While Iran’s blood-soaked regime acts out its fake ‘presidential election’ more and more workers have decided that the only appropriate response to this expensive sham is to go on strike. Thousands of skilled contract workers in the petrochemical industry went on strike on June 21st. The strike has kept growing and there are now over 20,000 workers from around 100 contractors involved. These contract workers have pay and conditions that are significantly worse than those of the National Iranian Oil Company’s official workers.
In early June, Yaser Ahmadinejad, an Arkan Saless Excavation Company worker, recorded a short video message in which he respectfully voiced the contract workers’ basic demands. These included a call on the regime to pay the contract workers their approved 35% pay rise.
Since then, Yaser Ahmadinejad has been sacked and now faces trumped up charges that include propagandising against the Islamic Republic system, threatening behaviour and publishing lies. Yaser must submit himself to the regime’s authorities for preliminary investigations in the next few days.
The Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign strongly condemns the harassment of Yaser Ahmadinejad and all other labour activists in Iran. We demand that all trumped up charges against labour activists are dropped immediately and unconditionally, all sacked workers return to work and all political prisoners are freed. We urge all trade unionists, socialists and other political activists to help us in defending the rights of all workers, political prisoners and social rights’ activists in Iran.
Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign
27 June 2024
Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign 