Russian autoworkers protest low wages

Andrea Peters

Ulyanovskiy Avtozavod UAZ main entrance. [Photo by Yuriy Lapitskiy / CC BY-SA 2.0]

Workers at an auto factory in Ulyanovsk, Russia, spontaneously shut down production on May 17 in protest over low wages. The plant is owned by one of the country’s major producers of buses, trucks and off-road vehicles for consumers, the government and the military. Activity was brought to a halt for several hours when dozens of men and women laid down their tools at the lunch hour and refused to restart the line until that night.

Law enforcement arrived, and seven workers were detained and brought to the local police station. Their protest was, according to the director of the Ulyanovsky Avtomobilniy Zavod (UAZ), “an illegal action” that interfered with the production process. The workers were later released without charge.

Parliamentary Deputy Aleksei Kurinny, a member of the Stalinist Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), accused the autoworkers of “sabotage” on the grounds that the factory is part of Russia’s military-industrial complex and fulfills orders necessary for the maintenance of the war effort. While no legal action has been taken against the strikers, Kurinny’s statement was a threat directed not just against the UAZ workers but all those who are unwilling to sacrifice themselves to support the Kremlin’s military machine. Sabotage accusations carry with them the possibility of extensive prison sentences.

In a video statement, UAZ workers rejected Kurinny’s charge, saying they were defending their interests, inviting him and others to come see the conditions in the factories and declared that they would get their raise “not thanks to politicians who live off our taxes” but due to their own efforts.

According to the workers, the average monthly salary at the UAZ factory is about 20,000 rubles ($260), with the highest paid seeing their earnings peak at around 31,000 to 32,000 rubles ($406-$419). They want all workers in the plant to be bumped up to the next skill and qualification tier and for compensation at that tier to be raised. In addition, they are demanding the removal of the clause from their contract that makes wage indexing dependent upon “the financial capacity of the company.”

UAZ as well as the general prosecutor brought in to investigate the dispute and the region’s minister of economic development have rejected the workers’ demand for a change to their tier status. They also said they were lying about their incomes.

Prosecutor Andrei Yefremkin told the newspaper Kommersant that his inspection “has so far found no violations,” and “the statement about the workers being paid 20,000 rubles does not quite ring true.” Repeating the position of the company, he declared that “their wages are higher than the regional average,” implying that this fact, even if it were not false, invalidates workers’ demand for better compensation.

The same line came from Ulyanovsk Minister of Economic Development Nikolai Zontov, who told the press, “On the whole, UAZ in terms of average wages corresponds to the average wage level in the automotive components and car manufacturing industry. The region itself is now in 60th place in Russia in terms of the average wage,” he opined as if such a ranking is some sort of achievement.

UAZ says that wage hikes in 2021 and 2022 have been adequate to meet workers’ needs and points to further planned increases, which will boost salaries by 12 percent overall for 2023. But even if one were to accept the company’s claims about what their line employees actually make, 2023’s boost would bring them up to just 45,000 rubles, less than $600 a month.

The company and state officials as well as the trade union have also sought to deny that there was really any real protest on the shopfloor. They claim it was just some sort of gathering in which workers, unplanned and in the middle of their shift, asked to speak with management.

Viktor Bychkov, chairman of the trade union committee at the plant, told Kommersant, “It was not a rally, but a meeting with the management, expressed in a loud form.”

He said he would “work through the legitimate demands with management” but would explain to his members that some of what they wanted, in particular the wholesale transition to a higher wage tier, was “illegitimate.” Bychkov defended the company’s outsourcing of work as necessary during “periods of high production load” and denied that his members are paid less than these temporary employees.

Conditions in Russia’s auto industry, which saw vehicle production fall by 56 percent in 2022, are extremely tense. Having been closely integrated into global auto production, the industry was particularly hard hit by the draconian economic sanctions imposed by the US and EU since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Despite an uptick in output, producers continue to impose unpaid furloughs and temporary shutdowns due to supply chain problems. At the start of May, UAZ extended its one-week holiday closure by six days. Workers were told they could use some of their paid vacation time during that period if they wanted to.

Russia’s largest auto production conglomerate, AvtoVaz, halted operations at some plants between April 4 and 24, a move they had intended to postpone till later in the year but could not delay. In June, AvtoVaz facilities in Tolyatti and Izhevskiy will switch to a four-day week for a period of three months. The company is citing shortages of electrical parts and problems in the car market as the reason.

In an interview with Tsargrad.tv, economist Yevgeny Nadorshin, commenting on the recent protest at the UAZ plant, stated that given the crisis in household incomes in Russia and the country’s efforts to ramp up industrial production, “without a doubt” there would be growing wage demands from Russian workers.

While inflation has eased over the last year in Russia, the country’s state bank just announced that the price reprieve was temporary and is now over. Inflation is once again on the uptick and will hit between 4.5 and 6.5 percent in 2023. Workers’ real incomes will continue to fall.

The stage is being set in Russia for major social conflicts. The relentless pressure on workers’ living standards coincides with and is exacerbated by the escalating US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine.

In the war, the Russian ruling class is seeking some sort of accommodation with imperialism that allows it to exploit Russia’s natural resources and the Russian working class without direct interference by the major capitalist powers. But the imperialist powers are seeking not accommodation but military defeat. The Kremlin, having taken the US and NATO’s bait in invading Ukraine, has entangled the Russian working class in a bloody debacle.

