Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: April 20-26
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
500,000 Spanish workers strike against Franco dictatorship
100 years ago:
2. APWU president Smith on USPS financial crisis: “nothing to see here”
The American Postal Workers Union bureaucracy is telling postal workers that the financial crisis at the United States Postal Service is not a crisis at all—but a “situation,” and that “victory is only a phone call away.”
That was the central message of APWU President Jonathan Smith’s livestream last Tuesday, an exercise not in organizing opposition to the massive concessions being prepared against postal workers, but in getting out in front of rank-and-file resistance in order to smother it.
The reality is far different from Smith’s complacent claims. Earlier this month, Postmaster General David Steiner warned Congress that USPS is approaching a liquidity crisis so severe that, “At our current rate we’ll be out of cash in less than 12 months.” Without new borrowing authority, he said, “the postal service would be unable to deliver the mail.”
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The crisis is already being paid for by workers. USPS has suspended its biweekly employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System—roughly $200 million every two weeks—to preserve cash, effectively looting workers’ deferred compensation and using it as an emergency reserve.
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Corporate America is salivating over the prospect of privatizing USPS. [Postmaster General] Steiner’s appointment itself—he comes from FedEx’s board of directors—is a signal of what is under consideration. Last year, a five-point Wells Fargo memo laid out the steps needed for privatization: Higher prices, route restructuring, removal of regulatory constraints and greater emphasis on parcel delivery over universal service. Much of this is being carried out under the guise of resolving the present “financial crisis.”
The “Delivering for America” restructuring launched under former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was aimed, though thus far without achieving profitability, at reorganizing USPS along Amazon-style logistics lines and making it more attractive to investors.
USPS is increasingly being transformed from a public service into a last-mile delivery contractor for private corporations. In many areas it already functions as Amazon’s de facto delivery service partner. Similar arrangements are being pursued elsewhere, undermining the universal service obligation and creating privatization in fact if not yet in name.
Smith’s attacks on “headlines” and “panic” were in particular a response to warnings raised by the World Socialist Web Site and by growing opposition among postal workers, especially through the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
The same day as Smith’s webinar, the Springfield, Massachusetts [Rank-and-File Committee] issued a statement declaring, “USPS is a public service, not a profit-making enterprise.” That statement explained:
“This manufactured ‘liquidity emergency’ is the product of the 1971 corporatization of the service and recent restructuring programs such as ‘Delivering for America,’ which have increased precarious non-career staffing, intensified workloads, and produced unsafe workplaces and massive losses in first-class mail revenue. Meanwhile, management and both parties in Congress demand further austerity.”
The committee explained that it was founded because workers “reject the current, non-democratic union structure and strive to build a movement that is by the worker, for the worker.”
Smith was clearly determined to prevent any such opposition from emerging. During the livestream Q&A, he explicitly told workers to keep their questions “germane,” shutting down broader discussion of restructuring, layoffs and the political causes of the crisis.
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The unions have worked hand in glove with management for years. They backed the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act, which rescinded the prefunding mandate for retiree health benefits while requiring future retirees to enroll in Medicare. NALC and the rural carriers union (NRLCA) openly support Delivering for America, which has eliminated thousands of routes for their own members, while signing side agreements allowing invasive electronic monitoring and massive pay cuts.
There is no doubt that when attacks on jobs are openly announced, the union apparatus will support them as unfortunate but necessary “shared sacrifice.”
In reality, this is a manufactured crisis created by decades of deliberate policy. USPS’s $9 billion net loss last year amounts to only a few days’ worth of munitions in the imperialist assault on Iran. It is a class policy: To free up resources for Wall Street and for war by carving them out of the backs of the working class.
And it is international. Canada Post is preparing to eliminate 30,000 jobs out of a workforce of little more than 50,000 and slash home delivery, a sign of what is being prepared in the United States.
The APWU webinar underscores the necessity for rank-and-file organization. The bureaucracy functions to enforce the dictates of management and anti-democratic strike bans even as the ruling class violates every law at will under the Trump administration.
The answer is not “common sense” appeals to Congress, but the class struggle. Conditions for this are rapidly emerging as workers across the country radicalize in response to dictatorship, war and austerity, and as major strikes break out.
Postal workers must find new channels that they themselves control, giving them real agency over their own struggle. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee are fighting to build those channels.
3. Mass protests by workers in northern India against price hikes due to US-Israeli war against Iran
Tens of thousands of unorganized workers employed in manufacturing industries in the National Capital Region (NCR) in northern India have been engaged in explosive strikes and protests, which began on April 10, against price hikes driven by the US-Israeli war against Iran. Workers are demanding an increase in minimum wages to keep up with the sharp increase in rent, utilities and food prices.
The eruption in northern India is part of a global wave of resistance to unbearable fuel and food price increases due to Trump’s criminal war against Iran and the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. In recent weeks, mass protests by workers and farmers have hit the Philippines, Haiti and Northern Ireland.
The NCR is a region surrounding the nation’s capital, New Delhi. It includes metropolitan New Delhi, the older Delhi city and adjacent industrialized districts in the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
It is home to about 15,000 small, medium and large domestic and transnational manufacturing industries that employ around 4.5 million workers, most of whom are contract or temporary workers. Before the war, the NCR—along with the Bombay metropolitan region—had one of the highest costs of living in the country. Workers across the region are demanding uniform minimum living wages of around Rs. 23,000 ($247) per month.
