The WFTU strongly condemns any collaboration with the war machine of the murderous state of Israel and calls for a boycott of Israel, especially for activities linked with its military operations and the crimes against Palestinians.

-Noting that on 26 January 2024, the International Criminal Court ordered Israel to ‘take all possible measures’ to ‘prevent’ genocide in Gaza, recognising that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it sought protection were plausible.

-Noting that on 26 May 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must ‘immediately’ stop its military offensive in Rafah, in southern Gaza, in response to South Africa’s request that the court issue this decision as an emergency measure, stating that Israel’s activities in Rafah constitute a ‘genocidal’ operation and threaten the survival of the Palestinian people.

-Noting that on 20 May 2024, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that he had requested arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Galant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

-And if the news published in various media outlets about the SINEDOR collaboration with the Israeli murderous state is true, we demand the immediate and unconditional end of the partnership without exception.

No support of the Israeli crimes
Stop the Genocide – Free Palestine

The post WFTU Condemns the Alleged Operations Carried Out by SINEDOR in Cooperation with Israeli Companies first appeared on Labor Today.

Over 30,000 people took to the streets with USB to demand a class-based alternative based on peace and justice.The extraordinary national demonstration organised with the Disarmiamoli coalition group concluded in Rome, with over 30,000 people participating, including workers, young people, students, activists, and trade unionists.

The crowd shouted clear messages to the country: ‘No more war! No more rearmament! No more complicity with NATO, the arms industry or the genocide of the Palestinian people!’Today’s demonstration was an integral part of the national general strike called by USB on 20 June.

This strike united the struggle against rearmament with demands for higher wages, more rights and welfare to defend public health and education and save an industrial apparatus sinking deeper every month.

While the Meloni government continues European policies by pouring billions into rearmament and militarisation, ordinary people suffer: hospitals are collapsing, schools are being closed down, and deindustrialisation is desertifying territories while rents are skyrocketing.In this context, continuing to invest in weapons, military missions and aggressive alliances such as NATO — which is complicit in the genocide currently being carried out in Gaza by the terrorist state of Israel — is a political, social and moral crime that must be strongly denounced.

Yesterday’s demonstrations and protest initiatives throughout Italy, along with today’s large rally, confirm USB’s position as a trade union and class alternative, connecting the defence of social rights with the struggle against permanent global war.

The post ITALY: USB Holds Historic Day of Protest Against War and Rearmament first appeared on Labor Today.

President Trump launched an unprovoked bombing attack on Iran this past weekend in violation of the U.S. constitution, which requires acts of war to be authorized by Congress unless there is a threat of imminent attack, which nobody has even pretended was the case. This is not only a further undermining of democracy in our country, it also is built on a set of lies for political and financial gain, just like the disastrous Iraq war 23 years ago, and will only serve to make the world, and the people of the U.S., both less safe and less economically secure.

The president ran for office pledging that he was the right person to keep the U.S. out of further military entanglements overseas, and there is strong support by the American people for that position. But faced with declining poll numbers, a trap laid by the Israeli government, and a willingness to pad the profits of both oil companies and the military industrial complex, Trump fell into the same pattern as president after president of both parties: start a shooting war and hope that the populace falls in behind you.

As rank-and-file delegates to the 78th UE Convention in 2023 declared, “The U.S. military budget — at over $877 billion, larger than those of the next ten nations combined — continues to soar out of control with bipartisan support. Threats or use of military force are still a regular feature of U.S. foreign policy, under presidents of both major parties. All of this is done at the expense of the needs of working people in the U.S. and throughout the world.” The only thing that has changed since that statement is that the upcoming military budget is expected to top $1 trillion for the first time.

The lie that was used to justify the mobilization of the U.S. military is that Iran was within weeks or months of building a nuclear weapon. That line has been trotted out by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly over the last 20 years, every time that he wants to justify dragging the U.S. into conflict there. Yet even the U.S. intelligence forces said that Iran was not working on constructing a nuclear weapon, and we had a deal a decade ago ensuring that they could not build one. But the first Trump administration tore up that deal in subservience to the Netanyahu government and in order to parade as tough on the world stage. 

