Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
OWC Report on USLAW National Assembly for Peace
APPENDICES TO TEXT (Part 2 of Appendices)
********
APPENDIX Three:
Model Resolution on the Occupation and Labor Rights in Iraq
(Circulated by U.S. Labor Against the War for adoption by unions,
labor councils and other labor organizations.)
Whereas: Since George W. Bush declared an end to the war in Iraq in
April, unemployment among Iraqi workers has reached 70%, facing many
families with hunger and dislocation, and
Whereas: Since Bush announced the war's end, the US occupying
authority has frozen Iraqi wages for most workers at $60/month, while at
the same time eliminating bonuses, profit sharing, and bonuses for food
and housing, causing a sharp cut in the income of those Iraqi workers
still employed, and
Whereas: $87 billion was appropriated by Congress supposedly for
the reconstruction of Iraq, yet not a dime is set to be used to raise
Iraqi wages or for the benefit of its unemployed workers, and these
extraordinary expenditures will come at immense cost in services and jobs
here in the US, and
Whereas: Since April Iraqi workers have begun to reorganize their
trade union movement, seeking a better standard of living, and to preserve
their jobs and workplaces, and
Whereas: The US occupation authority has continued to enforce a law
issued by Saddam Hussein in 1987, prohibiting unions and collective
bargaining in the public sector and state enterprises where most Iraqis
work, and
Whereas: The US occupation authority has announced it intends to
privatize the factories, refineries, mines and other state enterprises,
selling them off to private owners, despite the fact that these
enterprises belong to the Iraqi people, not to the US, and has issued a
new decree, Public Order 39, allowing 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi
businesses and the repatriation of profits, and
Whereas: The privatization of Iraqi workplaces would result in the
massive layoff of Iraqi workers, at a time when unemployment is already at
crisis levels, and
Whereas: The US occupation authority is in effect making it illegal
for Iraqi unions and workers to organize at the workplace to oppose
privatization or have any voice at all in the future of their own jobs,
and
Whereas: Iraqi unions are seeking to organize despite having no
resources of any kind, while the US occupying authority continues to
withhold from them the welfare funds and other resources and buildings
held by the Saddam-Hussein affiliated government unions, and
Whereas: Workers in the United States have experienced an erosion
of our own labor rights to organize and collectively bargain in defense of
our jobs, rights and working conditions and thus understand what the
restriction or loss of these rights means to working people,
Therefore be it resolved: That this local union (or other labor
body) calls for full trade union rights in Iraq, for immediate
nullification of the 1987 Hussein law banning unions in public enterprises
as well as the nullification of any other restriction on the full exercise
of labor rights, and
Be it further resolved: That we call on the US occupation authority
immediately to implement Conventions 87, 98 and 138 of the International
Labor Organization, guaranteeing the right to organize and bargain
collectively, and prohibiting child labor, and
Be it further resolved: That we call for an end to the US
occupation of Iraq, so that Iraq can be governed by and guarantee the
rights of its own people, labor rights included, and
Be it further resolved: That we call for a Congressional
investigation of the suppression of trade union rights in Iraq, and the
privatization of the workplaces of Iraqi workers and the property of the
Iraqi people, and
Be it finally resolved: That we will donate material resources,
such as computers, telephones and office furniture, as well as money, to
the Fund to Support Iraqi Trade Union Rights, established by US Labor
Against the War and encourage all unions to do likewise.
U.S. LABOR AGAINST THE WAR, P.O. Box 153, 1718 M Street, N.W.,
Washington, DC 20036
info@uslaboragainstwar.org
www.uslaboragainstwar.org
**************
APPENDIX FOUR:
GREETINGS FROM BRAZIL/BOLIVIA
Cover Letter and Greetings from Julio Turra (CUT, Brazil)
October 23, 2003
La Paz, Bolivia
Attention: USLAW Coordinators
Dear Amy Newell, Bob Muehlenkamp, Michael Eisenscher, Gene Bruskin and
Alan Benjamin:
For the past few days I have been in La Paz, Bolivia, where -- as you
surely know -- the powerful movement of the Bolivian workers and people
has led to the resignation of former President "Goni" Lozada. I
was dispatched to Bolivia to express the solidarity of the Brazilian trade
union movement with the fighting trade union federation and workers of
Bolivia.
Unfortunately, I will have to remain in Bolivia till October 27th, which
means I will be unable to participate, as I had hoped, in the National
Labor Assembly for Peace in Chicago on October 24-25.
I will be meeting later today with one of the historic leaders of the
Bolivian trade union movement: Edgar "Huracán" Ramirez. He is
the General Secretary-Emeritus of the National Mineworkers Federation and
of the COB trade union federation of Bolivia. We will be preparing a joint
message to your Assembly in Chicago. We ask that you please read this
letter to the delegates assembled at your gathering.
I urge you to please excuse my absence from your Assembly, but I trust you
will understand the emergency situation in Bolivia that has prevented me
from joining you in Chicago. I appreciate your understanding.
I am sending you as an attachment a message of greetings to the USLAW
Labor Assembly for Peace from the President of the CUT, Brother Luiz
Marinho, and from his General Secretary, Brother João Felício, both of
whom, in the name of the 9 million members of the CUT trade union
federation in Brazil and all its affiliates, salute your Assembly and wish
it the greatest success.
I send my best wishes to all of you and join with Brothers Marinho and
Felicio in wishing your Assembly full success.
In Solidarity,
Julio Turra
National Executive Director, CUT
Member, CUT Collective on International Relations
****************
GREETINGS FROM JULIO TURRA AND EDGAR RAMIREZ
[Note: This letter was read to the Assembly delegates.]
La Paz, Bolivia
October 24, 2003
Dear Sisters and Brothers Gathered at the
USLAW National Labor Assembly for Peace:
We send you greetings from La Paz, Bolivia, where the people -- through
the heroic mobilizations and national general strike waged under the
slogan, "Bolivia Is Not For Sale" -- forced President Goni
Sanchez de Lozada to resign.
We firmly believe -- as do trade unionists around the world -- that the
struggle you are carrying out as USLAW in the U.S. trade union movement
against the war of aggression and occupation of Iraq by the Bush
administration has given a tremendous boost to all of us who, throughout
Latin America, are victims of the same imperial interests that are
destroying nations across the globe to plunder our resources in the
interest of a tiny corporate minority.
The fight you are waging against your government's "war at home"
-- that is, its attacks on working people in the United States --
represents a call to working people around the world not to relent in our
struggle for justice and self-determination.
Bush's war policies on our continent continue in the form of the
stepped-up attempt to impose the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
via all the submissive governments of the region, such as that of Goni
Sanchez de Lozada in Bolivia.
For this reason, the mass insurrectional upsurge of the Bolivian people,
led by the Bolivian Workers Federation (COB) and the Bolivian Peasants
Federation (CSUTCB) and organized through popular assemblies and councils,
has represented a blow to the interests of the Bush administration and the
multinational corporations -- all of which backed the Goni government till
the very end and have now provided him a "golden" retirement in
Miami.
During the past few days of this conflict, the international press has
announced that the Pentagon has sent a contingent of Green Berets to
Bolivia to "protect" the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. Everything
indicates that the U.S. government is strongly considering sending U.S.
troops to Bolivia under the pretext of "combating drug
trafficking" -- much like they did in Iraq using the pretext of
"weapons of mass destruction."
That is why we are calling on your Assembly and all its affiliated unions
and labor organizations to remain alert and prepared to mobilize against
any and all U.S. troops in Bolivia or any other form of intervention by
the U.S. government in the internal affairs of the Bolivian people.
We wish your Assembly the greatest success, and we join you and the U.S.
labor movement in supporting the national AFL-CIO leadership's public
campaign to stop the FTAA. This is a treaty designed to further destroy
our national economies, which is why it is encountering such strong
resistance from working people across the continent, including in the
United States itself. The uprising of the Bolivian people these past weeks
was in essence an uprising against the FTAA.
We hope you will join us in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Dec. 12-14, 2003, for
the Western Hemisphere Workers Conference Against the FTAA. Join us in
charting a fightback plan for 2004 so that together we can defeat the FTAA.
