info@uuiraq.org
"There
is a labor movement in
Iraq"
International
Campaign against the Occupation, For the Defense of Labor Rights in
Iraq
ILC INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER NO.
81
By Gene Bruskin, coordinator of USLAW, spoke at an
antiwar meeting on May
8, 2004 in Chicago.
Following are excerpts from his presentation:
In September 2003 a general strike in
Basra,
led by transportation workers, demanded gas, water and electricity, and the
removal of corrupt Baathist managers.
In October 2003, oil workers at the Bergeseeya Oil
Refinery in southern Iraq, struck for two
days against a KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) subcontractor, which was hiring
60-70% foreign workers to do the refinery reconstruction. During the strike
tribal leaders met with the management and threatened serious repercussions if
the foreign workers were not replaced-the change happened immediately.
In December, Coalition backed forces raided the offices of both the Iraqi
Federation of Trade Unions and the Union of the Unemployed and leaders were
arrested and released without charges.
On December 8 the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq held their
founding conference in Baghdad with worker
delegates representing workplaces from across Iraq. The Workers
Councils were initiated by the Workers Communist Party of Iraq, a split off
from the Iraq Communist Party founded in the early 1990s.
In January, Dock workers in the port of
Um Qasr staged a picket and blocked
the main gate, even without a union, to protest low and arbitrary wage scales
at the port overseen by SSA, the notorious anti-union US west coast port
operator. The management promised to correct the problems in order to end the
picket line.
Also in January 2004 Oil workers at the Southern Oil Co threatened to organize
a national strike if the CPA's poverty level wage
scale was not improved. An Iraqi government official was dispatched to
negotiate with them and agreed to revise the wage scale upward for all oil
workers.
On January 31 employees at the Nth Gas Company in Kirkuk in Northern Iraq went on strike
demanding higher wages and the replacement of the company's corrupt Baathist management. Four company managers were removed and
the wage scale was changed.
On March 1, 2004 150 bank employees, mostly women, held an unprecedented
conference led by the Federation of Workers Councils and the Organization of
Women's Freedom in Iraq. They threatened
a general strike at banks and other workplaces if the 17 female bank cashiers
arrested by Iraqi authorities were not released. The cashiers were being blamed
for the disappearance of millions of dollars during the change in currency that
took place in the Fall of 2003. Authorities relented,
released the bank cashiers and dropped all charges
Also in March, teachers in Mosul, in the North of
Iraq, protested because they hadn't been paid for six months and they
threatened a strike. Authorities provided emergency pay to every teacher to
avoid a strike.
On March 24 coalition forces and local police fired warning shots at a
demonstration of unemployed workers in the holy city of Najaf, the city that is now
surrounded by Occupation Forces seeking to arrest religious leader Muqtada Al Sadr. Unemployed
workers had rallied weekly throughout the summer and Fall
of 2003 in front of government offices in Baghdad and other Iraqi
cities with the Union of Unemployed in Iraqi (UUI), linked to the Federation of
Workers Councils, to demand jobs or unemployment. On several occasions UUI
leaders and activists were arrested. One UUI demonstrator was killed.
On April 8 workers in Nasiriyah city in southern Iraq refused to
evacuate their Aluminum and Sanitary supply factories
despite threats on their lives from Muqtada Sadr's militia who wanted to turn their factories into staging
areas to fight the Coalition forces. The workers rejected Sadr
as their leader in shaping a new Iraq and chose to
protect their jobs and workplaces.
The good news, which you won't read it in the Chicago Tribune, is that there is
an Iraqi labor movement. These examples represent
only a small part of the organizing activity among workers in Iraq in the year
following the occupation. And these workers didn't have to learn how to
organize from the Bremer Provisional Authority or the Governing Council or the
US Labor Movement. They didn't file for elections
with the NLRB--unions have a tradition in Iraq going back to the
1920s.
There are many lessons to be learned from Iraqi history. Under the British
occupation in the 20s the oil and railroad workers formed the first Iraqi
unions. The British came into Iraq after World War I
after defeating the Turks, when the spoils of the Ottoman Empire were divided up.
Major General Stanley Maude declared victory saying: "Our armies do not
come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as
liberators." For decades under British control, until 1958, unions rose
and fell, flourished and were repressed, as Britain tried out various forms of
colonial control, echoed in the strategies and debates now taking place in the
Bush administration and Congress about how to keep control while preaching
democracy and sovereignty.
