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Follow Us on TwitterBDS Petition for Australian Unions 26Oct09 October 26, 2009
The Palestinian Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) campaign has been making great strides over the last few months. Not only have students, community members and church groups all over the world begun to come out in support the campaign, so have many unions.
Recently, the British Trade Union Congress voted in support of BDS. It has joined a growing number of unions internationally who have come out in support of BDS, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (CoSATU), Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC), Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) British University & College Union (BUCU), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya (Catalan Worker’s Union), Central Única dosTrabalhadores (Brazil), Norwegian Electrician & IT Workers Union, UNISON (UK) and many, many more.
In Australia, the campaign for BDS is still in its infancy, but due to the hard work of so many dedicated Palestine and human rights activists around the country it is starting to gain some traction. As part of this growing campaign, the Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Campaign group has been discussing what we could do to help contribute to the efforts to raise awareness of and support for the BDS campaign in the Australian union movement.
We have decided to initiate a petition, to call on the ACTU to break ties with the Histradrut. Our petition points out: “Histadrut was founded in 1920, not as a trade union federation, but in order to promote the creation of a Jewish colonial-settler state in Palestine. It formed various departments, including employment services and health services for Jewish people only. Golda Meir, who was appointed to the Histadrut executive committee in 1928, and who later became Israel’s fourth prime minister, described Histadrut as a “great colonising agency”. Histadrut continues to play this role, including as a public relations wing of the Israeli occupation – Histadrut campaigned internationally in the trade union movement to build support for the war on Gaza in January 2009”
We hope that this petition campaign will help foster discussion about the BDS and the Palestinian struggle within the union movement. It will be a longer term campaign – with plans to present the petition to the ACTU.
We would like to invite you to support the campaign by adopting the petition and carrying it on your campaign stalls and/or distributing it to unionists in your communities and cities.
If you have any questions or queries, please feel free to contact us at this email address:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign <palestinesolidaritycampaign@gmail.com>
Please return signed petitions regularly to PSC at the address on the petition.
Kim Bullimore
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Melbourne)
Download BDS Union Petition
Download BDS call by Palestinian Unions
Download Palestinian Labor Leader appeals for support for BDS
Download List of Palestinian Unions supporting BDS
Thank You.
