Retirees and oil workers across Iran are continuing weekly protests to defend living standards while workers elsewhere are striking in the face of an annual inflation rate of 46%. At the same time, working people in Iran have largely boycotted calls by the bourgeois clerical regime to show support for Tehran-backed Hamas’ massacre of Jews and war against Israel.
Workers at the Shoniz chocolate and candy factory in Tabriz went on strike Oct. 28 to protest the lack of a salary increase and inadequate living conditions.
Oil workers on drilling platforms in the Arab-Persian Gulf and refinery workers in southern Iran have been demanding an end to wage and retirement caps and short staffing and the refund of what they say are “excess taxes” deducted from their wages.
Workers at the Oil Products Distribution Company said, “With a meager salary alongside the delay in payment, life has become unbearable.”
Among the signs held by workers at the Continental Shelf Oil Company on Khark Island Oct. 22 were ones that said, “Salary caps = daylight robbery from employees’ pockets.” Above, another protest there the next day.
At the same time, an article in the reformist daily Shargh complained that “public opinion of Iranians has not come out against the crime of Gaza.”
When the announcer at a recent soccer game at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran called for a minute’s silence for Gaza, thousands of fans began booing and using their noisemakers. This is one more reflection of the growing opposition among working people to Tehran’s backing of Hamas and the regime’s military adventures aimed at extending its counterrevolutionary influence throughout the region.