Labour government proposes three year real terms pay cut for teachers in England

Tania Kent

The Starmer Labour government has recommended a 6.5 percent average pay rise spread over three years for teachers in England to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB).

The Department for Education’s (DfE) increase would be “weighted”, meaning the uplift is likely to be unevenly distributed and would not be fully funded. The proposal represents a real terms pay cut for over 468,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools. It would worsen the already huge fall in income for teachers since 2010, estimated to be over 20 percent using the Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation.

The Department for Education office in Sanctuary Buildings, London [Photo by Sebastiandoe5 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The three-year cumulative proposal is the first since 2002, again under Labour, that is not an annual pay offer. It parallels below inflation pay rises Labour is imposing across the public sector, including among health and transport workers. Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Education Minister Brigette Phillipson have insisted pay cuts for millions are necessary to plug a “black hole” in the budget and ensure “stability”. The proposal is meant to head off any industrial action over pay by teachers for the next three years.

The pay proposals are in preparation for Reeves’ November 26 budget, with big business and the financial markets insisting she must close a £20 to £40 billion spending gap. This is to be carried out by imposing the deficit on the backs of the working class through public spending cuts, income tax rises and gutting essential services that millions rely on.

The proposal consists of a 6.5 percent pay award over 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29. While the specifics have not been decided this could mean a smaller rise in the first year (perhaps around 1.5 percent), followed by slightly larger increases later (for instance 2 percent and then 3 percent). This would be weighted across pay scales, with lower paid teachers getting more. The pay deal is linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and based on government projections for growth. But CPI inflation is already at 3.8 percent, with RPI at 4.5 percent with many indices that growth is stagnant in the UK economy.

The pay deal will be linked to productivity and further cuts to an education system already facing a recruitment crisis, crumbling buildings, lack of SEND (special needs) places and with schools forced to provide social and food provision to deal with a child poverty crisis. By the end of 2024, 4.5 million children (31 percent of all children—about 9 in a classroom of 30) were living in poverty.

The current partially funded pay award of 4 percent for 2025-26, which came in this September, has meant that schools are having to find £630 million from existing budgets. No extra funding for schools was announced in Reeves’ spring statement and no increase in real terms funding for the education sector is expected this month. According to reports, further “reforms” will focus on curriculum and Ofsted (schools inspectorate) changes which will exacerbate teacher workload and focus on teacher “accountability”.

After taking recommendations from the government, trade unions and various education bodies, the STRB will makes its pay recommendation to the education secretary in February of 2026. The government threatens that rejection by the STRB or teachers will force it to impose cuts elsewhere in the DfE’s budget. But acceptance of the offer means cuts to school budgets.

The DFE’s submission stated, “The department expects that most schools will need to implement plans to realise and sustain better value from existing spend in addition to the funding being provided through the core schools budget to deliver the pay awards.” It insisted that schools, trusts and local authorities had to “continue to proactively drive better value from their budgets across the next three years”.

By maximising their resources, the government was “confident that this will contribute to improved affordability”. Nothing should be off the table, as there was “significant potential in under-utilised assets” across the school sector. These included school financial reserves and assets such as land and buildings.

In response to Labour’s offensive, the education unions issued pro forma joint statements declaring opposition to the offer while no putting forward no plan to fight back.

An October 30 joint submission from the National Education Union (NEU), NASUWT, NAHT, ASCL and Community education unions called for “urgent, significant and fully funded movement towards complete reversal of the real terms pay cuts for teachers and school leaders since 2010.” It states: “Labour was elected on a promise of change. It must now deliver for teachers, school leaders, parents and pupils.”

After years of betrayal by the education unions who have collaborated with successive Conservative and Labour government to ensure record falls in their pay, teachers in two of the main unions have responded by electing nominally left-wing leaders. Neither offers a way forward for teachers.

Matt Wrack, General Secretary of NASUWT—the ex-leader of the Fire Brigades Union and a former member of the pseudo-left Socialist Party—called on the government to “submit revised evidence.”

NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede complained, “This Labour government… is failing to deliver on its promises. Instead of 6,500 more teachers, we have botched Ofsted reforms, declining school funding, and now a pay recommendation that will do nothing to address the continued crisis in retention. Austerity Labour is paving the way for a [far-right] Reform government. A government that will take our public services from crisis to collapse.”

Daniel Kebede speaking at a rally in London in March 2024

This is disingenuous. Wrack, Kebede and the entire union bureaucracy called for Keir Starmer to be elected, even as he said his government would be the most pro-business in history and would govern with “iron” fiscal discipline. This is precisely what Labour is now implementing, with billions of pounds in cuts to public services to fund war and rearmanent.

Starmer has relied on a compliant trade union bureaucracy that has played a key role in suppressing and selling out strikes in transport, health and education to impose Labour’s agenda.

The NEU membership of almost 490,000 delivered a powerful mandate for strike action in a consultative ballot at their conference in April against a 2.8 percent wage offer from Labour. When the government revised its offer to 4 percent based on the STRB’s recommendation, the NEU and other education unions accepted it as a “positive step towards pay restoration”, despite knowing it would cost schools millions to fund from their own budgets.

The NEU then conducted a survey of its members, who voted overwhelmingly to begin a “political campaign on funding”, with 79 percent of respondents voting to back the call to register a dispute with the education secretary. Members were asked by the Kebede leadership to commit to getting every school “ballot ready”, with the intention to call a national ballot over the pay award in the autumn term “if necessary.” The calls for ballots for strike action have been shelved.

With the STRB not making its pay recommendations to government before April 2026 and the government’s final offer scheduled after this, the education unions will utilise the months to come to wind down opposition. Teachers cannot wait until the unions eventually accept whatever final offer is given as a shift in the right direction—as they did over the current pay award.

The State Department’s “public charge” directive: The reemergence of eugenics in American immigration policy

Marc Wells

A chilling new directive issued by the U.S. Department of State has ordered visa officers to consider whether applicants seeking to live permanently in the United States might become a “public charge” based on their health conditions. The cable represents a sweeping and reactionary development of US immigration policy, one that evokes the darkest traditions of eugenics and state-sanctioned discrimination.

“You must consider an applicant’s health,” the directive reads. “Certain medical conditions—including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, diabetes, metabolic diseases, neurological diseases, and mental health conditions—can require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care. All of these can require expensive, long-term care.”

Under the new guidance, consular officers are instructed to ask whether a visa applicant “has adequate financial resources to cover the costs of such care over his entire expected lifespan without seeking public cash assistance or long-term institutionalization at government expense.”

The policy even extends to the applicant’s dependents whose medical or disability status may be used to judge the applicant’s admissibility. Officers are told to consider whether the applicant might be unable to maintain employment due to caring for sick or disabled family members.

Immigrant children at a detention center in McAllen Texas, June 2019. [Photo: Office of the Inspector General]

The directive is a declaration that illness, disability, or the mere possibility of future illness can be grounds for exclusion from the United States. It empowers visa officers (state functionaries, not doctors) to speculate on medical costs, employability and longevity, transforming routine health conditions into markers of social unworthiness.

Among the conditions singled out for scrutiny is obesity, not only as a medical diagnosis, but as a “risk factor” for diseases such as asthma, sleep apnea and hypertension. The deliberate inclusion of weight, mental health and chronic disease as contributing factors in “public charge” determinations marks a profound political and cultural regression.

The State Department’s cable represents a modern revival of the 20th century eugenics doctrines that once shaped US immigration and public health policy and reached their most murderous form in Nazi Germany. By linking health status to immigration eligibility, it resurrects the pseudo-scientific belief that society must be “protected” from those deemed unfit or burdensome, a logic that historically justified sterilization, institutionalization and mass murder.

This doctrine has deep roots in US law. The Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924 codified the exclusion of those labeled “defective” or “likely to become a public charge,” categories that encompassed physical disability, mental illness and poverty itself. These measures were championed by leading American eugenicists such as Harry Laughlin, whose work directly influenced Nazi racial policy.

