Jewish News: Trade unions change tack on Israel 17Aug09 August 17, 2009
by Peter Kohn – The Australian Jewish News – 17 August 2009
AN initiative pioneered by unions in three countries to campaign for moderation in union views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is significant. So is the involvement of an Australian union.
The Australian Workers Union (AWU) has partnered with unions from the US and Britain in launching Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP), to oppose union movements boycotting Israel.
It is a far cry from the union battles of the 1970s, when the Middle East was on the Cold War chequerboard and some Australian unions clung to the doctrinaire Left, demonising Israel.
It coincided with a period of postwar ideological factionalism in the Australian Labor movement after the 1955 internal split in the party. The landmark battle between the then Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies and ALP firebrand Bill Hartley over his anti-Israel radio broadcasts dominated Jewish communal news in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Until 1970, when he was dramatically ousted, Hartley had run the left-wing Victorian ALP branch, the last bastion of the hardline Left, with the patronage of left-wing unions.
Monash University social policy academic Dr Philip Mendes, who co-edited Jews and Australian Politics, said some unions “had close relations with the Iraqi government and other Arab/Muslim countries”. Those activities alienated the Jewish community, he said, and sometimes failed to note that they represented only a minority of unions and unionists.
“There are still some Left unions, such as the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), which will criticise Israel, but generally in less inflammatory terms. Equally, the right-wing unions, such as the Australian Workers Union are far more open in supporting Israel than they may have been in the past.”
Yet the situation in Australia remains delicately poised. At an Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress about five years ago, the Left wanted a resolution supporting the Palestinian narrative. “I had to stare them down,” said Joe de Bruyn, national secretary of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA).
He told them “that if they went ahead with their proposal, the Right would oppose it … and we would fight them on the issue.”
AWU assistant secretary Michael Borowick believes that while some left-wingers through the years have grabbed headlines with their anti-Israel views, “the bulk of the Australian union movement has always been supportive of Israel since 1948 and that support is widespread and deeply felt today”.
Borowick has been active in the Jewish community -– with the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Council of Orthodox Synagogues of Victoria, Caulfield Hebrew Congregation and the Australasian Union of Jewish Students.
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still unresolved, unions in Europe have become radicalised again.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions has urged its country to lead an international boycott of Israel if it did not reach a peace agreement, echoing calls in Ireland and South Africa.
Britain’s Universities and Colleges Union, arguably the country’s most anti-Israel union, has called for a ban on imports from West Bank settlements, and expulsion of Israel’s ambassador.
Britain’s National Union of Teachers and the Scottish Trade Union Congress have called for bans on Israeli goods.
Roger Lyons, chair of Britain’s Trade Union Friends of Israel, described it as “a sad day when fellow trade unionists take such a one-sided, totally unproductive approach”.
In May this year, TULIP was launched in New York by AWU national secretary Paul Howes, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in the US, Stuart Appelbaum, and general secretary of the UK’s Community Union, Michael Leahy.
Howes said “There are a lot of misconceptions about the ways to bring peace to the Middle East and we don’t think it’s appropriate for trade unions to be punishing trade-union members in one country for the actions of that country’s government.”
Howes said TULIP hopes to grow and wants to narrow the gap between Histadrut and “genuine independent unionists in Palestine”, but its focus will be on educating union movements worldwide that their actions “play into the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah”.
He described TULIP as “fairly unique outside the United States”, where unionism has a more apolitical tradition on global issues.
“The solution to peace between the Palestinian people and Israeli people isn’t just reliant upon the governments of those two regions, but also on proper dialogue between workers.”
Howes, like former ACTU president Bob Hawke before him, emphasised commonalities between Australia and Israel. He sees Histadrut as “the largest and most effective independent and democratic trade-union force in the Middle East. We should work with them to assist them in projects they are running with Palestinian unionists and workers across the Green Line”.
He said Sderot, pounded by Hamas rockets, is a working-class community, while Hamas is a unionist’s worst nightmare, with “an atrocious record of oppressing trade union leaders in Gaza in particular. There have been instances of Palestinian union leaders being shot.”
Histadrut and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, an arm of Fatah, have not been asked to join TULIP, although both support it because it needs to be driven by unions outside the region, he said.
Howes said German trade union roof body DGB’s (Dachorganisation der Gewerkschaften) plan to join TULIP brings Europe’s largest national labour movement on board.
