Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeIran News NowIran Protests & DemonstrationsIran: The Minimum Wage for Workers Is Four Times Lower Than the...

Iran: The Minimum Wage for Workers Is Four Times Lower Than the Poverty Line

workers

Only the overthrow of the clerical regime and the establishment of the popular sovereignty will end the suffering of the workers and the working people

The clerical regime’s Supreme Labor Council, set the minimum wage of workers for 2018 as one million and 114 thousand tomans (about $220 a month). Meanwhile, according to Hadi Aboui, the head of the Supreme Centre of Workers Associations, the basket of workers’ livelihood, based on the data of the market, the evaluation of the prices, the state of the households and the shrinkage of the workers’ table, that was presented to the Supreme Labor Council, is three million and 700 thousand tomans, which is more than three times the minimum wage set by the regime (Aftab governance site – April 3, 2018).

Meanwhile, this minimum wage applies only to workers who are covered by the regime’s labor law. Earlier, Ali Beigi, the head of the governing body of the “Supreme Council of Islamic Councils” acknowledged that 93 percent of Iran’s workers were contracted and outside the scope of the labor law. They have to sign white papers with jobs that are paid much lower than the minimum wage that is to accept the slavery of the clerical regime.

Therefore, 13 million workers and their families, which, according to a government census form nearly 43 million people, representing half of the country’s population, will face poverty and distresses far greater than in the past.

The Supreme Labor Council of the Mullahs regime claims that the minimum wage is proportional to the inflation rate, which, according to the Central Bank statement, was 9.6% compared to the same period last year in the 12 months ending March 2018. (Tabnak site, March 28, 2019). But the real rate of inflation in most of the basic commodities is at least 30-40%, and the outlook for inflation in 2018 is darker. Nobakht, the government spokesman, had called the 2018 budget as “causing inflation” (Etemad newspaper, December 16, 2017), and Naghavi Hosseini, a member of the Parliament said, the budget bill has 30% inflation in it but they say the inflation is below 10% and a single digit. (IRGC’s Fars News Agency – March 7)

According to the Director General of the Ministry of Labor, in the anti-labor regime of the Velayat-e Faqih, the share of “compensation for service” – the total amount paid for the workforce (including wages, premiums, etc.) – is only 5% of the production cost, the lowest figure in the world. This figure in most industrialized countries is more than 50 percent, in the US, 70 percent, and in countries similar to Iran, is 25 percent to 35 percent (Government television – March 13, 2018).

Another trick of the regime to set this catastrophic minimum wage was to reduce the household size, i.e., the average number of people under the households of workers; the regime reduced the number of households in 2018 from 3.5 from 3.3.

Another major plunder of the corrupt regime of Velayat-e Faqih from the workers’ wages is that from now on, the workers’ “medical care premiums” will be transferred to the state treasury instead of being paid into the Social Security Fund. The move follows Rouhani’s collusion with the regime’s Parliament and the inclusion of a clause in the budget bill of 2018 (paragraph “Z” of Note 7 of the budget). Workers’ insurance premiums are equivalent to 30% of their wages, of which 7% is deducted from the workers’ wages, and the remaining 23% must be paid to the social security fund by the government to provide for workers’ medical expenses. With the looting of workers’ premiums by the government, which will surely have no return, deprived workers who always complain for the lack of health insurance and retirement pensions will then be more likely to encounter further problems.

Iran’s suffering workers have for many months been deprived of even this minimum wage, and that is why there is not a single day when the workers’ cries and anger from the four corners of the country ranging from Ahvaz steel to the Haft Tapeh sugarcane, and the railway workers to the workers of the municipality and … are not heard.

The Labor Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran salutes protesting workers across the country and calls on the workers and the working people throughout the country to protest against the oppressive and anti-labor practices of the regime. Only by overthrowing this predatory regime and the establishment of freedom and the sovereignty of the people will poverty, unemployment and deprivation be wiped off. The only way to get rid of the vicissitudes of the regime of Velayat-e faqih is to unite and solidify all the workers and the poor strata.

National Council of Resistance of Iran – Labor Committee

April 4, 2018