A Summary Report and the Text of Speeches:
An Evening of Solidarity with Workers in Iran
On May 13, 2007, an evening of solidarity with workers in Iran, which was organized by the Committee in Support of Workers in Iran-Toronto, was held at the North York Civic Centre. More than one hundred community and labour activists participated in the event.
The event, which included live music, had four speakers. Deborah Bourque, National President of the Canadian Union of Postal workers (CUPW), and Derek Blackadder , Senior Correspondent, LabourStart, and National Representative, Canadian Union of Public employees (CUPE), were the event’s guest speakers. Other speakers were Farid C. Partovi, a contact person for the international relations of the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) and a CUPE activist (spoke in Farsi and English) and Mohammah Mohmmadi (spoke in Farsi), an Iranian labour activist and a former colleague of Mahmoud Salehi. A solidarity greeting from Mohammad Abdipour, one of the Saqez Seven labour activists from Iran was also read by the event’s host, Golnar Maleksaniee. Also, a sum of $1332.00 was collected throughout this event in support of Mahmoud Salehi.
The text of Speeches:
Deborah Bourque’s Speech at the Solidarity night with workers in Iran
Good evening sisters and brothers, I’m really pleased to be here with you this evening. Thank you so much for the invitation.
· CUPW has long supported the work of Iranian activists here to build international solidarity with Iranian workers who struggle to build a workers movement in the face of the unrelenting repression of the Islamic Republic.
· Tonight I bring greetings of solidarity from the 54,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers across Canada and Quebec.
· Our support for Iranian workers goes back to at least the early ‘90s and included resolutions to CLC Conventions calling on the Canadian Labour Congress to “condemn the anti-labour policies of the Iranian regime”, supporting the Benz-e Khavar auto workers in 1995 and “other struggles of Iranian workers against the continuing brutal suppression of the most basic rights of labour” or supporting the strike of oil workers in 1996 and denouncing the Rafsanjani government’ suppression of their right to organize, along with other solidarity actions.
· From the beginning, CUPW welcomed and endorsed the formation of the International Alliance in Support of the Workers of Iran (IASWI) in 1999. We were impressed with the manner in which the Alliance worked with us and other unions. We were impressed with its collaborative approach and its emphasis on building ties between Iranian workers and Canadian and Quebec unions. Because of this approach, our solidarity work moved from being rather ad hoc and occasional, to a level that allowed us to gain a sense of the larger picture, to understand the huge difficulties facing the Iranian working class.
· We’ve been able to follow more closely the courageous resistance of Iranian workers and their determination to win their right to free collective bargaining and the right to strike. We’ve been able to see how they have moved this struggle forward.
· As a result of the work done by IASWI, we’ve learned of the resilience of labour activists such as Mahmoud Salehi, former President of the Baker”s Union in the city of Saqez. When IASWI first brought his circumstances to our attention in 2000, this brave trade unionist had already been arrested five times in the previous two years, and had been sentenced to a ten month prison sentence for organizing a May Day event. My predecessor, Brother Dale Clark, wrote a letter of protest then, noting that “Mahmoud Salehi’s only ‘crime’ is his continued effort to organize workers and his defense of workers rights.” Despite the inhuman treatment he suffered at the hands of the Islamic regime, Brother Salehi has never lost his commitment to labour’s cause nor has the regime relented in its attempts to shut him and the workers movement down. On April 24, 2007 I had occasion to write yet another letter to the current Iranian President, denouncing the regime’s anti-democratic and anti-union treatment of Brother Salehi, who has been re-arrested and re-imprisoned as part of a continuous series of mistreatment, harassment arrests and trials.
· Unfortunately, Brother Salehi’s case is but one of many we have come to know about. Many Iranian workers have been arrested, beaten and jailed simply because they have demanded payment of wages owed to them. Last year we saw 1300 members of the bus workers union of Tehran and their family members arrested and jailed as a result of being forced to take strike action. Despite world wide protests against the vicious action of the police and government, repression by the police and the government continue, especially against leaders such as Brother Mansour Osanloo.
· More recently, strikes by Iranian teachers have also resulted in serious acts of intimidation including the arrests of 45 teachers in North West Iran.
