Iraqi Workers' Brief
History
There are many
lessons to be learned from Iraqi history. Under the
British occupation in the 20s the oil and railroad
workers formed the first Iraqi unions. The British
entered Iraq after World War I having defeated the Turks
to gain control when the spoils of the Ottoman Empire
were divided up. Major General Stanley Maude declared
victory saying: “Our armies do not come into your cities
and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”
For decades under British control, until 1958, unions
rose and fell, flourished and were repressed. During
this time Britain tried out various forms of colonial
control, echoed in the strategies and debates now taking
place in the Bush administration and Congress, seeking
methods to keep control while preaching democracy and
sovereignty.
One of the tactics
of British control was the distribution of land and
power to tribal sheiks and landlords, creating a power
base beholden to the British—these tribal relationships
would later play an important role in Saddam’s power
base and today, ironically, in the resistance to the US
Occupation. Prior to this British policy, land was held
in a form of tribal communal ownership. So the British
led the movement in the 20th century to privatize Iraq
by privatizing the tribal lands and of course their oil.
Now the Bush administration, in a modern version of
Britain’s earlier efforts, has built its occupation and
control of Iraq around a strategy to privatize the
largely publicly owned Iraqi economic infrastructure,
selling it to the highest bidding multinational
corporation and allowing designated Iraqis to buy into
the program.
The Revolution of
July 14, 1958 ushered in an independent Iraq. Iraqis
supported a military coup led by junior officers against
the British installed monarchy. The Communist Party was
the only political force at this point with a base in
mass organizations and trade unions and their support
was critical to the success of the revolution. For the
first time Iraqi trade unions were officially legalized
and substantial organizing began in many sectors. This
initiated a period of progressive legislation, a new
constitution and the principle of development through
industrialization. Oil provided the capital to create a
modern Iraqi state. These policies coincided with
growing Arab nationalism and were threatening to British
and US interests concerned about keeping control of Arab
oil. Allowing democracy to flourish in the Middle East
was not on the short list or even the long list of US
policymakers at that time, anymore than it is now. And
Iraqis were well aware of this.
In 1963 competing
military officers, with the support of the emerging
Baath party, of which Saddam Hussein was a rising star,
overthrew the Revolution. This resulted in a brutal
massacre of thousands of popular grassroots leaders,
including trade unionists and many communists. The US
made no objection to this massacre, however. It is
widely believed, both inside and outside of Iraq, that
the CIA also had a role in the coup. At the very least
the CIA is thought to have supplied lists of communists
for the Baathists to murder, which they did in house to
house hunts. At the time the Communist party in Iraq was
the most popular in the Middle East, advocating the
social and economic needs of the average Iraqi.
In 1968, Saddam
and the Baath Party staged another coup to eliminate all
competitors in the government and the military and
started down the road to more than thirty years of
dictatorship. Trade unionists were among the major
victims, but the movement survived and functioned until
1978 when another wave of executions and persecutions
drove most activists into exile, prison or death. At
this point Saddam and the Baath party had absolute power
and no longer allowed any alternative parties or
organizations to function.
Many of us are
familiar with the fact that Saddam had friendly
relations with the US and the West throughout the 80s
when Europeans governments and the Reagan
administration, including Rumsfeld himself, supplied him
with WMDs. He used these weapons to fight a brutal war
against Iran. His massacre of Iranians and the use of
chemical weapons against them and the Kurds drew few
protests from the US. — He was a bastard, but he was
“our bastard.”
The good news,
which you won’t read, is that there is an Iraqi labor
movement. The workers didn’t have to learn how to
organize from the Bremer Provisional Authority or the
Governing Council. They didn’t file for elections with
the NLRB. Unions in Iraq have a tradition going back to
the 1920s. (Gene
Bruskin, Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War).
We shouldn’t
idealize the workers’ movement in Iraq, The
situation remains difficult for organizing despite
the courage of so many workers who have begun to
organize. Iraqi trade unionists have made some
things very clear to USLAW representatives:
-
It’s hard
to organize in the middle of a war — much of the
union work has slowed down dramatically.
-
Saddam’s
laws forbidding unions in the public sector,
most of the country’s economy, are still on the
books, enforced by the Occupation Authority.
-
There is a
tremendous amount of confusion and uncertainty
among Iraqi working people-violence, religious
pressures, massive unemployment, the former
Baathist regime’s leaders in the shadows,
sometimes still running their workplaces, armed
religious groups in the community, and a history
in which democratic rights have been very
fragile and ephemeral.
-
Women have
suffered terribly, losing rights as
fundamentalism gains ground, aided by the U.S.
-
The threat
of privatization looms over many workplaces
Although there
is a law, passed by the Governing Council, which
provides for the right to organize and strike,
Iraqis have seen the difference between laws on the
books and the realities on the ground.
There is
considerable maneuvering going on about what the
shape of the new labor law will look like in the
future and what role the international labor
movement will play in the process. In the winter of
2004, the US hired a Minnesota union busting firm to
write the labor law for Iraq, although they have
allegedly been replaced. The US continues to have a
role in the process, however.
http://www.laborstandard.org/Iraq2/Bruskin_Chicago_History_Repeats_Itself.htm
