People Before Profit blog

Iraqs oil workers and their union, Photographs by David Bacon

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:36:00 +0000

Following the fall of Saddam Hussein, oil workers in Basra reorganized one of Iraq’s oldest unions, faced the occupation’s prohibition on collective bargaining in the public sector, and forced U.S. contractor KBR to leave the oil districts. They helped workers organize in other industries, and defended Iraq’s oil against the threat of privatization. This photo documentary project shows them at work on the rigs and in the refineries, their union and its leaders, and their lives at home with their families.

The Los Angeles Harbor is hosting this exhibition of photographs of Basra’s oil and longshore workers:

Jan. 31 – Feb. 28 at the United Steelworkers (formerly PACE) Local 675, 1200 E. 220th St., Carson, Calif. (Wilmington Avenue exit off 405 toward the BP refinery, right on 223rd, right on Lucerne to 220th). Opening reception: Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m.

March 1 – March 31 at ILWU Local 63, 350 W. 5th St., San Pedro, Calif.

The show will travel to other unions, labor studies centers, schools and even plant gates, and will provide space for class visits and community discussions.

Sponsored by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, USW Local 675, United Teachers Los Angeles, ILWU Local 63, Diane Middleton Foundation, the Harry Bridges Institute and the L.A. chapter of U.S. Labor Against the War.

For more information, visit http://dbacon.igc.org/.

A political travelogue of South Korea

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:58:00 +0000

My November trip to Vietnam (PWW 1/21-27) was preceded by a fascinating visit to Korea, giving me a glimpse of the two countries that the U.S. has done most to devastate.

I was also drawn to Korea by personal ties. My father duly reported to Hamilton Air Field for induction to fight in the Korean War, but my birth gave him the fourth dependent necessary to decline service. As a young leftist, my intellectual mentor was a brilliant Korean émigré, Harry Chang.

And, since the 1980s, many of my Asian American activist colleagues in groups like CAAAV-Organizing Asian Communities in New York, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates in Oakland and the Korean Immigrant Workers Association in Los Angeles have their roots in Korea.

Despite these ties, I had little knowledge of the country before I began my trip preparation. But I quickly learned that Korea is one of the most politically unique countries on earth.

Not only has it stood as a divided country at the front lines of international conflict for more than 60 years, but its southern half is also the only former colony ever to become a fully developed capitalist country.

It also has powerful democratic and working-class movements. I happened to be in Seoul during the Korean Workers Day rallies on Nov. 11 that marked the 15th anniversary of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. I was privileged to meet with many activists of this vibrant movement during my short stay.

A ‘virtual holocaust’

One of the premier sites in Seoul is the Gyeongbokgung, a magnificent palace built at the apex of the Joseon dynasty some 500 years ago. A classic imperial walled city, it once boasted 800 buildings and over 200 gates.

Yet I was struck by the relative absence of the ancient structures that grace other Asian countries. Most of the Gyeonbokgung and other Korean palaces and temples are recent reconstructions, not originals. The reason is that, according to Gen. Curtis LeMay, U.S. architect of the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, “we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too.”

Historian Bruce Cumings describes the war as a “virtual holocaust” in which the U.S. cold-bloodedly caused the death of hundreds of thousands and destroyed practically every town and village in the country in order to defeat a resistance that was deeply rooted among the people, north and south.

It was in this brutal war that the U.S. military coined the infamous racist term “gook” to dehumanize Koreans and Chinese (and later Vietnamese) and justify their indiscriminate murder. At tragedy’s end the country remained divided. Today the tensions and problems remain, concentrated in the dangerous nuclear standoff between the U.S. and North Korea.

Rising from the ashes

Fifty years later, shiny modern buildings dominate Seoul, a bustling city that exhibits all the trappings of modern capitalism laced with the exquisite culture and gastronomic delights of traditional Korea. Literally from the ashes, South Korea’s 48 million people have miraculously built the world’s 11th largest economy. But Seoul’s landscape is marred by the ubiquitous presence of police who I found ensconced in certain areas of the capital. This seemed a jarring contradiction to the incredibly civic-minded and kind demeanor of South Korea’s denizens.

Activists told me that South Korea actually has little crime. The police presence, they say, is not only a hangover of the past dictatorships but also reflects fierce fights over the continued presence of 30,000 U.S. troops and present-day class struggles.

