[ “Informed and bold oil workers will not be silent and passive
in the face of the suppression and killing of people and will protest
together and in unison with the people,” calling on other workers in
the petrochemical industry to join the strikes.]
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‘PREPARE FOR BACK-BREAKING STRIKES’: IRAN ENERGY WORKERS TAKE
ACTION AS PROTESTS AGAINST REGIME WIDEN
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Borzou Daragahi
October 11, 2022
Independent (UK)
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_ “Informed and bold oil workers will not be silent and passive in
the face of the suppression and killing of people and will protest
together and in unison with the people,” calling on other workers in
the petrochemical industry to join the strikes. _
Iran energy workers take action as protests against regime widen.
Videos showed workers chanting ‘death to the dictator’. Regime
says it's open to dialogue. But few believe it., Borzou Daragahi tweet
// Independent (UK)
Labourers at a major Iranian petrochemical plant in the country’s
south went on a wildcat strike on Monday in solidarity with a
nationwide protest movement sparked by the death of a young woman in
the custody of morality police. It’s the first sign that weeks of
unrest are reaching the nation’s most crucial sector.
In a dozen videos uploaded to the internet, workers at the
petrochemical industrial zone in the Persian Gulf coast city of
Assaluyeh could be seen gathering, chanting slogans against regime
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
[[link removed]], and closing off
roads. There were also reports of a strike at a refinery complex in
Abadan, in the country’s oil-rich southwest.
“These strikes were in response to previous calls during the last
two days and in support of the massive protests of the people,” the
Iranian Council for Organising Protests by Oil Industry Contract
Workers said in a statement posted to its Telegram channel.
“Informed and bold oil workers will not be silent and passive in the
face of the suppression and killing of people and will protest
together and in unison with the people.”
The statement called on other workers in the petrochemical industry to
join the strikes.
“Now is the time to protest widely and prepare ourselves for
nationwide and back-breaking strikes,” it said. “This is the
beginning of the road, and we will continue our protests together with
the people of the whole country every day.
Videos showed workers chanting “death to the dictator” and calling
for the removal of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The workers have gone on strike and closed the highway,” a
narrator says in one video, which shows smoke rising from the complex
and labourers milling about on a road.
The strike comes after a harrowing and fiery two days of widespread
protests across the country led by women and young Iranians enraged by
the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini
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regime to downplay it, and a subsequent violent crackdown that has
left at least 185 more dead, including teenage girls and boys.
The anger over Amini’s death and the dress codes imposed on women
has fused with widespread discontent over the economy and politics
that has been building up since 1999, when regime forces began harshly
cracking down on a nascent reform movement. Protests have swelled over
the years, especially in 2009, but rarely have they built the momentum
that they have achieved over the last several weeks.
Protesters [[link removed]] have been
calling for strikes for days, and although schoolteachers, university
professors and some shopkeepers have closed up, labour actions have
not spread to crucial industrial sectors.
The Assaluyeh petrochemical zone stretches for miles along the coast
of the Gulf and includes numerous firms and plants, many under the
thumb or outright ownership of the regime and others that are joint
projects with foreign companies. It remained unclear whether the
strike on Monday was targeting a specific firm or all of them. The
entire region’s economy is centred around the extraction and
refinement of natural gas
[[link removed]].
Exports of LPG produced in part at Assaluyeh reached an all-time high
in August despite sanctions making them a key source of revenues for
the Iranian government.
“For Iran [[link removed]]’s economy
Assaluyeh is of essential importance,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, a
senior energy analyst at Kpler, an international business data firm
headquartered in Brussels. “The natural gas reaching those plants
goes into the country’s grid and it’s of essential importance
especially ahead of the winter months.
In addition to political concerns, some workers may have been further
angered by non-payment of wages for two months, according to the
workers’ association. Strikes in Iran’s crucial oil and
petrochemical industries in the late 1970s crippled the regime of the
deposed late monarch Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi and led to the
revolution which put fundamentalist Shia clergy in power in Tehran.
Iranian students from the Faculty of Arts at Tehran’s Azad
University participate in a protest with their palms covered in red
paint (Agence France-Presse -AFP)
The apparent strike in Abadan was reportedly at phase 2 of a refinery
project that is in collaboration with China’s state-owned Sinopec.
Labour action in Iran’s energy sector could have global
repercussions. Assaluyeh lies next to South Pars/North Dome natural
gas field, considered the world’s largest, and a strike could impact
energy prices at a time when Russia’s war against Ukraine has
already rattled markets.
Mr Falakshahi said disturbances to Iran’s gas sector may have a
minimal impact on global energy prices, but that could change if
strikes spread to the oil sector, in which Iran produces about 1 per
cent of global exports. “Right now you mostly have traders
scratching their heads and trying to figure out what’s going on,”
he said. “But it could still have a huge impact if it spreads to the
oil side.”
The protests in the wake of Amini’s death on 16 September, have
already badly impacted Iran’s economy. The stock market plummeted
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Sunday, and the country’s telecom ministry has said that internet
shutdowns meant to stifle protests have cost it a third of its
revenue.
On Monday, Iran’s foreign spokesman demanded that the west do not
link ongoing talks over the nuclear programme to the ongoing political
unrest, which he derided as “fake news”.
He said that Iran’s domestic affairs are “related to the
government and people of Iran”, urging the United States, Canada,
and the European Union, which have all taken recent action against the
regime over the protests, not to interfere.
Meanwhile, Iran’s hardline judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni
Ejei, known for advocating the airing of forced confessions on
television, falsely accused protesters of burning Korans and killing
people, even as he said he welcomed criticism and reform. “We accept
criticism and protest, and if there is a place where we have made a
mistake we will definitely welcome that,” he said.
Meanwhile, protests and acts of public defiance and civil disobedience
continued across Iran on Monday for the 25th day. Videos posted online
showed high school girls and university students protesting in Tehran,
Isfahan, Karaj, the heavily Kurdish areas of the country’s west, and
the country’s north near the Caspian Sea.
* Iran
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* Mahsa Amini
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* Iranian protests
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* Iranian women
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* Morality Police
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* oil workers
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* Iranian oil workers
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* Iranian Students
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* Student Protest
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* high school students
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* women's protests
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* women's movement
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