Macy’s, Big Lots join other US retailers in shutdown of thousands of stores

Jerry White

Macy’s, the largest department store chain by sales in the United States, is set to close 65 “underperforming” locations by March 23, 2025, as part of a broader strategy to shut 150 stores—or about a third of its operations—by 2026. The move will eliminate thousands of jobs and follows an ongoing trend of retail closures driven by the shift to online shopping, and more cautious consumer spending due to inflation, higher interest rates and crushing levels of household debt.

Striking Macy's workers in Washington state in November 2023 [Photo: UFCW L. 3000]

Retailers across the US, including Big Lots, 7-11, Family Dollar and Walgreen’s, announced thousands of store closures in 2024. An October 26 CNN Business article, titled, “Consumers reach their breaking point, forcing retailers to shutter stores at a worrying pace,” noted: “Major retailers have announced 6,189 store closures so far this year, already outpacing last year’s total of 5,553, according to Coresight Research. Chains are on track to close the highest number of stores in 2024 than any year since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic decimated the industry.”

Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of US economic activity and the Christmas holidays are a make-it-or-break-it period for retailers. Though the corporate media trumpeted the Mastercard/Spending Pulse report showing that this year’s holiday spending had risen 3.8 percent over 2023, Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s all cut their forecasts for profitability ahead of the holiday season. 

A far more accurate picture of the state of things came from the executives of Japan-based Seven & i Holdings, which is closing nearly 450 7-Eleven convenience stores in the US and Canada. In a conference call in October, they told investors that persistent inflation, high interest rates and a “deteriorating employment environment” had created “a more prudent approach to consumption, in particular among middle- and low-income earners.”

Underscoring this economic distress, consumer discount retailers like Big Lots announced it will be liquidating its 908 locations nationwide and holding “going out of business” sales after the failure of buyout bid by private equity firm Nexus Capital Management. 

Macy’s operates 459 stores under the Macy’s brand name and another 32 Bloomingdale’s luxury stores. The closures are part of the company’s “Bold New Chapter” strategy to streamline operations and boost profitability, including liquidating “non-go-forward stores.” In a December 11 conference call, Macy’s CEO Tim Spring told investors and financial analysts the company was raising the first round of store closures from the previously announced 50 to 65 and that these would “occur post-holiday.”

So-called activist investors, angered by falling share values, have pressured Macy’s to cut costs and monetize assets, including selling real estate and leveraging its Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury beauty product brands. Share values continued to fall after Macy’s announced its third-quarter profits of $28 million, down from $41 million a year ago. Values have stabilized since Wall Street received word of the increased number of closures. 

The company’s footprint has been shrinking for many years. Under pressure from previous investors, Macy’s sold its San Francisco men’s store for $250 million, its Minneapolis flagship for $59 million, a portion of its Chicago Loop flagship for $27 million and its Pittsburgh flagship for $15 million. In December, Macy’s said it was selling its iconic building in downtown Brooklyn, New York to United American Land. Macy’s will reportedly lease the four story, 440,000 square-foot property in the Fulton Mall from the new owner but it is not clear how long the store will remain open.

The company has returned $8.7 billion to shareholders over the last decade though stock buybacks and dividends. But this has not stopped private equity firms from aggressively expanding their presence on Macy’s board of directors and pressing to liquidate more stores based on their potential real estate value. 

In July, Macy’s board of directors rejected a $6.8 billion takeover bid from Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management. The Wall Street speculators were apparently planning to secure financing for the deal based on future sales of the 150 properties on the chopping block. 

In December, Joseph Sitt, Chairman of Thor, stated, “Macy’s owns valuable and well-located real estate assets—led by its flagship property at Herald Square in New York City—that we believe are worth between $5-$9 billion. In our opinion, Macy’s board should create a separate real estate subsidiary to collect market rents from Macy’s retail operations and pursue other asset sale and redevelopment opportunities. We believe doing so would greatly maximize the value of these owned assets for the benefit of stockholders.”

The closures will have a devastating impact on workers at the department store, which employed 94,000 salespeople, stock workers, managers and other employees as of January 2023. The concerns and anger of Macy’s workers were reflected in some of social media posts, including on thelayoff.com.

“I’m sick of these activist investors. They are all just bottom feeders. All they care about is the real estate. All they WANT is the real estate at the expense of everything and everyone else.”

Another read: “In a little less than 10 months, the company has announced its closing 150 stores and decided to call it a “Bold New Strategy” when every failed retailer had a similar, but maybe less presumptuous spin on similar downsizing approaches. We have moved from one activist investor distraction (Arkhouse) to the embarrassment of a delayed earnings release, to yet another activist investor fiasco (Barington). Now we learn that the company is selling assets for pennies on the dollar. What a year, can’t wait for the next survey, it will be interesting to see if we leave the question about trusting senior leadership or asking people how they feel about the future in the survey.”

“Reducing expenses means layoffs and reduced staffing. Staffing is always the biggest expense and the easiest way to cut costs,” another worker wrote, with one replying, “On top of that they want a huge stock buyback. Sure, why not…just print some money. It works for the Feds.”

In addition to Macy’s, Big Lots and 7-Eleven, the list includes: 

• Family Dollar: the discount chain announced 677 store closings in this year. 
• Walgreens: the pharmacy and convenience chain plans to close 1,200 stores over the next three years, including 500 in the fiscal year 2025.
• CVS: The pharmacy giant closed nearly 300 stores in 2024, on top of the 600 it has previously shuttered since 2022.   
• Advanced Autoparts: More than 700 locations will be closed by the middle of 2025, as the car parts supplier introduces a new three-year financial plan to revive its business, according to USA Today. 
• Party City: The company is permanently closing after 40 years, shutting 700 company-owned and franchised stores after declaring bankruptcy. 
• Foot Locker: The athletic shoe retailer announced in 2023 that it planned to close more than 400 low-performing stores in shopping malls through 2026. 
• Walmart: Earlier in 2024, the retail giant closed 23 stores in 12 states, including in the cities of Chicago, San Diego and Portland, and closed an additional 11 stores in December. 
• Office Depot: The company, which has been downsizing for years, closed 10 stores in 2024 and is planning for more in 2025. 
• Gamestop: After suffering a 20 percent decline in sales, the game console company is reviewing how many stores in smaller towns and declining malls it will close in 2025. 

