The Courageous Strike of the Teheran Tram-Drivers

The 17,000 employees of the Teheran bus companies, un-distracted by the famous “blasphemous cartoon” controversy, have been fighting an extremely difficult battle against their employers and the State for two months now. These workers are employees of the public transport company, the Teheran and District Bus Company (Sherkat e Vahed) which operates in the capital and surrounding area. In a country where the threshold of poverty is officially set by the government at 270 euros, most of these workers get a wage of around 200 euros and only about 15% of them 270 euros.

1978 was the year in which the poverty-stricken Iranian masses (the disinherited mostazafin) rose up in revolt, the Shah was expelled and the Islamic Republic was installed with the ensuing ferocious repression of the proletarian movement. The Iranian population has doubled since then, and now stands at 69.8 million inhabitants, more than half of whom are under 17 years old and 70% under 35. This youthfulness of this proletariat constitutes a strongly revolutionary factor.

After the terrible war with Iraq ended in 1988, at a cost of more than a million dead, the flight to the cities from the countryside was massively accelerated. Masses of huge barrack-like dwellings shot up everywhere to house the immigrants from the provinces. Teheran became a huge conglomeration of 12 million inhabitants.

In short, the typically capitalist process of proletarianisation and abandonment of the land, almost completed in the West, is still underway in the rest of the world. It has been calculated that in 2005 the world’s urban population overtook the rural population. According to one UNO estimate 175,000 people migrate to the cities every day. Fifty years ago there were only 86 cities with more than a million inhabitants, now there are more than 400.

On the basis of these simple statistics, who are the ones really ignoring the lessons of history, they who predict a social explosion in the metropolitan centres of profit and revenue, and the necessity for an entirely new form of distribution of the population in a post-mercantile age, with a truly global plan, or the ones who, in this massively expanding world slum, blather on about development and democracy?

Over the last few years the working class in Iran has suffered a severe attack on its working and living conditions. According to official figures the level of unemployment has risen to 20% of the working population and now stands at 16 million, with a million more young people entering the labour market every year.

Youth unemployment is linked to another statistic which speaks volumes about the benefits supposedly bestowed on the masses by Islamic moral rigour: tragically, Iran has one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the world; currently 1.2 million according to the official figures – which undoubtedly aim to minimise the extent of this plague.

As to job security, in Iran, same as in the West, “flexibility” is the order of the day. Permanent contracts are being substituted for short-term posts of a few months duration. World of Islam, or just plain world of capitalism? One of the methods most frequently used by the bosses to step up their exploitation of the Iranian working class is delaying the payment of wages. More than a million workers on the minimum wage (270 euros) are kept waiting for their pay for periods of between three and six months; and some up to two years. Even unemployment benefits and pensions are paid in arrears.

Although the legal minimum working age in Iran is fifteen years old, it is nevertheless estimated that around 380,000 children between 10 and 14 years old are employed in permanent work, and another 370,000 in seasonal work. In 2002-3 the government introduced a law which exempted businesses with less than 10 employees from the 1990 Labour Code. This has allowed children to be exploited even more.

The Iranian bourgeois regime regiment the workers by means of the Khane-ye Kargar (House of Workers) system. This is a kind of State trade-union which in every firm with more than 35 employees is headed by a Shora-ye Eslami (Islamic Council of Labour). These organisations were created following the violent repression of the labour movement in 1984. Although officially set up to look after the workers’ interests their real function is that of an out-and-out factory police force.

In 2003 an amendment to the 1990 Labour Code allowed trade-unions independent of the State to be formed without the permission of the authorities. Excluded from this provision however are the “strategic” businesses, such as Khodro, the Middle East’s main car manufacturing firm which employs 34,000 workers, and the petrochemical sector. In the sectors where workers do have the right to organise, any rights on paper are negated in practice, and those workers who do try to organise are subjected to various forms of repression, most commonly dismissal.

Strikes are illegal, but workers can, again in theory, take action in the workplace by means of Go Slows, Work to Rules and so on. In the public sector, however, every kind of strike is strictly prohibited.

