In Dissent magazine, Josh Eidelson interviews "Homayoun Pourzad", a member of the editorial collective of the Iran Labor Report (ILR) and the Central Council of the Network of Iranian Labor Associations (NILA):
Josh Eidelson: Last year the NILA presented a paper saying that we could be entering a fourth major phase of trade unionism in Iran. Have you seen that happening since then?
Homayoun Pourzad: No. Over the past year there has been a weakening of our movement. More people have been thrown in jail, jail terms have been extended for those who were already there, and the government’s really going out of its way to stamp out anything having to do with labor organizing. But the potential for a big flowering of the labor movement is right there. It could happen in a very short period of time.
JE: What would need to change for that to happen?
HP: The government should be forced either to leave or to change. That’s the only way out. With the present status [balance] of forces it’s out of the question. They want a monopoly of power over all political, economic, social, and religious forces.
JE: Have people you know experienced anti-union repression?
HP: Oh yeah, many people. Many, many activists are in jail, and some union leaders have been in jail for five years now in awfully abysmal situations. In fact, one of them is on a hunger strike in jail as we speak. If one guy tries to organize, they may let you get away with it once. If you do it twice, then you open yourself up to serious problems. If you do it a third time, you will be interrogated for months and they will throw you into solitary confinement. You won’t know when it’s daytime or when it’s nighttime. This is more or less routine in Iran at the moment.
JE: Have you experienced that kind of treatment yourself?
HP: No, I have not, because they don’t know me.
JE: How do you see the relationship between what’s gone on in Iran over the past year and what some are calling the “Arab Spring”?
HP: Before the Arab Spring, there was the spring in Iran, after the rigging of the elections.
I don’t know how much of an inspiration that was for the Arab Spring, in terms of the social networking or the slogans or the civil disobedience tactics, but the similarities are remarkable. But because the repression was so severe, the Iranian movement kind of went underground, and it wasn’t able to have any major victory. Then after the Arab Spring, on February 14 of this year, there was a day called for by the Green Movement leaders for people to come out in solidarity with the Arab Spring, and on that day there were between 200,000 and 400,000 people actually out in the streets in Iran. Every Tuesday since that time this has repeated, and then there was a Persian New Year [on March 20], and now we’re waiting to see what may or may not happen on the anniversary of the election, June 12.
JE: So what would constitute a major victory in Iran?
HP: To do away with the foundations of this really awful dictatorship in our country would be a victory. And the establishment of a regime that’s based on democratic principles, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and freedom of faith, whatever religious denomination you are. These are in our constitution, but they’ve never been practiced. For the labor movement, obviously, this is a matter of life and death. Without the legal safeguards for freedom of association, any government in power could disband labor unions and repress labor activists.
More specifically for the labor movement, we need to be able to establish organized unions in various sectors, because we have a huge industrial base and the workers are really ripe for this. Everybody wants it, and also there’s a huge economic crisis, so I think this could just mushroom in a very short period of time.
It’s unlikely that this regime is going to just hand over power to the people. And since we are all into peaceful means, for the democratic movement to succeed—which is a prerequisite for the labor movement to succeed—it will take support from not just the organized labor movement, but the working class. Organized strikes are what could make the difference. The last regime fell not because there were millions of fundamentalists in the streets but mainly because the oil workers went on strike. The regime was brought to its knees, and the major industrial powers forced the Shah to give up the country because it was becoming dangerous with the oil workers on strike. This is what we may see again. I think the Green Movement leaders have come to see that without working-class support they cannot fight this government.
JE: What level of skepticism do you think exists now in the Green Movement about Iran’s labor movement, or in the labor movement about the Green Movement?
HP: I would say there was a lot of initial skepticism by many in the labor movement about the Green Movement, a year and a half, two years ago, though not among our group. From the beginning, we were quite gung-ho. Some of our friends in the labor movement were skeptical because they felt that the Green Movement’s leadership comes from former regime elements, [Mir Hossein] Mousavi and [Mehdi] Karroubi. And anything that smacked of some form of fundamentalist influence was a no-no. But they’ve come to appreciate the necessity of this movement. One reason for that is that these two men and the cadre organizing on their behalf are really paying a heavy price for it. So nobody is saying anymore that this is just theatrical or it’s just an intra-regime struggle, because these guys are literally putting their lives on the line. That’s one factor. Another is the fact that our friends have realized that without political change there can’t be any change for us organizing in the labor movement. Things have really gotten out of hand with the repression in the last year.
Then on the side of the Green Movement, the democratic movement, both the followers and the leadership have realized that victory is not going to come that easily. Everybody had overly optimistic views—they thought it would be a couple months, the whole thing was going to tumble and fall into their laps, and it didn’t happen. This is a very powerful, well-entrenched regime with a small but very highly motivated minority of the population that supports it. So the Green Movement is reaching out to the workers and the labor movement. Now on both sides there’s a realization that we need to come together. And that’s a very promising development in the past year. You can see a major shift on both sides.
JE: What kind of shift?
HP: For example the middle class, the young people, and the Green Movement supporters just talk much more about labor solidarity than before. For May Day they asked for joint action, even though before, most of these guys didn’t even realize there was a labor movement in this country. Some of this came from class bias, but some was just sheer ignorance. And as far as the labor movement activists who were skeptical at the beginning, just read what’s published on their websites. The shift is quite visible.
JE: What does the Green Movement have to learn from the labor movement in terms of tactics?
HP: We actually wrote articles telling the Green Movement, you have to come learn tactics from us. I’m sure labor has had some kind of an effect, because at the very beginning nearly two years ago, all the Green Movement knew was to come out to the streets and just chant slogans. And at nighttime they would go to the rooftops and chant, “God is great,” and that was it. But now we see more flexible attitudes. For example, people writing slogans on money, or sometimes people will just walk on the pavement together without saying anything. These tactics have been used in workplaces in years past.