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13 August, 2007
The ICEM is in strong support of oilworkers’ trade unions in Iraq over the most recent denial of their rights. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Sharistani, through his legal adviser Laith abd al Hussein Shahir, issued a formal directive to the country’s oil companies, ordering them not to deal with trade unions and to exclude trade unionists from work committees.
The directive, in effect, is meant to silence Iraq’s oil unions from having an effect on the proposed Hydrocarbon Law. That law, which allows outside companies to exploit Iraq’s wealth, has been approved by the Iraqi government and now is before the country’s parliament. Iraq’s oil workers and their unions have become the most outspoken opponents to the measure, arguing that it would ignite already dangerous regional rivalries and enrich global oil companies at the expense of ordinary Iraqis.
Sharistani’s directive, which states that “unions do not enjoy any legal status to work inside the government sector,” is a repeat of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Decree 8750, issued by the occupational forces in 2003 to prevent public-sector oil workers from forming trade unions. It is also a replay of Saddam’s Decree 150, which banned all public-sector unions.
“The promotion and development of free and democratic trade unions, and the necessary social dialogue attached to that is essential for the reconstruction and reconciliation in Iraq,” stated ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “We stand with our Iraqi brothers and sisters, and ask that this draconian directive be rescinded.”
Iraq’s constitution, passed in 2005 with great hoopla praise from the occupational forces, enshrines the right of forming and joining professional associations and unions, and states this will be set in law. Sharistani’s directive of 18 July 2007 is directly contradictory to Iraq’s constitution. Iraq has also ratified ILO Convention 98 on Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, and thus has international obligations to promote voluntary unionism and collective bargaining rights.
Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Workers, representing 26,000 workers in the Southern Oil Companies, said his members would not recognise the directive since “we are working for Iraq.” He had called the oil law a “planned theft of Iraqi oil disguised as ‘The Hydrocarbon Law.’”
The General Union of Oil Workers and Technicians (GUOWT), part of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), sent a delegation on 6 August to meet with the oil minister. Sharistani refused to meet, but sent the Information director of the ministry to tell the trade unionists that the oil minister “will not meet with people that represent unions in the oil sector” because there are no workers in this sector, only “state employees.”
The GFIW delegation did deliver a letter, which demanded that Sharistani withdraw the directive.