The dismissal of nearly 20 contract workers at Siadan Steel in Abhar on July 23, 2025, despite the reinstatement of 30 of their colleagues, is not an isolated case. It reflects a general policy of “casualizing the workforce,” where temporary contracts in jobs of permanent nature are turned into tools for cheap dismissals and for suppressing protests. Under the pressure of inflation and mass unemployment, the phrase “no longer needed” has become an administrative excuse to eliminate long-serving workers—cuts that reveal the power imbalance between labor and capital.

Since the late 1980s, with the adoption of Article 7 of the Labor Law, short-term contracts have become the norm. Today, the majority of workers are employed under temporary or contractor-based agreements. This shift has structurally destroyed job security, producing a workforce that is cheap, compliant, and easily replaceable. Such instability traps workers in the dead-end choice between submission or unemployment and strips them of the ability to exercise even their most basic legal rights.

In May 2024, a draft amendment to the Labor Law was introduced. Instead of abolishing this mechanism, it effectively legalized the “blank-signed contract.” The clause claims that blank-signed contracts are forbidden, yet at the same time denies their nullification. In practice, a worker still faces a document that the employer can later fill in with unilateral conditions—leaving the worker no choice but to accept or face dismissal. This “legalization of lawlessness” only heightens insecurity and gives employers and contractors greater disciplinary power.

Temporary contracts and blank-signed contracts are two blades of the same scissors: the first takes away time and job stability, the second hands the content of the contract to the unilateral will of the employer. The result is wages below the cost of living, forced overtime, delayed payments, and the elimination of protesting workers. Without the possibility of independent agency, even an openly unjust contract is enforced without negotiation or guarantees. In this context, the case of the Siadan Steel workers is a vivid example of the broader mechanism of dismissability: selective renewals used to break solidarity and keep the workforce on the edge of fear.

The way forward is clear, but it faces a political barrier:

• A ban on temporary contracts in jobs of permanent nature.
• Elimination of all forms of labor-supply contracting.
• Annulment of all types of blank-signed contracts.
• Reinstatement of dismissed workers.
• Legal recognition of independent unions and unconditional implementation of the ILO’s core conventions.

These demands, however, are impossible under the Islamic Republic and its anti-worker laws.

Editorial Board of Pezhvak-e Kar Iran (Echo of Iran’s Labor)