Towards a Labour International

Towards a Labour International
Dear friend,The struggle for justice is not a spectator sport. The West’s political-media class won’t challenge the genocide it arms and supports. We have to take action ourselves, wherever we are, if we want to confront the grave crimes against the Palestinians. Israel’s war machine is enabled by the financial, military, diplomatic, and cultural support it gets from companies around the world. In ways big or small, thousands of companies are complicit. That means workers in these companies hold the power to throw sand in the wheels of the war machine. At the start of the genocide in Gaza, Palestinian trade unions called on workers and trade unions around the world to act against their employers’ complicity with Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Many thousands of them already have. Dockworkers in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Namibia and India have refused to handle military cargo destined for Israel to use to kill Palestinians. Just this week, Moroccan dockworkers in the port of Tangiers refused to load the NYSTED MAERSK after the vessel was found to have received at least 46 US military shipments for Israel during the genocide in Gaza, following an investigation by the Progressive International and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Pressure from Japanese unions and protestors forced the Japanese giant Itochu to end cooperation with Israel’s largest private military company, Elbit Systems. Building on years of activism for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, these campaigns have spread to other parts of the economy. To connect and support existing worker-led campaigns and foster new ones, this week the Progressive International launched the Watermelon Index, a tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine. The Watermelon Index is a database of companies complicit in Israeli crimes and worker campaigns against them.
The database extensively covers the complicity of over 400 companies with the intention of supporting workers anywhere to investigate company complicity in the occupation. Companies in the database vary from big technological corporations, such as Microsoft, to insurance companies, banks, energy and logistics firms. The Watermelon Index measures complicity through the different kinds of support, including financial, military, diplomatic, cultural, trade and social, in which a company enables Israel’s occupation. A number of groups have already come together to partner the Watermelon Index alongside the Progressive International including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Campaign Against Arms Trade, United Tech and Allied Workers, No Tech for Apartheid, Energy Embargo for Palestine, Organise Now!, Disrupt Power and the Movement Research Unit. All these organisations are either involved in Palestine solidarity campaigns, have facilitated worker organising or have won in strategic campaigns against company complicity. The Palestinian Youth Movement, after publishing critical research on Maersk’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, successfully blocked a Maersk shipment with military goods from being able to dock in Spain. This was after Spain announced an arms embargo on Israel. The Palestinian Youth Movement is currently mobilising with trade unions and civil society organisations in Morocco, Turkey and Spain to disrupt the journey of Maersk shipments to Israel. No Tech for Apartheid, another partner of the Watermelon Index, is also a worker-led campaign that has organised mass sit-ins, petitions and pickets demanding the end to Project Nimbus, a contract between Google, Amazon and Israel. In February 2024, Google workers from No Tech for Apartheid and United Tech and Allied Workers organised a picket outside of Google UK Headquarters. Since the wake of Israel’s siege on Gaza, there have also been multiple pickets organised outside of arms factories from Workers for a Free Palestine and cultural worker-led mobilisations targeting institutional partnerships with insurance and energy companies from Energy Embargo for Palestine and Culture Workers against Genocide. The Progressive International has placed organising capacity behind the Watermelon Index to facilitate further worker-led campaigns. This organising drive will focus on four key sectors: logistics and shipping, technology, finance and insurance, and energy. The Index provides resources for workers to be able to request support in organising in their workplace and will be supporting key actions taking place in these four sectors in the coming months. You can read more about the launch of the Watermelon Index here.Please explore the database of over 400 complicit companies and the campaigns against them here. But most importantly, join the dozens of workers in complicit companies that have contacted us in the last few days—using this form—to whistleblow on their employers, share information about campaigns and ask for help to organise for Palestine in their workplaces. The ties of complicity with Israel’s occupation and genocide are all around us. It’s up to all of us to cut them where we can to advance Palestinian liberation. In solidarity,The Progressive International Secretariat
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