[Part 2 of our conversation with longtime trade unionist Bill
Fletcher and labor historian Jeff Schuhrke about union calls for a
ceasefire in Gaza, the 2024 election and more. ]
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LABOR & PALESTINE: JEFF SCHUHRKE & BILL FLETCHER ON HOW U.S. UNIONS
ARE RESPONDING TO WAR IN GAZA  
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Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Jeff Schuhrke, Bill Fletcher
December 26, 2023
Democracy Now!
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_ Part 2 of our conversation with longtime trade unionist Bill
Fletcher and labor historian Jeff Schuhrke about union calls for a
ceasefire in Gaza, the 2024 election and more. _

, Democracy Now!

 

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is _Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, _The War
and Peace Report_. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We continue with Part 2 of our look at how the U.S. labor movement is
increasing pressure on President Biden to demand a ceasefire in the
U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza. Unions helped organize a march
to AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee —
headquarters here in New York last Thursday that called on lawmakers
to stop taking campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobbyists.
Unions called for a ceasefire — among them, United Auto Workers,
United Electrical Workers, American Postal Workers Union, 1199SEIU,
teachers unions in Chicago and Boston, to name a few.

For more, we’re joined in Chicago by Jeff Schuhrke, labor historian,
journalist and assistant professor at the School of Labor
Studies, SUNY Empire State University, here in New York, and in
Washington, D.C., by Bill Fletcher, longtime trade unionist, Ukrainian
Solidarity Network, on the editorial board of _The Nation_, has
written a number of pieces on Gaza and Biden. Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to begin with Bill Fletcher. Bill,
in Part 1
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our interview, you raised the issue that you’ve written about,
suggesting that, given the deep unpopularity of President Biden,
especially among young people, in terms of his position on the Israeli
attack, continuing attacks on Gaza, that President Biden should resign
— or, agree not to run again. And I wanted to explore that a little
more with you, because, clearly, it’s not inconceivable. For those
who remember, back in the 1960s, President Johnson announced on March
31st of an election year that he would not be running for reelection,
given what — the enormous failure of his policies in Vietnam, and
that touched off a frenzied race. Bobby Kennedy jumped into the race.
Eugene McCarthy, of course, was the antiwar candidate at the time. And
it ended up in a brokered convention, with Hubert Humphrey coming out
as the nominee. But, of course, then Humphrey was defeated by Richard
Nixon in the general election. I’m wondering your sense of what kind
of a scenario could conceivably play out if the pressure grew on Biden
to step aside.

BILL FLETCHER: Thank you, Juan. Yeah. So, to clarify, you’re
right: I’m seeking Biden to not seek reelection, to basically —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.

BILL FLETCHER: — have a repetition of what we had in 1968, as you
pointed out, with Johnson stepping aside. And I think that this
discussion is taking place all over the country. You know, before
October 7th, I actually wasn’t so much concerned about Biden’s
unpopularity. That’s very common. But what happened after October
7th is what’s very unsettling, because he is losing younger voters,
and particularly voters of color, who are really dismayed by his
position on Israel and Palestine and the Gaza war. And so, that’s
really my concern right now. And we need to have, going into November,
a strong front against the MAGA forces, at this point led by Trump.
I don’t see Biden being able to do that right now.

So, one, there’s a number of possibilities. The most important, I
think, is, if there’s sufficient pressure, he may then step aside,
and then opens up a lot of discussion about an alternative candidate.
And that probably would take us into the Democratic convention. Now, a
lot of people will say, “Yes, but look at what happened in ’68.
There was the opposition to Johnson. Johnson steps aside, and Nixon
wins.” And that’s correct. And Humphrey’s refusal to demarcate
himself from Johnson’s policies killed his election — his
possibility of being elected. Hopefully, we will have learned
something from that.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Schuhrke, you wrote a piece
[[link removed]] about
the unions and the war machine. Explain.

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah. So, as we know, the assault on Gaza is really
being fueled and funded by the U.S. government, in many ways, and the
weapons being used in Gaza, the missiles, the bombs, the fighter jets,
were manufactured here in the United States. So, when we talk about
unions calling for a ceasefire, or unions playing a role in ending the
violence, we have to talk about the fact that many of the workers at
the weapons plants here in the United States, many of the people who
actually work in the military-industrial complex, are union members,
represented by unions like the UAW and the International Association
of Machinists.

