The Coming Year Marks Increasing Protests for Wages

Iran Labor Report

The coordinators of the 30,000 workers signature petition to the Ministry of Labor released a statement on the recent official minimum wage level announced for the year 2013 by the High Council on Labor. The coordinators in their statement hint at the coming workers protests over the issue of the wage levels in the Iranian new year which started on March 20. The text of the activists’ statement reads as follows.

The final days of setting a new minimum wage level drawing to a close, the so-called ‘official’ and ‘made-up’ organs of the Ministry of Labor, after weeks of deliberation, announced that the cost of living for a family of four to be at 1,800,000 tomans per month. Despite that, the High Council on Labor set the new minimum wage for the year 1392 (2013) at 486,000 tomans.

This degrading act on the part of the High Council took place at a time when during the current year alone there has been many fold increases in the cost of living. Our efforts and struggles for an increase in the minimum wage, and the catastrophic situation of millions of workers and families came into the fore and public view due to such struggles. All eyes were set on solving the issue of cost of living increases and all expectations were on an adequate increase in the minimum wage to solve this problem. Even though such an increase would be but a small solution to workers’ many problems, high hopes remained. The anti-labor representatives on the High Council on Labor, together with the state and employer representatives showed their abject ignorance towards workers’ lives, survival and their families’ livelihood by setting the minimum wage at 486,000 tomans per month.

They crudely believe that with an end to the meetings in the High Council, and passage of the minimum wage everything has finished with peace and tranquility and workers will spend another year with ever increasing misery. They are, however, heedless in thinking that workers all across the country did not collect petitions or write protest letters just to tell any person or authority about their miserable working conditions, rather we are determined in pursuing our demands.
With the degrading response given to us– the 30 thousand signatories of the protest petition– and then passing the minimum wage at 486,000 tomans, they showed us that they have no regard for our basic human rights which includes enjoying a humane level of living and consequently they have underestimated our resolve toward improving our living conditions. By openly sneering at us they took our demands for naught, and by passing the minimum wage at 486 thousand tomans in front of millions of workers they proved to us that our share of producing wealth is nothing by poverty and hunger.

Thus, we the coordinators of collecting 30-thousand-signature protest petition declare our disgust at the minimum wage level ratified by the High Council on Labor and once more insist on the immediate implementation of all our demands as stated in the petition. We consider passing of minimum wage at 486 thousand tomans a clear insult and an unconscionable and unforgivable act toward human dignity. We hereby declare, with ever more force, the continuation of our protests toward an increase in minimum wage based on exact implementation of article 41 of the Labor Law, and will not stop until major, immediate and fundamental revision on the “passed” version of the minimum wage is implemented.

Coordinators of 30,000 workers protest petition:

Jafar Azimzadeh, Parvin Mohammadi, Shapour Ehsanirad, Sheith Amani, Sharif Saedpananh, Jamil Mohammadi.