In November alone, retail employment fell by 30,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every indication points to this trend accelerating in 2025, including major retailer’s proposals for major cost-cutting measures next year, including the introduction of AI and other technologies to slash labor costs. This will also provoke far more struggles by retail and logistics workers, a foretaste of which was seen last week in the strikes by Amazon and Starbucks workers. In the latter, 5,000 baristas walked off the job, shutting down more than 300 stores across 43 states.

Mass protests against jihadist HTS rule in Syria

Hakan Özal

Following the overthrow of the Russian- and Iranian-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria by Islamist proxies of NATO powers, there has been a great deal of anxiety and fear, particularly among religious and sectarian minorities.

On December 8, 2024, jihadist forces led by the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized power, creating new threats to the rights and lives of Christians, Alawites and other minorities.

According to the Artı Gerçek and the Mesopotamia Agency in Turkey on Wednesday, complaints of house raids, looting, harassment of women and executions have increased, especially in areas where Alawites live, since jihadists led by the HTS took power.

After two churches and a patriarchate were reportedly attacked, on December 18, in Hama, central Syria, masked and armed men set fire to a giant Christmas tree in the Christian-populated city of al-Suqaylabiyah on Tuesday. Those who tried to extinguish the tree and prevent the attack were reportedly threatened at gunpoint.

The circulation of a video on social media showing the burning of the Christmas tree in al-Suqaylabiyah sparked outrage among Christian and other communities across Syria.

Christians in Hama, Damascus and Homs took to the streets carrying crosses and protesting jihadist groups in solidarity with the people of Suqaylabiyah. The protesters formed long convoys of vehicles and demanded that minority-populated areas be cleared of jihadists.

Syrian Christians carry crosses and shout slogans in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, December 24, 2024, as they march during a protest after a Christmas tree was set on fire in Hamah city on Sunday [AP Photo/Hussein Malla]

Hundreds of people took to the streets in the Bab Tuma neighborhood of Damascus, chanting “Protect the rights of Christians.”

Andrew Bahi, a priest living in Damascus, told DPA (German Press Agency) that “We have the right to be afraid. Over the years, the [Christian-dominated] neighborhoods of eastern Damascus have been hit by hundreds of shells and we endured in our homes, but now the atmosphere remains ambiguous. There is a conflict and contradiction between words and actions.”

Samer Elias said, “Everyone chanted demanding the protection of Christians in Syria.”

The leader of the new regime, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Shara’a), claimed that those who burned the Christmas tree were foreign fighters and would be punished. But these and similar statements lack credibility in the face of increasing harassment and attacks by jihadist gangs.

A day after these demonstrations, protests took place in Tartus, Latakia, Hama and Homs after a video went viral of a December 5 attack on an Alawite shrine in Aleppo that houses the tomb of Hussein bin Himden al-Hasibi, considered an historical leader of the Arab Alawites. In a video allegedly made by jihadists, five civilians responsible for maintaining the shrine are killed and the shrine is set on fire during the attack. The jihadists then pose on the bodies of the mausoleum servants they killed.

Government officials appointed by the HTS have tried to appease the angry masses by saying that the attack on the shrine was not new, but took place during the capture of Aleppo in early December.

Euronews reported that the killing of three Alawite judges and an officer who served under the Assad regime in Hama on Tuesday also contributed to spark mass protests in Homs, Hama, Tartous and Latakia on Wednesday.

According to the London-based anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), HTS forces killed an Alawite demonstrator during a protest in Homs, further escalating tensions. Following these incidents, a curfew was announced in the city.

The official SANA news agency announced that the HTS government launched an operation against pro-Assad forces in the countryside of Tartus. During the operation, 14 security officials from the new Interior Ministry were reportedly killed.

Alawite sheikh Ali Dareer, who lives in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood in Damascus, told Reuters: “Thousands of people are filled with resentment, anxiety, and their dignity is offended,” before adding that “However, we must remain committed to peace.”

He said that homes had been vandalised and people beaten because of their religious identity, despite HTS promises the sect would be treated with respect.

Dareer then described an incident that allegedly took place on Thursday, when people were reportedly taken off a bus and beaten because they were Alawites.

These remarks underscore the tense atmosphere in the community and the danger that the new al-Qaeda-linked ruling forces could exacerbate sectarian tensions.

In the face of the repressive policies of the HTS regime, the imperialist and regional powers that brought it to power have largely remained silent. Instead, they are doing their best to eliminate Iran’s influence in Syria, plunder its resources and increase their influence in the country.

Washington lifted its bounty on al-Jolani, paving the way for a rapprochement with the new regime. Representatives of France and Britain also met with HTS officials in Damascus. The NATO powers and their allies are trying to use HTS, which they still consider a terrorist group on paper, as a tool for their geostrategic interests.

While the US and Israel have severely crippled Syria’s military infrastructure through intensive air strikes and sought to create a compliant puppet regime in Damascus, the Israeli army has expanded its occupation and influence in the country.

As Turkey seeks to suppress Kurdish forces in northern Syria and increase its influence in the country, it has turned to more open relations with HTS. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged military and logistical support to the new regime, while Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan became the highest-ranking NATO official ever to visit Damascus, embracing al-Jolani. The HTS leader also pledged a “strategic relationship” with Turkey.

