The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra- Background

by Ewa Jasiewicz

The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra has its roots in the Southern Oil Company Trade Union, which was established after the occupation began in April 2003. Activists first organised secretly, uncertain as to how occupation forces would respond. The goal of the union, as Hassan Juma'a [general secretary of the union] puts it, was to ‘re-organise the relationship between workers and the company’s administration in order to fight for workers’ rights’. Hassan himself has worked for the Southern Oil Company, a nationalised industry, for 33 years. He lives in a small, crumbling house in the poverty-entrenched Jhoumouria district of Basra. Father of six and a survivor of Saddam’s jails and torture chambers (he was imprisoned three times under the regime), Hassan Juma’a frequently cites the strike by oil workers in the South against the Basra Oil Company administration in the 1950s as an example of the power oil workers once had in Iraq, before the Baath regime crushed workers’ organisations. 1987 was the year trade unions were dissolved and all workers were transformed into 'civil servants'. State-run trade unions were set up and acted as instruments of surveillance and repression. Older generations may still remember the meaning of the word ‘Trade Union’ and remember organising within a genuine workers' organisation, however younger workers are still unclear as to what a trade union is capable of and what they themselves are capable of when they organise together for their own interests. One of Hassan’s key requests when visiting the UK was for training for trade union activists, in organisational, co-ordination and network-building skills.

The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra, or the Basra Oil Union as it is also referred to, is a federation of oil unions representing 23,000 members in ten energy related trade union councils, active in the nine separate Iraqi companies which make up the oil sector in Basra, Amara and Nassiryah.

The Southern Oil Company is the biggest oil company in Iraq and the undiscovered oil reserves which are thought to surpass those of Saudi Arabia are to be found primarily in the South. The other companies in this sector are: the Southern Oil Company, Southern Gas Company, Southern Refinery Company, Iraqi Excavation Company, the Oil Carrier Company, the Gas Packing Company, the Oil Production Company, the Oil Projects Company, and the Oil Pipe Lines Company.

The position of the Basra Oil Union is that it is independent, free from any political party influence or control. It is a union which doesn’t belong to any of the Iraqi union federations, although it enjoys relationships of co-operation and good communication at a local level with all of them – the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) and also the General Federation of Iraq Unions (Lead by Jabbar Tarish). Hassan also made a link with Kurdish trade union representatives whilst in London.

Despite activists within the union being members of different political parties, these political and ideological differences are left outside of union-building work, which, it was decided by consensus, should always and only serve workers’ interests and not those of the government or any particular party. The leadership of the union has been democratically elected by workers themselves. The union’s position is that it is against privatization and against the occupation – military and economic – of Iraq. The Union sees itself as bearing the responsibility of defending Iraq’s national wealth for the benefit of all Iraqis. Those who work day in day out to create the wealth of Iraq are those who were killed under the regime for trying to organize against it and suffered some of the most draconian surveillance and repression as a result of their critical and vital position within the economy. Iraqi oil workers are highly conscious of this critical position and the power they wield as a collective force. The union believes that the wealth of Iraq should be used to benefit all Iraqis – from North to South – to raise people out of poverty and to reconstruct the country both economically and socially. The union knows that the sights of the American free-market fundamentalist crusade are trained firmly on Iraq’s oil industry and have been since the 1970s.

One of the first acts of defiance against the occupation and the imposition of unlivable wages by the Bremer Administration was a three-day oil strike on August 10th 2003. It was also important to oil workers and the union leadership to keep the knowledge of the workings of the oil industry in the hands of Iraqi workers. From the very beginning, workers threw out the employees of US corporations Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) from their workplaces, as they knew that they had been sent by the Pentagon and were a constituent part of the Occupation. Barring KBR from their workplaces was one way of keeping that information safe from co-optation and exploitation and workers in control of workplaces.

Oil workers won an important struggle for higher wages in January 2004 after strike action and repeated pressure on the Occupation Authorities. Pro Consul Paul Bremer had introduced Order 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions in September 2003; oil workers in the Iraqi South managed to get the last two levels of the 11-level wage table eliminated, making the lowest minimum wage 102,000ID (which with risk and location payments rose to 150,000ID), up from from just 69,000 ID. Order 30 was just one of 100 orders,[1] de-facto laws which govern everything from traffic regulations to foreign investment and the status of occupation soldiers. Legal experts consider the Orders to be illegal, as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, to which both British and US forces are signatories, prohibit occupying powers from overhauling a country’s legal system and restructuring its economy and selling of state assets and properties. The Orders were passed under Bremer’s Civil Administration Law under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA was formally disbanded in June 2004 yet the Administrative Law persists, despite mass opposition to it and a Fatwah from the Ayatollah Sistani. Iraqis voting in this January’s elections repeatedly cite the repeal of Bremer’s laws as one of the main reasons for trying to vote in a government which can write new laws and a constitution which serves the needs of the Iraqi people. Bremer’s law is widely regarded as an extension of US interests, and the vehicle which will usher in privatization of the Iraqi economy, ensure the impunity of foreign soldiers and mercenaries from prosecution, continue to ban trade unions and criminalize public demonstrations and free speech.

The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra is still an ‘illegal’ union as it has not been officially recognized by the government. ‘We take our legitimacy from the workers and not from the government’, states Hassan.

Overcoming isolation is one of the key problems facing all new Iraqi civil society organizations. Connection to the internet and access to independent media and newspapers with uncensored news is restricted by the government and by prohibitively expensive net cafes and scarce web connections. On average, an hour on the internet costs 2000 Iraqi Dinar (about $1.50). This is a day's wages for some workers and in real terms can buy 40 ‘samoun’ pieces of bread – enough to feed the children of a family of five for a whole week.

The General Union of Oil Employees in Basra needs massive support. The struggle of Iraqi oil workers against the privatization of their industry and national resources is a struggle which serves all those fighting to end the war and ongoing occupation of Iraq, all those locked in struggle against corporate giants, occupying armies, neo-colonial regimes and governments and capitalism itself, the driving system behind this war which, if we can stand in solidarity with Iraqi oil workers, could be starved of the refueling it is depending on in Iraq.

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