The Glue Factory’s Little Kim Jong-un

A Tabriz rug lies on the floor, gilded sofas surrounding it. Only one person sits, colorful balloons all around him, getting ready to blow out the candles of a big birthday cake. Workers in factory uniforms stand behind the sofa, not touching the precious rug. Each of them offer a red rose to the boss as the photographer captures the moment.

This is the birthday party for Khalil Nazari, the owner of HL Glue Factory, and it's an eloquent expression of the relationship between the factory’s employer and its employees.

HL Glue Factory is not your ordinary chemical factory. To begin with, it is compulsory for employees to pray. “Effective August 16, 2014, praying is compulsory for all men,” reads a banner in the factory’s chapel. “At a minimum, violators are subject to a fine of 120,000 tomans [around $40], or they may be fired.” Compulsory prayer, however, is not the only odd rule at the factory. There are many others, including one to do with toilet breaks, and surveillance cameras are positioned around the factory to ensure workers follow these rules. “After the bell rings,” reads a notice, “employees must refrain from going to the W.C. for 20 minutes. Otherwise they will be dealt with accordingly.”

All conversations on factory phones are recorded: “For quality control and to improve our response, all phone conversations are recorded. Every three months, conversations are randomly broadcast on the factory’s loudspeakers, so be careful in your conversation. The responsibility lies with you.”

Employees are not allowed to bring big bags into the factory. They cannot speak to each other while working.“To ensure safety and quality,” one rule reads, “employees must keep their heads down. Looking at your employer or team leaders will be considered to be slack and lazy, and will be dealt with as such.”

 

“Strengthening” Family Ties

The factory recently published a job ad, looking to hire 600 single women. The contract for these jobs points out that a female employee will lose her job the moment she marries: “Based on religious teachings and in order to strengthen family ties, the factory is not allowed to hire married women.”

On social media, some people have compared the rules at the HL Glue Factory to those practiced in North Korea or at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, run by the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization until 2016. Many of them blame the situation at the factory on the absence of labor unions, or on the lack of support from the Ministry of Labor and Welfare.

But despite the clamor on social media, the labor ministry has done nothing. IranWire contacted the public relations office at the ministry, but failed to get a response. “Workers can call the ministry’s interactive voice system and record their complaints,” said a public relations employee at the ministry. “Then the ministry will send inspectors to evaluate the situation.” When asked about the reports on social media, the employee answered: “The ministry does not work based on what goes on on Facebook or Twitter and the like.”

In response to the allegations about his company, owner of HL Glue Khalil Nazari posted a video online. “I want to answer a series of questions, accusations, libels, insults and PhotoShopped documents,” he said. “Why do you rush to judgment because of Photoshopped copies of rules?”

He said that he’d introduced some strict rules in 2014 after he was told about violence breaking out in the factory. In one incident, a female employee was raped, he said, and another worker had been killed after a fight broke out. At this point, he took the decision to introduce compulsory praying. “Prayers brings one to the present,” he said, adding that it improves workers’ efficiency. “I ordered that men must pray during breaks so that women can have peace.” He said that because HL Glue is a private factory, the practice of compulsory prayers is acceptable, but admitted it wasn’t ideal. “Of course, I am against compulsory prayers. Even when government officials visited I said that this should not be copied by government organizations.”

When the news about compulsory praying first broke, Nazari, 36, responded on his company's Twitter account. “HL Glue Factory is a private business and it does not force anybody to remain with the factory,” he wrote. “Making prayers compulsory is justified by international and [domestic] laws and by sharia because of the labor contract between the employer and the employees. You would have been right if this were a state-owned factory." Then he quoted from the Koran. “There is no coercion in religion,” he said.

 

A Religious Man with a Philanthropic Drive

In the recently released video, Nazari also echoed previous statements he had made about his religious devotion, which he inherited from his father. He began praying as soon as soon as he hit puberty, and it changed his life. Praying turned him from an ordinary student into an exceptional one, and he went to the top of the class, eventually getting a letter of recommendation from the governor of East Azerbaijan. He said that every time he prays, his belief in the Day of Judgment strengthens. 

In the video, he also talks about how growing up among poverty affected him, and about his philanthropy. “I heard that that one in every four child born dies of hunger. I was troubled.” One day he was walking through the poor part of Tabriz, he says. “I said: God, would the day come that I would have so much money that I could make this poor neighborhood as rich as the well-to-do one and that no poverty would remain.” He knew that it was his job to help the poor, and that if he gave what money he had to them, God would repay him 10 times over.  “I was afraid that at the heavenly gate I would be asked ‘was there no man there to prevent these children from dying?’” 