The 1927 Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell sanctioned the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of working class and disabled people under the pretext of protecting the public welfare. The same ideological framework (medicalized exclusion justified by fiscal or biological “fitness”) underlies today’s visa guidance, revealing the continuity between century-old anti-scientific and racialist conceptions and the modern-day capitalist assault on immigrants and the poor.

In 1933, Hitler’s regime enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, mandating the forced sterilization of people with conditions like epilepsy or schizophrenia; roughly 360,000 were sterilized by 1939. This evolved into the Aktion T4 program, which systematically murdered about 250,000 disabled adults and children between 1939 and 1945, victims killed by gas, starvation or injection in hospitals that prefigured the death camps. Doctors and administrators gave these atrocities a bureaucratic medical facade.

While the current US policy is not comparable in scale or outcome, it is rooted in the same dehumanizing principle that society must be shielded from those who might impose an economic or medical “burden.” Beneath its administrative language, it marks the reemergence of eugenic ideology in US immigration policy.

This is the brutal logic of American capitalism, which places a dollar value on everything, including healthcare and human life itself. Despite trillions spent annually, tens of millions remain uninsured, and medical debt drives countless bankruptcies. In such a society, health becomes a privilege of class, while illness signifies social inferiority.

By extending this logic to immigration, the State Department codifies market values into law: only the healthy, wealthy and “productive” deserve entry. Those whose lives might entail medical costs or require care and support are excluded.

An attorney told KFF Health News, “Taking into consideration one’s diabetic or heart health history—that’s quite expansive.” Another warned the directive violates the State Department’s own Foreign Affairs Manual, which forbids rejections based on “hypothetical future scenarios.” Yet speculation about future illness is now central to decisions.

This marks a decisive break from even minimal humanitarian norms. It turns illness into guilt, where medical need means crime and vulnerability is grounds for exile.

The directive is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration. Under the banner of “public charge,” officials aim to deter not only undocumented but all immigration by redefining dependency to include potential use of public resources, from healthcare to food assistance.

This same administration has waged war on the working class: mass federal layoffs, cuts to SNAP and housing, and attacks on science and public research. ICE agents and National Guard troops have been deployed in major cities against immigrants, turning communities into militarized zones of fear.

Trump and his fascistic allies promote social Darwinism, where the strong thrive and the weak perish. The poor, sick and elderly are cast as drains on “public resources,” not victims of inequality.

The new visa guidance fits this reactionary agenda: a society ruled by profit and national chauvinism, where only those deemed “fit” or economically useful are permitted to live and work. The companion side of this policy is war and genocide abroad.

The Democratic Party and the trade unions, meanwhile, have responded to this latest assault with silence. Not a single leading Democrat has raised a serious objection to the State Department’s directive. This silence reflects the party’s own complicity in the bipartisan assault on immigrants and the working class.

Under the Biden administration, the machinery of deportation and detention expanded. Now, as Trump reasserts his far-right agenda, the Democrats offer no resistance. They are bound to the same capitalist system that breeds inequality, militarism, and repression.

The trade unions, integrated into the corporate and political establishment, have likewise refused to defend immigrants or oppose the attacks on social programs. Their role is to police the working class, not to mobilize it.

The targeting of immigrants with chronic illnesses or disabilities is an assault on the entire working class. The ruling class tests its most reactionary measures on the most vulnerable (immigrants, the poor, the sick) before imposing them on all workers.

The logic of exclusion and disposability will not stop at the border. It reflects a capitalist class preparing for mass impoverishment, intensified class conflict and war. Just as Nazi Germany’s euthanasia programs paved the way for genocide, the Trump administration’s embrace of eugenics foreshadows new forms of social brutality.

History warns where such devaluation of human life leads. What begins as administrative exclusion ends in extermination. The State Department’s directive is not an isolated policy but a symptom of a decaying social order that treats health as a commodity and life as expendable. It marks the return of eugenics in the guise of fiscal prudence and national interest.

