By Gabriela Calugay-Casuga, Rabble, December 1, 2025
The Ontario Federation of Labour has voted to no longer handle cargo or use services associated with Israel.
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) became the fourth Canadian labour federation to adopt a hot cargo resolution against Israeli goods last week. The resolution has the OFL declare trade relationships and services with Israel to be “hot cargo” that workers will not touch.
“Hot cargo” is used to define goods that workers will not handle due to its association with exploitation or oppression.
The New Brunswick Federation of Labour was the first to adopt a resolution supporting the boycott of Israel when it passed a resolution against handling weapons bound for Israel in May. Since then, three other provincial federations of labour have taken similar actions in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario.
Kevin Levangie, a member of the national steering committee of Labour for Palestine Canada, said workers may be used to seeing hot cargo used to describe goods made with scab labour, but this pressure tactic can be used more broadly.
In St. John’s N.B., Levangie’s hometown, workers have a strong history of refusing to handle goods that were associated with human rights abuses. In July of 1979, longshore workers in St. John’s refused to ship containers of heavy water that was to be used by the government of Argentina in a nuclear reactor. At the time, Argentina was run by a military dictatorship that was known to disappear its citizens.
More recently, workers at the same port refused to move military cargo bound for Iraq during the 2003 US invasion.
“International isolation of any country that’s committing human rights abuses is a really powerful tool that we have,” Levangie said. “I think it’s going to take pressure from the bottom, pressure from workers, to enforce this international isolation.”
In October 2023, the Israeli government declared war on Hamas in Gaza after more than 1,300 Israelis were killed in a ground attack. The Israeli Defense Forces’ response has resulted in the killing of more than 67,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health authorities.
“The October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas was an atrocity,” the recently retired president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, Danny Kavanaugh, wrote in a letter signed by Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske and sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney. “The collective punishment being inflicted on millions of Palestinians in response is a crime of historic scale.”
Pressure to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza is mounting in Canada, public opinion shows. In August, a report by the Angus Reid Institute found that Canadian sympathy for Palestinians has doubled since Israel declared war in 2023.
In August, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand announced Canada would be “freezing all existing permits in 2024 that could have allowed military components to be used in Gaza.” Despite this, reports done by World Beyond War, Palestinian Youth Movement, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, and the Arms Embargo Now coalition showed that arms were still making it to Israel through the United States. Levangie said this is one of the many reasons Canadians should continue to take action in Solidarity with Palestine.
“Canadians are complicit in this ongoing genocide, and there are ways in which we can resist and stand up against genocide and apartheid,” he said.
Labour For Palestine, which has been pushing labour organizations to adopt hot cargo resolutions in relation to Israel, plans to continue building momentum against the handling of goods and services bound for the country. The organization hopes to see the Canadian Labour Congress, which represents more than three million workers, endorse the arms embargo now campaign and make a nation-wide hot cargo resolution at its convention which will take place next year.
“We’ll continue doing the stuff that we’ve been doing,” Levangie said. “That’s continuing to ask our unions to sign on to the BDS campaign, continuing to work with rank and file members to coordinate refusals to handle goods and services associated with Israel and then we’ll also be continuing our education efforts.”
The post The Ontario Federation of Labour Adopts a “Hot Cargo” Resolution Against Israel appeared first on World BEYOND War.
From World BEYOND War via this RSS feed