During Operation Cast Lead, the ACTU crossed swords with the Jewish community over a speech by ACTU international officer Alison Tate to a pro-Gaza rally, posted on the ACTU website.
Tate told demonstrators: “The trade union movement unreservedly condemns the illegal war on the people of Gaza.”
When the speech was condemned by Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) president Robert Goot, an ACTU spokesperson told The AJN the offending sentence would be removed from the published version of her speech.
The NSW branch of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), which is linked to the NSW ALP Right, has a strong record of fairness on Israel.
Daniel Weizman, an ETU organiser, and formerly a member of the ALP’s Bondi branch, which has a high number of Jewish members, including NSW state treasurer Eric Roozendaal, said most Australian unions support a two-state solution.
Michael Easson, secretary of the NSW Trades and Labour Council from 1989 to 1994, spoke to The AJN after returning from the Israel Leadership Dialogue with other Australian leaders.
He cut his teeth on Labor factional politics with students, including Jeremy Jones -– a past president of the ECAJ, who ran a successful ticket to rescue The University of Sydney’s Labor Club from leftists.
Easson sees a different society in Israel from the Histadrut-run economy of the 1970s -– and recalls when Histadrut had an Australian liaison officer with the ACTU, Michael Sief.
Easson’s judgement on today’s relationship between Australian unions and their Israeli counterparts is that it “is not as deep as it should be”.
Jones, a former long-time secretary of Labor Friends of Israel, recalls the Australia-Israel nexus of the Centre Left.
“There were good personal ties between union and ALP figures in Australia and the Labor leadership in Israel. On the other side of the divide were pro-Soviet union leaders who toed the party line, Maoist leaders who opposed Israel as it represented the democratic world, and some rightist anti-Semites.
“Today the decades of anti-Israel propaganda have had a negative impact. There is little real knowledge of Israel’s rebirth, or of the place of the Labor movement in modern Israel, or historically. Nevertheless, Israel has some strong support in the union movement, particularly from those leaders who appreciate Israel’s democracy.”
ACTU president Sharan Burrow told The AJN the union roof body “actively supported the International Trade Union Confederation to bring together a dialogue between unions in Palestine and Israel as part of the peace effort”.
She spoke of plans to invite a representative from both the Palestinian and Israeli unions to visit Australia.
While the ACTU has been even-handed, individual unions from time to time display their extremist credentials.
The Australian Education Union’s (AEU) members shape the thinking of Australia’s next generation in the classroom.
Its Victorian branch earlier this year permitted its journal, AEU News, to be used by campaigner Alex Nissen to declare that being hit by teargas while “monitoring checkpoints” in the Palestinian territories led her to think: “This is what it would have been like for my family in Auschwitz”.
Her remarks triggered the resignations of two AEU members, both Jewish. RMIT business teacher Max Kaltmann told The AJN he was repulsed by the Gaza-Auschwitz comparison, “a hysterical fallacy”. Devorah Komesaroff, a Melbourne teacher, said she doubts the AEU would change.
On July 30, the AWU’s Howes chaired a panel discussion on “Peace, Justice and Reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians”, involving Palestinian General Delegation head Izzat Abdul Hadi, the ECAJ’s Goot, Labor MPs Michael Danby, who is active in Parliamentary Friends of Israel, and Janelle Saffin, who is active in Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.
Saffin told her audience the topic was one fraught with “years of demonisation of the other”.
Notably, the event was opened by Paddy Crumlin, national secretary of the MUA, which has traditionally not been an ally of Israel.
Danby, who was an industrial officer for the SDA, Australia’s largest trade union, sees boycotts as an overseas phenomenon.
In Australia, “we have always have friends and opponents in the union movement”, he told The AJN.
Goot says TULIP demonstrates union leaders can come together internationally to minimise the impact of those seeking to sanction Israel’s goods and services.
A barrister in employment law and industrial relations, Goot believes that past goodwill towards Israel has been eroded within the unions and from the greater public.
“While there are many reasons for that erosion, they include the changed facts on the ground in the Middle East, the influence of the Left within the trade union movement, the influence generally on Israel’s position in the media, and the failure by the Jewish community sufficiently to build an alliance with the union movement on issues of common concern.”
But he said the ECAJ has begun to build closer ties to Australian unions. “Much more, however, needs to be and will be done.”
LINK: http://jewishnews.net.au/2009/08/17/trade-unions-change-tack-on-israel/6842
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