THE establishment of independent labour organizations has always been problematic for the Iranian working class since its inception in the early years of the twentieth century.¹ Yet the recent resurgence in the labour movement for the formation of independent labour organizations has generated a search for new ideas, and new debates among labour activists, labour committees and several independent trade unions on organizational issues and formulation of labour demands and new organizational practices.

Some of these activities have been overt; others kept away from the surveillance of the authorities, fearing a brutal reaction of the state. Labour organizers have not only reached out to working class organizations outside of Iran, but also to women, students, and ethnic civil society organizations supporting their cause and struggle. As it has been in the long history of the Iranian workers’ struggle, labour leaders and activists confront not only employers’ intimidation and job loss, they frequently suffer imprisonment, torture and intimidation of their families by the state.²

Many labour organizers and political activists have come to the conclusion that in the absence of a viable secular democracy, neither the labour, nor any other progressive movements, can be sustainable. In fact, democracy is essential for the transformation of class structure (in itself) to class formation (for itself). In the absence of democracy such a transformation can hardly take place. Yet, in a class divided capitalist society, political democracy is inevitably in conflict with the system of socio-economic power and inequality.

For this reason, the working class is an ardent defender of deepening democracy into a democracy with social justice, that is, a viable social democracy. Further, the long history of labour movements shows that the working class has become conscious of the fact that the chances of democracy at any level of its development can be facilitated by the impact of a progressive space of civil society and working class organizations.³

 

This paper explores some of the objective and subjective obstacles facing the Iranian working class in its struggle for attaining the right to form independent organizations and to protect and promote civil liberties within the Islamic Republic. In 1976, about 40% of the Iranian employed workforce was in the working class, about half of whom worked in enterprises larger than fifty workers. The middle class was tiny (5%) and less than one-third of them worked for the private sector. Nearly one-third of Iranian employed workforce was self-employed, petty bourgeois, 99% of whom were in traditional occupations (such as farmers, textile or rug makers, carpenters, grocers, truck or taxi driver-owner). Among capitalists, a large majority owned small enterprises, and remained in traditional occupational positions.

The 1979 revolution represented a social rupture, egalitarian in character and openly antagonist toward large capital and capitalists, especially those affiliated with foreign enterprises. The revolution disrupted the ‘normal’ functioning of society. Most significantly, it jeopardized the sanctity of property rights and safety of capital, causing the weakening of capitalist relations of production, and entangling the elaborate maze of market networks. This condition was conducive to the growth of petty-commodity production and small-scale capitalist activities. We call this degenerative process ‘structural involution’. The Islamic state amplified the involutionary trend with its populist policies, at times even inciting anti-capitalist tendencies and encouraging small-scale activities. The resulting changes in political and economic structures affected the class composition of the Iranian workforce.⁴

 

The first post-revolutionary decade was a setback for capitalist relations of production (structural involution).⁵ By 1986, the working class (in the state and private sector) had shrunk to less than 25% of the employed workforce. At the same time the number of the petty bourgeoisie grew at more than double the rate of growth of the workforce to make up 40% of the employed (nearly all in traditional positions). The number of small enterprises almost doubled since the last census in 1976. This increase was mainly in the number of small capitalists, with a mere two to three employed workers. The average number of wage earners per capitalist employer (concentration ratio) in Iran fell from 16 in 1976 to 5.3 in 1986.

In the same period, the number of middle class employees in the private sector decreased to half of what it was in 1976. Obviously, the smaller, more traditional enterprises needed fewer managers and professional workers. At the same time the middle class employees of the state increased by almost 90%. Between 1976 and 1986 more than one million were added to the rank of government functionaries (800,000 of them to the armed forces). Women’s employment decreased not only relatively, but also absolutely.

