by AIRIS MEHREGAN Airis Mehregan is the pen name for a staff writer with Iran Labor Report in Iran. This article first appeared in Tehran Bureau Backbreaking labor for minimal pay defines essential economic sector. [ essay ] Take an open space, flat, an acre or two, with easily excavated soil, with sun-baked, perspiring souls [...]
Afghan workers in Iran clean one-meter diameter ego pipes, and several have lost their lives on these pipes. If they are lucky, the workers will clean the streets and sell the recyclables. They live on the bare minimum, lack any health care or social benefits and send their savings to their families in Afghanistan. Many [...]
Women workers in Iran suffer discrimination in the workplace. According to the official statistics, while Iranian women make up 27% of the workforce, they bear the main brunt of unemployment and layoffs. Many have to leave their jobs due to low wages, violence, unsuitable job conditions (there are no legal protections for women). Recently, Mahmoud [...]
Ahmadinejad administration since 2005 has taken an openly hostile attitude towards the labor organizations and attempted to promote newly created ones to “advance” his agenda in the work places. Not only the independent labor unions have been severely treated including incarcerations and suspensions of the labor activists, some of the traditional “yellow” workers organizations tied [...]
The unrestrained import policy of the Ahmadinejad administration as a means to curb inflation has hit the mid-size enterprises in Iran hard. Traditional industries, such as textiles, sugar cane refineries, tea, leather manufacturing, shoes, home appliances, etc., which once employed hundreds of thousands of workers, have been closing down one after the other in recent [...]
The workers in Iran have continued with their protests on the issues of wage thefts, layoffs, and job insecurity in the recent weeks. The protests have varied from sit-ins and strikes to the gatherings at the offices of the president and the parliament. A report on a number of these actions follows. Metal Industries (Tehran [...]
On Sunday May 9, Farzad Kamangar, Shirin Alamhouli, Ali Heidarian, Farhad Vakili, and Mehdi Eslamian were executed in Iran. Four of the executed were from the Kurdish region of Iran and Mehdi Eslamian was from the central city of Shiraz. The case of Farzad Kamangar, a teacher and human rights activist, has been the subject [...]
In the first month of the Iranian new year, starting on March 20, many workers are reported to have lost their jobs in Iran. Sadeghi of the Tehran Islamic Labor Councils put the increase in the number of layoffs during the new year break at 49 percent compared to 2008 and the increase in the [...]
During May Day weekend 2010, the Institute of Working Class History in Chicago held a conference to discuss, debate and analyze labor and social struggles. Below is the text of the paper delivered by the Network of Iranian Labor Associations (NILA) to this international conference, “A Century+ of May Days: Labor and Social struggles”. A New Beginning [...]
by Hamid Farokhnia, a staff writer at Iran Labor Report This article first appeared in Signs of promise as Green-labor unity builds Thousands of security and special antiriot policemen were deployed throughout Tehran from morning into late evening in anticipation of May Day protests and gatherings. In a major departure from past practice, the Green [...]
