Leather Industry workers organize a large sit-in and dissolve Alhaq association

Workers of the General Company of Leather Industry in al-Karada a suburb in Baghdad started a sit-in inside the company on 17 January 2004 in protest against the way the Ministry and administration handle the workers salaries and allowances. They accused the administration of corruption. The sit-in demands included; replace the administration and the accounting and planning managers in particular. Identify those behind the company’s losses as the administration claims and identify those responsible for the company’s debts from the former regime’s era and stop punishing workers on these debts by stopping their allowances or through putting mental pressure on them by holding the responsible for these debts. Pay workers’ allowances on due dates. Replace those who represent workers before the administration and hold new elections under the supervision of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq. Recognize the right of workers to obtain pieces of product to be distributed on them after each production cycle. The delegation of the FWCUI headed by Samih Ashor, the deputy secretary of the federation in attendance of Qasim Hadi, head of the Union of Unemployed in Iraq met a group of workers. The delegation emphasized that workers’ organizations is the affair of workers themselves and that the administration must understand that the workers are the actual producers while its task is organize the production.

It is worth mentioning that the company’s production exceeded 120% of the maximum production planned previously. The delegation of the FWCUI met the administration and informed it about the workers demands. The administration promised to answer the workers’ demands next Wednesday and claimed it agrees with these demand. The Alhaq association established by al-Sadr group was dissolved on demand from the workers and was replaced with a branch for the FWCUI.

Recently various Iraqi cities witnessed a large wave of strikes and workers’ protests and the FWCUI play a key role in organizing and leading these protests as was the case with the protest of workers of energy in Baghdad and Nasiryiah, electricity in Basra, construction workers in Nasiryiah and petrochemical manufactures in Baghdad.

The Ela Alammam reporter learnt that a conference is to be organized for representatives of Iraqi workers in the end of January or early February in Baghdad under the supervision of the FWCUI.



FWCUI

17. Jan 2005