Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, images of suicide bombings, religious violence, and general chaos have come to mind when most Americans have thought about Iraq. Counterposed are thoughts of US military efforts to separate the combatants and restore order. Whether one has supported or opposed the US actions in Iraq, the actual Iraqi people, almost all of them ordinary working people, remain remote and unknown.
But through the efforts of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), thousands of Americans have met face to face with Iraqi union leaders who represent Iraqi workers and learned firsthand of their experiences and aspirations in the midst of war and occupation. In these encounters, during three US tours (2005, 2007, and 2009), which I helped organize as part of the steering committee of USLAW, ten leaders of five different Iraqi unions and labor federations have presented common cause on three related themes: a desire for a democratic, nonsectarian society and government; a desire for basic labor rights; and a desire for the end of the US occupation and return of full Iraqi sovereignty that protects Iraqi oil, other national resources, and publicly owned companies from privatization.
Iraq has a long tradition of trade unionism, beginning under British colonial rule in the 1920s, as the oil sector and other industries grew. When the Baathists came to power in 1968, they formed an alliance with the Iraq Communist Party (ICP) that allowed it and trade unions to operate openly. But as the Baathists consolidated power, they turned on allies and in 1978 executed twenty-one ICP leaders and drove the organization underground. Trade unions were also repressed, culminating in Saddam Hussein's 1987 decree that made unions illegal in the public sector. Over eighty percent of the workforce—in the oil industry, transport, electric utilities, manufacturing, health, education, and public administration—lost access to union protections. An official labor organization continued to operate as an instrument of Baathist rule, but independent union leaders went underground, into exile, or into Iraqi prisons.
When the US military swept away Saddam Hussein and dismantled the Baathist political machine, Paul Bremer supervised the reorganization of Iraqi political and economic life through the Coalition Provisional Authority. The plan was to organize a new Iraqi government allied with the United States and committed to free market economic policies in the neoliberal mode—privatization, minimum business taxes, limited regulation, free trade, and unrestricted flows of capital into the country. In line with this agenda, the United States kept in force one law from the Saddam era: the 1987 decree banning public sector unions.
Despite this continuing legal block, as soon as the Baathist regime fell, experienced union leaders reemerged and began organizing workers again. The new Iraqi constitution, adopted by referendum in 2005, includes a provision generally supporting worker rights to unions, but for five years now the parliament has not enacted a law to specify and implement those rights. Unions operate openly in Iraq, but under harsh conditions without legal protection. They cannot maintain bank accounts or collect membership dues or maintain records in any permanent or official way.
In many ways, Iraqi unions have been operating as unions did in the United States before the protections of the Wagner Act. When they have gathered the strength to mobilize the workforce and gain community support, they have won victories. These have included wage increases, blocking privatization, stopping the outsourcing of jobs to non-Iraqi contractors, and protecting the jobs of union leaders and activists when local management or government ministries retaliate.
Since 2003, a new Iraqi labor movement has grown, despite the obstacles. Some unions are in federations associated with one or another political party. Other unions are independent of any political party, most importantly the General Union of Oil Employees, representing thousands of workers in that industry in the Basra region. There are two federations in Kurdistan and at least three in the Arab areas of Iraq. Iraqi workers have created a pluralistic labor movement unlike any other in the Middle East. Because of legal obstacles, no one knows how many union members there are, but unions have been able to mobilize thousands in specific campaigns for labor rights and against privatizations and outsourcing.
The presence of different and sometimes competing labor federations will not be strange to Americans who pay attention to their own labor movement. Yet for all the differences, it is significant that the Iraqi labor movement remains united on the core issues of democratic and nonsectarian government, national sovereignty, and labor rights.
Iraqi unions are associated with different political trends, but all are adamant that they represent workers without regard to religious sect. There are no Shia or Sunni unions. Iraqi union leaders who are Shia may have Sunni wives and other family, and vice versa. Every union has Sunni and Shia members, many in “mixed marriages” common throughout society. The “deck of cards” showing the fifty-five most wanted Iraqi leaders, issued by the United States shortly after the 2003 invasion, identified many Shia leaders high in the Saddam Hussein regime, and Christians, too, not just Sunni.
While sectarian religious differences have long existed in Iraq, they had not risen to the prominence and destructiveness that Iraqis have experienced since the US occupation began in 2003. Iraqi labor leaders express deep concern about these developments. The fact that the United States promoted sectarian politics soon after taking over the country, and that the continuing US presence exacerbates these tensions, are among the principal reasons Iraqi labor leaders give when calling for the end of US occupation of their country. The Iraqi labor movement also opposes the occupation because it sees it as a force to impose privatization and the neoliberal economic agenda that threatens the livelihood and living standards of Iraqi workers, and Iraq's national sovereignty through foreign economic control.