And I should also say — some important context — Palestinian
trade unions, including the Palestinian General Federation of Trade
Unions, have put out an international call for solidarity to unions in
other countries around the world, asking that they not participate in
the manufacture or transport of weapons to Israel. So, that has
— that creates kind of a dilemma for the U.S. labor movement,
particularly for antiwar labor activists, whether they are opposed to
Israel’s current assault on Gaza or if they’re just opposed to
militarism and war and imperialism in general.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Schuhrke —

JEFF SCHUHRKE: If we want to talk about shutting down the war
machine and dismantling the industrial — military-industrial
complex, we have to —

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Schuhrke, you mentioned —

JEFF SCHUHRKE: — acknowledge the fact that there are roughly 2
million U.S. workers in the defense and aerospace industry, and at
least tens of thousands of them are members of unions. So —

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Schuhrke, I don’t know —

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — if you can hear me, but you talked about
Palestinian labor activism. Give us a little history of Arab American,
overall, labor activism and the role it’s played.

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah. So, in the late 1960s 1970s, there was a fairly
large wave of Arab immigration to the United States, particularly to
the Detroit area, where many Arab immigrants, Arab Americans,
including Palestinians, were working in the auto industry. This
includes Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s father, who worked at the
Ford Flat Rock Assembly Plant outside Detroit. And they faced a lot of
racism and discrimination.

This was the time period of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers,
a lot of Black auto workers in the UAW who were influenced by the
Black Power movement and saw a lot of the systematic racism within the
labor movement, within the UAW, and were organizing against that,
also organizing against capitalism, more broadly. And some of — the
League of Revolutionary Black Workers was one of the first groups of
union members to actually speak out in solidarity with Palestinians.

So, in any case, in 1973, during the October War between Israel and
Egypt and Syria, members of the Arab community in Detroit, including
thousands of auto workers, learned that the UAW had purchased
$785,000 in State of Israel bonds, using their dues money to basically
bankroll the Israeli government. And so they were obviously — they
had never had any say in that. They weren’t — you know, hadn’t
been aware of that. So they organized a series of protests, including,
in November of 1973, a one-day wildcat strike, where about 2,000 Arab
auto workers, joined by some of their Black co-workers, shut down the
Dodge Main assembly plant to call on UAW leadership to dump their
Israeli bonds. And they ended up forming an Arab Workers Caucus within
the union that was active for several years and did succeed in getting
the union to get rid of some of their State of Israel bonds.

And in more recent decades, some of this type of activism has
continued, not only in the UAW, but other unions, as well, other
areas of the labor movement, with unions or central labor councils
trying to put forward statements, resolutions of solidarity with
Palestinians, but often facing pushback from national labor leaders,
saying, you know, “This is not our policy. You can’t say these
things.” So, for example, just — well, talking about
the UAW again, between late 2014 and early 2016, three graduate
worker union locals, which are all affiliated with the UAW, at the
University of California, University of Massachusetts and NYU,
these UAW-affiliated graduate worker unions passed resolutions
endorsing BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. And
the national — or, international UAW leadership effectively
nullified those resolutions. They said, “You can’t. It’s not our
policy to boycott or divest from Israel.” And even though they found
that those resolutions were voted on in a perfectly democratic way,
and there was nothing — you know, and this was — there was no
wrongdoing, they nevertheless, UAW leadership, nullified those
resolutions. And part of their argument was that some of the companies
to be boycotted are these military contractors that have workers who
are represented by the UAW.

And more recently, in 2021, after Israel’s last attack on Gaza, the
San Francisco Labor Council was preparing to vote on a resolution,
a BDS resolution, and the national AFL-CIO stepped in and said,
you know, central labor councils, which are chartered by the
national AFL-CIO, they have to be in alignment with the
national AFL-CIO’s policy. And because the national AFL-CIO is
not boycotting Israel, they told them, “You can’t vote on this.
You can’t vote to boycott Israel.”

And then, just more recently — 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jeff?

