Maryam Rajavi’s Labor Day message to Iranians workers
Felicitations on this day are not just meant to appreciate workers’ suffering and fortitude, but to harbinger and recall the burning hope for a future that is free from repression and exploitation, a future that will be realized with the power of the deprived and oppressed workers, whose force is able to fight and bring about change.
On this occasion, I would like to salute and extend my warmest greetings to the thousands of courageous workers who staged protests last year and expressed their demand for toppling the mullahs’ corrupt, oppressive and despotic rule.
I salute the workers who voiced their protest at the cost of their jobs and those who were flogged and imprisoned for doing so.
The mullahs’ response to these righteous protests was more suppression and treachery for if they accept any of the workers’ basic demands, they will have to reject the existence of their regime.
Iran’s working class had never been so entangled in poverty, unemployment and disarray.
Ninety per cent of Iranian workers live below the poverty line. 95% of workers have temporary employment and work on limited contracts. In fact, there is no job security in Iran’s job market.
In contrast, Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards Corps have monopolized the lion’s share of the country’s economy. They own and run thousands of financial, commercial, manufacturing, and public services institutions. They spend the nation’s wealth and revenues on the war operations against the people of Syria or on suppression of Iranian society, and leave the remainder for the regime’s officials and associates to plunder.
Consequently, the main employer and exploiter of workers, the suppressive forces, the Judiciary, the Labor Ministry, the Social Security Organization, the bogus organization of Workers Defense, etc. have all come together today in Khamenei’s establishment and his Revolutionary Guards Corps. For this reason, restitution of the trampled rights of Iranian workers will be realized only when the ogre of coercion, plunder and exploitation is annihilated.
Iranian workers must receive decent salaries and wages providing for their welfare, insurance and housing. They must enjoy the right to have free and independent organizations.
Every Iranian worker must have a job and enjoy job security. To this end, all human resources contractors and intermediary companies involved in recruitment of workers must be dismantled.
Fellow Iranian workers,
There is an enormous potential in your struggle for the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship as it expands to join the struggles of other strata and grows in solidarity with all your defiant countrymen.
Stand up to the mullahs’ discriminations against and oppression of Iranian ethnic groups and followers of other faiths. You need to underline your unity and solidarity.
Stand up to the regime’s backward ways and propaganda attempted to promote misogyny and inhuman discriminations against female workers. Rise up and support oppressed women and defend their rights. This is a struggle in defense of all workers’ rights.
Actively boycott the clerical regime’s sham elections. With the motto of “no to the executioner, no to the charlatan,” turn every factory, workshop and mine, every office and workplace into a bastion of protest and persistence to gain your trampled rights and freedoms.
Hail to all workers of Iran