 

A disrupted economy with a bloated state machinery, faced with a costly war, a glut in the world oil market, suffocating economic sanctions and a rapidly growing population, placed the Islamic state in a dire economic situation. By the late 1980s the state came to the realization that its claim of establishing the Rule of Mustazafan and its plan for erecting an Islamic economy were fantasies. With the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, the time for breaking away from revolutionary taboos had arrived. Hashemi-Rafsanjani entered the stage as a champion of economic liberalization, and by 1992 the liberalization policy was underway for reconstructing and rejuvenating the market and its institutions.

Economic liberalization policies look attractive in abstraction from political realities. In short, it calls for removing all market barriers – from foreign exchange and domestic price controls, to subsidies and quotas – letting resource scarcity determine market prices and directing resources to the highest bidders. It is suggested that this policy will increase productivity and profitability, which could potentially increase investment and thus employment and economic welfare of all. Yet, these may take place, if all goes well (which often does not), usually after a period of high inflation, high unemployment, bankruptcy of many small capitalists and petty bourgeois producers, and the decline of real income of many wage earners.

It did not take long before the liberalization policy of Hashemi-Rafsanjani came under popular criticism. For the first time, during the Rafsanjani presidency, the Islamic Republic found open political unrest as a constraint in its public policy formulation. Thus, Hashemi-Rafsanjani pursued a zig-zag policy of economic liberalization. Despite the limited advance of economic liberalization in the 1990s, continuing into the Khatami’s presidency, the involutionary trend of the Ayatollah Khomeini decade was substantially reversed. We call this trend a de-involutionary process.

 

The foreign exchange rate was realigned, price controls were mostly lifted, some subsidies reduced and others eliminated. An increase in oil prices in these years, allowing for a continued inflow of imports, made the timid liberalization policy somewhat palatable. By 2006 the impact of this rejuvenation was visible. The share of the working class in the employed workforce increased to 30% (still much lower than in 1976), and the middle class increased to 12% (from 4% in 1976, and 7% in 1986). During the same period, the share of the petty bourgeoisie declined somewhat to 36%. The number of small capitalists continued to increase, so the average number of wage earners in the private sector to capitalists declined further to 3.6.

Thus, the Iranian working class suffered a serious decline in the first revolutionary decade. Although their number increased from 3.6 million in 1976 to 6.2 million in 2006 (after a decline to 2.7 million in 1986), their share in the employed workforce substantially declined. The decline in the share of the working class coincided with an increase in the share of the petty bourgeoisie and the middle class. The low concentration ratio reflects an overall increase in fragmentation of the working class.

 

However, we should note that the increase in fragmentation is mainly in the small capitalist enterprises. More than half of working class population works in large enterprises (private or state owned) with more than 50 workers. Meanwhile, 15 to 20% of the unemployed portion of the labour force is mainly comprised of the potential members of the working class. Moreover, in the Iranian labour market, a significant number of those who are considered petty bourgeoisie are effectively unemployed workers for whom unemployment is not an option. These are small vendors of various goods or services who eke out a living by engaging in some sort of activity. They too, are potential members of the working class.

The labour movement in Iran has a long history of struggle for independent organizations and favourable labour laws. Iran’s first modern trade union was organized in 1906, and the earliest known labour strike took place in 1910. The dictatorial rule of Reza Shah (1925-41) suppressed the operation of a small number of independent labour organizations. Labour unions and the labour movement flourished during the fragile democracy of 1941-1953. However, after 1953 and the return of Mohammad Reza Shah to power, independent labour organizations were forcibly prevented from operating free of government supervision. This was in the face of the rapid capitalist development of Iran and an increase in the size of the working class in industry and public and private services in the 1960s and 1970s.⁶

Iranian labour enjoyed a brief moment of freedom during the revolutionary period and the months following the revolutionary uprising. That period, however, corresponded with the general chaotic condition of society and the widespread disruptions in economic activity. By 1981, all the independent unions and councils and the secular Worker’s House, which were all set-up by workers and labour activists during and after the revolution, were forcefully taken over by pro-government Islamist workers and non-workers. These organizations were officially liquidated and banned.⁷