Trump had actually returned to the bargaining table with Iran in recent weeks and announced that a new deal was very close. It was at that moment that Israel started bombing Iran – arguably not because Iran wouldn’t negotiate but instead because it looked like a deal would be achieved. It is an open secret that Netanyahu is trying to maintain a constant state of war for his country so that his current stint in office, extended indefinitely due to the war footing, doesn’t end and with it his protection from likely jail time on a massive corruption case. He has already pulverized Gaza back to the stone ages, bombed Lebanon into submission, and occupied parts of Syria – he’s happy to have a new target, especially one that drags the U.S. into the conflict. So once the Israeli bombing campaign was well underway, he announced that only the U.S. could finish the job, with our more-powerful ordinance. Trump had a choice to make, tell Israel to cease and desist, especially given that Israel relies heavily on U.S. financing and arms, or throw the U.S. into yet another intractable conflict in the Mideast putting our people into harm’s way for someone else’s fight, a fight with no shining knights on any side. Trump made the wrong choice.

And what does this leave us with? Iran, to save face at home and abroad, felt no choice but to retaliate. While it may be contained at this point, we will all live on a knife’s edge as we see whether we end up with either open or covert warfare spinning out of control. Forty thousand U.S. troops on the ground in the Mideast are put at risk. If we and the Israelis have been actually bombing sites loaded with nuclear material, we have risked dispersing it into the atmosphere, potentially poisoning people throughout the planet, as occurred during open air nuclear testing in the 1950’s. And the message we are sending to countries is not to avoid building nuclear weapons, but instead to do it quickly since it is only nuclear-armed nations that seem to be safe from possible U.S. attack.

We also face the likelihood of increased gas prices as the conflict potentially chokes off a sizable chunk of the world oil supply. Trump’s friends in the oil industry will laugh all the way to the bank as they benefit from the higher gas prices just as his military contractor friends will benefit from the demand for more weapons and ammunition.

To top it all off, Trump is now openly floating the idea of supporting regime change in Iran, the exact policy he correctly attacked previous administrations for getting embroiled in next door in Iraq, and one certain to be just as much a quagmire, if not more so, than that one, which cost the U.S. the lives of over 4000 service people and several trillion dollars in taxpayer money. And opening up the subject just hardens the position of Iran’s leaders, figuring that their days are numbered unless they fight and win.

Lastly, the lack of political leadership from both parties is shameful. Only a small number of Democrats and very few Republicans spoke out against U.S. intervention in the run up to the bombing campaign, preferring to acquiesce to the Israeli and military industry lobbying machines. And there is nowhere near the majority needed in Congress to seize control of war-making out of the hands of the presidency and back into the control of Congress where it belongs. The founders of the U.S. knew well that going to war is too important a decision to leave in the hands of one person. It must require the consent of the 535 members of Congress, each one of whom has to go home to their constituencies and tell them why they are sending their sons and daughters into harm’s way.

No more war in the Mideast. Congress must act.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

The post UE: No More Mideast Wars first appeared on Labor Today.

Today, in 2025, the Palestinian people are facing a new and even more brutal chapter of this ongoing catastrophe. Since October 2023, the people of Gaza have endured one of the most destructive and deadly military campaigns in recent history. Tens of thousands have been killed, the majority of them women and children. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Hospitals, schools, and refugee shelters have been repeatedly attacked. The infrastructure of Gaza has been deliberately decimated, plunging the population into a humanitarian nightmare with no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no safety.

As we mark this year’s Nakba anniversary, Israel, with the full support and complicity of the United States, the European Union, and their allies, is intensifying its war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. The international community watches, and yet Israel continues to act with total impunity, violating international law, United Nations resolutions, and even the recent rulings of the International Court of Justice.