Peru’s crisis-ridden president launches police-state buildup

Cesar Uco

The government of Peru’s unelected President Dina Boluarte has unveiled a multi-million-dollar “strategic plan” for the buildup and rearming of the country’s armed forces, along with its militarized National Police (PNP), in anticipation of major social unrest, strikes and anti-government demonstrations in the coming year.

President Boluarte opening new National Police (PNP) station in Lima [Photo: ElPeruano]

Military spending is set to increase by roughly 12.97 billion soles ($3.422 billion). This will include the purchase of advanced fighter jets for the Air Force, along with two military transport aircraft for 222.6 million soles ($60 million). The Navy is to receive some $1.3 billion in new equipment, including an ocean patrol boat and two logistical transport units. The Army is to get new rocket launchers and other equipment.

The government’s plan for the PNP includes acquiring 56 armored 4x4 vehicles, 43 anti-riot units fitted with water cannon for breaking up demonstrations, 1,007 handguns, and other equipment, totaling over $57.6 million.

The lavish new spending on Peru’s repressive forces is being rolled out amid a series of escalating crises and scandals that have destroyed the last shred of the government’s credibility among the Peruvian population. Boluarte’s popularity rating has sunk to just 3 percent, the lowest of any head of state on the planet.

Among the latest developments are a police raid on the home of Boluarte’s official spokesman and close political ally, Fredy Hernán Hinojosa Angulo, in connection with a kick-back and bribery scandal surrounding the Qali Warma (Vigorous Child in Quechua) program providing school meals for poor children. After the poisoning of children in a district near the southern city of Puno, it was discovered that the meals included molded chicken, horsemeat and dog food. At the time when Hinojosa headed the program, Boluarte was the minister overseeing his work. Simultaneously, a prostitution ring operating inside the Peruvian Congress, a sex-for-votes operation, has also been uncovered.

The regime of Boluarte, who was installed as president in a US-backed parliamentary coup that toppled President Pedro Castillo two years ago, epitomizes the corruption, self-dealing and hatred of the masses that characterizes the Latin American bourgeoisie.

Its attitude toward the Peruvian working class was made explicit this month when a reporter asked Education Minister Morgan Quero about the failure of the government to speak on Human Rights Day about the 50 Peruvians killed by security forces in the protests against the ouster of Castillo. “Human rights are for people, not rats,” was the minister’s terse reply.

The announcement of massive new spending on the military and security forces comes amid the continuing collapse of Peru’s health and education systems and as over half the population confronts food insecurity.

There are no looming conflicts with any of the five countries bordering Peru. The buildup of the armed forces is directed against the enemy within, the working class and oppressed rural masses. At the same time, its purpose is to curry favor with the generals, who will no doubt profit handsomely from kick-backs on military contracts.

It is also part of a global shift towards dictatorial measures to manage social unrest related to the threat of war, attacks on democratic rights, unemployment, poverty, and hunger.

While Peru has no regional foes requiring a strong army to defend itself, the country does find itself increasingly drawn into the economic power struggle between China and the United States for dominion over the South American continent. The US has reacted angrily to China achieving a sizable lead in exports and foreign direct investment in a country rich in copper and rare metals. It has expressed concerns that the new Chancay mega seaport, built by a Chinese company, may be used to harbor Chinese battle ships. Chancay is expected to become the South American hub for sea exports to Asia; particularly valuable is the export of lithium from Bolivia – essential to the production of Evs.

The current global landscape, marked by the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, Trump’s election to the presidency and his vocal admiration for right-wing Latin American figures like Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, prompts a closer look at developments in Peru.

Peruvian media highlight Argentine President Milei’s budget cuts, claiming they have curbed inflation and revived the economy, with GDP growth reported in the third quarter of 2024. However, this growth coincided with 55 percent of Argentines being driven into poverty.

Meanwhile, Salvadoran President Bukele’s authoritarian measures are framed positively for their effectiveness against organized crime, even as they have destroyed democratic freedoms.

The protests that rocked Peru in the latter months of 2024, focusing on organized crime and rising violence, reveal deeper issues. The government has tried to palm off its police-state buildup as a response to the demand raised by the protests for an end to the insecurity caused by organized crime and its shakedown operations. The existence of the gangs, however, is bound up with rampant social inequality. They are politically connected, create profits for a wealthy elite and are able to recruit from a mass of impoverished youth who find no place to either work or study.

Peru’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the Central Reserve Bank (BCR) project economic growth to fall below the 5 percent goal needed for job creation. Without job creation, poverty and extreme poverty will continue to rise. Protests, strikes and social upheavals will inevitably grow. This is what the government is preparing for with its massive arms spending.

The Peruvian working class must prepare as well. The decisive question is that of revolutionary leadership. This year’s protests were dominated by petty-bourgeois forces precisely because of a lack of such a leadership. The betrayals carried out by the Stalinist-led union apparatus, the diversion of social struggles into bourgeois politics by the “old” United Left, and the bitter experiences with guerrilla movements have all contributed to a political disorientation that must be overcome.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to three years in prison

Pierre Mabut

On Wednesday December 18, the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) had his final legal appeal rejected and was definitively sentenced by the Court of Cassation to a three-year jail term. Two of those years will not be served, on condition of good behavior, and the remaining year has been reduced to the wearing of an electronic bracelet for that period. Sarkozy has been found guilty of “corruption” and “influence peddling” mainly in connection with his electoral campaign contributions.

France's former President Nicolas Sarkozy during commemorations marking the 106th anniversary of the November 11, 1918, Armistice, ending World War I, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]

The electronic bracelet wearer is normally obliged to stay home under surveillance with his/her movements limited to a defined perimeter of one’s domicile. Sarkozy’s limits have not yet been set by the judges.

Sarkozy has announced that he intends to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights against the French State, claiming his democratic rights were infringed upon by the State’s wiretapping of his private, privileged discussions with his lawyer which led to his initial conviction.

