AIPAC’S BILLIONAIRE BACKERS ARE FUNDING ANTI-UNION GROUPS TOO, MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BEING SPENT TO DEMOLISH LABOUR MOVEMENT

In response to Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza, a new progressive effort, the “Reject AIPAC” coalition, is calling on federal candidates to refuse endorsements and contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose vast political operation has spent millions trying to crush left-leaning
Democrats who criticize Israel. At the same time, the labour movement, including a burgeoning network of over two hundred unions and worker organizations, has raised calls for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza.

These two blocs — progressives pushing back against AIPAC’s political influence and the labour movement — have common opponents: some of the biggest donors to the pro-Israel electoral machine are also financing the national union-busting infrastructure that has, for decades, waged a frontal assault on US
workers.

A Truthout investigation reveals that a handful of billionaire donors who have given huge sums to AIPAC’s political efforts have also spent millions funding key groups aiming to demolish the labour movement. Some of these anti-labour groups include the Job Creators Network, the Center for Union Facts, the Koch-backed
State Policy Network, the Manhattan Institute, and the Liberty Justice Center, a central group behind the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision. Moreover, major antilabour AIPAC donors from Wall Street are among the key backers of Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, who is leading the McCarthyist congressional hearings against critics of Israel on campuses and in unions.

The dual aims of some of AIPAC’s top donors — bolstering unquestioned support for Israel and crushing the labour movement — are increasingly merging. Labour historian Jeff Schuhrke has argued that anti-union forces are now deploying accusations of antisemitism to attack labour unions, and he believes that unions
must fight back against the weaponization of antisemitism against the Palestinian solidarity and labour movements.

“It’s not just about standing in solidarity with Palestine for its own sake, which is vital and important,” Schuhrke told Truthout, “but also to try to stop this . . . repressive environment that’s gunning for the labour
movement itself.”

Bernie Marcus is the cofounder and former CEO of Home Depot. He is worth nearly $10 billion. For decades, he’s used his vast wealth to fund a host of conservative organizations and far-right politicians, as well as a range of ultra-Zionist groups. Marcus is no ordinary donor to AIPAC. In the current election cycle, Marcus has given $2 million to the United Democracy Project (UDP), an AIPAC super PAC that has spent millions against progressive candidates. This makes Marcus the fourth top donor to AIPAC-tied electoral groups, according to the investigative news outlet Sludge. In the 2022 cycle, Marcus also donated $1 million to UDP.

Marcus has been a longtime enemy of the labour movement, funding numerous organizations.

One of Marcus’s pet projects is the Job Creators Network (JCN), a billionaire-backed public relations and lobbying operation that attacks the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), pushes right-to-work laws, and opposes the PRO Act as “radical labour legislation.” Marcus founded the JCN in 2010, then called the Job
Creators Alliance. Since then, he has given the JCN at least $6.9 million.

The JCN has spent nearly $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government since 2016. Its recent lobbying efforts have focused on measures like overturning the NLRB’s joint employer rule, which expanded rights for
workers with multiple employers, and pushing the National Labour Relations Board Reform Act, which would weaken the NLRB for workers by preventing a Democratic majority.

The JCN has received millions from anti-union industry groups like the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the National Restaurant Association, and JCN “partners” include FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), all key hubs of the Koch dark money empire that has been a driving force behind state-level attacks on labour unions and workers’ rights.

One of Berman’s core missions is to destroy the labour movement. “I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the  labour unions,” he told a group of oil executives in 2014. Berman’s anti-labour front groups, backed by millions in corporate cash, are key weapons that business power employs in war against labour unions.

Berman oversees a dizzying array of nonprofits and front groups aimed at attacking unions and other progressive causes, much of which resort to mudslinging and personal attacks. His Center for Union Facts
functions as the corporate elite’s attack dog against unions like the United Auto Workers and Starbucks Workers United. His Employment Policies Institute wages war against minimum-wage increases.

Through supporting Berman’s operations, big AIPAC donors like Marcus have been able to fund attacks against the labour movement and critics of Israel simultaneously. For example, the Center for Union Facts has started attacking unions that show any sympathy with Palestinian solidarity efforts. It denounced
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for opposing the repression of student protesters and attacked a leader of Starbucks Workers United who criticized Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Marcus funds other attacks on the labour movement through his huge donations to groups like the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), a right-wing law firm that played a pivotal role in the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which ruled that government workers are not required to pay dues to unions that represent them in collective bargaining.

In 2021, Marcus gave $1 million to the LJC. The LJC is part of the State Policy Network, the vast network of conservative state and national groups funded by the Koch donor network that incessantly attack labour unions and pro-worker legislation.

Along with Marcus, top AIPAC donors from Wall Street are key players in the national anti-union landscape. Paul Singer, worth $6.1 billion, is currently the fifth top donor to the AIPAC political network in the 2024 election cycle, with $1 million donated to UDP — the same amount he donated in the 2022 cycle. One of Singer’s pet projects is the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative, corporate-funded think tank that has been a consistent opponent of unions and workers’ rights. Like the Liberty Justice Center, the Manhattan Institute is part of the Koch-backed State Policy Network (SPN), which also includes groups like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity, which for years have been at the forefront of the Koch network’s anti-labour operation. The anti-union National Right to Work Foundation is also part of the SPN.

AIPAC-donating billionaires, are lining up behind the single politician who, more than anyone, is currently driving the congressional witch hunt against labor unions that voice criticism of Israel: Virginia Foxx. Foxx, who represents North Carolina’s Fifth District, chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. She’s used that seat of power to wage hearings into alleged antisemitism on campuses,  the most high-profile examples of which took place last December with the president of Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania. Foxx, whose ultraright political agenda includes an unremitting hostility to labor unions, is expanding her witch hunts to other campuses — and also, now, to unions that express solidarity with Palestinians.

As Truthout has noted, far-right billionaires like Tim Dunn, Art Pope, Harlan Crow, and the late Sheldon Adelson have also donated tens of thousands of dollars to Foxx. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee PAC, AIPAC’s political action committee, has channelled over $80,000 to Foxx since 2022.As
billionaire-backed politicians and groups increasingly use the cudgel of “antisemitism” to attack labor
unions, one thing should be clear: the Palestinian solidarity movement and the labor movement have common cause against big corporate donors that seek to destroy them both. Schuhrke says it is vital for the labour movement to resist the new McCarthyism against pro-Palestinian activists and critics of Israeli actions — many of whom themselves are union members.“This kind of repression, no matter what form
it takes,” says Schuhrke, “is always inherently the enemy of the labour movement.”

All this suggests a growing basis for a stronger alliance between the labor movement and the fight for
Palestinian rights. Indeed, in December 2023, union members led a mass march in New York City demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and calling on elected officials to reject AIPAC contributions. Right now,
thousands of unionized graduate workers, postdocs, and researchers across the University of California (UC) system, who are members of the powerful United Auto Workers Local 4811, are waging a militant strike in response to violent attacks on peaceful protesters. The union claims the UC administration committed unfair labour practices by repressing workers who were engaged in free speech over working conditions.

Local 4811 has been one of the most outspoken unions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and in displaying solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. Many members of Local 4811 participated in the UC Palestine Solidarity Encampments, and the union is calling on the UC administration to negotiate with the protest movement to reach an agreement on its demands around divestment from the UC’s investments in weapons companies that are profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I think that’s where a lot of Palestine solidarity activists in the labour movement want things to go,” said Schuhrke. “They want to see actual withholding of labour, and boycotts and divestment — things that will actually have a material impact to put real pressure on Israel and the US government to not only end the genocide, but the occupation and apartheid as well, and allow Palestine to be free.”