Opposition to the Newly Announced Mentor/Apprentice Scheme Intensifies

A recently approved 14-point scheme titled “Mentor/Apprentice” program by the Minister of Labor has faced opposition in the labor circles in the country.

Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) quotes Alireza Heidari, an expert on labor relations, that “administration of policies such as Mentor/Apprentice Scheme will result in more than 30 percent of workers active in trades becoming trainees under pretext of being trained following the implementation of this law.”

According to this labor activist, with policies such as removing the age limit in the draft changes to the Labor Law and Mentor/Apprentice Scheme, the administration is after reducing the workers’ rights to a third.

This can legally transform many skilled workers into mere trainees with low wages.

Hassan Sadeghi of Labor House finds Mentor/Apprentice relations a relic of old ages when there were no laws governing the labor relations. Going back to these schemes are steps in going back to those periods.

Free Union of Iranian Workers has released a statement on this scheme, the translation of which is provided by ILR below.

According to remarks by the general director of Khorasan province Cooperatives, Labor and Social Affairs, the mentor/apprentice scheme has been ratified and handed over to the Technical and Vocational Organization for implementation across the country. Accoding to Aliakbar Labbafi “this scheme has been passed following detailed studies and clarifications, citing the Skills and Technology Educational System approved on October 23, 2011 by the Council of Ministers and article 21 of the fifth development plan for the purposes of utilization of training capacities of work environments in the private sector and using this potential for developing vocational and technical training which can be a source of great positive effect on employment and vocational training of the youth.”

Based on reports from Fars News Agency, the head of Technical and Vocational Organization has said the following on this scheme: “This way it is estimated that one million and 550,000 jobs will be created in its very first year.”

Workers and Youth of the Country

It is implicit and already apparent that this scheme not only is not a plan to regulate the issue of workers’ training but is essentially a plan for a slave-like utilization of the workers in the production and industrial centers. According to this schme, the employers are now able to use workers with no certificate from Technical and Vocational Organization under the designation of training period for a period of three years. In that period, all workers subject to this scheme will be totally excluded from the Labor Law and the fixed minimum wage shall not apply to them.

According to this scheme, the workers at the end of the three year training period will be referred to the Technical and Vocational Organization to receive their certifiactes and following that, they will be among those workers protected by the Labor Law.

On the other hand, given that having Technical and Vocational Organization certificate today has become mandatory in many job situations, and having this certificate is considered an advantage in finding jobs, hundreds of thousands of workers seeking jobs will be inevitably forced to work for free for the employers in a period of three years without protection of the Labor Law and receiving the fixed minimum wage. In addition, such a situation by itself will create favorable conditions for the employers to constantly and every three years use workers without the Technical and Vocational Organization certificates as free labor and thus there will always be hundreds of thousands of workers who will be working under most slave-like conditions in the industrial and service centers in the country.

Workes and Co-Workers Across the Country

Mentor/Apprentice scheme is a most slave-like and anti-labor scheme to secure super profits for the employers and investors. This scheme has nothing to do with training of us workers and is a brazen attack on the Iranian working class in the context of current desperation, poverty, and joblessness imposed on us workers. The drafters and administrators of such a scheme are bent on putting us simply at the service of the employers and investors like the slaves of thousands years back. It is paramount to stand unified and united against such abhorrent scales of slavery and call for immediate stop to implementation of this scheme.

Free Union of Iranian Workers – September 30, 2012
Iran Labor Report