On this global day of worker power, we, the working people, must rely on ourselves to pull us out of the crises that billionaires, financial oligarchs and their TNCs created, while they lord over the world and its people.
Profound crises are crushing workers and toilers across Asia and the Pacific. The crises have plunged the working people of the Global South in neck-deep poverty and destitution. More than 60% of the working people hold precarious and informal jobs, and conservative estimates peg nearly 90% of workers and toilers in South Asia as having to eke out a living from such precarious work, while new jobs sprout mainly as low-productivity, dead-end jobs.
Many countries of the Global South are relying on their migrant workers to bring in remittance and boost their failing trade and economies. The economic reality of the Global North face stagflation—a combination of low growth and rising inflation—that places immense stress on workers, as bosses cut wages and governments impose austerity measures, eating away at their real wages.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) continuously re-divide global and regional economic and political spheres of influence and power, intensifying their plunder of the Southern Countries’ wealth and reshaping economies and political infrastructure to facilitate easier business and inflated profits. While US TNCs remain the largest and dominant players, they face intense challenges from other developed economies and teeter on the brink of losing their grip on the number one position. These machinations to secure ever-greater spheres of influence fuel hot wars, direct aggression, and wars of intervention against those who oppose the US empire. US aggression and intervention in Asia and the Pacific destroy jobs and lives of the working people.
Destitution and poverty plague many workers and toilers, and the current global economic crises deepen their misery. US and Israeli attacks against Iran trigger an intense oil shock comparable to the 1970s oil crisis. Oil prices double for many countries in Asia and the Pacific, especially those without oil resources, forcing other basic necessities and services to skyrocket—with estimates marking this as the steepest increase in the last five years. Real wages keep falling, compelling more workers to seek a second, sometimes a third job just to keep their families afloat. Stagnant growth and rising inflation erode workers’ wages across developed economies.
With prices of basic goods and services soaring to unprecedented levels, high costs squeeze the take-home pay of workers and toilers, forcing many working families to scrimp on basic needs just to get by. Migrant workers receive less pay, despite doing the most dangerous jobs, comparable to slave-like working conditions. Layers of consumption taxes imposed by governments further boost these sky-high prices, applying value-added taxes on goods and services and excise taxes on oil and fuel.
The oil shock deteriorates the already cramped job market as high overhead costs force small and medium enterprises to close and lay off workers. Rising expenses force working families into debt to fill the growing chasm between income and expenses, accelerating the trend of worsening living conditions. Wars of aggression and intervention destroy jobs and lives of the working people, reducing their communities and workplaces to ash and rubble. Employers and the government immediately repress those who assert their rights through their unions and organizations, utilizing vilification and the criminalization of dissent, while armed state apparatuses increasingly inflict physical harm on workers and toilers.
The financial oligarchs generate super-profits for their TNCs, families, and wallets through the exploitation and oppression of the working people. The wealth of a score of top billionaires equals that of the poorer half of the world’s population. The ruling class of each nation facilitates the seamless global operations, as both the global and national oligarchs exploit and oppress the working people and their families.
We must identify major concerns among the working people and address them accordingly. We must build cooperation among working people from the local level to build and increase power from the ground up, coordinate these various fights of the workers and toilers, and hold the financial oligarchs and the governments accountable for the misery, destitution, and poverty of the people.
We should coordinate our struggles with the struggles of other workers and toilers and forge an unbreakable bond of working-class solidarity among the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world. We have a world to win!