Strikes across Italy opposing Meloni’s social cuts and war policy

Marianne Arens

On Friday, May 26, Italian transit workers in both private and public companies, including local and long distance services, began a 24-hour strike, as did many public school workers. In as many as 25 cities, drivers of trains, streetcars and buses as well as teachers and, in Trieste, dock workers, struck for higher wages and against precarious and insecure jobs. In Milan, Naples and Turin, strikers marched through the city center chanting, “Abbassate le armi, alzate i salari!” (Down with arms, up with wages!).

In Rome, schoolchildren and students answered the call of the Unione sindacale di base (USB) union, and demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Education. In Lombardy, the train service of the Trenord company was suspended for 24 hours, while Trenitalia went on strike from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. In Naples, the entire public transport system, including the metro, bus, streetcar and cable car, was suspended for 24 hours, as was the case in Turin and Palermo. Workers also struck in Genoa, Florence, Livorno, Bari and Catania. The toll stations on the major highways likewise went on strike, causing long lines to form.

Striking furniture industry workers on April 21, 2023 [Photo by Fillea Cgil / flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0]

Clashes occurred in Milan as strikers moved toward the heavily guarded Confindustria corporate headquarters. Demonstrators tried to break through the barriers, throwing tomatoes and eggs. Police officers, reinforced by military police, countered with shields and batons.

Excluded from the strike were certain high-speed Frecce and ICE trains. The city of Rome and the flood-affected regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche were also exempted from the transit strike, as was air traffic. At airports, a national strike has been announced for Sunday, June 4.

The key demands were: €300 net monthly wage increase and adjustment of wages to inflation; €10 minimum hourly wage for all those whose earnings are still below that; and an end to precarious, temporary and low-paid jobs.

In May there were several strikes in Italy demanding increased wages and greater job security. They are part of a growing movement throughout the European working class, from France, Spain and Britain to the warning strike movements in Germany and Scandinavia and the recent teachers strikes in Romania.

In Italy, a four-hour national transport workers strike took place on May 2. On May 3, air traffic controllers went on strike, supported by Air Dolomiti and Vuelding flight attendants. On May 19, ground crew workers at all Italian airports went on strike against exploitation, starvation wages and precarious conditions. At ITA Airways, the successor to Alitalia, which is being taken over by Lufthansa, there have already been several walkouts protesting the elimination of 4,000 jobs.

The strike movement is directed against the pro-business social and war policies of the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who belongs to the fascist Fratelli d’Italia. The Meloni government is trying to extend the expired collective agreement in the public sector until 2024, replace it with arbitrary and puny inflationary bonuses and so impose the budget constraints dictated by Brussels.

The government has approved a new decree for labor and social affairs that includes cuts in social benefits and a relaxation of regulations on short-term employment contracts. In May, the three traditional union confederations CGIL, CISL and UIL held three large rallies opposing these policies, with 30,000 to 40,000 workers participating in each of Bologna, Milan and Naples.

Meloni is implementing tax cuts for entrepreneurs and the rich. In populist manner she compares taxes on small businesses and the self-employed to mafia protection rackets. Her finance minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti (Lega), cut by three-quarters an excess profits tax on energy companies that Meloni’s predecessor, Mario Draghi, had introduced. Another tax giveaway on the government’s horizon involves abolishing Italy’s extra tax on high-horsepower Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis.

Meloni is concurrently in the process of phasing out the Citizen’s Income (Reddito di cittadinanza). This was the central election promise of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Although it was only a drop in the bucket, it has provided around 1 million needy people with an additional social assistance of up to €780. To the applause of EU partners and financial markets, Meloni announced back in November 2022 that she would grant the Citizen’s Income only for a limited period in 2023 and abolish it altogether from 2024 on.

At the same time, poverty in Italy is on the rise. According to the Caritas poverty report, 5 million Italians live in absolute poverty. The south in particular is turning into a poorhouse: poverty there has doubled in the last 10 years to 10 percent of the population. Throughout Italy, 1.4 million children are at risk of poverty. Youth unemployment is on the rise, as is the precariousness of work, for which reasons among the “absolute poor,” immigrants are particularly affected. While 7.2 percent of all Italians are poor, among immigrants, poverty affects one in three (32.4 percent).

The gaping social inequality is not solely due to tax giveaways to the rich and entrepreneurs nor the austerity measures dictated by the EU. War policies are devouring billions. In her militarist policy, Giorgia Meloni is continuing the pro-NATO course set by Draghi. She supports Ukraine with military and financial aid and is arming the army and police state in Italy. In March, she visited President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev and promised him an air defense system. A few days ago she in turn received the Ukrainian head of state in Rome.

Meloni is at pains to highlight her agreement with the EU’s right-wing, militaristic and highly dangerous policies. Like Germany, Great Britain and France, Italy is to arm itself for a third world war at the expense of the working population.

The Italian trade unions, as in other countries, are vicarious agents of capital. In this capacity they work closely not only with the Democrats, who have carried out massive social cuts when in government, but also with Meloni. For example, Maurizio Landini, leader of the largest trade union confederation, CGIL, and a former member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), invited Meloni to speak at the last trade union congress.

Because the traditional CGIL, CISL and UIL union federations are so deeply entangled in the Italian economy, members are leaving them in droves. The USB, which called a strike on May 26, and other unions such as Cobas, CUB, etc. are trying to fill the vacuum. But their national orientation and perspective is essentially no different from that of the old union bureaucrats.

