Andrew Grossman
The United Auto Workers International has become the largest labor union in the US to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
At a hunger strike for a ceasefire outside the White House on December 1, a UAW official stated, “UAW International is calling for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Israel and Palestine so that we can get to the work of building a lasting peace, building social justice, and building a global community of solidarity”. The union bureaucracy has been forced to act by the militancy of the rank-and-file workers, many of whom having circulated and signed onto the UE’s ceasefire petition.
In a December 1 tweet, UAW President Sean Fain linked the ceasefire call to the struggle against fascism in WWII, apartheid in South Africa, and the US imperialist counter-revolutionary war in Nicaragua. This pits the UAW bureaucracy against imperialist-in-chief Biden—a continuation of contradictions between the “most pro-union president in history” and the “reformer” union bureaucrats. Fain has so far held back the traditional UAW endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate over policy differences regarding the UAW’s role in the “EV transition”. Nevertheless, these differences did not stop Biden’s appearance at UAW picket lines during the recent auto strike.
The UAW also announced on Twitter the formation of a committee to study their union’s economic ties to “the conflict”, which is to say to the US imperialist project in the Middle East. The AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the US, has long had economic and political ties to the Zionist project, and has recently subverted affiliated union councils’ calls for a ceasefire as the paper has reported previously.
The 1199SEIU local of healthcare workers became the second-largest union, after the UAW, to call for a ceasefire on December 15th.
