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US, Israeli diplomats slam PA leader while Jerusalem worries about potential UN blacklist.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The American ambassador to the United Nations blasted the Palestinian Authority’s leader during a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday morning.

Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield chastised PA head Mahmoud Abbas for his incendiary speech during the UN’s “Nakba Day” event on May 15.

Thomas-Greenfield said that Abbas’s equivocation of Israel “with the lies of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels” was a “gross affront to Holocaust victims and survivors.”

She added that making such a statement “about the world’s only Jewish state is entirely unacceptable, especially during a time of rising antisemitic violence around the world.”

In that speech, Abbas aired out a list of grievances he said contributed to the Palestinians’ current predicament, including a claim that the United States and the United Kingdom sent their Jews to the Land of Israel in order to benefit their own countries.

Thomas-Greenfield said on May 24 that Abbas’s rhetoric was “totally without basis, and it is deeply offensive to the American people.”

Notably, the United States was among 45 countries that did not attend the “Nakba Day” event, according to the Israeli mission to the United Nations, and no U.S. State Department officials met with Abbas during his trip. No senior UN officials met with him either.

Thomas-Greenfield was also critical on Wednesday of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s May 21 visit to the Temple Mount, which she deemed “provocative,” including the “accompanying inflammatory rhetoric.” She said, “This holy place should not be used for political purposes. We call on all parties to respect the sanctity.”

She also repeated the State Department’s stated position of being “deeply troubled” by Israel’s decision to allow citizens back into the area of Homesh in northern Samaria, one of four area settlements previously abandoned during the unilateral 2005 Gaza disengagement.

The Israeli government reportedly told Washington that it did not intend to reopen Homesh as a settlement, even as a military decree allowed for Jews to reenter the hilltop outpost.

Thomas-Greenfield condemned anti-Arab speech that occurred during the May 18 flag day march through Jerusalem on May 18. The chants “are outrageous and they are unacceptable,” she said.

‘Palestinian children as human shields’

Separately, UN Secretary-General António Guterres met on Tuesday with Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. In that Defense Ministry role, Alian is in charge of implementing the government’s civilian policy within the territories of Judea and Samaria.

The purpose of the meeting was to present Guterres with data and context as the UN leader decides whether to include Israel on a blacklist of countries and organizations that harm children in conflict zones.

The Israeli mission to the United Nations said Alian gave Guterres information relevant to Palestinian minors injured by errant missiles fired by Gaza-based terror groups that fall short into Gazan territory, along with evidence that a number of Palestinian minors killed in Israeli counterterrorism operations have substantial ties to terror groups, thereby distorting the picture painted in UN reports.

“The secretary-general was also provided with examples of the incitement to terror that is rampant within the Palestinian Authority, both on social media and Internet networks and in schools, which in turn cause a high level of children and teenagers to be involved in terrorist activities,” a statement from the mission said.

The report generally names and shames notorious terror organizations such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram for the harm perpetrated on children. The addition of Israel to the list would be a boon to those seeking to delegitimize the country.

A 2021 report warned that Israel would be added to the list should Palestinian minor casualty numbers rise in 2022. The figures trended downward last year, but a rise in those numbers in 2023 has Israeli officials concerned that Guterres will take action, according to JNS sources.

“We presented the secretary-general with clear data proving that the majority of Palestinian minors killed in the past year were involved in acts of violence and terrorism, and this information was omitted from the UN data, along with the fact that terrorist organizations use Palestinian children as human shields, and fire missiles and rockets from densely populated areas,” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan wrote in the statement.

He added: “Whoever is responsible for the incitement and recruitment of minors for murder and terrorism is the one who should be included on the blacklist, not the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], which is the most moral army in the world.”

A spokesman for Guterres would not provide a readout or details of the meeting between Guterres and Alian or respond directly when asked if Israel should be concerned with the report’s impending release, telling JNS that “there is great interest around the report” and that “everyone needs to be patient.”

The spokesman said the report is expected in late June or early July.

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“The circumstances of the case are being investigated by the local authorities,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated.

By World Israel News Staff

Israeli citizen Rasan Shamsiah, 32, was murdered in Dubai Wednesday, Hebrew-language media reported.

A resident of Akko (Acre), a mixed Arab-Jewish city in the north, Shamsiah was stabbed 35 times, apparently regarding a longtime dispute between two families that led to the victim’s decision to flee to the Emirates.

Ma’ariv reported that members of rival families were aware of his plans and waited for him in Dubai.

The victim was known to Israeli police.

“The matter is known to the Israeli consul in Dubai and the department for Israelis abroad in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The circumstances of the case are being investigated by the local authorities,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated.

Police in Dubai reportedly arrested suspects and updated the Israeli police.

Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has vowed that his ministry would engage in “total war” to restore governance to Israel’s crime-ridden north.

In recent years, residents have suffered from a massive crime wave in the Galilee and Negev.

On Sunday, dozens of Arab-Israelis protested what they referred to as a lack of police response to crimes in their community.

The vast majority of serious crimes in the Arab community, such as murder, go unsolved, largely due to residents’ resistance to testifying in court and refusal to provide eyewitness testimony to police. Arab MKs often complain of racism and discrimination when police do engage in crackdown efforts in Arab towns and cities.

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WestJet pilots just secured a deal from the airline, averting a strike at the 11th hour. It’s a win that reinforces the truth that taking proactive labor actions delivers results — a noteworthy fact for an industry currently witnessing a labor-rights push.

A WestJet Airlines airplane is seen at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, on May 16, 2023. (Mert Alper Dervis / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Last week, on the eve of a long weekend, WestJet and Swoop pilots secured a tentative agreement, subject to member ratification, that averted a strike. WestJet management was initially ready to go to war with its pilots, going so far as to threaten and prepare for a lockout. Then the chest-thumping gave way to the reality that management was in an untenable position, and now it’s all smiles and backslapping after workers stood firm.

The four-year contract includes improvements in take-home pay to the tune of CAD$400 million, retroactive payment to January, the option of a pension, and a handful of other quality-of-life improvements. It’s a big win for workers in a tough industry who are proving once more that labor action delivers results.

As Captain Bernie Lewall, WestJet pilot and chair of the Master Executive Council said on the council’s podcast, “All our talking points have been about making WestJet a career airline.” Prior to the agreement in principle, WestJet pilots were paid toward the lower end of the North American average. The new deal will bump them up considerably and, importantly, remedy the company’s conspicuously absent pension option.

WestJet was bought by private equity company Onex in 2019 in a $5 billion deal. At the time, then mayor of Calgary Naheed Nenshi said, “Private equity firms buy companies for one of three reasons: cut costs, grow the business, or restructure the industry. Which is it?” The company was struggling at the time and had battled their employees off and on. This conflict ratcheted up when the company’s flight attendants began organizing in 2018.

Airline pilots across North America are in the midst of a labor-rights push. Last week, FedEx pilots voted in favor of a strike as they agitate for higher pay. Seizing this particular moment is good strategy for organizers. As Reuters reports, “With aviators in short supply and air travel demand booming, pilots are enjoying enhanced bargaining power, encouraging them to push for better contracts with airlines and parcel firms.” Around the same time, American Airlines pilots reached their own four-year agreement in principle, just after Delta Air Lines workers did the same. The Globe and Mail reports that the two deals are comparable. In May, Southwest pilots also voted for a strike mandate, and Air Canada workers are currently pushing for their own better deal.

The airline industry is notorious for its poor treatment of workers. Last summer marked an all-time low, largely influenced by the pandemic, although the underlying issues had been brewing for quite some time. At the time, workers were quitting en masse amid delays, cancellations, lost baggage, plus widespread disrespect, fatigue, and illness.

Management was nowhere to be found across the industry, particularly in Canada. And all of this was playing out against the backdrop of a generational shift across sectors. Now airlines are struggling to catch up to changes, including new hires. Indeed, in January, a pilot shortage was named as a major contributor to travel chaos. It ought to surprise no one, then, that labor is taking this opportunity to catch up after years of neglect.

Lewall’s comment that “all our talking points have been about making WestJet a career airline” is important. It echoes a common theme in labor bargaining — workers aren’t just after more cash. They want respect, safe working conditions, stability, and a future within which they can feel secure.

Labor battles often revolve around safeguarding careers, not simply short-term improvements. They encompass medium- to long-term aspirations that contribute to stable employment. Viewing the WestJet labor dispute through the lens of these sorts of long-term calculations, it’s no surprise, given the paltriness of its employee offerings, that the air carrier has been having a pilot retention problem. Similarly, it comes as no surprise that Southwest Airlines has been having its own issues with retention, which contributed to the utter catastrophe that was holiday flights last winter.

Both labor and management across industries ought to take notes and lessons from the struggle for better deals for airline pilots. Labor is having a moment in both the private and public sectors across North America, and it is seizing it. At the heart of the battles at play are structural market changes, shifting attitudes and expectations, and new standards. One of the virtues of collective bargaining is that a win by one union or group of unions may set a precedent for others — one good deal helps pave the way for the next good deal.

In a competitive labor market, such as the one the airline industry faces, workers have the opportunity to enhance their bargaining power and negotiate improved terms with their employers. It is crucial for workers to seize this moment. At a minimum, management should acknowledge that workers deserve and desire fair compensation. But there’s more to it than that. They also want respect and stability, even if some workers put a premium on job flexibility. Retaining workers requires, for instance, a fair pension, just as protecting them requires safe working conditions.

