u/Spirited_Classic_826

>Are you an aviation industry worker ready to support the building of a rank-and-file committee to launch a fight back against the systematic deregulation of the industry carried out by governments and corporations, and supported by the trade union bureaucracies over the past four decades? Fill out the form at the end of this article to contact us and speak out about your own experiences.

>The death of ramp worker Oscar Robayo at Montréal-Trudeau Airport in late August was the product of systematic deregulation and profiteering across the air travel sector. The 39-year-old was crushed to death by an Airbus passenger jet while performing a routine pushback operation for which his employer, the subcontractor Samsic, failed to follow appropriate safety procedures, according to numerous worker testimonies given to the World Socialist Web Site.

>The semi-privatization of Canada’s airports in the 1990s facilitated the growth of a highly competitive race to the bottom between subcontractors providing ground handling services and other operations at airports. Government deregulation allowed competitors to underbid existing providers by cutting labour costs in a process referred to as “contract flipping,” resulting in ever greater pressure to cut corners and ignore safety rules.

>Montreal Airport provides a clear example of this. It was there in 2023 that Samsic, a multinational provider of “business services” employing over 100,000 people in 27 countries, secured the contract for ground handling services following a “contract flip” that abrogated existing workers’ seniority rights and benefits.

>Interviews by current and former employees at Montreal Airport with the WSWS show that workers complained for years prior to Robayo’s death about the cavalier attitude towards safety shown by Samsic, and the subcontractor’s expectation that workers use broken equipment and violate long-established safety procedures.

>Robayo was crushed because he was forced to stand next to the landing gear of the passenger jet, a violation of standard operating procedure, due to the absence of an extension cable that would have allowed him to communicate with the pilot from a safe distance.

>A retired pilot, John, recently spoke to the WSWS about the transformation of the aviation industry he witnessed over three decades during his career.

>...

>The consolidation of the regionals into a single Air Canada subsidiary in the 2000s was, in John’s account, a cost-cutting exercise dressed up as restructuring. Seniority lists were scrambled, pushing out the highest-paid pilots near retirement, and crew complements were pared to the legal minimum.

>“They changed the rules: on a 37-seat aircraft, one flight attendant; at 38 seats, you had to have two. So they kept it at 37 passengers and one attendant.” The result, he said, was fewer workers, longer hours and lower wages, “which is basically what deregulation does.”

>Despite extensive training and experience, pilots faced dire conditions: “It took a long time for a pilot starting at regional level to actually make a decent salary. I can remember driving cab on my days off just to pay the rent. That was kind of the price to get into the industry at that level.”

>The defining feature of the job, John explained, was the relentless pressures of a schedule determined by constantly shifting market competition—a pressure that flowed directly from the airlines’ need to keep aircraft in the air and generating revenue. “The delays are cumulative,” he explained. A half-hour delay in Victoria meant a late arrival in Winnipeg, which cascaded down the line. “You always had to be on time, or even slightly early, to make that critical departure time.”

>Without constant coordination with ground staff and air traffic control, a crew could lose its departure slot and fall behind. “We’d be constantly talking with ground staff and air traffic control for a departure time, and it just got really, really tough.”

>It was precisely this pressure—the compression of schedules to maximize aircraft utilization and profit—that contributed to the death of Oscar Robayo. The jet on which he was performing the pushback had been delayed in Montreal over the previous weekend due to a technical problem and was already one-and-a-half hours late for its departure to Paris on the day of the fatal accident.

>The industry’s culture, John said, discourages pilots from admitting when they are unfit to fly. “There’s a ‘we can do anything’ mentality—we don’t need sleep, we don’t need food—that World War II mentality. It’s ridiculous.” But when a pilot does develop a medical problem, “There’s no support, no way to proactively deal with it.”

>The individual worker is invariably made to pay the toll with their physical and mental health, and they are made to carry all the responsibility and guilt for safety.

>John pointed to the case of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his crippled plane in the Hudson River. “Immediately they said it was his fault and tried to crucify him, and of course it was proven afterwards that was really the only thing he could have done,” he added.

>...

>At Montreal, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), of which Robayo was a member, lauded its partnership with Samsic management as recently as August 2025 and released a token news release following Oscar’s death that failed even to mention him by name.

>Aviation workers need to build rank-and-file committees, controlled democratically by the workers themselves, to take up the demands of the rank and file and mobilize the industrial and political power of the working class against deregulation and corporate profiteering, and for workers’ control over workplace safety and the aviation industry.

>“Rank-and-file committees are probably the best way to outflank the unions, to be completely independent of all the vested interests,” John said in agreement. He described the camaraderie and pride in craft he saw in the crew rooms—qualities that management exploits but that also point the way forward.

>“The fight against the current—we’re not going to speed up, that’s it. It’s bad enough as it is. Pushing back—the shop floor is the place to do it,” he said.

>Crucially, John insisted, this fight must be political, “Getting workers involved in seeing the political aspect of it, developing that political understanding most of us don’t have when we’re working, I think that’s an excellent way to go.”

>This sentiment could hardly be more timely under conditions in which the Carney Liberal government announced plans to privatize Canada’s four main airports to increase the opportunities for the financial oligarchy to extract profits from the aviation sector.

>The privatization initiative is part of the ruling elite’s class war agenda to subordinate all of society’s resources to enriching the financial oligarchy and mobilizing Canadian imperialism to wage war around the world.

>A key mechanism for the enforcement of Carney’s program is the effective banning of the right to strike, a threat that will be familiar to thousands of airline workers at Air Canada and Westjet who have been on the receiving end of government-imposed strike bans over recent years.

>We strongly urge all workers who agree with the urgency of a rank-and-file mobilization to fight for good-paying, secure jobs, safe workplaces and an end to capitalist deregulation and austerity to fill out the form below to get involved.

>Help build an aviation workers rank-and-file committee to coordinate an industrial and political mobilization of the working class and conduct a workers’ inquiry into Oscar Robayo’s death that will get to the bottom of the conditions behind it and explain what must be done to prevent a repeat of this tragedy.

>Meatpacking workers: Speak out against the Tyson closure in Joslin by filling out the form below. All submissions will be kept confidential.

>About 2,500 workers at Tyson Foods’ beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, face the end of their regular pay on October 12, two months after the company abruptly shut down production. Families who spent decades working at the slaughterhouse are seeking food and clothing assistance, while laid-off workers struggle to find employment in the Quad Cities region along the Illinois-Iowa border.

>Tyson announced the closure on August 13 and stopped slaughter and processing operations that day and the next. Its state filing covered 2,495 employees; it was submitted no more than an hour before the plant’s closure was announced to workers. To avoid running afoul of laws requiring advance notice before layoffs, Tyson agreed to continue paying them for the next two months. Sanitation contractor Fortrex subsequently announced another 103 layoffs at the site.

>Laid-off workers rallied outside the plant after the announcement, demanding a plan either to keep it open or six months of severance. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which represented the Joslin workforce, subsequently signed an agreement committing it to cooperate with the shutdown and oppose actions that interfere with it.

>Tyson cited the historic shortage of cattle in announcing a restructuring of its beef business. It is also closing its facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and pursuing the sale of its plant in Pasco, Washington. The company said it would shift capacity to plants in Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, concentrating production at locations it considers more competitive.

>Despite losses in its beef division, Tyson as a whole remains profitable. In its third-quarter results, released 10 days before the Joslin announcement, it reported $13.87 billion in sales and $362 million in operating income, up 39 percent from a year earlier. It had $4 billion in liquidity as of June 27. Workers are being made to bear the cost of a restructuring aimed at protecting returns to shareholders.

>In its response to the closure, Local 1546 President Robert O’Toole praised the union’s “long-standing and proud union partnership with Tyson Foods.” The plant-closing agreement dated August 18 translated that partnership into binding commitments: The union agreed to cooperate with the closure, refrain from interference and withhold support from others taking such action. If workers interfered, officials were required to publicly disavow the action and order members to stop.

>In return, the agreement provided just one to four weeks of severance, depending on length of service, calculated at 36 hours per week. Even workers with more than 10 years at Tyson received only four weeks. The agreement also contained a broad release of claims against the company, including claims under the federal plant-closure notification law.

>Joslin workers need full wage and benefit continuation, financed by Tyson, and a fight against further closures and layoffs. Rank-and-file committees can unite workers across Tyson and other meatpacking companies, defend immigrant coworkers against raids and deportations, and coordinate actions through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). Workers who built their lives around these plants must have a decisive voice over their jobs and the conditions of production.

>WSWS reporters spoke with former workers and immigrant support organization Akwaaba QC about the closure’s consequences. Many workers have made the region their home, raising families while supporting relatives abroad. The shutdown now threatens to uproot them, while immigration arrests make even the search for another job a source of fear.

>Nana Ouro-Agoro, president of Akwaaba QC, emigrated from Togo in 2008. Akwaaba QC provides language assistance, housing support and help accessing services for immigrants and refugees.

>At a relief center established for displaced Tyson workers, she said the organization was expanding food assistance. She described a couple who came to the organization for food and clothing after working at Tyson for 25 and 23 years respectively.

>...

>She said the number of available jobs, compounded by language barriers, could not meet workers’ needs. Moving elsewhere would mean leaving communities built over many years.

>“When we try to approach them to go maybe out of state, maybe Michigan, JBS in Nebraska ... they don’t want to leave the Quad Cities. They say, ‘We love the Quad Cities. We have our family here.’ This has become home for a lot of people.”

>The Trump administration’s assault on immigrants adds the threat of detention to the loss of employment. Ouro-Agoro reported arrests among Akwaaba’s clients, including asylum seekers with current work permits.

>“The fear is there, especially for asylum seekers. Those who have work permits—They are arresting them! They are detaining them. So we have clients, people who have work permits, who are fearful now: ‘Where am I going to go and find a job with my work permit? I don’t want to go far and be arrested.’

>“We have two clients who have been detained in Iowa ... and then we have one who was detained, and we worked with a lawyer and he was released one month ago. And now I got a call from someone who has been detained in Missouri who needs a lawyer to get released.”

>Workers seeking help after injuries and dismissals at Tyson had repeatedly encountered indifference from UFCW officials, Ouro-Agoro said.

>Five miners were killed and two others were rescued injured on 1 October when a roof collapsed in an underground coal mine operated by İmbat Madencilik in the Soma district of Manisa province, western Türkiye.

>All of the dead—Ramazan İnce (26), Halit Ersay (37), Kerim Ören (37), Ömer Karakaya (34) and İsa Olcay (49)—were members of the Independent Miners Union (Bağımsız Maden-İş). İsa Olcay, who had returned to the mine because he could not make ends meet on his pension, worked in the same mine as his son. Mass marches and funerals were held for the workers. The miners’ deaths were protested in many cities, including Istanbul and Ankara. In Istanbul, police detained protesters with brutal violence.

