered by the pro-death penalty administration of President Donald Trump and the ultra-conservative Supreme Court which upholds this reactionary agenda. Trump’s executive order, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” signed on Inauguration Day, explicitly directed the pursuit of capital punishment in all applicable federal cases and encouraged the attorney general to assist states in carrying out executions.
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This increase in state-sanctioned killings, concentrated in just a few states, is a terrifying yardstick of the political brutality currently promoted by the Trump administration and gripping the American justice system, including the ongoing Gestapo dragnet against immigrants and White House’s criminal military pursuits around the globe.
5. Sri Lankan workers in Biyagama FTZ blame authorities for cyclone disaster
World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters visited Biyagama, a town in Gampaha District located about 20 km from Colombo, on December 7 to speak with survivors of flooding caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
Workers from the Biyagama Export Processing Zone (BEPZ), many of whom live in boarding houses, along with small and medium-sized business owners, are among those affected. The area is highly vulnerable to frequent flooding from the Kelani River, one of Sri Lanka’s four major rivers.
The flooding was so severe that roads, houses and businesses were fully or partially submerged. Workers, small shop owners and residents described to reporters the terrifying impact of the disaster, the repeated flooding they endure and the destruction caused this time by the overflowing Kelani River.
Temporary shelters for flood victims were set up at Yabaraluwa Ananda Vidyalaya (school) and a nearby temple.
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Reporters explained that in Sri Lanka and around the world, enormous wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny capitalist elite, whose only concern is private profit.
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Reporters also spoke with a young female worker from Balangoda (over 150 km from Colombo), employed at the Midas Safety factory in the BEPZ, which manufactures medical gloves for export. She has worked there for nearly two years and earns about 50,000 rupees [approximately $160 US] per month.
She explained that the factory closed for two and a half days due to flooding and lack of transport. When it reopened, it operated with a reduced number of workers.
She reflected on the global nature of the crisis, saying that air pollution is caused by “emissions from vehicles, gases from power stations, and so on,” and that this is leading to “the melting of glaciers.” She added that under capitalism, real solutions to these problems “do not yet exist and are even unthinkable.”
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Across the country, more than 3,200 industries have reported losses, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Industries. An estimated 2.3 million people—over 10 percent of the country’s population—were living in areas affected by Cyclone Ditwah. More than 1.1 million hectares—nearly 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s land area—were inundated, causing massive damage to homes, infrastructure, and essential services, according to a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study.
6. Video: Workers speak on Cyclone Ditwah disaster and government neglect in Sri Lanka
7. BSW Congress: Why Sahra Wagenknecht’s party in Germany is not an anti-war party
Following its formation two years ago, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW)—a split from Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke)—won notable results in the state elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony. It capitalized on the widespread opposition to the mad, reckless escalation of military spending and presented itself as an anti-war party.
Yet its support collapsed just as quickly when, in coalition governments with the pro-war Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), it aggressively implemented social cuts and expanded the repressive state apparatus.
At its congress last weekend, the party—soon to be renamed the “Alliance for Social Justice and Economic Reason”—responded by reviving its anti-war rhetoric in an attempt to win back voters. At the same time, however, it reaffirmed its determination to pursue its right-wing, pro-capitalist program. This alone exposes its thunderous denunciations of war as empty bombast.
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The glaring contradiction between congress rhetoric and real-world policy stems from the fact that the BSW is pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist in every respect.
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The only realistic basis for a movement against a third world war is the struggle against capitalism. Only the expropriation of the major banks and corporations and their placement under democratic control can avert catastrophe. This requires nothing less than the mobilization of the international working class—the producers of society’s wealth, who bear the full burden of war and crisis—based on a socialist perspective.
8. Growing resistance to IG Metall union at Berlin Mercedes plant
At the Mercedes plant in Berlin’s Marienfelde district, a conflict is developing between workers and their union, IG Metall, expressed in a growing number of resignations from the union.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party [SGP in Germany] support this growing resistance to the IG Metall apparatus and propose the establishment of an independent rank-and-file committee to discuss how to fight layoffs and social cuts and why a new organizational structure is necessary.