The WFTU reiterates its full and uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian people and their just struggle. We remain firm in our demand for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian and Arab territories, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. We reaffirm the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and insist on the urgent need to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In these difficult times, we are inspired by the courage and determination of workers, students across the globe who have risen in solidarity with Palestine. The WFTU feels proud as its affiliates are leading mass mobilizations across the world, rejecting the genocide in Gaza and demanding an end to their governments’ complicity in this crime.

The WFTU calls on its affiliates and friends across the globe to escalate their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Our solidarity must be loud, it must be visible, and it must be grounded in action.

On this 77th Nakba Day, we do not forget, and we do not remain silent. We rise alongside our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the streets, in our unions, and in every forum of international struggle. Despite threats and repression, the voices of peace continue to grow louder, while the WFTU will continue to proudly wave the Palestinian flag alongside its own, standing on the right side of history, and fighting until the end of occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

End the occupation now!
Stop the genocide!
Free Palestine!

The post WFTU Statement on the 77th Anniversary of Palestinian Nakba Day first appeared on Labor Today.

The workers also rallied in support of an unidentified graduate student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 27, 2025, and another student that was revealed to had been abducted on March 28, 2025 from the campus of Minnesota State University Mankato.

Hundreds of students and workers gathered on campus at the UMN in front of Morrell Hall, the same hall which was occupied for 24 hours back in January 1969 by 70 black students to protest institutional racism and the lack of outreach, support, and culturally relevant coursework for students of color. At the rally, AFSCME 3800 President Max Vast, GLU-UE President Abaki Beck and others addressed the crowd with both a list of demands to UMN President Rebecca Cunningham and addressing the working conditions on campus that were making it harder for UMN workers and faculty to do their jobs.

The list of demands includes the following:

1. An immediate meeting with AFSMCE-3800 and GLU-UE, to ensure the urgent concerns of our union members are addressed and swiftly acted upon.
2. A clear, written commitment to defending immigrant workers by providing immediate and full financial, material, and legal support for international students and workers facing the threat of deportation. Establish the University of Minnesota as an official Sanctuary Campus to protect our community.
3. A binding agreement to halt layoffs for one year due to federal funding cuts, providing staff with job security as legal challenges to cuts unfold. The future under the Trump administration remains uncertain and in President Cummingham’s own words, “we should not overreact to what continues to be a fluid situation”.
4. A rapid expansion of Know Your Rights trainings for all students and workers to ensure that we are fully prepared to defend out rights and stay safe in the face of increasing federal attacks.
5. A publicly communicated plan to strengthen and expand our legal challenges to federal funding cuts, outlining how the University will address the potential impact of funding cuts. We demand the University commit to leveraging the full power of the University to resist these attacks, and ensuring that workers’ jobs and research remains protected.
6. An end to union busting on campus, demonstrated by bargaining in good faith with our Unions, and immediately and voluntarily recognizing graduate fellows and newly organized workers on campus. Strong unions are the foundation of our university and make this a better place to work, live, and study for everyone.
7. Immediate action to end political repression on  campus, including a clear commitment to protect workers targeted by McCarthyist federal investigations, immediately repealing restrictive protest policies, reversing the consolidation of power over departmental speech, and ending retaliation against campus protest. We further demand the University refuse to comply with the Trump Administration’s request for names and nationalities of students and workers involvement in protest.
8. A written commitment to no cuts to cultural centers or academic programs, and the continuation of critical EDI work. The University must take concrete steps to ensure ALL students and workers feel safe, supported, and respected on this campus. This work is far from finished.

AFSCME-UMN will also be heading to the bargaining table for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the UMN as their prior contact was three years ago. President Vast appealed for continued support from the students and workers in their fight to secure a new CBA and the rights of all students and workers in the UMN.

LUEL applauds AFSCME-UMN Local 3800 and GLU-UE Local 1105 for standing up for fellow workers and students. LUEL calls on the UMN and all university systems to respect the rights of students and workers and for the UMN to recognize the graduate fellows and other workers that want to form a union.