>This new catastrophe, in the mining basin where the 2014 massacre claimed the lives of 301 miners, is neither an “accident” nor “fate.” These deaths are the product of the profit system, in which production is pushed forward under dangerous conditions, inspections are a formality and profit is placed above human life.

>Miners and their families cannot rely on the company, the state or the bureaucracy of the Turkish Mine Workers Union (Türkiye Maden-İş), which collaborates with them, to hold all those responsible to account. It is an urgent necessity for the miners to launch an independent workers’ inquiry through rank-and-file committees elected by themselves, with the support of experts they trust, and to seek to mobilise the support of the broadest sections of the working class. The findings must be made public. The miners must exercise, through their own committees, the right to stop work wherever they see danger.

>The Evaluation Board set up by the rank-and-file union Bağımsız Maden-İş, together with miners who survived the collapse, technicians and engineers, represents a step in this direction. According to the board, the collapse took place in the development roadway of the East-5 panel, which had not yet entered production. The company wanted to bring East-5 into production as quickly as possible to replace East-3, which had been closed due to a fire. To move equipment by monorail, it had the floor of the tunnel dug out. The ground beneath the roof-support props was excavated, the props were not set deep enough into the floor, and proper clamps were not used on the central props. According to the statement, it was known three days before the collapse that the faces were dangerous.

>A worker who was in the mine at the time of the collapse told soL Haber that the support sets gave way while 18-tonne conveyor pans were being moved through by monorail. “This is negligence, this is murder,” he said. A former İmbat worker reported that the company was notified of official inspections weeks in advance. As a result, risky areas were covered with tarpaulins, and work resumed as soon as the inspectors left.

>...

>The carnage in the mines is an international phenomenon. As the World Socialist Web Site noted in May, although mining employs only about 1 percent of the global workforce, it accounts for more than 8 percent of all fatal workplace accidents. This year, 82 workers were killed in a coal mine in China’s Shanxi province, and more than 600 in the Rubaya mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

>At the same time, a rank-and-file movement is developing against these dangerous conditions in the mines and against unpaid wages. In March, the Polyak miners broke through a barricade and seized the mine. In April, the march by Doruk Madencilik workers from Eskişehir to Ankara to demand what they were owed placed the miners’ struggle on the national agenda. In August, the Eti Gümüş and Doruk miners held out in defiance of a protest ban and waves of detentions.

>The fact that workers are forced to work, and die, under dangerous conditions testifies to the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Today’s immense level of scientific and technological development makes it possible to organise production and supply chains on a world scale, under the democratic control of the working class, without endangering the safety of any worker. For workplace killings to end, the decaying capitalist profit and nation-state system must give way to a world socialist society.

>Truck drivers: tell us if you support the proposed October 1 action by filling out the form below. All submissions will be kept confidential.

>Calls for truck drivers across the United States to park their rigs on October 1 are circulating among drivers as soaring diesel prices wipe out already-thin margins for owner-operators. The scale of any action Thursday remains unclear, but the fact that such action is being discussed, outside of the existing trade union apparatus and other structures, testifies to a growing mood of militancy in the working class.

>The discussion comes amid a severe diesel crisis, fueled in part by disruptions from the US war against Iran. The national average price reached about $6.44 a gallon on September 28. The same day, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster over the diesel shortage and record prices, temporarily expanding the use of untaxed dyed diesel and raising allowable weights for fuel, agricultural and timber shipments.

>At the same time, the Trump administration has escalated its attack on immigrant truckers. Federal officials say more than 26,000 drivers have been put out of service under English-language requirements, while Mexico’s National Chamber of Freight Transportation, CANACAR, estimates that roughly 25,000 Mexican commercial drivers have had B-1 visas revoked along the northern border. Earlier this month, some 300 Mexican drivers blockaded the Mexicali-Calexico and San Luis commercial crossings in protest against the visa crackdown.

>This campaign has been accompanied by increasingly open anti-immigrant and anti-Sikh agitation. On September 13, 28-year-old Sikh truck driver Gurvinder Singh was stabbed 17 times at a Wyoming rest stop in an apparently racially motivated attack. Four days earlier, the Department of Homeland Security had posted an anti-immigrant graphic depicting a Sikh man with the words, “Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr Singh,” before deleting it amid widespread denunciations.

>The emergence of opposition among truckers, who occupy a key role in the national and world economy, is extremely important. To carry this forward, truckers should build rank-and-file committees across North America, democratically elected by the rank and file, independent of the union bureaucracies, to unite truckers of all nationalities in a common struggle against the cost of living, war and attacks on democratic rights.

>The WSWS spoke with truck drivers near the US-Mexico border in San Diego about fuel prices, deteriorating working conditions, the attacks on immigrant drivers and the growing discussion of collective action.

>One driver said “The price of diesel has destroyed our profit margin. I spend 1.5 times more these days than I used to. It used to be $1,000 for gas a week, now it is $1,500 for gas a week... It’s very difficult as a father—my family is buying only the necessities and nothing more.”

>He said he was shutting down on October 1.

>...

>John, who hauls goods and does a large share of military household moves, described how changes to the tariff system eliminated payments drivers once received for additional work.

>“Back then anything over 75 feet from the truck to the house was considered a long carry, so we got extra money for it. Anytime we went up more than two flights of stairs, we got stair carry. That was extra. If that building had an elevator, we had an elevator charge. So they took all of that and said, ‘Oh, we’re gonna wind all that up in the tariffs.’ When they did, they decreased the tariffs.”

>“If we pack the job, we come into your home and pack all the stuff in boxes. We used to get paid for each box, plus for packing that box and for hauling your shipment. Then they changed it, and said they are going to base it on the weight of the shipment, and we will give you a portion of your weight.’ So now we’re losing money on the packing material. And we have no say in how this is determined. Congress makes those adjustments,” he added.

>John’s son is in the Army and he has already been told his battalion is set for deployment early next year. His son and daughter-in-law were previously deployed to Afghanistan together. His son-in-law is also still serving. His daughter-in-law recently left the military on PTSD disability.

>Asked about the war in Iran, John said: “Oh, I’m totally against it. I think it’s unnecessary.” He added, “I’m very close to it because I move those guys around. I hear the stories, I see the results. I’m not for war.”

>John had not heard about the recent blockade by Mexican truckers. But when told about it, he responded, “The only way things are going to change is if we unite.”

>John recalled the example of the Cuban-American drivers who work out of the Port of Miami, who struck a few years back. “They were so together. They couldn’t block the port because obviously you have more than just freight coming out of there—cruise ships run out of there—but they blocked where no other truck could go in there and get around them and walk out a container. And they stood there. They didn’t drive away at 5 o’clock. They stayed there. Their wives were coming, bringing food. People were showing up to deliver pallets of water. They stayed there.”

>“All it takes is unity,” he added, “because we all face the same problem, all of us.”

>...

>The WSWS also spoke to two B-1 Mexican drivers, Jose and Marcos. Jose said, “There have been cases of Mexican drivers who speak English or don’t speak English well—they’re taking away their visas. It’s an extreme to take away their visas just for not speaking English well.”

>“Taking away your visa is taking away your income. What’s happening now is a political problem—they’re attacking the immigrants.”

>On the question of cross-border unity Marcos added, “If we unite, the system collapses, because there won’t be food, there won’t be fuel. And there are many corporations that won’t (have the goods or materials to) be able to function.”

>A 15-year-old boy was killed in a horrific workplace incident at a precast concrete factory in Melbourne’s southeast suburb of Dandenong South last Thursday.

>According to WorkSafe Victoria, at around 10:45 a.m., the boy “was fixing defects on a precast concrete panel when an adjacent panel weighing more than two tonnes fell onto him.”

>Emergency services, including multiple ambulances, police and firefighters, rushed to the factory. Paramedics attempted to save the boy, but he died at the scene.

>According to 7News, the concrete panel had been standing upright before it fell. Several other workers were nearby, with many reportedly taking their morning break when the incident occurred.

>The identity of the young worker has not been publicly released. Nor have authorities or the company explained the circumstances in which a boy of just 15 came to be working on multi-tonne concrete panels in a factory, what his employment status was, how long he had worked there or what training and supervision he had received.

>The company operating the Dandenong South factory has not been publicly identified in official statements or initial media reports. The company reportedly declined to comment on Thursday while WorkSafe investigators were at the premises.

>WorkSafe has announced an investigation but has released no further information about why the panel fell or the conditions at the factory.

>The death comes less than 10 months after another incident with disturbing parallels. 15-year-old worker, Beau Bradford, was killed on a worksite in Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

>...

>Such incidents are not aberrations. Construction accounted for 61 percent of all Victorian apprentice injury claims over the five years to 2026 and almost 70 percent of WorkSafe prosecutions involving apprentices.

>Despite their particular vulnerability, young workers have limited additional legal protection. Victoria imposes restrictions on children under 15, who cannot perform work that is not “light work,” operate heavy machinery or work on building and construction sites.

>But once a young person turns 15, these specific child-employment restrictions no longer apply. Victorian government guidance states that from that age a teenager can legally work in any kind of job, provided they are appropriately qualified and the work does not breach other laws applying to young people. 

>Thus, a 15-year-old can legally enter industries and workplaces from which a 14-year-old is specifically excluded, despite the heightened dangers confronting inexperienced young workers. 

>...

>The teenager was the 34th worker confirmed by WorkSafe to have been killed at work in Victoria so far this year.

>The defence of safety and all other conditions depends on workers forming their own rank-and-file committees, independent of the government, the union bureaucracy and the regulatory authorities. 

>Such committees must not only enforce safety on the job, in opposition to management, and organise independent investigations into tragedies such as the one in Melbourne. They must form part of a broader political movement of the working class, based on a socialist program that rejects the subordination of all aspects of society, including workers’ safety and lives, to profit.

>About 160 people returned Sunday to the North Austin intersection where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez one week earlier. Garcés Pérez, meanwhile, remains imprisoned at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall with a bullet still lodged near his spine and is scheduled to appear at a federal hearing Wednesday.

>The demonstration was one of a series of protests across Central Texas since the shooting. Protesters gathered Sunday outside the Pearsall detention center demanding Garcés Pérez’s release and surgery to remove the bullet. Students at Anderson High School walked out Friday, following walkouts earlier in the week at schools in Austin, Pflugerville, Del Valle and Hays County. About 400 students at Lamar Middle School left class Wednesday to protest the shooting.

