The statement of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iranon the occasion of May Day, the International Workers' Day! 

A fiery salute to the more than a century struggle of the working class and working people of Iran to shape a society free from poverty and deprivation, to enjoy a national and people-oriented government and freedom, independence, and social justice!

Workers and working people of Iran!

The Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran congratulates you on the occasion of the May 1^st, the International Workers' Day. This year marks the 136^th anniversary of May Day around the world, which was established during the First Congress of the Second International in 1889. The auspicious tradition of rallying on the first day of May began with the protest campaign of American workers to reduce working hours from 14 hours a day to 8 hours on May 1, 1886, and then on May 4, it was met with a violent and bloody crackdown on protesting workers in Chicago. The May Day events, which is taking place today around the world, including in our homeland, with the participation of hundreds of millions of workers and working people, is not only a commemoration of the heroic struggle of the American workers, but also a call to the continuation of the struggle of workers around the world against the inhumane and exploitative system of capitalism in order to build a new world.

This year's International Workers' Day coincides with an unprecedented assault by monopoly capitalism on the rights of workers and working people, resulting in unemployment, poverty, and increasing deprivation for millions of working people. According to the United Nations, more than 700 million people in the world live in absolute poverty today, and more than 1.8 billion of the world's population earn less than $1.9 a day. For instance, in the United States, the racist and quasi-fascist Trump government has launched an unprecedented assault on the rights of the country's working people in the first 100 days of its administration. The dismissal of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the racist offensive to deport hundreds of thousands of refugees from the United States, the sending of thousands of innocent people to El Salvador's dreaded prisons, and the planning to deprive tens of millions of people, especially the elderly and retirees, of healthcare have made life difficult for many layers of society. This is the ugly face of monopoly capitalism at the heart of global imperialism, the United States, a country where, according to official government statistics, more than 37 million people live below the poverty line and more than 30 million of its citizens lack health insurance. This situation exists in the United States where, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies of the Forbes Billionaire List, there are now 801 billionaires living in the United States with a total wealth of $6.22 trillion, which is more than the wealth of half of the entire American population (340 million people).

In the past year, we have also witnessed the continuation of the crimes of the racist and criminal Israeli regime in Gaza, crimes that enjoyed the clear support of global imperialism and the humiliating silence of the media of the capitalist states. These relentless crimes have hurt the conscious of humanitarians around the world. The murder of more than 50,000 Gazans, including more than 12,000 children, continues to this day, while capitalist countries such as the United States, Britain and the European Union continue to welcome Netanyahu and the heads of the Israeli government, figures with blood-stained hands who must be brought to justice as war criminals. Recently, Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, warned that the resumption of war had turned Gaza into a "hell on earth" for its residents. In recent days, Lazzarini added on the "X" platform (formerly Twitter) that the Israeli army does not allow the entry of essential goods, that the Gaza Strip has become a land of despair, and that "deliberate and manufactured hunger" is spreading and intensifying in Gaza.

Workers and working people of Iran!

This day May Day coincides with the 104^th anniversary of the first event held in Iran on the occasion of the International Workers' Day. For the first time in 1921, International Workers' Day event was held in Iran at the initiative of the Communists and the Central Council of the Federation of Trade Unions. This year, we welcome the celebration of International Workers' Day at a time when Iran is facing deeper economic, political, and social crises than ever before. Last year was the year of widespread protests by workers and working people against the macro policies of the theocratic regime, which have pushed the country further into the abyss of economic bankruptcy and poverty and deprivation of millions of working people. The Research Center of the Iran Chamber, in its analytical report titled: "Poverty, Prosperity and the Planet: Ways Out of Multiple Crises", relying on the World Bank's 2024 report, stated that the poverty rate has stabilized at 30 percent in recent years. The results of the estimates of the "Majles [Parliament] Research Center" also show that the poverty rate in 2024 remained at 30 percent. Even according to these figures, andtaking into account that Iran's population has exceeded 90 million people, today, due to the damaging policies of the country's capitalist interests and the deeply corrupt and anti-people regime of the Islamic Republic, more than 30 million citizens of our country are living in poverty, and the number of these citizens is increasing every day. The fact of the matter is that as a result of implementing neoliberal policies of structural adjustment such as privatization, workforce reductions, dismantling of the country's productive infrastructure, deregulation, and wage liberalization, the working people face numerous problems, including rising inflation, the disproportionality of the minimum wage with the cost of the living, the sweeping temporary contracts, the lack of job security and safety conditions in the workplace, and the increase in unemployment.

