According to reports received from Iran over 3000 workers at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Development Commercial Company are now on strike.

The strike and protests at Haft Tapeh in Shush city, Khuzestan province in southern Iran, began yesterday (6 May). At 7am on Tuesday the workers in the industrial section of the company gathered in front of the general manager's office. They later also prevented Abu-Albasi, the deputy general manager, from entering the company's premises.

At present all parts of the company are involved in this widespread strike, including workers in the offices, in the development department and the agricultural section. All production and activity in the company has come to a halt.

The workers have struck 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.

At present a number of plain-clothes Intelligence Ministry officers are near the company. 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.

Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network, 7 May 2008

[Source: Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran]

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Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network
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