Summary
Arab labour federation established in Haifa in November 1942 by the coalition around Bulus Farah’s Rays of Hope Club, which quickly won workplaces long neglected by the Palestine Arab Workers Society and later merged into the Arab Workers’ Congress (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3359-3362, 3521-3538).
Details
- Established in November 1942, the FATULS quickly won the allegiance of unionists at the Iraq Petroleum Company, the just-completed Consolidated Refineries and the Shell Oil installation in the Haifa area, and later organised port and camp workers; at the end of 1942 the Labor Department estimated it had some 1,000-1,500 members, against the PAWS’s countrywide about 5,000 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3359-3362).
- A significant portion of the PAWS’s membership belonged to branches under the leadership of communists and their allies, so from 1943 a sizable segment of the organised Arab working class was effectively communist-led (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3361). Lockman speaks of “the communists who controlled the FATULS” and played a major role within the PAWS (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3415), and the National Liberation League from its inception included the leaders of both the left wing within the PAWS and of the Haifa-based FATULS (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3467).
- al-Ittihad was the National Liberation League’s organ, “originally established by the FATULS in Haifa and later the newspaper of the new labor federation controlled by the NLL” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3463).
- In summer 1944 the FATULS formed a “Supreme Arab Workers’ Council” with the seceding Nazareth branch of the PAWS, which existed only on paper (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3529-3531).
- The FATULS soon merged itself into the Arab Workers’ Congress after that federation was formed in August 1945 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3535-3538).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Bulus Farah, Palestine Arab Workers Society, Arab Workers’ Congress, National Liberation League, Haifa