Time and again, unions call for one-day strikes so as to maintain control over a growing movement and to prevent a social uprising against war and capitalism from occurring. Their leaders are linked to Italy’s pseudo-left and Stalinist parties, from Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) and the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), newly formed in 2016, to Potere al Popolo (PaP), Sinistra Italiana and the Democrats. Both USB leader Pierpaolo Leonardi and Cobas leader Piero Bernocchi are close to the Rifondazione Comunista, which supported the Romano Prodi government’s policy of budget cuts and war between 2006 and 2008.

In the recent local elections, union bureaucrats, when they spoke out at all, supported the PD (Democrats). PD’s newly minted leader Elly Schlein, 38, whose only trump card is her relative youth, began her career on Barack Obama’s campaign team in the US and has been vice president of Emilia-Romagna for two years. In the elections, however, the bankrupt policies of the so-called “left camp” have led to another, even more significant electoral victory for the right and fascists around Meloni.

In Emilia-Romagna, these bankrupt policies are particularly evident. The recent massive flooding, which has claimed 15 lives, relentlessly expose their blatant failure. In this region, where the “left” camp has been in government for 78 years, everything that is necessary to prevent floods, landslides and other disasters has been neglected.

Not only has infrastructure been neglected, soils paved over, rivers straightened and mountains deforested, and long overdue dam work repeatedly postponed. The austerity measures in the public sector are now also taking their toll. There is a shortage of well-trained and reasonably paid workers, including agronomists, urban planners, structural and civil engineers, firefighters, social workers and many more.

The disastrous flooding shows the true face of the capitalist crisis. While those in charge in Rome and Bologna argue over responsibilities and funds, the people in the flooded region are left to fend for themselves and rely on the help of volunteers.

Psych examiner reported “no suicidal thoughts” days before Epstein death

Gabriel Black

2011 photo taken at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. From left: James E. Staley, at the time a senior JPMorgan executive; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Epstein; Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder; and Boris Nikolic, who was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s science adviser.

A psychological examiner reported that Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and sex-trafficker, had “no suicidal thoughts” and a “clear mental status” in the days leading up to his death while in prison in 2019, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The information about Epstein’s time in prison comes as an ongoing lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase continues to reveal information about his relationship with the rich and powerful.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Jes Staley, a major financier and close confidant of Epstein, alleges that he and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, communicated “for years” about Epstein. This stands in sharp contrast to Dimon’s claim to not “know anything” about Epstein until 2019.

The lawsuit is being pursued by the US Virgin Islands and an unnamed woman who was the victim of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. The suit alleges that JPMorgan Chase facilitated Epstein’s sex-trafficking of young women at his Caribbean villa.

Staley was a significant player in Epstein’s world and was a leading financier himself. The Journal claims JPMorgan Chase has “sought to pin the bulk of the relationship [with Epstein] on Staley.” The bank has sued Staley on these grounds.

Staley was a leading executive at JPMorgan and considered to be a “leading candidate” to succeed Jamie Dimon, according to the Journal. Following his exit from JPMorgan Chase in 2013, Staley took over Barclays in 2015, one of the largest multinational banks, with assets over 1.5 trillion British pounds.

Staley is accused of sexually abusing a young woman through Epstein’s trafficking operation, an allegation he denies. He stepped down from Barclays in 2021, following investigations into his well-known relationship with Epstein.

Dimon and JPMorgan have both denied Staley’s claims. “I don’t recall knowing anything about Jeffrey Epstein until the stories broke sometime in 2019. … I didn’t even—had never even heard of the guy, pretty much,” stated Dimon. 

One entry from Epstein’s calendar, dated March 2, 2010, notes a meeting including Epstein, Dimon and Staley. JPMorgan told the Journal that Dimon did not attend.

If Staley’s claims are true, it suggests that JPMorgan was more conscious of its dealings with Epstein, including the financial backing Epstein required to run his trafficking operation, than the bank lets on.

The day after the Journal released this information, on Friday, the Associated Press announced that it had obtained some 4,000 pages of documents from the federal Bureau of Prisons regarding Epstein’s imprisonment. The documents, some of which are now publicly available, were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act. 

While the WSWS has only reviewed some of these documents so far, selections regard Epstein’s mental health, following his placement on suicide watch and psychiatric observation in late July, 2019.

An official log from his psych examiner notes in his “Suicide Risk Assessment”:

No mental health history, no substance abuse history, no suicide history, no suicidal thoughts. Clear mental status.

Later on, in multiple psychological observation follow-ups, the psychologist notes, 

Denied suicidality; He stated he would never harm himself as he wants to be alive to fight his legal case and go back to live his life.

Two days before Epstein died, the final psych check-up reads,

No acute symptoms, distress or mental health concerns; denied suicidality, some concerns with sleep. Happy he received his PAC # [Personal Access Code, used to make phone calls] to make phone calls and requested to speak with someone without it being on a speakerphone. Wanting his books he left in the suicide watch area. Interacting and getting along with his cellmate. Getting ready of this [sic] attorney visit.

In 2019, following the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death, the WSWS wrote that

[T]he efforts of the media—and the New York Times in particular—to dismiss out of hand any suggestion that Epstein’s death was the result of anything but a suicide reek of a high-level cover-up.

The night Epstein died the two cameras outside his cell malfunctioned. Two guards, who were supposed to make regular rounds of his cell, failed to do so.

Dr. Michael Baden—a former New York medical examiner present at the official autopsy—claimed Epstein’s wounds were more consistent with strangulation and assault. The chief New York City medical examiner, however, disagreed, stating it was due to suicide.

While it is possible that Epstein was misleading his psych interviewer, the observer’s reports also correspond with those of Epstein’s lawyers who stated he was in “good spirits” before he died.