In the past year, our country has witnessed hundreds of protest movements by workers, working people, pensioners, nurses, teachers, and educators against the regime's policies, and also protests by the women in particular against the inhumane policy of imposing the mandatory "hijab", which has created a very tense situation in our society. The regime has been able to survive by relying on violent and bloody crackdown on protests, and almost daily arrests of labour, civil, and environmental activists, and the execution of many death sentences.
This year's International Workers' Day will mark nearly a year since the start of a massive strike by project workers in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. It is noteworthy that there are currently more than 200,000 people employed in the oil industry in the public sector alone, two-thirds of whom are employed on "temporary contracts" or are employees of "third parties" (contract work) whose income is in some cases only one-third of the income of permanent public employees. The struggle of the oil industry's "project workers" to eliminate contractors, increase wages, eliminate discrimination and enforce the "equal pay for equal work" law, i.e. to receive wages equal to those of permanent employees of the Ministry of Oil, implement the job classification, and so on, continues in all manufacturing and maintenance sectors. In other sectors of the country's industries as well as the public sector, labor protests have been widespread in the past year, including strikes by miners, workers of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane complex, the telecommunications company, the Ministry of Energy, the country's steel industries, railway workers, stewards of passenger trains, and municipal workers.

One of the most prominent examples of the struggle of the country's working people last year was the courageous rallies of pensioners, teachers, and nurses for wages above the poverty line and for job security, which spread to various cities and hospitals across the country. For example, on February 3, 2025, more than 17,000 healthcare workers and staff of various healthcare agencies and centers in the country wrote in a letter to Pezeshkian [the President]: "As healthcare workers, we demand a review of our inadequate salary and benefits status to address the issue."

The nationwide struggle of the country's pensioners, which is unique in the world, has continued throughout the nation in the past year, despite all the repression and threats of the regime's security apparatus against its activists, and is a shining example of the struggle and perseverance of the nation's working people against the oppressive theocratic regime. Once again, the Iranian new year began with the protest of pensioners, and in the weeks following Nowruz [March 21^st], thousands of retirees from all over the country took to the streets and continued their protest against the dire living conditions, the problematic healthcare situation, the meager pensions, the postponement of the payment of insignificant annuities, the incomplete implementation of the equalization of wages, and other unmet demands.

‎Workers and Working people of Iran!‎

‎This year's May Day celebration is taking place at a time when the regime's harmful and adventurous policies in the region in recent years, and especially in the past two years, have posed serious threats to Iran's peace and national sovereignty. The threat of a military conflict with US imperialism and its regional mercenary, the racist and criminal Netanyahu government, has put the country in a very difficult and dangerous situation. The start of the second round of talks between the representatives of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran and the agreement to continue the talks, in recent weeks, have been able to prevent the current tensions from turning into a military attack on Iran by the United States and Israel and the outbreak of a new war. ‎

The fact of the matter is that the leaders of the theocratic regime, led by Khamenei, have put Iran in a very weak position, both in the foreign and domestic arenas, as a result of the policies they have pursued so far. For a long time now, the regime's leaders, due to their weakness in managing the nationwide crisis and in facing with a large segment of society that wants the end of Khamenei's dictatorship, have seen no other way but to perform vulgar shows while using the tools of repression incessantly. ‎

In February 2025, the broad meeting of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran, in a message to the workers and working people of the nation, emphasized that the experience of the popular movement of the last few years is proof of the fact that without the organized presence of the working class and working people the barrier of tyranny cannot be broken, and the intervention and encroachment of imperialism on the homeland will not stop. Since the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising, the struggles of the labour movement have expanded further, which in itself promises the organized presence of the working class and the working people in the political developments of the country. The very important point in this regard is the need to link the struggles of the labour movement with the general struggle against the dictatorship. Such a bond must be reinforced and strengthened in every way.

The Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran once again congratulates all the workers and working people of the nation on the occasion of the International Workers' Day on May 1^st. The Tudeh Party of Iran is proud that in its ranks, trade unionists and militant and revolutionary workers such as Vartan Salakhanian, Ali Omid, Asef Razmdideh, Saber Mohammadzadeh, Mohammad Janjanian, Ali Shenasaei, HosseinPour Tabrizi, Hassan Jalali, and many others have fought and have provided shining examples of militancy, courage, revolutionary morality, and selflessness in the history of the revolutionary and labour movement of our country for the future fighters.

The Tudeh Party of Iran, along with the trade union movement of the country and the working class activists in Iran, while commemorating the International Workers' Day, demands job security, decent wages and benefits for all manual and intellectual workers, the elimination of discrimination against female workers who suffer a double oppression, freedom of trade union activity and the right to organize in independent trade unions and labour unions, and an immediate end to the prosecution, imprisonment, and repression of trade union activists, and demands the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.‎

• ‎We salute the workers and working people of Iran!‎
• ‎‎Long live the glorious memory of the victims of the labour movement and all those who died for the freedom of the homeland!‎
• ‎‎‎Victory to the struggle of the workers and working people of Iran to secure trade and political interests and to put an end to the anti-people and tyrannical regime of the Islamic Republic!‎
• ‎‎‎The realization of the rights of the working people is possible in peace, not in war!

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‎The Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran‎
27 April 2025‎ 

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