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Plans are underway to hold an International Labor Conference in Iraq in August 2008. We see this as an important and urgent step toward strengthening and unifying the labor movement in Iraq. Only through increased solidarity in Iraq, and with workers in the region and around the world can we hope to impact the fate not only of workers but of all Iraqis.
We call upon all unions and labor organizations around the world to support this conference morally and financially. Your expressions of solidarity with workers in Iraq in the past have given us a lifeline of hope. Your continued participation and support for this conference will buoy and strengthen the Iraqi labor movement. Only through unity can we hope to achieve democracy, freedom, security and prosperity.
Iraq’s labor movement is a force for unifying our nation. A strong labor movement is also essential to the future of any democracy in Iraq. Labor unions transcend the sectarian conflict unleashed by the U.S.-led occupation. The invasion and occupation turned Iraq into an arena for settling international accounts and a base for exporting terrorism to the world. Workers represent the majority of Iraqis who do not have any interest in the ongoing terrorist violence. When sectarian gangs have attempted to transfer their conflicts into the ranks of workers, they have been rejected.
Iraq’s labor unions are the glue that binds Iraqi people in the north, center and south. In some areas, the glue is strong, but in other areas of the country unions are isolated. Our goal with the August conference is to strengthen the ties between all worker organizations and focus on our common priorities. Those who feel isolated need to know that they have support from the international labor movement.
Iraqi workers need your support if we are to speak in one voice to reclaim our sovereignty.
Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. Millions of Iraqis, the majority of them workers, have been killed, wounded and displaced inside and outside of Iraq as a result of the U.S.-led occupation.
In the name of our “liberation,” the invaders have destroyed our nation’s infrastructure, bombed our neighbourhoods, broken into our homes, traumatized our children, assaulted and arrested many of our family members and neighbours, permitted the looting of our national treasures, and turned nearly twenty percent of our people into refugees.
The occupation is determined to impose its economic and political will on Iraqis. The occupiers came with designs on our national riches - our oil - and schemes to privatize our industries, utilities, ports and public services and to put Iraq’s national resources under the control of foreign corporations and international financial institutions.

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