Iraqi Labor Unions Still Struggling with U.S. Occupation's Yoke

by Steve Early

Labor Notes

http://labornotes.org/blogs/2012/08/iraqi-labor-unions-still-struggling-us-occupations-yoke


In the wake of last year's long overdue U.S. troop
withdrawal, media coverage of Iraq has dwindled to near
zero--except when there's another suicide bombing (which
usually merits just a paragraph in world news
round-ups).

The fate of costly U.S.-funded projects and
institutions is little known or largely forgotten, $800
billion later. Among the many problematic U.S. efforts
to remake the country was the Coalition Provisional
Authority's assistance in quashing one type of
non-governmental organization: trade unions.

"Democracies don't work unless the political structure
rests on a solid civil society," CPA administrator Paul
Bremer told his Baghdad staff in 2003. "They protect
the individual from the state's raw power." Ensuring
that Iraqis had the right to unionize more freely than
during the Saddam Hussein era was, however, not a
priority of the Bush or Obama administrations.
FuelFireCoverFuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in
Occupied Iraq, 432 pages, $28.95, New Press: 2012.

As British investigative journalist Greg Muttitt
reports in Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in
Occupied Iraq, the CPA never rescinded Hussein's 1987
law prohibiting unions and collective bargaining in the
public sector--a ban which applied to the entire oil
industry and more than 80 percent of the nation's
economy.

This decision was not unrelated to U.S. policymakers'
fear that a resurgent Iraqi union movement would oppose
their plans for privatization of state-owned
enterprises and resulting foreign control of Iraq's oil
resources.

Under the U.S.-backed governments that took over from
the occupation authority, union treasuries and offices
have been seized, Iraqi troops have been deployed
against strikers, and key union leaders have been
prosecuted on trumped-up charges.

The oil ministry of current Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki has ordered local oilfield managers to stop
dealing, informally, with worker representatives about
union issues. Travel abroad to build trade union
solidarity has been restricted and union activists have
suffered discriminatory pay cuts and job transfers.

A Non-Sectarian Union

As Muttitt recounts in his book, courageous veterans of
pre-2003 resistance to Saddam Hussein set about
rebuilding an Iraq Federation of Oil Workers Unions in
Basra immediately after the U.S. invasion.

In a city that became well known later for sectarian
strife, their new organization was committed to trade
union independence. Although several of its founders
were associated with the Iraqi Communist Party, "the
new union attracted communists, democrats, Islamists,
and others. The only political rule was that party and
religious affiliations must be left at the door when
doing union work."

Within two years, under grassroots leaders like Hassan
Juma and Faleh Abood Umara, the oil workers union grew
to 23,000 members, half the industry workforce in
southern Iraq. Its first major victory, in a back pay
dispute, occurred via a direct action stand-off with
British troops during the first weeks of the occupation
when oil workers, like many other Iraqis, were
struggling to restore basic services and feed their
families while not receiving any salaries.

As Muttitt explained to U.S. labor audiences during a
speaking tour earlier this summer, the precarious legal
status of the oil workers led them to seek solidarity
ties with unions around the world. In 2005, they hosted
an anti-privatization conference that was attended by
foreign guests, including Muttitt and American labor
journalist David Bacon, who was representing U.S. Labor
Against the War.

Formed nine years ago, USLAW now links more than 200
national, regional, state, and local labor bodies in an
ongoing campaign against "the war on workers and unions
in both the U.S. and abroad." In 2005 and 2007, USLAW
hosted tours by Hassan Juma, Faleh Abood Umara, and
other Iraqi trade union leaders, aimed at getting the
AFL-CIO to oppose American military occupation and
defend workers' rights in Iraq more vigorously.

Cross-Border Solidarity

The connections made in the U.S. and elsewhere led to
widespread international labor condemnation of the
Maliki government's crackdown on electrical worker
unions two years ago. The Basra-based Electrical
Utility Workers Union came under fire when it supported
local residents protesting power blackouts that were a
continuing problem in southern Iraq, despite the
expenditure of $13 billion on power plant
reconstruction by multinational firms like GE.

The demonstrations were suppressed by Iraqi police who
then raided and closed union offices, confiscated
membership records and equipment, and threatened to
prosecute union activists under anti-terrorism
statutes. Among those locked out was past U.S. visitor
Hashmeya Muhsin, president of the Electrical Utility
Workers Union and a rare female national labor leader.

The AFL-CIO wrote to Maliki criticizing his continuing
enforcement of "anti-union labor laws which originated
in a far less democratic and less hopeful era of Iraqi
history." The international federation of energy
workers, based in Switzerland, issued a statement
saying it was "appalled that seven years after the fall
of Saddam Hussein's regime, workers in Iraq are still
without legislative protection."

The oil workers have paid a particularly high price for
their defense of public ownership of their country's
energy sector.

As Bacon reported in The Nation, labor played a
catalytic role in thwarting the kind of oil industry
overhaul originally sought by the U.S. and its ally,
Maliki. "When the Bush administration pushed for
passage of a law that would facilitate foreign
investment, the union organized widespread opposition,
mounting what was in effect a political strike and
shutting down pipelines in 2007."

One Iraqi official quoted by Bacon complained that
"unionists instigate the public against the plans of
the Oil Ministry to develop [Iraq's] oil riches using
foreign development."

As described in Fuel On The Fire, the Maliki government
and more than a dozen multinational companies have
nevertheless reached controversial 20-year agreements
that, according to foreign and domestic critics, grant
these firms an unfair share of the oil they produce
rather than just a fee for their services.

U.S. troops may have left, Muttitt notes, "but foreign
oil companies have arrived en masse with their own
private armies," enlarging the already sizeable
presence of private contractors and mercenaries.

Nevertheless, Muttitt says, "the contracts that
ultimately were signed gave away less to foreign
investors than would have been the case without the
anti-oil law campaign" waged by "a grassroots movement
led by trade unions, oil experts, and subsequently
political parties and religious groups."

"This was an impressive and quite surprising
achievement," he concludes, "given that the world's
sole superpower made it a top priority to win passage
of an oil law that would have provided foreign
investors with windfall profits."

Facing an Uphill Fight

The continuing crackdown on unions that Muttitt
detailed on his recent tour is clearly designed to
weaken working class organizing. As USLAW reports, "a
new draft labor law submitted to the Iraqi parliament
perpetuates the disenfranchisement of public workers
and, like Saddam Hussein's law, will serve as
instrument to control and discipline, rather than
liberate workers."

At Bay Area meetings in July, Muttitt noted 29 oil
workers were disciplined recently after a protest
against management corruption and labor rights
violations in the southern Iraq province of Maysan--a
development that didn't escape the attention of USLAW
activists.

"I'm making a plea not to forget Iraq," Muttitt said.
"Even though U.S. troops have been withdrawn, what's
happening there today is a direct legacy of the
occupation."


For more information on Muttitt's book and his further
touring, see fuelonthefire.com

Steve Early was among those local trade unionists
hosting Faleh Abood Umara and Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein
when they visited New England as part of a
USLAW-sponsored solidarity tour in 2007.

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