All independent labor unions were banned following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Workers are effectively denied the right to organize and the right to go on strike. But in 2004, with the great difficulty, the Union of Workers of the United Bus Company of Tehran (Sherkat-e Vahed) was re-established (though not legally recognized), 25 years after it was disbanded. Tehran's bus drivers recently announced a strike with a set of simple demands: two sets of winter and summer uniforms, new stationary for record keeping, and a small raise to subsidize lunches. These requests provoked a brutal response from the regime's security forces, who set the union's office on fire, beat committee members, and sliced the tongue of the union's leader. When union leaders still refused to call of the strike, the Revolutionary Court jailed them and security forces arrested about 1,000 drivers.