The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a nearly 60-year-old nonprofit that aims to “eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism abuses,” wrote to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in late July, asking the panel to protect Jewish graduate students from the independent labor union United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
The nonprofit said that leaders of the “radical, pro-Hamas labor union” try to “impose their virulently antisemitic tactics and messaging on college campuses, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Cornell University.” (JNS sought comment from United Electrical.)
The union coerces “dues payment out of Jewish students, despite Jewish students seeking religious accommodations to dues payment as per federal antidiscrimination law,” the nonprofit said.
It added that union officials have supported calls for Israel and Jews to be destroyed. “All the while, union bosses tell Jewish students, wrongly, that they have bad or insufficient religious grounds to opt out of union dues payments,” the nonprofit said.
Jewish students at MIT secured the right to avoid paying union dues after filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The union at Stanford backed off after attorneys for Jewish and Catholic students threatened to file with the EEOC. Cornell students were able to secure accommodations in certain instances.
