Thirty people were arrested at May Day rallies in Tehran and Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, the Independent Iranian Workers Union (IIWU) has reported. These included prominent labor activist Shith Amani.

In Tehran, according to the IIWU Telegram channel and other social media users, police and plainclothes agents attacked workers and other protesters as they convened in front of the Ministry of Labor.  May Day rallies are authorized only when organized by Worker House (Khane-ye Kargar), the recognized workers union that is affiliated to the reformist political party of the same name. President Hassan Rouhani’s spokesman Ali Rabiei is a prominent member of Worker House, which also operates the Iranian Labour News Agency, ILNA.

IIWU alleged that on Saturday [May1] security forces helped around 70 members of the Worker House to rally freely and under the protection of security at the back entrance of the Ministry of Labor, while security forces prevented others from joining the rally and mixing with the around 70 people already chanting freely there. Some prominent labor activists, including Jafar Azimzadeh and Parvin Mohammadi, have said they were last week threatened by security forces and told not to participate in May Day rallies.

In previous years also security forces attacked May Day independent gatherings and arrested labor activists.

Photos and videos on social media appear to show small rallies in Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Kerman, Sari, Dezful, Ghazvin, Isfahan, Arak, and Shoush. Protesters, sometimes including retirees, chanted slogans blaming the government for inflation that has eroded the value of wages.

The minimum monthly wage of 26.5 million rials (just over $100) agreed in late March by a council of government, employers' and workers' representatives is 39 percent up on the previous year. But according to the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), the inflation rate in March-April 2021 rose to around 50 percent, the highest in three years. The International Monetary Fund projects 39 percent consumer price inflation in 2021, up from 36.5 percent in 2020, way up on 9.6 percent in 2017 before the United States imposed stringent sanctions.