Home | Articles | Labor Rights in Iran

Labor Rights in Iran

20 May 2007 Gozaar

Font size:

Labor rights, including the right to organize, are codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 23 states, “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” Yet in Iran, as in most repressive regimes, the movement for labor rights is one that is fiercely suppressed. Without independent unions, workers are unable secure their rights and act as the necessary check on corruption in state-run industries. The Islamic regime finds itself vulnerable when workers—such as bus drivers, nurses, teachers and others—voice their dissatisfaction with unpaid wages and poor working conditions.

Thousands of teachers have taken to the streets in recent months demanding fair wages and work conditions and the release of colleagues who were jailed while advocating their cause. These protests were and continue to be brutally put down. Despite his populist rhetoric about helping the common man, President Ahmadinejad has not only refused a dialogue with teachers regarding their demands, but has unleashed his intelligence forces on them in an effort to intimidate and harass.

Recent movements by teachers or the Vahed Bus Drivers Union demonstrate a courageous willingness to fight for human dignity. The very same social groups who were meant to benefit from the 1979 Revolution—but who have been systematically denied living wages, not to mention opportunities for a better life—have returned to the political sphere to demand their basic rights.

The struggle for fairness in the workplace has led, in many instances, to a broader struggle for freedom. It was within trade unions that black South Africans first practiced democracy – voting for representatives who amplified their voices to the national level. Trade unions in South Africa not only played a key role in reforming that country’s labor and economic policies, but they also worked to roll back apartheid itself. In 1980, electrician and labor activist Lech Walesa, who later became Poland’s President, led a strike in the Gdansk shipyards that galvanized men and women across the country. Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, fueled a growing campaign to not only improve economic conditions for Poland’s workers but also push for larger political freedoms. Just as Solidarity tied rights in the workplace to rights writ large, groups and associations in Iran are struggling tirelessly for an independent civil society, gradually building grass-roots constituencies that demand government accountability, better laws and a democratic structure.

Supporting Iranian workers in their fight for labor rights and supporting other underprivileged social classes, into which more and more Iranians are finding themselves, is the noble purpose of Iran’s labor movement. A coordinated effort by all movements in Iran which seek social justice will have a stronger voice not only before regime officials, but also before Iranians themselves.

In this issue of Gozaar, women’s right activist Mehrangiz Kar examines the legal and political environment in which laborers and labor activists must operate. In a conversation with Fazel Hosseini, labor activist and economist Dr. Mahmoud Sadr Saebi (a pen name) surveys the evolution of the labor movement over the last decades and shares his frustration with Iran’s crony capitalist system. In “A Brief History of the Relationship between the Iranian Left and Labor,” Faraj Sarkouhi explores the historical relationship between the Iranian Left and the workers it has sought to represent. Journalist Nima Mansouri charts the historical course of the Iranian labor movement. Vahed Rahban and Samsam Kashfi ponder why Iranian film and literature largely fail to address labor issues.

In response to a discussion question, journalist Gita Mir Rezania, art critic Levon Haftvan, and writer Hamid Bustani discuss how Iran’s labor movement aligns itself with other social movements in Iran today and the potential gains for democracy and human rights that can be achieved through cooperation among these social movements.