U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders

U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders
News Feature, David Bacon,
Pacific News Service, Dec 10, 2003

Editor's Note: There's another kind of battle being waged in Iraq -- the struggle for worker's rights. Iraqi union organizers say the U.S. authority is working against them.

SAN FRANCISCO--U.S. occupation forces in Iraq escalated their efforts to paralyze Iraq's new labor unions with a series of arrests this weekend.

On Dec. 6, according to a union spokesperson interviewed by phone, a convoy of 10 Humvees and personnel carriers descended on the old headquarters building of the Transport and Communications Workers union, in Baghdad's central bus station, which has been used since June as the office of the Iraqi Workers Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Twenty soldiers jumped out, stormed into the building, put handcuffs on eight members of the Federation's executive board, and took them into detention.

"They gave no reason at all, despite being asked over and over," says IFTU spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin. Soldiers painted over the name of the federation on the front of the building with black paint, Muhsin says. The union had few resources, "but we did have a few files, and they took those," Muhsin adds. Ironically, the office had posters on the walls condemning terrorism, which soldiers tore down in the raid.

Although the eight were released the following day, there was no explanation from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the U.S. occupation government in Iraq, for the detentions.

(more)

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=0ea74f4207000f2a20cd2bdf4ab0e2a9

and rip up the unions. Looks like this is going to be a corporate minefield.

They get to create their dream economy and society over there. What we are seeing is literally their vision of how things should be. Keep that in mind and make sure that others see it too.

flat tax, no unions, corporate control...sounds like the Right is trying to create its own little perfect RW vision of America in the ME.

maybe they want a place to go after they've screwed the US over completely? a place to retire that isn't Florida?

casinos will surely follow. It will be like Havana back in the 50's, don't they want everything to be like it was back in the 50's?

Welcome to DU :hi: if'n I haven't before.

this is going very badly -

liberation for the Iraqis?

I think not.

:mad:

Wait 'till the regime unleashes on US unions (like they are not already!).

Particularly since the Busheviks think very little of BOTH their Imperial Subjects both here and in Iraq.

We are seeing the future of the Amerikan Empire, just as we are seeing it in Russia, where Putin has taken the Bushevik playbook verbatim. Of course he is already much farther along than the Busheviks, because his nation doesn't have the 225-year-old defenses of freedom.

It looks as if the darkness of repressive totalatarianism is in the ascendancy and prinicples of liberal democracy and individual liberty are under attack by petty despots everywhere. Putin's actions of creating a rubber stamp dictatorship should be a source of considerable alarm as should the military action taken here against this union. As the world community recognized in 1948 the right to freedom of association and the right to form unions is an inalienable human right of every person on the planet. Using the military to arrest and detain union members for no reason is an attack on this right.

companies to foriegn investors and the allocation of 100% of profits to foriegn companies (CPA Order #39)...

here's some background on the IFTU.

http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=32&num=7636

There can be no other explanation.

hmmm.. sounds like a friggin' dictatorship to me!!

Thanks for the post. What are the chances that Richard Gephardt, the "pro-labor" Democrat, will speak out on this? Somewhere between zero and none.

They represented a threat to his consolidation of power. Hence Niemoller's regret: "then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist"

See e.g. :

http://www.takver.com/wharfie/ll980416.htm

as well?

Iraqi workers fear privatization will bring massive layoffs. "I'll have to fire 1,500 (of the refinery's 3,000) workers," says Dathar Al-Kashab, manager of the Al Daura oil refinery. "In America, when a company lays people off, there's unemployment insurance and they won't die from hunger. If I dismiss employees now, I'm killing them and their families."

At the refinery, as in most factories, those with jobs work 11- and 13-hour shifts. Al Daura workers earn $60 a month. They have no safety shoes, goggles, masks or other protective gear. The IFTU helped the refinery's workers organize a union and elect its leaders....

When these new unions try to talk with the plant managers, however, they're told that a 1987 law forbids workers in state-owned enterprises (where the majority of Iraqis work) from forming unions. The CPA still enforces this Saddam-era law. Another order issued by the CPA on June 6 threatens that anyone who "incites civil disorder" will be detained as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention.

They've been trying and wishing for years! Hitler did the same thing!

that I can't believe what I'm reading this morning. We are creating more and more terrorist on a daily basic.

"... on the front of the building"

Did they make sure to break all the windows, and paint the word 'Juden' on the door, too?

This sort of action will certainly help bolster the administration's fundamentalist allies in Iraq. Once they finish destroying the Ba'athists, the Communists, and the Unionists, there will be nobody left to take power but the Ayatollah of Iraq.

