Amid the carnage and devastation of occupied Iraq, a movement is vying for the nation’s future. This movement hopes to build a new Iraq – one Iraq – that’s democratic, multi-ethnic, and multiconfessional. This movement isn’t centered on the various political coalitions of the 30 January elections or the Iraqi transitional government, but in the country’s newly reconstructed labour unions. Indeed, this is fitting, considering recent history teaches the unique, muscular role trade unionism has played in democratising countries emerging from tyranny. Think Solidarity in Poland or the Congress of South African Trade Unions in South Africa.
When Saddam Hussein fell, Iraq’s progressive forces – out of exile, out of prison, out from the underground – finally had the breathing room to coalesce into a labour movement committed to a democratic, secular and pluralist Iraq. The three most important elements of this movement are the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, the Federation of Worker Councils and Unions of Iraq, and General Union of Oil Employees in Basra.
IFTU emerged in May 2003, just a month after Saddam’s fall, out of the underground Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement. Today, the IFTU boasts over 200,000 members organised in every important sector of the Iraqi economy. Of the twelve unions that comprise the federation, six have held worker conferences that democratically determined their unions’ leadership. The most moderate of the three, IFTU supported Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s interim government, the various UN resolutions governing the occupation of Iraq and its transition to democracy, the 30 January elections, and, most controversially, the continued presence of coalition troops for security – although this view has changed. IFTU is the only trade union federation to be officially recognised by the Iraqi government. In 2004, Jack Straw recognised the federation as England’s union partner in rebuilding post-invasion Iraq.
With Iraq being plagued by an unemployment rate that unionists argue rose to 90 per cent during the first few months of the occupation, a network of activists organised the Union of Unemployed in Iraq that led an 18-day demonstration outside the Coalition Provisional Authority’s offices demanding jobs and social provisions.
Out of this initial splurge of spontaneous organising arose the FWCUI. The FWCUI is a much more militant labour federation than IFTU. In their view, ‘the occupation is the source of all problems in Iraq and without ending it there will be no improvement in the disastrous situation in Iraq’. Since its inception, the FWCUI has called for the immediate withdrawal of US and UK troops and were highly critical of the 30 January elections.
Yet the most exciting developments in Iraq’s new trade union movement are occurring in British-occupied Basra. There, workers at the Southern Oil Company threw out employees of US contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, rooted out former Baathist managers and began autonomously to reconstruct their workplaces and ready oil for export. This initial surge of worker militancy became institutionalised into the GUOE.
Today, the GUOE claims 23,000 members federated throughout the many oil unions of Basra. Their threat to shut down oil exports and arm themselves last December led the CPA to almost double their wages. This 17 July, the GUOE led a 24-hour strike that cut most oil exports from southern Iraq. The union demanded, with the support of the local governor, that a bigger cut of Basra’s oil revenue be reinvested locally.
While differences crop up between them at times, there’s one topic that unites them in opposition: the privatisation of Iraq’s economy. In September 2003, the head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, issued Order 39, which unilaterally – and against international law – allowed the privatisation of nearly all of Iraq’s 200 state-owned firms, while allowing 100 per cent foreign ownership. On the same date, the CPA published Order 37, which capped individual and corporate income tax rates at no higher than 15 per cent.
It was a neoliberal’s dream state. As Bjorn Brandtzaeg, a former British CPA team leader for trade and industry, wrote in the Financial Times, ‘Instead of focusing on restarting the main industrial complexes as soon as possible after the end of hostilities, a team of ideologically motivated CPA officials with close ties to the US administration pursued a narrow privatisation strategy. The result… several hundred thousand people remain out of work.’ Aggravating unemployment further, foreign companies with reconstruction contracts routinely hire foreign workers instead of their Iraqi counterparts. Today, unemployment hovers between 25 and 40 per cent.
A further dose of neoliberal reforms are scheduled to occur soon due to a debt-reduction agreement made between the government and the International Monetary Fund. Much of Iraq’s budget is devoted to supplying ordinary Iraqis with a basic needs subsidy. The IMF wants this subsidy cut if debt-reduction is to proceed.
While Bremer and company single-handedly restructured Iraq’s economy and legal structure, there was one law they didn’t repeal: Saddam’s draconian 1987 labour law. That year, Saddam Hussein outlawed unions throughout the public sector, declaring that ‘workers’ were now ’employees’ of the state and therefore had no right to bargain collectively. Since 70 per cent of Iraq’s economy was state-owned, independent trade unionism was annihilated. Because the CPA failed to repeal the 1987 labour law, union organising has remained illegal.
Iraq’s trade union movement has disregarded this law, organising workers and striking for jobs and better wages throughout Iraq. This has led to some hostile run-ins with occupational forces. In December 2003, troops stormed the headquarters of the IFTU headquarters in Baghdad, arrested eight of its leaders, and shut down the office for seven months. The FWCUI claims it leaders have been arrested and tortured by the US while their peaceful demonstrations have been fired on by US soldiers and associated Iraqi security forces. To complicate matters more, the trade unionists’ fight for a progressive Iraq has made them a target of Islamic terrorists and Baathist leftovers. On 4 January of this year, the IFTU’s international secretary Hadi Saleh was savagely tortured and murdered in his home by what the IFTU believes to be Saddam loyalists – remnants of his secret police force, the Mukhabarat.
Still, this hasn’t stopped Iraq’s trade union movement from continuing their work. Recently, each of the union federations sent delegates throughout the US for exposure and to rustle up support. The unions are extremely cash-poor – most union staff are volunteers. There is also a dearth of communication equipment needed to conduct everyday business. As a recent FWCUI urgent appeal stated, ‘our federation has been relying almost entirely on donations from supporters abroad.’ Its request is simple and direct: send us your support financially if you can. For progressives, the best way to show solidarity with Iraq’s nascent labor movement is in the form of a cheque and to urge the various media outlets to cover the emergence of Iraq’s newly reconstituted trade union movement.
Matthew Harwood is a freelance journalist about to read for an MLitt in International Security Studies at St Anderews. He keeps a blog www.woodshavingsdaily.blogspot.com