Dec 6, 2025The role of the US labor and Zionism has a long history. Even before the AFL-CIO was formed the AFL and other unions were supporting the formation of a Zionist state. This record and history has been exposed in labor historian Jeff Schuhrke’s book “No Neutrals There, US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine”. Schuhrke is an assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University and a union activist and leader. He is interviewed about this book and also his earlier book “Blue Collar Empire, The Untold Story Of US Labor’s Global Anti-Communist Crusade” and the connection between US labor and it’s international role. Both these book show how and why nearly all US unions have in large part become appendages of US imperialism and used their apparatus to support the Zionist regime and also crush opposition within the ranks to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the pogroms in the West Bank. He also discusses the present growth of fascism and attacks on immigrants and critics of Israel. This interview was done on 12/5/25 by WorkWeek’s Steve Zeltzer WorkWeek 
/ workweek-radio Labor Video Project www.labormedia.net
Transcript
0:00United. [singing] [music]
0:06This is Steve Zeltzer with Work Week and today we’re going to be talking with Jeff Shery. He is a labor historian, uh,
0:13assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Junior School of Labor Studies at Sunni Empire State University. He
0:20teaches labor history and also he’s author of blueco collar empire the
0:25untold story of US labor’s global anti-communist crusade and no neutrals
0:31there US labor zionism and the struggle for palestine. So welcome to our show. Thanks for having me.
0:36So Jeeoff I think both these works are very important primer works on uh both
0:43the history of the AFL international operations and the relationship of the AFL to Zionism. So why did you decide to
0:50to do blue collar empire and followed up with no neutrals there? um you know it’s a the topic of you know
0:57what people you know call the AFL CIA um and that sort of history and kind of
1:04ongoing um process of top top labor official in this country particularly
1:10through the AFL CIO and its affiliated unions working closely with the state
1:16department the CIA the US agency for international development national endowment for democracy these are things
1:23that when I was kind of first coming up in the labor movement and and reading, you know, studying labor history,
1:29reading some books on it, it would it would pop up occasionally. I’d hear something about this and it would always
1:35really, you know, uh um kind of spark my curiosity and also my horror. You know,
1:42I thought, wait, what? You know, the unions working with the CIA and being complicit in these notorious coups in
1:48Latin America and places all around the world. you know, it it when you first hear about it, it doesn’t exactly make
1:54sense until you, you know, learn about the the actual history and what the AFL
2:00CIO is and all that. So, long story short, um when I I you know, for a lot
2:07of personal reasons, I decided to pursue a PhD in history and I wanted to focus on labor history because I was already
2:13active in the labor movement and wanted my studies and research and teaching to be um somehow helpful to the labor
2:20movement. Um I decided that to to make that my focus the the sort of broadly
2:26AFL CIO anti-communism and global operations especially during the cold
2:32war period and um I did f you know as I was working on my my PhD I found that
2:39there was a lot of um previous studies that have been done um by scholars by
2:45researchers by journalists a lot of exposees as well as interesting materials in the archives. Ives. Um the
2:53George Meanie Memorial AFL CIO archives at the University of Maryland has a lot of material from um some of the
2:59different foreign institutes that the AFL CIO was running like a field, you know, the American Institute for Free
3:05Labor Development, which was the Latin American Arm. So I uh and I already had
3:11a background in labor journalism and writing things about the labor movement
3:17geared towards workers and union members. And I I just kind of felt like it was it would be worthwhile for there
3:24to be a new up-to-date book kind of combining a lot of the existing scholarship and existing research as
3:31well as some new stuff that I was finding in the archives and to try to make it accessible to a wide audience
3:37not just to you know uh not just to university faculty and researchers and academics but something that broadly
3:45union members and workers could read and under and begin to understand the history of it. Um, so that was that was
3:53why I wrote Bluecollar Empire. Um, and especially because I think it’s such it’s that story of US labor’s complicity
4:01in US empire um is a big reason why we have such a
4:06weak labor movement in the United States today and why multinational corporations are so powerful, why we continue to have
4:13wars and uh invasions, you know, like what Trump is trying to do with Venezuela right now. what’s been
4:20happening uh what the US has been doing in the Middle East for at least the past 25 years or really much longer than that
4:26but since the war on terror um and many many other examples um to understand
4:31what the world that we live in today and the in the context of the current modern-day labor movement we have to
4:36understand this history and I thought especially with a younger generation of
4:42um workers getting involved in unions getting active organizing their own workplaces at Amazon and Starbucks and
4:49lots of other places. It’s important for them to know about this history as well. And and you were you were also UUP AFT
4:56local 2190 co-president University of Chicago in Illinois. Uh well yeah student
5:03I was the co-president of the graduate worker union at University of Illinois Chicago UIC which is the graduate
5:11employees organization uh an AFT local. Right now I’m a a member of the UUP
5:16United University professions which is the faculty and professional employee union at Sunni. But yeah I was a I was a
5:23yeah I mean I I had been a a union organizer and researcher with SEIU and the fight for 15 campaign when I was
5:30doing a master’s degree at UMass Amherst. I was part of the graduate union there which is affiliated with the UAW local 2322
5:37and then at UIC when I was doing my PhD I was very active in the grad union the
5:43GEO and um was a bargaining chair and um I mean I was the grievance chair and I
5:49was on the bargaining committee and I was the co-president and I helped certainly not on my own but I helped
