From the series Workers’ struggles in the world
“Why is it that large-scale factory production always leads to strikes? It is because capitalism must necessarily lead to a struggle of the workers against the employers, and when production is on a large scale the struggle of necessity takes on the form of strikes”.
What has changed since Lenin wrote these theses in 1899? The capitalist mode of production has spread throughout the world, we have entered the imperialist phase, and wage earners now make up 80-90% of those who produce goods and services, numbering over two billion. Consequently, “large-scale [...] production”, and therefore the “struggle” in “the form of strikes”, are now phenomena which are present worldwide. The strike has become a “natural economic phenomenon” of the capitalist mode of production, as Lenin wrote in 1902, and it has spread across the globe.
Its regularity and diffusion are the best indicators of the insurmountable contrast between the two fundamental classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But it is not always covered by the press, and even less by official statistics, which are lacking on this subject and have not improved over time. By cross-referencing and piecing together information from numerous sources, it is still possible to compile a review of struggles and strikes on a global scale, which document the continuous vitality and combativeness of our class.
We report here news on struggles in the agri-food industry, agriculture, and the arms and extractive industries in Australia, Brazil, India, and the United States.
Lotta Comunista, October 2025
AUSTRALIA, agri-food industry
A recent dispute concerned two of the six Australian plants of the multinational Nestlé in the food industry, which together employ a total of more than 4,000 workers. The factories are in Campbellfield and Broadford, both in the southern State of Victoria, not far from Melbourne.
The subject of the dispute was wages, with demands for wage increases of around 4-5% per year over the coming years, in the face of significant price increases in the region. In addition, there is the issue of shift work in factories that operate continuously with eight-hour shifts. Management intends to change by concentrating them into 12-hour shifts over four days, with serious negative repercussions for the workers' families. There is also the issue of the limit on overtime. The strike was carried out in March, with the approval of 90% of union members; the dispute then ended in a compromise.
AUSTRALIA, arms industry
The State of South Australia is also called the Defence State
because it is home to significant arms industries and particularly the Osborne shipyards, ten miles from the centre of the State capital, Adelaide. Production includes both military ships and submarines. In particular, Hunter-class frigates and Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels are produced here; work will also soon begin on the production of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS project, in collaboration with the US and the United Kingdom, which will replace the Collins-class diesel-electric submarines. AUKUS, as is well known, is fundamental in strengthening the Australian submarine fleet and in the strategic role that Australia intends to have in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific.
Around 7,000 workers operate in the shipyards; they are divided between BAE Systems (headquartered in London) and ASC (formerly Australian Submarine Corporation), a State-owned company. In this hub of high-tech military production for the future maritime wars of global imperialism, there were numerous strikes in the summer of 2024 and in the spring of this year, with public demonstrations. The strikes also adopted the rolling stoppage system, meaning a rotational strike among different groups of workers. At the core of the demands, in addition to recovering wages and salaries eroded by inflation, was the equalisation of wage treatment of BAE private workers with those of the public ASC. The AMWU union claims that, while their work is critical to Australia's naval future and the success of the AUKUS program, their pay remains up to 20% below the going rate in the shipbuilding industry [...]. These are highly skilled workers. They are welders, boilermakers, electricians, fitters, and riggers. BAE workers are sick of being treated as the poor cousin
.
BRAZIL, extractive industry
Petrobras is the largest oil company in South America and one of the top twenty in the world; it is State-controlled and employs about 45,000 wage earners. It too has had to face the consequences of the trend of falling oil prices: Brent was trading at around $80 a barrel in January and with fluctuations and variations it fell to even $65 in October; the average trend in 2025 was clearly downward. This did not prevent profits from flowing in – $6.25 billion in the first quarter of the year [Reuters], although the share price fell by 30%. Petrobras decided to revise its five-year strategic plan amid declining Brent crude prices, signalling a shift towards austerity [...] [and] announced that it will explore all cost-reduction avenues before scaling back investments. [...] This approach contrasts with the previous expansionary strategy
[Zacks Equity Research
].
The workers, who obviously have no responsibility for market trends, have been made to pay for these market difficulties. There has been a downward revision of previous agreements on the working week and wage compensations. Some of the wage earners are organised by the FUP (Federação Única dos Petroleiros) union, which called strikes last May: according to the FUP itself, they affected 25 of the 46 oil wells in the Campos basin, seven of which were completely stopped, as well as ten refineries in the country.
