One month ago, a movement of high school blockades and shutdowns
began in France. It has not only deeply shaken the French government,
but spread across Europe. An international movement is developing, as
youth and workers raise the same demands in each European country and
governments everywhere meet them with police violence and repression.
There
is an echo in the present events of 1848, a year of revolutionary
upheavals across the continent. This is, of course, an analogy, not a
concrete comparison. The world of 2026 is vastly different from that of
1848. But the rapid spread of mass protests from France across Europe
and beyond expresses the essentially global character of the movement
now unfolding. More fundamentally, its emerging social and political
essence is working class and socialist, not bourgeois-democratic.
The
last month has brought to the surface sentiments that millions of
people across Europe share but that official politics has long
suppressed. There is deep opposition to the diversion of hundreds of
billions of euros from education, pensions and social spending to the
military and the war against Russia in Ukraine; to financial speculation
that drives up housing and energy prices; to social cuts dictated by
the financial markets; and to police repression and the promotion of
neo-fascism. These are international questions, and struggles over them
have won broad support across national borders.
*****
The demands raised by youth and workers across Europe cannot be won
on a national basis, through reforms granted from above by capitalist
governments. The ruling class is neither willing nor able to make
concessions. A financial oligarchy has amassed a concentration of wealth
incompatible with democratic forms of rule.
France, Italy,
Belgium and Greece carry state debts of more than 100 percent of GDP,
and Spain’s is close to it. Pursued by their creditors and facing
speculation against their debts, these governments could finance social
concessions only by taxing the oligarchy, which they refuse to do.
Instead,
they are pouring resources into war. Over the last month, the European
powers recklessly escalated the war on Russia, despite Moscow’s warnings
that further escalation could trigger nuclear war. They armed the
Ukrainian regime for massive drone strikes on Moscow, Saint Petersburg
and other Russian cities, while NATO prepared a blockade of Kaliningrad.
They
are planning up to €800 billion in additional military spending under
the “ReArm Europe” plan, and Germany has exempted military spending from
its constitutional debt brake to finance a vast rearmament program.
They can raise sums on this scale only by gutting social spending.
This
is why every government in Europe answers the movement in the same way.
A ruling class that will neither touch its own wealth nor abandon its
war aims can impose these policies only through dictatorial forms of
rule. It responds to mass opposition with police-state measures and the
promotion of neo-fascist forces.
*****
The crisis in France shows that workers and youth cannot wage this
fight within the framework of electoral politics and union negotiations
with the capitalist state. While the union bureaucracy and “populist”
politicians like Jean-Luc Mélenchon promote the illusion that the
government will back down, President Emmanuel Macron is pursuing a
ruthless strategy. His government has answered the protest movement with
mass arrests and police violence that has left dozens of students
maimed.
On October 17, masses of youth marched alongside “yellow
vests” protesting the rising fuel and living costs produced by the
US-NATO wars and energy blockades against Russia and Iran. The protest
overwhelmed riot police in several cities, and Interior Minister Laurent
Nuñez admitted a “loss of control.” Since then, officials have imposed
curfews in several major cities, and arrests since the movement began
have passed 10,000.
For the October 24 protest, the government is
deploying the army. Soldiers of Operation Sentinelle will take over
guard duties, freeing police and gendarmes to confront protesters
alongside the GIGN, RAID and BRI assault units, armored vehicles,
helicopters and water cannon. Nuñez says the forces must be more mobile,
and he is considering banning undeclared demonstrations.
Elected
and controlled by the workers and youth in struggle, and independent of
the union bureaucracies and the capitalist parties, these committees
can fight for the broadest extension of strikes, free of the timetables
that the bureaucracies set.
A central task of the committees of
action is to unify the struggles now erupting across Europe. Against
Macron’s police state, the strongest allies of French workers and youth
are the workers and youth now in struggle across Europe. Their
simultaneous eruption poses the need for a European general strike,
which can be prepared only by breaking through the national framework of
the union bureaucracies. The ICFI fights to link the committees
internationally through the International Workers Alliance of
Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
Such committees can become the
center of a movement to stop imperialist war, halt the rise of
neo-fascism and resolve the debt crisis by expropriating the capitalist
oligarchy. The youth’s demands for decent schools, affordable housing
and an end to conscription and war cannot be met while that oligarchy
controls the economy and the state. The PES and its sister parties
therefore fight for the taking of power by the working class and the
replacement of the European Union with the United Socialist States of
Europe.
The Trump administration and the Israeli government are deepening their
plans for a massive attack on Iran in a matter of weeks. The New York Times
reported Wednesday, citing US officials, that the American and Israeli
militaries “have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against
Iran after the American midterm elections,” and that the targets “would
likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and
missile and drone arsenal.”
*****
The Times reported that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
discussed the new strikes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
during a visit to Israel this week, and that American and Israeli
warplanes have been flying over Iraq to rehearse the strikes. The United
States “is assembling a massive arsenal that will be fully in place by
early November,” the Times wrote, including “three aircraft
carriers, thousands of Marines, fighter jets and Special Operations
forces.” The US military “prefers to conduct attacks under the cover of
night,” the Times added, “and there will be increasing hours of darkness over Iran early next month.”
Some US planners, according to the Times, believe “an intensive three-day campaign could cause enough economic damage to change the Iranian position.” The Times
reported, citing people it described as briefed on the planning, that
the two militaries are also preparing to bomb Iran’s nuclear program,
possibly including the underground site at Pickaxe Mountain. Trump said
in an interview with the right-wing cable channel Newsmax on October 15:
“Now we’re looking at Pickaxe Mountain. We may have to go there.”
The Financial Times
reported Wednesday, under the headline “Netanyahu made plans to restart
Iran strikes earlier this month,” that Israel’s military had planned to
open several days of strikes on Iran on the weekend of October 10,
against nuclear facilities, power plants and other civilian
infrastructure, in an operation more intense than the US-Israeli air war
launched in February. The strikes did not go ahead, the Financial Times reported, because Trump was against reopening the bombing until the midterms were over. The New York Times
gave a similar account: The two militaries “came close to striking Iran
early this month,” with their air forces “on the highest state of
alert,” before Trump “decided at the last minute to postpone the
attack.”
Netanyahu is campaigning in the Israeli election of
October 27 on the platform of overthrowing the Iranian government. On
September 3 he told an audience of Israeli military commanders: “I am
convinced that we can remove this threat once and for all—that is, to
overthrow this regime. That is the central task that still lies ahead of
us, but it is close.”
The Times of Israel, an
English-language Israeli news site, reported October 14 that Channel 12,
an Israeli television news station, had learned that Netanyahu pushed
Trump to restart the bombing before the Israeli vote, and that Trump
told him he could “go ahead and prepare.” Five days earlier the Times of Israel
reported, again citing Channel 12, that Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir,
the Israeli military’s chief of staff, had warned US military commanders
that a strike could force Israel to postpone its election.
*****
Neither Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer nor House Minority
Leader Hakeem Jeffries has made any significant statement warning about
the Trump administration’s plans to attack Iran after the elections. The
Democrats are demanding an escalation of war against Russia. Jeffries
told the House on September 16, during the debate on a bill authorizing
tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil and gas: “Many of us
wonder why the President has been so reluctant to aggressively confront
the bully of Eastern Europe.” He added that “you have to confront the
bully, not appease the bully.”
Schumer said on October 17, after
Trump waived new sanctions on Russia: “Trump is aiding and abetting a
dictator who has helped Iran target US troops in the Middle East.”
Schumer and Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had said on March 13 that Russian
President Vladimir Putin “has been one of the prime beneficiaries of
President Trump’s poorly conceived and executed war against Iran,” and
that “Russia is reportedly providing Iran intelligence to target and
kill U.S. service members.”
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said of the waiver on Fox News Sunday
on October 18 that if Trump is “giving that money to Russia ... they’re
using it to provide support for Iran. In the Iranian US war that’s
going on right now, you don’t give money to an adversary.”
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said on ABC’s This Week
on September 27: “We can’t leave the Strait in the hands of the
Iranians. They can’t be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.” Democratic
Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said on CNN on September 30 that
Hegseth “needs to distract from the fact that he’s losing a war,” and
that if Hegseth needed a new office at the Pentagon, it should be for
“figuring out how to win this war in Iran.”
On January 22, five
weeks before the US bombing of Iran began, 149 House Democrats voted for
the $839 billion military appropriations bill. On September 16, 58
House Democrats voted for the Russia sanctions bill, since signed by
Trump, which also extends sanctions on Iran through 2031.
Thousands of California state workers walked off the job Wednesday,
October 21, demanding higher wages, affordable healthcare and protection
against Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s attacks on remote work. The
one-day strike by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local
1000 expressed deep anger among workers who keep essential public
services operating but cannot afford to live in the state they serve.
In a strike authorization vote held from September 9 through October
7, 96.2 percent of participating members voted in favor, according to
the union. The results were announced October 8, and the union set a
one-day walkout for October 21.
Local 1000 purports to represents
approximately 100,000 state employees, including nurses, counselors,
information technology specialists and office workers. Picket lines were
held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento and other
cities. Workers have been without a new contract since the previous
agreement expired June 30.
World Socialist Web Site
reporters spoke with workers about the conditions driving them into
struggle. Their accounts revealed the gulf between the determination of
the rank and file to fight and a union leadership that limited the
walkout in advance to a single day.
*****
The California strike is part of a developing international movement
of workers and youth against declining living standards, fascism and
war.
In France, mass protests and student mobilizations confront
the Macron government’s repression, while the union confederations seek
to contain the movement within a delayed, one-day action on November 5.
In Greece on Wednesday, teachers, hospital doctors and other public
sector workers joined students in demonstrations across more than 50
towns and cities.
In Mexico, healthcare workers have rejected a
union-backed wage agreement and organized assemblies and protests
against both the union leadership and the government. Volkswagen workers
in Puebla have rejected a second contract pushed by their union. In
Canada, more than 9,000 Stellantis workers voted by 97.3 percent for
strike action against layoffs and the threatened selloff of the Brampton
assembly plant.
Across national borders, workers confront the
same class enemy. Capitalist governments are slashing wages, jobs and
public services to protect corporate wealth and finance war. The
question posed in each struggle is political leadership. Workers need
organizations through which they can unite their struggles and exercise
control over them.
Ashley, a worker with California’s Employment
Development Department, which administers unemployment benefits,
observed that workers around the world “are protesting for the exact
same thing. This is not a coincidence. And until we stand up and until
we do this together, nothing is going to change.”
*****
One of the main demands from workers is an option to continue
telework. Newsom’s four-day office requirement imposes additional
commuting costs and threatens workers’ health, as COVID-19 and influenza
continue to circulate. Last month, he vetoed Assembly Bill 1729, which
would have required written justification for ordering employees to work
in person. The bill had Local 1000’s support.
