Local union hosts Iraqi worker photo exhibit

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/9787/1/338


Photo courtesy The Dispatcher
“You know longies here in L.A. or over there in Iraq are just working stiffs trying to do right by their families,” said Joe Kordich, retired longshore worker with Local 13 of the International Longshore Warehouse Union. “You can see it here in these pictures. They remind me of some of the guys I worked with.”

Joe was visiting a photo exhibit this past March titled “Iraqi Workers Organize — Iraq’s Oil and Port Workers and Their Union” displayed at the ILWU clerks’ Local 63 hiring hall in San Pedro, Calif. The photos, some of which appeared previously in The Dispatcher newspaper, were taken during visits to Iraq by David Bacon, who is a labor writer-photographer and depicts Iraqis working on the docks and in the oil fields of Basra, Iraq.


Photo courtesy The Dispatcher

The photos show workers unloading ships, rigging oil wells, attending union meetings as well as leading their regular family lives.

One photo shows working families living next to a military dump containing radiation-contaminated scrap metal.

FULL story at link above.