Indeed, South Korea’s astonishing economic pace was accomplished under the iron fist of a U.S.-backed military dictatorship. But President Park Chung-Hee was a neocolonial ruler of a new type. Park was a career military officer trained by the Japanese. However, after he staged a coup in 1961, he defied U.S. attempts to tether the South Korean economy to Japan and was determined to build Korean national strength.

He drew up Soviet-style five-year economic plans that concentrated the immense aid provided by the U.S. to this strategic country in the hands of a few huge Korean capitalists (known as chaebol). Park crushed all dissent in his ruthless march to monopoly capitalism until he was assassinated in 1979.

According to sociologist Hagen Koo, by 1985 the 10 largest chaebol groups accounted for an astonishing 30 percent of national sales and 12 percent of total employment. South Korea experienced “in one generation the same magnitude of change that took a whole century in European societies.”

Powerful workers’ movement

Joon S. Park, a political prisoner for 10 years and now a professor and peace activist, told me that after the war the dictatorship denounced even the mildest dissent as communist and traitorous.

But by the 1970s worker actions began to pick up, with courageous young women workers taking the lead. The historic Kwangju uprising of 1980 signaled the development of a massive cross-class democratic movement that ended the military dictatorship in 1987. And the successful general strike called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) in 1997 dramatized the independent political role of the working class in South Korean life.

This year the KCTU celebrated Korean Workers Day with an outdoor cultural event on a chilly Saturday night and a massive rally in the center of Seoul on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 13. Militant movement song and dance highlighted Saturday’s festivities, although much of the crowd holed up in the delectable tent eateries set up on the perimeter of the grounds.

I was moved by a powerful photo exhibit of the dozens of Koreans who gave their lives in the workers’ struggle.

Colorful flags and fierce sloganeering filled the air on Sunday, as about 70,000 Koreans thronged to the rally in the Gwanghwamun section of central Seoul. I walked the length of the rally and was taken aback that men constituted at least 90 percent of the crowd. A sizable contingent of trade unionists from Japan joined in spirited solidarity.

A huge phalanx of battle-ready police was deployed to the scene, but the event proceeded peacefully. Above the speeches, Kim Myoung Joon of MediAct explained to me that the workers’ movement faces critical challenges today. Above all, he and other activists say, the state and the chaebol have reduced the majority of South Korean workers to temporary status in a bold move to reduce the cost of labor and divide the movement.

Aelim Yun of Korean Solidarity Against Precarious Work told me that officially 52 percent of all workers are temporary employees, but she believes the number is closer to 70 percent. She pointed out that the KCTU is mostly made up of permanent male workers and that it has been unable and/or unwilling to forthrightly fight for the temporary workers, many of whom are women.

Indeed, at the Saturday night cultural event dissident unionists set up their own stage within 50 yards of the official one to dramatize their displeasure with the KCTU’s handling of the temporary worker issue. As I imbibed a delicious short rib soup, a bevy of activists informed me that another strategic division on the Korean left is between those who see reunification of the country as the primary task and those who emphasize the popular democratic and class fights within South Korea. This difference also reflects diverging attitudes toward North Korea.

In short, the activists I spoke to were sober that the South Korean labor and left movements confront complicated issues and a powerful class opponent — not to speak of the U.S. military — as they face the future.

In praise of peace at the DMZ

I also toured the notorious Demilitarized Zone on the 38th Parallel that separates the North and South. For decades the DMZ was one of the tensest military frontiers in the world, including a nuclear trip wire with virulent accusations and sometimes bullets zinging back and forth. I was surprised to find the atmosphere in the DMZ much changed. Instead of fierce war propaganda, visitors are showered with paeans for peace. South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, elected in 1998, won a Nobel Prize for his so-called “sunshine policy” that helped lead to the historic North-South Joint Declaration of 2000.

Since then South Koreans have erected numerous statues and memorials for peace and reunification in the Zone. They have even built an impressive new train depot that they hope will soon become a busy way station to the North.

Indeed, one of the most important accomplishments of the great democratic movement in South Korea has been the dissipation of the formerly violent anticommunist, anti-North Korean attitudes and policies.

Today even most of the leaders of the chaebol, with at least one eye on economic expansion, want better relations with the North and give lip service to reunification. Public opinion polls show that few South Koreans fear renewed war.

Similarly, in the heated international negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program, South Korea has rejected Washington’s hard-line approach and worked closely with China for a more reasonable solution. It seems that South Korea is coming to see itself as a part of the “Asian century” and not as a simple appendage of U.S. foreign policy.

