Introduction
On January 13, 2024 (after some technical difficulty in entering into the webinar–I reregistered in order to do so), I attended a webinar sponsored by Labour for Palestine Canada, titled “Worker to Worker Solidarity : The role of unions in fighting Israeli apartheid.” The video is available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCHAgqCrJPA).
The Nature and Content of the Webinar
There were five panelists, but since I entered the webinar late, I did not hear any introductions about who they were. The five panelists were: Hassan Husseini (Labour for Palestine), Riya Alsanah (a Palestinian organizer, a member of Workers in Palestine Collectiveresearch coordinator, Who Profits Research Center), Simon Black (a lead organizer with Labour Against the Arms Trade Canada and an academic), Abdul Rahman (a Palestinian organizer and refugee, trade unionist and researcher) and Charmaine Chua (a Singaporian organizer and academic). I have been able to find information about four of them, but not about Abdul Rahman.
Early on, I asked two questions by writing in the chat section:
- Although the immediate problem of the genocide is urgent, what would be an end-game solution to both the conflict and the more general issue of the class power of employers. For example, even in Palestine there have been powerful employers, such as PADICO and TNB.
- Is there a list of key employers that provide equipment (military and otherwise) to Israel? If so, what could be done with such information?
Near the end of the panel talks, a Q&A session was opened–but there was little time to address not just my questions but several questions of other zoom participants. My question number two was indirectly answered, though, by Charmaine Chua, an academic and organizer in California. The question was itself naive.
Chua pointed out that organizing to limit arms shipments to Israel has been fraught with difficulties. For example, given the secrecy of the military, it is difficult to identify what shipments are destined to Israel or contain military equipment. Furthermore, even if you know the nature of such shipments, you have to know when they are going to be shipped–not just the day but also which shift. Since that information may not be available, you then have to try to organize different workers on different shifts in order to have them actively engaged in stopping such shipments to Israel.
Chua did, however, engage in self-criticism. She pointed out that had she engaged in a longer-term process of organizing such workers, she would likely be more successful. It is necessary to take a longer-term point of view when addressing such issues.
She outlined five steps required to work with dock workers to prevent military shipments to Israel:
- assessing the local terrain: what restrictions exist in local organizing. Health and safety laws may be used to the advantage of such organizing.
- Understand contract? (unsure if contract or contact–probably contract) meetings: contract clauses may allow stopping work
- Find bridge builders: A lot of people on the streets, but not enough work done in between issues that bring people out onto the street.
- Slow and indirect outreach: New York (unsure of details)
- Difference between solidary work and internationalism: solidary work is intermittent whereas internationalism long-term.
Several panelists pointed out that there was international solidarity in the labour and union movement, ranging from Spain to Belgium to the UK. However, despite such solidarity, bombs were still being dropped on Gaza.
One panelist pointed out that an effective tactic is to target specific known suppliers of the Israeli military, such as Zim and Pratt & Whitney. Temporary blockades of such specific military suppliers can have an effect, and local efforts in Mississauga, a city near Toronto, did engage in such a blockade.
Simon Black pointed out that it is insufficient to try to stop arms shipments to Israel; we need to block shipments of Israeli military equipment to Canada–a two-way blockade.
Problems with the Webinar
Although various fact sheets and websites were provided for further investigation for zoom participants, the request by one zoom panelist that the zoom meeting (which was being recorded) be available for viewing was not addressed. I looked on YouTube, and I could not find any uploaded recording. (The recording, though, is now available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCHAgqCrJPA–but it still should have been indicated to the zoom participants that the recording would be available–I was not the only one who experienced technical difficulty in entering into the zoom meeting. Perhaps at the beginning, because I missed several minutes of the webinar, it was indicated what was going to be done with the recording, but I am unsure about that. I will be, gradually, looking at the YouTube presentation and revising this post.
My first question–about solutions to the immediate conflict and solutions to the class power of employers–was not addressed. Rather, Hussan Husseini seemed to select questions from the Q&A chat on the basis of the relative possibility of immediately engaging in coordinated action (such as question from a member of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) or a question about direct action and being shut down). This is unfortunate since, as Chua pointed out, it is necessary to adopt a long-term point of view in addressing organizing issues.
There have been genocides in the past (I studied Spanish in Guatemala in 1980 and, not long after, the Guatemalan military (with U.S. aid) committed genocide in the early 1980s for example), and there will undoubtedly be genocides in the future–unless we create a society without a class of emplyoyers and without a government that remains separate from the power of ordinary working people and citizens.
Should there not be an effort to attempt to link up a critique of what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank with what is going on in Canada? Not just the Canadian government’s support of the genocide, but in the daily lives of Canadian workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers?
I suspect that many workers and community activists in Canada have a negative attitude towards the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank but a positive attitude towards their own employer and towards the class of employers in general. Internationalism requires that we see ourselves in others and others in ourselves–rather than excluding ourselves from the “poor other”–so typical of social reformers and social democrats. Should we not be attempting to shift towards a negative attitude towards all employers–towards the class of employers?
For example, I have tried to calculate the rate of exploitation of workers by PADICO, a Palestinian holding company that exploits workers in Palestine (see The Rate of Exploitation of Palestinian Workers at PADICO Holding, a Palestinian Capitalist Company). If possible, should we not try to calculate the rate of exploitation in Canada of workers in companies linked to the shipment of arms to Israel, such as Zim or Pratt & Whitney? (A preliminary look at the annual reports of Zim shows that it may be possible to calcualte the rate of exploitation of Zim workers in 2017 (in 2018 and 2019 there were profit losses. On the other hand, for Pratt & Whitney, the annual report for Raytheon Technologies, which owns Pratt & Whitney, there is no information for salaries or wages, and such information is necessary in order to calculate the rate of exploitation.)
Of course, there are undoubtedly other ways in which the common exploitative and oppressive situation of Palestinian and workers in Canada can be made explicit, but socialists need to make such efforts and not let the paternalistic attitude of “the poor exploited and oppressed Palestinian workers” and the “non-exploited and non-oppressed workers in Canada” prevail. The view that workers in Canada have “good jobs,” “decent work,” “fair wages,” “good contracts,’ and other cliches need to be constantly challenged.
I failed to see such a challenge during the webinar. The closest thing to such a challenge was Chua’s recognition of the need to engage in long-term internationalist work in order to bind workers’ interests across nations.
Conclusion
The five panelists provided concrete information and analyses of the immediate situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the efforts to provide resistance to the current genocide.
However, if internationalism requires a long-term outlook, then a critique of the common exploitation of workers throughout the world should form one of the main pillars of such internationalism.
Where is the current effort to connect up the exploitation of workers in Canada that produce military equipment for Israel and the exploitation of Palestinian workers, whether such workers work for Palestinian or Israeli employers?
The Abolitionary 