From socialistworker.org
http://www.socialistworker.org/2005-2/548/548_06_IraqUnions.shtml
Behind the IFTU controversy:
Does Iraq’s main union support the U.S. occupation?
By Lee Sustar | June 17, 2005
A TOUR of the U.S. by Iraqi labor leaders has highlighted a controversy
about that country’s best-known labor federation—the Iraqi Federation of
Trade Unions (IFTU).
The debate hinges on the IFTU’s support for the U.S. occupation,
its close
ties to the former occupation-appointed government of Iyad Allawi, its
takeover of assets and membership lists from Saddam Hussein’s
government-controlled unions, and its status under the occupation-
appointed
regime’s Decree Number 16 as the sole legal union federation in Iraq
today.
The IFTU’s participation in a tour organized by U.S. Labor Against
the War
(USLAW) led the steering committee for Boston United for Justice with
Peace
to issue an open letter on the matter. “We have to think about the
consequences our alliances will have not only on our own work here in
the
United States, but also on the efforts of Iraqis inside Iraq to organize
resistance to both the military and economic occupation of their
country,”
wrote Jennifer Horan, on behalf of the steering committee of the group,
which is an affiliate of United for Peace and Justice, a national
antiwar
organization.
USLAW leaders sought to allay such concerns in advance of the tour
with a
statement that presented the IFTU as an opponent of the occupation,
along
with the other union organizations involved—the Federation of Workers
Councils and Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) and the General Union of Oil
Employees
(GUOE), based in the southern oilfields near the city of Basra.
“We recognize that our labor movement has an unfortunate history of
picking
and choosing which unions it will grant legitimacy to in parts of the
world
where our government is interfering with national sovereignty,” the
USLAW
co-conveners wrote. “We refuse to act in that tradition.”
Yet the issue of trade union legitimacy in Iraq is likely to be
inescapable—not only because Iraqi unions themselves are forcing the
issue,
but because major union federations internationally, including the
AFL-CIO,
have launched an intense effort to train and influence the renascent
Iraqi
labor movement. A series of interviews with labor movement officials and
activists in Iraq, Europe and the U.S. on both sides of the debate
indicates
that the dispute over the IFTU and the character of the Iraqi trade
unions
is likely to intensify.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE CONTROVERSY over the IFTU erupted in Britain in October 2004 when
the
federation’s representative Abdullah Muhsin intervened at the annual
Labour
Party conference to help head off a resolution calling for withdrawal of
occupation troops.
In a recent phone interview from London, Muhsin denied advocating any
position on the occupation to the Labour Party or British unions. “Our
demand is for the [United Nations-created] political process in Iraq to
succeed, to have a permanent constitution, and peace,” he said. “If the
labor movement in the U.S. wants to campaign and say troops should be
removed [from Iraq], it is their right, and who are we to say no?”
But Muhsin did argue against the out-now position in Britain. He
distributed an open letter to union delegates at the Labour Party
conference, saying that an early withdrawal of troops “would be bad
for my
country, and play into the hands of extremists.”
Such a characterization of the resistance is a regular theme for
Muhsin. In
the interview, he attacked Iraq’s insurgents for “indiscriminately
killing”
innocent people. “This is no resistance,” he said.
Along with his denunciations of the resistance has come praise for
Allawi,
the Baathist apparatchik-turned-CIA asset who in 2004 was put in
charge of
Iraq by the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority. Muhsin proposed
inviting Allawi, then prime minister in the U.S.-appointed
government, to
address the Labour Party conference. This, Muhsin wrote, presented an
“opportunity for those who honorably opposed the war to extend
support to
Iraqi democrats who are trying, in the most difficult circumstances, to
construct a vibrant civil society.”
Muhsin’s speech to a fringe meeting at the party conference was
organized
by Labour Friends of Iraq, which is co-chaired by a retired union
official
who is antiwar—and the prowar Ann Clwyd, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s
human
rights envoy to Iraq.
The aim of the group, says its director, Gary Kent, is “to move
beyond the
war, uniting those who were for the war and those opposed to the war in
grassroots solidarity with what we call grassroots Iraq—chiefly, the
trade
unions.” He added: “We are very struck by the argument that the
democratization of Iraq could have positive repercussions throughout the
Middle East. It is very important that we don’t cede the flag for
democracy
and freedom in Iraq to the neocons.”
