Empty tables revive workers’ protests in Iranian streets

Mohamed Shaat

With the continuing economic deterioration suffered by Iranian society, the phenomenon of “empty tables” has spread, revealing the extent of the deterioration of living conditions, which has caused continuous protests since 2018, especially after the US sanctions imposed by Washington in the same year after withdrawing from the nuclear agreement doubled the economic decline.

Empty tables

In conjunction with the indirect negotiations in Vienna between Iran and Washington and Iran’s adherence to its demands, labor protests were renewed again in many Iranian cities, where steel retirees in Kermanshah, Tehran, Ahvaz and Arak organized protests to meet their demands.

Social security retirees gathered in Kermanshah due to poor living conditions and other demands, and the protesters demonstrated their poor living conditions by offering “empty tables,” in a message to the regime about the extent of their living deterioration and their inability to provide for their daily bread.

The circle of protests is widening, as it included the strike of oil industry workers nationwide, while livestock farmers also organized protests in several cities in Iran, in addition to student protests at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad after two suicide attempts by a student amid the silence and indifference of regime officials.

Ongoing protests

Teachers’ protests continue in light of the regime ignoring their demands, as the teachers’ protests began last week, and the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Unions called on all teachers to protest in order to meet their demands.

The protests spread across Iran, where teachers demanded their rights, stressing the need to implement the teacher classification bill approved by the Iranian parliament’s education committee, which calls for raising teachers’ salaries to at least 80% of the salaries of university faculty members. But Iranian officials say there is not enough funding to implement such a plan.

The teachers criticized the regime’s refusal to raise their salaries at a time when the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) budget increased by 2.5 times, or more than 90,000 billion tomans, representing an increase of 240 percent over the previous year, in addition to allocating about €1 billion, or more than 30,000 billion tomans, to the IRGC solely for exporting projects of terrorism, missiles and the like, while the budget for education increased by only 14% to reach 130,000 billion tomans.