Statement of the Network of Iranian Labor Associations on the Occasion of May Day

In the name of the creator

To all the Iranian workers, young people, and freedom lovers:

We celebrate the International Workers Day this year at a moment when our country has entered one of the most critical junctures of its recent history: the tyrannical dictatorship which has received powerful blows from the popular movement is bent on re-establishing its dominance through bloody repression and mass executions; Iran’s working class is going through one of its most difficult existential and economic challenges in memory; the incompetence and wide-spread corruption of the ruling elite, by destroying all the national and social wealth, is thrusting the country to the edge of the precipice; and the misguided and adventurist foreign policy of the regime is – as will be clear very soon – threatening the very sovereignty and integrity of our country.

Against this backdrop, we are witnessing an extraordinary flowering of the mass movement, the unmasking of the ruling class, and finally, the anticipated march of the new labor movement toward mass unionization. It should be pointed out that Iran’s progressive labor movement does not consider its struggle in isolation or in opposition to the ongoing democratic movement in the country. On the contrary, it looks at them as working in tandem with one another. In this context, we consider the new orientation of the Green Movement towards the laboring classes as a welcome and positive development that must be applauded.

The Green Movement partisans should realize that without securing the support of the working class, there can be scant chance of success in their fight for freedom and democracy. The working class movement of Iran with well over one hundred years of militant history is among one of the oldest and, until recently, one of the most influential labor movements in all the third world. From a 1904 strike by Shilat fishermen-workers against their Russian bosses, which heralded the Constitutional Revolution, to the struggles by the oil workers against the British-owned oil company, to the tumultuous events of 1979, Iran’s working class has been unequivocally in the forefront of democratic struggles—a fact that the new generation needs to be fully cognizant of.

Just as thousands of workers participated in big numbers in last year’s protest rallies – with some paying with their lives, the labor movement wants to see a reciprocal support by Green Movement activists for workers’ demands. These demands are as follows:

1. Freedom for all imprisoned labor activists.
2. The right to strike and the right to have a union of one’s own choice.
3. An end to all form of “temporary” contracts.
4. Full payment of workers’ back wages.
5. An end to discrimination against female workers.
6. An end to exploitation of child labor.
7. An immediate halt to the privatizations of the recent years.
8. Job security through the promulgation of the right laws.

Onwards towards the creation of mass-based labor unions!

Network of Iranian Labor Associations

April 26, 2010