Michael, a
pseudonym for a worker who spoke to WSWS reporters in San Diego,
criticized the union for diverting opposition to Newsom’s
return-to-office order into an appeal for legislation that Newsom
himself could veto.
“The union has never had any intention of
fighting this,” he said. He explained that workers had been told the
issue would be kept out of the contract and that the union would instead
focus its efforts on Assembly Bill 1729.
“All in all it’s out of the
contract struggle, and a big bait and switch was played on the
workers,” Michael said. He added that the union “puts their effort into
elections more than worker actions.”
The union’s appeals to Newsom
cannot conceal its own responsibility for helping to bring him to power
and imposing his concessions.
As CalMatters reported,
Local 1000 contributed $500,000 to Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign
and another $1 million to defend him in the 2021 recall election.
During his tenure, state employees have faced wage reductions over three
years. Union officials agreed to pandemic-era pay cuts and accepted
another round of wage reductions in 2025, along with deferred raises.
*****
The SEIU bureaucracy works to preserve precisely this political
subordination. Workers are fighting a Democratic administration that has
imposed concessions and rejected their demands. Yet the union
leadership’s strategy is based on appealing to that very same
administration to bargain fairly.
*****
The walkout was the first actual strike in the 44 years since Local
1000’s first collective bargaining agreement in 1982. In 2016, the union
bureaucracy called off a planned one-day walkout despite a 92 percent
vote in favor. Then-President Yvonne Walker declared, “Our goal has
never been to strike.”
Over those decades, immense fortunes
accumulated at the top while workers’ living standards stagnated. A
study by economists Jasper Boll, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman
estimates that average wealth per family among California’s richest
0.001 percent grew 25-fold between 1982 and 2026, after inflation.
Separately, the Public Policy Institute of California found that real
earnings for a median-paid, full-time, year-round worker rose just 7
percent between 1980 and 2023. By March 2026, Oxfam counted 246
California billionaires holding a combined $2.061 trillion. Their wealth
had grown by $487.2 billion in just one year.
The one-day limit
was a decision of the union leadership aimed at having workers “blow off
steam” while they continue to work without a contract, even though
mediation talks between the union and the state are not scheduled to
resume until October 30, nine days after the walkout. Workers’ needs
remain unmet, while the administration has been assured that state
operations will resume.
The union bureaucracy is trying to
undercut the strike by threatening poverty against workers. Its own
strike guidance acknowledges that Local 1000 has a strike fund but
states that it is “not intended to replace workers’ wages during a
strike.” Workers already struggling to pay rent are expected to bear the
loss of income, while the organization that collected their dues and
sent them to Newsom refuses to use this fund to replace their pay.
State
workers occupy a powerful position. Administrative services,
unemployment benefits, healthcare and education depend on their labor.
But that strength must be organized independently of an apparatus that
limits their struggle and ties them to the Democratic Party.
Workers
must form independent rank-and-file committees in every department and
workplace, democratically controlled by workers themselves. These
committees should take charge of demands, strike preparations and
connections with other sections of the working class.
Among their
first tasks should be to restore the principle “No contract, no work”
and prepare the organization and financial support necessary to sustain
it. Workers must demand control over strike resources, livestreamed
negotiations and full access to every proposal. No agreement should be
accepted without publication of its complete text, adequate time for
discussion and a democratic vote of the membership.
*****
Workers who agree with the need to break the control of the SEIU
bureaucracy and the Democratic Party and organize an independent
struggle should contact the WSWS today.
With 10 days remaining before the midterm elections, and the
Republican Party facing likely loss of control in both the House and
Senate, President Donald Trump is intensifying his embrace of violence,
racism and fascist political appeals.
At a campaign rally in South
Carolina Wednesday, where Trump was stumping for Senator Darline Graham, he hailed the violent attack on a protester who sought to heckle
him from the audience. A Trump supporter punched the protester in the
face and then sheriff’s deputies dragged the victim away—not the
attacker.
Trump crowed: “Wow, thank you. That was great—man. Who’s
the guy that threw that punch? You are … The guy stood up, and he just
let that little—and he got whacked. Wow.” The crowd responded by
chanting “Darline” and “USA, USA,” as though the US Constitution did not
contain a First Amendment protecting the right of free speech.
There
were multiple acts of physical violence by Trump supporters against
protesters who interrupted Trump during his 90-minute, typically
meandering paean of self-praise. It is significant that he was heckled
so extensively in a state long dominated by the Republican Party, and
which he carried in all three of his presidential campaigns. Even more
significant was the response of his supporters, openly encouraged by
Trump, who called the protesters “terrible people,” to physically attack
the hecklers.
State police intervened repeatedly to remove anti-Trump protesters, but did nothing to stop the violence by Trump supporters.
*****
Trump also weighed in on the degraded campaign advertisement issued
by the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, tech billionaire Vivek
Ramaswamy, against his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, former state
health director. The Ramaswamy campaign posted an online ad featuring
Acton’s mother denouncing her own daughter as a liar, but it quickly
emerged that Acton has had no contact with her mother for 48 years,
because the mother sided with Acton’s stepfather after he was indicted
for rape of Acton when she was 12 years old.
While media pundits
and many Republicans—including outgoing Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and
Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson—condemned the ad as a vicious
attempt to exploit a family tragedy in which Acton was the child victim,
Ramaswamy has declared he will spend $4 million to run the ad on
television, and both Trump and Vice President JD Vance supported his
action.
Trump enthusiastically endorsed the ad, calling it “pay
dirt” and denounced DeWine for speaking out against it, calling him
“disloyal.” “Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the
mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how
the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and
steals!” Trump wrote on social media.
Acton said in a television
interview that her mother is the one lying. “It’s awful to see her this
way, and it’s even more incredible to see that my opponent has taken
advantage of someone who’s clearly not well, who is older, and this is
totally in line with who he is,” she said.
*****
In neighboring Michigan, Trump and Republican Senate candidate Mike
Rogers have accused Democrat Abdul El-Sayed of being a supporter of the
Muslim Brotherhood and a “jihadist” or “terrorist,” merely because
El-Sayed’s parents are of Egyptian descent and El-Sayed himself, born in
the Detroit area, is a practicing Muslim.
At the final debate in
the Senate campaign, on Wednesday night, Rogers claimed that El-Sayed
had been “bought off” by the Muslim Brotherhood. “Are you for America,
or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?”
The national
Republican Party and pro-Israel lobbies like AIPAC have pumped tens of
millions of dollars into the Michigan race, based largely on appeals to
anti-Muslim bigotry. El-Sayed would be the first Muslim member of the US
Senate.
Alongside encouragement of violence, bigotry and smear
tactics of the lowest order, Trump has directed the Department of
Justice to step up its efforts to disrupt early and mail-in voting in
Democratic-run states. Attorney General Todd Blanche said there would be
more lawsuits like the one filed in California last week, seeking to
force states to use lists of non-citizens created by the Department of
Homeland Security to block voters from casting ballots, even though the
lists have not been verified and are riddled with errors.
Last week, Mamdani released a campaign video on social media in which
he called Hochul “the real deal for New Yorkers.” He said he was
“looking forward to being out there with her on the trail in the weeks
to come” before the November 3 election. The two are expected to appear
together in the final weeks of the campaign.
Republican Bruce
Blakeman is Hochul’s opponent in the gubernatorial race. Blakeman, a
loyal follower of Trump, has been campaigning on a program of tax cuts,
stricter policing and support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE). On the fundamental questions—the police, the defense of business
interests and the attacks on workers—there is little to distinguish the
two. The election, like many others that will be held across the country
in November, presents a choice between two right-wing candidates of the
ruling class.
*****
Hochul is a corporate Democrat of long standing, a former aide to
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who became governor in 2021 when Andrew
Cuomo resigned over allegations of sexual harassment.
In his
campaign video, Mamdani claimed that Hochul “actually fights for working
families in New York.” This statement is an attempt to cover up
Hochul’s anti-labor record. When 15,000 New York City nurses struck in
January, Hochul declared an emergency that allowed the hospitals to
bring in replacement nurses from out of state, three days before the
strike began.
When about 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers
struck in May, Hochul denounced the strikers as “reckless” and “the
highest-paid workers of any railroad in the nation.” About 40,000 New
York City subway and bus workers have been working under a contract that
expired May 15, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which
Hochul controls, is offering raises of 2 percent a year (far below
inflation), and demanding givebacks and higher employee contributions to
health insurance.
Hochul has championed big business, not the
working class. She has repeatedly refused demands to raising taxes on
the rich. “We’re not raising taxes in the state of New York,” she
declared in January, rejecting Mamdani’s own request for a tax on the
wealthy. A week later, he endorsed her. Instead, she has emphasized tax
benefits for real estate developers and other business incentives.
Hochul
has also been a consistent advocate of the police and repression. A
steadfast supporter of Israel and its “right to defend itself,” Hochul
defended the NYPD’s violent clearing of the encampment at Columbia
University in 2024 and offered the State Police to assist. Her
much-publicized ICE law, passed with the state budget in May, does
nothing to stop the raids and arrests carried out by federal agents
across the state.
*****
The mayor also gave his support to Democratic House Minority Leader
Hakeem Jeffries, who seeks to become speaker of the House. Jeffries is a
hawk on Russia, a loyal defender of Israel and an apologist for the
genocide. Mamdani publicly renewed his support for Jeffries a day after
the New York Times reported that Jeffries had met privately
with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, in a White House
effort to find “common ground” with a likely Democratic House.
When
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to New York to address
the UN General Assembly, Mamdani announced that he would not arrest the
war criminal as he had promised to do during his mayoral campaign.
Instead, he oversaw the NYPD’s arrest of 104 anti-genocide protesters
who sat down to block Netanyahu’s motorcade near the UN on September 24.
Moreover, the mayor’s municipal strategy to combat antisemitism
provides millions of dollars to Zionist organizations and equates
opposition to the genocide with antisemitism.
In August, Mamdani
filed suit to block a City Council bill that provides a one-time payment
of up to $10,000 to paraprofessional school aides. These poorly paid
workers assist special education students with significant needs. The
Council passed the bill 49–0. Mamdani let it become law rather than face
an override, and then sued. Compounding the outrage, Mamdani claimed
that the bill violates the Taylor Law, under which pay can be settled
only at the bargaining table. This is the law that bans strikes by
public employees and has sent their union leaders to jail.
But the
most egregious example of Mamdani’s move to the right is his
“partnership” with the would-be dictator Trump. The two have met three
times, at the White House last November, again on February 26, two days
before the US attack on Iran, and on September 21 at Gracie Mansion, the
mayor’s official residence. During a press conference after their
meeting, Mamdani remained silent while Trump said of Iran, “In fact, I
have meetings on that today,” acknowledging that he was planning the
next stage of the criminal war. By hosting Trump, Mamdani lent the
fascist warmonger legitimacy at a time when Trump’s approval rating has
reached an all-time low.
