On 23 January, faculty and staff from the City University of New York’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union voted 73-70 in favour of a resolution to divest from Israeli companies and government bonds and recommended the teacher’s pension divest $100m from Israeli companies and bonds.

However, less than a month after the resolution passed, union leadership organised a re-vote on the divestment resolution - which led to a 113-63 vote against it on 20 February.

Now, members of a university labour union have expressed concern that months of hard work to pass a resolution to boycott and divest from Israel had been undemocratically overturned by leadership.

CUNY’s PSC union is said to have around 30,000 members and is one of the largest academic unions in the country.

Speaking to the Middle East Eye about the union leadership’s move to hold a re-vote and revoke the resolution, Evan Rothman, sponsor of the resolution in the delegate’s assembly to boycott and divest, said union leadership had cited two aberrations - which impacted a total of four votes - as the key reason for conducting a second vote.

However, Rothman believed that the union leadership’s intense scrutiny of the electoral process and the decision to “fix” procedures was unusual and unprecedented.

“To me, this is another instance of the Palestine exception where we saw colleges and universities across the country bring out all of these policies that were understood to be formalities but never enforced,” Rothman said.