By Kathy Durkin
January 26, 2026
New York City
Workers at Breads Bakery stores in New York City are organizing to join the United Auto Workers union Local 2179. The workers, who have named themselves the Breaking Breads Union, are demanding respect, higher wages, overtime pay, additional wages for working on holidays and guaranteed weekly hours with a posted work schedule. Additionally, they want broken equipment replaced and company concern for workers’ safety.
But this is no ordinary union drive. These bakery workers are also demanding that the Israeli-owned company “cease to support the Israeli occupation of Gaza.” The workers say they “have been forced by the chain to create products for fundraisers for Israeli organizations and are unable to decline.” Some told of seeing videos showing atrocities inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and “your boss telling you [to make] a new specialty bread item that’s sold special and discounted for use as a fundraiser for a country that’s doing a genocide.” (the guardian.com, Jan. 15)
So far, over 30% of the 275 workers employed at Breads Bakery’s six stores have signed cards petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to join UAW Local 2179, the minimum percentage of workers who can request a vote be conducted to unionize.
They have received hundreds of messages of support in response to the bakery workers’ grievances, which are posted on social media. This is despite far-right Zionist threats and vicious anti-union calls for customers to deliberately patronize the stores to support the bosses’ pro-Israel policies and fundraising campaigns.
The Breaking Breads Union solidarity with the Palestinian people, who have been murdered, tortured and forced out of their homes, farms and businesses by the Israeli state, with U.S. backing, is propelled by the Palestinian people themselves who have resisted the U.S./Israeli siege so valiantly. It reflects the basic humanity and solidarity felt and shown by millions of workers and allies in the U.S. and worldwide for the Palestinian people.
Some other unions have voiced their support for the Palestinian people. In December 2023, the UAW called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a grouping within the union founded UAW Labor for Palestine, which demanded the union leadership divest from Israel Bonds. Also that year, Starbucks Workers United sided with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. (nytimes.com,, Jan. 13)
Hopefully, the Breaking Breads Union’s strong stance will influence other workers and unions to do more of the same.
This writer’s grandparents fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Poland, then in the Russian tsar’s empire in 1907. Her grandfather, Paul Bubrick, was a staunch anti-Zionist member of the Bund who transmitted his strong views supporting the Palestinians’ right to their country, freedom and self-determination to many of his descendants.