Do you think the Bush administration planned it this way? Or is it just rampant incompetence? There's plenty of evidence for the latter...

so much for "Freedom". The only freedom the Iraqis will have will be of the coprorate fascist kind. Government for, of, and by the people? Where's the profit in that? sheesh people might even get together in an attempt to make their lives better, can't have that! the CEO needs a new Gulf V so he fly direct to his new estate in Fiji. No they'll have government for, of, and by corporate interests, they are trying to build a RW (corporate not fundie) fantasy land in the ME.

is a grotesque and Soviet-style.

We are just beginning to taste the Tyranny of the Dictator, as the Busheviks are just getting started over there.

And of course, both Hitler and Bush share the same hatred of unions. Lucky for us the wretched remnants of teh Constitution and Bill of Rights and the fact that a majority of Amerikan Subjects just aren't ready to behave like Nazis and Soviets protects us...

...for the moment.

without any charges. Will we be putting them on trains to concentration camps next?

" In Germany the Nazis first came for the Communists and I didn't object because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't object because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't object because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't object because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller, Dachau,Germany, 1941

Unions will begin to sympathize with the nationalists among the armed resistance.

It's been happening in the US for decades!

to organized labor supporters-torture and murder at the hands of SOA graduated death squads.
http://www.populist.com/02.7.Hirsch.html

I remember the hypocritical stance that the Reagnites took in fighting reds over unions in Poland while smashing them here in the US.

It's still all about the big bottom line for capitalist corporations.

There will just have to be another "peoples' revolution" to stop this madness.

We have just received an urgent appeal from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions which we feel needs to be passed on to the largest possible number of trade unionists in the next several days.

On Saturday, dozens of US troops in ten armoured cars raided the IFTU temporary headquarters in Baghdad, smashing windows, seizing documents, and even tearing down posters and banners condemning terrorism. Eight IFTU leaders were arrested, but were released the following day, unharmed. No reason or explanation was given for the raid.

The IFTU is calling on President Bush to conduct a full investigation of the raid and to ensure that it will not be repeated. The United States must respect the right of workers under international law to have free and independent trade unions.

Please visit this page and send on your protest to the White House today:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=22

Please pass on this message to all your lists. Thanks very much.
Eric Lee, Labourstart
---------------------------------------------------------------
Background information on the struggle to form free labour unions in Iraq:

Press Release by Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions
http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=32&num=7636

Iraq: Workers resist US ban on unions
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/560/560p15.htm

US Labor Against War: Campaign against occupation and for Iraqi Labor rights http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/campaigns/campaign.php?topic_id=1

Conditions Grim for Iraqi Workers,

Conditions for much of Iraq's workforce has stayed the same or worsened since the recent invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's government this spring.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has decreed a base wage of $60 a month wage for all workers, which is the base wage workers received under Saddam Hussein. However, in recent months, Iraqi workers' buying power has been reduced by the introduction of imported goods, as well as the fact that they no longer receive profit sharing bonuses for state-run firms or subsidies for food and housing.

Additionally, in 1987 Saddam Hussein forbade the formation of unions in Iraq 's publicly-owned enterprises. This law is still in effect under the occupation. In fact, a law has been decreed that any action that might threaten the economy could lead to the arrest of individuals and their imprisonment as "prisoners of war."

Another new piece of legislation has opened the door to privatization of state enterprises, set a 15% tax rate for corporations, and placed no restrictions on foreign ownership or the repatriation of capital. Workers were concerned that with privatization half would be let go.

Since the spring, the independently organized Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) has organized shops in more than a dozen industries: oil & gas, rail, vegetable oil & food, transport, textiles, leather products, construction and carpentry, transport and communication, electrical & municipalities, printers, mechanics, service industry and the agriculture & irrigation workers. These unions organize in a number of cities and the IFTU held a meeting of 400 trade unionists at the transport union headquarters in May.

In today's occupied Iraq there are no unemployment benefits. With 70% of the work force unemployed, unemployed demonstrations have broken out spontaneously, others have been organized by the newly-formed Union of the Unemployed.

--Mike Parker http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org
Source: Labor Notes - www.labornotes.org

The corporate death squads are next...

after WWII

I saw/read something while in Germany that said US opporsition to labor unions and workers' rights over-rode allies and forced major changes to the planned govt and constitution of West Germany.

Anyone know anything about this??????

At least not quite like that. There are a few reports and documentaries about a CIA project to "Americanize" the German society, but that'S it AFAIK.

Shouldn't they be putting down the resistance first?

Maybe now the communists will join the uprising.

Perhaps they were only trying to organize employees of the Baghdad WalMart.

</sarcasm> :mad: