Iran’s Workers Want To Unite for Better Conditions, but Need Outside Help

Iran’s workers are standing up for themselves and, increasingly, looking to join with others. Nearly 5,000 oil workers marched on December 9 in the South Pars natural gas field, the largest labor mobilization in Iran’s energy sector to date. Most were contract workers protesting wage disparities and violations of basic labor rights. Groups, including the Council for Organizing Protests of Oil Contract Workers, the Bushehr refinery workers’ associations, and the Tehran Bus Workers’ Syndicate, expressed support. The following day, oil, gas, and power-sector contract workers joined welfare-organization staff protesting similar grievances outside of parliament.

Iran’s working class once formed the regime’s backbone, yet since 2017 it has become a driving force against it. Employees across energy, education, transport, and government offices have shown a growing willingness to mobilize around shared grievances, striking in parallel despite their limited ability to organize openly.

Stage Set for Nationwide Energy Strikes

South Pars, Iran’s largest gas megaproject, and Asaluyeh, its main onshore hub, have been centers of labor unrest since 2018, driven by exploitative subcontracting, delayed wages, overcrowded living situations, and widening gaps between contract and direct-hire staff. In  2019 and 2020, protests over unpaid wages and deteriorating dormitory conditions become routine. These pressures helped set the stage for broader strike waves that followed, including the coordinated 2020 walkouts across oil, gas, and petrochemical sites and the 2021 expansion of strikes by workers at natural-gas complexes, power plants and manufacturing facilities. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, wage arrears, stalled job-classification reforms and persistent discrimination led to continuous protests.

Unrest Grows as Strikes Reach Other Sectors

Teachers, industrial workers, and those in other sectors staged demonstrations in 2019, the same year as the Bloody November protests. During the 2022 uprising, workers across the education, health care, transport, and legal professions staged solidarity strikes or work slowdowns. The truckers’ strike that began on May 21, 2025, spread to more than 40 cities, and showed how quickly economic grievances could escalate into coordinated nationwide action. Labor activism is now part of a shared political struggle rather than isolated workplace disputes, reinforcing the cross-sector dynamic shaping today’s energy sector mobilization.

Regime Policies Deepened Labor Vulnerability

Legal changes in the 1990 Labor Law accelerated a shift from stable employment to precarious work, with temporary contracts rising from 6 percent of the labor force in 1990 to roughly 90 percent by the late 2000s. The model spread across energy sites, enabling wage arrears, reduced benefits, and easy worker replacement. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps entrenches these conditions by controlling major petrochemical projects through opaque contracting chains that suppress labor standards and limit oversight. Regulatory bans on independent unions, intelligence monitoring inside refineries and the dismantling of collective bargaining channels further constrain workers, leaving them with few lawful mechanisms to contest exploitation. Activists who challenge these conditions have been arrested and sentenced to prison.

Iran’s Labor Groups Are the West’s Leverage Point

Iran’s labor movement has become a key driver of pressure on the regime, yet its impact depends on its ability to sustain strikes through reliable worker support funds and its capacity to organize across sectors. Worker protests challenge the Islamic Republic’s claim to represent Iranian national interests. To aid this movement, Washington’s existing diplomatic messaging campaign supporting Iran’s workers is not enough. The American AFL-CIO and allied international unions should publicly back Iranian labor actions, help establish the needed strike fund, and create a cross-sector network.

Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Janatan on X @JanatanSayeh. Follow FDD on X @FDDand @FDD_Iran. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.