Whatever happened to "workers of the world, unite"?

On May Day, Iranian government thugs descended on a group of bus drivers demonstrating outside the headquarters of the Tehran Bus Company. The workers had assembled to demand the release of colleagues who'd been arrested earlier for the crime of striking. Soldiers from Iran's State Security Forces waded into the crowd and beat the protesters down with batons.

It was a vicious assault on Iran's downtrodden proletariat -- exactly the sort of thing one expects would inflame the "International Solidarity Committees" at Canada's largest union. Yet the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) ignored the incident. Scan the union's Web site and you will find nary a word about it.

In truth, I don't think Tehran's bus drivers care much whether CUPE issues a press release about their plight. And, of course, neither do I. But I did think it was a curious omission given the Middle Eastern cause CUPE's internationalist cadres have embraced.

On Saturday, CUPE's Ontario division -- representing more than 200,000 workers -- voted to boycott Israel, a socialist democracy where labour rights are well-entrenched and unions have the power to shut down whole sectors of the economy. "Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa," said Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of CUPE Ontario's International Solidarity Committee. "We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties."

The group threw in the now-obligatory denunciation of Israel's "apartheid wall." But it is telling that Nastovski went further and called for the "right of return" of millions of Palestinians descended from refugees who fled Israel six decades ago. As any serious observer of the Middle East knows, such an influx eventually would tip Israel's demographic balance in favour of Arabs, and thereby destroy the Jewish state from within.

Which leads me to this question: Do CUPE Ontario's members know that one of their leaders is using her official office as a platform to call for the de facto destruction of the Jewish homeland, which happens to be the only state in the Middle East that protects workers' rights as we in the West would define them?

CUPE's anti-Israel bias isn't new. For years, CUPE B.C.'s International Solidarity Committee has used union resources to produce a propaganda tract called The Wall Must Fall, an "educational booklet" that labels Israel "the South Africa of the Middle East," and blames the Jewish State for ongoing bloodshed -- including the Palestinians' "violence of resistance." But the divestment movement has gained steam in recent months thanks to a campaign organized last summer by a coalition of liberal churches and academics. (Just yesterday, Britain's largest union of college teachers voted to boycott any Israeli colleague who did not publicly disavow his nation's policies.)

As with the leadership of CUPE and other unions, these groups appear to have little real knowledge of the Middle East. But they see the divestment campaign as an easy way to prove their social-justice bona fides.

None of this facile anti-Israeli bigotry will hurt Israel's economy, which grew at an annualized rate of almost 7% in the first quarter of 2006. Nor will talk of a boycott discourage real investors -- like Warren Buffett, who just last month plunked down US$4-billon for Israel's Iscar Metalworking Company. The only victims will be Canadian public workers, who watch powerlessly from the sidelines as blowhard leaders fritter away their union's credibility -- and, more importantly, workers' dues.

Union power has withered in recent decades for a variety of reasons -- including outsourcing, mechanization and the decline of manufacturing. It is no coincidence that the only place unions still flourish is the public sector, the one part of our economy that's immune from market forces. But even here, their continued survival isn't guaranteed.

Till now, public unions have survived because the financial benefits the country would reap from breaking them are smaller than the associated political costs that governments would suffer. But that will change if union leaders present themselves as radical ideologues who care more about signing on to fashionable causes than actually supporting workers' rights. So keep talking, Ms. Nastovski. When Canada's governments finally bust the nation's pampered public unions, we'll have you to thank.

- Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post.