In fact, the group is proposing to support a contributor to the
neoconservative Weekly Standard newspaper —the ex-leftist Christopher
Hitchens—in a debate with antiwar member of Parliament George
Galloway, who
recently shook up a U.S. Senate hearing with his challenge to the Bush
administration’s occupation of Iraq.
Material on the Labour Friends of Iraq Web site slams Galloway—and
squarely
supports the continued occupation of Iraq. Its mission statement
declares,
“We will encourage support for the IFTU.”
For its part, Britain’s union federation, the Trades Union Congress
(TUC)—which opposed the war and voted at its conference for an end to
the
occupation—has an officially evenhanded approach to Iraqi unions. A TUC
conference on Iraq in February included representatives from both main
federations—the IFTU and FWCUI—as well as the oil workers’ GUOE,
teachers
unions and a Kurdish union. Even the General Federation of Trade Unions
(GFTU), a remnant of the state unions under the former regime, sent a
representative.
Nevertheless, the IFTU has emerged as the main focus of TUC solidarity
efforts. The TUC Aid for Iraq campaign was launched with an
explanation that
“initiatives could include paying for an IFTU theater bus to tour Iraqi
workplaces and explain the case for joining trade unions” and other
material
aid, although a TUC spokesperson said no aid money has yet been
disbursed.
Individual TUC affiliates also play a role in supporting the IFTU. The
federation’s Muhsin operates from an office at the headquarters of
UNISON,
Britain’s biggest union, which represents public-sector workers.
Muhsin has made frequent appearances at TUC meetings, and this year
accompanied a TUC fact-finding mission to Iraq. Financial Times
journalist
John Lloyd described the scene in Kurdistan when the IFTU’s Mosul leader
Saady Edan sought to convince leading British trade unionists to drop
their
demands to end the occupation. “We want the occupation to end,” Edan
said.
“But if it ends now, it will bring chaos. Once the Iraqi security
forces are
capable, then the occupation should leave. But they are not yet.”
This is
essentially the official position of the Blair government and the Bush
administration.
Lloyd—whose article was strongly sympathetic to the IFTU—added: “The
visitors wonder why a union movement that is poor and needs funds as
well as
training is able to drive them about in big Toyota Land Cruisers and
BMWs.”
The delegation’s recommendations, posted on the UNISON Web site,
recommended
“[developing] training for the leaderships of the IFTU and Kurdish
federations” and “[arranging] a fact-finding visit to the UK.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
MUCH OF the international labor movement’s role in Iraq is
coordinated by
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), a grouping
with origins in the pro-U.S. side of the Cold War labor divide
between the
U.S. and Russia. According to a document on the ICFTU Web site, its
role in
Iraq has largely been training in trade-union basics—lectures on the
history
and politics of the labor movement, International Labor Organization
(ILO)
standards, organizing and bargaining.
A February 2005 session—held across the Jordanian border in Amman—
gave the
ICFTU’s desk officer for Asia and the Middle East, P. Kamalam, the
opportunity to meet Iraqi trade unionists from all the federations,
including the old state-run federation and a splinter under the
influence of
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading
party in
the current government.
The IFTU, she said, has “good unions on the ground” but “does not
properly
attend to the issue of gender and women.” The FWCUI, in her view, has a
record of organizing workers and does a better job of stressing women’s
rights.
A major issue for Iraqi labor, she said, is the scramble to control
the
assets of the old state-run General Federation of Trade Unions.
“Everyone
wants a piece of that cake,” she said from her office in Brussels.
“Because
it’s a big amount of money and of infrastructure.”
That struggle was won by the IFTU—outside Kurdistan, at least—in
January
2004 when the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council passed Decree
Number
16.
That, Kamalam said, is a “problem” for the ICFTU. “We have spoken
to IFTU
about it to say that, you know, there cannot be one legitimate union,
because that goes against freedom of association,” Kamalan said. The
IFTU,
she added, “has not publicly taken that position, even though they
tell us
that they are all for the ILO conventions.”
How did the IFTU secure its status as the sole legal federation?
