For six weeks, mass protests have rocked Iran. The murder of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian from Saqez, a city in Iran’s Kurdistan province, has forced a reckoning between Iranian society and the state. Iranian women are asserting their rights and, more broadly, the Iranian people are demanding radical political change. The Iranian government has so far responded with force to protesters, killing hundreds. Officials have not suggested initiating a political process to meet public demands. The protests are set to continue.
So far, workers have played a key role in the protests, organizing demonstrations and using their role in the economy to express solidarity with the protests and put pressure on authorities. . Lawyers and doctors have staged protests in Tehran and other major cities. Various groups of industrial and transport workers organized demonstrations. Teachers have helped organize talk groups and discussion forums among students in schools where acts of civil disobedience came to the forefront of the early movement.
But despite various labor groups contributing to the cause and calling for strikes, workers still continued to join protests or go on massive strikes to put serious economic pressure on the authorities. I don’t do it.
For six weeks, mass protests have rocked Iran. The murder of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian from Saqez, a city in Iran’s Kurdistan province, has forced a reckoning between Iranian society and the state. Iranian women are asserting their rights and, more broadly, the Iranian people are demanding radical political change. The Iranian government has so far responded with force to protesters, killing hundreds. Officials have not suggested initiating a political process to meet public demands. The protests are set to continue.
So far, workers have played a key role in the protests, organizing demonstrations and using their role in the economy to express solidarity with the protests and put pressure on authorities. . Lawyers and doctors have staged protests in Tehran and other major cities. Various groups of industrial and transport workers organized demonstrations. Teachers have helped organize talk groups and discussion forums among students in schools where acts of civil disobedience came to the forefront of the early movement.
But despite various labor groups contributing to the cause and calling for strikes, workers still continued to join protests or go on massive strikes to put serious economic pressure on the authorities. I don’t do it.
The hashtag “general strike” has been trending on social media since the protests began. Demonstration supporters, including those outside Iran, welcomed bazaar strikes carried out by shopkeepers in many cities in the first few weeks of the movement. I have shared the report. Expectations rose when the Coordinating Council of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association declared a nationwide strike from Oct. 23 to Oct. 24.
However, these strikes were unsuccessful and none of them were large enough to affect the production of goods or the provision of services. Bazaar strikes mainly consisted of shopkeepers boarding windows to prevent property damage. Oil strikes were confined to the small pockets of contract workers and took place mainly at lunch or during shift breaks. Teachers’ strikes were limited to a few classrooms in Kurdistan. The long-awaited general strike has yet to materialize.
The idea that a general strike could change Iran’s new protest movement is tied to the memory of the 1979 revolution that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic. Since 1978, strikes by civil servants, city officials and even oil workers have put great pressure on the royal government. But the conditions that allowed large-scale labor mobilization in 1979 no longer exist today. One of the reasons these strikes were successful is that they were led by workers with stable jobs in a consolidated state-led sector. Outside of the bazaar, strike action by precarious workers in the private sector was limited.
Today’s Iranian workers are in more precarious employment than they were in 1979, making it harder to mobilize. Iran’s oil ministry directly employs less than a third of all oil workers in the country and relies on private contractors to provide support. Teachers and doctors in the public sector face stiff competition from a vast pool of low-paid workers in the private sector. After years of privatization, fewer than 100 of his large industrial enterprises remain state-owned. Most of the workers in these companies are employed on temporary contracts.
The 1979 revolution helped organize workers, but today the unionization rate is dismal. Widespread union busting and privatization in the 2000s, combined with layoffs and job insecurity in the sanctions-plagued 2010s, have left Iranian workers unorganized. Over time, the loss of union structures made it more difficult for political struggles to turn into workplace strikes. For example, in the late 1990s, workers were able to mobilize organizations to support reformist leader Mohammad Khatami. A decade later, declining trade unions prevented stronger action at work during the 2009 Green Movement. Today the situation is even more dire.
Apart from the lack of formal organization, economic factors are major obstacles to worker-led political action. Between 2010 and 2020, the median annual spending of a household headed by a blue-collar worker fell from her $4,600 to $3,900, a 15% decrease, according to data from the Iranian Statistics Center. With little savings, most workers live paycheck to paycheck. They cannot afford to give up their wages and fear being laid off in an economy with high unemployment.
In October, managers at Haft Tappeh Sugarcane, a large state-owned company, were reportedly urged by authorities to “do whatever it takes to prevent worker protests.” One day before the workers planned their protest, they suddenly agreed to pay months’ worth of delayed wages. Recently, the Persian Gulf Mining and Metals Special Economic Zone sought payment from key employers in Hormozgan province. unpaid wages “To prevent workplace grievances, which may be a reason to join the protests.” Iranian officials, recognizing that economic grievances are the main motivation for the protests, have stepped up the crackdown.
An oil workers’ strike scheduled for October 29 has been postponed because, as organizers explained, “our jobs have been securitized.” But officials also understand that Iranian workers are in a precarious position. Many workers will refrain from protesting if their wages and jobs are at stake.
In a recent interview published in Persian, Jack Goldstone, a leading theorist of social revolution, said that “continued strikes among workers at oil facilities and other important and key sectors” , suggested it was one of the necessary conditions for the success of the current protests in Iran. increase. That doesn’t mean workers can’t contribute to the protest movement, though.
Strikes played a major role in the 1979 Revolution because they were a viable and effective tactic. But strikes are not the only political action workers can take. As the first few weeks of protests have made clear, workers can show solidarity and have their demands heard in a number of ways. For those observing the protests from afar, it is important not to force workers to have their own ideas of what effective mobilization looks like, especially in the short term.
Moreover, while Iranian workers currently lack unions and organizations to organize quickly, the very political imperative to participate in protests could spur new kinds of organizing. Yes. Until the 1979 revolution, national strikes only became a feature of the movement after months of popular demonstrations. will be given time to build new networks and take advantage of the extraordinary solidarity expressed among Iran’s various social groups and diasporas.
Finally, the economic situation of workers can also change. Iran’s economy continues its fragile recovery, and continued unrest and declining prospects for sanctions relief will hamper significant improvements in the welfare of Iranian families. However, there is room for actors outside Iran to provide economic support to Iranian workers. The most prominent proposal of this kind is strike fundsBut such funds create perverse financial incentives for simply supporting workers who put themselves at risk. Iranian officials are also likely to move aggressively to block financial transfers made as part of strike funding.
A better approach would be to make it easier for Iranians in the diaspora to send money to family and friends in Iran in the form of remittances. This gives many workers the means to join the strike by helping them overcome the fear associated with loss of income. For other workers, remittances will help make ends meet in an economy where Western sanctions have contributed to a spike in inflation.
Encouragingly, research shows that unconditional money transfers are associated with increased political participation, including protests. Increased remittances will help restore the mobilization capacity of Iranian workers, but given the inherent risks, it will be up to individuals to decide when they are ready to strike.
Former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who addressed Iranian workers on Labor Day, once declared:
More than 40 years after the founding of the Islamic Republic, fewer people believe in revolution than ever before, and the failure of the state to ensure the welfare of its workers is one of the many reasons for this loss of faith. It is one. Today, the unorganized and helpless Iranian workers have few possessions. That is why it may be difficult to foster a new revolution.