The ruling that a former head of state of France is a criminal underscores the illegitimacy of the French capitalist regime. The bourgeois newspaper of record Le Monde admitted that it was “an earthquake in the history of the French Fifth Republic, the first time an ex-French President has been dealt such a severe punishment.”

In reality, the ruling marks the second time, after the conviction of former President Jacques Chirac on embezzlement charges in 2011, that a former French president is condemned to prison. Chirac’s prison term was however entirely suspended by the courts. Sarkozy’s was not, and in that sense the ruling against him marks a new stage in the official recognition of the criminality of the French political system.

Indeed, the undemocratic 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic grants the president vast powers in terms of the launching of war, police repression, and dictatorship. The president can repeatedly dissolve parliament, arrange foreign policy at his own discretion, and can invoke powers to suspend parliament and the judiciary to rule unchecked, effectively as a dictator. The fact that these powers repeatedly were wielded by criminals is a warning of the enormous danger of dictatorship posed by the French capitalist regime.

The case against Sarkozy dates back to charges laid in 2014 when evidence came to light of his attempt to bribe a high-ranking judge at the Court of Cassation, Gilbert Azibert, for feeding him information about an ongoing enquiry into illegal electoral campaign contributions from Liliane Bettencourt, the multi-billionaire heiress to French cosmetics empire L’Oréal.

The now 70 year-old Sarkozy, ex-right-wing leader of the former UMP Gaullist party, now renamed the Republicans and reduced to a rump in the National Assembly, faces in total five legal cases brought against him. He is charged with falsifying invoices relating to his election campaign expenses for president in 2012: the so-called Bygmalion affair, the latter being the publicity agency charged with running his campaign.

Next January sees the opening of his trial for receiving illegal donations from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 election campaign. If found guilty, Sarkozy faces a heavy penalty of 10 years jail and five years of disqualification from public office.

In 2012, the Mediapart online investigative magazine published two documents purporting to show a €50 million contribution from Gaddafi in aid of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. This contrasted with the €20 million officially declared for the campaign’s expenses.

Sarkozy, during his term as president he played a central role in launching the criminal 2011 NATO war of aggression which destroyed Libya, reducing it to a country beset by warlords and Islamist militias. It should be noted this was supported by all of the pseudo-left who make up today’s New Popular Front, and especially the Pabloite New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). After leaving office in 2012, Sarkozy called for “rapid action of the international community” to intervene in Syria for regime change; again with NPA support.

As a pillar of the French establishment, Sarkozy has played a major role in the suppression of struggles by the working class and youth. Already in 2005 as Minister of the Interior, he suggested that working class neighborhoods be cleaned out with “high pressure hoses” after mass urban riots in response to the police killing of two youth.

In 2018, when current President Emmanuel Macron was under siege from the mass mobilization of the “Yellow Vest” movement in 2018, Macron called upon Sarkozy for his advice. While demonstrators were being beaten to pulp by the riot police and dozens lost their eyesight and limbs, Sarkozy advised “respect for law and order.”

A spokesperson for Macron’s office commented on the judgment against Sarkozy, saying that “the two men have a mutual respect for each other.”

Another example of President Sarkozy’s vile attacks on oppressed workers and nations was a trip he made to the French colonial possession of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in 2010. He said: “I have come to help Mayotte develop itself, but let’s be clear about one thing, there are rights and duties; among duties there is respect for law and the State representatives and police who have the heavy responsibility to enforce the law.”

In 2011, he incorporated Mayotte into the French State machine as a fully-fledged French department, but all the investment necessary was and has been absent. All the island’s social crises are now blamed on clandestine immigration from the Comoros. Because of his and all French governments’ failure to invest in economic development and social care, the 350,000 impoverished population has just been decimated by the cyclone Chido, leaving possibly thousands dead and over half of makeshift housing destroyed.

In the recent period, Sarkozy has sought to shore up his position by signaling his support for far-right forces.

In a BFM-TV interview he approved of Trump’s strategy of appealing to “the nation’s greatness” and “the national flame,” attributing Trump’s victory to speaking about “America to Americans.” In line with most of the rest of the French political establishment, Sarkozy defends the line that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” His son, Louis, brazenly supported the Gaza genocide, saying, “let them die, Israel is doing Humanity’s work.”

South Korean president stonewalls removal from office

Peter Symonds

A week after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached by the National Assembly, the country’s political crisis continues to deepen. Yoon, with the assistance of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), is seeking to block investigations into his extraordinary declaration of martial law on the evening of December 3–4 and to prevent his removal from office.

Protesters carry a caricature of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a rally demanding his arrest in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, December 21, 2024 [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

After being impeached on December 14, Yoon was suspended from office pending a decision in the Constitutional Court on whether or not to remove him. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who was appointed by Yoon and is now acting president, used his presidential powers on Thursday to veto six bills passed by the National Assembly, where the opposition Democratic Party (DP) holds a majority.

This is only the second time since the end of the US-backed military dictatorship in the 1980s that an acting president has exercised the veto power. The bills included four providing financial assistance to the agricultural and fishery sectors, and another giving greater power to the National Assembly to summon and require information from officials. The bills have now returned to parliament, where a two-thirds majority is needed to overturn Han’s vetoes. The DP and its allies hold only 192 out of 300 seats.

Significantly, Han also has refused to date to approve National Assembly nominees to the nine-member Constitutional Court to fill three vacant positions. If the nominees are blocked, it sets a very high bar for Yoon’s removal from office. Constitutionally, all six existing judges must vote in favour of the impeachment.

The political confrontation between acting president Han and the DP-controlled National Assembly will come to a head tomorrow. The Democrats yesterday issued an ultimatum to Han, demanding that he approve bills establishing special counsel investigations into insurrection charges against Yoon and corruption allegations against Yoon’s wife, or face impeachment himself. In addition, they have suggested that Han may have been involved in the martial law decree.