5:55lead a strike uh for three weeks successful strike in 2019. So, I’m very
6:00much part of the labor movement, not just, you know, looking not just an academic. Yeah. Right. Uh although lately I’ve
6:06been more of an academic, I guess, because it’s just I’ve been writing these books and that’s been my main focus. Um but yeah, so as I was studying
6:14the sort of US US labor and CIA and anti-communism and cold war stuff, I
6:20naturally kept coming across um stuff about Israel and Palestine in
6:26the archives and in the research I was doing. And I was originally going to try to squeeze that into BlueCollar Empire,
6:31the first book, but I it felt like it was just too it was too much information. It was the book was already
6:36too long. And it felt like that history about US labor’s connection to Zionism
6:42and support for the state of Israel and involvement in Palestine that it deserved its own book. Um, and
6:49especially because I mean I first was thinking about having that be its own book about 5 years ago. And even then,
6:55you know, there were these sporadic assaults on Gaza, uh, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands of people
7:01being killed and then ongoing legal settlements being built in the West Bank. Um, so there was it was like, you
7:08know, very timely obviously. So I started as soon as I finished Blue Collar Empire, started working on this this new book, No Neutrals There. And uh
7:16as I I was about 3/4 of the way done writing it when October 7th happened and the uh the current you know iteration of
7:23the genocide in Gaza uh really took off um you know in in late 2023. So it’s
7:29become even more timely um for really you know horrible reasons obviously. So
7:35yeah, that’s and so let’s go to maybe an earlier part of the development of the labor movement
7:42with Samuel Gumpers and his role um because he was head of the AFL and was
7:50involved in supporting US interventions to protect labor in Puerto Rico and
7:56other countries. this idea of in the fight in the labor movement between business unionism and class struggle,
8:02militant unions of the IWW and others that had an early focus really around the his
8:09developments. Yeah. You know, this is as the US labor movement and unions first started
8:14developing in the 19th century, they often very much were classconscious organizations um led by immigrants from
8:24places like Germany and Ireland and then later also you know Italy and Eastern Europe. Um but they and they who you
8:30know who had clearly were influenced by Marxism and anarchism and and just anti-
8:36capitalist and very militant um but they faced constant repression from the government from the military
8:42the police you know the Pinkertons at private uh security forces and so some
8:48of these labor leaders by like the 1880s 1890s including Samuel Gumpers
8:53they kind of thought you know the their calculation was they needed to try to
8:58distance themselves from any kind of, you know, looking too radical or or seeming like they were quote unquote
9:04disloyal to the to the US government or to capitalism. And this was like the
9:10context that the AFL was founded, American Federation of Labor in the 1880s with Samuel Gumpers as its first
9:16president. Gampers was a himself an immigrant originally from uh I think he
9:22was a well his his parents were Dutch but he was he was born in uh England and raised in London until he was about 13
9:29then moved to the US moved to New York was a cigar maker and became a leader of the cigar makers union and then
9:36president of the AFL um for most of the rest of his life all the way until he died in 1924 I think. So he really
9:44dominated the AFL and the AFL in those years became the major labor organization. But like you say, there
9:51were still um the sort of the the the original kind of uh trade unionism which
9:57was a class class struggle oriented much more interested in in class conflict and
10:03and fighting against the employers rather than trying to cozy up to them and and standing against some of the uh
10:10actions of the US government rather than trying to prove their loyalty and and
10:16patriotism which is what Gampers was always trying to do to win respectability and legit legitimacy in the eyes of the government and the eyes
10:21of the employers. So yeah, in the early 1900s, the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, was sort of this rival uh
10:29more radical anti- capitalist rival to the AFL. And then later in the 20s and
10:3530s um uh the Communist Party USA and and unionists who were uh connected to
10:41to that um which uh who were a big part of forming the CIO, the Congress of
10:47Industrial Organizations in the 30s to break away from the AFL and and the
10:53AFL’s more kind of conservative craft union tradition and instead of organized
10:59big industrial union. So, but on the question of foreign policy, yeah, like I I mentioned, Gumpers and AFL leaders in
11:06trying to prove that they weren’t radical and that they weren’t a threat to the system, they were constantly um
11:14trying to showcase how they were good, patriotic, loyal Americans. And um this
11:20was especially I mean there were yeah early examples during the SpanishAmerican War in 1898. Actually,
11:26Gumpers was part of this group of elites who were opposed to the uh were opposed
11:32to the annexations of like Puerto Rico and Guam in the Philippines as well as the occupation of Cuba. Um the
11:39anti-imperialist league. Uh but Mark Twain Mark Twain was a member of that. Mark Twain was a member, but also like
11:47capitalists like Andrew Carnegie and uh former President Grover Cleveland. And
11:52uh and for GPers, I think it was really not so much about opposition to imperialism as much as an opportunity to
11:59sort of rub elbows with these high-profile business and political leaders, as well as a kind of racist um
12:08belief that if if if the US was annexing parts of Latin America and Asia, then um
12:16not wanting to have like Latino and Asian workers be competing with white workers um in the in the labor market.
12:23So, but that was a a short-lived because once like by the 1910s when the US was
12:30invading um Nicaragua and and Haiti uh and uh the Dominican Republic um the AFL
12:39pretty much went along with it. And then especially the major turning point in my opinion was World War I when Dumpers G,
12:47you know, pledged the AFL’s full-fledged support to Woodro Wilson in bringing the
12:52US into the war because it was very controversial. Most Americans, especially working-class Americans, were opposed to the war.
