u/Spirited_Classic_826

>London Underground Train Operators and other grades from across the network spoke with reporters from the World Socialist Website on Thursday about Transport for London (TfL’s) “Train operators’ four-day week”.  

>The overwhelming consensus was that TfL’s compressed work week is a Trojan horse for a historic attack on terms and conditions secured through decades of struggle.

>The new schedules were first outlined in a TfL document published in March 2025 and were openly embraced by the leadership of train drivers’ union ASLEF which rammed through the changes in a ballot back in April.

>RMT drivers have demanded strike action to oppose the changes. But Eddie Dempsey, Rail Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) General Secretary, cancelled two days of strike action by 1,800 RMT London Underground train operator members earlier this week. The “concession” cited by the RMT—that TfL’s plans will be introduced “voluntarily”—is a fraud.

>Dempsey’s strike cancellation and the RMT’s claim that TfL had “shifted” their stance are clear signals that the RMT’s national executive is preparing a sellout.

>A leaflet distributed among drivers by WSWS reporters was warmly received by train operators. It insisted: “The unity of London Underground workers must be asserted against the union apparatus and the sectional divisions it sows. United action is needed to win workers’ demands for pay restoration, adequate staffing, decent hours and safe working conditions.”

>Drivers expressed anger toward the leadership of train drivers’ union ASLEF (with around 2,000 members), who pushed through acceptance of the deal despite significant opposition.

>...

>A young driver told WSWS, “I’m against this deal. Nothing management come up with is done to benefit us. It is an attack on all our hard-won terms and conditions going back 50 years when they were won.

>“On holidays, it proposes going from block weeks to one week. You can’t have a proper holiday with your family. From what I can see, there are also fewer holidays.”

>He explained a significant change in what drivers call “step of time” (i.e., minor breaks during the shift to prevent the effects of non-stop driving), “At the minute we have ‘step of time’ where we terminate and another driver takes over. This is the case from Monday to Friday. On Sunday, there is no ‘step of time.’ With this deal, it will be like Sunday all the time. Non-stop driving with only the basic break. Also, notice for any change on your next shift will go from 24 hours [to] 12 hours. Any work-life balance is completely gone.”

>Drivers warned that TfL’s new schedules would increase exhaustion and impact passenger safety. The effects on family life would also be devastating. One driver said, “I am against the 4-day week because the days are too long, 10 hours a day. I would have agreed to a 4-day week if there were 32 hours in total.”

>Speaking to the impact of the deal on 10,000 RMT members across the LUL, a member of the station staff said, “If they get the four-day week through for the drivers, then it will be us next.”

>The resignations from ASLEF reflect broader opposition among ASLEF drivers to the union’s sellout deal. But instead of denouncing Finn Brennan and ASLEF’s leadership and issuing the call for a united fight across the London Underground to defeat TfL’s plans, Dempsey and the national executive are using ASLEF’s agreement to drive acceptance of TfL’s plans by RMT drivers on a “voluntary” basis. Every driver knows where this will lead.

>...

>RMT members should demand a resumption of strike action, complete oversight of all negotiations with TfL and full control over the dispute by the rank-and-file to renew the fight for a shorter working week abandoned by Dempsey. This means forming rank-and-file committees to link up all grades, appealing to ASLEF train operators to oppose their leadership and join a united struggle.

>Workers at Nexteer Automotive voted by 86 percent to authorize a strike at the Saginaw, Michigan auto parts plant in voting that began on Wednesday and concluded Thursday morning. Production workers voted 89-11 percent for a strike action and skilled trades workers backed it by a 70-30 percent margin. The overwhelming strike mandate comes after the 1,300-member workforce rejected two consecutive UAW-backed tentative agreements—the first by 96 percent on April 2 and the second by 73 percent in mid-May—and forced UAW Local 699 to hold a strike authorization vote against the clear resistance of the union apparatus.

>Workers speaking to the World Socialist Web Site outside the local union hall expressed overwhelming support for a strike and denounced union officials for collaborating with management to intimidate workers with threats over the economic cost of a strike to their families, even as supervisors and union officials probed for divisions among the membership.

>After the first TA was rejected, the Local 699 leadership extended the 2021 contract indefinitely behind the backs of the membership, without a meeting, discussion or vote and told workers a strike was “illegal.” After the second rejection, the UAW International and Local 699 were forced to call a membership meeting on May 17.

>At that meeting, Jason Tuck, a UAW International servicing rep with a salary of $148,476 in 2025, cursed the workers, threatened them with the closure of the plant and walked out mid-meeting when the membership made clear they would not be intimidated. Tuck was previously the Local 699 bargaining chairman and headed up the negotiations that led to the concessionary 2021 contract.

>During the meeting, a worker put forward a motion to hold a strike vote and workers overwhelming backed it, forcing the union to schedule the vote.

>The veteran worker who called for the strike vote at the Sunday meeting spoke to the WSWS outside of the union hall on Wednesday. He said:

>"This is the result of the 2008 financial crisis. All the Big Three spun off their parts suppliers. Ever since we’ve been working for wages we can’t live with. I came here in 2006. We won’t accept any more concessions. We can’t continue to accept being second-class union members. Everybody here wanted a strike. It was a resounding “yes” to have a strike vote. Nobody said no. The International Rep Jason Tuck needs to grow up. We shouldn’t have to accept that from someone who is supposed to help. He was the bargaining chair in 2019, and after that he got a promotion to the UAW International."

>“We’re stuck between those who have the money and the power,” he added, before a UAW Local 699 official tried to prevent him from continuing to speak to the WSWS reporter. He then challenged the bureaucrat, saying, “I can talk to whoever I want. It’s called free America,” whereupon the union official scurried away.

>The worker concluded, “We got corruption in Washington today too. We have a president who is setting up a slush fund for people who rebelled against the country.”

>...

>One veteran worker, who started at the plant when it was still operating as GM Delphi and watched it pass through several name changes—GM Holding Co., Newco and finally Nexteer, said that in every contract negotiation over that span something was taken away. Shift premiums went first, then paid holidays. At one time, workers had a two-week paid shutdown. Then the pay was stripped, and eventually the shutdown itself was eliminated. Workers were told each time to hold on, that conditions would improve when the company did better. They did not.

>He was equally blunt about the union leaders overseeing the negotiations. “They get retirement homes in Black Lake,” he said, and officials like Tuck and UAW President Shawn Fain collect between $100,000 and $275,000 “before kickbacks.”

>He added that when workers confront union officials about specific commitments made at the bargaining table—improvements to buydown arrangements, pay protections for job transfers—the response is a blank denial. “I don’t remember that,” they say. “Yes, you do,” he replied. “You said it.”

>Another veteran worker said he had simply never been able to get union representation when he asked for it. “It just seems like nobody’s fighting for us,” he said. On hearing Tuck’s compensation figure for the first time, he made an immediate connection: “Now I see why he walked out. He was mad because we didn’t vote that crappy contract in.”

