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 | | From: | James A. Chamblee | | Subject: | U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:17:06 GMT |
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 | http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html
(#17) U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq
in Quest for Business Privatization
The Progressive, December 2003
Title: Saddam's labor laws live on
Author: David Bacon
Left Turn, March/April 2004, v. 12
Title: "Ambitions of Empire: The Radical Reconstruction of Iraqs Economy"
Author: Antonia Juhasz
Faculty Evaluators: Haidi LaMoreaux Ph.D., Susan Garfin Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Katie Drewieske, Adam Stutz
In the Wall Street Journal on May 1, 2003 an article leaked the
confidential Bush Administration documents outlining sweeping plans
to remake Iraqs economy in the US image. Hoping to establish a
free-market economy in Iraq the US is calling for the privatization
of state-owned industries such as parts of the oil sector. This
all-inclusive plan for mass privatization of Iraq is divided into
three stages. In the first stage corporations are not only able to
establish their businesses in Iraq, they are also able to own Iraqi
resources, including two of the most precious Iraqi resources: oil
and water. In the second stage, all Iraqi resources would be turned
over to private ownership. The final stage includes the establishment
of a Free Trade Area in the Middle East paving the way for US
domination of the entire region.
The beginning of the corporate invasion was signaled by the many
multi-million dollar contracts that were handed to corporations via
the Bush administration. The US Agency for International Development
(USAID) secretly sent out bids for contracts. Iraqis, humanitarian
organizations, the United Nations and any non-US led business were
left out of the contract bids. Although Halliburton and Bechtel are
some of the most well known corporations that have received these
contracts, there are a plethora of others that have been included
in these secret bids:
MCI/WorldCom
DynCorp/Computer Sciences Corp
Flour Intercontinental
Creative Associates International Inc.
Research Triangle Institute
With Halliburton now responsible for the extraction and redistribution
of oil, Bechtel has been handed the contract to oversee the management
of water systems and waste water management. Being the largest
private company in the world responsible for water management, (it
is involved in over 200 water and waste water treatment plants
around the world) Bechtels contract has been extended to include
the distribution of water just as Halliburtons was for oil. With
this in mind, the private ownership of Iraqi water supplies could
have devastating consequences for the Iraqi population.
In addition to the privatization of the Iraqi resources, the U.S.-led
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq has kept in place
many of Saddam Husseins anti-labor practices.
In 1977, Saddam Hussein purged unions and made radical parties
illegal. Many labor leaders were executed or fled the country to
live in exile. Ten years later, Hussein reclassified the people who
worked in large state enterprises as civil servants. That meant
that the government employed 70 percent of Iraqi workers, and made
it illegal for them to form unions or to bargain for better working
conditions.
Since the Hussein regime fell last April 2003, workplace-organizing
activity has exploded. Union organizers emerged quickly, spearheading
a drive for better wages. A worker strike was held in Basra two
days after British troops arrived. Workers demanded the right to
organize and protested the appointment of a Baath party official
as the new mayor. Similar demonstrations have been going on throughout
the country. 400 union activists met in Baghdad in June 2003 to
form the Workers Democratic Trade Union Federation, and planned to
reorganize unions in many of Iraqs major industries.
But the CPA, while striking down almost all of Husseins other laws,
has kept the ban on unions, keeping wages low and unemployment high
(at about 70 percent). They are privatizing the state enterprises
that employed most of the workers. As of December 2003, 138 of the
600 state-owned businesses were being offered for sale.
On Sept. 19, 2003, the CPA published Order No. 37, which suspends
income and property taxes for a year and limits future taxes to 15
percent. Later that day, they issued Order No. 39, permitting 100
percent foreign ownership of businesses (except oil) and allowing
repatriation of profits. Outright ownership of, access to, and
profits from Iraqi oil fields is still under dispute although it
is likely that U.S. interests will prevail.
The CPA has set an emergency pay scale for Iraqi workers wages,
which for most is $60 a month. This is the same wage scale that
workers had under the Hussein regime. Benefits under Hussein included
frequent bonuses, profit sharing, medical coverage, and food
subsidies. There is no overtime pay under the CPA, no benefits, and
an increase in the exchange rate has made imports and essential
items very expensive. Workers have had a drastic cut in income since
April 2003 as a result of CPA decisions.