· Despite the back-drop of violent repression and imprisonment, it is clear that the struggle for workers rights in Iran has increased in intensity.
· We are all inspired by the intensity and the determination of this struggle. This May Day, all over Iran, thousands of workers took part in demonstrations throughout the country, calling for the right to strike, calling for freedom of speech and calling for the right to organise May Day activities without government and police interference. Several of these demonstrations were violently attacked by the police.
· Trade unionists and trade union leaders were arrested, harassed and injured.
· What is really important and exciting is that thousands of Iranian workers took part in these rallies, in many different locations, knowing exactly what would happen. Knowing that there would be harassment and violence and arrests, they still protested.
· I want to applaud the contribution the IAWSI has made to bringing the struggle of workers in Iran to the attention of the labour movement around the world.
· As we gather here to celebrate the continued struggle of workers in Iran to build unions, to demand the basic right of workers to organize and freely negotiate collective agreements, and to condemn the long and continuing history of the Islamic Republic’s violent suppression of the workers’ movement, we need to be absolutely clear that our denunciation of the anti worker Islamic Regime must never be viewed as some kind of endorsement of the threats by the American Empire to begin a war on Iran. We know that if such an imperialist war were to be launched, it would be Iran’s working class which would bear the brunt of, death, injury and indescribable misery, just as it has been working people who have borne the brunt in Iraq.
· Recently, Bush has made contradictory statements, alternately stating he has no intention of attacking Iran, then making bombastic speeches about the need to stop both Iran and Syria. But the fact remains that he has moved the necessary military hardware into the Gulf region to launch a huge attack, and this action speaks louder than a thousand verbal denials.
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Summary of the Speech by Derek Blackadder
Derek spoke of “the relationship that has recently developed between various Iranian workers solidarity organizations around the world as we have started to work on campaigns in support of Iranian struggles. The fact of these campaigns appears to indicate that Iranian workers are becoming more militant, or at least that their struggles are becoming better-known.
“LabourStart is proud to assist Iranian workers in any way we can. At this time, for many reasons, there is increased interest in Iranian struggles and so our ability to mobilize support around the world is heightened. As well, workers elsewhere are beginning to look to Iranian workers for inspiration.
As we celebrate May Day here this evening there is at least one electronic campaign running on LabourStart in regard to Iran, for Salehi’s freedom, plus many, many news stories in several languages about a wide variety of Iranian struggles. Ten or even five years ago there would have been no campaigns and very few news stories. Something is happening and LabourStart is very proud to be playing a small part in it. Join us in solidarity at www.labourstart.org.”
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Farid C. Partovi’s Speech
The abstract of Farid C. Partovi’s Speech in Farsi
….What Iranian labour activists and concerned individuals living outside Iran can do? There are many things that can be done in support of workers in Iran. The main point is that we should support the rising Iranian labour movement in any possible ways we can regardless of ideological or sectarian differences. The labour movement in Iran is growing, but its activists are taking huge risks and face numerous obstacles, i.e. the Islamic Republic’s ongoing crackdown and the expulsion (from the workplaces) and the criminalization of labour activists and continuing persecution and imprisonments and incessant repression and so on. We should ask ourselves what we can concretely do for this movement outside Iran. I think we should reach out to unions and labour organizations and human rights groups. We should engage progressive, socialist and anti-war activists and organizations around the world in a dialogue about the current situation in Iran and the importance of supporting workers’ struggles in the country at the same time as opposing any military attacks by the US and its allies against Iran…
English Part of the speech by Farid C. Partovi
….What has been taking place in Iran, in more than 25 years, particularly following the crush of genuine workers’ councils, unions and progressive and socialist organizations by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in early 1980s, has been in line with the global attacks on workers' rights and their working and living conditions under the capitalist globalization and neo-liberal agenda. The Iranian government has been responding absolutely favourably to the needs of global and local corporations and businesses to create even more favourable conditions for capital investment and its multifaceted needs in Iran. For the past fifteen years and more, we have witnessed the implementation of policies of labour market deregulation and the selling off of factories and state-owned enterprises. Most employers, including the state as the largest employer in the country, have been laying off thousands of workers while refraining from hiring workers on a permanent basis; they have been contracting out big segments of the production units in such huge industrial complexes as the Iran Khodro, National Oil Industry, Minoo Industrial Group, and in textile industry and many others. In the process of implementing aggressive privatization and contracting out policies and programs, companies have transferred responsibilities toward workers to sub-contractors, through which workers were stripped off of crucial legal rights, including type of work contract, job security, work place health and safety, wage and benefit protection, working hours, etc. It has been over a decade that permanent positions have rarely been offered to workers. Currently, according to various reports, about 80% of the workers who are employed by public and private companies are on temporary contracts. In many of the industrial workplaces, the expansion of the contracting companies has resulted in considerable increase in the health and safety accidents, injuries and deaths.
