Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands

The Bush administration calls the Iraq occupation an exercise in democracy building. Yet from the beginning, many of the Iraqis who want democracy most are treated as its enemies – Iraq’s unions.

Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.

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