You’d think all of this would be obvious, even automatic, but of course it’s not. Maintaining and extending labor rights and fair pay is a perpetual struggle in which management and owners are on one side and workers on another. That doesn’t mean that the two sides can’t find a way to coexist, but it does mean that they are always going to be in an antagonistic relationship. As long as there is a class divide between those who labor and those who set the rules and conditions under which that labor is done, struggles like those affecting the airline industry are inevitable. The recent wins do at least remind us once more that better deals are always possible — if you’re prepared to fight for it and to collectively withhold your labor in the process.

The Halutza dairy farm established in the Negev desert established just only a year ago will become the largest in Israel, with support from Jewish National Fund-USA. And the cows will be the country’s happiest.

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Organizing workplaces like Amazon with enormous turnover is a steep challenge. But workers there and elsewhere are experimenting with different tactics to unionize despite the churn.

Amazon warehouse workers protest Amazon’s unfair labor practices and shameful response to workers’ demands for better, safer jobs with fair wages and an end to retaliation at Amazon Air Hub on Friday, October 14, 2022 in San Bernardino, CA. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

When the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) first submitted union authorization cards, “we had to withdraw and file again,” recalled organizing committee member Justine Medina, “because Amazon challenged over one thousand of our signatures saying they no longer worked there.”

The sky-high turnover at the eight-thousand-worker fulfillment center on New York’s Staten Island, made collecting cards “a race against Amazon firing everyone,” she said.

Amazon has annual turnover of 150 percent. “They design the productivity quota, the rates system, to be a constant speedup situation, and that makes it hard to keep the job,” said Medina, who still works at the warehouse. Several ALU leaders have been fired.

Still, ALU, an independent union now with affiliates in Kentucky and California, was able to collect enough valid cards and win its election in 2022. “The faster the turnover is, the harder it is to organize,” said Medina. “You can still do it, but it’s obviously a challenge.”

Despite the churn, at Amazon, in charter schools, in restaurants, and among student workers, unions are developing strategies to organize high-turnover workplaces.

Built-In Turnover

The 150 percent turnover figure at Amazon can be misleading: some people stay for years while a lot more stay briefly. But at Grinnell College in Iowa, where student dining workers organized a union in 2016, the workforce of undergraduates turns over completely every four years.

In light of this, the Grinnell Union of Student Dining Workers won in its first contract the right to do a union orientation with new workers.

The union deliberately kept contracts short — just two years long — so at least some members remember the details of the last negotiation, said union member Isaiah Gutman: “Outside the nuts and bolts, the negotiation experience helps members and leaders understand who we are up against, what [management] thinks of us.”

Resident advisors at Columbia University in New York City faced even more intense turnover when they started to organize last year. Only sophomores and above are eligible, and nearly half the workforce of 153 turns over every year.

To cope, they went public with the union earlier than would be recommended in a normal union drive, circulating a campus-wide petition on wages and worker input. They needed to cast a wide net to reach incoming RAs, said organizing committee member Leena Yumeen.

Columbia RAs attend a sixty-hour training before the semester starts, so the union, the Columbia University Resident Advisor Collective, used that opportunity to talk to new RAs about workplace problems and got one hundred to sign up for a group chat that was explicitly union. In May the RAs won their union election with 95 percent of the vote.

“Coworker Culture”

Ted Miin works at an Amazon delivery station in Chicago where, despite high turnover, workers have won drinking water and paid sick time, and conducted safety strikes after COVID hit. The independent worker-led collective Amazonians United coordinated walkouts at two stations and won a $2 raise that was extended to all delivery stations in Chicago.

Though workers don’t have a union that’s recognized by the company, new hires quickly learn about Amazonians United, because coworkers talk to them on break, and might invite them to a nearby potluck lunch after work (shifts are 1:00 a. m. to noon).

Their conversations with new workers emphasize a “coworker culture,” Miin said, “bringing attention to what the managers are doing, how they’re treating us, and building a culture where coworkers will look out for each other, don’t snitch on each other. . . . That kind of culture picks up pretty quick.” They petitioned to make their break room worker-only, and managers no longer sit there.

As a result, the facility has had a hard time finding workers willing to move up to management, Miin said. Two even stepped down after promotions.

Amazonians United also builds cohesion through a group chat, getaways, and get-togethers at restaurants, parks, ice-cream shops, or a neighborhood organization near the workplace. They also conduct a Union School political education program and hold annual citywide barbeques.

Recognizing that even committed organizers may leave or get fired, Amazonians United works to keep them in the union. “We have to develop our consciousness as a shared class that should be continuing to work and build together,” Miin said.

