Major excerpts from the Central Labor Council of the Islamic Shoras (councils) statement were published in the Tehran daily Kar va Kargar (Labor and Laborer).

"During more than 20 years of revolution, demands of labor have not received adequate attention," the statement says at the outset, "as if it is forgotten whose able hands were those which helped the revolution triumph, and how [workers] sacrificing material conditions of their lives have marched forward, along with other sections of the society, in all different arenas of war and construction."

"Aren't the oppressed supposed to inherit the Earth?" the statement rhetorically asks. "What kind of rule is this that we give up our lives and property in order to reach the goals of the revolution, but once that victory is attained we are to be forgotten." Until now, the Council statement asserts, "in deference to the welfare of the regime we have not taken any action," but it calls on the workers in the new year "to stand firm against those who have aligned themselves against the toilers, and to prove that...from now on we will take our destiny into our own powerful hands." The Iranian new year, Nowruz, starts March 21, the first day of spring.

The semiofficial Central Labor Council is reflecting the anger that a frontal assault by the ruling class has aroused among the workers. As soon as the elections for Majles [Parliament] were completed in February, the outgoing deputies approved a long dormant antilabor bill disqualifying workers in small workshops of five or less from the benefits of the Labor Law. This law provides some job security, health insurance, retirement benefits, and vacation time.

The new bill is sugarcoated to exempt the existing shops, and to be applied on an experimental basis for six years. Its defenders demagogically claim that it will help solve the country's unemployment problem. But the workers are not buying it and have been organizing protest meetings to demand that it be rescinded.

At a mid-March meeting of workers, Abu Talebi, a labor leader in the oil rich province of Khuzistan, spoke out against the bill. He said the new bill "not only will not solve the unemployment problem, but it will exacerbate it."

Three weeks after the bill was passed Torkashavand, the executive secretary of the Khaneh Kargar [Worker's House] in the Ray county near Tehran, reported that some workshops have already started laying off workers. He said he knew of print shops and bakeries that were planning to lay off workers in order to get the requirements of the Labor Law off their backs. Workers in the province of Mazandaran by the Caspian Sea in the north held a protest demonstration in the provincial capital.

Daryabegi, the executive secretary of the Khaneh Kargar in Mazandaran, estimated that the new bill will eventually disqualify 70 percent of the workers in the country from receiving benefits of the Labor Law.

In these protest meetings, speakers have reported formation of independent trade unions in oil, steel, electricity and agriculture. Abu Talebi told the audience in Khuzistan that many workers in the province have expressed their readiness to join these independent trade unions. This is a new development.

During the revolution, workers organized shoras, which were independent factory committees taking on revolutionary tasks. After the shah's overthrow, and especially during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 while the working people were fighting at the front to defend the gains of the revolution, pressures from the capitalist regime weakened the shoras, sapped their independence, and prevented the workers from forming trade unions.

Late in February, representatives of the Islamic shoras of Tehran province held a protest demonstration in front of the Majles building in the capital city. They demanded that Majles rescind the antilabor bill it passed earlier. The daily newspaper, Hamshahri, estimated the size of the demonstration to be two to three thousand.

Then, on March 8, a more militant demonstration of thousands of workers' representatives from across the country took place in front of the Majles. Kar va Kargar reported that workers of all nationalities, "Kurd, Turk, Baluch and Gilak" protested in unison against the infamous antilabor bill.

Demonstrators "gave an ultimatum to the Majles deputies and governmental authorities that if their demands are not met, the protests will culminate in strikes," the paper reported. Among the slogans raised in the demonstration were, "Labor Law, blood money of our martyrs!"; "Condemn the new slavery!"; "Majles Nowruz present to us, breads made of bricks"; "Death to the enemies of workers!"; and "May 1: strike, strike!"

Majles deputy Tajaldin from the industrial city Isfahan spoke in the March 8 demonstration and appealed to the government to introduce emergency legislation to rescind the bill. But so far, the government of president Khatemi has stayed silent on this question.

Elias Hazrati, who was elected to the new Majles from Tehran, spoke at the demonstration. Addressing his remarks to the outgoing Majles, he warned, "These are only workers' representatives in this demonstration, but if ranks of workers were to congregate here, all the streets of Tehran would be filled with people."  
 
 
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