On Saturday, August 24, a group of construction workers from the Heavy Equipment Production Company (HEPCO) gathered in front of the company’s headquarters in Arak and protested over unpaid wages, their contract conditions and insurance problems.
The workers said: “Due to the decline of production in 2019 and the inefficiency of the management chosen by the Privatization Organization, we are worried about our job security.”
The workers said they have only received their wages for the first two months of the current Persian calendar year, which started in March.
The workers resumed their protests on Sunday in front of the local offices of the regime’s parliament in Arak.
HEPCO, founded in 1974, was once the biggest manufacturer of heavy construction equipment in Iran and the Middle East, and produced 3,000 pieces of equipment per year. But since the mullahs seized power in Iran, the company has been constantly declining. The company was eventually sold to private owners with ties to the regime, which further pushed it toward its collapse.
HEPCO’s workers are one of many labor communities who are protesting delays in wages and poor working conditions. The regime’s response to labor protests has so far been hollow promises, crackdown and repression, and heavy prison sentences for protest organizers.
Protests by disabled people in Tehran
In other protests, a group of disabled people held a demonstration in front of the office of the Iranian regime’s president Hassan Rouhani, according to the website of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK).
The demonstrators, who had come to Tehran from various cities, protested against the regime’s lack of action to implement the law in support of disabled people. The legislation was passed into law in 2017, but so far, the regime has refrained from allocating the necessary budget for its implementation.
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Protests by commercial complex investors in Rasht
In Rasht, investors of the state-affiliated Adineh Commercial Complex in Rasht gathered in protest to the regime’s lack of response to their demands. The protesters had invested in the complex by purchasing its units in advance. But the complex has yet to be built, and the protesters are demanding the possible embezzlement cases and their perpetrators to be exposed.
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