Tag: Iranian workers
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Bread, Speech, and Prison: Remembering Sattar Beheshti on Workers’ Day
On International Workers’ Day, Goahar Eshghi, the mother of Sattar Beheshti, published a message addressed to workers in Iran. It is a short text, but it carries the weight of a whole political history: the history of a worker killed in custody, a mother turned into a public voice of justice, and a society where…
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Bread, Freedom and Organisation: Esmail Bakhshi on Iran Today
Esmail Bakhshi is a well-known Iranian worker and labour activist. His name is mostly associated with the struggles of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers, the fight for independent workers’ organisation, and his own experience of prison, torture, dismissal from work, and resistance to repression. Over the past years, he has not been known as the…
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National Wealth, Private Misery
When we talk about oil, the main issue is not always what we see at first glance. The usual question is this: under war, blockade, and disruption in maritime routes, how much oil can Iran still sell? But perhaps the more urgent question is this: how much of the oil it still produces can Iran…
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Fifteen Days in the Life of Workers in Iran
Over the last fifteen days, reports from different towns and industries in Iran painted a consistent picture: people who work—factory hands, municipal crews, oil and gas employees, platform drivers, miners, and border laborers—are carrying the country’s crises on their backs. The same problems return again and again: unpaid wages, unstable contracts, sudden layoffs, dangerous worksites,…
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Iranian Labour Unions Condemn Mass Deportation of Afghan Migrants
Two Iranian labour organizations have condemned the mass deportation of Afghan migrants as “organized inhumanity” and “a political cover-up” for the Islamic Republic’s domestic and regional failures. According to official figures, more than 380,000 Afghan nationals have been expelled from Iran in a short period, mostly through the Dogharoun border crossing in eastern Iran. The…
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How Iran’s Working Class Fights to Survive: A Political Explanation
Kazem Farajollahi’s article, is a powerful and detailed explanation of the struggles that Iranian workers face today. It was published on International Workers’ Day, a date that has special meaning for labor movements around the world. The article begins with a dedication to two women workers, Reyhaneh and Sharifeh, who, according to the author, have…
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Iranian Activists Support the Global ‘March to Gaza’
Dozens of independent Iranian activists—including workers, teachers, political prisoners, environmentalists, and children’s rights defenders—have released an open letter supporting the global “March to Gaza.” Many of these signatories are currently imprisoned in Iran for their peaceful activism. Their statement is both a condemnation of Israel’s war on Gaza and a call to action for global…
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Iran’s Truck Drivers Strike Over Fuel, Pay, and Corruption
Since 18 May 2025, truck drivers across Iran have turned off their engines — not out of road fatigue, but out of deep frustration with broken promises, rising costs, and an economy shaped by corruption and neglect. What started in the southern port of Bandar Abbas quickly spread to more than 100 cities, marking one…
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The Explosion in Iran: A Mirror of a Rotten System
According to the statics, following the explosion at Shahid Rajaei Port, 46 people have so far lost their lives, and according to the emergency services, 1,242 people have been injured. Of these, 240 have been hospitalized in Hormozgan Province hospitals, and 7 have been admitted to hospitals in Shiraz. Despite these official numbers, there are…
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From Kolbar to ‘Terrorist’: How the Islamic Regime Manufactures Enemies
Hamid Hosseinnezhad Heydaranlou was a 39-year-old Kurdish man from a small village called Segrik, near Chaldoran in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. He was a husband, a father of three children, and someone who worked hard just to survive. Like many other Kurdish men in his region, he was a kolbar — a cross-border porter who…
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Structural Violence in the Islamic Regime’s Labor System
Between 2021-22, 3,826 workers in Iran were killed in so-called “workplace accidents.” These deaths are not isolated tragedies or unfortunate errors of management—they are the logical outcome of a social order in which the working class is systematically denied the right to organize, to supervise, and to intervene in the conditions of its own labor.…
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The Struggles of Iranian Workers in 2024
The year 2024 was a testament to the unyielding spirit of Iran’s labor movement, even as it battled relentless oppression. Across 31 provinces and 70 cities, workers, teachers, retirees, and healthcare professionals staged 2,396 protests and 169 strikes. Their demands were not extravagant—wages above the poverty line, payment of long-overdue salaries, and basic workplace protections.…
