Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning more on US's Union-Destroying in Iraq

These are old reports, but I'm sure it's just as bad now, if not worse.
. . .

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BAGHDAD, IRAQ (10/20/03) -- The disaster that is the occupation of Iraq is
much more than the suicide bombings and guerilla ambushes of U.S. troops
which play nightly across U.S. television screens. The violence of
grinding poverty, exacerbated by economic sanctions after the first Gulf
War, has been deepened by the latest invasion. Every day 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.

While the effects of U.S. policy on daily life go largely unseen in the
U.S. media, anyone walking the streets of Baghdad cannot miss them.
Children sleep on the sidewalks. Buildings that once housed many of the
city's four million residents, or the infrastructure that makes life in a
modern city possible, like the telephone exchange, remain burned-out ruins
months after the occupation started. Rubble fills the broad boulevards
which were once the pride of a wealthy country, and the air has become
gritty and brown as thousands of vehicles kick the resulting dust into the
air.

In the meantime U.S. contractors get rich from the billions of taxpayer
dollars supposedly appropriated for reconstruction. Iraq's national wealth
-- factories, refineries, mines, docks, and other industrial facilities --
are being readied for sale to foreign companies by the occupation's
bureaucracy, to whom democracy and the unrestrained free market are the
same thing.

But Iraqi workers, while facing bleak conditions, are not accepting their
fate, at least as defined by corporate planners. They are organizing and
making plans of their own.

Iraqi workers need a raise - desperately. For six months, they've been
paid at an emergency level dictated by the US occupation authority, known
as the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA. Most workers get
$60/month, a small percentage $120, and a tiny minority (mostly
administrators and managers) $180. This is the same wage scale that
prevailed under the last few years of the Saddam Hussein regime.

One worker at the General State Leather Industry Factory, the largest shoe
factory in the Middle East, says she supports six people in her family
with the emergency payment. With unemployment still at catastrophic
levels, every working Iraqi is supporting many other people at home. As
she explains her situation, she's surrounded by four other seamstresses,
each wearing a hejab and worn tan tunic over their clothes. They stand
protectively around her while she speaks for all of them. "The prices of
food and clothing are going up rapidly, and the salary is very low. We
work hard, and I've been here 10 years. I have to have a raise," she
pleads.

Another worker at the Al Daura oil refinery just outside Baghdad,
complaining anonymously for fear that he would lose his job, told me he'd
spent 10 years fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, only to return home to his
six children with nothing. "I still have no house or place to live," he
said bitterly, "and the current emergency wage is totally incapable of
supporting us."

In September and October, the refinery saw three work stoppages, in which
workers demanded a regular salary, at a level higher than the emergency
payments. Leather factory workers even stormed out of their plant, and
marched to the Labor Ministry, complaining about their manager and the
wages. Similar protests have been happening at workplaces throughout the
country.

Those without jobs, estimated at about 70 percent of the workforce, or
about 7-8 million people, have even less. Twenty years ago, most people
living in Baghdad were supported by regular employment. Today the
informal, or black economy, is the means of survival for an enormous part
of the population. Since April, the CPA and the Iraqi Ministry of Labor
and Social Affairs have rewritten all the country's job classifications,
and their corresponding salaries, at least three times. But the actual pay
received by workers has remained exactly the same. The $87 billion just
appropriated by Congress for Iraqi "reconstruction" contains not a dime
for workers or the unemployed. Instead, the money will prepare the way for
the transformation of the Iraqi economy, and the privatization of the
state enterprises at its heart. In the process the Bush administration is
not considering measures that would protect and reinforce labor rights.
Instead, since April the CPA has essentially banned unions in Iraqi state
enterprises, and even issued a decree prohibiting strikes.

