According to published reports, today (August 31) contract workers employed in Gachsaran Oil and Gas staged a gathering and march demanding the elimination of contracting companies and an end to discrimination. The workers, protesting the authorities’ silence regarding their demands, chanted:
“The worker is awake, he detests discrimination,”
“Worker, shout out, cry out for your rights,”
and “We don’t want an incompetent minister.”
Today, official employees of the Offshore Oil Company in the Khark region also gathered as part of their ongoing protests. The demands of official oil workers are nationwide, and the main ones include:
- Removal of the salary cap
- Removal of restrictions on retirement severance pay
- Full implementation of Article 10
- Payment of Article 10 back pay
- Elimination of the three-tier classification of operational jobs
- Revision of the imposed pension fund statute, and more.
Gatherings alongside workers’ families represent an important and instructive model for the social expansion of protests in the oil industry, and efforts should be made to replicate them across all oil operational areas.