- Down with Bush's policies of war!
- Let us unite across the continent to stop the FTAA!
- Long live the strugggle for justice and liberation of working people on
all continents!
Julio Turra,
National Executive Director
Unified Workers Confederation of Brazil (CUT),
Brazil
Edgar Ramirez Santiesteban,
General Secretary Emeritus,
National Federation of Mineworkers of Bolivia
General Secretary Emeritus,
Bolivian Workers Federation (COB)
*************
Greetings from CUT Trade Union Federation (Brazil)
Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 21, 2003
Dear Sisters and Brothers of USLAW:
We thank you for the invitation you sent to the Central Única dos
Trabalhadores (United Workers Federation of Brazil, or CUT) through our
National Executive Director, Julio Turra, requesting that we send a
representative from our federation to USLAW's National Labor Assembly for
Peace in Chicago on October 24-25.
Unfortunately, due to our packed calendar of activities in Brazil and the
emergency trip of Brother Julio Turra to Bolivia, we will not be able to
be present physically at your gathering, but we wish to convey our message
of solidarity to all the delegates present in your Assembly.
Indeed, we value tremendously the activity that USLAW has carried out
during this terrible period of the war of aggression by the Bush
administration against the people of Iraq -- a war that has been extended
with the U.S.-led occupation of that war-torn country. Your leadership in
this antiwar effort within the labor movement has brought great honor to
the labor movement the world over.
As you know, the CUT was among the various international trade union
federations that participated in the International Internet Labor Press
Conference last February, organized by USLAW, to present an International
Labor Statement Against the War. Be assured that you can continue to count
on us to join you in the struggle for a world without war, a world in
which the voices of working people will be heard and their interests will
prevail.
The CUT will be participating next November in Miami in the activities
organized to fight the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This fight
has been strengthened immeasurably on a continental level by the AFL-CIO
leadership's decision to launch a mass petition campaign to "Stop the
FTAA! No More NAFTAs!" addressed to the Foreign Ministers who will be
gathered in Miami.
This stance by the AFL-CIO has reinforced the struggle which the CUT is
waging in Brazil against the FTAA -- a struggle that in September 2002
witnessed more than 10 million votes by Brazilian working people in a
Popular Plebiscite in opposition to this attempt to impose a NAFTA-like
treaty on the peoples of the Americas.
We wish you full success in your Assembly deliberations and in the
follow-up work that will result from your gathering. Your struggle and
your successes are ours, too.
Please convey our best greetings to all Assembly participants.
Long Live the Struggle of Workers and Peoples Against War and For Peace!
Luiz Marinho
President,
CUT Workers Federation
Brazil
João Antônio Felício
General Secretary,
CUT Workers Federation
Brazil
*********************
APPENDIX FIVE:
Waging A Conscious Struggle Against Racism
National Labor Assembly and Workers of Color
There must be a conscious effort to involve and mobilize Black and other
workers of color in the building and functioning of the National Labor
Assembly.
There needs to be a discussion, especially among workers of color on how
we intend to push for the Assembly to do more effective work to make the
demands and character of the labor and workers movement more inclusive and
more challenging to the racist aspects of US domestic and foreign policies
and practices.
Please review the attached statement and sign onto it if you agree with
it. Responses are also important and welcomed.
In Solidarity
Saladin Muhammad
Send your endorsement to:
Saladin62@aol.com
----------
National Labor Assembly: Waging a Conscious Struggle Against Racism
USLAW has played an important role in uniting and mobilizing
significant participation within the US labor movement against the war in
Iraq, including linking up with leaders of trade unions and federations
representing 130 million unionists in 53 countries speaking out in one
voice against the war.
USLAW'S convening of the upcoming National Labor Assembly for Peace as a
democratic institution to develop an independent program and voice for
labor on US domestic and foreign policies is a very important development
for all working people in the US and worldwide.
The so-called 'war on terrorism,' the unjust war and occupation of Iraq
and the preemptive strike and regime change initiatives led by the US have
created conditions of international political, economic and military
instability. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration, in the
name of protecting US interest abroad and national security at home, has
manipulated US and international public opinion by lying to the American
people and fostering a climate of racism and religious intolerance.
