A Labor Member of the Supreme Labor Council: The Government Seeks to Mute Workers

A labor member of the Supreme Labor Council reacted to Minister of Labor Ebrahim Raisi's efforts to transfer the determination of the minimum wage to the Islamic Consultative Assembly, effectively removing workers from the bargaining process, stating that "the government is seeking to mute workers" and "workers will not give up their bargaining opportunity." According to ILNA news agency, Alireza Mirghafari criticized the Minister of Labor, saying that handing over the determination of workers' wages to the parliament practically means "muting" and "making workers less influential." Mirghafari emphasized that the Supreme Labor Council is the only place where workers can negotiate their livelihoods, which the Minister of Labor seems to want to undermine by transferring the responsibility for wage decisions. The minimum wage for workers covered by labor law, married with one child, is currently about 10 million and 900 thousand tomans. This amount was approved by the Supreme Labor Council last March, while the latest "official calculations" indicated that by the beginning of this year, the livelihood basket for a working family was between 25 million and 30 million tomans. The website "Khabar Online" also reported that changes in the method of determining annual wages are becoming more serious every day. The Minister of Labor revealed news in the last days of last year that faced criticism from labor representatives. According to this report, Soulat Mortazavi announced on March 18 that they concluded that by sending a bill to the parliament, "we should change the method of determining the minimum wage for workers. The best authority for deciding workers' wages is the parliament." In response to this effort by the Minister of Labor, Ali Babaei Karnameh, head of the labor faction in the parliament, emphasized that presenting a proposed bill to amend Articles 41 and 167 of the Labor Law for determining workers' wages to the government is tantamount to ignoring the issue and will lead nowhere. According to this parliament member, this action does not solve the wage problem for workers, and the government wants to pass the ball to other powers and engage the parliament with the labor community. Alongside the opposition from many parliament members and workers, government-affiliated media report that some parliament members support the proposal. In this regard, the state news agency IRNA quoted Vali Ismaili, head of the Social Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stating that "we welcome the proposal from the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare in determining the amount of workers' wages in cooperation with parliament members and believe this decision will be fairer and more just." The Minister of Labor also justified this action by claiming that throughout the 40-year history, the issue of determining the minimum wage for workers has always been contentious, and it seemed necessary to have an authority that could decide on this matter, which "has higher acceptance than the Supreme Labor Council, which we believe is the parliament." This decision by the Minister of Labor was made after labor representatives walked out of the last minimum wage determination meeting in protest and refused to sign the wage resolution for the year 1403.