This latest working class eruption began in the Noida industrial township but rapidly spread across the NCR. So desperate are the conditions of India’s toilers that even domestic workers employed by individual middle class households joined the agitation.
Wages are so low that a majority earn a mere Rs. 10,000 ($107) to Rs. 15,000 ($160) per month for six days a week of intense work lasting 10–12 hours a day. Current wages have largely remained unchanged for about a decade.
The government responded to the protests with violent police repression, which reached a high point on April 13-14. Both local and state government authorities sent huge contingents of police forces to suppress any opposition by workers to their daily misery.
After firing large quantities of tear gas and beating many protesters mercilessly, police arrested over 350 workers on April 14. The angry workers fought back by throwing stones and firecrackers and overturning several police vehicles.
In addition, the Hindu-supremacist Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh—who has a long history of unleashing police violence against Muslims and the poor—branded this worker uprising as a “Naxal” and even “Pakistan-linked” conspiracy. The Naxalites were Indian Maoists who began armed peasant uprisings in the late 1960s. They have largely been stamped out by the murderous violence of the Modi government.
Despite his threatening rhetoric, Adityanath was compelled to announce a 21 percent hike in minimum wages. Even as he announced the paltry wage increase, the chief minister ordered the police to maintain “vigilance against disruptive elements” and told workers to be thankful that their oppressive employers “provide employment opportunities.”
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Even with the wage hike announcements of 35 percent by the Haryana government and 21 percent by the Uttar Pradesh government, the workers can barely make a living. There is deep ferment among the Haryana workers over these meager increases. They are, however, being held in check by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which is associated with Stalinists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Two factors have largely driven this spontaneous uprising. The first is the impact on the Indian economy by the US-Israeli war against Iran. India, which imports large quantities of crude oil, fertilizer, and cooking gas from Persian Gulf countries, has been severely impacted by shortages and price increases, which in turn have driven up food prices.
The second major factor is the new set of four “Labour Codes” implemented last November by the pro-business Prime Minister Narendra Modi–led BJP national government. This was a further step by the fiercely anti-worker Modi government to enhance the “Ease of Doing Business,” an utterly reactionary concept initiated and energetically promoted by the World Bank.
The Stalinist trade unions—the CITU and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), which is associated with the older Communist Party of India (CPI)—appear to have been caught flat-footed by the uprising. Both the CITU and AITUC have a long history of betraying strikes, especially in the state of Tamil Nadu, where they have significant presence. They are now scrambling to bring the movement under control by sending delegations to intervene in the strikes and protests.
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Despite the Indian elite boasting of having the highest economic growth rate, the condition of workers in India reflects that of the 19th century. According to the 2025 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), only 23.6 percent are employed on regular salary or wages. Of the rest, 56.2 percent are “self-employed,” a glorified term used to describe people making a living by selling fritters on the sidewalk, while 20.2 percent are casual laborers who work whenever they can find some kind of manual job.
The CITU, which claims to represent 6.2 million workers, has called for nationwide protests on April 16 in support of the NCR workers. But the record of both union federations, which have allowed the national and state governments to escalate their anti-working class policies, points to the necessity of workers breaking the grip of the labor bureaucracies and developing their own independent means of struggle, including rank-and-file committees controlled associated with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
4. The Pitt: The medical drama whose social realism and honesty have gripped millions
The Pitt, to its considerable credit, is different. While Season 2 does not shy away from contradictory and flawed characters, it is largely life-affirming. The makers set out intentionally and in a sensitive manner to engage with the social problems of our time and how they shape the human material.*****
The Pitt takes place in a big city hospital, and, thus by its very nature, the staff and patients are multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-racial. Yet identity politics is absent from the program. The racial and ethnic differences aren’t significant issues. The viewer is struck by the high level of solidarity among the physicians, many of them from widely different backgrounds. A broad cross section of America is here, and yet there’s no racial storyline. In a similar vein, when inter-generational conflicts arise, they are not presented as insurmountable. The characters are drawn according to the common problems and challenges they encounter.
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The difficulties faced by the central character, an attending physician in crisis, also have a more general meaning. Dr. Robinavitch is attempting to fight through the serious, at times intractable problems in the hospital and in his life without losing his sanity. Although The Pitt has resonated especially strongly with healthcare workers, this is something to which the broader population clearly relates.
Workers are the ones who keep society functioning in all its aspects, but they come up against obstacles created by the existing social framework every day. How can we have decent transportation, quality education, safe construction and industrial projects, a functioning electricity grid, a working service sector and so forth, if workers are driven to exhaustion, budgets are slashed, positions are cut and conditions are generally made impossible? Workers can see and feel the effects of the system on themselves and on others in myriad forms, and they are looking for ways to not “succumb” to these pressures.
The Pitt has risen in popularity as the official political institutions and big business sink lower and lower in the public estimate. Of course, this is not simply a matter of one television program. Nurses have been named the most trusted profession in the US for 24 consecutive years as of 2026, according to annual polling from Gallup. Approximately 75 percent of American adults rate nurses’ honesty and ethical standards as “high” or “very high.” Medical doctors and pharmacists also receive the approval of the majority, typically being considered trustworthy by between 53 and 62 percent of those surveyed.
On the other hand, capitalists and business executives are generally disliked, if not despised. Recent data shows only about 12 to 15 percent of the public views such individuals as having high ethical standards: “They are often viewed more negatively than positively.”