>Texas authorities have also begun making arrests over the protests. At least three people were arrested on trumped-up resisting-arrest and riot-related charges during the September 20 demonstration that erupted hours after the shooting. Six days later, Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested Misael Ramos, a candidate for Austin City Council and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, while he was walking his dog.

>Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan immigrant who came to the United States in 2024, was working as a DoorDash driver on September 20 when an unmarked SUV drove alongside his car and attempted to hit him. He initially believed he was dealing with an aggressive driver. After learning that the men were federal immigration agents, he said he asked to pull over somewhere safely so that he could submit to detention. Instead, he said, the vehicle struck his car again before an agent fired into him.

>The bullet struck Garcés Pérez from behind. He was taken to Dell Seton Medical Center, while his whereabouts were concealed from his wife and attorney. He was discharged after only about four hours and transported roughly 135 miles to the Pearsall detention center with the bullet still in his body. After reporting severe pain and loss of movement on the left side of his body, he was returned to a hospital and subsequently sent back into ICE detention.

>His attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, has said Garcés Pérez suffers “extreme pain” and loss of movement and warned that he faced paralysis. A specialist later recommended surgery to remove the projectile, which fractured his collarbone and remains lodged in the upper part of his back near his spine. His legal team said last week that without surgery his mobility could be permanently affected. He remains detained ahead of Wednesday’s federal hearing.

>Among those at Sunday’s demonstration was Enrique, an Austin-area resident who described the atmosphere produced by the immigration raids.

>“Everywhere I go, I have to carry passport, documentation,” he said. “I have never ... seen this before. I don’t feel safe going out without documentation.”

>...

>Enrique rejected the presentation of immigrants as a criminal threat. “The vast majority of those people are hardworking people that are contributing,” he said. “They’re not criminals.”

>He said he had watched videos of parents being seized in front of their children, “their children crying,” despite having no criminal record. Turning the official language of criminality against the agents themselves, he said he felt more unsafe around those carrying out the raids than around the supposed criminals invoked to justify them.

>“I don’t want to be one more of the statistics,” Enrique said. “That’s why I’m here to make our voice heard.”

>The methods being deployed against immigrant workers have also reached far beyond those facing deportation. Keith Porter Sr. traveled to Austin after his son, 43-year-old Keith Porter Jr., was shot and killed on New Year’s Eve by off-duty ICE agent Brian Palacios at the Northridge, California, apartment complex where both men lived. His family has spent the ensuing months demanding that Los Angeles County prosecutors bring the case before a grand jury.

>Porter Sr. told the World Socialist Web Site that his son had been firing a weapon into the air during the New Year’s celebration when Palacios emerged from his apartment.

>“He saw my son with his back turned with a weapon pointed in the sky,” Porter said. “Instead of him approaching my son and saying anything about it, he just shot three times and hit my son in the back three times and killed him.”

>...

>Another young man interviewed at Sunday’s protest described the fear created by the use of masked agents and unmarked vehicles.

>“The fact that they can come in unmarked vehicles, cover up their faces, I could never tell if it’s even a federal officer or a random person kidnapping you,” he said.

>“I’m brown. They could just say I’m illegal one day, you know, and I’d have to prove it in court, lose my job in the process,” he continued. “Yes, I’m a citizen, but I still would live in fear. I don’t trust these people at all.”

>He connected immigration to the economic and political conditions produced internationally, arguing that US policies abroad contribute to the conditions that force people to migrate. He then returned to the social power of workers themselves.

>“At the end of the day, if the working class unite, then the power truly is in our hand,” he said. “Without our labor, without our brain and muscle, there’d be no ... corporations’ power. There would be no imperialism. There’d be none of this oppression.”

>Last weekend, WSWS reporters spoke with New York City Transit (NYCT) workers in Brooklyn about the death of their coworker, 41-year-old subway conductor Moet McCullum. A mother of three with only 11 months on the job, McCullum was fatally struck by a moving D train late on September 3 near the 161st Street station in the Bronx while working as a construction flagger on the tracks.

>Workers described construction flagging as one of the most dangerous assignments in the subway system. Several condemned the participation of Transport Workers Union Local 100 in the investigation alongside the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), arguing that the agency cannot be relied upon to hold itself accountable, and supported the WSWS’ proposal for an independent investigation conducted by rank-and-file workers.

>McCullum’s death comes as more than 40,000 subway and bus workers remain without a contract. Their previous agreement expired May 16, the same day 3,500 Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers began a three-day strike against the MTA. Local 100 kept its subway and bus members on the job rather than mobilizing them in a common struggle with the railroad workers. In interviews with the WSWS, transit workers themselves connected the unresolved contract struggle with unsafe conditions, staffing cuts and the need for workers to act independently.

>A conductor with two years of service told WSWS reporters, “What has happened [to Moet McCullum] is horrible. There is a need for real change.” He spoke about the dangers of the flagging position and called for an independent rank-and-file investigation by workers themselves.

>“It is not fair for the [TWU] union to be investigating her death with the MTA. For safety reasons, service should be stopped if flaggers are on the tracks. There has to be accountability if someone’s life is taken. You can’t sweep this under the rug. The MTA is not going to blame itself. I think this investigation has to be fair, and workers doing this investigation independently is the only way it will be fair.”

>The conductor spoke on the contract struggle. “It would have been a good idea for us to fight alongside the LIRR workers. We are the backbone of New York City. We are the veins that connect New York City. The way all the trains connect the city, we are indispensable.”

>...

>Sam continued on the broader issues across the entire system, including higher workloads and reduced staffing. “They are cutting jobs in transit. They are cutting jobs in Towers. [The ‘Tower’ position] is the next step up for conductors. They operate switches like dispatchers... Tower operators push buttons to line up trains. I don’t know the number, but they are cutting jobs. I paid the $70 to take the test and passed. They created a list starting with the highest score to take the jobs. After a certain number, they stopped calling people. This was sometime around June. I didn’t hear the union say anything about this.”

>On the overall political situation, Sam commented, “I feel like what they say about the working class being abandoned is true. No one cares about the working class. We are the ones struggling to pay our bills. All the politicians, including Mamdani, are out for themselves. What about us, the blue collar workers? What can we do? Some people work overtime and still can’t make ends meet. Prices go up, up, up; while wages are stagnant. There needs to be a complete change.”

>He continued, “I think it is crazy we haven’t heard anything about our [contract] for four months. They are trying to demoralize us into accepting a bad contract.”

>...

>She continued to comment on the importance of rank-and-file workers communicating with one another. “I speak to my construction flagger co-workers every day. Moet McCullum has a twin sister who is [also] a conductor. We are supporting her now.”

>On the union and the New York state administration, Nicole said, “[I]t is not surprising Governor Hochul and the union have said nothing about where the failure is or any safety measures they will take. They won’t say or do anything until a wrongful death lawsuit is filed.

>“I don’t like what is happening with the contract either. Four months ago, we didn’t mobilize around the LIRR workers’ struggle and strike. That is why we are in the position we are in today. There could have been a lot more done. They didn’t do anything, and now look where we are.”

>Workers themselves must conduct their own investigation into McCullum’s death through independent rank-and-file committees, as the spearhead of a broader inquest into safety across the entire system. Such a struggle also necessitates uniting workers across the entire industry and beyond in the fight for better wages, working hours, conditions and benefits. This requires independence from the Democratic Party, including its “left” variant in the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as the TWU bureaucracy. Workers who want to take up this fight can contact the WSWS to build rank-and-file committees today.

>This month’s courageous blockade of the Mexicali–Calexico commercial crossing by Mexican truck drivers protesting the mass revocation of their B-1 visas was an opening shot against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, facilitated by the Sheinbaum government.

>For four days, over 300 drivers parked their trucks at the commercial crossing lanes, holding up an estimated $800 million per day in cargo—costing corporations some $150 million daily—and sent both governments into crisis mode. Drivers were protesting the mass revocation of 25,000 B-1 work visas from commercial drivers along Mexico’s northern border. Some 19,000 of them are binational B-1 truckers who cross daily. Sixty percent of those affected are from Mexicali and 40 percent from Tijuana and Tecate, according to the National Chamber of Freight Transport (CANACAR).

>Federal authorities, including US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the US Department of Transportation, accused the drivers of violating cabotage laws—rules that historically bar B-1 drivers from moving a container between two points within the United States, although most drivers are unaware of it. They transport either components or finished goods which have been loaded at a Mexican facility and deliver it to manufacturers, retailers, distribution centers, and warehouses across the US. 

>The blockade was lifted Sunday, September 6, on the basis of a single meeting between Mexican state officials, business organizations and a handful of “representatives” for the drivers. 

>The drivers have refuted the charge that they committed cabotage and demanded a clear explanation of what rules they broke to be stripped of their visas and livelihoods. They warned: “If we don’t see that things have progressed and visas continue to be withdrawn left and right, we will take action again … and next time it will be a little more organized and much bigger.” 

>Despite the promises, on the first business day after the blockade ended, drivers reported that ICE revoked up to 20 more visas. 

>The clarification the workers demanded has since been provided, and the arbitrary new categories make clear that “cabotage” is not a set of standards but a mechanism for criminalizing the ordinary requirements of the job. 

>Under the new rules, a driver may not return to Mexico on foot after entering with a loaded trailer, may not leave his truck if the trailer remains in the US more than three hours and may not change trailers or trucks for any reason. They may not stay with relatives while making a week-long trip across the United States. Even stopping to rest at a Walmart may be grounds for revocation. Enforcement reaches back two years and further: workers are being punished today for conduct never before named as a violation.

>The workers answered with the contempt the rules deserve. “If you breathe gringo air it’s cabotage,” one wrote. “Going to Love’s to take a shower is cabotage.” Another added: “You forgot to add that getting out to take a sh** is cabotage.”

>These rules are enforced at the discretion of fascistic immigration officers working to meet the growing deportation quotas—ICE arrested some 50,000 people a month over the summer or about 1,600 per day, while the administration is pressuring the organization to double these numbers. 

>...

>As in the United States and throughout the world, the Mexican union bureaucracies are tasked with straitjacketing workers into contracts and enforcing no-strike clauses to ensure no wildcat action such as this blockade ever recurs. With the blockade having demonstrated that the rank-and-file drivers can, on their own initiative, bring cross-border commerce to a halt, the state, CANACAR and the corporatist union bureaucracies tied to Sheinbaum’s Morena party are seeking to bring the B-1 drivers under the unions’ thumb—to contain and demobilize them precisely at the moment their independent action has revealed the enormous strategic power of the working class over the critical logistics of both economies.

