A girl walking in a destroyed Gaza to try and get food in August of 2024. Credit: Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia Commons Credit: Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia Commons

We celebrate May Day annually as a worker’s  holiday, (despite the attempt by business class voices to replace it with the anodyne Labour Day in September), an opportunity to count our successes and challenges in the age-old fight for worker rights. We remember one of our highest principles, that an injury to one is an injury to all. One vital way to honor that principle is by taking concrete action in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

May 15 is Nakba day, a sorrowful occasion marking the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow-motion genocide that has  horrifically accelerated since the Gaza-based October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

In late March 2025,  as the Israeli army (IDF), armed and supplied by western countries, including Canada.

yet again renewed its attacks. Health officials in Gaza reported that more than 50,000 had died beneath the bombs since October of 2023, with as yet uncounted corpses, many of them children and other civilians, rotting beneath the Gazan rubble.

According to The Lancet, one of the world’s most reputable medical journals, the actual butcher’s bill of genocide casualties runs around 40 per cent higher than the numbers reported by Gaza health authorities.

In addition to the Gaza carnage, settler and IDF attacks of Palestinians in the West Bank have caused 906 casualties between the October 7, 2023, attacks and March 25, 2025, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, some labour organizations around the world and here in Canada are taking positions that reflect solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposition to Israel’s genocide. For example, here in Vancouver where I live and write, the local labour council is co-sponsoring an event to mark Nakba Day and encourage pro-Palestinian solidarity.

Across Canada an umbrella organization of labour activists, Labour 4 Palestine

is organising solidarity actions and campaigns. They say on their web page:

“As Canadian labour activists our primary goals are: To raise awareness within our movement of the plight of the Palestinian people and workers. To actively support labour unions and workers in Palestine. To educate our members about the history of Palestinian liberation struggle. To expose the role of the Canadian state and its complicity with Israel’s violations of international law to build solidarity within our movement for Palestinian human and labour rights.”

Similar organizing is going on in the US where an April 27 press release in which  The Labor for Palestine National Network, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) join the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza’s 2025 May Day call in urging U.S. unions to “go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure”—including “general strikes and widespread civil disobedience”—against the ongoing bipartisan, U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, and to “coordinate efforts with the student movement” against the Trump regime’s domestic assault on Palestine solidarity and on “civil liberties and freedom of expression.”

As early as January, 2024, the Council of Global Unions issued a statement urging :

  • “All States Parties to the Genocide Convention to fulfil their obligation to prevent genocide: The UN Security Council and member states must take collaborative action to ensure that the provisional measures are implemented in full.
  • International Criminal Court prosecutor must expedite investigations into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel and Palestinian armed groups: A thorough and independent investigation is crucial to bring perpetrators to justice and prevent future violations.
  • World leaders to prioritise diplomacy and dialogue over violence: Secure the release of all hostages and work towards an immediate and lasting ceasefire that guarantees the safety and security of all Palestinians and Israelis.

In April of 2024, leaders of eight Global Union Federations (GUFs) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) travelled to Ramallah to convey their solidarity to unions in the West Bank and Gaza. These organisations represent almost every sector of the global economy and have members in more than 150 countries representing over 200 million workers.

During 2024, unions around the world, including here in Canada, took action to support the Palestinian led Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement.

Here are some examples of  this practical solidarity.

  • In July, seven major US labor unions representing 6 million workers called on the Biden administration to halt all military funding to Israel. Also in July, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced its complete divestment from Israel Bonds.
  • In July, OPSEU SEFPO, representing 180,000 workers in Ontario, Canada, adopted a resolution supporting BDS.
  • In October, as part of the #BlockTheBoat campaign, Greek dock workers and trade unionists at the Piraeus port in Athens stopped a container suspected of carrying bullets for Israel’s use in its genocide from being loaded onto the MV Marla Bull. The vessel was forced to leave without the cargo. In November, Moroccan dockworkers refused to load a Maersk ship with military cargo for Israel’s genocide.
  • In December, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) called on the South African government to go beyond statements of solidarity with Palestinians and take concrete action by severing diplomatic ties with Israel and imposing sanctions on it.
  • Also in December, the Swedish dockworkers’ union, Svenska hamnarbetarförbundet, voted in favour of a “blockade against handling war material to and from Israel’s apartheid and genocidal regime.” This decision will impact Swedish’s import of weapons from Israeli companies such as Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems.

This is all as it should be, and workers and their allies should continue and extend these solidarity efforts. I suggest we should urge our unions and labour organizations to condemn the genocide being waged against the Palestinian people, and call for an immediate ceasefire, as well as international aid and reparations for the Palestinian people as they rebuild on their ancestral lands. We should join in general strikes and other work stoppages to block military aid from our countries to the IDF, and we should support other workers taking such necessary and moral actions.

But while we do that, innocents are dying every day in Gaza and the West Bank. As  we should use the collective power of our unions and civil society organizations to oppose Canadian complicity in genocide, we should also take personal steps like sending money to organizations like Doctors Without Borders that do so much to relieve human suffering in Gaza and elsewhere.  Also, I urge readers to support the many online drives supporting Palestinian families. Two I have supported in the past and trust are https://gogetfunding.com/mutual-aid-for-displaced-palestinian-mother  and https://www.instagram.com/mivasair/?hl=en. Full disclosure. One of these campaigns is organized by my son and the other by a friend and ally of many years, Rabbi David Mivasair.

We cannot do everything, but we must do what we can. Happy May Day all year, my friends.

Tom Sandborn

Tom Sandborn lives and writes on unceded Indigenous territory in Vancouver. He is a widely published free lance writer who covered health policy and labour beats for the Tyee on line for a dozen years,...