UAW vote: ‘We gave the billionaire class a giant middle finger’

Curtis Blankinship (KEPW News): The Detroit News reports that the United Auto Workers voted to divest from Israel bonds and quotes a UAW member, Olga Karounos:

‘I don’t just hope, but I know that this is going to send a message to not just the billionaire class, but to politicians and any single person who is not afraid of standing up to genocide, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the United States government. and will put the United Auto Workers again on the map for standing for international solidarity.’

Navruz Baum writes in The Daily Struggle: The UAW reportedly holds at least $400,000 in these investments. Delegates from Unite All Workers for Democracy, or UAWD, the class struggle movement of the UAW, representing UAW members across the country, led the effort to divest.

UAW members have been fighting to divest dues money from Israel bonds for over 50 years. In the 1970s, the UAW Arab Workers Caucus picketed UAW events, struck and organized for the 1974 UAW constitutional convention, demanding divestment.

Workers redoubled their efforts after the apartheid state escalated its genocide in October 2023.

Karounos spoke with General Motors worker/citizen reporter Andrew Bergman.

Andrew Bergman (Unite All Workers for Democracy): Olga, you made the motion to divest from Israel bonds at the UAW convention. It just passed. How do you feel? Tell us about it.

Olga Karounos (UAW Local 2325): Amazing! I feel like we just gave the ruling class a giant middle finger. We gave the billionaire class a giant middle finger. We gave the capitalists and the imperialists a giant middle finger.

This is a moment that is going to resonate far beyond just this room. I guarantee—I know—that we have just answered the call of the Palestinian trade workers who have been calling for this for over 50 years.

We have answered the call of our fellow workers who have been walking out to protest this genocide all over the world. We have answered the call of our brothers and sisters who have been massacred by this war.

So this is the first step in the right direction for a really long fight. It’s incredible.

Andrew Bergman: And before you go, because Olga is running to the airport, stayed here for this vote. Can you tell us that room—it was not clear that we could even do this.

And many of the people in that room are still captured. They’re still captured by the administration caucus. They’re still captured, unfortunately, by the bureaucracy that keeps people from being able to actually speak their mind and fight for liberation.

What did it feel like rather than being at a meeting with your coworkers back in your local, what makes it so special to accomplish this in this kind of space?

Olga Karounos: Look, the powers that be and the ruling class and the oligarchs always divide us by fear. And there were a lot of people when we brought this amendment first—it got voted down earlier in the day—who mentioned that they were afraid. Afraid of their jobs, afraid of their livelihoods, afraid of even this resolution being discussed would shut their jobs down.

When we got up there and said, ‘We see the hard work that the aerospace engineers, the rocket manufacturers do. You are specialized laborers. I could never do what you did.’ They looked and they were surprised. They saw that we were comrades.

And I think that just that small act of solidarity, letting them know and reminding other workers that we are all in this together, that it is us versus the billionaires, it is us versus the war makers, that it is not different sectors who are all fighting over the same small little pot of money. It is us fighting against the billionaires and the ruling class.

So I think that just making a statement and letting other workers know in manufacturing that we see them and that we hear their concerns and we hear how important their work is, that gave everyone the courage to stand up together as a union, as United Auto Workers.

Andrew Bergman: Thank you, Olga. Thanks for being here.

Curtis Blankinship: For KEPW News, I’m Curtis Blankinship.

You can hear Curtis Blankinship and his program ‘Talk Is Cheap’ every Saturday at 4 p.m. on KEPW 97.3 Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.