Government Raises Workers’ Minimum Wage; Worker Salaries Still Below Two Million Tomans Per Month
The minimum wage for workers in 1398 was set at 1 million and 516 thousand tomans after hours of discussion in the Supreme Labor Council; a wage that is even far below the poverty line figure in Iran.
Domestic Iranian media reported on Tuesday, the 28th of Bahman, that after 12 hours of negotiations in the Supreme Labor Council, the minimum wage for workers was set at 1 million and 516 thousand tomans for 1398, and the minimum daily wage for workers would be approximately 50,500 tomans.
Based on the figures announced regarding housing allowance, child allowance, seniority benefits, and worker vouchers, the minimum wage for a married worker with one child would reach approximately 2 million tomans per month, and the minimum wage for a single worker or a married worker without children, considering housing allowance and worker vouchers, would be 1 million and 780 thousand tomans.
These figures have not even managed to surpass the poverty line figure announced by official sources in Iran. The parliamentary research center had reported the poverty line at 2 million and 850 thousand tomans in the summer of this year.
According to Ehsan Sohrab, another member of the board of directors of the Supreme Council of Islamic Workers’ Councils, “Field research shows that a worker needs 5 million and 300 thousand tomans in salary so as not to be ashamed before his family.”
Some time ago, Mohammad Reza Tajik, representative of the Supreme Assembly of Representatives of Iranian Workers in the Supreme Labor Council, had said that to maintain workers’ purchasing power, at least 1 million and 89 thousand tomans should be definitively added to the minimum wage for 1398.
Nader Ghazi Pour, a member of the workers’ faction, had also said in Bahman that a salary of 3 million and 800 thousand tomans was signed by the government representative, the employers’ representative, and the workers’ representative, but ultimately such figures were not realized in the new year’s worker wages.
A wage that is now equivalent to 115 dollars at market prices in Iran, and this wage is considered 2.5 million tomans less than the living basket of worker families.
However, workers have not even received their minimum wages in the current year and have repeatedly held protest gatherings to receive their overdue months. Gatherings that continued until the last days of 1397 and it is unclear when workers’ wages are supposed to be paid.
In recent months, commodity prices in Iran have increased dramatically, and worker protests have also increased with growing economic problems, but these protests have been met with crackdowns by the Islamic Republic and even the arrest of some workers.