Rejection of sectarian differences in the Iraqi labor movement does not extend to a rejection of ethnic differences. On this score, Kurdish unions remain outside of Arab federations and generally support the autonomy Iraqi Kurdistan has maintained since the United States established “no-fly zones” in 1991, preventing Saddam Hussein's military from continuing to impose his rule in the area. Kurdish unions are therefore generally more favorably disposed toward the United States than their Arab counterparts, but they share with Arab Iraqis the desire for independence and self-rule free from foreign occupation.
Perhaps the most urgent demand unifying the entire Iraqi labor movement is the call for passage of a new labor law that will give Iraqi workers the legal protections asserted in basic International Labor Organization (ILO) standards to organize and bargain collectively. This demand is brought forward in light of the Iraqi constitution, which claims to protect these rights. Yet Iraqi labor leaders have been assassinated, their offices destroyed, their activists fired or transferred to distant job sites in internal exile. Iraqi government ministries have consistently refused to recognize unions in their jurisdictions. Until ILO standards of labor rights are given legislative force, Iraqi workers will continue to organize in difficult conditions dating back to Saddam Hussein—without legal protection and without financial capacity.
The demands and aspirations of Iraqi workers have resonated with US labor audiences and helped to motivate US trade unions to oppose the Iraq war and occupation. Since its founding in January 2003, in the run-up to the US invasion, US Labor Against the War has grown to over 190 affiliated union locals, central labor councils, state federations, international unions, and other labor organizations, representing millions of workers.Footnote 1
Building international solidarity with Iraqi workers has been central to this growth. USLAW sent two people to participate in an international labor delegation that traveled to Iraq on a fact-finding tour in October 2003. When they returned to the United States with news of the existence of a fledgling Iraqi labor movement and its demands, they attracted large labor audiences on a national tour reporting their findings.
Building on this response and the Iraqi labor contacts established during the October 2003 tour, USLAW undertook to host a delegation of Iraqi labor leaders in the United States. In June 2005, timed to anticipate the upcoming AFL-CIO national convention, six senior Iraqi union leaders from three federations traveled to twenty-six US cities, speaking to thousands of people, appearing in local media, meeting with congressional leaders of the Progressive and Out of Iraq caucuses.Footnote 2 Iraqi concerns resonate with American workers, who are also fighting privatization and seeking protection of labor laws with real force. Hearing directly from Iraqis that the US occupation induced and intensified sectarian violence, many people moved to an antiwar position.
The tour educated the US labor movement about Iraq and the war, leading to sixteen antiwar resolutions originating in USLAW-affiliated central labor councils and state federations submitted to the 2005 AFL-CIO national convention. Meeting in Chicago that September, the convention voted to call for the rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq. It was the first time in history that the AFL-CIO opposed active American military action abroad. AFL-CIO opposition to the war, derived from rank-and-file resolutions, in turn opened space for other locals and labor organizations to join USLAW, adding resources to the labor component of the larger US peace movement.
As part of its work, USLAW has continued to engage labor in solidarity actions with Iraqi unions, resulting in contributions of funds, computers, and other equipment conveyed to Iraqi unions and federations. Two further tours brought other Iraqi labor leaders to the United States, in 2007 and again in 2009, hosted jointly by USLAW and the AFL-CIO, when five Iraqis, including for the first time two representatives from Kurdish federations, attended the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, where delegates reiterated their opposition to the war and occupation. Hosted by USLAW, the Iraqis then met with labor and other peace activists in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
In March 2009, the Iraq Freedom Congress, Iraq Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), and General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq jointly sponsored an international conference in Erbil (Kurdistan) to form a larger confederation to coordinate labor actions in support of labor rights and a nonsectarian democratic society. Nearly two hundred Iraqis from over a dozen unions attended, as did solidarity delegations from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia. Iraqi delegates to the conference successfully hammered out a basic program and formed a continuations group to lead the organizing to come.Footnote 3
The US delegation, organized by USLAW, included two American Iraq war veterans active in Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), the first veterans to return to Iraq to engage with the Iraqi people. There were emotional encounters as the vets addressed the conference and met with individual Iraqis, resulting in strong bonds of friendship rather than enmity and recrimination.Footnote 4
Motivated by the energy and determination of the Iraqis to push for labor rights, USLAW and IVAW undertook a petition campaign in 2009, directed at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The petition called for the United States to press Iraq to enact legislation that fully guarantees labor rights for all Iraqi workers. The petition was delivered to State Department officials by a delegation including USLAW leaders; Hassan Juma'a, IFOU president; and an Iraq war veteran in IVAW who pointedly explained that he and many other Iraq vets are from the working class and did not fight to establish a society in which worker rights are trampled.Footnote 5
Just as contending federations and unions in Iraq have united around the pursuit of labor rights and a democratic nonsectarian society, so USLAW has brought together otherwise contending unions from the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and independent unions in solidarity with Iraqi workers and common opposition to US military action in Iraq. In 2010, USLAW is expanding its work to opposition to the US war in Afghanistan.Footnote 6 As long as the US military operates in Iraq, and as long as Iraqi workers lack basic rights, USLAW will continue its organizing in solidarity with the Iraqi working class.
