By Amir Taheri
A YEAR ago last Saturday, Ali Khamenei ordered the abduction of trade-union leader Mansour Osanloo. In so doing, Iran's top ruling mullah hoped to kill in infancy the independent trade-union movement that Osanloo had launched in '05 with the help of colleagues among bus drivers and conductors in Tehran.
A year later, Osanloo is still in prison, sentenced to five years on a charge of "undermining the security of the Islamic Republic." Yet the free-union movement that he inspired has spread like wildfire.
Transport workers in Tehran and its suburbs have refused to disband their union and rejected the mullahs that Khamenei appointed as their leaders.
Workers in the auto, construction and petrochemical industries have set up their own independent unions, as have teachers, miners, dock workers and bakers. The Workers Organizations and Activists' Coordination Council, an umbrella group for the free unions, now boasts more than 700 groups across Iran with almost 2 million members. Read more ...
A YEAR ago last Saturday, Ali Khamenei ordered the abduction of trade-union leader Mansour Osanloo. In so doing, Iran's top ruling mullah hoped to kill in infancy the independent trade-union movement that Osanloo had launched in '05 with the help of colleagues among bus drivers and conductors in Tehran.
A year later, Osanloo is still in prison, sentenced to five years on a charge of "undermining the security of the Islamic Republic." Yet the free-union movement that he inspired has spread like wildfire.
Transport workers in Tehran and its suburbs have refused to disband their union and rejected the mullahs that Khamenei appointed as their leaders.
Workers in the auto, construction and petrochemical industries have set up their own independent unions, as have teachers, miners, dock workers and bakers. The Workers Organizations and Activists' Coordination Council, an umbrella group for the free unions, now boasts more than 700 groups across Iran with almost 2 million members. Read more ...
Source: New York Post
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
Posts
