Iraqi unionists tell Portlanders of repression

By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Not many Americans outside the armed forces get to hear firsthand accounts from Iraqis about life under U.S. occupation.

But union members and others in Portland heard accounts from two Iraqi trade union leaders June 22, accounts that suggest that the anti-union policies of the Bush Administration have been exported to occupied Iraq.

To serve as administrator for the U.S. occupation government known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, Bush appointed Lewis Paul Bremer III. Bremer, a longtime associate of Henry Kissinger, was co-chair of a Heritage Foundation task force that inspired the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

Bremer actually retained a Saddam-Hussein-era law prohibiting unions, said Hassan Juma’a Awad Al Asade and Faleh Abbood Umara.

Through a translator, Al Asade and Umara told unionists at a lunch at American Federation of Musicians Local 99 that Bremer declared Iraqi Law 150 still in effect. Law 150, passed in 1987, abolished all public-sector unions. Since most economic activity in Iraq is state-run, a ban on public-sector unions effectively meant a ban on unions.

Bremer also tried to privatize Iraq’s state industries, but the plan faltered. No foreign corporations could be found who were willing to buy when neither day-to-day security nor long-term legality could be assured.

The occupation government also decreed that all of Bremer’s proclamations were to remain in force after the U.S.-arranged elections put Iraqis nominally in charge of Iraq.

But the continued ban on unions didn’t stop Iraqi workers from unionizing. Within weeks of the invasion, union activists, some who’d been imprisoned by the regime, sprang into activity, and quickly organized unions in the shipping and oil sectors.

Al Asade, a 30-year employee of the state-owned Southern Oil Company, had been imprisoned three times by Saddam Hussein’s regime for his labor and human rights activities. Umara also had been detained.

Amid the lawlessness that followed the collapse of the previous government, Al Asade and Umara helped found the General Union of Oil Employees, a 10-union federation that claims 23,000 members in the oil sector.

Al Asade and Umara, like many Iraqis, have concluded that oil is a major reason the U.S. is occupying Iraq. Both President Bush and his father are Texas oil men, and prior to taking office, Vice President Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was a Chevron board member. The administration has extremely close ties to the oil industry. And Iraq is one of the world’s largest oil producers, with an estimated 115 billion barrels of reserves.

Immediately after the collapse of the regime, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root won a no-bid contract to manage reconstruction efforts. At a time of economic disruption when a majority of Iraqis were unemployed, KBR brought in 1,200 foreign workers to work on reconstruction.

Al Asade’s newly-formed oil union threatened to halt oil production in reaction. KBR removed the foreign workers, mostly Asian, to Kuwait.

The national tour was organized by the group U.S. Labor Against the War. While the group is opposed to U.S. presence in Iraq, organizers said the tour was intended primarily as a way to educate Americans about conditions of union workers in Iraq.

Despite the tour’s co-sponsorship by numerous U.S. unions, it took about three months for the Iraqi unionists to be issued a visa, and the application process required that they make three trips to the U.S. embassy in Jordan.

Upon arrival in the United States, the Iraqi trade union leaders were detained for almost four hours and interrogated by U.S. Customs.

In Portland, the Port of Portland refused to permit the Iraqis to tour the port facility, citing security reasons.

Organizers decided to go ahead with the Port as the official welcome site for the Iraqi unionists. Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt welcomed the Iraqis, as did longshore labor leader Leal Sundet.

“No matter how you stand on the war, there’s now general agreement across the spectrum and among our membership that the goal is for a free and democratic Iraq,” Nesbitt said. “I think an essential element of that is a free union movement.”

“Your struggle is our struggle,” Sundet told the Iraqis at a morning press conference at the the gates of Terminal 6. “It is the same government and corporations that are exploiting you that are exploiting us.”

Sundet had in mind Stevedoring Services of America (SSA). SSA tried to bust the ILWU in a 2002 West Coast port lockout. In that struggle over whether clerical work would remain union, President Bush threatened to use the military to replace union dockworkers.

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration gave SSA the contract to handle shipping at the Iraqi port of Um Quasr. When the contract ended in mid-2004, the company withdrew.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.