History Repeating Itself - the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, ICP and Iraqi Workers
Submitted by Ewa J:Please forward...
There were some delegates and organisers at the European Social Forum
who were shocked to see Subhei Marshadani, the General Secretary of the
Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) attacked by protestors when he
tried to speak on a plenary platform titled _Ending the Occupation in
Iraq_. Later some would label the action of the protestors as _fascist_.
Others were not so shocked. The current government of Iraq, which
Marshadani and his UK rep Abdullah Muhsin_s party, the Iraqi Communist
Party, are part of, is generating a climate fertile for fascism. Many
Iraqis regard the interim government as neo-Baathist. The Interior,
Security, Defence and Prime Ministers in Iraq are all former Baathists.
Those rebuilding and supervising the state apparatuses of control; the
police, the army and the intelligence services are descended from a
regime which depended heavily on these apparatuses. And the current
collaborationist government is relying on them heavily again. History is
doomed to repeat itself.
I met the leadership of the IFTU both in Baghdad and Basra. The men I
met were all, without exception Communist Party Members. I incurred
their displeasure when I organised the itinerary for the US Labour
Against the War delegation in October. I had included visits to both
IFTU sites and Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI)
(At the time called the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of
Workers Councils in Iraq), the Union of the Unemployed, which I had been
protesting with in front of the occupation headquarters for weeks, plus
un-unionised workers employed by the occupation. The IFTU reps tried to
get me to cancel the visits I had planned for the FWCUI, denouncing it
as a negligible organisation. I refused. And the USLAW delegation met as
many workers as possible, in the oil sector, railway sector, vegetable
oil factory, Baghdad Airport Military Base, brick workers, unemployed
workers and leather factory employees. The TUC delegations which
travelled to Iraq had their itineraries organised solely through the
IFTU, seeing only the workplaces and union officials which the
Federation/ICP wanted British Trade Unionists to see. Whilst the workers
and unions which trade union reps met were nothing but genuine, it was
nevertheless just one aspect of a wider, broader, contradictory and
varied trade union movement in Iraq, generated by and through more
traditions, political and religious, than just those of the Communist
Party of Iraq. Basing policy, vision, definition and solidarity on the
conclusions of a collective maximum of 4 -6 weeks spent in Iraq with
trade unionists and workers belonging to a single federation, built
along Communist Party cadre lines, in a post totalitarian country, and
relying on Federation/Party translators is myopic.
Especially when that Federation_s leadership belongs to a party which
has historically collaborated with the strongest forces in power in
Iraq, including the Baath Party itself, and is at work collaborating
with the current neo-Baathist government which is allowing atrocities _
massacres, torture, routine humiliation and extra judicial killings to
take place daily against a people struggling for liberation; both from
an encroaching, trauma-compounding neo-Baathism armed with American
artillery, and co-optive party political and reactionary Islamic party
agendas. The fact is not lost on Iraqi people, both within and outside
the country.
The IFTU_s UK representative Abdullah Muhsin called the Occupation_s
interim constitution _a radical document_ when it was released last
June. Many Iraqis feel no new constitution; government or election can
have any credibility, let alone represent any _radical_ potential when
created under occupation.
The IFTU has never opposed the Occupation_s Orders 39 on Foreign
Investment and 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions which allow
foreign companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel to carry out 100%
privatisation of public assets at zero profit tax and total profit
repatriation. Order 30 sets the minimum wages for workers at 69,000ID,
around #30 per month. Average rent is 25-50,000ID per month. 5 litres of
drinking water costs 300-500 ID and barely serves a family for a day.
Yet the Orders remain in place unchallenged. The Union which did
challenge this order, the Southern Oil Company trade union, which comes
under the Umbrella of the IFTU but declares itself as _free trade union
which does not belong to any political party_ and was, when I was
working with it in Basra, the only Union in the IFTU Not headed by an
ICP member, has received virtually no publicity through the IFTU. Why?
It does not tow the Occupation_s agenda and defines itself and conducts
itself as autonomous. I know this through my 4 months experience knowing
SOC reps and living with the family of SOC General Secretary Hassan
Jumaa in Basra.
I only found out about the SOC Union after a visit to the Basra Oil
Company Union. The IFTU rep who accompanied me tried to recruit workers
who_d taken wildcat strike action over low wages, into an IFTU union.
They refused him point blank. Workers there sung the praises of the SOC
Union, whereas the IFTU leadership remained strangely silent on it.
My agenda in Basra was to give as much information about the Occupation
Orders passed against workers, ILO conventions and workers rights, and
the history and profile of the companies privatising Iraq as possible. I
wanted to work with workers as a grassroots level and help them in their
struggle to form unions of their own choosing, free from any political
party agenda influence. The IFTU leadership wanted me to go through them
at every turn. I informed them that I was not in their pay or
employment, I was an independent activist. An ICP member, in the offices
of the IFTU, told me, coldly, to play ball or _get out of Basra_. I
didn_t leave. They responded by spreading a rumour about me that my
_mission was not clear_. When someone is _not clear_ in Iraq, this is a
euphemism for _suspicious_ and marks someone as a potential spy. It is
well known that such a rumour in paranoid Iraq can get someone killed.
The leadership later also spread rumours about me being a member of the
Worker Communist Party. Again, a dangerous rumour implying I was not
independent and a member of a party which has had serious conflict with
Islamic groups in the South. It was all designed to alienate me from
workers and push me out of Basra.
The issue at stake is not whether workers in Iraq need solidarity and
support, nor whether they are genuine or not if members of an IFTU
union. The issue at stake is the political allegiances and agenda of
their leadership. A union leadership solely allied to a party
collaborating, perpetuating and benefiting from its empowerment by an
Occupation government, calls into question its ability to be democratic,
genuinely representative and open to workers struggle against that
occupation and against its stooge neo-Baathi government.
The anger witnessed from those protesting against the General Secretary
of the IFTU can be explained by the fact that Iraqi working class people
are, for the first time in 35 years, in a position to form radical
unions, new unions, unions which are capable of creating insurrectionary
working class struggle, unions capable of combating privatisation, slave
wages and the re-imposition of a Baathist bosses and a neo-Baathi
government, and capable, even, of challenging the occupation itself. The
possibilities exist for this. The conditions, given enduring 70%
unemployment and no functioning infrastructure and the fact of actually
keeping your workplace going rather than shutting it down is more of an
act of resistance for most workers, are another story, but the
organisational possibilities exist . There are workers in Iraq who
believe in and are prepared to mount an organised challenge to the class
system in Iraq, which is still Baathified. There is a belief that this
is possible. Workers have challenged occupation-protected Baathist
bosses in Najebeeya Electricity plant, Um Qasr, Maqal Port and locations
in the Southern Oil Company.
The rage which propels people to defy and denounce the head of an
organisation which falls silent when it comes to massive military
onslaughts up and down Iraq but wax lyrical on the need for elections as
soon as possible - clearly a route to securing and legitimising the
Communist Party_s power in a new government - does and will enrage
people. Opposition to the IFTU_s leadership and Communist Party and
Occupation promoting agenda should not be confused with opposition to
ordinary workers who are part of the unions in the IFTU. In Iraq now,
as is the case with unions all over the world, the interests of the
leadership and their members are often not the same. It is no wonder
that more and more people, both within and outside Iraq, are viewing the
IFTU, as it stands now, as an obstacle to genuine worker empowerment and
direct, participatory democracy in Iraq and will oppose it, angrily and
uncompromisingly.
