proposed Iranian labor law
[an excerpt from a longer article]
Middle East Report Winter 2006
[…]
A Lose-Lose Game
To mollify the critics, the Ministry of Labor submitted draft
amendments of the 1990 labor law in 2006. The new draft seems,
however, to be strongly influenced by the discourse of the free
market. According to neo-liberal economists, the main conflict in
worker-employer relations is not so much between labor and capital as
between the employed and unemployed: It is not labor in a titanic
battle against capital, but one good for labor against another good
for labor. Such rhetoric holds that Iran’s labor law offers a high
degree of protection to employed workers in the form of job security
and fixed remuneration unrelated to productivity and, accordingly,
advises more intense competition between the employed and unemployed
in the labor market. If a modified labor law loosens restrictions on
employers, allowing them to dismiss workers more easily, employed
workers may lose their job security, but unemployed workers will be
better able to find jobs.
Rooted in such theory, the draft amendments propose several changes
giving carte blanche to employers seeking to get rid of employees.
The suggested changes to sections 21 and 27 of the labor law are
quite important. According to section 21, which has to do with
termination of employment contracts, an employment contract may be
terminated only by such events as the worker’s death, retirement,
total disability and resignation. The proposed draft, however, adds
two other possibilities: a decrease in the firm’s productivity, firm
restructuring or technological updating, and a decrease in the
physical power of the worker leading to a decrease in firm productivity.
According to section 27, “where a worker is negligent in discharging
his duties or if, after written warnings, he continues to violate the
disciplinary rules of the workplace, the employer shall, provided
that the Islamic Labor Council is in agreement, be entitled to pay to
the worker a sum equal to his last monthly wage for each year of
service as a length-of-service allowance, in addition to any deferred
entitlements, and to terminate his employment contract.” The new
draft would alter section 27 so that the employer can terminate an
employment contract with a worker after two written warnings, without
any need for the approval of the Islamic Labor Council. These changes
to sections 21 and 27, if passed, will allow employers to dismiss
workers much more easily.
If employers are to obtain such an advantage, is there any advantage
accruing to workers in the draft amendments to the 1990 labor law? A
glance at chapter 6 of the existing law shows that it does not allow
for the existence of any independent worker organization, except the
Workers’ House, which is really a channel for government control over
workers. According to section 130 of the chapter, “in order to
propagate and disseminate Islamic culture and to defend the
achievements of the Islamic Revolution,” workers in industrial,
agricultural, service and craftsman’s establishments may establish
Islamic associations whose duties, powers and functions shall be
drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Labor and
Social Affairs and the Islamic Propagation Organization, and approved
by the Council of Ministries. Moreover, according to note 4 of
section 131 in the chapter, the workers of any given unit may
establish only an Islamic Labor Council, a guild society or workers’
representatives, which in practice means that workers are not allowed
to set up anything, since Islamic Labor Councils already exist in
every workplace of any size. All these provisions remain in the
draft, in which a single section has replaced six sections of the
1990 law, but with the same consequences for workers. According to
the new section, “in order to propagate and disseminate Islamic
culture and to protect the legitimate and statutory rights and
interests of workers and employers and to improve their economic
situation, in a manner guaranteeing the protection of the interests
of society as a whole,” workers subject to the labor code and the
employers of a given profession or industry may establish Islamic
associations, Islamic Labor Councils or elect their own
representatives. At least as far as workers’ demand for having
independent organizations is concerned, the changes made in the draft
give no advantage to the workers. The new draft proposed by the
Ministry of Labor under Ahmadinejad seems to be a lose-lose game for
workers: Employers get the right of expedited dismissal, without
workers gaining any right to form independent trade unions.
[…]