Workers’ rights and conditions have not been at the core of the Islamic Republic’s main policies, especially from the 1990s onward. The existent labor law offers far-reaching exemptions and loopholes that make it possible to circumvent workers’ rights, while prohibitions on independent unions deprive workers of the legal tools to claim their rights. This chapter gives a detailed analysis of the evolution of labor regulation and reform in postrevolutionary Iran, building on primary research and interviews with industrial workers, scholars, and legal experts, conducted in Iran. In particular, the chapter demonstrates how, from Rafsanjani’s neoliberal turn to Rouhani’s presidency, labor casualization and job insecurity have gradually – and systematically – undermined working conditions, exposing workers to severe exploitation and limiting their legal protection. The presidents’ policies have not been equally detrimental, as the values behind every administration, as well as the general economic contexts, influenced their choices: from Rafsanjani’s market-oriented rhetoric to Khatami’s participatory narrative of civil society, Ahmadinejad’s conservative populism to Rouhani’s business-friendly pragmatism.

Drawing upon a study of the labor movement’s challenge to inequality in Los Angeles from 1992 to 2008, this chapter presents a critical analysis of the city as a site of solidarity. It shows how, to build local labor law, the labor movement must promote solidarity not just among workers but among different progressive movements, which become interlinked around campaigns to reshape low-wage work, while also promoting related goals: including immigrant inclusion, expanding affordable housing, and promoting environmental justice. As such, the chapter is fundamentally about the role of solidarity in efforts to build decentralized power in a political context where there is an absence of political opportunities for moving labor policy, specifically, and progressive social policy more generally at the national level. Building decentralized power as a way to rebuild labor law, this chapter suggests, requires conceptualizing solidarity as a local, city-wide project, with two related components: one is inter-movement solidarity, which is solidarity between labor and allied movements; and the other is intra-movement solidarity, which is solidarity among workers fighting for better lives. The chapter argues that, while both visions of solidarity are necessary to build local labor reform, there are tensions between the two that must always be managed.