The Connecticut AFL-CIO and Western Connecticut AFL-CIO Central Labor Council joined with other labor bodies and submitted a resolution to the national AFL-CIO convention this summer which in part asked the AFL-CIO to call for “an immediate end to the US occupation of Iraq and to support the repeal of the Patriot Act and the reordering of national priorities toward the human needs of our people”
At the convention the AFL-CIO passed a resolution calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. The key section states “Our soldiers—the men and women risking their lives in Iraq—come from America's working families. They are our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers, our husbands and wives. They deserve to be properly equipped with protective body gear and up-armored vehicles. And they deserve leadership that fully values their courage and sacrifice. Most importantly, they deserve a commitment from our country's leaders to bring them home rapidly.”
The claims against the former Iraqi government that created support for the invasion, that it had secret stores of weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the US and that it have ties to those who attacked the US on September 11, 2001 have been shown to be groundless.
The cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq both in human life and money has been immense. Thousands of Americans are dead, tens of thousands of Iraqis have perished, and the eventual cost to the US has been estimated by a former US Commerce Secretary to be over one trillion dollars [August 21, 2005 New York Times].
In Iraq conditions for workers have declined. Not only has unemployment grown, but labor leaders are being targeted for assassination and workers’ rights are being denied under a 1987 decree issued by Saddam Hussein, which the Iraqi interim government has not lifted.
Both the President’s declining poll numbers on Iraq and the positive response to Cindy Sheehan’s “Bring the troops home now” protest outside the President’s ranch show that the American people are fed up with the war.
Resolved,
The Greater Hartford Central Labor Council calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
It urges working people to attend the September 24, 2005 anti-war march and demonstration in Washington DC
It will send a spokesperson to the September 14 press conference at the New Haven Main Library called by groups organizing support for the September 24 rally
It will create a committee open to labor council delegates and members of affiliated locals to create leaflets and materials to educate unionists about the war
And it will widely publicize this resolution to all its affiliates and the media.
