To the striking hospital employees of British Columbia, Canada

 

 1st May 2004

 

Dear friend Fred Muzin,

: President, B.C. Hospital Employees' Union (HEU)

On behalf of all the members of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, I would like to express my total support for your strike.  We regard your struggle as our own and have been conveying the news of your strike to the workers in Iran through our publications and via our radio & TV.

 We eagerly await the success of your fight and the retreat of the B.C. government from its brutal and disgraceful attacks on your rights and conditions.  As your struggle has shown, to improve our situation or even to protect it from further deterioration, we workers have no choice but to unite and fight.  The employers, private and state alike, will use any excuse to impose worse conditions on us.  Privatization and contracting-out are other words for cutbacks and redundancies.  This is precisely what is happening in the health care sector in B.C.  Having frozen pay levels for three years, now they want to impose deep wage cuts and mass layoffs.  Even more disgraceful is their recourse to legislation to try and break the strike by making it illegal.  Your magnificent defiance in the face of this anti-labour legislation and the support by teachers and wide sections of the labour movement for your just struggle will ensure your success in driving back this attack by the right-wing Liberal government.

I wish you every success in your struggle.

 Sincerely,

 Kazem Nik-khah

Secretary

Worker-communist Party of Iran – Organisation Abroad