Agitating For Workers Rights In Iraq

[Solidarity]

Counterpunch
June 4, 2004

Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq
Where the Livable World Order Begins
By GREG MOSES

Wouldn't it be a profound retort to empire if Iraqis led a global movement for worker's rights? Next Friday in fact, June 11, a coalition of labor groups will stand behind an Iraqi appeal for the right to self-organize.

"Workers are in urgent need to build strong and broad-based organizations which are not based on language or religion," says Aso Jabbar, international spokesperson for the Union of Unemployed Iraqis, one of several worker-based groups organized in the aftermath of the recent US invasion.

This June marks the second year in a row that international labor groups are gathering in support of Jabbar and other Iraqi labor organizers as the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Next Friday, Iraqi labor representatives plan to deliver formal complaints to the ILO, protesting the labor policies of provisional authorities in Iraq.

In effect, Iraqi labor organizers accuse US-backed authorities of setting up the national equivalent of a company union, ignoring the rights of workers to organize their own shops and elect their own leaders.

http://www.counterpunch.org/moses06042004.html