For the Second Time in One Week, Mobliran Workers Blocked the Main Road from Tehran to Karaj March 12, 2000 Mobliran Workers’ protests against non-payment of their wages over the past 20 months is growing louder as they have twice been blocking the main road from the capital city of Tehran to Karaj during past week.  On March 11th, approximately 300 workers of Mobliran Company, one of Iran’s main furniture makers, staged a demonstration by setting up barricades on Karaj Road’s east bound.  Mobliran factory was privatized in 1992.  The present employees, less than 300 workers, according to the official news agency IRNA, “are only a small portion of the larger staff who had either been fired or paid some compensation before being dismissed”.  The latest road blockage is in fact third protest by Mobliran workers in the past few weeks.  Last month, almost 300 Mobliran workers staged a protest rally in front of the Labour Ministry, calling on government officials to act accordingly in response to their demands.  Last week, on March 3rd, about 200 workers blocked the Karaj road, demanding payment of their salaries for the past 20 months.  They ended that protest only after management of the factory promised to negotiate with workers’ representatives and pay their delayed wages.  However, as we foretold in our news release, dated March 3rd, the company’s management did not fulfill their promises, as the result of that, leaving angry and frustrated workers no choice but to stage another road protest by blocking the main road from Tehran to Karaj.  Workers ended their protest later on Saturday afternoon after some official negotiated with them.  Mobliran workers are not alone in their struggle for payment of delayed wages.  As we said in previous documents, more than 500 manufacturing plants, with the workforce of at least 400,000 have not been paying wages to their employees in the last 3 to 24 months.  Sit-ins, Strike actions, demonstrations and blockage of roads are some of the methods used by protesting workers in their struggles against delayed payment of wages and for improved working conditions and better social and income security programs.  Workers are fed up with lack of accountability from officials and thus they are expanding and intensifying their protests any way and anywhere they can. However, workers are facing many challenges in their struggles for the realization of their rights and demands.  One of the main barriers is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s repressive and anti-worker policies and practices - lack of the right to organize free and independent workers’ organizations and the right to strike, persecution of labour activists and political opponents, lay offs, cut backs and privatization and pursuing the “economic readjustment” policies of the international Monetary Fund and global and national corporations, etc.  The new anti-worker law approved by the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis), giving owners of small workshops the right and power to exempt their employees of any protections under the labour law, is the latest systematic attack on millions of working people in Iran.