Kathy Black...campaigning for peace and Iraqi workers' trade union rights.

Workers still living under Saddam's cloud

By

Kerri Carr

Dictator Saddam Hussein may be gone but political repression continues for Iraqi workers, under the influence of the United States, says Labour Against the War convenor Kathy Black.

"When Paul Bremer and the US [United States] provisional authority came in to power, they took a look at the Iraqi legal codes and tossed most of it out, and decided they could write it better, except they decided Saddam got one thing right - his anti-union policies were worth preserving," Ms Black told Federation Council on March 8. In the late 1980s Saddam Hussein outlawed union organisation in the public sector, which is more than two-thirds of the Iraqi economy.

"That policy remains in place now under the new Iraqi parliament," Ms Black said.

"They haven't budged to reverse that, but these brave people continue to organise nonetheless, even though they are under constant harassment and attack.

"Their union offices are attacked and invaded, shut down, their computers and papers confiscated, their bank accounts frozen, their leaders arrested. Still, they organise. They've held illegal strikes, especially in the oil sector, and they ask for international solidarity and support for their demands for basic union rights under the ILO [International Labour Organization] standards."

Labour Against the War has about 200 affiliate organisations, representing about three million US union members. The organisation exists to educate union members, organise members to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and calls for a just US foreign policy.

Ms Black said Iraqi trade unionists also want "help in exposing the US attempts to ram a privatisation oil law down the throats of the Iraqi parliament and the Iraqi people".

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