JEFF SCHUHRKE: — in October of this year, the
Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council, which is in Olympia,
Washington, the delegates to that labor council unanimously voted to
pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and opposing the manufacture
and shipment of weapons to Israel. And again, the
national AFL-CIO stepped in and said, “You can’t do this,”
made them take the statement off their website and off social media.
But nevertheless, a few other central labor councils, in Western
Massachusetts, in Austin, Texas, in San Antonio, have recently passed
their own ceasefire resolutions, as well, effectively, it seems,
defying the national AFL-CIO.

So, there’s quite a bit of tension here. It goes back to what Bill
Fletcher said in the first segment
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how there’s always been this divide within the labor movement on
international issues. And oftentimes it takes the — it looks like a
divide between some of the top officials and more local or grassroots
union members or local leaders.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jeff, I’m wondering if you could talk about the
difference between what’s going on in the U.S. and what’s going on
in other countries, as the Palestinian labor movement is asking for
solidarity actions in other countries. What’s going on in Europe or
in the Global South among trade unions in response to Israel’s
attacks on Gaza?

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah. In a lot of the rest of the world, unions are
going beyond just statements and resolutions, and actually taking real
action. So, for example, dockworkers in Genoa, Italy, and Barcelona,
Spain, have said that they will refuse to handle any Israeli cargo, I
think particularly weapons heading to Israel. A railway union in Japan
said the same thing. Coal miners in Colombia have said they don’t
want to send coal to Israel to fuel Israel’s war machine. Most of
the major labor unions in India have put forward a statement calling
on the Indian government not to provide material support to Israel.
And trade unionists in the U.K., Australia, Canada have participated
and organized protests at weapons factories, blockading them, shutting
them down, at least for a few hours. And this is what the Palestinian
trade unions have specifically called for, is to actually get in the
way and disrupt the war machine.

Here in the U.S., there have been protests at some of the different
weapons manufacturers, but they’ve mostly been led by community
members, and not necessarily endorsed by the unions or the union
members that work in those factories. But in the past, in 2010, 2014
and 2021, the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union, ILWU Local 10, which is dockworkers on the West Coast, and
Local 10 is in the Bay Area, they refused on three occasions to handle
Israeli cargo on ZIM Lines ships. That’s the main Israeli shipping
company. There were pickets led by community members,
and ILWU dockworkers refused to cross those picket lines and
basically did not unload those Israeli cargo ships. And then, this
year, more recently, in early November, there were also community-led
pickets of a U.S. military supply ship in — first in Oakland, and
then in Tacoma. And I know that the protests, the pickets in Oakland,
there were some members of the ILWU there supporting it. But other
than that, there hasn’t been the same amount of actual kind of
direct action in the U.S. to try to shut down the war machine. It’s
been mostly statements and resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Bill Fletcher back into the
conversation, trade unionist, one of the heads of the Ukrainian
Solidarity Network, on the editorial board of _The Nation_, wrote
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Biden, and a Path Forward” for _The Nation_ and wrote
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Fascist Movement’s Biggest Threat: Labor Unions?” in _In These
Times_. And this follows up on Juan’s earlier question. You talked
about Biden and saying you thought he should step aside in running for
president next year. But if you can talk about the role of President
Trump when it comes to labor? You had President Biden on the picket
line, and President Trump then stepping in and going to a nonunion
shop. Talk about what you see as Trump’s appeal to a number of
workers around this country, and the threats that you see he
represents in this country.

BILL FLETCHER: Amy, it’s a tremendous threat, both for workers,
but also if you’re looking at the Middle East. So let me just
preface my response by pointing out that what we’re seeing in Gaza,
in many ways, one could argue, was to a great extent provoked by Trump
and what Trump did in terms of cultivating his relationship with
Netanyahu, supporting the further Israeli aggression and expansion,
and the development of the so-called Abraham Accords, which were aimed
at strangling the Palestinian movement and Palestinian people. So
there’s no way that Trump can get off the hook on the issue of Gaza.

In terms of workers, one of the things that’s interesting is that as
— I think a good description of Trump at this point is as a
post-fascist. I generally referred to him in the past as a right-wing
populist, but I think he’s moved further. One of the things that
he’s been attempting to do is to cultivate a different picture of
the Republican Party and of the MAGA movement. And so, they want to
describe themselves increasingly as a workers’ movement. But what
they actually are talking about is a white movement of working people
that supports a neoliberal, largely neoliberal, economic agenda, but
an agenda that is incredibly racialized.