Naturally, faced with these worsening conditions, the workers haven’t taken it lying down. Strikes, pickets and demonstrations are occurring virtually every day. We will comment on some of the more significant examples. In January 2004 the police shot into a crowd of 1,500 strikers at the Khatoonabad copper mines, killing four and wounding several others. In March and June of the same year, 200,000 teachers, a third of the total, were led out on strike by an independent union, whose president, Mahmoud Beheshti Langarudi, spokesman for Ali-Asghar Zati, and other members from the Mazandaran province, were arrested in retaliation. In October, a strike which started in the Textile Company of Kurdistan factory in the industrial city of Sanandaj, spread rapidly to other textile factories in the city (Shaho and Shinbaf), and was successful in obtaining back-pay. In December-January, another 16 day strike in the same factory led to the formation of a Workers’ struggle committee, which was immediately met with threats, sackings and arrests. In 2005, in reaction to the new minimum wage, set by the Government at 270 euros, thousands of workers from various cities (Tehran, Karaj, Demavand, Kermanshah, Abadan, Isfehan, Kashan, Sandandaj) and particular factories and workplaces (Filiver of Teheran, Khodro, Manshah petrochemicals, naval shipyards at Sadra di Behshahr) signed a petition for it to be raised to 460 euros. On May 1^st of last year, for the first time in many factories workers imposed stoppages lasting several hours and demonstrations took place in several cities under the auspices of a “Committee for the formation of free trade-unions”. In November, following a two month long strike, the workers of the Textile Company of Kurdistan in Sanandaj obtained back-pay and the reinstatement of 36 sacked workers.

Since 2003 the tramdrivers and workers at the Teheran and District Bus Company have been organising themselves within a new independent trade-union called the Trade Union of the Workers of the Teheran and District Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed, Sandikaye kargarane sherkate vahed). It has been formed on a truly class basis and currently has around 5,000 members. Despite this being the organisation which genuinely represents and defends the Teheran tramdrivers’ interests, neither the company nor the civic authorities have afforded it recognition. This union had been founded earlier, back in 1968, but was then banned in the early eighties by the new Islamic regime which imposed its Khane-ye Kargar and Shora-ye Eslami.

For more than a year now the workers organised within the Sherkat-e Vahed have been fighting for a series of demands, such as higher wages, parity with other public sector workers, payment of back-pay, reduction of workload, introduction of collective bargaining and elimination of Shora-ye Eslami from the company. To these demands others have been added in the course of the struggle following the repressive measures taken by the Company and the civic authorities. These have mainly involved calls for the reinstatement of sacked workers with full back-pay for the time they were unemployed, and the release and reinstatement of comrades who had been arrested, also with full back-pay.

In March 2005, workers in four of the ten transport districts in the capital went out on strike demanding a 14% wage increase. The stoppage was only for a few hours but it achieved its objective and the rise was granted. Between March and June the company reacted by sacking 17 members of the union.

Two months after the strike, on Monday May 9^th, 300 men belonging to the House of Workers, the Islamic Council of the Sherkat-e Vahed, to Basij, a paramilitary group formed by the government, and some company security men (Herasat) arrived in 12 lorries outside the union headquarters. They would then go on to attack and disrupt a meeting which was going on inside, beating up ten or so of the union militants; including the future leader, Mansoor Osanlou, who had been sacked two months before for his union activities. And all this under the watchful eyes of the State security forces. The most determined elements amongst this bunch of thugs were a group of 40 or 50 or so people led by well-known supporters of the regime, amongst them provincial deputies from the House of Workers, from the Supreme Council for the Co-ordination of the Islamic Councils, from the Executive Council of the provincial Headquarters of the Islamic Councils, from the East Teheran House of Workers, members of the Islamic Council of the Sherkat-e Vahed, and from the company’s security forces.

Barely a month afterwards, some of these gentlemen, namely Hassan Sadeghi, Ahmadi Panjaki and Mohammed Hamze’I, would take themselves off to the Geneva to represent the Iranian workers at the 93^rd session of the Council of the International Labour Office! The fact that this corrupt bandwagon, now part of the UNO, still accepts them as representatives of the Iranian workers tells us a lot about its true function as a bosses yellow union International.

In September and October 2002 a group of members of the ILO’s Freedom of Association Section visited Iran. Appropriately enough the report it drafted was despatched to the Iranian authorities! And it is notable that this report wasn’t translated into any other foreign language – rather as though the condition of Iranian workers was solely a matter for themselves, or rather for their exploiters. Clearly this organisation’s specific aim is to prevent international solidarity between workers.

