By David Bacon
Longshore workers in the U.S. took another step closer to Iraq’s dockworkers in March, when Henry Graham, president of ILWU longshore Local 10, sent a letter of support to workers in Umm Qasr. Graham’s letter was inspired by reports coming from Iraq that workers on the docks of the country’s largest port have begun to organize a union, and have already faced the firing of union supporters.
“We salute you for your bravery,” Graham wrote. “We want you to know that we oppose any violation of your rights. Workers everywhere have the right to form unions. It is the only way we can win better pay, better conditions, protect our jobs, and secure our rights.”
Since the U.S. occupation began, Iraqi dockworkers there have been receiving the same emergency salaries—roughly $60 or $120 monthly—decreed by the U.S. occupation authority for all Iraqi public sector workers. Iraqi longshoremen are employed by the port authority, a government enterprise.
When the occupation started, however, their income dropped because their profit-sharing arrangement was terminated. All Iraqi Port Authority workers had been paid two percent of the profits accrued from unloading fees. The loading fee per container was $150 with two ships docking per week, unloading approximately 250 containers each.
Then in October, the occupation authorities decreed a new salary schedule, in which workers’ wages would be paid in Iraqi dinars instead of dollars. That meant another sizeable loss in income, and workers began organizing as a result.
Port Director Abdel Razzaq issued a notice Oct. 25 banning any employee working for the Port Authority from speaking to any reporter or representative of any non-governmental organization without his permission. On the day the workers were set to vote on officers for their new union, the manager removed the banner announcing the election. Workers were told they had to wait until a new law was passed, since the current labor code contains a provision decreed by Saddam Hussein in 1987 banning unions in the public sector. The Bush administration, through the occupation authority, continues to enforce this law.
In November, according to the head of the Basra Federation of Trade Unions, Razzaq fired three port workers for trying to organize.
Workers were not deterred, however. In mid-January they organized a six-hour strike over the low wage scale, blocking people and vehicles from entering the main gate into the Umm Qasr port. Iraq issued new bank notes last fall, but port managers continued to pay workers in the old bank notes that could only be exchanged for new money at 75 percent of their face value. In the melee that ensued, the accounting office and that of Razzaq himself were occupied. The demonstration ended when occupation troops were called out. Since then workers charge that Razzaq is being protected by a unit of private militia, the Badr Brigades.
SSA occupies Iraqi port
The port of Umm Qasr is being operated by Stevedoring Services of America. It was the first Iraqi enterprise to be turned over, not just to a private owner, but to a foreign one. Even before U.S. troops had reached Baghdad, the Bush administration gave SSA the concession for operating it.
Privatizing Umm Qasr began the transformation of the Iraqi economy—from one based on nationalization and production for a domestic market to one based on ownership by transnational corporations, sending their profits out of the country. To many Iraqis, Umm Qasr represents a new era of foreign domination.
Following Iraq’s revolution of 1958, which overthrew the monarchy and threw out the British, 1,000 longshore workers labored on Umm Qasr’s docks. Even in the heady days of Arab nationalism, however, they still had no guarantees for their rights and jobs. At first, subcontracting companies were allowed to hire dockers in a daily shapeup. Finally, workers rebelled. After winning recognition for their union, they demanded and won a hiring system under their control and a daily guaranteed wage, whether or not there was a ship at the dock to work.
These achievements are still remembered by older workers, and form a backdrop to the current effort to reorganize unions on Umm Qasr docks. Nevertheless, they seem like a distant dream. Life in Umm Qasr has changed completely for the people on the piers. A decade-long war with Iran, then the first Gulf War followed by 12 years of sanctions, and finally a new invasion and occupation, have all taken their toll. Much of the port lies in shambles, although the basic infrastructure is still in place.
Umm Qasr is an object lesson in the privatization of Iraq. Its fate will have a profound effect on the degree to which any future Iraqi government will be able to control the country’s economy. By the same token, the jobs, the standard of living and the labor rights of the port’s dockworkers will be a bellwether for the fate of hundreds of thousands of other workers in formerly state-owned enterprises throughout Iraq’s economy.
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 and most industrialized countries into a free-market, free-trade economy.
This massive introduction of free enterprise began even before the invasion, with the granting of the first contracts for servicing the military and building its bases. Those were followed by others for rebuilding the infrastructure of the country itself, destroyed by war and sanctions. But this transformation is not limited simply to reconstruction contracts. The pre-existing economy of Iraq is set to be transformed as well, as the state-run enterprises at its heart are sold off to private, foreign investors.
