Syrian Workers on Their Second May Day After the Collapse of the Assad Clique’s Regime

On the second Workers’ Day after Assad’s flight, May 1 returns to Syria without bringing any stability to the working class and the toiling masses, who have paid the highest price in the war, fragmentation, and devastation that befell our country, and who continue to bear high costs under the Thermidorian authority to which power has been handed.

Two years ago, with the collapse of Assad’s rule on December 8, 2024, the scene was not merely that of an authoritarian political regime, but the disintegration of a system of governance that had lasted for decades, built on the intertwining of political repression and systematic economic plunder.

However, with the Thermidorian authority coming to power, a program of “economic reform” and “rationalization of spending” was announced as a condition for rebuilding the state. In reality, this program amounted to a rearticulation of policies aimed at dismantling the public sector and shifting the cost of collapse onto the working class.

This began with large-scale layoffs under the pretext of “ghost employees.” Estimates suggest that around 2011, there were approximately 1.3 million workers in the industrial public sector, and a total labor force exceeding 5 million workers and employees.

Instead of addressing the structural roots of this imbalance, a shock approach was adopted:
Direct dismissal of at least 100,000 employees according to partially documented estimates during 2025, with broader estimates indicating that the total number affected by direct or indirect exclusion—including forced leave and restructuring—may range between 300,000 and 400,000 workers.

This is not administrative reform, but a forced restructuring of the labor market in line with the logic of reducing the cost of wage labor in the state and transforming unemployment into a tool of social control.

In parallel, the authority launched wide-ranging privatization programs affecting more than 100 public enterprises under the banner of “liberalizing the economy and attracting investment.” The essence of this process, however, is not efficiency but the transfer of ownership of the means of production from the public domain to private capital—local or foreign—within a redistribution of economic power in favor of the new ruling elite of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its circle.

All of this has been accompanied by a broad collapse in the productive structure: electricity cuts exceeding 18 hours per day in most areas, acute fuel shortages, and the shutdown of hundreds of workshops and small factories, particularly in the food and textile sectors.

Evidence also indicates that a large proportion of small and medium industrial enterprises are operating partially or have ceased entirely, with significant variation across regions and sectors amid the collapse of energy supply and production chains.

This disintegration has not produced an economic vacuum, but rather reshaped the market based on imports and smuggling, with increasing dominance of foreign goods at the expense of a large share of local production, and growing bankruptcy among small and medium enterprises.

Thus, the worker is reintegrated into the market as surplus labor, subjected to deteriorating working conditions, or threatened with complete exclusion from the cycle of production.

In this deteriorating reality, the issue of trade union organization re-emerges as a central factor in understanding the current phase.

Instead of allowing the rebuilding of independent labor organizations, the Thermidorian authority has restricted union activity, once again transforming it into an administrative structure integrated into the state, while maintaining formal representative bodies that lack real bargaining power. Any attempt at protest or independent organization is met with political labeling that shifts it from the realm of “social demands” into that of a “threat to stability.”

Thus, not only are the conditions of labor being dismantled, but also the instruments of working-class representation are being undermined, preventing it from expressing its demands.

It is far from accurate to consider the current phase as a linear transition from authoritarianism to freedom. Rather, it represents a reconfiguration of bourgeois power structures under new conditions. What has changed is the political form of the ruling elites; the essence of control over labor and wealth relations remains as before—albeit with different tools and new political names.

Therefore, the central question is not: what has changed in power?
But rather: who owns production, who determines the conditions of labor, and who monopolizes the distribution of wealth?

What does the Revolutionary Left propose at this stage?
The Revolutionary Left Party puts forward a set of firm positions in its line of struggle:

An end to mass layoff policies that have affected hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly through restructuring, and the reinstatement of dismissed workers.

Reorganization of the public sector with the participation of workers themselves.

A halt to privatization programs as a systematic transfer of ownership in favor of local and foreign capital.

Opening the files of wealth redistribution and ownership of the means of production in strategic sectors in favor of, and exclusively owned by, the Syrian people.

Recognition of the right to independent trade union organizations and the formation of independent unions.

A sliding scale of wages.

Struggle for monthly compensation for unemployed and dismissed workers.

Finally, on the second Workers’ Day after the fall of the regime, the fundamental questions remain unchanged.
The ruling elites have changed, but the social relations of labor have not. The discourse has shifted in favor of the new authority, but the structure of exploitation persists.

We reaffirm our central position:
No political liberation without social liberation. And no social liberation without breaking the structure of control over power, labor, and wealth.

All power and wealth to the working class and the popular classes
Revolutionary Left Party in Syria
May 1, 2026