DECLARATION OF THE GLOBAL WORKERS UNION

PRESS RELEASE
1st May 2025*

*INTERNATIONAL LABOUR DAY

DECLARATION OF THE GLOBAL WORKERS UNION

“ JUSTICE FOR WORKERS, FREEDOM FOR PALESTINE* ”

Issued by: Secretariat for Malaysia–Palestine Workers Union

As the world marks International Labour Day 2025, we raise our voices in defiance of injustice and in honour of the working class everywhere — especially those who labour under fire, siege, and occupation.

Today, we highlight with urgency the dire situation in Gaza and the West Bank, where workers in all sectors — from healthcare to education, construction to agriculture — are being systematically targeted by the Israeli Occupation. Hospitals have been bombed, ambulances destroyed, schools flattened, and vital public infrastructure decimated. Entire families of workers have been wiped out. The working class of Palestine is enduring not only economic strangulation but also genocidal warfare.

The Israeli regime’s war machine has turned workplaces into battlefields, targeted trade union offices, killed doctors on duty, bombed food distribution centres, and displaced tens of thousands of workers and their families. In the West Bank, workers are arrested, assaulted, and denied their right to livelihood under apartheid laws and military checkpoints.

In the face of this brutality, we — workers and trade unionists from Malaysia and around the globe — issue this united declaration:

1. We stand in full solidarity with Palestinian workers — farmers, teachers, nurses, factory workers, builders, drivers, and all labourers — who continue to resist under siege, occupation and war.
2. We condemn the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza and the Occupied West Bank — the siege, the destruction of lives and livelihoods, and the deliberate targeting of workers, unions, hospitals, schools, markets, and all sectors of civil life.
3. We reject the complicity of global powers — especially the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and their allies — whose weapons, funding, and political cover enable Israel’s ongoing crimes.
4. We demand an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, an end to the occupation, the lifting of the siege on Gaza, and the full realization of Palestine’s right to self-determination, freedom, and return.
5. We call on trade unions and workers’ movements worldwide to take action:

Organize mass protests and workplace solidarity actions

Enforce boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS)

Refuse to handle Israeli goods and arms shipments

Build grassroots workers’ resistance against Zionist apartheid

6. We salute the courage of Palestinian trade union federations — under bombardment yet unyielding — who have called on their comrades around the world to rise with them
7. We commit to building a global anti-apartheid workers’ front, advancing the BDS movement and intensifying international pressure until Palestine is free from occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism.

From the factories of Kuala Lumpur to the ports of Durban, from the fields of Latin America to the railways of Europe — we say:

No freedom for workers without freedom for Palestine!
Justice for all workers means justice for Palestine!

On this May Day — a day of internationalism, resistance and solidarity — we pledge:

Workers of the world, unite for Palestine!

Workers of Palestine, you are not alone!

Mphd Azmi Abdul Hamid
President Malaysia – Palestine Worker Union ( MPWU )

Dr Khalil Az Zayyan
Deputy Presiden MPWU

Zuhri Yuhyi
Secretary General MPWU