Racism has been a major factor in shaping US polices and creating tensions
and division among the people. African American and Latino/a working class
youth and communities are criminally stereotyped by the corporate owned
media and made the main scapegoats of the US domestic war against working
people. Immigrants of color, Muslims and peoples of Arab descent are
experiencing the most severe cases of attacks on their civil liberties.
USLAW, like the other major anti-war formations, needs a sharper and
clearer focus on work to mobilize the participation and leadership of
African American and other workers of color in the labor movement. Despite
the large membership of Black and Latino workers in some of the unions
represented in USLAW, there were very few workers and union leaders of
color at the founding conference in January 2003 to help shape and launch
its program.
There has been ongoing corporate and government war waged against US Black
and Latino workers and our communities on a daily basis, including the
hundreds of police murders of unarmed youth, high unemployment, cuts in
major social programs and environmental racism. This state of war on a
significant and specially oppressed section among US workers has not been
emphasized enough in the processes of initiating the various anti war
coalitions and their calls to action.
Despite the sincere efforts on the part of these coalitions in challenging
the policies of US militarism and global domination, the weaknesses
mentioned above, sends a dual message-that in order to build the broadest
possible unity against wars abroad, that we must downplay issues and
demands that speak to the racist character of the war as one of the major
attacks on working people in the US; and that these attacks are secondary
to more important attacks within the global economy. The failure to make
the concrete links between the war at home and abroad as it relates to the
racist character of US policies, greatly contributes to the feeling of
exclusion within the anti war movement by many working people of color in
the US.
As a significant percentage of the labor movement and also as the hardest
hit from the aggressive military and anti-working class US domestic and
foreign policies, African American and other workers of color must have
major input into shaping a workers program on these and other questions
impacting US and international workers.
The call to Workers Centers to participate in the National Labor Assembly
is an important step in this direction. However, more needs to be done to
target, encourage, mobilize and support the participation of workers of
color in the unions to be more active and visible in the work of USLAW/National
Labor Assembly at the local, national and international levels.
African American and other workers of color must be an organized force
within USLAW/National Labor Assembly and represented on every level and
committee of the organization in order to effectively push for a more
inclusive worker of color focus and participation in the overall life and
perspectives of USLAW/National Labor Assembly and the US labor movement in
general.
We are encouraged by the recognition by USLAW of the importance of
addressing this important need for inclusiveness as it begins this
historic effort of founding the National Labor Assembly at the October
meeting in Chicago.
On the days leading up to the National Labor Assembly, Black and other
workers of color must begin an online discussion on issues and resolutions
we feel should be discussed and adopted at the Assembly and other concerns
of importance as it relates to the holding of the Assembly.
Such a discussion will better help to focus our concern about racial
inclusiveness, build more interests among workers of color in attending
the Assembly, and motivate the unions to make extra efforts to involve
worker of color members of their unions in the National Labor Assembly and
the anti-war movement.
In the spirit of building real working class unity!
Statement Endorsers:
Saladin Muhammad
Saladin62@aol.com
Jerry Gordon Chair, Ohio State Labor Party*, Cleveland, OH 44118
Shafeah Mbalia, National Association of Letter Carriers Local 1729*,
Greenville, NC.
Kristen Rutter, AFSCME L3299*
Dennis Serrette, CWA National Director of Education*
Jerry Tucker, Exec Director United Health Care Workers of St Louis*
Michael Eisenscher, Coordinator, Labor Committee for Peace & Justice*,
Bay Area, CA
Michael-David Sasson, Vice-President CUE Local 3 and Labor Greens Network
Co-Convener*
Efia Nwangaza, Afrikan-Am Institute for Studies & Planning*,
Greenville, SC
Bill Fletcher, Jr, Executive Director, TransAfrica Forum*
Black Telephone Workers for Justice, NJ
Joslyn Williams, President, Washington, DC Labor Council*
Marsha Steinberg, Delegate, SEIU Local 660, Los Angeles*
Alan Benjamin and Ed Rosario, Co-coordinators, OWC Continuatons Committee
*
* organizations for identification only