This year, May Day arrives at a moment when the Iranian working class is living through one of the darkest and most complex periods in its history; a period in which exploitation, repression, poverty, and war have simultaneously cast their shadow over the lives of millions of workers and wage-earners.

Five decades of rule by the Islamic Republic have driven Iranian society to the brink of social collapse. Crony privatizations, the destruction of production, wages several times below the poverty line, mass unemployment, and the systematic suppression of every form of independent workers’ organization have created conditions in which the working class is deprived not only of the minimum means of survival, but also of the most basic human and social rights. Throughout all these years, the Islamic Republic has not only failed to respond to this crisis; it has intensified repression, imprisonment, torture, and executions, strangling every voice of protest at birth.

Against this backdrop, the social uprisings of recent years, especially the protests of January 2026, expressed the broad presence of the dispossessed classes and the labouring population in the struggle for fundamental change. These protests, which began with demands rooted in livelihood and survival, rapidly took on a political and radical character, becoming a direct challenge to the ruling system as a whole. Yet this uprising, amid unprecedented repression and a nationwide internet shutdown, was turned into a full-scale killing field: in the space of only two days, tens of thousands of passionate and defiant human beings, most of them workers and members of the lower classes, were massacred by the Islamic Republic’s machinery of repression. This catastrophe is the logical continuation of a regime that has built its survival on the destruction of society.

Now, along the same path, war and foreign military intervention have been added to this crisis. Widespread attacks on industrial infrastructure, energy facilities, and production centres have directly targeted the lives and safety of workers. Workers, without any form of protection, are forced to continue working in unsafe workplaces exposed to bombardment, or else face workplace closures, unemployment, and hunger. This war, like domestic repression, has nothing to do with the freedom or liberation of the people. It only deepens devastation, death, and social disintegration.

We stress that the primary responsibility for the present catastrophic situation lies with the Islamic Republic. This is a regime that, over decades, has repressed society, devastated the economy, and dragged the region into a cycle of war and tension, creating the conditions that have brought the lives of the Iranian people to this critical point. At the same time, foreign military intervention is not a solution, but a force that intensifies this catastrophe and further destroys society’s capacity for change.

Under these conditions, the Iranian working class faces a historic challenge: domestic repression on one side, and the devastation of war on the other. This situation, more than ever, highlights the necessity of an independent response rooted in the power of society itself.

We believe that the only way out of this situation lies in the independent, broad, and nationwide organization of the working class and other sectors of society. Without the formation of this social power, every uprising and protest will either be drowned in repression or diverted and appropriated by other forces. Organization is not a choice; it is a vital necessity for restoring agency to society and opening the horizon of fundamental transformation.

For us, May Day is not merely a day of commemoration. It is a day to declare a historical necessity: the necessity of ending an order built on exploitation, repression, and death, and of beginning an organized struggle to build a free, equal, and humane society.

With respect and solidarity,
Iran Labour Confederation – Abroad
May Day 2026