Our differences with the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions-IFTU

 

By Aso Jabbar , January 2005

 

 

The Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq categorically condemned the terrorist attack against the members of the IFTU and the Murder of Hadi Salih, the international officer of the IFTU. These are terrorist attack against civilians, which must be condemned. Despite our condemnation, we have serious difference with the IFTU, which may not be obvious to many abroad.

 

 

Some of these differences are:

 

1. IFTU is backed by the Iraqi Communist party, which was a member of the Governing Council and now of the Interim Iraqi Government and fully collaborates with the US led coalition in Iraq.

They have always supported all policies adopted by the local authority and USA in Iraq including, the occupation of Iraq, UN resolutions in regard to war and occupation, all resolutions passed by the Iraqi Governing Council and Interim Government, the game due to be performed under the name of election, federalism for Iraq, Islamic and fascist groups coming to the power.... etc. The IFTU was recognized by the Interim Government as the official and legal representative of workers in Iraq and they are receiving huge amount of financial support from the authority for their unreserved support for the IGC and the IIG.  There were no real attempts by IFTU to be recognised by the Iraqi Interim Government but this government did so because they need this union as an instrument to subdue workers and to outlaw any independent union. Its sponsor the Iraqi Communist Party did not condemn the second gulf war in 1991 with an illusion that America will liberate people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. They did not condemned economic embargo from the beginning and only announced a modest opposition to this genocide toward the end, when no progressive and semi-progressive forces remained silent.

 

 

 

2. IFTU represents the government and employers in any dispute with workers. Its main task is to implement the policies of the Iraqi communist party, Interim Government and the occupation authorities. It endorses the policies of the Iraqi Interim Government in regard to workers.  IFTU has never supported the FWCUI or UUI; neither has it supported independent unions in Iraq like Southern Oil Company, which is not affiliated with the IFTU or FWCUI. In numerous protest actions they have stood with administrations and the government. For example they did not condemn the bloody attack by the Iraqi police on the Textile workers in Kut. They refused to send message of support to Basra workers’ conference. They refused to sign our complaint to ILO against the authority’s decision to ban all unions except IFTU. They refused to support our proposed labour law. We pleaded with them not to stand against workers in their struggles for their fair demands, but they are still supporting the interests of employers, administrations and government.

Look at their web page, you will not find any news of strikes or protest actions by workers, which are everywhere these days. In all protest action by workers, IFTU has been a marginal organisation and in many incidents workers even did not distinguish between representatives of IFTU and administration and employers. In the incident of the strike of workers in Petrochemical and Plastic Industry in Baghdad they vigorously stood against the workers, tried to break their strike and prevent them from electing their own organization. This incident demonstrated clearly the organic relation between the leaders of IFTU and employers and why workers do not recognise them as union activists. They are not serious in their opposition to Islamists. They are just part of the propaganda launched by the Interim Government and the occupation forces against the Islamic groups and Baathists.

This is the reality of IFTU. The Interim Government consciously recognised them as the only legal union because they need it to subjugate the protesting working class and limit the effect of their strikes and protests. IFTU is to draw the labour movement behind their collaborating policies with occupation. The USA and the reactionary forces grouped in the Iraqi Interim Government are struggling to control the labour movement in Iraq and divert its attention from struggling for its progressive agenda. One way to do that is to deepen ethnic and religious division between workers. IFTU is in line with all these reactionary policies. 

 Working class is struggling against these policies and to improve its living conditions. We are in the hearts of this struggle; organizing, leading and guiding workers and they are defending employers, managers and administrations. We know very well that working class could be very powerful and strong and will have a say in deciding its won future if we succeed in our agenda, while if their agenda succeeds the working class will be further marginalized and its exploitation further intensified. 

 

 

3. From our point of view the occupation is the source of all problems in Iraq and without ending it there will be no improvement in the disastrous situation in Iraq. Therefore it is very crucial for Iraqi people to end the occupation in Iraq through their independent and progressive struggle .We welcome any forces in Iraq and abroad which support and participate in achieving this task. It is very crucial also for us to criticize strongly those who are collaborating with USA and who are standing against these attempts to force the occupation forces to leave Iraq. On the other hand we all know about the position of the Iraqi Communist Party and the IFTU on occupation. We all remember the dirty role that the IFTU representative played in British Labour Party conference to convince union delegates not to support an early withdrawal of UK forces from Iraq. This incident by itself is enough to know who this group is and how it misleads the labour movement for their own party’s agenda.

