NCRI – Following the Iranian regime’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 countries, one of Iran’s economic indicators is the status of Iranian workers and comparing their situation to that of workers in other countries of the world.
Iranian state television broadcasted a report in March 2016 which showed Iranian workers venting their anger at its reporter who tried to interview them about their income.
“If you want to solve a problem, then solve it at its roots! Where were they when article 44 of the constitution was enacted? Our factory has already sold its niches, and our machineries have been looted. Where were the so-called responsible people?” the first worker fumed.
The reporter asked them how they have gone about living despite not having received their salary for five months.
The second worker said: “Nothing! Problems…troubles…poverty…borrowing money from here and there…indigence! You already know how we are living now.”
A third worker said: “I’m afraid to say the facts, because as soon as I say them, my manager will begin taunting me about my words and then he will fire me. When I am fired, will you personally support me and will you stand by me?”
These workers were talking about the closing down of factories and overdue wages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRQLRIbkoKM
A review of the standard wage for workers and how much of the problems of their day-to-day livelihood is solved with this amount of pay is telling.
The minimum wage set for workers in Iran for 2016 is 8,121,640 Rials (U.S. $268) per month.
Meanwhile, on December 1, 2015, Gholamreza Abbasi, the Secretary-General of the regime’s Supreme Labor Council, on state television announced that in Iran “80% of workers live under the poverty line.”
That constitutes more than half of the population.
On November 22, 2015, Iranian state television quoted Ali Rabiei, the regime’s Minister of Labor, as saying: “The majority of the population, over 40 million people, are from the working class which is a very large proportion of the 75 million people who live in Iran.”
According to the regime’s labor law, the minimum wage of workers should be based on the inflation rate and the livelihood of a 4-person household.
According to Article 41 of the labor law:
1. The minimum wage of workers is determined according to the percentage of inflation announced by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
2. The minimum wage must be determined without any examination to the physical and mental profiles of the workers or the features of the assigned work. The amount must be to an extent in order to maintain a standard number of family members announced by the authorities.
While the minimum wage is determined according to the inflation rate and the livelihood of a 4-person family; nevertheless, each year the regime falsely claims to have a lower inflation rate, thereby letting it keep the workers’ wages low.
According to the state-run ILNA news agency, on April 4, 2016, Fatollah Bayat, the head of the Contract Workers Labor Union, stated: “The workers community are not satisfied with the increased rate of 14% in their wages since the inflation rate of 12% – which is calculated based on 330 goods by the Statistical Center – is not tangible for the workers community and it cannot be a good measurement to determine the living standards of workers because a worker cannot possibly afford to buy more than 250 of these goods in his whole lifetime.”
Iran stands very low in the global table of wages for workers, and an Iranian worker’s income is dismal when compared to the wages of other countries.
The state-run newspaper Siasat reported on October 8, 2015: “The working wage in Iran ranks 138th out of 148 countries in the world.”
The state-run Mehr News Agency on June 28, 2015 reported: “According to the newly-released statistics of the minimum hourly wage of workers in different countries of the world, the people subject to the labor law in Iran, who are called ‘the workers,’ hold the least amount of income among the countries in the world. For instance, an income of a worker in Australia is 8.4 times than this little amount of income, i.e. the regular hourly income without overtime and other benefits of a worker in Iran. In other words, the work force in Australia has an income 8.4 times than that of the work force in Iran.”
Figures published in the state-run Mehr News Agency, June 28, 2015:
The Table of the hourly wage in 27 countries of the world – according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
|
Country |
Hourly wage in U.S. $ |
Hourly wage in Rials |
The minimum monthly income in Rials |
|
Australia |
9.54 |
314820 |
60445440 |
|
Luxembourg |
9.24 |
304920 |
58544640 |
|
Belgium |
8.57 |
282810 |
54299520 |
|
Ireland |
8.46 |
279180 |
53602560 |
|
France |
8.24 |
271920 |
52208640 |
|
Netherlands |
8.20 |
270600 |
51955200 |
|
New Zealand |
7.55 |
249150 |
47836800 |
|
Germany |
7.19 |
237270 |
45555840 |
|
Canada |
7.18 |
236940 |
45492480 |
|
UK |
7.06 |
232980 |
44732160 |
|
USA |
6.26 |
206580 |
39663360 |
|
South Korea |
5.85 |
193050 |
37065600 |
|
Japan |
5.52 |
182160 |
34974720 |
|
Spain |
5.37 |
177210 |
34024320 |
|
Slovenia |
5.14 |
169620 |
32567040 |
|
Czech Republic |
4.42 |
145860 |
28005120 |
|
Portugal |
4.41 |
145530 |
27941760 |
|
Poland |
3.59 |
118470 |
22746240 |
|
Turkey |
3.49 |
115170 |
22112640 |
|
Slovakia |
2.99 |
98670 |
18944640 |
|
Greece |
2.84 |
93720 |
17994240 |
|
Hungary |
2.58 |
85140 |
16346880 |
|
Estonia |
2.49 |
82170 |
15776640 |
|
Chile |
2.72 |
89760 |
17233920 |
|
Latvia |
1.46 |
48180 |
9250560 |
|
Iran |
1.12 |
37110 |
7124250 |
|
Mexico |
1.01 |
33330 |
6399360 |
|
– |
– |
– |
– |
Also in some developed countries, 75 percent of revenues in factories, production centers and companies are allocated to workers. Acknowledging this bitter reality, Abbasi, an official of the regime, told state television in an interview on March 7, 2015: “Look, in developed countries what percentage of the production rate is on the account of the work force? They spend money up to 75 percent on the workers, so they never face a problem because they actually motivate their human resources. I want to ask what’s the cost of the work force [in Iran] in comparison to the rate of production? The experts of the Ministry of Cooperatives Labor and Social Welfare even announced that on average it is less than 10 percent in different areas. Less than 10 percent! Yes, something around five and a half percent.”
Officials of the regime themselves therefore admit that while the workers in other countries share up to 75 percent of a production center’s profits, the share of Iranian workers from the earnings is less than 10 percent. Some 65 percent of the revenue is taken by the employer.
On the other hand, 80 percent of factories, production centers, services and companies in Iran belong to government and government institutions, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). In fact, the employer of the workers in Iran are the ruling class that are looting three-quarters of worker’s salaries, something which has not changed after the P5+1 nuclear deal.