And so, when we’re looking at Trump, there’s nothing that Trump
did during his administration that was to the benefit of working
people or the benefit of unions. Nothing. I mean, when you look at,
for example, his so-called tax cut, which really was a tax giveaway,
it was very harmful to working people, and it benefited a very small
slice of the population.

But what Trump does is that he appeals to workers, and particularly to
white workers, on the basis of a xenophobic appeal or nativism, you
know, the idea that immigrants are the major threat, that competition
from China is the major threat, that basically he would rebuild U.S.
industries through further xenophobic measures — none of which he
was able to pull off while he was president, for sure, and none of
which would benefit U.S. workers. But it’s an appeal that is very
persuasive among many white people, and not particularly — and this
is where it becomes really interesting, Amy. They talk about white
workers. The appeal for MAGA, as was true with the tea party
movement, is not primarily among white workers. It’s primarily among
the middle strata among whites. And that is what I think many people,
including good progressives, have misunderstood, particularly after
Trump was elected, that the appeal is not mainly for white workers.

Now, the union movement is in a situation where in order to
fight MAGA, in order to fight the fascists, what it needs to do is
two things. One is, obviously, an economic populist, progressive
economic populist message and practice. But that’s not enough. The
other part is that it has to actively take on matters of race and sex.
It cannot think that it can avoid these issues, and that that somehow
will bring us all together in a great kumbaya. It will not happen.
Fighting the fascists is going to necessitate taking an advanced
position on changing the economy, changing the way that workers are
being crushed. But it’s also going to necessitate really taking on
what’s happening to workers of color, the way that immigrants are
being played — or, the issue of immigration is being played, and
the issue of sex. This is the future, I think, of a movement, of an
anti-fascist labor movement.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Bill, I wanted to follow up on that point that you
raised about that the Trump base is not really a traditional
working-class base. I’ve shared that perspective for many years now,
because, first of all, the reality is that many people who were
formerly part of the U.S. working class or labor movement were thrust
into, basically, contingent work — independent truckers as opposed
to unionized truckers, franchisers who now, instead of being a legal
employee of a company, now own their own franchise — basically
creating a much bigger aristocracy of labor than existed in prior
times, including, in addition to that, the unions of all of the law
enforcement, of police unions, correctional unions, border patrol
unions, all of the surveillance and the repression of the state that
is unionized, that that is really the base of Trump, rather than the
traditional organized labor movement and workers in the most oppressed
sectors. But the question then becomes: How do you build a movement, a
movement of opposition to the new Trump form of fascism?

BILL FLETCHER: So, that’s the $64,000 question, Juan. And I agree
with your basic analysis. I would only add to that that what’s
happened in the economy is, in addition, an atomization and a
fragmentation of work and workers. And so you have many self-employed
people who are only technically self-employed. They actually have
employers, but they are 1099ers. That is, they’re considered
contractors, even though, in effect, they are all part of the working
class.

I think that the building of the anti-MAGA front is a battle around
democracy. This is one of the reasons I refrain from using the notion
of cultural wars. I don’t think that we’re engaged in a cultural
war. I think we’re engaged in a battle around democracy, and the
extent to which democracy is either expanded or contracted. Right? Do
we expand democracy to address women, to address the gender-oppressed,
to address people of color, to address the way that the economy works,
or do we contract that? Do we expand democracy to address the various
persecuted religious sects, or do we contract it? Do we expand
democracy in order to democratize the economy, so that instead of the
poor being squeezed, we have a humane tax system, a democratic, with a
small “D,” tax system? I think that that’s the basis of building
that broad front. And so, what that doesn’t mean — and I get
almost homicidal anytime I hear Democrats say this — is this idea of
tacking more towards the center. No, no! Danger, Will Robinson. It’s
not about tacking to the center. It’s about taking a very strong
stand on what needs to happen in the economy to masses, to millions of
working people. That’s where we can build that front.