>A fourth-generation Saginaw autoworker described a union coordinator going around the plant in the days before the vote alongside management, asking workers what it would take to vote “yes” on a third tentative agreement, while simultaneously trying to persuade them that $500 a week in strike pay would be impossible to live on. The worker recognized this as a coordinated effort to divide and demoralize the membership. “It’s the tactic of the union,” she said, “to scare and divide us.”

>...

>Under just-in-time delivery conditions, a Nexteer strike could rapidly shut down production across General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis facilities throughout the Midwest and beyond. That is precisely what the UAW bureaucracy is working to prevent.

>The Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee has called on workers to deliver a strong strike authorization vote and, crucially, take the next step: the immediate formation of a rank-and-file strike committee, elected from trusted shop floor workers, to set a concrete walkout deadline and enforce it. The current bargaining committee—which produced two sellout agreements and has sought at every stage to suppress workers’ resistance—must be replaced. Negotiations must be carried out openly, before the membership, with no more closed-door sessions whose results arrive as a fait accompli.

>When asked what he thought about rank-and-file workers taking direct control of the strike and the negotiations, a veteran worker’s answer was brief and to the point: “It’ll be a lot better.”

>At an explosive meeting of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 699 members held Sunday, rank-and-file workers at the Nexteer parts plant in Saginaw, Michigan, chased UAW International Representative Jason Tuck from the meeting room and forced the union local to schedule a strike vote for Wednesday, May 20.

>The meeting came two days after Local 699 members voted down by more than 73 percent the second sellout tentative agreement brought by the union bureaucracy. On March 31, Nexteer workers rejected the first TA by more than 96 percent.

>Nexteer, which employs 1,300 workers, produces critical parts such as steering panels and components for some of the Big Three automakers’ best-selling models. Under conditions of “just-in-time” delivery of parts to assembly plants, a Nexteer strike could quickly shut down production at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. It could ignite a wave of strikes at US auto parts companies. Last Monday, workers at American Axle’s Three Rivers, Michigan, plant voted by 98 percent to authorize a strike. Workers at Dana, Bridgewater Interiors and Magna have contract expirations over the next several weeks.

>This is precisely what the UAW bureaucrats, at both the national and the local level, are desperate to prevent. Their six-figure salaries and expense accounts depend on suppressing the class struggle and imposing ever more onerous conditions on the workers, who are forced to pay them tribute in the form of dues deducted from the workers’ paychecks.

>There were some 200 workers at Sunday’s union meeting and the mood was angry. More workers would have likely attended to demand strike action, but many were forced to work Sunday due to mandatory overtime.

>After the massive “no” vote on the first TA, the union officials indefinitely extended the old contract behind the backs of the workers and told them a strike would be “illegal.” Following Friday’s rejection of the second TA, Local 699 officials said nothing of a strike, advising only that Sunday’s meeting would discuss “the next steps.”

>One worker wrote in a Facebook post that at Sunday’s meeting, International Rep Jason Tuck “tried to sell us a bill of goods for his own good.” The worker continued, “Well, he’s making a good salary and on top of the [F] bombs he dropped, he walked out like a coward with his tail stuck between his legs.”

>Another worker told the WSWS, “It’s true [Tuck] is a piece of crap and was cussing them. He left the meeting mid-way through.”

>...

>Under the second TA voted down on Friday, the full rate for production workers after four years would be $27 an hour, the same wage workers made when the company was called Delphi. If the workers’ wages had kept up with inflation, they would be over $45 today.

>The workers lost their cost-of-living escalator, saw their health costs soar and were divided by a multi-tier system that condemns hundreds of new-hires to not just poverty, but destitution wages.

>The second TA was in some respects worse than the first. It contained an expanded “grow in” period for new hires, who would have to work 48 months before reaching the full production wage. Out of pocket health costs for workers hired after 2021 would rise sharply.

>The actions of Tuck and the Local 699 leadership underscore the urgency of Nexteer workers joining and building the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee, part of the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The committee issued a statement after the defeat of the second TA urging workers to attend Sunday’s Local 699 meeting to hold a vote to strike at 12:01 am Monday.

>...

>The Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee urges workers to adopt the following demands:

>- Abolition of all tiers. Equal pay and benefits for equal work.

>- Immediate, substantial wage increases that exceed the rate of inflation, with cost-of-living adjustments.

>- A living starting wage and rapid progression to top pay, not 24 or 48 months of poverty.

>- Full healthcare coverage for all workers and their families. No premium hikes, no doubled weekly contributions.

>- Enforceable limits on overtime, speedup and scheduling abuse.

>- Job security and anti-outsourcing protections. Full transparency and the right to oppose the shifting of work to lower-wage operations.

>- Workers’ control over safety and staffing, with elected rank-and-file safety reps empowered to stop unsafe work.

>- Explicit, enforceable prohibitions on cycle-time surveillance and the use of tracking data for discipline, job elimination and speedup.

>42,000 University of California healthcare and service workers were set to begin a historic open-ended strike on Thursday, May 14. Custodians, patient care technicians, respiratory therapists, food service workers and others had voted overwhelmingly to strike against poverty wages, skyrocketing housing costs and the inadequate healthcare. Workers in Local 3299 have been kept on the job without a contract since 2024.

>Then in the dead of night, the strike was abruptly called off at approximately 1:26 am Thursday morning, and workers were ordered to report to work only hours later. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 announced it reached a tentative agreement behind closed doors with the University of California administration.

>This is the latest in a series of sellouts by union bureaucrats across the country. In particular, it is almost identical to the way that SEIU blocked a district-wide strike of 77,000 Los Angeles public school workers in April with only hours to go before their strike deadline, following all-night talks involving LA mayor Karen Bass. The same week, SEIU canceled a strike of 34,000 building workers in New York City shortly before it was set to begin.

>Also at the UC system, the United Auto Workers (UAW) suppressed a 93.3 percent strike mandate by 40,000 academic workers after their contract expired in March, ultimately pushing through a ratified agreement without ever allowing a strike.

>The union bureaucracy is deliberately sabotaging workers in order to prevent a struggle which would inevitably develop into a broader fight which would threaten their ties to management and the Democratic Party. A general rule is emerging: The more favorable the objective conditions for a struggle, the more shamelessly the bureaucracy acts to disrupt and dissipate workers’ momentum.

>Workers should not consider themselves bound to a deal made in flagrant violation of their will and reached when they were still asleep. To override this betrayal, workers must organize rank-and-file committees at every campus and UC facility, excluding union officials, to mobilize workers to vote down the deal and prepare a genuine struggle, this time under workers’ control.

>The full tentative agreement has not been released to the membership, underscoring the undemocratic character of the maneuver. Voting will begin as soon as Monday, leaving little to no time to read the full text of the deal, that is if it is even circulated by then. So far, workers have only been provided the so-called “highlights” from the union apparatus.

>AFSCME boasts, “We Won” on its website, claiming that “historic wins” were obtained, but even the highlights point instead to a historic sellout. The agreement includes a $1,500 lump-sum payment, a 5 percent wage increase retroactive to 2025 and promises to “increase minimum wage to $25 in 2025, $26.50 in 2026, reaching $30.10 by April 2029.”