*****
Mamdani’s election reflected opposition to both capitalist parties, as
well as an ongoing process of radicalization. Workers and youth who are
seeking a genuine alternative to capitalism will not find it in the DSA
or any of the other pseudo-left organizations that share its social
base. The working class needs its own party that is rooted in Marxism,
as developed by Lenin and Trotsky and carried forward by the
International Committee of the Fourth International. The Socialist Equality Party is that party, and all workers and youth who seek to
fight inequality, war and dictatorship are encouraged to contact us.
Nearly
1,000 armed private security guards are being rushed into USPS plants
in the final weeks before the midterm elections—into the very facilities
that will process millions of mail-in ballots, and months before the
deepest cuts in USPS history.
Nearly 1,000 armed private security
guards are being rushed into USPS plants in the final weeks before the
midterm elections—into the very facilities that will process millions of
mail-in ballots. Asked what the guards are for, Postal Inspection
Service spokesman Brian Benson did not bother to disguise it: They are
being deployed “to provide security and act as a deterrent to criminals
or employees who may wish to compromise the mailstream.”
They are
not here to protect the mail. They are here to watch the people who move
it. The guards are being pointed at the workforce at the exact moment
the Trump administration is attempting to turn the Post Office into an
instrument of election rigging—and on the eve of the deepest cuts in its
history.
We demand the immediate withdrawal of these armed
private guards. Postal workers must organize against the actions of USPS
management and its armed contractors, report any attempt to violate the
rights of voters or postal workers and respond collectively to stop it.
Why these facilities, why now
Armed
guards have been reported in Denver, at Carol Stream and another
location in Chicago, in Charlotte, and at two facilities in Topeka,
Kansas. The list of targets also includes Atlanta, Indianapolis,
Phoenix, San Diego and Tampa. The pattern is focused on large postal
facilities with a thousand workers or more, especially concentrated in
Democratic-leaning and swing-state cities.
At the Denver
Processing and Distribution Center, workers report that four armed
guards have begun checking employee badges at the entrances, despite the
electronic badge readers that already do that job.
“It’s really
suspicious,” said Claire McKean, a postal contractor and investigative
researcher. “Seeing armed guards deployed in primarily
Democratic-leaning or swing states is alarming.” She put the question
plainly: “How do we know that they’re not going to load all the ballots
into armored trucks with armed security standing by?”
One of the
security firms, Spanish multinational Prosegur, is notorious for human
rights violations. In 2024, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the
largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, excluded Prosegur from its
investments after concluding the company was possibly contributing to
serious human rights abuses through its Brazilian subsidiary, Segurpro.
Among the cases examined by Norway’s Council on Ethics were the following:
A Segurpro guard shot and killed a man suspected of stealing from a railway operated by the mining giant Vale.
Segurpro
personnel were found to have blocked indigenous communities from
reaching their ancestral burial sites, from fishing in the Acará River,
and from traveling to a nearby town for supplies and medical care. They
used rubber bullets, tear gas and batons against roughly 150 people,
injuring about 20.
International labor organizations
have also filed complaints against Prosegur alleging anti-union
practices and violations of workers’ rights in multiple countries.
There
have already been serious incidents involving armed contractors at USPS
facilities. In April 2024, at a regional processing and distribution
center in Charlotte, North Carolina, a private security guard shoved a
female postal worker to the ground and punched her in the face,
according to Miriam Bell, president of the Charlotte Area Local of the
APWU. Another mail handler intervened after seeing the guard reach
toward his sidearm. Management then retaliated against the victim by
putting her on emergency placement in an attempt to fire her, Bell said.
These
armed contractors operate with little oversight. A 2022 audit by the
USPS Office of Inspector General found that 35 of 115 guards examined,
roughly 30 percent, lacked the required security clearances and that
auditors could not verify completion of required training for sampled
guards.
Armed guards and the coming postal cuts
After the
holiday peak season ends, these same armed guards could be used to
intimidate workers in postal facilities who oppose the deepest cuts in
USPS history.
Postmaster General David Steiner has brought in
Alvarez & Marsal, a corporate turnaround firm, to draw up the
cost-cutting plan. Steiner has told Congress that USPS plans to employ
30,000 to 35,000 fewer workers within four years, and to shift the
workforce “more toward pre-career than career” employees. This means
more disposable, low-paid, no-benefits workers.
And that is only
the beginning. The Postal Service’s own Inspector General has floated a
10 percent workforce reduction, roughly 60,000 jobs, alongside fewer
delivery days, the conversion of door delivery to cluster boxes, and the
outsourcing of transportation and retail operations. Management has
already suspended payments into our pension fund and frozen hiring.
Steiner has threatened the closure of “thousands of unprofitable post
offices” and an end to six-day delivery. The date is set: Management has
said it will begin the operational offensive after the New Year.
These
cuts will be wildly unpopular, and management knows it. The Post Office
is the most popular institution in the federal government. The public
does not want its post offices closed, its delivery cut or its mail
slowed. The workers do not want their jobs destroyed. The only people
who want these cuts are the financial oligarchy and the politicians who
serve it.
The conclusion is inescapable: Armed guards are being
moved into postal facilities now, before the cuts begin, to intimidate
the workforce and to be on hand when workers’ anger erupts.
The union knew—and did worse than nothing
The
deployment of armed guards was reported publicly months ago. Yet when
postal workers raised it with the APWU, the union claimed to have “no
solid information” and was “extremely hesitant” to discuss it. At
another facility, when workers pressed their steward for answers, they
were merely told the matter had been “escalated up the proper chain.”
The “proper chain” is the place where our grievances go to die.
The
union bureaucrats are themselves industrial security guards whose job
is to discipline the workforce, to channel our grievances into
procedures that go nowhere, and to prevent any independent organization
of the workers. At the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC),
union officials are preparing to take the next contract to binding
arbitration and imposing it without even the fig leaf of a membership
vote.
So we must not wait for the union officials to act. We must
act ourselves. The Democrats will not stop it: They agree with the
austerity and fear a movement from below more than they fear
dictatorship. The union officials will not stop it: They are integrated
with the very state apparatus that is carrying it out.
The only
force that can stop this is the working class itself, organized
independently of both corporate parties and their enforcers in the trade
union bureaucracy. We call on postal workers in every station and
distribution center to build rank-and-file committees, to share
information across crafts and districts, and to link up with federal
workers, teachers, industrial workers and postal workers around the
world in a unified class movement against dictatorship.
The USPS
Workers Rank-and-File Committee was founded by postal workers in
September 2023 to organize a fight against attacks on jobs, wages and
working conditions, independently of management and the union
bureaucracy. We fight to defend workplace safety, pensions, democratic
rights and the Postal Service as a public institution, and to build a
network of committees through which postal workers can share information
and coordinate action with workers across the country and
internationally.
These are our demands:
1. The immediate removal of armed personnel from our facilities. We
do not need armed men standing over us to “deter” us from compromising
the mailstream. That is the language of a prison, not a workplace. The
mail has been safe in our hands for generations, and it is safe now. The
ones who are the real threat to the mail are the government officials
and managers sending in the contractors.
2. Full disclosure, now.
Who are these guards? What is their training and certification? Who do
they answer to? We demand these answers publicly, not “up the chain”
where our questions have disappeared for months, and not through
unofficial word-of-mouth about rooms being handed over behind our backs.
We refuse to go on allowing management to make these decisions behind
closed doors while the union stands by in complicity, telling us it has
“no solid information.” If the union has no information, that is because
it has not demanded any. We will not accept a union that feigns
ignorance, while armed guards are moved into our plants.
3. No searches, no pat-downs, no surveillance of postal workers. Rooms in our plants are being converted into rooms for patting people down. This must end.
4. No use of security to discipline or escort workers.
Management already violates our Weingarten rights with impunity, with
no accountability and no pushback from the union apparatus. We will not
allow armed guards to become the enforcement arm of discipline—to walk
workers out of the building without union representation, to intimidate,
to escort. Security is not a disciplinary tool.
5. No interference with the mail or with mail-in ballots. As
the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee has already declared: We will
not do it. We refuse to carry out any order to withhold, delay or
“verify” mail-in ballots. We will not be the instrument of the
disenfranchisement of the American people.
If you agree with these
demands, join the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee and help
organize workers at your facility to carry them out.
However
Poilievre’s visit came about, it fits seamlessly into the corporatist,
Canadian nationalist politics of the USW bureaucracy. The union’s
national director, Marty Warren, and other leading officials are among
the most vociferous proponents of the big business-led “Team Canada” in
the ongoing trade war.
On Friday, October 9, the leader of the
Conservative Party of Canada and the official opposition in Ottawa, the
far-right demagogue Pierre Poilievre, showed up on our picket line. This
was a major political event that revealed much about the class
character of the United Steelworkers (USW) bureaucracy and its hostility
to our demands.
For starters, such a visit would had to have been
greenlighted by the USW District 6 and National leadership. Without
assurances from the union, there’s no way a federal politician of
Poilievre’s notoriety would appear on a picket line where he could
expect a hostile reception from workers aware of his notorious record.
Poilievre heads the most right-wing party within the political
establishment. One that in recent years has, like its Republican Party
ally in the US, increasingly morphed into a far-right political
formation. Poilievre is an advocate of corporate deregulation, tax
cutting, the gutting of public services and worker rights, and
militarism and war. Poilievre rose to national prominence as a fervent
promoter of the fascist-led “Freedom” Convoy, whose instigators called
for the establishment of a dictatorial regime to abolish the few
remaining public health measures still in place in early 2022 to combat
the COVID-19 pandemic.
However Poilievre’s visit came to pass, it
fits seamlessly into the corporatist, Canadian nationalist politics of
the USW bureaucracy. The union’s national director, Marty Warren, and
other leading officials are among the most vociferous proponents of
“Team Canada” in the ongoing trade war between Washington and Ottawa.
This propaganda claims that bosses and workers in Canada have the same
interests in the economic conflict with Trump, and that workers must
make “sacrifices,” including by accepting higher prices for basic
necessities and real wage cuts. The bureaucrats in the USW, Unifor and
other unions are more than willing to line up behind even the most
reactionary bourgeois politicians on the basis of flag-waving
nationalism and the defence of Canadian capitalism’s profits. The fact
that this happens on both sides of the border is shown by UAW President
Shawn Fain’s enthusiastic applause for Trump’s “America First” tariffs.
The
picket line visit by Poilievre was part of his “outrage” tour over
Stelco’s decision to lay off 500 workers in Hamilton and Nanticoke.
Cleveland-Cliffs, Stelco’s US owner, has cited the tariffs and
counter-tariffs adopted by Trump and Carney to justify throwing workers
out of a job. The entire political establishment has denounced the
layoffs, not because they’re worried about workers’ jobs, but because
Stelco is one of Canada’s most important primary steel producers and the
ruling class doesn’t want to lose the ability to make their own
weaponry and military equipment to wage war. They also conveniently
ignore the fact that workers in the US face the same demands for
concessions from Cleveland-Cliffs. Some 23,000 US steelworkers have been
kept on the job by the USW since the end of August without a new
contract.
