Turn the Tide! Workers Unite and Fight Imperialism!
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle stands with all working people around the world in celebrating International Workers Day and the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat. While the conditions facing workers around the world today are crippling, the legacy of May Day is being taken up by the working class to fight against the system of capitalism and imperialism once and for all!
After days of travailing, grinding workers to dust, a road littered with holes is taken to reach their homes. They are greeted with worn-down roof and walls, and at the center a barren dinner table awaits working families across the world. The current economic crises is hitting all working families, hard!
African families are facing double-digit inflation, with the average inflation in Africa estimated at 16%, but with Burundi it is more than 38% , while Nigeria is around 24%. Wages are not able to keep pace with the inflation, which is of course a planned outcome of imperialist impositions and their national bourgeoisie collaborators. Workers in Kenya received a 6% wage increase, but it is equivalent to a mere USD 60 (KES 7,997) a month. Any increase in wages is erased by the run-away inflation in Africa.
In Asia and the Pacific, workers are mostly in informal work, with close to 90% of the millions of workers in South Asia under informal arrangements. They get crumbs as wages – often delayed, often unpaid – while the bosses are corpulent and greedy, and billionaires are created every week. Precarious work due to job insecurity and dangerous working conditions are the norm, with workers often going home either maimed or in a wooden box.
Latin American and Caribbean workers are in a death choke as the region’s economy remains neck-deep in debt. The region’s debt increased from 58% of GDP in 2019 to more than 70% in 2020. Argentina’s debt surpasses 100% of GDP, while inflation reached 143% in 2023. Since 2020, both Ecuador and Suriname have entered into default. Instead of the economy in manufacturing and industry, an estimated 80% of the wealth of the region is in the hands of a few landlords and real estate magnates.
The working-people from the rich countries are no better-off. In the United States, workers receive an annual average of USD 45,000 while a conservative estimate of the annual cost of living for a family of four is USD 76,800. In Canada, average annual salary is estimated to be at CAD 59,000, while the annual cost of living is around CAD 72,000. The monthly gross minimum wage in the European Union (EU) ranges from € 551 in Bulgaria to € 2,638 in Luxembourg, while the conservative estimate for the cost of living for a family of four in Bulgaria is around € 2,100.
The destitution and misery of the working people is the foundation of wealth of the global elite. From the blood, sweat and tears of the working people comes the billionaires and their corporations trillion-dollar portfolios, leveraging the dollars in their pockets to make even more profits, to the detriment of every working family. The billionaires in 2025 have added, in just 1 year, another USD two trillion to their wealth, reaching a total of USD 161 trillion for the 3,000 global billionaires. The intensity of profit making is so obscene, that within a few years, the working people will soon be contending with trillionaires.
But crises and exploitation will not break the back of the working people. Working people are not doomed to be mired in poverty and exploitation, lies propagated by apologists stating that we are at the end of history and there is nothing beyond our present predicament.
When Ladi Anzaki Olubunmi, a platform worker who was found dead in her apartment in Nairobi, Kenya on 7 March 2025, an immediate condemnation of her death came from fellow gig workers, which demanded not only justice for Olubunmi but systemic change in how gig workers are being treated by the big corporations.
When NEXPERIA Philippines, a Chinese-owned company refused to enter collective bargaining, and instead retrenched hundreds of its workers, including its union officials, the workers of NEXPERIA Philippines gathered to strategize for a fightback. They prepared to stop work, educate rest of the workers to stand up and fight, and went on strike against the company. It took 4 days of the strike to force the bosses to enter negotiations again, and the company forced to reinstate 2 of the sacked union officials, while winning other victories.
When the bosses of the Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de Gobierno del Estado (SITTGE), a public sector union in Mexico started their “dirty war” against the union by indulging in arbitrary dismissal and pressuring workers to resign from the union, signing letters to discredit the union leadership, while holding back at least 140 million Mexican pesos in back wages and benefits from the workers, and using the State Civil Guard to harass SITTGE General Secretary, Francisca Reséndiz Lara and other union leaders, the workers did not stand by. They organized actions, reached out to other organizations and opposed the attacks. Groups like the Coordinadora del Movimiento Amplio Popular (CMAP), and other allies, have set up a solidarity encampment for the SITTGE workers in front of government offices in San Luis Potosi.
When the bosses in the US wanted to attack the jobs and wages of port workers, 50,000 workers demanded higher wages and job security and fought back by striking against the attempt made by the bosses. When the bosses and the government in the EU wanted to cut wages and benefits, transport workers from France, Italy and Spain went on strike against the attacks. Sanitation workers and teachers in the United Kingdom are also striking for better conditions, defending their wages from attacks of the capitalists.
Above are heroic struggles of workers against their bosses, but it will not be enough. Our wages, jobs, social protection and the welfare of our families are under attack from all fronts by the collusion of capital and governments. Capitalists and governments coordinate and are well-organized to exploit workers and plunder every ounce of resources that we have. The exploiters are raising the ante of the struggle and attempting at every chance to destroy the working people and rake in more profits.
We must raise our level of struggle, and spread the fires of resistance to every corner of the globe. We must be organized, coordinated and together in a common front to oppose capitalists exploitation and oppression at every corner and junction. A common front of workers, with the most resolute and militant workers’ organizations in the forefront, building workers councils where workers are to be found, and conducting multiple forms of coordinated struggle against capital are our urgent tasks. In short, a common united front of all workers, standing shoulder to shoulder, coordinated and in cadence fighting against the bosses and their defenders in government, advancing our struggles at every corner and junction.
We will not allow ourselves to be pigeonholed by the bosses, and we will not allow them to drive wedges between us to divide us: We Will Raise The Level Of Our Struggle To New Heights And Fight Together For A Better World!
Signed,
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
People Over Profit
International Migrants Alliance
International Women’s Alliance
Source : https://maoistroad.blogspot.com/2025/05/turn-tide-workers-unite-and-fight.html