Why labor unions are backing pro-Palestine protesters after mass campus arrests

Several major labor unions have criticized the mass arrests of students and faculty at pro-Palestinian campus protests across the country, following their own calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. 

The unions’ support for pro-Palestinian protesters, as well as their calls for cease-fire, draws on a long history of antiwar activism in the labor movement, and it reflects a shift in its approach to Israel, experts said. 

“There's a history of progressive unions taking stances going back to the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and especially the war in Iraq and war in Afghanistan,” said Will Brucher, an assistant teaching professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. 

However, he added, “Many mainstream AFL-CIO unions have been reluctant to weigh in on the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and other global political matters, while other unions openly supported U.S. foreign policy.” 

This has shifted as union members have become more politically active and leadership has become more progressive, Brucher told The Hill. 

Some of the country's biggest unions — the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — have issued statements calling for a cease-fire since the outbreak of war last October. 

Several of these unions have also voiced concerns over the past week as university administrators deployed police against protesters, who have formed encampments on university quads to protest the war and urge their universities to divest from Israeli companies or defense companies supplying weapons to Israel.   

Tensions reached a fever pitch last Tuesday, when protesters occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia and violence broke out at the University of California, Los Angeles, after counterprotesters attacked and attempted to dismantle an encampment. 

New York police ultimately raided Hamilton Hall and arrested protesters. The Los Angeles police also cleared the UCLA encampment and made arrests. More than 2,000 people have been arrested in total. 

UAW President Shawn Fain, who rose to prominence last fall amid the union’s weeks-long strike against automakers, slammed universities’ responses to protesters last Wednesday. Roughly 100,000 of the more than 300,000 members of the UAW are academic workers, according to NPR.

“The UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice,” he said in a post on the social platform X. 

"Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months,” he continued. “This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong.”  

“We call on the powers that be to release the students and employees who have been arrested, and if you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war,” Fain added. 

The SEIU, which represents nearly 100,000 educators, graduate student employees and staff at universities, similarly criticized the response to and voiced solidarity with pro-Palestinian protesters. 

“The suppression of free speech sets a dangerous precedent for all who seek justice, whether it’s students calling for institutional accountability or workers organizing for better conditions on the job,” the SEIU said in a Thursday statement. 

“As campuses around the United States are erupting in protest over the horrors and injustice Palestinians are facing, SEIU proudly stands in solidarity with the students, faculty and staff exercising their right to speak up,” the union continued.  

Unions have historically been involved in antiwar activism, noted Erik Baker, a Harvard University lecturer who studies the history of labor and management.  

The UAW, in particular, has a “long antiwar tradition,” he said, pointing to former UAW President Walter Reuther’s opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, as well as the union’s opposition to apartheid in South Africa. 

The union itself emphasized these themes after joining other labor organizations in calling for a cease-fire in December. 

“From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the CONTRA war, the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe,” Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla said in a statement at the time.  

However, the increase in unionization among student workers sets the current moment apart from earlier protests, Baker said. 

“I think now we have this real kind of bridge between the campus movement and the labor movement,” he told The Hill.  

“This bridge, this synergistic relationship between campus activism and labor activism, to me, multiplies the strength of these students relative to the past few years, where they may have been working in parallel,” he later added. 

Brucher also suggested members and leaders of campus unions, who have traditionally been reluctant to address the Israel-Palestine issue, have become more politically engaged on global issues in recent years and have demanded their unions take a stand on issues not directly related to campus. 

This has coincided with concerns about academic freedom, as universities have cracked down on protesters, Brucher said. 

“When it comes to the campus protests, I want to stress that it's not just about the union's sympathy or calls for the cease-fire,” he said. “It's really about issues of academic freedom.” 

He argued that faculty and graduate student union members have a right "to share their opinions and take stands on them without facing repercussions from the university and college administrations.”

Students also “have the right to speak out on their campuses,” Brucher said.

“They have the right to organize around this issue, and they have the right to peacefully protest, and that also includes the right to have encampments in the university and engage in other forms of protest and even forms of civil disobedience,” he added.

UAW Local 4811, a union of 48,000 academic workers in the University of California system, has filed unfair labor practice charges against UCLA over the treatment of protesters, including some of its members, and plans to hold a vote to authorize a strike early next week.

“Our members have been beaten, concussed, pepper sprayed, both by counter-protestors and by police forces,” the union said on X. “As a union, it is our responsibility to stand beside them and demand that UC stop committing these gross Unfair Labor Practices.”

“In order to de-escalate the situation, UC must substantively engage with the concerns raised by the protesters — which focus on UC’s investments in companies and industries profiting off of the suffering in Gaza,” it added.