25 January, 2010
The ICEM reported here of the successful leather workers’ strike that concluded in December in Iraq, a strike that spawned a shorter strike in the clothing and textile sector in the Baghdad area. Both workers’ units come under the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), a national labour centre that counts two ICEM affiliates to its rolls.
In January, the Ministry of Industries has retaliated by predictably reverting to something that other Iraqi ministries have done: It has taken the leader of the textile strike, FWCUI President Falah Alwan, and transferred him from a Cotton Industry enterprise, under the State Company for Textiles, to another enterprise in order to suppress his union activities.
Falah Alwan
The ICEM condemns this action and urges trade unionists and human rights activists globally to protest. The ICEM notes that global protests in the past produced reversals for other Iraqi trade unionists who were exiled for trade union building, including port workers of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) in Um Asr and eight leaders of ICEM-affiliated Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) in the Basra area.
Please send an e-mail in your own words to Minister of Industry and Minerals, Fawzi Hariri, here and here, and copy the State Company for Textiles here.
Trade unions in Iraq are under constant pressure, considering neither the occupation forces nor the Iraqi government has lifted the draconian Saddam era Decree150 that prohibits independent unions from existing in the all-encompassing public sector. The Iraqi government has also failed to pass into law a meaningful labour code, a set of fair and universally accepted statutes that have been drawn up by Iraqis with assistance from experts at the ILO.