American Labor’s Shameful History of Support for Zionism
Some American trade unionists have argued that labor should remain “neutral” on the question of Palestine. In fact, the US labor movement has never been neutral: its union officialdom has a more-than-century-long history of allying with Zionism.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with national labor leaders on March 14, 1958, in Washington, DC. To Eisenhower’s immediate right are George Meany, then president of the AFL-CIO, and Walter Reuther, then president of the United Auto Workers. (Getty Images)
On October 16, 2023, nine days into Israel’s total war on the two million civilians trapped inside the besieged Gaza Strip, a coalition of Palestinian trade unions issued an international call to action directed at labor movements around the world. “This urgent, genocidal situation can only be prevented by a mass increase of global solidarity with the people of Palestine and that can restrain the Israeli war machine,” the plea stated. “We need you to take immediate action — wherever you are in the world — to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.”
Specifically, Palestinian unionists urged their counterparts in other countries to refuse to manufacture or transport weapons and equipment for the Israeli military and to pass motions within their unions to this effect. Over the next several days and weeks, in countries like Belgium, Spain, Italy, India, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Japan, and Australia, unions of workers at airports, seaports, railways, coal mines, factories, and other workplaces publicly pledged to honor the call to action in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In doing so, the members of such unions vowed not to allow their labor to be used in the service of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In the United States — the nation that supplies Israel with the vast majority of its imported armaments — unionists first answered the Palestinian call only two days after it was issued. At the October 18 meeting of the central labor council in Olympia, Washington, the board members voted unanimously to pass a resolution expressing opposition “in principle [to] any union involvement in the production or transportation of weapons destined for Israel” and committing “to investigate ways our member unions may be participating in this war.”
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.