Labor Strikes In Iran Continue For Third Consecutive Day
Iranian workers in major industries continued to strike on Monday, with action now across at least 10 provinces.
Iranian workers in major industries continued to strike on Monday, with action now across at least 10 provinces.
Workers in the oil, gas and steel industries stood up against low wages as industrial action continued to cause disruption to the country’s main sources of revenue.
Videos published on social media show staff at Madkoush steel company in the southern city of Bandar Abbas have stopped working. Contract workers in Shadegan Steel Complex in the south also went on strike in action which began on Saturday.
Major companies were hit by the action including engineering giant Imensazan, blacklisted by the US, Jahanpars companies in the Sarcheshemeh Copper Complex, electricians at the Gachsaran Petrochemical Project and contract workers in the Daralu Copper Concentrate Plant in Kerman.
Iran International revealed in an exclusive report that security forces are threatening the workers and their families to stop the strike.
However, labor activists believe this time the nationwide strikes are not the same as the previous ones and warn that society is on the verge of explosion. Experts say there is no end in sight as tensions rise amidst a crumbling economy and the biggest anti-regime sentiment in years. It remains to be seen how the government will react to it.
In an interview with Iran International TV Saturday evening, Esmaeilion who had not directly mentioned the exiled Prince as the reason for leaving the alliance a day earlier, named him as the person with whom he had disagreements and left the group.
Prince Reza Pahlavi has not responded to Esmaeilion’s accusations yet.
Esmaeilion claimed that the “near absolute majority” of the members of the alliance sought the formation of specialized committees and drawing up articles of association for the alliance, but the Prince “resisted” such initiatives and instead demanded that the alliance should only give support to political organizations formed outside it.
“Another problem was that discussions within the group leaked out … The tweets that Mr Pahlavi posted in the past two, three weeks transferred internal discussions outside although we were still discussing the issues,” he said.
Prince Reza Pahlavi said in an April 4 tweet that he had submitted a letter containing the names of additional prospective members to give a voice to those who were unrepresented in the alliance. In another tweet on April 10 he reported that members of the group had not come to a consensus regarding the said candidates.
Calling this a setback, the Prince had also said that he would work with other individuals and groups “to amplify the voices of all Iranians, adding that he would not limit himself “to one group” and stand behind “all groups who believe in ensuring Iran's territorial integrity, who want human rights for the Iranian people, and who believe the future government of Iran should be a secular democracy, the form of which should be decided by the Iranian people.”
Prince Reza Pahlavi has not publicly named his proposed candidates but some of his his supporters who call themselves ‘constitutionalists’ allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of football legend Ali Karimi at the time of announcement of their association.
They allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of London-based journalist Amir Taheri and Germany-based musician and activist Shahin Najafi.
There is also the accusation that Esmaeilion resigned because of Prince Pahlavi’s recent trip to Israel.
In his interview with Iran International, however, Esmaeilion denied the allegation that he had announced his resignation Friday, immediately after Prince Reza Pahlavi’s visit to Israel, “to undermine his achievements.”
Some constitutional monarchists seem pleased by Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance. “From now on fresh blood will enter [the veins] of the pragmatic front of the opposition. This is a very positive development!” one of the supporters of the exiled Prince tweeted.
“Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance has another aspect, namely, if the project of restoring constitutional and parliamentary monarchy in the future, is realized, it will again result in autocracy,” another tweet said.
It also accused monarchists of not having the capability of cooperating with those in favor of a future republic. “The problem is in the theory of monarchy, which does not prepare the ground for pluralism.”
In recent years, the former crown prince did not lay claim to the throne, and at least on one occasion he said his own desirable government would be a republic rather than a monarchy, but many of his supporters, who always refer to him affectionately as ‘The Prince’ see him as the future king of the country.
NOTE: In the earlier version of this report it was erroneously said that Prince Reza Pahlavi had proposed US-based Amir-Hossein Etemadi as a candidate for the Council.
In an audio file sent to Iran International and verified by our contacts, a man recounts the ordeal of contract workers in the companies active in oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
The worker especially talked about the case of himself and his colleagues working under contract by the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Corporation, aka Persian Gulf Holding, where a $170-million embezzlement case at one of its subsidiaries put the company on spotlight last winter.
Persian Gulf Holding is a large Iranian quasi-governmental company that claims to be an independent entity but practically it is a large part of the government-controlled energy industry with 15 subsidiaries. Regime insider Abdolali Ali-Asgari – a former head of the country’s state broadcaster is the current CEO of the company.
Describing their situation as “stuck in hidden slavery,” the worker says the problems stem from the special status of a few well-connected senior managers and systematic corruption in the energy industry.
“Iran’s oil industry mafia takes advantage of the workers, especially project and contract workers, and forces them to work in terrible conditions," he said.
With double-digit unemployment and ever-falling currency, workers have little choice to find other employment paying them more than the minimum wage of $120 a month.
Workers' lives are not important for managers; wages are meager and are paid with delays; there are no weekend breaks; the managers are selected from those with links to senior officials and do not do anything but sit in their ivory towers with their laptops; and when workers go on strike to demand changes, the security forces threaten the them and their families to break their strikes. These are just some of the gravamina of the worker in his audio file.
