UE in the News

Johns Hopkins University workers and students want JHU to commit to protecting both international students and research funding amid federal government changes.

Those speaking out spent much of Thursday picketing outside the university.

“There definitely has been a lot of concern among people on campus about these actions taken by the federal administration, but we are still going to stand up and protect our members and other international, and otherwise, people on campus,” said Stephen Schmidt, a member of the Teachers and Researchers United Union [UE Local 197].

[UE Local 1103-GSU President] Evan Yamaguchi, a third-year graduate worker at the University of Chicago, was among the thousands holding signs and banners.

“Workers literally had to fight for their lives just for an eight-hour workday,” he said. “So it’s crucial now more than ever for all of us to recognize that whatever rights we have aren’t given, they’re won and hard fought for.”

“It’s good that there’s a cease-fire, but it took way too long to get there, and that is largely the fault of U.S. government policy,” UE general president Carl Rosen tells In These Times. Pointing to the continuation of settler violence and Israeli military attacks in the West Bank in the days since the Gaza cease-fire began, along with Israel’s ​“bellicose approach” to neighboring countries like Syria and Lebanon, Rosen says, ​“there’s a lot of work to do to bring peace to that area and U.S. labor continues to have an interest in making sure that happens.”

In a special interview, UE President Carl Rosen demands an end to U.S. military aid “because our country is the one that enables Israel to do what it’s doing.”

“Labor unions exist to fight on behalf of the working class, and part of the fight of the working class is for peace, to not waste money on military spending, but instead direct it to social spending that lifts up the living standards of the working class and not have working people sent off to their deaths in needless wars.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders recently raised concerns about the “anticipated layoffs” at the center in a letter to a top federal immigration official. Union officials accuse the federal government of engaging in a union-busting pattern.

A group of unions representing millions of workers sent a letter on Tuesday to the White House demanding a cease-fire in the war in Gaza and that the United States stop sending military aid to Israel. [ ... ]

Given their membership, the union letter is a strong statement from a key electorate that the administration needs to update its Mideast foreign policy, a policy that Vice President Kamala Harris, who was endorsed by Mr. Biden and several top Democrats to become the Democrats’ nominee, will also have to speak for.