Strikes in Iran; Workers’ Demands Expanded to Include Vaccination Requirement

As professional and civil groups continue to support the ongoing nationwide strike by contract and temporary workers in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, which has entered its fourth week, protests and strikes are also taking place in other sectors including transportation, livestock, and agriculture.

The Telegram channel of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers’ union reported that workers, on Wednesday, added the demand for vaccination of workers across the country to their demands and announced they would continue the strike until their demands are met.

According to Hrana’s report, affected livestock farmers held protest gatherings in at least Shahrekord, Nishapur, and Torbat Heydarieh. These protests were held against the rising cost of fodder and the low prices of milk and meat.

Videos posted on social media show that farmers in Khuzestan are also chanting in protest of the closure of irrigation water to agricultural lands, and are moving with sticks and stones toward law enforcement vehicles.

Meanwhile, the Hrana human rights website has reported on the gathering of tanker drivers and truckers transporting fuel at Piruz Khan customs in Qasr-e Shirin, adding that “the low freight rates” were among the reasons cited for the truckers’ protest.

• The nationwide strike in oil industries continues

Approximately four weeks ago, thousands of contract workers in the oil, gas, petrochemical industries, and power plants, following negligence and failure to meet their professional demands including wage increases, modification of the work schedule from twenty to ten working and non-working days, went on a widespread strike and, having left their workplaces, returned to their cities.

The Strike Organization Council, in its seventh statement, referencing four urgent demands—including doubling wages, achieving twenty working days and ten days of leave, improving health and safety conditions in the workplace, and ensuring agreements are written and formal—wrote: “Just as we have been able to strike together with tens of thousands of people, we can achieve our demands. We have heard your call. We consider the doubled wages you have proposed as the fruit of our strike and will base ourselves on it, and we will not accept anything less.”

In recent days, extensive support for the oil workers’ strike has been given inside and outside Iran, and in the latest development, the sole bus company union of Tehran and its suburbs issued a statement supporting the continuation of the workers’ strike, stating: “It is regrettable that your working conditions, health, workplace and dormitory safety evoke memories of forced labor camps, and despite unbearable heat and very difficult working hardship, you are deprived of the most basic welfare and work safety facilities.”

Some workers from striking oil projects residing in Fooladshahr also joined the support for striking workers by posting a video on social media.

Source: Voice of America