12:58Eugene Debs went to jail. Exactly. Socialist uh party leader, presidential candidate went Eugene Debs
13:04just gave he he went to jail simply for giving an anti-war speech and that was considered illegal. It was considered
13:10espionage. Um, and many IWW leaders and members were rounded up and sent to
13:16prison. Um, other radicals, especially immigrants, were deported uh in mass and
13:22and you know, some stuff that’s very similar to what we’re seeing today. You know, these raids um all over uh
13:28so-called radical left organizations and unions. government now the I mean which I consider a fascist government is
13:35saying that you’re you’re committing treason if you’re opposed to war if you’re opposed to intervention of US US
13:42government in Venezuela and other countries right yeah so the AFL and and gumpers
13:47kind of turned up you know I mean they they sort of protested some of this stuff but not really and and they went
13:54along with the war and that was kind of the beginning one of the things I I wanted to get to is that the role of Jewish trade
14:01unionists in the United States because ILGW there were many many trade
14:06unionists uh who got involved in the union movement and were Jewish and had escaped actually from programs and from
14:14anti-semitism who came to the United States and they began to play an important role in the labor movement in
14:19relationship to the position of the of these unions. Yeah. many uh social socialist Jews um
14:26from the Russian Empire uh who had been part of this organization called the
14:32Jewish labor bund general Jewish labor labor bund uh in Eastern Europe and
14:38Russia which was a socialist organization of workingclass Jews who um
14:44not only you know they were fighting back against anti-semitism and pograms and things like that but also against
14:51just basic workplace exploitation fighting against Thesar and his um despotic you know regime in in Russia
14:58and they faced a lot of persecution um for that and that was you know as well
15:05as anti-semitism so they uh in large numbers in the early 1900s came to the
15:10US settled in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and mainly found
15:16work in the needle trades in the you know garment industry and formed the uh international ladies garment workers
15:22union as well as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers um of America which were socialistled
15:29you know comparative compared to the rest of the AFL very progressive at the time um and the ILGW did join the AFL
15:38but they were interestingly and importantly they were actually anti-Zionists at first a lot of these Jewish trade unionists or at least
15:44non-Zionists because they saw Zionism as the opposite of socialism it was this nationalistic colonial project um that
15:53wasn’t about class struggle and most of the Zionists in Europe were middle class and upper class Jews who were not part
15:59of the you know not connected to socialism not connected to labor movements at all. But what started
16:04happening around the 1920s uh and and and beyond in in Palestine
16:12there were um well there was the beginning of the so-called labor Zionist
16:17movement which tried to fuse Zionism and its more nationalist settler
16:22colonial ideas with socialist ideas um by saying we’re not just going to build
16:29a Jewish state in Palestine but a Jewish workers state in Palestine. And the this is when the histrut was
16:36created. And we can talk more about that. I know you’ve done a lot of educational work around the histrut. Um,
16:41but it was founded in 1920 by labor Zionists in Palestine to carry out this
16:47project of basically establishing a a Jewish exclusive economy in Palestine
16:54with farms and hospitals and uh industrial workplaces and uh workers
17:01bank and things like that. Um, but it was all totally systematically discriminating against the native, you
17:07know, Palestinians and only meant for Jewish settlers, Zionist settlers. But because it was ostensibly on the outside
17:14a workers organization and it was, you know, labor Zionism trying to build a worker- centered society in Palestine,
17:21it it appealed to some of the non-Zionist or anti-ionist Jewish trade union leaders in the US on the basis not
17:28so much of supporting Zionism, but supporting like worker-to-worker solidarity. so-called um and then from
17:35there it spread you know the the labor support US labor support for settlements
17:42in uh in Palestine kind of expanded from the Jewish trade union leaders to the
17:48non-Jewish mostly Christian labor leaders um like William Green for example who succeeded Gumpers as
17:54president of the AFL and and other people Philip Murray who was president of the CIO and then eventually George
18:00Meanie and Walter Ruther and Lane Kirkland, these other highranking labor officials who were not Jewish but became
18:06very supportive of uh Zionism and the state of Israel again because of their
18:12broader support for US Empire and their their anti-communism
18:17and their uh opposition to the Soviet Union and the cold war and all these things kind of came together
18:23and the kabutz was the idea of socialism. Jewish workers in kabutz would be a
18:30socialist society in a kabutz. I know Eric Lee uh founder of labor start was in one of these kabutzes and I asked him
18:37did you know any of your neighbors? Uh you know no you know the Palestinians
18:43were his neighbors in these kabuts. So very strange to think you can have socialism in one kabutz but that was the
18:50ideology kind of that was pushed but also Israel does have a national health care system and the histadrude as a
18:57union was also wasn’t it part of the state the corporate structure of the state yeah exactly it was it be even before
19:04the state of Israel was founded in 1948 history was sort of you know some people have called it the state in waiting or a
19:10kind of proto state it was doing the actual work you know building this economy building the infrastructure for
19:17laying the economic foundations for the eventual establishment of the state of Israel. And then once Israel was
19:22established, History was basically the the second largest employer. I mean, you know, we talk about as as a trade union
19:29federation, but it was really a major employer, the second largest employer in the state of Israel only after the
19:35Israeli government. And again doing a lot of this so-called nation building uh or you could call it settler colonial
19:41work of again building the infrastructure the housing the roads um
19:47uh healthcare infrastructure communications transportation farm and agriculture of course is really
19:53big the you know kibbutzas and other kind of communal farms with these you
19:59know socialist kind of the look of socialism but again being completely
20:05like you’re talking racially exclusionary against the indigenous people. Um but because it had
20:12the sort of the facade of socialism that it um it did appeal to a lot of even you
20:18know left-wing and progressive union uh leaders in the US for a long time uh who
20:23were they were just systematically ignoring or downplaying or not caring about the indigenous people of Palestine
20:30who were and and one of the points I make in the in the book and no neutrals there is that this is you know we have
20:35to look at our own history in the United States about the indigenous people here and even in the labor movement, you
20:41know, when we celebrate this country was built by workers. Um, yes, but it was built on land that was stolen and or
20:48take, you know, taken through merciless violence. And I think that the that fact
20:54of our own history and and our own, you know, labor movement um made made the US
21:00labor movement sort of ideologically receptive to labor Zionism and its own kind of mythology of building this
21:08utopian world but completely ignoring downplaying how they were it was all based on stolen land and dispossession
21:15and exclusion of the indigenous people. And one of the important aspects of the
21:21development of Zionism and the AFL CIO particularly is in the role of the
21:28Histadroup particularly internationally. I know in South Africa they supported the South African aparthide government.
