Continued Protest Gatherings of Steel Retirees in Multiple Cities; Special Guard Surrounds Sungun Copper Complex Strikers

Receiving pensions above the poverty line, free healthcare, resolving supplementary insurance problems, implementing the salary equalization law, and paying steel retirees’ legal claims according to valid steel fund regulations are among the most important demands of the protesters.

According to ILNA news agency, citing Steel Fund protesters, the meager increase in payments resulting from improper implementation of the salary equalization law by the Steel Fund does not match inflation and living costs, and this fund has no intention to correct the equalization, which is paid 27 percent less compared to other retirement funds, by providing financial resources.

Meanwhile, reports from East Azerbaijan indicate that workers at Iran’s second largest copper mine are surrounded by security and special guard forces on the sixth day of their strike.

According to the Free Union of Iranian Workers, after managers of the Sungun Copper Complex threatened more than two thousand protesting workers that if they do not end their strike they will side with the government, reports emerged from early Sunday that security forces and special guards with extensive presence at the entrance of the Sungun Copper Complex are preventing worker transit.

Based on this report, families of these workers have threatened that if anything happens to the striking workers, they will come to the complex from the cities of Urmia, Tabriz, Varzaghan, and Ahar and will protest.

Workers at the Sungun Copper Complex have stopped work protesting the cancellation of temporary contracts and the implementation of the job classification plan.

The Sungun Copper Complex has an annual financial turnover of more than 15 trillion tomans, and in September of the current year, part of the exploitation of this complex was transferred to the Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, the economic arm of the Revolutionary Guards.

A video has been released showing the strike of Sungun Copper Complex workers in Varzaghan in which a crane moves rapidly and dangerously toward the protesters, passing through the crowd.