Iraqi Oil Workers Hold 24-hour Strike - Oil Exports Shut Down

For Immediate Release Sunday July 17th 2005

15,000 Southern Oil Company workers from the General Union of Oil Employees - Iraq's largest independent union - began a 24-hour striketoday, cutting most oil exports from the south of Iraq.

The strike is in support of demands made by Basra Governor Mohammadal-Waili - reflective of the wishes of the vast majority of Basra's residents - for a higher percentage of Southern oil revenue to be ploughed back into Basra's local economy. Basra's sewage system,electricity grid and medical services are still damaged and running at limited capacity. Despite being the capital of Iraq's oil reserves, the governorate is still struggling with entrenched poverty, malnutrition and an unemployment rate of 40%.

The GUOE has been involved in an industrial dispute with the Southern Oil Company administration, Ministry of Oil and Government since June20th when workers at the Basra Oil Refinery staged protest action and alock out. The Union is demanding the removal of high ranking Baathist managers in the SOC and regime loyalists serving in the Ministry of Oil.The Union has given the Ministry of Oil until January 1st 2006 tocomply. 15 in total are marked for removal.

The Union is also calling for an increase in workers wages. According tothe Media and Culture Officer, Faraj Rabat Mizbhan, the basic startingpay for an Iraqi soldier is 700,000 ID (£270) per month whilst a senioroil worker with 30 years service is being paid on average 400,000 ID(£150). The Union is also calling for land allowances for workers -currently a provision limited to high ranking managers.

The Union is also calling for an increase in risk payments - currentlyat the same level as workers employed in offices. Risk payments areallocated to workers working in dangerous locations usually situated farinto desert regions.

Union President Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi plus members of theexecutive committee have been involved in negotiations with the Ministryof Oil and Central Government over the past month. The Governor of Basrafully supports the demands of the GUOE.

Negotiations between the Ministry of Oil and Government and Union haveresumed in order to avert a full general strike which would involve afurther 8,000 union members included in Amara and Nassiriyeh provinces.Non Union workers have also been known to join GUOE strike action in thepast. If the Iraqi government does not agree to the Union's demands, ageneral strike will ensue.

Notes
Currently, the Southern oil sector is providing the central and Northernareas of Iraq with the vast majority of it's' petroleum, LPG and oil, aswell as providing the bulk of oil exports.
The GUOE held its' first conference on Privatisation this May whichended with a resolution against the privatisation of Iraq's oilindustry, declaring that 'privatisation of the oil and industrialsectors, or of any part of them, will do great harm to the Iraqi peopleand their economy'. It also called upon 'members of Parliament.to take afirm stand against political currents and directives calling for theprivatisation of the public sector in Iraq' and called 'upon all Statesto remit the odious debts undertaken by the previous regime, withoutcondition and without infringing the independence, sovereignty andeconomic self-governance of Iraq', (Final Conference Communiqué May 252005)

For further information please contact:
Faraj Rabat Mizbhan, Responsible for Culture and Media, GUOE00964 7801 393 137 (Arabic only)
Nafutna - UK Support Committee for the General Union of Oil EmployeesEwa Jasiewicz (0044) 07749 421 576 or Munir Chalabi (0044) 7952 683 415
Photographs of the recent conference and sites contact David Bacondbacon@igc.org 001 510 851 1589

Leave our country now, by Hassan Juma'a

From the first days of the US-British invasion of Iraq, oil workers have resisted foreign occupation

Hassan Juma'a Awad Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian

We lived through dark days under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. When the regime fell, people wanted a new life: a life without shackles and terror; a life where we could rebuild our country and enjoy its natural wealth. Instead, our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes.

Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq. Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation, which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.

Read full article in the Guardian

Iraq oil workers fight privatisation

On May 25th-26th the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra held ahistorical conference on the privatisation of Iraq’s public sector. Ewa Jasiewicz was there.The conference attracted 150 trade union activists, mostly GUOE members and union council leaders from Nassiriyah, Amara and Basra, plus Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions reps and local party activists. International delegates, organised by Iraq Occupation Focus, and representing civil society organisations in the UK and USA also participated and spent a further four days touring oil sector locations and interviewing workers. Local and national media also covered the event.

