By Joe Maniscalco

When the United States government finally decides to end the systemic slaughter of Palestinian people in Gaza, it’ll largely be because the American labor movement has finally decided to flex its collective muscle and fully reclaim its role as “the conscience of America.”

That’s exactly what UAW President Shawn Fain and leaders from the American Postal Workers Union, United Electrical Workers, and other labor organizations were talking about on Friday, Dec. 15 in Washington, D.C. when they urged passage of House Res. 786 and an immediate ceasefire in Palestine-Israel.

“As a trade unionist and a labor movement — it’s up to us to stand up and fight for the best of what humanity is — and can be,” UAW President Shawn Fain flatly declared.

Over the last three days, ceasefire advocates inside the labor movement have turned up the heat on the establishment, hitting the streets, confronting complicit leadership, and taking concrete action against the right-wing Israeli government’s ability to commit further genocide in Gaza — a place U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres last month called a “graveyard for children” and whose staggering death toll now includes some 19,000 Palestinian lives. 

“Every single person that stands up for [a ceasefire] makes it easier for the next person to do it,” Brooklyn organizer Emma Alpert told Work-Bites on Friday. “And I think labor has been amazing. We're seeing huge unions and organizations and groups of people who are coming out and doing the right thing.”

Alpert was among a group of roughly 100 local constituents who flooded U.S. Representative Yvette Clarke’s district office on Lennox Road in Brooklyn on Dec. 15 to urge the longtime Congress member to follow House colleagues Rashida Tlaib [MI-12], Cori Bush [MO-01], Ilhan Omar [MN-05], Nydia Velázquez [NY-07] and others in signing onto Res. 786.

They went away severely “underwhelmed and disappointed,” however — with Clarke’s staffers instructing them to “use the website” to request a meeting.

“They basically told us that ‘it was a hard time for everyone’ and that we need a chance to hear her side,” Alpert said. “But our stance is that there isn't another side to this — thousands of kids are dying. They said it would take us a week to get a meeting — that could mean thousands  more kids dying in that time.”

Work-Bites reached out to Clarke’s office multiple times for a comment on this story — but has not gotten a response.

MORAL OBLIGATION

“As long the bombing continues, it is our moral obligation to speak out,” UAW Regional Director Brandon Mancilla said alongside Fain in the nation’s capital on Friday.

“The labor moment is the conscience of America,” he said. “We promote a vision for a just society — and we put the power of our membership behind it.”

That same day 1199SEIU — the largest healthcare union in the country — put the power of its more than 450,000 members located up and down the Eastern Seaboard behind its call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the unconditional release of all hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“As healthcare workers, we are deeply troubled by the worsening health and humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” the union said in a statement. “Food, water, and medicine are urgently needed to save the lives of Palestinian civilians caught up in this conflict.”

The union further stated, “We reject the notion that Israel’s attacks on hospitals filled with patients, apartment blocks filled with families, and the deaths of 11,000+ Palestinian women and children are acceptable collateral damage.”

The following day saw a strong labor contingent of rank and file trade unionists including members of the Amazon Labor Union, PSC-CUNY, TWU and others, joining hundreds of protesters in Herald Square in New York City — some carrying bloody-handed effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden — in calling for an immediate end to the slaughter in Gaza. 

PSC-CUNY member Corinna Mullin called it “crucial” for labor to come out and take a position on the genocide in Palestine.  But she also said it was equally important for the labor moment to condemn settler colonialism and U.S. imperialism because “we have a history of our unions and union leadership, especially our large ones, supporting U.S. imperialist foreign policy.”

“We have a younger generation of trade unionists, who understand these connections,” Mullin told Work-Bites. “They're social justice unionists; they understand connections between the oppression of the working class and people of color in this country — and the oppression of the working class in the Global South. Palestinian liberation is central to our working class liberation here and the liberation of all oppressed peoples.”

Janvi Madhani, a member of UE Local 197-Teachers and Researchers United, drove home the same point in the nation’s capital on Friday when she noted, “Our hard-earned tax dollars go directly towards the bombs being dropped in Gaza but not towards healthcare, housing, or education at home.”

“Time and time again, our government has initiated wars and destabilization campaigns around the world,” Madhani continued. “To what end? The two major US wars of the past two decades, Iraq and Afghanistan, cost us billions of dollars while producing more extremism, more war, more instability, and more danger.”

Gene Bruskin, also speaking in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the more than 130 unions and million members comprising the National Labor Network for a Ceasefire — said those workers also “strongly condemn the violence done to civilians by Hamas in the brutal October 7 attacks in Israel.”

“Since then, unfortunately, we’ve witnessed a massive slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank — paid for by workers’ tax money at a time when funding for vital social programs is under threat,” he said. “The merciless bombing of Gaza has enraged union members from coast-to-coast — nurses, factory workers, construction workers, port workers, government workers, and more.”

Work-Bites also spoke to a librarian and member of District Council 37 — the largest municipal union in NYC — outside Representative Clarke’s district office who called it “extremely important” for the labor moment to push for a ceasefire in Gaza because it is both a moral imperative and a worker issue.

“I mean, among other things, it just connects with the economic issues of austerity at home, and how our tax dollars go to things that don't support us here,” she said, requesting anonymity.

Earlier reporting from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women found women and children constitute two thirds of all those killed in Gaza.

Chelsea Bland, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women’s DC Metro Chapter, further noted alongside Fain how in Gaza “two mothers are killed every hour and seven women are killed every two hours” 

“In this moment,” Bland said, “I speak directly to labor leaders and activists and emphasize that we must meet this moment with the moral courage it demands.”

Members of UAW Region 9A, along with other trade unionists and organizations will continue pushing for ceasefire in Gaza with another march and rally along 5th Avenue in New York City on Thursday, Dec. 21, at 5 p.m.

“I thank our UAW members for speaking out and pushing us to come out in support of a ceasefire,” Fain also said. “It was the right thing to do. So, now it’s time for the rest of our elected leaders to step up and do what it takes to end the violence. And I call on the rest of the labor movement to join us in this mission for peace and social justice for all of humanity.”

The American conscience demands it.

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