1,000 signatures reached
To: SAG-AFTRA, SAG-AFTRA leadership, Gabrielle Carteris
SAG-AFTRA, stop supporting the police union!
We want our union to demand that the AFL-CIO expel the IUPA.
Why is this important?
The International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) covers up and promotes racist behavior.
You, as a member of SAG-AFTRA, are currently associated with the police union, because both unions are members of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO).
We want the leadership of SAG-AFTRA to demand that the AFL-CIO remove the IUPA from membership. The WGA-East did it. We should too.
SAG-AFTRA put out a statement that essentially asked the police union to police themselves. Link to the June 11th statement: https://www.sagaftra.org/statement-police-unions-and-building-more-racially-just-and-equitable-society
This is not enough.
If the AFL-CIO does not disassociate from the police union, they (and we) will be implicit in future police murders of Black Americans.
Share widely with your fellow SAG-AFTRA members!
Full text of the letter we will be sending to SAG-AFTRA:
"To the SAG-AFTRA leadership:
We are writing to ask you to join in solidarity with the Writer’s Guild of America, East, in calling for the removal of the IUPA from the AFL-CIO membership, and to ask other affiliate unions who represent police unions to reconsider those relationships.
We, too, believe that police unions are incompatible with the AFL-CIO’s stated goals ‘to vanquish oppression, privation and cruelty in all their forms.’ Too often, police unions serve directly against the interest of workers.
The history of policing is filled with violent strikebreaking and labor movement suppression. As recently as 2018, police arrested 75 of our Unite Here members who were striking for better wages and working conditions.
We appreciate the explicit clarity in SAG-AFTRA’s June 11th statement that Black Lives Matter. However, in terms of the recommendations to our affiliate unions, the statement falls short.
Recent events have made it quite clear that as long as police unions exist to shield officers from accountability, police departments cannot and will not police their own. We must disassociate from these unions who work in opposition to our principles and endanger our members.
We urge you to call on the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO to enact the process described in Article X, section 8(b) of the AFL-CIO Constitution to suspend the AFL-CIO’s affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), on the constitutional grounds that ‘the policies or activities of [the IUPA] are consistently directed toward the achievement of the program or purposes of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedom of association and oppose the basic principles of free and democratic trade unionism.’
We also suggest that, like the WGAE, you call on other member unions of the AFL-CIO that represent police officers (such as AFSCME) to strongly consider whether those affiliations align with the goals of our labor movement. We urge officers, staff, and leadership within these unions to commit to contracts that do not evade accountability, to do the work of eradicating racism within their ranks, and to uphold their promise to serve and protect all people equally.
Signed,
Members of SAG-AFTRA"