Even after they leave Amazon, some people continue to participate in the Union School and social events. One person used techniques learned fighting Amazon to stop wage theft at a new job administering COVID tests in prisons.

Union Outside Workplace

The same spirit animates the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a new group started in Durham, North Carolina. Its structure is designed for workers who often switch low-wage jobs, like Iesha Franceis. She has worked in fast food and retail, and now works at a long-term care facility, but the whole time she has been a USSW member.

When COVID hit, she was working at Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers in Durham. Franceis and her coworkers conducted a four-day safety strike in October 2020, winning COVID protocols and paid quarantine time not just for her store but also for the thirty-two others owned by the same franchisee.

When they struck a year later because safety had backslid, the workforce was entirely new except for Franceis and one coworker, Jamila Allen, and included lots of high-school students.

“They were so amazed at what they did, at the fact that they walked out of the store, and the store shut down,” Franceis said. She knew that feeling from her first strike. “It was a whole new world for them.”

Like Amazonians United, USSW hosts a lot of social events and meetings. The union asks everybody to bring two new people each time. USSW members also will walk into stores where they don’t know anyone, introduce themselves, and strike up a conversation about working conditions.

“We know this industry. Everybody’s going through the same problems — not enough work time or not enough money, harassment. It’s universal,” said Franceis.

Strikes Help

At charter schools in Chicago, annual turnover ranges from 15 to 30 percent. Turnover hampered but did not prevent charter organizing, said Chris Baehrend, former president of the charter teachers union. Sometimes losing important leaders meant organizing committees didn’t have the strength to go public with an organizing drive by the end of the year, he said, which was a “huge disappointment.”

Still, they were able to organize thirty-five schools under thirteen different employers, and in 2018 became a division of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Baehrend is now a CTU organizer.

In 2018, teachers and paraprofessionals struck fifteen schools in the Acero chain, the first charter strike in the country. That made it easier to strike up a conversation about the union.

“New members come in and say, ‘I hear you strike here, that’s scary,’” Baehrend said. “But it starts a conversation about what is the union’s power.”

The union also maps schools to identify new people and “pushes delegates to meet new people who come in,” he said. (Delegates are like stewards.)

Strong Basics

The more visible, vocal, effective, and participatory the union is, the easier it is to incorporate new people, said veteran union organizer Gene Bruskin, who has organized in food production, nursing, hotels, and more.

In new organizing, “you can’t avoid the fundamental organizing premises of a strong, representative, active committee and a visible campaign,” Bruskin said. “Without that, the turnover hurts you much more.”

Bruskin worked on organizing Smithfield, the five-thousand-worker pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, an open shop (“right to work”) state. The workers faced massive retaliation — at one point the company fired a third of the workforce, claiming that many Latino immigrant workers didn’t have proper documentation. The union had to completely rebuild its committee after that, but eventually won its union election in 2008.

Meanwhile, Bruskin noted, a neighboring poultry plant that already had a union had “30 percent membership, a weak contract, and they didn’t service it. Nobody’s going to join that union because you walk in there and people will tell you, the union’s for sh*t.”

At Smithfield, the union won an hour to orient any new hires. “An hour with ten people, and you have a good program, chances are you’re going to sign up eight of them,” said Bruskin. But he said many unions don’t take orientations seriously.

Jenn Gott, a pre-loader and Teamster steward at a United Parcel Service (UPS) warehouse in Davenport, Iowa, said it’s important to reach new people right away and tell them about the union. “If you don’t feel like you were invited to be part of it from the jump, then why now?”

Iowa is open shop, so new hires don’t have to join the union, but Local 710’s contract says the union can get contact information for any new hires. And every month they get ten minutes to talk with the new people.

Getting management to allow this is sometimes a battle, said Gott, but it’s worth it. She tells new workers, “I’ve been here twenty-eight years. I was fired once, and I’m here because of the union.”

Union Reduces Churn

Union gains — and the fact that workers are organizing together — can make jobs worth keeping.

Winning strikes teach you that you can make changes where you are, said the USSW’s Franceis: “That just lets you know you don’t have to quit and go to another job only to experience the same problems on the same level or at a higher level.” USSW’s goal, she said, is to make low-wage jobs into respectable high-paying union jobs.

A strong union presence keeps people from getting picked on by managers. “People get in trouble, somebody stands up for them, ‘Oh, don’t let them do that, come on, we’ll talk to your shop steward,’” said Bruskin. “That, and having a strong contract, keeps a lot of people from leaving.”

And day-to-day solidarity with your coworkers directly challenges high turnover, said Miin at the Amazon delivery station: “Many coworkers said, ‘I would have quit long ago if it wasn’t for this group. I never worked anywhere that has a group like this.’”

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