Interview with Mansur Osanlou

Head of Greater Tehran United Bus Company Union

Mansur Osanlou heads the executive committee of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (sherkat-e vahed) union. In December 2005 he was arrested and in the following January other members of the executive of the Syndicate and some family members were arrested, beaten and imprisoned after their unofficial union called a strike for, among others, the right to independent trade unions. He was only released in August after national and international pressure, but was rearrested later in December 2006. He is now freed on bail and awaiting his trial charged with “acting against national security and disturbing public order”.

Iranian Workers’ Bulletin. Thank you for agreeing to the interview. Your syndicate wrote in their first and second summary of events that while the official poverty level is an income of 4,000,000 rials per month (approximately £220), the official minimum wage for the current year is set at 1,830,000 rials (approximately £100) per month. Moreover while inflation is officially put at 15% the unofficial rate which is nearer the truth is 50%. With rents in larger towns increasing by 40% and the price of land and housing also growing by 50%, how can workers make ends meet and how do these issues impact on the current struggles and the self-organisation of workers. Indeed is there any hope for an improvement in the economic conditions of workers?

Osanlou: Workers are forced to take on two or three jobs, do overtime, their wives have to work, and their children are forced to leave school to work. Because of the appalling costs of housing they have had to move out to the suburbs and townships on the outskirts of Tehran, some up to 100 km away. Many are renting in remote places. This means that they have less time for struggle and syndicate activity. But having tasted the sweet taste of knowledge and of united syndicalist activity, which resulted in increased wages in the sherkat-e vahed by at least 30%, they will not abandon the road they have discovered. As a matter of principle there is always hope for improvement, depending on the level of knowledge, consciousness, effort, struggle, perseverance, understanding of conditions and the circumstances, and a correct analysis of conditions and circumstances and the forms of organisation and, not least, our level of devotion to the tasks at hand. How much passion we have for what we are doing effects the level of optimism we harbour!

IWB: There were reports of thousands of labour protest and demands in Iran last year (1385 in the Iranian calendar, which ended on March 21), most of which was for wage arrears (from 2 months to 2 years) and the right to work. Why do you think that in a rich country like Iran the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers unpaid and job are continuously under threat? What I mean is why has the concern for of bread and work broken the back of Iranian workers and indeed why don’t the authorities do something about this general injustice?

Osanlou: The real cause of all these misery is the absence of trade unions and workers’ federations. The lack of labour organisations, and more generally, democratic civil institutions, create such condition for workers. The concern for bread and work is brought about by the neglect of those wielding power and mercantile wealth, and dealers and middle men of imported goods, and those who put no value on economic independence, manufacturing and industry. There are many obstacles to manufacturing and the fall in the living standards of workers and producers is caused by the bureaucratic and anti-state organisation and the totally uncontrolled foreign imports, both smuggled and non-smuggled. The authorities respond to issues only if a demand is made from the floor of society organised as a force around that particular issue.

Examples are efforts by our syndicate to realise the rights and entitlements of the workers in sherkat-e vahed. The presence of representatives of the syndicate at each level of the struggle gradually forced the hand of managers and those in charge to move, on certain issues, towards complying with the law. Emphasising and insisting on legal principles and rights gradually had some effect on certain sections of the government’s executive branch and the judiciary. The important point is to create workers associations and unions which, with the historical and global backing, and using the experience of our brothers and sisters in other countries can strengthen our position in facing up to the lack of rights.

IWB: Major sections of manufacturing in Iran, including cotton weaving, shoes, saddlery, tyre manufacture etc have been driven to total bankruptcy and even closure of large sections through unregulated imports and smuggling of foreign goods by some government institutions, the various foundations and especially the aghazadeha (literally sons of esquires), and the bazaar merchants. According to your syndicate, imported goods amounted to $46 billion US dollars last year. Why do you think there is no support for domestic manufacturing, while many of these industries are both profitable and create jobs?

