NCRI – Bardseer Sugar Cube Factory workers and their families demonstrated in protest to their unpaid salaries by the government appointed management in the southern city of Kerman on Thursday. The striking workers participated in the event with their families.
"We are fed up with empty promises. They sit behind closed doors with the government representatives but the outcome for us is nothing," said one angry demonstrator.
"It has become a daily routine for workers to spend their time behind closed doors waiting for the day their salaries are paid. We have no means to prepare our children for the school year which has just begun," another worker said.
A worker representative participating in the demonstration added, "The management claims that beet workers, numbering nearly 3,500, have not turned in their crops and the factory has no funds to pay the workers. But, they have shipped their harvests long before from the fields."
Bardser factory is not an isolated case in workers walk out over unpaid salaries in Iran. The Sugar Cane factory in the southwestern city of Shoosh in which more than 5,000 workers are still on strike over their unpaid salaries since last year is a prime example of how the government is treating the huge labor force.
In summer alone nearly 140 workshops and factories went on strike over payments. Factories such as Haft-Tapeh sugar cane mills, Kiyan-Tire making car tires, Iran Khodro car manufacturer are some of the biggest with tens of thousands of workers.
In the past decade, most of Iran's factories have been privatized by the mullahs' regime opening the doors to even more suppressive measures against the Iranian workforce. The new managements were appointed by the government without adequate protection for workers and their families who make the most venerable part of the population.
