The financial argument does not hold water. The UAW has committed $40 million to organize unorganized auto workers. We applaud this commitment and hail the victory at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee. However, we find it unacceptable that a union with $40 million to fund organizing cannot part with half a million dollars to end its complicity with genocide.
We call on the IEB to reverse its shameful lack of action immediately, and we reiterate our demands that UAW leadership respect the Palestinian trade union picket line by immediately:
- Divesting our union and employers from Israel Bonds and from the military, extractive and technological industries connected with the […] occupation and U.S. [neo]imperialism;
- Terminating UAW’s ties with the Histadrut, [Zionism’s] racist labor federation, and its U.S. mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee;
- Demanding that the United States government immediately halt all aid and military support to [Zionism], including the supply of weapons produced in UAW shops; and
- Protecting UAW members who engage in pro-Palestine speech and advocacy — particularly Palestinian, Muslim and Arab workers — from doxxing, surveillance and repression within and beyond the workplace. The defense of UAW 2325 against Congress and UAW 2710 members who have been disciplined for their advocacy is critical at this moment, but countless workers have been facing these issues broadly around our locals.
UAWL4P urges the IEB to take these concrete actions and more in order to materialize the ceasefire call President Fain made over four months, and tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, ago. The IEB must recognize that the power to end complicity lies in the hands of our union’s rank-and-file members and work to realize that power with urgency. To support the IEB’s alignment with the will of rank-and-file members, we draw your attention to this list of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] resolutions passed by UAW locals and other bodies across the country dating back to at least 2014 and to a new resolution reiterating its prior demands for UAW divestment, adopted by [Association of Legal Aid Attorneys]-UAW 2325 on May 7, 2024. (laborforpalestine.net)
As union members and allies who have been advocating, researching and working tirelessly for solidarity with Palestine over the past seven months — some of us for years and decades — we believe in a UAW that stands with the people of Palestine, workers around the world and people of conscience everywhere by immediately voting to divest the UAW from occupation and genocide as outlined above.
In solidarity for a free Palestine from the river to the sea! An injury to one is an injury to all!
If the UAW does this, I wonder what the insane overreaction will be from DC
Beyond forcing capitalists to share a few more crumbs of their stolen profits, unions and student led organizations have been the sort of the tip of the spear in past socialist revolutions. Surely this is not a secret to those in Washington and elsewhere. This has to be scaring the shit out of the more historically literate ones.
A lot of westerners, Americans especially, always ask “yeah but can I do?!” This is what you can do. Unionize your workplace or help unionize others. Push for (or be!) radical leadership that seeks to squeeze the owners for every cent they can get. Push the union to take up issues like divestment from Israel. This is how political change that actually matters happened in the past and it can happen again. Workers hold the power, ultimately. Capitalists and their subservient politicians want you to forget that or give up.