David Bacon
The free trade ideologues of the Bush administration see the occupation of Iraq as a beachhead into the Middle East and south Asia. Their first objective is the transformation of the state-dominated economy of what was once one of the region's wealthiest countries.
Tom Foley, a Bush fundraiser put in charge of implementing this vision on the ground, said his goal is a "fully thriving capitalist economy". Privatising Umm Qasr began the transformation of the Iraqi economy — from one based on nationalisation and production for domestic welfare, to one based on ownership by transnational corporations, sending their profits out of the country.
Stevedoring Services of America, now SSA Marine, is spearheading this transformation. The company, which has a history of tight political connections with the White House, received a US$4.8 million no-bid contract to operate the port of Umm Qasr on March 24. It covers the assessment of the port's needs, assistance in making it operational, but then also the ongoing management of dockside operations.
San Francisco's Bechtel Corporation began dredging the harbour in May. Then, on July 16, SSA began accepting commercial cargo, including container, break-bulk, and roll-on/roll-off shipments.
Despite its dilapidated state, Umm Qasr is still a highly developed facility, with 23 berths for ships, four modern container cranes, and a grain and cement dock. (Oil exports are handled through another, unrelated port.)
The possibilities for the profitable employment of these facilities weren't lost on other port operators, who would have liked the plum themselves. The British shipping giant, P&O, thought it was entitled to run Umm Qasr, inasmuch as the British were given responsibility for occupying and administering the south of Iraq.
US shippers have since complained of "gross profiteering" at the high tariffs charged for handling cargo in the port. SSA denies that it profits from the tariffs themselves, and says they're set by the US Agency for International Development. But in a privatised port, the tariffs will eventually flow into the pockets of whatever private operator holds the concession, and SSA advises USAID on the rates required to make the port "self-sustaining".
When USAID was slow in taking SSA's "advice" in July, the agency got a call from Congressman Norm Dicks, telling them to pay more attention to the company's recommendations. SSA, which was originally brought in just to assess damage and get the facility operational, is now positioned to operate the port as a permanent concession.
Iraqi workers look at the prospect of privatisation with dread. Dathar Al-Kashab, manager of Baghdad's al Daura oil refinery, predicted that privatisation would have an enormous effect. "A worker starting here today has a job for life, under the old system", he explains, "and there's no law which permits me to lay him off. But if I put on the hat of privatisation, I'll have to fire 1500 [of the refinery's 3000] workers. In America when a company lays people off, there's unemployment insurance, and they won't die from hunger. If I dismiss employees now, I'm killing them and their families." The privatisation of the Umm Qasr docks would undoubtedly have the same effect on the port's longtime workforce.
Iraqi unions
Iraqi workers, however, haven't simply waited for the axe to fall. In June, 400 labour activists held a conference in Baghdad, and laid plans for organising unions in 12 of the country's principal industries, including longshore and transportation. They set up an umbrella labour group, the Workers Democratic Trade Union Federation (WDTUF).
The reorganisation of Iraq's unions continues a long tradition of labour activity. When the king was overthrown in the revolution of 1958, unions became legal in Iraq for the first time, although workers had organised strikes and underground protests since the British occupation in the 1920s.
In 1963, however, the CIA organised a coup that overthrew the government of Karim Kassem, and installed the Baath Party in power. In 1977, Saddam Hussein purged unions of his political opponents and drove radical political parties underground or into exile.
In 1987, Hussein had another unpleasant surprise for Iraqi workers. He issued a law declaring that the class struggle was over. Workers in state-owned enterprises were no longer to be considered workers at all, but civil servants. As such, Hussein said, they had no right to organise unions or bargain.
On the Umm Qasr docks and in factories and refineries throughout the country, unions were effectively banned.
Anti-union law upheld by CPA
Today that 1987 law is still being enforced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The law affects workers employed in the enterprises set to be privatised, and that is why it hasn't been repealed as hundreds of other Hussein-era laws have been. If those workers have no legal union, no right to bargain, and no contracts, then privatisation and the huge job losses that will come with it, will face much less organised resistance.
US occupation forces in Iraq escalated their efforts to paralyse Iraq's new labour unions on December 6, when soldiers arrested eight members of the WDTUF's executive board, and took them into detention. Although the eight were released the following day, there was no explanation from the CPA.
While the WDTUF has set up an organisation for dockers and other transport workers, there is still no union on the docks in Umm Qasr, according to one retired longshore union organiser, Muhsen Mull Ali. In nearby Basra, however, there is already a trade union council, and two general strikes have taken place since the beginning of the occupation.
"In Basra 70% of the people are unemployed", Muhsen says. "American companies hire Iraqis at $70, and foreigners at $300. There's so much unemployment in Iraq that people will take jobs at any wage, and the Americans took advantage of this."
Muhsen spent two long stints in prison for organising unions in Basra (first under the king, and then under Hussein), but says he intends to return to the area nevertheless to begin reorganising workers on the docks. "They will reimpose capitalism on us, so our responsibility is to oppose privatisation as much as possible, and fight for the welfare of our workers", he explains.
Jassim Mashkoul, the new federation's director for internal communications, adds that "at the beginning, we thought our situation might be better afterwards, since we got rid of Saddam Hussein. But it hasn't been." The federation calls for an end to the occupation, and for a democratic government of Iraqis to replace it.
International solidarity grows
Keeping open the space for unions to organise, and workers to gain some control over the economic decisions that will affect their lives, requires international support. Guy Ryder, the general secretary of the International Confederation of Trade Unions, says "democracy must have roots. It requires free elections, but also mass based, democratic trade unions that help secure it and protect it."
Arab trade unionists are even more critical of the occupation's effect on workers. According to Hacene Djemam, general secretary of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, "war makes privatisation easy: first you destroy the society and then you let the corporations rebuild it."
Labour peace activists in US Labor Against the War, a national group of unions which opposed the Bush intervention before it took place, prepared a research paper after the occupation started, profiling US corporations like SSA that were given reconstruction contracts.
Clarence Thomas, former secretary-treasurer of San Francisco's longshore union, Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, was a member of a USLAW delegation that went to Iraq in October. He took copies of the report, and offered to assist unions there if and when they confront the kind of union-busting activity the ILWU faced in 2002.
At the Labor Assembly for Peace in Chicago in late October, USLAW resolved to make Iraqi labour rights under the occupation an issue in the 2004 election.
In Iraq Thomas told the leadership of the WDFTU that "the Bush administration doesn't like unions in the US, so how can it like them in Iraq? Capital has international unity and mobility, so it's obvious that workers have to have the same thing if we're all to survive."
[Abridged from <http://www.corpwatch.org>. David Bacon is a US labour journalist and photographer. His forthcoming book The Children of NAFTA is due out in January.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 21, 2004.
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