Disunity Threatens Iraqi Labor's Resistance to Occupation

By: Truthout, November 7, 2005 The cracking towers and gas flares of the al-Daura oil refinery rise above the neighborhood on Baghdad's outskirts that bears its name. On February 18, Ali Hassan Abd (Abu Fahad), a leader of the refinery's union, was walking home from the Al Daura Refinery with his young children when gunmen ran up and shot him. Abu Fahad had been one of 400 union activists who emerged from the underground or returned from exile in May 2003, and at a Baghdad conference formed the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. Afterwards, he went back to the refinery and urged his fellow workers to elect department and plant-wide committees. That, in turn, became a nucleus of the Oil and Gas Workers Union, one of the twelve industry unions that make up the IFTU. DD 11.09.2005

http://dbacon.igc.org/Iraq/2005disunity.html

Middle East and North Africa