Editorial 2018-10-09
Human Rights Support Org. Corp.
https://www.humanrightssupport.org
A letter to Labor Unions and ILO
By the Iranian Lawyers Association (ILA)
Sub: Labor Unions and ILO Support for the Iranian People
Attn: Labor Unions around the world
Greetings,
The Iranian government cracks down pervasively and systematically the slightest protest by workers through beating, arresting, and even executing them. These workers merely ask for their long due wages and their other legitimate demands.
Truck drivers, for instance, have begun a nationwide strike to protest high costs of their vehicles maintenance and repairs, low wages. Workers of hundreds of small and medium size businesses are protesting or are on strike for similar complaints. The government’s response: beating and numerous arrests as usual.
Any support in any form by different countries’ labor unions and also tangible measures by the International Labor Organization (ILO) would help the Iranian workers with their fight against the Iranian regime.
The top three demands by the Iranian workers are as follows:
- immediate release of worker prisoners from the Iranian notorious prisons (a list of the names of imprisoned workers is available)
- recognition of the workers’ right to have real, non-governmental syndicates
- recognition of female workers’ right to equal employment rights
We kindly and cordially urge labor unions around the world and the ILO, severally and jointly, to take effective measures to put pressure on the Iranian regime. From among different measures, mention can made of the following examples, and/or any other measure(s) deemed, by the unions and ILO, to be practicable:
- issuing communiqués and declarations by powerful and outspoken workers unions around the world and by the ILO to condemn the Iranian regime’s suppression of the Iranian workers in order to exert continued pressure on Iran to stop its systematic persecution of workers;
- suspension of some or all of the ILO services rendered to the Iranian government, there being precedence on different occasions in 1988 and 1998 against other states;
- suggestion by workers unions to the ILO to expel the Iranian regime from that organization as the last resort
Any pressure by the international community would help the Iranian workers in their cause and would send a strong message of care by the world to the Iranian people who feel left alone and forgotten in their fight against this brutal regime.
Best regards,
Iranian Lawyers Association
https://greenlawyers.wordpress.com
2018-10-09