Osanlou: When the tools of political power are used to acquire billions in unsupervised profit through huge commissions and percentages, and in the absence of trade unions at workplace level and, such national organisations as federations of trade unions, then capital will easily gravitate towards the easy and quick profits of merchant capital, foreign imports and acting as international middleman.

The real decision making in Iran takes place outside the framework of parliament and the administration, smoothing the road to importing foreign goods. Existing legislations are ultimately perverted to favour merchant-middlemen capital. The tools of illegal wealth and power only seek a quick profit. Therefore in the absence of a social organisation of workers and labouring masses, policies tilt towards levelling the road for foreign imports. The issue of job creation becomes a mere slogan. Unfettered imports stifle manufacturing industry. One other possible policy aims could be to remove the last privileges from the working class of Iran and force it to sell its labour at less than a dollar a day.

IWB. Saturday February 24, was your first court appearance in Branch 14 of the Revolutionary Court (RC) on the so-called charge of “acting against national security and disturbing public order”. Why should you, who are a worker and a syndicate official, be tried in a RC? Has the RC any legal standing in the constitution still? And what relation does the dossier of an active worker have with the RC?

Osanlou: Because the founding of a workers’ syndicate threatens the illegal interests of managers, the factory security force (herasat) and the Islamic Councils (shora) in sherkat-e vahed. Knowledge of the Labour Code, the Constitution, international labour conventions and workers’ rights, allows workers to stand up to the extortions and bullying of managers and their agents. Through their watchful supervision they will stop the rentier misappropriation of funds by the managers.

From the time Mr Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran, managers of the sherkat-e vahed, were appointed from the military and the revolutionary guard. They are used to barrack-room behaviour and bullying, and are ignorant of labour laws and rights and the relation between workers and management.

When faced with the legal, law-centred and enlightening phenomenon of syndicates they gradually realised that they cannot continue to use public facilities and assets for their own personal and private interests. Hence, relying on help from sympathisers and fellow clique members in the Labour House, the Provincial Supplies Councils and ultimately some individuals in the security services they tried to cook up a dossier against the head of the executive council of the sherkat-e vahed workers syndicate. The emerging co-ordination between the management and elements of the security and information apparatus aimed at the destruction of the syndicate and imposing a heavy price on workers and on me as their true representative, as well as on the country for their private exploitation of public assets. Because normal courts have repeatedly found members of the syndicate not guilty of any wrong doing, they have taken to fabricating a dossier in the Revolutionary Court.

Essentially there is no legal standing for the RC in the constitution. These were created in crisis situation at the beginning of the revolution by Imam Khomeini. Towards the end of his life he had ordered that all matter that clash with the constitution should be dealt with in the framework of the constitution. The dossier of an active member of a syndicate has nothing to do with the RC and the ministry of information (security). But the behind the scene harmonization between the revolutionary guard managers of sherkat-e vahed and their colleagues in other security institutions drags a workers’ representative to the RC in order to prevent and block the rights and entitlements of workers.

IWB: Why has your defence of workers’ rights or their right to create independent unions cost you the label of “acting against national security and disturbing public order” an absurd “crime” for which they are now prosecuting you? Whose interests are being attacked by an independent syndicate such as that of Tehran and Suburbs bus drivers that the RC pulls out its knives and enters the ring to protect these interests?

Osanlou: Because unfortunately in our country many unwittingly, and some knowingly to preserve their personal interest or that of their clique, try to drown our justice seeking cries in futile and repetitive accusations, accusations which our defence lawyers have rejected and presented numerous watertight legal arguments in their rejection. Accusations such as propaganda against the ruling system, and endangering internal security are now so meaningless and repetitive. They have been thrown ad nauseam at any social or political activist, women, students, journalists, writers, reporters, university professors, and any citizen who has something to say. These allegations have become truly threadbare and meaningless, and lost their dignity and real meaning.

