Worker Protest in the Age of Ahmadinejad
Mohammad Maljoo
Mohammad Maljoo is a lecturer in the Faculty of Economics at Allameh Tabatabae University in Tehran.
In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after an intense campaign in which he exerted great effort to present himself as the defender of the poor and the working class. These classes, badly hurt by neo-liberal economic policies in the period following the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war, had staged a number of organized and noisy protests in the years preceding Ahmadinejad’s campaign, and they responded in significant numbers to his appeal for votes. The first year and a half of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, however, has seen an erosion of the social contract between working Iranians and the state of a magnitude that may be decisive for the future of democracy in Iran.
After Ahmadinejad assumed power, collective action by Iranian workers has subsided, despite strong popular dissatisfaction with the economy. Working people increasingly resort to disjointed, individual and quiet protests; what looked like a budding movement for social justice in 2004 now looks like a non-movement. What explains the downswing in labor activism? The commitment of working people to pursuing their collective interests has not flagged, but under Ahmadinejad, the political opportunities for collective protest have been severely restricted. Ensconced in power by elections in 2004 and 2005, hardline conservatives are more willing than their predecessors to employ the force of the state to break workers’ movements. Pending adjustments to the law governing worker-employer relations appear to tilt the playing field further in the favor of management. Finally, the demise of the reformist movement inside the Islamic Republic, and the corresponding return of the conservatives, has sent a chill wind blowing through all realms of political activity. The form and vehemence of workers’ collective action in the future will depend on the political opportunities available to them.
Economic Dissatisfaction at a Glance
According to a national survey of values and attitudes implemented in 2004 by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, about 71 percent of Iranians are dissatisfied with “the economic situation of the country,” while 25 percent are somewhat satisfied and only 5 percent are very satisfied. The survey data showed about 71 percent of men, 70 percent of women, 72 percent of the employed and 79 percent of university graduates classifying themselves as dissatisfied.[1]
Case studies of smaller groups also indicate a high level of disquiet with the economy. A questionnaire distributed to primary and secondary school teachers in Tehran found that nearly 60 percent, when asked to “consider your salary from the Ministry of Education,” expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs, while only 18 percent evinced satisfaction.[2] These negative feelings are not confined to the capital. Another research project revealed that about 10 percent of teachers from the small town of Nishabur expressed strong job dissatisfaction, while only 1?percent said they were very satisfied with their jobs.[3]
According to one study, “One potent reason for job dissatisfaction could be tied up not so much, as is generally assumed, with the characteristics of the job as with the general satisfaction workers experience as members of society.”[4] Strong job dissatisfaction, as among these Iranian teachers, may have little to do with the particulars of the conditions of their employment. Instead, it might be a clear sign of deeper discontent with the situation of Iranian working people in the private and public sectors. The discontent is probably driven both by objective conditions, such as low and stagnant wages and declining job security, and frustrations related to the discrepancies between political slogans, like those of Ahmadinejad on the campaign trail, and state performance.
[...]
Conditions of Possibility
The decline in militant collective action among both Tehrani teachers and bus drivers under Ahmadinejad seems to capture the situation of Iranian working people as a whole. Unhappy Iranian workers increasingly pursue their interests through individual activities, whether political or economic, rather than collective political action. Indeed, the “vertical” communication of grievances to the authorities that was prevalent during the “reformist moment,” thanks to the more open society of those years, has given way to “horizontal” grumbling with co-workers and colleagues. Alternatively (or simultaneously), Iranians dissatisfied with their jobs seek additional income-generating opportunities in their struggles to survive and improve their individual lots.
How do we explain this trend in Iranian society? Fortunately, social theory has something to say in this regard. The political economist Albert O. Hirschman demonstrated that modern societies are predisposed to oscillate between periods of intense preoccupation with public issues and periods of almost total concentration on individual improvement and private welfare goods. By taking the psychological mechanism of disappointment seriously, Hirschman explains the swing from public to private concerns as the result of the frustrations of participation in public activity. Nevertheless, disappointment by itself cannot explain the recent downturn in labor activism in Iran.
As one of Hirschman’s critics writes, people’s choices may change either as their preferences change or as their possibilities change. [15] Indeed, in contemporary Iran, it is the shrunken possibilities for working people that most credibly explain their relative quiescence. At the legal level, the Ministry of Labor is slated to forward amendments to the 1990 labor law that appear designed to forestall independent worker organization. At the level of the state, following the reconsolidation of hardline conservative control over all the branches of government, the authorities are determined to continue the repression of mass protest as well as to maintain an intimidating atmosphere of retaliation. Last but not least, the power struggles among reformist and conservative factions within the state, which protest movements could sometimes exploit to promote their own agendas, have disappeared with the defeat of the reformists. The main question for Iranian workers is whether these structural conditions of possibility will change in favor of revived worker activism.
[...]