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Gone are the days of the so-called “social partnership” in Germany, when unions were able to wrest a few concessions for their members from the owners of capital within the framework and in the interests of the national economy. Across the world, a super-rich financial and economic oligarchy is trying to solve its crisis through war on all fronts: “shooting wars” to control resources, markets, and important trade routes; trade war against its rivals on the world market; and class war against its employees and the working population. This applies not only to the US, but also to Europe and especially to Germany.
IG Metall supports all of this. In the last one to two years, tens of thousands of jobs have been cut in the automotive and supplier industry. Countless plants have been closed, production facilities shut down and relocated. The names of IG Metall officials appear on every agreement securing the destruction of thousands and tens of thousands of jobs.
At Volkswagen last year, IG Metall and its works council went so far as to declare the elimination of 35,000 jobs and wage cuts of 20 percent a “Christmas miracle” for the workers. The conversion of car factories into tank factories has the full support of IG Metall!
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The opposition to and desertion of IG Metall is calling onto the scene groups that describe themselves as “left-wing” and “militant.” In November, the anonymous group “Auto Workers for a Militant IG Metall” distributed a flyer at the Mercedes plant in Marienfelde calling for “A strong, militant IG Metall!”
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We definitively reject this! The claim that one must first submit to the dictates of the union bureaucracy in order to then fight against the leadership from within is false and serves only one purpose: to sabotage an effective struggle against the IG Metall leadership. Every union member knows that the Mafia-like structures of the IG Metall apparatus nip (crush!) any criticism in the bud. Opponents are intimidated and silenced through legal or illegal maneuvers.
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Instead of useless petitions that reduce workers to supplicants, the widespread militancy of workers needs a clear orientation.
That is why it is so important to build independent rank-and-file committees, which have already been formed in workplaces in several countries. They create a new organizational structure that makes it possible to unleash the great economic and political power of the working class and develop its self-confidence in its own strength. It is the many millions of workers in production and administration who create society’s wealth. The working class is the productive and value-creating force in society. Their rights take precedence over the profit interests of shareholders and speculators.
The central strategy of the rank-and-file committees must be internationalism. Everyone in the auto industry knows that, given the globalization of production, there is no longer a national economy and workers everywhere face the same problems. Nevertheless, the union bureaucrats spread the poison of nationalism with their demands for a national industrial policy and securing production sites. They divide the working class and play workers in one country off against those in other countries or even other regions.
9. Canada: Québec Solidaire chooses right-wing nationalist Sol Zanetti as co-spokesperson
At its congress last month, Québec Solidaire (QS) chose Sol Zanetti, a Quebec City MNA (Member of the National Assembly) and fervent indépendantiste, as its “male spokesperson” and “updated” its election platform to further emphasize its pro-capitalist character.
These actions are part of Québec Solidaire’s ongoing efforts to project a more “responsible,” pro-establishment orientation and place the promotion of Quebec independence at the centre of its activity.
QS is thereby signalling to the nationalist sections of the ruling class that it is prepared to play an even larger role in realizing their reactionary project of creating a third imperialist state in North America through Quebec’s secession.
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Since its formation in 2006 by feminists, environmental and anti-poverty activists, and other “left-wing” nationalists, QS has operated entirely within Quebec sovereignist circles. It has repeatedly sought to negotiate an electoral pact with the PQ, including at the height of the 2012 student strike.
Speaking for privileged layers of the middle class, QS serves the faction of the Quebec ruling class that sees the creation of a third imperialist state in North America as a means of intensifying worker exploitation and more effectively advancing its economic and geostrategic interests.
Within the “sovereignist family,” Québec Solidaire’s special function is to use what remains of its fraudulent image as a “left-wing,” “anti-establishment” party to give a “progressive” and “democratic” veneer to Quebec nationalism and the program of Quebec independence.
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Once presented as a “social project”—the fraudulent idea that an independent Quebec would be a vehicle for social progress—Quebec independence is now openly promoted by the Parti Québécois (PQ), the main sovereignist party, as a chauvinist, exclusivist and openly pro-big business project.
The PQ constantly attacks immigrants and Muslims, accusing them of being responsible for myriad social ills, from the housing crisis and dilapidated public services to increased crime and violence. It insists that Quebec independence is the only way to “drastically” reduce immigration and thereby protect the Quebec “nation,” which it claims is threatened with extinction by “uncontrolled immigration.”
