Demonstrate for Iranian trade unionists - 6 March

Solidarity with Iranian trade unionists

TUC demonstration call

Thursday 6 March 2008 - 12:30pm-1:30pm

On Thursday 6 March, the TUC is urging British trade unionists to demonstrate outside the Iranian Embassy in London as part of a worldwide day of action against the repression and harassment of trade unionists in Iran.

The demonstration will be held from 12:30 to 1:30pm outside the Iranian Embassy at 16 Prince's Gate, London SW7 1PT - please bring banners and as many people as you can. In the morning, rail and bus unions will be leafleting commuters at the major bus-rail interfaces around the country (contact TUC Regional Offices for details).

In particular, demonstrators will be calling for the freeing of two Iranian trade union leaders - bus workers' leader Mansour Osanloo, and bakery workers' union leader Mahmoud Salehi - both jailed for their union activities, not under Iranian labour laws which they have not broken, but shadowy and imprecise national security laws, enforced by Revolutionary Courts which operate outside the normal law.

The international day of action (on Railway Safety Day) has been called by the International Trade Union Confederation and the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). In Britain, events are being organised by transport trade unions, the TUC, Amnesty International and the ITF which is based in London.

Often portrayed in the British media as a backward, theocratic regime, only of interest because of its nuclear ambitions, Iran is in reality and industrialised country with a long history of trade union activity. But workers in Iran are not allowed to join the trade unions of their choice, and when they set up their own unions, they are brutally repressed by a regime which sees independent trade unionism as a threat to its own power, and colludes with employers who fail to pay wages, close profitable factories and abuse workers' rights.

For more information about Mansour Osanloo, Mahmoud Salehi and Iranian trade unionism generally, go to:

• http://www.itfglobal.org/campaigns/osanloo-action.cfm
• http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10989