Category: gmoses

We are facing a terrorist conflict between two international poles of terror that have taken Iraq as a battle ground to settle their reactionary accounts.

–Shamal Ali

The “Iraqi Resistance” and Worker-communists (May 22, 2004)

As far as armed resistance as a revolutionary tactic is concerned, although the worker-communits view armed resistance as a viable revolutionary tactic, amid the current ideological and class formations and the organizational weakness of a mass movement of workers and emancipatory forces, believe that, resorting to this method can be a huge political mistake, which could hinder the development of a secular mass movement and will deepens the current unfolding dark scenario.

A Feb. 9, 2004 release from the IFTU (Iraq Federation of Trade Unions) celebrates official recognition:

Decree No 16 2004 (28 January), issued by IGC President
Adnan Pachachi, says that the IFTU and its President, Mr
Rasem Hussein Abdullah are “the legitimate and legal
representatives of the labour movement in Iraq.”

But a note attached (by the editors of website for US Labor Against the War?) says:

[Note: IFTU is not the only new federation in Iraq.
The Iraqi Workers and Unions Council has also been
organizing workplaces and also established Union of
the Unemployed in Iraq. It remains to be seen whether
this federation will also receive recognition, will merge
with the IFTU or will contest for representation even
without formal recognition.]

Source:
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=3068
———————————————————-

On May 8, 2004 USLAW co-convenor Gene Bruskin explained why his group is backing a complaint by the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI) and Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) against IFTU recognition as “the” state-approved union for Iraq.

“we don’t think that any government should have the right to pick and choose which unions should represent workers.”

Source:
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=4858
———————————————————-

I have emailed the IFTU:

Dear Mr. Abdullah Muhsin,

I have recently published an article sympathetic to
the UUI/FWCUI petition forthcoming at the ILO
conference.

The article has attracted more interest than I
expected, and I would like to follow up with an
article that gives more explicit consideration to the
IFTU side of the story.

I would appreciate any materials that you could
provide in that respect.

My overall interest in these matters is to help
American readers understand the possibilities of
“alternative politics” in Iraq, i.e. something besides
a politics of war. In this respect, the political
quest for worker’s rights interests me as an issue
foundational to a nonviolent future.

Where the Livable World Order Begins

first published at CounterPunch

By GREG MOSES

Wouldn’t it be a profound retort to empire if Iraqis led a global movement for worker’s rights? Next Friday in fact, June 11, a coalition of labor groups will stand behind an Iraqi appeal for the right to self-organize.

“Workers are in urgent need to build strong and broad-based organizations which are not based on language or religion,” says Aso Jabbar, international spokesperson for the Union of Unemployed Iraqis, one of several worker-based groups organized in the aftermath of the recent US invasion.

This June marks the second year in a row that international labor groups are gathering in support of Jabbar and other Iraqi labor organizers as the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Next Friday, Iraqi labor representatives plan to deliver formal complaints to the ILO, protesting the labor policies of provisional authorities in Iraq.

In effect, Iraqi labor organizers accuse US-backed authorities of setting up the national equivalent of a company union, ignoring the rights of workers to organize their own shops and elect their own leaders….

Linked at US-Law

US Labor Against the War (USLAW)
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/

Organized at a Chicago meeting in Jan. 2002. Anti-war petition “signed by more than 200
labor federations and unions in 53 countries, collectively representing more than 130 million members.”

Click to access uslaw_report_indesign_2.pdf

In June 2003 joined international labor conference in Geneva, held simulatenously with annual meeting of the UN International Labor Organization (ILO). Amy Newell of USLAW releases report on, ” eighteen US corporations granted no-bid contracts in Iraq worth billions of dollars” [see pdf above].

In October 2003, USLAW sent two delegates, “Clarence Thomas, Executive Board Member of the International Longshore & Warehouse Workers (ILWU) Local 10, and David Bacon, independent labor journalist and photographer,” along with ILC, French teachers’ union, and Iraqi trade union exile from France, on a six-day mission to Iraq [pdf above].

“They discovered widespread, massive violations of workers ‘ basic rights, 70% unemployment with no social safety net, human rights abuses, increasing control by U.S.corporations of the most basic elements of the Iraqi economy, and shockingly, CPA enforcement of a Saddam Hussein-era
law that bars public sector workers and those employed by public enterprises from joining or being represented by unions” [pdf above].

“Every day,” writes David Bacon in the opening paragraph of his report, ” the economic policies of the occupying authorities create more hunger among Iraq’s working people, transforming them
into a pool of low-wage, semi-employed labor, desperate for jobs at almost any price” [pdf above].

In October of 2003, USLAW convenes National Labor Assembly for Peace which in turn resolves to launch the Campaign to End the Occupation and for Labor Rights in Iraq [pdf above].

International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC)

International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU)

also see: laborstart.org