Bob Wing is an Oakland-based writer and activist who visited Vietnam and Korea in November 2005. His essay on Vietnam appeared in the Jan. 21-27 issue of the PWW.

WORLDNOTES

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:23:00 +0000

Palestine: Despite obstacles, heavy turnout

Despite severe restrictions imposed by the Israeli Occupation Forces, Palestinians voted in record numbers in Jan. 25 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Tension was high in east Jerusalem where Israeli officials have prohibited campaigning and harassed candidates, WAFA, the Palestine News Agency, reported. Last week they said they would permit limited voting but would not allow all parties to participate. Harassment of candidates continued.

Fadwa Khader, a member of the central committee of the Palestinian People’s Party and the only woman candidate for the Legislative Council in Jerusalem, was arrested at a public meeting in Jerusalem and jailed. Israeli police also broke up a news conference and detained seven candidates of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Palestinian National Authority invited international observers, including representatives from Brazil, India and members of the European Union Election Commission, to observe the voting process.

Chile: First woman president elected

In a Jan. 15 runoff election against a conservative businessman, Socialist Party candidate Michelle Bachelet won Chile’s presidency with more than 50 percent of the vote. Voter turnout was 97 percent.

The former health and defense minister succeeds outgoing Socialist President Ricardo Lagos. She pledged to continue Lagos’s policies and to narrow the gap between the rich and poor in Chile.

The daughter of an air force commander who died in prison after the 1973 coup, Bachelet and her mother were forced into exile for a number of years during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Considered to be on the left of the left-center coalition that backed her, Bachelet becomes the first woman elected to the presidency of Chile. According to Prensa Latina, her opponent, Sebastian Piñera, a former senator, is a billionaire businessman and one of the richest men in the country.

“I will work tirelessly for all Chileans, for our country,” Bachelet promised thousands of enthusiastic supporters who celebrated in the streets.

China: Web site for migrant workers

A web site to safeguard workers’ interests was launched last week in Beijing, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The site is specifically geared to help rural migrant workers who work in major urban areas across the country. Operated by the Beijing Workstation of Legal Aid for Rural Migrant Workers, the web site publishes laws and regulations as well as information on the more common lawsuits against offenders of migrant workers’ rights. It also lists lawyers who handle migrant worker cases and has a hotline for immediate help.

There are about 140 million rural migrant workers working in cities in China. Although they play a significant role in urban construction and development, they have low social status and relatively little political influence. Many, frustrated at their inability to protect their rights, have turned to violence. The web site, www.zgnmg.org, began receiving hits on the first morning it opened.

S. Africa: Miners to get compensation

Mozambicans who have suffered illness as a result of working in South Africa’s asbestos mines are scheduled to receive compensation from the Asbestos Relief Trust this year, BuaNews reported.

The fund was formed in an out-of-court settlement in 2003 between companies and workers, following the successful suit of 7,000 asbestos workers against the British multinational Cape Pic. The Cape Pic victory set a precedent where the company was forced to pay compensation to asbestos victims and relatives of those who had died from asbestos-related diseases.

The trust is about R460 million (about $76 million) and will benefit about 1,500 workers. Additional former miners with asbestos-related health problems, some of whom have worked as long as 30 years in the mines, are not due to receive compensation because of complications with paperwork and medical records.

Europe: Dockworkers close ports

Ports across Europe were at a standstill last week as 40,000 dockworkers throughout the region protested a European Union directive to “liberalize” cargo handling at European ports. The EU bill would allow independent contractors to hire untrained poorly paid workers to load and unload cargoes. The work is dangerous for the skilled union workers who currently do the job. Union representatives say if the bill is passed about half the 150,000 workers would lose their jobs.

About 10,000 dockworkers converged on Strasbourg in eastern France where the bill was debated, according to the Irish Examiner.

Short strikes were scheduled at Rotterdam and Antwerp in the Netherlands, and at ports in Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Germany and France. The European Transport Workers Federation said more than 40,000 workers from 12 countries participated in the protests.

World Notes are compiled by Pamella Saffer (international@cpusa.org).

Worlds minorities often targets of war on terror

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:21:00 +0000

UNITED NATIONS — Ethnic and religious minorities accounted for more than 75 percent of those targeted in war worldwide last year, according a report released Jan. 19. The Bush administration’s “war on terror,” says the report, is a main culprit in the persecution of minority peoples.

