Trade Unions in Iran: the Other Movement

When most people think about the recent upheavals in Iran, they think of marches demanding democracy and challenging the June 12 presidential election. The face of those protests is the “Green Movement” — so called because its supporters wear green —that put millions of people into the streets of Tehran and other large cities throughout the country.

Largely unseen and rarely reported on, however, are thousands of strikes, slow-downs and sit-ins by workers challenging the erosion of trade union rights and the government’s drive to privatize the economy. Tehran’s economic policies will impoverish tens of millions of people — and they aren’t passively accepting the situation. Read more, and see also here.