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In opposition to short-staffing, low wages and harsh working conditions, healthcare workers have dug in their heels in fierce battles with management in recent times, including in Providence, Rhode Island, and Grand Blanc, Michigan. Tens of thousands of nurses were blatantly sold out at Kaiser Permanente and in New York City by their unions. This is a major battlefield in the class struggle. It is not for nothing that the ultra-right City Journal recently (and nervously) headlined an article, “Why Are So Many Nurses Left-Wing?”
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The success of The Pitt coincides with the participation of millions upon millions of people in every sizable community in the US on March 28 in the “No Kings” protests against ICE, war and dictatorship. The population is moving to the left, to an ever more critical view of the status quo, of the gang of criminals and murderers who rule the US and of capitalism itself.
5. Trump threatens to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges after IRGC closes the Strait of Hormuz
The Sunday television interview programs of April 19, 2026 are a portrait of a ruling class with no significant opposition to mass murder. The sitting president threatens the destruction of the civilian infrastructure on which 90 million people depend. His ambassador to the United Nations defends the threat by citing the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II. A former senior Biden official admits on camera that the previous administration had war-gamed the same strikes.
The war on Iran is the policy of both parties of American capital, backed by their German, British and French partners, against the peoples of Iran, Lebanon and Palestine. The struggle against this war cannot be waged through the existing two-party framework, entirely controlled by corporate America. It requires the independent mobilization of the American and international working class, on a program of socialist internationalism, led by the International Committee of the Fourth International.
6. Tensions between Israel and Türkiye escalate
Israeli and Turkish leaders have launched the most extraordinary rhetorical attacks on social media against each other.
On April 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on X of “massacring his own Kurdish citizens”, “accommodating Iran’s terror regime and its proxies” and undermining regional stability.
Erdoğan had earlier warned that “provocations” could derail the US–Iran ceasefire and criticized Israel’s actions in the region. Turkish officials described Netanyahu as the “Hitler of our time”, citing Israel’s military actions in Gaza and across the region, and stating that Israel was manufacturing Türkiye as its next enemy. They accused him of destabilizing the region for his own political survival. Presidential advisor Burhanettin Duran accused Netanyahu of committing genocide in Gaza and dragging the region into chaos.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called Erdogan a “Muslim Brotherhood man, who massacred Kurds”. He criticized the Turkish president for failing to respond to Iranian missiles fired into Türkiye, calling him a “paper tiger”, accusing him of antisemitism and declaring “field trials in Türkiye against Israel’s political and military leadership”. The fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted in Hebrew, “Erdogan, do you understand English?” before adding, in English: “F*** You.”
Several Israeli politicians, within the government and the opposition, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, have publicly described Türkiye as a new regional threat, comparable to Iran. These were references to Erdogan’s earlier threats against Israel when he said that Türkiye could “enter Israel” just as it had intervened in Libya and Karabakh—Türkiye’s interventions to support Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia and in the Libyan civil war.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of deliberately trying to portray Türkiye as its next enemy. Netanyahu was trying to “undermine peace negotiations” in the region as he continues “his expansionist policies”.
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Turkish criticisms of Netanyahu function largely as an attempt to channel rising domestic anger over soaring living costs and intensifying state repression toward an external rival. Recent surveys in Türkiye show most of the population opposes the Iran war. Yet Ankara cannot afford a direct confrontation with the United States. It joined the Riyadh Declaration in condemning Iran and redirected much of its public response on the war against Israel, drawing on domestic opposition to the war to reinforce the narrative that Israel provoked the conflict.
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These latest rhetorical attacks followed an announcement that caused uproar in Tel Aviv: Istanbul’s chief prosecutor filed indictments against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 34 other Israeli officials—including Defense Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, and former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen. The charges relate to Israel’s naval interception of dozens of vessels in the Global Sumud Flotilla, seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in late September and early October 2025.
Israel detained and later deported all activists aboard the 39 boats, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and 24 Turkish citizens. Ankara condemned the interception as “an act of terror” that endangered civilians. The indictments include allegations of crimes against humanity, genocide, torture, and unlawful deprivation of liberty—charges that, if upheld, would carry cumulative sentences amounting to thousands of years.
Ankara has consistently criticized the mass civilian deaths in Gaza since October 2023, yet it has maintained significant economic and logistical ties with Israel. Azerbaijan’s oil exports still transit the pipeline running through Türkiye, and US bases in Türkiye have remained available for military intelligence-gathering operations that benefit Israel.
Erdoğan was also a signatory to the rotten agreement at Sharm el-Sheikh last October advanced by the Trump administration for Gaza. The plan envisaged Gaza being administered by a “Peace Council” chaired by the US president, without recognizing any political rights for the Palestinians in the territory, while granting Israel a permanent security role controlling borders.
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Today’s rapid escalation in Israel–Türkiye tensions reflects a long-running rivalry that has now transformed into open hostility, driven by developments in Gaza, Syria, Iran, and domestic politics in both countries.
The rivalry between two allies of US imperialism in the region primarily concerns their shares in the carve-up of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. While both governments support aspects of Washington’s drive for dominance in the Middle East, Ankara has grown increasingly concerned about Israel’s expanding partnerships, particularly in Cyprus and Syria.