INDIA, agriculture
India is the world's second-largest tea producer, with about a fifth of the global output. China, with over 40% of the market, is the first producer, while Kenya ranks third with 7%. Two-thirds of Indian tea plantations belong to large private companies, with the remaining third owned by small farmers. Direct wage earners, mainly from large industries in the sector, are about 1.5 million (this figure doubles if indirect workers are included), 80% of whom are women, primarily employed in field harvesting. They are concentrated in three States: Assam and West Bengal in the North-East, and Tamil Nadu at the southern tip of the subcontinent. Working conditions and wages are among the worst, although significant differences exist between the two northern States and the southern State, which is one of the most developed in the country.
Local press reports include accounts like these: Darjeeling tea is made from the finest leaves and it takes the finesse of women pluckers [...] to pick two leaves and a bud by hand, while balancing heavy wicker baskets strapped to their foreheads and resting on their backs. In the treacherous terrain of the eastern Himalayas, the job is arduous
. And there are bitter observations: The irony is that workers contributing to the production of the world's priciest teas earn among the poorest of wages, a sad legacy of the colonial era
.
A study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the condition of these tea-harvest workers highlights and quantifies some aspects of the working-class conditions. Firstly, working time, which is on average around 50 hours per week. Work is predominantly outdoors: 95% of workers are classified as field workers. The wage gap between men and women, for the same activities, is 10% lower for women. Wages are significantly below the legal minimum by as much as 66%. The work is seasonal, lasting about eight months a year, which is reflected in the wage situation. The conclusion is that the prevalence of wages below minimum wage thresholds, the pervasiveness of gender wage gaps, and the excessive hours worked in India are all issues of concern
[ILO, Wages and Working Conditions in the Tea Sector, 2020]. We note that, even though it is 2025, these facts read like chronicles of Manchester's textile mills two centuries ago.
Significant strikes and demonstrations by these workers, sometimes involving clashes, occurred in 2022, in the second half of 2024, and in 2025: the recurring issues were wages and working conditions. But they did not come from nowhere: ten years ago, there were similar, but larger, strikes and demonstrations, with a majority of women participants, always with the same recurrent motivations. The BBC reports thousands taking part in strikes that disrupted the Indian tea industry.
UNITED STATES, arms industry
A tough dispute has developed at Boeing Defense in two plants in the State of Missouri and one in Illinois, dedicated to military production – the F-15 and F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters, the T-7 Red Hawk trainer, and the MQ-25 drone, as well as other military equipment. About 3,200 workers are affected, all of them medium and high skill levels. The dispute, which began in August, is practically the same one – merely postponed by a year – as the dispute that took place last year and involved 30,000 workers at Boeing plants in Seattle, Washington, where civilian aircraft are produced. The demands are similar, namely salary recovery for the years lost without increases and without negotiation, pension guarantees, and an increase in line with the cost of living. The course of the negotiations was also very similar: since the start of the strike (August 4th), Boeing's proposals (drafted in agreement with the IAM union) were rejected by the union members three times, just as had happened in Everett a year earlier. Then the IAM came up with the idea of having the workers vote on their own proposed agreement, and when approved to bring it to the negotiations with Boeing.
Resentment for the past, which had surfaced dramatically in Seattle, is also strong in Missouri. Workers do not forget and do not spare anyone, not even the IAM, which however remains an indispensable mediator in the dispute. On the picket placards, workers wrote: We aren't building Toasters! We handcraft some of the best fighter jets in the world
. The ideological pressure on workers who produce military equipment for the defence of the country
is present, but it has not yet been enough to make them end the strike, thus blocking production; the same happened in Australia at BAE and ASC. They demand the same treatment as their colleagues in Seattle, which Boeing explicitly denies because Missouri is not the State of Washington: essentially, this is the Yankee version of local pay scales. Commenting on the Seattle strike a year ago, we wondered how effective a unified dispute – a single contract for all 150,000 Boeing workers – would be. Perhaps the workers in Missouri are realising this now, as they demand equal treatment with those in Seattle. It should also be noted that the last strike in these plants (which lasted a full 100 days) dates back to 1996. At the time of writing, after more than three months of struggle, and after a proposed agreement has been once again (for the fourth time) rejected by the workers, the strike continues.