He went on to say that several workers have died in the past few months due to non-compliance of companies with safety issues, but the authorities do not let such incidents to be reflected in mainstream media.
The worker claimed that the firms which employ them sign contracts with the government in euros and dollars but pay workers in rials and often two or three months late.
One of the main reasons that the information about the plight of oil industry workers does not make news is that their workplaces are usually located in remote areas with poor connectivity to big cities, making them vulnerable to pressure by their employers.
In an interview with Iran International on Sunday, journalist Reza Hajihosseini described the situation of these workers as a case of “dehumanization,” noting that the way the employers treat the workers reminds us of a leaked video showing how jailors treated prisoners in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Javad Abbasi Tavallali, a journalist with firsthand experience about the working conditions in Asaluyeh -- a city in Bushehr province and home to the majority of the country’s energy plants and refineries – told Iran International that almost all these government contractors, such as Petro Sina Arya, PetroPars, and Petro Paydar Iranian, are affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.
“These companies make the best use of a lack of media coverage about their actions and a lack of workers unions,” he said, adding that “the exploitation and the disasters that are taking place in Asaluyeh are known to the government thanks to regular reports by Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters – the engineering wing of the IRGC – for decades.”
The worker's statement comes on the backdrop of a renewed round of strikes by Iranian factory workers, including workers in the country's oil industry.
Since Saturday, workers of more than 30 oil, gas, steel and petrochemical companies in Asaluyeh and Kangan in Bushehr province, Dehloran in Ilam province, Gachsaran in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, and many more started another round of strike demanding wage increases in the face of more than 50 percent annual inflation.
Hossein Aghayan, a former director of the supply department of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), says the rise in gasoline consumption is a result of heavily subsidized low prices, ILNA reported on Sunday.
The NIORDC is part of the country’s oil ministry and performs all operations relating to refining and distribution of oil products.
“One of the reasons for the growth of consumption is that the price is low. When they did not raise the price of gasoline at the right time, they should have expected its consequences,” Aghayan said, noting that if the authorities move to increase the price now, it will have a detrimental effect on an already inflation rate and will lead to increase in prices of other goods.
“If the prices are not raised, the unbridled rising consumption will continue,” Aghayan warned.
As part of a populistic approach to the economy, the Islamic Republic sells gasoline at extremely low prices, charging less than 10 US cents per gallon, or less than 3 cents per liter, while neighboring oil-producers have much higher prices, more in line with international market rates.
For years there has been talk of adjusting prices, but since 2018 Iran’s currency has dropped 12-fold and any increase needs to be very big to meaningful in US dollars.
One of the reasons that the Islamic Republic did not manage to increase fuel prices was the fear of triggering more protests, as the country was convulsed by the boldest wave of unrest following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
In November 2019, a government decision to increase fuel prices by 50–200 percent triggered a cycle of protests and unrest across the country that lasted for over two weeks. During this time, angry protesters torched hundreds of gas stations, banks, and government buildings.
In March, Iran International released a classified document outlining the proceedings of a meeting of various government officials from different departments at the presidential office in late February according to which strategic fuel reserves had dropped to a dangerously low level, forcing major repairs at refineries to be delayed allowing maximum production for the time being.
The meeting decided to advise officials to avoid any public remarks or suggestions that could be interpreted as an intention to raise current fuel prices.
According to Aghayan, the main concern of the authorities at the moment is controlling the supply chain so that long lines would not form at the gas stations across the country.
He also made several suggestions on how to control the consumption of gasoline, such as stricter rationing plans and decreasing daily quotas for citizens, as well as raising fuel prices more than threefold.
“In the past, we imported super or premium gasoline and mixed it with light naphtha, and there was no problem, but if we want to supply high-quality gasoline, we have to import it,” Aghayan underlined.
In addition to extremely low prices that do not encourage saving fuel, Iran also faces gasoline and diesel shortages due to a lack of refining capacity. The low prices also lead to millions of liters of fuel being smuggled out of Iran daily, which betrays a large-scale smuggling network.
The NIORDC head, Jalil Salari, said on Saturday that about 10 million liters of diesel fuel is smuggled out of the country per day, claiming that it is about 10 percent of the country’s total daily production.
Iran has one of the biggest reserves of oil and natural gas and its economy is chiefly dependent on the revenues from crude oil exports. But due to sanctions and mismanagement it has failed to modernize the energy sector in general, with power shortages most of the year.
Systematic corruption is not something new in Iran's oil-dependent economy but recently criticism is intensifying over the government’s energy management. The situation has been grave in the past several years but since the administration of Ebrahim Raisi assumed office in 2021, the entire energy management system is going haywire even faster, drawing backlash from people and even regime officials.
Russia has also started exporting gasoline and diesel to Iran by rail this year for the first time since it lost its traditional customers over its invasion of Ukraine.
Since Saturday, workers of the oil, gas and petrochemical industries in Iran startedanother round of strike demanding wage increases in the face of more than 50 percent annual inflation.