>All of them are sidestepping an important issue, which is that the
>armed actions in Iraq appear to be drawing very little popular
>support, and it's not unreasonable to wonder why that is so.
<snip>
>The majority of Iraqis, and the oppressed ethnic majority in
>particular, are lending their support to other forms of struggle,
>particularly the call for direct democratic elections; the
>progressive forces are also engaged in forms of popular organizing
>that by and large do not use armed struggle (apart perhaps from
>isolated incidents of self-defense that we do not hear about -- it's
>the height of folly to imagine that these people are not realists),
>such as organizing the unemployed and the trade union movement.
Armed struggle and other forms of struggle -- including struggles of the unemployed and the trade union movement -- do not necessarily contradict each other. On the contrary, they exist on a continuum of means of struggle, and other forms of struggle gain leverage when accompanied with credible threats of armed struggle:
***** 12.21.03 GI SPECIAL #157:
Iraqi Workers Threaten General Strike And Armed Resistance; Iraqi Workers Win
By Ewa Jasiewicz. Occupation Watch, Baghdad http://www.occupationwatch.org
IRAQI WORKER REPRESENTATIVES from the country's energy sector met last week to discuss the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) imposition of low wages upon public sector workers in the country.
In early September, the CPA designed, and Paul Bremer the Third signed, Order 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions, which cancelled all previous state subsidies for public sector workers such as family, housing, location, and risk benefits. Iraqi workers had relied on these subsidies in order to survive their pittance dictatorship wages. Instead, the CPA imposed a new 10 step, 13 level salary table which sets the country's minimum monthly wage at 69,000 Dinar ($40) per month. This is less than half of the recommended salary of a sweatshop worker in one of neighbouring Iran's Free Trade Zones. The highest wage is a Super A Step 10 3 million Dinar ($1500) currently being paid to governors and high-level ministry staff.
The new wage table replaces emergency payments of $60, $100, $120, $220 and $280 per month. For any workers receiving the new CPA minimum wage, this means their income will almost be slashed in half. . . .
Occupation Watch interviewed workers and trade unionists in Basra on their conditions and organising. The response from Iraqi Port Authority workers, Southern Oil Company Workers, Basra Oil Company Workers, Electricity Plant Workers and Transport Union representatives was that they needed a rise. Most workers we spoke to were receiving $60 or $120 monthly wages . . . .
Market prices, for basic foodstuffs, have almost doubled in some parts of Iraq, the price of a kilo of onions rising from 250 dinar to 750 in Basra, and apples going up by a third. Ration card rice was cut also cut three months ago, say mother and wives, still struggling to make ends meet. Fruit is too expensive to barely ever be seen in family homes in Basra's poorest areas such as Haiyania and Jhoomouria, where I have been living for the past month with trade unionists and their families. . . .
Southern Oil Company trade union rep Faleh Khali Chiyid at North Rumeilla crude oil pumping station told us a committee was formed containing administration and union members to discuss the new CPA wage table and a meeting was held for two days. 'We tried our hardest to push everything forward but couldn't raise the lowest wage grade any higher than 6,000 ID. So, we decided to refuse the entire table'. He went on to explain that trade unionists were concerned about the interests of all the workers, even management and engineers as they feel they too are not getting enough. A chief engineer with 12 years experience can expect to earn 246,000 ID per month ($120 or $30 per week). . . .
'We told them (SOC workers) to start saving their money in preparation for if the ministry doesn't accept the wage-scale. We thought the Ministry might respond to our refusal and our demands by withholding our wages', explained Faleh. However, the SOC Union was prepared to escalate the struggle.
'If the ministry refuses to pay our new table, all of the refineries, the power plants and crude oil pumping stations will stop. And no one from the administration will be able to interfere', told us Faleh. The threat of a total shut down of Iraq was however, more of a shock-tactic according to Hassan Jum'a who reasoned, 'We won't shut down everything, there are humanitarian needs that need to be met, water purification plants, hospitals, these facilities must be kept going and we want the SOC to keep going too. But, what we will have a total shut down of, is exports'. And the expected response to that?
'One of our assumptions is that soldiers will occupy the pumps. If they do, we will fight them. We will resist them with force. And we will join the armed resistance'.
Unsurprisingly, the threat of a general oil strike in Iraq's biggest oil company and one of only two still functioning and shipping oil to market, plus thousands of radical oil workers joining the armed resistance, caused some alarm at CPA-Governing Council levels and prompted the Minister of Oil himself came down to hold talks with the Union.
The result was that until the new wage table can be agreed, through negotiation, between the Ministry of Finance and the union, the old sparse-step CPA emergency payment system (starting at $60 per month rather than the risible $40) will replace the 130-step CPA dictated one. . . .
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copyright 2003 © LaborNet
<http://www.labornet.org/news/1203/genstrik.htm> *****
Even workers still employed in the oil industry in Iraq -- a privileged minority in the Iraqi labor force, 70% of whom are unemployed -- have already come to the point of actually threatening to join the armed resistance, alarming the CPA. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>