This introduction is being written on the day the British Government ends its support for the “furlough” scheme to pay 80% of workers’ wages so they would not be sacked during the pandemic. At least 1 million workers now face an uncertain future. The Italian government began unravelling its support for jobs on 1 July when it ended the moratorium on lay-offs.

As we write, comrades are translating the bulletins emerging from the struggles of the oil workers’ strike committee in Iran which have now been ongoing for two months. They can be found on our website (and we publish Statement No. 12 below). The oil workers are not alone. Dozens of protests and demonstrations are taking place daily involving medical students in Kermanshah, fire department...

52 days have gone by since the start of the strike, which began when thousands of Iranian oil workers downed tools on 19 June and walked off oilfields across Iran. The Council for Organising Protests by Oil Contract Workers has issued 11 statements so far. In our previous article we published parts of their first 6 statements (see as well as giving a short explanation of their full context.

(Leaflet distributed by the CWO at recent strikes and protests happening around the UK.) · Pay and pension cuts, redundancies, fire and re-hire, health & safety violations, precarity, evictions, anti-protest bills... The attacks are varied but they all point in the same direction: as always, it is the working class who will bear the cost of the crisis.