Stevedoring Services of America, now SSA Marine, is poised to take advantage of both aspects of the growth of the private sector. The company, which has a history of tight political connections with the White House, received a $4.8 million no-bid contract to operate the port of Umm Qasr March 24, 2003. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which granted it, the contract covers the assessment of the port’s needs, assistance in making it operational and the ongoing management of dockside operations.
San Francisco’s Bechtel Corp. began dredging the harbor 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.)
Union organizing spreads
As the organizing efforts in Umm Qasr unfold, workers in other industries near it in Basra are also organizing and challenging low wages. In Basra there have been three general strikes over wages.
In October 2003 a two-day wildcat strike took place at the Bergeseeya Oil Refinery, part of the Southern Oil Company, Iraq’s largest crude oil pumping and refining company. Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a division of Halliburton Corp., was given a no-bid reconstruction contract last summer.
Vice-president Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO, and still collects a million-dollar-a-year pension from the company. KBR brought in a Kuwaiti-based construction company, Al Khoorafi, that began using Indian and Pakistani workers in place of the existing, experienced Iraqi workforce. Unemployment in Iraq is currently about 70 percent, so to protect their jobs Iraqi workers threw out the foreign workers and protested outside the company’s offices. Tribal leaders representing the workers eventually resolved the dispute.
At the Southern Oil Company, workers organized a union. Headed by Hassan Ju’ma, they also banned foreign workers from its facilities following the Bergeseeya plant action. KBR tried to get indigenous workers to accept its foreign staff, but the local workers refused to budge. The company asked workers to accept a 50 percent foreign staff, and then just five percent, two percent and even one percent.
“Iraq will be reconstructed by Iraqis, we don’t need any foreign in-terference,” Ju’ma said. “Drivers are the only foreigners we allow anywhere.”
Then, in December, oil workers began challenging the wage schedules. This followed an attempt by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to set a new schedule in September—Order 30 on Reform of Salaries and Employment Conditions of State Employees—that would have lowered the bottom rate for industrial workers in Iraq from $60 a month to $40. The order also eliminated all previous housing, food, family, risk and location subsidies.
Oil workers throughout Basra surveyed prices, and then announced that instead of lowering wages, the CPA needed to raise them. Southern Oil Company workers proposed their own wage schedule, setting the minimum at approximately 155,000 ID per month ($85). They backed up the proposal with a threat to strike and shut off oil production. Workers also threatened to join the armed resistance if occupation troops were called in to take over the pumps, prompting the Minister of Oil to come to Basra. He agreed immediately to return to the old $60/120 monthly scale.
In January electricity workers at the Najibeeya, Haartha and Az Zubeir generating stations mounted a wildcat strike, stormed their workplace administration buildings, declared the CPA wage schedule void and vowed to shut off power if wages were not raised. The Minister of Energy also agreed to return to the old emergency wage scale.
“We hope that this strike can be conducted safely and legally,” explained Samir Hanoon, vice president of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Basra. “But if we cannot win through the legal procedures, we will take other actions—protests, demonstrations and total shut-downs. We realize that there may be some sacrifices, but we are ready to accept them. Our real problem is with the CPA, with Bremer.”
Finally, in mid-January, Southern Oil Company unionists won the first battle when the CPA agreed to implement the union’s wage schedule in the oil industry. By February, the Southern Oil Company schedule was being implemented only in the oil sector (the biggest public sector employer in Iraq), while other public sector industries, especially electricity, were still in negotiations. Many workers believe, however, they will receive the same, since a strike in the power sector would halt all other industries.
International solidarity
Henry Graham’s letter recognized the struggle undertaken by Umm Qasr and other Iraqi workers, and offered his local’s support.
“You are not alone,” he wrote them. “If dockworkers in the rest of the world hear about your situation, you can count on their support. On March 20, there will be national demonstrations throughout the United States to oppose the occupation of Iraq, and to demand the rights of the Iraqi people. Our union will be actively involved in those demonstrations, and on that day dockworkers in many ports on the Pacific Coast will not work on the ships. We will use the demonstrations to show our support for you, the dockworkers in Um Qasr.”
This article includes important information reported by Ewa Jasciewicz on the ground in southern Iraq during December and January on behalf of Occupation Watch.