>In fact, administrators had already agreed to a 5 percent pay increase and $25 starting pay. But the claim that this means “livable wages” is an outright lie. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in California with one child needs to earn at least $53.54 per hour to make ends meet. Moreover, because the wage increase is only retroactive to 2025, this means workers will get no wage increases for the final months of 2024, when the last contract expired.

>The next four years would see base wage increases of 6 percent in 2026, 5 percent in 2027 and 4 percent each in 2028 and 2029, for a total of 24 percent over the five-year contract. This is only 6 percent better than the 18 percent over five years from UC’s “last, best and final offer.” In 2024, AFSCME’s initial demand was for 25 percent over three years.

>...

>The first step for workers is to organize rank-and-file committees against the sham ratification process. They should demand the full tentative agreement be released immediately, with adequate time for workers to read and discuss it before a vote. Workers must impose rank-and-file oversight of the balloting to ensure its integrity.

>The struggle must be resumed under workers' control. AFSCME members should organize meetings to decide on their own non-negotiable demands and prepare the ground for mass action to win them, with or without the permission of the union apparatus.

>This struggle must be based on a strategy of class struggle. Workers are being told there is “no money” for housing, staffing or wages while hundreds of billions are funneled into criminal wars. Trump recently declared with utter contempt that he does not think “even a little bit” about the economic impact of the war on tens of millions of Americans.

>But the attack on the working class is bipartisan. The Democrats who run California, and who also make up the UC Regents, have overseen brutal austerity, while refusing to do anything to hold Trump accountable in the slightest for his fascist policies.

>The struggle is not simply against the UC administration but against an entire political and economic system that subordinates human need to private profit.

>The 42,000 University of California workers, including custodians, food service workers, security personnel, medical assistants, MRI technicians and respiratory therapists, stand on the verge of an open-ended strike set to begin Thursday. Officials from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 are working to prevent it with “last ditch” negotiations set for Wednesday with precisely that purpose.

>The impending action takes place as opposition grows across industries to wartime inflation, AI-driven job cuts and worsening conditions on the job. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 contract covering more than 40,000 New York City subway and bus workers expires on May 15. On May 16, the cooling-off period ends for 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers in five unions, leaving them legally free to strike. These LIRR workers have twice been blocked from striking by union officials, who appealed to Trump to appoint a Presidential Emergency Board, a maneuver that bought eight months of delay and delivered nothing. 

>A custodian sleeping in her car near UC San Diego and a New York City transit worker paying half of his wage for a New York apartment are fighting the same enemy. The conditions for a unified fightback have never been more favorable. The question is whether workers can seize the moment, and that requires taking the struggle out of the hands of the labor bureaucracy and preparing for a political confrontation with the Democrats, from California Governor Gavin Newsom and the University of California Board of Regents to officials on the local level.

>The terms of the UC dispute make the stakes concrete. Both sides have accepted a $25-per-hour minimum wage floor. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single California adult with one child requires at least $53.54 per hour. The entire negotiation is conducted at roughly half the level workers need to live in California’s major cities. 

>This is the ceiling both institutions agreed upon before a single picket line formed, while $10 billion sits in UC’s unrestricted reserves, produced by the labor of the workers who will walk those lines.

>The claim that there is “no money” obscures who controls the budget and in whose interests it is administered. The University of California is not simply a public employer. It is an institution of the California Democratic Party establishment: its regents appointed by Democratic governors, its budget administered by Democratic politicians.

>The Board of Regents includes corporate executives, real estate investors, and architects of privatization across California’s public sector. When UC management dismisses affordable housing as a “non-mandatory bargaining item,” that is a political and class choice made by administrators answerable to this apparatus.

>...

>A broader pattern of the unions’ suppression of the class struggle is unmistakable. In Los Angeles, 77,000 teachers and school workers were blocked from the first simultaneous walkout of all school employees in the district’s history, confronted with a last-minute deal that left layoffs fully on the agenda. The United Auto Workers shut down a struggle by 40,000 UC academic workers two months ago. None of these were miscalculations. The better the conditions for class struggle, the more openly the apparatus moves to extinguish it.

>The open-ended strike authorization shows real determination. But workers must not allow the bureaucracy to determine what happens next.

>Rank-and-file committees must be built so that workers have an organizational form independent of the apparatus that can coordinate across campuses, communicate directly among themselves and make democratic decisions. No agreement should be accepted or announced without the full membership’s review and time to discuss it. When an official announces a “breakthrough” at 2:00 a.m. after a closed-door session, workers should treat it as a warning sign. That is exactly what happened to the LAUSD school workers.

>A rank-and-file committee can connect a food service worker at UC Davis to the transit worker facing a May 15 deadline in New York, to the Nexteer worker in Saginaw, to the Dana worker whose safety conditions have been documented and suppressed for years.

>This is what the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is fighting to build: instruments of struggle capable of asserting workers’ democratic control over a fight the apparatus is racing to close down.

>The $10 billion in UC’s unrestricted reserves was produced by the labor of the workers going on strike Thursday. The question of who controls that wealth is not a bargaining question. It is a political question: Which class holds power in society? Answering it requires the independent mobilization of workers across campuses and sectors, against the Democratic Party establishment that controls the Regents and the union bureaucracy it deploys to manage their discontent. The resources exist. The determination exists. What is needed now is the organization to act on it.

>On Tuesday, one of the landmark cases of state repression against the independent workers’ movement in Türkiye came to a close in Gaziantep. Mehmet Türkmen, the general president of BİRTEK-SEN, who had been in prison for almost two months, was acquitted of the baseless charge of “publicly disseminating misleading information” and released.

>The acquittal came in the wake of a solidarity campaign for Türkmen, which was carried out both in Türkiye and internationally. The sympathy shown by large sections of the working class towards him was in stark contrast to the union bureaucracy’s guilty silence.

>On the same day as the trial, the DİSK leadership—which failed to issue a single statement in defence of Türkmen—hosted Labour and Social Security Minister Vedat Işıkhan. This is no coincidence: the union bureaucracy, integrated with the state, views such leaders as a challenge. Türkmen founded the independent BİRTEK-SEN after being expelled from DİSK in 2022.

>From the beginning, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi—Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party—Fourth International) have characterized Türkmen’s arrest and persecution as state repression aimed at crushing the developing independent workers’ movement, expressed in a growing number of wildcat strikes and acts of resistance. We have called on workers and young people to fight for Türkmen’s freedom and democratic rights. At the 2026 International May Day Online Rally, demands were made for the release of Türkmen and other prisoners of the class struggle.

>State repression is carried out in the context of a rising cost of living and deteriorating working and living conditions. As economic hardship intensifies due to the devastating consequences of the US-Israeli war against Iran, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government continues to implement a severe austerity program on behalf of the capitalist oligarchy. The overwhelming majority of the public opposes the war against Iran, and the government, which condemns Iran’s right to self-defense, faces growing opposition to its war and austerity policies.

>Türkmen, who had participated in a protest on March 13 organized by approximately 400 Sırma Carpets workers in Gaziantep—who had not been paid for months and had gone on strike on 9 March—was arrested on the grounds of his speech there. In this speech, which fell within the scope of his constitutional rights, Türkmen explained that workers across the country were facing difficulties in receiving their wages and that, when they protested, they were met with police repression. He pointed out that corporations were being protected by the state in the face of both workplace fatalities and wage theft.

