August 8, 2018—Workers of Ahmadabad Railway block railway line in Rafsanjan, Iran
September 19—As we go to press, strikes continue in Iran. Industrial workers and others have walked out in the face of the crisis of skyrocketing inflation and withholding of workers’ pay. In some factories, workers haven’t been paid for 12 months. The protests are a continuation of the uprising in December of the poor and unemployed.
Strikers include beet farmers who haven’t been paid for one year for planting, harvesting and delivering the product to the Azar Gand Sugar Factory. In August, they blocked the roads and doors to the factory demanding to be paid.
Railroad workers of Ahmadabad Railway blocked the railway line in Rafsanjan because they haven’t been paid in 2 to 3 months. Railway workers in Sirjan and Kaheh also struck in August in protest of non-payment of their salaries. Truckers have waged a series of strikes since May 22 over the low fares they receive. Internet workers have also struck for non-payment of wages.
These strikes and workers’ growing anger show that capitalism in crisis is the mortal enemy of all workers. Capitalism makes workers wage slaves, chained to the bosses’ system for survival. They show that workers, who make everything of value, have the power to put an end to capitalism’s exploitation.
Fighting for improvements to the murderous wage system won’t end wage slavery. The striking workers have the tremendous potential to mobilize to get ride of capitalist wage slavery. Then we can build a communist world without money or wages where the masses produce and share what we make to meet the needs of our class, not for the capitalists’ profits.
To do that, workers in Iran and everywhere need to join and build ICWP to mobilize for communism. We call on readers to help spread Red Flag. We ask that readers who know Farsi or other languages translate Red Flag and Mobilize the Masses for Communism.