At the same time as the deterioration of living conditions for working-class households and wages falling far behind living costs, an inspector from the Iranian regime’s Supreme Council of Islamic Labor Councils said that with this runaway inflation and soaring prices, there is no longer any table left for workers.
Habib Sadeghzadeh Tabrizi told ILNA, a state-run news agency, on Sunday, December 21: “One gram of gold is equivalent to about one month of a worker’s minimum wage,” describing this as indicative of the deep gap between wages approved by the Supreme Labor Council and the real cost of living.
Labor Organizations Indicate that Iran’s Minimum Wage Next Year Must Be 600 Million Rials
Currently, the base wage for workers covered by the Labor Law is close to 110 million rials (approximately 85 dollars) per month. This amount, including benefits, reaches about 150 million rials (approximately 115 dollars) per month. In contrast, some government-aligned labor groups have said that the monthly cost-of-living basket has reached 580 million rials (approximately 654 dollars).
Previously, the Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane Workers’ Syndicate, the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Labor Organizations, Khuzestan retired workers, and the Eighth of Azar Retirees’ اتحاد group had stressed in a joint statement that the minimum wage for the coming year should be 600 million rials (approximately 462 dollars).
These independent labor and retiree groups had called in 2024 for setting a wage of 400 to 450 million rials (approximately 308 to 346 dollars) for the current year.
Referring to Article 41 of the Labor Law, adopted in 1990, Sadeghzadeh Tabrizi said that this legal article, which was supposed to set wages based on inflation and living costs, has today turned into an ineffective text.
The two notes of Article 41 of the Labor Law stress that the minimum wage for workers must be set based on the inflation rate and the cost of living of a working-class household. However, over the years, members of the Supreme Labor Council have ignored the second note and set the following year’s wage at a level that has been even lower than that same year’s living costs.
Labor activists and independent labor organizations have described this approach as a policy of “wage suppression.”
Sadeghzadeh Tabrizi added in his interview with ILNA that the Supreme Labor Council sets wages at the end of each year, but those wages lose their value even before being deposited into workers’ accounts.
He added that the wage for 2025 was set based on a dollar exchange rate of 850,000 rials, while now, with only three months remaining until the end of the year (the Iranian New Year begins on March 21, 2026), the dollar has reached a rate of 1.31 million rials.
Sadeghzadeh Tabrizi pointed out that the stark gap between official decisions and economic realities has placed workers in a situation where they no longer have the ability to plan their daily lives.
In this regard, Majid Rahmati, a board member of the Islamic Labor Council Association of Tehran Province, told ILNA on Friday, December 19: “According to a report by the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare that I reviewed in Azar, household calorie consumption has dropped by about 30% compared to ten years ago.”
Emphasizing that reduced consumption of dairy products and basic food items carries social consequences and serious health impacts, he said: “When a family cannot provide an adequate food basket, especially for its child or infant, the ground is effectively laid for illness and malnutrition.”
Also according to ILNA, Sadeghzadeh Tabrizi in part of his remarks referred to workers paying taxes and stressed: “Workers whose wages do not even cover basic living expenses should not be subjected to additional tax pressure.”
Earlier, Somayeh Golpour, head of the Supreme Association of Workers’ Trade Unions, had suggested to the Eghtesadnews website on Friday, December 19 that because inflation for 2026 is not considered in the cost-of-living basket, “the equivalent of one and a half grams of gold per month from Farvardin to Esfand should form the basis of the minimum wage.”
She added that this measure should “also include those who work in contracting jobs, employees who receive the minimum wage, and retirees who are affected.”
Golpour also said that another proposal is for the constitutional legal obligations—namely the provision of housing, full and free healthcare, free education, and free transportation—to be implemented.
According to her, these are matters that “have existed in the heart of the constitution for years, and deprived groups, lower deciles, workers, and retirees have suffered from their non-implementation.”
Golpour noted in this interview that 80% of workers’ wages are spent on housing costs.
At the same time as criticism mounts over the living conditions of workers and other wage earners, the government of Iranian regime president Masoud Pezeshkian is seeking, through parliament, to amend Article 41 of the Labor Law by removing the “cost of living” criterion from minimum wage calculations and limiting wage increases solely to the official inflation rate.
Ahmad Meydari, the minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, said on Wednesday, December 17 about the government’s plan to raise workers’ wages next year: “A law is under review in parliament according to which wage increases must be at least in line with inflation, which we are also taking into account, and after reviewing all these issues, it will become clear how the matter can be pursued with workers and employers.”
In this way, the Pezeshkian government is seeking to remove the second note—namely “living costs”—from wage determination calculations.
The publication of these remarks has sparked criticism from users in workers’ Telegram groups, with one user describing the labor minister’s proposed move as “decision-making against the people.”