Low wages arent the only problems unions hope to combat. Working
conditions are exhausting and dangerous. Under the Hussein regime,
the workday was seven hours long. Now a day shift is 11 hours, a
night shift is 13 hours. Safety glasses and other safety equipment
are virtually unknown in most industries. If workers get sick or
hurt, they must pay for their own medical care and also lose pay
for the time they miss. Life has gotten much worse, said one worker.
Everything is controlled by the coalition. We dont control anything.
Workers in the businesses to be privatized could face even more
problems in the future. If they have no legal union, no right to
bargain and no contracts, they may not be able to oppose the
privatization of their plants and potential huge job losses. A plant
manager in one industry seemed willing to talk to the union in his
factory, but since finances and wages are controlled by the CPA,
he is not able to sign any kind of contract with the group.
The factory manager pointed out that under the Hussein regime, the
3,000 workers were guaranteed jobs for life. He was not allowed to
lay off anyone. But if his business were privatized he would have
to fire about 1,500 people in order to make a profit; since there
is no unemployment insurance, he will be killing those workers and
their families.
Iraqi Labor Undersecretary Nuri Jafer says he would like to start
an unemployment insurance program, but so far no country is willing
to help fund it. Meanwhile, none of the $87 billion that Congress
allotted for Iraq will go to increase wages or implement a large
jobs program.
A delegation from U.S. Labor Against War a group of American union
and labor councils visited Iraq in October to investigate conditions.
They asked Jafer repeatedly whether or not the 1987 law banning
unions would be repealed, but he would not answer the question. The
British CPA representative at the Labor Ministry also refused to
answer, and complained that the foreign union delegations that
visited the ministry were wasting the Labor Ministers time.
UPDATE BY DAVID BACON: The disaster that is the occupation of Iraq
is much more than the war that plays 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 U.S.
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.
The effects of U.S. policy on daily life, especially the economic
situation of most Iraqis, go largely ignored in the U.S. media,
although anyone walking the streets of Baghdad cannot miss them.
Children sleep on the sidewalks. Sewage still pours into the Tigris
River, and those who must depend on it for drinking or cooking
continue to get sick. The violence of poverty is not held to be a
violation of human rights in the United States just one manifestation
of the great division in the world between the wealthy, industrialized
north, and the developing south. The U.S. does not recognize that
human rights include economic and social rights, in part because
they are collective rights of groups, social classes, or even
nations.
The story on labor in Iraq detailed these violations of human rights.
Most of the specific CPA decrees mentioned in the story, suppressing
union rights and setting the stage for privatization, are unarguably
violations of international human rights standards.
Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labor Organization,
guaranteeing freedom of association, makes the continued enforcement
of the 1987 ban on unions illegal. Convention 135, preventing
retaliation against workers for union activity, makes the arrests
of union leaders, and their expulsion from their offices, illegal
as well.
The story exposed not only the growing poverty of Iraqi workers,
but the conscious effort to use a falling standard of living as an
attraction for foreign investment. After the story appeared in The
Progressive, the situation for workers and unions grew worse. Members
of the national executive board of the Iraqi Federation of Trade
Unions were arrested in December, along with leaders of the Union
of the Unemployed of Iraq. In January and February, a wave of work
stoppages and labor confrontations in the south hit Iraq's key
industries - oil and electrical generation. Worker resistance grew
so heated that the occupation authority was forced to withdraw
decrees which would have lowered wages even further.
In an especially Orwellian moment, George Bush even declared in his
January State of the Union speech that U.S. intervention in Iraq
would promote the formation of free trade unions in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, as of April, the occupation authority continued to
enforce the Saddam-era ban on union in most workplaces.
Few other media outlets picked up the story of the violation of
Iraqi labor rights. A notable exception was the labor press,
especially The Dispatcher (of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union) and the Guild Reporter (of the Newspaper Guild).
This labor attention reflects the growing antipathy and opposition
to the war and occupation among U.S. unions, a story in itself.
There was some attention on the radio, due in part to the efforts
of the Institute for Public Accuracy. None of the major national
daily US newspapers, however, and none of the television networks,
have run any news stories at all about Iraqi labor and workers.
Perhaps this is just an extension of their failure to cover unions
and workers in the US, but given the need to develop the institutions
of civil society in Iraq capable of governing the country, ignoring
unions and their allied popular organizations seems a kind of willful
blindness typical of the occupation generally.
The best source for continued and up-to-date information about Iraqi
workers and unions can be found on the website of U.S. Labor Against
the War, the national network of unions opposed to the Bush war
policy. www.uslaboragainstwar.org.
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