Poilievre responded to Stelco’s decision by announcing a
new leader of his “steel caucus,” Micheal Guglielmin, a former VP of
Operations of Imperial Metal Services. Mr. Guglielmin’s “prescription”
for the problems facing the steel industry, particularly workers, range
from the usual right-wing tax cuts and deregulation garbage, to dealing
with “unfair trade practices” and “Chinese steel dumping,” and “securing
reliable access to steel for Canadian businesses.“
It is a
measure of how far to the right the USW apparatus has moved that
Poilievre’s pro-corporate, pro-war ravings sound like the USW’s own
talking points. Poilievre more or less parroted recent statements by top
USW officials, including a joint statement on the trade war they issued
with Unifor last April. Warren and Unifor’s Lana Payne declared at the
time their support for an “industrial strategy” to “safeguard our
industrial economy,” including “strategic sectors” like “aerospace and
defence.” They urged former central banker and current Liberal Prime
Minister Mark Carney to “flex market muscle” against the US and to
diversify “export markets while enforcing trade rules against unfair
practices—particularly from China.” Making clear their support for the
trade war measures against the US and preparations for military conflict
with China, they added, “Standing up to one source of economic coercion
while ignoring another will not protect our industrial economy.”
We declared in an NSC-RFC statement
in response: “National Steel Car workers and workers throughout all
manufacturing sectors have no interest in being dragooned into Canadian
imperialism’s trade wars and military conflicts.
“The USW and
Unifor’s denunciation of Chinese workers is especially disgusting in
this regard, because China is the target of war preparations on the part
of the US and Canadian governments. Our allies in the fight for
good-paying, secure jobs, affordable food and energy prices and a
contract that guarantees safe working conditions are the workers
labouring under the same conditions as us across the United States and
Mexico, as well as the super-exploited Chinese workers, who serve as a
benchmark to which the corporate elites here want to reduce us to.”
In
this context, workers should consider the comment by Shaun McMullin,
our Recording Secretary, who responded to rank-and-file criticism over
Poilievre’s picket-line visit by saying, “Anybody who can amplify our
message is welcome on the strike line.” This is the same McMullin who a
few weeks ago told strikers to get another job, calling it “an act of
solidarity,” while opposing our committee’s call for an urgent campaign
to rally working-class support for our struggle. And it is the self-same
McMullin who, together with USW Local 7135 President Frank Crowder, has
repeatedly intimidated strikers and physically barred them from talking
to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site, which has given workers a voice to speak out during the strike and supported the building of the NSC Rank-and-File Committee.
The
“message” being put out by McMullin and his pals in the bureaucracy is
not ours. We have no interest in backing a trade war against our
colleagues in the US, nor joining in the military build-up and economic
bullying against China. As one of our fellow strikers put it during an interview with the WSWS earlier in our strike, “There’s a version of me somewhere in Beijing or Moscow or wherever.”
The USW has smeared the National Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee
for, among other things, collaborating with National Steel Car, being a
“scam,” and breaking down “solidarity.” All the while, the USW Local
7135 leadership wants to collaborate with NSC on setting the “incentive”
rates, after hiding behind an arbitrator’s decision to abandon the
rank-and-file’s demand that piecework be abolished. And as Poilievre’s
visit demonstrated, they and the USW top brass are happy to collaborate
with most reactionary, pro-business political forces.
The support
from the union bureaucracies and so-called “left” parties for such
right-wing, anti-worker policies allows Poilievre and the Tories to get a
hearing among workers by fraudulently posturing as friends of the
little guy. For the past 40 years, the unions and their allies in the
New Democratic Party have ensured that the working class has been
politically suppressed. They claim that “progressive” politics consists
of championing the war in Ukraine, tariffs against the US, and
“sacrifices” for “Team Canada,” i.e., to pad the bottom lines of
Canada’s corporations, banks, and financial oligarchs at our expense.
To
win our strike, we urgently need a radically different strategy. We
shouldn’t be looking for allies in the political establishment,
corporate boardrooms, or the USW head office, but among workers in
Hamilton and across Canada, in the US, and internationally, all of whom
confront the same attacks on their jobs and living conditions that we
do. The National Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee calls for:
The
unification of our strike with the struggle of workers at Stelco
against layoffs, and the 23,000 workers at US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs
south of the border who the USW have been forcing to work on contract
extensions for nearly two months.
The rallying of support from
railway workers across North America to refuse to handle all NSCX-marked
rail cars, that is the cars NSC owner Greg Aziz leases so he can
continue making profits during our strike.
The expansion of the movement to the 9,000 Stellantis workers in Windsor, Brampton, and Etobicoke, who voted last weekend overwhelmingly for strike action against plans to sell off the Brampton Assembly Plant and lay off workers on the third shift in Windsor.
An
appeal to the more than 250,000 education workers across Ontario
working without contracts, thousands of whom will join rallies this
weekend, to link their fight for real-wage increases, job security, more
staff in schools and billions to upgrade dilapidated schools with our
struggle for decent wages and a safe workplace.
The development
of our strike as the spearhead for a continent-wide working-class
industrial and political counter offensive against war and trade war,
austerity and the gutting of worker rights, and for decent-paying, safe
and secure jobs for all.
It’s time to build the National
Steel Car Rank-and-File Committee to break our strike out of the
isolation imposed by the USW apparatus. It should be constructed as part
of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees in a
decisive repudiation of the nationalism and pro-corporate toadying of
the USW bureaucracy, which boasts of heading an “international” union
while doing everything to divide workers in Canada and the US.
We
need committee members from every shift and department to form
delegations to go to visit workers at Stelco, Stellantis and other
worksites to fight for a broad-based worker-led industrial and political
mobilization in Canada and throughout North America against the ruling
elite’s onslaught on our jobs and living conditions. Contact us at
nscrfc@gmail.com or fill out the form below to join the fight.
The contracts for around 23,000 steelworkers
at US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs expired on September 1, but the United
Steelworkers have kept them on the job, first on a 30-day extension and
then on continuous 48-hour extensions.
The bureaucracy is holding
workers back from a struggle even as companies demand huge givebacks.
Cleveland-Cliffs has sought monthly healthcare premiums, higher
deductibles, an increase in workers’ coinsurance from 10 to 20 percent
and the elimination of incentive plans. U.S. Steel’s September 30
proposal included doubled deductibles, higher copays and compulsory use
of vacation during family and medical leave. The company’s last publicly
posted offer, dated October 9, advertised a pathetic 19.3 percent
compounded wage increase over five years. It submitted another offer
October 20, whose full terms remain unpublished.
At Cliffs’ Stelco subsidiary in Hamilton, Ontario, layoffs have begun as management idles cold-rolled and coated finishing operations.
Roughly 350 production workers face job losses, with the total
potentially reaching 500. The USW backed Cliffs’ 2024 takeover, complete
with employment assurances to the Canadian government. Workers can keep
those assurances with their layoff notices.
Yet in the midst of
all of this, and with a bargaining recess until October 28, many USW
officials last week joined management in a quarterly safety conference
in Ohio, with travel, expenses and earnings paid by management under the
labor agreement.
“We’ve made important gains on health and safety
... this conference gives us another opportunity to build on our
progress,” the USW declared in a statement reported by the Mesabi Tribune.
But
less than three weeks earlier, on September 27, machinery at Cliffs’
Monessen coke plant killed Jeffrey Smith, 53. On October 9, Henry Antonio Marmol Martinez,
52, was crushed to death at McWane Ductile in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.
In August 2025, Timothy Quinn and Steven Menefee died in a catastrophic
explosion at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works in Pennsylvania, where
investigators subsequently documented years of unsafe practices and
inadequate training.
Earlier editions show the character of these
gatherings. Cliffs’ 2024 sustainability report described approximately
180 company and union participants reviewing corporate safety
statistics, attending training breakouts and hearing a keynote on
leadership and safety. There was also a safety expo. Vendors have been
invited to market products at the conferences: Cliffs employee Jawan A.
Smith shared a vendor-registration invitation on LinkedIn. An exhibitor
list for the October 2026 meeting has not been published.
The USW
already announced tentative agreements with Cliffs on safety and
training on September 12, claiming, among other things, stronger company
training obligations, but supplied no agreed clauses.
What this
means is not stronger protections against management abuse, but a
strengthening of the “labor-management” safety and training framework
which finances paid union assignments and gives the apparatus a direct
role in administering millions of dollars in company-funded programs.
On October 19, Phillips 66 locked out 385 workers at its Bayway
refinery and Linden terminal in New Jersey after they rejected the
company’s latest contract offer. The workers, members of Teamsters Local
877, had voted down a tentative agreement 196 to 160 during a contract
extension. When the extension expired at 4 p.m. that afternoon, they
were barred from the plant.
Bayway, which processes 275,000
barrels of crude oil a day, is the largest refinery on the East Coast.
The lockout follows the course set by BP at Whiting, Indiana, where more
than 800 workers have been locked out since March 19, and by Marathon
at Martinez, California, where about 120 workers have been kept out
since April. In each case, the company has kept the plant running with
managers and replacement labor while it seeks to impose job cuts and
concessions on an isolated workforce.
The lockout is a corporate
offensive aimed at imposing massive concessions. Perhaps the most
significant is the proposal to increase the probationary period for new
hires from 10 months to as long as six years by tying probation to a new
qualification system.
This would keep a large section of the workforce in a state of permanent insecurity, able to be dismissed without recourse.
*****
The lockout has now removed experienced refinery workers from the
facilities, including about 120 members of the refinery’s fire brigades
and oil spill response team, leaving management to rely on supervisory
and technical personnel to keep operations running. The danger is such
that Linden’s mayor, Derek Armstead, has raised concerns about emergency
response capabilities and asked the company for a briefing on emergency
staffing, fire suppression and hazardous materials procedures.
Bayway
Vice President Donald Susanen brushed the concerns aside, insisting
that the facilities continue to operate “with properly trained and
qualified personnel” and that “the refinery remains fully staffed with
no reduction in roles or responsibilities.”
The record gives no
grounds for such assurances. In January 2024, a fire at Bayway injured a
worker. In July 2025, a storm-related power outage forced a partial
shutdown, and the refinery’s sewer system leaked oil into Morses Mill
Creek. In August 2025, a fire in the fluid catalytic cracking unit cut
gasoline output.
During the BP Whiting lockout in Indiana, the
first four months under replacement crews saw four flaring events, a
fire and a major power outage. During one flaring event on April 26,
workers inside were told to shelter in place, while nearby residents and
the locked-out workers were not notified.