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It is above all the criminal US-Israel attacks on Iran that have provoked consternation among Türkiye’s ruling circles. They fear that, as a NATO member hosting US bases and providing intelligence for US-Israeli forces that have been targeted by missiles, possibly as false flag operations, Türkiye could be drawn into the war. The global rise in oil and natural gas prices caused by the conflict will exacerbate the already severe cost-of-living crisis, intensifying class tensions.
While Erdogan declared the attacks on Iran were illegal and called for a ceasefire and negotiations, Türkiye’s military, economic and financial dependence upon its alliance with Washington means aligning with President Donald Trump’s “new Middle East” policy. To do otherwise would invite a coup against him, as the 2016 NATO-backed coup attempt demonstrated. For this reason, he refrained from condemning the US under the leadership of his “friend” Trump.
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Tensions between Israel and Türkiye are also rising in the Horn of Africa, a vital strategic area for the Middle East powers. The region’s ports, military bases, and political alliances shape access to the Bab el-Mandeb straits—the southern gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal—which functions both as Israel’s maritime lifeline via the Eilat–Ashdod corridor and as Türkiye’s access point to the Indian Ocean.
Over the past decade, the two states have cultivated opposing regional blocs: a Türkiye–Qatar–Somalia axis on one side and an Israel–UAE–Eritrea/Ethiopia axis on the other.
Somalia is the most visible front in this rivalry. Türkiye has become Mogadishu’s primary political patron, military trainer, and economic partner. It operates its largest overseas military base in the capital, trains Somali forces, and controls key infrastructure including the port. Ankara has dispatched the Çağrı Bey vessel and supporting ships to begin deep-sea drilling at the Curad-1 well, 250 miles off Somalia’s coast, a move that signals its long-term geostrategic interests in the region.
Israel, by contrast, has sought influence through Somaliland. Last December, it became the first and only UN member state to formally recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state, a step widely interpreted as an effort to secure access to the port of Berbera and one that antagonized both Ankara and Mogadishu.
In Sudan, Türkiye had secured a long-term lease on Suakin Island—viewed by some analysts as a potential naval foothold on the Red Sea—before the Sudanese army ousted President Omar al-Bashir in a pre-emptive coup amid a mass uprising. In Djibouti, Ankara has expanded its diplomatic and commercial presence as part of its broader Red Sea strategy.
Israel’s footprint in the Horn is older and more discreet. It has long maintained intelligence and security ties with Ethiopia, including around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Egypt and Sudan fear could reduce Nile flows during a drought. Israel has reportedly used Eritrean ports and islands for intelligence gathering in the Red Sea. Its partnership with the UAE—a major actor in Eritrea, Somaliland, and southern Yemen, and a backer of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s civil war—has extended its reach.
The Iran-aligned Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping linked to Israel, carried out in support of the Palestinians, have forced vessels to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, underscoring the strategic value of the Red Sea corridor. This has become more pronounced as Iran threatens to close the Red Sea if the US continues to block the Strait of Hormuz.
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On Friday, Türkiye held a three-day Diplomacy Forum in Antalya, which more than 150 countries were expected to attend, including more than 20 heads of state and government, among them Syrian President al-Sharaa and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The foreign ministers of Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were to meet on the sidelines of the forum to discuss the war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
7. Starmer government facing collapse over Mandelson/Epstein scandal
UK Labour government Prime Minister Keir Starmer will deliver a statement to the House of Commons Monday to “correct the record” regarding the vetting of Peter Mandelson prior to his appointment as UK ambassador to the US.
Before handing Mandelson the job in December 2024, though he is still attempting to deny this, Starmer was fully aware of his intimate connections with the billionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson continued his relationship with the pedophile even after he was convicted and served jail time.
On Thursday, an investigation by the Guardian revealed that “A formal decision to deny him clearance was made by [UK Security Vetting (UKSV)] on 28 January 2025… According to sources, UKSV informed the Foreign Office that the risk factors involving Mandelson meant that his clearance should be denied.”
Starmer claimed on Friday that he was not informed until as late as Tuesday evening this week that Mandelson failed vetting. Even if a man who has served at the highest levels of the state and was formerly the UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions were to be believed, it would reveal a level of incompetence beyond comprehension.
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The Independent reported—fully seven months before the Guardian—in the article, “Concerns Mandelson did not pass MI6 vetting for US ambassador role – but Starmer appointed him anyway,” that it was told by sources “that MI6 failed to clear the Labour peer largely because of concerns over his business links to China. However, there were also worries that his past links to the disgraced financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein ‘would compromise him’.”
Starmer therefore knew. Yet much of the media coverage, particularly the pro-Labour Guardian, has still focused on what Starmer knew and when. This is because there is a fear that his downfall will bring to a head a far broader political crisis of rule for the British bourgeoisie, possibly claiming the Labour government as its victim.
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Among the figures being touted as Starmer’s replacement should he fall, whether now or after May’s local elections—expected to be disastrous for Labour—is Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Another Blairite, Streeting is equally compromised, having already been forced to delete a batch of photos of himself with Mandelson, including one in which Streeting fawns over the “legend Lord Mandelson.”
Sections of the media, including the Financial Times, have warned in recent months that whatever Starmer’s decline in political fortunes, he still represents the “stability” sought by the bourgeoisie after a period of crisis-ridden Tory rule—which saw the Conservative Party burn through a staggering four prime ministers and five chancellors in the space of just eight years.