In the coming months, more high-powered figures are expected to give evidence. Sergey Brin, Google co-founder; Michael Ovitz, former president of Disney; Mortimer Zuckerman, real estate mogul; Elon Musk, the world’s richest man; and Thomas Pritzker, executive chair of Hyatt have all been subpoenaed as part of the ongoing Virgin Islands case.

US Supreme Court issues far-reaching attack on the right to strike

Tom Carter

The US Supreme Court building as seen at dusk in Washington D.C. on October 22, 2021. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that is a massive attack on the right of workers to strike. By an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing an employer to file a lawsuit and recover monetary compensation for “damages” incurred as a result of a strike.

Existing labor law requires striking workers to take “reasonable precautions” to protect the employer’s property from being unnecessarily damaged by a sudden work stoppage. In its decision Thursday, the Supreme Court invoked and expanded this concept to such an extent that it would, taken to its logical conclusion, make any strike illegal if it causes any harm to the company’s bottom line.

Damaging the company’s bottom line to the maximum extent possible utilizing the power of the organized rank and file is, of course, the whole point of a strike, which is a fundamental democratic right and an essential form of workers’ collective self-defense.

In her dissenting opinion, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the sole justice to vote against the decision, suggested that the issue in the case was nothing less than whether workers are legally free or whether they are “indentured servants,” who can be prohibited by law from putting down their tools.

“Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master,” Jackson wrote. Existing labor law, she continued, protects the right of workers to a “collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor.”

The remaining eight Supreme Court justices disagreed. The ostensibly “liberal” justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined the six-justice bloc that constitutes the far-right majority in an opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Christian fundamentalist appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Under the legal framework adopted by the majority, as Jackson implies, workers are effectively reduced to the status of unfree laborers by default, bound to work for their employers against their will unless and until special permission is granted from above to stop.

The case arose from a strike of cement truck drivers that took place at a concrete works operated by Glacier Northwest in Kenmore, Washington. After the workers’ contract expired on July 31, 2017 and the company refused to accept the minimal terms put forward by the Teamsters, the union was compelled to call a strike on August 11, 2017.

Of the 80 to 90 concrete truck drivers in the collective bargaining unit, 43 were scheduled to work on the day the strike began. On a typical work day, the drivers would pick up and deliver between three and six truckloads of concrete. Meanwhile, the concrete would continuously be prepared (“batched”) at the work site and loaded onto the trucks throughout the day. The concrete delivery trucks are fitted with rotating drums that prevent the concrete from hardening during transit.

When the appointed time for the strike arrived at Glacier Northwest, some of the trucks were at the company’s yard in the process of being loaded and some were out for delivery. There were 16 drivers who had undelivered concrete on their trucks at the time the strike started. Ignoring management’s demands that they deliver the concrete, those drivers safely returned their trucks to the yard fully loaded. This was accomplished without any damage to the trucks, to any equipment or to the environment.

Glacier Northwest claimed that it was “damaged” by the strike because some of the concrete could not be delivered and therefore could not be used. This is wholly frivolous as a factual matter.

Because the concrete is “batched and delivered” throughout the work day, any work stoppage would necessarily interrupt that process and potentially cause the loss of some of the concrete. More importantly, from a legal standpoint, the drivers’ contract had already expired, so the company cannot claim to be “surprised” that the drivers abruptly walked out, given that they had already long since fulfilled the legal requirements of the agreement they had been working under.

The union, as required by law, gave management 60 days’ notice. If anything, management should have been grateful that the trucks were all safely and conscientiously returned after the strike started, instead of left on the side of the road where they could have been damaged by the hardening concrete. Under the circumstances, Glacier Northwest had nobody to blame for any “damages” but itself.

Nevertheless, the company angrily retaliated against the striking workers by sending out discipline letters and filing a lawsuit against the Teamsters local in Washington state court. The union then complained to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that the discipline letters as well as the lawsuit constituted illegal retaliation. The Washington Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, and the NLRB General Counsel sided with the union, issuing a complaint that the lawsuit was meritless and that the company’s conduct violated federal labor law.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the foundation of the “labor relations” framework imposed under then President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” employers have historically been prohibited from separately filing lawsuits over strikes, requiring them instead to go through the same state-controlled process that the unions must use, namely the NLRB. In 1959, the Supreme Court announced a rule generally precluding state courts from hearing any lawsuits involving labor activity.

The Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the Glacier Northwest opens the floodgates for employers to unilaterally file lawsuits in the event of every future strike, claiming that they unfairly suffered “damages” as a result of workers’ failure to take “reasonable precautions” to make sure that the company was not harmed by the strike.

If workers at a fast food restaurant walk out over intolerable working conditions, for example, they can now face a lawsuit from the company for the loss of perishable food left out in the open or even the loss of the company’s expected profits during the time frame of the strike. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of such lawsuits, they can be filed on the most frivolous or wholly fictional grounds to intimidate and threaten workers and drain their resources.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decision will doubtless provide a further pretext for the union bureaucracies themselves not to call strikes, invoking the excuse that “we can’t go on strike or the company will sue us.”

The only strikes envisioned under this framework are token, theatrical “strikes” carefully orchestrated by prior agreement between the union bureaucracy and management so as not to cause any harm to the company’s bottom line. As for real industrial actions organized by the rank and file from below, aimed at causing decisive economic injury to a company if workers’ demands are not met, that kind of activity is to be branded illegal “sabotage.”

