Unifor and UE Pass Resolutions for an Arms Embargo and Support for Palestinian Workers

Labour  •  September 5, 2025

Unifor passes resolution in support of Palestinian workers and their call for an arms embargo on Israel

The Unifor Constitutional Convention in Vancouver has just passed a resolution that endorses “the call by Palestinian trade union for an arms embargo on Israel.”

This Instagram post highlights: “The resolution was introduced by the Canadian Freelance Union, a Unifor community chapter and Local 2025, representing union staff. It follows a recent report released by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and members of the Arms Embargo Now (AEN) coalition.”

The full text of the resolution states:

Resolution No. 14 – Support Palestinian Trade Unions and Palestinian Workers

UNIFOR WILL:

1. Work with Global Union Federation partners, national and international unions and other allied organizations and coalitions to support Palestinian Trade Unions and Palestinian workers who are affected by the ongoing genocide.
2. Endorse the call by Palestinian trade unions for an arms embargo on Israel.
3. Educate members on issues impacting Palestinians, including how to combat Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and antisemitism through Unifor’s Education program.
4. Continue to demand a permanent ceasefire, sustainable peace and end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.

BECAUSE:

• Unifor has endorsed the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and is committed to human rights and international solidarity.
• Unifor has endorsed the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) at its 2017 Canada Council; and
• Unifor is committed to human rights and international solidarity; and
• As trade unionists, we must stand in solidarity with Palestinian trade unions.
• International legal rulings have declared Israel’s occupation of Palestine (including the West Bank and East Jerusalem) to be a violation of laws that obligates governments to prevent, prohibit, and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.

Respectfully submitted by Local 2025 and the Canadian Freelance Union

This resolution passed on August 26 follows this letter from Unifor National President Lana Payne to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney on June 25 that states: “Prime Minister, we call on your government to fulfil Canada’s obligations under domestic and international law and suspend exports to Israel of any and all arms and military equipment manufactured in Canada. Canada’s participation in a global arms embargo on Israel is the only reasonable course of action to end the genocide in Palestine.”

As noted on their website: “Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union, with more than 320,000 members across the country, working in every major sector of the Canadian economy.”

As a signatory to the Arms Embargo Now demand for a “a full, immediate arms embargo on Israel” and a partner that receives the support of the Unifor Social Justice Fund, Peace Brigades International-Canada welcomes this resolution.

According to Government of Canada figures, Canada exported $30,641,495.83 of military goods to Israel in 2023 and $18,906,035.86 in 2024. On July 4, 2025, The Maple reported: “Data from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) shows that in February the Liberal government authorized two new military export permits to Israel worth a combined total of $37.2-million.” These figures do not include other “military goods,” including the crucial components for F-35 fighter jets, that are indirectly exported from Canada to Israel via the United States.

While the actual numbers are likely much higher, we note that at least 31 Palestinian human rights defenders (documented by Front Line Defenders) and 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers (Committee to Protect Journalists) are among the more than 62,000 Palestinians killed by Israel over the past 22 months. •

End the Genocide in Palestine

Starting with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) 53rd Convention in 1988, delegates to UE conventions have adopted resolutions opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; supporting the human rights of the Palestinians; opposing the one-sided policy by which the US government funds and arms the Israeli government; and calling for negotiations toward a just and peaceful solution to this longstanding conflict.

At our 74th Convention in 2015, we took our commitment to peace and justice for Palestine and Israel one step further, endorsing the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS arose from a 2005 call by Palestinian trade unions and hundreds of Palestinian civil society organizations for a worldwide, nonviolent campaign of boycotts to pressure Israel to end its apartheid rule over the Palestinians. BDS was modeled after the 1980s international solidarity campaign that put economic pressure on South Africa’s government and helped end apartheid.

