Iraqi trade unions

Iraqi workers win tactical victory

The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions has claimed a tactical victory in the Basra oil pipeline workers’ dispute. Union leader Hassan Jumaa announced on 11 June: “An enlarged meeting was held with... the minister... Most of the issues within the remit of the prime minister were dealt with....” The workers originally struck on Monday 4th. The government sent troops to surround the workplace. Work resumed, but the government agreed to negotiate. The government had ordered the arrest of leaders of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions for “sabotaging the Iraqi economy”, but in fact they were not...

US Iraq plan in chaos, but Islamists offer no answer

by Colin Foster Is a new nationalist political alliance emerging in Iraq, non-sectarian or at least cross-sectarian? Some reporters in the USA claim it is. The balance of evidence, I think, indicates not. The claim for the existence of a new alliance rests on a “legislative petition” submitted in the Iraqi parliament on 8 May calling for the USA to set a timetable for withdrawal. The “petition” does not have the force of a parliamentary decision, but its organisers claim the support of 144 members, a majority of the 275-member parliament. On 5 June they got a binding decision through the...

Iraqi rail workers strike

Iraqi railway workers have begun an indefinite strike to win a pay rise and basic rights. The strike action, backed by the vast majority of rail workers, has paralysed the country's main North/South rail corridor. It has been taken in order to achieve improvements in salaries and conditions, as well as improved safety, protection from attack and fundamental workers' rights. Mac Urata, Secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federations's Inland Transport Section, has commented: "It beggars belief that the dictatorial anti-union laws of the Saddam Hussein era are still in place...

Appeal from Iraqi workers’ leader

From Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq The occupation troops and their allies, and the militias, have driven society into a sectarian war. They have also confiscated the most basic liberties. The regional powers have put their resources at the disposal of the armed groups and powers who represent their interests in Iraq, thereby turning... living and working places into battlefields of a destructive reactionary war... The workers of Iraq have taken their position against the occupation and the current situation through demonstrations and protests...

The “reactionary anti-imperialists”

“Reactionary socialism… half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare; More substance in our enmities Than in our love… W B Yeats The left is defined, grouped and regrouped, and redefined again and again, by responses to major events — for example, to the October Revolution of 1917. The left is now undergoing another redefinition, around its responses to the series of wars that began with the Kosova war of 1999 and continued...

US and Iraqi forces raid Iraqi union office

US and Iraqi government forces have once again raided the office of Iraq's largest trade union federation. So much for the argument raised by some on the left that the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (formerly the IFTU, led by the Iraqi Communist Party) is just a "yellow union", little more than a labour front for the government and the occupiers. The GFIW, like its "communist" leaders, is deeply reformist and class-collaborationist - but it is no less a real union than the reformist, collaborationist unions in Britain. And, as a matter of urgency, it needs our solidarity against the Iraqi...

Support Iraqi workers and women!

Text of the AWL leaflet for the 24 February anti-war demonstration, London. There is sectarian civil war in Iraq. Simmering civil war, rather than full flames, but civil war. It would be stupid and criminal to look to the US/UK troops to stop the civil war. The current "surge" of US troops in Baghdad is more likely to worsen the conditions, as a smaller "surge" of US troops from other areas of Iraq onto the streets of Baghdad worsened conditions in the second half of 2006. But now the hard-pressed labour movement, and all democratic and women's rights, risk being destroyed in the full flames...

Sectarian militias kill more trade unionists in Iraq

The reactionary nature of the sectarian militias in Iraq has been demonstrated yet again with the killing of more trade unionists.

On 11 January militia gunmen abducted eight engineers from the Iraqi Oil Ministry as they were travelling to a Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq...

Iraqi labour movement opposes new oil law

The Iraqi labour movement has been campaigning for a long time now against the principle of privatising and contracting out Iraqi oil. A joint statement in December 2006 by all the main union federations declared: "We strongly reject the privatisation of our oil wealth, as well as production sharing agreements... there is no room for discussing this matter". But on 17 January al-Jazeera reported that an Iraqi government committee had finally reached agreement on a draft oil law. The Independent (7 January) has reported the law will allow foreign oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the...

More strikes as Iraq spins into abyss

BY martin thomas According to the Federation of Workers’ Councils of Unions, reporting on 11 October, health workers in Kerbala (southern Iraq) have held a sit-in protest, after a strike in early October calling for wage rises. In Nasiriya (also southern Iraq), health workers have struck four times over wages. FWCUI says: “The strikes in the health sector have expanded to many provinces” as far as Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq. This revival of the Iraqi workers’ movement — previously very much on the defensive since a small strike wave in early 2005 — is of tremendous importance, and socialists...

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