Yoon is also stonewalling. In the immediate wake of his failed attempt to impose martial law and the wave of outrage that swept the country, the president publicly apologised and promised to cooperate with legal and constitutional proceedings. Since then, however, he has refused to answer summonses or hand over documents.

Yoon also failed to appear last Wednesday at the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) for questioning over charges of insurrection and abuse of power. A CIO statement declared that his no-show would be “considered as a failure to comply with the first summons.” A second summons has been issued and the CIO is reportedly considering the possibility of Yoon’s arrest.

The fact that Yoon feels he can brazenly impede his removal from office is a result firstly of the perfidy of the Democrats and their allies in the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). They have wound back the mass protests and strikes that erupted over the declaration of martial law and channeled the widespread anger into the narrow confines of parliamentary manoeuvres.

Yoon’s attempt to wind back the clock to the military dictatorships of the past failed in large measure because of the immediate protests it provoked and ruling class fears of a mass outpouring of anger. Thousands of people gathered around the National Assembly in the early hours of December 4 and prevented the arrest of key political figures, including the opposition leader and parliamentary speaker.

The National Assembly was able to convene and pass a motion demanding Yoon lift the martial law decree. While constitutionally required to accede to the motion, Yoon prevaricated for several hours, no doubt consulting both domestically and internationally as to whether he should simply ignore the demand. Finally, he relented.

The KCTU immediately swung into action, declaring that it would initiate a “general strike” until Yoon was removed from office. In reality, the “general strike” proved to be nothing more than limited stoppages in several sectors, such as auto and rail, some of which had already been planned.

Following Yoon’s impeachment, the KCTU announced on December 16 that it was lifting its “general strike guidelines.” KCTU head Yang Gyeong-su claimed that Yoon’s suspension from office amounted to a victory. “In the end, democracy, workers and citizens, and the KCTU won,” he said.

Mass protests against Yoon continued last Saturday. Organisers estimated that 300,000 took part in the largest demonstration, in the capital Seoul, to demand his resignation and arrest. Farmers associated with the Korean Peasants League attempted to join the protests, driving into Seoul with tractors and cargo trucks, but were blocked by police. Other protests involving thousands were held around South Korea, including in Busan, Gwangju, Jeonju, Ulsan, Daegu and Jeju.

While large, the protests were significantly smaller than those the previous Saturday, when organisers estimated that two million gathered near the National Assembly building where lawmakers were preparing to vote on a second motion to impeach Yoon. Older participants who had experienced the brutality of military dictatorship expressed their determination to never allow a return. Young people were clearly shocked that basic democratic rights could be so easily overturned.

The fact that Yoon has not resigned and the right-wing PPP has even begun to organise pro-Yoon rallies suggests that he has powerful support in international circles. The Biden administration, in particular, welcomed Yoon’s decision to forge close military and intelligence ties with Japan in what amounts to a tripartite alliance with the US as Washington prepares for war against China. Such a pact had been previously thwarted by deep-seated animosity toward Japan stemming from its harsh colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945.

While the Biden administration indicated that Yoon should withdraw the martial law decree, it has not condemned his wholesale assault on democratic rights, nor called for his removal from office. If Yoon had succeeded, South Korea would now be under martial law, all political and strike activity would be banned, and blanket censorship imposed. Yet Washington, which hypocritically exploits the banner of “democracy” to wage regime-change operations, is silent when it comes the gross abuses of political allies if its geopolitical interests are at stake.

Australian teacher shortages worsen in public schools

Erika Zimmer

As the school year concludes in Australia, numerous studies have projected an even worse teacher staffing crisis in public schools in 2025. The federal Department of Education is predicting a shortage of 4,100 secondary school teachers across the country next year, with this almost certainly a significant underestimate.

A section of the striking New South Wales teachers’ rally in Macquarie Street, Sydney on June 30, 2022.

A study by statistician Simon Kuestenmacher looked at teacher supply into the next decade. It estimated that by 2034, Australia’s current workforce of 391,000 schoolteachers will need to grow to 414,000, an increase of 23,000 teachers. This is to keep up with the projected 6 percent increase in the number of school aged children.

These numbers, however, do not factor in Australia’s ageing teacher workforce. Kuestenmacher estimated that to replace teachers approaching retirement and those working over their retirement age, 34,000 new teachers will be needed in the next decade.

“[W]e are facing an uphill battle,” he explained. “Pumping out 3,400 new teachers (that actually end up teaching) every year was never an easy task but in our current economic environment, things are only getting more difficult.”

Graduates are shunning teaching degrees, while registered teachers are leaving the profession in unprecedented numbers.

In 2023, graduating school students choosing teaching as their first university course preference dropped nearly 20 percent from 2022. Moreover, of those who do start a teaching degree, 50 percent drop out before the end of the course. This reflects the terrible experiences that many student teachers have during their placements in public schools, prompting half of them to pursue an alternative career. Many graduate teachers quit the profession within the first few years.

Education researcher Saul Karnovsky told ABC News: “We have seen teacher shortages in the past, no doubt. There have been moments of crisis which the media would have called a crisis and policymakers would have as well. But the scale and the scope of this particular crisis at the moment is unprecedented.”

Teacher shortages exist in every Australian state. In Queensland, 78 percent of principals said they had teacher shortages this year. Schools are reported to be struggling to staff all classes in Western Australia and South Australia. Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, reported 1,500 unfilled teaching positions in August 2024, almost double the number of vacancies that existed at the start of the school year.

The Labor government in New South Wales (NSW) has claimed that the teacher shortage in that state is easing. However, new data referred to by the state opposition minister for education, Sarah Mitchell, has revealed that NSW has 200 fewer full-time and temporary teachers than two years ago, despite increasing student enrolments. In addition, hundreds more jobs are being axed following the announcement in April by Premier Chris Minns, that public school funding will be cut by $148 million this year and even more, $1.4 billion, over four years.

