Iraq's oil workers to strike against Anglo-US oil-grab

[IChing]

Iraq's largest oil workers' trade union will strike this Thursday, in protest at the controversial oil law currently being considered by the Iraqi parliament. The move threatens to stop all exports from the oil-rich country.
The oil law proposes giving multinational companies the primary role in developing Iraq's huge untapped oilfields, under contracts lasting up to 30 years. Oil production in Iraq, like in most of the Middle East, has been in the public sector since the 1970s.

The Union, representing 26,000 oil workers, has held three previous strikes since 2003, each time stopping exports, for up to two days at a time. The announcement of the strike has spurred negotiations with the Ministry of Oil, which are ongoing.

Imad Abdul-Hussain, Federation Deputy Chair of the IFOU said: "The central government must be in total ownership and complete control of production and the export of oil". He warned against the controversial Production Sharing Agreements favoured by foreign companies, saying other forms of co-operation with foreign companies would be acceptable but not at the level of control and profiteering indicated in the current Oil Law.

Federation President Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi said: 'The oil law does not represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people. It will let the foreign oil companies into the oil sector and enact privatisation under so called production sharing agreements. The federation calls for not passing the oil law, because it does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people."

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/51632/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. How long before the trade unionists are equated with Al-Quaeda members

or generic terrorists?

[mmonk]

2. They know the scoop.

The insurgency picked up steam after protestors were fired on and Bremer shut down the Sadr paper and word got out about the oil situstion if I remember correctly. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going on memory.

[KansDem]

3. I've got a bad feeling about this...

I hope the strikers prevail, however to be anything in Iraq these days is risky, let alone if being involved in anti-hegemonic activities against the invading empire.

I mean, it's not like Bush will just send in the Pinkertons with tear gas and billycubs...


edited for spelling...

[IChing]

4. Labor and the oil industry........

Nationalization of oil worked for the people of Iraq
I think labor is in for a battle against the puppet government.

[Tom Joad]

5. will any dems in congress, besides kucinich, support the oil workers?

just asking.

[IChing]

6. Clinton is asking her public focus group..Labor is being attacked

all over the world and these oil workers are standing up for common Iraqis.

[eridani]

7. What cheers me up most about this article--

--is that Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi is still alive. Hope he stays that way. He was a very inspiring speaker on a labor-sponsored tour in 2005.

[Tom Joad]

11. There is another tour this June. Coming to SF Bay area.

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. Unions tend to suffer under recent republican rule.

Why should this be any different? Republicans, or at least the Bush family, are part of the international oil monopoly, or the NWO, as it's better known.

Watch for opposition to suffer.

[Tom Joad]

9. They also suffered from clinton/gore administration. WTO and Nafta and all that

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. True! Makes you wonder why Clinton was doing Reagan-esque things.

And why he seems to be friends with pappy bush now.

I wonder how many have drunk the Kool-Aid of the NWO and peak oil. Just surmising.

[eridani]

10. Another article that's relevant here--

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51572/?page=5

If the oil workers and their union allies decide to organize protests or strikes, they are likely to have the Iraqi public on their side. Fully three-quarters of Iraqis believe that the United States invaded in order to gain control of Iraqi oil, and most observers believe they will surely agree with the oil workers that this law is a vehicle for that control. Even Iyad Allawi has now publicly taken a stand opposing it, perhaps the best indication that opposition will be virtually unanimous.

Finally -- and no small matter -- the armed resistance is also against the oil law. The Sunni insurgency underscored its opposition by assassinating Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a major advocate of the pending law, on the day the bill was made public. The significance of the opposition of the Sunni insurgency is amplified by the stance of the Sadrists, the most rebellious segment of the Shia majority. Sadr spokesman Sheikh Gahaith Al Temimi warned journalist Christian Parenti that while the Sadrists would "welcome" foreign investment in oil, they would do so only "under certain conditions. We want our oil to be developed, not stolen. If a bad law were to be passed, all people of Iraq would resist it."

It seems clear that what the oil law has the power to do is substantially escalate the already unmanageable conflict in Iraq. Active opposition by the Parliament alone, or by the unions alone, or by the Sunni insurgency alone, or by the Sadrists alone might be sufficient to defeat or disable the law. The possibility that such disparate groups might find unity around this issue, mobilizing both the government bureaucracy and overwhelming public opinion to their cause, holds a much greater threat: the possibility of creating a unified force that might push beyond the oil law to a more general opposition to the American occupation.

