Trade union repression in Iran

Speech by Brendan Barber

All Party Parliamentary Group on Iran

18 November 2008

The treatment of our sisters and brothers in Iran is a disgrace and a tragedy.

Iran used to have a vibrant and forceful trade union movement, which played a major role in the overthrow of the Shah and was rewarded with repression and violence and, over the years, incorporation in the theocracy that took over.

Thirty years later, the Iranian trade union movement is being reborn. It is being reborn among bus workers in Tehran, among teachers across Iran, and among the sugar workers at Haft-Tapeh.

As these workers gradually and painfully re-establish trade unions, we in the UK and in the global trade union movement must support them.

Mansour Osanloo has become the symbol of this new wave of trade unionism in Iran. What has happened to Mansour has happened to many others.

I'm not going to take you through his story - colleagues will do that later - but I want to emphasise that the sort of things Mansour and his peers have been pressing for are hardly unacceptable.

In many Iranian factories, wages remain unpaid for months. Workers are very often on temporary contracts or no contract at all. They are subject to the whims of arbitrary management, and can be sacked at will. Some of this is corruption - pension contributions going 'missing', wages being 'diverted' and so on - and some of it is pure greed. Whatever, a lot of people are getting poor, and a lot of people are getting rich.

Overlaying this, however, is a violent and repressive state, which cannot tolerate free trade unionism. Partly this is because of collusion with the criminal and the greedy. But it is also a visceral opposition to independent trade unionism - people who owe their loyalty to their fellow workers rather than the state or the state's religion.

Trade unionists are often seized arbitrarily by state agents and incarcerated without anyone knowing - not their families, their colleagues, their lawyers. They may be tried in revolutionary courts, because they have broken no law that would enable the state to try them in the civilian courts. And they may languish for months in jail without charge or trial, without access to lawyers, to medical care or visits.

Put together, unions face a tough time in Iran. And not just trade unions, but women's organisations, lesbians and gay men and many others.

The TUC has worked closely with our international trade union colleagues, especially the International Transport Workers' Federation, and also with Amnesty International - I'm pleased to say that we're in the process of developing a partnership with Amnesty.

We have protested to the ILO, to the British Government, and to the Iranian Government - we are taking our complaints to the European Parliament too, and I was particularly pleased to see that the international Solidar NGO honoured Mansoor with its Silver Rose Award this year.

The ILO and the Foreign Office have been very positive, and have engaged.

But the Iranian Government and its Embassy here in London fail even to attempt to defend what they have done. The TUC received a desultory visit four years ago to say that trade union protestors were dangerous terrorists and enemies of the state and that was it.

The FCO of course is hampered by the international situation: any action the British government takes unilaterally is portrayed by the Iranian Government as part of an imperialist plot, part of the build up to war and part of the American agenda, although hopefully Barack Obama's election will make a difference to that.

So let me be clear. Neither the TUC, nor anyone in our alliance of people concerned about Iranian trade unionism is doing this as a front for attacking Iran's national sovereignty. What we are certainly saying, however, is that at a time when Iran is looking for friends, repressing the trade union movement at home won't win any friends in the trade union movement abroad.

So in conclusion, I welcome this meeting, and the interest shown by MPs.

I hope that you will be able to help us in helping the Iranian trade union movement to overcome the challenges of harassment, repression and violence.

First, as an All Party Group, you could register our concerns with the Iranian Embassy, with visiting Iranian dignitaries, and so on.

Second, if you visit Iran, it would be very welcome if you could raise the issue of trade union freedom with the Iranians you meet, and if possible, ask to see Mansour or other imprisoned trade unionists.

Do please keep making clear to British and other European governments that there IS a trade union movement in Iran, and that it needs support.

And don't forget Mansour Osanloo.