>The experience of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos stands as a prime example of what the ruling class fears. In December 2021, the 26-year-old Cuban immigrant truck driver was sentenced to 110 years in prison for a crash on a Colorado mountain pass caused by brake failure on his truck, which was owned by a Houston company cited for violations. 

>Outraged truck drivers across the country mounted a boycott of Colorado under the slogan “No Trucks to Colorado,” which within a month forced Democratic Governor Jared Polis to cut the sentence to ten years. That episode demonstrated the enormous power of the working class when it acts collectively and independently. It is precisely this power that the Mexican state, the employers and the union bureaucracies are now seeking to strangle by dragging the B-1 drivers into unions whose function is not to defend them but to discipline them.

>...

>The experience of the Matamoros workers in 2019 is an indispensable lesson. There, 70,000 maquiladora workers rose in wildcat strikes against the employers, the state and the gangster-ridden or charro unions—and were defeated not by the police or the companies alone, but by a leadership that steered the struggle back into official channels. Similarly to how Verdugo intervened, labor lawyer Susana Prieto arrived in Matamoros, having a large social media presence, and monopolized the microphones at mass assemblies. 

>At a time when workers were widely discussing the internationalist program of the World Socialist Web Site and even marched to the US border to call on American workers to join their struggle, Prieto promoted a nationalist orientation, along with the lies that new “independent” unions would differ from the old unions and that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would support their struggle. Prieto ended by joining the ruling Morena party—the same party whose government sent troops against the workers. The Matamoros rebellion posed the same question the truckers now face: independent workers’ power and internationalism or the state-sponsored and nationalist unions?

>And the struggle is spreading. In Piedras Negras, truckers are threatening to blockade the Eagle Pass crossing over the Mexican government’s ban on empty trucks returning across the border, which affects 30 percent of crossings. At the Cucapah checkpoint in San Luis Río Colorado, lines of trailers stretch five kilometers. 

>This movement is neither local or national, but international—and it will not be contained by the “diplomatic channels” that Verdugo and the business councils have constructed. Across the United States, truckers are discussing on social media a strike on October 1 to oppose rising fuel costs.

>The drivers must link their struggle to the workers on the other side of the border and beyond. American truckers, warehouse workers and port workers face the same employers and the same state, and they themselves must come to the defense of the Mexican and Indian workers. The campaign of Will Lehman—the Mack Trucks worker running for UAW president on a rank-and-file program against the union bureaucracy—points the way forward. The Mexican and the American driver are divided by a border that serves only their exploiters. A program of socialist internationalism, of international working-class unity, is what must be fought for.

>The following is a statement from the Rouge Workers Rank-and-File Committee opposing the security sweeps at Ford and other auto plants. To get information about building rank-and-file committees at your plant, fill out the form at the end of this article.

>Brothers and sisters,

>What began in January 2025 as a police raid on Michigan Assembly Plant (MAP) has metastasized into a permanent police-state regime inside Ford Motor Company and across the auto industry. Tracking dogs, undercover security agents and warrantless searches are now daily reality for autoworkers from the Rouge to Sterling Heights Assembly and Kansas City Assembly. The UAW bureaucracy is not merely standing by. It is an active participant. In July 2026, Ford launched a 90-day “pilot program” at MAP, stationing dogs trained to detect firearms and explosives inside the factory.

>Under the Fourth Amendment, no government agency, corporation or individual has the right to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures of our property or persons. We do not surrender our constitutional rights when we pass through the factory gate.

>There is a direct line from the Ford Service Department of the 1920s and 1930s to the Global Security Task Force of 2026. The methods are updated—dogs, undercover agents, secret surveillance—but the class relationship is unchanged. The Service Department’s methods were murderous. In 1932, when unemployed workers organized the Ford Hunger March to demand jobs and relief, Harry Bennett’s goons and the Dearborn police opened fire on the unarmed marchers, killing five workers and wounding dozens.

>The history runs deeper. Henry Ford was the single largest financial supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. His newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, published “The International Jew,” reviving the Czarist forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Ford’s relationship with the Nazi regime was also financial and operational. Ford-Werke, its German subsidiary in Cologne, was never confiscated, and throughout the Third Reich the plant produced army trucks using slave labor. Ford was among the greatest beneficiaries of the Nazi forced-labor system.

>The close relationship between Bill Ford, Jr. and Donald Trump is not political convenience—it is the contemporary expression of the same class alliance that bound Henry Ford to Hitler. This was on full display at the Rouge in January 2026, when Trump and Bill Ford, Jr. toured the factory together, plotting the transition to military production. TJ Sabula, a UAW Local 600 assembly worker, denounced Trump to his face as a “pedophile protector”—a reference to his association with Jeffrey Epstein—and Trump responded with rage, cursing and raising his middle finger as he walked away. Within 24 hours, GoFundMe pages set up by co-workers to defend Sabula, who was suspended without pay, received more than $800,000 from over 30,000 contributors. The outpouring of support forced the company to reinstate Sabula despite the refusal of the union apparatus to lift a finger in his defense.

>When police first swept through MAP in January 2025, UAW President Shawn Fain said nothing, and is silent still. Scott Elliott, shop chairman of UAW Local 900, has publicly backed the company’s crackdown from day one, distributing a memo in July 2026 supporting the searches. He speaks for Ford management, not for the men and women who work the line.

>...

>At the UAW Constitutional Convention in June, Mack Trucks worker and socialist Will Lehman was nominated for UAW president on a program of abolishing the bureaucracy and transferring power to rank-and-file committees. Ford and the other automakers see this militancy and they are afraid: the dogs, the undercover agents, the zero-tolerance firings are the response of a ruling class that knows the working class is stirring and means to crush that movement before it grows.

>The UAW apparatus will not defend us. It is part of the apparatus of repression. We must defend ourselves. The Ford Rouge Workers Rank-and-File Committee declared in its February 2025 founding statement: “We are not going back to the conditions of industrial slavery, enforced by Ford’s Servicemen goons, that existed before our fathers and grandfathers built the union.”

>We demand:

>- Immediate removal of all tracking dogs, K-9 units, and undercover agents from every plant—MAP to DTP, SHAP to KCAP, Chicago to Kentucky Truck

>- An immediate end to all warrantless searches

>- Disbandment of Ford’s Global Security Task Force

>- Reinstatement of every worker fired under these unconstitutional measures, with full back pay

>- No collaboration with ICE. An injury to one is an injury to all

>- No conversion of auto plants to war production. Conversion instead to socially useful production under democratic working-class control

>- Build rank-and-file committees in every plant, independent of the UAW apparatus, to control shop-floor conditions and mobilize the working class

>These demands cannot be realized through the union apparatus. They require a new organization of the working class, built from below on the basis of international solidarity within the framework of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).

>This fight is not a local grievance. It is a fight against the drive to dictatorship and world war, winnable only through the independent mobilization of the rank and file, united across national boundaries, on a socialist and internationalist program.

>Take up the fight! There is no time to lose!

>Abolish the union bureaucracy!

>Join the Ford Rouge Workers Rank and File Committee!

>Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees!

>Workers of the world, unite!

>Lawyers for Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk filed two separate appeals on September 9 against the 15-year prison sentence imposed on him on August 10 by the Pervomaisk City District Court in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region.

>A 24-page submission prepared by one of his defense lawyers provides a devastating exposure of the verdict. It demonstrates that Bogdan was convicted for his political views, his writings and his editorial collaboration with the World Socialist Web Site.

>The appeal calls the verdict “illegal and unfounded” and asks the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal to overturn it and close the proceedings, because the acts attributed to Bogdan do not constitute high treason under Part 2 of Article 111 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.

>Under Article 111, the prosecution had to establish intentional assistance to a foreign state or organization carrying out subversive activity against Ukraine and prove direct intent; that Bogdan knew such activity was taking place and consciously intended to assist it.

>The prosecution proved none of this.

>As the appeal states, the case was built “mainly on the content of the political and historical statements of Syrotiuk B.I., without proving the specific fact of his assistance to the aggressor state in carrying out subversive activities against Ukraine.”

>The defense points out that criticism of the Ukrainian government, NATO or the United States, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist views and criticism of nationalist historical figures do not constitute high treason.

>The prosecution produced no evidence of contact between Bogdan and representatives of the Russian Federation, no coordination with Russian officials, no tasks or instructions from Russia, no transfer of information to Russian representatives, no assistance to occupation administrations or Russian military forces and no participation in organized subversive activity.

>What the evidence actually establishes, the appeal states, is “writing texts, translating, collecting interview materials, and communicating with editors of a public international publication.”

>In other words: journalism and political activity.

>To bridge this enormous evidentiary gap, the verdict treated the WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International as a “foreign organization” supposedly engaged in subversive activity in the information sphere and Bogdan’s articles and editorial work as assistance to that activity.

>...

>Even more damaging to the verdict is the prosecution’s own forensic linguistic examination. The experts found in the examined publications no calls for the overthrow of the government, the liquidation of Ukrainian statehood, changes to Ukraine’s borders, cooperation with or assistance to Russia, the transmission of information to the enemy or the carrying out of subversive activity.

>Their general conclusion was unequivocal: “No signs of propaganda aimed at supporting the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine were recorded in publications No. 1–14.”

>The full content of the six WSWS articles used to convict Bogdan likewise contradicts the prosecution’s construction.

>In “For the organization of an international movement of workers and young people against war!”, the Russian invasion is described as “adventurist,” and its “reactionary nature” is explicitly stressed. The article calls for an international struggle of the working class against both Western imperialism and the Putin regime.

>Bogdan was not the author of another article cited, “US pledges to ‘go on the offensive’ against Russia.” According to the verdict, his role was to translate the article from English into Ukrainian and transmit it for publication.

>And in “For the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian working class!”, the position could hardly be clearer. It states, “We … do not support this war, either in Ukraine or in Russia.”

>...

>The appeal exposes the political character of Bogdan’s prosecution. A socialist opponent of both the Russian invasion and the NATO-led war policy was transformed into a “traitor” because he opposed the nationalist and pro-war line of the Ukrainian state and fought for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers.

>The WSWS fully supports the legal defense and the use of every available legal avenue to overturn this monstrous verdict. The appeal itself provides powerful additional material for exposing the frame-up and mobilizing opposition to Bogdan’s persecution throughout the world.

>But Bogdan’s freedom cannot be left to the courts of the same state that arrested him, banned the WSWS weeks later and sentenced him to 15 years in prison for socialist and anti-war political activity.

>The decisive force in securing his freedom is the international working class. The WSWS will intensify and expand the international campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. We call on workers, young people, journalists, academics, artists and all defenders of democratic rights to take up this fight and bring it into workplaces, trade unions, schools and universities throughout the world.

