NCRI Iran News | Economy
70 Percent of Construction Workers out of Work Due to Iran's Recession in Housing Sector
- Tuesday, 30 May 2017 17:02
NCRI - Board member of the so-called High Association of Labor Unions ‘Hadi Sadatai’ has said that recession in housing sector has left 70 percent of construction workers jobless, according to terrorist Quds force’s Tasnim news agency on May 29.
In his interview with the news agency, Sadati acknowledged that if there’s a job for construction workers, they’ll be paid 40-50 thousand tomans a day for an average 20 working days a month, which is quite inadequate to run a family considering that the minimum cost of living for a family of 4 is close to three million tomans. So, in the most optimistic case, construction workers have to turn to second jobs, like driving for instance.
On foreign national workers, Sadati pointed to one million unemployed Iranian construction workers, saying “currently, many of employers would rather work with foreign workers, as they work more for less money compared to their Iranian counterparts. Besides, employers don’t have to be responsible for workplace accidents for their foreign workers.”
“Nearly three million foreign workers are working in Iran, while no organization is monitoring their activities”, he added.
The board member of the so-called High Association of Labor Unions pointed out that unemployment is currently the construction workers’ most important problem, since they are most of the time out of work and are not able to afford their livelihood. The other issue, Sadati added, is the construction workers’ compensation insurance.
“If a construction worker stops working, he will not be able to afford his cost of living”, said Sadati, adding “on average in 2015, a construction worker was out of work for five days a month, but there are now workers who due to deep recession are not working even a single day a month.”