The Supreme Court’s decision is aimed squarely at keeping the growing tide of workplace militancy in the United States within safe channels as major contract battles loom on the immediate horizon, including in the auto industry and at UPS. Moreover, in the context of the escalating US-NATO war in Ukraine, the decision is a further confirmation of the historical law that imperialist war abroad means attacks on democratic rights at home.

While Thursday’s decision is a massive and authoritarian attack on the right to strike, the concurring opinions filed by the Supreme Court’s most extreme right wing indicated they would go even further. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, would have permitted Glacier Northwest to sue the union simply based on the company’s allegation that concrete had been damaged intentionally. Thomas and Gorsuch, in a separate concurring opinion, raised the possibility of overturning outright the 1959 case prohibiting employers from filing lawsuits outside the NLRB.

Notably, while President Joe Biden proclaims himself “the most pro-union president in history,” his administration failed to defend the striking concrete truck drivers in the case before the Supreme Court. The Biden administration’s official position was that it was “supporting neither party” in the dispute and merely arguing that the case should be decided through the NLRB process. But the Biden administration went out of its way to argue in its brief that “accepting the allegations” made by Glacier Northwest as true, the concrete truck drivers “failed to take reasonable precautions” to prevent harm to the company.

The Biden administration’s brief also cited, in an appendix, the “findings and declaration of policy” of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 itself, which declared that the government’s goal was to “eliminate” those “practices by some labor organizations” that “have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce by preventing the free flow of goods in such commerce through strikes and other forms of industrial unrest or through concerted activities which impair the interest of the public in the free flow of such commerce.”

In so many words, the Biden administration argued that the existing national legal framework of “labor relations” should be retained because it was put in place to prevent and control strikes, with the assistance of the trade union apparatus.

Thursday’s decision attacking the right to strike was handed down by a court that has been stacked with unelected far-right operatives, which is in the midst of waging an unrestrained offensive against democratic rights all down the line (having abolished the right to abortion last year), and which is currently embroiled in a bribery and corruption scandal that calls into question the legitimacy of any of the Supreme Court’s decisions over recent decades.

At the center of that scandal is far-right Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas, a high-level Republican operative and close Trump ally. Among other things, Justice Thomas has been exposed accepting undisclosed luxury vacations bankrolled by billionaire Republican real estate mogul Harlan Crow, a vicious anti-communist and collector of Nazi memorabilia.

While Thomas is the most brazen offender, the corruption scandal extends to varying degrees to nearly every justice on the court in recent decades, as well as the current chief justice himself. Jane Roberts, for example, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in purported legal recruiting fees by one of the law firms that went on to argue a case in the court.

The decisions emanating from this corrupt court are evermore lawless and reactionary, crisscrossed with tendentious and illogical reasoning and double standards.

It is worth pointing out that when socialist autoworker Will Lehman attempted to file a lawsuit in federal court in November 2022 challenging the suppression of the vote in the UAW elections, he was told that he could not file a lawsuit and must instead go through an administrative process. But as demonstrated by Thursday’s decision, when an employer wants to dodge that administrative process, the Supreme Court rushes to intervene and bends the law in whichever direction it needs to be bent to deliver a result in favor of management.

The Serbian Movement Against Violence

Mira Oklobdzija

On May 3, 2023, a 13-year-old boy entered his school in central Belgrade with a gun and opened fire. He is currently in a psychiatric clinic, and his father is in custody, accused of training the teenager to handle weapons and failing to adequately secure the pistol. Only a day later, a young man of 20 randomly fired at people in a rural area south of the capital. Altogether, 17 people have been killed and 21 wounded, most of them children or very young. One injured girl died in the hospital 10 days later.

What followed were three protests: silent marches of more than 50.000 people each. The third, the largest one on May 19, lasted long into the night, without serious incidents. Citizens peacefully walked through the city with the banner “Serbia against violence and blocked Belgrade’s most important Gazela Bridge over the river Sava. Apart from expressing grief over the lost lives, demonstrators are criticizing the government for encouraging a culture of violence and hate speech, which is omnipresent in the official media space and freely used even by the president, Aleksandar Vučić.

Protestors demanded the resignations of two ministers and the withdrawal of broadcast licenses for two TV stations that are close to the state—“Pink” and “Happy”—which promote violence and frequently host convicted war criminals and people from the underworld. Both are famous for their violent reality shows that, by some estimates, make up 60 percent of their recent programming. Protestors also demand that tabloids, sharing the same appreciation for hate speech and violence—such as Informer, Kurir, Blic, and Telegraf—be put under scrutiny.  Nearly 450,000 people have signed a petition calling for concrete actions.

A History of Protest

Protestors from the democratic opposition in Serbia often call their actions “walks.”  Like the Australian aborigines, they are performing a sort of “walkabout” in search of the soul of their country, which the Western media so often portrays as barbaric and brutal. The current “walks” in Belgrade continue a ritual journey started a long time ago. The anti-war movement organized a number of protests in 1991-1992 against Slobodan Milošević’s regime,  opposing the army’s actions in the Battle of Vukovar, the sieges of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, and military conscription. About 150,000 people took part in the largest protest—the Black Ribbon March—in solidarity with the people of Sarajevo. Somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 people deserted from the Yugoslav People’s Army, while between 100,000 and 150,000 Serbs emigrated as part of their refusal to participate in the war. Despite these numbers, the independent media and anti-war groups from Serbia did not attract much international attention.

During  the winter of 1996–1997, students of the University of Belgrade protested against the electoral fraud attempted by the Socialist Party of Serbia of President Slobodan Milošević and demanded the return of the university’s autonomy. At the same time, opposition parties created the coalition Zajedno (Together) and organized a series of peaceful protests.