AFSCME-UMN Local 3800 can be found at: https://www.afscmemn.org/local-3800-university-minnesota-clerical-workers GLU-UE Local 1105 can be found at: https://umnglu.org/

The post Students and Workers Rally at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Against Layoffs and Attacks on Free Speech first appeared on Labor Today.

After the flattening of Gaza, Israel continues its atrocities in the West Bank, with daily killings of civilians, imprisonments, bombings and destruction of infrastructure. In the last months, the Israeli aggression also expands and escalates in Lebanon, in Syria and in the wider region of the Middle East, with the open violation of borders and the mass devastating bombing of civilians. The Presidential Council expresses its support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and with the people of the region, in their struggle for sovereignty, liberation, and to repel aggression against their countries.

The recent statement of the President of the USA regarding the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, constitutes a continuation of the longstanding and consistent US’s stance and support for the murderous state of Israel and its plans. With his statement, Trump reaffirms in unprecedented cynicism, the USA’s full support of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. The World Federation of Trade Unions strongly denounces and condemns these statements and plans, and reaffirms its unshakeable solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for their right to live in freedom in their own homeland, in the land that they were born.

The consistent and principled support and solidarity to the heroic Palestinian people had always been a priority for the international class-oriented trade union movement. It is clear that the only way to secure and consolidate peace and security for the people in Palestine and Israel, but also in the wider Middle East, is to immediately end the Israeli occupation and settlement in the occupied Arab territories, as provided for in the UN resolutions, and to establish an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

For the WFTU is clear that as the imperialist aggression intensifies, our solidarity must intensify too.

The workers from all around the world are in a continues struggle of supporting the Palestinian people! The militant trade unions join their voices with the Palestinian people, condemn the imperialist hypocrisy.

The WFTU, on the occasion of the 30th of March, observed as the Palestinian Land Day, calls on its affiliates and friends, class-oriented and militant trade unions internationally to organize mobilizations and demonstrations, both in the streets, but in the workplaces as well, under the slogan:

“Free Palestine! Stop the displacement plans! Stop the ethnic cleansing”

The post The WFTU, on the Occasion of the 30th of March, Observed as Palestinian Land Day first appeared on Labor Today.

Statement of the UE Officers

Last weekend, the federal government arrested, detained and threatened with deportation Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S., not because he had committed any crime, but in retaliation for his peacefully speaking out on political issues while a student at Columbia University. The Trump administration has also cancelled over $400 million in already-allotted research funds to Columbia, essentially for failing to sufficiently repress peaceful student protests. The Department of Justice has launched investigations of 10 universities, with a threat to similarly slash federal funding, including several where UE represents graduate workers, and the Department of Education has sent threatening letters to an additional 60 schools. The clear intent of all these actions is to suppress dissent and the right to protest on campus.

These are serious attacks on our civil liberties, and will impact all working people if they are not vigorously resisted. The purpose of attacks on civil liberties is to instill fear, much like what bosses do during union organizing campaigns. People who are afraid to criticize the government will also be afraid to speak up at work. History has shown that a government that feels like it can get away with detaining or deporting legal residents for political speech will also be willing to arrest or deport union leaders who speak out about bad working conditions and low wages — especially a government of corporate billionaires like the one currently in office.

At the 78th UE Convention, in 2023, rank-and-file delegates from around the country declared, “The chilling effect of denials of our democratic freedoms curtails political debate within the U.S., limits the ability of all citizens to make democratic choices for the future of our country, and thereby undermines our livelihoods and living standards.”

In the late 1940s and 1950s, our country — and our union — faced a similar attempt to punish people for exercising their democratic and workplace freedoms: McCarthyism. The abduction and threatened deportation of Khalil, a green-card holder with the legal right to live and work in the U.S., is strongly reminiscent of the U.S. government’s attempt to deport founding UE Director of Organization James Matles in the 1950s, despite the fact that he was a naturalized citizen.

