This is the report delivered by Eric London to the 2022 International May Day Online Rally held on May 1. London is a writer for the WSWS and a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party (US).
President Rajapakse has clearly been shaken by the entry of the working class into the mass protest movement against his government, fuelled by intolerable social and economic conditions.
Amid unprecedented inflation and falls in living standards due to the pandemic and the Ukraine war, Turkish doctors have organized a two-day nationwide strike.
“It’s not my job to die. You send firemen with oxygen and their gear. You send us with nothing. It’s like you gave me a rock and a stick and sent me into war and expected me to be quiet.”
We are building a network of rank-and-file committees of workers in key industries and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, and prepare for a political general strike.
The Apparel Workers’ Action Committee warns that this repressive move could be extended to other centres of the working class in both the private and public sectors.
The CNH Workers Rank-and-File Committee is being launched in order to organize a real fight for the needs of all workers at CNH.
The following statement by the Rank-and-File Committee of Ford Workers in Saarlouis was published in German ahead of the works meeting at the Saarlouis plant on Wednesday.
Quebec school workers are being forced back to work on their fifth day of infection with COVID-19. That is, while still contagious with the debilitating and potentially fatal disease.
Richmond refinery workers are fighting for their safety and the safety of those in their community, but winning this strike requires breaking free of the isolation and duplicity of the USW.
Chile’s president, ex-student radical Gabriel Boric, ordered Carabineros Special Forces to break up the picket line at a major oil refinery.
A Texas oil worker spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the significance of Valero workers turning down the contract amid a nationwide struggle of oil workers against the corporatist unions and the oil companies.
The oil companies’ soaring profits are a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of oil workers across the country demanding better pay and staffing.
At all Dana plants, the company is violating the terms of the contract and the unions are letting them do it. While the violations differ at each plant, our response at all plants must be the same: we must unite and take action ourselves, or things will only get worse.
Once again the UAW is trying to rush through a vote on a tentative agreement without providing workers with full details or the time necessary to study and discuss.
Stellantis workers in suburban Detroit expressed solidarity with Detroit Diesel and CNH workers who have rejected the United Auto Workers' efforts to impose pro-company contracts
The revelation of Curry’s position on the board underscores the corrupt financial interests behind the UAW’s adamant efforts to block a strike at Detroit Diesel.
The nationwide strike points to growing anger in the working class over the Labour Party-led government’s austerity measures, the soaring cost of living, and the worsening death toll from COVID-19.
Educators at day care facilities and social workers have been fighting since the beginning of March for improved pay and a reduction in workloads for the 330,000 workers employed in the sectors. But the negotiations conducted by the unions offer no resolution of their problems.
Some 6,000 nurses face a contract expiration July 1, with the Michigan Nurses Association making no preparations for a serious struggle.
Michelle Heughins is facing an involuntary manslaughter charge in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the brutal killing of John Neville by prison guards at the Forsyth County Jail, when she was the only one who tried to save his life.
The mass infection policies enforced by the federal government have left teachers, staff and students entirely unprotected in schools as cases surge.
Democrats and Republicans are citing the drop in student enrollment during the pandemic to justify a new assault on public education.
Educators at day care facilities and social workers have been fighting since the beginning of March for improved pay and a reduction in workloads for the 330,000 workers employed in the sectors. But the negotiations conducted by the unions offer no resolution of their problems.
The BEU has kept workers on the job for nearly three years without a contract. Like many teachers, including those in the Boston Public Schools system who have been working without a contract for eight months, Brookline educators are demanding “reasonable compensation as well as working conditions that meet the realities of a modern, comprehensive education.”
Workers placed no confidence in federal arbitration as a means to resolve Hi Viz and other issues in their favor, despite the efforts of the SMART and BLET unions to promote illusions in it.
D.C. Circulator drivers will see their wages eaten up by inflation as an even greater crisis in the region’s transit system looms.
At Arriva Yorkshire, the starting hourly rate for bus drivers in the first year is £9.79 (just 29 pence more than the minimum wage). Drivers then graduate to £10.91 for two years, before reaching the top rate of £12.15.
A driver told the WSWS that support for a ‘no’ vote inside the garage was high, and that his colleagues “don’t want to accept it, and I won’t accept it.”
The firing of several senior managers at JFK8 after the victory of the Amazon Labor Union is meant to be an intimidating message to all workers.
Amazon’s dropping of safety measures to pre-COVID-19 levels has nothing to do with the current state of the pandemic and will only intensify it and accelerate the spread of the disease.
The attempt to use the ALU as cover for the bureaucracy and the Democrats appears to have backfired spectacularly. Instead, the exact opposite happened: the ALU managed to discredit itself within a few short weeks by its association with these layers.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration declined to fine the warehouse giant, but cited numerous “risk factors” present in its warehouse.
COSATU is warning its ANC partners that they have massively underestimated the anger building in the working class.
In the days surrounding official acknowledgment that miners labor under brutal conditions, news broke of more deaths in the country’s extraction, metallurgy and construction industries.
Pike River: The Crime and Cover-up, published by Mehring Books, examines the causes of the 2010 New Zealand mine disaster, which killed 29 people, and the decade-long cover-up by successive governments and the judicial system, which have shielded the company leadership from prosecution.
Mine workers in Utah, who have risked their lives during the pandemic, are prepared to fight for higher wages, better benefits and safe working conditions.
A driver from Norwood told WSWS, “It’s a really difficult time. Mortgages are going up and we have to work overtime to make ends meet. Without overtime you can’t survive.”
By Unite’s own admission, it has presided over four years of below-inflation pay deals. It now wants to impose another one.
News of the strike vote at Brixton was eagerly awaited across Arriva London South. Drivers are determined to win an above-inflation pay award, with this year’s pay talks already delayed and inflation running at 9 percent.
Bus drivers explain their reasons for following and sharing articles from the WSWS and the importance of the fight taken up by the London Bus Rank-and-File Committee.
The ICFI and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties are advancing this initiative to begin and develop a global counteroffensive of the working class against the homicidal policies of the governments controlled by the capitalist ruling class, which are responsible for the worldwide catastrophe.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
