Iraq's union crackdown puts progress at risk

Unions in Iraq are a vital antidote to authoritarianism and sectarianism – but the government is determined to break them

Swimming against the tide of popular uprisings across the region, the Iraqi government is trying to wipe out free and independent trade unions. Two weeks ago it decided that the main trade union body in the country was no longer going to exist. Ministers appointed a government committee, packed with officials from the Sadrist movement, to take over the structures and assets of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) – the Iraqi equivalent of the TUC – and run its upcoming elections.

This is a dangerous recipe for breaking apart one of the few institutions left that unites people across tribal, ethnic and religious boundaries, and which is committed to women's rights and the creation of a peaceful and prosperous Iraq.

Iraqi workers have been forming and running their own unions, often in the face of tremendous personal danger, first under Saddam's repressive regime, and then under the allied occupation and the bloody backlash that followed. Despite these pressures, unions have been improving workplace health and safety, wages and productivity, and building a social security system to help vulnerable workers back on their feet.
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But recent developments put all of this at risk. We have reports of government officials, flanked by police, attempting to take over union offices. And it is painfully sectarian. In Basra last week, the seven officials that demanded the keys to the local union office were all from the Sadrist party. These followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are a small, but important, minority in the Iraqi coalition government, and won control of the labour ministry in the recent carve-up of government portfolios. In preparation for union elections, these Sadrist officials have been issuing their own union membership cards, effectively giving them the right to decide who can vote. In a similar incident last year – and a worrying sign of things to come – the polling booth for a union election was inside the Sadrist party offices. These are tactics that Hosni Mubarak would be proud of.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/10/iraq-union-crackdown?INTCMP=SRCH