Delegates to the United Auto Workers’ 39th Constitutional Convention in Detroit took up union business that ran well past contract bargaining, asserting the union’s weight on behalf of all the workers who keep the world economy running.
On June 18, the delegates voted to pull union funds out of Israel bonds, refusing to keep bankrolling Israel’s war of genocide. The vote makes the UAW the first major U.S. union to divest from the apartheid state, and it marks a rank-and-file struggle breaking into the open inside the labor movement.
UAW officials kept divestment off the convention agenda at the outset. Members at five locals — 869, 1115, 2320, 2325 and 7902 — had already voted to send divestment amendments to Detroit. On June 17, Olga Karounos, a legal services worker from New York and a member of Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), moved to call the divestment amendment out of committee. By UAWD’s count, 147 delegates stood with her, past the 128 needed to put it on the floor. The next day the convention debated it and adopted it, 321 to 287.
Earlier on June 17, UAWD member Mike Davis, a parts worker from Ohio, had tried to bring a stronger measure to the floor. That amendment, End Complicity With Israeli Genocide and Imperialist Wars, would have gone beyond divestment. It would have shielded weapons workers — protecting their jobs and pay if they struck to halt arms shipments to Israel or faced retaliation for doing so — and it would have cut union ties to the apartheid Histadrut labor organization. Davis’ motion drew 69 delegates to their feet, short of the 128 required.
The divestment vote was big step forward. A previous UAW Executive Board vote on divestment failed on May 3, 2024. The vote came after sustained worker pressure and demands for action on the issue from multiple union locals.
UAW members have been fighting to divest dues money from Israel bonds for over fifty 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.
UAW’s divestment shows the potential for greater militancy and labor solidarity action within U.S. unions, coming as workers around the world, in Belgium, France, Greece, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and beyond have even refused to handle weapons and Israeli-bound cargo. The U.S. Palestine support movement has won the divestment of public funds in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, and New York City.
In other UAWD actions, delegates introduced amendments to “Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers,” as well as an amendment to “Fight Layoffs with Work Sharing.” Those amendments opened discussions and raised consciousness, but fell short of winning the vote.
June 16, UAWD member Shelly Pires introduced the amendment to Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers. It would allow union meetings to discuss striking in the event of ICE attacks in the area. The amendment was debated with impassioned speeches about the importance of building working-class capacity to shut down production with political strikes. UAW Local 2325 has already implemented a similar structure.
UAWD’s amendment to Fight Layoffs with Work Sharing would require UAW negotiators to bargain work-sharing provisions, spreading available work across the entire bargaining unit instead of throwing some workers out of a job. The resolution notes that “thousands of UAW members have recently been laid off at John Deere, Stellantis, General Motors, Ultium, and numerous IPS facilities.”
These amendments show rank-and-file initiative for political action. They challenge the traditional union leadership claims that political action by workers might disrupt labor-management agreements and disturb the illusion of labor peace. But that labor peace served the bosses.
These contracts allowed them to grow wealth while workers’ living standards were driven down. That arrangement is now being challenged. The Pentagon wars are coming home at jet speed, and the union members appear to be responding faster than their leaders.
The workers’ struggle on the floor of the convention occurred at the same time that the Trump administration, the Pentagon and the auto bosses are seeking to reframe Detroit’s auto industry into a military manufacturing hub. Washington is pushing for a draconian $1.5 trillion military budget to replenish its depleted arsenal of lethal weapons. They want to employ the productivity of Detroit to arm their military adventures and line their pockets with the lucrative contracts.
UAW workers see nothing to be gained in weapons production that ultimately destroys their work.
Convention details as reported by UAWD’s Daily Struggle.
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