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All the political mechanisms of rule established over more than a century are falling apart at the seams—above all the Labour Party.
Under conditions of entrenched and growing social inequality and mounting class conflict, political minnows such as Lammy, Kendall and Streeting—who all agreed with Mandelson, as a leading architect of New Labour, that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”—are incapable of reversing a perilous situation for the ruling class.
Labour is today hated by millions of workers and youth. Indeed, it is only due to the betrayal carried out by the nominally left Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party for more than four-and-a-half years from September 2015, that the Blairites have survived at all, and Starmer handed leadership of the party.
Starmer went on to win a landslide in the 2024 general election under Britain’s undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, despite having won just 33.7 percent of the vote—the lowest share for any single-party majority government in post-1945 UK history.
Starmer was eased into power due to the betrayal of the trade union bureaucracy, who quelled a mass strike movement as they backed a Blairite whose hostility to the working class was made clear by his ban on shadow cabinet ministers supporting workers’ picket lines and his support for genocide in Gaza.
Thanks to the continued refusal of Corbyn and the “left” to wage political war on the Blairites, almost two years of Starmer’s government of austerity and militarism has mainly benefited the most right-wing forces—including the far-right Reform UK.
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Following Corbyn’s betrayal and the debacle of his Your Party vehicle, and the prostration before Starmer of Labour’s parliamentary left-wing of a few dozen MPs, the Green Party has seen a surge in support in recent months—and now polls in second place behind Reform. But whatever vaguely leftist rhetoric is spouted by new leader Zack Polanski, the pro-capitalist Greens also represent no alternative to Starmer’s collapsing party.
If Reform, and the most vicious anti-working-class representatives of the super-rich they represent, are to be stopped in their tracks, then there is no time to waste: the working class must adopt the program of socialist internationalism.
As the WSWS noted on Mandelson’s arrest:
Mandelson’s career epitomised the transformation of the Labour Party into a naked instrument of finance capital and architect of illegal wars of imperialist plunder, most infamously against Iraq in 2003. Having now resigned five times from various positions in his career, including being forced from office twice in the Blair years due to earlier scandals, he was welcomed back to the summit of political power by Starmer. Not only did Mandelson epitomize the New Labour agenda of serving every requirement of the banks and corporations, but his close relations with Epstein were seen at the time as an asset that would facilitate efforts to woo the Trump administration.
For the working class, the central issue is not holding Mandelson or [Andrew] Mountbatten-Windsor to account through parliamentary debates, humble addresses, or official inquiries—including the public inquiry into Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador advocated by Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The fundamental task is the building of a new, independent political party of the working class and making a decisive political break with the entire parliamentary set-up and all its rotten parties. It is the capitalist system they all defend that enabled the financial oligarchy—and figures such as Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor—to thrive.
8. Union officials call off strike of 34,000 New York City doormen, porters and maintenance workers
On Friday, union officials abruptly cancelled what would have been a major strike of 34,000 doormen, porters and maintenance workers in New York City. The deal between 32BJ SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and the Realty Advisory Board (RAB), which represents the landlords, was decided without any vote by the membership on whether to call off the strike.
Only two days earlier, around 10,000 residential building workers had rallied in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The rally was a forceful demonstration of the workers’ willingness to wage what would have been the first strike of New York’s building workers since 1991. More than 550,000 residents live in the buildings that would have been affected.
The 32BJ bureaucracy’s abrupt about-face is an effort to prevent a struggle and appease the landlords. In a statement released on Friday, 32BJ SEIU President Manny Pastreich said that the union had “found a common path forward with the RAB.” This comment is unintentionally revealing. The RAB “wanted to have labor peace,” its president and CEO Howard Rothschild told Bloomberg.
This was the second major strike called off last week. Early Tuesday morning, education unions called off a city-wide strike in Los Angeles schools after negotiating inadequate deals that pave the way for planned budget cuts.
This underscores the fact that workers confront not only a ruthless corporate America and its two parties, but a trade union bureaucracy which functions as a labor police force. The better the conditions for class struggle—major strikes in America’s two largest cities would have had a galvanizing impact on workers across the country—the more open their efforts at sabotage. Workers must prepare new channels of struggle by forming independent rank-and-file committees, to impose their democratic will and give themselves genuine agency.
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During last week’s mass rally, Pastreich physically embraced Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had come to address the workers. The rally heard a slew of speeches from union and Democratic Party officials with the typical slogans and chants of “solidarity” and that New York City is a “union town.” But it was wholly devoid of a fighting strategy for rank-and-file workers.
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Mamdani highlighted the extreme inequality that exists between building workers and wealthy tenants and landlords at the rally, but the self-described socialist had traveled to the White House months before to fawn over Donald Trump and request billions of dollars in funding for new real estate projects. Having campaigned on a platform centering affordability, he is now touting the mere $40/week increase for low-paid workers as a win.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Australia has held speakouts on university campuses opposing the escalating US-led war against Iran. Events have taken place at Western Sydney University (WSU) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), with a further speakout scheduled at the University of Melbourne.
IYSSE speakers condemned the criminal and unprovoked US-Israeli war, which so far has claimed the lives of an estimated 2,000 people, largely civilians, and threatens to escalate into a global conflagration.
The Australian Labor government is supporting and complicit in the war crimes against Iran. Australian military personnel were aboard the US submarine that torpedoed and sank the unarmed IRIS Dena in international waters, killing 140 sailors. Labor has deployed missiles, a warplane and personnel, including SAS commandos to join in a war aimed at regime-change and the annihilation of Iranian society.
