Here’s something I learned today via the estimable RickB.

In 1987, Saddam Hussein passed Law 150, outlawing trade unions in the public sector and preventing ‘public sector workers organising or going on strike. Law 150 also changed the status of employees in state-owned enterprises to civil servants, depriving public sector workers of the right to organise.’ Iraq having a small private sector, the law affected 80 per cent of the workforce.

The law has never been repealed.

The US State Department’s Iraq Country Reports on Human Rights Practices has this to say about workers’ rights in the newly liberated and democratized country:

The exercise of labor rights remained limited, largely due to insurgent and sectarian?driven violence, high unemployment, and maladapted labor organizational structures and laws. Union activity is also inhibited by the 2005 Decree 8750, which cancelled unions’ leadership boards, froze their assets, and formed an interministerial committee to administer unions’ assets and assess their capacity to resume activity.

No mention of Law 150 that was left in place in 2003 by US viceroy Paul Bremer when he reverted the Iraqi legal system to that of the pre-Saddam years.