Iraqi oil, health, teacher demands unmet

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Iraq's teachers and healthcare workers, like the oil unions earlier this year, are demanding the government take action on improving working conditions.

The teachers union representing workers in 15 provinces took to the streets of Baghdad Sunday in a one-day strike, saying it will escalate actions if the government doesn't deal next month.

The teachers say they deserve the same pay as colleagues in the safer Kurdistan region, IraqSlogger.com reports.

The Ministry of Education "supports the demands of the teachers but it has not acted in a serious way with the Council of Ministers and the Committee on Education in the Parliament," said Amir al-Qaisi of the Iraqi Teachers' Syndicate. "The ministry's position is one of a spectator to the educational reality in Iraq."

Aside from pay disparity, the union says there is a lack of badly needed investment in the school system and buildings. There's also the rampant threat to security, with a director of a school in Baghdad being assassinated last month. Women also face threats by those who believe they are second-class to men.

The General Federation of Iraqi Workers has backed the plight of healthcare workers in Basra, including an increase of the average $100 per month salary and parity of hazardous pay with doctors and medical assistants, according to statements passed to the GFIW to United Press International.

Basra has been a hotspot of union activity, which made headlines this year as Iraq's oil workers demanded a say in controversial oil law negotiations and an increase in pay and other working conditions.

Oil unions made short-term halts on pipelines and threatened to do more, even as security forces surrounded the striking workers and arrest warrants were issued, sparking international outcry.

The national oil minister has relied on a decades-old anti-union law in issuing a directorate to the ministry not to deal with the union.

"The law enacted under the Saddam regime is still acted upon and implemented by the government in Iraq," Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions President Hassan Jumaa Awad told UPI in London last month. "Up until now the Iraqi government has not repealed these acts and are in the same position, basically."

Awad said the oil workers' demands have largely gone unmet.

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Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor

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(e-mail: blando@upi.com)