Irán, República Islámica del - Workers take strike action over missing wages and contract work (2012)

Despite harsh repercussions strikes occurred throughout the year. In January 3,500 workers went on strike at Barez /Alborz Tire Company shutting down operations for four days. In February and early March, hundreds of Alborz workers and their families again protested over unpaid wages. In March workers were told the plant would close until enough money was found for it to reopen. On 24 January workers at the Pars Metal Company organised a sit-in over unpaid and late wages – they had staged a similar protest in 2010. In March some 1,800 workers from the Tabriz petrochemical plant protested against the management’s decision not to renew their contracts and called for better conditions. Meanwhile, a number of workers at the Esfahan Steel Company demonstrated in Tehran on 24 April to protest the non-payment of their back wages while some 100 workers and their families gathered outside the Fars Organisation of Industries and Mines in Shiraz seeking payment of missing wages. Contract labour was also a growing concern with 1,500 workers at the Imam Port Petrochemical Complex staging protests calling for direct employment contracts rather than sub-contracts in April. Around 1,500 workers from the Pars Paper Mill in south-western Iran went on strike on 9 April over the dismissal of 60 temporary contract workers. Despite these protests the deputy Labour Minister Mojtaba Zarei reportedly denied that any industrial workers have protested or gone on strike in the past year.