Britain's initial attempt
to take direct control of Iraq led to what is
known and still widely celebrated by Iraqis as the Revolution of 1920, a
widespread uprising against British control. The British put down the uprising
by using bombs and poison gas, introducing WMD into Iraq for the first
time. The British found themselves facing increasing domestic criticism in Britain for their heavy
handed and expensive colonial policies. This included a campaign to "Quit
Mesopotamia," as Iraq was referred to
at that point, Britain sought cheaper
and more acceptable means of administering their newly acquired Middle Eastern
territories. They smelled oil and weren't about to leave. Churchill was put in
charge of laying down new guidelines for indirect rule. This rule took various
forms until the British were driven out for good in the Revolution of 1958.
Workers and unions played an important role in this revolution through the
leadership of the Iraqi Communist Party, the strongest popular force in Iraq from the 1930s to
the 1970s until they were finally crushed by Saddam.
One of the tactics of British control was the distribution of land and power to
tribal sheiks and landlords, creating a power base beholden to the
British-these tribal relationships would later play an important role in
Saddam's power base and today in the resistance to the US Occupation. Prior to
this British policy, land was held in a form of tribal communal ownership. So
the British led the movement in the 20th century to privatize Iraq by privatizing
the tribal lands and of course their oil. Now the Bush administration, in a
modern version of Britain's earlier efforts, has built its occupation and
control of Iraq around a strategy to privatize the largely publicly owned Iraqi
economic infrastructure, selling it to the highest bidding multinational and
allowing designated Iraqis to buy into the program.
The Revolution of July 14, 1958 ushered in an
independent Iraq as Iraqis
supported a military coup by junior officers against a British supported
monarchy. The Communist Party was the only political force at this point with a
base in mass organizations and trade unions and their support was critical for
the success of the revolution. For the first time Iraqi trade unions were
officially legalized and substantial organizing began in many sectors. This
started a period of progressive legislation, a new constitution and the
principle of development through industrialization. Oil provided the capital to
create a modern Iraqi state. These policies coincided with growing Arab
nationalism and were threatening to British and US interests concerned about
keeping control of Arab oil. Allowing democracy to flourish in the Middle East was not on the
short list or even the long list of US policymakers at that time, anymore than
it is now.
After all, it was only a few years before, in 1953, that the CIA overthrew the
democratically elected and immensely popular government in neighboring
Iran. This history of Iran is very
instructive. President Mossadegh, elected by a huge
majority in Iran, had nationalized
the British controlled oil refineries. The 1953 coup was engineered by Kermit
Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson with military assistance from none other than
Norman Swartzkof Sr, father
of the Gulf war general. This ushered in the brutal dictatorship of the Shah
whose hated pro-Western regime was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by Islamic
fundamentalists. Iran then inspired the
fundamentalist movements in the Middle East, including the
Taliban and the bin Laden's of the world. We now face
a war on terror that is in many ways of our own making. This history makes a
pretty good argument that the US should keep their
hands (and arms) to themselves, or what goes around comes around, or however
you want to interpret this. It is indeed a shortsighted
view of power politics that western governments have practiced in the Middle East and that we see
unfolding before us today in Iraq.
In 1963 competing military officers, with the support of the emerging Baath party, of which Saddam Hussein was a rising star,
overthrew the Revolution. This resulted in a brutal massacre of thousands of
popular grassroots leaders, including trade unionists and many communists. The US made no objection
to this massacre, however. It is widely believed, both inside and outside of Iraq, that the also
CIA had a role in the coup. At the very least the CIA is thought to have
supplied lists to the Baathists of communists to
murder, which they did in house-to-house hunts. At the time the Communist party
in Iraq was the most
popular in the Middle East.
Eventually in 1968, Saddam and his Baath Party staged
another coup to eliminate all forces that they had shared power with and began
on the road to more than thirty years of dictatorship. Again the Communists
were among the major victims, but the party and the trade union movement
survived and functioned until 1978 when another wave of executions and persecutions
drove most activists into exile, prison or death. At this point Saddam and the Baath party had absolute power and no longer allowed any
alternative parties or organizations to function.
Many of us are familiar with the fact that Saddam had friendly relations with
the US and the West
throughout the 80s when he was supplied with WMDs by
Europeans governments and the Reagan administration, including Rumsfelt, and he used them to fight a brutal war against Iran. His massacre of
Iranians, and the use of chemical weapons against them and the Kurds, drew few
protests from the US--he was a
bastard, but he was our bastard.
