Hartford-Undercurrent-February-2004

http://hartfordimc.org/undercurrent/hartford-undercurrent-february-2004.pdf

CCSU Anti-War Rally Draws Support

by Paul Karolczyk

The “Rally to Stop the War Against Working People at Home
and Abroad” took place in Central Connecticut State
University’s Semesters meeting hall on the evening of Wednesday
February 4. Over one hundred supporters filled the hall
in a great show of solidarity. A nine-member panel discussed
a variety of problems challenging the international working
class. The feature segment included a discussion and slide
show presentation by labor journalist David Bacon and west
coast Longshoreman’s Union leader Clarence Thomas. Both
traveled in October to Iraq as members of a U.S. Labor Against
War fact-finding delegation that met with Iraqi unionists and
workers. U.S. Labor Against War is an organization that describes
itself as “a network of unions and other labor organizations
opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq.” Bacon and Thomas
are currently touring the east coast and sharing their findings.
Some of their findings reveal the U.S. led occupation is
subjugating Iraqi workers by obstructing their efforts to organize
unions to ease privatization.

Corporate management strives to prevent unions from
having any influence on decision-making. Similarly, totalitarian
regimes view union activities such as collective bargaining
and strikes as threats to state control and orderly economic
functioning. Bacon explained that Saddam Hussein issued
a law in 1987 that transformed Iraq’s public sector workers,
such as oil refinery workers, into “civil servants.” “Civil
servants” have no right to organize unions. Bacon added “the
1987 law has a special effect on workers employed in enterprises
set to be privatized. If they have no legal union, no
right to bargain and no contracts, they will be much less able
to mount organized resistance to the privatization and the
huge job losses that will follow.” This means U.S. corporations
that privatize the Iraqi oil industry will have unlimited
control of all industrial relations.

Corporate management will have the authority to prevent
Iraqi workers from bargaining for fair work conditions, such
as wages, safety and health. Refinery workers already work
thirteen-hour days without overtime pay. According to Bacon
“most Iraqi workers get $60 per month, a small percentage
$120, and a tiny minority, mostly administrators and
managers, $180. This is the same wage scale that prevailed
under the last few years of the Saddam Hussein regime.”
Workers in a truly democratic society would be free to
organize and strike if pressed by injustice, but the Coalition
Provisional Authority may charge union activity in Iraq’s public
sector as war crime. CPA head Paul Bremmer issued a
decree on June 5 titled “Public Incitement to Violence and
Disorder”. This decree states that those who “incite civil disorder,
rioting or damage to property…will be subject to
immediate detention by CPA security forces and held as a
security internee under the Fourth Geneva Convention of
1949 (which governs prisoners of war). Bacon argues “the
phrase ‘civil disorder’ can easily be interpreted to apply to
people advocating or organizing strikes.”

A slide show was presented along with their discussion.
The images photographed by Bacon depicted the Iraqi working
class including workers from oil refineries, shoe factories,
and injection molding plants. Also shown were scenes
of Iraqi street children, children of oil refinery workers, and
policemen guarding large crowds of unemployed men. Iraq’s
unemployment rate has climbed to 70 percent or 7 to 8 million
workers.

The rally also included talks from the co-founders of Military
Families Speak Out. Charles Richardson and Nancy
Lessin spoke out against the Bush administration for sending
troops to fight in an unjust war. Their son is a U.S. Marine
who was deployed to Iraq in 2002. Military Families Speak
Out has a membership of about 200 families. Richardson
explained, “it’s not easy for military families to speak out
because it’s not easy for them to believe their loved one’s life
is at harm for no good reason”. Other speakers included
representatives from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists,
Middle East Crisis Center, Connecticut’s anti-war student
movement, and Service Employees International Union. The
rally was hosted by CCSU Progressive Students Alliance and
endorsed by a statewide coalition of unions, peace and justice
groups, and anti-war student groups. Another rally is being
planned for early March to be held at CCSU. All of these
groups are currently working in solidarity towards mobilizing
for the Global Day of Action anti-war protest on March
20 in New York City.

For updates please check out www.americanissues.com/ccsupsa