Navigating Precarity: Organizational Diversity in Iran’s Industrial Labor

How do workers organize under financialized and repressive labor regimes? This study examines four cases of Iranian industrial labor struggles (Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane Company (HTSC), Iran National Steel Industrial Group (INSIG), Heavy Equipment Production Company (HEPCO), and Chadormalou Mining and Industrial Company (CMIC)) to analyze how workers develop distinct resistance strategies in response to financialization, labor precarity, and state repression. Drawing on social movement theory, industrial relations scholarship, and financialization studies, I argue that workers’ organizing strategies are not solely determined by economic hardship but are shaped by prior mobilization experiences, political traditions, and access to broader social networks. Using protest event analysis, archival research, and digital ethnography, this study demonstrates that while financialization weakens traditional unions, it also compels workers to pursue alternative organizing strategies, ranging from grassroots councils and informal alliances to engagement with state-controlled labor institutions. By situating Iran’s labor struggles within broader global trends, this study contributes to debates on precarious work, labor agency under financialization, and the role of historical and socio-political contexts in shaping resistance strategies in authoritarian economies.