>According to Evrensel, during the hearing, Türkmen stated in his defence, “I know for a fact that this investigation was launched following a complaint by the boss of Şireci [textile company]. I was charged because I demanded accountability for the loss of an arm.” Noting that at least 555 workers have died in workplace accidents in Gaziantep over the past 13 years, Türkmen added, “By locking me up, you are sending a message to employers: ‘Exploit as much as you want; we’ll lock up anyone who speaks out’.”

>Türkmen added, “All 555 of these names are on record. Not a single employer has been jailed or detained. Why is someone losing a hand or an arm every day when the textile industry is one of the least risky sectors? It’s because the drive for profit is more valuable to employers than their workers’ lives.”

>Ahead of the trial, textile workers, along with numerous representatives of political parties, trade unions, and professional organizations from many cities across Türkiye and from Europe, gathered in front of the courthouse to show their support for Türkmen. The speeches delivered emphasized the baseless nature of the charges against Türkmen and highlighted how the judiciary is being used as a tool to suppress workers’ rights and the opposition.

>...

>Tugay Bek, one of Türkmen’s lawyers, noted that in 2025 alone, 2,555 workers lost their lives as a result of “workplace accidents,” and that this number has exceeded 25,000 over the past decade. In other words, Türkiye sees worker deaths each year on a scale six times larger than the 2014 Soma miner massacre—and not a single employer has been held accountable for this.

>Mehmet Türkmen’s mother, Ayşe Türkmen, also addressed the crowd outside the courthouse, saying, “Was my son arrested because he stood up for the rights of workers who had lost their limbs? I’ve come to take my son home.” His uncle added, “If Mehmet had sided with the bosses, he would have had a house, a car, and everything else, but he chose to stand with the workers and support their struggle, and that’s why he’s in prison.”

>During the hearing, Türkmen’s lawyers stated that the number of workers killed in workplace accidents in Gaziantep had doubled over the past 10 years, and that this was due to the fact that those responsible had not been brought to justice. The lawyers requested that workers who had lost limbs in workplace accidents be called to testify; the court denied this request.

>A worker from the Başpınar Organized Industrial Zone, who was among the audience and had lost his fingers in a workplace accident, stood up and shouted, “I’m here with my hand that has no fingers. I stand with Chairman Mehmet.”

>...

>Although the charges against Türkmen have been dropped, the disinformation law and the judicial system that enforces it remain in place. Workers in Gaziantep, across Türkiye, and around the world continued to work under the same precarious conditions, to be exploited, and to fall victim to workplace accidents.

>Türkmen drew attention to this reality after his release, saying: “The order that steals workers’ fingers, hands, and lives in this country will certainly change, and if it is to change, it will be through the struggle of the workers who are fighting for their very lives and for their labor.”

>This requires the construction of new rank-and-file organizations based on an international strategy, independent of the trade union apparatus and the establishment parties. The International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees is fighting for this.

>Kamara Bond, a production worker at the Dana Incorporated auto parts plant in Warren, Michigan, was fired twice for reporting dangerous working conditions on the shop floor. Chemical exposures, high temperatures and poor ventilation at the Detroit area factory could have very well contributed to the death of her co-worker Anthony King in October 2025 and an unidentified janitorial contract worker in 2024.

>The Fortune 500 corporation, which employs 28,000 people in 33 countries, reported $610 million in 2025 profits on $7.5 billion in sales revenue. In an investor call last month Dana executives boasted they achieved $35 million in cost reductions during the first quarter and were on schedule to slash $325 million as part of its Dana 2030 plan.

>Dana workers in Warren produce axle, driveshaft, suspension and steering components for some of the most profitable vehicles sold by General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. Far from being protected by United Auto Workers Local 155, workers say union officials have allowed management to sacrifice their health and safety for profit.

>Kamara reached out to the World Socialist Web Site to share her story and encourage her coworkers to come forward with information on Anthony King’s death. She said workers had to prepare for a fight when the current UAW agreement expires on May 22.

>Dangerous heat, oil spills in the plant

>Kamara began working at the Dana plant in April 2022. She was diagnosed with high blood pressure and became concerned about unbearable temperatures inside the plant. 

>“My first OSHA complaint was in June of 2024. I complained about inhumane temperatures. The fans provided no real air circulation in that huge building. There were oil spills on the floor and management was putting a band-aid on the problem. The cleaning crew was hand-mopping these big spills and using kitty litter to clean it. At some point [Dana] didn’t pay their suppliers, so they took all our gloves out of the machines and started trying to make us wear used PPE. That’s when I filed a complaint.”

>She continued:

>“I was told somebody died in the lunchroom. One of the janitorial workers had his head down. Security thought he was drunk or something. Instead of calling an ambulance, they called his boss. His boss apparently came, took him out of our lunchroom, and he died. We heard he had a brain aneurysm. Some people said he was already gone before they took him out.”

>That was when Kamara began calling Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA). She also learned from investigators that a homicide had taken place in the plant parking lot but workers were not informed. “I was like, who am I working for?” she said.

>After she filed a report, she began facing harassment from supervisors who would write her up for violating the dress code, even though other workers wore less clothing because of the oppressive heat but did not get written up. In July 2024, in the weeks following her June OSHA complaint, Kamara received two write-ups in rapid succession. The stated reason: her clothing.

>“I’d already been complaining to my supervisor: you’re letting the men do this, but not me. I filed charges with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) on June 13. My OSHA complaint was June 24. The Civil Rights Division complaint was July 16, just two days before my termination.”

>The write-up that precipitated her firing was dated by HR as received on July 16, but the supposed incident it documented did not occur until July 17. “They had already been working with the union to get rid of me,” she said.

>On July 17, 2024, Kamara’s supervisor approached her on the floor without a union representative and ordered her to roll her pant legs down. She complied. But she then went to the area manager to demand an end to what she described as targeted harassment.

>“It was a confrontation on the floor. He accused me of calling him the N-word,” Kamara, who is African American, said. “He made up all these false allegations, that I was threatening him. They walked me out with security.”

>The following day, July 18, she received a call that she was fired for insubordination. She  filed additional charges with the NLRB and OSHA, and began fighting for reinstatement through the union. The fight took six months. She was out of work from July 18, 2024 to February 25, 2025.

>Back at work: same conditions, no training, phosphate in the air

>When Kamara returned in February 2025 she was placed in a new area of the plant alongside a coworker named Anthony King. She was assigned to a machine Anthony had been running and told she would receive formal training, which never came.

>“I waited six weeks before my union filed a grievance, and eight weeks before I started complaining loudly. I had been showing up to work every day but nobody had signed off on my training. In June, they finally tried to see what I knew on the machine. I refused to run it. I’d been there months and no one had certified me.”

>Beyond the lack of certification, Kamara discovered that Anthony himself had never been properly trained. When she raised this with management, they could not produce documentation showing he was qualified to train anyone else. The implications went beyond paperwork.