“State of the World’s Minorities 2006” was issued by the Minority Rights Group International, a nongovernmental organization with consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Commission. It lists problems in nearly all of the world’s countries, and defines “minorities” as any “non-dominant ethnic, religious and linguistic communities who may not necessarily be numerical minorities.”

Mark Lattimer, executive director of MRGI, told a press conference, “In every world region, minorities and indigenous peoples have been excluded, repressed and in many cases killed by their governments. In extreme cases where the situation has deteriorated into civil conflict — as in the Sudan, in Burma and in Iraq — we see whole communities living under grave threat for their lives.”

“In war today,” Lattimer continued, “the targeting of minorities is no longer the exception but has become the norm. In three-quarters of the world’s conflicts in 2005, violence was targeted at specific ethnic or religious groups. And the tragedy is we could have seen it coming.”

Lattimer said his group found two main trends while compiling the report, which aims to predict global trouble spots. One was the overwhelming number of African peoples on the list. Citing the situations in the Sudan, Nigeria and elsewhere, he said, “We see different minorities or indigenous peoples continuing to live in a situation of grave risk.”

The second trend is the growing “number of states where the oppression of minorities is linked directly to the ongoing ‘war on terror’ by the United States.”

Gay McDougall, the United Nations expert on minority issues, agreed with the report’s conclusions. “Ethnic and religious minorities are disproportionately affected by these ‘counterterrorist’ measures, including the use of emergency powers that displace the normal judicial processes,” she said. “Minority communities are under more stress because of these measures, their livelihoods are more threatened, and the value of their role in society and their existence is being brazenly questioned as well.”

Lattimer said, “In situation after situation, governments have justified repression of their minorities by reference to the war on terror.” He condemned many governments allied to the U.S. who are “in effect turning what should be a struggle against terrorism into a war on minorities, a war on minority civilians.”

Minority women and young people are particularly vulnerable, Lattimer said. Women face rape or the threat of rape in many armed conflicts.

The recent riots in France by young people, many of African descent, are related to massive unemployment and problems in education in minority communities, he said.

McDougall said that an important problem for people from minority communities is racial profiling, which “we certainly know in this country, from the treatment of other minorities, is a very dangerous and corrosive approach to any kind of law enforcement. It is without a doubt a threat to those who are identified as having Arab identity or Islamic faith in [the United States].”

While the U.S. war on terror is a major factor in the repression of minority peoples abroad, McDougall singled out specific problems within the U.S. itself.

McDougall told the World the response to Hurricane Katrina “unmasked the reality that’s been with us in this country for a couple of centuries. That is that there is a major group in this country that has not been incorporated into the benefits of society since slavery. No Reconstruction did it, no war on poverty has done it, no more recent policies have done it.”

Morales takes office in Bolivia

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:13:00 +0000

Bolivia’s president-elect Evo Morales Aima, left, vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera, center, and economist Carlos Villegas show an analysis their transition team performed inside governmental institutions of the departing government.

Morales, the farmers’ leader and head of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS – Movement toward Socialism), was inaugurated as the first indigenous president of Bolivia in a boisterous and celebratory inaugural in La Paz, the nation’s capital, Jan. 22.

The election of the 46-year-old Morales was a cause for great joy among Bolivia’s indigenous population, and a cause for great distress for the Bush administration and the ultra-right.

“The 500 years of Indian resistance have not been in vain,” Morales, an Aymara Indian, said in his inaugural speech. “From 500 years of resistance we pass to another 500 years in power.” More than 60 percent of Bolivia’s population considers itself indigenous.

Morales said the “free market economy” hasn’t worked in Bolivia and is responsible for many of the country’s problems, including chronic poverty. He also reached out for the support of broad sectors of Bolivian society, and warned against possible moves by the “North American Empire” to remove his government.

Iraqi unions launch united struggle

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:06:00 +0000

Iraq’s labor movement has formed a united permanent coordinating committee to “make its positions known” to the Iraqi government, and to challenge the dictates of international financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Six union federations, including two Kurdish labor organizations, issued a joint statement, Jan. 16, stressing “the importance of complete sovereignty for Iraq over its petroleum and natural resources” to “develop them in a way that assures a complete reconstruction of the country” and to “provide a decent living standard for Iraqis.”