According
to Kamalam, “because they had people who were in common with the
union and
the Interim Government, from the same political parties”—that is, the
Iraqi
Communist Party (ICP) and Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord. In fact, when
Allawi’s interim government reaffirmed the IFTU’s status, the
federation’s
president was Rasim Al-Awadi, described in the April 25 New York
Times as a
“senior Allawi aide,” and according to some Iraq analysts, his second in
command.
Most IFTU leaders have close ties to the ICP, which has played a
central
but highly contradictory role in the history of the Iraqi working class
movement. Founded in 1935, it drew its initial membership from those who
struggled against British colonial rule in the 1920s and later puppet
regimes established by London.
The ICP became a mass organization—the biggest Communist Party in the
Middle East. In the 1970s, it made an alliance with the ruling Baath
Party;
later, Saddam Hussein’s regime turned on the party, jailing,
torturing and
killing party cadre and driving many into exile.
After the 1991 Gulf War, the ICP was able to operate legally in Iraqi
Kurdistan, which enjoyed quasi-independence under the protection of
the U.S.
no-fly zone. It opposed the 2003 invasion and quickly emerged from the
underground to become one of the first parties to function after the
fall of
Baghdad.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT AT this point, the role of the ICP became increasingly
controversial on
the international left. The party accepted a post in the governing
council
under Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, then two
ministerial
posts in the Interim Governing Council. A right-wing Web site dug up a
document from the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic Party’s
affiliate to the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy,
praising the ICP.
At the same time, the ICP was organizing the IFTU. But according to
its
critics in the Iraqi labor movement, the IFTU never matched its
rhetorical
opposition to privatization and low wages—both imposed by Bremer’s
orders—with action.
In the recently published A People’s History of Iraq, Italian
author Ilario
Saluci argued that the party’s balancing act had disastrous
consequences.
“Thinking it could become a ‘party of struggle and of government’—
even in a
puppet government totally devoid of power—the ICP has increasingly
become a
‘left’ cover for Anglo-American forces,” he wrote.
Defenders of the IFTU and/or the ICP, of course, reject this
analysis. They
point to numerous speeches, articles and interviews about and by ICP and
IFTU members that appear in left-wing publications, such as the
Communist
Party USA’s magazine, Political Affairs.
Those words don’t impress Sabah Jawad, a British journalist and
member of
Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation and an exile from Saddam
Hussein’s
Iraq. “These people [the ICP] have an incredible capacity to say two
different things to two different people,” he said. “It’s always been an
opportunist party—and I used to belong to that party.”
The IFTU is often criticized on similar grounds by antiwar
activists in the
labor movement. “The IFTU vilifies and condemns the resistance, but
is in
bed with the brutal U.S. occupation that generates that resistance,”
said
Michael Letwin, co-convener of New York City Labor Against the War, a
USLAW
affiliate that has refused to endorse a meeting with IFTU leaders in New
York.
One piece of evidence is often put forward by its supporters in
defense of
the IFTU as an opponent of the occupation—a raid by U.S. forces on the
IFTU’s offices in December 2003. But this appears to have been an
isolated
incident. The IFTU achieved its status as the sole legal union in
Iraq the
following month.
More seriously, several IFTU activists have been murdered—16 since
October,
according to Muhsin. The best-known case was the brutal torture and
killing
in January of Hadi Salih, a longstanding ICP cadre and IFTU
international
representative.
Labor leaders around the world condemned the murder of Salih, often
adding
a statement of solidarity with the IFTU. But one can condemn the
murder of
Salih without endorsing the IFTU. Moreover, said Sami Ramadani, another
left-wing exile from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, “Neither the IFTU or
anyone else
has produced a shred of evidence on who killed Hadi Salih. We are in the
realm of speculation.”
Ramadani, now a sociologist in London, was central in making an
issue of
Abdullah Muhsin’s intervention at the British Labour Party conference,
writing a lengthy critique of the IFTU that appeared in the Guardian
newspaper.
“All these [Iraqi] federations are party organizations, but the
IFTU stole
a march on them because of Allawi’s involvement,” he said in an
interview.
“There isn’t a single trade union federation that is truly a
federation of
genuinely elected trade unions, unfortunately. Grassroots trade
unionism is
being snuffed out, in a sense, by these ad hoc federations.”
