26 July, 2010
Global trade union and civil society outrage was heard loud and clear last week by the latest setback to reconstruction in Iraq. The Iraqi government, on 20 July, invoked a ministerial order to shut and seize all offices and property of electrical workers’ trade unions.
Within a day of the order, police were inventorying equipment, furniture, and files of several electrical workers’ union across Iraq, including those of two ICEM affiliates – the Electrical Power Workers’ Union of the Federation of Workers’ Council Unions of Council (FWCUI) and the General Union of Electricity Workers and Technicians (GUEWT), affiliated to the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW). GUEWT President Hashmeya Muhsen Al-Saadawi said the police were polite, yet forceful in cataloging and closing offices.
In Iraq, issuance of the order and implementing it within a day is a record. Normally, administrative orders can take weeks and months to put in place. In this case, the anti-union bias of Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani is evident. He has only recently been appointed Acting Minister of Electricity. The order states that trade union leaders who stand in the way of the closures will be charged under Iraq’s 2005 Terrorism Act.
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Last week’s targeting of electrical trade unions stands as a malicious muscle-play by the government to keep a ban on all public-sector unions. That ban, Order 8750, was imposed by the occupation forces in August 2005, and, in turn, had upheld a Saddam law from 1987 that banned free and independent trade unions. The electrical raids also serve as stark reminder that meaningful labour law in Iraq will be very difficult under leaders of this government.
The ICEM and many other unions and NGOs, including Amnesty International, immediately protested. On 22 July, ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda wrote to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki: “This order is a direct affront to all trade unions in Iraq, particularly trade unions such as the GUEWT that ICEM and its affiliated unions across the world have been working with in order to establish free and democratic institutions for the betterment of all Iraqi people.” (The full letter is here.)
In another letter, this one to new UK Foreign Secretary William Hague by Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Brendan Barber, the decree was labeled “a violation of the Iraqi constitution, and one of the most draconian acts by the Iraqi Government since the fall of Saddam. It comes from Hussain al-Shahristani, the Minister for Oil, who has recently taken over the electricity portfolio and has a worrying track record of using Saddam-era labour laws against trade unions.”
The TUC began a campaign on LabourStart to protest this willful action, and that can be joined here.
In Iraq by week’s end, there was discrimination against trade union leaders who attempted to gather to discuss the sudden closures and seizures. At one such gathering that took place outside the offices of an electric enterprise, police came by to verbally assault trade unionists. In Basra on 22 July, union leaders did meet with some members of the Basra Governorate Council to discuss the aggressive and illegal, under Article 22 of the Iraqi Constitution, ministerial order
The ICEM urges trade unions and activists to engage the Iraqi government by joining the LabourStart campaign.