Weekly protests by retirees from the oil, steel, telecommunications and sugar industries, along with retired teachers and other workers who find it impossible to make ends meet, have been taking place across Iran for well over a year and are expanding and getting a little bolder today. Wages and pensions don’t come close to keeping up with rising prices for food, housing and other essentials. Inflation is officially above 45% a year.
Working people from many nationalities — Persians, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Arabs and more — are joining the nationwide coordinated protests.
Workers widely oppose the attempts by the reactionary clerical regime to develop nuclear weapons, destroy Israel and kill or expel the Jews there.
U.S. economic sanctions, ostensibly imposed to pressure the Iranian regime to stop its nuclear weapons program, are making the crisis even worse for working people.
“A retiree’s salary lasts only a week”; “Our expenses are in dollars, our wages in riales”; and “Free health care is our undeniable right” were among the chants at the Feb. 16 protest by retired workers in Ahvaz — a city with large numbers from the Arab and Bakhtiari nationalities — one of more than a dozen similar actions that weekend.
Other slogans included “Neither the parliament nor the government cares about the people” and “Not threats, jailings or executions — nothing can stop us!”
Protesters in Ahvaz marched from the Khuzestan province governor’s office to Helal Cinema Square and back, “to attract more attention,” a participant said. They started out marching in the street, but two cops told them to move to the sidewalk. “We have no problem with the gathering as long as it does not take place on the streets,” said one of the cops.
“We will not live under oppression,” chanted protesters the same day in Gilan province, where a majority of the population are from the Gilak nationality. They carried placards calling for freedom for Ismail Gerami, a retired electrician who has been arrested multiple times; for Nowruz Zabihi, a retired worker arrested in Tehran on his way to a recent retirees’ protest; and Sharifeh Mohammadi, a Kurdish woman and former member of the Committee to Help Form Labor Unions, who has been sentenced to death.
On Feb. 15 hundreds of retired oil workers from around the country demonstrated outside the Ministry of Oil in Tehran, protesting attacks on their pensions and backing fights by workers for wage increases.