>We urge all readers to sign the petition at FreeBogdan.org and add a statement of support in their own words; to use the site’s letter-writing tool to send a letter, in Ukrainian and in their own language, to the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal (inbox@mka.court.gov.ua), copying freebogdan@wsws.org, demanding that the verdict be overturned and Bogdan released immediately; to organize statements of support from their workplaces, unions and campuses; and to make as substantial a donation as possible to the campaign for his freedom.

>Overturn the verdict! Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!

>The AfD’s election victory in Saxony-Anhalt has triggered the expected reaction from the Left Party. Following the rise of the extreme right, it is not breaking with the policies that paved the way for it. On the contrary, it is ingratiating itself even more openly with the CDU and the other establishment parties and offering to prop up CDU-led governments. This recipe will not weaken the AfD but strengthen it further.

>The AfD is not an accident. Its rise is taking place within the framework of a rightward shift that has been driven from above for years. Under conditions of a deep crisis of capitalism, the ruling class is turning ever more openly to militarism, domestic rearmament and social cuts, and for this purpose it is strengthening authoritarian and far-right forces. A significant part of the AfD leadership comes from the state apparatus and the establishment parties. Its lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, was also a member of the CDU for five years before joining the AfD.

>The Left Party knows very well that the AfD’s rise is a product of these policies. It itself accuses the federal government of preparing the ground for the AfD through rearmament, social cuts and the adoption of right-wing positions. Nevertheless, it declares the CDU, of all parties, to be its partner in the supposed “fight against the right.”

>...

>Bodo Ramelow was even more explicit. The CDU had to stop “dithering” and work together with the Left Party. The AfD’s program, declared the former Thuringian minister president, had to “bring all democrats together.” Eva von Angern, the Left Party’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, declared in turn that Schulze would have to talk “either with the AfD or with the Left Party.”

>This says everything about the class character of the Left Party. It is not a socialist alternative to the prevailing policy but a pillar of the existing capitalist order. Its function consists above all in binding opposition to war, social cuts and the rightward shift to the establishment parties and preventing the development of an independent socialist movement of the working class.

>The Left Party itself bears central responsibility for the rise of the extreme right that it claims to oppose. First, it helped create the social catastrophe that the AfD exploits, especially in eastern Germany. Second, through right-wing government policies under a left label, it discredited the idea of a socialist alternative. And third, it supports central parts of the program of the ruling class—from social cuts and rearmament to refugee policy—and is itself prepared to make pacts with extreme-right forces.

>Anyone who wants to fight the AfD must therefore understand how things could come to this, especially in Germany—and what key role the Left Party played in it.

>...

>The rightward development of the Left Party is not limited to the policy of social counterrevolution. It also played a central role in the return of German militarism, which ultimately requires dictatorial methods and a fascist party like the AfD.

>As early as 2013, its then foreign policy spokesman Stefan Liebich collaborated on the strategy paper “New Power—New Responsibility.” It programmatically prepared the turn announced by President Joachim Gauck, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen at the Munich Security Conference in early 2014: Germany had to end its supposed “culture of military restraint” and once again play a role internationally corresponding to its economic power.

>Since then, the Left Party has integrated itself ever more deeply into this offensive. It supported the Western-backed overthrow in Ukraine in 2014 and, after the Russian invasion in 2022, closed ranks with the federal government and NATO on fundamental issues. Leading politicians called for sanctions against Russia, “security guarantees” for Ukraine and a stronger European great-power policy.

>The party also lined up behind German Staatsräson during the Gaza genocide. After the beginning of Israel’s war of extermination, its then Bundestag deputies voted in October 2023 for a joint resolution by the coalition government and the Union in support of Israel.

>In March 2025, a further qualitative step followed. The states of Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, co-governed by the Left Party, voted in the Bundesrat for the constitutional amendment that laid the foundation for the largest rearmament since the Second World War. Their votes were not even necessary. Parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek declared at the same time that the claim that the Left Party did not want to support the Bundeswehr was a “straw man.” Rather, one had to discuss “calmly” what it needed and finance the corresponding requirements.

>...

>Despite its high election result, the AfD is not a fascist mass movement on the model of the NSDAP, the Nazi Party (also known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Many of its voters are not convinced right-wing extremists. They voted for the AfD out of anger at the federal government, the decay of social infrastructure, job cuts and war policy, and from the experience that the supposedly left-wing parties implement the same policies as the traditionally right-wing parties. This anger is real, but the AfD channels it in a reactionary direction.

>It must be directed at its real cause—the capitalist profit system. The ruling class is not turning to the right because individual politicians make wrong decisions. The capitalist crisis, the intensified struggle for markets and raw materials in a developing Third World War and growing social resistance are driving the ruling elites internationally toward militarism, authoritarianism and fascism.

>That is why the struggle against the AfD cannot be waged in alliance with the bourgeois parties but only against the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left Party. Their policies have created the social and political ground on which the extreme right is growing.

>The fight against fascism and militarism requires an independent offensive by the working class against social cuts, layoffs, rearmament and war, and against their common cause: capitalism. It requires a political break with the Left Party and all forces that bind the working class to it and to the profit system.

>The decisive task is to build a new socialist leadership in the working class—the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. Only the international working class, armed with a revolutionary socialist program, can prevent the renewed descent into fascism and a Third World War.

>A new study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has confirmed what miners, their widows and black lung clinic physicians have warned for years: the deadly and preventable disease has returned to levels not seen in nearly half a century.

>Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, NIOSH researchers found 32.5 percent of sampled veteran underground coal miners in Central Appalachia—those with at least 25 years underground—suffer from the disease. The last time prevalence among miners with the same work history reached such a level was in 1978. In 2018, the rate was 20.6 percent.

>The new findings represent more than a fourfold increase since the disease hit a low point of 7 percent in 1999—three decades after the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 established federal dust limits and black lung benefits.

>The resurgence has been driven by miners’ increasing exposure to respirable crystalline silica. As the thick, easily mined seams of Appalachia were exhausted, operators turned to thinner remaining seams, forcing miners to cut through far more rock rich in quartz. Silica dust can cause especially severe forms of black lung and is roughly 20 times more toxic than coal dust alone.

>Tim Balthis, a 57-year-old former miner and mine foreman, described working in silica-laden air to NPR reporters: “It’s like opening your front door and letting the sunshine [in]” with dust particles floating in the light, “and then multiply that by 10 billion times. … It’s like a fog.”

>Stone Mountain Health Services in southwestern Virginia alone has diagnosed 2,400 new cases in the past five years. A 2019 NPR/FRONTLINE investigation documented 21,000 instances of silica dust overexposure over 30 years.

>...

>NIOSH first recommended an exposure limit of 50 micrograms of respirable crystalline silica per cubic meter of air in 1974 and reiterated the standard for coal miners in 1995. The Obama administration’s dust rule, fully implemented in 2016, lowered the overall respirable coal mine dust limit from 2.0 to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter but left the silica standard essentially unchanged.

>It was not until 2024 that the Biden administration adopted the 50-microgram silica limit NIOSH had recommended half a century earlier. Mining industry groups challenged the rule. Days before coal operators were due to comply in April 2025, the Trump administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a temporary enforcement pause, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals then stayed the rule’s compliance deadlines. The judicial stay remains in effect, and MSHA is reconsidering portions of the rule.

>On February 18, 1969, West Virginia rank-and-file miners launched a 23-day wildcat strike, forcing the state to recognize black lung as a compensable occupational disease and helping drive passage of the federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act later that year.

>The National Mining Association now argues that because black lung takes years to develop, current cases “do not reflect the conditions, practices, protections or regulations that are in place today.” At the same time, the industry has pressed for greater use of administrative controls and personal protective equipment, including respirators, when engineering controls do not keep silica exposure below federal limits.

>...

>More than 1,700 coal miners died from black lung between 2020 and 2023. Ending a disease caused by preventable exposure requires placing miners’ health and lives above the profitability of the coal industry. That requires workers’ control over the mines as part of the socialist reorganization of production on the basis of social need rather than private profit.

>Support has continued to grow internationally for Bogdan Syrotiuk, the young Ukrainian socialist sentenced to 15 years in prison for opposing the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine. On Monday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) party issued a communiqué condemning the fabricated charges and the “unacceptable brutality” of the sentence against Syrotiuk and calling for his immediate release.

>On August 10, a court in Pervomaisk sentenced Syrotiuk, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists (YGBL), on charges of “high treason … under martial law.” Since then, the campaign waged by the sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to defend Bogdan has won increasing prominence and support. Over 7,700 people from 90 countries have signed the petition for Syrotiuk on FreeBogdan.org, and letters of protest have flowed to the Pervomaisk court from over 30 countries.

>A growing range of political parties across Europe have condemned the sentence and demanded Bogdan’s freedom. These include the Stop the War Coalition in Britain, Revolutionary Left and the Spanish Communist Workers Party in Spain, Socialist Alternative in the Netherlands, and the Spartacist Workers Party and Klasse Gegen Klasse in Germany. In France, Lutte ouvrière (LO, Workers Struggle) and Révolution permanente (RP) have issued statements calling to free Syrotiuk.

>LFI’s decision to issue their own call for Syrotiuk’s freedom reflects the growing prominence of the campaign to free Syrotiuk, and the political significance of Syrotiuk’s struggle to unite the working class against far-right forces and a bloody war that threatens to engulf all of Europe.

>Mélenchon is a front-runner in next year’s French presidential elections, which currently are expected to produce a runoff between Mélenchon and a neo-fascist candidate. In the 2022 elections, Mélenchon won nearly 8 million votes. Many LFI officials—including LFI National Assembly group leader Mathilde Panot, and LFI European Parliament members Rima Hassan and Emma Fourreau—have faced police interrogation or legal charges on trumped-up accusations of terrorism for statements of opposition to the Gaza genocide.

>Below is the full text of LFI’s communiqué translated into English.

>Press communiqué: Ukraine: Criticizing the war cannot be punishable by 15 years in prison

>On August 10, 2026, a Ukrainian court condemned Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 27-year-old socialist militant, to 15 years in prison for “high treason” and to the confiscation of his assets. This sentence is one of unacceptable brutality.

>The judgment gives no evidence of espionage, sabotage, or transmission of military intelligence to Russia. As proof of high treason it cites the drafting, translation and publication of six articles for the “World Socialist Web Site,” a socialist publication established in the United States. In these texts, Bogdan Syrotiuk criticizes the policy of the Ukrainian government and the role of NATO, denounces the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborationists like Stepan Bandera, and calls for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers against war. He also explicitly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the regime of Vladimir Putin.

