Why U.S. Labor Has a "Special Responsibility" to Stop Israel's Attacks on Lebanon

But amid signs of a mounting regional war, the plea takes on new urgency. ​“Israel’s recent strikes on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people including women, children and paramedics, are exactly the type of regional escalation of hostilities that we predicted would happen without a cease-fire in Gaza,” the union’s leaders warned in their statement.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) is not alone in demanding a halt to the flow of military support from the United States to Israel. On July 23, seven major unions, which together account for nearly half of all unionized workers in the United States, called for an arms embargo until Israel ends its assault on Gaza. 

Before that, unions representing the majority of union members in the United States had already urged a cease-fire. These are significant breaks with the U.S. government’s foreign policy in a labor movement that has often historically sided with the state department (though some rank-and-file movements are demanding more, including divestment from Israel).

But UE, which has a long history of opposing U.S. wars and occupations, stands out for its early—and strong — call for an immediate cease-fire and opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel. The union played an important role in encouraging other unions to sign onto an early cease-fire call, at a time when the Biden administration was discouraging its own staff from even uttering the word ​“cease-fire.”

I spoke with Carl Rosen, the general president of UE, about why the union is so concerned about Israel’s actions in Lebanon and Gaza, why U.S. support for Israel is an issue workers in the United States should care about, and what the possibilities for organizing in labor could look like moving forward. 

“The U.S. labor movement has a special responsibility to stop this war,” Rosen told me, ​“because our country is the one that enables Israel to do what it’s doing far more than any other country in the world.”

SARAH LAZARE: Israel’s recent bombardments of civilian areas in southern Lebanon have killed at least 569 people, including 50 children. And its remote detonation of booby-trapped pagers and two-way radio devices killed 32 people and maimed more than 3,000. Can you explain why the escalation in Lebanon is an issue that working people in the United States ought to care about?

CARL ROSEN: For several reasons. Number one, UE has always believed that labor unions in our country ought to be able to speak out regarding foreign policy issues affecting the United States. This is activity being done with our tax dollars. This is activity which, in many cases, is undermining working people and the standards of working and living in other countries, and therefore contributes to the race to the bottom for all of us.

This is also just a fundamental matter of justice. It’s been long held by the labor movement that an injustice to anyone is an injustice to everyone. And it doesn’t take much moral clarity to see that what is happening right now in the Middle East is absolutely atrocious.

I was wondering if you could talk more about Lebanon specifically. What is it about the escalation in Lebanon that has you especially worried?

Several things are very concerning. Number one, people are being killed by the hundreds. That ought to be enough to spark outrage among all Americans, because it’s being done with our money, our weapons. Second, there’s a very real concern here that Israel intends to do to southern Lebanon what they’ve done to Gaza, which is to bomb it back into the stone ages and make it uninhabitable. This is the definition of ethnic cleansing or genocide. And it’s totally unsupportable. Rather than figuring out how to live with others, they are wanting to either exterminate them or drive them elsewhere. Third, other countries in that region are not going to just stand by and watch this happen. The only reason, probably, that Israel has not been attacked by many of its neighbors and many in the Middle East, at this point, is because Israel has such overwhelming military force. But at a certain point, these other countries are gonna say, ​“Screw it. Because after they do this to Lebanon, they’re going to do this to us.” This is a direct provocation to an even larger war. This is the kind of escalation we’ve been warning of all along if the United States doesn’t call them to heel.

And make no mistake: The United States has the ability to call them to heel. They have been our pit bull in the Middle East for decades now, and we have a responsibility to rein them in. And it’s only for domestic political considerations that that hasn’t happened yet, and because of the interests of the military-industrial complex in this country that is making obscene profits off of the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the Middle East.

You mentioned domestic political considerations. What my mind immediately goes to is that the majority of the U.S. public actually supports an arms embargo. Polls show 61% of Americans think the United States should not ​“send weapons and supplies to Israel,” including 77% of Democrats. Yet, most of the U.S. government and especially President Joe Biden have offered nearly unconditional political support for this military aid that is fueling the genocide. 

Can you speak to what it has looked like over these past 11 months to see many within the U.S. labor movement disagree with the foreign policy of this country, and do you think there is a time when there is more willingness in U.S. labor to question foreign policy?

Absolutely. This has been an important development, I would say an historic development, particularly when you have a Democratic administration. Most of labor has not tended to speak out against the foreign policy of any administration, but particularly a Democratic administration. So it’s very important that this has developed, and I think it’s because of several factors. 

Number one, it’s clear that the system is bad for workers. It’s become more and more clear to leaders within the labor movement, both because the material facts on the ground have become increasingly clear with the wealth transfer and income degradation that we’ve seen over the last 40 years or so. But it’s also because people in the leadership ranks in many unions grew up in a world that has learned from the experiences of Vietnam and beyond, the 2003 Iraq war, etc., and aren’t going to fall for the same garbage over and over again. It’s also a recognition and great concern by some within the labor movement that Democrats are hurting their own political chances in the election this year, and possibly going forward, by not breaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and therefore they are trying to push Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to do that.

