This weekend, thousands of union members will converge in Pittsburgh at the biennial convention for one of the largest unions in the country, the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Our union must vote to pass two urgent resolutions in solidarity with Palestine.
As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues to escalate, workers in the U.S. have, with few exceptions, failed to stand against the U.S.-backed horrors. Our inaction is an embarrassment when compared to the dockworkers in countries like France, Greece, Morocco, and Spain, who have refused to load weapons bound for Gaza.
Two million displaced Palestinians are currently fighting to survive bombing and forced starvation, and the CWA convention is an opportunity we cannot miss to begin to fulfill our duty to them–as human beings and as members of the international working class. The two resolutions submitted by members of CWA for Palestine, a national rank-and-file-led group, represent tangible steps towards creating a union that can meet this moment.
Both resolutions are rooted in the demands of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza (PGFTU-Gaza), the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, and other labor bodies, who are calling on U.S. unions to stand with Palestine and uphold the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) picket line. The first, “Resolution for an Immediate Arms Embargo in Solidarity With Palestinian Trade Unions,” calls for an immediate arms embargo and end to U.S. military aid to Israel–demands that have broad and growing public support. The second, “Resolution to Uphold the Palestinian Trade Union Picket Line,” would trigger CWA to begin the process of financially and institutionally divesting from Israel and its racist labor federation, the Histadrut. The Palestinian Postal Services Workers Union (PPSWU), part of the Communication Workers Union-Palestine, has specifically called on CWA delegates to pass these two resolutions at convention.
Palestinian unions make these appeals because they understand that Israeli occupation and genocide in Palestine is a labor issue, and that the U.S. government and U.S. institutions are critical targets in ending the carnage. As workers in the U.S. and specifically as CWA members, it is our labor that builds the weapons and technology Israel uses to murder Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond; that perpetuates the lies of the war machine through corporate media and other institutions; and that keeps the U.S. economy running.
CWA’s connections to Palestine are laid bare by Israel’s targeted killing of the same workers who make up our union. In this genocidal assault, Israel has targeted and killed more than 200 journalists, and systematically destroyed health care, telecommunications, and educational infrastructure, incapacitating hospitals, severing essential communications networks, and destroying 90% of schools and universities in Gaza. Israel has killed at least 1,400 healthcare workers, including doctors tortured to death in Israeli prisons, at least 500 teachers, at least 317 United Nations UNRWA staff, and seven World Central Kitchen workers. The weapons we help build in the U.S. kill Palestinians who work the same jobs as us.
Fundamentally, our fate as workers is tied up with Palestine. Who profits off of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza and the West Bank, and belligerent Israeli and U.S. attacks in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen? It is the same U.S.-based billionaire class who drive monopolization in telecoms, health care, and tech, who slash our jobs and keep our pay down, who union bust, and who partner with politicians to systematically attack the labor movement, Medicaid, and other crucial services.
Our class struggle here is only strengthened when we make these connections. Ultimately, it is our basic responsibility as unionists to stand with our fellow workers wherever they face oppression, and in this case, when their lives are brutalized and cut short by occupation and genocide. We don’t cross picket lines, we walk them.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to U.S. labor action for Palestine is the reticence of the people at the top of many of our unions. But across the movement, rank and file organizing in solidarity with Palestine can help build union democracy that transforms our unions on every front, including building unions that can better resist the anti-immigrant horrors of the Trump administration and attacks on labor. It is our hope that CWA leadership will hear the calls of membership this weekend, and no matter what, we will keep pushing.
In part because of the work of similar rank-and-file movements, many major U.S. unions have already at least taken the step of calling for an end to military aid to Israel, including the American Postal Workers Union, International Union of Painters, the National Education Association, Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, United Electrical Workers (UE), and CWA’s Association of Flight Attendants.
But more than a year after those seven unions wrote their letter to the Biden administration calling for an end to military aid to Israel, Palestinians in Gaza are still displaced, without food and medicine, and living under a sky filled with American bombs. While we cannot end the genocide from a union convention in Pennsylvania, we can add to the international outcry increasingly isolating Israel and pressuring its partners here.
For CWA members, passing these resolutions is an essential step: In solidarity with Palestine–and out of the belief that we can remake both our unions and our world. —
Reticence? Hardly. Union aristocrats are more than happy to talk about this, but they will never act. One aspect unmentioned in the piece is the traditional refusal of American workers in arms companies (and suppliers) to join forces with their comrades in the fight against militarism, for the obvious reason that they are perfectly content to enjoy well-paid careers making things to decapitate children. Not their own cherished little ones, of course. Children overseas, who don’t matter to American arms workers.
Anti-militarist and pro-Palestinian organisations need to look further than “standing with Palestine” and explore options to transform US military contractors into peaceful civilian manufacturing. Otherwise, they are demanding that American workers stop their well-paid child abuse, and of course they won’t.