Email dump confirms Epstein’s role as purveyor to Trump and entire US ruling class

Jacob Crosse

A new tranche of more than 20,000 emails obtained from the Jeffrey Epstein estate has further exposed the deep integration of Epstein, a convicted sex trafficker, into the highest levels of the American and international bourgeoisie long after his 2008 conviction.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails, which the New York Times prominently reported on Wednesday morning, substantiating Trump’s links to Epstein. The emails prove that Epstein trafficked women in proximity to and with Trump, and that the media, financial and political establishment worked to suppress this information for years.

The most extraordinary of the initial batch of emails released on Tuesday by House Democrats is an April 2, 2011 exchange between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein wrote:

“i want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there”

Maxwell replied only hours later: “I have been thinking about that…”

An April 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell discussing Trump being present with a trafficking victim at his house for "hours."

The email directly contradicts Maxwell’s claims to Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche over the summer that Trump was a “perfect gentleman” and “never around the girls.” It shows Epstein explicitly reminding Maxwell that Trump had spent “hours” with a trafficking victim at his residence, believed to be Virginia Giuffre, and that this fact, the “dog that hasn’t barked,” had never been publicly exposed.

Also released were December 2015 emails between Epstein and writer Michael Wolff. The emails show Wolff acting as a political adviser to Epstein, warning him that CNN planned to confront Trump “on air or in scrum afterwards” about his relationship with Epstein during an upcoming debate. Wolff advised Epstein on how to frame Trump, telling him to “let him hang himself” if Trump lied, because such an exchange could benefit Epstein politically or, if Trump looked poised to win, provide leverage later.

A third email, dated January 31, 2019, shows Epstein writing to Wolff that he was “never a member ever” of Mar-a-Lago despite Trump publicly claiming he expelled Epstein. Epstein added that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

In a panicked attempt to shield Trump, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee responded to the initial Democratic “leak” by releasing a massive batch of emails, images and documents from the Epstein estate. This had the opposite effect as it provided further proof that Epstein remained in close and constant contact with powerful figures in media, finance, government, academia and foreign policy after serving his work-release sentence in 2009. The emails confirm a criminal ruling class deeply intertwined with Epstein and fully aware of his conduct.

Dozens of emails show Epstein corresponding with New York Times financial reporter Landon Thomas Jr. in the period before Epstein’s arrest and death in a federal jail in 2019. Epstein repeatedly offered the Times reporter damaging information about Trump, including knowledge of Trump’s behavior with “young women” at Epstein’s properties. Epstein even wrote of having photographic evidence. Yet none of this ever appeared in the Times.

One December 2015 email from Epstein to Thomas recounts Epstein’s houseman witnessing Trump “almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.” Another shows Epstein offering: “would you like photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.” Thomas replied “Yes!!!”

Epstein replied with the name “laruen petrella” and what appears to be a redacted link to a photo. He also replied with a hyperlink to Celina Midelfart, daughter of a wealthy Norwegian family. In the 1990s Midelfart dated both Trump and Epstein. Referring to Midelfart in the email, Epstein wrote, “my 20 year old girlfriend in 93, , that after two years I gave to donald.”

Epstein also maintained a relationship with billionaire Thomas Barrack, recently appointed by Trump as US ambassador to Turkey. In a March 9, 2016 message, Barrack wrote to the convicted sex trafficker, “Hope ur good. Lets catch up.” Epstein responded: “send photos of you and child. make me smile.”

A large set of emails reveals Epstein’s steady correspondence with Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary, former Harvard president, and one of the most influential figures in international finance. Summers sought dating advice from Epstein in 2017, 2018, and 2019. In one exchange Summers described Trump as “world’s luckiest guy.” In another, Epstein counseled him on how to manage a romantic dispute, telling Summers “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well ... annoyed shows caring.”

Further emails confirm Epstein’s communications with fascist Steve Bannon. In September 2018 Epstein advised Bannon that the attorneys for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should accuse Christine Blasey Ford of being on medications that cause “false memories.” On June 3, 2019 Epstein wrote Bannon: “prince andrew and trump today. tooo funny. recall prince andrews accuser came out of mara lago.” Bannon replied: “Cant believe nobody is making u the connective tissue.”