[Strelnikov_]

12. A strike by the workers in 2003 prevented a takeover

This is serious, as we all know the GOP oiligarchs are not going to give up the Precious without a fight. Anyone else getting a feeling that the shit is about to hit the fan.

Hard to Deny: Iraq Is All About the Oil

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51572/?page=3

Not long after President Bush declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" under a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the deck of the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, Paul Bremer, the new head of the American occupation, promulgated a series of laws designed, among other things, to kick-start the development of Iraqi oil. In addition to attempting to transfer management of existing oil facilities (well heads, refineries, pipelines, and shipping) to multinational corporations, he also set about creating an oil-policy framework, unique in the region, that would allow the major companies to develop the country's proven reserves and even to begin drilling new wells.

All these plans were, however, quickly frustrated, both by the growing Sunni insurgency and by civil resistance. Iraq's oil workers quickly unionized -- even though Bremer extended Saddam's prohibition on unions in state-owned companies -- and effectively resisted the transfer of management duties to foreign companies.

In one noteworthy moment, the oil workers actually refused to take orders from Bechtel officials in the oil hub of Basra, thus preserving their own jobs as well as the right of the Iraqi state-owned Southern Oil Company to continue to control the operation in that region. Bechtel's management contract was subsequently voided.

[gravity]

14. Cooperation with private companies would be best for the Iraqis

but it all depends on if they get a fair deal out of it.

[eridani]

15. Only under a flat fee deal--a PSA is an absolute outrage

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51572/?page=5

It is worth reviewing the logic of PSAs to understand why the U.S. was so determined to make them a part of the law, and why many Iraqis were so ferociously opposed.
Production sharing agreements are generally applied in circumstances where there is a strong possibility that oil exploration will be extremely costly or even fail, and/or where extraction is likely to prove prohibitively expensive.

To offset huge and risky investments, the contracting company is guaranteed a proportion of the profits, if and when oil is extracted and sold. In the most common of these agreements, the proportion remains very high until all development costs are amortized, allowing the investing company to recoup its investment expenditures (if oil is found), and then to be rewarded with a larger-than-normal profit margin for the remainder of the contract which, in the Iraqi case, could extend for up to 25 years.

This is perhaps a reasonably fair, or at least necessary, bargain for a country which cannot generate sufficient investment capital on its own, where exploration is difficult (perhaps underwater or deep underground), where the actual reserves may prove small, and/or where ongoing costs of extraction are very high.

None of these conditions apply in Iraq: huge reservoirs of easily accessible oil are already proven to exist, with more equally accessible fields likely to be discovered with little expense. This is why none of Iraq's neighbors utilize PSAs. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates all pay the multinationals a fixed rate to explore and develop their fields; and all of the profits become state revenues.

[gravity]

16. Thanks for the info

I don't know what's the best deal for the Iraqis, but they are the ones who should have the power to negotiate with the multinational corporations.

[slipslidingaway]

17. "UPDATE - Apparently the strike deadline has now been moved

until Monday May 14th. Take Action to Urge the US Congress to drop the Iraqi Oil Law “Benchmark”"

http://priceofoil.org/2007/05/09/iraqi-union-set-to-strike-over-oil-law/

[slipslidingaway]

18. Military Raids, Arrest at Iraqi Union Office Demands Action

5 March 2007

http://www.icem.org/en/77-All-ICEM-News-Releases/2159-Military-Raids-Arrest-at-Iraqi-Union-Office-Demands-Action

"The ICEM, the Global Union Federation for oil workers, is calling for “strong condemnation” of the two recent US and Iraqi military raids on union offices in Baghdad. The raids, during which one worker was arrested, and computers and fax machines at the central office of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) confiscated, occurred on 23 and 25 February.

The ICEM, with affiliates in 125 countries, is calling on trade unions worldwide to directly protest this unprovoked attack on a trade union federation that stands for nation building and bettering the living conditions inside Iraq.

ICEM is calling on trade unions and others to write to Iraqi embassies in their home countries, as well as to send messages of solidarity to GFIW leaders that their efforts to build strong trade unions in Iraq will succeed and with it, fair and just reconstruction for all Iraqi people."