Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23371

Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-06-06 16:57. Media

By David Bacon, San Jose Mercury News

The Bush administration calls the Iraq occupation an exercise in democracy building. Yet from the beginning, many of the Iraqis who want democracy most are treated as its enemies - Iraq's unions.

Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.

When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild their labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein.

Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases, and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders.

President Bush doesn't believe what he preaches. He says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others: They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands.
The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process.

more...

[mdmc]

1. They just don't get it

we wouldn't be there if there wasn't oil for corporations...

[slipslidingaway]

2. Arrest warrants issued

"Iraq’s powerful oil workers’ trade union today expressed alarm as an
arrest warrant was issued for its leaders, in an attempt to clamp down
on industrial action."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1054737

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

3. Nowadays, I tell those who blast demagoguery of "freedom" and "democracy",...

,..."You have neither and, what's sad is, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT!!"

Perhaps, once the American people fully acknowledge and accept the fact that we DON'T HAVE DEMOCRACY at home, they'll accept the fact that their corporate-controlled government has no intention of EVER spreading democracy abroad.

[donkeyotay]

4. One heckuva irony. We stole their oil fair and square and a damn UNION

stands in the say. I think that union has international law on their side, because despite the pretense of us not running Iraq, we didn't have a legal right to privatize assets. So unless a court would uphold that all of this was done under a sovereign Iraqi government, it's illegal to steal assets during an invasion.

[mhatrw]

5. Kick! n/t