Dear Mr. Ryder:

Please find attached an appeal in support of workers’ rights in Iran. This appeal has been signed by nearly 30 different organizations including some of ICFTU and Global Unions affiliates as well as over 600 concerned individuals and labour activists. It is being sent to the ICFTU, Global Unions Federations, their affiliates and other international labour organizations as well as the ILO’s workers group.  

As you are very well aware, the Iranian working class is deprived of numerous internationally recognized human and labour rights. For instance, the IRI’s labour law does not recognize, among other things, the rights to organize freely and strike. The only formal organizations that claim to be representing workers in Iran are mainly suppressive tools of the regime such as the government-sponsored “Workers’ House”, “ Islamic Labour Councils” and also the recently formed “guild associations”, for instance the Association of Iranian Journalists and the Association of Truck Drivers that are basically instruments at the hands of the Islamic Participation Front that retains the control of the Ministry of Labour and a number of other ministries as well as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament).  These state-affiliated groups must not be allowed to attend international labour conventions or conferences in the names of workers in Iran. We are alarmed with the ILO’s collaborations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its “labour arms”, which we believe is a gross disregard of the ongoing struggles by independent workers’ movements in Iran to establish their own free labour organizations.  

Therefore, in this appeal, we are calling on all free organizations of workers globally, from national labour organizations to international bodies like the ICFTU and Global Unions Federations, to play an active role in supporting Iranian workers’ efforts to organize themselves into genuine and democratic labour organizations. This can be done through various measures such as adopting and acting on the attached resolution, condemning and putting pressure on the Iranian government, and lobbying ILO to cease its association with the above government-sponsored “labour” groups. However, we think one concrete way of getting involved is to directly build bridges with Iranian workers and support them in their struggles against the employers’ and government’s attacks and for the right to organize freely and the right to strike. The attached resolution is demanding a direct observation by world’s labour organizations in such a process.   

This appeal also addresses the neo-liberal agenda of privatizations, lay offs, contracting out, outsourcing, deregulations, and non-payment of wages, etc., which continues in full force in Iran. This is a regime that for the past 24 years has imposed the most unbearable political, economic, legal and social conditions on the Iranian working class and deprived masses including women, migrant workers, youth, children and seniors. Almost 70 percent of Iran’s population now lives in an absolute poverty.  The IRI’s recent waves of attacks on workers’ rights, including the exemption of workshops of 5 and 10 employees or less from the minimal rights stipulated in the labour law and the withholding of wages to more than one million workers, have severely worsened the working and living conditions of millions of working families in Iran. All this at the same time is a part and parcel of “economic structural adjustment” and other anti-worker policies of the international Monetary Fund, World Bank and multi-national corporations. All employers’ groups, the government of khatami and various parliamentary and political factions within the Islamic Republic, including the above “guild associations,” are supporting and aggressively engaged in implementing this anti-worker neo-liberal agenda.  

Workers in Iran have been simultaneously fighting back against all these attacks on numerous fronts; however, having no rights to organize freely or to strike, their protests and walkouts have relentlessly been repressed by security and intelligent forces. Iranian labour movement needs international labour solidarity and support to fight back against these offensives by the capitalist class and its oppressive regime in Iran.  

We are asking the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the Global Unions Federations as well as their affiliates to take any initiative they possible can to defend workers’ rights in Iran. If you have any questions or require more information, please contact us at the above address. Thank you. 

In solidarity,

International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran
Contact Persons: Farid C. Partovi/ Mehdi Kouhestaninejad
cc: Mr. Fackson Shamenda, ICFTU President; Affiliates

To view the appeal, click here