Read this article in:
10 November, 2010
The quest to resist austerity measures imposed on public services and public-sector workers in the wake of the financial crash is a noble one and one worth fighting. But global unions need also look within boundaries of certain countries to witness an unparalleled assault on public-sector workers and trade unionists who courageously step up to lead those workers.
I refer specifically to the troubling and untenable trade union situation in Iraq, where reconstruction to essential, publicly-owned industrial sectors has come at a steep price to ordinary Iraqi workers and the brave men and women who lead them toward a true democratic society.
In Iraq, roughly 80% of all industries are in the public sector. Yet even as foreign investment arrives, and privatization of certain manufacturing sectors appears inevitable, trade unionism is prohibited. It is still illegal to be a member of a trade union, just as it was under the dictator Saddam, and two years into the rule of the occupation forces (2005), Decree 8750 was mandated that forbid unions from owning property, holding bank accounts, or collecting fees from workers.
It is unconscionable that seven years after the fall of Saddam, and 23 years after his notorious Public Law 150 banning all trade union activity in the public sector, Iraq is still without a legal framework for industrial relations that meets ILO standards. Sadly, the Saddam-era ban was one of the few laws not overturned by the occupation administration when it took power.
In 2005, the provisional government of Iraq did re-draft the country’s constitution. Section 22 of that constitution calls for a new labour law to defend the rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively. But due to political stalemate, lack of will by Iraqi politicians across all political parties, and indifference by the United States government, a Labour and Social Security Law that was written by the ILO has not even been considered by Iraq’s Council of Representatives.
Instead, Iraq’s Cabinet members resort to ministerial orders that close union offices, confiscating all materials, equipment, and literature. The most recent such order, in July against all unions attempting to operate in the electric power industry, was carried out in a day, showing the government to be serious in its clamp-down on unions, perhaps as a signal to foreign investment.
With the order shutting electrical union offices, a threat was also issued warning workers and trade union leaders that they would be incarcerated under Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005 if they tried to protest the shutdowns. This came only months after the al-Maliki government laid down an order banning trade unionists from travelling abroad unless they got a hard-to-get “internal visa” from the Supreme Ministerial Committee.
This was the government’s response to trade unionists from a whole range of Iraqi unions who for several years had travelled to Jordan, Lebanon, Europe, or America for union training and development programs. Donors and trade union organizations such as the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), the American AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, and ICEM have supplied that support and training.
In 2007, at the ICEM’s World Congress in Bangkok, Iraqi trade union development and full trade union rights for the country’s unions became a priority in our work plan. That was reiterated at our 2010 Executive Committee where a strongly worded resolution was adopted condemning the government’s most recent repressive tactics. “We demand the immediate repeal of all restrictions on union activity and the immediate enactment of fair labour legislation which fully complies with ILO Conventions and provides fundamental human and trade union rights as provided in the Iraqi constitution,” read the statement.
To be sure, other trade union bodies and Global Union Federations have taken up the cause in order to achieve this. At the 97th International Labour Congress in June 2008, five labour organizations, including ICEM, TUC, AFL-CIO, Public Services International (PSI), and Education International (EI), stood in front of the Committee of Standards and condemned Iraq’s ruthless attack on trade unionism.
The ICEM is proud of the work it has done with Iraq’s unions and with trade union leaders, but we know that far more needs to be done. The ICEM is even prouder of the great trade union leaders who have risen inside Iraq against what would seem insurmountable odds to carry out a most noble struggle with perseverance and self-sacrifice.
One is Hashmeya Muhsin Al-Saadawi, the first woman to head a trade union in the Arab world and one leader who was forcefully removed from her office in Basra this past July when the government closed the union offices in the electrical sector. As president of the General Union of Electricity Workers and Technicians of Iraq (GUEWT), affiliated to both the ICEM and the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), Hashmeya Muhsin in 2009 won the Dutch labour center FNV’s prestigious Febe Elisabeth Velasquez award.
The award, along with a cash prize, is given to a trade union leader who takes risks in defending workers’ rights in countries where they are routinely violated. In poverty-ridden Iraq, however, what she did with the prize money is most exemplary: she produced a training manual for launch of an Iraqi social security campaign to promote social justice and equality as means to achieve job opportunities, decent work, and health, education, and quality living.
The ICEM offers this as the way in which to go about nation-building.
There are many other Iraqi trade union leaders who have stood tall in the face of repression, and we owe it to them to raise full ire outside Iraq to what is happening to them within. Some have been arrested, others forced from their work and transferred away from co-workers and their families to remote job sites because they led protests against salary curtailments, cuts to food rations, or common social entitlements withheld.
I would be remiss to not mention the dozens of Iraqi trade union leaders have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their union activities – their lives. Dedicated unionists such as Hadi Saleh of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), Shukry al-Shukry, a founder of the IFTU, Ali Hassan Abd of the Oil and Gas Workers’ Union, Dr. Adnan Al-Abed, an academic and adviser to the GFIW who reviewed the ILO’s labour law proposal, Moaaid Hamid of the GFIW, Ahmed Adris Abas of the Transport and Communications Workers’ Union, Thabet Hussein of the General Union for Health Sector Workers, General Secretary Najim Abd-Jasem of the Mechanic Workers Union, Hassan Hamza, president of the Hotel and Tourism Workers’ Union, and Majiid Karim, an executive member of the GFIW, to name only a few, all were assassinated in order to stifle union activity.
The assassination of journalists, as well, has regrettably set civil society back in Iraq. In recent weeks, the lives of Ryad al-Saray in Baghdad and Safaa al-Khayat in Mosul ended because cowards could not bear a free and open society, and their deaths serve as reminders that public-sector life in Iraq is dangerous and deadly.
One has to ask, how far has Iraq come since the overthrow of Saddam? Is destroying Iraq’s labour movement the way to ensure a stable, civil society in which democratic institutions can thrive? By neo-liberal norms in an age of greed-filled privatization, free and democratic trade unions do stand in the way to unfettered access of a country’s resources.
But for the vast majority of Iraq’s citizens, after five decades of living under severe repression, they want better. Nationalist sentiment inside Iraqi society considers electricity, the oil sector, pipelines, ports, transportation, and other enterprises as integral public services that stand as guarantees of sovereignty and economic well-being for all citizens.
There can be little debate that war makes privatization easier. First you destroy the infrastructure, and then you re-build with no-bid contracts awarded to favored corporations. Iraqi unions have seen this first-hand over the past seven years, and the fights they wage to defend what is rightfully theirs, against forces of neo-colonialism, are heroic and just. Global Union Federations like the ICEM recognize this, we recognize it as a shining example of what public-sector trade unionism is all about, and we pledge to continue to do what is necessary to assist Iraqi trade unions in winning their fight.