Excerpts from a statement by the [Public] Transport Workers Action Committee in Germany on the sellout deal between the Verdi union and the Berlin Transport Company:
Verdi has stated that the long timeframe for the contract—four years until the end of 2029—protects against attacks by the BVG. “The employer side made it very clear in these collective bargaining negotiations that they want to tamper with many provisions of the framework agreement,” reads a Verdi statement on the collective bargaining outcome from March 31. “We must prevent this, and a longer term helps in doing so.”
In plain language: Anyone who rejects this sellout can expect even greater attacks. “Take it or leave it!” This demonstrates once again the role of the Verdi apparatus and its defenders as the ones serving up these attacks to us workers.
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Public transportation is facing brutal cuts. The federal transportation budget was slashed from 38.3 billion euros last year to 28.2 billion this year—a reduction of nearly 28 percent. According to the transportation contract, the BVG receives around 1.3 billion euros annually, which, however, does not cover actual needs. The BVG’s debt is set to skyrocket from 1.4 billion euros in 2024 to over 3.7 billion euros by 2028 because the Senate is forcing the BVG to take out loans—only to then claim that there is no money for staff and better working conditions.
Ultimately, this will pave the way for the complete privatization of the BVG. Even now, following the privatization of the Ringbahn here in Berlin, other transport systems such as the S-Bahn subway network—the North-South subnetworks and the Stadtbahn—are also slated for privatization. RTHey are to be awarded to a private consortia comprising S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, Siemens, Stadler and other corporations, thereby further fragmenting the system.
The same thing is happening to colleagues in many other countries. In Paris, 19,000 employees of the RATP public transit network—with 308 lines and over 4,500 buses—are set to be sold to global corporations by the end of this year. In Chicago, more than 40 percent of the Chicago Transit Authority’s public transit system faces dismantling because the Trump administration will no longer cover the $771 million deficit. In Madrid, a strategy to liberalize the EMT urban bus sector has been underway for years, opening it up to private capital and outsourcing individual services.
And everywhere, the union bureaucracies play the same role: They limit protests to symbolic actions, agree to lousy compromises, push through cutbacks and prevent workers from uniting across companies, cities and countries. In contrast stands the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), with which we collaborate. It fights to unite transport workers in Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Madrid and worldwide to organize joint struggles against social cuts, war and fascism.
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The conclusion is clear: The union leaders act as co-managers in the interests of the government and corporations. They support the government’s arms buildup and war policies and suppress any serious resistance to them.
Outrage over this is growing—yet within the Verdi apparatus, pseudo-left organisations in particular ensure that this opposition is defused and kept under control. They present themselves as “reformers” of the union, but in reality they nip every independent movement from below in the bud.
Representatives on bargaining committees and shop stewards like Manuel von Stubenrauch—who, as a tram driver and Verdi shop steward, sells the new “transparency” and “feedback” as a democratic breakthrough—serve precisely this purpose: They give the bureaucracy’s maneuvers a seemingly “left-wing” and grassroots veneer, but at the decisive moment defend the course of the Verdi leadership, which enforces the directives of the Senate, the government and the companies.
These pseudo-leftists receive political backing from the Left Party, which has been and remains actively involved in cuts and privatizations in the Senate and in the districts.
The Action Committee must be consciously developed against these maneuvers by the Left Party and its union proxies as an independent alternative that pits the interests of the workforce against the demands for “restraint” and “austerity” aimed at keeping the war chest full, and that does not divide us as BVG employees from our colleagues in other transit companies, in the public sector, in the private sector, in administration and in industry.
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We counter the Verdi agreement with our own immediate demands, which stem from our daily experience and the real needs of our colleagues:
1) Mandatory introduction of the 30-hour workweek with full wage compensation for all driving staff. Only a significant reduction in weekly working hours with full pay can end the constant work overload.
2) Abolition of six-day shifts and a maximum of eight hours per shift—including in split shifts. The formal “37-hour workweek” obscures the actual time on duty, which rises to over 50 hours in a six-day shift week, destroys our health and endangers passenger safety.
3) At least 10 minutes of paid turnaround time after one hour behind the wheel—even in the event of traffic jams, detours, or other traffic chaos. Rest periods at the terminal must be guaranteed in the schedule and in practice, and not split up or shortened if the driving time is shorter; a digital tachograph is necessary for this.
4) Reversal of the reduction in bus service and simultaneous extension of rest periods between individual shift days to at least 12 hours. The necessary increase in staff and vehicles per route reduces stress and prevents overcrowded buses and long wait times.
5) The equipping of all terminal stations with high-quality restroom facilities and air-conditioned break rooms. The current conditions—a lack of toilets, filthy containers, or mobile “outhouses”—are unacceptable and harmful to health.
6) Illness must not be punished: Abolish the reduction of the Christmas bonus for prolonged illness, abolish the so-called “negative prognosis” for prolonged illness, and put an end to dismissals due to illness.
7) Prepare for a full-scale strike through democratically run staff meetings. Only an indefinite joint strike by all local transit workers—including S-Bahn, U-Bahn, and private operators—can achieve our demands.
11. H-E-B grocery warehouse worker dies after workplace accident in San Antonio
Austin Lewis Flores, a worker at a warehouse for the H-E-B grocery chain in San Antonio, Texas, died after a workplace accident earlier this month. Reports indicate that on April 4 he was working with a floor jack when he was hit by a forklift.
