The reasons why
Iranian workers don’t trust international organisation and don‘t embrace unions
and syndicates are as follows:
1-Repression, bans and censorship dominate workers issues. For many
years no independent organisation has managed to work and those portrayed as ‘workers
organisations’ such as khaneh kargar’ and Islamic shoras are one way or another
associated with the government. Any spontaneous attempt by the workers to fight
for their right is severely suppressed (killing workers in Shahr Babak is the latest example of this ). For
quite a while after this incident it was impossible for any labour activist to
travel to this town and the whole city was under a security cover. Another
example is that those workers who went on strike in protest at workers deaths caused by hard work
in Iran Khodro were dismissed with a
number of excuses. Those who were contract workers found out that their
contracts will not be renewed, others have been dispersed to remote sections of
the factory to such an extent that they
couldn’t keep in touch with each other.
2-Unemployement is so severe amongst workers that no worker has any job
security. Given the bankrupt policy of reducing work force in all
production/service units every day workers face the threat of unemployment.
Mass unemployment means that workers in almost all sectors accept pay well
below the official wage set at 120 dollars a month. For this reason, especially
given the predominance of contract work amongst production and service sector
workers, who have no responsibility to re-employ these workers, workers feel they have no job
security and that deprives them the right to organise, fearful that they might
made redundant.
3- All sections associated with
the oil industry, from
exploration, excavation, export, production of oil based products … have
been classified as ‘strategic industries’ by the state and the security forces
, and it is forbidden to set up any
workers organisation in these industries. In addition, as a result of recent
changes and the predominance of foreign and contract companies, in all oil related sectors, these
companies have been given a free hand to exploit the workforce and all labour
rights in such industries are dictated by the contract between the workers and
the manager. In such workshops unemployment insurance, right to a job because of duration of
employment are not guaranteed.
4-Because of 25years of repression and dictatorship in our society
workers have come to the conclusion that there is no point setting up organisations
and syndicates and that confronted by state repression they have no means to
act. Years of repression have taught them that the state response to any
workers protest is prison, torture. There is no precedence of workers victory even a limited one. As a
result of this workers have no hope in joint mass action.
5-Iranian workers have no trust of international organisations, and believe
them to be tools used by the state in
the preservation of the current situation. The activities of international organisations
and their contact with centres such as ‘khaneh kargar’ and other such state set
up organisations , accepting them as
genuine workers organisations has developed this further in workers mind frame. For example workers ,
even worker activists have no idea what were the conclusions of the visit by
ICFTU and Mrs Anna … regarding eth situation of Shahr Babak workers and have no
idea if this visit had any results?
6- As the news of the ILO visit to Iran was kept secret , their visit
left no impression on Iranian workers and only a minority of labour activists
became aware of this visit and even the after the end of the visit. These
representatives either had no opportunity to meet workers representatives or
even didn’t show any interest in meeting genuine workers representatives. (Of course the regime did its best to avoid
such contacts).
When workers are arrested for organising a May Day celebration and then
released on bail of over 200million tomans , how can anyone expect independent
workers organisations in