Happy May 1st, International Workers’ Day!
This year, International Workers’ Day comes at a time when the working class and its lives and livelihoods are more under attack by capital than ever before in the world. Iran is among the countries whose workers, including workers in various professions and those with the same fate, including farmers, teachers, nurses, employees, etc., have been attacked in the most brutal way possible by capital and its guardian government, the Islamic Republic regime. Not only have their wages and rights been plundered, they have also been deprived of an organization that can defend their interests, and any protest they make is met with individual and collective dismissal from the workplace. Among the most recent anti-labor actions by the capitalists and the government that supports them, we can mention the dismissal of a group of workers from the Ahvaz National Steel Group and a hundred workers from Pars Tabiat Cellulose, who were fired by the owners of these factories after protesting against their exploitation and demanding justice. The response to protests against workers’ rights in Iran, in a country where the capitalist laws that govern it and the government that protects the interests of capitalists have left the hands of capital owners free to encroach on the lives and livelihoods of workers, is expulsion, repression, imprisonment, and torture.
The only solution for Iranian workers in such circumstances is an organized and united struggle against the dismissals, pushing back the invasion of capital into their lives and livelihoods, and ultimately, the struggle. Their political unity is against a system and government that has brought nothing to the people except poverty, misery, oppression, imprisonment, torture, and execution.
Workers of Iran, unite and organize yourselves in your councils. Your conditions will become much worse than they are as the Islamic Republic continues to exist. The Islamic Republic, as a barbaric government that upholds the capitalist system, cannot serve your interests and those of your fellow citizens. Only by overthrowing the Islamic Republic and establishing a popular system based on councils, led by you, the majority of the hardworking people of Iran, can the highest form of democracy and freedom be imposed on the ruling society and save the masses of the people from the current inhumane situation of poverty, misery, lack of rights, suffocation, and oppression. It can provide the conditions for a humane and equal society and abolish all the inhuman, humiliating, and discriminatory laws of the Islamic Republic.
Workers of Iran, unite.
Iranian Political Prisoners Association (in exile)
2 Ordibehesht 1403 equals 21 April 2024