The students filed complaints to the EEOC. If successful, they’ll be able to sue the grad students union.
Four Jewish graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed federal discrimination complaints against the the MIT Graduate Students Union (GSU), alleging that union officials have denied the students’ requests for religious exemptions to the forced payment of dues. Their argument rests on the union’s official endorsement of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Each of the four students’ complaints, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), contends that the union 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.”
The students had previously sent union leadership letters explaining their religious objections to paying dues and, in the process, tacitly supporting the BDS movement, to which officials replied that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees to a labor union.”
One of those students, Ph.D. candidate in computer science William Sussman, said that he was shocked by the union’s response.
“Jewish graduate students are a minority. We cannot remove our union, and we cannot talk them out of their antisemitic position — we’ve tried,” he said. “That is why many of us asked for a religious accommodation. But instead of respecting our rights, the union told me they understand my faith better than I do.”
Though Massachusetts has no right-to-work law in effect, meaning private-sector unions — including those at private colleges and universities — are broadly able to compel members to pay dues, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires unions to provide religious exemptions. Should the EEOC find in favor of the students’ claims of discrimination, it will either take legal action against the union in its own right or issue the students a “right to sue” letter, granting them standing in a federal civil-rights lawsuit.
Mark Mix, the president of the National Right to Work Foundation — which has worked with the students through this process — said this episode is a clear example of unions becoming captured by progressive politics.
“GSU union officials appear blinded by their political agenda and their desire to extract forced dues,” Mix said. “Their idea of ‘representation’ apparently includes forcing Jewish graduate students to pay money to a union the students believe has relentlessly denigrated their religious and cultural identity, all during a time when anti-Semitism is ripping across our nation and world.”