In an October 8 phone press conference, Thomas Foley, director for private
sector development for the CPA, announced a list of the first state
enterprises to be sold off, including cement and fertilizer plants,
phosphate and sulfur mines, pharmaceutical factories and the country's
airline. Foley described his goal as a "fully thriving capitalist
economy." On September 19 the CPA published Order No. 39, which permits
100% foreign ownership of businesses, except for the oil industry, and
allows repatriation of profits. No. 37 suspends income and property taxes
for the year, and limits taxes on individuals and corporations in the
future to 15%.

Dathar Al-Kashab, manager of the Al Daura refinery, predicted that
privatization would have an enormous effect. "A worker starting here today
has a job for life, under the old system, and there's no law which permits
me to lay him off. But if I put on the hat of privatization, I'll have to
fire 1500 [of the refinery's 3000] workers. 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."
Al Kashab was formerly the manager of the maintenance department, and
still wears his machinist's overalls as he sits behind the huge desk of
the plant director, a position to which he was appointed when the
occupation began.

The state-owned Mamoun Factory of Vegetable Oils, which employs 771
workers is another prime candidate for sale to a private owner. "But
there's no private person in Iraq with enough money to buy this place,"
said manager Amir Faraj Bhajet. "It would have to be a foreign owner. They
would like the assets, but would they want the workers?" Production is low
and many of the plant's injection molding machines, which make plastic
bottles for the oil, are disabled. Replacement parts were unavailable
during 12 years of sanctions, and the plant was inspected 20 times as a
possible site for chemical weapons production, since the PVC used in
making bottles has a dual possible use. Iraqi newspapers are already
carrying stories on possible buyers.

Despite fear of privatization, however, the fall of the Saddam regime has
led to an explosion of workplace organizing activity. Low wages are one
motivation, but often working conditions are even more important. At the
Al Daura refinery, Detrala Beshab, president of the refinery's new union,
noted that while the workday is officially seven hours, the day shift is
actually 11 hours long, and the night shift 13 hours. Since workers are
paid by the month, there is no overtime pay. "When we talked to the
manager, he told us he had to talk to the Oil Ministry, which had to talk
to the Finance Ministry, which had to get permission from the coalition
forces," Beshab said. "The coalition forces control the finances and our
wages." Beshab and the union committee are all older men, at least in
their forties. The plant hasn't hired new workers in some time. Any job in
Baghdad right now may be precarious, but it is a means of survival, so
workers hang onto them by any means they can. An eleven hour shift is much
better than no shift at all.

The workers' situation is so desperate the refinery gives them motor oil
every month to make up for their low income. On the highway outside the
plant, the sons of refinery workers have set up little roadside stands
selling it to passing cars. In Saddam's time no one could afford to retire
- "the pension wasn't enough to pay a taxi to collect the check," Beshab
laughs. But the refinery and every other state enterprise did pay other
important benefits. There was a system of bonuses and profit-sharing,
which often was as much as the salary itself, and a food subsidy as well.
All those benefits disappeared when the occupation authorities took over.
Workers have suffered a drastic cut in income since April as a result of
CPA decisions. A skyrocketing exchange rate (2000 dinars to the dollar in
mid-October) has made imports more expensive -- in effect, another cut in
salary.

No one in the refinery, except the fire department, has boots or
gloves. Safety glasses are unknown. "Lots of us have breathing problems,
and there are accidents in which people get burned," explained another
union member, Rajid Hassan. If anyone gets hurt or sick, they have to pay
for their own medical care, and lose pay for the time they're out of work.

Two months ago, organizers came out to the plant from one of Iraq's
two new labor federations, the Workers Democratic Trade Union Federation,
the modern successor to the country's pre-Saddam labor movement. Iraq has
a long history of labor and radical activity, born during the fight
against the British during their 6-year occupation of the country at the
end of World War One. Starting with oil, railroad and dock workers, unions
mounted strikes, which the British suppressed at gunpoint, killing
strikers.

