Steelworkers Union Pledges Support For Iraqi Trade Unions

[Itsthetruth]

Pittsburgh Business Times
June 21, 2005

Steelworkers back Iraqis, call for better working conditions
by Dan Reynolds

Representatives of Iraqi trade unions joined with their counterparts at the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh Tuesday to decry working conditions in Iraq and call for international support to reinforce the labor movement in the occupied country. About 75 people attended the public forum.

In the meeting held at USW(United Steelworkers of America) headquarters at Gateway Center, Downtown, Falah Awan, president of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq called on his American co-unionists to assist him in demanding that the Iraqi government write a labor code as part of efforts to craft a constitution in that country. "I call on you in the name of Iraqi labor to support us and to support our federation," Mr. Awan said.

Mr. Awan said Iraqi workers are fired at will and have no control over their working hours. He said women and children are being exploited in the Iraqi economy and that the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari is doing nothing about it. "Because the groups who are in power don't respect any human value in this society," Mr. Awan said.

Maurice Henderson, a spokesman for the USW, said the USW had formed alliances with trade unionists in Brazil, Australia and Europe in the past and will extend similar support to trade unionists in Iraq.
"We are in full solidarity with our brothers in the Iraqi movement," Mr. Henderson said.

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