Answer to Question 1
Since the 1950s, Iranian labor groups have asserted their rights to form unions
or syndicates. Inasmuch as the Iranian constitution protects workers' rights, the
constitution also states its fierce opposition to communism, which, it maintains, is at
odds with Islamic values. In theory, workers in Iran have the right to form labor unions,
but no system of recognition or protection for unions exists. In addition to the Labor
Law, workers' councils, in the spirit of an Islamic council, started to form soon after the
revolution. This system, along with most unions, was disbanded in 1985. A private
sector growth and liberalization program began in the early 1990s, which gave greater
license to employers to issue workers' contracts, including shortterm and temporary.
Today, the government endorses a system of individual rather than collective
bargaining. As a result, workers who have attempted to roll back or protest the
government's liberalization have been met with severe police repression.
Answer to Question 2
A significant aim of the revolution was to cleanse the Iranian nation of corrupt
Western values. Just after the 1979 revolution, a powerful cleric, Ayatollah Taleghani,
declared that women in Iran should voluntarily take up the chador. The dress code
serves as a social marker of a woman's virtue and is a key measure of the
postrevolutionary state's own virtue and legitimacy. Western decadence came to be
embodied in the image of the miniskirtclad Iranian woman. The new image of the
chadorattired woman became a symbol of modesty and virtue, and, for some, of an
authentic Islamic Iranian vision of women. It was also symbolic of the religious ethos
of the Shi'i mourners. Thus, images of Iranian women dressed in black chadors depicted
the state's success in ridding Iran of Western influences, and offered a basis for its
legitimacyvirtuous citizens.