 

In their place, Islamic Labour Councils were instituted under the sponsorship, and with the support of, the Islamic state. At the top of the network of Islamic Labour Councils was the newly reconstituted and Islamic Worker’s House. Thus, Worker’s House became a self-appointed federating ‘union’, which gradually formed a ‘labour empire’. It has relied on financial and logistical help from the government, even though it receives membership dues, and benefits from overseeing two lucrative cooperatives – one for distribution of consumer goods (EMKAN), and the other for housing (ESKAN).⁸

In the Khomeini decade, as the economy suffered from a deeply degenerative involutionary process, and nearly all political or civil society organizations were either destroyed or taken over by the official or non-official arms of the Islamic regime. Labour activism gradually surfaced after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. The effort at post-revolutionary normalization of the economy gave rise to a de-involutionary phase, which resulted in an increase in the size of the working and middle classes. Moreover, Mohammad Khatami, who ran for presidency of the Islamic Republic in 1997 on a platform of cultural liberalization, was instrumental in opening the political space, albeit, marginally and briefly, despite opposition from the more conservative factions of the regime.

 

Khatami, in his eight years of presidency focused on the promotion of civil society as a central feature of his political agenda. In this period, independent minded progressive Iranian workers and labour activists succeeded in mobilizing labour. However, this narrow opening repeatedly came under severe strain from the conservative factions of the republic, formally and informally (by its bands of vigilantes).⁹ The limitation on organizational efforts of the working class, and civil society in general, has substantially increased since the election of Ahmedinejad to presidency in 2005.

Labour law in Iran avoids using the word ‘strike’, but recognizes work slowdown or stoppage, while workers are present in the workshop (Section 142). However, strikes do occur and unions frequently clash with the coercive organs of the government as economic crisis, high inflation and high rates of unemployment put workers under pressure. Jobs are insecure as factories close down for various reasons. Wages are low and payments are frequently delayed for months. The use of temporary contracts, which are exempt from many benefits of the labour law, including protection from arbitrary firing of workers, has increased. The repressive acts of government in dealing with worker grievances have often forced workers into a defensive struggle for their basic economic demands.

The first decade of the Islamic Republic, marked by the suppressive and hegemonic power of Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq war and the mass killings of militant opposition was suffocating for Iranian workers and few labour strikes took place. Independent political and labour organizational moves were violently suppressed. Those few disputes and strikes that did take place in 1980-1990 were of a defensive nature, based on economic demands, in the form of sit-ins, petitions, and letters to Islamic authorities. Demonstrations, work slowdowns and strikes, were confronted brutally.¹⁰

 

Workers’ disputes intensified during the Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s presidency (1989-1997). In this period the number of labour grievances increased in reaction to the general economic conditions that resulted from the liberalization policy of the government (starting in 1991). The immediate outcome of the policy was high inflation (decline in real wages), and elimination of some subsidies. Hence, the opposition to the liberalization policy among the disadvantaged masses and the working class mounted and the state retreated for fear of a widespread mass opposition.

Following the retreat, the state began its zigzag strategy to pursue economic liberalization. It pushed forward where it could, mainly in areas that were inconspicuous, and gave in when public discontent mounted. As riots and demonstrations in opposition to government policies (e.g., in Mashhad, Qazvin, Arak, Akbarabad and Islamshar) grew, the regime, to ensure political stability, was forced to pay greater heed to what the public was willing tolerate.¹¹

 

Nevertheless, the growth of capitalist economic activity during the de-involutionary period, stimulated by war reconstruction activities, led to an increase in the absolute and relative share of working class employment. The same conditions resulted in a substantial growth in the size of the middle class in both public and private sectors. There was an opening up of the public space, and different social forces were partially relieved from the hegemonic control of Khomeini’s period and the official and semi-official repressive organs of the Islamic Republic. Representatives of different classes, dominant and subordinate, became more assertive, especially the technocrats, intellectuals, students, women and ethnic groups.

