Iran: Win for protesting workers as Court annuls Haft Tappeh privatisation, but labor activists still criminalized
'Showdown at Haft Tappeh Sugar Factory: Minor Win for Workers, Larger Abuses Left Unchecked', 30 September 2020
It has been almost three months since the workers at Iran’s Haft Tappeh Cane Sugar Agro-Industrial Company, in the southwestern city of Shush, Khuzestan Province, began their latest round of peaceful protests. Like many workers throughout Iran, they have faced chronically unpaid wages and benefits and corrupt privatization schemes that have exacerbated abuses against workers. Yet with independent unions unrecognized, labor activism criminalized, and labor leaders routinely jailed in Iran, workers face an uphill battle to make their voices heard and rights violations addressed.
... Surprisingly, the workers there recently won a small victory. After investigating the circumstances of the 2016 sale of Haft Tappeh, which had been state-owned, to its present private owners, and the company’s performance since the privatization of the company, a state auditing court ruled the sale should be annulled...
While Haft Tappeh workers have periodically faced violations such as unpaid wages and insurance benefits for many years, the current problems at the company began after it was sold to the private sector in 2016...
On November 20, 2018, several Haft Tappeh workers who had participated in the protests and activists were arrested by security forces... On December 14, 2019 ... the Appeals Court in Tehran sentenced nine labor activists to five years in prison, on the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security” in connection with the Haft Tappeh protests... The struggle by workers at the Haft Tappeh sugar complex against severe violations is by no means an anomaly; workers face chronically unpaid wages and undelivered health insurance benefits, and suffer the consequences of corrupt privatization schemes, in companies and industries across the country...