Email exchange between Epstein and Steve Bannon in which Bannon remarks he "Can't believe nobody is making [you] the connective tissue," between Trump and former Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

It is known from earlier reporting that Bannon feared Epstein might expose Trump and his relationship during the 2016 election.

These revelations land at a volatile moment in Congress. The House has returned to session and Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in, seven weeks after her election. House Speaker Mike Johnson used the shutdown as a pretext to delay the swearing-in, thus blocking Grijalva from signing a bipartisan discharge petition to force the release of Epstein files.

Over the last 48 hours the Trump administration has directly pressured Republicans to withdraw their signatures from the discharge petition. Trump personally called Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, while Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confronted Representative Nancy Mace the following day.

Neither backed down and with Grijalva’s signature, the Republican sponsor of the petition, Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky, announced he has the signatures required for the disclosure bill to reach the House floor. It is expected to pass with bipartisan support.

Even then the ruling class has built in escape hatches. The Senate must approve the measure, and the final release of documents would require the signature of Donald Trump, the man whose links to Epstein were described by the convicted sex trafficker as the “dog that hasn’t barked.”

At the same time, Ghislaine Maxwell is seeking a commutation from Trump. A whistleblower recently revealed that Maxwell is already receiving “concierge-style” treatment in federal custody after she was moved to a minimum security prison for women in Bryan, Texas. She is allowed customized meals, private after-hours access to the exercise yard, and even personal time with a puppy at the prison camp. She enjoys computer access denied to other inmates, many convicted of far lesser crimes. One prison official complained that he was tired of being “Maxwell’s bitch.”

The American ruling class presides over a justice system built not on law but on class privilege. The Epstein files give a glimpse of a degenerate elite that trafficked children and young women, protected abusers, suppressed evidence, manipulated the press and now openly blocks efforts to uncover the truth.

More revelations from the emails will surface in the coming days. What has emerged so far already indicts the entire financial aristocracy and its political and media servants.

Peru’s political establishment lines up behind unelected far-right government

Francis Portocarrero

Amid a wave of mass protests against social inequality Peru’s nominal opposition parties are doing everything possible to disarm and block any actions against recently installed President José Jerí’s attempt to solidify a right-wing dictatorship.

Aside from scattered rhetorical protests, their actions fail to challenge the continuation of an illegitimate and repressive regime that took power through the overthrow of the elected President Pedro Castillo in December 2022. The installation of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, was accomplished through brutal repression and homicidal violence.

If one reviews the votes of the political parties in Congress, in many cases the opposition and the ruling party have voted together, including for regulations that restrict the powers of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Peruvian National Police and the Judiciary. These provisions, known today as “pro-crime laws,” have reduced the operational capacity of the state to face the new forms of violent organized crime that are expanding in the country.

For instance, legislators from across the political spectrum voted for Law 31990, which modifies article 473 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and restricts the effective collaboration procedure, a legal procedure used for dismantling criminal organizations. “Pro-crime” Law 32138, which raises the threshold for charging the crime of criminal organization (article 317 of the Criminal Code and article 2 of Law 30077), preventing the incrimination and prosecution of criminal networks operating in national territory.

Those parties that voted for it included: Alliance for Progress (APP), Honor and Democracy, Free Peru, Popular Force, Podemos Peru, Non-Grouped Parliamentarians, Popular Action, We Are Peru, Popular Renewal, Popular Democratic Bloc, Together for Peru, People’s Voices, Avanza País, Social Integration Party, Magisterial Bloc and the Socialist Bloc.

All these forces voted for other laws perceived as protecting criminal networks and which exclude political parties from all criminal and administrative sanctions for crimes committed through its party structure, consolidating a regime of privilege and political impunity.

Some parliamentarians used sick leave to avoid voting or abstained, but this has not been the rule. These votes reveal the deep turn to the right of the political establishment. In Congress, fugitives reign, involved in everything from salary theft of their assistants or “mochasueldos” to sex trafficking. Such political degeneration is a reflection of the total bankruptcy of Peru’s capitalist democracy.