The monarchy that the British installed, lasting until 1958, continued
to make union organizing illegal. After the 1958 revolution overthrew the
king, unions and radical political parties came aboveground for the first
time. But in 1963, the CIA mounted a coup against the Kassem government,
and installed the Baath Party. In 1977, Saddam Hussein, who became the
Baath Party ruler, purged the unions and made radical parties illegal.
Many activists were executed, and others fled Iraq into exile.

Following the fall of the Saddam regime in April, organizers of the
old unions resurfaced. In Basra, they mounted a strike two days after the
arrival of British troops, demanding the right to organize and protesting
the appointment of a Baath Party member as the new mayor. Subsequently,
400 union activists met in Baghdad in June, forming the Workers Democratic
Trade Union Federation, and laid plans to reorganize unions in twelve of
the country's main industries. After that meeting, organizers fanned out
to workplaces, including the Al Daura refinery. There they encouraged
workers in each of the nine departments to elect union committees, and to
choose leaders for the entire installation. While the plant manager seemed
very willing to talk with the union, he was not able to sign any kind of
contract with the federation.

The refinery and all other state enterprises are still covered by the
law issued by Saddam on March 11, 1987, which abolished Labour Law No. 151
of 1970, which guaranteed such rights as the 8 hour day. Saddam's 1987
decree turned workers in the public sector into "civil servants," thereby
denying them the right to form or join unions or to bargain. The pension
funds of these workers were handed to the treasury without compensation.
At the same time that unions in the public sector were banned, new
"unions" were created for the private sector which, according to Law 52 of
1987, would work with management to "increase efficiency and work
discipline."

The 1987 law has a special effect on workers employed in enterprises
set to be privatized-if they have no legal union, no right to bargain and
no contracts, the privatization of the plants and the huge job losses that
will come with it will face much less organized resistance.

On June 5 CPA head Paul Bremer issued a decree, called "Public
Incitement to Violence and Disorder." In a paragraph about "prohibited
pronouncements," section b) list those that "incite civil disorder,
rioting or damage to property." Those who violate the decree "will be
subject to immediate detention by CPA security forces and held as a
security internee under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 [which
governs prisoners of war]." The phrase civil disorder can easily be
interpreted as applying to people advocating or organizing strikes.

On an October 13 interview, Dr. Nuri Jafer, assistant to the Iraqi
Minister of Labor, was asked whether the 1987 law would be repealed, and
refused to answer the question. Sitting next to him in his ornate office
was Leslie Findley, a British advisor assigned by the CPA to oversee the
ministry. She was asked the same question, and also refused to answer.
Then she complained about the number of union delegations visiting the
ministry, making the same request. "I'm going to tell the minister that
these are taking too much of his time, and recommend that he concentrate
instead on doing his job," she warned. Dr. Jafer spent a half-hour
describing in glowing terms his idea for a new system of unemployment
benefits, paying, he hoped, a survival income "without removing the
motivation from people to go out and find jobs." Leaving aside the
repetition of the free-marketeers' horror that poor people might lose
their desire to work, Dr. Nuri's explanation had one other major problem.
"As yet, unfortunately," he conceded, "we have yet to find any country
willing to help us fund it."

At the shoe and vegetable oil factories, another new labor group began
organizing workers this summer, called the Workers Unions and Councils.
With its encouragement, shoe factory workers organized a union and
demanded legal recognition. Like workers at the refinery, they complained
about long hours without overtime pay, no vacations, and the disappearance
of their extra pay when the occupation started. At the factory this
reporter was immediately surrounded by dozens of angry workers, each
interrupting the other in their urgent efforts to describe their
frustration. Dressed in the standard blue overalls of most Iraqi factory
workers, they looked as if they had just taken a break from operating
their machines. All seemed very willing to speak out within just a few
yards of the manager's office, but hesitated at giving their names. They
explained their reluctance by noting that workers whose names wound up on
lists maintained by Saddam Hussein security police were fired and
blacklisted, or even executed.

