Why Teamsters President Hoffa worries Iran's mullahs

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/19/INR1REQT1.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle
Why Teamsters President Hoffa worries Iran's mullahs

Mahtaub Hojjati

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Iran's despotic mullahs are worried more about Teamsters union President James Hoffa than Iran's Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Why? They are frightened by the prospect that Hoffa's escalating voice may give birth to an Iranian version of Solidarity's Lech Walesa, whose courageous and charismatic leadership transformed Poland's workers into an invincible political force.

A gem of an alliance has been cut between Hoffa and Iran's labor movement. In December 2005, the Teamsters president demanded, in a letter to Iran's notoriously belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the release of 14 labor union workers unjustly detained and beaten. In July 2007, after the jailing and brutalization of Mansour Ossanlou, a Bus Transport Workers Union leader, Hoffa similarly insisted on his freedom and condemned the Iranian government's flagrant disdain for freedom of association and expression.

Iran's theocrats fear Hoffa because they worry about the close nexus between free labor unions and political freedom. Last year, two prominent Iranian labor leaders, Mahmoud Salehi and Jalal Hosseini, were tried and convicted of internal subversion in secret proceedings conducted by the Saqqez Revolutionary Court.

The mullahs accurately perceived labor organizing as the antechamber to revolt against despotism. That explains why labor rights are joined with democracy and human rights in the annual country reports issued by the State Department. Similarly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates: "Everyone has the right to form and to join labor unions for the protection of his own interests."

The stipulation is echoed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Labor unions were pivotal to rescuing Italy and France from the clutches of communism in the early years after World War II. Free trade unions are classrooms in leadership and organizing skills. Moreover, they provide workers economic security. All three challenge the cravings of despotic regimes to monopolize power.

Take the case of Iran.

The mullahs command barely a crumb of popular support. Because their grip on power is tenuous, every semblance of freedom is crushed. Dissident voices and newspaper publishers are left to suffer in Evin prison, Iran's version of the Bastille. Women clothed in garb more fetching than head scarves or chadors are harassed and detained by police. Every candidate for office must be theologically scrubbed by the extremist Guardian Council. The economy is in shatters because of ill-conceived monopolies granted to the Revolutionary Guard. Corruption is staggering. Unemployment and underemployment are widespread. Inflation is galloping. Foreign investment is at a trickle because of international sanctions and slim protection of private property. Gasoline rationing has provoked vandalism.

A recent poll in Iran placed popular support for the mullahs at 5 to 10 percent. The overwhelming proportion covets secular democracy (79 percent), a dispensation that was stolen from the Iranian people in 1953 when the United States and Great Britain orchestrated a coup against nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (for which the United States apologized in 2000). The prime minister championed the right to organize, even though under his administration the majority of workers joined the Tudeh Party, which he opposed.

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and power to the people! Go Hoffa! Go Teamsters!