UE Statements

Meeting in Pittsburgh this week, UE’s General Executive Board debated and approved a statement on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. The board declared that “The U.S. labor movement must be prepared to fight for AI to be used to improve people’s lives, not to drive mass unemployment, climate disaster, war, and increased profits for the ultrarich.” They conclude with a call “for public and worker control of Artificial Intelligence technologies, and for the end of their use for mass surveillance and as weapons of war, in order to ensure that AI tools are used for the benefit of working people and not to further enrich the capitalist class.”

On Saturday President Trump, who ran for office pledging to keep the U.S. out of military entanglements overseas, ordered extensive military strikes on Iran. These strikes are unconstitutional and reckless, and will make the world a more dangerous place on many levels. They come at great cost in both human lives and treasure.

The UE General Executive Board has issued a statement condemning the murders of Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, demanding that their killers be held legally accountable, calling for a no vote on the Homeland Security Appropriations bill that is up for Senate approval, and demanding that Congress abolish ICE entirely.

Our government’s escalating attacks on Venezuela are unconstitutional, immoral, and a massive waste of resources. The idea that Venezuela represents a military threat to the U.S. is patently absurd; the use of the U.S. military to carry out lethal attacks on fishing boats and seize oil tankers amounts to simple murder and piracy. We demand that our government immediately cease these attacks, and that Congress exercise its power to reign in this overreach by the executive branch.

UE’s Higher Education Conference Board released a statement today calling on universities to reject the so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” being promoted by the Trump administration, which asks universities to exchange autonomy for preferential funding. On Monday at 7pm ET / 4pm PT, the conference board will be hosting a “Workers Over Deals” webinar to discuss how higher ed workers can push back through collective organizing.

President Trump launched an unprovoked bombing attack on Iran this past weekend in violation of the U.S. constitution, which requires acts of war to be authorized by Congress unless there is a threat of imminent attack, which nobody has even pretended was the case. This is not only a further undermining of democracy in our country, it also is built on a set of lies for political and financial gain, just like the disastrous Iraq war 23 years ago, and will only serve to make the world, and the people of the U.S., both less safe and less economically secure.

The Trump administration’s decision to mobilize and deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to Los Angeles is disturbing and absolutely unjustified. It is an attempt to stifle dissent through military force — something which has no place in a democracy — and a signal that if we wish to preserve our democratic freedoms, working people will have to be prepared to defend them through action in the streets, in our workplaces, and at the ballot box.

Federal agents are currently on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY attempting to detain UE Local 300-Cornell Graduate Students United member Momodou Taal. Taal is an international graduate worker and visa holder who was terminated from his employment and threatened with deportation by Cornell administrators last September without just cause.

The UE officers have released a statement denouncing the arrest, detainment and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S., in retaliation for his peacefully speaking out on political issues. The officers condemned this abduction, as well as other threats by the Trump administration against universities, as “serious attacks on our civil liberties” which “will impact all working people if they are not vigorously resisted.”

The statement further points out that “History has shown that a government that feels like it can get away with detaining or deporting legal residents for political speech will also be willing to arrest or deport union leaders who speak out about bad working conditions and low wages.”