Flores was sent to a clinic where an X-ray revealed he had a broken ankle. Several days later he was later found unresponsive at his home. An autopsy revealed that he died of a pulmonary thromboembolism that developed after a blood clot had dislodged and traveled to his lungs.
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This follows the death of another H-E-B warehouse worker at the same location last October. Teresa Dominguez, 27, was found unconscious in a freezer. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined that she had died of blunt trauma. Witnesses said that she had exhibited signs of distress while driving a forklift. After being discovered, EMS was called and transported her to a local hospital, where she later died.
“Six months and nothing has changed. No major safety improvements. Nothing was fixed,” Brenda Flores said. “My son should have been transported to an ER immediately from hitting that floor at H-E-B, no excuses, no exceptions. And now my son is gone, too.”
Workplace injuries and deaths are not uncommon in warehouses. Grocery stores are also hazardous workplaces. Some of the most common causes of injuries include forklift and other vehicle accidents, falling objects, slips on wet or cluttered floors, extreme temperatures in freezers and overexertion and repetitive stress.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, grocery workers experience nearly twice the average rate of nonfatal workplace injuries compared to other private sector workers. In 2024, the approximately 2.6 out of 100 workers suffered some type of workplace injury, while for grocery workers they suffered at a rate of about 4.0 per 100.
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H-E-B workers are not covered by a union, but in unionized workplaces officials work as little more than agents of management. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has rammed through pro-company contracts across the country in the face of worker opposition. In spite of a history of workplace accidents in the grocery industry, unions have done nothing to improve worker safety in these environments.
Government workplace safety regulations are weak due to limited enforcement mechanisms and low penalties for violations. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has limited authority and resources. Many employers consider the low fines as a cost of doing business rather than a serious consequence that will cause them to change their practices.
Based in San Antonio, H-E-B is a major grocery chain, operating over 400 grocery stores in Texas and Mexico. The company employs about 175,000 workers and is one of the largest private employers in Texas. In 2025 it had total revenues of $50 billion, making it the 19th largest retailer in the United States. H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt was listed 230th on the Forbes list of billionaires in 2025, with a net worth of over $10 billion.
12. Aldi DX tech workers in Germany fight job cuts: Form a rank-and-file committee!
Over 2,000 employees of the IT company Aldi DX gathered in Essen, Germany on March 31 and elected an electoral board to prepare and carry out the election of a works council. Many workers of the discounter’s IT subsidiary are determined to fight against job cuts and the deterioration of working conditions.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and World Socialist Web Site support this willingness to fight. We advocate expanding this growing resistance and making it the starting point for a broad mobilization of all employees at all locations.
The attacks on Aldi’s IT workers are part of the global crisis of the capitalist system. Everywhere, new forms of production, above all utilizing AI, are being deployed to massively cut jobs and increase conditions of exploitation immeasurably. At the same time, the unrestrained enrichment of those at the other end of society is taking place. A super-rich financial aristocracy is destroying society. With the same aggressiveness with which President Trump and the oligarchs behind him are threatening the destruction of civilization in Iran, the ruling class in every country is taking action against the working class.
In order to successfully fight against job cuts and deteriorating working conditions, it is necessary to connect the workplace dispute with a systematic mobilization against the capitalist profit system.
Only on the basis of a socialist perspective, which rests on the old principle of the labor movement that the interests and needs of workers rank higher than the profit maximization of the capitalists, and which strives for democratic control over production, can workers’ rights be enforced.
Therefore, the founding of a rank-and-file committee is necessary, which stands in the tradition of workers’ councils, mobilizes all Aldi DX employees and creates the organizational framework for a joint struggle. This is the way to connect the dispute that has begun at Aldi with the many workers in other sectors who are confronted with the same or very similar problems.
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The German government is driving forward an insane rearmament program in order to become the leading military power in Europe. It is using the Ukraine war to prepare an Operation Barbarossa 2.0 (Hitler’s original invasion of Eastern Europe was named Operation Barbarossa). In order to finance this war policy, social benefits are being massively cut. “We can no longer afford the welfare state!” Chancellor Friedrich Merz declares.
In truth, however, the population can no longer afford capitalism and its profit system. For the working class, the much-vaunted “new era” in foreign and military policy means a return to the class struggle! Just as the ruling class is reanimating its reactionary traditions of mass dismissals, social cuts, war and dictatorship, the working class must turn again to its revolutionary, socialist traditions.
There is no lack of willingness to fight. In conversations with the World Socialist Web Site, many Aldi DX employees show themselves to be self-confident, determined and combative. One of them said that if the new work-from-home regulation was indeed preparation for further job cuts, “one must also think about strikes.” Another said that there was much uncertainty in the company, but “The mood is combative. I just listened to the Internationale on the underground on the way here,” he reported smiling.
13. Argentine union boss pitches corporatist alliance to US executives and fascistic President Milei
Jorge Sola, general secretary of Argentina’s General Confederation of Labor (CGT), participated last week in the summit of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Buenos Aires, a gathering of US multinationals operating in Argentina. The event brought together corporate executives, representatives of the US Embassy, fascistic President Javier Milei alongside members of his cabinet, governors and other leading political figures.