>These positions can be discussed or combatted politically. They cannot be punished by 15 years of prison and assimilated to treason against the state.

>The ruling also orders the destruction of the program of his organization, of brochures and printed articles seized during searches. To political condemnation there is thus added a particularly worrying act of state censorship.

>The campaign in defense of Bogdan Syrotiuk is at the center of growing opposition of workers, youth and progressive sections of the middle classes to war, militarism and the promotion of fascistic political forces.

>The World Socialist Web Site and the Parti de l’égalité socialiste of France urge their readers and supporters to visit the website of the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk, FreeBogdan.org. There they can sign the petition for his freedom. Through FreeBogdan.org, readers can access Ukrainian translation tools to contact the Pervomaisk City District Court at inbox@pm.mk.court.gov.ua and the Nikolaev Court of Appeal at inbox@mka.court.gov.ua, with a copy to freebogdan@wsws.org, to demand the sentence be overturned and that Bogdan be freed.

>Singam Thayan, of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain, and Athiyan Kandasamy, of the Socialist Equality Party in France, took part in a London Tamil TV programme, drawing attention to the international campaign demanding the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk, the Ukrainian socialist imprisoned by the Zelensky regime for his opposition to the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.

>Bogdan, 27, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, was arrested on April 24, 2024, and thrown into a harsh prison. Last month, on August 10, a court in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, sentenced him to 15 years in prison, alleging that he committed “high treason under martial law.”

>London Tamil TV has 95,000 subscribers on YouTube. During a 31-minute programme, “Is the Ukraine-Russia conflict setting the stage for a world war?”, the presenter Anas posed questions regarding the Ukraine war and the arrest and sentencing of Bogdan. The video of the programme can we viewed below.

>Responding to a question about the trajectory of the Ukraine war, Athiyan stated, “Now we see this war escalating. The US-NATO attack on Russia in Ukraine aims to break Russia into multiple fragments, plunder its resources, and thereby bring Central Asia under their control.”

>He explained that Ukraine is functioning as a front in a third world war, with similar conflict fronts occurring across the globe. Specifically, the genocidal assault on Gaza, attacks on Lebanon, strikes on Iran, and the plundering of Venezuela’s oil resources are being unleashed and backed today by US imperialism alongside other imperialist powers, pushing humanity towards disaster.

>Responding to a question of whether there is indeed a risk of a third world war, Singam stated that current conditions are heading directly toward it. During a recent meeting between the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and French President Emmanuel Macron, their discussions focused primarily on escalating the war. Burnham and Macron have agreed plans to produce long range cruise missiles in Ukraine. France stands ready to send its troops to Ukraine, a move strongly opposed by Russia. Where these circumstances lead is toward creating conditions for a massive war to break out in Europe.

>People are pushed into a situation where the choice is either war or revolution, Singham stated.

>Responding to a question of whether Europe would have the audacity to sever ties with Russia when it cannot produce its own fuel independently, Athiyan explained that German imperialism invaded Russia twice during the First and Second World Wars with the aim of bringing it under its control.

>With those two attempts having failed, we now see it launching a third attempt. Alongside this, imperialist nations like the US, France, and Britain have embarked on their own efforts. As preparation for this conflict, they are currently taking steps to introduce mandatory conscription. Germany is preparing for war by allocating €1 trillion toward its military and infrastructure. Their primary goal is to bring Russia’s fuel—one of its key resources—under their control. This will advance to the next stage and ultimately lead to a conflict with China.

>Answering about the reason for Bogdan’s arrest, Athiyan explained that he was accused of writing articles for the World Socialist Web Site and maintaining contact with its editors, anti-war political activities for which he has been charged with treason. Rejecting the lie that Bogdan is a tool of Russia, Athiyan explained that in his May Day 2023 speech, Bogdan called for Ukrainian, Russian, and international workers to unite and fight against this war.

>Bogdan maintained an anti-war stance; he did not take a pro-Putin position on Russia. Nor did he take a pro-Zelensky position on Ukraine. Instead, his political stance was that this is not our war—it is a war being fought in the interests of the capitalist class on both sides and imperialist interests.

>Furthermore, the sentence handed down for writing articles for the World Socialist Web Site is a direct blow against freedom of speech and bears no relationship to the truth. Under Ukrainian law and the European Convention on Human Rights, this conviction is unlawful and must be condemned. For Bogdan, a 15-year prison sentence is tantamount to a death sentence, as conditions inside Ukrainian prisons are exceptionally brutal and his health is poor.

>Securing Bogdan’s release is paramount. His case serves as a stark example of the severe punishment inflicted on anyone in Ukraine who dares to voice opposition to the war effort of Zelensky’s far-right government, Athiyan said.

>The international working class must strongly condemn this. Today, thousands of people are sending letters to the Ukrainian court demanding Bogdan’s release. Academics, writers, workers, and students alike are fighting for his freedom. Our speaking with you today is part of this very struggle. Regardless of the language they speak, workers around the world must join the fight against this repression and contribute to securing Bogdan’s release, he concluded.

>To find out more about Bogdan’s case and to sign the petition, visit freebogdan.org.

>Two events in the past week have illustrated the growing lack of international confidence in the stability of the US financial and political system.

>Last Wednesday the Dutch National Bank (DNB) revealed that between March and August it had moved part of its gold holdings from New York and Ottawa to London because of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”

>This was followed by an announcement from the manager of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund that it was proposing an overhaul of its government bond holdings which could result in a cut to its stock of US Treasury bonds by as much as $80 billion as it looked to other kinds of debt which could bring a greater return.

>The Dutch central bank said it had moved around 86 tonnes of its total gold holdings of 313 tonnes in the US and Canada and that it was “strengthening its crisis preparedness.”

>The language used in the DNB statement was carefully guarded but it did not take too much reading between the lines to pick up the essential meaning. It said that gold held with the Bank of England was regarded as “the world’s most easily tradable gold and will therefore be the most readily available for DNB in a crisis situation. The gold reserves in New York and Ottawa cannot be utilised as quickly in such a situation.”

>In its report on the move the Financial Times (FT) said it followed calls in Europe for repatriation of gold from the US amid warnings that “an unreliable American government under President Donald Trump may otherwise seize them amid growing transatlantic tensions.”

>Last year, the Taxpayers Association of Europe sent letters to the finance ministers and central banks of Germany and Italy urging them to reconsider their gold holdings in New York. The president of the association, Michael Jäger, said “we are very concerned about Trump tampering with the Federal Reserve Bank’s independence.”

>...

>Ever since President Nixon removed the gold backing from the US dollar in August 1971 and the international monetary system was based on the dollar as a fiat currency—no longer backed by gold as the ultimate embodiment of value but by confidence in the US financial system—bourgeois economists and some who considered themselves to be Marxists have maintained that Marx’s analysis of the pivotal role of gold had been refuted.

>But Marx’s analysis is being confirmed by what might be considered unlikely sources.

>In an article in the FT earlier this month under the headline “Gold’s run isn’t done yet,” Bhanu Baweja, chief strategist at UBS Investment Bank, pointed to the rise in the price of gold, particularly after the decision of the US and the European powers to seize the financial assets of the Russian central bank held in Western banks at the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022.

>As a result of this action, he wrote: “Reserve and asset managers globally were left confronting a simple question: if $630bn held in Treasuries, Bunds, gilts and other bonds could become inaccessible overnight, what constituted money? Their answer was gold.”

>He also noted that a “more structural driver of gold has been the gradual erosion of confidence in US public finances”—a reference to the mounting national US debt now $40 trillion with no plan in sight to halt what is universally acknowledged as its “unsustainable” rise.

>The enhanced role of gold and the erosion of confidence in US financial assets are expressed in facts and figures.

>In June, the European Central Bank reported on a significant jump in the portion of gold in the reserves held by central banks.

It rose from 20 percent at the end of 2024 to 27 percent at the end of last year. The proportion of US Treasury bonds fell from 25 percent to 22 percent over the same period. The rest of the reserves were made up of dollar-denominated assets, coming in at 42 percent. Gold was now the second highest component of reserves after topping the euro in 2025.

>The budget reconciliation law signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025—H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA)—has produced the largest reduction in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps. By slashing $187 billion from the program over 10 years, a cut of roughly 20 percent, the legislation has fundamentally reshaped what remains of the American social safety net.

>The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) puts the decline at roughly 5 million people, or 12 percent, since the law’s enactment. According to US Department of Agriculture figures, 36.6 million people are now receiving benefits, down 5.7 million from May 2025, below the pre-pandemic level and the lowest number enrolled in 17 years.

>Children have borne the heaviest share of the cuts. In the 25 states that report data on children, 1.2 million have been cut off since July 2025. Refugees, people granted asylum, survivors of trafficking and domestic violence—all lawfully in the US—have been stripped of eligibility outright. Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible.

>This is a deliberate, bipartisan policy of the ruling elite. While hundreds of billions are appropriated for war, this policy attacks nutrition, promotes hunger and disease, and takes food out of the mouths of workers and their families. The average benefit in fiscal 2025 was $187.94 a month per person, or about $6.26 a day. Even this paltry sum is considered excessive by the financial oligarchy.

>The ruling class has been explicit about what it wants. Under the headline “The Food Stamp Reform Is Working,” the Wall Street Journal celebrated the SNAP cutbacks in an editorial Wednesday, writing, “As always, the political left is spinning these declines as a human tragedy. Not so. Republicans have merely ended the literal free lunch for able-bodied beneficiaries and states.” The editorial concluded, “Washington’s welfare buffet is fiscally unsustainable and promotes dependency.”

>The main mechanism of the cuts is stringent new work rules for recipients. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that these work requirements could remove 2.4 million people from SNAP in a typical month, but by May enrollment was already about as low as it had been forecast to go in 2030. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called the results “a pretty big win” for those wielding the ax to the program.

>...

>The removals from the SNAP rolls have been overwhelmingly bureaucratic. While the paperwork burden for recipients and the states has exploded, federal funding for SNAP administration has been cut in half. What results, Auburn University public health historian Zachary Schulz told Newsweek, is “a form of attrition driven by paperwork, missed notices, or difficulty completing interviews.”

>As a result of the assault on benefits, participation in SNAP has fallen in every state but Alaska, and by 10 percent or more in 23 of them. The biggest drop has been in Arizona, where enrollment fell 54 percent between July 2025 and May 2026, with nearly 473,000 people cut off from benefits, about 180,000 of them children.

>For the first time, more Arizonans now visit food banks each month than receive food stamps. “We think of ourselves as the canary in the coal mine,” Natalie Jayroe, CEO of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, told NPR. “We are showing the rest of the country a really scary scenario.”

