As we explained in the last post about how a new class developed in Iraqi society, which is the class of workers and handicraft. These workers formed the basis for the movements and unions of Iraqi workers , which overlooked the 20^th  century, which is a large village suffers from ignorance and poverty due to the consequences of the Ottoman occupation’s domination over Iraq, this class formed a new revolutionary base in Iraqi society to demand rights, justice and equality, but the incident represented the turning point and the beginning for the renaissance of the Iraqi workers , which was the strike of the railway workers in 1927 against the British transport companies. They submitted several demands against these companies and to the Ministry of Works, with their insistence on achieving their demands, they were able to achieve an important part of them, which was “determining the number of working hours and free medical treatment”. As a result of this incident, the first association for handicraft workers was established in Iraq in 1929, after the Labor Law No. 72 of 1936 was enacted, in which it defined their rights and duties.

The Iraqi workers continued to demand their rights as part of their people’s robbed rights throughout history, such as the strike of printing press workers in 1942 to demand the application of article 72 of the 1936 Law, including limiting working hours and increasing wages by 25percent, then the strike of the workers of ”Dukhan Jaafar Company” and “Dukhan Abdul Aziz Company” workers (it is the strike of the tobacco workers who went on a general strike and held a sit-in in their factory. The strike lasted for  5 days , the police surrounded them , cut off water and food from them. The strike was a protest against the robbery of the profits of the tobacco workers and the dismissal of (14 workers) because of their union activity). This mass movement of the Iraqi workers  had the greatest impact on the emergence of a lively revolutionary base within society, which in its demands and ambitions exceeded its own rights and surpassed to larger and wider concepts such as the demand for freedom.

One of the worst periods in the Iraqi workers’ march was the Baath’s domination of power in Iraq, so it leads to finish it in two directions….

The first was to end every labor thought that is against the ideology of the Baath, they worked on this by fighting all national and leftist tendencies within the workers’ circles, so that Ba’ath took control of all labor unions, especially after the collapse of the Progressive movement in 1979, the killing, imprisonment and pursuit of all the national forces that were affiliated with it by the ruling Baathist regime.

The second was to finish the political, intellectual challenge that this active class of society represented to the regime by trying to dissolve it and merge it into a larger system , making it part of the movement that is in the favor of the authority and its goals, so the Revolutionary Command Council issued Resolution No. 150 of 1987, which transfer of all Iraqi workers to employees, the application of the military law or military industrialization to them instead of Labor Law No. 71, which was implemented in the revolution of July 14, 1987. This Baathist regime ended a struggle that lasted for decades and issued rights and duties of this active segment of society.

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