Over the course of the twentieth century, Iran has experienced numerous dramatic events and has undergone radical transformations. The country participated in three major wars (1914–1918, 1941–1945, 1980–1988) that caused enormous human suffering and economic damage; two coup détats (1921, 1953) that altered power relations within the military and political elite; and two revolutions (1905–1909, 1978–1982) that led to fundamental changes in social, political, and cultural relations in Iran and beyond. But the event that, perhaps, has had the most significant impact on the history of twentieth-century Iran was the discovery of oil in 1908.
This idea forms the basis of a major research project currently underway at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam: a study of the social history of labor in the Iranian oil industry during its first century (1908–2008). The papers in this special section of ILWCH comprise part of that project. While previous studies of the Persian/Iranian oil industry chiefly focused on the roles of the state and the oil companies, the main objective of this project is to study the people who worked in the industry, thereby providing a history from below. Our research is focused on five main areas: the composition of the labor force (ethnicity, gender, and age); the process of labor formation (recruitment, skills, training, and education); labor relations (wages and labor discipline); labor migration, mobility, and integration; and living conditions/quality of life (housing, nutrition, hygiene, health, and leisure). After investigating the material circumstances of the oil workers' daily existence—at work, at home, and in the community—the project has turned to researching the interactions among oil workers; the creation, by the Anglo Persian/Iranian Oil Company, of a colonial-style corporate entity in an independent nation; and the evolution of the Iranian state over the one hundred years following the discovery of the oil.
That discovery of oil in 1908 and the ensuing construction of a massive oil refinery, shipping docks, and industrial towns in southwest Iran opened a new chapter in Iranian labor history. At the turn of the twentieth century, heavy oil rapidly replaced coal as the principal source of energy in Western economies. The demand for Iranian oil was heightened during the First World War, which resulted in a sharp increase in the number of workers in the oil industry. Throughout this early period, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company treated the oil-producing region of Iran like a colony, reaping eighty-eight percent of the industry's profits. Meanwhile, the migration of workers to the newly founded oil towns resulted in the formation of a new social class with a distinct class identity that intersected with elements of its members' preexisting communal and tribal identities.
Source: Library of Sahab Cartographical and Geographical Institute, Tehran
Following the end of the First World War, a new political order emerged that aimed to reduce provincial and tribal autonomy. In 1925, Reza Shah Pahlavi took power, establishing a constitutional monarchy with a centralized government. He adopted a top-down approach to modernization, rapidly urbanizing and industrializing the nation. The new monarch also forced the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to offer better working conditions to its employees. However, Reza Shah denied the workers autonomous representation by free labor unions and other democratic rights. His policies created a tripartite relationship between the state, labor, and the oil company. As his modernization policies were implemented, oil gradually shifted from being merely an export commodity to a commodity for domestic consumption.
The outbreak of the Second World War halted the process of authoritarian modernization in Iran. The occupation of Iran by Great Britain and the Soviet Union in August 1941 weakened the centralized government of Reza Shah; in September of the same year the king was forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. This situation opened a space for the labor movement to become increasingly active throughout the country. In the oil industry, organized labor engaged in mass activities such as strikes, sit-ins, and public protests and demonstrations. The growth of political awareness, labor activism, trade unionism, and class-consciousness led to the nationalization of the oil industry in 1951, by Premier Mohammad Mosaddeq. This was unacceptable to the Western powers that had come to rely on Iran's oil. Two years later, after an intense diplomatic campaign, Britain and the United States orchestrated the 1953 coup détat that overthrew Mosaddeq's government.
The nationalization of oil in 1951 ended Britain's monopoly over the Iranian oil industry and paved the way for other international oil companies, particularly those from the United States, to become part of a new consortium that was formed in 1954. Although the oil industry was nationalized, the consortium controlled aspects of production and marketing. The consortium, Iranian Oil Participants Ltd. (IOP), included British Petroleum, Exxon (Esso), Socony, Texas Oil, Socal, Gulf, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Compagnie Française des Petroles (now Total), which controlled sales from the nationalized oil industry.
In the post-1953 period, the balance of power again shifted toward the state, which, while taking repressive measures to eradicate any form of labor organization, introduced a series of measures to improve working conditions in the oil industry. Using increased oil profits; Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi financed a massive modernization project, which, in turn, brought significant socioeconomic changes to the nation. The most substantive change was the use of oil revenue to industrialize the still primarily agrarian country. This, in turn, created a sizable working class, with some 2.5 million people in manufacturing, 70,000 to 80,000 of them in the oil industry. Despite the Shah's efforts to implement massive socioeconomic reforms and secularize Iranian society, religiopolitical forces remained active.
The influence of nationalists and the political left on the oil industry's workforce had a major impact on the political transformations of the 1940s and the crises of the early 1950s. However, during the 1960s, in the absence of organized political opposition, the core political activities within the mainstream industries gradually adopted some Islamic dimensions. By the mid-1970s, labor activism was gradually becoming influenced by religious forces and became the channel through which the working class expressed its opposition to the government. The increased influence of religion was encouraged by the Shah's reluctant tolerance of religious opposition. This created a small space for the clergy to express its views when other social forces were silenced considerably.
