Iran's war on trade unions
President Ahmadinejad is stepping up the repression of labour activists. We should support them in their fight for basic rights
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Peter Tatchell
guardian.co.uk, Monday August 18 2008 18:30 BST
Article history
The anti-worker dictatorship in Iran has stepped up its attacks on labour activists, with a new wave of arrests and jailings.

Among those recently jailed were two workers' rights campaigners, Sousan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi. They have been sentenced to 15 lashes and four months in prison for the "crime" (under Iran's Islamic law) of participating in a May Day celebration in the city of Sanandaj earlier this year. The verdicts were issued by the criminal court of Sanandaj – branch 101.

On the same charges the same court sentenced Abdullah Khani to 91 days in prison and 40 lashes and Seyed Qaleb Hosseini to six months and 50 lashes.

In addition, Khaled Hosseini, a worker activist, was given a 91 day suspended sentence and 30 lashes because of his efforts to support the trade union leader, Mahmoud Salehi, who was imprisoned at the time and was being denied medical treatment. The charges against him include "disturbing public order and agitation."

http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/2290

News online

Tehran bus union man arrested in new attack

25 June 2008

The ITF has expressed acute concern following the arrest yesterday of Gholamreza Gholamhosseini, another member of its Iranian bus affiliate.

Gholamhosseini, a member of the Vahed Syndicate Executive Board
was arrested by police in Tehran while visiting Shirodi Stadium, where an event to mark Iran’s Women's Day was taking place. The gathering was sponsored by the municipality of Tehran and by the bus company, Sherkat Vahed.

Security personnel prevented Gholamhosseini from entering the stadium; police then apprehended him and took him to Gisha Police Station.

Today, June 25th, Judge Hassan Dehghan Dehnavi, who is also involved in the case of the union’s General Secretary Mansour Osanloo, ordered Gholamhosseini’s detention in Evin prison. Hassan Dehghan Dehnavi declared that Gholamhosseini, who is not charged with any crime, should be detained for an indefinite period whilst his case is investigated.

Gholamhosseini had been dismissed from the company for taking part in the strike action of January 2006. Although the court has ordered his reinstatement, the company is refusing to comply.

By Mahtaub Hojjati - San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 19, 2007

Iran's despotic mullahs are worried more about Teamsters union President James Hoffa than Iran's Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Why? They are frightened by the prospect that Hoffa's escalating voice may give birth to an Iranian version of Solidarity's Lech Walesa, whose courageous and charismatic leadership transformed Poland's workers into an invincible political force.

A gem of an alliance has been cut between Hoffa and Iran's labor movement. In December 2005, the Teamsters president demanded, in a letter to Iran's notoriously belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the release of 14 labor union workers unjustly detained and beaten. In July 2007, after the jailing and brutalization of Mansour Ossanlou, a Bus Transport Workers Union leader, Hoffa similarly insisted on his freedom and condemned the Iranian government's flagrant disdain for freedom of association and expression.

Iran's theocrats fear Hoffa because they worry about the close nexus between free labor unions and political freedom. Last year, two prominent Iranian labor leaders, Mahmoud Salehi and Jalal Hosseini, were tried and convicted of internal subversion in secret proceedings conducted by the Saqqez Revolutionary Court.

An international trade union has condemned the disappearance of Iranian union leader Mansour Osanlou, who has reportedly been abducted in Tehran.

Mr Osanlou's wife told the BBC her husband was pulled from a bus by unidentified men on Tuesday evening.

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) has written to Iran's president to protest.

Mr Osanlou, head of Tehran's transport workers' union, spent most of 2006 in prison for running a strike in 2005.

As the director of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, Mr Osanlou was first detained in December 2005 for organising a walk-out by bus drivers.

The drivers then planned another strike in January 2006 in response to his detention and to demand recognition of their trade union activities.

The Iranian government responded by pre-emptively detaining hundreds of drivers, including several union organisers.

All were later released, but Mr Osanlou was detained in Tehran's Evin prison for several months before being freed on bail.

His union is not recognised by the Iranian government, but it is the first independent Iranian trade unions to be affiliated to an international organisation, says the BBC's Pam O'Toole.