“A sea of nurses across the country is demanding their rights,” the Tehran-based Iranian Labour News Agency reported Aug. 18. Their strike, which began in Karaj and Shiraz, has spread to dozens of hospitals, involving thousands. The nurses are demanding higher pay, better work conditions and an end to forced overtime.
Hundreds of striking nurses in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province, Aug. 19, above, were joined by other hospital workers and strike supporters.
The nurses are often forced to work 16-hour shifts, face abuse from supervisors and receive low wages. “We have to cover 40 to 50 patients in each shift,” a nurse at Amir Hospital, a cancer treatment center in Shiraz, told the press. According to Aftab news, the nurses earn just $200 a month, less than nurses in other Middle Eastern countries. And they’re often paid late.
Nurses say the poor quality of medical facilities and equipment and shortages of supplies and medicine are obstacles to providing adequate care.
The strike takes place amid rising prices — a 25% increase in the cost of bread in some provinces — growing opposition to the government’s increasing use of the death penalty and the capitalist rulers’ inability to whip up support for their threats against Israel. Supervisors have threatened to fire them or have them arrested but have failed to intimidate the nurses back to work. “Don’t be afraid, we are all in this together,” is a popular chant at the protests.
“This strike is unprecedented. We have had rallies and sit-ins for months, but such a prolonged strike has never happened before,” Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, secretary general of the Nurses’ House, which organizes many nurses, told the Labour News Agency.
What is also unprecedented is the solidarity from independent unions and other workers. “Today, it is our turn to rise in support of the dedicated nurses,” wrote the Union of Truckers and Drivers of Iran on their internet site. The truckers’ union has organized numerous work stoppages over the last year, demanding higher pay for drivers and protesting fuel shortages.
Independent unions of teachers, Tehran bus drivers, metalworkers and retirees have also called for solidarity with the strike.