Nine members of the Trade Union of the Vahed Bus Company of Tehran and Suburbs have been sacked for taking part in the strikes of December 2005 and January 2006 at the Company's depots. This was in accordance with the ruling of the Labour Discipline Committees and was also approved by the Workplace Justice Tribunal.
The sacked drivers are Saeed Torabian, Reza Fazeli, Ali-Akbar Pirhadi, Seyyed-Reza Nematipoor, Mansour Hayat-Gheybi, Atta Babakhani, Soltan Ali Shekari, Vahab Mohammadi and Amir Takhiri.
This ruling was first issued by the Labour Discipline Committees. After the workers' appeal it was referred to the Workplace Justice Tribunal which then revoked the ruling for just one person, Nematollah Amirkhani, but upheld it for all the others. The verdict against Nematollah Amirkhani, who was to have been sacked, was revoked in the Workplace Justice Tribunal and referred to Tehran Province's Workplaces' Arbitration Committee. The Committee, with the recommendation of the Labour Ministry, decided that Amirkhani should receive a lump sum as severance pay and be made redundant. According to Saeed Torabian this will be a compulsory redundancy.
Saeed Torabian, one of the leading organisers of the union, also said that these cases did not follow the due process of the law. "After the sacked workers received their verdict from the Workplaces' Arbitration Committees they referred it to the Workplace Justice Tribunal ... Since May 2007 around nine of our trade unionist friends have been sentenced to be sacked by the Workplace Justice Tribunal." He added that "... in 2006, when the Labour Discipline Committees passed the sacking sentence against the trade unionist workers, the Committees were not registered at the Labour Office. Because of this, in May 2008 we were able to get a letter from the Labour Ministry [confirming] that the Labour Discipline Committees that passed this ruling were not registered at the Ministry. … we will [now] refer our complaint to the Workplace Justice Tribunal … that the Committees that sacked the workers were illegal, and hope that our pursuit [of this issue] has a good outcome and a verdict [that is] legal and just to the workers is passed."
At the time of the strikes during the winter of 2005-06, Article 27 of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Labour Code specified that before a worker can be sacked the boss has to give him or her at least two written warnings and that the Islamic Labour Council in the plant has to agree to the dismissal. Last year the Ahmadinejad government amended this article so that there is now no need to get agreement from Islamic Labour Council.
Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network
31 August 2008
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