Overwhelming workloads are one of the key drivers of the workforce crisis. Australia has some of the world’s highest face-to-face teaching hours requirements, and every year teachers are burdened with additional administrative duties. While wealthy public schools enjoy lavish infrastructure and teacher supports, within underfunded public schools, teachers are provided with grossly inadequate support for student disabilities and challenging behaviours.

One primary school teacher in Melbourne told the World Socialist Web Site about the impact in her school of the staffing crisis. “A factor of the teacher shortage that I think needs to be highlighted, is that schools running without enough teachers, are hiring CRTs [casual relief teachers], when they can, to cover all the additional tasks that may otherwise be done by additional staff members. This exhausts budgets, meaning that inevitably in Term 4 schools can’t afford more CRTs, so classes are split.

“I frequently get 6 kids each day sent into my classroom. Teachers are then catering to 30 kids of different year levels, adding to workload, stress and exhaustion. Teachers then feel guilty for taking time off when they need it because of the burden it places on their colleagues. The expectation to work at this pace is way too high.”

A Western Australia teacher with 25 years working in both public and private school classrooms told ABC News that the workload and pressure became too much. “I was experiencing heart palpitations and breathing issues, it was related to stress… It’s not a school, it is every sector and the pay’s not the issue because there are other times when I was getting paid more—it’s the work-life balance, it’s having basically no life… physically I just could not keep doing it.”

In an article in the Conversation, another teacher pointed to the gulf between the needs of the students and the demands of the government: “It’s frustrating knowing what the students need emotionally, but the curriculum and administrative demands don’t leave room for that kind of support.”

Student learning is being badly affected by the staffing shortage. A 2023 report found that almost 10,000 lessons in NSW were being conducted without adequate educational support in public schools daily.

A high school teacher in regional Victoria explained to the WSWS that at his school, “A hundred students at a time get sent to a ‘study centre’ when staff are not present. They get supervised by usually one, at the most two, Education Support staff. These ‘lessons,’ usually online from a central lesson hub, are then counted by the school as fully delivered lessons.”

The teacher shortages are intensifying the cascade of dysfunction in Australia public schools. Decades of deliberate underfunding has resulted in the country having one of the most privatised school systems in the OECD. Students classified as disadvantaged, with a low socio-economic background, indigenous, disabled or living in a remote area make up 46 per cent of public school enrolments. 

Government schools are concentrations of disadvantage. Yet between 2009 to 2018 the total income of Catholic and private schools rose ten times higher than that for public schools. From 2019–2024, even under the totally inadequate official framework for school funding, public schools lost $13.1 billion and are likely to lose a further $13.3 billion under the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the next round of funding currently before the parliament.

A Secondary Principals Council submission into a senate inquiry into “disruption in Australian classrooms” held this year stated: “Our [public] schools simply do not have the resources to adequately address [the students] complex and challenging behaviours.… Staff shortages, and staff teaching out of their field of expertise, supercharges disruption and intensifies disorderly behaviour, which drives teacher departure from more challenging school settings and the teaching profession generally.”

A critical factor in driving up teacher workload and stress was the introduction of the high-stakes National Assessment—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) regime by Labor’s Rudd and Gillard governments in 2008. Described by Gillard as the bedrock of Labor’s “education revolution,” the tests were implemented to make schools accountable for student “continuous improvement.” Subsequently, “poor” performance in the tests, or any other problem emerging in the schools, is sheeted home to lack of “quality teaching.”

A war on public education is being waged by the ruling elite, and policed by the teachers’ unions. In every state and territory, the union bureaucracy has collaborated with state and federal governments, including by delivering regressive enterprise agreements that have driven down real wages and facilitated the imposition of crushing workloads.

Income and wealth inequality reach record highs in Canada

Steven Fields

A key finding contained in the latest household income report from Statistics Canada is that the income gap between high-earning and low-earning households has reached record levels. Related to this is the extraordinary pace at which wealth inequality is growing in Canada. In short, the rich are getting richer, middle-income people are getting poorer, and the already poor remain poor. 

A homeless encampment in Kitchener, Ontario, in front of the former Krug Furniture factory

In its October 2024 report, Statistics Canada defined “income gap” as the gap in the share of disposable income between the top two quintiles (top 40 percent of households) and the bottom two quintiles (bottom 40 percent of households). In the second quarter of 2024, this gap stood at 47 percent, which is the largest ever recorded.

While low-income households experienced above-average growth in wages, this was offset by an increase in interest paid on mortgages and consumer credit. As a result, their share of disposable income remained mostly unchanged. For the bottom quintile, this share stood at a miserly 6.2 percent. While this is a slight increase compared to 2023, it means that a substantial portion of Canadian households remains one pay cheque away from crisis.

The middle-income (third quintile) households fared the worst. Their share of disposable income dropped from 17.4 percent in the second quarter of 2023 to 16.6 percent in 2024.

For high-income households (top quantile), the additional debt burden from higher interest rates was more than offset by higher yields on savings and investment accounts. This group saw its share of disposable income increase from 41.6 percent in 2023 to 42.4 percent today.

An even more striking feature of the report is the rapidly rising wealth gap. The Statistics Canada report blandly states that: “Most wealth is held by relatively few households in Canada.” The gap between the wealthiest and least wealthy grew by 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period the previous year, the highest increase on record.

The wealthiest (i.e., the top 20 percent) Canadians held 67.7 percent of total net worth. The net worth of these households increased by 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2024 compared to a year earlier, bringing the average worth of a household in this group to $3.4 million.

In contrast, the net worth of the least wealthy households decreased by 1.4 percent in the second quarter of 2024 compared with the year earlier. These households (i.e., the bottom 40 percent) accounted for only 2.8 percent of Canada’s total net worth.