The lockout comes as
Phillips 66 is reaping enormous profits, in large measure due to the
surge in fuel prices driven by the US-Israeli war against Iran. In the
second quarter of 2026, the company reported earnings of $3.85 billion,
up from $207 million in the first quarter. Its refining segment alone
made $3.06 billion before taxes. On July 31, 2026, it authorized an
additional $10 billion in share repurchases.
*****
The union’s response to the lockout has been to confine the struggle
to the channels it controls. On October 21, it filed an unfair labor
practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging
refusal to bargain and coercive conduct. It has maintained pickets and
said negotiations will continue. But there is no announced plan to
mobilize other Teamsters locals or refinery workers nationally in
coordinated industrial action.
Workers at Whiting and Martinez
have faced the same isolation at the hands of the United Steelworkers.
In February, the USW signed a national pattern agreement for refinery
workers granting 15 percent over four years, far below the 25 percent
workers had voted for, and it has left each local to fight on its own.
The
lockout must be ended immediately. The company’s demands for
concessions must be rejected. The workers must defend safe staffing
levels, full training and qualification protections, and their wages and
benefits.
*****
The workers must take the fight into their own hands by forming
independent rank-and-file committees, outside the control of the union
apparatus, to organize the struggle. These committees must reach out to
workers at the Linden terminal and the contractors throughout the wider
Bayway complex, to the locked-out workers at Whiting and Martinez and to
refinery workers in Paulsboro, Delaware City and across the East Coast.
They should demand that the Teamsters pay full benefits from the
union’s strike fund to every locked-out worker.
Above all,
rank-and-file committees would break the isolation in which every one of these struggles is being fought. The workers at Bayway, Whiting and
Martinez face the same demands, the same attacks by management and are
confronting union officials who work to keep them divided. The fight at
Bayway is a battle in a nationwide drive by the oil companies, and it
can only be won by breaking out of the isolation imposed by the union
apparatus and uniting refinery workers across companies and regions.
The vulnerabilities, collectively labeled PHP2Shell, are tracked as
CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619. Both received a critical industry
severity score of 9.2 out of 10, and both can potentially allow an
attacker with no password, account or direct access to a machine to run
commands remotely on a vulnerable server.
*****
For an ordinary user, the practical danger is straightforward. A
malicious visitor might send specially constructed requests to a
website, seize control of the limited account used to run its web
service, steal information visible to that service, install malicious
software, alter material or shut the site down. The Singapore Cyber
Security Agency warned that successful exploitation could enable
“unauthenticated remote code execution”—the technical term for an
outsider causing a computer to run code of the attacker’s choosing.
The
flaws affected PHP releases from version 5.4 through 8.5.11. Systems
based on PHP 8.1 or earlier were in a particularly precarious position:
those releases had already reached end-of-life and were not receiving
new fixes from the PHP project. These include systems running software
that is up to 14 years and seven months old.
The crisis exposed
the degree to which basic public services are dependent upon shared,
frequently outdated software components. Rather than risk allowing
attacks into public-facing systems, agencies across Europe took services
down while emergency updates were installed and systems were checked.
*****
Media reports indicated that the crisis did not consist of one
centralized failure that could be timed from beginning to end, but a
series of emergency withdrawals of public and commercial services as
separate organizations raced to assess exposure, install fixes and
restore operations.
The PHP project released emergency versions of
its software at about 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. The project
urged users to update immediately. Patching was not automatic, however,
and required action by each organization, hosting provider or systems
administrator.
AI was central to both the discovery of the
vulnerabilities and fears about their weaponization. Security firm Calif
found the defects during an OpenAI-funded examination of PHP using
OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol model, while Google-owned Wiz independently
reported finding the flaws using AI systems including Google’s Gemini 4
Argon and GPT-5.6 Sol.
*****
The PHP crisis follows a series of internet-scale emergencies in which a
defect in a broadly shared component has disrupted millions of people
or placed vast quantities of data at risk. Such events repeatedly expose
the contradiction between the social character of digital
infrastructure and its subordination to private ownership, competitive
advantage and cost-cutting.
Sunday, October 18, marked one month since Sahil Wakode, a
22-year-old second-year BTech student at the Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Bombay, took his own life in despair. Wakode was found
dead in his hostel room on September 18, hours after he was allegedly
caught using his phone during a mid-semester examination. He was the
third student to die by suicide at IIT Bombay this year, and the tenth
across the IIT system in 2026.
To mark this tragic day, Wakode’s
parents, Ravindra and Sonali Wakode—who have been waging a hunger strike
at Azad Maidan, some 30 kilometers from the IIT Bombay campus—attempted
to revisit the institute to seek accountability from its
administration. His father submitted a letter to the Registrar. Instead
of showing the slightest sympathy to the distraught parents and to the
students who had maintained a month-long protest at the “Justice Corner”
just outside the institute’s main gate, the IIT Bombay administration
unleashed the police.
More than 100 Mumbai Police personnel,
together with IIT security, private security staff and plainclothes
operatives, descended on the campus. The visiting parents were detained
along with 22 students at the protest site. The police then proceeded to
demolish the protest site. The arrested protesters were taken away in
two buses, all of them subsequently released. Students alleged that the
first round of detentions began around 2 a.m., when police vans first
entered the campus. When protesters began recording the police, they
were detained. A second round of detentions followed after the students
resumed their sit-in.
The protesters described a brutal police
assault. “They kicked us. They literally kicked us in the stomach. My
pants were entirely torn. There was hair-pulling and choking, and I was
pulled by my neck. The policewoman hit me on my head,” one student
recounted. Several protesters sustained bruises and other injuries.
Deepali Salve of the All India Independent Scheduled Castes
Association (AIISCA), who participated in the protest, alleged that
police assaulted demonstrators during both rounds of detentions, denied
medical treatment to injured students, and prevented them from
contacting others.
The police violence unleashed against
protesters by the IIT Bombay administration replicates, on a smaller
scale, the violent response of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government
to recent protests by workers and youth in Delhi and its industrial
suburbs. Draconian repression has now become the norm as noted in an earlier WSWS article.
So far this year, three students at IIT Bombay, including Wakode, have
died by suicide, yet the institute’s administrators have shown not an
iota of contrition or made any sincere effort to investigate these
deaths.
*****
Wakode was a Dalit, and his parents have alleged caste-based
discrimination and harassment by Professor Suryanarayana Doolla, who
reportedly seized Wakode’s paper, escorted him from the examination hall
and threatened him with suspension before any disciplinary committee
could examine the matter. The corporate media and various “left” and
lower-caste rights groups have seized upon the caste dimension and
proclaimed it the central issue.
Caste discrimination is endemic
in India and even in elite institutions it is present at least in
indirect form. But the fixation on the caste allegation is reactionary,
as it detracts from the central problem: the oppressive academic
atmosphere and the practice of pitting students against one another in a
relentless competition for grades that prevail at the IITs.
The
caste framing, promoted by the bourgeois parties and their pseudo-left
hangers-on, divides students along caste lines and obscures the fact
that the brutal pressure of the examination-and-grading regime bears
down on all students, regardless of caste. It substitutes an
identity-based grievance for a Marxist class-based analysis, and thereby
disarms the students before the very system that is crushing them.
IIT
Bombay, like every other educational institution, is geared towards
supplying skilled labour to capitalist enterprises, so as to ensure they
are “competitive,” i.e. profitable. The students are overwhelmingly the
children of aspirational middle-class families. Many of them have
poured their life savings into their children’s coaching, beginning as
early as the eighth grade, to prepare them for the grueling entrance
examinations. Once admitted to the IITs, students face immense pressure,
and many experience severe mental stress.
The IITs are, as one
recent graduate put it, a pressure cooker. As many as 73 IIT students
died by suicide or unnatural death between September 2021 and August
2026. IIT Kanpur’s estimated suicide rate of 19.8 per 100,000 students
is higher even than Japan’s, the highest among college students in the
world.
*****
Under capitalism, the right to a free, quality education at all levels,
including university, is not a basic democratic right. Education is a
commodity, rationed by the ability to pay and by the needs of the profit
system, in which everything must be done rapidly because “time is
money.” The ruling class has no interest in the intellectual development
of the mass of young people; it requires only a thin layer of
technically trained labor to staff its corporations, and a vast reserve
army of the unemployed to discipline the rest.
*****
The protests over Wakode’s suicide have taken place within the
context of a broader movement that has seen millions of Indian youth
join protests in recent months—first over the BJP government’s corrupt
management of the brutal university entrance-exam system and more
recently against the Modi government’s attempt to purge the electoral
rolls of millions of impoverished working people, especially Muslims and
Dalits.
This is itself part of a wider youth radicalization.
In France, secondary school students have been blockading their schools
since mid-September, protesting overcrowded and dilapidated classrooms,
teacher shortages and the Parcoursup admissions system. These protests
have unfolded as the government implements €54 billion in austerity
measures while directing tens of billions of euros toward military
spending in a reckless drive toward war with nuclear-armed Russia.
*****
Everywhere, the anger of young people is directed against the same
social injustices produced by crisis-ridden capitalism: austerity,
social inequality, police repression, anti-immigrant and communal
reaction, militarization and war. Everywhere, the ruling class and its
state answers with the same brutality.
The critical question
facing young people opposed to the social catastrophe being produced by
capitalism is to turn to the working class. It is the working class that
alone has the social power to rally all the progressive elements in
society behind it in a struggle to overthrow the capitalist oligarchy
and reorganize socio-economic life so that society’s resources are used
to meet social needs not enrich the few.
In India, the turn to the
working class means assisting it in breaking free of the Stalinist
parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of
India, and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and
their respective trade union fronts—and building new organizations of
genuine class struggle. The Stalinists are an integral part of the
capitalist establishment. While waving red flags and in the name of
fighting the Hindu supremacist BJP, they have systematically suppressed
the class struggle for decades and subordinated the working class to the
Congress Party, till recently the bourgeoisie’s preferred party of
national government, and a raft of right-wing casteist and
ethno-chauvinist parties that similarly support “pro-investor” reform
and the Indian ruling class’ anti-China military-strategic alliance with
US imperialism. The result has been only to strengthen the Modi-led
BJP, communal reaction and the ruling class as a whole.
The
turn to the working class also means a turn to Marxism. This is because
it is through the assimilation of Marxism, the science of the class
struggle, and its contemporary expression Trotskyism, that the working
class will find the theoretical and political weapons it needs to
overthrow capitalism, emancipate itself, and eliminate war and want.
On Wednesday, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and the
National Union of Social Security Workers (SNTSS) settled on an 8
percent wage package and declared the matter closed. To call it an offer
would be to obscure the force that the government, the IMSS and the
SNTSS are exerting to impose the package upon workers against their
will.
SNTSS Secretary General Rafael Olivos announced that this
time around, the new offer would not even be put to a vote by the rank
and file. Workers had voted down the initial wage package on October 14
by a huge margin, after storming the headquarters of their union on
October 1, organizing stoppages over its head on October 8-10 and
occupying seven of the union’s 37 sections.