 

 Now let’s examine comments made by Abdulla Muhsin, the international officer of IFTU in August 25, 2004, The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU): Outline History and Future Tasks, A paper by Abdullah Muhsin, United Kingdom based Representative of the IFTU:

He says (The Union of Unemployed in Iraq - which now calls itself as the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq. Like many other movements formed in Baghdad in the wake of Saddam’s demise it gained some international notoriety for organising protests outside Bremer’s offices. But the UUI is really a front organisation of the small Workers Communist Party of Iraq. It commands very little support among Iraqi working people. In fact the union had disappeared from the political and industrial scene of Iraqi Kurdistan because of its sectarianism. It is possible this experience will be repeated in the rest of Iraq. Though the UUI has capitalized on the strong anti-occupation feeling and on the despair of the high numbers of unemployed, it possesses few industrial credentials and is viewed with disdain by the Iraqi labour movement.)

 

 These claims made by IFTU are disgusting and completely in line with claims of the Kurdish nationalist parties; PUK, KDP, the Iraqi Communist Party and Islamic groups in the Interim Government. Abdulla Muhsin has no courage to talk about the policies and the practices of UUI and the FWCUI, but will try to mud everything.  These comments are to belittle UUI and the fair demands of unemployed people that it uphold. There are millions of unemployed people in Iraq; living with their families in a disastrous situation including hunger, deprivation, and lack of health services and so on .Any serious social movement should have an answer to this problem. We were the first labour group who organised unemployed people in Iraq to achieve their demand; jobs or unemployed benefit. The UUI is an attempt to answer a problem in such enormous scale and has achieved a lot of success in this regard. We organised series of protest actions before the CPA, including a 45-days sit-in. We were attacked by Islamists- Muqtada al-Sadr group in Nasiriryiah and by the US forces in Baghdad. On three occasions our leaders and members were arrested and tortured by US forces. During many protests the US and Iraqi forces shot on peaceful demonstrations of UUI and unemployed people killing and injuring defenceless people.

 In all these incidents IFTU maintained silence and indifference and instead to belittle the heroic struggle of UUI. While hundreds of unions and progressive people worldwide protested against these brutalities and supported UUI demands, the IFTU supported the policies of US forces and Iraqi Interim government against the UUI. By opposing UUI existence and struggle, the IFTU practically has incited reactionary groups against the UUI.

 In Iraqi Kurdistan we organised unemployed people in UUI -Iraqi Kurdistan since 1992 and we had serious of confrontation with Kurdish ruling parties. Prominent leaders of UUI have been killed Like Baker Ali by PUK and Nazir Omer by KDP. In tens of incidents hundreds of UUI members in Kurdistan were arrested and tortured by PUK and KDP. After civil war in 1994 between PUK and KDP in North, Kurdistan UUI was weakened, but we have not disappeared from north .We have been attacked, arrested, tortured and killed by Kurdish militias. The Iraqi Communist party of Iraq was as usual a junior member of PUK and KDP local authorities. They are well known for their nationalistic and reactionary policies and with collaborating with strong forces no matter how reactionary they are.

 IFTU accuses us of sectarianism but they are neglecting our relentless struggle against the ruling Kurdish parties. According to them it is us who are sectarian but the Kurdish nationalist parties who killed demonstrators and defenceless unemployed people and killed thousands in their internal ward and more than 9000 women (honour killing) are democratic and good guys. For a decade the Communist party of Iraq supported the policies of PUK and KDP against UUI -Kurdistan.

Amid the appalling conditions in Iraq it has not been easy for us to organise more than 350,000 members in UUI in 7 major cities across the country and one cannot be less unfair to dismiss UUI as a sectarian organization. For a neutral person the question is; there is UUI struggling for the demands of unemployed people in Iraq, it is independent of any of the forces participating in the Interim Government and US polices. It struggles against the occupation and the Islamo-ethnocentric resistance. It struggles for a secular government and constitution, for freedom of organisation and speech. It works hard to raise the awareness among workers and encourage unemployed people to improve their living conditions. How do we deal with this organisation? IFTU leaders thinks that the UUI was just a propaganda campaign and an attempt to exploit the resentment against the US occupation of Iraq but this proves their ignorance about and blindness to the disastrous conditions of unemployed people and labour movement in Iraq.  

The IFTU leaders claim that FWCUI is another name for UUI. For them any organization, which is “illegal” and not authorized by the stooge government, does not exist. If it was not the “notoriety” of UUI as Abdulla Muhsim describes it, they would have denied that UUI exists as well.  They willingly ignore or oppose other tendencies inside labour movement. However the history of these two years has proved that labour movement in Iraq is genuine movement with enormous energy and struggle ability and that many tendencies exist within the Iraqi labour movement and UUI and FWCUI are its most militant organizations.

