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U.S. Workers Fight for Iraqi Workers’ Freedom |
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Some of our staff here joined other activists in Washington, D.C., today at the Iraq embassy to support Iraqi workers’ efforts to form unions and protest a new law that could put control of most of the profits from oil sales in the hands of rich oil companies. In a soft afternoon rain, a few dozen of us carried signs saying “Workers’ Rights Are Human Rights” and “Hands Off Iraq’s Oil.”
We’ve reported how the rapid opening up of Iraqi oil for “private investment” is one of the benchmarks in the Iraq funding bill, which Congress passed and President Bush signed recently, and which threatens to leave the Iraqi people with little to run their country.
At the same time as it is seeking to wrest control of the oil profits from the Iraqi people, the government of Iraq also is refusing to give workers the right to a voice at work. The current government has not repealed laws enacted under the former regime that prohibit public employees from joining unions. To make matters worse, Iraq’s oil minister recently issued a ruling declaring all public unions in the country illegal and ordered the managers of oil facilities not to deal with the oil unions.
AFL-CIO International Affairs Director Barbara Shailor told the crowd:
Our brothers and sisters in Iraq have asked for our help. We are here today to show we are going to help. The oil industry is critical to the future of Iraq. And critical to the workers in Iraq is the basic right to form a union.
Shailor delivered a letter from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to Prime Minister Al Maliki through the embassy. The letter urges Al Maliki to revoke the oil minister’s edict:
Iraqi workers have been joining together freely to form trade unions across the country, including in the oil sector, since 2003. The AFL-CIO has worked closely with Iraqi labor representatives and their supporters worldwide to rebuild labor institutions and to promote trade unions and worker rights in Iraq.
Trade unions are a fundamental civil society organization necessary for democracies to grow and thrive. We urge the Iraqi government to withdraw this order immediately. Further, we urge the Iraqi government to revive its consultations with the ILO (International Labor Organization) in order to replace the labor laws installed by a dictator, with a truly democratic labor law worthy of a new democratic Iraq.
In a recent policy briefing paper, Shawna Bader-Blau of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center pointed out that the Iraqi oil unions’ concerns about the oil law stem from more than just nationalistic pride:
Oil workers, and Iraqi workers in general, have a lot riding on the oil industry. At 95 percent of government revenue, oil industry revenue could fund the national pension plan and national health insurance scheme envisioned in the constitution, and provide the capital for true reconstruction of dilapidated hospitals and schools. Every dollar that leaves the country by virtue of a generous contract with a foreign company is a dollar that could have been invested in Iraq.
For more information on the oil law and its impact, click here.
Bader-Blau also read a letter at the protest from the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, which said Iraqi workers are “heartened” to know that U.S. workers are on their side.
3 Comments
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The only copy of the oil law I’ve read is the once supposedly released by the Kurds in February. It is the one Dennis Kucinich referred to in his plea on the floor of the House for his colleagues to please note that this is not about equitable distribution of oil revenues among the various Iraqi groups, but about the issuance of the very unfair Exploration and Production Contracts (formerly Production Sharing Agreements). As such, we should do everything in our power to get this thing changed, rather than including it as one of the benchmarks the Iraqi Parliament ought to meet.
I thought that Congress did include it in the third benchmark of H.R.2206, but when I read the benchmark more carefully, I saw that there is no mention of the Hydrocarbon Law by name, or any particular draft of it. Take a look at pages 12 and 13 of H.R. 2206 and see if you agree that maybe we shouldn’t be upset with the Democrats on this one. Have they out-foxed the Bush Administration?
When is the US going to reimburse yhe Iraqi trade union federation for breking into there offices not once but twice and took there computers, beat up the staff and destroyed the offices. This was accomplished by US military personnel. The Iraqui Communist Party is a secular very large political party that supports and belons to the Iraqui trade unions.
This just further proves the hypocrisy of our government’s claim that it is our goal to bring democracy to Iraq. What bull. That was never the intention of this administration. We have no right to Iraqi oil. Their entire economy relies on that valuable resource, and other nations should respect that. I honestly feel Iraqi workers would have no chance at all if it were not for the efforts of the AFL-CIO and the ILO.