Within hours,
rank-and-file workers emphatically rejected the new deal and marched
from the Siglo XXI National Medical Center toward the Zócalo in Mexico
City. Workers also protested in Monterrey, Mexicali, Tijuana, San Luis
Potosí and Xalapa. Workers called blockades outside the Siglo XXI and La
Raza medical centers for Thursday, another national march for October
30 and an assembly of elected delegates for October 31.
Workers
denounced the imposition of a salary increase without their mandate as
an attempt to suppress the movement, chanting “Olivos, get this: the
rank and file is not for sale.” In Mexicali, security guards locked
marchers out of the IMSS regional office. In Tijuana, workers chanted,
“No cotton swabs, no alcohol, just corruption,” and said colleagues had
been reprimanded for speaking publicly about the shortages.
IMSS
Director Zoé Robledo, accompanied by Labor Secretary Marath Bolaños,
announced that the institute’s Technical Council had raised the package
from 6.8 to 8 percent: 4 percent on the base wage and 4 percent on a
rent allowance known as Concepto 11. The rejected package included
increases of 2.9 and 3.9 percent respectively. The new offer therefore
merely adds 1.1 points to the base wage, on which pensions are
calculated, and one-tenth of a point to the allowance.
Robledo
called the package “financially viable,” to be covered by “republican
austerity.” The SNTSS called it “the highest with respect to inflation
achieved in the last 20 years.” In fact, the global figure is no higher
than the 8 percent of 2024 or the 8.1 percent of 2025; it compares
better with inflation only because inflation has eased. Last year the
base wage rose just 3.1 percent, below the 3.76 percent inflation of
September 2025. Against 3.45 percent inflation this September, this
year’s 4 percent is just over half a point in real terms.
The
package came with other promises, including permanent positions for
10,939 temporary workers and 31,700 additional surgeries. None came with
a date, and the “comprehensive plan” has yet to pass a Technical
Council review of its budgetary viability.
Instead of providing a
report on the negotiations to all 37 sections as demanded by workers,
Olivos declared the review settled. He added that the union had held the
October 14 vote “without being legally obliged to do so,” ruled out the
extraordinary national congress workers have demanded since early
October, and said he would not step down “not now, not tomorrow, not
later.”
The government of President Claudia Sheinbaum and her
party Morena set the terms of the deal on the basis of continued
austerity and explicitly stated that it expects the union to enforce
them. On October 20, Sheinbaum asked Robledo for “an exercise in how to
reduce spending in certain areas without affecting IMSS services.” On
Wednesday morning, she declared: “I say it very clearly, the union has
to cooperate with this.”
*****
Rank-and-file workers have rejected the deal, but the union and
government imposed it regardless, calculating that marches and blockades
will not stop the hospitals. The question now is what organizations can
carry the struggle forward.
The election of delegates by shift
and hospital unit is a significant step forward. But replacing Olivos
through a congress held under the SNTSS statutes, with the permission of
the Interior and Labor ministries, would leave workers facing the same
government and legal machinery.
The same holds for the court challenge Soto announced to Proceso,
on the grounds that the deal “has to go through an extraordinary
congress, under the statutes, to be valid.” Workers need new
organizations, not new faces: rank-and-file committees elected in every
hospital, clinic and department, with delegates recallable by those who
elect them, which cannot accept limits, including legal ones, on
organizing and striking outside official union structures.
These
committees must be independent of the SNTSS, Morena and every other
capitalist party. Workers are moving in this direction. “We need to
demand the president’s resignation… Out with Morena!” one wrote. The
expulsion of the PAN from the protests shows that workers broadly know
the alternative cannot be the party whose government imposed the 2007
ISSSTE law privatizing public workers’ pensions.
On this basis,
the ongoing debate over a national strike can be taken up. “One minute
of a national strike could cost lives,” Soto has said. But many among
the rank and file are drawing a different conclusion. “A strike cannot
last more than a few hours; the country would collapse,” one worker
wrote. “Let’s stop being cowards.”
*****
A national strike prepared and led by rank-and-file committees, with
broad support inside and outside the IMSS, could organize emergency care
under workers’ own control while stopping the system that produces the
shortages.
Such committees can open the books of the IMSS and the
SNTSS and link IMSS workers with IMSS-Bienestar and ISSSTE workers,
teachers and health workers internationally through the International
Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. They could also use this
organized power against reprisals like firings.
The IMSS
rebellion is part of a national and international upsurge against social
inequality, austerity and the union bureaucracies and capitalist
government enforcing these policies. Within Mexico this includes
struggles by Volkswagen workers in Puebla, students fighting over safety
and harassment in Mexico City, youth demanding clean water in
Guadalajara and CNTE teachers fighting cuts. And internationally, mass
protests have erupted in France, Spain, Germany, Italy and beyond.
The
demands by workers remain 10 percent on the base wage indexed to
inflation, full staffing and supplies, the restoration of the
defined-benefit pension for every worker and health spending of at least
7 percent of GDP, paid for by halting payments to creditors. Their
realization requires a new political leadership armed with a socialist
program, that means building a section of the International Committee of
the Fourth International in Mexico.
The World Socialist Web Site urges IMSS and IMSS-Bienestar workers who want to build these committees and political leadership to contact us.
One of the very dangerous consequences of global warming is the
growing incidence of wildfires. Not only do they cause extensive
physical destruction, but they put huge quantities of smoke into the
atmosphere, severely impacting human health. This pollution can travel
long distances from the direct effects of such fires, as witnessed
earlier this year in the northeastern US due to wildfire smoke
originating in western Canada and the US.
This smoke includes a
witches’ brew of gases and particles that can have deleterious
consequences for human health. Among these are small particles called
PM2.5, which can penetrate lung tissue and cause respiratory and
cardiovascular harm, including aggravated asthma, decreased lung
function, heart attacks, strokes and increased premature mortality. This
has been known for some time. A less well-known but also dangerous
component of wildfire smoke is ozone, which is a highly reactive
molecule composed of three oxygen atoms (O3), as opposed to naturally
occurring two-atom oxygen—O2.
Ground-level ozone is a secondary
pollutant that is formed by chemical reactions of primary pollutants,
such as nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds, carbon-based
chemicals that easily turn into gas from the liquid phase. Consequently,
ground-level ozone concentration, which is distinct from the ozone
layer in the stratosphere, is sensitive to meteorological factors, such
as solar radiation, temperature, humidity and wind speed, as well as
local land use.
In the upper atmosphere, ozone provides
protection against excessive solar radiation reaching the earth’s
surface. It will be recalled that a number of years ago there was
concern regarding the formation of “hole” in the ozone layer due to the
emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used, among other things, as
refrigerants. These chemicals were then banned.
At ground level,
however, ozone gas has serious negative consequences. It is toxic to the
lining of human airways, not to mention other animals. It is known to
cause asthma among children and heart disease and respiratory problems
in adults. It has been linked to premature death.
*****
With climate change accelerating due to the uncontrolled emissions of
greenhouse gases from human activities resulting in continuing global
warming, the frequency and extent of wildfires caused by the resulting
hot/dry conditions means that the impact of increased ground-level ozone
will rise along with the other negative effects of wildfires in the US.
This is compounded by the projected number of deaths due to particulate
pollution from wildfires. The catastrophic global impact will be
greatly increased by similar conditions around the world. The knock-on
effects, including physical and human, will be immense.
The
deadly impact of a capitalist system intent upon maximization of profit,
by any means necessary, including war and dictatorship, regardless of
the consequences, including its unwillingness and indeed inability to
effectively address global warming, can only be averted through the
combined effort of a united global working class replacing this
putrefying system with socialism.
Facing growing discontent among university staff over job cuts,
declining real wages, rising workloads and deteriorating conditions, the
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) last week issued a report
partially documenting the chronic underfunding of Australia’s 39 public
universities.
It highlighted the fact that federal government subsidies to private
schools totalled $20.6 billion in 2026, almost two and a half times the
approximately $8.4 billion in federal funding provided to the public
universities via the Commonwealth Grant Scheme.
The NTEU’s report
shows that funding per university student has fallen by 10 percent in
real terms since 2013, while funding for private school students has
risen by 25 percent in real terms. A graph in the report indicates that
the gap has widened faster under the Albanese Labor government since
2022 than under its Liberal-National Coalition predecessors.
Between
2013 and 2023, real government funding per university student fell by 8
percent, from $15,290 per student to $14,067 per student. By 2024, the
most recent year for which university funding data is available, it had
fallen to $13,770, a 10 percent decline on its 2013 value.
When
the funding is measured by student headcount, taking into account that
many students study part-time, it fell to $10,038 per university student
by 2023. By contrast, over the decade to 2023–24, real government
funding for private school students rose from $12,225 per student to
$15,262 per student.
By 2024, some university courses, including
in arts and humanities, received as little as $1,236 in annual federal
funding per student—just 8 percent of the average $15,262 in total
government funding per private school student.
But the NTEU report
is silent on Labor’s underlying agenda—the funnelling of more than $50
billion a year, and rising, into military spending in preparation for
war, while gutting social spending, including on public education and
health, spearheaded by the cutting of $38 billion from the National
Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over four years.
Aside from the
pouring of money into private schools, the NTEU report focusses instead
on one aspect of the Labor government’s record—its continuation of the
previous Coalition government’s Job-ready Graduates (JRG) scheme, which
charges students more than $50,000 for a three-year arts or humanities
degree, loading them up with huge debts, while slashing the funding for
universities providing those courses.
Under this scheme, for
example, in 2024 the government per-student contribution for
communications courses was just $1,236 per year—92 percent lower in real
terms than the indexed pre-JRG rate of $15,249.
The report avoids
mentioning, however, that Labor promised during the 2022 election
campaign to abolish the JRG regime, but has since rejected numerous
calls to do so. Also not mentioned is the main reason for Labor’s
stance. Apart from cutting university funding by almost $1 billion a
year, the JRG scheme is designed to try to push students into lower-fee
science and technology (STEM) courses to meet the needs of the military
and employers.
That is completely line with the Albanese
government’s record of transforming Australia into a base for a US-led
war against China, providing the Pentagon and US military companies
access to 110 facilities, and its stated goal of making Australia one of
the world’s top 10 weapons exporting countries.
A release of the toxic chemical glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) late
Tuesday night from a 5,500-gallon tank at the MC Tank Transport terminal
in North Toledo, Ohio, forced nearly 1,000 residents from their homes
and led to a shelter-in-place order affecting tens of thousands of
people.
Schools on both sides of the Ohio-Michigan border closed
Wednesday, including Toledo Public Schools and Bedford Public Schools in
Michigan. Stellantis evacuated the north plant of its Toledo Jeep
complex, which employs more than 4,000 workers, Tuesday night and
canceled both shifts Wednesday. Kuka, Mobis, Mayco and Dana canceled
afternoon shifts.
