Iranian Economic Unrest

IPS News reports that bazaaris aren't the only ones with complaints in Iran:

"Meanwhile, industrial workers are increasingly restive. According to the Iran Labor Report, a Web publication of Iranian labour activists, 180 workers at the Alborz china company in the northwestern city of Qazvin staged a demonstration Jul. 6, complaining that they had been paid only twice in the last 12 months. They had previously protested on May 1.

"Kevan Harris, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who frequently travels to Iran, noted that the head of a government-run trade union in the northern city of Tabriz complained recently that workers there have 'reported not receiving wages on time, receiving below the minimum wage, no payment of overtime, being cut out of government sponsored entitlements such as food vouchers, and moving towards temporary contract labour'...

"A major test is likely to come when the government phases out subsidies of consumer staples and replaces them with cash payments. The subsidy reform, already postponed several times, is now due to be implemented in late September."

One school of thought felt that the regime was so repressive in 2009 because it knew 2010 would be a year of austerity.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)