The College Fix

Forced to pay union that says Israel commits ‘ethnic cleansing’

University of Chicago law students have filed a free speech lawsuit against their union due to its support for Israel boycotts.

The pending federal complaint says the Graduate Students Union at UChicago infringes on students free speech rights via “a recent collective bargaining agreement.”

The agreement requires graduate students “either become dues paying members of the union, or pay an equivalent ‘agency fee,’ as a condition of continuing their work as teaching assistants, research assistants, or similar positions.”

The students object to their money being used to support the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions,” campaign against Israel and other political positions taken by the union. The law students, as research assistants, were quickly added into the union in March 2024 following a rapid vote. Less than 10 percent of UChicago law students voted in the election.

Both GSU and its parent union, the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, support the boycott, which claims that Israel is an “apartheid regime” that has committed “ethnic cleansing” and is “occupying Palestine.”

Similarly, the graduate union at the University of Chicago has joined “UChicago United for Palestine Coalition” and “reaffirmed” its commitment to BDS “just one week after the October 7 terrorist attacks,” according to the lawsuit.

The students filing the complaint depend on their jobs as teaching and research assistants to advance their careers and to provide for their education and cost-of-living expenses. And some, as the claim states, are “tortured as to how to weigh their consciences against their careers.”

The graduate union did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment in the past several weeks from The College Fix.

Attorneys representing the students also did not respond to requests for comment from The Fix.

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An advocate for worker freedom said “union bosses” often “take radical positions [that the workers] oppose.”

Patrick Semmens, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, said this based on his organization’s experience hearing from “workers seeking free legal aid.”

The workers’ rights group is involved in similar challenges relating to pro-Israel employees who object to their union’s political advocacy. Specifically, his group is also battling the electrical workers union at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He said via a media statement “the history of [United Electrical] is filled with such examples.”

Semmens cites a current case where foundation attorneys are “providing free legal aid to several Jewish graduate students at MIT who were appalled by the anti-Israel rhetoric and divisive protest activity from the union and sought to cut off all financial support to the union by seeking religious accommodations under Title VII.”

Semmens shared how at a congressional hearing, “Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman said that his phone has been ‘ringing off the hook’ since the October 7 attack on Israel because Jewish students and workers across the country are feeling increasingly targeted by union rhetoric and want to dissociate.”

While the foundation’s MIT case and this one at UChicago are at different stages, Semmens said “one thing is in common: GSU-UE union officials initially denied each of them a legally-required religious accommodation, claiming that nothing in Judaism prevented them from supporting a union.”

Under the National Labor Relations Act, “workers can opt out of membership but can be required in non-Right to Work states like Illinois to pay dues or fees to a union hierarchy as a condition of staying employed,” Semmens said.

In right-to-work states, employees have more freedom to opt out of a union.

Semmes says that he hopes the results of this case filing and others like it will be a realization by the courts “that this kind of compulsion has no place in America.”

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IMAGE: COGS Union/Instagram

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