"We're demanding the right to form a union which must have full
authority to represent workers here," explained one worker. "We must
change this law that says we don't have to right to a union. If the law
doesn't change, we'll change it anyway, like it or not. We are the
people." When an assistant manager listening to the interview began to
explain the reason why the factory director couldn't negotiate, this
worker lost his patience and his loud, intense disagreement made the
manager retreat back into the office. "Life has gotten much worse," said
another, pointing emphatically into the air. "Everything is controlled by
the coalition. We don't control anything." Even without legal status,
unions are finding a way to operate and win some demands. The vegetable
oil factory's employees tried first to set up a union for the food
products industry. The labor ministry then reminded them that they were
civil servants, and therefore prohibited from collective bargaining. The
workers and the Workers Councils responded by setting up a union for civil
servants, defying the ban. The new union's demands include reclassifying
the workers so that they can receive higher salaries, lifting the
punishment of banned former employees, and the reinstatement of
profit-sharing. According to its general secretary Majeed Sahib Kareem, "a
major reason for our existence is to eliminate the laws issued by the
Baath regime." Kareem displayed a long list of workers at the plant who
had been arrested and executed during the Saddam Hussein regime for
belonging to the Al Daiwa Party, which is now part of the Iraqi Governing
Council. The children of these workers were blacklisted and unable to find
jobs. Kareem and his union seek to get the government and factory
management to make restitution for the old crimes, and correct the harm
done to workers' families.

The WDTUF also condemns the 1987 law and calls for its repeal, but
doesn't organize mass demonstrations against it. "We think civil
disobedience is a fertile ground for troublemakers to create havoc and
endanger the lives of the people who participate," said Abdullah Muhsin,
the federation's international representative. Part of the Workers
Councils network is the Union of the Unemployed, which for months marched
and demonstrated in the streets for survival payments for people who often
are starving. On July 29 they set up a tent encampment in front of the
compound of the US occupation authorities, and the soldiers detained 21 of
the union's leaders as a result. "The money they spent on just ten combat
helicopters would be enough to meet the needs of all the unemployed
workers in our country," charged Qasim Hadi, the union's general
secretary, who has been arrested twice in protests.

In the face of extreme levels of unemployment, the occupation
authorities have claimed that the contracts for reconstruction given to US
corporations will result in jobs for large numbers of Iraqis. In an August
13 letter to the Union of the Unemployed, William B. Clatanoff, the
then-CPA advisor to the Ministry of Labor, boasted that neighborhood
councils throughout Baghdad would nominate projects "which will not only
offer productive jobs, but also quickly impact neighborhoods in need of
overdue improvements." Anyone driving through the city's streets in the
following two months could easily see the absence of any such public
works, however. Enormous piles of rubble from the war remain untouched.
Clatanoff promised 300,000 jobs throughout Iraq, none of which have
appeared.

Nevertheless, US corporations are actively providing some essential
services to the occupation troops, maintaining prison compounds, and
rebuilding those parts of the infrastructure, like ports and pipelines,
needed to get oil exports restarted. But here the employment of Iraqi
nationals is much less desired.

Highly paid technicians are brought in from outside, and housed in
compounds surrounded by walls and razor wire, escorted by soldiers.
According to the Financial Times of London, contractors preparing meals
for troops on their bases use foreign nationals because they don't trust
Iraqis. "Iraqis are a security threat," said a manager for the Tamimi
Company, which provides food service for 60,000 soldiers. Instead, the
firm brought in 1800 workers from Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Tamimi in turn is a contractor to US construction giant Kellogg, Brown and
Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation. Halliburton's no-bid
contract in Iraq is worth over $2 billion.

Those Iraqis who do get hired to work for the Americans on the bases
describe oppressive working conditions. Muiwafa al Saidy, who works for US
contractors doing construction at the Baghdad airport, complained that
"soldiers aim guns at us wherever we go, even to the toilet." Workers are
paid $5 a day, but have to give $2 of that to a "translator" who threatens
to tell the soldiers they're terrorists unless he gets paid off. They have
to pass through three different gates to gain access to the area where
they work, and al Saidy described instances in which they were held in a
no-man's land between the gates all day, to punish them for arriving a few
minutes late. Adding to the tension are the presence of prisoners in the
compound. Al Saidy said he's seen children brought in from the soccer
fields, balls in hand, old men in their 80s, and even hospital patients
carrying their drip bags. He described treatment bordering on contempt -
food thrown on the ground, blows with sticks, and other forms of
disrespect.