But on December 24, 1996, the government coalition Za Srbiju (For Serbia) organized a large counter-protest. Milošević told his supporters that “Serbia will not be controlled by someone else’s hand,” implying that his hand was adequate. To the chants of “Slobo, mi te volimo” (“Slobo, we love you”), Milošević responded with “I love you too.” Before, during and after the rally, supporters of the regime physically confronted the opposition. Police intervened, but not promptly enough. One person was killed, another seriously injured. Serbia seemed to be on the brink of the civil war.

A few years later, the country again approached the precipice. On August 25, 2000, Ivan Stambolić, a former mentor and political ally of Milošević, was kidnapped from his home and later executed. Milošević was accused of orchestrating the assassination. The anti-government youth movement Otpor! (Resistance) led the campaign against the administration and for a transparent democracy. To unify opposition, 18 parties formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, with Vojislav Koštunica as the candidate to confront Milošević. Across two months of protests, several hundred thousand protesters arrived in Belgrade, chanting “He’s finished!” Although there was no larger escalation of violence, 65 people were nevertheless injured in the riots and two died. DOS won the elections in December with a two-thirds majority. On 1 April 2001, Serbian police detained Milošević, and he was later transferred to The Hague.

More Recent Protests

The “walks” are still going on. Promises have not been held and hate speech continues, as does the perpetual reinforcement of old nationalist myths. The rise to power of Aleksandar Vučić didn’t help. At the end of 2018, voices started to be raised against president’s authoritarian rule. First in Belgrade and quickly spreading to the cities across the country, this round of demonstrations lasted more than a year before being suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. What provoked anger were numerous scandals involving ruling party members, information about strange arm deals and corruption, questionable electoral practices including the intimidation of voters, and violent attacks on opposition figures. Assaults on investigative journalists and pressure on independent media had again become commonplace. Freedom House reported on legal harassment and smear campaigns. But oppositional parties didn’t come with a convincing alternative program and nothing at the top changed. For his part, Vučić organized a number of rallies under the banner of the “Future of Serbia,” handsomely assisted by a pro-government media that demonized protesters as “fascists, hooligans, and thieves.”

The walks continue amid a growing crisis of democratic institutions. In 2020 Gradjanski Otpor (Civil Resistance) called for a boycott of the elections, while representatives of the academic community demanded a change in the editorial policy of the Serbian public broadcaster RTS. For the next two years the streets were often occupied by one initiative or another:  both pro- and anti-LBGT manifestations, reactions to COVID measures, actions against police brutality and in favor of media freedom. To most of these demands for change, Vučić gave his characteristic answer, calling participants criminal, foreign elements.

The biggest environmental protest (and the only successful one) started in September 2021 and lasted until February 2022. It was held in Belgrade and other locations in Serbia. Tens of thousands of people demanded that the Serbian government cancel the permission given to the Anglo-Australian corporation Rio Tinto  to explore mines near the Jadar Valley and exploit the silicate mineral, jadarite. On January 8, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić announced that the government “was close to annulling all permits given to Rio Tinto” and later confirmed that the plan had indeed been abolished. She didn’t shy away from accusing Western governments of supporting the protests.

What’s Happening Now on the Streets

In 2023, the mass protests are taking place yet again. The pro-governmental TV station Pink has reported that a “handful of haters” are harassing the people. The government proclaims that the protesters are anti-Serbian, unpatriotic, and a danger to the state. For his part, Vučić sent the demonstrators a message: “Serbia is fed up with your destruction of everything Serbian!” He informed his supporters that “sister services from the east told him that these are attempts at ‘color revolutions,’” alluding to the change of government in Kyiv in 2014.

Meanwhile, the government has issued an invitation to a May 26 counter-rally, where, according to the authorities, “the real Serbs” will pledge their fealty to the motherland and its leaders and oppose all inner and foreign enemies that are struggling to influence them.

According to the Miroslav Parovica, the president of the opposition National Freedom Movement:

The government officially announced that the system works well, and to top it all, the president of the state publicly invites his supporters to protest against the citizens of Serbia who did not accept the official version about the responsibility of video games and social networks (for the killings)… it is important to support and encourage the citizens to persevere in this silent march that will eventually win over an aggressive and hysterical government unwilling to take responsibility and show even a gram of empathy and reason.

Prominent copywriter Nadežda Milenković adds, “The authorities support … street demonstration of power, brute force, ignorance, lack of education, lack of compassion, demonization… The only thing they do not support is demonstrating decency. If you try to show the authorities what unadulterated humanity looks like, the authorities will demonstratively pout.”

The government has done one good thing: organized a mass handover of illegal arms. To date, citizens have turned in more than 13,500 weapons), from guns and hand grenades to anti-tank launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. But this is far from enough. Social insecurity, underlying violence, mistrust, manipulation, propaganda, economic problems, and confusion concerning the future are all taking their toll. The president consistently glides between pro-EU and a pro-Putin positions while loudly proclaiming his independent position.

For their part, the democratic opposition and the peaceful citizens of Serbia are hoping to become a serious factor of change. But the clear and present danger is that an organized, obedient, and paid group of protesters will take the stage on May 26. They may well become violent. The government is well aware of it. Indeed, given its consistently violent rhetoric, the government might even encourage it.

Do we All need Religion? An Introspection

Santosh Kumar Mamgain

Religion is considered one of the most significant notion that determines and many times dictates the life of the people in the society. Our society is so much obsessed with the idea of religion that it starts impacting us in ways it shouldn’t. Religious beliefs is no longer a dogmatic system or system of belief in a deity or religious cult, it impacts our day to day living and influence our food choices, dressing, language, perceptions and biases, our vocation and even our mobility.

