With the aim of providing a solution to one of the most basic and urgent needs of the labour movement - the issue of working class unity - and, in turn, help to create more contact and co-ordination between different sections and levels of the labour movement and the current movements and protests of workers, and also establish closer and broader links among the activists and vanguard [elements] of the social movement of the working class throughout Iran and so on; following a number of preparatory meetings and the necessary collaboration, a brief description of which has reached the labour movement, during a meeting on 16 February 2007 the labour and student organisations' activists who have signed this statement finally decided to form the Co-operation Council of Labour Organisations and Activists. In a friendly atmosphere, with the aim of basing their activity and co-operation on a voluntary and free united action bloc, that is centred on tangible and specific workers' issues, demands and concerns.
It is necessary to reiterate that at the same time as declaring its formation and the start of its co-operation and activity, the Co-operation Council of Labour Organisations and Activists also demands that other labour organisations and activists, and their genuine and caring representatives, join the Council and support similar co-operation and united action. This will help us in creating more links and co-ordination in the labour movement, confront the problems and difficulties facing us, and achieve our rights and rightful and human demands.
May this co-operation and collaboration themselves become the basis and foundation for removing and wiping out the existing divisions and rifts within the labour movement, and establishing class unity and solidarity among workers, for imposing workers' demands and claims, and the granting of their full rights, until their freedom from the existing stagnation and deprivation.
Co-ordination Committee for the Formation of Labour Organisations
Pursuit Committee for the Formation of Free Labour Organisations
Workers' Cultural-Support Organisation
The Union of Labour Committees
A group of Iranian University Students Demanding Freedom and Equality
A group of Labour Activists
A group of Labour Movement Writers
Translated by Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network
March 2007.