The report notes that younger households (defined as those under 35 years of age) were the only group to continuously decrease their mortgage debt. There are different explanations for this but, for young low-income workers, the likely reason is that they are being gradually priced out of the housing market altogether by a combination of high housing prices and interest rates. A poll from Scotiabank revealed that 29 percent of respondents in this age group now live at home with their parents or family—a nine-point increase from three years ago.

Canada’s real gross domestic product (GDP) increased only 0.5 percent in the second quarter of 2024 after rising 0.4 percent in the first quarter. In other words, the widening wealth gap comes at the expense of the less affluent portion of society.

The impact of growing inequality can be observed in various aspects of daily life. The number of homeless people is rising, and tent encampments are an increasingly common sight in Canadian cities. Nearly 23 percent of the population reported some type of food insecurity in 2022. Low-income Canadians are often forced to rely on food banks due to prohibitive costs of housing and basic necessities. Food Banks Canada issued a report noting that in March 2024, more than two million people visited food banks—a new record. With such high demand, the food bank system itself is pushed to the brink. Low-income workers are often precariously employed in the so-called gig economy, often working multiple jobs to pay for rent and food.

After the release of the Statistics Canada report, Canadian politicians pledged to address the problem. Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Finance in the Trudeau Liberal government until her dramatic resignation Monday, mustered a typical pro forma statement: “We are working very, very hard to lean against this tendency in the global economy towards more inequality. We’re leaning against it with very specific policies designed to support middle class Canadians and people working hard to join the middle class.”

This is a pack of lies. The rapid growth in income inequality and the concentration of wealth in a few hands at the top of society is the product of four decades of ruthless austerity for public spending and attacks on worker rights, combined with massive subsidies and tax breaks for corporate Canada, implemented at every level by all of the establishment parties.

The nine years of Liberal Party rule under Justin Trudeau, backed to the hilt by the trade unions and New Democrats, has accelerated this process. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Trudeau government handed over $650 billion with no strings attached to the banking and corporate elite. Over recent years, the government used a combination of high interest rates and rampant inflation to impose real-wage costs on the working class, while the rich and wealthy profited handsomely.

This record, and the systematic efforts of the Liberals’ union and NDP allies to suppress the class struggle by sabotaging strikes, has enabled the far-right demagogue Pierre Poilievre to pose as a friend of working people. The leader of the official opposition Conservative Party of Canada, who appears poised to take over as Prime Minister when the next election is called, tried to preposterously pose as the defender of working-class Canadians following the release of the StatsCan report. He told reporters at a press conference: “Today, Stats Canada reported that the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level in recorded history, after NDP-Liberal money printing inflated the assets of the super-rich while inflating the cost of living for everyone else.”

The reality is that the Trudeau government picked up in its policies from where its Tory predecessor under Stephen Harper left off. All of the major parties, including those of the Quebec establishment, have imposed ruthless attacks on the living standards of the working class since the 1980s. In the 1990s, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien presided over the largest social spending cuts in Canadian history despite budgetary surpluses. By 1998-1999, under Finance Minister Paul Martin, Ottawa’s spending on social programs dropped to 12 percent of GDP, the lowest level in nearly half a century.

In the early 2000s, the Liberals embraced a new campaign spearheaded by big business which centered on corporate and personal income tax cuts. These cuts were sold to the populace as a boost to middle-income Canadians. But, together with the reduction in capital gains taxes, the effect was to skew wealth distribution in favour of the most privileged.

During the financial crisis of 2008, Canada’s largest banks received bailouts from the Harper Conservatives to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. The massive state aid was offered with no strings attached. During the two-year bailout period, the banks remained highly profitable, generously rewarding shareholders and leading executives.

More recently, during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, Canada’s Liberal government funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to the largest banks and major corporations. While the wealth of the country’s richest was protected, most working-class Canadians had to settle for below-inflation pay raises, further impoverishing large sections of the population. The trade union bureaucracies played an important role in helping the government and businesses ram through capped salary increases.

While the unpopular Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is touting new token measures to combat the cost-of-living crisis, including a two-month GST holiday on selected items, such tinkering around the edges will not fix the living cost crisis or the widening wealth gap. Furthermore, Canada’s international economic standing is deteriorating. The global crisis of capitalism is increasing the pressure on all world governments to squeeze the working class to make their economies more competitive to transnational finance capital and subordinate all of society’s resources to the waging of world war. Developed economies are turning to protectionism and economic nationalism, a situation reminiscent of the period that preceded World War II.

Arrest of top Brazilian general exposes military’s role in January 8 coup

Guilherme Ferreira

Gen. Walter Braga Netto (ret.) was arrested last Saturday, December 14, for alleged obstruction of justice in the investigation of the January 8, 2023 coup attempt in Brazil. The arrest of a four-star general is unprecedented in a country where even the bloody crimes of the US-backed military dictatorship (1964-1985) have gone unpunished. It has further exposed the critical role played by the military in the coup plot.

Gen. Walter Braga Netto [Photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil]

Braga Netto was one of the military officials closest to fascistic ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. Under Bolsonaro’s administration (2019-2022), he served as the military’s chief of staff and Defense Minister. In Brazil’s October 2022 election, Bolsonaro chose him as his vice-presidential running mate.

His arrest came three weeks after the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) indicted Bolsonaro, General Braga Netto and 35 other members of the Bolsonaro government, 25 of them military officers, for the crimes of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d’état and criminal organization to “maintain ... Bolsonaro in power, preventing the inauguration of the legitimately elected government” of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party - PT).

According to the PF report on the coup attempt, General Braga Netto was a “central figure in the acts aimed at subverting the democratic regime in Brazil.” He is the person most cited, with 98 references to him in the report.

