UAW Labor for Palestine, a coalition of United Auto Workers (UAW) union members who support the liberation of Palestine, voted unanimously on Wednesday to release an official statement calling for the labor group\u2019s leadership to rescind its endorsement for President Joe Biden\u2019s reelection. The coalition joins a growing number of rank-and-file member groups leveraging their unions\u2019 political cache to pressure the White House to stop abetting Israel\u2019s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The groundswell of support signals a public shift concerning the occupation of Palestine, which had previously received fairly little attention within the U.S. labor movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an unprecedented breakthrough in labor in this country to have resolutions passed, even the weak resolutions which challenge effectively \u2026 the domination and the stranglehold of Zionism within American labor,\u201d said Michael Letwin, a longtime anti-war activist and organizer with Labor for Palestine, a coalition of labor organizers and Palestinian rights activists formed in 2004. \u201cThere\u2019s never been anything like this before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The resolution vote under UAW Labor for Palestine (a separate entity from Letwin\u2019s Labor for Palestine) follows protests during the UAW National Community Action Program conference in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, when President Shawn Fain announced the organization\u2019s endorsement of Biden. The UAW issued an official call for a ceasefire in Gaza the previous month following pressure from union members to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johannah King-Slutzky, a union member with UAW Labor for Palestine and a steward at Local 2710, the union\u2019s chapter for Columbia University student workers, was among several union members protesting the decision at the conference. During Biden\u2019s conference appearance, King-Slutzky and her colleagues were physically reprimanded by security, who dragged her out of the venue by both wrists, as shown in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSomething I\u2019m disappointed by is that the international executive board didn\u2019t give members an opportunity to weigh in on whether they would have wanted to endorse Joe Biden, given his support for the genocide to continue and materially supporting the genocide by sending weapons to Israel and funding the war,\u201d King-Slutzky said. \u201cI think if that had happened, we might have seen a very different outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a social media post after the conference, UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla stated that UAW\u2019s international executive board vote to endorse Biden for reelection was at the direction of President Fain during a closed-door session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI certainly feel fortified by the experience,\u201d said King-Slutzky, who noted other UAW members had approached the protesters to voice support for their actions. \u201cI do feel confident that UAW members broadly stand behind support for ceasefire. The only question next is like, what is to be done about that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members of the UAW\u2014representing nearly 400,000 active workers employed under manufacturers, nonprofit entities, government bodies, and universities\u2014are not the only union activists acting against their leadership\u2019s endorsement of Biden\u2019s reelection in support of Palestine. Educators for Palestine is a grassroots mobilization campaign that was launched by dissenting rank-and-file members of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association (NEA), the latter of which represents some 3 million educators, making it the largest labor union in the country. The campaign\u2019s call-to-action items include an explicit demand for the NEA to \u201crevoke our endorsement of President Biden until the following conditions have been met.\u201d The same petition commits to withholding future donations toward the NEA\u2019s political action committee, an attempt to blunt the union\u2019s political power unless the campaign\u2019s demands are fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the politically influential union representing roughly 2 million public health care workers, have campaigned in solidarity with Palestine through the Purple Up For Palestine collective, a nod to the union\u2019s signature purple and yellow colors. The collective\u2019s list of demands stops short of a call to rescind the union\u2019s endorsement of Biden, which was announced in April last year, but instead includes the demand to \u201cpressure President Biden to end military assistance to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Nicole Morse, a gender studies educator and union member of the NEA, their involvement with the Educators for Palestine campaign was another way to tangibly voice their dissent over the genocide in Gaza, as a self-described anti-Zionist Jewish person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor educators specifically, we\u2019re committed to critical thinking, to caring for children, to supporting young people,\u201d said Morse, who is also a member of the local union United Faculty of Florida. \u201cAll of that is being attacked right now, as schools in Gaza are leveled, as children are being killed and starved, as universities are being destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morse believes the Educators for Palestine campaign has opened up conversations around what union members should be able to expect of their leadership, even if everyone may not agree with it. \u201cMore and more, the labor movement in the U.S. is waking up to realize that our unions are institutions that are built by us and built for us,\u201d said Morse. \u201cAnd if we can\u2019t question them \u2026 if we can\u2019t work to make them better, then they\u2019re not unions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Labor organizers have a history of taking up progressive causes, but the Palestinian struggle has not garnered much support in the past, in part because of U.S. labor\u2019s deep ties with the Israeli government. According to Letwin, the tides began to change in the aftermath of the Israel Defense Force\u2019s (IDF) weeks-long attack on Gaza in 2014. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The invasion, an act of retaliation after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed by Hamas, resulted in the IDF killing more than 2,300 Palestinians and injuring 17,000 others, as later revealed in a report by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The magnitude of casualties, the highest recorded at the time since 1967, pushed more awareness of Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestine into the mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to Israel\u2019s 2014 attack on Gaza, Labor for Palestine issued an appeal to labor unions to support the Palestinian trade unions, which have repeatedly called for U.S. labor to upend its collaboration with the state of Israel and support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. Other union bodies began to take official stances against Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian territories: the first Block the Boat initiative was carried out by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an organizing group serving working-class Muslims and Arab people in the San Francisco Bay Area, alongside the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 at the Port of Oakland where union workers refused to handle cargo shipments for Israel, a solidarity initiative that has continued and spread across the globe. Local unions also began issuing resolutions in support of Palestine. For example, members of the UAW 2865, which represents graduate students at the University of California, passed the first pro-Palestine resolution of its kind by a mainstream union, according to Letwin. (The resolution was ultimately nullified by its leadership.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it wasn\u2019t until the IDF\u2019s October 2023 invasion of Gaza that Letwin said support for Palestine \u201creally broke way open in labor.\u201d Letwin, who is also part of the recently formed UAW Labor for Palestine group, said the Palestinian struggle constitutes a labor issue for many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that the Palestinian trade unions have called on the U.S. labor movement\u2019s support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnions are supposed to be about solidarity and respecting picket lines. We walk picket lines, we don\u2019t cross picket lines, and the Palestinian trade unions have repeatedly put up a picket line against Israel,\u201d Letwin said. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to be true to what union solidarity is supposed to be about, we have to respect and honor that picket line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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