A while back I had the honour of meeting some trade unionists from different Iraqi unions at a UK union event. I remember being extremely impressed by their bravery in trying to build a labour movement against the odds. One had received death threats simply for being a woman in a high profile position, another got them for the fact their union consciously described itself as a secular organiation.

Added to this, they faced problems with the occupation. When the Americans came to town in 2003, they turned over the IFTU (Iraqi Federation of Workers’ Trade Unions) offices, causing a lot of damage. Paul Bremer, the US Adminstrator of Iraq, refused to lift Saddam’s anti-union law, which banned activities outright in much of the economy.

A few months ater I met them, I learned that they hadn’t been exaggerating at all, when Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the IfTU was tortured and murdered in his own home by suspected former Baathists. Saleh had originally been imprisoned by Saddam for his union activities and had his death sentence commuted to exile. After the war, which he opposed, he returned quickly from Europe, hoping to help rebuild his country’s civil society, and not under any illusion as to the risks he was taking.

I’m a union rep myself and am probably also something of a coward. I’m sure I’d pack it in like a shot if I were to get death threats or see colleagues killed. The worst inconvenience I ever get is being bored for hours in branch meetings, and I’d not know where to start with some of the problems faced by my Iraqi counterparts.

In short, Iraq’s fledgling labour movement is getting shat on from all sides in this chaos; resistance, baathists, occupation - and that’s before they even start dealing with their employers.

A small but welcome call for help has come this week though in the form of a new book (Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions) by the IFTU’s Abdullah Muhsin and Democratiya’s Alan Johnson. A year on from Hadi Saleh’s murder, it celebrates his life’s work with a history of the labour movement in Iraq, from independence, through dictatorship and to the troubles and achievements in adversity of the current period.

I’m very glad to see a bit of old fashioned international labour movement solidarity going on here, and i hope much more comes of it. Luckily there’s a tangible thing we can do to help - go online and buy a copy of Hadi Never Died. I can’t recommend it personally yet as I’ll admit I’ve only just got a copy and haven’t actually read it! (though flicking through it seems very well put together). Main bonus with it is that all the profits from it are going to the TUC’s appeal fund for helping Iraqi unions. You can get your own here: http://www.tuc.org.uk/publications/viewPub.cfm?frmPubID=479

(For further reading, I got some of this from the TUC’s Brendan Barber writing about Hadi Saleh on Comment is Free - though he met Saleh himself, and puts it much better than me!)

Dress down Tuesday, hurrah, courtesy of the TUC!

Pity I’m normally fairly lax on this front anyway. I tend to start a new job looking fairly dapper (I invariably have to buy proper trousers and shoes for the first time in ages), but then as I start spotting more and more colleagues in elements of mufti, the appearance slips. My excuse for today’s work outfit of jeans is that they’re smart (they have less holes than most of my jeans), and my shirt does have a collar, even if it’s otherwise a bit raggedy and tent-like.

Anyway this story is about unions calling for British bosses to do like Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi. Last year, he took off his tie and urged his country’s famously formal workforce to leave their formalwear at home so firms could turn down the air conditioning, and save a little bit of the environment. I like the idea of a PM who’s that flexible and practical in his look - I imagine he would be top of my list of world leaders to sing karaoke with. Of course it’s not bad either to have one who likes to parade the little details of good British design, and if Mr Tony were to start unbuttoning his sleeves too, we’d all see the Paul Smith pinups on the inside!

Sometimes being a union activist can seem a bit like being a living history exhibit - especially when you’re something of a n00b sitting in a branch meeting with all the unfathomable age-old rules and age-old grudges. Anyway, it’s nice to know, via this missive from the future published in The Morning News, that giant-mega-space-robots are going to be having just the same bother eons from now.
(Hat-tip Communicate or Die)

…and if you want to find out which Transformer your branch secretary is, here’s a handy quiz.