Workers in Iran’s oil industry have expanded their strikes on Tuesday to include employees from major companies in the country’s south. This comes at a time when living conditions continue to deteriorate and authorities struggle to restore calm in Iran following four months of anti-regime social unrest.
Video footage shared on social media showed the spread of strikes among oil company workers.
Workers of companies in the cities of Ahwaz, Aghajari, Bushehr, and Asaluyeh, joined the strikes organized by unions to protest the living situation.
The cities of Abadan and Bandar-e Mahshahr, which include the two largest petrochemical and oil refining facilities in the country, witnessed a return to strikes at the beginning of this week.
Workers are demanding better wages, lower taxes, and better services, including pensions after retirement.
Permanent workers in Iran’s oil industry said they will join a strike announced by contract oil workers and will stop work to protest the government’s crackdown on a wave of nationwide demonstrations following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested for not wearing her hijab “properly.”
Iranian authorities are pushing onward with their security crackdown on the capital and major cities, with the aim of eliminating hotbeds of protests that shook the country in the past months. Hundreds of people were killed during the crackdown.
At least 524 people, including 71 minors, have been killed in the violent crackdown by security forces on protesters while over 19,000 are said to be arrested, according to the latest tally by US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
HRANA also reported the death of 68 security and military personnel during the crackdown on protests.
Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran's Kurdish regions, accused the Iranian security services of kidnapping 96 Kurdish citizens during the first two weeks of January.
The organization said that “five students, four teachers, and five women were among those kidnapped.”
