I've been posting diaries lately related to oil and the Democrats' caving on the issue of troop withdrawl. Basically, my point has been is what we all know, that this war was about oil, not terrorism. To me it has been interesting to see the mechanism for controlling the oil fields come to light - we create benchmarks that require Iraq to privatize their oil fields, which would be unprecedented, and may make them ineligible to stay in OPEC (gotta research that one a little more). The Dems went from saying that unless Iraq privatizes we'll withdraw, to agreeing to new language, that says that in order to receive reconstruction funds they have to privatize. This may be even more cruel. But see how the Dems are complicit with the Rethugs in this corporatocracy?
So, it turns out that Iraqi workers are having their say about this. Interestingly, the MSM did not report strike activity this week, but today Truthout did an article on it. Here are some excerpts:
This week, Iraqi anger over starvation incomes and oil ripoffs boiled over. On Monday, June 4, the biggest and strongest of the Iraqi unions, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, launched a limited strike to underline its call for keeping oil in public hands, and to force the government to live up to its economic promises. Workers on the pipelines carrying oil from the rigs in the south to Baghdad's big refinery stopped work. It was a very limited job action, which still allowed the Iraqi economy to function.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded by calling out the army and surrounding the strikers at Sheiba, near Basra. Then he issued arrest warrants for the union's leaders. On Wednesday, June 6, the union postponed the strike until June 11. Labor unrest could not only resume at that point, but could easily escalate into shutdowns on the rigs themselves, or even the cutoff of oil exports. That would shut down the income stream that keeps the Maliki regime in power in Baghdad.
OK, so Maliki will be feeling threatened over this and retaliate.
The strike is about 2 things, working conditions and privatization.
Some of the oil workers' demands reflect the desperate situation of workers under the occupation. They want their employer - the government's oil ministry - to pay for wage increases and promised vacations, and give permanent status to thousands of temporary employees. In a country where housing has been destroyed on a massive scale, and workers often live in dilapidated and primitive conditions, the union wants the government to turn over land for building homes. Every year, the oil institute has miraculously continued holding classes and training technicians, yet the ministry won't give work to graduates, despite the war-torn industry's desperate need for skilled labor. The union demands jobs and a future for these young people
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Maybe this is because they're really reserving these positions for US oil workers?
Now we get to the meat.
But one demand overshadows even these basic needs - renegotiation of the oil law that would turn the industry itself over to foreign corporations. And it is this demand that has brought out even the US fighter jets, which have circled and buzzed over the strikers' demonstrations. In Iraq, the hostile maneuvering of military aircraft is not an idle threat to the people below. This standoff reflects a long history of actions in Iraq, by both the Iraqi government and the US occupation administration, to suppress union activity
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OK, so the Iraqi people ARE going to take to the streets about this!! But what if the US slaughters them and then blames it on sectarian violence?
And in this article we also see the seeds of what is REALLY going to rebuild Iraq, the unions! And, unbeknownst to us (well, at least me), they started in on it right away.
When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild its labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein.
Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders
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More proof we don't give a damn about demcracy in Iraq. This just adds insult to injury to the war for oil issue.