Mr. Rajavi said: Last year, nearly 50 major strikes and protests occurred in different factories nationwide. Although the mullahs' regime violently suppressed them, but the continuing wave of strikes demonstrated that crackdown can no longer thwart the workers' rage and protests across the country.
Last year, thousands of workers in such major factories as Khavar Benz in the central province, Qa'emshahr Textiles in the north and Isfahan's Textile factory staged long and repeated strikes and protests.
Comparing the 22% increase in the workers' wages with the 100% rise in the rate of inflation, the NCR President said that the workers' purchasing power had declined by 78% relative to the past year. This situation, he noted, prevents them from obtaining their daily food staples, let alone paying the exuberant costs of housing, medical bills and their children's education.
Mr. Rajavi added: Half the nation's work force is unemployed. Many are workers laid off due to factory closures or a declining productive capacity. Authorities at Mostaz'afin Foundation, a major state-owned conglomerate, have reported the closure of 100 affiliated factories.
The NCR President also enumerated the most important outlines of the NCR's plan to realize the rights of Iranian workers. They include: Abolishing all anti-worker regulations and enacting a new labor law based on the workerÕs own views; participation of workers in the management of all workerÕs funds and banks; recognition of their right to strike and to engage any other means of peaceful protest; canceling previous debts of the deprived workers in all spheres and of all government deductions from the workerÕs earnings (such as taxes, insurance payments, etc.), and gradually providing the necessary expenditures, e.g. for insurance and retirement pensions; endeavoring to provide housing, transportation, and health care for all workers as well as nurseries and kindergartens for their children and to give them priority in free education at universities and colleges of higher education; progressive increases in the workerÕs share of factoriesÕ profits; providing professional and technical training for unskilled workers; and efforts to establish a minimum living standard for all workers proportionate to increases in the cost of living.
Mr. Rajavi stressed: Only the Khomeini regime's overthrow by the National Liberation Army of Iran and the establishment of democracy and popular sovereignty in Iran will pave the way for the restoration of the rights of Iranian workers.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris May 1, 1996
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