NCRI – Angry workers staged widespread demonstrations across Iran on Labor Day in defiance of a ban on rallies for the sixth successive year by the regime.
Workers staged marches in cities around the country to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
In Tehran, protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Labour to demand guarantees over their medical insurance.
They also demonstrated outside the regime’s parliament over low income and the critical condition of workers’ living conditions.
State security forces arrested two men taking pictures of the protest, but workers managed to free them from police.
A state-organised gathering in the Motamedi Stadium to publicise the sham elections also turned into an anti-government when workers heckled a speech by MP Alireza Mahjoub, and waved placards asking, ‘Are you talking of justice? Shame, shame’.
Workers in Kermanshah, western Iran, protested outside Razi University and the province’s municipality building.
Laborers from the Mobarakeh Steel Factory in the cities of Moorche Khort and Nain, in Isfahan Province, gathered in protest in Ishfahan’s ‘Qadir’ garden.
Also in Isfahan, state security forces arrested 10 workers from the Mobarakeh steel factory on charges of planning a Labor day gathering to protest over critical working conditions, unpaid wages and being made to sign blank employment contracts.
Contract workers at a steel factory Hamadan also staged a strike in protest at unpaid wages.
In the city of Saqez, officials fearing massive public unrest refused permission for workers to hold a Labor Day ceremony.
In the city of Shushtar, in southern Iran, municipal workers – who have been on strike for 12 days – gathered outside the city’s fire department to demand 12 month unpaid wages.
More than 200 workers in Abhar, in Zanjan Province, staged a rally in the city’s main street to demand the annulment of short contracts, and payment of their wages and retirement fees.
