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Report Exposes Corporate Rogues in IraqLabor Campaign Launched
Corporations that have been awarded huge U.S. government contracts in Iraq are "a rogues gallery of some of the most anti-democratic, anti-labor, socially irresponsible multinational corporations on the planet," says Bob Muehlenkamp of US Labor Against War. His statement is based on the findings of USLAW's new report, "The Corporate Invasion of Iraq." The study reports on the labor, human rights, environmental, business and social responsibility records of 18 U.S. corporations granted contracts by the Bush administration to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq. Muehlenkamp says, "Iraqi workers don't want to exchange Saddam's tyrannical rule for the rule of multinational corporations intent on privatizing their resources, and denying their democratic right to form independent trade unions. Iraqi workers need and deserve to know whom they will be dealing with." The report, available at www.uslaboragainstwar.org, shows that Halliburton Corporation recently secured a non-competitive contract worth $7 billion to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry. When Vice President Dick Cheney was its CEO, Halliburton subsidiaries sold $73 million worth of oil equipment and services to Iraq, in defiance of international sanctions. Another multinational, Bechtel Corp. was granted a contract for reconstruction work in Iraq initially valued at $34.6 million; ultimately it could be worth as much as $680 million. But Bechtel helped Iraq build a petrochemical plant that U.N. inspectors found in 1991 to be linked to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. Bechtel was also identified as one of two dozen U.S. corporations that supplied Iraq with one or more forms of banned weapons, military logistics and construction. MCI-WorldCom, also named in the report, was granted a $30 million contract to build a wireless network in Iraq. The company has never before built such a network. But it did perpetrate the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT FOR IRAQI WORKERS"As Iraqis begin to rebuild their labor movement, they will confront not only U.S. authorities and their former Ba'athist managers, but also some of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world. This report serves as an important introduction to those employers," said Jerry Zero, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago. The report is part of an international campaign to assure that Iraqi workers enjoy all the labor rights recognized by the International Labor Organization (ILO). On June 15 in Geneva, Amy Newell, national organizer of US Labor Against War, presented the report to an international labor rights conference held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the International Labor Organization. The conference proposed an international labor delegation to visit Iraq in the coming months. The delegation would witness firsthand how Iraqi workers are being treated by these corporations and whether the occupation forces are respecting and guaranteeing workers' rights to organize, bargain and strike. Looking forward USLAW intends to move beyond opposition to the war to more broadly focus on the multitude of ways in which a militarized U.S. foreign policy impacts working people. Its program includes educational workshops, distribution of popular education materials and the organization of veterans and military families within the labor movement. These activities will lead up to a National Labor Assembly for Peace being planned for Oct. 24-25 in Chicago to which all the labor organizations that have opposed the war and Bush's foreign policy will be invited to send delegates. Michael Eisenscher is a staff organizer and webmaster for US Labor Against War, coordinator of the Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice and publisher of SolidarityInfoServices, an electronic news service for social justice activists. |
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