From this platform of imperialist finance capital, Sola articulated a program that lays bare the role of the Peronist trade union bureaucracy as an instrument for subordinating the working class to the destruction of living standards and labor rights and the turn to fascism under Milei.
Speaking on a panel, Sola declared:
Those of us who represent workers represent the interests of labor power, but we believe in a strategic partnership between productive investment, that productive force of capitalism, and labor… Conflicts must be addressed at a great negotiating table, where the state is also present—a smart and efficient state, not one that merely serves capital and legally subordinates everything to it.
In an interview with the right-wing outlet Infobae at AmCham, Sola reiterated this perspective in even clearer terms: “That strategic partnership between those who invest productively and those who generate labor power must exist in Argentina. It has always existed in Argentina and goes far beyond the ideological affinities of the government in power.”
These statements were made in between friendly criticisms of Milei’s “Labor Modernization Law,” approved with the complicity of the CGT, which blocked any real resistance in exchange for discarding clauses that affected the bureaucracy’s source of revenue from automatic dues deductions and other income.
The law imposes longer workdays of up to 12 hours without overtime pay, slashes severance, guts collective bargaining, reduces sick pay and vacation time, and effectively criminalizes strikes in strategic sectors, rolling back protections from the 1974 Labor Contract Act to 19th-century conditions. Not even the US-backed military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 dared to go so far.
This draconian legislation is centered around facilitating mass layoffs even after Milei’s “shock therapy” has already eliminated 300,000 formal jobs—including 61,000 in the public sector.
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While the CGT was founded in the 1930s as a conglomerate of anarchist, Stalinist and socialist unions, its transformation into an appendage of the capitalist state was consummated with the rise of Juan Domingo Perón, who came to power in 1943 as part of a military junta. During a period of post-war economic expansion, Peronism sought to reconcile the interests of industrial capitalists with those of the working class through state mediation.
The CGT formed the Labor Party that initially secured Perón’s election in 1946, adopting a model directly inspired by the integration of trade unions into the fascist state of Benito Mussolini, which Perón had studied while serving as a military attaché in Italy. This system—corporatism—subordinates workers’ organizations to the state, suppressing class struggle in the name of national unity and economic development.
Today, the CGT is offering its services to Milei, proposing a similar alliance between the state, union bureaucracy and corporations. This policy, rooted in fascist ideology, is being advanced under conditions in which Milei is carrying out a restructuring of Argentine capitalism rooted in the devastation of workers’ rights and conditions.
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The CGT’s current trajectory is rooted in its long history as an agent of the bourgeoisie. After Perón’s ouster in 1955, the federation remained dominated by the right wing of Peronism. When Perón returned from exile on June 20, 1973, CGT-linked gunmen participated in the Ezeiza Massacre, opening fire on left-wing Peronist youth and workers.
This massacre, which left at least 13 dead, marked the consolidation of the fascistic wing of Peronism and paved the way for the formation of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), a death squad responsible for over 1,500 killings between 1973 and 1976. Organized by José López Rega and supported by sectors of the CGT bureaucracy, the Triple A targeted leftists, intellectuals and militant workers.
By suppressing revolutionary struggles throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, the CGT played a decisive role in paving the way for the US-backed military coup of March 1976 and the ensuing dictatorship.
Today, the CGT continues to support Peronist factions whose representatives in Congress and provincial governments have facilitated Milei’s austerity measures. It has also sought closer ties with the Catholic Church, one of the most reactionary institutions in Argentina, proposing a “new stage” in relations with its leadership.
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Another critical component in propping up the union bureaucracy is the role of pseudo-left organizations in and around the so-called Left and Workers Front (FIT-U). Despite covering the AmCham summit, outlets such as La Izquierda Diario and factions linked to the Partido Obrero failed to mention the CGT’s participation.
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Milei, far from his right-wing populist pretense of opposing the “political caste,” is constructing a corporatist regime in which all institutions—state, unions and corporations—are integrated to guarantee the upward transfer of wealth to the financial oligarchy.
He enjoys the support of virtually every section of the bourgeoisie and is aligning Argentina’s military and foreign policy with Washington, while advancing extreme right-wing ideological positions.
Within this framework, different factions of the union bureaucracy perform a division of labor: the CGT openly collaborates, while the CTA, FreSU and pseudo-left currents adopt a more “combative” posture to channel opposition back into the CGT.
The events at AmCham and Sola’s statements confirm that the trade union apparatus is not an instrument for defending the working class, but an instrument of its class enemies.
As Leon Trotsky warned in 1938, in periods of acute class struggle, trade union leaders seek to “become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless,” often integrating directly into the bourgeois state.
This process has deepened under globalization, with unions increasingly functioning as partners of corporate management.
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In his History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky documents the rapid growth of coordinated lockouts and factory closures in the months before the October insurrection—hundreds of plants closed in successive months, throwing tens of thousands out of work and fueling the radicalization of workers and factory committees. The Bolsheviks linked factory committees and soviet power, raising a program that addressed the social control of industry and the political overthrow of the capitalist state as the opening shot of the world socialist revolution.
What is required today is no different: the building of independent rank-and-file committees, uniting workers across industries and national borders, and breaking decisively from the union bureaucracy and its pseudo-left appendages. Such organizations must form part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, which fights to coordinate struggles globally.
At the same time, the political struggle against capitalism and fascism requires the construction of a revolutionary leadership in Argentina, as part of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
"Peace for the world! Down with war!"