The problem here is that we no longer consider religion as a belief, but it has become a determinant and many a time ‘the’ determinant of our identity. People choose to identify themselves as individual as well as part of a community on the basis of our religion; we really support and try to mobilise ourselves with our fellow co-religionists, and detest, hate and even violently repel those who don’t align with our religious system. Is religion really so important that it has become increasingly difficult to criticise or even disagree with a religious belief and not garner a reaction from a believer? People are ready to commit a bloodbath to preserve their religion at any cost and religious beliefs have become a battleground for conflicting egos and one upmanship. Every society consider their religion as the ‘only’ gospel truth; their holy texts to be the source of salvation and universal truth and their teachers to be divinely ordained. Everyone you talk to, will tell you how their religion is a ‘way of life’, and how it is emancipating and liberating while justifying the loads of restrictions and problematic ideas by either assigning a pseudo-scientific explanation or trying to provide a ‘deeper philosophical understanding’ of those ideas that a person of limited understanding cannot comprehend.

But this idea of ‘limited understanding’ presents an interesting conundrum for its believer itself as it creates a large of ‘religious fools’, one who are barely invested with their religious literature and history of their own customs, and because of their ‘limited understanding’ become gullible to half truths and complete lies spread in the name of religion, one who get swayed by the rhetoric of religion rather than the knowledge of it, and follow blindly anyone who is ready to persuade them that he or she knows the truth. For such people, religious knowledge is derivative but as always for a believer there are no ifs and buts, all religious knowledge is ultimate and complete and thus they will be the one who will zealously rally for their religion and also the ones to react violently to anything that goes even mildly against to what they already believe or even choose to believe. And make no mistake, it has nothing to do with the educational and intellectual level of an individual. It is a matter of belief. Religious dogmas most likely stand on the pillars of willful surrender and often blind faith, and less on rational and logic.

And this is what makes us question- to what extent religion should determine our life? One can say ‘to each their own’ but does religion really provides us that space to exercise our free will? Almost all religious beliefs are based on a deontological premise, which is to say that there are inherent set of duties associated with religion which one is obliged to fulfill. The rewards are often ambiguous. We will never know to what extent our material needs like money, job, education, marriage, children is fulfilled by the grace of God and whether will be getting salvation or not? Or we are getting punished for which of our past sins? But the duties are on our face and thus unavoidable. And thus those people who don’t conform to these norms, are often seen as digressers and dissenters by the believers. Non-believers are essentially the most hated people for their failure to accept all the great things about the religions and their inability to mold their lives according to the lofty ideals of a particular religion.

Another question that arises in our mind is to what extent one should follow religious ideas, beliefs and the norms ordained by them? Is religion something that we chose for ourselves or as in most cases, we got it as inheritance from our family which was further reinforced by the society, community and people around us? But as we progress, we come in contact with people of diverse backgrounds who are beyond our own community. Should religion play any role in determining our behaviour and interaction with them? Should we try to define ourselves by our religion in spaces where religion is not required or even act as a deterrent to one’s personal or intellectual development? Unfortunately this happens too often with people carrying the insignia of their religious identities on their sleeves or head, and consciously create a barrier of identities. For the fundamentalists, the response would be to undo anything that goes contrary to the religious beliefs. Also unfortunately, the present society is plagued with a wave of revivalism wherein there has been a conscious attempt to hark back to the beliefs that originated many centuries and even millenniums ago. This pragmatic belief in the infallibility of religious dogmas in their pristine and ‘original’ form scorns at any attempt to modernise and adapt the religion according to the changing social dynamics. Are we ready to lose years and years of human development on the altar of religion? Also unfortunately yes.

To put it very crudely, Religion should play no role in dictating the personal choices of an individual. Those who believe that people should live according to the tenets of their religion are just religious fools who can’t see beyond the narrow confines of their religion. Religion is a man made construct meant to facilitate humans psychologically. It should not become an instrument of oppression. Religion is never liberating. It is coercive, oppressive and discriminatory. If you love your religion more than the right of a human to live their own life , then you are part of the oppression. Let everyone decide for themselves whether they want religion in their lives or not, and if yes, to what extent. Religion can be a wheelchair to support the spiritual endowment of an individual or society, but it should not be shoved down our throats. And this is precisely the problem with the structure of religious system in our society. We are not content with following the traditions ourselves, we take it as a mission to make everyone by hook or by crook, by manipulation, persuasion and even violence to believe in their ideas. Unfortunately, we are spiraling down as a community where religion is no longer a choice but has become a duty for all and if you don’t oblige to it, you are not worthy of living and you are a traitor in the eyes of the believers. There is no readymade solution to this problem, of we consider it one, but at least the scope to contest, discuss, debate and argue should not be narrowed down or else there will no voice to question when religions will fight a bloody battle to establish their empire. Religion should be for everyone but not everyone needs religion.

Strike wave grows in Portugal despite trade unions’ attempt to strangle it

Santiago Guillen

The beginning of 2023 has seen an escalation of class struggles against the Socialist Party (PS) government in Portugal. Amid the deepest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s, the PS is trying to impose austerity and the costs of a war economy on the backs of the working class with the assistance of the union bureaucracies.

Protesting teachers march through Lisbon, Portugal, January 2023. [Photo: Maureen Danovsky, M. Ed @MaureenDano]

The struggle of Portuguese workers is driven by the same international crisis that has propelled millions of workers across Europe to protest against soaring prices and plunging wages. In France, this led to a direct confrontation between the working class against the Macron government.

