Category Archives: Connecticut AFL-CIO

Solidarity Rising: Two More UAW Graduate Employee Units Endorse BDS!

Screenshot 2016-03-23 17.48.25Solidarity Rising: Two More UAW
Graduate Employee Units Endorse BDS!

 

Screenshot 2016-04-26 18.30.03Joint Statement GSOC-UAW 2110 and GEO-UAW 2322 are Latest Unions to Vote for Divestment
This past week the NYU Graduate Employee Union (GSOC-UAW 2110) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Graduate Employee Union (GEO-UAW 2322), both representing 2,000 members each, endorsed by full membership vote the call from all major Palestinian trade unions and civil society groups to impose Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. . . . In December 2014, the 14,000 student-worker union at the University of California (UAW Local 2865) system passed a similar resolution supporting BDS with 65% in favor.

 

JWJContext: America’s Labor Unions Are Increasingly Standing with Palestine (Alternet)
Following a well-attended panel hosted by Western Mass Labor for Palestine at the April 16 Jobs With Justice Conference in Springfield, MA, author Vijay Prashad extensively reviews the rise of Labor for Palestine and U.S. trade union support for BDS. Panelists included Prashad, LFP Co-Conveners Suzanne Adely and Michael Letwin, Carol Lambiase (United Electrical Workers), Bill Shortell (International Association of Machinists), and was moderated by WMLFP members Jordy Rosenberg and Ruth Jennison. Prashad’s article concludes by quoting Adely: “Ultimately, building labor solidarity with Palestine and with all anti-racist struggles is part of the fight to build a stronger, democratic union movement.”

 

delegation-birzeitLabor to Palestine: We Stand with Palestine in the Spirit of “Sumud”: The U.S. Prisoner, Labor and Academic Solidarity Delegation to Palestine
On April 16, the nineteen-member March 2016 delegation to Palestine, which included LFP Co-convener Jaime Veve and several other trade unionists, issued a powerful report stating, in part: “We join hands with our comrades in the Palestinian labor movement and salute the struggle of striking teachers, labor organizers and workers demanding economic justice, independence and national self-determination from colonial structures. We further pledge to campaign in the ranks of U.S. labor to divest from Israeli bonds and sever ties between the AFL-CIO and the Histadrut.” To host a local event with delegation members, contact palestine.prison.delegation16@gmail.com

 

socialsecstrike-maanLabor in Palestine: Mass Rally Against Approval of New “Social Security” Law (IMEMC)
Thousands of Palestinians, on Tuesday, demonstrated outside of a government building, in the occupied West Bank hub of Ramallah, against the Palestinian Authority’s approval of a new law many believe fails to provide adequate protection for workers. . . . Weeks earlier, a teachers’ strike brought the largest public demonstrations against the PA in years.

Analysis: Eric Lee: The Online Labour Solidarity Whiz who’s ‘Proud to be a Zionist’
In a new article, British BDS activists Peter Waterman discusses the hypocrisy of Zionist anti-BDS spokesperson Eric Lee, owner of the widely-read website, LabourStart.

Download: New Labor for Palestine Pamphlet
Key background documents from Labor for Palestine, prepared for 2016 Labor Notes conference.

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American and Palestinian Unionists Build International Solidarity To Win ‘Freedom’ for Palestine (In These Times)

In These Times
WEDNESDAY, APR 6, 2016, 3:12 PM

American and Palestinian Unionists Build International Solidarity To Win ‘Freedom’ for Palestine

BY JEFF SCHUHRKE

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In an address on Middle East policy last month, Bernie Sanders —the first Jewish American to win a presidential primary—did something virtually unheard of in contemporary U.S. politics when he called for an end to “what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory” by Israel.

The only candidate to skip the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, Sanders instead delivered a speech from Utah in which he acknowledged that “today there is a whole lot of suffering among Palestinians” due to the occupation.

“For a presidential candidate to break from the mold, like it seems maybe Sanders is doing, and to talk about the fact that the occupation needs to end, is something that’s exciting to Palestinians,” says Manawel Abdel-Al, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU).

