Vol. 73/No. 48      December 14, 2009

Workers protest outside Wagon Pars factory in Arak, Iran, in early October against nonpayment of wages. Workers haven’t been paid for six months. Wagon Pars makes train cars.

The semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) reported that on November 12 Iran Telecommunication Industries (ITI) workers in Tehran prevented the main stockholder and members of the executive board of the company from entering their central office. The workers were protesting the nonpayment of their wages for the last 11 months. After a few hours security forces intervened. The workers allowed the bosses to enter the building under the condition that they would address their grievances, ILNA reported.

A week earlier 1,000 ITI workers had demonstrated in front of the provincial government offices in Shiraz, calling for the dismissal of the governor. Workers were demanding nine months’ back pay.

Four hundred workers at the Aluminum Factory in Arak rallied in the plant November 15 and pulled a Basij emblem off the wall. A week earlier the workers had held a protest rally in the factory yard.

The Basij is an auxiliary formation of the Pasdaran, or Guards of the Islamic Revolution, the military force that is increasingly dominant in the government. The Basij and Pasdaran have been buying up more and more privately owned or government-auctioned industries. Aluminum workers in Arak have protested because the Basij is taking over the company and refusing to pay workers back wages.

As the pace of factory closings and layoffs increase, the capitalists in Iran, as elsewhere, are attempting to trample on contracts and withhold workers’ wages and benefits to the degree they can. Back wages and benefits are at the center of workers’ protest actions.

Two hundred fifty workers at the Jahad Nasr Company, which does housing construction projects in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, went on strike November 11. They had not been paid for four months.

In late October some 200 workers at the Alborz Ceramics Factory, near the city of Ghazvin, marched out of the plant and rallied for an hour in front of the municipal building in town. Then they marched around the town while surrounded by security forces. The workers chanted, “Government support to workers: is a lie, is a lie! Workers: solidarity, solidarity!”

A few days later the Ziaran meatpacking workers in Ghazvin, owed back wages for six months, marched nearly five miles to press their grievances with the municipality’s governor. Meat packers said major problems started when the company was privatized in 2007.

On November 2 bread bakers reached an agreement with the Sanandaj municipality, beating back an attempt to cut their wages and winning a slight wage increase. In late October the bakers struck for three hours to warn against attempts to cut their wages, and issued an ultimatum that they would strike for a whole day if their demands were not met. Bread is the main staple of workers in Iran and is heavily subsidized by the government.

Ali Najati, the central leader of the Haft Tape (Seven Hills) sugar workers union in Khuzistan, was arrested and taken to prison November 14 to serve a six-month term imposed earlier. Shortly before, four other members of the executive committee of the union started serving four- to six-month prison sentences.

Ever since the organizing drive started for the Haft Tape union, its leaders have been harassed and intermittently jailed for union activity.

Reza Rakhsahn, a member of the union, told ILNA that more than 1,000 Haft Tape workers rallied to demand their back pay. ILNA pointed out that the rally took place after the leaders of the union went to jail, indicating that the workers are not intimidated.
 
 
Related articles:
Washington prepares 4th round of Iran sanctions
London: Bus drivers strike over wage freeze
Philadelphia transit workers end 6-day strike
New Zealand miners win a new contract  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home