The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) is the second largest union federation in Iraq.
The federation was formed by members of the Union of the Unemployed of Iraq, which is connected to the Worker Communist Party of Iraq as a left-wing alternative to the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The latter is currently the only legally recognized union federation in Iraq; it is closely connected to the Iraqi Communist Party, an organization which opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 but decided to work with the new political institutions established after the occupation.
- This "legal recognition" of one union federation over another is a violation of the International Labour Organisation's Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, to which Iraq and all the occupying powers are signatory.(, look for Convention 87; Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948.)
The FWCUI opposes both the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and the Islamist elements of the Iraqi insurgency, and it is often repressed by both the foreign and Islamist forces. Many anti-war movements around the world have provided venues for FWCUI speaker tours. A third labor formation known as the Federation of Oil Unions in Iraq also exists.
The FWCUI's members have led a number of strikes, and are particularly strong around the Basra region.
Famous quotes containing the words federation of, federation, workers, councils and/or unions:
“Women realize that we are living in an ungoverned world. At heart we are all pacifists. We should love to talk it over with the war-makers, but they would not understand. Words are so inadequate, and we realize that the hatred must kill itself; so we give our men gladly, unselfishly, proudly, patriotically, since the world chooses to settle its disputes in the old barbarous way.”
—General Federation Of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)
“Women realize that we are living in an ungoverned world. At heart we are all pacifists. We should love to talk it over with the war-makers, but they would not understand. Words are so inadequate, and we realize that the hatred must kill itself; so we give our men gladly, unselfishly, proudly, patriotically, since the world chooses to settle its disputes in the old barbarous way.”
—General Federation Of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Surrealism ... is the forbidden flame of the proletariat embracing the insurrectional dawn—enabling us to rediscover at last the revolutionary moment: the radiance of the workers’ councils as a life profoundly adored by those we love.”
—“Manifesto of the Arab Surrealist Movement” (1975)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)