“We hope this isn’t just election talk,” he adds. “People were very excited about Barack Obama as well and we didn’t get much progress. But we’re hopeful.”

Abdel-Al—who lives in occupied East Jerusalem—is visiting Chicago this week at the invitation of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and Jewish Voice for Peace to enlist the support of the U.S. labor movement in the Palestinian liberation struggle. He addressed standing-room-only audiences of rank-and-file unionists at last weekend’s Labor Notes conference and again on Tuesday night at the local UE Hall.

A machine repair technician by trade, Abdel-Al has been a union activist for three decades. He tells In These Times that throughout their history, Palestinian trade unions have always waged a “two-part” battle. “We represent workers in the class struggle for socioeconomic rights, but also in the national, political struggle for freedom and independence,” he says, noting that the Palestinian labor movement has managed to endure despite a century of repression and upheaval under British, Jordanian, and Israeli control.

Abdel-Al’s PGFTU represents 14 private sector unions in the West Bank and Gaza. In the West Bank, Abdel-Al says the PGFTU negotiates collective bargaining agreements with employers and successfully convinced the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) to pass a minimum wage law in 2012. The union federation is now calling for the P.A. to implement social welfare policies by next year.

Meanwhile, over 25,000 public schoolteachers (not affiliated with PGFTU) staged a one-month strike earlier this year to call for the P.A. to honor a promised pay raise that had been “left on the backburner for three years,” Abdel-Al says. The strike ended last month after President Mahmoud Abbas intervened and promised back pay and a 10 percent wage increase.

Abdel-Al’s PGFTU is not recognized by the Israeli government, leaving unprotected the approximately 92,000 West Bank Palestinians who regularly cross into and out of Israel and Israeli settlements for work. Abdel-Al explains that while many of these workers have legal permits to be employed in Israel, many others are unauthorized workers—hired under-the-table by Israeli employers—and face extreme exploitation. “When they’re injured on the job, they’re simply taken to the closest border checkpoint and left there. The employer disappears.”

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Abdel-Al at Chicago’s Haymarket monument. (Jeff Schuhrke)

Regardless of their legal status, Abdel-Al says that all Palestinian workers in Israel, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, face discrimination, arbitrary dismissal, low pay, and a host of other issues on the job.  “All we want is freedom from oppression,” he says, asking U.S. unionists to do whatever they can to help their fellow workers in Palestine.

Heeding this call, last August, UE became the first national U.S. labor union to endorse Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)—a global, nonviolent movement to protest Israeli human rights violations inspired by the successful efforts of civil society groups to pressure South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s.

While the activist network Labor for Palestine has been pushing U.S. unions to get behind BDS for the past decade, serious strides have only been made in the two years since Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, which killed 1,462 civilians. In December 2014, BDS was endorsed by University of California graduate student workers with UAW Local 2865—a vote that was controversially nullified by the UAW’s International Executive Board earlier this year. Following Local 2865 and UE’s lead, the Connecticut AFL-CIO also passed a resolution in favor of BDS late last year.

BDS is gaining traction within the international labor movement as well, with support from unions in South Africa, the UK, Norway, Brazil, and elsewhere. Last April, it was endorsed by Canada’s Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), which represents 325,000 public and private sector workers in Quebec.

“I think BDS is a powerful tool to educate people on what is happening in Palestine,” Nathalie Guay, coordinator of CSN’s international relations, tells In These Times. Guay, who helped connect the PGFTU and UE, hopes that more North American unions will not only endorse BDS, but also send their members on delegations to Palestine to learn about the situation first-hand. “Every single person who goes there comes back as an activist for Palestine. We need more of that.”

Noting the growing international influence of unions from the global south, including Brazil’s pro-BDS Central Única dos Trabalhadores, Guay predicts the international labor movement will continue to increase its support for Palestine in the years to come. “I think there will be some evolution,” she says.

This evolution is already evident in the International Trade Union Confederation—a global organization composed of the world’s major labor federations—which has issued increasingly critical statements of Israel since the 2014 assault on Gaza.