Peru has seen a wave of strikes driven by growing anger over the killing of transport workers (more than 180 so far this year) by extortionist and politically connected gangs demanding protection money. The transport unions, dominated by bus owners, have attempted to divert this anger into support for repressive legislation, including a so-called “urban terrorism” law, and a harsher police crackdown.

Outside the Congress there are a few critical voices, like the journalist César Hildebrandt or Glatzer Tuesta, lawyer of the NGO Ideele, who has a radio program. However, all their criticisms and are framed as the defense of the Peruvian state and the model of capitalist democracy.

These forces promote a supra-classist and nationalist narrative: that the state belongs to everyone, and that some mafia or corrupt sectors of politics “have captured institutions” and now control key institutions. According to this discourse, new elections could be beneficial as long as the masses who reject capitalist politics and all of the current politicians, “learn to vote.” However, none of the parties seek to impinge on the interests of the corrupt and blood-soaked ruling class.

The nominal left, both in the Peruvian Congress and outside it, has repeatedly defended private property and the sanctity of so-called capitalist democracy. The pseudo-leftist parties, including Together for Peru, People’s Voices, New Peru, the Magisterial Bloc and Socialist Bloc, are dedicated to channeling the overwhelming rejection of millions of Peruvians back into the electoral swamp. It is this “left” that capital, both domestic and foreign, needs.

During the 2023-2024 session, there was an opportunistic alliance between pseudo-left and center parties, including Peru Libre, which managed to gather enough votes to compete for the presidency of the Congressional Board of Directors. For this, it offered guarantees to openly right-wing parties; however, the coalition failed to win control of Congress. The alliance with the right, however revealed not only opportunism, but also that these parties function to protect the power and stability of capitalist interests.

The deepening political crisis in Peru reflects widespread anger among the working population, driven by numerous intersecting factors that highlight the illegitimacy and corruption of the current regime. One key flashpoint has been the recently issued arbitrary ruling by the Constitutional Court, whose members were appointed by the current Congress. In a blatantly partisan decision, the court annulled the money laundering trial against Keiko Fujimori, leader of the dominant party in Congress, the far-right Popular Force, on the technical pretext that the illegal campaign contributions she received were not contemplated under current legislation. This ruling occurred at the height of the electoral season, sparing Fujimori from facing justice and provoking widespread repudiation across Peru.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling ignited a backlash from reactionary forces, emboldening a counterattack that has even targeted the prosecutor who led the investigation.

Meanwhile, Congress exploited the political turmoil following the removal of President Boluarte by installing José Jerí Oré, a little-known political figure, as head of state and granting a vote of confidence to a new right-wing cabinet led by Prime Minister Ernesto Álvarez. This government openly seeks extraordinary powers to govern by decree on citizen security issues. Álvarez himself slandered protesters killed by undercover police provocateurs as “terrorists,” signaling the government’s commitment to repress dissent. The initial security operations, including a night raid in the port city of Callao that involved notorious reactionary figures, have been widely condemned as a farce and provocation by Peruvian workers and popular sectors.

Perhaps the most ominous development has been the placing of Lima and Callao under a state of emergency on October 22, a political tool used to suspend fundamental constitutional rights and justify mass militarization and police repression.

Despite the deployment of thousands of police and military personnel, violence persists, undermining any claim that the state of emergency genuinely addresses insecurity. Instead, it clearly seeks to suppress the recent wave of mass protests not only against the current unelected government, but against the entire political setup. This measure signals a dangerous escalation, laying the groundwork for deploying the military to suppress broad social opposition.

The state’s pretexts of “transnational crime” and “organized gangs” mask the systemic political decay and corruption entangled with mafia interests. The former Prosecutor of the Nation, once heralded as a defender of anti-corruption efforts, was suspended amid attacks from the far-right, which has also targeted prosecutor Domingo Pérez.

Trade union bureaucracies in Peru have played a decisive role in weakening organized working class resistance. Federations, unions and their pseudo-leftist allies refuse to call strikes or organize protests, limiting themselves to symbolic gestures or legalistic rhetoric. This bureaucratic impotence facilitates the government’s class assault and social repression, leaving workers without a genuine political vehicle for their struggles.