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Iran Khodro auto workers protest at the participation of Iranian delegation at the ILO conference
Dear Director-General: With greetings, In the age of communications, we workers are deprived of any free and independent publications. In the age of the Internet, we are deprived of access to the Internet and means of mass communication. Dear Director-General: How can we understand the significance of rules? We ask Your Excellency, what do rules mean? Is having free workers’ organisations, taking part in strikes and joining trade unions among the rules of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)? We ask: what is the purpose of the ILO, why has it been formed and what are its rules for? As we do not have any free press and publications, we are not aware of these rules either. However, we would like to ask: what is the goal of the present conference that has just been convened, and who can attend it? Are its doors open to anyone? Can anyone who can bring themselves there take part in it? Should those who are members of this organisation respect its rules, or not? Every year we see delegates from Iran attending the ILO conference who are not representatives of workers. This is because we are deprived of any form of organisation. In our country, there are no independent labour organisations. Forming trade unions is a crime. Joining workers’ councils is an offence. So how do these delegates get elected every year and attend the ILO conference, and get approved by Your Excellency? Does not the ILO make any protest at all to these delegates? Dear Director-General We workers believe that the ILO neglects its duty, since it has shut its eyes to the facts. Numerous violations of workers’ rights are going on every day. However, the ILO does not make any protest. The most basic human rights of workers, such as having free and independent labour organisations and the right to strike and to protest at inhuman and illegal laws, are denied to them; scores of workers are sacked every day for going on strike for their rights; every year many are expelled by disciplinary excuses; each year, the workers are tossed from one contractor to the next, i.e. they get sold as slaves, but there is no protest from the ILO. We workers of Iran Khodro, who are over 35,000, ask Your Excellency to ask these so-called workers’ representatives how they have been elected to represent us workers? Even the workers in Iran do not know who these people are, what their names are, where they have come from – while they are deprived of their representatives. Please ask these delegates, why forming any labour organisation is illegal in Iran? Why is it that Iran Khodro Company, with over 35,000 workers, does not have a labour organisation? Why??? Dear Director-General: how much longer must we workers be deprived of our organisations? How much longer must workers get fired for going on strike, and be without job security? Every year, scores of our colleagues are sacked for attempting to form labour organisations. Every year, many of our colleagues are fired for protesting at the working conditions and for going on strike. The latest example is the expulsion of over 50 striking workers on 8 March this year. Dear Director-General: We workers of Iran Khodro regard the attendance of delegates from the Iranian government at the conference to be illegal. We call for the expulsion of these delegates from the ILO conference for clear breach of ILO rules and violation of our certain rights: ■ preventing the formation of any labour organisations; ■ preventing workers from joining their independent organisations; ■ banning strikes and labour protests; ■ banning and preventing workers’ assemblies and rallies; ■ preventing free participation of workers to celebrate international workers’ day; ■ no commitment to permanent contracts and collective bargaining; ■ not observing workplace health & safety; ■ persecuting and jailing workers for going on strike and attempting to form labour organisations; ■ putting workers’ economic and job security in jeopardy by using private contractors; ■ stopping the publication of independent workers’ publications and shutting down labour websites; We call for: ■ the reinstatement of our sacked colleagues and all other workers; in particular Vahed bus workers; ■ an end to firing of workers for going on strike and taking protest action; ■ freedom of independent labour organisations; ■ an end to persecution of workers involved in protest and immediate release of Mansoor Ossanlou, the imprisoned Vahed bus worker. A group of Iran Khodro workers 3 June 2006 Copy to: General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) _______________ Translated by the International Labour Solidarity Committee of the Worker-communist Party of Iran
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