Are we going to see another organizing push? I know there are growing rank-and-file calls for divestment from Israel. What do you think is needed in this moment?

If you look at our statement, it’s a continuity from what we have already said and what other unions have already said about continued military aid while the bombardment of Gaza is going on. I think other unions probably are largely in agreement with what we have just said, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see others come out and say something similar.

I do think there will be more organizing around this issue, including at the local level. How much there will be before versus after the election remains to be seen. Historically, this is a very difficult time to get the labor movement to focus on much other than the election itself. And frankly, it’s a very important election. We can understand that. The eye needs to be kept on that also. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be speaking out at the same time about what’s happening

There is an argument that Netanyahu is doing this as a calculated move to not only to affect Israeli politics and keep himself in office and out of jail, but also to affect U.S. politics. It’s entirely possible.

What is your response to someone who might say something like, ​“This is not an issue a union like UE should take on. This is not a union issue. You’re outside of your lane.” What would you say to that?

Labor unions exist to fight on behalf of the working class, and part of the fight of the working class is for peace, to not waste money on military spending, but instead direct it to social spending that lifts up the living standards of the working class and not have working people sent off to their deaths in needless wars. War and peace has always been an important issue for the labor movement. Unfortunately labor hasn’t always been on the right side, but it has certainly always been an issue.

The same people who say we shouldn’t speak on this would say we shouldn’t speak out on racial justice issues, on questions of trade and immigration and you name it. They just want us to go back to being bread-and-butter unions that are just trying to negotiate things in our own workplaces, forgetting what’s going on in the world. That doesn’t work. The U.S. labor movement has been virtually destroyed because too much of the labor movement stuck to that for too long.

In what ways did that destroy the labor movement?

We stood by blindly supporting U.S. foreign policy which consisted of both military and economic activity to create the conditions to make the rest of the world safe for U.S. corporations to move in and, in the process, move a huge part of the U.S. manufacturing base overseas. 

That wouldn’t have happened without the U.S. foreign policy that much of the labor leadership not only didn’t oppose, but they actively supported, including the undermining democratic and militant unions in other countries in the service of corporations. That rotted out the U.S. industrial labor movement. Huge portions of our jobs went overseas, and a lot of them moved from mid-sized towns in rural areas, leaving those areas with virtually no unions. You can draw a direct line from that to people in those areas being despondent about the economic system we have, and turning to false prophets like former President Donald Trump.

Part of why I wanted to reach out to you and talk so soon is this feels like an incredibly urgent moment. Do you think the U.S. labor movement has a special responsibility to try to prevent a larger war, and do you think it has the power to do that?

Absolutely. The U.S. labor movement has a special responsibility to stop this war, because our country is the one that enables Israel to do what it’s doing far more than any other country in the world.

We have to create a movement, not just a labor movement, but of all people of good will, all social justice movements in this country, we have to create a counter-pressure against the military-industrial complex, against those who are willing to support Israel no matter what it does, against those who are pushing the Biden administration from the other side. We have to create a counter-force strong enough to convince the administration to change their policy.

You talked about acting in solidarity with workers in other parts of the world. I would love to hear more about that principle of internationalism.

You can’t have full justice anywhere without having justice everywhere for working people. One of the many good things that the National Labor Network for Ceasefire has done is to arrange direct conversations between leaders of the Palestinian trade union movement and the leaders and activists within the U.S. labor movement, so people hear firsthand about their ability to work, their conditions of work, the death and destruction many of their members have faced, the starvation they haven been facing, etc. You can’t turn your back on that as a trade unionist. We absolutely have to have solidarity among workers across the world. The corporations that we work for have no loyalty to any country. Workers need to band together to defend themselves against those corporations operating across national lines.

How have these conversations gone over with your membership?

The convention is where we have the conversation, and we’ve had these resolutions that have laid out the situation and the international solidarity position for quite a while. We have a discussion every two years at our convention where a couple hundred delegates get together and review it and affirm it and speak on it. And then that information goes back to the locals. Like any union, how it percolates down to every single member is another a question. But the info is there, we highlight it in the newspaper that goes out to every member. There certainly are locals where there have been discussions about it. There are a good number of locals that have taken action including a number of our graduate worker locals have participated in protests on their campuses on these issues. The folks who are active in our union on the issue generally are overwhelmingly supportive of the policy we’ve adopted.

Why did UE move so quickly to release a statement about Lebanon. Why did you internally decide it was important to do right now?

It really does seem like it’s a very urgent thing right now. It does seem like Israel is purposely provoking an even wider conflict. And it does seem like this is raining down absolute horror on thousands and thousands, or probably tens of thousands, of civilians who are just trying to live their lives. And we couldn’t stand by and just watch that happen, so we wanted to get something out to alert folks, and hopefully other people in the labor movement will be joining us in this before very long at all.