On the occasion of International Workers’ Day, the Campaign to Support Iranian Workers issued a statement, which is also summarised here in this publication;
International Workers’ Day has been around for years, no longer a day for joy and bouquets of flowers and sweets, nor a day for repetitive poems and slogans. May Day is a day to reconsider the global working class, a day to show global power, a day to protest decades of lawlessness, and a momentary loss of the rights of workers and wage earners around the world.
The epidemic and deaths caused by Corona’s disease in the major centers of the capitalist world have once again shown how powerless the existing class system is in the face of serious crises in human society.
But what makes it harder for workers and wage-earners to bear today’s conditions is the image that capitalist ideologues and economists of the world provide and portray to us after the Corona epidemic.
Replacing work at home instead of attending public offices and centers for a wide range of services and administrative jobs and training, using the personal facilities of employees to reduce the cost of public and private centers, will result in causing widespread unemployment of workers in variety of services and public transportation, as well as atomizing and further dispersing the labor force in these sectors. Contrary to many economists’ beliefs, the widespread unemployment of the workers, not in the post-epidemic turmoil, is on a large scale today.
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Capitalist governments around the world have made the current crisis a platform for reducing public spending, freezing wages, making huge payments to less profitable sectors of capital, and eliminating existing workers’ organizations and defenses…
While the outbreak of corona disease has not yet stopped in many parts of the world, capitalist governments have allocated large amounts of public funds to financial, aviation, service and tourism institutions, of which only a small portion of their profitability has declined in recent months. At the same time, to counter social protests and post-crisis riots, a significant portion of government budgets are spent on rebuilding and equipping police forces. Governments and parliaments are already preparing to pass laws to limit social protests in various countries.
The rule of capitalists in Iran, in addition to aligning with the general policies of world capital, has also justified the anti-labor policies of employers in Iran by passing a shameful minimum of wages ( around 130 dollars per month) . Ninety-six percent of written labor contracts in Iran are currently temporary contracts, and more than 3.5 million workers work in non-standard production and service centers without any contract, insurance or legal support.
In such a situation, the working class must, today and in the context of the current unusual situation, begin its social organisation to deal with the sinister plans of the capitalists.
The only way for society to deal with the dark world that capital has provided for us is to organise, empathise based on a radical platform in today’s world.
