Doctoral Student at UC-Berkeley Quits Academic Union Over Its Obsession With Palestine
“the union’s strike endangers the safety and rights of Jewish workers like myself”
The left thinks it has found its new cause in this and they have completely gone off the deep end.
Daniel J. Solomon writes at City Journal:
Why I Quit My Academic Union
Samuel Gompers and Albert Shanker were cultural heroes in my childhood home. The two Jewish men had worked relentlessly to build the labor movement in the United States—the American Federation of Labor in the former case and the American Federation of Teachers in the latter. Pete Seeger’s union anthems played so often on the stereo in our New York City home that I still remember the words to “Solidarity Forever.” Despite becoming a conservative as an adult, I retained a deep emotional attachment to the American labor movement.
I still see union membership as a positive good and a partial antidote to the growing anomie in a society bereft of most traditional forms of community. Indeed, I was, until not so long ago, a member of the United Autoworkers 4811 (UAW 4811), which represents academic student employees across the University of California system.
Despite my affinity for the labor movement, however, I recently resigned my UAW membership, and, with the help of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, filed an informational brief explaining that the union’s strike endangers the safety and rights of Jewish workers like myself. If I have become the “scab” and “stool pigeon” reviled in the songs of my childhood, it is because my former union has embraced anti-Israel activism.
On May 15, UAW 4811 voted to strike, demanding “[d]ivestment . . . from companies profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza” and “[a]mnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to protest.” While union officials claimed the vote was a response to the University of California Los Angeles clearing an anti-Israel encampment, the strike and its demands applied to all campuses across the UC system.
Within a month, a court struck down the union’s gambit. The UC system’s attorney argued (and UAW disputed) that the union violated a “no-strike” clause in its contract. Without resolving that question, a California state judge temporarily restrained the strike, and the union quietly capitulated on June 25.
The only explanation for UAW 4811’s costly action is that it has been captured by radical left elements, more concerned with revolutionary cosplay than improving the lot of student workers. Those elements are increasingly active in the UC system. For months, Jews have been harassed, denigrated, and sometimes assaulted in our workplaces on campus.
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Comments
your continued affiliation with the “affinity” is what will break you as you get older
the unions BY THEIR VERY NATURE
are socialist>>communist ( and yeah THAT INCLUDES the na zis) that give the “YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE’ as go getters and you cant do without us,agenda
think about that in a personal relationship,, how devastating and destructive that same attitude is/would be
the unions are just another government layer and while the bosses live it up
the workers are suppose to feel good in the comfort of unity
same thing castro and mao and adolph etc etc had all told the children to get them to follow…UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE
dont be one of those
you giving the unions an excuse
The only explanation for UAW 4811’s costly action is that it has been captured by radical left elements
should be cause for concern that you are not able to extrapolate those “radical left elements” as the underlying norm for unions
that they come across less radical the other 90+% of the time is also by design
how about whats happening on the streets to the j ewish community
that doesnt bother you?
you think that that is just more outlying radicals ?
THAT IS THE NUCLEUS of the left
your parents like others might have on the surface wanted peace and tranquility but deep down they wanted allll the j ew haters of their times to be beaten down
dont fool youself
You are one major mental case.
@TJ
destroycommunism may be a “major mental case”, but there are quite a few of us who view the union movement in the United States through the same colored glasses.
Glasses of color, please.
lol
Need more evidence that the unions are the handmaidens of the leftists?
Every voter guide I got from the union I was forced to join was a guide of who NOT to vote for, since it was a Dem straight ticket.
I hope the members are smarter than the “leadership.”
Organized labor and collective bargaining is inherently incompatible with being a graduate student working on a PhD. Each professor running a research program is more like a small businessman or entrepreneur.
Grad students want recommendations from their professors and career help. Labor unions cannot compel that, just as they cannot compel U of C divestment policy.