Workers' Protests at Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company Enter the Twentieth Day

The Iranian Labor News Agency, ILNA, reported that the protests by workers at Haft Tappeh continued on Saturday, December 3, for the twentieth consecutive day. According to this news agency, the protesting workers marched from the governor's office to the Teacher's Square in Shush. The workers present at the gathering on Saturday were still protesting the delay in their wage demands, lack of job security, and the employer's indifference to their claims. Two days prior, reports emerged about 'the deposit of one month of overdue payments' into the workers' accounts, and the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Workers' Syndicate announced the release of three more detained workers. Ismail Bakhti, the only remaining imprisoned worker from the detained workers, is still in custody, along with Sepideh Gholian, a journalist who is also among the recent detainees. Karim Yavari, the director general of job support and unemployment insurance at the Ministry of Labor, confirmed in an interview with ILNA that 'all detained Haft Tappeh workers, except for one, have been released.' This official also confirmed the detention of a journalist, stating, 'The other detainee is a female journalist and not a worker.' Farzaneh Zilabi, the lawyer for the detained Haft Tappeh workers, told ILNA, 'The workers have been released on bail, and the process of addressing their cases will continue.' During the protest gathering on Saturday, the Haft Tappeh workers expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of serious follow-up by national, provincial, and local officials regarding their demands. They stated that the only outcome of several days of meetings with officials was the payment of one month of overdue wages. In addition to wage arrears, they demanded the payment of service benefits, retirement costs for workers who retired from hard and hazardous jobs, contracts for daily workers, and the implementation of job classification plans, which remain unmet. One of the protesters' demands is the cancellation of the privatization of this economic complex and its return to the public sector or transfer to the workers employed at the complex. According to the protesting workers, the two years since the privatization of this complex have seen the mismanagement of private sector managers lead to significant problems for the sugarcane industry. The new wave of protests by Haft Tappeh workers, which began twenty days ago and continues, started after reports emerged regarding the imprisonment or fleeing of the private employer of this unit. Ali-Ashraf Pouri-Hosseini, the head of the Privatization Organization, announced that one of the owners of this company is imprisoned, and the other has fled. The Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company was privatized in March 2016. This privatization faced criticism, including from the newspaper Aftab Yazd, which reported in May 2017 that Razi Noori, the representative of Shush Daniel in Parliament, had warned about the process of privatizing the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company to two young men aged 28 and 31 to Ali Tayebnia, the then-Minister of Economy. This parliament member questioned, 'Is the privatization of this large economic complex to two young men aged 28 and 31 without coordination with provincial and local officials not a sign of abandoning this complex, and was it a correct action?' Noori had predicted that this privatization would 'create numerous problems' for the workers of this economic complex.