One of the most sinister elements of the coup plot was the “Green and Yellow Dagger” operation, which called for the assassination of Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, as well as the “arrest/execution” of Supreme Court (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who has been the rapporteur in numerous investigations against Bolsonaro since 2019, including in connection with the attempted coup. Minister Moraes was also president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) between 2022 and 2024, making him the central target of attacks by Bolsonaro and his political entourage in their baseless allegations of fraud in Brazil’s electronic voting system and the consequent results of the 2022 election.

The coup plot called for Braga Netto to become the coordinator of an “Institutional Crisis Management Office” to “advise the then President of the Republic JAIR BOLSONARO in the management of the facts arising from the institutional rupture,” according to the PF report. This office was to be primarily occupied by military personnel, serving as the pillar of a dictatorship.

Moraes’ “arrest/execution” was scheduled to take place on December 15, 2022. It was aborted because, according to the PF report, “the then [Army] commander, General FREIRE GOMES, and the Army High Command rejected the use of ground forces to provide the necessary support for then-president JAIR BOLSONARO to promote an institutional break.”

General Braga Netto’s arrest for obstruction of justice was based on testimony given by Lt. Col. Mauro Cid to Minister Moraes and the Federal Police on November 21 and December 5. Cid, who signed a plea bargain agreement after being arrested for falsifying Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 vaccination card, was the ex-president’s aide-de-camp. He was also indicted in connection with the coup attempt.

In mid-November, Cid’s plea bargain agreement was placed in question after the PF managed to recover messages and documents deleted from his electronic devices that showed he had omitted information about General Braga Netto’s role in the coup plot.

In his subsequent testimony, which let the PF maintain his plea bargain agreement, Cid gave new details about the “Green and Yellow Plan” and confirmed that Braga Netto contacted his father, Gen. Mauro César Lourena Cid, asking for details of his son’s plea bargain.

Cid confirmed that there was a meeting at Braga Netto’s house on November 12, 2022, shortly after Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat, which approved the “Green and Yellow Dagger” plan. Cid testified, according to the Federal Police, that “General Braga Netto delivered the money that had been requested to carry out the operation [Green and Yellow Dagger]. The money was delivered in a wine bag. General Braga Netto said at the time that the money had been obtained from agribusiness people.”

In fact, Brazilian agribusiness was one of the powerful sectors of the Brazilian bourgeoisie that most supported the Bolsonaro government. After Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat, it financed the protests by truck drivers who blocked roads across Brazil and the protest encampments in front of military headquarters demanding the intervention of the armed forces against alleged electoral fraud.

The Federal Police report pointed out that Gen. Mario Fernandes (ret.), “then Executive Secretary of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, was the link between the then government of President JAIR BOLSONARO and the coup protesters, who were camped out in front of military installations calling for an institutional break.” General Fernandes is also the alleged author of the “Green and Yellow Dagger” plan and took part in the meeting at Braga Netto’s house on November 12, 2022.

Since Cid’s testimony, three more military officers were indicted on December 11 by the Federal Police in connection with the coup attempt. Among them was Lt. Col. Aparecido Andrade Portela (ret), who helped raise money from agribusiness for the January 8 coup. He is a close friend of Bolsonaro’s and was a deputy to Senator Tereza Cristina, who was Bolsonaro’s minister of agriculture and previously one of the most prominent representatives of agribusiness in the Brazilian Congress.

Braga Netto’s arrest prompted the Lula administration’s defense minister, José Múcio, to repeat the fraudulent narrative that the January 8 coup plot was the work of rogue military personnel, while the Armed Forces as an institution supposedly saved Brazilian democracy. On December 17, he said that although the military was “embarrassed” by Braga Netto’s arrest, it “was no surprise to anyone.”

However, General Braga Netto is no mere rogue officer. On the contrary, he personifies the military’s growing prominence in the country’s political life, a process that began at the end of the PT governments that ruled the country from 2003 to 2016, and which was fueled by the last decade’s growing economic and social crisis.

Having been blooded in the criminal United Nations “peace-keeping operation” in Haiti, under the PT government of President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), the Armed Forces began to suppress domestic social unrest through Law and Order Guarantee (GLO) operations, which allow the military to take charge of public security.

The government of Michel Temer (2016-2018), Rousseff’s successor, intensified this use of the military, particularly in the 2017 general strike against his labor and pension reforms and in the 2018 truckers’ strike. Meanwhile, he increasingly turned to the generals to fill key positions in his government, including in an unprecedented way in the Ministry of Defense.

It was during Temer’s administration that General Braga Netto began to stand out politically. As Eastern Military Commander (2016-2019), he headed the GLO operation in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympics, and, in February 2018 he was appointed federal intervenor in Rio’s public security. The appointments of Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna as Minister of Defense, also in February 2018, and Braga Netto as head of public security in Rio were unprecedented milestones in the erosion of the civilian control over the military established after the fall of the military dictatorship in Brazil.

The Bolsonaro government intensified this process, filling its cabinet with military personnel, including the tapping of Gen. Hamilton Mourão for vice-president. The presence and importance of the military in the Bolsonaro government increased as the economic and social crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic intensified. The most notorious of these appointments was that of General Braga Netto as chief of staff in early 2020, when he took charge of the Bolsonaro government’s criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2021, Braga Netto took over as Bolsonaro’s defense minister amid both the deadly second wave of the pandemic and the most serious military crisis since the end of the dictatorship after Bolsonaro fired the entire military command to align the Armed Forces behind his coup plans. In July 2021, Braga Netto, accompanied by the three heads of the Armed Forces, threatened the Brazilian Congress, saying that there would be no elections in 2022 if there were no “printed and auditable” ballots—a longstanding demand of Bolsonaro in his campaign to discredit electronic voting in Brazil.

Shortly before leaving the Army High Command and the Defense Ministry to run for vice president alongside Bolsonaro, Braga Netto ordered the publication of an order of the day to be read to the troops commemorating the military coup of March 31, 1964, as a “historical milestone in the political evolution of Brazil” against “the anti-democratic ideals of the communist uprising.”