A Labor Activist: Workers' Salaries Run Out in the First Week

Hadi Aboui, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Labor Associations, stated on Monday, January 3, that "workers' salaries run out in the first week." According to ISNA news agency, this labor activist pointed out that "the wages for 2017 are determined based on the inflation rate of 2016, while price increases become evident in the first three months of each year." The final approval of the minimum monthly wage for workers is made by the Supreme Labor Council, which consists of three labor representatives, three employer representatives, and four government representatives. Based on this council's resolution, the minimum monthly wage for workers is set at 812,000 tomans. Hadi Aboui's remarks come at a time when Ali Rabiei, the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, recently announced that "workers' wages in 2017 will exceed inflation." This issue relates to the first clause of Article 41 of the Labor Law, which states that the minimum monthly wage for workers should be determined based on the inflation rate. However, the second clause of Article 41 emphasizes that the minimum wage should be based on the living costs of a working-class household. In this regard, labor organizations and activists believe that in recent years, the second clause of Article 41 has not been considered at all in determining the minimum wage for workers. According to ISNA, Hadi Aboui noted that in Article 41 of the Labor Law, the criterion for determining wages is "not only the inflation rate, which the government and employers insist on, but also the second clause is provided to ensure that the living conditions of workers are taken into account and not solely based on inflation." This labor activist stated, "We cannot determine the 2017 wage based on the inflation rate of 2016, and this way of determining wages is misguided." Gholamreza Abbasi, the President of the Supreme Council of Labor Associations of Iran, told ISNA that the increase in the base salary and wages of workers should match the poverty line, and according to him, the realities of workers' lives should not be sacrificed for expediency. Mr. Abbasi pointed out that the meetings of the Supreme Labor Council, the decision-making body regarding workers' wages, have never yielded satisfactory results for the labor group, adding that the government is a major employer and makes decisions from a governing perspective. The President of the Supreme Council of Labor Associations of Iran also stated that employers are aligned with the government regarding wages. In part of his remarks about the minimum wage for workers, he mentioned that last year, the employer group in the Supreme Labor Council announced the household cost basket as 2,700,000 tomans, while the labor group announced it as 3,000,000 tomans, but the base wage for workers was only increased by 14%. Gholamreza Abbasi referred to the determination of the minimum wage of 812,000 tomans for workers this year. The protests of labor organizations and activists regarding the low wages of workers come at a time when several employer organizations have indicated in recent years that due to economic problems, they are unable to pay higher wages. This argument has always been rejected by labor organizations and activists, who emphasize the necessity of enforcing labor law in this regard.