21:34Isscore was a company owned by the histo providing military weapons and and tanks
21:40or trucks to the aparthide government and internationally uh they have played a role in collaboration with the
21:47solidarity center and the AFL in fact Frank Hammer who is a UAW retired auto
21:53worker his brother was in the AFLD agent he was trained at the history
21:58offices in in Israel you know for work for international work so you have this kind collaboration
22:05between the AFL CIO and the HISDA druit in relationship to international operations. Yeah. And I mean obviously that’s
22:12something that you were you were organizing around um uh back like in in the in the 80s 90s and still today and
22:19that comes up in the book. I was happy I was able to interview you uh and get some of your your insights and your story for for the book. But yeah, that
22:26that goes back to the broader point about the the Cold War and how the US
22:31government and especially the US labor leaders, US labor officials and the AFL CIO saw Israel as a critical partner in
22:40waging the cold war because of they saw it as this sort of buffer state uh or bull work against Soviet influence in
22:46the Middle East and um and history like you say was um invol you know so the AFL
22:53CIO like the subject of my first book was doing all these international operations with the arm in- arm with the
22:59US government and history was also you know similarly doing that with the Israeli government and working with the
23:05US government and um there’s all these connections there um and it again kind
23:11of shows how Israel then and now because now it’s no longer about the threat you
23:16know the threat of communism but now the now the enemy is like Islamic fundamentalism or um you know or for a
23:23while there it was like you know secular dictators like Saddam Hussein and Iraq and how the US has to support Israel and
23:29give it lots of weapons to fight off these, you know, these uh supposed
23:34threats or dangers or whatever that are going to, you know, to prevent them from overrunning the Middle East. So, we need to give all this support to Israel. It
23:42it from the Cold War to today uh cold war to the war on terror. Um it it kind
23:49of shows how Israel is like this colonial imperial outpost of the US um
23:54in in the Middle East and the issue of the Zionist and the the
23:59Nazis, the rise of fascism in Germany. There was an effort in the United States to have protest to allow Jews to escape
24:07the Holocaust. Uh the the St. Louis, the ship was prevented from landing in the
24:13United States by Roosevelt. There was an effort to get protests here to demand the the opportunity uh to save Jews. But
24:20apparently the AFL and the unions did not mobilize because their view was that
24:26instead of working to allow Jews to escape here, they should go to the the
24:31Palestine at that time, Israel, and that’s where they belonged. This whole ideology, that’s really where Jews
24:37belong. They belong in in this Jewish state. Yeah. I mean so there there was you know
24:42an effort by some of the Jewish trade union leaders you know who formed the Jewish labor committee which is now a
24:48very different organization from what it was when it started but when the Jewish labor committee was founded in the 1930s
24:53by the sort of socialist non-Zionist or anti-ionist Jewish American trade union leaders like David Dubinsky and the
25:00point of it at the time was to to try to save uh you know Jewish uh Jewish people
25:07workers and socialists especially in Europe to save them from Nazi persecution and and murder. And they did
25:15help to um uh organize, you know, get pressure the US government to the State
25:20Department to get some exit visas for a few hundred uh Jewish families from
25:26Europe. But when it came to pressuring the US government to lift its its really
25:32strict immigration restrictions on Jewish people and others from from
25:38Europe who were trying to escape the Nazis, the AFL leadership was not
25:43wouldn’t wouldn’t go there. They they supported they were, you know, because they had this very very long ugly legacy
25:50of anti-immigrant uh you know uh politics and pushing like the Chinese Exclusion Act, for example. uh back in
25:57the 1880s, the first anti-immigrant law that was championed by organized labor, by white labor. Um and that tradition
26:04continued all the way, you know, like you say, during the during the Holocaust. So, while you did have some
26:10like some of the trade union leaders trying to do what they could to to rescue some uh refugees, the the AFL’s
26:18official position was they they would not protest the end of immigration restrictions. And yeah, some of the
26:24leaders, I think it was actually Philip Murray, the president of the CIO in the 40s, um was issuing statements about how
26:32um and this was right after the Holocaust, actually, the late 40s and right around the time that the state of
26:38Israel was founded. Um there were these uh you know, hundreds of thousands of uh
26:43displaced people, displaced Jews in Europe who had survived the concentration camps and there was a question of what what what to do with
26:50them. And Philip Murray was saying um something I have the quote in the book
26:56but he’s like you know if any discussion about sending them any place other than
27:01Palestine is a evasion of the issue like they can only go to Palestine. Let’s not
27:06talk about bringing them to the US or to the UK or or or where anywhere else in Europe. Um only Palestine. Um, and there
27:15were even at the time uh Arab political leaders making the point saying like the
27:22the you can’t make the Palestinian people hold the entire burden of uh uh
27:27of the Holocaust, you know, that this is a um the world has has has failed here
27:33and this is especially you know Europe has has done this and the United States
27:38um and the UK in particular you know had these immigration restrictions and and
27:43it’s the Palestinians who had nothing to do with the Holocaust are the ones paying the price by being forced out of
27:49their homeland um to make room for this new state of Israel. Um so sort of, you
27:55know, I mean to me I look at it as just the classic, you know, two two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s something we all learn as kids and that’s something
28:02that still today the Zionist movement doesn’t seem to understand that they they’ll talk about the Holocaust and
28:07anti-semitism which is all very real and and uh um
28:13horrible. But the the answer why is the answer well then now we have to do the same thing to to another to a completely
28:18different innocent people uh in Palestine. Well, isn’t the Zionist ideology that
28:24you have to work with the imperialist? you have to work with everybody to get a Jewish state. Uh and in fact the
28:31Zionists work with the Nazis in Germany. They brought Adolf Ikeman to or to
28:37Palestine at that time to get the support of the Nazis of the idea of all the Jews leaving Germany and going to
28:43Palestine to set up an Israeli state. And uh today the Zionist regime works
28:48with right-wingers, fascists all over the world. People are confused. Why are uh why is Israel, which says that
28:54they’re fighting anti-semitism, working with anti-semmites all over the world? Yeah. Right. And or you see like the ADL
29:02Anti-Defam Anti-Defamation League president defending Elon Musk when he came out doing the Nazi salute. Um but
29:10then, you know, attacking people who say free Palestine, you know, smearing them as anti-semites. It’s um Yeah. And yeah,
29:17there was in the 30s uh the you mentioned like the Havara agreement or
29:22transfer agreement between the Zionist organization and the I think the Jewish agency in Palestine at the time. sort of
29:29the political leaders of the Zionist movement and uh Nazi Germany to allow um
29:36it was to allow German Jews to escape Germany and come to Palestine and um and
29:42uh but in the process though breaking this international boycott against Nazi
29:47Germany that that Jewish people in the US and around the world had had had begun to protest Hitler’s anti-semitic
29:54policies and yet the Zionists were then breaking the the boycott as part of this deal to bring more Jews into Palestine.