The city ordered everyone within one mile of the
terminal to evacuate at 10:48 p.m. Tuesday. At 4:24 a.m. Wednesday, it
ordered everyone within three miles to shelter in place, an order
covering more than 50,000 people. Dense fog blanketed the city that
night, slowing the emergency response. Meteorologists said a temperature
inversion and calm winds likely kept the chemical cloud close to the
ground.
The shelter-in-place order was lifted at 5 p.m. Wednesday,
less than 13 hours after it was issued, and the evacuation zone was cut
to a half mile. On Thursday morning it was cut again, to a quarter
mile, and Toledo schools reopened.
The tank had not stopped
leaking. A city spokesperson said Thursday morning that the chemical
“continues to release from a compromised tank but has significantly
slowed.” HAZMAT crews entered the site for the first time that
afternoon. A full assessment of the tank and those beside it had yet to
be done, and the city said its goal was “to transition site control back
to the owner for cleanup.”
At Ottawa River Elementary, outside
the evacuation zone, students reported headaches and a chemical smell in
the hallways Thursday. Toledo Public Schools offered parents a
“voluntary early dismissal” as “a precautionary measure.”
It is
not clear what methodology was used by city officials to determine that
it was safe for residents to return home and send children back to
schools in the area. Many residents expressed skepticism of official
assurances. These concerns recall the aftermath of the East Palestine,
Ohio derailment, where federal agencies used similar technology to declare areas safe.
*****
This is the second serious incident involving dangerous chemicals in
Toledo since the August explosion at Brent Industries, an industrial
dry-cleaning and laundry facility that killed two workers, Heladio G.
Perez, 46, and Mary Allen, 64. In the wake of the explosion and fire,
residents who live near the site reported symptoms including coughing
and wheezing, headaches and sore throats, as well as concerns about air
quality.
In May, a tank holding some 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove, California, overheated and cracked, forcing more than 50,000 people from their homes for five days.
MC
Tank Transport was bought last year by Kenan Advantage Group (KAG),
which calls itself North America’s largest tank truck carrier. KAG has
faced multiple federal workplace safety investigations and enforcement
actions in recent years.
In February 2020, at a KAG terminal in
Cleveland, Ashley Friedman, 30, entered an oxygen-deficient tanker that
had been purged with nitrogen for cleaning and was overcome. Her
co-worker Alan Linder, 60, collapsed trying to rescue her. Both died.
OSHA cited KAG for serious violations related to confined-space
operations, protective equipment and chemical hazard communication,
resulting in a $33,735 settled penalty.
These disasters take place
as the Environmental Protection Agency, the supposed watchdog of public
safety, is being gutted and restaffed with the very people it was
created to regulate. As the WSWS documented in November 2025, the agency’s leadership is now drawn directly from the chemical and petroleum industries.
The
disaster in Toledo is part of a broader assault on the limited health
and safety protections workers won in past struggles. Chemicals that can
cause cancer are moved and stored beside working-class neighborhoods by
companies whose first concern is cost.
The Albanese Labor government has ended free COVID vaccination for
most of the Australian population, removing one of the last remaining
public health protections against the continuing pandemic. Since October
1, COVID vaccinations have cost up to $180 per dose for those excluded
from the free program.
Under the new arrangements, free
vaccination is restricted to people aged 65 and over, Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders aged 50 and over, and adults assessed as
severely immunocompromised, including some cancer patients and organ
transplant recipients.
The imposition of this exorbitant charge,
amid a cost-of-living crisis, will further depress already low
vaccination rates. Prices at pharmacies range from $120 to $180, meaning
a couple could face a bill of up to $360. Millions of workers and their
families, struggling with soaring rents, mortgages and food prices,
face another substantial financial barrier to essential healthcare.
The
government’s narrow eligibility criteria exclude large numbers of
people with chronic health conditions, including younger adults with
cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes and other illnesses
associated with an increased risk of severe COVID outcomes. Healthcare
workers, teachers, retail employees and others repeatedly exposed to
infection will also have to pay unless they qualify for free
vaccination.
The decision exposes the fraud of the official justifications for abandoning public health measures during the pandemic.
*****
The withdrawal of free vaccination is the latest stage in an
anti-scientific assault on public health measures and infrastructure,
carried out by successive governments in the interests of big business.
During
2020–21, widespread public opposition to mass infection and demands
from workers for protection compelled governments to implement measures
to limit transmission. These included limited lockdowns, social
distancing, restrictions on gatherings, mandatory isolation and
quarantine and mask requirements.
These measures were
progressively dismantled as governments subordinated public health to
the demands of big business for the unrestricted resumption of economic
activity. The Albanese government largely avoided the issue during the
2022 federal election campaign before accelerating the removal of
remaining protections after taking office.
Within little more than
a year, virtually all nationally coordinated measures aimed at
suppressing transmission had been abandoned. Through the “National
Cabinet,” Labor and state and territory governments ended mandatory
isolation periods and pandemic leave payments for most workers, forcing
those without adequate sick leave to choose between losing income and
attending work while infectious. Mask requirements were removed from
domestic flights and most public settings.
Access to PCR testing
was drastically curtailed, dedicated testing centers were closed, and
regular public reporting of infections was progressively wound back. No
comprehensive national program was established to improve indoor air
quality through ventilation and filtration in schools, workplaces,
hospitals and other public buildings.
It was the first time workers in universities and polytechs have gone
on strike at the same time, after being offered pay rises well below
the 4.1 percent official rate of inflation. Workers are also protesting
the fact that more than half of all university jobs are now on
fixed-term or casual employment agreements, according to the Tertiary
Education Union (TEU).
Victoria University of Wellington staff are
also demanding that their pension scheme Unisaver divest from
companies, such as Palantir and Elbit Systems, linked with Israel’s
genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Wednesday’s industrial action is part of a growing wave of struggles. It followed a nationwide strike
by 10,000 public sector workers last month. Thousands of firefighters
are also continuing to hold one-hour strikes twice a week in opposition
to real wage cuts and underfunding.
Internationally, workers are
entering into major struggles against soaring living costs, austerity
and imperialist war. Mass protests have erupted across France, Spain and
Italy, where workers are demanding general strikes.
With an
election looming on November 7, both the National Party, which leads the
right-wing coalition government, and the main opposition Labour Party,
have pledged to cut overall spending, while pouring billions of dollars
into the military to prepare for war.
On October 18, the day after as many as 800,000 students and workers
marched across France against crumbling schools, budget cuts and the
rising cost of living, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele posted a
message on X, written in French, telling the French ruling class to
follow his example.
“I have heard it said that France is finished,
that it is too late to save it,” Bukele wrote. “But France is still as
beautiful, enviable even.” His own government, he added, “overcame in
one year a problem a hundred times more serious, without the means that
France has. France could do it in a week.”
Bukele did not name the
“problem.” The one achievement his government claims is the suppression
of gang violence through a permanent state of exception, in force since
March 2022, that suspends constitutional rights, deploys troops
domestically, and has put more than 90,000 people in prisons infamous
for torture. Human rights groups have documented between 458 and 570
deaths in state custody.
Applied to France, the formula means
treating hundreds of thousands of high school students, teachers and
other workers as gang members.
Bukele’s post came the same day
Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that “France is burning!” and
urged, “close your borders and take control, before it is too late!” Two
days later, he described the French events as a “full-on revolution”
that could be countered only with mass deportations.
The movement
in France, which began in mid-September at a high school in the Paris
suburb of Créteil, is part of an international upsurge of workers and
youth. Across Europe, mass protests against austerity, inequality and
war have broken out in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Greece
and Albania. In Latin America, national strikes and mass marches have
confronted the governments of Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia,
Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica in the past two weeks alone.
The same global capitalist crisis loaded onto the backs of the working class is producing social explosions everywhere.
Every section of the political establishment across Latin America has
prepared for this moment by adopting the Bukele model, that is,
normalizing states of emergency, criminalizing opposition, deploying the
military, building mega prisons and building up the repressive
apparatus.
*****
Bukele's post, however, came as his own model shows its limits. Under
a $1.4 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund, his
government has laid off an estimated 15,000 public sector workers since
2024. Between October 15 and 17, Bukele announced that 10,629 prisoners
he now calls “casual collaborators” of the gangs could be released
early, and on October 20 his security minister presented a 2027 budget
that cuts more than $25 million from the National Civil Police and
freezes spending on the overcrowded prisons.
This is the old
problem of “guns and butter,” where Latin American governments are
strained to finance either. A report on the regional economy issued by
the Bank of Spain on October 20, summarized by El País, found
that “security” has displaced growth and development at the center of
government agendas over the past four years, even as the same
governments cut taxes for the wealthy. They are doing so with ever less
room to maneuver.
Public debt stands at historic highs, deficits
exceed 5 percent of GDP in Mexico and Colombia and reach 9.4 percent in
Brazil, with interest payments alone absorbing huge chunks of the GDP.
Every new police unit and prison must be paid for at the expense of
social spending.
In a region so dependent on foreign capital and
the world market, each new global shock will be passed on to workers
through cuts and inflation. Out of the deepening crisis of world
capitalism, the ruling elites on both sides of the Atlantic have nothing
to offer workers and youth but dictatorship, fascism, war and
relentless attacks on living standards.
The working class, which
today is larger, more internationally interconnected and objectively
powerful than ever before, must build a global movement, with complete
political independence from every faction of the ruling class and union
bureaucracy, to overthrow the capitalist profit system and establish
world socialism.
Prime
Minister Andy Burnham’s Labour government has announced the dispatch of
Royal Air Force (RAF) Typhoon fighter jets to support Saudi Arabia’s
war on Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. It is Burnham’s first
major military deployment since becoming prime minister.
The
Ministry of Defense (MOD) announced Monday that RAF Typhoon fighter jets
would take part in a “defensive” mission to protect Saudi airspace and
critical infrastructure against missile and drone strikes by the
Houthis.
The MOD’s “operational update” said that an RAF A400M would be sent
“to support the movement of defense materiel within Saudi Arabia”, UK
military advisers would be deployed “to support Saudi staff officers,”
and air-to-air refueling support would be extended for another 90 days.
In
recent weeks, Houthi rebels have launched drone and ballistic missile
strikes on key energy, aviation, and military infrastructure inside
Saudi Arabia. King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was struck on
October 10, killing 13 people. In September, the Houthis captured
Yemen’s southwestern coastal towns of Mokha and Dhubab and Perim and
Zhugar islands, giving them control of entry and exit points to the Red
Sea.
Defense Secretary Wes Streeting portrayed Britain’s military
support for the blood-soaked Saudi monarchy, a key UK ally in the Middle
East, as a humanitarian mission. Having enabled Israel’s genocide in
Gaza for more than three years, Streeting told the BBC, “When civilians
are under attack, we have a responsibility to respond.” He declared that
RAF planes would “shoot down those rockets and missiles that have been
causing hundreds of civilian casualties.”
