Building Bridges:

Your Community & Labor Report – National Edition

Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash

Presents

Assaf Adiv, Coordinator of the Workers Advice Center in Israel

and

Abdullah Muhsin,

Foreign Representative of the Iraqi Federation of Workers’ Trade Unions (IFTU)



When we called Assaf Adiv, Coordinator of the Workers Advice Center in Israel, to record him for our May Day show, he was being detained at an Israeli

Checkpoint trying to reenter from Ramallah. The Workers Advice Center is a union of Arab workers in Israeli . Assaf had been escorting a fact-finding

delegation of European trade unionists to Israel and Palestine. We had to break off talking with Assaf when Israeli police started to interrogate him.

When we next talked to him on May Day, we were joined by Abdullah Muhsin, Foreign Representative of the Iraqi Federation of Workers’ Trade Unions (IFTU).

After Assaf updated us on his detention and Abdullah Gave us a short summary of the emergence of Iraqi unions, they entered into a fascinating conversation on

the massive unemployment in both regions accompanied by the importation in both cases of foreign workers

Despite massive unemployment in Iraq, U. S. contractors are bringing highly paid workers to Iraq from all over the world to do jobs that Iraqi’s

can do. Similarly, Arab workers in Israel and Palestine have been displaced from jobs in Israel by the importation of low paying contract workers who have few legal rights.

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Building Bridges is regularly broadcast over WBAI, 99.5 FM in the N.Y.C

Metropolitan area on Mondays from 7-8pm EST and streamed at http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram

for more information email knash@igc.org

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