City Workers Condemn NYC Labor Officials’ Meeting with the Histadrut
DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido recently traveled to occupied Palestine as part of a labor “solidarity” delegation to meet with leaders of the Histadrut, the Zionist entity’s trade union federation. The Histadrut is a deeply racist organization that, over the past century, has played an integral role in the colonization of Palestine. For years, Palestinian labor organizations have called on trade unions internationally to boycott the Histadrut for enacting discriminatory policies against Palestinian workers and depriving them of both their rights and access to their land, forging and maintaining the mechanisms of Israeli apartheid today.
We, as rank-and-file members of DC 37, condemn Garrido’s collaboration with the Histadrut, which serves as a vicious arm of the Israeli occupation. Furthermore, we condemn Garrido’s support for the settler colony of Israel, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom are children, since October. We refuse to dialogue with the racist Histadrut and reject the narrative that doing so would be a display of worker solidarity across unions. There is no room in the labor movement for an organization actively perpetrating apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
For over eight months, members have been met with walls of opposition and indifference from union officers when taking action in support of Palestine. Meanwhile, workers continue to risk retaliation for standing against the occupation’s war crimes. Leadership tells us that Palestine is not a labor issue. Yet, Garrido has chosen to pander to Zionist interests rather than support the rank and file he purports to represent. His actions show that he values unions as institutions over actual lives. While city workers uplift calls from Palestinian trade unions to stop arming Israel and end all complicity with Israel’s war crimes, DC 37 leadership has aligned themselves with the genocide-enabling Histadrut. How can they claim to have taken a neutral stance when Palestinian trade unions and their demands have not been afforded any attention or respect?
We know that working-class struggles are deeply intertwined with struggles for civil rights and liberation at home and abroad. In solidarity with Palestinian trade unions, we reiterate our demands to divest city worker pensions from Israeli securities. Furthermore, we demand that DC 37 cut all ties with the Histadrut in response to their complicity in the occupation’s genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza. In these moments, we are reminded that an injury to one is an injury to all. We have more in common with workers in Palestine than we ever will with the elected officials who have turned a blind eye to this genocide. Our liberation is bound together.
