Will bushies Get What They Really Wanted from The Death and Destruction, The Oil!! {UPDATED}

Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands
By David Bacon
San Jose Mercury News

The Bush administration calls the Iraq occupation an exercise in democracy building. Yet from the beginning, many of the Iraqis who want democracy most are treated as its enemies - Iraq's unions.
Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.
When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild their labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein.
Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases, and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders.
President Bush doesn't believe what he preaches. He says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others: They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands.
The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process.
Iraq's oil was nationalized in the 1960s, like that of every other country in the Middle East. The Iraqi oil union became, and still is, the industry's most zealous guardian.
Holding a no-bid, sweetheart contract with occupation authorities, Halliburton Corp. came into Iraq in the wake of the troops in 2003. The company tried to seize control of the wells and rigs, withholding reconstruction aid to force workers to submit. The oil union struck for three days that August, stopping exports and cutting off government revenue. Halliburton left.
The oil and port unions then forced foreign corporations to give up similar sweetheart agreements in Iraq's deep-water shipping facilities. Muhsin's electrical union is still battling to stop subcontracting in the power stations - a prelude to corporate control.
The occupation has always had an economic agenda. Then-occupation czar Paul Bremer published lists in Baghdad newspapers of the public enterprises he intended to auction off. Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam bitterly observed, "War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it."
The Bush administration won't leave Iraq in part because that economic agenda is still insecure. Under Washington's guidance, the Iraqi government wrote a new oil law in secret. The Iraq study commission, headed by oilman James Baker, called it the key to ending the occupation.
That law is touted in the U.S. media as ensuring an equitable division of oil wealth. Iraqi unions say it will ensure that foreign corporations control future exploration and development, in one of the world's largest reserves.
Hassan Juma'a Awad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress on May 13. "Everyone knows the oil law doesn't serve the Iraqi people," he said. The union was banned from the secret negotiations. According to Juma'a, the result "serves Bush, his supporters and foreign companies at the expense of the Iraqi people." The union has threatened to strike if the law is implemented.
Like all Iraqi unionists, Juma'a says the occupation should end without demanding Iraq's oil as a price. "The U.S.A. claimed that it came here as a liberator, not to control our resources," he reminded Congress.
To win Iraqis' respect, therefore, congressional opponents of the war must disavow the oil law. Whatever government holds power in Baghdad at the occupation's end will need control of the oil wealth to rebuild their devastated country.

Well, Well, Well looks like bushies Puppets are Following Orders!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 6, 2007
11:18 AM
CONTACT: Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation
Sami Ramadani – 07863 138748 sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk
Kamil Mahdi – k.a.mahdi@exeter.ac.uk
Sabah Jawad – 07985 336886 sabah.jawad@idao.org

Iraq Government Orders Arrest of Oil Workers’ Leaders
WASHINGTON - JUNE 6 - Iraq’s powerful oil workers’ trade union today expressed alarm as an arrest warrant was issued for its leaders, in an attempt to clamp down on industrial action.
Members of the union have been on strike since Monday 4th June, in protest at the government’s failure to meet any of its promises made in a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on 16th May. The union’s 16 demands included improvements to wages, health and other working and living conditions as well as consultation on the proposed oil law, which the union opposes. The union added a 17th demand yesterday demanding the sacking of the General Manager of the Southern Pipeline Company.
On Tuesday, al-Maliki warned that he would meet threats to oil production “with an iron fist”.
The arrest warrant, based on a charge of “sabotaging the economy” specifically names Hassan Juma’a Awad, the leader of the 26,000-strong Federation of Oil Unions, and three other leaders of the Federation.
Hassan Juma’a commented, “the government is intimidating the union but we are determined to gain our legitimate rights.” He added that the strike would continue in accordance with the union’s plan.
The strike entered its third day today and is in its “second phase,” which now includes the closure of the main distribution pipelines, including supplies to Baghdad. “Phase one” closed some of the smaller distribution pipelines. Phases one and two did not include production and exports.
The union is calling on all its supporters and unions across the world to back the union at this critical juncture. Sami Ramadani from the union’s UK-based support committee, Naftana said: “Issuing a warrant for the arrest of the oil workers’ leaders is an outrageous attack on trade union and democratic freedoms.”

Naftana is an independent UK-based committee supporting democratic trade unionism in Iraq. It works in solidarity with the IFOU. It strives to publicize the union’s struggle for Iraqi social and economic rights and its stand against the privatisation of Iraqi oil demanded by the occupying powers. For more information see the IFOU’s website