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The ruling class is well aware that a push for independence based on such reactionary policies and appeals is likely to provoke opposition within the working class. Polls currently indicate that the sovereignist option has the support of less than 35 percent of the electorate.
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As the class struggle intensifies across North America and internationally, it becomes ever clearer that the problems confronting Quebec workers are rooted in a global crisis of capitalism; and are essentially the same as those faced by their class brothers and sisters across Canada and internationally.
Quebec independence is a trap for the working class. It is advocated by sections of the ruling class, petty bourgeoisie and union bureaucracy as a means of advancing their own class interests—not least among them dividing and isolating Quebec workers from their class brothers and sisters in Canada and internationally in order to prevent a unified struggle of the working class against capitalism.
The working class must reject the nationalist agitation for Quebec independence, whether explicitly chauvinist and right-wing or “inclusive” and “left-wing.” It must no less forcefully repudiate Canadian nationalism—the ideological weapon of the federalist section of the Canadian financial elite in Quebec and across the country—and oppose the federal state, which for more than 150 years has served as the principal enforcer of capitalist exploitation in the northern tier of North America.
To prepare for the intense class struggles ahead, the working class must build an independent political movement, opposed to all the rival factions of the ruling class, to unite workers across national borders in the struggle for workers’ power and international socialism.
10. Federal government loosens track inspection requirements, in latest gift to railroads
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has approved a waiver to allow Class I railroads to cut minimum visual track inspections in half, from twice weekly to once a week. The move, announced on December 5, is the latest stage in dismantling any remaining federal regulations of the railroad industry.
The move will lead to more frequent derailments, which already take place three times a day on average. A major derailment on December 3 near Grand Junction, Colorado, sent two locomotives and five coal cars into the Gunnison River, after the train collided with a boulder on the tracks. Two engineers were unhurt but had to be pulled from the wreckage by search and rescue teams. The same day, a Union Pacific conductor was killed in a collision at a vehicle crossing in Southern California.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR), an industry trade group, has been lobbying for this change for some time. The AAR had originally requested visual inspections of twice a month on account of advances in the utilization of Automated Track Inspection technology. The AAR frames this as “automated technologies to enhance safety,” but in reality it is a ploy to use advances in technology as an excuse to cut jobs.
Automated track inspection technology has been employed for decades, in conjunction with visual track inspections performed by qualified track inspectors. Specially equipped rail cars are placed in freight trains and monitor track geometry with an array of various sensors. The information is collected and potential problems are relayed to managers and inspectors for visual verification.
After verification, the defect is either repaired, slow ordered, or removed from service until repairs can be rendered. The utilization of this technology can enhance railroad safety, in conjunction with human inspectors, but instead it is being used to eliminate track inspector positions. Cutting inspection frequency in half allows the railroad companies to double the territory size of an inspector, enabling half of the track inspector positions to be eliminated.
This is the latest step in the cost-cutting scheme of “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” Under this system, first introduced in the 1990s, tracks have been ripped up for scrap and maintenance deferred, causing capacity bottlenecks. Locomotives were mothballed to save on maintenance, and crews were furloughed and fired, causing service meltdowns.
Train lengths were doubled to over two miles to reduce the number of necessary crews and locomotives. Overwork, discarding of long-established safety rules and abusive petty disciplinary actions were utilized to whip employees into compliance. These actions have created record profits for the rail companies and their Wall Street owners.
At the same time, workers report that management routinely seeks to intimidate workers into silence when they encounter safety issues, undermining the enforcement of the Federal Railroad Safety Act. The major carriers have refused to join the federal government’s voluntary Confidential Close Call Reporting System, which allows rail employees to report mistakes, close calls and unsafe actions by the rail companies without fear of reprisal.
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The Trump administration is also clearing the way for the merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. This scheme will create a transcontinental $85 billion juggernaut, holding shippers hostage with monopoly power. Railroad workers will pay an enormous cost with job losses.
Trump fired Robert Primus from the Surface Transportation Board (STB) on August 27 without cause. Primus was the lone voice on the STB that opposed the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern (CPKC) merger in 2023.
The CEO of Union Pacific, Jim Vena, met with Trump in the Oval Office on September 4. Vena even suggested the next cities to send the National Guard into.
