Regarding: the situation of the oil workers in Iran
From: Free Them Now (FTN)
November 25, 2023
We are writing this letter on behalf of the Free Them Now, the campaign to free jailed workers in Iran, to protest the appeasement of the International Labour Organization with the anti-workers and anti-human Islamic regime of Iran.
For several weeks now, formal and contractual oil project workers have been protesting and striking. These workers were able to struggle and protest many years, because of the securitised and barrack-like atmosphere of their work and the oppressive and suffocative climate of the oil centres. However, in recent years they have broken this silence atmosphere, and have started their protests despite the costs.
You definitely know that the Islamic regime is a government that violates the most basic rights of the workers in iran, every day. In this country, workers and all citizens do not have the right to strike, the right to organize and collective bargaining, the right to protest and freedom of speech. The Islamic government constantly violates all the protocols of the ILO regarding workers’ rights. Some workers in Iran are tortured and imprisoned for defending their basic rights. These pressures are more intense in the oil industry, which is the economic artery of the government. For example, during the protests of the oil workers in recent years, and especially during their protests in solidarity with “woman life freedom” revolution in October of last year, hundreds of oil workers were fired and blacklisted by the government due to protesting these conditions, and they do not have the possibility of employment anywhere else.
Iran’s oil industry is an important centre of authorities’ looting and more than 200 thousand workers are employed in it. Each part of the oil workers are under the control of a contractor, and these contractors, who are mostly dependents of the government and security guards, take advantage of the workers and impose very inhumane conditions on them. Due to the special and scattered conditions of the oil centres, many of which are located in the middle of the seas and in areas far from residential and urban facilities, the Islamic Republic has been able to impose more difficult working, livelihood and security conditions on the oil workers. These workers do not have the opportunity to visit their families for months and are forced to live in excruciating heat and without basic facilities in camps without proper cooling and living facilities. Their working conditions are also very unbearable and deadly. In oil, we have witnessed workers’ cardiac arrest due to working in scorching heat above 60 Celsius degrees, which should basically be prohibited.
Over the past year, several oil centres have experienced explosions and fires, and several workers have lost their lives. At least twenty workers lost their lives in the workplace, in the last six months. Three workers committed suicide due to the pressure of work and livelihood. It is not easy to describe the hellish conditions imposed on the workers in one letter.
The protest of the official and contractual and project oil workers is to all these attacks by the government on the workers livelihood, against the barrack-like conditions, the securitised working environments, lack of safety of the working environment and many other grievances that have not been addressed by the employers.
The appeasement of the ILO with the Islamic regime means accompanying the anti-labour policies of this regime and is the subject of the anger and disgust of the workers in Iran.
Our demand is to expel the Islamic regime and all its representative bodies from the ILO. Our demand is to put pressure on the Islamic government to respect the rights of workers, and condemn the anti-labour and anti-human policies of this government. This government should be condemned and boycotted worldwide. This is our wish and definitely the wish of all workers in Iran.
However the workers and people of Iran through “woman, life, freedom” revolution are struggling and confronting the Islamic regime, with the aim of bring it down. And they condemn any appeasement with this government. Listen to the voice of Iranian workers.
Shahla Daneshfar, spokesperson of Free Them Now (FTN)
Kazem Nik khah, head of FTN’s International relations