Iraqi Government Says Oil Workers' Unions Are 'Not Legitimate"

The UPI report from Ben Lando has not received the attention that it
deserved. The Iraqi government's attitude towards the labor unions
should be a scandal in Congress...

Links and formatting at original:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/iraqi-government-says-oil_b_57978.html

Iraqi Government Says Oil Workers' Unions Are "Not Legitimate"
Robert Naiman, Huffington Post, July 26, 2007

On one side of the ledger, we have: more than 3,600 U.S. soldiers
killed, and more than 25,000 wounded. The financial cost of the war is
now $10 billion a month -- three months of the war would pay for the
expansion in children's health care that the president says is too
expensive. Nearly a million Iraqis have died, and four million have
been made refugees inside or outside the country.

But on the other side of the ledger: we have brought the Iraqis
"democracy." Supporters of the war like Joe Lieberman, echoing
Madeleine Albright's defense of 500,000 Iraqi deaths due to sanctions
(yes, the same Madeleine Albright now lecturing Senator Obama on how
diplomacy works), say the price is right.

What is this "democracy" we have bought for the Iraqis, with our blood
and treasure and theirs? Women's rights organizations say they are
increasingly the targets of violence, and the government does nothing,
the UN's office of humanitarian affairs reports. Iraq's minorities are
suffering a persecution at times verging on genocide, an Iraqi MP told
the BBC.

And now this: "Iraq's oil minister said Iraq's oil unions are not
legitimate," UPI reports:

"There are no legal unions in Iraq," Hussein al-Shahristani said
Wednesday in response to a question about various factions' positions
on the controversial oil law.

No legal unions in Iraq? What kind of democracy is that? Is that what
we purchased with the blood and treasure of America's working
families? Apparently so, according to UPI:

The lone remaining law from the Saddam Hussein regime kept by U.S.
occupying powers and the successive Iraqi government is the one that
bans worker organizing in the public sector.