12/08/2026
AUGUST 12th– INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY
Youth organized in trade unions and militant in struggle, for work and a life with rights, for the overthrow of the system of profit and exploitation!
The World Federation of Trade Unions and the WFTU Youth Committee extend their warm, militant and internationalist greetings to the young women and men of the working class throughout the world.
The younger generation is experiencing the consequences of capitalist exploitation with particular intensity, unemployment, low wages, flexible working arrangements, zero-hours contracts, outsourcing, unpaid internships and insecurity, while many young people are deprived of fundamental rights and the conditions necessary for a decent life.
At the same time, in many countries, a growing number of young people are left without a job and outside education or vocational training, deprived both of the right to education and stable employment, the means of achieving their dreams. This further demonstrates how young people are among the first to pay the price of capitalist crises and policies.
New forms of flexible work, including teleworking, are likewise being exploited by employers to shift costs onto workers, blur the boundaries between working and non-working time and deepen insecurity. Technology, automation and artificial intelligence, instead of being used to reduce working time and improve people’s lives, are being utilized by capital to impose dismissals, intensify work, monitor workers and suppress their struggles.
For the control of natural resources, markets, roads for transport of goods and the control of new territories, the competition for dominance between the major imperialist powers and their allies is being intensified day by day, generating new wars, conflicts and interventions in different countries.
Governments are spending billions on armaments and war preparations while cutting expenditure on wages and social protection and further commercializing education and healthcare.
The decaying capitalist system promises young people “security” and “opportunities.” In reality, the future it is preparing for them is one in which they pay for the war economy with their labour, their rights and their blood and return home in coffins from the battlefields for interests that are alien to the peoples. The very same system that maims young workers in the workplace sends them to kill and be killed in wars fought for the profits of the monopolies.
Working youth have no interest in choosing between rival camps of plunderers or becoming cannon fodder for imperialist rivalries!
The WFTU stands alongside the youth and peoples who are paying the price for the imperialist aggression of the United States, NATO and the European Union and for imperialist rivalries, in Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine, Venezuela and every corner of the world.
It expresses particular solidarity with the youth and people of Palestine, demanding an end to the genocide and occupation carried out by the murderous State of Israel, and with socialist Cuba, demanding an end to the criminal US blockade.
Faced with this horrific reality of the capitalist world, the individual path, the logic of “everyone for themselves” and the rotten values of capitalism offer no way out for the young people. Individualism, competition among workers and the search for individual solutions leave young people isolated and defenceless against capital and its state.
The strength of youth lies in collective organization and struggle in mass participation in trade unions, in mass and democratic processes and in workplace struggles for collective agreements, reduced working hours, health and safety measures, quality leisure time and access to culture and sport.
It lies in the struggle to guarantee every young woman and man access to exclusively public, free and high-quality education, without class barriers, providing all-round knowledge rather than fragmented skills tailored to the needs of business groups. Education is a right, not a commodity!
Class-oriented trade unions must educate young workers in the values of organized struggle and class and internationalist solidarity, place their trust in them, enable them to take on positions of responsibility and help them gain experience through the small and great struggles of the working class.
The future of youth does not lie in capitalist barbarity, poverty and war. It lies in a new world, freed from the capitalist system and the exploitation of man by man, where the working class owns the immense wealth it produces and the economy is organized to meet contemporary social needs.
This future will not be handed to us! It will be won through organization in trade unions, class struggle and internationalist solidarity.
Young people organize in trade unions and strengthen the class struggle to overthrow the system of exploitation!
No sacrifice for the profits and wars of the exploiters!
Long live organized and militant working-class youth!
Long live the internationalist solidarity of the peoples!
