این مقاله درباره وضعیت جنبش کارگری ایران ، فعالین کارگری و تاثیر تحریم ها بر اوضاع آنان است که برای نشریه ویووپوینت تهیه شده است.
Union leader Reza Shahabi has become a hero because of his refusal to cooperate with the prison authorities. After a month long hunger strike and international support, Shahabi finally received treatment in hospital
The international economic crisis has reached Iran too. The already oppressed working class is hardest hit by the capitalist crisis. But the Iranian workers at the same time face other problems too. They are dealing with a dictatorship that refuses them the right to organize, a dictatorship pushing the country into thorny international and regional conflicts.
The economic and political crisis in Iran has aggravated under the regime of Ahmadinejad making the situation for the Iranian people, especially the working and poor classes, even more difficulties. The Ahmadinejad regime has been busy implementing privatization and neoliberal structural-adjustment programs. In fact, the twenty-year-long process concluded under Ahamdinejad who has dutifully signed to the so-called Amendment to the Article 44 of the Constitution. This Amendment envisions a wholesale dismantling of the public sector and paved the way for its handover to the capitalists.
For instance, there have been cuts in health care and education whole food subsidies have been abolished. Likewise, social insurances have either deteriorated or altogether abolished. There are also mass retrenchments alongside a proposal of a new labor law that annuls the right to permanent employment contracts and denies the employees a few rights that they still enjoy. On top of that, waves of factory closures and layoffs have rendered them even vulnerable. In essence, the proposed new law hands over the decision-making over working conditions to the employers.
The proposed law would reduce the employees to the status of a slave on an unregulated work market. Meantime, working-class activists are sentenced to jail and every kind of protest is silenced. Owing to these deteriorating working conditions, huge cutbacks and ‘reforms’ introduced by the regime, Ahmadinejad has been praised by the IMF-boss for finally fulfilling all the demands the IMF placed on Iran.
At the same time, complex political situation in the country and regime’s strange attitude is sparking deep conflicts with the West. The nuclear ambitions of the Iranian regime have provided the West with the possibility and the excuse to adopt a tough stance towards Iran through economic embargoes and increasingly serious threats of a military invasion. The economic embargoes primarily hit the Iranian people, especially the working classes, leading to an even shoddier situation. The impact of these curbs is becoming visible: significant lowering of the living standards. But these sanctions have also given the state more power and an alibi for increased oppression. There are workers not been paid for months. Others are not allowed to form their own organizations. Similarly, the workers on strike face unemployment without unemployment insurance. All these layers of workers are even harder repressed by the regime. “The times are hard and the country is threatened by embargoes and war”, is the excuse the regime is using in order to legitimize a harsh stance against the working class.
Step by step, Islamic regime is increasing repression against workers. Consequently, it is becoming difficult for the workers to achieve their most fundamental demands, to organize and to unite with other progressive social and political movements.
Also, the labor activists engage in a daily combat with the Islamist-capitalist regime. Several working-class activists have been imprisoned in Iran for a long time. Reza Shahabi, board member of the independent union for bus drivers, is one of them. He was arrested about a year ago and has since been in jail without trial. Shahabi has become a hero because of his refusal to cooperate with the prison authorities. He suffers from severe health problems and was refused treatment for a long time. After a month long hunger strike and international support, Shahabi finally received treatment and had an operation in hospital.
Several others from various occupations, like Ali Nejati, Shahrokh Zamani, Mohammad Jarahi, Nima Pour Yaghob, Behnam Ebrahimzade, Sassan Vahebivash and Ebrahim Madadi and Ali akhavan have been sentenced to long prison terms for their activism to organize the working class movement. With the worsening economic situation as a result of crisis and embargo, one can expect intensification of strikes and protests as well as regime's clampdown on the working class. However, despite harsh sentences and arrests there are strikes on a daily basis against the deteriorating situation.
(Translated, for Viewpoint, by Linn Hjort)
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