May Day in Tehran

As thousands of Iranians gathered in protest in Tehran this May Day, the usually stodgy, anti-union Wall Street Journal editorial staff was full of support.

The night before May Day, the WSJ editorial [subscription required] reported that over 80 illegal unions, bound together as the “Workers’ Organizations and Activists Coordination Council”, were organizing to protest decreasing worker’s rights in Iran. School teachers were also planning to protest, despite the beatings protesters received at a demonstration last March. The BBC reported that an increasing number of state and private employees weren’t being paid the salaries owed to them by their employers. The leader of the Tehran bus workers’ union, Mansour Osanloo, was tortured and lost part of his tongue after bus workers protested last year.

The Wall Street Journal acknowledged their atypical position, but partially justified this by alluding to an “Iranian threat”:

We do not often find ourselves on the same side as the AFL-CIO, but American unions have for decades supported people like Mr. Osanloo — and, before him, others like Lech Walesa — through the Solidarity Center, which is engaged in labor-rights issues from Zimbabwe to Iran to China. That’s a reminder that when it comes to such basic and universal issues as the freedom of association, partisanship really can end at the water’s edge. In the face of the Iranian threat — to its own people no less than to its neighbors — that’s exactly the kind of May Day solidarity we need.

While precise turn-out numbers aren’t known, it is clear that thousands of Iranians protested on Tuesday and that there were some clashes with police, though the prominent Western news sources have yet to report on the outcome.