From day to day, it's easy enough to find items in the international press that chronicle the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear program. But what the press doesn't cover — one might even say they neglect to cover — is the struggle of working class Iranians in their efforts at building an Iran in which both life and livelihood are respected.

Over the course of recent years, Iran has seen a resurgence in the momentum of its workers movement.  In response to this, the Iranian government has stepped up its efforts to stifle organization and solidarity amongst workers.  In late 2005, several prominent figures in Iran's workers movement received prison sentences following their attempt to organize a May Day demonstration in 2004.

From News & Letters:

The courts of the government of Iran have sentenced a number of prominent labour movement activists to several years in prison, to be followed for some of them with exile. Their only "crime" is the attempt to hold a celebration event on May Day 2004.

These workers were arrested at the gathering for International Workers' Day on May 1, 2004 at the Children's Park in the city of Saqiz, and sent to the dungeons. According to the rulings issued by the courts, Mahmud Salehi, the spokesman for the Coordinating Committee for the Creation of a Workers' Organization has been sentenced to 5 years in prison and 2 years in exile. Jalal Hosseini has been sentenced to 3 years in prison. Mohsen Hakimi, also a member of Iranian Writers' Association, Muhammad Abdipur and Borhan Divargar, other prominent figures in the workers' movement, have been sentenced to 2 years in prison each.  (full article)

Although the above sentences are indeed draconian, they are simply the most recent examples of the systematic repression of working people in Iran.  Police intimidation and assault are foremost among the measures employed by the elite of Iran in their ongoing campaign against Iran's workers and their families.

While the better part of the "New World Order" spends its time scrutinizing Iran's nuclear program and building its case for a new war in the Middle East, the working people of Iran continue to struggle under the constant shadow of hostility and repression from the combined threat of foreign aggressors and their own ruling class.

[special thanks to "K" for contributing to this article]

With the news of yesterday's mine accident in West Virginia, the US has now seen a total of three serious mine accidents in just a few short weeks.  The news dispatches from these grim scenes are reminiscent of the harsh reality chronicled by George Orwell in his 1937 book, The Road to Wigan Pier:

It is not long since conditions in the mines were worse than they are now. There are still living a few very old women who in their youth have worked underground, with the harness round their waists, and a chain that passed between their legs, crawling on all fours and dragging tubs of coal. They used to go on doing this even when they were pregnant. And even now, if coal could not be produced without pregnant women dragging it to and fro, I fancy we should let them do it rather than deprive ourselves of coal. But—most of the time, of course, we should prefer to forget that they were doing it. It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are oblivious of its existence. More than anyone else, perhaps, the miner can stand as the type of the manual worker, not only because his work is so exaggeratedly awful, but also because it is so vitally necessary and yet so remote from our experience, so invisible, as it were, that we are capable of forgetting it as we forget the blood in our veins. In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.

Sit-down strike by coal miners in Wilsonville, Illinois, May 24, 1937

Further Reading
The Road to Wigan Pier   full text at george-orwell.org
Herald-Dispatch.com  Huntington, West Virginia