So he rented a cheap house in southern Tabriz and started to produce chemicals, all by himself. Soon he could afford to employ a few people. He started with three employees, then he had nine, and then 30. Today he employs 500 people. When he built his factory, he didn’t borrow money from the bank — he didn’t even have a checking account at the time, he says — and didn’t get help from anyone else. Building the factory was a religious duty, he said. 

Today his business is expanding all the time, and he’s currently building a huge chemical factory that spans an area of three kilometers, complete with its own landing strip. Recently he introduced a herbal glue to replace mulch for protecting soil. Last year he received an honorary doctorate in macro-management from Farabi University of Science and Technology, and now some people refer to him as “Dr. Nazari.” He has often been a guest on Sahand (Tabriz) TV to talk about his accomplishments. During the recent holy month of Ramadan, the television station described him as a philanthropist who was helping gather donations to pay to free prisoners who are unable to pay so-called “blood money”. Nazari told Sahand TV that the secret to his success is his trust in God.

In the new video, Nazari also encouraged people to see the positive measures he'd introduced at the factory. "Why don’t you see the glass as half-full?” he asked. He said the factory provided employees with free hot meals. "Why don’t you publish that?" He added that he also provided employees with a place to live and free milk, and that employees were entitled to exercise breaks. The factory offers its employees interest-free loans for marriage, dental work, childbirth and cars, and he said this is what the media should be focusing on — and in fact, journalists should be commending him, saying "Bravo!" for all he's done for his employees, and for the fact that his growing business — it now exports to 80 countries. "Why don’t you see that I love God and my workers and I go to the factory only because of them?" And he added: “Why do you treat a business owner who has created jobs for 500 people the same way that you would treat a thief?"

Nazari said he hadn't made any decisions about the factory out of greed or just to make money, and indicated that he lived a modest life.

 

"Employees Are Happy"

IranWire also spoke with Ms. Alizadeh, HL Glue’s public relations director. We asked her about the claims on social media concerning the strict terms of HL’s contracts with its employees. “There have been a number of inaccuracies,” she said. “The site was hacked and phony articles were added. Perhaps 99 percent of them are complete lies. Of course, any enterprise is prone to such issues. This is a private enterprise, so the employer can set rules that are totally within the bounds of logic. The employees have agreed to them; they do their work enthusiastically and have no issues. In any case, this is an Islamic country and the rules are within the framework of Islam.”

Alizadeh went on to say that the factory bans employees from using bathrooms at certain times "to increase efficiency."

She said that a large enterprise such as theirs needs firm guidelines for staff. "Without these rules and this regulation framework, there would be no order in the factory. Everybody says this factory operates in a very orderly manner."

Both Alizadeh and Nazari in his video repeated that certain claims were simply not true, and in some cases copies of the contracts had been PhotoShopped to suggest the company demanded unreasonable behavior from its staff. For example, one allegation was that the contract said employees should never be idle, and if they were, they had to balance on one leg as punishment. "No, this is absolutely not true," said Alizadeh. "I am responsible for public relations here and have not seen anything like this. If you come here and see the factory up close, you would not see such things. Some rules are there to protect workers who work with machines that might cut their fingers off. The rules are there for preventing the worker from getting distracted and remaining focused. There are no such rules for other situations."

In his video, Nazari said that another misrepresentation concerned a PhotoShopped part of the contract that said married women who worked had no honor. But both Alizadeh and Nazari confirmed that the company did not employ married women, though they did not corroborate claims that women who had been single when hired would have their contracts terminated when they got married. "You must look at it from an ethical point of view," said Alizadeh. "A woman who marries has definitely more commitments in her life, whereas a single woman has fewer preoccupations. During working hours, she can deal with the work environment better. After all, they must work for five hours. So that is why we have invited single women to work here. Think about it: A married woman who works cannot take care of her personal life effectively. At HL Glue Factory the work is not the only important thing. Moral standards are on the top of our agenda." 

Alizadeh echoed Nazari's claim that the workers were happy. "The workers say they have no problems and ask why people outside the factory are saying these things. Here the workers receive their pay the day before it is due, whereas many factories do not pay their workers for months. "The point is that people who work with cutters must follow rules. It is not forced on them and they agree with it."

When asked if she was married, Alizadeh said she was single. When I asked for her first name, she said: "I am Alizadeh. Just Alizadeh."

After the interview, I noticed something else interesting about the contract — a rule against using names other than Nazari’s on publicity material. “Using any name except Khalil Nazari’s on announcements, bulletins and posters is forbidden,” the contract reads. Whatever the details of the contracts might be, it's clear that Nazari exerts enormous power over the company he runs, and the people who work for him.