by James Parks, Jun 6, 2007
Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of Iraq’s Electrical Utility Workers Union (in light scarf) leads a May Day march in Basra.
The U.S.-backed government has proposed a new law in Iraq that would permit what the oil industry calls “production-sharing agreements” that could put 70 percent of the profits from oil sales in the hands of rich oil companies and leave the Iraqi people with little to run their country.
The plan, which was supported by the U.S. State Department as early as 2003, also has the backing of the International Monetary Fund and some powerful Iraqi political leaders. In fact, the rapid opening up of Iraqi oil for “private investment” is one of the benchmarks in the Iraq funding bill, which Congress passed and President Bush signed recently.
Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, General Federation of Iraqi Workers, made it clear workers are fighting the law:
The oil law is a bad for the Iraqi people. It is not fair or equitable. It’s just another name for privatization.
Muhsin Hussein, the only female union president in Iraq, is on a 26-day, 12-city tour of the United States sponsored by U.S. Labor Against The War (USLAW). Today, she joined a rally in Washington, D.C., to protest the oil law outside the offices of BearingPoint.
BearingPoint is the contractor hired to promote the oil law, which was written by a committee of technocrats who talked with the Big Oil companies but ignored the state-run national oil company and the workers, Hussein says. It’s part of an overall effort to privatize state-owned industries.
USLAW is urging workers to write their members of Congress to support legislation that would:
*Not link military withdrawal from Iraq to adoption of the oil law;
*Demand that the Iraqi government and U.S. military authorities abide by recognized international labor standards, including the freedom to form unions;
*Remove all U.S. military forces from harm’s way by immediately withdrawing all troops and private contractors from Iraq; and
*Fully respect Iraq’s sovereignty.
The protest comes one day after oil workers, members of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, struck the pipeline company in Basra, bringing an immediate stop to the free flow of oil products, including kerosene and gas in one pipeline. The pipe transfers oil and gas to Baghdad and the central region of the country. The workers are demanding an end to control of the pipeline from Baghdad because of mismanagement.
Muhsin Hussein also met with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney today and addressed a group at the AFL-CIO in Washington. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, who planned to join her on the tour, was delayed in Iraq with visa problems. He is expected to join the tour Wednesday. (For a complete schedule of the tour, click here.)
Muhsin Hussein says that although workers had hoped the end of the 35-year brutal reign would usher in a pluralistic, open society, life for everyone in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein is characterized by a lack of security or basic laws, unemployment and now the threat of a lack of funds to run their government.
Muhsin Hussein says the war has devastated her country and the lives of workers. Unemployment is rampant, affecting mostly women and youth. She estimates that 60 percent of Iraqis are jobless and that 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.The infrastructure is completely destroyed. There is little electrical power and few bridges or roads. Emissions from armaments have so polluted the environment that workers are beginning to get sick and many are suffering from terminal illnesses, she says.
Muhsin Hussein says U.S.-backed laws have taken away trade unions’ property and made it hard to join unions. The government also has not repealed laws enacted under the former regime that prohibit public employees from joining unions.
In a first-hand account of his trip to Iraq at AFL-CIO headquarters, photojournalist David Bacon pointed out that unions are more prevalent in Basra because the area was under the control of the United Kingdom after the fall of the former regime. The U.K. administration was more supportive of unions, Bacon says, than the United States.
The AFL-CIO Convention in 2005 called for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and in March 2007 the Executive Council reaffirmed the convention resolution. Hussein says that’s what Iraqi workers want. She praised the AFL-CIO stance and said:
Keep up the pressure on the administration to end the occupation and let us run our country.
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