Victory for Iraqi Leather Industry Workers as Strikes Spread
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010Thanks to our friend Ali Issa (formerly in Austin, now in New York) for the link to his blog, Iraq Left: On Iraqi Organizing and Movement Building Now, http://iraqleft.wordpress.com/
(The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq is a left-led, independent labor federation that has had a lot of communication and solidarity with U.S. Labor Against the War. The reference to the “Ba’athi move of banning ‘unrecognized’ unions” recalls Saddam Hussein’s edict banning public sector unions. This was one of the few Saddam-era laws kept on the books by the U.S. occupation.)
January 2, 2010
After a 53-day strike (the longest in Iraq since 1931) won workers in the leather industry the release of long promised safety benefits and back wages, FWCUI-affiliated unions are at it again, this time organizing Baghdad cotton factory workers and announcing a strike for similar demands, now entering its 19th day. There is yet a another strike, this one in the industrial area of Nahrawan (east of Baghdad) at al-Thalal brick factory. This strike began on the 23rd of December. If these actions are any indication, organizing in the industrial sector is really catching fire in Iraq. In the face of such effective and uncompromising direct action, the Iraqi authorities –surprise, surprise—have stepped up their attempts to interfere, by “relocating” organizers to out of the way offices, or simply firing them. The most threatening of these attempts though, takes the form of planned union federation elections, which the FWCUI considers to be a sham meant only to confer legitimacy on the state-backed federation. This then may lead to the very Ba’athi move of banning of all ‘unrecognized’ unions.
Here’s an earlier post with background on the same subject. Privatization is an issue everywhere:
November 26, 2009
The Baghdad based Federation of Worker’s Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) has called for an expansion of the now 41 day-old leather industries strike, into other industries and sectors across Iraq. In their call (which you can read in the original Arabic here, and in English translation here) they cite numerous wage and condition-related grievances, but also emphasize what Iraqi labor unions have for decades been struggling against: a 1987 law, enforced to this day, which prohibits worker organizing in the public sector, in addition to various economic initiatives which they see as threatening the public sector’s very existence. The FWCUI’s analysis also has a broader reach, and considers these moves an expression of the desire on the part of the Iraqi Government, multi-nationals, and the US-led occupation, to privatize nearly all Iraqi industry.