Presently, about 70 percent of people in Iran live under the poverty line, and the current monthly minimum wage of $183,000 (less than US$200.00) is more than 50 percent below the official poverty line, and it’s less than one third of the real poverty line.
Last year alone, despite the lack of the legal rights to organize and strike, we witnessed hundreds (more than one thousand) strikes and job actions in the country. Workers' protests against non-payment of their wages and bonuses and for their rights to organize and strike have been escalating throughout past year. There have been a series of recent job actions and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of teachers and education workers in the country for pay parity and other demands. Organizing workers is one of the hardest and riskiest endeavours as the security and intelligent forces and employers are extremely aggressive in their reactions to organizing drives. For instance, organizing in the public sector and amongst the state’s millions of employees is absolutely prohibited.
But, who are the leading labour activists in Iran? And what are they struggling for? I assume that we all know about Mahmoud Salehi and the Saqez 7, who were arrested and persecuted for organizing a May Day rally and we have heard about Mansour Osanloo and the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (employees of a city-owned company with about 17,000 employees). We have seen considerable international solidarity actions by labour organizations and unions in different countries, including by the CUPE, CUPW, CAW, CLC and other unions in Canada, in support of these activists. The LabourStart launched a very effective campaign for the freedom of Mansour Osanloo and presently for the release of Mahmoud Salehi who has been re-imprisoned since April 9, 2007. One main demand of the Iranian labour activists is the freedom of association and the establishment of free, democratic and independent labour organizations, including unions, councils and so on, without any state or employers’ interferences. Mahmoud Salehi is in jail for the fourth or fifth times and Osanloo is facing trials after his second release from jail, and other labour activists such Sheys Amaani and Sedigh Karimi of the Unemployed and Dismissed Workers’ Union are arrested precisely for such efforts and leaderships in making this goal a reality.
Having said that, however, many labour and progressive activists in other countries, including Canada, are cautious about supporting Iranian labour movement. Some are worried that the Bush administration could take the advantage of the struggles inside Iran. I saw an article at TomPaine.com about the American Right standing up for the Iranian labour movement, in which the author asks whether labour activists in Iran would be happy to receive American right-wing support. Firstly, it’s important to emphasize that the Iranian labour movement is a genuine class movement of diverse groups and tendencies of workers who are predominantly anti-capitalists. This is a movement that has experienced one of the most influential revolutions in the 20th century and has learnt a lot from it, including the fact that workers should never let governments and ruling classes influencing them. This movement principally opposes war and militarization in the region and around the world. And, in the context of the current confrontation between the US and its European allies and the Iranian government, the labour movement is holding an independent position, in which it strongly opposes all kinds of arms races between all of these countries as well as opposing military intervention or sanctions against Iran, because it’s not only unacceptable under any pretext but also its main victims are always working people and their families. The Iranian labour movement will never become an instrument of the foreign policies of the United State and its allies nor an ally of the government of Iran which is one of the most repressive existing regimes on the planet. A genuine defence of the independent interests of the working class demands the united, coordinated and organized efforts of workers themselves, both locally and internationally. In Iran, this requires an organized, progressive, independent and anti-capitalist labour movement that fights powerfully for workers’ rights and freedoms against employers and the Islamic Republic at the same time as standing up strongly, in solidarity with workers of other countries, against the capitalist globalization, war and the militarization of the region by the Western powers and their allies.