Looking back at Iraqi history, which Iraqi's themselves know well, it becomes
very clear why they totally distrust the US. They see more
than 80 years of occupation, foreign intervention, war, sanctions, coups,
massacres and other manipulations led, tolerated or supported by the British
and several US governments. If
the Iraqis haven't had much experience with democracy its not because they
didn't yearn for it and fight for it-It is in fact the western powers that have
opposed democracy and supported surrogates, regardless of how brutal and
dictatorial they were, since the end of the Ottoman Empire at the close of WW
I.
Let's be clear-President Bush doesn't even support democracy in this country,
certainly not in Florida, and certainly
not for anyone who doesn't agree with him. To Bush the NEA are terrorists, the
FTAA demonstrators in Miami were terrorists
and the pro-choice demonstrators are terrorist allies-anyone who is not with
him is against him. He will oppose a genuine democracy in Iraq. He is only
interested in control. He will oppose democracy at home-he is the enemy of
working people and so is this war
The fundamental principle is this: It is not
our country and we have to leave. Recent events have made it clearer not than
ever that the occupation is the problem, not the solution. Until we leave there
will be no peace and there will certainly be no democracy. Which part of "get
the hell out of our country" is it that you don't understand, president
bush? And while you are at it, get the hell out of the white house-pay your own
rent somewhere else.
In the wake of the Gulf war, in 1990 and 1991 for a brief month or two, many
organizers emerged from underground. The Union of the Unemployed and the
Federation of Workers Councils were conceived by a newly emerged Workers
Communist party, a split off from the traditional CP, which it criticized for
collaborating with colonial and Baathist governments
for decades in an unsuccessful effort to seek legitimacy. The movement quickly
was forced underground but continued to function. At the same time trade
unionists that later formed the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions began to
coalesce underground.
There were occasional strikes, although very limited, some underground papers. Falah Alwan, the President of the
Workers Councils whom I met in Geneva this year in
March, said he organized funds for unemployed and injured workers, but even
that resulted in threats on his life.
Nonetheless, when the dust cleared after the US invasion, Falah and other veteran Iraqi organizers reemerged.
The situation remains difficult for organizing-we shouldn't idealize the
workers' movement in Iraq, despite the courage
of so many workers who have begun to organize. Iraqi trade unionists have made
some things very clear to USLAW representatives:
Its hard to organize in the middle of a war-much of the union work has
slowed down dramatically in the past month or two.
Saddam's laws forbidding unions in the public sector, most of the
country's economy, are still on the books.
There is a tremendous amount of confusion and uncertainty among Iraqi
working people-violence, religious pressures, massive unemployment, the former Baathist regime's leaders in the shadows, sometimes still
running their worker places, and armed religious groups in the community, and a
history in which democratic rights have been very fragile and ephemeral
Women have suffered terribly, losing rights as fundamentalism gains
ground.
The threat of privatization looms over many workplaces
Although there is an interim governing law, passed by
the Governing Council that provides for the right to organize and strike
Iraqi's have seen the difference between laws on the books and the realities on
the ground.
There is considerable maneuvering going on about what
the shape of the new labor law will look like in the
future and what role the international labor movement
will play in the process. In the winter, the US hired a MN union
busting firm to write the labor law for Iraq, although they
have been allegedly replaced. The US continues to have
a role in the process, however.
USLAW began our relationship with the Iraqi workers and unions in Oct 2003 when
we sent what may have been the first international labor
delegation to Iraq. We issued a
report after that trip, called Labor Rights and
Working Conditions Under the Occupation, which has
since been updated. Since then we have stayed in contact with both federations
through email and phone.
In March I traveled to Geneva to meet with the
ILO, the UN tripartite body that deals with labor
issues. Our delegation included representatives of the International Liaison
Committee from Paris and the Arab Confederation of Trade Unions. Both Iraqi
Federations were invited although only the Federation of Workers Councils was
able to make it. I was able to spend a couple days with Falah
Alwan, the President of the Workers Councils. It was
a humbling experience.
We were there to follow up our visit to the ILO in June of 2003 Amy Newell
delivered a copy of our report: The Corporate Invasion of Iraq on behalf
of UsLAW. The report details the sordid record of the
US multinationals
that Bush contracted with to rebuild and run Iraq. The report was
also translated into Arabic and has been circulated in Iraq and the Arab
world. At that meeting we urged the ILO to carefully monitor the situation of labor rights in Iraq. In March of this
year our delegation asked the ILO for an update and presented documents
detailing violations of labor rights. We also
expressed concern that the Iraqi Governing Council had publicly recognized one
of the union federations, the IFTU, as the official representative of Iraqi
workers-we made it clear that we don't think that any government should have
the right to pick and choose which union should represent workers. We issued a
declaration to that effect and it is circulating internationally and will be
presented to the ILO Workers Committee in June of this year by an international
delegation including USLAW.
