Rapid Iraqi Follow-up to ICEM, ITF ‘Well-to-Wheel’ Work Praised

Oil and transport trade unions in the Suleymania area of Iraqi Kurdistan returned home from a recent meeting of the ICEM, International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) Oil & Gas Trade Union Alliance in Beirut and quickly organized a wider meeting of unions from both petroleum and transport sectors at the regional level. (See the ICEM/ITF story here.)

Salam Rachid of the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Syndicat Union of Suleymania arranged the meeting of local union activists to report back on the results of the seminar and explain the importance of the Alliance.

ICEM, ITF, and the Solidarity Center of the US, which supports the “Well to Wheel” Alliance in Iraq, are delighted to see the immediate follow-up work at local level, which is considered essential to the success of the Alliance. This is especially important given the draconian measures taken recently against trade unions of electric power workers’ in Iraq, in what has become the latest attempt by the Baghdad government to destroy independent trade unionism.

The ICEM views the recent crack-downs on electric power workers as an extension of failure by Iraq’s government to enact ILO-compliant labour legislation and its excuse to impose old legislation from the Saddam era, which banned trade unions in the public sector and heavily restricts all trade union activity and work.