“We believe statements are not enough and hope the ITUC will change its policies in a more definitive way to help end the occupation,” Abdel-Al says. “But no matter how small, this is a positive change.”

Abdel-Al took time out of his busy schedule this week to visit the Haymarket memorial—a tribute to martyred Chicago unionists who were hanged in 1887 as a result of their activism in support of the 8-hour workday. “This is the birthplace of the worldwide labor movement. Around the world, we celebrate labor on May 1st because of what happened in Chicago.”

He wants U.S. labor activists to remember that occupied Palestinians are also oppressed workers. “Any activism, any support for us would be in accordance with a slogan that is well known by the working class everywhere—workers of the world, unite! Through solidarity and willpower, workers can make changes and bring about the achievement of rights for persecuted and oppressed people everywhere.”

Jeff Schuhrke is a Summer 2013 editorial intern at In These Times.

Letter of Support for UAW 2865 (David A. Roche Business Manager S.M.A.R.T. Local #40 President CT State Building Trades – Ex Secretary CT AFL-CIO)

View in PDF format: support-UAW-2865-letter

U.S. Unions Under Attack by the Israeli Government (The Sruggle)

The Struggle

U.S. Unions Under Attack by the Israeli Government

Defend US Unions

In 2015 official bodies of the U.S. trade union movement began to endorse BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) in support of Palestinian rights. In the summer at convention the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union passed a resolution calling for an end of U.S. military aid to Israel and endorsing the BDS movement. They got a thank you from 3,000 people, but a lawsuit from the Israeli government.

The Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center filed a charge under the hated Taft-Hartley provision of the National Labor Relations Act saying the resolution amounted to a secondary boycott. A secondary boycott is where you ask people to boycott a company to try to make it stop doing business with a company that you’re striking or taking some other labor action. The Shurat HadDin was claiming the unions was acting like a “discriminatory hate group”.

Then at the very end of October the Connecticut AFL-CIO federation (repesenting 200,000 workers) passed a resolution requesting the national AFL-CIO join in measures of BDS against Israel. The Israeli government-funded “Stand with Us” group issued a statement saying it was “deeply disappointed”. You can imagine what their “disappointment” will lead to, alliances with anti-union billionaires, lying charges of anti-Semitism and the like.

The rank and file group “Labor for Palestine” notes that in addition to the Israeli government, StandWithUs lists as its “sponsors and partners” dozens of the most extreme Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian organizations active today, including CAMERA, Christians United for Israel, the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Zionist Organization of America.

What You Can Do

Sign on to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation petition in support of the CT AFL-CIO. (4,500 signers as of Thanksgiving) Get your union to pass a resolution in support of BDS

If you’re not in a union, join one

Contact one or more of these national AFL-CIO Executive Board members and urge them to speak out in favor of BDS and get the national AFL-CIO to support BDS.

If you’re in a union ask your local or international Treasurer in writing if it owns Israel Bonds and tell him/her to sell off the bonds and invest in something that would benefit U.S. workers. See one union’s answer to a letter in 2009.

Check out the rank-and-file group Labor for Palestine

taft-hartley
How Taft-Hartley weakened unions and working people

scare us

buying_israeli_goods_is_funding_apartheid_1

Image digitized in the late 2000s and processed for the Oakland Museum of California Museum Technology Initiative for Educational Outreach, July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.

Image digitized in the late 2000s and processed for the Oakland Museum of California Museum Technology Initiative for Educational Outreach, July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011.

solidarity forever
from a censored mural by Mike Alewitz

Israel-funded group slams US labor federation for backing Palestinian rights (Electronic Intifiada)

eilogo

Electronic Intifada

Israel-funded group slams US labor federation for backing Palestinian rights

Solidarity activists are urging support for a US labor federation facing a backlash from a group closely tied to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over its support for Palestinian rights.

In October, the Connecticut branch of the AFL-CIO passed a resolution calling on the national labor federation to back key elements of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

AFL-CIO is the largest US labor federation, counting dozens of unions with a combined membership of almost 13 million workers as its affiliates – 200,000 of them in Connecticut.

