Iraqi anti-occupation trade unionists tour U.S.
By
Special to Workers World
Published Jun 29, 2005 10:28 PM
From left: Clarence Thomas, co-chair of the Million Worker March and ILWU Local 10 executive board member; Falen Abbood Umara, general secretary, GUOW; and Trent Willis, President, ILWU Local 10 and co-chair of Million Worker March.
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The history of the General Union of Oil
Workers in Iraq is unique. It was founded 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in
April 2003. That August, the union struck for three days and won wage increases
for its members.
GUOW fought Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg,
Brown, Root against privatization of the oil industry, and the military
industrial occupation of Iraq.
Since the strike, the union has grown to
over 23,000 workers in 10 oil and gas companies in Basra, Amari, Nassiriya, and
Anbar provinces. Yet it is not recognized as the collective bargaining
representative of the oil workers.
From the very beginning of the
occupation, GUOW denounced Paul Bremer and the U.S. Coalition Provisional
Authority and the Allawi puppet government.
GUOW President Hassan
Juma’a Awad, a co-thinker and colleague of GUOW General Secretary Faleh
Abbood Umara, wrote an article in the Feb. 18 Guardian of London. It was
headlined, “Leave Our Country Now.” Some excerpts:
“From
the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the U.S. and its allies had come to
take control of our oil resources ... Our union has ... shown it is able to
stand its ground against one of the most powerful U.S. companies, Dick
Cheney’s KBR (subsidiary of Halliburton), which tried to take over our
work places with the protection of occupation forces ...
“We reject
and will oppose all moves to privatize our oil industry and natural resources.
We regard this privatization as a form of neocolonialism, an attempt to impose a
permanent economic occupation to follow the military occupation. ...
“And today we are resisting this brutal occupation together, from
Falluja to Najaf to Sadr City. ... We as a union call for the withdrawal of
foreign occupation forces and their military bases. We don’t want a
timetable—this is a stalling tactic.”
GUOW leader in
SF
More than 200 Local 10 members attended. On June 16 in San
Francisco, Local 10 of the International Longshore Worker Union hosted a meeting
with Umara of GUOW.
The Million Worker March sponsored events for the
Iraqis at other venues. MWM’s Clarence Thomas presented Umara with MWM tee
shirts, pens and DVDs. A videotape of Thomas’ visit to Baghdad in October
2003 was shown.
In addition to ILWU Locals 10 and 34, the Iraqi union
leaders have met with labor councils in the Bay area—San Francisco and
Alameda (Oakland). And they spoke at a packed meeting at St. Joseph the Worker
Church in Berkeley.
There were also meetings with oil workers in the Los
Angeles area and in Martinez, a port in the Bay area, who are seeking to
establish bilateral relations with GUOW. During the West Coast trip, the GUOW
leaders appeared at many other events.
As a result of the tour, the
potential for international solidarity with Iraqi workers and their unions will
grow. The strategy laid out by the GUOE leadership is a splendid example of a
perspective that has the support of the Million Worker March Movement and those
anti-imperialist, anti-racist forces here that want an immediate withdrawal of
U.S. troops and the end of the occupation.
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