The presidential election of 1997 and the advances of Islamic reformism, resulted in many new civil society organizations. However, in the eight years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, Islamic reformists failed to effectively alter the existing political balance of power in favour of political democracy and social justice. The liberal economic position and an unfriendly (and somewhat arrogant) attitude towards subordinate classes prevalent among Islamic reformists, and their lopsided leaning towards a truncated and exclusionary liberal democracy against the rising secular forces across all social classes, constrained the advance of Islamic reformists in this period.

 

Nevertheless, the relative opening up of the public space in 1997-2005, gave rise to independent civil society organizations among workers, women, intellectuals, and students, despite crackdowns imposed by hardliners, who still dominated the judiciary, coercive forces, especially the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia, and the security and intelligence organs of the state. Since 2005, when Ahmadinejad gained the presidency, this relatively open space has come under attack by the new governing military-security-cleric complex. The Ahmadinejad administration has operated through provocation, confrontation, and marginalization and exclusion. Arrest and imprisonment of independent unions leaders, execution of civil society activists, closure of pro-labour websites and blogs, attacks on May Day gatherings of the advocates of independent trade unions, have been elements of Ahmadinejad’s anti-democratic administration. Under Ahmadinejad, anti-labour policies, such as attempts to change labour laws to make layoffs arbitrary, have received greater impetus and the Ministry of Labour has come under the control of the Mo’talefe, a conservative, anti-labour coalition of entrepreneurs who have a traditional bazaari origin and a strong anti-reformist orientation.¹²

The early years of 2000s witnessed a resurgence in the confidence of labour activists and intellectuals, which led to widespread translation of books on labour movements in other countries, publication of books and articles on the left, trade unionism, social movements, civil society, politics and philosophy. In the meantime, the number of workers’ strike for economic demands and work conditions increased.¹³ Workers in public and private industry and services protested to demand their unpaid wages (a chronic problem in Iranian enterprises), opposed the widespread use of ‘blank signed’ and temporary contracts, and demanded that government and employers respect the application of current labour laws.

Some of the most confrontational labour protests were around re-employing laid-off workers. But even these simple demands and peaceful strikes were not tolerated by the government’s security and coercive forces. In many instances, the Islamic reformists of Khatami’s administration were either unable or unwilling to curb the violent attacks of coercive security forces on peaceful workers. Some of the most tragic examples of these years demonstrate the brutality of the security forces against workers’ peaceful moves and strikes. In July 2001, the workers from Jamco clothing and Shadanpoor shoe factories were seriously beaten by security forces in front of the Majles, as they demonstrated for the payment of their delayed wages.

 

In January 2004, construction workers participated in a strike and sit-in in the Copper Smelting Plant near the village of Khatounabad, in the Kirman province. This plant belongs to the National Copper Industries of Iran and was operated by a Chinese contractor. The construction workers complaint was the unfulfilled promise of being hired by the firm upon the completion of the plant. The workers’ families had joined the sit-in. On the eight day of the strike and sit-in, on 24 January, security forces attacked the strikers and their families sitting-in in the plant. In the attack and the ensuing clashes, four workers were shot dead, 300 wounded, and many arrested.¹⁴

In March 2004, one-third of Isfahan’s teachers followed the call to strike by a leader of the Islamic society, Anjoman Eslami, who was later arrested. The major demand of the teachers related to unpaid salaries, and a salary raise to compensate for inflation. Eight hundred schools in Isfahan and 300 in Tehran shut down on the first day of the strike. Eighty per cent of the teachers in Iran are women. This was an impressive expression of protest by Iranian working women.¹⁵

 