This amounts to a cruelty against the law and legality. My entire trial was no different to the interrogation sessions in prison and there was not one single document to support these accusations. The issue was more insinuation and ideological grilling. Clearly the syndicate of sherkat-e vahed has delivered a blow to the illegitimate interests of all the Islamic Councils and managers and officials who are not answerable to anyone and who bypass the law. It has worked for the general good of the workers in sherkat-e vahed. This is what has joined the management and the RC to one another.

IWB: In your first court session the prosecution tabled a dossier of 1200 pages against you. You witnessed the mood in the first court session and have obviously followed the development of that dossier. Do you think that the dossier, the atmosphere of the court and ultimately the final verdict of the court against you could be without political and security viewpoints? Are unresolved issues from the past, which seem to be firmly entrenched in all the 1200 pages, operating? And how?

Osanlou: It is all made up, like the dossiers cooked up for many others which have surfaced in newspapers and media over the years. The political standpoint reflects a particular macro-economic view. These persons feel threatened by labour unions, and are forced to respond. They concoct such dossiers by bringing psychological pressure, imprisonment, solitary confinement, threats, and intimidation. Trade union activists are pressured to abandon their syndicalist and social struggles by instilling fear and intimidation and by call attention to some aspects of the personal life and intimate family relations that have nothing to do with political matters.

Hundreds of my fellow workers have borne witness to this and have been coerced to give an undertaking not to continue with union activity in exchange for being released from prison or be allowed back to work. I myself have experienced enormous pressures and have faced all kinds of interrogations to scare me off the road I have been following, to stop syndicalist activities and stop seeing friends and fellow workers of 20 years standing. In my second arrest from November 8 till December 20, 2006 the only thing they demanded of me was to resign my post as head of the executive committee of the syndicate. I was in solitary confinement for 11 nights. After arrest and in the car of the security people I received dozens of fist blows on my head, face and body. They squeezed my neck with a handkerchief until I thought I would suffocate. A person named Asna Ashari who was a captain in the security apparatus in the anti-narcotic section (I recognised him from a identity card I had seen a year previously) was in charge of these operations against me. They tore my coat and pulled it over my head. They kept pounding me over the head with fists that had large agate rings saying: pack your bags and leave this place. All these were to create fear and trepidation in me and my family so that I would resign from the syndicate!

IWB: What does your syndicate expect from brother and sister workers in other countries and trade unions and organisations and other international labour organisations and progressive lawyers? In short how can one organise international support and solidarity for labour movements in peripheral countries, including workers in Iran?

Osanlou: Just as capital is global, the struggle to safeguard the rights of workers is also global. Our sister and brothers in trade union and similar organisations in other countries can foster a supportive atmosphere in our favour by disseminating news of our problems and our struggles to other workers in the world, to those in their own countries and among their own people and their own comrades. They can contact the Iranian embassy everywhere and declare their support for the workers of sherkat-e vahed and its syndicate.

International labour organisations and progressive lawyers can give an account of cases of human right abuse and trampling of our workers right in such international institutions as ILO and the UN and the world council for human rights. They can write to the Iranian administration officials and demand the application of international and human rights regulations to Iranian workers and specifically workers in sherkat-e vahed.

They could demand that the case of Iran should be brought up in the ILO and Iranian officials be required to explain the repression, expulsion and imprisonment and illegal trial of sherkat-e vahed; if Iran is a member of UN or ILO it must obey the principles of the UN declaration of Human Rights, the international labour protocols especially the protocol 87 and 98 and the two charters of the UN and the right to trade unions.

Particular support for workers in peripheral countries should take place because if wages are low there, capital will move its manufacturing to peripheral countries and the workers of the metropol (Europe, North America, Japan and Australia) will face lay offs and unemployment.

You can support them by pressuring the governments and administrations of these countries, and by setting up classes, congresses, by sending representatives and inspectors to investigate labour affairs, by helping train the workers of peripheral countries in the legal-syndicate matters, and by legal and financial assistance of their newly created unions like us.

IWB: Thank you Mansur Osanlou.

Tehran April 2007

April 2007

This interview was first published in Iranian Workers’ Bulletin no 12 April 2007