New Ruling Holds that Anti-Israel Graduate-Student Union Cannot Compel MIT Students to Pay Dues

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruled that Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students may not be compelled to pay dues to a union that endorsed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, allowing those students to withhold funds from a union they claim has discriminated against them “based on a failure to accommodate [their] religious beliefs and cultural heritage” and “based on national origin, race, cultural heritage & identity.”

Adina Bechhofer, Joshua Fried, Akiva Gordon, William Sussman, and Tamar Kadosh Zhitomirsky filed federal discrimination complaints with the EEOC against the MIT Graduate Students Union (GSU) alleging that union officials denied their requests for religious exemptions to the forced payment of dues. They had previously sent union leadership letter explaining their religious objections to paying dues — and supporting the BDS movement in the process — to which those union officials replied that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees to a labor union.”

While Massachusetts does not have a right-to-work law on the books, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does require unions to provide religious exemptions, and the EEOC ruled that the students may divert their union dues to charities of their choice rather than the union itself.

Sussman, a doctoral student in computer science, appeared in front of the House Education and Workforce Committee in July and described the extent to which the GSU acts as a political activist group — and a mouthpiece for pro-Hamas sentiment — rather than a labor union.

“The blood had not yet dried when my colleagues at MIT declared, ‘Victory is Ours,'” he told the committee. “The full-time GSU staff organizer told NBC10 Boston, ‘Those who rebel against oppression cannot be blamed for rebelling against that repression.’ In November, my union representative joined anti-Israel protesters who were occupying a building, and when threatened with suspensions, the GSU backed the protesters.”

Sussman told the committee that when MIT disciplined graduate-student protesters, the GSU claimed it was “external pressure from billionaire donors and right-wing politicians” that drove the punishment. Later on, he said, “the GSU pushed through a ceasefire resolution that does not mention ‘peace,’ ‘hostages,’ or ‘Hamas,'” and the GSU vice president was arrested at an anti-Israel protest in May. Despite being banned from campus, Sussman said, that official “remains on paid ‘union leave.'”

Shortly after testifying in front of the committee, Sussman told National Review that his experience with the union’s radical anti-Israel activism has caused him to question his place in the Democratic Party and the current state of left-of-center politics in general.

“Many of these left-leaning organizations were founded by Jews,” he said. “And yet, these are the organizations that are now throwing us to the wolves.”

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman, whose nonprofit represented the students in their complaint, told NR that progressive culture-war politics have effectively become the heart of many unions rather than more traditional labor concerns.

“These unions are basically failing with regard to their traditional blue-collar types,” he said. “They’ve grossly shrunken over the decades because they just can’t keep the same level of blue-collar support, so they’ve had to reach out and reinvent themselves. For example, 25 percent of the United Auto Workers membership is grad student workers. Instead of representing the guys who built cars, they’re now representing all these impressionable young people who have been miseducated on college campuses all over America.”

In Sussman’s estimation, most graduate students have no interest in being involved in union-related progressive activism. They would rather get their work done and earn their degree, he told NR.

“If I had to guess, I think the vast majority of grad students just want to be grad students,” Sussman said. “We came to grad school to do our research and study and learn and not get into political battles all the time. I feel like I’ve been derailed because it’s very hard to focus on my work when there’s constant protesting from the union. The more general campus protests are not different from the union protests. It’s a revolving door of the same characters; it’s just that, in this case, they’re using their special authority as a union.”