28 July, 2008
Rubber workers of Kiyan Tyre in Chahardangeh, Iran, continued their protests last week over wage arrears. Some 600 workers of the factory began striking on 16 July and the protests escalated last week when strikers began setting portions of the factory on fire.
Shouting anti-government slogans on 22 July outside a management building in Chahardangeh, a western suburb of Tehran, workers threatened to bring their next protest to Iran’s Majlis, or Parliament.
On 12 April, 1,000 workers at Iran’s biggest rubber plant took job actions because their wages had not been paid in five months. Then, the repressive State Security Force ran bulldozers into the protestors, and arrested all 1,000 using electric batons. Most were held for 36 hours, while some 100 strike leaders were held longer. They were finally freed, but as a condition for release, the workplace leaders were forced to sign statements that they would not protest again.
The more recent protests are against a hand-picked management team which reportedly is under-paying wages, or denying payment altogether. Kiyan, formerly called Alborz Tyre Mfg. Co., was established in 1958 as a joint venture with the American company B.F. Goodrich Co. In 1979, it became part of state-owned National Iranian Industries, before being sold to private Iranian investors in 1994.