Iran:
Economic crisis worsens, popular unrest grows

The worsening economic crisis and recession in Iran is spreading. As it 
does, popular unrest is growing. As workers move their protests outside the 
factory, joining with students in demonstrations and protests against 
government authorities, their economic struggles have become political.

The deteriorating economy is facing major recession. It has already dropped 
to levels comparable with 40 years ago. The foreign debt is evaluated at 
US$30 billion.

In the two years to March 1999, some 400,000 workers have lost their jobs. 
Many factories and plants have failed to pay any wages for over a year. 
Meanwhile, the rate of inflation and price rises are astronomical.

The Pash Bafi kashmir wool plant in Kermanshah is typical. With 400 workers 
it is in serious trouble: production has ground to a halt and it is 
expected that the factory will close down any day. Workers in the plant 
have received no salary for months.

Although they have complained to the authorities, issued protest leaflets 
blaming the management for the problems and threatened to go on strike, no 
one has addressed their grievances.

There is no social security — no payment of unemployment benefits, no free 
hospital care, no housing assistance — for those who lose their jobs. The 
only social security is in the form of insurance covering mainly state 
sector employees and the military.

Not only is the reactionary Islamic regime incapable of providing social 
services but it is failing even in its attempts to provide retirement funds 
and basic health insurance for those who have paid for such services.

Out of every 100 workers who lose their lives due to accidents at work, 
only one receives any insurance payment or cover for their family. And this 
payment is so meagre that many don't bother applying for it, even though 
they pay their insurance premiums.

Government policy over the last ten years has been to "reconstruct the 
economy" by following a policy of privatisation in accordance with the 
instructions of the International Monetary Fund.

Under the cover of privatisation, the government has stopped making 
payments to the social services insurance funds and now owes 350 billion 
Tomans to these services (according to the paper Kar va Kargar, 
22/4/99).

The existence of large state-operated funds within a faction-ridden 
dictatorial regime such as that in Iran today has inevitably led to the 
emergence of Mafia-style groups and rampant corruption.

Competition between various groups of the clergy to steal from the social 
services funds, under the guise of "privatising" them, has resulted in the 
corruption in this sector being exposed.

Nevertheless, like the Yeltsin regime in Russia, the Iranian regime is 
using privatisation as a means to plunder state financial assets.

Iran's constitution, adopted 20 years ago, soon after the February 
uprising, provides for the right to work (article 28), right to housing 
(article 31), right to health care and medical services (article 29) and 
right to free education for all (article 30).

However all this has remained on paper and even the limited rights to free 
education and free health services during the Shah's regime have 
disappeared.

The privatisation process has seen workers laid off or simply not paid, 
assets of enterprises stripped or just left idle. 

The Poushak (clothing) factory of Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan used to 
employ 90 workers. It was part of the regime's Foundation for the 
Dispossessed.

Nevertheless, production was stopped five months ago and workers with more 
than 20 years' service left with no job and no redundancy money. A woman 
worker from this plant complains that "millions of Tomans of equipment and 
product are sitting idle and no one cares about the 90 workers who have 
lost their jobs".

The workers have staged a number of protests, so far without effect.

Workers from an engineering consultancy company associated with the 
Ministry of Roads and Transport have protested that the company had made 
them redundant (at no notice) in order to reduce the government budget, 
without any redundancy payments.

Wages in Iran have two components: the basic salary and benefits or bonus 
payments (such as child benefit, hard work supplement, food subsidy, 
overtime extras).

At times of economic crisis, factory owners and the state can cut back half 
of the salary by stopping all benefits (bonus payments).

Workers in the service sector of Abhar Hospital (like many other hospitals, 
the service sector has been privatised) claim that according to a deal 
between the hospital authorities and the private contractor, only the basic 
salary (i.e., excluding any benefits) will be paid to the workers. Some 
workers have received no salary at all for more than four months.

Strikes as well as protests are escalating. As well as the Abhar Hospital 
workers, there have been protests or stoppages by sugar plant workers in 
Ahvaz and oil pipeline workers, also in Ahvaz, bicycle factory workers in 
Gouchan, leather workers in Lorestan, Iran Wood Industry workers in Tehran, 
Pars textile company employees in Semnan.

Ghods road workers have staged protests, as have Nour Afshar Hospital 
workers, makers of paper bags in Kerman (southern Iran), workers at the 
KhazarSefalin clothing plant, brick makers in Tehran — and many others.

Complaints range from unpaid wages to arbitrary extension of working hours 
and "slave-like" prohibitions on leaving the plant.

The 100 workers in the Pak Dam factory, which is a private company in 
Karaj-Tehran road, have protested against their employer's "instructions" 
that in future they will work 7am to 5pm, and they cannot leave the plant 
between those hours.

At the same time, manning levels have been cut in some sections from six 
workers to three, who must do the work of six.

Iranian workers are learning through their own experience that without a 
fundamental change in the economic and political system the conditions of 
poverty and destitution will not improve.

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News Bulletin, Solidarity Campaign with Iranian Workers

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