(reprinted from Workday Minnesota, a midwestern labor paper)

November 2, 2003

CHICAGO -- The U.S.-named Coalition Provisional Authority that now runs Iraq will not change Iraqi labor law -- which severely curtails unions -- for at least two years and, on Oct. 16, banned strikes, say two U.S. unionists who traveled there.

Freelance writer David Bacon, a Newspaper Guild member, and former International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Clarence Thomas, of California, said those decisions left most Iraqi workers without union representation and unable to strike.

That's because Iraqi labor law bans unions in state-run companies, a large share of the pre-war economy, they said.

Bacon and Thomas discussed their six-day mid-October trip, mostly in Baghdad but also to the al-Dawra oil refinery, in a telephone interview before reporting on it to an Oct. 24-25 conference of U.S. Labor Against the War, held in Chicago.

The conference occurred on the same weekend that at least 50,000 protesters, including some unionists -- such as those from Hospital and Health Care Workers Local 1199 in New York -- marched in Washington, demanding withdrawal of U.S. troops, and repeal of the Patriot Act, among other causes.

"We saw no physical evidence of reconstitution in Iraq and we did not see people working," Thomas said. Bacon estimated Iraqi unemployment at 70 percent.

Thomas said their data came from "several labor organizations, including the Workers' Democratic Trade Union Movement, which took a significant role in opposing the bloody repression of Saddam's regime," and the new Union of the Unemployed.

The "old guard" of the Iraqi labor movement "was forced underground" during Saddam Hussein's rule, he said. "They resurfaced and are putting into place an organized structure for all places where workers are employed."

Bacon said the new Iraqi assistant labor minister told them of the strike ban and that Hussein's previous labor laws would stay intact for at least two years.

He added that "already low wages have been frozen" and profit-sharing and bonuses were eliminated. Thomas said the refinery's workers earn $60 a month.

A detailed e-mail question to the coalition authority, for comment and confirmation of their statements, was not answered.

But an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based group of Iraqis in the U.S. protested, in an Aug. 7 letter to President Bush, against plans to privatize Iraqi state enterprises "by any party which is not a legitimate, sovereign, democratically elected government" in Iraq. That confirms authority plans to sell off state-run firms.

And on June 6, the authority issued a public notice in English and Arabic, saying it "respects Iraqi laws."

"This extends to Iraqi labor laws prescribing the conditions under which employees of government instrumentalities and enterprises continue to work," the notice added.

Those are the laws, the two U.S. unionists said, that ban unions from government-owned firms.

"The form of industrial and labor relations ultimately will be a matter for the Iraqi people and the future Iraqi government to decide," the authority's notice concluded.

The Chicago meeting drew approximately 200 delegates who said they represent several million unionists, said co-chairs Gene Bruskin and Robert Muhlenkamp.

Teamsters Local 705 -- the union's second-largest local and an early foe of the war -- hosted the Chicago conference. Delegates voted to protest the war and to campaign against George W. Bush's domestic agenda, said Local 705 President Jerry Zero.

"The war is not just in Iraq and not just in Afghanistan, it's in my hometown and yours," Washington, D.C., Central Labor Council President Jocelyn N. Williams told the Chicago conference in closing remarks.

"Why wouldn't labor be against the war on Americans who are out of work, who are poor, who don't have access to health care or to good education? Why wouldn't labor be against the war on working people (who are) harassed, intimidated and fired for daring to speak up for a voice at work?" Williams challenged.

"Our goal is build a national organization coalition for labor and human rights in Iraq, and to support the movement to end the war," Bruskin, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Food and Allied Service Trades Department, said.

"It's also to prevent future pre-emptive wars and to educate people about links between the wars and domestic policies."
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Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.