I was recently invited to attend the general conference of the International Federation of Workers Education Associations (IFWEA), which was held in Albufeira, Portugal in early October. I knew what the highlight of my two days at the conference was going to be — and I was sure it wasn’t going to be the plenary sessions or workshops. The highlight would be meeting Abdullah.

Abdullah and I had exchanged a couple of email messages and when we each learned that the other would be guests of IFWEA, we arranged to meet up.
Abdullah, you see, is the representative of the new, independent Iraqi trade unions. And I was meeting him the day before he returned to Baghdad for the first time in a quarter century.
We discussed business of course — how the new Iraqi unions could use the new information technology, and LabourStart in particular, to achieve their goals. We discussed the possibility of an exciting international campaign, using the Internet, to pressure the coalition governing authority to release the assets (including buildings) that belonged to the former regime’s state controlled ‘unions’.
For me, it was an introductory course in Iraqi trade unionism. I knew that under the Saddam regime there had been a state-controlled ‘trade union’ — but this was no more a real union than, say, the All China Federation of Trade Unions, which though it claims to be the largest union in the world is actually nothing of the sort. But I knew nothing of what had happened since Saddam’s regime fell.
It turned out that with collapse of the Ba’athist regime, the official ‘unions’ collapsed as well — and two distinctly different movements stepped into the breach. One, the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was the one Abdullah represents. Another is a union of unemployed workers, one which has gotten a lot of press attention in the far-Left press, at least here in Britain. There are even remnants of the Saddamist unions, the former GFTU, though Abdullah sees them more as gangsters than a rival trade union movement. Indeed the IFTU refers to the Saddamists as a “yellow union”.
The IFTU was officially formed following a meeting attended by some 400 people at the headquarters of the transport union in Baghdad in May. It lists its goals as the following:
* workers rights;
* a new democratic trade union movement actively involved in influencing economic and social policies and rebuilding civil society, together with other social movements;
* the increased role of women at all levels within unions and civil society;
* cooperation with international and regional labour movements, and also to seek their help and cooperation to equip Iraqi working people with new skills and knowledge;
* special attention to social and economic needs of disabled people (of which there are many after Saddam?s war).
The IFTU held its first press conference in late August. It began by condemning the vicious terrorist attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Earlier in the month, it organized a series of protests in Basra and its representatives met with the British authorities there.
IFTU now includes the following unions: the Oil and Gas Union, the Railway Union, the Vegetable Oil and Food Staff Union, the Transport Union, the Textile Union, the Leather Products Union, the Construction and Carpentry Union, the Transport and Communication Union, the Electrician and Municipalities Union, the Printing Union, the Mechanics? Union, the Service Industry Union, and the Agriculture and Irrigation Workers Union.
It has managed to establish contact with the closest neighboring trade union center — the Syrian unions — and sent a mission to Damascus to meet with them. (That’s not the one I would have picked, as Syria’s unions are no more independent nor real than the Saddamist unions. But the IFTU, like the new governing council in Baghdad, is looking for legitimacy in the Arab world.) It will also be involved in a new initiative launched by several workers education associations in Arab countries, including the Democracy and Workers Rights Center in Palestine.
Facing an estimated seven million unemployed, a collapsed economy, and the need to build up a new society from scratch, the Iraqi unions face enormous challenges. They will be needing the help and support of trade unionists everywhere.
Full coverage of their struggle is featured on LabourStart, here: http://www.labourstart.org/iraq