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The working class movement and progressive change (David Mather) Recently the US has being trying to tighten the grip of economic sanctions on Iran by increasing pressure on European corporations and banks to quit Iran and cease doing business there. At the same time lengthy jail sentences have recently been imposed on two of the leaders of Tehran’s bus workers trade union on the grounds that their activities constitute “a threat to national security”. These two developments are interconnected and together they have ominous implications for Iran’s workers and their families, and thus for all the Iranian people. US sanctions were first imposed on Iran following the 1979 revolution. Since then US corporations have been prevented from doing any business in and with Iran. In their absence European and Asian firms have moved in. German and Japanese firms have been active in the oil and petrochemical industry. European and Japanese banks have set up branches in Tehran. In the car industry joint venture deals have been signed with European firms including Peugeot and Renault. Renault has invested an estimated 300 million euros in a joint venture deal with Iran’s leading nationalised car manufacturers Iran Khodro and Saipa to mass produce a new low cost saloon car. And for the first time it is the foreign firm that holds a majority of shares in such a joint venture. HOPI declares that sanctions are not an alternative to war with Iran as some liberal western politicians imagine. Rather they are a form of warfare. They are part of a cynical American strategy to soften up the regime as a prelude to military action and regime change. But they will not hurt the leaders of the regime, who are already moving their money abroad into East Asian banks They will hurt the Iranian people. If these firms withdraw from Iran. millions of jobs and the livelihoods of millions of Iranians are at stake. At the end of October leaders of the Tehran bus workers syndicate were sentenced to heavy jail sentences. Mansour Osamloo and Ebraham Mahdadi got 5 years and 2 years respectively They were accused of crimes of “acting against national security” and of “propaganda against the system”, despite their frequent public statements against the threat of US military action The sentences confirm HOPI’s claim that the regime will use the threat of military conflict with the US to justify and extend repression inside Iran, just as it did during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Already workers leaders in the sugar cane industry are being brought to trial on the same charges. Tehran’s bus workers have been a leading section of the growing series of workers protests against poor pay and conditions in Iranian workplaces. Many workers receive wages which are below poverty levels. Non-payment of wages for months at a time has become a systematic practice among employers, especially in small and medium enterprises where it is frequently a prelude to workplace closures. Workers in the car industry and elsewhere have been protesting against casualisation, especially the spread of short term contracts in place of full time jobs, as well as deaths on the job which have directly resulted from work intensification and the need for workers to work double shifts in order to make a living. But the protests of the bus drivers, car workers, teachers sugar workers and others Thus at the same time as opposing the US plans to attack Iran, HOPI extends it support for the just struggles of the Iranian workers and the Iranian people.
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