Basra oil workers have joined Electricity workers in their threats to
'Shut Down Iraq' if their wages aren't corrected. Samir Hanoon, Vice
President of the Basra Federation of Trade Unions explained: Negotiations
with the GC and CPA are ongoing. We don not want to be in any hurry to
take actions until the last result. In general, for the lives of people
living in Basra, electricity is more important than food and water. After
our discussions with unions in the oil section, we know we are capable of
a total shut-down. Our problem is not with the General Directors and
managers - its with Bremer and the occupation. But for us to go on total
strike we must study the process well. The effect will be on Iraqi
families. We also know that ex-regime people are still active and we know
they'll use the strike to serve their own ends. They may sabotage it and
the benefit will be to the Occupation Forces. We have to be careful in
studying what will affect the existence of the occupation forces, not the
things that will affect or harm the Iraqi people.' With the GC having
already had a month to study the Southern Oil Company's home-made
wagetable plus the weakening Dollar, it looks like further pressure
tactics from workers could be on the cards.

Approximately one month ago, Oil workers throughout Iraq's Oil jugular
vein governorate of Basra announced the formation of their own wagetable
- challenging the CPA's Order 30 which set a 130 position, 10 step and 13
level wage table. The table sets the minimum wage for an Iraqi public
sector worker at 69,000 ID - at the time of negotiations amounting to $40
- and less than half the monthly recommended wage for a sweatshop worker
in a free trade zone in neighbouring Iran or Jordan, or a meal for six at
corporate chow down HQ, the Cassa Sultan. Either way, workers have
refused the table calling it unfair and exploitative. When SOC workers
crafted their own wage table which set the minimum salary at approxmately
155,000 ID per month - cutting out at least three pittance-wage levels.
The wagetable was also backed up with a the threat of an all-out strike
if not accepted and worked upon jointly. That strike threat was
re-enforced with a threat of workers joining the armed resistance if
Occupation troops were called in to take over the pumps. SOC's wagetable
- accepted by the company's management, administration and General
Director - and it's 'take it or fight us' conditions prompted the
Minister of Oil Himself to come down and engage with the Union. A return
to the emergency CPA salary table - meaning $60, $120, $180, $220
monthly for most workers - was agreed until a new table could be forged.

Since then, two things have happened. The first: Electricity sector
unions at Najibeeya, Haartha and Az Zubeir locations who supported the
oil sector workers demands tacitly last month, took a wildcat strike last
week, stormed their workplace adminsitration buildings, declared the CPA
wagetable dismissed and vowed to go on 'total shut-down' if wages were
not raised as soon as possible. A delegation met with the Minister of
Energy to discuss the adpotion of a new table and a return to the old
emergency wagescale was agreed as an interim solution.

The second: The value of the US Dollar against the Iraqi Dinar has been
yo-yo-ing, plunging from 2100 ID in August to 1114 last week and 1650 to
1113 to 1250 and now 1420 in the past five days. Much has been written in
the Iraqi press about this. Commentators compare the fall with the rumour
driven orchestrated devalutaions of the Baath manipulating the Central
Bank of Iraq during the 90s.

This means that the concession granted by the CPA to Iraqi public sector
workers in struggle over the wagetable is fake. A return to dollarised
wages will mean nothing if the fall continues to gather momentum. Any pay
rises in dollars will also be meaningless. Private Sector workers, who
are the most likely to be paid in dollars look set to be hit hard. Such
as the 14,000 security guards employed to guard oil installations and new
foreign corporate bounty hunters' offices in Basra by South African
Security company Erinys. Either way you look at it, its a crafty
shakedown on the part of the Occupation Administration.

Iraq, economically, has been levelled into a destroyed, depressed
'capitalists dream' state through Dictatorship debasement, three wars and
13 years of free-market priming sanctions. As a result, it has a
stagnant, capital-weak economy and has to import almost everything. These
imports are of course in dollars. Everything from oil to jeans is traded
on the world market in dollars. This means that imports into Iraq are
more expensive, and so prices of goods in shops go up as shopkeepers are
forced to raise prices to make up on the extra they have to pay to get
goods in, plus the fact that less people will be buying. The fall of the
dollar, catalysed by spreading self-fulfilling rumours on the streets
that the dinar will be devalued against the dollar, thus flooding the
market with dollars, plus some budget puppetry at Bank of Iraq/Occupation
Administration levels, serves the Occupation very nicely. It also means
that new Iraqi businesses will have a harder time starting up and
trading, with overheads - rents for buildings, telecommunications,
equipment - rising, as well as the cost of importing goods and services,
hampering their chances of winning a lane in the Great Reconstruction
Contract Race.

