How Breads Bakery in New York became a target of anti-Zionist union activism

Breaking Breads echoed campus protesters, especially as it put “Israeli” in scare quotes. And while UAW may seem like a non sequitur, it has replaced its declining auto worker membership with aspiring academics and others. In New York City, UAW already represents graduate students at Columbia University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and New York University.

UAW also suits Breaking Breads, having called “for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine” on December 1, 2023. That same statement announced UAW’s creation of “a Divestment and Just Transition working group.”

Breaking Breads is pushing toward such divestment. However, the bakery’s leadership has its own strong support. Tal Shuster, co-chair of the Israeli-American Council (IAC), told me: “Once we heard about it, we contacted the owners. We know them both and offered them any type of help they want. If it’s to come and be a customer, wonderful. To come and volunteer and help them in the kitchen? We told them the entire community will be there immediately.” Shuster said Breads’ leaders were “grateful” and asked only: “Come to shop here like you do all the time.” New Yorkers have obliged. Last Friday, The Times of Israel’s Luke Tress tweeted a video showing how “hundreds turn[ed] out to support Israeli-owned Breads Bakery on the Upper West Side”.

For now, Breads Bakery remains union-free. That won’t change without bakery leadership recognising the union or pro-union employees approaching the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a secret ballot election and winning a majority of votes. There would still be limits to union power, though.

National Jewish Advocacy Center CEO Mark Goldfeder told me: “There are some mandatory subjects of bargaining, like wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, but these [other demands] do not fall under that category.” Put differently, a union couldn’t determine bakery customers or causes the bakery supports.

Employers can lawfully discipline employees “refusing to do assigned work or engaging in partial/intermittent work stoppages that the NLRB treats as unprotected” or “public disparagement that isn’t framed as part of a labour dispute or is ‘so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously untrue’ that it loses protection,” Goldfeder explained. However, NJAC Associate Director Ben Schlager warned discipline would “invite an avalanche of litigation”, saying “reassignment, rather than termination, would be the safer course”.

Goldfeder flagged another potential “legal snag”: “If ‘don’t cater Zionist events’ is applied as a proxy for refusing service to Jews, Israelis, or Jewish communal events, the bakery could create exposure under” both federal and New York City law.

As for what this episode foretells, Former Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, tweeted: “This is going to spread. This is not spontaneous. This is part of an effort to marginalise Jews and Israel.” It certainly looks like part of the ongoing effort to do exactly that.

Goldfeder is sceptical that this could become a trend, calling it “too legally problematic”. Schlager, however, sees American Labor already “becoming bolder and more willing to advocate for causes outside of typical wage and hours issues”.

Either way, Jews, Israelis, and their friends still have recourse. Use it. Insist laws be enforced fairly and patronise targeted Israeli and Jewish businesses.