The ratified minimum wage for the Iranian year 1405 (21 March 2026 to 20 March 2027), set at approximately 14.6 million tomans per month (about US$95), is the official institutionalisation of a wage that stands several times below the poverty line. This measure is a conscious decision to deepen poverty and force the working class into a bare-minimum, grinding existence.

This figure has been announced under conditions in which independent labour assessments, along with workers’ lived experience, show that the monthly cost-of-living basket for a working-class household has risen to more than 80 million tomans (about US$523). This means that the officially approved minimum wage is, in practice, more than five times lower than the real cost of survival. Such a gap reflects the complete collapse of livelihoods and the mass displacement of millions of workers below the poverty line.

The process through which this wage is determined is nothing less than an organised deception. The structure presented under the name of the “Supreme Labour Council”, which claims to include representatives of workers, employers, and the state, in reality contains no genuine representation of the working class. The so-called labour representatives are appointed figures tied to state and security institutions, with no connection whatsoever to workers’ will or demands.

On the other side, given that the state and its affiliated bodies are themselves the largest employer in the country, the very notion of an “independent employer representative” is effectively meaningless. What exists instead is a unified state-controlled mechanism that attempts, through the theatrical display of tripartism, to legitimise these decisions. This mechanism is an open fraud against Iran’s working class and against labour organisations across the world.

Even this imposed wage offers no prospect of stability. Under conditions of deep economic crisis, runaway inflation, and the devastating consequences of war, this meagre increase will be rendered meaningless in a very short time. Existing trends indicate that society stands on the threshold of hyperinflation and a further collapse in living standards, a situation in which even this minimum wage may cover only a few days of living expenses, or merely a fraction of rent.

The consequences of this situation are already plainly visible in the everyday lives of workers:

• the widespread removal of essential food items from workers’ tables, to the point that red meat and fish have effectively disappeared from reach, while even chicken and rice are increasingly being pushed out;
• a severe decline in the consumption of vital food products, including dairy;
• a growing inability to provide for the most basic needs of infants;
• an escalating incapacity to cover the costs of children’s education and schooling;
• the transformation of health and medical care into luxury commodities, out of reach for broad sections of society;
• the spread of homelessness and marginalisation;
• and the increase in child labour as one of the direct consequences of the collapse of family livelihoods.

These are the signs of a profound social catastrophe that has pushed the lives and futures of millions of people towards destruction.

At the same time, the policies embedded in the government’s 1405 budget bill (the budget year beginning 21 March 2026) move along the very same path. Setting wages and state employees’ salaries without any regard for the realities of subsistence means extending poverty to wider sections of the labour force. In truth, the entire existing economic and political structure rests upon the organised reproduction of poverty and inequality.

This catastrophe is the direct result of an economic-political order founded on exploitation, repression, and the destruction of working-class organisation. The absence of independent and nationwide labour organisations has not only restricted the possibility of organising collective struggle, but has also prevented the real scale of this disaster from being properly recorded and reflected. As a result, workers and their families endure this immense suffering in an individualised and fragmented manner, while the capacity to transform it into an organised social force has been systematically suppressed.

Alongside this crisis, the danger of war, itself the product of the Islamic Republic’s warmongering policies and the rivalry of global and regional power blocs, has now become an objective reality. This war bears no relation to the interests of Iran’s workers and people. Yet its principal burden is imposed upon them, and its destruction directly targets the lives and livelihoods of the working class.

The Iran Labour Confederation – Abroad emphasises:

There is no path towards improving workers’ conditions within the framework of this system. This structure must be dismantled in its entirety, and only through its overthrow can the possibility of real change emerge.

At the same time, such change can come about only through the direct and organised intervention of the working class and other social forces. Without independent, nationwide, bottom-up organisation, no change, not even at the most elementary level of subsistence, can be sustained.

Workers must organise themselves in their own councils and independent organisations, expand networks of solidarity, and build their own nationwide structures so that they may become an effective and decisive force, both in the political sphere and in the struggle over wages, working conditions, and livelihoods.

We also stress the importance of international working-class solidarity. Trade unions and labour organisations across the world must understand that workers in Iran are struggling for survival and human dignity under some of the harshest possible conditions. Supporting the right to independent organisation, amplifying the realities of workers’ lives in Iran, and pressuring governments to end policies that destroy people’s lives and livelihoods are among the urgent responsibilities of the global labour movement.

The Iran Labour Confederation – Abroad has been formed in order to strengthen the independent and nationwide organisation of Iran’s working class and to expand international worker solidarity, and it seeks to take a step towards advancing these aims. Yet the scale of the crisis is such that these efforts must be broadened on a far wider level.

Today, Iran’s working class is confronted with conditions in which the continuation of this situation means the complete collapse of life and of the future of coming generations. This situation must be stopped, and that is possible only through the organised power of workers and their nationwide solidarity.

Iran Labour Confederation – Abroad
March 21, 2026