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The rail carriers are able to carry this out because of the prostration of the pro-company union bureaucrats. SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson is one of many officials who have enthusiastically endorsed the merger, following a toothless job security agreement for current workers after the merger. “This is a bold agreement, and I’m proud of the mutually beneficial work done here and what Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, and SMART-TD were able to accomplish.” But the railroads could easily fire workers for minor rule infractions as a work-around of this agreement.
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED) released a statement on the FRA’s inspection waver, “pledging to hold the carriers accountable for every condition,” in the words of union President Tony Cardwell.
In reality, they will do nothing. In 2022, the BMWED and other rail unions worked with the companies and the White House to block a national strike demanded by workers, in which safety would have been a key issue. At the time, he reserved far more venom for rank-and-file workers, denouncing the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee for organizing workers to enforce their decision for a strike.
Only months after Congress intervened to prevent a strike, a Norfolk Southern train derailed with dozens of chemical cars in East Palestine, Ohio. The railroad, emboldened by the actions of Washington and the unions, set fire to the contents of the cars in a bid to reopen the tracks as soon as possible, poisoning the entire town with carcinogens. The true scale of the disaster was covered up by federal agencies, who later admitted that the “controlled release and burn” had been unnecessary.
Over the past year and a half, SMART-TD, the BMWED and the other rail unions have worked furiously to prevent a repeat of 2022 by seeking to impose contracts separately, union by union, carrier by carrier, rather than through a national agreement. An initial contract was rejected by BMWED members at CSX, only for almost the same contract to be rammed through in another vote. As for SMART-TD, it tried to ratify a crew consist agreement at BNSF which would have paved the way for one-man crews by creating a new ground-based position, which would eventually replace conductors.
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The fight for safety must be organized below by the rank and file itself. This requires the establishment of rank-and-file committees across the rail industry to fight for workers’ control over safety and to end management’s code of silence against reporting issues. They must join with committees in other industries which are already investigating horrific workplace deaths under the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
11. Australia: Concerns that unsafe conditions killed two Queensland building workers
Some, still scant, details are emerging about the conditions that led to the deaths of two much-loved Queensland construction workers, and serious injuries to another, within 24 hours earlier this month.
Family members and building workers are raising concerns about the reported lack of safety precautions involved. They are demanding action to halt the rising toll of deaths and injuries caused by corporate profit-driven speed-ups and disregard for workers’ lives throughout the construction industry.
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In several social posts, Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) officials paid tribute to the two workers and said no project was worth the loss of a worker’s life. But the union is working with state government workplace safety agencies that are investigating the deaths.
Such inquiries usually take years and then cover up the underlying causes and responsibilities for workers’ deaths. None have led to any lessening of the toll. In Queensland alone, there has been a series of deaths on building sites in the past 18 months. Across the country, the past two years have seen 82 deaths in the construction industry.
Official investigations invariably cover over the driving forces of dangerous working conditions under capitalism—the systemic subordination of workers’ health and lives to the interests of corporate profit, including through speed-up, subcontracting and casualization.
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Workplace deaths and serious injuries are on the rise globally, as corporations cut costs and impose productivity increases to satisfy the demands of their financial backers. In Australia, the recent deaths of a young worker at the Port Kembla steelworks and of two mineworkers in the Cobar tragedy are typical.
To halt this carnage, workers must take matters into their own hands. Rank-and-file committees, independent of the union bureaucracies, must be established in workplaces everywhere to assess site conditions, investigate deaths and injuries, formulate demands and enforce safety measures, including through strike action.
Above all, the growing tide of casualties shows the necessity to overturn capitalism and fight for socialism, which includes placing the construction industry, along with the banks and major corporations, under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.
12. Firefighter killed, homes destroyed in Australian bushfires
Record-high early December temperatures, strong winds and a high fuel load built up over several wet years created the conditions for catastrophic fires last week in parts of New South Wales (NSW) and Tasmania, many of which are still burning. An experienced firefighter was killed—the second already this bushfire season—and hundreds of homes and other structures were destroyed.*****
More than 50 fires are still burning across the state, with several not yet under control. The NSW Labor government has declared a natural disaster for the local government areas of Central Coast, Mid-Coast, Upper Hunter, Muswellbrook, Warrumbungle and Dubbo. It is estimated that around 20,000 hectares of land has been impacted so far around NSW.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), 50 fire vehicles and appliances, nine aircraft and 250 firefighters were sent to fight the Koolewong fire. Across the state, a total of around 1,500 firefighters and 300 vehicles were mobilized trying to get blazes under control over the weekend.