30:02and and there have been obviously other examples more in you know you could see in the present day like you say of the
30:08Zionists uh and the state of Israel working like you mentioned before Israel partnering with apartheid South Africa
30:16you know an openly racist colonial regime and yeah it uh
30:22the it’s obviously all the accusations of anti-semitism are disingenuous I
30:29think uh from Zionists uh which is dangerous because I I think anti-semitism is a real thing and it is
30:36a real problem and they’re sort of muddying the waters um and making it harder for people to distinguish when
30:43something actually is anti-semitism being able to fight back against actual anti-semitism like people like you know
30:49Elon Musk or Trump and his administration and some of the and the white nationalists and Nick Fuente Nick
30:54Fuentes and these kinds of crazy right-wing people fascists who have been taking over the US and and yet you know
31:01Israel often Israel and the ADL and other kind of Zionist groups being willing to partner
31:07with these people and work together with them. And the whole issue of the political
31:14role of Zionism, I know that the leadership of the AFL CIO consider
31:19themselves Zionist. They believe in the idea of a Zionist state. I mean, it seems like a contradiction. here in the
31:25United States, you’re for equality of all workers. But on the other hand, in in Israel, you’re for a Zionist state,
31:32just a Jewish state that the Jews have uh better rights, better conditions than
31:37than other uh other people in in Israel. uh but also the the the political role
31:43of the AFLCI leadership and other unions in preventing even a discussion uh
31:50having a debate in the United States in the working class in the unions about the this issue of Palestine and defense
31:55of Palestine. Is there a connection? Yeah, I think so. And you know, you mentioned AFL leaders calling themselves
32:01Zionist. And just remember Joe Biden uh multiple times saying, “I’m a Zionist. I’m a Zionist.” You know, and this again
32:07is I think it’s an worth noting that, you know, because people who try to muddy the waters, they’ll say when
32:13you’re anti-ionist, it means you hate Jews. But Zionism doesn’t it’s not just a Jew. It’s the overwhelming majority of
32:19Zionists in the United States are actually Christians. You know, like Joe Biden, a Catholic. But that that’s just a you know, something else to think
32:26about. But um yeah uh we talk about for example Lane Kirkland
32:33who was president of the AFL CIO between 1979 and 1995. A Christian southern I
32:40think he was he was a pro whatever Protestant from the south who was probably more Zionist than than any
32:46other labor leader in history. and he in the in the late 70s when Carter was
32:52president, there was beginning to be a little bit of discussion or opening up of discussion in the US about the rights
32:59of Palestinians for the first time, the right of Palestinian refugees from the Nagba in 1948 to be able to return home
33:05and the possibility of creating a Palestinian state. And Glenn Kirkley came out very quickly,
33:12right as soon as he became president of the AFL in 1979, strongly against this
33:18and would give speeches saying there can never be a Palestinian state, the US
33:23cannot allow this, it would just be a terrorist state, etc., etc., go against all of our values and our interests.
33:29Just harshly harsh anti-Palestinian rhetoric for no apparent reason. You
33:35know, this is like at the time of de-industrialization and you know, all these factories shutting down and unions
33:41in decline and the president of the AFL CIO is what is he talking about? like going berserk about this whole about
33:48even entertaining the notion of uh rights for Palestinians. And more
33:53recently in the last 25 years or so um as there’s been more and more organizing
33:58from rank and file union members across the US through groups networks like the
34:03labor for Palestine network that was founded in 2004 and through the um or
34:10even you know what uh what you were part of in the in the 1980s lab labor committee on the Middle East during the
34:15you know at the time of the first inifat um and uh and since the BDS movement was
34:21started in 2005, boycott, divestment, and sanctions. More and more rank and
34:26file unions and union locals have been trying to have discussions on this to talk about endorsing BDS or calling for
34:33an arms embargo against Israel or more recently, you know, calling for a ceasefire and things like that. And
34:38yeah, it often the highest ranking labor leaders will shut it down. you know, you had in the, you know, around 2014, 2016,
34:48three graduate worker unions affiliated with the UAW passed resolutions
34:53endorsing BDS only for the UAW’s international executive board to nullify
34:59to overturn those votes. I mean, they found that they were completely democratic, free and fair votes where the me rank and file members were asked,
35:06do you should we support BDS? And the overwhelming majority voted yes. and uh
35:12nevertheless UAW top leadership said well that you can’t do that um and
35:18overturn those decisions or you know like where you are in San Francisco I know you know about this obviously a few
35:24years ago the San Francisco Labor Council was going to have a vote to pass
35:29a resolution to support BDS and the AFL CIO president Liz Scheler jumped in before the vote before the discussion
35:36could even happen and said you’re not allowed to even talk about this so a lot. When we talk about labor solidarity
35:44with Palestine, we also have to talk about union democracy and you know how rank and file members can have an actual
35:50say and and that whether their democratic processes will be respected
35:55by the top union officials. And of course in the UAW the argument that they used was uh our members are
36:02going to lose jobs if we have a boycott of Israel weapons manufacturers and
36:08others. And that’s another whole position of the unions in this country. They support the military budget.
