Iranian workers are denied the basic right of assembly but each year they valiantly mark May Day. Iran’s labour movement has a long and courageous history: despite the fact that workers have no right to form unions or express their grievances, many bravely do, facing imprisonment for claiming unpaid wages.

This year, worker groups in Iran joined together to issue a statement highlighting their circumstances on International Workers’ Day. The following is an extract:

“The so-called ‘rationalization of subsidies’ [elimination of all subsidies for basic goods being carried out by Ahmadinejad’s government] is ever more destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of workers’ families, yet we do not have the right to freely protest against this situation. With the dizzying increase in the prices of energy [gas and electricity] and the ever-increasing shutdown of factories, hundreds and thousands of workers are forced to join the millions of unemployed. Meanwhile, they [the rulers] change the terms and conditions for unemployment benefits to the detriment of workers; they obtain franchises in hospitals and clinics that attend to workers, and set different criteria for retirement benefits; they tie up construction workers’ insurances with labyrinthian bureaucratic rules; and at the same time that raise the prices of basic goods by astronomical amounts [by 5 to 8 times] , while raising the minimum wage for workers by an insulting  9.0%.

In our view, for millions of desperate and destitute workers’ families trying to scrape a living in these conditions, all the mentioned factors have no meaning other than increased pressure in trying to make ends meet. However, we the workers will not be observers of the slow death of our families and will not accept the daily assault on our lives and livelihoods, but stand unified against poverty, misery and the total lack of social rights. In this context, we the Iranian workers announce our utter abhorrence for the current conditions, and call on all the people in the country to collectively raise their general demands.

Signed:
Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
Free Union of Iranian Workers
Committee for reopening Painters and Interior Design Workers’ Syndicate
Committee for reopening Mechanical Metals Workers Syndicate
Society in Defense of Workers’ Rights
Committee for Pursuit of Forming Workers’ Organizations
Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations”

Full statement and demands can be read here

Jailed activist Mansour Osanlou who has been a key figure in Iran’s worker movement has taken this further.

I wish 1 May to become a day of anger for my fellow countrymen and fellow workers – a day of anger of all the wage-earners of Iran.” In a note from prison he continued, “We welcome 1 May in such circumstances that the ruling dictatorship and despots in their fascist approach bar every protest, in effect leaving us to die of hunger and poverty while telling us not to make a sound.

24 scholars worldwide have signed a statement by The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) recognising  jailed workers in Iran.