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While conditions have now eased with the arrival of a cooler front, the early onset of the bushfire season dovetails with long-range weather forecasts from the BOM. The bureau predicts higher than average summer temperatures across the entire country, while warmer ocean temperatures will create the conditions for storms. Dry lightning, one characteristic of summer storms, is a common source of ignition for bushfires.
A La Niña climate pattern, typically associated with higher rainfall and cooler temperatures, has been in place since early October, but this year it is “relatively weak and relatively short-lived,” senior BOM climatologist Dr Zhi-Weng Chua told the Guardian.
“La Niña leans towards cooler temperatures, but global warming is influencing this—there is a push and pull, and maybe La Niña is not the dominant influence and global warming is having more influence,” Chua continued.
David Bowman, professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania, told the Guardian, in a world of increasing climate instability, “the No. 1 message is: Expect the unexpected.”
The increasing unpredictability and severity of bushfires is not a uniquely Australian phenomenon. The “State of Wildfires 2024–2025” report, published on the Earth Systems Science Data website, analysed global changes in fire patterns and locations. One of the core findings of the report was that the era of “small, frequent grass/savannah fires” being the dominant global fire pattern appears to be shifting.
The report found that fires are increasingly occurring in forests, wetlands, and other carbon-dense ecosystems—where even a smaller burned area can release large amounts of carbon and cause long-term ecological damage.
In the past 12 months, catastrophic and record-breaking wildfires have hit Japan, Canada, South Korea, Turkey, France, Spain and the United States. In each of these fires, firefighters struggled to bring the blazes under control amid extreme weather conditions and inadequate warning systems, preparation, resources and manpower.
Despite increasingly urgent warnings by climate scientists about the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the main contributor to global warming, governments the world over, including the current federal Labor government, continue to approve new coal, gas and oil operations, facilitating vast corporate profits, while relegating renewable energy to token projects and lip service.
The destruction in NSW and Tasmania this early in the bushfire season, along with the deaths of two firefighters, are a warning to the working class. Capitalism, under which even the continued viability of human life on Earth is subordinated to profit, is incompatible with solving the climate crisis.
13. White House plans oil blockade of Venezuela in drive for regime change
Following the US seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, the Trump administration has pledged to further escalate its campaign of piracy against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Reuters reported Thursday that the administration is preparing to seize more oil tankers, citing six sources familiar with the matter. The news agency reported that “the U.S. has assembled a target list of several more sanctioned tankers for possible seizure” and that “the U.S. Justice Department and Homeland Security had been planning the seizures for months.”
“Further direct interventions by the U.S. are expected in the coming weeks,” Reuters added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt effectively confirmed Reuters’ reporting Thursday. “We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,” Leavitt told reporters. She confirmed that the seized tanker is being brought to a US port, where authorities intend to confiscate its cargo of approximately 1.1 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil worth roughly $78 million.
In other words, the Trump administration is initiating a blockade of Venezuela, which is typically treated as an act of war under international law.
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In an interview Tuesday, President Donald Trump refused to rule out sending ground troops, telling Politico that Maduro’s “days are numbered.” He has warned that attacks could expand “very soon” from boats to targets inside the country.
The US media is, meanwhile, openly discussing a pledge by the Trump administration to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The Wall Street Journal editorial board published a statement Thursday declaring that Trump is now “obliged to follow through” on his commitment to oust Maduro.
“The seizure signals that Mr. Trump isn’t backing down on his effort to oust the dictator,” the Journal wrote approvingly. The editorial added: “Having committed the U.S. to oust Mr. Maduro, Mr. Trump is obliged to follow through.”
The Journal editorial also celebrated the transfer of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado under US military protection to Norway, to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, suggesting “the CIA may have sources in the country that can help with a democratic restoration.”
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The coordination reveals the intimate relationship between Washington and the so-called “opposition.” Machado has outlined a $1.7 trillion privatization plan for Venezuela’s economy and has repeatedly praised Trump’s military buildup. “I believe that President Trump’s actions have been decisive,” she told reporters in Oslo Thursday.