A few excerpts from this report were nevertheless published in the Iranian newspapers, and some trade-union militants got it translated into English. From this we can gather that the heavy repression of the Iranian workers was denounced, in a vague kind of way, and that the formation of “new independent unions” was greeted positively. In fact these new unions aren’t independent at all, but are linked by a thousand ties to the government and the Iranian State. We refer to the Iranian Journalists’ Association and the Iranian Lorry-drivers Association. In fact the former organisation stipulates in its statutes that only those belonging to one of the country’s official religions can join. Three out of five of its executive committee members also belong to the Majles, the Islamic parliament, and four of them are members and leaders of the Islamic Cooperation front, which holds the majority in the Majles as well as a dominant role in the State structure. This is hardly surprising really considering the social role of journalists who work for the bourgeois press.

But what really reveals the anti-worker nature of these organisations is the way they have complied with the ILO and refused to challenge the blatant falsehoods being perpetuated by this organisation. And it is the same with the Lorry-drivers Association, with many of the leaders holding positions in the government and the institutional parties.

But let us return to the Tehran tramdrivers.

On June 3, 2005, a general assembly of the Sherkat-e Vahed workers and tram-drivers was held to adopts statutes and elect a leadership. Despite road blocks and intimidation from the combined ranks of the State and company security forces and members of Khane-ye Kargar (House of Workers) 8,000 workers participated in the assembly. By the end of July the number of members of the union sacked had reached seventy.

On September 7, the drivers staged a protest over the non-payment of wages. This consisted of leaving vehicle lights on during the daytime shift. In response to this token demonstration 7 trade union leaders were arrested for “public order offences” and later released on bail. On October 17, drivers organised a “
“ticket strike,” refusing to sell or check them. It was demanded that a previous agreement, concerning reduction of workload, wage parity with other government employees and reinstatement of sacked workmates, be adhered to.

Not only was the agreement not adhered to but on December 22 fourteen more trade-unionists were arrested, including the union’s leader, Mansoor Ossanlou. In retaliation on Saturday 25^th December, 3,000 workers in six out of the ten districts followed the union’s call for strike action, and 40 were arrested. The drivers and their families responded to these latest arrests by setting up a permanent camp outside the Evin maximum security prison, famed for the torture and assassinations carried out within its walls.

The strike carried over to the next day.

During the night, 4,000 workers assembled at the District 6 depot, a notoriously militant district. Following the arrival of the mayor of Tehran and his personal assurance that he would release the prisoners and meet the workers’ other demands, the drivers and other workers resumed work at 5am. On Monday the 27^th a small procession of workers and relatives of the prisoners set out from the prison and headed toward the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, calling for the release of the detainees. During the night, 11 out of the 18 prisoners were released, leaving behind 7 union militants, all of whom were members of the executive committee. Meanwhile the bank accounts of several union activists were frozen and their wages stopped.

On December 31^st some of the union leaders went to meet with the mayor. The latter would give no assurances about the Ossanlou’s release but promised to reply within fifteen days to the workers’ other demands, i.e., introduction of collective bargaining, recognition of the union, wages increases and the dissolution of the company’s Shora-ye Eslami (Islamic Council). Meanwhile, the seven trade union militants accused of public order offences were summoned to appear before the Court of Justice on the following day.

Messages of solidarity with the Tehran drivers and workers were arriving from the main factories in Iran: from the petrochemical workers in Khuzestan (in oil rich South-western Iran bordering Basra in Iraq), from the Shaho Textile Company workers, from the Kermanshah Metalworkers Union, from the Khodro workers, from the Kurdistan Textile Company workers and from the Committee for the formation of a free union of copper miners.

On January 1^st, 150 workers demonstrated in support of Ossanlou’s release outside the Revolutionary Court. The following day at least 5,000 members of the union assembled in the Azadi stadium in the North west of the city. Once again the mayor appeared to meet with the workers. And the day after that the union resumed the “lights on during the day” protest and called for another strike on January 28^th.

At this point the struggle become more intense: Mansoor Ossanlou was still in prison and the mayor’s promises were clearly revealed as a strategy to gain more time. The “first citizen” – who as part of the anti-worker forces had been playing the role of “the moderate,” engaging in discussions with the workers and attending their meetings – was now faced with stubbornness on the workers’ part and a union which, instead of hinting it might stop the protests, was announcing new strikes. The mayor’s unsuccessful strategy was abandoned; the mask was cast aside and he would denounce the union as an illegal organisation and vow to prevent the strike.