>“If you don’t know what you’re doing on these machines, you could push the wrong button, have the wrong robot going the wrong way, crush a part, or crush yourself. If you’ve never been shown how to stop or start the machine, you should at least know what the E-stop button is. According to their own rules, you’re not even supposed to be running a machine unless you’re trained on the matrix.”

>The parts in Area 3 came coated in phosphate that drifted through the air. Workers were not given proper PPE, like masks or respirators, and no one told Kamara, Anthony, or any of the other workers that the chemical should not be inhaled.

>“The forklift drivers would come through and say, ‘You’re supposed to be wearing a mask.’ I’m like, they didn’t give us masks! Anthony wouldn’t dust himself off. He would wear the phosphate on his shirt all day. He was working two jobs, midnights at Dana, then mornings at Kroger. That man was in good health. But he was breathing that stuff in every day for a year.”

>Chronic phosphate inhalation in an industrial setting without proper PPE is a well-established occupational health hazard. The risks are severe and include but are not limited to chemical pneumonitis, chronic bronchitis, and progressive lung fibrosis, as the particles accumulate in lung tissue and trigger sustained inflammatory responses. Some phosphating processes also release phosphine gas as a byproduct, which is acutely toxic even at low concentrations and can cause pulmonary edema, cardiovascular stress, and neurological effects.

>UAW buried grievances, collaborated with management

>Throughout this period, Kamara’s union rep “was turning in the write-ups but not turning in my side of the story. The grievances he submitted on my behalf had no HR stamp, meaning they were never actually filed. He admitted it. That’s why the regional union leadership had to step in and take over my cases. The UAW rep resigned in July of 2025, after just one year in the position, because he had botched so many grievances.”

>The union ultimately combined her multiple grievances into a single case, in violation of her rights and the contract. She eventually accepted a paltry settlement offer that did not make her whole for six months of lost wages.

>On June 3, 2025, another oil spill occurred in Area 3. Kamara immediately requested to be moved to a safe environment. Management made her wait until July 7. She was given a three-day suspension for refusing to operate her machine.

>On July 22, the second day of her suspension, she had a scheduled meeting with a MIOSHA investigator, who then interviewed 11 workers, including Anthony King, about conditions at the plant through September of 2025.

>On August 1, Kamara was called to run a machine she had not operated since 2024. When she arrived, she found the spindle loader wrapped in tape in what she described as a makeshift repair that suggested the machine had not been properly fixed.

>“I told my supervisor: I think the company is trying to set me up. He sent me to the conference room. Management and the union were in one room. Then the head of HR came into the room and started questioning me without my union present. I told him to talk to my union. He refused. He started yelling at me to sit down like I’m a dog. My union rep grabbed me because I was saying, ‘This is a hostile work environment, I’m leaving.’ My rep said if I left he couldn’t help me.”

>Kamara was accused of attacking her supervisor and received a termination notice on August 7. 

>Death of Anthony King

>Kamara found out about Anthony’s death by chance, during a phone call in late December 2025 with a former coworker. 

>“I called a coworker during the Christmas period, just to catch up. I asked how Anthony was doing. He said: ‘Anthony’s dead. He died in October.’ It threw my whole Christmas off. I felt survivors’ remorse. I felt like I had abandoned him when I left. If I had been there, at least I would have called 911.”

>Kamara pieced together details from former coworkers and found out that another worker walking past Anthony’s station found him in extreme distress on the ground. Someone called an ambulance and he was transported to a nearby hospital. According to some accounts, Anthony was unresponsive by the time the ambulance left the Dana premises. A union head of safety reportedly visited the hospital that night and was apparently fired.

>Some workers alleged that the company tried to clock Anthony out to make it appear as though he had a medical incident off-shift. When workers approached the UAW about it, they were told they weren’t aware.

>“Anthony was such a hard worker. I kept telling him: we get paid by the hour, Anthony, not by the parts. Don’t kill yourself over this. He would push and push. I feel like I owe Anthony justice because that could have been me. It could be any one of us.” 

>Kamara’s case is not an isolated incident. “They knew if they fired me, everyone in the building would have to bow down to them. That’s how it works. Get rid of the person who speaks up, and the rest will fall in line. I’ve been fired from two different companies, both times after filing safety complaints. I’m not going to stop using my voice. That’s what I was given a voice for.”

>With Dana’s contract expiring on May 22, Kamara has a direct message for workers at the Warren plant, in Toledo, Ohio and at Dana facilities in all 33 countries where the company operates.

>“Don’t be afraid to speak up. Retaliation is real, and I know companies do it. That’s why people don’t come forward. But use your voice. I’m trying to set a precedent. Nobody at any Dana plant, in any country, should face discrimination or retaliation for raising safety concerns.”

>Kamara encouraged workers to begin making plans for strike action now, and to link up with other autoworkers in the Big Three and at other Dana facilities worldwide. “If the contract is up and it’s not what workers are looking for, they should walk out. All shifts. Start making picket signs now. Don’t wait until the last minute. If the union won’t lead it, let the workers do it themselves.”

>If you are a Dana worker and want to speak out about the death of Anthony King, conditions in the plant, the upcoming contract expiration, or want info on forming a rank-and-file committee, fill out the form below to get in touch. We will protect your anonymity.

>Support staff at Ash Field Academy in Leicester—a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) school—took the first day of strike action on April 30 in a dispute over the reinstatement of workplace union representative Tom Barker. Two further strike days by the UNISON members are scheduled for May 13 and 14.

>Barker was suspended from the school in October 2025, only days after members had voted to take industrial action against job losses and staff restructuring at Ash Field by his employer, Discovery Schools Academy Trust (DSAT). As a Multi Academy Trust, DSAT comprises 20 schools: 15 primary schools, four specialist provisions, and one secondary school.

>UNISON opened a formal industrial action ballot over Barker’s suspension on February 18 this year with the ballot closing on March 18. Members voted by 87 percent on a 57 percent turnout to support Barker’s reinstatement.

>When DSAT took over Ash Field Academy from the single school trust in 2024, DSAT reduced staffing levels by not replacing staff that had left, justified as “natural wastage”. Last summer DSAT leaders launched a redundancy consultation that resulted in a further 10 percent loss of mostly frontline workers, worsening workload stress for remaining staff.

>Teaching Assistants and support staff voted to strike after nine redundancies were announced in October 2025, with 86 percent supporting strike action. DSAT leaders responded by withdrawing the redundancies and restoring staffing to 2024 levels and agreeing not to impose further redundancies for 12 months. Barker was suspended three days after the strike vote. By ending the dispute, UNISON strengthened the hand of management, enabling them to launch a vindictive campaign against Barker in an attempt to block future opposition to inevitable cuts in order to meet budgetary demands.

>The school support staff were also involved in a prolonged and bitter dispute between April and November 2023 in which Barker was the local union representative. The teaching assistants took strike action for 43 days over eight months. The strike action in 2023 resulted in an 18 percent and 25 percent pay rise for classroom-based staff, and a £2,000 one-off payment for all support workers with a commitment from the employer to follow the National Joint Council pay settlements.