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The tanker seizures and military threats must be understood in the context of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published December 4. The 33-page document explicitly establishes a goal of “restoring American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” while denying “non-Hemispheric competitors”—meaning China—“the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets” in the region.
The strategy makes clear that the administration views Latin America as a captive supplier of resources for US corporations, to be blockaded from Chinese investment and trade at gunpoint. China currently purchases roughly 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports, and the piracy campaign is aimed at severing this trade.
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Trump has also threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro, declaring that “Petro is next,” making clear that the campaign extends beyond Venezuela to any government in Latin America that fails to submit to Washington’s dictates. Colombia is also a significant oil producer, although far less than Venezuela.
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The Democratic Party has offered no serious opposition to these war preparations. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when asked Wednesday whether he opposes regime change in Venezuela, refused to state his opposition. “Ya know, obviously if Maduro would just flee on his own, everyone would like that,” Schumer said.
The bloodbath already unleashed with the boat strikes is just the beginning of what the Trump administration has planned for Latin America. Having declared its intention to overthrow the Venezuelan government, announced a blockade of the country’s oil exports and deployed the largest military force to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the administration is threatening a broader war to reduce the entire hemisphere to a US colony.
The strike by more than 650 Libbey Glass workers in Toledo, Ohio, is approaching its fourth month with rank-and-file workers resisting efforts by the company and the United Steelworkers (USW) to impose a contract that would destroy long-standing rights and conditions.
On the picket line earlier this week, workers spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about their strike, the broader political issues confronting the working class, and the strategy needed to break the isolation of each separate struggle and unify them in a common fight against the corporate-government war on the working class.
This is the first contract since Libbey declared bankruptcy in 2020 and the USW and International Association of Machinists agreed to $32 million in concessions, including cuts to wages, pensions and retiree health benefits. Now management, backed by private equity investors, is demanding even more: the elimination of seniority, the ability to send workers home to avoid paying overtime, a sweeping expansion of “management’s discretion” language and the outsourcing of critical skilled trades work.
On November 19, Libbey workers overwhelmingly defeated an attempt by the USW International to ram through management’s demands. The USW bureaucracy, however, is continuing to isolate the strike while it searches for a mechanism to force a revote.
Workers traced the company’s aggressive posture to its ownership structure. A longtime worker described the private equity buyout during bankruptcy: “Basically these were some kind of millionaire-billionaire investors. Five of them came in when Libbey went into bankruptcy. We took a 15 percent pay cut, got them out of bankruptcy two years early, and then they turn around and give us a contract that does away with seniority, does away with any worker rights and with no overtime protections. They want to send you home if they don’t want you there and force somebody else in who hasn’t hit 40 hours. They’re trying to do away with overtime pay altogether.”
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The support for the unity of the working class cuts across the nationalist poison promoted by the USW, the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO, which long ago integrated themselves into the boardrooms of the corporations and supported wage-cutting in the name of competitiveness. As the worker noted, “When I did social work, we got cost of living every year. When I started working here in a union shop, we were getting 1 percent.”
Workers were acutely aware of the role of the USW apparatus in facilitating the company’s restructuring. One recalled the last time the USW International tried to impose concessions: “They did that last time. We didn’t take it. We held out for a better contract.” He agreed with the IWA-RFC’s call for power to be transferred from the union apparatus to the workers on the shop floor. “Yes, we should take it out of the hands of those people making hundreds of thousands of dollars and doing nothing for us.”
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Workers also engaged in a serious discussion about the potential of Socialism AI, a new initiative launched by the WSWS aimed at giving workers the ability to obtain accurate information, translate communications with workers abroad, study the history of struggle, and plan collective action. Socialism AI could help Libbey workers communicate with their counterparts in Mexico and Portugal, overcome language barriers, and plan coordinated action based on shared conditions rather than competition for the lowest wage.
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“It’d probably be a good tool to do what you’re trying to do—bring people together,” one worker said. Another raised a critical point: “It’s a matter of who controls it. If the people running the country control it, they’ll use it for war and to throw people out of their jobs. But if workers controlled it, it’d be totally different.”
The same thing is true of all technologies, the WSWS reporters said. In the hands of the working class, AI, robotics and other forms of automation could be used to make work safer and drastically shorten the workday, while increasing living standards and giving workers more time for their families and cultural pursuits.
“They are never going to pay us more for a shorter workweek,” the worker said, pausing for a second, “unless there is a revolution.”