Britain’s claim that
RAF assets will be used only for “defensive” actions is absurd on its
face. Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s
College London, told Time magazine that Britain’s Voyager refueling aircraft “basically allows the Saudi Air Force to stay in the
air over Yemen for longer without having to fly a single sortie and
then return to base. It increases the operational tempo in terms of
targeting strikes.”
Speaking in parliament, Streeting underlined
the geostrategic and economic interests underpinning Britain’s military
deployment: “The Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait are among the world’s
most important maritime trade routes. We cannot allow international
shipping to be threatened or held to ransom.” He told MPs, “Continued
instability risks disrupting global trade and energy supplies”, and that
support for Saudi Arabia “is firmly in the United Kingdom’s national
security and economic interests.”
*****
British imperialist interests in Yemen reach back to the nineteenth
century. The British East India Company captured the port of Aden in
1839, as a coaling station for steamships travelling between Britain and
India. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, jointly owned by France
and Egypt, transformed the Red Sea into a primary global trade artery.
Britain bought Egypt’s 44 percent share in 1875. It sought to control
the Bab al-Mandab Strait, establishing Aden as a British protectorate.
The
boundaries of the protectorate were codified on the eve of World War I,
when Britain and the Ottoman Empire agreed on a “Violet Line”
separating British-protected South Yemen from Ottoman-ruled North Yemen.
After World War I and the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Britain
consolidated control over the south to protect its maritime trade
routes. In 1937, Britain made Aden a Crown Colony, and control over the
broader hinterland was maintained through a savage policy of “Air
Control”, with RAF bombing raids against dissident villages and tribes.
By
the late 1950s and 1960s, after Britain lost Suez and Iraq, Aden became
headquarters of Britain’s Middle East Command. But the rising tide of
anti-imperialist struggle across the Middle East and North Africa forced
Britain to relinquish control of Aden in 1967.
The US-led war on
Iran launched on February 28 has set the entire region ablaze,
destabilising the Persian Gulf states and opening a new scramble by the
European imperialist and regional powers for control of territory,
resources and geo-strategic influence.
France has deployed troops,
radar units, and air defense systems to Saudi Arabia. President
Emmanuel Macron held talks on Wednesday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman in Riyadh, pledging “full support” for war on the Houthis,
while Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot met his Saudi counterpart Prince
Faisal bin Farhan on Monday, where they discussed bilateral relations
and the need to protect “freedom of navigation”.
Italy announced
the deployment of warships to the Red Sea on September 17, with Foreign
Minister Antonio Tajani claiming that Italy was “not at war.” After an
Italian F-2000 aircraft sustained damage during a Houthi strike on Taif
Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto declared that
Rome would not wait for a joint EU decision to act.
Greece has
deployed military force, including the Greek-operated Patriot Missile Defense System in the Yanbu region of Saudi Arabia. Greece commands
Operation Aspides, the naval mission protecting commercial shipping in
the Red Sea on behalf of the European Union.
Egypt is rapidly
mobilising military assistance, including air defense systems and combat
aircraft, while ruling out the deployment of ground troops inside
Yemen.
Turkey and Pakistan signed a Mecca Joint Defence Agreement
with Saudi Arabia on August 7. The pact mirrors NATO’s collective
security provisions, treating an attack on one member as an attack on
all. Following this month’s strikes by Houthi rebels on Riyadh airport
and on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facility, the alliance was formally
activated, triggering rapid “defensive” deployments by Pakistan and
Turkey.
Professor Sohail Ahmad, an international relations analyst
at COMSATS University Islamabad, noted this week that while Egypt was
intervening to defend its interests in the Red Sea, including Suez Canal
revenues, “The strategic danger lies in alliance entrapment. Defensive
cooperation involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Türkiye does not
mean these states share identical objectives or are committed to
offensive operations inside Yemen. Yet an attack on deployed personnel
or critical infrastructure might create pressure for retaliation,
turning a limited security commitment into a wider military obligation.”
The
situation resembles World War I, when a complex system of alliances
rapidly transformed a local conflict into a worldwide military
conflagration. Amid an expanding regional war, the unpredictable actions
of the US against Iran and the recklessness of the European powers, the
distinction between defensive and offensive military deployment can be
obliterated in seconds.
Burnham’s deployment to Saudi Arabia on behalf of British imperialism
underscores Labour’s role as the party of war. On July 22, less than 48
hours after becoming prime minister, Burnham had approved US fighter
jets launching airstrikes on Iran from UK bases, a clear escalation of
the “defensive” military involvement greenlit by his predecessor, Keir
Starmer.
Striking teachers, hospital doctors and public sector workers marched
alongside tens of thousands of school and university students in more
than 50 towns and cities across Greece on Wednesday. The protests are
part of an upsurge of the class struggle across Europe.
The
primary teachers’ federation, DOE, called a 24-hour strike, while the
secondary teachers’ federation, OLME, held a three-hour stoppage from 11
a.m. to 2 p.m. The public sector union federation ADEDY called a
stoppage from 11 a.m. to the end of the shift, and hospital doctors in
the OENGE federation staged a nationwide strike. Workers throughout
Greece’s cultural sector held a 24-hour strike. Five-hundred pensioners
rallied in Athens’ Kotzia Square before marching to the Health Ministry.
*****
As in France, Belgium and Spain, the movement is dominated by young
people, driven by the slashing of education spending and the intolerable
rise in the cost of living. On Tuesday evening, students pitched tents
in Syntagma Square, Athens, and in Thessaloniki and Patras under the
banner, “Greece and France, uprising everywhere—the same problems, the
same enemy.”
One banner in Athens read, “From Greece all the way
to France we are fighting for free education”. In solidarity with youth
and students fighting the Macron regime, others held up placards in
French reading, “To study or to survive; Beauty is in the street” and
“The world is ours”.
Millions of workers remain poor long after
Greece’s debt crisis and the 2009–2018 peak years of a savage austerity
offensive. Reuters noted that the average monthly salary of €1,500
“remains stuck at the 2009 level.”
*****
The union leadership has called just one full nationwide strike this
year, on February 28, and will not hold another until November 25. The
private sector General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) did not
strike, and its website makes no mention of this week’s protests.
From
2010, GSEE and ADEDY called dozens of one-day general strikes aimed at
allowing workers to let off steam, while negotiating with successive ND
and PASOK governments as they imposed austerity. In 2015, they propped
up the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras, which trampled on the
referendum vote against austerity and imposed even more brutal
austerity.
Today Syriza—which has collapsed to 2 percent in
latest polls—dares to describe the protests as “oxygen for democracy”
when it bears direct responsibility for the conditions confronting
workers and youth.
NATO announced on Tuesday that it will send additional forces to the
Black Sea, citing mounting military attacks on commercial shipping. This
move marks a dangerous escalation of NATO’s war against Russia over
Ukraine.
The announcement followed a meeting on the Black Sea in
Brussels of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political
decision-making body. US Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, a NATO military
spokesperson, said, “Allies have or will send additional maritime patrol
aircraft, radar systems, explosive exploitation teams, intelligence
personnel, drones, and more to the Black Sea.”
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said, “NATO has already strengthened
our posture along the eastern flank, including with counter-drone
capabilities. We will continue to stand united and ensure that we are
ready and able to address any threat and to keep our one billion people
safe.”
On Tuesday, Bulgaria confirmed that a US P-8 Poseidon
reconnaissance aircraft had begun patrolling the Black Sea. France
reportedly sent a maritime reconnaissance aircraft to Romania on October
18.
NATO’s escalatory moves came in response to demands from
Romania and Bulgaria, the two members of the alliance on the western
coast of the Black Sea. On October 6, two commercial vessels were struck
by naval and aerial drones in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ),
roughly 70 nautical miles east of the coast at Byala. It was the first
recorded attack in Bulgaria’s economic zone. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan sank and 10 sailors remain unaccounted for.
On October 14, the Comoros-flagged tanker Yara J
was hit by a drone attack in Romanian territorial waters near Sulina.
On October 17, Romania claimed that its F-16s had shot down two drones
that had entered its territorial waters. According to The Maritime Executive,
at least eight attacks on commercial vessels have been recorded in the
western Black Sea this month, excluding attacks on Ukrainian ports: four
off the Romanian coast and four in Bulgaria’s EEZ, with between 23 and
27 sailors reported dead or missing.
Bulgaria, Romania and NATO
have not been able to establish that Russia is responsible for these
attacks. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said that “There is no
logic in Ukraine attacking its own ships and crews, given that the
outcome of all these attacks favors Russia — and indeed, the logic
points in that direction,” adding, “The problem is that we cannot prove
it.”
There is a very clear logic pointing to Ukraine possibly
carrying out such attacks: as the latest decision to reinforce the Black
Sea shows, such provocations are accelerating NATO’s preparations for
direct war with Russia.
*****
NATO’s Black Sea deployment comes as the European NATO powers
reaffirm their commitment to full political, military and financial
support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. This includes Ukrainian
military strikes deep inside the country and plans to blockade Russia’s
Baltic coast, including the strategic territory of Kaliningrad.
Last
Saturday, Ukraine attacked St. Petersburg with more than a thousand
drones. NATO threats against Kaliningrad in early October prompted
Russia to warn that it would respond with all means, including nuclear
weapons.
The Black Sea, through which roughly a quarter of the
world’s wheat trade flows has become a battlefield, particularly this
year with the targeting of merchant vessels, disrupting that trade and
driving up global wheat prices. According to data from Türkiye’s Chamber
of Shipping (IMEAK), 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been
affected by attacks in the Black Sea since the war erupted in February
2022, 163 of them in the first eight months of this year.
As reported by CBC News,
Ambrey, a British-based firm specializing in global maritime risk,
calculated that there were more than 210 strikes on commercial vessels
only between July and the end of September. It attributed 125 of those
strikes to Ukraine and 88 to Russia. According to Romanian Foreign
Minister Oana Țoiu, the Black Sea has become the most dangerous region
in the world for commercial shipping.
Attacks on commercial
vessels in the Black Sea have escalated dramatically this year, after
NATO leadership signaled in December 2025 that it would back Ukrainian
attacks on Russia’s “shadow fleet.” As the World Socialist Web Sitewrote in March 2026:
The
attacks in the Black Sea are being carried out with NATO’s knowledge
and approval. In early December, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
implied that they had approved such attacks, stating: “We are
strengthening our support for Ukraine and increasing pressure on Russia.
This includes countering Russia’s Shadow Fleet and other measures to
pose strategic dilemmas for the Kremlin.”
*****
Through encouraging strikes deep inside Russia and provocations in the
Baltic and Black Sea, the imperialist powers are seeking to goad the
regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin into a response that would
provide NATO with a pretext to enter the war directly. This underscores
the urgency of building a socialist anti-war movement in the
international working class, opposed to imperialist aggression and
independent of the Putin regime, which defends the reactionary interests
of the Russian capitalist oligarchy.
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.
