Two labor organizations reported on Thursday, June 20, that a number of project workers from several companies in oil regions have gone on strike. Some reports have stated that the number of striking workers is at least 3,000.
The Council of Organizing Informal Oil Workers noted that the project workers had previously announced they would start protests if their demands were not met by June 20. It wrote, “Contractual project workers at Dasht Abbas, Samin, and Darbast Bandon Zamani Company went on strike on Wednesday, June 19, demanding higher wages and a schedule of 14 days of work followed by 14 days of rest.”
The Council for Organizing Protests of Oil Contract Workers also reported that workers employed by a contracting company at the Salman Farsi Petrochemical Plant went on strike on Thursday, demanding higher wages and a 14-day work and 14-day rest schedule.
The received reports indicate the formation of protest cells in other project sectors.
This labor organization emphasized that an important demand of the project workers, like us third-party workers, is the elimination of contractors and added, “There should be no difference in the wage and living conditions of workers who work for oil, gas, and petrochemical companies.”
The Council of Organizing Informal Oil Workers (third-party workers or those working with specific contracts for oil companies) declared that “there should be equal pay and equal working conditions for the same work” and wrote, “It is the right of all of us third-party, temporary, volume, daily wage, specific contract, contractual, and project workers to enjoy all the job benefits of the oil industry like the official workers.”
Meanwhile, reports from Telegram channels of some labor organizations and retirees indicate that project workers from 30 companies in refineries, petrochemicals, and other oil, gas, and power plant centers, mainly in southern Iran, went home after handing in their tools.
According to this report, more than 3,000 workers have joined the campaign so far.
Project (contract) workers have gone on strike several times in recent years to protest their living conditions. Additionally, the number of labor protests, such as strikes and gatherings, has been on the rise in various parts of Iran in recent years. These protests have mainly been directed at the non-payment of wages on time, low wages, layoffs from factories and companies, and privatization.
Meanwhile, the regime’s Etemad newspaper reported on Thursday that “an examination of labor protests over the past 27 months from March 2022 to June 2024 shows that during this period, thousands of coal, copper, iron ore, and chrome mine workers in the provinces of Kerman, Mazandaran, Yazd, Razavi Khorasan, South Khorasan, and Semnan have demanded their legal rights in gatherings that lasted from a few hours to several days and weeks.”
According to this report, “while out of the 12 protest gatherings of mine workers in these 27 months, the common focus of 10 protest gatherings was the increase in wages and several months’ delay in wage payments. In these protests, the line of coal mine workers has been much longer, and it seems that the ground for the violation of the rights of underground mine workers is more extensive.”
