WFTU Statement on the Occasion of the New Year 2026
As we welcome the year 2026, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) addresses its militant and class-oriented greetings to workers, trade unionists, and progressive peoples across the globe. The new year finds the international working class confronted with old and new challenges, but also armed with experience, organization, and the unbreakable strength of solidarity.
The year that has passed once again confirmed the deepening structural crisis of the capitalist system. Economic instability, rising inequalities, and intensified exploitation go hand in hand with sharpening geopolitical antagonisms, imperialist wars, and interventions. The peoples continue to pay a heavy price through poverty, unemployment, displacement, repression, and the destruction of social and labor rights.
Imperialist aggression and militarization remain central features of today’s world. Wars, occupations, blockades, and sanctions are used as tools to impose political and economic domination, secure profits for monopolies, and control strategic resources and markets.
The crimes committed against peoples, most tragically illustrated by the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people, expose once again the brutal and inhuman nature of imperialism. With over 63,000 lives lost by the end of 2025 and numbers tragically increasing, the genocide in Gaza confirms that ceasefires and agreements imposed by imperialist powers, under their control and supervision, cannot ensure just or lasting peace, as they serve the interests of monopolies and geopolitical dominance rather than the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and dignity, and the end of the occupation and the establishment of their own independent state.
The WFTU reiterates its unwavering solidarity with all peoples resisting occupation, foreign intervention, and economic coercion. We stand firmly alongside the people of Palestine in their struggle for freedom, justice, and self-determination, and alongside the people of Cuba in their just demand for the immediate lifting of the criminal blockade and the end of all forms of imperialist pressure and blackmail. In the same spirit, the WFTU expresses its firm and unwavering solidarity with the working class and the people of Venezuela, who are facing intensified threats, military provocations, economic warfare, and attempts at foreign interference by U.S. imperialism and its allies. We denounce the escalation of aggression, including military deployments in the region under false pretexts, which endanger peace, violate Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten the stability of Latin America as a whole. The peoples of Venezuela have the non-negotiable right to determine their own future freely and democratically, without coercion, sanctions, blockades, or intervention.
Militantly, the international class-oriented trade union movement will continue the struggle for peace, the struggle for the dissolution of NATO and all imperialist military coalitions, for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and for a world based on cooperation, and mutual respect between the peoples.
At the same time, workers everywhere face intensified attacks on wages, working conditions, social protections, and trade union freedoms. Governments and multinational monopolies are accelerating policies of privatization, labor deregulation, and repression, while seeking to criminalize struggle and weaken collective organization. The right to strike and the right to organize are under direct assault in many countries.
Workers refuse to accept these conditions. Guided by class-oriented trade unions, they continue to resist and struggle. The path of collective struggle remains the only dignified and effective path to defend workers’ rights, to confront exploitation, and to secure living and working conditions that meet contemporary needs.
The demands of the international working class remain urgent and non-negotiable:
• Real wage increases and secure employment with full labor and social rights
• Reduction of working time with no loss of pay, with 35 hours of work per week and 7 hours of work per day
• Universal, public, and free access to healthcare, education, and social security
• Safe and healthy workplaces and respect for human dignity at work
The year 2025 the WFTU firmly and successfully commemorated the 80th anniversary of its founding, a milestone that reaffirmed the historical continuity, relevance, and fighting character of our Federation. The legacy of eight decades of struggle strengthens our responsibility to pass on to new generations of workers the values of class unity, internationalism, and uncompromising resistance to exploitation.
Drawing strength from this history, the WFTU will continue to intensify its action, strengthen its structures, and expand coordination among its affiliates and friends worldwide. Special emphasis will be placed on organizing young workers, women, migrants, and precarious workers, who are often the first victims of capitalist exploitation and anti-labor policies.
As we enter 2026, the World Federation of Trade Unions remains firmly committed to its founding principles. We stand in militant solidarity with all workers and peoples fighting exploitation, oppression, racism, discrimination, and imperialist domination. Internationalism remains our most powerful weapon, and unity our greatest strength.
Confident in the capacity of the international class-oriented trade union movement to confront the challenges ahead, we look forward to new struggles and new victories. For the defense of workers’ interests, for social justice, for peace, and for a world free from imperialist wars and the man by man expoitation.
On the occasion of the New Year 2026, the World Federation of Trade Unions extends to workers all over the world, to its affiliates and friends, its warmest militant wishes for a year of strength, solidarity, struggles, and victories!