>The attack on food stamps is having a ripple effect on school nutrition programs. Children in SNAP households are automatically certified for free school meals, and schools qualify for universal free breakfast and lunch when at least a quarter of their students take part in programs like SNAP. So as the rolls shrink, whole schools lose eligibility. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where more than 500 schools had qualified for universal free meals, has ended them at most of those schools. Losing free school meals costs a family roughly $1,000 per student a year.

>...

>On August 24, the Washington Post’s editorial board declared that “there’s no realistic path to solvency for the U.S. government without changes to the retirement state,” proposing that Social Security be reduced to “a tax-funded transfer payment as a floor, with means-tested benefits and compulsory private savings above that.”

>The Social Security trustees reported June 9 that the retirement trust fund will be exhausted in late 2032, after which benefits would fall 22 percent absent congressional action. House Speaker Mike Johnson said June 8 that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have “to be adjusted and fixed,” adding, “We have a plan to do that next year”—after the November elections.

>Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi of New York introduced a bill with Republican Tom Cole creating a Social Security commission modeled on the 1983 commission that raised the retirement age to 67 and taxed benefits. Democratic Senators Chris Coons, Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner cosponsored a bill creating a fiscal commission to recommend further cuts.

>All of this comes as the House funds the Pentagon at $839 billion a year and the administration seeks $87.6 billion more, most of it for the Iran war. Global bond yields stand at their highest since 2008, while the markets demand that governments pay for war by cutting what remains of social programs.

>The Democrats’ criticism of the food stamp cuts is confined solely to its timetable, and their criticism of the coming assault on Social Security and Medicare will be confined to the same. To fight the assault on programs and benefits the working class has wrested from the ruling elite in struggle, the working class must break free from the political straitjacket of the pro-capitalist, big-business parties and fight for a workers’ government based on a socialist program.

>Oscar Robayo, a 39-year-old ground handling worker performing a routine pushback operation at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL), was crushed to death by the front wheel of an Airbus A350-900 on Monday, August 24.

>As the World Socialist Web Site reported, based on testimony from Oscar’s co-workers, Samsic Assistance Canada, the subcontractor employing him, systematically disregarded basic safety procedures. He was forced to perform the pushback without an extension cable, meaning he had to walk close to the plane’s nose gear that ultimately crushed him.

>We described the incident as “the tragic product of systematic deregulation of airport operations by the federal government and rampant profiteering throughout the air travel sector.” The initial report and interview published on the WSWS were followed by a touching tribute in memory of Oscar, who has been consistently described by those who knew him as a kind, caring and reliable co-worker.

>A former Samsic employee has come forward to provide further testimony on the death trap workers have confronted at the airport since the subcontractor won a contract for the first time in 2023. He published a powerful video on YouTube denouncing the company’s imposition of unsafe equipment and a toxic workplace culture. The whistleblower identified the primary culprit for Robayo’s death as a corporate regime that pressured employees to cut corners and disregard safety protocols, while managers stubbornly refused to replace broken equipment.

>...

>"They [Samsic] took over. … But the thing that’s crazy is they never focused on safety. They were all about get your plane out on time. Get it out. Get it out. Get it out. And during the beginning stages of Samsic, a lot of us old ATS employees try to fight and implement safety with these cards. You know, hey, let’s get a checklist going because the previous company used to do this and you know, used to have a checklist before we pushed out these planes. … They told us that it was too expensive to get all the employees cuz Samsic was a big company. It was too expensive to laminate all the cards for the company. Come on. What a joke...

>Nothing’s more important than safety. Nothing’s more important than coming into work, clocking in, and going out the same way that you clocked in. Nothing is more important than that."

>Referring to the immediate cause of the accident highlighted by the WSWS’s initial report—the absence of a proper extension cable allowing workers to maintain a safe distance from the nose gear—the worker explained, “You walk with the headset without an extension, and you’re head-to-head basically with the nose gear. If you trip, if you slip on snow, if you slip on the rain and you fall, you’re going to get ran over by that nose gear.”

>After viewing the video, a WSWS reporter reached out to the worker and obtained the report filed to Canada’s Labour Program, a federal agency ostensibly tasked with upholding workplace safety, as far back as May 2024. The report documented many of the same issues raised by current Samsic employees following Oscar’s death and paints a picture of an extremely dangerous workplace environment on a daily basis.

>Underscoring the type of work environment established by Samsic with the connivance of the federal government and Montreal Airport, the report began with the words, “Hello, I would like to remain anonymous because I do not want to be at risk of losing my job.”

>The report notified the governmental body responsible for the enforcement of the Canada Labour Code of unsafe equipment, with photos of jerry-rigged tractors, and an exposed electrical cable that nearly caused a fire. The report also alleged that complaints filed by workers to HR were divulged to the deputy manager through a personal relationship, jobs were handed to people in personal relationships with managers without open competition, and managers racially abused workers.

>The worker wrote to the government agency, “The equipment at Samsic is deemed unsafe as I have tried to report this to managers but it goes ignored and say they need the equipment and to leave it alone… When you drive some gas tractors, the passenger door has no door handle so they tie a string. And you’re supposed to hold it so it don’t fly open.”

>...

>The information emerging in the wake of last week’s tragedy in Montreal demonstrates the urgency of airport workers taking matters into their own hands by establishing rank-and-file committees to oversee workplace safety and put an end to the race to the bottom in working conditions. At Montreal Airport, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers placed their stamp of approval on Samsic’s ruthless methods of exploitation when they concluded a collective agreement with the multinational in November 2024, which included a provision that workers only get union protection after three months.

>We urge all workers to come forward with information about the conditions that led to Oscar Robayo’s death. It is high time to join the fight to build a rank-and-file alternative as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to the corporatist gang-up of the government, corporate executives and union bureaucrats that produces deadly conditions across the air travel industry in Canada, the US and around the world.

Posted in full

>We are publishing here “On the international class struggle and the building of the IWA-RFC,” the fourth of six resolutions adopted unanimously by the Ninth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held from August 2–7, 2026. The resolution was introduced in a report by Tom Hall.

>1. The period since the Eighth Congress has seen a significant acceleration of the class struggle on every continent. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 458 strikes were recorded across just eight European countries, including five general strikes at the national or regional level: national general strikes in Belgium and Italy, regional general strikes in Andalusia and the Basque Country and a general strike in Northern Cyprus. A national general strike swept Argentina in February; some 1.7 million state employees struck in the Indian state of Maharashtra; and general strikes have swept Africa.

>2. The class struggle is also intensifying in the United States. Sixteen major strikes erupted in the first five months of 2026, ahead of the pace of 30 for all of 2025. These included the strikes by 31,000 Kaiser healthcare workers, 15,000 New York City nurses, 42,000 University of California workers, 6,400 San Francisco educators, 3,800 JBS meatpackers and the ongoing rebellion among auto-parts workers in the Midwest, expressed in massive contract rejections at Nexteer, Dana and other plants. Alongside the strike movement have come the “No Kings” demonstrations involving millions and the mass protests against ICE raids in Minneapolis and other cities.

>3. This Congress affirms the assessment made in the opening report to the 2026 International May Day Rally, that the first months of 2026 “mark the point at which the resistance of the working class has emerged as a global force, contending against the offensive of the oligarchy on a scale that places the fundamental questions of the epoch—war or peace, dictatorship or democracy, socialism or barbarism—directly on the historical agenda.”

>4. These struggles are unfolding increasingly in direct conflict not only with employers and governments, but with the trade union bureaucracies that function as an anti-strike corporate police force. This Congress reaffirms the analysis developed in the 2018 resolution “The Resurgence of Class Struggle and the Tasks of the Socialist Equality Party” and the Seventh Congress resolution “Build the IWA-RFC in the United States!” (2022), which stressed that the nationally based, pro-corporate bureaucracies, whose degeneration is rooted in the globalization of production, are structurally incompatible with the defense of an internationally integrated working class.

>5. Against the apparatus, this Congress advances the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), founded by the ICFI in April 2021. The IWA-RFC is based on an international strategy. Its purpose is not to influence the existing trade union bureaucracies but to organize a rank-and-file insurrection against them and to transfer power to the growing network of factory, shop floor and workplace committees. The rank-and-file committees assembled under the banner of the IWA-RFC are the fighting organizations and schools of revolution of the present period, as the committees of correspondence and safety were the schools of the American Revolution in 1773–76.

>6. The strategy of the SEP proceeds from the understanding that the development of the class struggle creates the conditions for the growth of socialist consciousness, the building of revolutionary leadership and the conquest of power. There is no revolution without the entry of the working class into struggle. Conversely, the artificial suppression of the class struggle by the labor bureaucracy over the past 45 years has produced a massive reversal in the social position of the working class—labor’s share of GDP has fallen to the lowest level on record, going back to 1947—and created the conditions for the domination of right-wing politics and reaction. To this must be added the bureaucracy’s relentless promotion of economic nationalism and “buy American” chauvinism, which has fed directly into the poisonous atmosphere on which the far right thrives. The building of rank-and-file committees is aimed at breaking the grip of the bureaucracy and creating the means through which the enormous social opposition now developing can find a revolutionary expression.

>7. This strategy is counterposed to that of the tendencies that rejected the fight for socialist consciousness in the working class and devoted themselves instead to the supposed reform of the bureaucracy. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union, founded a half century ago, is the model. Promoting one “reform” bureaucrat after another, it blocked the development of the political struggle of the working class at every point, even as the bureaucracy integrated itself into the structure of corporate management and the capitalist state. Fifty years later, these tendencies have themselves been absorbed into the apparatus they promised to reform, where they function as anticommunist defenders of war and of the suppression of workers’ democratic rights. TDU’s chosen “reformer,” Sean O’Brien, appeared on the platform of the Republican National Convention.

>8. This Congress gives its strongest support to the campaign of Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist, for president of the UAW in the 2026 elections. In the 2022 elections, Shawn Fain was presented as a “reformer” by the pseudo-left organizations that operate in and around the apparatus and the Democratic Party, including Jacobin, the DSA, Labor Notes and others. Over the past three years, Fain has presided over the betrayal of tens of thousands of auto and auto parts workers, collaborated with the Trump tariff regime, preemptively shut down academic-worker struggles, and suppressed all opposition at the 2026 Constitutional Convention, while the court-appointed monitor recently documented a “toxic culture of division and retaliation at the highest levels of the organization.” The bureaucracy cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.

