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House Ed, Workforce Committee subpoenas anti-Israel union

"Several of Local 2325’s members were forced to be associated with a union that had taken a critical position affecting their faith, the State of Israel, and Israel’s sovereignty.," Rep. Virginia Foxx wrote.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, during a hearing about antisemitism on campus with the presidents of Harvard, Penn and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Dec. 5, 2023. Credit: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, during a hearing about antisemitism on campus with the presidents of Harvard, Penn and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Dec. 5, 2023. Credit: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, subpoenaed the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325, a union, on Monday, after it failed to turn over documents to the committee.

The committee sought information about the union’s “contentious vote and subsequent adoption of the Resolution Calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, an End to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and Support for Workers’ Political Speech despite several union members’ objections,” per the House committee.

“On Jan. 29, 2024, the committee sent Local 2325 a letter on the vote and adoption of the resolution,” Foxx wrote. “The committee noted how several of Local 2325’s members were forced to be associated with a union that had taken a critical position affecting their faith, the State of Israel and Israel’s sovereignty.”

The House committee sought to afford the union “fair accommodations and with the opportunity to communicate with the committee about such accommodations,” and the union had “several opportunities to apprise the committee of any issues with its production,” Foxx wrote.

“However, Local 2325’s legal representative communicated only minimally and stated Local 2325 would not respond on the day the scheduled production was due,” she added. “This is unacceptable, and as a result, the committee must now resort to compulsory process.”

The anti-Israel resolution, which the union passed by a margin of 1,067 to 570, states in part that “Israel has kept the Gaza Strip under a state of siege for decades” and “the recent Israeli siege on Gaza deepens the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinian people that has been ongoing since the Nakba in 1948 and the Balfour Declaration in 1917.”

The resolution, which did not call for Hamas to release the hostages or to disarm, resolved in part to “oppose all existing and any future military aid to Israel,” to “endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement” and “support the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.”

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