On the Iraqi Council of Ministers’ attack on ILO core conventions

To the Iraqi working people:

The Iraqi working people are playing an important role in the development of the new Iraq and are helping in the re-building of Iraq's devastated national economy.

They are taking a full active role in the consolidation of the current political process in order to create a democratic, united and federal state after years of repression and hardship at the hands of the deposed dictatorship of Saddam.

Today our courageous working people are exerting their legitimate rights to assist in the building of a democratic state, to defend the fundamental rights of working people in a free and democratic Iraq.

But today despite our sacrifices and instead of receiving the support they deserve from the new Iraqi state, the Iraqi working people and their legitimate trade unions are subjected to unjust attacks and clear open interference in the internal affairs by the "new" old Iraqi Council of Ministers and some Ministries of the transitional government. Their purpose is to prevent working people from organising free and democratic unions. Saddam Hussein’s anti union Law 150 of 1987 is still being applied.

Our working people across Iraq from Basra, Kirkuk and Babel, Najaf and Messan (Al Amarah) are aware of this repressive manoeuvre against our trade union movement and are determined to exercise their legitimate rights to organise workers in free unions. We declare our resolve that we shall continue to use all democratic means available; strikes, courts procedure and protests to stop this undemocratic practice against workers.

To this end we shall mobilise our working people across Iraq and especially in industries such as Oil, Transport and Docks and in the public sector against this violation of our fundamental rights to organise free from state interference.

The IFTU as a key patriotic component of Iraq society determined to uphold and defend the rights of working people to organise, to representation and to take strike action as stated in the core conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), condemns this unjust and unprovoked attack against the Iraqi working class.

We also call upon our working people to face head on this old "new" attack by the transitional government, which aims to prevent us from organising freely.

We affirm that the IFTU will continue to be loyal defenders of the rights and aspiration of Iraqi working people for a free, open and democratic society.

IFTU Executive,
Baghdad
25 August 2005