Strikes and social protests on the rise in Iran

Iran Focus:

Workers' demands for overdue wages and actions over poor working conditions have gained momentum over the past few days in Iran, with protests and strikes erupting in a number of towns and cities.

Coal miners from Sangroud are set to march today all the way to Tehran to demand that their wages be paid and safety measures be properly implemented. 650 miners working in the West Alborz Coal mine have been on strike for the past four weeks, demanding that the Ministry of Industries and Mines provides them safer working conditions. On Sunday four miners at a phosphate mine in the town of Jajeroud, situated 15 kilometres east of Tehran were killed by a slide of ice and rocks.

In another incident, some 800 workers in Chahar Mahal Bakhtiyari province protested in front of government buildings in Shahr-Kurd on Saturday demanding overdue salaries. The employers of Karoon 4 Hydroelectric plant said that promised government funding had not arrived and that it was unable to pay its employees salaries.

Separately on Sunday at least 100 teachers demonstrated outside the Ministry of Education building in the Iranian capital in protest to the lack of suitable permanent jobs which the government had promised it would provide. Many of the teachers complained that they had been waiting on job candidacy list for more than four years.

A protest also erupted today in the Iranian city of Rasht (Caspian Coastal province of Gilan) after a jute factory was indefinitely shut down for what officials said was bad weather. The 250 employees who had gathered in front of the factory said that the facility continued to operate during periods of severe snow over the past two weeks and that the closure was an excuse for not paying due salaries.