UAW members push their union to divest from Israeli genocide

 

Rank-and-file members of the UAW are demanding that union leadership immediately divest from Israel Bonds.

On the morning of October 7, 2024, members of the International Executive Board (IEB) of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) found their inboxes flooded with hundreds of emails from union members around the country. The messages all demanded the same thing: that the UAW immediately divest from a relentless U.S.-backed Israeli genocide responsible for the death of an estimated 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

The UAW—which represents about 370,000 auto, academic, legal, and weapons industry workers—maintains somewhere between $400,000 and $1,000,000 in investments in Israel Bonds, which directly fund the ongoing and spreading violence in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and beyond. The company’s own website highlights “the crucial role of Israel Bonds during this time of conflict and war.” 

Echoing demands by Arab, Black, and other UAW members in 1973, UAW members today are demanding to know why the IEB is investing their dues money to support an expanding U.S.-backed genocide. 

The same day as the mass email campaign, members of UAW Labor for Palestine, a rank-and-file led initiative building solidarity with Palestinian workers as part of the Labor for Palestine National Network, confronted UAW President Shawn Fain at Black Lake Lodge, the union’s conference retreat center. Referencing a failed decision this past summer wherein the IEB voted against divesting from its Israel Bond holdings, union members asked Fain, “The next time the UAW IEB holds a vote to divest, will you vote ‘Yes’?” Fain assured rank-and-file members that he in fact will vote for divestment.

Days later, on October 13, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus whose members currently hold a majority of the seats on the IEB, voted overwhelmingly in its first ever convention to endorse rank-and-file UAW members’ resolution calling for the IEB to divest from Israel Bonds. This critical step reveals broad support for divestment from across the UAW.  (more...)

UAW members push their union to divest from Israeli genocide