36:14There’s no opposition to militarism. Trillions of dollars are being spent on war, but we can’t have healthcare. We
36:20can’t have housing. Uh we can’t have public education. Kids are going into bankruptcy or in debt to to go to
36:27schools. But the the UAW previously though around the issue of South Africa there was a march of uh ArabAmerican
36:35workers that changed the position of the UAW. Yeah. Well, a couple things like there
36:40there were in the you know ‘ 80s boycotts against South Africa, particularly Shell Oil, a major boycott
36:47um because Shell Oil was doing business with the apartheid South Africa and like literally fueling the South African
36:52military and police and the United Mine Workers and the AFL CIO organized this
36:59big uh consumer boycott of Shell products, of Shell gas stations, Shell credit cards and telling union members
37:05don’t have anything to do with Shell. And interestingly, you know, Oak Okow OCAW, the um oil chemical and Atomic
37:13Workers Union represented workers at Shell, but they didn’t like they weren’t
37:18against it. And there was that that whole argument this is going to hurt jobs uh in the US wasn’t didn’t come up
37:24because um you know uh thankfully the labor leadership at the time recognized
37:29that this is an important issue and we have to stand against apartheid. And um the point isn’t to take away jobs from
37:36people, it’s to change the behavior of the company. Um and uh yeah, the you
37:43mentioned uh ArabAmerican workers with the UAW. Um in 1973, another important
37:49turning point. Um 1973, uh ArabAmerican auto workers in Detroit,
37:56um at at Dodge, the Dodge main plant staged a one-day wildcat strike to protest the UAW leadership for
38:03purchasing State of Israel bonds, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this is a, you know, I probably should
38:08have brought this up earlier, but talking about US labor support for Zionism, it’s not just rhetorical. It’s
38:14material support. For over a hundred years, million, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars from union
38:21treasuries going to Zionist projects, to the histadrut to the Israeli government um in particularly in the form of buying
38:28state of Israel bonds. So uh yeah, these ArabAmerican auto workers did a strike
38:33to protest UAW leadership for investing their dues money in the state of Israel
38:40and uh it did convince some of the union UAW locals to divest some of their
38:45bonds. not not the not the international union um but they al they created an Arab workers caucus to not only um
38:54organize around the question of Palestine but also about discrimination and racism that they face on the job
39:00from their supervisors as well as from the union representatives who were mostly white and English English
39:05speakaking and one of the things that the Arab workers caucus in the UAW was demanding in the 70s was direct election
39:13of union leaders of the top union officers which is something that finally happened in the UAW in 2022
39:21um and led to the you know election of the current leadership of with Sean Feain. It seems that there’s been a development
39:28among labor activists throughout the United States that this issue of Palestine is critical in the labor
39:34movement. You see this growing and how is that reflected itself? Yeah, it’s a, you know, the earliest example that I
39:41could find aside from some of the, you know, those early Jewish trade unionists who were part of the labor Jewish labor
39:47bund in Europe and who were non-Zionists or anti-Zionists and had qualms about supporting Zionism. Other than that, the
39:54first actual kind of uh act of solidarity with Palestinians that I saw
40:00that I could find in my research was uh pretty early in 1949,
40:05right after the you know the foundation of the state of Israel and the Nakba. um
40:11the ILGW, International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was donating millions of dollars to the new state of Israel and a
40:19group of ArabAmerican uh garment workers in New York wrote a letter to the union president, David
40:25Dubinsky, and it was very a very polite letter. you know, they they didn’t want to antagonize him, but they just kind of
40:31politely said, you know, there’s 70 750,000
40:36Palestinian refugees uh uh from from what this, you know, war or you know,
40:42ethnic cleansing that had just happened literally had just happened in Palestine to create the state of Israel. And they
40:48said, knowing this, could and knowing that our union is giving a lot of money to Israel and giving money to other
40:53countries, do you think, you know, in the name of humanitarianism, could you give some support to these refugees? and
41:00Duminsky actually responded and donated a mere $5,000
41:06to the uh American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker humanitarian organization, which was at the time
41:12handling like humanitarian and refugee relief for Palestinian refugees in Gaza.
41:18Um so $5,000 was nothing compared to the millions of dollars that the union was giving to Israel. But it was still um
41:26you know it started small but it was still you know something on record very early on. And that this group of
41:31Arab-American garment workers they added a a postcript to their letter saying once other workers of other ethnicities
41:38and races heard what we were doing. They were on board and they also signed signed their names. And you see names
41:43that are of like Italian-Americans, African-Americans joining with the ArabAmericans and and supporting this idea of helping
41:51Palestinian refugees. And then the next example I see the big example is 1973
41:57like I mentioned the Arab auto wildcat strike in the UAW very important. And
42:02then in the the 80s 90s the work that you and others were doing labor committee on the Middle East trying to
42:08educate more union members about Zionism about the history and its ties to South Africa and the beginning of union
42:14starting to pass resolutions during the inifata calling for uh an end to US
42:19military aid to Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian state, the end of the occupation and all that. And then
42:26again in the early 2000s with the uh during the second inifat and after the
42:32after 9/11 and the the beginning of an anti-war movement to oppose Bush’s war on terror. you see the creation of the
42:39Labor for Palestine network of union activists uh supporting BDS and uh and
42:45that has really continued to grow in the last couple of years uh with with the genocide obviously more more pro
42:53Palestine Palestine solidarity caucuses being organized within unions more
42:58resolutions being put to union conventions calling for divestment uh divesting at union held bonds in Israel
43:05or boycott activities also in the I should have mentioned the last 15 years or so there have been at least three or
43:11four times where uh ILWU doc workers on the west coast in Oakland and and
43:17Seattle especially in Oakland IL 10 um refusing to cross community pickets uh
43:24organized by you know pro Palestine ArabAmerican community members protesting ZIM the uh Israeli shipping
43:32company um which is similar to the kinds of protests that happened with uh
43:38apartheid South Africa uh or even earlier in the 30s with Chinese Americans um doing pickets at on the
43:46docks to protest uh the US sending scrap iron to Japan which was being converted
43:51into weapons to be using to kill Chinese people when you know Japan invaded China
43:56and that time too IL members refused to cross the community picket line so in
44:02all these cases it means those ships don’t get unloaded because the you the dock workers aren’t aren’t servicing the
44:08ships because they’re honoring the community picket lines. So that’s that’s been very significant as well. Um and it
44:15you know it’s kind of a hint of the kind of power organized labor can have. Um
44:20and also if I I want to just get back to the point about the jobs question. I mean if you want to talk I if you want
44:27to talk about like self-interest for workers you know forget about the moral argument and just talk about self-interest and economic interest. If
44:34if we took that trillion dollar Pentagon budget and instead put that money into
44:40things like healthcare and housing and education and transportation, it would create way more jobs than Pentagon
44:47spending currently does. And and obviously would directly benefit workingclass communities. Um and there
44:55have been you know in the 80s especially there was a lot of talk about economic
45:00conversion or what today we might call just transition of workers in the
45:06weapons manufacturing industry um with those factories you know converting what
45:11they’re producing. They don’t have to be the machines they have don’t have to only be making bombs and so on. They
45:17could be making medical equipment or, you know, uh, green energy components and other things that are socially
45:23useful for civilian use and still employ people in good union jobs without having
45:28to um, make these weapons of war. This was something that the International
45:33Association of Machinists President William Wisinger talked about a lot in the 1980s. You know, his union
45:41represents the largest number of weapons workers and he was brave enough to come out and say, “Well, we shouldn’t be producing weapons. we need to convert,
45:47you know, and to produce other things, you know, protect the jobs of people and their livelihoods, but they don’t have
45:53why do we have to be part of this war economy of war and death? And I think
45:58that’s something union leaders today should be talking more about and advocating for and educating their
46:03members about the issue of uh war. Of course, both the Democrats and Republicans
46:09support the war machine, both for trillions of dollars. They’re debating about even whether to have
46:14subsidies for ACA for people, but apparently it’s unlimited budget for mil
46:20more more ships, more military weapons bombing countries all over the world. The other issue is that the in my union,
46:26the CWM, I’m a member of the News Guild. I mean, even the to raise the issue of the genocide, the word genocide, they
46:33don’t want to say the word genocide. And I mean in my union I tried to raise it at the my local my the news go
46:40convention and you know this fear of even using that term for journalists.
