Minimum Wage In Iran Only Enough For Nine Days: Official
Amid widespread labor protests in Iran, an official says the monthly minimum wage of less than $200 only suffices for "nine days of a family's life".
Amid widespread labor protests in Iran, an official says the monthly minimum wage of less than $200 only suffices for "nine days of a family's life".
Hossein Rasouli, an official from the Workers’ House said Saturday that currently, the minimum monthly wage of workers does not even reach eighty million rials (150 USD).
Although the government mandated wage is called the "minimum" wage but that is what most workers receive.
“The wages of the workers have increased by only 27% this year, but this increase is for those workers who are formally employed and does not include a large part of [temporary or contract] workers,” he underlined.
Earlier, the Coordinating Council of Teachers Associations said to prevent further impoverishment of the lower-class wages must be determined in US dollars.
Real incomes in Iran began to lag behind inflation after the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, but salaries were increasing from 2000-2010 when monthly minimum wage hit a high of about $275 in 2010. This coincided with the time when the United Nations Security Council began imposing sanctions to force Tehran to roll back its nuclear program.
A few months into the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, when inflation was around 40 percent, the High Council of Labor increased the minimum wage by an unprecedented 57 percent in early 2022 after two consecutive years of very high inflation. At the time minimum wage almost equaled $220.
However, the rial lost half of its value in the past 8 months and the minimum wage, without housing allowance, has dropped to around $120 a month.
Rising prices and declining incomes have led to more protests in the previous months with thousands of workers still on strike.
Nonetheless, various conservative groups prepare for the parliamentary election in March 2024 and get together on an almost daily basis, discussing probable alliances.
Divides among conservatives were noted by the media when Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's supporters in February accused the ultraconservative Paydari Party of using the controversy over hijab for political gain as the next election nears.
During the 2020 parliamentary elections, and Presidential election of 2021 conservatives at least pretended to be united in the absence of their reformist rivals.
According to Etemad Online, Conservative figurehead and former Majles Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel warned in March against divides and infighting within the conservative front and suggested that various groups should forget about their differences in the interest of unity of the "revolutionary front."
According to the website, when the Society To Promote Popular Institutions of the Islamic Revolution emerged as a conservative alliance in February, it was clearly the same alliance that was called JAMNA (Persian acronym for the Popular Front of Islamic Revolutionary Forces) in 2017, which was led by Haddad Adel.
The alliance was mainly consisting of IRGC-linked Isargaran and Rahpouyan groups. Like 2017, the group once again claimed to be the leading conservative group. Regardless of the word "revolutionary" in its name, the group is a traditional conservative entity. The group's rhetoric, however, looks like the fashionable revolutionary discourse promoted by Paydari, a younger and more aggressive group. Its leading figures are Haddad Adel, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and current lawmaker Zohreh Elahian.
According to Etemad Online, it is evident that decisions about the group and its strategy are made in secret darkrooms rather than transparent congresses. The group is also said to be a rebranded version of SHANA (Coalition Council of Revolutionary Forces), another name for the same group, once again with the code word "revolutionary" which means a group that aligns itself with Khamenei's radical anti-US stance.
However, as a tactic to reduce the significance of Ghalibaf's neo-con allies while giving him prominence as an individual, Haddad Adel is giving the leadership of the group to Ghalibaf, who knows that he has little chance if he remains just as the leader of his neo-con group.
Another conservative group, SHARIAN, the Strategic Network of Supporters of the Islamic Revolution, was established in March with the presence of Vice President Mohammad Mokhber and Roads Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, firebrand anti-US cleric Mahmoud Nabavian and former hard-line lawmaker Hamid Rasai.
This group's members are known as younger conservatives. Meanwhile, a report in Khabar Online featured photos and a long list of the leading members of the Sharian group mainly to show that they are much younger. The website tagged the next parliamentary election in Iran as a competition between young and old conservatives.
The third group is the notoriously non-conformist Paydari which consists of relatively younger anti-US politicians who have so far defied any alliances in almost every election since 2009. They support a totalitarian Islamic government as opposed to an Islamic Republic which at least pretends to be adhering to some democratic principles. They hold the majority in the current parliament where they ratified reactionary laws against Internet freedom and women's rights.
The group's membership is not transparent. Many members do not openly show affiliation with the Paydari Party, and some others at times distance themselves from the party although it is public knowledge at the parliament that they belong to Paydari.
There are also smaller groups such as those who are affiliated with former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supporters of former Speaker Ali Larijani but they are not big in numbers.
Other groups running for the Majles include traditional parties such as the extremely unpopular Islamic Coalition Party and the allies of former President Hassan Rouhani. The latter group is said to be operating under the leadership of former Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, a "moderate" politicians who is known for his remarks after the violent crackdown on the 2019 protests: "It is a lie that we only shot the protesters in the head. We shot some in the leg."
However, following the unresolved issues after the 2022 protests, there are every indication that the turnout in the March 2024 could be even less than the elections in 2020 and 2021, which were as low as 20 percent in some big cities.