The tragic event of Khatounabad was a catalyst for escalating the protest movement of workers. The small number of independent labour activist committees that came up in the early 2000s, became more vocal and new committees were set up in some large factories in the following months, for example in Iran Khodro and Toledi-e Iran in Tehran. In early 2004 in Saqez, in Kurdistan, groups of seamstresses, bakers, brick-makers formed a shora (council). A report notes: ‘They linked up with labour activists in Tehran and five other cities… After secret meetings and coordination, a resolution had been agreed upon… on May Day, workers would demonstrate simultaneously in all seven cities.’¹⁶

 

In May 2005, workers in Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company formed Tehran and Municipality Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate as an independent trade union.¹⁷ The formation of a syndicate by Vahed Bus Workers was followed by the creation of Haft Tapeh Sugar Refinery Workers Syndicate, and reactivation of Kermanshah Electrical and Metal Workers Trade Society. Several committees and boards were formed for organizing the nascent labour syndicates or associations and re-inaugurating previously active ones. Among these are Free Assembly of Iranian Workers, the Board for Re-inauguration of Metal and Mechanical Syndicate and the Board for Re-inauguration of Painting Workers Syndicate.¹⁸

In addition, numerous committees have been formed by labour activists with the objective of providing support for the creation of independent unions, coordination of union actions, and reaching out to other progressive civil society organizations. Most of these labour committees are active in defending the workers’ right to strike, the right to form independent trade unions and labour organizations, and the right to elect their own representatives. There are also those who call for the ‘abolition of waged labour’, and the establishment of revolutionary councils. Labour committees have set up many websites and news bulletins, many of which have been used as sources in this article.¹⁹

 

May Day, the international day for workers, has become a ritual strengthening the solidarity among Iranian workers, despite the suppression of the state. In recent years, May Day celebrations have come under attack by coercive forces, ending in disruption of the demonstrations and brutal harassment and arrest of many demonstrators and labour organizers. Major international labour confederations have repeatedly expressed their solidarity with the plight of Iranian workers. Among those are the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and International Syndical Confederation (CSI).²⁰

The power of the working class of Iran can no longer be ignored. Despite all the historical, political, legal and structural obstacles, including repression and intimidation, its strength is once again on the rise.

 

Footnotes:

1. See the handbook on the history of the working class movement by Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network at http://www.iwsn.org/handbook/index.htm (this and all the web sites quoted in this paper were last visited on 27 August 2010), and Daneshfar (2005). See also Hossein (2008), Floor (1985), and Lajevardi (1985) on the working class trade unions and their conditions before the 1979 revolution.

2. A sample of reports on these circumstance are listed here. For a summary list of labour strikes and workers demands in 2009/2010 see http://asre-nou.net/php/workers/2010- 07-13_290_jambande88-1.pdf. On current issues on human rights in Iran see http://www.gozaar.org/persian/human-rights/index.1.html, Also see a report of Amnesty International (2010) on imprisonment of labour leaders.

3. In a book on civil society and democracy in Iran (Jahanbegloo, forthcoming) we have extensively discussed the role of democracy and progressive civil society organizations in advancing the cause of the working class in the democratic process, as well as the objective and subjective obstacles of the Iranian working class for establishing their independent organizations under the Islamic Republic.

4. See Nomani and Behdad (2006) and Behdad and Nomani (2009) for elaboration of this analysis.

5. For an analysis of the involutionary process in this period, see Nomani and Behdad (2006, ch. 3).

6. See the handbook on a brief history of the history of the working class of Iran in http://www.iwsn.org/handbook/index.htm, Hossein (2008), Floor (1985), and Lajevardi (1985).

7. Rahnema (1992), Bayat (1987).

8. In 1998, Workers House claimed that one third of Iranian workers were its members. Bayat (2007, p. 109). However, there is no independent verification for this claim.

9. See Behdad and Nomani (2009), and Nomani and Behdad (2006, chs. 3 and 5).

10. For labour grievances and actions in 1981-1989 see Daneshfar (2005). For a partial list of labour protests in 2010, see On Labor Demands and Actions in 2001 http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=75308

11. Nomani and Behdad, 2006, 44-56.

12. See Maljoo (2010).

13. See Daneshfar (2005), for the details on labour grievances and actions in 1997-2004.

14. See Malm and Esmailian (2007, p. 71), Sohrabi (2009), Daneshfar (2005), and http://www.etehadbinalmelali.com/HTML_09/5_1_09/khatoonabaad.htm.

