Regrettably, this unfair event has taken place while the country is stricken by the coronavirus and impoverished people bear the brunt of the ominous disease.

Also, according to the labor law passed by the parliament, workers’ minimum payment is one-fifth of the poverty line. In other words, to merely reach the poverty line, workers must scramble five times more. However, many workers have been deprived of their monthly salaries and should struggle to obtain their arrears.

“According to stats provided by an expert in job and insurance affairs, 600,000 official workers have become unemployed from March 15 to April 3. Now, they are in line to receive unemployment insurance. In Tehran province, around 87,000 workers lost their jobs and the average in other provinces is more than 10,000 people. It’s unclear that how many of them will obtain unemployment insurance given the deficit of insurance funds,” the state-run Sharq daily wrote on April 14.

Notably, the mentioned stat excludes non-official labor force like children or construction workers who generally have no contract.

 

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Iran – Coronavirus Sweeps Away the Mullahs’ Economy

Since March 21, the head of Crisis Management Organization Ismail Najjar ordered to shut down entire construction workhouses until further notice, according to ANA news agency on March 31.

More than 1.5 million construction workers, mostly non-official and without unemployment insurance, have been fired or being unemployment according to Ismail Najjar’s order.

“More than 1.5 million official and non-official workshops had to stop their activities. Creating new employment is impossible until two years after shutting down of small production sectors and low-level factories,” ISNA news agency quoted the administration’s spokesman Ali Rabiei as saying on April 11.

With a ballpark figure and calculating all workers’ families for four, dismissal of 600,000 of the workforce means to cut off the revenue of at least 2.5 million people who are certainly from impoverished and low-income classes of the society. Regardless of the social, moral consequences for leaving 600,000 households with empty hands.

The population of Iran’s workforce is estimated at 14 million. The number of needy people along with their families reaches more than 40 million. Many of these workers are also at risk of dismissal in the current circumstances.

In response, the regime didn’t provide support or compensation for stricken small industries. Therefore, the growth of unemployment is the result of the regime’s irresponsible policies. Earlier, Rabiei admitted that the number of unemployed workers is more than 4 million.

Furthermore, more than 90 percent of labor classes are under the poverty line and 70 percent of them are under the absolute poverty line. However, hard and dangerous jobs, dismissal, unemployment, and long-time arrears are not all the story.

The Iranian labor community is also exposed to political pressures and suppression on behalf of mullahs-linked employers. They pursue to quell workers’ cries for better work conditions and basic rights by employing pressure and suffocation.

In return, workers tirelessly continued their struggle by expanding their protesting moves like holding rallies and sit-ins in front of government offices, marches, etc.

Moreover, Iranian workers had a key role in nationwide protests against the mullahs such as the November uprising. Many of them had fallen in the bid to achieve justice and equality and a larger number were detained by state security forces.

 

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A Look at the Iran Regime’s Human Rights Record in 2019

Iran – Summary of Repression in 2019