VANCOUVER, B.C. and CHICAGO—Canada’s largest private-sector union, Unifor, and the smaller but more militant United Electrical Workers in the U.S. are demanding their nations’ governments cut off arms sales and economic ties with Israel, due to what the unions term Israel’s genocidal war on Gazans.
The demands were in resolutions at UE‘s convention in Chicago, and Unifor’s convention in Vancouver, B.C., both in late August. Unifor, once the Canadian Auto Workers, has 320,000 members.
Both unions oppose more arms sales by their respective countries to the far-right, extreme nationalist Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Unifor is joining the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. UE has backed BDS for a decade.
More than a year ago, Palestinian unions called for their union colleagues worldwide to join the BDS drive, which has gained momentum on the left, as Israel’s war on Gaza has escalated.
Financed principally—though not solely–by U.S. military aid dollars, which Israel uses to buy U.S.-made arms, planes, and bombs, the Israeli military has killed between 62,000 and 90,000 Gazans, many of them women and children.
It’s also turned the other two million Gazans into permanent refugees and Gaza into a ruined wasteland, racked by widespread famine.
And to ensure his own political survival, Netanyahu, a right-wing nationalist like his pal, U.S. GOP President Donald Trump, wants to annex Gaza.
The UE’s demand may go nowhere in the Nation’s Capital. The right-wing white nationalist GOP Trump regime marches in lockstep with Netanyahu.
And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, now a key cog in the U.S. right-wing machine, wields enormous influence in Congress via its proven ability to raise and spend tons of money to unseat lawmakers—even Jewish lawmakers—who dare challenge the Israeli right-wing’s line, regardless of which coalition runs Israel.
The Unifor demand directly follows a letter from union President Lana Payne to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, making the same point about arms sales alone. Since the start of 2023, Canadian arms sales to Israel totaled $48.55 million, Unifor calculated. U.S. arms aid to Israel has topped $14 billion in the same time period.
“Prime Minister, we call on your government to fulfil Canada’s obligations under domestic and international law and suspend exports to Israel of any and all arms and military equipment manufactured in Canada,” Unifor told the PM.
Only reasonable course available
“Canada’s participation in a global arms embargo on Israel is the only reasonable course of action to end the genocide in Palestine.”
The Canadian Freelance Union, Unifor Local 2025, introduced the resolution at the Vancouver convention. Delegates committed Unifor to work with global unions “to support Palestinian trade unions and workers affected by the ongoing genocide.”
Neither Unifor nor UE provided estimates of the total trade to be cut off if the two nations implement the BDS demands, however.
In a nod to the uproar over anti-Semitism on college campuses, in both nations, Unifor also decided to “educate members on issues impacting Palestinians, including how to combat Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and antisemitism.”
And it reiterated past Unifor demands for “a permanent ceasefire, sustainable peace and an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories,” including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s Israeli government rejects all those demands.
UE started opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1988 and has expanded its stand since then to “support the human rights of the Palestinians” and to oppose the “one-sided policy by which the U.S. government funds and arms the Israeli government.
It also calls for “negotiations toward a just and peaceful solution to this longstanding conflict.” The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has lasted for more than a century, sometimes flaring into open war.
UE also declared the U.S. labor movement has a particular responsibility to oppose the Israeli war on Hamas since U.S. tax dollars—in foreign aid—finance the U.S. arms sales to Israel.
“The U.S. working class has been forced to fund this genocidal project through military aid to Israel, which UE has long called to end. The ruling class, Democrats and Republicans alike, scramble to provide intellectual and political justification for continuing to send billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Israel,” while not funding health care, adequate housing or jobs at home.
UE called the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel “a pretext to launch a military assault against the entire population of Gaza.” Besides the killings and the two million refugees, the Israeli military “decimated the healthcare system, bombed every last Palestinian university, systematically killed journalists covering the conflict, and are engaging in deliberate starvation of the population.
“Israel is now openly proposing illegally moving Palestinians from their land to other countries, some of which are themselves war-torn. There is only one word which is adequate to describe Israel’s actions, and that is genocide.
“Because Israel’s military is so heavily funded and supplied by our government, the U.S. labor movement has a special responsibility to speak out against what is being done with our tax dollars.”
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