The AFL-CIO and the ICFTU have made strong statements in support of labor rights and the rights of workers in Iraq to choose their
own unions, and we are encouraging them to make their practice reflect these
statements. Many in the USLAW network are concerned that the AFL-CIO has agreed
to take money from the Federal government supported National Endowment for
Democracy to do labor work in Iraq. The feeling is
that any government that attempts to destroy labor
rights at home, such as this administration, surely will not support labor rights in Iraq.
A critical issue is privatization. The Bush administration made it clear from
the outset that he wanted Iraq to be a model
unregulated free trade zone in the Middle East. In September
2003 the Provisional Authority issued an order making all Iraqi industries
subject to sale to foreign owners and allowing international investors tax free
and virtually unregulated freedom to buy Iraqi industries and take the profits
out of Iraq without restriction; the oil industry was not included on the list
because of the sensitivity of the issue. Most Iraqi industries are in bad shape
due to more than a decade of wars and sanctions, along with the corruption of
Saddam's regime. Workers and managers alike and representatives of both
federations told our delegation in October that privatization would be a
disaster, resulting in massive job loss and dislocation.
Nonetheless the initiative is still in play, slowed primarily by the fact that
few companies wish to invest in Iraq while the
situation is so unstable, unless they have the type of guarantees that US
contractors like Halliburton have gotten, virtually ensuring big profits. In
April, US appointed Iraqi ministers have discussed ways to encourage foreign
banks to locate in Iraq and,
significantly, promoted the privatization of Iraqi water. Imagine selling the Tigris and
Euphrates
Rivers to Bechtel, one
of the biggest for-profit water operators in the third world, and giving them
permission to sell the water back to unemployed Iraqis. If the Unions lead the
fight against this, will the International labor
movement support them against the wishes of the Bush administration? We in
USLAW hope so and are organizing with that in mind.
We can't underestimate the importance of the responsibility that we in the labor movement have in supporting the emergence of an
independent and strong Iraqi labor movement. Falah was very clear. The unions have a window right now.
They know that it can close at any moment, as it has in the past. They are
determined to build as strong a presence among workers in Iraq as possible.
For those of us in the peace movement that have opposed the war and the
occupation, we must also be in solidarity with the most progressive, secular
and humanist forces on the ground-the unions. And this is a feminist force.
Both unions have strong pro-women platforms. Both federations have emphasized
to us the historical fact that Iraq has been very
much a secular country, in which the Sunni and Shiite religious leaders were
just that, religious leaders and not political leaders. They accuse the US of fanning the
flames of religious and ethnic sectarianism by making all appointments based on
religious and ethnic identities and turning religious leaders like Ayatollah Sistani into powerful national political spokespeople. The
recent example of a joint Sunni-Shiite resistance to the occupation shows that
there is genuine potential for religious unity.
We in the labor movement can make a difference
here-we can play an important role in assuring that whatever Iraqi political
formation results from this process includes a labor
movement with full rights, operating under internationally recognized ILO
conventions, fighting to help Iraqi workers fend off multinational companies
seeking low wage havens in the middle east--helping them make sure that Iraqi's
get to determine the shape of their national economy, not these multinationals.
What do I mean specifically?
First, we must recognize that we have a tremendous stake in ending this
war and occupation. It is draining our Federal treasury of $5 billion dollars a
month at a time when Medicaid cuts are rampant, and US social programs are
being savaged, while state and local governments are being driven into fiscal
crisis. It is creating hatred of the US on a massive
scale, feeding those terrorist groups that wish to attack innocent US and
western civilians. It is killing and severely injuring thousands of our young
men and women, creating financial disaster for the families of many guard and
reservists and laying the groundwork for another generation of vets suffering
from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Recent events have revealed the utter
bankruptcy of Bush's policies in Iraq--they are built
on lies and his strategy is totally unraveling. But
he still intends to stay the course, so we need to continue to organize. We
need to talk to our members and our leaders-we need to lead on this issue-we
cannot wait for John Kerry or for Congress-we need to speak out against these
war policies
Thank you
Gene Bruskin,
May 8, 2004