Now they’re in the sights of the Israeli-government funded, anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic organizationStandWithUs.

“StandWithUs is deeply disappointed that this resolution passed,” the group’s northeast regional director Shahar Azani told the right-wing blog The Daily Caller. Azani claimed the decision was based on “a distorted, one-sided misrepresentation of the reality of the situation.”

But the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is pushing back.

It is urging supporters to sign a petition thanking the Connecticut AFL-CIO for its “principled stance in calling for national AFL-CIO to apply economic and diplomatic tools including BDS to support freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people.”

Backed by Netanyahu

StandWithUs’ Azani asserts that his group wants to build “bridges and not walls between people such as those BDS promulgates.”

But the group has long been one of the most aggressive anti-Palestinian organizations in the US.

In January, Haaretz reported that the Israeli prime minister’s office had hired StandWithUs for $254,000 to “to help it push the government’s political line this year via social media.”

The Tel Aviv newspaper notes that in recent years, “StandWithUs has performed this service for free when Israel faced intense criticism abroad, such as during the summer [2014] war with Gaza.”

StandWithUs also colluded with the Israeli government to sue members of the Olympia Food Co-op for their decision to boycott Israeli goods in 2010. That litigation is ongoing.

In addition to the Israeli government, StandWithUs lists as its “sponsors and partners” dozens of the most extreme Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian organizations active today, including CAMERA, Christians United for Israel, the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Zionist Organization of America.

The fact that the Connecticut AFL-CIO has attracted the attention of StandWithUs, a group with such high-level ties to Netanyahu, suggests that the labor federation will face growing pressure to reverse its vote.

But recent decisions to adopt BDS initiatives by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and the American Anthropological Association have dealt blows to Israel’s efforts to curtail support for Palestinian rights.

UE is facing a National Labor Relations Board complaint over its vote, filed by Shurat HaDin, another Israel-backed, anti-Palestinian group.

As of this writing, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’s petition to thank the Connecticut AFL-CIO had garnered more than 2,600 signatures.

Connecticut labor federation backs Israel boycott (Electronic Intifada)

Electronic Intifada

Connecticut labor federation backs Israel boycott

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Palestinian workers holding Israeli work permits take cover from the rain after crossing the Eyal checkpoint between the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya and present-day Israel, 4 January 2015.

Oren ZivActiveStills

The Connecticut branch of the AFL-CIO has voted to back key elements of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

AFL-CIO is the largest US labor federation, counting dozens of unions with a combined membership of almost 13 million workers as its affiliates – 200,000 of them in Connecticut.

At the Connecticut branch’s convention in October, delegates passed a resolution calling on the national AFL-CIO to adopt BDS “in connection with companies and investments profiting from or complicit in human rights violations arising from the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the State of Israel, and to urge its affiliates and related pension and annuity funds to adopt similar strategies.”

Screenshot 2015-11-11 17.04.00

It also calls on the US to “diligently apply all diplomatic and economic tools to bring an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to support a fair and just peace in which the people of Israel and Palestine can live in peace and security in accordance with international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The resolution notes that Unite, the largest union in United Kingdom and Ireland, has backed BDS.

Democratic Party ties

The move is significant because while many rank-and-file members of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions have supported Palestinian rights, the same has not been true for the federation’s leadership.

The national AFL-CIO worked closely with the US Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War to subvert left-wing movements and governments around the world.

It has contributed millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and remains closely tied to that party’s pro-Israel establishment.

Both the administration of President Barack Obama, as well as his would-be successor Hillary Clinton, oppose any form of boycott of Israel, including of its settlements.

“Giant stride”

In September, a delegation of Connecticut trade union leaders traveled to Palestine in response to an invitation from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

It included David Roche, president of the Connecticut Building and Construction Trades Council, who co-sponsored the resolution along with John Harrity, president of the Connecticut State Council of Machinists.

Reverend David W. Good, who co-led the delegation for the Tree of Life Educational Fund, spoke last month about the Israeli abuses the participants witnessed:

Good made the case for BDS, arguing that “the fulcrum of change is with us.”

