Forty-eight days have passed since the suppression and arrest of workers’ gathering on International Labour Day – May Day. During this time our country has witnessed important events and we witness widespread and amazing changes in the social movement.
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Therefore, we workers, under the present conditions, ... see it as our right to put forward the demands of fellow workers and to raise our banner. These demands are as follows:
1. Immediate increase in the minimum wage to over 1 million tomans [$1010] a month.
2. An end to temporary contracts and new forms of work contracts.
3. The disbanding of the Labour House and the Islamic Labour Councils as government organisations in the factories and workshops, and the setting up of shoras [councils] and other workers’ organisations independent from the government.
4. Immediate payment of workers’ unpaid wages without any excuses.
5. An end to laying-off workers and payment of adequate unemployment insurance to all unemployed workers.
6. The immediate release of all political prisoners including the workers arrested on May Day, Jafar Azimzadeh, Gholamreza Khani, Said Yuzi, Said Rostami, Mehdi Farahi-Shandiz, Kaveh Mozafari, Mansour Osanloo and Ebrahim Madadi, and an end to surveillance and harassment of workers and labour leaders.
7. The right to strike, protest, assemble and the freedom of speech and the press are the workers’ absolute right.
8. An end to sexual discrimination, child labour and the sacking of foreign workers.
Workers! Today we have a duty to intervene, to pose our demands independently and by relying on our own united strength, together with other sections of society, to work towards achieving our human rights.
The Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers
23 June 2009
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