According to reports received from Shush city around 5000 workers are now on strike at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Development Commercial Company.

The strike has entered its sixth day and all three shifts, as well as all parts of the factory and cane fields of the company, are solidly behind the strike. The workers had warned that they would step up strike action if their demands were not met by the management of the state-owned company.

On 10 May many workers protested in front of the Governor General's office in Shush city, in Khuzestan province (southern Iran). This protest lasted many hours and a growing numbers of workers kept joining it. After six days of strike action the workers have not had any response from management about what is going to happen to their unpaid wages. Neither the general manager, Yaghoob Shafiee, nor anyone from the management committee, nor Zibdari, the company's security chief, have come anywhere near the factory or fields.

The workers went on strike demanding that the past two months' unpaid wages be paid. Their full demands are as follows: - Payment of two months' unpaid wages. - An end to the gathering of legal dossiers and summoning workers to court. - Sacking the general manager of the company, a mollah named Yaghoob Shafiee, and the whole management committee. - Sacking the security chief of the company, a person named Zibdari, who has had a direct role in the beating, spying and gathering of dossiers on workers.

During the past few days Intelligence Ministry officers have begun harassing workers by phoning or going to their homes in the middle of the night. We therefore must keep up the pressure on the management of this state-owned company and the Iranian government to accept all the workers' demands and to drop all charges against them.

Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network, 10 May 2008

Source: Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran

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