The conference was ‘scientific’ meaning that it dealt with the nature of privatisation, approaching the issue in a research-based way. The opening speech from GUOE President Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi attacked the conspiracy against the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussien’s tyranny and American imperial interests, asserting the need to fight the economic occupation of Iraq.Eight Papers were presented by professors from Basra University, covering different aspects of privatisation. One key topic was the fact that no democratic debate had taken place on the subject within parliament or anywhere else and that no commission had been established to publicly discuss privatization, as elsewhere in the Middle East. The use of Iraq's debt to force through privatisation was also discussed. Amjad Sabbah al Assadi, a researcher at the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies spoke of the need for social welfare as a priority before any privatisation could even be considered. Unemployment stood at 70%, and 80% of Iraq's private companies had gone bankrupt since the war, as they could not compete with cheap imports. Privatisation would create foreign monopolies as the Iraqi private sector was too weak to compete. The failure of privatisation systems in Lebanon, Algeria and Egypt wasalso discussed, as was the corruption it engenders in state and private sector. Hussein Fadhil and Samir Hanoon, President and Vice-President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions spoke at the conference in support ofthe GUOE and against the privatisation of Iraq's oil wealth.Trade union leaders from the GUOE repeatedly raised their experiences and efforts. The head of the Southern Drilling Company spoke passionately of the independent reconstruction efforts workers had undertaken in thedrilling sector and affirmed that Iraqi workers had brought the sector back to life despite mass looting and deliberate degradation under the watch and de-facto permission of the Occupation forces. Others described how they had thrown out American company KBR representatives from work locations. They repeatedly stated they would rebuild the public sector using Iraqi labour and ingenuity and that this was a source of pride and honour for them and the country, which should not be exploited by foreign companies.

Contributions from international delegates included Greg Muttitt, researcher from PLATFORM, on plans to open Iraq's oil reserves to multinationals and Production Sharing Agreements that deprive host governments of revenue and control over their industry. Justin Alexander of Jubilee Iraq, an organisation focusing on the cancellation of Iraq’s foreign regime-incurred debts, explained how Iraq's foreign debt is being used as a lever to prise open the economy. David Bacon, representing the million-strong US Labor Against the War described how Mexican workers in the electrical power and oil sector successfully prevented the sell-off of their industries.

International solidarity messages were sent from over 40 organisations, including the South Africa Anti-Privatisation Forum, Liga Manggawaga (Philippines), the Canadian Autoworkers Union, Fiom-Cgil (Italy), Patagonia oil workers (Argentina), UNT (Venezuela), ZZG - National Union of Miners (Poland) and in Britain, the NUJ, UNISON, NATFHE and TGWU.

The GUOE’s conference didn’t just make history in industrial politics on a local and national level - it also marked a chapter in the Union’s own history. From its beginnings in the Southern Oil Company, blockading against British occupation forces, to rehabilitating their war-smashed work sites, strike action by workers in various oil-related companies and tireless negotiations with the authorities over wages, profit-sharing and risk and location payments, the union has grown into a major force with 23,000 members. It is winning support from managers too, who at the Basra Oil Refinery and Iraqi Drilling Company articulated their appreciation of the Union’s reconstruction efforts and honesty. The conference was a show of collective consciousness and strength, an affirmation of the past two years of struggle and service on the behalf of Iraqi workers and their families. Now, the union is looking to struggle on behalf of Iraq’s inhabitants against the pillage of their one key resource which is capable of dragging millions out of poverty and rebuilding the country, if it stays under democratic control.

The GUOE needs our support. Questions regarding the illegality of Bremer’s Orders and Iraq’s odious debts which form the structural basis for the imposition of privatisation on Iraq must be asked in Parliament, at trade union meetings, conferences and throughout the anti-war movement. MPs should be called on to raise the illegality of the privatisation of Iraq’s economy at every opportunity. Even if the military occupation of Iraq may be preparing for a step back, the economic occupation is moving in for the kill.For details on how to support the GUOE please see www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk

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.

Download full report by by Ewa Jasiewicz