Most Iraqi companies which do have enough capital to compete with the big
boys and deal with players such as KBR and Bechtell, are notorious for
their Neo-Baathi tactics of delayed and shoddy goods provison, looting
and trashing of freshly built facilities such as schools and generally
fulfilling already racism-fuelled ideas about Iraqi incompetence and Ali
Babaa'ism. Why do they do it? To profit from and further the chaos of the
occupation as it grapples for control - economic and social. The
forgotten truth of the intensifying economic 'Great Game' - the
pathological bomb and build industry which levels national landscapes -
physically, economically and socially - is that working people do all the
reconstruction work, they know what to do, know their workplaces and know
the super-exploitation they are struggling under. The glossy brochure
served exhibitons and trade fairs for international companies held in
Kuwait and Jordan are the bomb and build industry congratualting itself,
inflating itself and re-producing itself. Down on the ground, nothing but
the skyline changes.

Iraqi workers do need new equipment, new chances and new skills, and
Iraqi business do need to break out of the dictatorial bribes and
intimidation cycle, but what Iraq and Iraqi people need right now is the
means and no-strings-attached support to do it all themselves. 70%
unemployment, and its the land of engineers. I've never met so many
engineers and well-educated people in my life. And Where are they?
Selling peanuts on Kharrada Dakhil or doing the housework. Iraq needs
serious social restruction, a civil society, as well as a rise in wages,
living standards and hopes for the future. Renewal, the mythologised
meaning of 'Baath' which kept millions hypnotised into dictatorship
acceptance, needs to be rooted in mutual aid, empowerment, confidence
building and skills sharing, and ironically persistently cultivated
free-association and co-operation, and just Giving - all the realities of
social life existent in working class and struggling communities all over
the world, and all the words that get scoffed at by the corporate chiefs
I speak to who roll their eyes and declare to me, with the best of
intentions but totally skewed convictions - 'I will rebuild this
country'. The corporate chief uttering this particular company pep-talk
will remain un-named but his declarations of 'putting Iraqis back to
work' (One of his companies - a labour recruitment company - is in
Capitalist accuracy slang referred to as 'a body shop'. He speaks
determinedly about 'Getting the lights back on' and re-interates and
re-interates 'I have a country to rebuild', missing the glaringly obvious
point. He's not doing it. His two hands aren't doing it. He may be
administering it, supervising it, controling it, profitting from it, and
taking credit for it but its all done by Iraqi hands - just as the
innovative SOC Workers proved when they kicked out KBR, took the
materials they offered combined with spare parts from the local market
and part rebuilt their own industry. From complete crude oil pumping
stations, water pumps and pipelines, to combustion burners - all were
autonomously reconstructed by SOC workers themselves following the Fall
of the regime. Major business owners, bosses, never 'give work' they take
it, order it around, profit from it, and maintain their place in the
economic pecking-order by reproducing their own self-topped heirarchies.
I get a deadpan gaze when I talk about nurturing and skills-exchange and
wage justice as being the real tools of reconstruction in this country.
Because thats not what reconstruction or 'helping Iraq people' really
means.

Ordinary people are struggling now even more than before - 70%
unemployment and with almost everything of any value - gold wedding
jewelry, clothes, car parts, TVs - sold during the sanctions grind,
ordinary Iraqi people are still struggling to make ends meet. The current
dollar-play escalates the pressure on these people and expresses a
strategy by the US-Iraqi GC acquiesced Occupation adminsitration akin to
the Soviet population control techniques of manipulating inflation and
poverty levels to make sure people kept down, stayed down. Welcome to the
next phase of socio-economic experimentation on Iraq.

Photo: Iraqi SOC workers stand before Lehees Crude Oil pumping station which
they repaired themselves. Lehees was totally destroyed in this war.
Pipelines, the main pump and sub-pump have all been reconstructed.