Hundreds of Telecom Company Employees Strike in Several Iranian Cities

Hundreds of employees of Iran’s telecom companies held strikes and gatherings on Saturday and Sunday, June 30 and July 1, in the cities of Mashhad, Hamadan, Shiraz, and several cities in Lorestan and Khuzestan provinces, demanding “implementation of job classification plans in telecommunications, direct employment contracts, and job security assurance”.

According to ILNA news agency, the strike and gathering took place on Sunday in front of Iran Telecom Company buildings as well as the office of Ali Safari, one of parliament representatives in Ahvaz, while telecom company employees in Mashhad have been protesting their professional grievances for the past two weeks.

According to the report, the gatherers who are contracted with private companies and mostly work on telecom aerial cable networks said: “We will continue our protests until our demands are met”.

According to ILNA, the gatherers in front of Ali Safari’s office, parliament representative in Ahvaz, stated that the purpose of their gathering was “to inform more parliament representatives about the situation of telecom companies” and asked legislative branch representatives to “roll up their sleeves and force Iran Telecom Company to comply with the law”.

In this regard, the Free Union of Iranian Workers reported that aerial and underground cable network employees in Mashhad held a gathering on Saturday in front of Razavi Khorasan Labor Department.

According to the Etehad website belonging to this workers’ organization, following this gathering, representatives of the gatherers, officials from the Mashhad Telecom Department and Razavi Khorasan Labor Department held negotiations, but this meeting ended without clear results.

According to the report, officials from the Labor Department and Mashhad Telecom attempted to end the strike by giving “verbal promises to the striking personnel regarding cancellation of warnings against them, cancellation of dismissals, and pursuit of their demands”, but striking employees announced they would not end their strike until the promises given are “put in writing” for addressing their demands.

This is not the first time Iran Telecom Company employees have protested. Previously, Iran Telecom Company employees have held five gatherings in front of parliament since 2015.

The Free Union of Iranian Workers pointed out that since then, Iran Telecom Company employees have faced nothing but “empty verbal promises to fulfill their demands regarding job security assurance and direct employment contracts”, and during this period their representatives at the Mashhad Telecom Company have been “dismissed”.

Previously, according to the government IRNA news agency, Mahmoud Vaezi, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, on June 6 emphasized that Iran Telecom Company was privatized long ago and its personnel issues are unrelated to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and said: “The Ministry of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare has complete oversight of this company’s personnel issues.”

Iran Telecom Company was transferred in November 2009 based on Article 44 of the Constitution, and 50 percent of Iran Telecom Company shareholders are from the private sector.

According to Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran Telecom Company has a board of directors where one of the five members is from the government and only 20 percent of its shares belong to the government.

In this regard, Selman Khadadadi, a parliament representative, told ILNA regarding these gatherings: “Based on the Civil Service Management Law, the government was supposed to determine the status of its employees by September 2016, but ultimately requested an additional year following negotiations to do so”.

He noted that the government should send a bill to parliament by the end of this September and determine the status of its contracted and company employees, including telecom company staff.

This parliament representative said: “It is unjustifiable that in one room, one office, one institution, one organization or one ministry, two people do identical work; one is contracted and earns one million but the other is permanent and earns three or four million”.

Source: Radio Farda