When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations.
The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign.
“I was disappointed in the resolution on Israel and Palestine because it didn’t call for an end to armed shipments,” said Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher who attended the protest, alluding to a statement that the parent union endorsed at its convention in July.
Since last fall, many rank-and-file union members have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and took about 250 hostages. The leaders of many national unions have appeared more cautious, at times emphasizing the precipitating role of Hamas.
“We were very careful about what a moral stance was and also what the implications of every word we wrote was,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said of the resolution her union recently adopted.
In some ways, this divide reflects tensions over Israel and Gaza that exist within many institutions — like academia, the media and government.
But labor’s divide over Gaza also reflects a deeper, more existential debate: Is the future of organized labor with its left-leaning activists, who have become increasingly outspoken on various issues inside and outside the workplace? Or is it with establishment leaders whose politics are more pragmatic?
The leaders, who are generally elected, may reflect the views of most of the 10 percent of U.S. workers who belong to unions. But that percentage has been dwindling for decades. By contrast, the portion of the labor movement that has been growing rapidly in recent years — Starbucks baristas, REI workers, graduate students, medical residents — skews young and to the left, precisely the demographic that cares most about the war in Gaza.
“Insofar as the new energy is about those young people — and it mostly is — part of what comes with that is Gaza being a high priority,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist who studies labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Radical labor activists have been at odds with more moderate leaders for generations, of course, but the current divide first reared its head during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries.
At the time, many large unions lined up to endorse Hillary Clinton before her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, had a chance to gain traction with voters. As progressives became enthusiastic about Mr. Sanders, whom they tended to trust more on issues like trade, inequality and the Iraq war, many grew disenchanted with their unions’ early endorsements.
The split flared up again in 2022 when rail workers in several unions rejected a labor contract over issues like understaffing and scheduling. After President Biden worked with Congress to impose the contract nonetheless, averting a strike that he worried would damage the economy, many labor activists criticized Democrats for undermining workers’ leverage, while mainstream union leaders defended the president.
The split over Gaza has resembled these earlier fights in some respects. “There’s a general reluctance to take strong stands on anything that might risk political capital,” Dr. Milkman said, referring to labor leaders, who have generally aligned their unions with Democrats and sought to preserve their access to party leaders. When it comes to Gaza, Dr. Milkman said, many national union leaders have been reluctant to criticize the Biden administration and potentially hurt the party’s electoral chances.
In February, a 50,000-member local of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Washington State backed a campaign urging Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the presidential primary, arguing that it would pressure the Biden administration to alleviate suffering in Gaza. In response, the union’s international leadership “privately made it clear that they were not in that place,” said Joe Mizrahi, the secretary-treasurer of the Washington local, whose membership is relatively young and racially diverse.
“They are more reluctant to put out a strong statement,” Mr. Mizrahi added about the union’s leaders. After the local called for Mr. Biden to leave the presidential race in mid-July, the international union’s president, Marc Perrone, said that “we strongly support” Mr. Biden’s candidacy.
A spokesman for the international union said that it had backed a cease-fire and the return of Israeli hostages through its affiliation with other labor groups, and that it took strong stances on issues “that impact our members the most.”
Members of teachers’ unions have also parted company with their parent union. At the American Federation of Teachers convention this summer, when some members sought to amend the resolution on Gaza so it would call for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, the convention’s chair did not allow the motion to go forward.
“I would have liked to see it come to the floor to get a vote,” said Dennis Kosuth, a school nurse and member of the Chicago Teachers Union, who attended the convention.
Ms. Weingarten, the parent union’s president, noted that the adopted resolution, which called for a cease-fire in Gaza as well as “diplomacy that creates two states for two peoples,” had followed months of outreach and dialogue and was supported by a large majority of her members. She said the member who sought to introduce the amendment was allowed to speak for the idea before a vote on a related motion.
A video of the remarks indicated that the member had received spirited applause at times, though it is difficult to say how widely the views were shared. Several members of the Chicago local who said they had been disappointed with the convention resolution on Gaza said they were still encouraged by the discussion of the issue there.
Outside groups have also played a role in these debates, raising concerns that some teachers may be drawing from biased or inaccurate material, which risks misinforming their students.
“The entire subject of public education, K-12, is very, very concerning,” said Eric Fingerhut, the president of the Jewish Federations of North America, whose local federations have sought to educate labor leaders about Israel.
Mr. Fingerhut spoke with Ms. Weingarten this year and said he felt “very positive” about the relationship with her union, calling her someone who “brings substantial political and communal experience and expertise to the issue.”
But some labor experts argue that by failing to more aggressively challenge U.S. policy toward Israel, union leaders may be missing an opportunity to help rebuild their movement.
Charmaine Chua, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said one way to motivate workers to unionize might be to appeal to their interest in Gaza. “Many people are being freshly brought into union-movement work as a result of their solidarity with Palestine,” said Dr. Chua, who has helped organize workers to speak out on the issue.
At Google and other tech companies, where workers have been organizing on and off for years, the war in Gaza appeared to prompt a large increase in employees interested in joining No Tech for Apartheid, a group that pushes Google and Amazon to abandon a cloud technology contract with the Israeli government and military.
Gabriel Schubiner, a former Google employee and organizer with the group, said that the number of tech workers actively involved had grown from a few dozen to a few hundred after Oct. 7, and that many of these employees had later become interested in a wider range of workplace issues.
“They gained a really experiential understanding of how much power they actually have in the workplace,” Mx. Schubiner said. In April, Google fired more than two dozen workers involved in sit-ins over the cloud contract.
A Google spokeswoman confirmed the firings but said many members of the group were not Google employees.
The United Automobile Workers, whose president, Shawn Fain, came to power thanks largely to a left-leaning insurgent group within the union, has also rallied its members with progressive positions on political issues, like calling for a suspension of military aid to Israel. (A few other major unions also joined this effort.) The union waged a successful strike last fall and unionized its first major foreign auto plant in the South this year.
Larry Cohen, a former president of the Communications Workers of America, said the Gaza issue was a reminder that the goals of union members and the interests of the Democratic Party were not always the same, even if labor leaders sometimes lost sight of the difference.
For example, he said, calls to limit shipments of offensive weapons to Israel until there is a cease-fire might put labor at odds with the Biden administration. But these calls would most likely create enthusiasm within the labor movement, motivating existing members and helping to attract new ones.
“Everything we do needs to start with mobilizing our members,” Mr. Cohen said. “A common mistake for us as leaders is to stray away from that because we’re too concerned about being able to talk to the president.”