Regime seeks to eliminate bonus years for early retirement by changing regulations.
In another oppressive move, the plundering mullahs’ regime intends to eliminate the few remaining legal protections for workers by changing regulations for ‘hard and harmful jobs.’ This comes at a time when workplace safety and the very health and lives of workers are sacrificed daily for the plundering activities of the IRGC and foundations affiliated with the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
The state-run newspaper Jahan-e Sanat wrote: ‘The Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare is on the verge of finalizing a regulation that redefines hard and harmful jobs.’ Meanwhile, ‘worker and employer representatives alike have expressed complete ignorance of its content, claiming this action is a great public deception… With the finalization of the regulation redefining hard and harmful jobs… the main victims will be the workers who have sacrificed their health for years in high-risk and polluted environments’ (December 17, 2025).
This is not the first time the mullahs’ regime has drafted anti-labor laws, given that the largest employers in Iran are Khamenei, the plundering foundations affiliated with his office, and the IRGC. Let alone the fact that none of the articles in the regime’s own labor law, which offer only minimal rights for workers, have ever been implemented. Now, the regime seeks to erase even the theoretical privileges granted to workers in ‘hard and harmful’ jobs.
Article 52 of the Labor Law states: ‘In hard, harmful, and underground jobs, working hours should not exceed 6 hours per day and 36 hours per week.’ According to paragraph B, note 2 of Article 76 of the Social Security Law, ‘Individuals who have been employed for 20 consecutive years or 25 intermittent years in hard and harmful (health-detrimental) jobs… can apply for a retirement pension. Each year of insurance premium payment in hard and harmful jobs will be calculated as one and a half years.’ In 2025, about 30 occupations, such as firefighting and welding in tanks, were designated as ‘hard and harmful’ jobs.
The action by the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare is a legal ambush aimed at removing many jobs from the category of hard and harmful work, eliminating the bonus years, and depriving a large portion of workers of early retirement. This move comes as government statistics reveal that thousands of workers lose their lives annually in ‘work-related’ accidents. The Tabas coal mine disaster, which killed 52 workers, and the shocking statistic from the Deputy Minister of Health regarding the annual deaths of 10,000 workers in work accidents, expose the criminal nature of a regime that, instead of ensuring workplace safety, is solely focused on the maximum exploitation of workers.
The Labor Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, emphasizing that the only way to escape this brutal and inhumane exploitation is to rise up against the mullahs’ regime, calls on the International Labour Organization and labor unions in various countries to condemn the anti-labor and inhumane policies of the mullahs’ regime, including the increased pressure on workers in hard and harmful jobs.
National Council of Resistance of Iran- Labor Committee
24 December 2025