The level of repression is increased. On Saturday the 7^th, the drivers stage another protest, driving around the city with their headlights on again and with a portrait of Ossanlou attached to every bus, with a caption calling for his release. Some also put up posters advocating the formation of a free trade union. The protest is successful and drivers from all of Tehran’s ten transport districts, in particular from districts 4, 5 and 9, take part. In District 5 the government calls out the yegan ha-ye vizhe, a special force created in July 2002 to combat “anti-islamic behaviour” and “social corruption” amongst youth. Various skuffles break out when members of the state security forces and the Herasat (company security) stop the buses and attempt to remove the Ossanlou posters. Five drivers are arrested and then released shortly afterwards.

The next two weeks are relatively quiet as preparations are made for the strike on January 28^th. On the evening of the 24^th union militants distribute a leaflet about the strike and what had prompted it. On the 25^th, six trade-unionists are summoned to the Court of Justice to appear the following day. One is placed under arrest whilst distributing the leaflets. The six trade-unionists, having turned up at court accompanied with two workmates, are then interrogated until nightfall and then, along with their two workmates, arrested. Practically the entire union leadership is in jail. Other workers, also summoned to court, see which way the wind is blowing and refuse to appear.

In the meantime, during an interview on Iranian television, the mayor defines the union as “illegal” and the State radio describes the workers as “counter-revolutionaries” and “saboteurs”. Rumours start to circulate about the Government deploying 10,000 Baseej to break the strike. On the night of the 27^th, hundreds of members of the security forces enter the homes of the trade-unionists, who are beaten up and carted off to prison where the beatings continue. The company directors, members of the Shora-ye Eslami and the forces of order work together to identify and arrest workers. In some cases family members are also subjected to police brutality. During the raid on the house of one of the union leaders, Yaghub Salimi, the riot squad forcibly arrest his wife and five children, including a two and twelve year old.

On the Sunday morning the strike nevertheless goes ahead in all ten districts. In each area there are around six to seven hundred drivers working, the workers on the picket lines are confronted by over a thousand agents who force them back on to the buses with insults, menaces and baton charges. Those who refuse are arrested. In those depots where the workers are powerful enough to react the police resort to tear gas and threaten to open fire on the demonstrators. Company and Government call in the army, and mercenaries of the Baseej militia, to replace the striking drivers. The fact that by this time around a hundred had already been arrested shows the high level of commitment to this strike, which in fact continues in some districts.

By evening 1,300 workers had been arrested and most of them taken off to the Evin prison. The Company declares it is going to sack them all and freeze the payment of their wages with immediate effect. Arrests continue for the rest of the day and the following night. Bit by bit, the prisoners are then released, until by the end of February, the last we heard, six militants remain, all from the union leadership and including Mansoor Ossanlou. An unspecified number of workers is prevented from returning to work, and on February 22^nd, 150 of them organise a demonstration outside the Ministry of labour demanding reinstatement.

We have described the course of this struggle not in order to register our surprise at the “anti-democratic” way in which the workers have been treated, nor to denounce the methods of the Iranian regime in particular, but to pay tribute to a bravely fought workers’ struggle, and to see what lessons can be derived from it. Despite the rubbishy journalism over here having us believe that Iran is a country immersed in mediaeval obscurantism, in fact it is a modern country with a highly developed bourgeoisie, and that is the social context within which the Iranian proletariat is conducting their battle.

Our response to the repressive action taken by the Iranian State and employers is not to condemn it as an affront to Democracy, or to portray it as a “violation of human rights” (a purely metaphysical concept) but rather to warn the workers of all countries that they need to prepare themselves for a similar level of conflict. This struggle isn’t a hangover from the past but rather a foretaste of what is to come, throughout the entire capitalist world. The repression meted out to the tram-drivers in Italy recently is a small indicator of what the working class in the west can expect in the future. To those who can let go of their democratic and pacifist prejudices it is clear that the class struggle, even when restricted to fighting purely for basic “economic” demands, will be made illegal and will eventually come into conflict with the state apparatus, both in its democratic, and its antidemocratic, guises.