The IFTU leaders also claim that UUI or even FWCUI are the front organization of the “small” Worker-communist Party of Iraq. This is a very superficial and dishonest evaluation of labour movement in Iraq and their independent unions. This has been always the vicious propaganda of these reactionaries against both WPIraq and UUI. The aim of this propaganda is clear, it is to incite Islamists against the activists of the UUI and FWCUI and ultimately preventing them from organizing among workers and justify oppressing them by their puppet government. Like elsewhere in Iraq there are political parties and there are unions, people have the right to join parties and at same time to be members and leaders in unions. Only the WPIraq supports UUI and FWCUI and therefore there is nothing surprising if people join both the WPIraq on the one hand and the UUI and FWCUI on the other hand. Other parties are so reactionary and have so anti-human policies that they are in alliance with US occupation and political Islam or with the misogynist anti-workers Islamo-ethnocentric resistance.

They want to belittle our struggle by saying the WPIraq is a small organization. However what the workers could do with a “huge” party like the Iraqi Communist Party which is collaborating with US occupation and political Islam and the only connection it has to communism is its name .Did workers in Iraq forget the coalition between ICP and Baath Party between1970-1978 which end up in massacring thousands of labour leaders, unionists and workers in Iraq?  Our problem is that ICP and its general secretary are member of the Interim Government and friends to people like Paul Bremer, Alawi and even Blair and Bush. Leave alone UUI and FWCUI, has the ICP support the demands of workers, unemployed people, women and youth   in Iraq? Lets ask the leaders of the IFTU and ICP some questions: What good has the occupation done to people in Iraq? What good will an ethnic and religious government, ethnic Federalism, death penalty, UN resolutions, political Islam and sharia, former Baathists do to people in Iraq? What good has resolution number 16, which legitimated IFTU and outlaws all other independent unions done? Why IFTU supports all these policies?

The WPIraq supports UUI, FWCUI and other independent unions politically and materially because they believe that the ranks of workers in Iraq should be independent from the bourgeoisie including the employer and Government.

The question here is not whether WPIraq is small or big. The question is what are the policies of WPIraq toward labour movement in Iraq and what prospects put before the working class. Why Abdulla Muhsin is not talking about this? Why he does not have the courage to talk about our policies? This will make it obvious how far the IFTU and ICP are from the working class. Therefore it’s better to rubbish everyone progressives force by terms that they learnt from their masters like small, ultra-left, and extremist and so on. The IFTU is proud because one day the ICP was big party but they do not want to talk about the catastrophes that the policies of the ICP have brought to the Iraqi working class. Now, we only need to remember that the ICP is the member of the puppet government with other CIA-sponsored scums.

Today the ICP and the IFTU again are acting as tools to subject the interests of working class to the interests of the USA, puppet government, political Islam, nationalists and employers in general. How many protest actions have been leaded by IFTU? Let Abdulla Muhsin mention one. I cannot give one single example. We are proud we are in the heart of the worker-movement’s protests and hardly a day goes by without our activists organizing and leading a protest action for workers’ demands. In fact all our unions have been established during protest actions and not in bureaucratic ways of the IFTU. Recently we established the council of workers of Petrochemical and Plastic Industry in Baghdad during a protest action.

What will Abdulla Muhsin and his colleagues say about the conference of Basra workers? Arranging a conference where 350 labour activists from different industries in south of Iraq, participate in a city dominated by their friends- political Islamic groups backed by Iran and British forces while the IFTU and ICP members are shouting Allahu Akabar with the Islamic groups, which terrorise everyone can not be done by a small sectarian organization. Such achievements are done while we receive no fund from governments and we even do not have an office in the capital. Despite the financial problems we are publishing now a newspaper, which is the first independent newspaper for workers and by workers in Iraq. We exist and we are active in whole Iraq. Look at the waves of workers protests across the country to see where is the IFTU stands and where the FWCUI stands?

IFTU leaders and members were also among those Iraqi forces which recognised the so called election in Iraq and their representatives in Iraq and abroad encouraged people and workers to take part in the election as we saw Abdulla Muhsin in Euro news who praised  the so called election and tried to show it as free and democratic  process in Iraq while its obvious that under military occupation of Iraq and armed militias of Islamic and ethnic groups, how an election could be free ?

   This does not mean that we are not ready to work with the IFTU and ICP if they accepted our principles. These principles have nothing to do with the WPIraq and briefly can be summarized:

Freedom for Iraq and struggle against occupation and political Islam, Build unions independent from government and employers, freedom of speech and organization, support workers’ protests and demands, a progressive labor code, struggle for secularism and a secular government , boycott  the upcoming election in Iraq  in January 2005 which aims to  legitimate the occupation of Iraq through a pro-American government in Iraq and so on.