The Iranian Workers Movement Today

By Yadullah Khosroshahi and Kamran Nayeri, Labor Links, No. 1, January 2002

Tehran municipal bus workers formed a militant union in the opening decade of this century.

Editor's Note: The following was the lead article in the inaugural issue of the Labor Links, an English language quarterly that I edited with Yadullah Khosroshahi.  Khosroshahi was a central leader of the Iranian oil workers strike that was key in bringing down the Shah's regime in the February 1979 revolution. He went on to become the leader of the oil workers shoras (councils) after the revolution until he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured. After almost five years, he was released but had to escape Iran after he found out the Islamic Republic agents are after him again and his life is in danger.  He spent the rest of his life in exile in London and remained an active leader of the Iranian labor movement until he died of a stroke on February 4, 2010.  The idea of publishing Labor Link was discussed and agreed upon during our visit to Cuba to attend the Congress of the  Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), in late April-early May 2002.  As the editors, we decided to suspend publication of Labor Links as it was not utilized sufficiently by the Iranian labor activists in exile. For a brief biography of Khosroshahi see, "A Biographical Sketch of the Iranian Socialist Labor Leader Yadullah Khosroshahi." For my tribute to Khosroshahi, see, "The Yadullah I Knew: A Tribute to an Iranian Working Class Leader." KN. 

*      *      *

Iranian workers face many of the same problems workers face in the periphery of world capitalism: ongoing economic, social and political crises, capitalist attack on wages and working conditions and standard of living, and the challenge to combine struggle for the dignity with the struggle for survival. Capitalists, their governments (international and domestic), and their allies stand against the workers' movement. However, Iranian workers today stand on the shoulder of the previous generations and their rich history of struggle. 

The Struggle against Monarchy 

Iranian workers were central in the 1978-1979 revolution that toppled the U.S. backed regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Workers participated in mass protests from the beginning. In the summer of 1978, they formed strike committees to combine struggles in workplaces with the fight against dictatorship in the streets. The most significant workers' action was the four-month general strike by the workers in the strategically important oil industry that was decisive in the downfall of the Iranian monarchy. 

The Shora Movement 

The movement to organize shoras (factory committees) swept the entire country after the downfall of the Shah’s dictatorship on February 1979. Shoras dealt very effectively with trade union issues such as wages, benefits, working conditions, and housing. However, they also were involved in decisions regarding hiring and firing, purchase of materials and sales of products, and finance. Shoras tipped the scale in favor of workers in the workplace. They began to organize along industry lines and geographically. Oil workers demanded the right to directly run the oil and petrochemical industries. Many capitalists who could not face the upsurge by the workers fled the country and their factories were nationalized. Peasants also organized their own shoras (peasant committees) and took on the landowners. These together with the organization of soldiers, youth, oppressed nationalities, women, and neighborhood defense committees provided the basis for a government of workers and toilers. 

Islamic Republic Attacks Workers 

Iranian workers movement lacked its own revolutionary leadership to take the political power. Instead, the Shi’ite hierarchy moved to set up the Islamic Republic in 1979 to maintain the capitalist and landlord class rule. It immediately began a course to undermine the self-active and self-organized movement of workers and toilers, beginning with a broad attack on democratic rights. It sent state appointed managers to factories to suppress and dissolve Shoras. At the same time, it began to set up competing organizations called Islamic Associations in workplaces to undermine shoras. Islamic Associations worked with management by preparing lists of militant workers who were then fired, arrested and in some cases executed by the government. At the same time, a broad attempt was made to set up Islamic Shoras to support anti-working class government’s policies. 

After 1981, when there was an atmosphere of war and terror in the country—including mass imprisonment, torture, and execution of opponents of the government, a final offensive against shoras took place. The Workers House, a government sponsored organization, led the assault aided by semi-fascist armed gangs called Hezbollah. They systematically planned and arrested shora leaders. By winter of 1981, all independent shoras were dissolved and their leaders arrested. 

Revival of the Workers Movement 
As the Islamic Republic regime increasingly lost its legitimacy, the workers' movement revived outside of the pro-government Islamic associations and shoras. Militant workers began to organize clandestinely and semi-publicly to wage struggles. After the end of the 8-year war with Iraq, Islamic Republic began a program of rebuilding the economy by inducing capitalist investment. They adopted structural adjustment program of the World Bank and IMF. Privatization got underway. Many state-owned factories were sold to influential families or capitalists who had run away from the revolution and workers power. 

Laws were passed to encourages capitalists and suppress workers. An example is Ministry of Labor’s decision of February 6, 1994, that sanctioned replacement of a permanent workforce with a temporary one. Using this law, capitalists began to lay off workers en mass just to hire them as temporary workers with lower wages, no benefits and no rights. According to official statistics, 400,000 workers lost their jobs in this wave of attacks. Meager unemployment benefit covers only a small section of workers. In recent year, with the government's tacit support capitalists refuse to pay even meager wages they owe their workers with some receiving no pay for as long as a year. Over a year ago, the Iranian parliament passed a law that removed 1,800,000 workers in small units of 5 or fewer from the protection of the labor law. These workers and their family will no longer receive social security and health benefit, making their miserable living conditions even worse. Today’s official minimum wage stands at $1.70 per day while the minimum daily cost of living for the working class family is estimated at over $5. 

Iranian workers have waged strikes (not legal in Iran) and factory occupations sometimes keeping managers and capitalists with them, and even have confronted armed government forces. Increasingly, they have taken their struggle to the streets. 

In 1979, Iranian workers movement was part of a wider revolutionary wave that included working people in Nicaragua and Granada. Today, they are part of a worldwide resistance to a brutal international capitalist offensive. They deserve and need the solidarity and support of workers and our unions and parties everywhere in the world.