What retireds It has not bothered the worker more than anything else; it is not a simple matter; Because “discrimination” is not easy to tolerate. Apart from this discrimination, which has been criticized many times but has never been heard, another issue that bothers workers’ retirees is the one-roof, two-air wage policies. And wage benefits.
For years and even decades, “discrimination” and one-roof, two-air policies have been applied at various levels to the lives and livelihoods of Social Security retirees. The problem is that this group of pensioners, who according to the latest official statistics make up at least 65% of the current pensioner population in the country, are trapped in very discriminatory policies; The issue of receipts and salaries, and of course wage benefits such as matching and additions, is one dimension, and the issue of unfair and end-of-year payments in the form of an annual holiday is another.
Discrimination in rights
The first sign of discrimination is the difference in the level of income. The deputies of the 10th Majles, in reviewing the 99th budget bill, approved that the salary ceiling of the country’s pensioners be 2 million and 800 thousand Tomans, and from April of this year, no pensioner will receive less than this minimum floor. The first cornerstone of discrimination was laid here; Parliamentarians referred to the country’s retirees only as “state and military retirees”, and workers’ pensioners were exempted from this general rule, citing the ruling that “determining the pension of retired workers as employed workers is the sole responsibility of the Supreme Labor Council.” The result was very unfortunate: four months of the year, pensions, minimum wage workers were very low and received a salary of 2 million and 100 thousand tomans.
It should be emphasized that this unjust practice is not unique to this year and is repeated every year! Every year, the salaries of other retirees increase from the first month of the year, April, but labor retirees wait several months for the results of the meetings of the Supreme Labor Council to be determined and for the CEO and the Cabinet to decide whether to increase pensions.
Discrimination in assimilation
After that, it was time to start a show called “Matchmaking” which, in a few scenes, kept retirees busy for months; First, in July, the government paid 32,000 billion tomans to social security in the form of shares of several companies, and in a letter announcing this payment, it emphasized that this amount is for repaying government debts to the organization, but it should be equated with social security pensioners. Since this credit was not enough to implement a correct, real and principled matching, it changed the name of matching to “proportionality” and claimed that this imaginary, tail and tear matching needs 17,000 billion tomans of credit per year.
This is while the real assimilation requires about 54 thousand billion tomans of credit, which the government does not intend to allocate to retirees who have run the industrial and production cycles of this country for years. The same government – a government that pays one-tenth of its debt to the organization on the one hand and sets the task for this small payment on the other – has allocated about 17,000 billion tomans from the national treasury to equalize state and military funds, and since The funds are far fewer in number than Social Security retirees, and with this money, an “almost real” equalization was implemented that brought the salaries of each retiree to 90% of the working salary. The result was again very disappointing: the minimum wage retirees after August, when this plan was implemented incompletely, receive about 2 million and 800 thousand tomans, while the country’s retirees with the same coordinates and at the same time minimum wage, receive about 4 million tomans!
As Eid Ali Karimi (Executive Secretary of Qazvin Workers ‘House) emphasizes that the fact that all workers’ retirees have a monthly income of over 2 million and 800 thousand Tomans is not true and there are retirees in Qazvin province who receive only 2 million and 200 thousand Tomans.
One-roof and two-air policies in the “Eid” category
Aside from this discrimination, which has been criticized many times but has never been heard, another issue that bothers workers’ retirees is the one-roof, two-air policies on wages and wage benefits.
Social security retirees, based on a customary procedure established for many years in the Iranian wage system, wait every year for the results of wage negotiations in the Supreme Labor Council, and their annual pension increase is determined exactly as the increase in the minimum wage, while in the Social Security Law two articles – Articles 111 and 96 – are devoted to how to determine the annual pension, and nowhere in these two articles is it stated that the increase in the minimum pension of retirees must be in accordance with the increase in the minimum wage of employees; The only legal requirements are to match the increase in pensions with the inflation rate and the increase in the cost of living.
Now these retirees, whose annual wage increase is equal to the increase in workers’ wages and is determined on the basis of the minimum wage approved by the Supreme Labor Council, become an “employee” at the end of the annual Eid and become as “an employee” as government retirees and Eid employees. they take!
Seyyed Ahmad Hosseini (Ahwaz Social Security retiree and union activist) told ILNA about this structural contradiction, which is to the detriment of low-income workers’ retirees: If we are employees, why do we not receive the same salary as national retirees; If we are workers, why is our Eid a worker? Why did they only think about equalizing the wage benefits of retirees on Eid night and giving us Eid as much as government retirees? If the wage conditions of retirees are to be equalized, they should increase our salary floor to 4 million Tomans!
Hosseini continues: Last year, when all the workers received more than 3 million Tomans for Eid, we, the retired workers, received about one million Tomans for Eid; In previous years, our Eid was less than one million tomans; This year, they are probably going to give us as many Eid employees! We retirees receive the same salary as last year for three to four months every year, and when we protest why, like other retirees, our salaries have not increased in the new year, they say you have to wait for the results of the Supreme Labor Council meeting and the government’s decision! But on the night of Eid, the approvals of the Supreme Council of Labor and Workers’ Rights suddenly smoke and blow! Workers’ retirees who suffer all kinds of discrimination and injustice, give us at least the same Labor Day!
Workers’ Eid has a specific floor and ceiling according to the law; Sixty days of basic labor rights is the floor, and the ceiling is ninety days of basic salaries; Therefore, this year, all workers will receive Eid between 3 million and 800 thousand tomans to 5 million and 700 thousand tomans. Any payment below this is illegal and workers have the right to sue.
According to Hosseini, the same small amount of 3,800,000 tomans, if paid to retirees who have a thousand misfortunes and livelihood problems at the end of the year, can untie at least one of the countless knots in their lives and make life a little easier.
He continues: With this money, a retiree can buy nuts and sweets for his big family on Eid night and at least not be ashamed of his family!
in short
In general, labor retirees suffer from lawlessness and discrimination at various levels. The huge volume of virtual campaigns and correspondence of retirees addressed to the responsible authorities shows this dissatisfaction.
On the one hand, non-implementation of laws, especially Article 96 of the Social Security Law and Article 111 of this law; On the other hand, non-payment of government debts to the Social Security Organization and shortcomings in the quality and quantity of health services provided and, of course, the implementation of assimilation has been unequal and class. Meanwhile, the end-of-year employee Eid is a double suffering that is imposed on retirees, and every year, salt is sprinkled on their deep wounds!