May Day message from the Iraqi Freedom Congress:

The first of May is International Workers Day; it's a day of solidarity between workers of the world, a day in which the workers show that the world can't be run without them. This year's first of May witnesses popular uprisings for freedom and prosperity in the Middle East, uprisings that have overthrown corrupt regimes and threatened others which have changed the political equations in the region and the world. In these uprisings workers played a key role in achieving their just demands.

In Iraq during the last eight years, workers have been denied their rights to organize and protest. These rights have been banned under the former regime and carried over to the new "democratic" Iraq. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have put together a plan in which the Iraqi government is to discontinue subsidizing major projects, paving the road to privatize them. Part of the plan is to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers if implemented. Along with this plan, the World Bank and IMF have instructed the Iraqi government to eliminate or decrease the number of items presented in the food stamp, de-subsidize fuel prices, freeze employees' salaries and wages and privatize education and health care.

Furthermore, the killing and slaughter that was run by the sectarian fractions have never stopped taking the lives of workers in the workplace. In addition, these fractions have established sectarian based workers federations and unions, created to divide the workers because the labor movement drew Iraq's political history in the first half of the last century by overthrowing corrupt cabinets and forcing new laws, such as the labor law in 1927.

Today, in the midst of these revolutionary situations in Iraq and the region, the workers in Iraq are carrying the task of saving the society from these burdens. Every step towards achieving any demand is a crucial achievement not only for workers but for the entire society.

Lets make the first of May of this year a day of rejection of occupation's economic and political agenda, a day of rejection of all sorts of corruption, a day of rejection of impoverishing millions of people in Iraq, a day of rejection of random arrests, secret prisons and torture and a day of rejection of the abhorrent sectarian quotas.

Long Live the first of May.

 

Amjad Ali

of Iraq Freedom Congress