Destination Iraq
So you thought the lot of the trade unionist was a hard one in the UK? Try doing the same job in Iraq. Trade unionists there are overcoming overwhelming obstacles, as a delegation of UNISON staff found out.
The situation for Iraqi trade unions seems impossibly bleak: quite apart from the day to day dangers of bombs which affect all citizens, trade unionists have been specifically targeted. The President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was kidnapped in Mosul (WHEN?) and other union organisers regularly receive death threats. Any large gathering of people is a possible target, and travelling is difficult and dangerous because of the security situation.
But despite all this, the Iraqi trade union movement is active and organising. Earlier this year a delegation of UNISON employees travelled to the Middle East to provide training for organisers. International Officer Nick Crook, Louise Chinnery and Pam Johnson from LAOS went to Jordan to meet ten activists from the IFTU, and ten from the Iraqi Teachers Union.
“UNISON has established a link to Iraqi trade unions, partly because of the union’s involvement in the Stop the War movement,” explains Nick Crook. “The General secretary of the IFTU came to speak at UNISON conference in 2004 (NICK – is this the same one who was later kidnapped in Mosul?), and as a result of that we felt we needed to do something more concrete to help. They said that what they really needed was training.”
Trade unions have existed in Iraq since the 1930s. They grew up around the oil industries, and became strong in the ‘50s and ‘60s. However, after Saddam seized power in 1979, he converted them into state controlled unions, so that instead of representing workers, they were enforcing government policy. By 1987 he had changed the labour law to exclude all public service workers from joining a union. Activists who dissented were forced into exile, or became political prisoners. People began to distrust unions as another face of the Ba’athist regime.
But after the fall of Saddam in 2003, exiled unionists returned and political prisoners were freed, and they began to revive the trade union movement. One of their key demands is to change the law, to enable public service workers to become unionised. Until this happens, they cannot register – but they are organising nonetheless, in readiness for when the time comes.
“These unions are trying to set up their own trade union education themselves, so we were there to give them the skills to develop their own courses,” explains Louise Chinnery. The programme they developed was based on the union’s lay tutor scheme, and was designed to help the Iraqis teach their activists how to recruit and the organise. It was also intended to educate them in the history and role of trade unionism in a political democracy. The same group will meet again later this month, and each of the Iraqis has undertaken to train ten people in the intervening time.
“The level of enthusiasm is incredible,” comments Louise. “In theory they should train 200 people by the end of the project, but in reality they will train many more – they’re already exceeding their targets.” Next year UNISON’s regional trainers will take part in a similar project with 20 activists from unions in Iraqi Kurdistan, which since 1991 have been able to operate autonomously from the rest of the country.
Nine of the 20 who attended the training course in Jordan were women, and they reported additional obstacles to their work. As well as traditional problems of discrimination, they feel particularly vulnerable travelling alone. They are also facing increasing pressure from Islamicist groups, which are moving into trade unions in a concerted way, and then leaning on women not to take up positions of responsibility. “This is a worrying trend,” says Nick Crook. “We’re going to see if we can do some focussed training for women activists in the future.”
Their achievement so far is the more impressive when you consider the conditions in which they are operating. “Quite apart from the current situation, Iraq has lived through 20 years of war, and because of that the country is just falling apart,” explains Nick Crook. “Factories, roads and railways which were damaged in the Iran-Iraq war have still not been repaired. Teachers are having to teach without course books or stationery, and often they are having to work two or even three shifts a day, with up to 50 pupils in a classroom, because the facilities are so reduced.”
And yet Iraqi trade unions have been able to flex their muscles. Railway workers were able to shut down the railways for a symbolic one day strike because they were being targeted by insurgents. The hotel sector managed to shut down some of the big international hotels over pay and conditions. And Baghdad airport has been shut down several times by union power. With the help of international friends like UNISON, we can only hope that in time the Iraqi unions can be reborn to play a full part in the country’s emerging democracy