Labor Laws by the Wayside

A law banning the hiring of retirees was sent to state and affiliated organizations in March 2015, based on which employment of retired workers was illegal unless endorsed by a senior official and approved by a government special committee. The reformed labor law aimed at creating conditions for putting the army of unemployed youth on the payrolls.

It raised hopes in and among the large and growing numbers of youth hunting for work. The government also took some relief in the imagination that one of its main economic problems (tsunami of joblessness) would be solved to some extent. That turned out to be wishful thinking.  Now it is revealed that that law was an exercise in futility and failed to produce the desired results. Needless to say, its enforcement was never supervised as would have been expected.

Head of the Temporary Workers Union, Fathollah Bayat in a talk with Qodsonlne news website has outlined some of the impediments that hurled this key piece of legislation on the wayside.

Most retirees prefer to spend time doing other things rather than working. “However, given the low pensions and systematically rising costs of living, they are left with no choice but to work. If officials in charge of deciding policy pay enough attention to the pension issue, most if not all retirees would willingly give up their jobs in the interest of the youth,” he said. However, this case does not apply to all the working elderly because many of them had decent and well-paid careers. In short, their pensions are high enough to secure a decent quality of life in retirement. Bayat is of the opinion that these groups can and should be “invited to work as consultants simply because money is not a concern for them and their valuable experience can contribute to the success” that hire them.

People working two or more jobs are another factor, experts say, which has made the bad unemployment situation worse. These people are usually given high posts with higher wages. More often than not “it is claimed that this group of highly-paid staff is instrumental and without them the company will suffer.”

Passing laws is not the enough to solve problems as “we have enough laws…  The problem is with the unsupervised and inappropriate enforcement of laws,” the union official told the website.