>The World Socialist Web Site spoke with staff on the picket on the first day of strike action. There were some 20 support workers and Teaching Assistants (TA’s) on the picket with a few local UNISON reps, and representatives from Leicester and District Trades Union Council. The Independent MP for Leicester South, Shockat Adam made a brief appearance. The names of staff have been changed for their protection.

>...

>Karen and Michell said: “They [management] have the responsibility to the welfare of all their staff, and that includes Tom.” Both believed Tom was victimised because: “He’s outspoken, and he stands up against what’s wrong. I think that’s why they targeted him.” They explained that having been taken over by a Multi Academy Trust, the school management have been strengthened and “that’s probably why they joined the trust [DSAT] in the first place.”

>“It’s always the front line staff that suffer the most, when it comes to redundancies, Last time [in 2023] when it was about pay, it’s a bit stomach turning when you’re told they can’t afford to pay you a fair wage when you know people are there earning a wage way more than you do.”

>By removing their rep Karen and Michelle said: “They’ve took our voice away, and that’s what their whole aim is. They tried to take our voice away from us, and we need to get our voice back.”

>As the WSWS explained in its previous article on Barker’s suspension: “The suspension is aimed at silencing opposition to the drastic cuts being planned and implemented throughout the education sector. There has been a significant growth of industrial action nationwide against academy Trusts who after decades of bumper profits now face deficits in their budgets, with 55 percent predicted to be in deficit.

>“Rising costs and depleted school budgets have seen a significant increase in redundancies and pay cuts of up to 20 percent and a restructuring of pay grades for thousands of TA’s across the sector. 50 percent of schools reported cutting teaching assistants (2025) and 55 percent reported cutting support staff overall. Almost three quarters (74 percent) of school leaders expected TA cuts in 2025-2026.”

>Educators must mobilise their collective and independent strength against this offensive and in opposition to the trade union bureaucracy who drive every dispute down a blind alley of appeals to employers and the government.

>The outrage expressed by several unions including the leader of UNISON, Andrea Egan, the largest trade union with 1.3 million members, is hot air to cover their complicity in imposing austerity and privatisation of public services.

>The suspension of Barker must be lifted and a unified campaign launched to oppose the decimation of state education. The drive to privatisation, cuts in education spending and the defense of the basic democratic right to organise in the workplace can only be fought by the building of independent rank and file committees.

>Less than three weeks after United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 called off the powerful strike of meatpacking workers at the JBS meat processing plant in Greeley, Colorado leading to a concessionary contract weeks later, meatpacking workers at the JBS beef and pork plant in nearby Denver voted April 27 to authorize strike action. Ninety-seven percent of the plant’s 300 workers voted in favor.

>The Greeley JBS plant is responsible for nearly 8 percent of all US beef processing, while the Denver facility processes beef and pork for Kroger grocery stores across the Southwest. These include King Soopers and City Market in Colorado, Fry’s Food and Drug Stores in Arizona, Smith’s in Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona and Ralphs and Food 4 Less in Southern California.

>The last contract at the Denver facility expired in September 2025 with Local 7 reaching the latest of several extension agreements with JBS allowing workers to strike on 72 hours notice after an authorization vote.

>“We’re evaluating their [JBS’] behavior if they’re actually going to come to the [bargaining] table,” said Kim Cordova, Local 7 president. “Once we give that 72-hour notice, then the no-strike clause in that agreement is gone. We already have strike authorization vote from the workers and from the members. And so once that provision in our collective bargaining agreement is no longer in effect, we have the ability to engage in a work stoppage.”

>As mentioned previously, however, after the initial contract expired in September 2025, the union reached multiple rolling contract extensions with the company at the Denver plant often on a month-to-month and even week-to-week basis. Given this, it is highly likely that there were multiple periods in which pro-corporate “no strike” clauses were not in effect and preparations could certainly have been made to conduct a solidarity strike with Greeley workers.

>Local 7 officials, however, did nothing to mobilize Denver workers in support of their brothers and sisters or even inform them that the strike was taking place. This was duplicated at Local 7 workplaces across the Colorado and Wyoming regions.

>The initiation of the latest contract extensions is in fact intended to give JBS a stronger hand in negotiations and thus stifle the Denver workers’ struggle.

>This is of a piece with the UFCW’s strategy in both the Greeley strike and the King Soopers and Safeway grocery workers strikes before it last year. The union’s overriding concern is not the defense of workers but the companies’ profits, which must remain unimpeded throughout.

>This was precisely why the UFCW did nothing to mobilize its membership in Cactus, Texas after JBS diverted cattle there from the Greeley plant. At the same time, union officials allowed scab labor, whom they euphemistically referred to as “replacement workers,” to continue plant operations in Greeley while 3,000 members were manning picket lines.

>Then as now, the critical task for meatpacking workers in JBS and beyond is to form their own independent rank-and-file committees, breaking the stranglehold of the union and taking the struggle into their own hands.

>To add insult to injury, nearly three weeks after the Denver vote passed and even after strike registration was held on May 2 indicating that an actual work stoppage was imminent, UFCW International has thus far refused to sanction the strike. According to a Local 7 press release, the International is making its sanction contingent upon additional bargaining sessions with JBS. However, given the fact that JBS has stonewalled and delayed during the few sessions it has attended, the true intent of withholding sanction is effectively to disregard the workers’ strike authorization vote.

>These actions have led to widespread outrage among rank-and-file workers, who have decried the open collusion between the union and management.

>One worker on the UFCW’s subreddit noted with disgust the recent news that UFCW international bureaucrats had been photographed smiling with JBS executives in Brazil. “They are in bed with JBS. After seeing that you can’t tell me UFCW international isn’t dirty! Using our dues to fly to Brazil! Give me a break.”

>...

>There is no doubt that the UFCW is extremely concerned that should the Denver workers go out on strike, they would draw lessons from the Greeley and make it more difficult for the union bureaucracy to shove a similar concessionary contract down workers’ throats. Moreover, it would likely rekindle discontent at the Greeley plant itself which the union seeks to keep quiet.

>Militant precedents are being set by workers in the US and internationally who are refusing to accept any more rotten contracts issued by management in collusion with the unions. These include Nexteer auto parts workers in Saginaw, Michigan, who last month rejected a concessionary TA reached between the company and the United Auto Workers by 96 percent. Miners in Türkiye launched a march across the country drawing in broad layers of the working class in defiance of the Erdogan government to win their demands.

>In both cases, the initiative sprung independently from the rank and file. Meatpacking workers in Denver and beyond can only hope to achieve their aims through similar initiatives, above all, by forming rank-and-file committees in opposition to the union bureaucracy.

>Workers can only fight against poverty wages and unsafe conditions by taking up the fight for rank-and-file committees with even greater urgency. For information on forming or joining a rank-and-file committee, click here.

>Voting closes Tuesday for a second tentative agreement (TA) covering 30,000 flight attendants at United Airlines. The vote by members of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) is taking place under conditions of acute crisis in the airline industry, marked above all by the sudden collapse of Spirit Airlines on May 2 and the layoff of its 17,000 workers without notice or severance.

