I only glanced at this article but believe this to be true.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0504.harwood.html"Iraq's resurgent labor unions could have helped rebuild the country's civil society. The Bush administration of course tried to crush them...
Saleh's murder is more than just a sign of the frailty of Iraq's move towards democracy. It's also an apt example of how Iraq's labor movement has fared under U.S. control. Americans have largely left the Iraqi unions to fend for themselves, and in some cases actively undercut them. As a result, Iraq has been significantly deprived of the movement perhaps most willing and best equipped to nurture along a nascent national democracy in a religiously and ethnically divided country: organized labor.
Years from now, when historians try to figure out what precisely went wrong in the American occupation of Iraq and why, there will be many candidates: the failure to win enough international support; insufficient numbers of ground troops; the decision to ignore plans drawn up by experienced nation-building experts outside the Pentagon. But somewhere on the list will be the administration's indifference, indeed hostility, to Iraqi organized labor. The Iraqi people are paying a price for that attitude." 
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