But Falah Alwan, general secretary of the FWCUI, argues that
there’s no
comparison between his federation and the IFTU. “The IFTU is an official
union”—that is, a government-supported one, he said from Baghdad before
traveling to the U.S. for the USLAW tour. By contrast, he said, “We
created
our unions without participation of the government.”
The impetus for the formation of the federation came from the
unemployed
workers movement that exploded onto the streets of Iraq in 2003. The
Union
of the Unemployed later merged with the Workers Councils initiated by
another left-wing party, the Workers Communist Party, to form the FWCUI.
The FWCUI has taken a policy of non-collaboration with the
occupation and
the various governments installed by the U.S., and it calls for an
immediate
withdrawal of U.S. troops and their replacement by United Nations
peacekeepers. Despite the January 30 election, U.S. pressure on Iraqi
parties has led to what is still effectively an “appointed
government” said
Amjad Ali, the FWCUI’s Canada-based international representative. But
like
the IFTU, the FWUCI condemns the Iraqi resistance.
Ramadani—himself a trade unionist—concedes that the FWUCI has held
some
local union elections. He said he has found no evidence of such
efforts by
the IFTU, however. Instead, he contends, the federation was imposed from
above once the IFTU got control of the assets of the old government
unions.
“The membership lists were crucial,” he said. “When they say they have
200,000 or 300,000 members, this is what they mean.”
In Ramadani’s view, the only significant legitimate union in Iraq
is the
oil workers’ union—the GUOE, which has its origins in a strike by
workers at
Iraq’s Southern Oil Company against the Haliburton subsidiary
Kellogg, Brown
& Root. “It’s a sure thing they held an election,” he said. “They have
rules, they are visible, and they go on strike, for goodness’ sake.
You can
see their organization on the ground. You don’t see any of that in the
others. And trade unionism shows itself on the ground in wages and
working
conditions.”
In a visit to Britain in February, GUOE leader Hassan Jumaa forcefully
denounced the occupation in a speech reprinted in the Guardian.
“Those who
claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the
occupation
to stay a bit longer, due to ‘fears of civil war,’ are in fact
speaking only
for themselves and the minority of Iraqis whose interests are
dependent on
the occupation,” he wrote.
This could be interpreted as a swipe at the IFTU. But two top IFTU
representatives spoke at a privatization conference hosted by the
GUOE in
Basra on May 25-26. There, union members and academics discussed the
plans
for Iraq’s transformation normally kept quiet in the occupation’s Green
Zone. The leading parties of Southern Iraq—which include the main ruling
Shiite Muslim parties of the national government following the January
elections—sent representatives to the conference, an indication of the
importance of the GUOE in Iraq’s all-important oil industry.
In an interview from Basra, Farouk Muhammad Sadiq, international
secretary
for the GUOE, was diplomatic about the IFTU and the other
federations. “We
heard about Muhsin at the Labour Party, and we don’t agree with him,” he
said, adding that he believed the IFTU in Iraq is genuinely working
to end
the occupation.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THOSE WHO want to build genuine trade unions in Iraq—and the workers
they
seek to organize—face tough going.
A government counteroffensive against the resistance, led by U.S.
forces
and carried out by mostly Shiite militias, has intensified the tendency
toward religious sectarianism and ethnic conflict. Government commando
units, modeled on the 1980s counterinsurgency in El Salvador and led by
former officers under Saddam Hussein, are widely accused of
assassination,
kidnappings and torture.
All this is infinitely removed from the Western trade union
establishment
world of white papers, formalized collective bargaining and social
partnership. What does it mean to talk about ILO conventions on union
rights
in Falluja—where eight months after the U.S. leveled the city, tens of
thousands remain displaced, residents are forced to submit to eye
scans as
IDs by U.S. troops, and young men are routinely rounded up with no
cause?
After the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, is it really possible to
argue
that the occupation is creating a “civil society” in which Iraqi
unions can
take root, as the pro-occupation elements in the British Labour Party
would
have it?
Building trade unions that can fight for the interests of working
people in
Iraq will necessarily mean taking on the most difficult issues:
religious
sectarianism, the Kurdish national question, women’s rights and Iraqis’
right to self-determination.
Above all, building a labor movement in Iraq means not
collaborating with
the U.S. occupation—which denies Iraqis the means to control their
own fate.
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VTJP/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
