Strikes in Iran are still on the rise
It has been a week since a strike wave began in Iran with the first strike movements in the refineries in the south of the country. Today the strike has spread over 12 provinces and has affected at least 38 large industrial complexes throughout the country. Just yesterday, the workers of the combined cycle power plant in Urmia went on strike.
Workers in the oil and gas fields s well as in the refineries presented this series of complaints at the beginning of last week: info
- 70% of the workers are subcontracted with temporary contracts.>/li>
- Many subcontractors pay their salaries very late, do not pay bonuses and do not even respect the provisions of the contracts.
- Workers in "special economic zones" are not subject to labor law.
- The transportation means that workers use to go to work are not air-conditioned, being more than 50 degrees.
- Migrant workers are living in barracks under very bad conditions.
- The work environment is governed by the security forces and the workers have no independent organization.
/info
Along with the strike in the Haft Tappeh sugar factory, which is already in its 57th day of strike and that of other sectors such as the Urmia buses and the wage taxi drivers on Thursday in three cities, there are calls for a truck driver strike. However, strikes continue to erupt with no apparent coordination among the dozens of locations where they are taking place and, as one Iranian site puts it, this is the necessary next step in the struggle:
Expanding the correlation between the different sectors and weaving the immediate economic slogans of each unit into more general working class slogans is the way to push for even the smallest results.