Iraq's unions under attack

Over 500 members of the Iraqi Teachers' Union demonstrated in Baghdad on Friday 28 March against an attempt by the Iraqi government to take over the union.
Apparently basing itself on "Decision no.3" made by the "Governing Council" appointed by the US as the nominal authority in Iraq between July 2003 and June 2004, the Government has threatened to remove the existing (elected) leadership of the Teachers' Union and impose new elections.
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"Decision no.3", as far as I know, was a purported "de-Ba'thifying" measure, calling for the dissolution of unions and associations linked to the Saddam regime and for preparatory committees to set up new organisations.
In any case, its use now against the Iraqi Teachers' Union, which has functioned as an independent union, with its own elections, since 2003, is an outrage. The Government's motive is probably retribution for the Teachers' Union's part in the August 2008 workers' protests that won wage rises for public sector employees.
The relative strengthening and stabilising of the Maliki government has led to it taking a more assertive attitude to the USA, as in the November 2008 deal it got the USA to sign, promising US troop withdrawal by December 2011 and a number of moves to put US troops much more in the background well before then. But it simultaneously increases the threat that the government poses to the Iraqi labour movement.
It is a government dominated by Shia clerical-fascist parties, parties for whom the Iranian regime is (to one degree or another, with one emphasis or another) a model, and Kurdish warlord parties. It has refused to carry through its promises to introduce a democratic labour law. It continues to keep on the lawbooks two measures which, if implemented strongly, could crush all legal space for the Iraqi unions - the old Saddam decree from 1987 banning unions in the public sector (a very large part of the Iraqi economy) and Decree 8750, from 2005, authorising the Government to seize all union funds.
The Teachers' Union is a vital test case.
By Martin Thomas