By Davi Paulo Souza Jr – Director of the Chemical Workers Union of São José dos Campos and Region

Today the workers of ICL Jacareí (SP) are taking forward five days of strike for basic rights: a fair Results Participation Program, implementation of a job and salary plan, an end to unrestricted outsourcing and the exhausting work regime on Saturdays. The strike is a direct response to the intolerance of the company, which refuses to negotiate with dignity and bets on the attrition and demobilization of the category.

ICL (Israel Chemicals Ltd) is an Israeli multinational that profits from the exploitation of natural resources and the workforce in different countries — including Brazil —, where it imposes degrading conditions, violates agreements and promotes job insecurity.

The workers’ struggle against corporate Zionism and the genocide of the Palestinian people

But this exploitation is not separate from the State policy of Israel. ICL is directly linked to the Zionist war machine, as part of its profits supports a regime of apartheid, occupation and genocide against the Palestinian people. The same company that denies wage increases and seeks to silence the workers in Jacareí, is complicit in the bombs that fall on Gaza, the colonization of the West Bank, the siege of Rafah and the ethnic cleansing that is carried out throughout historical Palestine.

That is why the strike at ICL is not only a local labor struggle — it is also an internationalist trench against Israeli colonial capitalism. To support this strike is to say no to Zionism, no to imperialism and no to the normalization of the Palestinian genocide as “responsible diplomacy” or “economic partnership”.

Lula’s government must immediately break all diplomatic and commercial relations with the genocidal State of Israel; otherwise, it becomes an accomplice to the massacre in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing plan carried out by Zionism against the Palestinian people, who are heroically resisting.

From the International Socialist League (ISL), we express our total solidarity with the workers of ICL Jacareí. We reinforce the call for active solidarity with the strike, both at the factory gates in Brazil and through internationalist class actions around the world.

This fight is one and the same. Against ICL and the Zionist state, in defense of labor rights and for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

Long live the strike at ICL Jacareí!

Boycott the companies complicit in the genocide!

Total rupture of commercial and diplomatic relations with the genocidal State of Israel!

For a free, democratic, secular and socialist Palestine, from the river to the sea!