Just recently, complying with IMF/World Bank demands, the transitional government tripled the price of fuel, sparking street demonstrations and other protests throughout Iraq. Moves have also been made to privatize the country’s significant public sector, part of transnational-corporate-friendly “structural adjustment” measures demanded by the international agencies.

Responding to these moves, Iraq’s labor unions called for retraction of the oil price increase and “rejection of the reduction of spending on social services, especially the elimination of government support for the food distribution system or the reduction of the number of items covered.”

The global institutions must “stop imposing structural adjustment conditions for loans,” and must agree to “provide funding for public services and state-owned enterprises without demanding their privatization,” the unions declared. They called for cancellation of debts owed by Iraq that “resulted from the policies of the former [Saddam Hussein] regime,” and demanded that the international financial institutions “engage in dialogue, discussion and negotiations with the trade union federations regarding their policies in Iraq.”

The joint statement noted that “the Iraqi economy has been severely affected by decades of sanctions, wars and occupation” and that “the wars and occupation have caused a dramatic decrease in the living and social standards of Iraqis and especially of workers.”

The unions called for adoption of “a new labor law and a pension and social security law that assure workers’ rights and are in conformity with international labor standards and human rights conventions.”

Iraq Federation of Trade Unions spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin told the World the unified labor coordinating committee was formed “as a response to anti-union order no. 875 issued by the government of Prime Minister al Jafaari.”

Decree 875, announced last summer, revoked previous agreements permitting trade unions to function without government interference. Under the new decree, the government authorized itself to seize control of all trade union monies and prevent the unions from dispensing any funds.

“The notorious Decree 875” was issued “to try to prevent this united, democratic national trade union center emerging in Iraq, and we will not let him succeed,” IFTU President Rasem AlAwady told a British trade union conference last fall.

The IFTU, the largest of the country’s labor federations, was a key player in helping form the unified labor committee, Muhsin said. The IFTU has merged with other smaller federations to form the new General Federation of Iraqi Workers, which is now preparing to hold its first national conference.

The Jan. 16 statement was signed by the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, Oil Unions Federation in Iraq/Basra, Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, Kurdistan General Workers Syndicate Union/Erbil, and Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Syndicate Union.

Cuba to play in World Baseball Classic

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:03:00 +0000

After receiving pressure from Major League Baseball, the players’ association and the baseball commissioner’s office, the U.S. Treasury Department said Jan. 20 it would grant a license to the Cuban national baseball team, allowing its participation in the World Baseball Classic games set for March 3-20. The decision came after Cuba said it would donate any profits it received from the tournament to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The first application was denied in mid-December by the U.S., on the basis that the money made by the Cuban players during the series would be used to support the socialist island, conflicting with the U.S. economic blockade against the people of Cuba.

The 16-team tournament is the sport’s first World Cup-style series, consisting of an 18-day match-up. Professional players from North and Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa are expected to showcase their country’s best and most talented baseball stars.

The games are being coordinated by the MLB commissioner’s office and the players’ union, and are set to take place in Tokyo; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and three states in the U.S. — Florida, Arizona and California.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a critic of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, said, “I’m glad that the U.S. government has realized that it hit a foul ball by denying Cuban baseball players the opportunity to play ball in America.”

The license granted to the Cuban team by the Treasury Department eliminates a thorny complication and potentially fatal blow to the entire event.

Last month, Cuba was denied entry to participate in the series after right-wing Cuban American members of Congress urged the Treasury to veto the Major League Baseball’s license application, asking the league to drop the Cuban team. After the initial rejection, the International Baseball Federation threatened to withdraw its sanction to the tournament, if Cuba was not allowed to compete. Puerto Rico threatened to withdraw as a host country of the games if the U.S. would not reconsider letting Cuba play.

Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, called on the Bush administration to reverse its decision, saying that banning Cuba could hurt future U.S. Olympic bids. In addition, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, linked the Cuban situation to any U.S. bid to host the 2016 Summer Games, saying that there must be assurances that all countries are allowed to compete in such events without interference.

Cuba is home to a historic powerhouse baseball team winning gold medals in the 1992, 1996 and the 2004 Olympics.

“We were always positive,” said Antonio Munoz, the promoter who paid millions of dollars to stage the first two rounds in Puerto Rico. “There were some negative people, but they were wrong in the end. I always said there was no Plan B. There was only one plan: that Cuba would come and that all efforts should be focused on obtaining approval.”