Although the government's absolute control over the oil industry and the improvements in living conditions and social welfare benefits resulting from increased oil prices delayed the participation of oil workers in revolutionary activities, their late, yet active, involvement proved to be vital to the success of the Revolution. Peyman Jafari's article explains why the improvements in quality of life during the 1970s did not prevent the oil workers from organizing a mass strike and joining the revolution.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 which brought to an end more than seventy-seven years autocratic rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had far reaching consequences both for Iran as well as the International allies of the ancient regime, chiefly the United States and Britain. As a result the country remained locked in a confrontation with the West, which retaliated with sustained economic sanctions and embargos. However, when the western managers and technicians withdrew from the oil industry, Iranian oil workers resumed production without them—an unprecedented event in developing countries. Nevertheless, the workers' sense of independence eventually put them in serious conflict with the revolutionary government. They increasingly resisted the encroaching Islamization of the labor movement by the establishment of Islamic Associations of Labor in workplaces.
The September 1980 Iraqi invasion of southwestern Iran suddenly overshadowed the internal conflicts and contradictions. The events of the 1980s affected the oil industry in many ways. It found itself at the forefront of the war when Iraq destroyed Abadan, one of the world's largest oil refineries. In addition to the attacks on pipelines, oil refineries and installations, Iraq attacked the workers home and workplaces. Workers also suffered from the state's lack of investment in infrastructure and technology, chiefly due to the war economy now underway. As a result, the war had an enormous impact on oil production and the labor force, turning thousands of workers and their families into internal migration.
By the end of the war and during the presidencies of Rafsanjani (1989–1997) and Khatami (1997–2005), the oil industry and its labor force again experienced major changes. As private companies, both Iranian and foreign, were again allowed to participate in the oil industry, initiatives promoting privatization and the outsourcing of labor were introduced, affecting the status of Iranian employees.
The three papers presented here share some of the preliminary findings of IISH project. The first, From ‘Amaleh (Labour) to Kargar (Worker), which I authored, examines the creation of a new working class in the Persian/Iranian oil industry in the early twentieth century. Following the discovery of oil in 1908, the immediate challenge facing the oil company was the scarcity of skilled and semiskilled labor. The remoteness of the discovery's location meant that before the oil could be pumped, a massive infrastructure had to be put in place, including access roads, pipelines, an oil refinery, and shipping docks. The unprecedented scale of the project and the novelty of the labor involved required a massive recruitment campaign within Iran and beyond its frontiers, from Mesopotamia to South Asia. Unskilled workers came primarily from the local tribal-pastoralist and village-based laboring poor; skilled and semiskilled workers were recruited from the British colonies, Burma, and India. However, in a region where most villagers were able to sustain themselves with farming and herding, it was not easy to introduce a cash economy, radically different work rhythms, and new forms of labor discipline. Tactics of inducement and coercion on the part of oil company managers were required to construct Iran's first class of industrial workers.
The second article, by Maral Jefroudi, examines the era following the 1953 coup détat from the perspective of Iranian labor history. During this period, the Shah introduced his White Revolution which was characterized by political suppression and the creation of formidable barriers against free trade unionism, on the one hand, and the establishment of a range of new social benefits, on the other. Jefroudi challenges the standard narrative in Iranian historiography that describes this period as one where state repression and/or structural deficiencies within the working class prevented workers from pursuing collective radical action. Jefroudi argues, to the contrary, that the objective and subjective conditions of their class are what led the workers to engage in forms of collective action that would not antagonize the Shah and jeopardize the benefits they accrued as a result of his social reforms. Furthermore, she maintains that workers’ repertoires of collective action should be contextualized and analyzed qualitatively rather than being juxtaposed to some idealized form of radical activism. In conclusion, she asserts that the oil workers of the long sixties added new tactics to their repertoire of collective action by appropriating some of the state's own imagery and rhetoric.
The third article, by Peyman Jafari, deals with the 1970s, a decade when oil production and export increased rapidly. This was a period of significant political and institutional transformation that affected the management of the oil industry, as well as the living and working conditions of its employees. As Iran experienced rapid urbanization and economic growth, the widening social, cultural, and ideological gap between the political elite and large segments of the population added a new dimension to the social grievances of those employed at the lower levels of the oil industry. Jafari's article provides an essential framework for understanding the reasons why oil workers gradually entered the revolutionary movement of the late 1970s and argues that their particular labor grievances resonated with the demands of the revolutionary movement at large.
The three articles in this volume of ILWCH, although concisely, nevertheless, intend to encompass some hundreds years social history of the labor in the Iranian oil industry; from the time that the tribal ‘amaleh left the pastoral life to follow the formative years of the working class in this emerging industry to the time that the established and recognized oil workers assume the agency, causing far-reaching political and social change in the Iranian society.
