This week's protests

Iraqi oil workers protest over pay, threaten to strike

 
Reuters report (May 10^th): About 300 Iraqi oil workers staged a brief walkout in the southern oil hub of Basra, protesting a lack of financial benefits and threatening to halt production if their demands were not met.
The demonstrators were engineers, technicians and workers at the state-run South Oil Co., which has some 18,000 employees developing some of Iraq’s big oil fields. They protested for three hours at the company’s headquarters in Basra and at another location near an oil field west of the city.

They warned they could shut down production in some oil fields if they were not given financial bonuses similar to those given their peers working in fields that are being developed by international oil companies.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Business/Middle-East/2011/May-10/Iraqi-oil-workers-protest-over-pay-threaten-to-strike.ashx#axzz1MQFeM0nU

Iraqi protesters demand better services, jobs

AP report (May 13^th):  More than 500 Iraqi protesters have gathered in downtown Baghdad, demanding better government services and more jobs.

The demonstration Friday at Baghdad's central Tahrir Square was one of the largest in Iraq in recent weeks.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110513/API/1105130628