In August, a representative of the International Labor Organization,
Walid Hamdan, visited Iraq. On his return, he made a report to the
International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU). Guy Ryder, the
ICFTU's general secretary, called for an international labor delegation to
visit Iraq to investigate conditions for workers. "Ensuring respect for
workers' rights, including freedom of association, must be central to
building a democratic Iraq and to ensuring sustainable economic and social
development," the ICFTU said in a May 30 statement. "Democracy must have
roots. It requires free elections, but also mass based, democratic trade
unions that help secure it and protect it as well as being schools of
democracy." Arab trade unionists are also critical of the occupation's
effect on workers.

According to Hacene Djemam, General Secretary of the International
Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, "war makes privatization easy: first
you destroy the society and then you let the corporations rebuild it." He
emphasized that Iraqi workers must be able to form unions of their own
choosing.

Meanwhile, US Labor Against the War, which brought together unions and
labor councils that opposed the Bush intervention before it took place,
prepared a research paper after the occupation started, profiling the US
corporations that were given reconstruction contracts. A USLAW delegation
to Iraq in October took copies of the report, and offered to assist unions
there if and when they confront the kind of union-busting activity for
which some of those companies have become notorious. A British labor
delegation also visited Iraq in September.

Labor support in the US for Iraqi unions will focus on the repeal of
the 1987 Saddam law prohibiting collective bargaining for state-sector
workers, and the removal of other legal barriers on labor activity. The US
Labor Assembly for Peace, convened in Chicago on October 24 and 25 by
USLAW, announced it was launching a national campaign to defend Iraqi
labor rights under the occupation, and resolved to make this an issue in
the 2004 election. It called for Congressional hearings into the
enforcement of the 1987 law, and began circulating resolutions through
unions around the country to build up pressure on Bush and the CPA.

Clarence Thomas, former secretary-treasurer of San Francisco longshore
Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, was a member
of the USLAW October delegation. He explained to a meeting of WDTUF
leaders that his local had opposed the war even before it started, a
position backed up by the International union at its convention in June.
Jassim Mashkoul, the new federation's director for internal
communications, thanked him for his opposition to the war and occupation.
"At the beginning, we thought our situation might be better afterwards,
since we got rid of Saddam Hussein. But it hasn't been." He cited the
occupation authority's enforcement of the 1987 law as a major obstacle. In
addition, he noted, the new federation has asked that the old union
structure set up by Saddam Hussein be officially dissolved, and its
buildings and the benefit funds it administered turned over to the new
unions. The occupation authorities have turned a deaf ear to these appeals
as well. Both the WDTUF and the Workers Councils federations opposed the
war and call for an end to the occupation. But according to another leader
of the federation, Muhsen Mull Ali, who spent two long stints in prison
for organizing unions in Basra, "they will reimpose capitalism on us, so
our responsibility is to oppose privatization as much as possible, and
fight for the welfare of our workers." "We need Congressional hearings
into the union-busting actions by US occupation authorities in Iraq,"
Thomas declared. "If unions here knew what's being done in our name over
there, they'd be outraged."

[David Bacon, Bay Area labor photojournalist, accompanied Clarence
Thomas, executive board member of ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco, to Iraq
and chronicled their meetings with Iraqi workers, union organizers, and
others. Clarence and David are available to speak before labor audiences
and others about their experience and observations about the situation for
workers in Iraq. David also has a photo show. Contact David Bacon at
dbacon@... and Clarence Thomas at deeclarenc@.... For more
information about USLAW contact: http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/ ]

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