15. US government brands DACA recipient Yaa’kub Vijandre a “terrorist” for opposing genocide in Gaza
New court filings make clear that the US government is now explicitly attempting to rebrand Yaa’kub Ira Vijandre, a resident of Dallas, Texas, as a “terrorist” on the basis of his political beliefs and speech opposing genocide in Gaza, prison abuse at Guantanamo Bay and the US police-military-intelligence apparatus.
Vijandre, 38, was seized at gunpoint by Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs on October 7 of this year, one day after speaking at a Richardson, Texas City Council meeting in defense of another resident who had been abducted by immigration authorities.
Vijandre has lived in the United States for most of his life, first entering the country as a 14-year-old child. Until his abduction in October, he was protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Those protections were revoked only after federal agents began scrutinizing his social media posts opposing the US-backed genocide in Gaza and condemning the mistreatment of prisoners labeled “terrorists” by the US government.
In November 2023, shortly after the start of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, Vijandre was approached by FBI agents and pressured to become a confidential informant. He refused. His subsequent detention follows a well-established pattern in which federal law enforcement retaliates against individuals who decline to serve as informants and who persist in opposing US imperialist violence and repression.
In a reply brief filed December 8 in federal court in Georgia, Vijandre’s attorneys state that the government has admitted that his detention is rooted in his beliefs and social media activity, not in any criminal act. An immigration judge acknowledged this directly, concluding that Vijandre was subject to mandatory detention because of his “belief that certain individuals accused of terrorism have been wrongfully imprisoned and that they are not having proper treatment,” and because he expressed those views publicly. The brief emphasizes that the government has not identified a single post by Vijandre that meets the constitutional standard for incitement or criminal conduct under the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Brandenburg v. Ohio sharply limits the state’s ability to punish political speech. The Court ruled that even extreme or unpopular speech is protected by the First Amendment unless it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Mere advocacy, expression of beliefs, or abstract support for ideas, including revolutionary perspectives, is constitutionally protected. As Vijandre’s attorneys note, the government has failed to identify a single statement or post that meets this standard.
Like the overwhelming majority of the more than 60,000 people now held in ICE concentration camps across the country, Vijandre has not been convicted of any crime and is not accused of committing one. The government’s own filings concede that he is being held under a provision of immigration law that punishes individuals for “endorsing or espousing” certain views. When pressed in federal court, government attorneys have attempted to retroactively claim that his detention is based on “actions,” however the only “action” they point to is an alleged social media post that does not exist and that would be constitutionally protected even if it did.
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Immigration attorney Eric Lee, another member of Vijandre’s legal team told the World Socialist Web Site:
If it is “legal” for the federal government to detain a DACA recipient for social media posts about Islam, prison conditions at Gitmo and resistance in Gaza, then tens of millions of Americans are next in line for domestic political detention.
The case lays bare the real function of the immigration Gestapo, which is not the protection of public safety from the alleged threats posed by immigrants, but the suppression of all political opposition to real terrorists and criminals in the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and Pentagon.
Vijandre’s continued imprisonment represents a direct assault on the First Amendment and underscores the necessity of building the independent political opposition in the working class that will defend the democratic rights of all, including immigrants, who fight against genocide, imperialist war and state repression.
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The criminal character of the entire US government, and specifically the Trump administration and all those involved in the “mass deportation operation,” was further confirmed Thursday by US District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from ICE custody on Thursday.
Xinis wrote that the court “continued to press counsel about the existence of a removal order and was told plainly that none can be found.”
In ordering Abrego Garcia’s release, Judge Xinis made clear the US government lied to her in an attempt to get him deported. She wrote that lawyers for the Trump administration “did not just” stonewall the court, but “affirmatively misled the tribunal.”
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The deportation of Abrego Garcia was one of several illegal ICE kidnappings that provoked mass outrage throughout the United States. Facing public pressure, declining poll numbers and a Supreme Court decision, on June 6 the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the United States, but quickly sought to gin up new criminal charges in order to deport him to an African nation he never lived in or visited.
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The Trump administration will continue to harass and attempt to deport Abrego Garcia in spite of the judges’ ruling. On Thursday, Department of Homeland propagandist Tricia McLaughlin claimed the order lacked “any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”
16. 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.
