AFL-CIO Protests Saddam-like Iraqi Labor Order
As U.S. combat troops head home from Iraq, new evidence shows there is much to be done before all Iraqis are truly free. In a letter to Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka strongly protests a recent government order that bans all trade union activities in the government-owned electrical industry.
The order by Iraq’s minister of electricity prohibits ministry officials from dealing with unions and instructs them to take back all the benefits electrical unions have negotiated in recent years. More ominously, it orders the ministry, along with the police, to close all electrical union offices and take control of their assets.
In the letter—which also was sent to Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—Trumka reminds Al-Maliki that Iraq is a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and must abide by international treaties such as the ILO rules on the right of workers to join unions.
AFL-CIO Calls for Release of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi
The AFL-CIO and the global union movement are demanding that Burma’s military dictatorship immediately free Nobel laureate and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since last Thursday. She was just six days short of completing her house arrest. She was taken to prison after a U.S. citizen swam a mile across a lake to her home and stayed overnight, which violated the terms of her house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years and reportedly is in poor health and in need of medical care. The military regime has given no indication that it will grant her freedom and just last week denied an appeal made by her lawyer for her release. A few days ago, she was transferred from her home to Insein Prison and threatened with new charges.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the legitimate leader of Burma and a recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Her political party, the National League for Democracy, won 82 percent of the parliamentary seats in a national election in 1990, but the military regime refused to cede power.