Today’s witch-hunt is no more about the purported “anti-Semitism” of campus protesters than the McCarthyist witch-hunts were about “communism.” In both cases, the point is to stifle dissent and make people afraid to criticize our government’s actions, to create a docile working class that is easier to exploit because people are afraid to speak up.

We are appalled by the outrageous extent to which university presidents and administrators are not only bowing to this effort to curb free speech and expression, but actively suppressing protest on their own campuses. The very purpose of a university is the free exchange of ideas, and we expect the leaders of those institutions to stand up for that principle. Instead, too many are doing the work of our increasingly authoritarian government of billionaires.

Civil liberties are not a luxury. Indeed, as the history of the labor movement has shown, they are essential to enable working people to fight for justice. As in previous generations, if the government will not respect our civil liberties, and if the leaders of institutions and political parties will not speak up for them, then we must defend them through mass mobilization and, if necessary, strikes.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

The post UE: Attacks on Campus Protest a Grave Threat to Civil Liberties and Worker Rights first appeared on Labor Today.

The Israeli government didn’t show at any point its true will to end the genocide, even throughout the cease fire deal, provoking the deal repeatedly by prohibiting aid from entering Gaza, and the ongoing military operations in the West Bank and Lebanon.

The escalation of the genocide with blessing and support of the USA and its allies, reveals once again the hypocrisy and cynicism of the imperialist powers.

The WFTU reiterates its solidarity with the heroic people of Palestine, and calls upon its affiliates to intensify the solidarity action with Palestine. The WFTU was and will remain on the side of the Palestinian in their struggle for freedom and peace.

End the Genocide! 
Free Palestine! 

The post The WFTU Condemns the New Barbaric Bombardment of Gaza and the Continuation of the Genocide of the Palestinian people first appeared on Labor Today.

Since the beginning of the genocidal operations of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territories, dockers all over the world, and especially in Europe, have carried out actions to block the transport of weapons, supported by the WFTU and the European Regional Office EUROF.

The decision of the Swedish trade union, taken in a referendum and with the approval of 68% of the trade union members, is a courageous and just decision that breaks the complicit silence of the European governments on the ongoing genocide and also responds to the recent decision of Sweden to join NATO.

EUROF – WFTU European Bureau expresses its full solidarity with the Swedish leader and the dockers and calls upon all WFTU member unions in Europe to express their full solidarity and to intensify their actions of struggle and blockade in support of the Palestinian people.

The post WFTU-EUROF: Solidarity with Dockworkers Union in Sweden first appeared on Labor Today.

The Palestinian Trade Union Coalition considers Trump’s statements to be nothing but a declaration of war on the Palestinian people. We emphasize our complete rejection of Trump’s statements, considering that these poisonous statements contribute to the displacement and migration of the Palestinian people, and that the United States is trying again to control Gaza and expand the borders of the so-called (Israel) through the presence of American forces in Gaza and Palestine, which means blatant American control and occupation of the Palestinian territories and the displacement of its people and forcing them to emigrate.

We also demand that our Palestinian people consider the statements of the American Pharaoh Trump to be worthless, appreciating the Arab, Islamic and international role that rejects the idea of displacing the Palestinian people. We also consider that Trump’s statements reflect the US President’s “deep ignorance” of the Palestinian people, emphasizing in all his statements the complete American bias in favor of the Israeli occupation. Trump appoints himself as the guardian of the world, but Palestine is not a common land for any party to decide to control it, and no one has the right to impose his guardianship on the Palestinian people and their land, as Gaza is an integral part of our land. Palestinian and any solution must be based on ending the occupation and achieving the rights of the Palestinian people, and not on the mentality of a real estate merchant and the mentality of power and domination.

As a labor union coalition, we demand that all the poles of the world work to reject Trump’s official policy calling for the destruction of Palestine and the Middle East and his attempt to control the components of the Palestinian people in favor of the Israeli occupation.

The Labor Union Coalition of Palestine
Secretary General
Mohammed Yahya
2025.02.06

The post PALESTINE: WUC-P Statement on Trump Statements About Displacing the Palestinian People first appeared on Labor Today.