Thursday, October 2, 2025
Tēnā koutou
katoa,
University Workers for Palestine has been
trying for over a year to get UniSaver, the preferred
superannuation provider for most universities, to divest
from Israel and companies complicit in occupation and
genocide, and develop a BDS (Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions) policy. We’ve had no response from them. So we’re
drawing a line in the sand. This open letter makes clear
that if they don’t respond in an ethical, meaningful way,
university communities will support a campaign to sever ties
with them and take our, and our employers’, contributions
elsewhere.
If you work at a New Zealand university,
please sign
on
(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenirEj731V9T7Fi8Bjfv2tmpUHmj9wNU7y07b7RfKONhbdtQ/viewform),
and share with other university workers (and we also invite
others, including our students, alumni and former
colleagues, to sign in solidarity). We will be sending this
letter to UniSaver at the start of November.
In
solidarity, University Workers for Palestine
(Uni4pal)
————————————————————-
To
the UniSaver
Board,
We are writing to you to demand that you
divest immediately from all holdings that are complicit in
the genocide of Palestinians. In August of last year, you
received an
open letter with 400 signatures pointing out some of the
worst
investments (like Elbit Systems and Palantir
Technologies) and asking you to develop a divestment policy.
You never bothered to contact letter signatories and you
have apparently done nothing to change UniSaver
investments.
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A year has passed, a year in which
genocide has accelerated; many thousands of Palestinians,
including our university colleagues, have been killed during
this time, in what has been described as a
scholasticide.
We are writing to you now to
reiterate our call for you to divest and develop a
divestment policy to prevent future investments in companies
that are complicit in genocide and apartheid. To
repeat from our letter a year ago (with the addition of
point 4), we demand that UniSaver Limited:
- Take
immediate steps to review its portfolios and to terminate
its holdings in entities which make it, and us as members of
UniSaver, complicit in the crimes of the Israeli
state, - Outline a clear plan for divestment where
immediate termination is not possible, and - Develop
policy measures to ensure its financial and investment
strategies are in keeping with the internationally
recognised BDS framework. - Update the Responsible
Investment Policy to require the investment manager to
divest from
companies found to be complicit in the genocide of
Palestinians.
If you don’t withdraw our funds
from genocide, we, the undersigned, will support a campaign
to get universities in Aotearoa New Zealand to sever ties
with you. We will not accept our retirement funds fuelling
the genocide of Palestinians.
We expect to hear a
response from the Unisaver board by the end of
November.
University Workers for Palestine
We
are a collective of university workers from institutions
across Aotearoa in active support of a Free Palestine. We
are organising to oppose the occupation, apartheid,
scholasticide, and genocide in Gaza, and to act in
solidarity with Palestine. This has included a call for
Unisaver, the university supported superannuation scheme, to
divest from entities that are invested in and benefit from
the illegal military occupation of Palestinian territories,
as well as the genocidal war on Gaza. In July 2024 an open
letter written by UW4P collected over 400
signatures.
