On the occasion of International Workers’ Day, May 1, the dire economic conditions of Iranian workers have reached a critical point.
Issues such as wages below the poverty line, delayed paychecks, lack of job security, increasing inflation, and decreasing purchasing power have put immense pressure on millions of workers and their families in Iran.
Several labor activists and unions have emphasized the need for “unity, organization, and mobilization” among workers and wage earners to change the current situation in Iran, criticizing the government’s “anti-labor policies.”
The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, in its statement, highlighted that this year’s International Workers’ Day is being commemorated under circumstances where hundreds of workers, teachers, labor rights defenders, and toilers are facing unfair sentences and imprisonment. They added that suppression, harassment, and persecution of toilers, women, and youth in Iran have intensified.
The union addressed various issues faced by Iranian workers, including lack of job security, temporary work contracts, expansion of subcontracting companies, unpaid wages, non-implementation of job classifications, failure to harmonize the rights and benefits of retirees, and wages below the poverty line.
They also criticized the “astronomical housing costs, rampant inflation, and exorbitant prices” which have imposed unbearable conditions on a significant portion of the working class.
The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company emphasized that “putting pressure on pioneering workers, threatening and intimidating them, dismissal, detention, imprisonment, and unjust verdicts have become the norm.” They stated that even for organizing independent events on International Workers’ Day, workers are not spared.
The Syndicate wrote: “Union members have been arrested and beaten many times in the past on International Labor Day” and “in recent years, they have been repeatedly summoned and threatened to stop union activities.”
Moreover, the Free Union of Iranian Workers, in its statement on International Workers’ Day, referred to nearly two years since the “revolutionary uprising of Iranian people and its brutal suppression” and highlighted the resilience of women and oppressed masses in reshaping the political landscape of the country.
According to the Free Union of Iranian Workers, in these circumstances, Iran regime seeks to maintain its precarious position through regional military adventurism and domestic intimidation by issuing and implementing inhumane execution sentences and aggressively targeting women and girls opposing compulsory hijab.
The statement emphasized that “only a popular social-political revolution and the formation of a secular and democratic government based on freedom and equality, rejecting exploitation, can put an end to the inhumane conditions existing in the country and the warmongering and atrocities in the Middle East.”
On April 29, the semiofficial ILNA news agency quoted Ali Ziaei, the head of the Crime Scene Investigation Group of the Forensic medicine Organization of the country, that in 2023, 2,115 people lost their lives in work-related accidents, indicating an 11.3% increase compared to the previous year.
According to a number of labor activists, this official statistic does not include workers not covered by the labor law or those working in the so-called “under-stairs (very small businesses)” workshops.
Additionally, the Coordinating Council of Nurses‘ Protesters stated, “As nurses whose lives are drained in hellish work environments in hospitals and who suffer from exhaustion with meager wages, on International Workers’ Day, we declare we will no longer submit to servitude.”
“Reforming tariffing and registering nursing services under the name of nurses, eliminating compulsory overtime, and correcting overtime compensation” are among the demands raised by this council.
