Pakistan August 25, 2025-The eruption of strikes and protests across Pakistan—by textile workers in Faisalabad, Karachi dockers, PIA (airline) engineers, railway crews, teachers, nurses, and the militant All Government Employees Grand Alliance (AGEGA)—after the announcement of the 2025–26 national budget is not just a reaction to a bad fiscal document. It is the inevitable product of a capitalist economy run by a fascist state machine that shields the ruling elite.

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) argues that no budget under capitalism—no matter how “worker-friendly” it pretends to be—can genuinely serve the working class. The capitalist state exists to extract surplus from labor, privatize public goods, and maintain control through fascist repression. PL’ers and workers are fighting back and fighting to win workers to the understanding that only communism can meet our needs!

Capitalism leaves racist conditions for worker

At a panel discussion organized by a trade union that PLP is working in, labor leaders from the Railway Workers Union, Karachi Port Trust Union, and the Punjab Teachers Association highlighted the glaring absence of labor rights from the budget. The federal minimum wage remains frozen at Rs 37,000/month, far below survival levels. Over 90 percent of the workforce in the informal sector—rickshaw drivers, domestic workers, daily wagers, sanitary workers, street vendors—remains unregistered and denied even basic protections.
Union density is at a historic low—only 1–2 percent of workers are organized—because the capitalist state deliberately suppresses unionization through intimidation, legal hurdles, and targeted dismissals.

The All-Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) and AGEGA, where we are actively involved, denounced the 10 percent salary increase as “a cruel joke” in the face of record food inflation. The budget’s new pension rules—limiting widow benefits to just 10 years—were branded an outright attack on the most vulnerable. The message from the capitalist ruling class is clear: work until you drop, and then die quickly so the state can save money.

While the government’s spin-doctors trumpet “tax relief,” the Salaried Class Alliance of Pakistan (SCAP) revealed that annual savings for middle-income earners amount to only Rs 7,000—pocket change in the face of skyrocketing transport fares, utility bills, and food costs.

Fighting the bosses head on!

Students are no better off: the Democratic Students Federation, National Students Federation, Pakhtoon Students Federation, and progressive campus collectives are protesting tuition fee hikes, collapsing hostel facilities, and shrinking job markets—direct consequences of capitalist austerity and privatization.

Some trade unions marched in Karachi to the railway workers’ sit-ins in Lahore demanding a Rs 60,000 minimum wage (about 210 USD). From AGEGA’s protest camps in Islamabad to the Punjab Professors and Teachers Union threatening a province-wide shutdown, the anger is palpable. Young doctors’ associations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nurses in Sindh, and municipal workers in Quetta have all issued strike notices. Yet history teaches us that within capitalism, even the hardest-fought victories are temporary—quickly rolled back when the balance of forces shifts.

Tinkering with tax brackets or slightly raising wages in this system is like bailing water from a sinking ship—it does not change the fact that the hull is rotten. The strike wave after the 2025–26 budget is not just a protest against inflation—it is a symptom of the deeper disease: capitalism and its fascist guardians in Pakistan. Fighting for wage hikes or pension rights is necessary, but the ultimate struggle is for state power in the hands of the working class.

PLP is striving for an international communist revolution which means abolishing private ownership of industry, land, and resources. Organizing workers, students, and peasants into a unified revolutionary front. Replacing capitalist parliaments with democratically run workers’ councils and building international solidarity to smash capitalism globally.

As the PLP says, equality and freedom won’t come through budgets – it requires a struggle for communism.