>9. The Lehman campaign’s program gives concrete form to the perspective of the IWA-RFC: the end of the dictatorship of the Solidarity House apparatus and the transfer of power to a network of rank-and-file committees on the shop floor; the replacement of nearly 50 years of pro-corporate policies with a strategy of class struggle; full recovery of wages lost to concessions and inflation, a zero-layoff policy, company-paid healthcare, and a 30-hour week with no loss of pay to stop automation-driven job cuts; the repudiation of the bureaucracy’s nationalism, counterposing an international strategy based on the unified struggle of American, Canadian and Mexican workers against transnational corporations; the defense of immigrant workers against the ICE raids and deportations; and the mobilization of the industrial power of the membership against dictatorship and war.

>10. The fear of the apparatus towards the rank-and-file rebellion embodied in Lehman’s campaign has now found expression in open death threats. On July 16, a high-ranking UAW official and prominent Fain supporter, until recently the assistant director of Lehman’s own region, posted a death threat on Lehman’s campaign page: an AI-generated image depicting Lehman bound and gagged, blood running from his mouth, with a masked gunman aiming a rifle at his back. This Congress calls for the broadest campaign in defense of Will Lehman, demanding the public repudiation of the threat by the UAW. The defense of Lehman is the defense of the democratic rights of the entire working class against the gangster methods of the labor bureaucracy.

>11. This Congress resolves to mobilize workers and youth behind the Lehman campaign and the campaign to defend him against the death threat issued by the UAW apparatus; to build rank-and-file committees in every factory, workplace, school, and neighborhood in which the party is active; to extend the IWA-RFC into logistics, healthcare, education and the public sector, and to develop its international coordination with the sections of the ICFI in the fight against the global assault on jobs and against war and dictatorship; to defend science and culture as social rights, connecting the struggles of educators, scientists and artists against censorship and the profit-driven assault on intellectual labor to the fight to make the cultural achievements of humanity accessible to all; and to recruit the most class-conscious workers into the SEP.

>On June 24, the strongest earthquake to strike Venezuela in 125 years killed more than 6,500 people and left tens of thousands missing. Two months later, with much of the population still living in tents on plazas and sidewalks, Donald Trump announced that the United States government is taking control of Venezuela’s oil.

>On Friday evening, Trump boasted on social media that Washington had secured “majority US control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela.” This amounts to one-fifth of Venezuela’s reserves, the largest in the world. However, Washington is effectively asserting control over the entire industry.

>The Wall Street Journal has since documented that a private company led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt will receive century-long rights to develop 17 oil fields. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital will take a 35 percent stake through penny warrants—equity at virtually no cost—along with preferential rights to buy 20 percent of the output at cost.

>In sum, the Department of War of the United States is seizing the oil of a country it invaded eight months ago, not as mere broker or financier, but as an owner.

>This is the clearest demonstration yet that the incipient third world war now unfolding is a war of colonial conquest and repartition. The oil is being seized to fuel Washington’s wars against Iran and Russia and war preparations against China. 

>The measure is also inseparable from the trade war against Canada, the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, and Trump’s National Security Strategy that asserts American domination over the entire hemisphere. The Americas are being converted into a resource base and staging ground for global war by US imperialism.

>Two things stand exposed. The first is the gangsterism of the US ruling class, which has abandoned its former pretense of upholding international law, human rights and democracy. The second is the venality and cowardice of the Latin American bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois apologists—above all the Chavista movement, hailed for two decades by Pabloite, Stalinist and academic tendencies as a new road to socialism. It now presides over the surrender of Venezuela’s national wealth to the Pentagon.

>...

>What Chavismo actually was

>What was presented for two decades as “Socialism of the 21st Century” was, from its origins, the diversion of a revolutionary upsurge into national reformism funded by oil rent.

>Leon Trotsky’s analysis of Lázaro Cárdenas’s nationalizations in Mexico supplies the clearest explanation of this phenomenon. A national bourgeois government in a semi-colonial country, he wrote, “veers between foreign and domestic capital,” governing either as the instrument of foreign capital or by maneuvering with the proletariat to gain limited room against it. Trotsky was explicit that it would be “an outright deception” to claim the road to socialism runs through nationalization by a bourgeois state.

>Under Chávez, the private sector’s share of GDP reached 70 percent—higher than in 1998. The employers’ share of national wealth against labor hit a record 48.8 percent in 2008, while real wages fell. In 2012, Venezuela had the world’s most profitable banks and its best-performing stock market. The misiones expanding social assistance and services were real and temporarily lowered poverty. But nothing altered the country’s dependence on a single commodity and, through it, on imperialist finance capital.

>When prices collapsed and Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat, the whole edifice fell apart. Chavismo and its apologists had systematically suppressed the sole force capable of opposing imperialist aggression, the independent struggle of the working class, and their own “anti-imperialism” was exposed as empty rhetoric.

>In 2024, Rodríguez herself denounced the US-backed opposition for wanting to hand Venezuela’s oil, gas and gold to its “masters” in Washington. In September 2025 she told the New York Times that the Pentagon had always had the strategic objective of obtaining Venezuelan reserves. She knew exactly what was coming. She now helps administer it.

>Following a recent interview with Rodríguez, TIME described the result as a client state: Rubio supervises the administration of oil revenues and public finances; export earnings are held in escrow and released as Caracas meets conditions; Rodríguez consults Rubio on the appointment of her defense minister; and there is near-daily contact by phone and WhatsApp.

>The completeness of the capitulation was underscored when Nicolás Maduro Guerra—a National Assembly deputy, son of the abducted president, and himself named in the narcotrafficking indictment—issued a formal communiqué on official Venezuelan letterhead thanking Trump and Rubio by name for their role in the agreement, even as his father sits in a New York prison cell.

>...

>Three and a half decades of continuous warfare—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Palestine, and now Iran and Venezuela—constitute a single protracted campaign to liquidate, state by state, every obstacle the anti-colonial movements of the 20th century had erected against unrestrained imperialist rule. Imperialism’s objective is to remake the world as though the October 1917 revolution and the anti-colonial upheavals had never occurred.

>Venezuela is where this process finds its most naked expression. The Pentagon now holds ownership over Venezuelan crude; Chinese purchases have been cut to zero, and Russian joint ventures have been terminated.

>Ramírez, the former president of the state oil company, warns that the arrangement stands on clay and Venezuelans will not accept it. The looting rests on social austerity and mass poverty, and is being imposed on a population that has just buried over 6,500 people and faces total devastation. And Washington has exhausted every political instrument for containing the anger it is generating: the right-wing opposition remains hated and the Chavistas are openly administering the plunder and unable to posture as anything other than Washington’s puppets. What remains is brute force through the Bolivarian National Guard and US Marines.

>The political perspectives developed by the International Committee of the Fourth International have been entirely vindicated by these events, at a time when the working class represents a vastly greater social force than at any other moment in history. Its conscious unification across Venezuela, the United States and the Americas under the ICFI’s program of world socialist revolution is the only answer to recolonization and world war.

>On November 15, 2025, Russell Scruggs Jr., a 44-year-old postal worker, died just weeks after starting his job at the USPS Palmetto Processing and Distribution Center in Georgia. Coworkers told the World Socialist Web Site that Scruggs suffered a head injury after falling and hitting his head on machinery in the plant. Coworkers also reported that he complained earlier in the day that he was not feeling well and was denied a request to go home. 

>His death was one of four at Palmetto since 2024—this June, Demarcus Little also died at the facility. Workers say the facility has no cell phone service, leaving employees dependent on management to summon help, and that supervisors called security before calling an ambulance.

>His death also came one week after Detroit postal worker Nick Acker was killed on the job in a mail sorting machine accident.

>The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), has initiated an independent, rank-and-file inquiry into these deaths, carried out by workers themselves rather than USPS management or the American Postal Workers Union.

>Workers are “humans, not machines”

>Barbara Scruggs, Russell’s ex-wife of seven years and mother of three of his children, spoke with the WSWS in support of the IWA-RFC’s independent inquiry and is encouraging Russell’s coworkers from Palmetto to come forward with any information.

>“Russell was a hard worker, a great father, really loved his daughters, always provided for them and always provided for the household. He was just a really great person with a big, big heart,” she said. “Russell would give you the shirt off his back. He wanted to help everyone. He wanted everybody to live comfortably. He really loved his children and wanted to make sure they had everything they needed. And while we did separate, he always wanted to make sure that I wasn’t struggling to take care of them by myself. He still wanted to make sure that I was good and that they were good. Everybody loved him. He was always smiling, always laughing, just a hard worker. I remember at one point he had three different jobs just because he didn’t want me working while I was pregnant.”

>...

>She and Russell’s family found out that he’d requested to go home but was not allowed to leave. His coworkers told his family that the post office often discourages absences to keep the mail running constantly. “I just think it’s very careless,” Barbara said. “If someone isn’t feeling well, you don’t know what they have going on, you don’t know their condition, and what happened to Russell could be the result. If people aren’t feeling well, they should be allowed to go home. It’s their right. They shouldn’t be made to stay and make sure the job’s done. They should view them as humans, not machines.

>...

>Barbara still has not been called by USPS, OSHA or the APWU. “I have not been contacted, no nothing. It was like, ‘Okay, he lost his life,’ and that was it. They [USPS] were not really caring about who he left behind, just not caring about him as a person at all. Even the steps they took after him falling, I just heard it wasn’t good. A couple people who witnessed it were encouraged to just ‘Go back to work, go clock in.’

>“Of course, if people are walking over a dead body, it’s going to be traumatizing. I think that was the most heartbreaking part. When I got that call, I was thinking how bad it was, but then when I read the rest of the story in the article, I was like, ‘Oh my god, is this real?’ It just really angered me. I was thinking, ‘Could he have been saved?’”

>After Demarcus Little’s death, workers told the WSWS that a few landlines were installed inside the facility, and that voluntary medical training was offered to postal workers, which is not sufficient to prevent further deaths. “It’s really sad that they’re hardly going to take any precautions and make sure it doesn’t happen again. They have no plans on making it a better environment. I heard they got a couple of phones installed, but do they even work?”

>...

>“One of his children, seven, is too young to fully understand, but she knows he’s gone. They’ve had to go through three birthdays and Christmas without him. Russell’s birthday was in May, so we did celebrate it. They couldn’t sing happy birthday because it was just too much for them, but we did have a birthday cake and blow out the candles and got some pictures which they have on their nightstand. It’s just really hard. They’re still dealing with it. I’m still dealing with it because it’s so unexpected—you just never think in a million years this would happen. My daughter even asked, ‘Why my dad?’”

>She made a final appeal for Palmetto workers to get in touch with the WSWS and to support the independent inquiry. “Please don’t be scared to talk, to come forward. This is someone’s life. He left children behind, and we just want answers. We want to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”