46:46This is a genocide is is really a problem. I mean politically I think it brings into question what is our union
46:52about. Why is our union supporting Zionism and the Zionist state when they’re committing genocide?
47:00Yeah. And it I mean it’s been part of the larger question of why are our unions supporting the US war machine
47:05which Israel is sort of like I said before kind of a a really critical piece of that of the broader US war machine
47:12and empire. Um and uh yeah, I mean I think it’s just shortsighted a lot of
47:17these I mean the ultimately it’s again about union democracy and maybe you know
47:22getting rid of some of the current leaders uh voting them out and putting in new you know uh new new labor leaders
47:29who understand internationalism because the US labor movement is in some ways unique on this right we’ve seen labor
47:36movements unions union federations all over the world who have not been afraid to call it a genocide who have not been
47:42afraid to to come out against uh producing and shipping weapons to Israel
47:48um to try to block the movement of weapons uh transfers and u general
47:53strike in Italy right at least do workers Spanish dock workers yeah seems like those actions are separate
48:00from the actions of the ILA the ILU of solidarity to stop the genocide
48:06right it’s like we this is what I mean the US labor movement is kind of unique I mean because you
48:12some people in the US labor movement who say all this stuff is impractical. We can’t do this. You know, we need to just focus on the so-called breadandbut
48:18issues and and all of that, but then you see unions all over the world are able to take meaningful action in solidarity
48:24with Palestinians and and against war and genocide. So, why can’t we? And I
48:29think, you know, yes, there’s a lot of complicated parts of this, but at the end of the day, it’s about who’s leading
48:36the labor movement and who’s in charge and how democratic are our unions? because I think the vast majority of
48:42workers in this country don’t want their labor or their tax money going towards genocide and atrocities. Um, and uh if
48:50they just had uh real control over their unions and union leaders with a real vision and
48:56real principles, we wouldn’t necessarily have these uh we wouldn’t have this be
49:02having this conversation, you know. Doesn’t that get down to business unionism though? the ideology that we
49:08shouldn’t really connect what’s going on in Palestine to a union contract. They’re somehow separate. We shouldn’t
49:14connect the wars, the trillion spent on wars with the fact that we can’t get public decent public housing or decent
49:20healthcare. I mean, it seems that separation and opposition to build a working class movement. I know that
49:26Brandon Johnson called for a general strike against the ICE raids in in Chicago. Sarah Nelson, who’s president
49:33of the AFA, has called for a general strike against the attack on federal workers. Yet, that doesn’t seem to be
49:38taken up by the rest of the trade union leadership. They are afraid of even mentioning that word. At the same time,
49:44it seems that the Trump government is preparing for martial law, for dictatorship uh and to crush uh those
49:51people who are activists right now. Their terminations attack on critics of
49:56Israel and in academia. Professors are being fired. I mean there’s a witch hunt going on uh which the Zionists have been
50:02supporting and helping to collaborate with. Yeah. And this is what’s so I think scary about this moment is that
50:10everything you just described is happening. You know fascism is really it’s here already and we we see people
50:16being kidnapped off the streets. We see I mean there’s so many examples but just the one that uh earlier this week um uh
50:24this you know former president of uh Honduras uh who was a major narot
50:29trafficker who was you know there was this thorough meticulous trial only a few years ago overwhelming evidence that
50:36this guy is uh you know corrupt uh right-wing criminal dictator president
50:43of Honduras convicted and Trump just threw out the conviction like it was nothing, you know, while while
50:49continuing to make this, you know, this sort of pretext of uh we have to go to war with Venezuela or else Maduro
50:54because of drug trafficking. Um, and it doesn’t but you know, I mean that plus
51:00obviously everything that’s happening to immigrants in this country, people of color who are not even immigrants but
51:05still get snatched off the streets um and you know, their basic rights being violated. um Palestinian solidarity
51:13protesters, students being kidnapped and thrown into ICE detention centers with no due process and so on. And yeah,
51:21federal this war on federal employees, all of this and so much more is
51:26happening and yet the AFL CIO leadership is still afraid to even mention the word
51:32general strike, the words general strike. Um, and it’s really like if we’re going to have a real
51:40um, you know, a real and genuine and effective kind of general strike in this country, the AFL CIO and it’s it’s
51:48infrastructure. the central labor councils and state federations are sort of it’s sort of the ideal infrastructure
51:54to carry out a general strike if they h if they actually wanted to, you know, and and and did the organizing and and
52:01mobilization that it requires because they have they bring all the different unions together uh 14 million workers
52:08represented by the AFL CIO um in multiple industries all over the
52:14country, all 50 states and then I don’t know how many hundreds of central labor councils in communities, cities all over the
52:21country. That’s how you would do if you were going to actually do it. And that’s how it has been done in US history that
52:28there was a 1892 general strike in New Orleans and it was actually the AFL unions that that led that. It’s hard to
52:34believe. um or the um 1919 general
52:39strike in Seattle, the Seattle’s Central Labor Council at the time, part of the AFL organized that they obviously had a
52:46lot of radical influences from the IWW and folks like that, but it was the AFL central and the AFL national leadership
52:52distanced themselves from it, but the Seattle uh Central Labor Council people
52:58were more militant. And then the 1934 general strike in San Francisco
53:03um the San Francisco’s labor council at the time endorsed it. They were the leaders were very you know they were
53:10kind of forced to endorse it by the rank and militant rank and file pushing for it and some of the unions just start on
53:16their own just started calling for a general strike. So eventually the San Francisco labor council leaders had to
53:21go along with it. So yeah, it’s like we we can’t I think it’s not an impossible
53:27utopian dream and and obviously the point of a general strike right now would be to protest and to shut down um
53:33this this sort of rising fascism. Um but uh the fact that the lab major labor
53:40leaders you know I mean we know Sean Feain has been talking about a general strike in May 1st 2028 and there’s some
53:46if there unions left if there are any unions if there’s unions left um but yeah the
53:51fact that the beyond him and Sarah Nelson like you mentioned there’s like no real serious discussion at least not
53:57publicly about this from the major labor leaders it’s very scary because like how because it makes you ask how bad is it
54:04going to have to get like at what you know, are we going to really fight back?