Now, one of the things, Juan, that’s really amazed me is the level
of cowardice among many trade union leaders when it comes to actually
taking on MAGA. I mean, I’ve actually been engaged in discussions
with union leaders about we’ve got to take on the right wing. And
they are fearful, man. I mean, they are petrified that they’re going
to — that white males are going to run out of union halls
hysterically — right? — yelling, screaming, never to return, if
they start dealing with race and gender and sex and the issue of
fascism, and as opposed to that, no, that’s how we’re going to
unite, that’s how we’re going to defeat the right, both within our
ranks but also more generally.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill Fletcher, I wanted to ask you a question on
international issues, from Ukraine to Israel, the linking of funding
for Israel, funding for Ukraine, and, of course, linking it to the
border, that has held it all up, Republicans wanting extremely
draconian measures taken on the border, and progressive Democrats
fighting back, although they feel that Biden more is compromising with
Republicans than with them, like the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
But I wanted to ask you about Ukraine and Israel, your views as the
co-founder of the Ukrainian Solidarity Network.

BILL FLETCHER: So, my view is that Ukraine and the Palestinians
share a lot in common, that they’re both victims of naked
aggression. They’re both victims of a colonial project — in the
case of Ukraine, that of Russia; in the case of Palestinians,
obviously, what the Israelis have been doing since 1948, and I would
actually say since 1946.

And so, there is actually a sort of — I would almost argue, Amy,
that we’re in an era of a globalization of anti-occupation struggles
— Ukraine, Palestine, Kashmir, West Papua, Puerto Rico, etc.
— that there are many examples of anti-occupation struggles that
are going on, and that these anti-occupation struggles are beginning
to reemerge, to globalize and to build important connections. We in
the U.S. left need to be supporting that. And the Ukraine Solidarity
Network is part of that. And as opposed to what Biden is arguing, that
he wants to support the Ukrainians and support Israeli aggression, we
think that there’s absolutely a contradiction in terms. There is no
alignment.

But here’s the other thing, Amy, that’s going on. The Republicans
have this whole thing around the border. But what’s being missed in
this is that there is a pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party that is
growing, that there is a very important segment the Republican Party,
and really based among the MAGA forces, that look to Putin as a
political ally. And they look to the Putin regime and the Putin
project as something that needs to be replicated in the United States
— Putin’s Christian nationalism, I would argue, Putin’s
homophobia, his misogynism, his white supremacy, his argument that
Russia is defending, in effect, the European and the Western world.
This is something that resonates among the MAGA forces. And there
are, unfortunately, segments of the U.S. left that seem to have put
cotton in their ears when that comes up. They don’t want to hear
that discussion. They don’t want to acknowledge that that’s part
of what’s going on. But that’s part of the motivating force of
Republicans that are trying to block any aid to Ukraine.

So, in sum, I am not at all in support of any kind of aid to Israel.
Cut military aid. Stop this. But the linking that Biden has made
between aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel, that’s absolutely
horrendous.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Bill, in that vein, isn’t the — from the
perspective of people suffering from the effects of war, isn’t a
more consistent position to have ceasefires, not only in Israel, but
also in Ukraine at this stage, and try to figure out a way to
negotiate peace?

BILL FLETCHER: Well, you know, that’s an interesting question,
Juan, and it’s being debated. Ultimately, the answer to that will
lie with the Ukrainians. And they will have to decide, just like the
Koreans had to decide, just like the Vietnamese had to decide, whether
or not they want to call a ceasefire, whether they want to divide
their country, whether they think that the prospects of winning are
there or not. That’s not up to us. And that that’s one of those
things where I think that segments of the U.S. left prove how American
they are in their chauvinism, that we’re going to tell the
Ukrainians how to resolve this. My argument is, to the extent that the
Ukrainians want to fight and continue to fight against Russian
aggression, that should be supported, in the same way that other
peoples that are fighting aggression from a foreign power need to be
supported. If at some point the Ukrainian people say, “OK, we’re
not going to win this,” or that we make a decision that some sort of
other solution needs to be taken up, then I think it’s important, in
the name of self-determination, that people here would support that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Bill
Fletcher is a trade unionist, a co-founder of the Ukrainian Solidarity
Network. He is on the editorial board of _The Nation_. We’re going
to link to your articles in both _The Nation_ and _In These Times_.
And Jeff Schuhrke, a labor historian, journalist, union activist and
assistant professor of the School of Labor Studies at SUNY Empire
State University.

To see Part 1
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our conversation, you can go to democracynow.org. We’ll also link to
Jeff’s articles at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan
González. Thanks so much for joining us.

* War on Gaza
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* Labor
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* unions
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* presidential election
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* Ceasefire
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* democracy
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