In Portugal, strikes have spread across the entire country and to virtually all sectors of the working class. In the first quarter of the year, strikes rose by 148.1 percent in the private sector and 112.9 percent in the public sector compared to 2022. They are continuing in the second quarter, as the union bureaucracies scramble to shut off one strike after another.

Portuguese hospital technicians and assistants walked out on May 19, demanding improved working conditions and recognition of their specific expertise in the career progression system. The unions reported that more than 90 percent of the 30,000 workers in the sector joined the strike, not counting those on whom the PS government imposed a reactionary minimum service requirement.

The Portuguese Nurses’ Union submitted to the minimum services requirement. It is now trying to disperse the struggle, announcing two more strike dates, June 28 and 30, over a month after the first strike day.

Portugal’s public-sector pharmacists will strike on June 22, 27 and 30 against low wages and precarious working conditions.

Civil servants in the judicial sector massively followed a strike call, paralysing over 10,000 legal proceedings. Last month, 100 percent of cabin crew from Easyjet also went on strike. Over 380 flights were cancelled.

On Wednesday, railway workers will go on strike in support of increased pay and working conditions. The rail network operator Comboios de Portugal (CP) warned of “severe disturbances” in rail traffic between May 30 and June 1 due to the strike.

Walkouts are multiplying in the transport sector across Europe, showing the immense power of this section of the working class. This includes a ground handling strike at Italian airports on June 4, after the 24-hour general strike on May 26, which affected bus, tram services and metro lines; flight and train strikes in France, as in the June 6 protest against Macron’s pension cuts; French air traffic controllers striking since March; security staff at Glasgow airport in Britain; and Spanish pilots on May 29-30 then again on June 1-2.

The Union of Investigation, Inspection and Borders Inspectors (SIIFF) called off the strike by the inspectors of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) after the successful May 22 strike at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport was joined by 100 percent of workers.

The SIIFF tried to dissipate the impact of the strike that could have paralysed all Portuguese airports and border posts, including maritime ones. It scheduled strikes on different days in May and June, and at different airports across the country.

José Luís Carneiro, minister of internal administration of Portugal, thanked the unions, stating that the lifting of the strike “was the result of a lot of work within the government, but also of a deep dialogue with the representative structures of SEF workers.” However, he warned: “This long and arduous path has not yet come to an end.”

The explosion of strikes is driven by the increasingly difficult conditions facing Portuguese workers. Inflation in 2022 exceeded records with a rise of 7.8 percent and the forecast for this year stands at 5.4 percent, numbers not seen in the last 30 years. The situation is much worse for working people, as food prices increased 20 percent over the past year, while house prices rose 18.7 percent. Rents increased by more than 20 percent, and 35 percent in major cities like Lisbon and Porto.

The fundamental issue workers face is the role of the union bureaucracies, including the PS-linked General Union of Workers (UGT) and the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), linked to the Communist Party (PCP). They are suppressing a unified industrial and political offensive of the working class against the PS government and the Portuguese capitalist state.

Last year, the UGT signed an agreement with big business and the PS government for raises of at most 3.6 percent for the public sector and 5 percent in the private sector—i.e., well below inflation. The CGTP did not sign this agreement, but despite leading most of the strikes it has done everything it can to isolate them, calling them in different sectors and on different dates, to prevent a unified struggle.

CGTP has now called partial strikes for June 28, a measure aiming to let off steam and then stop the mobilizations during the summer period, hoping that they will evaporate by autumn.

Discontent with these unions was reflected in the creation in 2018 of the STOP teachers union, which has been involved in teachers strikes since November. Although it defines itself as “truly democratic” and opposing signing agreements “without first democratically listening to teachers,” it has not proposed escalating the teachers’ struggle or a unified action with others industries.

Discontent over the role of the unions is leading teachers to seek to organize outside of them, highlighting the objective need for the formation of rank-and-file committees.

One 23-year-old teacher said he has “never experienced anything like this ... it was a very democratic moment. We feel that, this time, the fight is in the hands of the teachers and not the unions.” Another teacher commented, “There was a compromise not with a union but among all, because the discontent is real, people feel that the demands are fair and, therefore, we will not stop fighting.”

Terrified of rising militancy, the pseudo-left Bloco de Esquerdas (BE) and the Stalinist PCP are working to drive the movement into the dead end of pressuring the PS government. They have set up the “Just Life” movement, presenting it as an independent citizen platform, calling the PS government to address soaring inflation.

These forces, however, are widely discredited. Its first “Just Life” demonstration on February 25 gathered a few thousand, despite the great media publicity. This is far from the 150,000-strong protest in defence of teachers during the same dates.

The reasons are not hard to find. From 2015 to 2021, they supported the austerity measures of the PS government, while simultaneously working together with the unions to block any working class response. In the 2022 elections, both saw their electoral support collapse. The latest polls give them historically low percentages of the vote, at barely 5 percent each.

The threat exists that under these conditions the far right is profiting from the discrediting of the organizations falsely promoted by the capitalist media as the “left. ” The neo-fascist Chega, funded by sections of the Portuguese ruling class, is polling 13 percent, exceeding the combined vote of Bloco and PCP.

The austerity measures and corruption scandals have seen the popularity of the PS government crumble, opening the way to snap elections and the possibility that the fascists enter a right-wing-led PSD government. This would be the first time the far right would return to power after Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship was brought down in the 1974 Carnation Revolution.