15. Malm and Esmailian (2007, pp. 75-76).

16. Malm and Esmailian 2007, 3.

17. See Saeed Turabian (2009), the spoke person for the Vahed Bus Company Workers Syndicates, on the story of the formation of the syndicate.

18. These independent workers organizations are: Tehran and Municipality Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate, Haft Tapeh Sugar Refinery Workers Syndicate, Free Assembly of Iranian Workers, The Board for Re-inauguration of Metal and Mechanical Syndicate, The Board for Re-inauguration of Painting Workers Syndicate, Kermanshah Electrical and Metal Workers Trade Society, Pursuing Committee for the Formation of Free Workers Organizations, Coordination Committee for Support of the Formation of Workers Organizations, Support Society for Laid off and Unemployed Workers in Saghez, and Women’s Council. See http://iranlaborreport.com/?p=582.

19. For an impressive list of links to many of these committees’ websites, articles, statements, and resolutions written by labour activists and issued by different independent labour organizations with varied political orientation within the left movement inside and outside of Iran, see http://www.ofros.com/payvandha. htm. See also http://www.iwsn.org/handbook/index.htm, http://www.rahekargar.net/links/links.html, and http://asre-nou.net/php/links-new.html.

20. For a list of expression of support of these confederations see http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php? page=recherche&recherche= survey07+iran#pagination_articles, and http://iranlaborreport.com/?cat=1.

 

References:

Amnesty International. 2010. ‘Iran: Iranian trade unionists held incommunicado’, 14 June, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/063/2010/en

Assef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movement and the Post-Islamist Turn. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2007.

Assef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control. Zed Press, London, 1987.

Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani, ‘What a Revolution! Thirty Years of Social Class Reshuffling in Iran’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, African and the Middle East 29(1), 2009.

Shahla Daneshfar, Mobarezat-e kargaran dar Deu Dah-e akheer. http://www.kargaran.org, 2005.

Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988.

Willem Floor, Labour Unions, Laws and Conditions in Iran. Center For Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham, UK, 1985.

Mohammd Hossein, Yek Gharn Mobarezeh-e Tabaghati dar Iran. Vol.1. Rodabeh Publisher, Willowdale, Canada, 2008.

Habib Lajevardi, Labour Unions and Auto-cracy. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse New York, 1985.

Mohammad Maljoo, 2010, ‘Worker Protest in the Age of Ahmadinejd’, Middle East Report Online 241 http://www.merip.org/mero/mero062610.html

Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian, Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War. Pluto Press, London, 2007.

Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran, Qanon-e Kar (Labour Law), http://www.irimlsa.ir/page.php?103. English translation the law is also available t the same site and found on the web site of International Labour Office (ILO) http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/WEBTEXT/21843/64830/E90IRN01.htm

Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad, Class and Labour in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter? Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 2006.

Karen Pfeifer, Islam and Labour Law: Some Precepts and Examples, in Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani (eds.), Islam and the Everyday World: Public Policy Dilemmas. Routledge, London, 2006, 113-140.

Ali Rahnema and Farhad Nomani. The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics, and Economic Policy in Iran. Zed Books, London, 1990.

Saeed Rahnema, ‘Work Councils in Iran: The Illusion of Worker Control’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 13(1), 1992.

Behzad Sohrabi, ‘In the Memory of Khatounabad’s Lost Workers’, http://www.fwhi.org/maqale/bs_khaton_abad.htm

Saeed Turabian, 2009. ‘An Account of Three Years Struggle of Vahed Workers Syndicate’, in http://www.akhbar-rooz.com/article.jsp? essayId=19179.