54:09And the issue of fascism, I know at my union convention, CW, they CWA people did raise a general strike. One person
54:17they talked about authoritarianism, not fascism, but there doesn’t seem to be any education about fascism. And as we
54:24know, the Zionists work with fascist and are working have no problem working with fascism. But in the labor movement that
54:31this education about fascism it doesn’t that there’s no debate there’s no discussion yet it’s in front of us. Do
54:38you think that the struggle for Palestine is also connected to the struggle against fascism? Yeah absolutely. I mean I would say you
54:46know is Israel is uh is practicing
54:51fascism you know in in the way it uh to to the extent that you know we talk about fascism as a extreme form of
54:58nationalism and militarism about um uh
55:04wiping out an entire group of people who are undesirable for one reason or another uh you know deter you know
55:10deemed undesirable uh by the regime. Um that’s what you know that’s what we’ve
55:16seen happening. That’s we hear it in the genocidal intent. And you know just and a reminder to folks listening that
55:22genocide is not just a a buzzword. You know it’s a legal term and uh it’s about
55:28the intent to the intent to um destroy a population in whole or in part. And
55:35that’s why numerous legal international law experts and you know numerous
55:40humanit human rights organizations have said after meticulous or uh research and
55:46investigation and and so on looking at is the policies of Israel the actions of
55:51Israel that it is carrying out a genocide. Um this is like a legal
55:56legally true. it’s not just something people say, you know, and um I think um
56:04this rising militarism and this idea that um uh uh some people are just
56:11expendable or you know garbage as Trump called you know Somali Americans for example. That’s that’s what the Zionists in
56:17Israel call the Palestinians. Right. Exactly. Garbage and they they have no right to exist.
56:22Right. Um so yeah and and that you see it through the the the corporate I mean
56:27another aspect of fascism is uh corporations providing the the machinery
56:33and weaponry and technology to carry out this massive violence and all kinds of
56:39uh not only like the big Pentagon contractors and weapons manufacturers you know the Lockheed Martin and
56:46Northrup Grum Grumman and uh so on but also some of the tech big tech companies
56:52Microsoft and Google and Amazon web services are providing the cloud computing technology for for Israel to
57:00do its you know surveillance and targeting you know AI targeting and this dystopian science fiction kind of stuff
57:07but it’s reality and uh it’s the same kind of technology of mass surveillance
57:13and mass murder that’s being you know people have talked about Palestine being a laboratory for these kinds of
57:18technologies that then get replicated and used elsewhere. where including here in the United States. So when we see
57:25like the ICE raids that have been happening and and similar types of things, it’s it’s like directly drawing
57:30from the the playbook of uh of Israel and how it’s its treatment of Palestinians.
57:36So um Israel is definitely when we talk about the rise of global fascism not only here in the US but all around the
57:41world. I think Israel is a central part of that and the US too with its massive
57:47financial support for Israel and of course IBM was involved in providing equipment for the uh camps.
57:56Yeah. In in Germany GM was building auto plants. In fact after the war GM sued
58:02the US government to get compensation for their plants that had been bombed in Germany. Jeez.
58:08War is a good business. Yeah. for for the uh for the capitalist. Well, the the last thing I want to touch
58:14on is the crisis right now uh in in the history because apparently the the president of the history has been
58:20arrested along with other officials in the history for kickbacks uh for getting
58:26money for contracts. It seems like this corporatization which is what the histadr was is blowing up and used being
58:32used by the fascists to get rid of the histadrude or weaken the histadrude. Yeah. No, I didn’t know that that news
58:38though um about the history leader being arrested. Um but yeah, I mean history
58:44has we has been gradually kind of weakened in the last 30 or 40 years or so as the labor labor Zionism had been
58:52sort of the dominant strand in in the broader Zionist project for many decades and is you know Israel’s first
58:59governments for the first 25 years or so were labor Zionist governments but since
59:04about the 80 late 70s 80s and up till today now it’s the the right-wing you
59:10know the lood party um Zionists who you know are even more extreme and don’t
59:17care that much about questions of workers rights and that that facade of socialism we were talking about that facade of workers rights has been you
59:24know stripped away obviously and um along the way through the 80s and 90s a
59:29lot of the major you know like corporate like um companies and the kat hole
59:36healthcare network and things like that that were tied to history were privatized are sold off or separated. So
59:42history has shrunk considerably and lost a lot of its power and the labor Zionist
59:48movement has lost a lot of its power in in you know in favor of these outright fascists and I think it it’s a similar
59:55you know you have basically people who are at least ostensively pro- labor labor leaders in Israel supporting
1:00:03this Zionist project for decades and decades and what did they get out of it
1:00:09nothing they got destroyed they’re getting destroyed Um, it’s very similar to U US labor and high ranking labor
1:00:16officials and the AFL CIO supporting US empire and militarism for decades and decades. And what has the labor movement
1:00:23gotten from that? You know, we’re union density now at 9.9% and still shrinking.
1:00:28Um it so it doesn’t b you know it even those so so-called pragmatic arguments
1:00:33that well we have you know labor has to go along with these kind of imperial or colonial projects because it’ll benefit
1:00:40the workers and benefit the labor movement that the history doesn’t bear that out in the end those colonial and
1:00:46imperial forces will use the labor movement until they don’t need them need it anymore
1:00:52and that appears to be what is happening now in the United States and internationally. So I want to thank you
1:00:57very much for joining us. We’ve been talking with Jeff Shery. He is author of a critical important book on labor in
1:01:04the United States and in the history of its role in relationship with the his no
1:01:10neutrals there US labor Zionism and the struggle for Palestine. So thanks for joining us and keep up the fight.
1:01:18Thank you very much. Thanks.
