More than a year since its formal application to the Labour Ministry, the new subway workers independent union, having not received an answer from the government, is appealing for international solidarity to demand the Labour Ministry to fulfill its administrative function to register this new, democratically created union.

Fightback has long warned that the right-ward drift of the NDP leadership in BC [British Columbia] would hurt the party in the polls. The argument is often made that in order to win over “middle of the road voters,” you have to moderate your demands and program. In fact, history has proven that this moderation only leads to disaster. What is needed is a strong socialist program to inspire the mass of the population.

We republish here the appeal from the Mexican CLEP-CEDEP students that are facing a campaign of legal harassment and threats from the authorities. Five of them, all leading student activists, are facing jail sentences for the only crime of having defended free education. The authorities are accusing them on trumped up charges as a result of the students' strike to defend free education on June 4th. The legal costs involved in this campaign have already run up to 825 euros (16,000 Mexican pesos). We make an appeal to all IDOM readers to sign the protest letter, raise this issue in your organisation and ...

For 30 years the NDP (the Canadian Labour Party) has been swinging to the right. If this process were to continue it would put at risk the very position of the party as the expression of the Canadian working class. Now, as the effects of the world crisis are weighing heavily on Canadian society, within the NDP there is an attempt to take the party back to the values it was originally built on.

We are entering a new period where an economic recovery will actually bring more attacks on workers, and this will have a transformative effect on the working class movement and their organizations, specifically the trade unions and their labour parties. The old leaderships with their old ideas who tried to reach conciliation with the bosses will need to be replaced. Workers will need to push for a new leadership that is willing to fight and get them real tangible gains in their struggles. In Ontario, we are already seeing the beginnings of this in the labour movement.

In a previous article we pointed to the fact that the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord signed on October 30 was a farce. Events have now confirmed that we were right. To accept the agreement now would be a betrayal of the mass movement. What is required now is an active boycott, combined with mass mobilisation for the overthrow of the present illegitimate regime.

“Poor Mexico! So far from God, so near to the United States.” The famous words of Porfirio Díaz are truer today than at any time in the tempestuous history of this country. The crisis of world capitalism has hit Mexico hard. And its extreme dependence on the USA, which previously was presented as something beneficial to the Mexican economy, has turned out to be a colossal problem.

Off-year elections were held in a number of places around the country on November 3, 2009. We are publishing here a balance sheet by a comrade of Socialist Appeal in the USA.

Cynicism is a very useful tool for those in power. Although it inherently expresses a sense of dissatisfaction, it offers nothing as a way out. The charade of the two-party system has done a lot of damage to American workers’ perception of politics in general, and created a situation where cynicism and apparent apathy is widespread. What is needed in the US is a party that represents working people. Such a party would go far in combatting the cynical and apathetic attitudes of many toward politics, as there would finally be a force led by workers in the interests of workers.

A lot of noise had been made about the so-called “reinstatement of Zelaya”, but is that what is really happening. So far a lot of wheeling and dealing has taken place, but no concrete steps to put Zelaya back as the legitimate president. We will see in the coming days how real this agreement is.

Four months after the coup against democratically elected president Mel Zelaya in Honduras, a combination of brutal repression and stalling tactics at the negotiating table have temporarily defused the resistance movement, but not decreased the people's opposition to the Micheletti regime. The level of consciousness has experienced a giant leap. It is necessary to group the most advanced activists of the movement into an organisation based on the ideas of Marxism.

The struggle of Mexican workers in defense of the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) has become one where at stake is not just this single union, but the position of the entire Mexican labor movement. It poses questions that go well beyond the realms of the Electricians’ Union. Here Ruben Rivera explains what is required to fight back and push the whole movement forward.

Up to half a million people turned out in Mexico City to demonstrate their support for the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) on October 15. In spite of all the government and media campaign, the workers were not intimidated. On the contrary, they came out with even greater force. This marks a major turning point in the situation in Mexico.

For Mexico, the world economic crisis has provoked a severe fall in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of -10.3% in the second quarter alone - the worst on record since 1981. 36,000 companies have gone bankrupt and 735,000 workers have lost their jobs. Massive government spending cuts are further aggravating the situation.

The Mexican government recently announced the sacking of 44,000 electricity workers at the Luz y Fuerza del Centro. We have been approached for solidarity activity. Please take this up on your workplace.