“I’m very, very thankful for the union members who came back from our last Tree of Life journey resolved to be in solidarity with workers in Palestine,” Good added.

Following the vote, resolution co-sponsor John Harrity said: “We are proud that the [Connecticut] AFL-CIO, through the action of elected delegates from the large spectrum of unions that make up our federation, voted to endorse the resolution.”

Stanley Heller, a longtime Palestine solidarity activist in Connecticut, called the state’s AFL-CIO vote “a giant stride forward.”

“There’s probably going to be a discussion about BDS in trade unions all across the country,” Heller predicted. “Unions will discuss whether the labor adage ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ will be applied to Palestinian working people too.”

The Connecticut AFL-CIO did not respond to The Electronic Intifada’s repeated requests for comment and the organization does not appear to have issued any statement about the resolution.

Backlash?

The Connecticut AFL-CIO vote predictably generated reactionary disgust. “You are supporting a people and a culture that seeks to annihilate Israel,” Elie Goretsky commented at the federation’s Facebook page. “Ergo, your organization endorses anti-Semitic beliefs and activities.”

“Sickened to see that you racist pigs choose to support terrorists,” added Corey Multer, who suggested that the federation change its name to “ISIS-FL-CIO Connecticut.”

As news about the decision spreads, there is likely to be a more organized backlash than mere abuse on Facebook.

In August, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) became only the second national union in the United States, and the largest so far, to vote to back BDS.

UE – which is not affiliated with AFL-CIO – now finds itself under legal assault by the Israeli intelligence-linked lawfare group Shurat HaDin, which has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

A UE spokesperson told The Electronic Intifada last month that the union was confident the complaint would be dismissed.

U.S. Union Support for Palestinian Rights Could Be a Game Changer (Truthout)

Truthout

U.S. Union Support for Palestinian Rights Could Be a Game Changer

Posted on Nov 5, 2015

Connecticut AFL-CIO BDS Resolution

BDS Demands1

Download: CT AFL-CIO Resolution

October 29-30, 2015

Connecticut AFL-CIO
11th Biennial Convention
Stronger Together!
RESOLUTION 7

SUPPORTING JUSTICE AND PEACE FOR THE PEOPLES OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

WHEREAS, Nelson Mandela said: “we know too well that our freedom is
incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; and

WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO has an historic relationship with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) forged during President Sweeney’s historic visit to Palestine in year 2000; and

WHEREAS, the PGFTU has expressed their deep gratitude for the AFL-CIO affiliated Solidarity Center’s assistance to strengthen the Palestinian labor movement and to enhance peace and understanding between countries; and

WHEREAS, for the past three years the Connecticut AFL-CIO and its affiliates have supported the human rights efforts of the Tree of Life Educational Fund in promoting a deeper understanding of the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict, including engaging with PGFTU in response to their call for help to achieve a just peace in Israel and Palestine; and

WHEREAS, the PGFTU has informed us of the worsening conditions suffered by Palestinian workers and their families as a result of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories including the indignities caused by Israeli checkpoints, unsafe working conditions and exploitation of workers; and

WHEREAS, in response to an invitation from the PGFTU, Executive Secretary Treasurer Pelletier encouraged a labor delegation to witness first-hand the effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian workers and their families; and

WHEREAS, a delegation including CT AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Olsen and Connecticut Building and Construction Trades Council President Dave Roche along with Tree of Life representatives and representatives from the Machinist Union, the Steelworkers Union (Indiana) and the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Union traveled to Palestine and Israel; and

WHEREAS, worker eyewitnesses like this returning delegation can provide first-hand accounts of the inhumane and declining conditions of Palestinians and encourage passage of this resolution; and

WHEREAS, Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian lands since 1967 and the Israeli policy of building settlements, separation walls and by-pass roads on Palestinian lands undermine a viable two-state solution; and

WHEREAS, the United Nations (OCHA) reports that over 600,000 Israeli settlers now live in the occupied Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem and these settlements deprive Palestinians of their land and divide Palestinians communities; and