>United flight attendants have not received a pay raise since 2020, though their previous contract became amendable in August 2021. They have been kept on the job through the joint operation of the airline and the union apparatus under the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, which imposes heavy limits on the right to strike for railroad and airline workers. The law has been wielded for a century by the American bourgeoisie, and loyally enforced by the trade union bureaucracy, to suppress the class struggle.

>Workers rejected the first tentative agreement last July by 71 percent on a 92 percent turnout. The current TA emerged after eight months of further mediated talks and was announced March 26 following a four-day session in Washington D.C. It runs from May 31, 2026 to May 31, 2031.

>The United flight attendants’ contract is far below what workers are demanding. The headline figure of $100 per hour applies only to flight attendants in their 13th year of service or beyond and not until July 30, 2030.

>One-time back pay equal to $740 million is the equivalent of 4 percent of eligible earnings for September through December 2021, 4 percent for 2022, 2023 and 2024, then 22 percent for 2025 and 25 percent for January through May 2026. For example, a flight attendant who earned $60,000 in 2024 will receive $2,400 for that year.

>The agreement’s much-publicized boarding pay applies only to a fixed period determined by the company rather than the actual time flight attendants spend boarding passengers. Moreover, this compensation is classified separately from regular wages, meaning it does not count toward vacation accrual and certain other benefit calculations. Compensation for long waits between flights (“sit time”) is treated the same way.

>The contract also leaves broad scheduling powers in United’s hands. Restrictions on overnight “red-eye” assignments apply only within a narrow 2:00–4:00 a.m. window, while the airline retains the ability to schedule duty periods lasting up to 16 hours that include overnight flying.

>In response to the second contract, many workers on social media have commented on their exhaustion with the whole process. “Right, I’m voting yes because I have to. It’s nearly under duress. Strong word I know. But I literally cannot wait another year. I need to be able to afford my own place to live. On these wages that’s just not possible.”

>Another commented that “[United CEO Scott] Kirby will say in his press release how proud United is for giving our FA the best industry leading contract ever! While the truth is that we voted yes out of sheer exhaustion. Yup, true.”

>Spirit’s collapse is only the first casualty in a wave of bankruptcies and consolidations likely to break out across the industry. The immediate trigger is the oil price shock due to the US attack on Iran. Jet fuel was roughly $80 per barrel in March; by the week ending April 24, the International Air Transport Association recorded an average of $179 per barrel. Industry analysts now predict JetBlue is highly likely to go bankrupt in the next year. Frontier is already returning aircraft and deferring deliveries.

>...

>United flight attendants voted by 99.99 percent to authorize a strike in August 2024, but the AFA has invoked the Railway Labor Act in refusing to call one in the 20 months since, instead agreeing to nearly two years of mediation which has led to two unpopular deals. But even in the event of a strike, the AFA has said it would call a series of limited, rolling strikes rather than a national walkout. The bureaucracy treats this trademarked strategy, CHAOS or “Create Havoc Around Our System,” as virtually the equivalent of an economic guerrilla insurgency, but in reality it is designed to bleed workers’ initiative without challenging the airlines’ operations.

>With Spirit now liquidated, Nelson did not respond by organizing a struggle but by sending a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling to request the Trump White House to “deploy the full capacity of the federal government to support [Spirit] workers.”

>Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, mass layoffs are coming, the struggle is not over but entering its next phase. The defense of jobs across the industry requires the formation of rank-and-file committees, independent of the AFA bureaucracy and the two capitalist parties. New organs of power, accountable to workers and with no ties to management and Wall Street, must coordinate joint action across the industry.

>In particular, airline workers must raise the demand that Spirit’s 17,000 workers must be made whole, financed by the expropriation of the war profits of the oil majors and the major banks. The Railway Labor Act must be abolished and the unconditional right to strike recognized. Such measures would be the first step towards bringing the airline industry under public ownership, under the control of workers, and operated as a public utility, not private profit.

>On May 1, amid a wave of workplace deaths in the Australian state of Queensland—seven in the past six months—a judge fined a resources company only $7 million for the manifestly preventable death of an experienced underground coal worker in central Queensland in 2021.

>The relatively small fine—only a fraction of the profits of the employer’s parent company, Mastermyne Group Limited—is another indictment of the official disregard for workers’ lives and safety.

>In the district court in Brisbane, the state capital, Judge Jeffrey Clarke found the company guilty of industrial manslaughter due to criminal negligence over the death of a beloved father and grandfather, Graham Dawson, 62.

>Dawson was killed in a roof collapse at the Crinum underground mines near the town of Emerald on September 14, 2021. Henare Morgan, who was aged 25 at the time, was seriously injured.

>They were carrying out roof support works in a tunnel when the rock around them collapsed and crushed them. Morgan was trapped next to his colleague’s body for hours before being rescued and flown to the hospital with crush injuries to his upper legs.

>Court documents allege that shotcrete—effectively sprayed concrete—was used without the combined use of support beams known as steel sets, and without identifying the risks of abandoning the original method of strata support, which had been recommended by specialist expert advice.

>The Bowen Basin mine is owned by Japanese firm Sojitz Corporation and operated by Mastermyne Crinum Operations Pty Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mastermyne Group, whose website describes it as “the country’s leading underground coal mining contractor.”

>In handing down the sentence, Judge Clarke said Dawson’s death could have been avoided. During the trial, the court heard Dawson had been on the final night shift of a seven-day swing and had been working to install part of an underground roof support system when the surrounding rock collapsed.

>Clarke said there had been an “alarming” lack of consultation about the company’s decision to change its methods, adding there had been “clear warning signs” about the risk. “No coal mine worker should ever be put in the perilous position of working under an [unsupported roof],” he said. Clarke said Mastermyne had not shown any remorse.

>The court heard there had been multiple warnings about the shotcrete process. During the trial, multiple witnesses had noted this was not a common method or one used routinely.

>This was Queensland’s first recorded court sentence for industrial manslaughter, since legislation creating the criminal offence came into effect in 2020. The company immediately lodged an appeal, even though the fine amounts to less than a year’s profit.

>...

>According to the Safe Work Australia figures, Queensland frequently records the highest or second-highest number of worker fatalities in Australia. In 2024, Queensland had the most deaths (53), followed by New South Wales (48).

>In all these cases, the state safety agency, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ), said it would investigate the circumstances with assistance from police. Such investigations typically take many months or years and invariably end up in whitewashes or, at best, paltry fines on the employer.

>Repeatedly, family members and workers have raised concerns about the reported lack of safety precautions and demanded action to halt the deaths and injuries caused by corporate profit-driven speed-ups and disregard for workers’ lives.

>But the contempt for workers’ lives continues. Last year’s deaths in New South Wales of a young worker at the Port Kembla steelworks and of two mineworkers in the Cobar tragedy are typical. Work continued or quickly resumed after the deaths. The managements imposed gag orders on workers and investigations were left in the hands of official agencies, ensuring no meaningful accountability.

>Globally, the International Labour Organisation estimates that 2.93 million workers die annually from work-related causes. In March, in one of the most recent known tragedies, a disastrous blaze at an auto parts factory in Daejeon, South Korea killed 14 workers and injured 60 others, at least 25 seriously.