The Israeli government used the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas (which happened shortly after our last convention) as a pretext to launch a military assault against the entire population of Gaza. They have killed over 90,000 civilians, the majority of them women and children, and displaced virtually the entire population. They have decimated the healthcare system, bombed every last Palestinian university, systematically killed journalists covering the conflict, and are engaging in deliberate starvation of the population. Israel is now openly proposing illegally moving Palestinians from their land to other countries, some of which are themselves war-torn. There is only one word which is adequate to describe Israel’s actions, and that is genocide.

In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Israeli government continues to confiscate homes and land to expand Israeli settlements. Palestinians are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers. In a recent report, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) found that on average 100 Palestinians are attacked monthly by Israeli settlers in the West Bank (up from 30 in 2024) and 168 have been killed since the start of 2025. Since 1967 Israel has settled more than 750,000 of its citizens in the West Bank, and has been building walls that prevent Palestinians from accessing needed resources. Farmers are cut off from their fields and water supplies, which could soon wipe out Palestinian agriculture in the Jordan River Valley. All of this is illegal under international law.

For the past several decades, the US working class has been forced to fund this genocidal project through US military aid to Israel, which UE has long called to end. The ruling class, Democrats and Republicans alike, scramble to provide intellectual and political justification for continuing to send billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Israel, while millions of working people here at home lack jobs, healthcare, or adequate housing, and are increasingly left homeless by devastating climate catastrophes and forced into unlivable and undignified conditions. Because Israel’s military is so heavily funded and supplied by our government, the US labour movement has a special responsibility to speak out against what is being done with our tax dollars.

Despite the brutality of Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people, the US ruling class is using false claims of “antisemitism” to smear anyone who criticizes Israel, and to justify repression of protests against Israel’s actions. Members of UE and other unions have been suspended, fired, or detained because of their protest activities. Much like scapegoating of communists during the McCarthy era, these baseless accusations are being used to attack UE and other militant unions and organizations.

Due to the undue influence of pro-Israel power brokers such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI), many American states have passed laws forbidding involvement in BDS activities, and paint any opposition to Israel’s crimes as bigotry and antisemitism. Israel rightly proclaims “never again” in response to the genocidal Holocaust by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s, yet engages in these unconscionable actions.

UE has played an important leadership role in mobilizing labour opposition to Israel’s actions, including cosponsoring a labour statement calling for a ceasefire in October 2023, helping to initiate and lead the National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC), and working with other unions to send a letter to Biden demanding that he end US military aid to Israel in July 2024. Both NLNC and the letter to Biden were joined by unions representing the majority of union members in the US—the first time in the history of the modern labour movement that a significant part of the US labour movement has opposed the foreign policy of a Democratic President.

In the face of Israel’s genocide, we intend to continue to mobilize our members and our allies to demand an end to the Israeli apartheid regime and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and to pursue effective means to achieve it, such as BDS.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79th UE CONVENTION:

1. Demands that the US government immediately cease all military aid to Israel, and instead pressure Israel to:
   1. End their apartheid policies, and the genocide, occupation, and destruction in Gaza, as well as the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and;
   2. Negotiate a peace agreement on the basis of equality, democracy, and human rights for the Palestinian and Israeli people, including Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for refugees;
2. Endorses the BDS movement and urges the union at all levels to become engaged in BDS and the movement for peace, justice and equality for Palestinians by:
3. Creating forums for locals that have undertaken campaigns for divestment to lead workshops for member-to-member education so that other locals may learn from them;
4. Creating and distributing educational materials about BDS;
5. Identifying areas of investment not in compliance with BDS;
6. Opposes all anti-BDS legislation, and opposes all efforts to outlaw BDS, existing BDS legislation, and otherwise punish critics of Israeli policies;
7. Condemns the use of accusations of “antisemitism” to silence critics of Israel, and the use of such charges to suspend, fire, detain or deport people whose only “crime” is speech or protest.

Adopted unanimously by delegates to the 79th UE Convention on Tuesday, August 26. •