WHEREAS, the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are subject to Israeli military law while the Israeli settlers living in the illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories are subject to Israeli civil law; and

WHEREAS, almost 300,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem are considered “residents” without the rights of Israeli citizens and face insurmountable obstacles to buy or build homes and open businesses and face daily pressures to leave, while Israeli presence in East Jerusalem continues to expand; and

WHEREAS, the unresolved conflict has resulted in war four times during the past 9 years between Israel and Gaza with Palestinians bearing the overwhelming costs in lives and property; and

WHEREAS, the International Labor Organization (ILO), reports that the Israeli occupation and settlement activity have produced a generation of young Palestinians without work or hope for a better future; and

WHEREAS, Israel’s right to defend itself from rocket attacks and tunnels should not result in the collective punishment of the civilian population such as in 2014 where more than more than 2,100 Palestinian civilians were killed, including 500 children and 250 women, and twenty thousand housing units were destroyed adding to a pre-existing shortage; and

WHEREAS, despite this ongoing tragedy, Israel remains the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II to date having received 5124.3 billion in bilateral assistance that continues at the rate of 3.3 billion per year; and

WHEREAS, there is growing awareness that the world must act to help end this ongoing human rights tragedy and in this regard UNI Global Unions, an international Labor organization to which many U.S. Unions belong, endorsed the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) statement that reads as follows:

“We denounce the occupation of Palestine by Israel, and will mobilize for a just and sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine, in accordance with the legitimacy of international law and in particular Resolutions 242 and 338 of the UN Security Council. We call for: An end to the construction of illegal Israeli settlements and removal of existing settlements; Israel’s withdrawal from all Palestinian lands, in line with the 4th of June 1967 borders; and the dismantling of the illegal separation wall. These demands will support equity, justice and the achievement of a comprehensive peace confirming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state Jerusalem with East as its capital”; and

WHEREAS, UNITE, the largest union in united Kingdom and Ireland, endorsed the Boycott Divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS), specifically supporting the boycott of any goods produced from illegal Israeli settlements in the west Bank; divestment from financial holdings in any companies, funds of organizations complicit in the ongoing illegal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people; and sanctions against Israel for its continued illegal occupation, flouting of international law, and construction of an apartheid regime; and

WHEREAS, a growing number of labor organizations have joined with global human rights groups to demand an end to the extreme oppression of Palestinians and sustained efforts to build a fair and lasting peace; so

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO and its affiliates call upon the national AFL-CIO:

1. to demand that our Government diligently apply all diplomatic and economic tools to bring an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to support a fair and just peace in which the people of Israel and Palestine can live in peace and security in accordance with International law and the universal Declaration of Human Rights; and

2. to adopt the strategy of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in connection with companies and investments profiting from or complicit in human rights violations arising from the occupation of the Palestinian Territories by the state of Israel, and to urge its affiliates and related pension and annuity funds to adopt similar strategies; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO and its affiliates work to oppose anti-semitism, Islamophobia and all acts of racism, human rights violations and the exploitation of workers.
Submitted by:

David Roche, President, Connecticut Building and Construction Trades Council

John Harrity, President, Connecticut Council Machinists

ADOPTED

Also see: Connecticut Union Leaders Delegation to Palestine Report

One of the First State Union Federations to Talk about Boycott of Israel (Connecticut AFL-CIO)(TSVN)

One of the First State Union Federations to Talk about Boycott of Israel (Connecticut AFL-CIO)

Screenshot 2015-11-04 21.33.16

Published on Oct 29, 2015

John Olsen, who led the 200,000 member Connecticut State American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations for decades speaks at the Tree of Life conference in Old Lyme, Connecticut about plans to offer a resolution to call on the national AFL-CIO to support BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) of Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians. Oct 19, 2015. Olsen was in Palestine in September 2015 and was shocked at the 30,000 Palestinian workers who have to get up a 2 a.m. in the morning each day to wait for hours before they’re allowed in Israel to go to work.