https://iclfi.org/pubs/slus/2025-pdc-helgeson
Beginning on February 4, the Swedish Dockworkers Union (Svenska Hamnarbetarförbundet) waged a six-day boycott of military cargo destined for Israel in protest against the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. The day before the action began, the bosses’ Port of Sweden association lost its attempt to have the courts rule the SDU boycott illegal. The same day, the union’s national deputy chairman Erik Helgeson was fired by his employer, Gothenburg RoRo Terminal, which accused him of breaches of “national security.” These charges are an ominous attack on the union and international labor solidarity with the besieged Palestinians. The Partisan Defense Committee demands: Reinstate Erik Helgeson with full back pay and benefits! Hands off the SDU!
From the U.S. to Europe, the imperialist sponsors of the Israeli genocide have launched wholesale assaults on pro-Palestinian activists. Branded as anti-Semites or terrorists, protesters have been brutally attacked, arrested, jailed and fired. The SDU’s six-day boycott of arms shipments to Israel points the way to the kind of workers’ action that is needed to strike a real blow against the genocidal war against the Palestinians.
Unions internationally, including the executive board of ILWU Local 10 in the Bay Area, have begun to rally to the defense of Helgeson and the SDU. What’s needed is to translate this defense into labor action against Israel’s imperialist backers, the common enemy of the international working class and the besieged Palestinians.
21 February 2025