>Even by official counts, the record is damning. The US Department of Labor’s latest annual report on worker deaths found 5,070 preventable workplace fatalities in 2024, a figure that dramatically undercounts the toll when occupational illness is included.

>Last month marked one year since 63-year-old Ronald Adams Sr. was killed at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant in Michigan. His widow, Shamenia Stewart-Adams, and co-workers have still received no official explanation of what happened. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued no findings, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) has said nothing.

>These deaths and injuries are not just “accidents.” They are the inevitable product of a capitalist system that subordinates health and safety to the relentless drive for profit.

>The basic social rights of the working class, such as workplace safety, can be defended and advanced only through the independent mobilisation of the working class in opposition to the parties of the ruling class, including Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition, and their servants in the trade union bureaucracy. Over the past year, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has taken the initiative in defence of workers’ safety by conducting independent investigations into the deaths of Ronald Adams Sr. and other workers.

>Around the world, rank-and-file committees must be built in opposition to trade union collaboration with management in the fight to assert workers’ control over safety and production. Under the democratic control of workers, these committees could assess site conditions, investigate deaths and injuries, formulate demands and enforce safety measures, including through industrial action.

>Above all, the fight for health and safety is bound up with ending a global social system based on the exploitation of workers’ labour power for private profit. This requires the forging of a socialist and internationalist leadership in the working class to unite the full power of workers across national borders, to take control of basic industries as part of the socialist reorganisation of the world economy to protect workers’ lives and meet human need, not corporate profit.

>Postal workers: come forward with your own testimony to the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee’s independent investigation into workplace safety! All submissions will be kept anonymous.

>Workers at the United States Postal Service’ Network Distribution Center Springfield, Massachusetts are speaking out against injuries, contract violations, safety issues and inaction in the face of this by union officials.

>Conditions at USPS have deteriorated for many years, but the issue has reached a breaking point since the start of the “Delivering for America” restructuring program begun in 2021. This bipartisan program aims to restructure the post office along Amazon lines, setting the stage for potential privatization. The current financial crisis at USPS—which may run out of money by next year—is being used to further squeeze the workforce. Management has already suspended payments into postal workers’ pension plan.

>Last month, a group of workers founded a rank-and-file committee at the facility to expose these conditions and to “unite postal workers worldwide to build collective power,” according to its founding statement. The committee is “independent of union apparatus, political parties and management,” it continues. “It is democratic, transparent and accountable to the shop floor.”

>The committee is affiliated with the national USPS Worker Rank-and-File Committee, which is conducting an independent investigation into workplace safety. That inquiry was launched last November, after the deaths of postal workers Nick Acker in Michigan and Russell Scruggs, Jr in Georgia.

>The testimony given in this article by the Springfield workers, whose names have been withheld to protect them from retaliation, is part of that investigation.

>Workers describe the physical environment as hazardous and unsanitary. “They were doing asbestos remediation two weeks ago,” one worker said. “There were no notices taking place or communication from management. At no point did I see or hear the union [The American Postal Workers Union, APWU] going to investigate it. I did not see the safety coordinator inspecting the area. People could have been exposed to it. No precautions were taken whatsoever. The area being remediated was right outside of a supervisor’s area. I’m concerned about anyone who was working in that part of the facility who could have breathed in asbestos. Anyone who used the break room or the restroom could have tracked it around.”

>Disease is also present in the facility. “Last summer, we heard unofficially that a maintenance employee who had been working on the HVAC system got sick with Legionnaires’ disease. He was out of work for a week. If he hadn’t been young and healthy, it could have been fatal to him. There was no official communication whatsoever from management. No one confirmed it was safe to use the HVAC system.”

>A co-worker added: “Legionnaires disease was found in our vents and asbestos and they do not secure areas or block them off. The person who found this was the union safety advocate. I don’t trust OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]. They said within a week or two they cleaned it. I don’t believe it. The air is stagnant and not fresh.”

>...

>One worker describes how they were hurt on the job. ”I fell in the parking lot on marble rocks. They refuse to sweep and clean here and don’t care. I was injured and taken off of the clock after I got a ride to the ER. I was ignored by the first supervisor; a second supervisor and manager made me wait for 5 1/2 hours for paperwork. A lot of people have fallen on those rocks. They should not be there and were put there for decorations. Other people have fallen. They are still there. Management was well aware of people falling on them.”

>Machinery is also a cause for concern. One said, “There have been many accidents with fork lifts. A mail handler was driven over by a fork lift. He needed stitches, the back of his foot was split open. He was out of work for about 2 weeks. Management won’t offer limited duty. They tell them there is no work for him and make them stay home without pay.”

>Another worker spoke about stress from overwork. “With the understaffing, I deal with a set of PSM’s (parcel sorting machines). Because management has started to remove bids in an effort to save money, we have lost jobs on these machines. As a result, a single employee has been forced to work multiple machines that had been worked by two or three employees. This presents a safety hazard because you have less people doing more work. It becomes a physical and mental strain. When we inform management, they tell us that the employees need to make sure they are working safely. However, when the mail volume builds up on these machines, management will intimidate employees and imply that they need to work quicker and more efficiently.”

>Inadequate emergency response is a major concern. One worker recalled, “There had been an incident where a new employee threatened to shoot another employee. The building was not evacuated. The building was not searched. There was no firearm safety protocol from management. It happened on a night shift. Eventually all three shifts learned about it. A few days after work, my supervisor gave a stand-up talk about what to do if there is an active shooter in the building. The stand-up talk lasted five to ten minutes at most and did not address the recent threat at our facility.”

>Fire alarms and drills are given short shrift. The worker continued, “In general, fire evacuation procedure is very disorganized. Many employees are unclear about which exit to use and the meeting points after the evacuation. There is not good communication from management.

>“In February 2026 there was a power outage in the building and workers were not told to go home. The fire alarms were useless and they still kept people in the building. In general, it’s very poor communication and there is no discussion about the use of fire extinguishers as well. There is a $40,000 fine but no one seems to enforce it.”

>...

>There is a profound lack of confidence in the union’s willingness to defend workers’ contractual rights. One worker noted, “Management continually, blatantly violates the union contract. They tell us to ‘just grieve it later,’ knowing that our union leadership is weak and constantly makes deals with management that do not benefit our workforce.”

>Another pointed out, “Management has become so emboldened in violating our contract as well as federal law and our local union is incredibly weak. Jobs are being reverted right and left. With the structure of our current union, workers are stuck with inadequate representation for three years at a time since it’s so difficult to remove elected officials. Our workplace cannot continue to function like this. I am concerned for the future of the entire postal service and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.”

>In the founding statement, the workers who founded the Springfield NDC rank-and-file explained, “we will continue to lose ground unless we form independent rank-and-file committees to advocate for our rights, investigate violations and wrongdoings, address safety concerns and educate our coworkers.”

>The conditions documented here are precisely what the committee has been founded to combat. Its answer is not to pressure the union bureaucracy or management, but to expose these conditions build a structure that is, in their own words, “by the worker, for the worker”—democratic, transparent, and accountable to the shop floor alone.