Iraqi trade unions

Martin Thomas spoke to Falah Alwan ( FWCUI), Toma Hamid (WCPI in Australia), and Mansour Razaghi (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union in Australia who has been in close touch with the Iraqi unions) about recent protests in Iraq. FA: On Friday 4 March there was a very rough curfew imposed by the authorities to stop people from attending the demonstration in Tahrir Square, Baghdad. But despite that around 15,000 attended. It lasted until 5.30pm and after that they started shooting the demonstrators. One of our comrades was injured by a bullet, and another one was injured in Samara...

Strikes in the [state-owned] leather industries were held on 1 February. The workers called for safety benefits and remunerations. They wanted to expose the lies of the administration about the bankruptcy of their company. They have more than one contract with the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Trade and other ministries to provide them with leather goods. The third demand was against “self-financing”, which is a kind of privatisation. The strike continued for two weeks, until 14 February. The administration promised to answer the workers’ demands, except the demand safety benefits. In...

Iraqi railworkers who work on the railways heading south from Baghdad are fighting for pay increases and security benefits after several workers died in explosions on the track. The railway, which heads south from Baghdad to Samawah, crosses a particularly dangerous territory in which armed gangs are active. Instead of providing adequate security for the trains and their workers, railway bosses have attempted to pay off the gangs themselves. Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, said “railway workers have been suffering from mines and explosions. The...

Recently, AWL members in the UK and Australia (along with other activists) have been holding monthly web-conferences with Falah Alwan, leader of the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq. This is an edited transcript of Falah's report to the December conference. Because of the quality of the internet connection, this transcript is imperfect. It is edited and is therefore not a verbatim record of what Falah said. The first issue is to do with a strike of railway workers. Workers of the railway in the south of Iraq – especially around Samawah, 270km south of Baghdad, which is a...

Falah Alwan is the president of the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions of Iraq . He spoke to international solidarity activists early in November. The biggest sector in Iraq is the public sector. According to the decrees of the former regime, public sector workers are prohibited from organising. The current Iraqi authorities still impose the same decisions. Regarding the private sector, there are factories operating outside of even the control of the Ministry of Labour. There are some workplaces operating without any kind of labour law. After 2003 we started organising new unions; we...

The Alsabah (a pro-Iraqi government newspaper) published this news on May 15, 2010: The higher ministerial committee that supervises the implementation of the Civil Provisional Authority Decree No. 3 (Paul Bremer, 2004), has decided that unionists must obtain prior approval from the government should they intend to travel or participate in any delegation or activity abroad. The decision was made April 25, 2010, by a high committee headed by Thamir Jaffer of the State Ministry of Civil Society Affairs along with representatives of the ministries of Interior, Finance, Justice, National Security...

The Alsabah (a pro-Iraqi government newspaper) published this news on May 15, 2010: The higher ministerial committee that supervises the implementation of the Civil Provisional Authority Decree No. 3 (Paul Bremer, 2004), has decided that unionists must obtain prior approval from the government should they intend to travel or participate in any delegation or activity abroad. The decision was made April 25, 2010, by a high committee headed by Thamir Jaffer of the State Ministry of Civil Society Affairs along with representatives of the ministries of Interior, Finance, Justice, National Security...

From the General Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions, 29 May 2010: A demonstration that began May 7 in Basra intensified today with new threats upon the workers and union leaders being relocated 1000 km from their jobs. In response to a call made by the leaders of the general union of harbor workers in Basra (an affiliate union with the General Federation of Worker Councils and Unions in Iraq) hundreds of employees of the Iraqi Harbor Corporation walked off the job on May 7, 2010, demanding better wages and living conditions. Immediately after being informed, Iraqi Harbor Corporation...

The AFL-CIO, an American equivalent of the TUC, has launched an international campaign for a democratic labour law in Iraq. At present, Saddam Hussein's labour law from 1987 is still on the books, making trade unions theoretically illegal in the public sector, i.e. in most of the Iraqi economy. In addition, Decree 8750, from August 2005, gives the Iraqi government arbitrary powers to seize union funds. Successive Iraqi governments have promised that they will legislate for workers' right to organise, to have representation, to strike, etc., but have not yet done so. The AFL-CIO may well do not...

From the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq, December 2009 . After one of the longest strikes in the history of the Iraqi workers' movement, the workers in leather production achieved a historic victory when the administration agreed to pay safety benefits. The strength and endurance of the strike which lasted over fifty days, was in the unity and determination of the workers, and their singular focus on their demands and organizing. The organizers showed an ability to lead the strike and maintain the determination among the ranks of the workers for more than seven weeks. The...