A note on the ongoing killing of workers under irresponsible structures

In the past week, once again the sound of collapse and falling debris echoed from workshops. Yet these deaths were not headline news, not spoken from official podiums—only mentioned in scattered local reports or co-workers’ condolence notes. A worker’s death is a silent death, and what makes this silence heavier is its repetition: why every week? Why every day?

A large share of occupational deaths in Iran involve construction workers. Cave-ins, falls from heights, electrocution—a fixed, repetitive list, all easily preventable. Why, then, do these tragedies continue? The answer lies in a system that values profit over life and sacrifices oversight for expediency.

Industrial owners, employers, and contractors show no will to improve workplace safety. On-site inspections have been reduced to a minimum, the accident-reporting system is ineffective, and every day small, unregistered workshops claim workers’ lives without employers or contractors held accountable. Safety training and proper equipment are seen as expenses most refuse to pay—because for them, a worker is an uninsured life: if one dies, another stands at the gate the very next day to replace him.

But the problem is not just greedy contractors or a weak ministry. The issue is an anti-worker structure in which the Ministry of Labor and its branches—from local labor offices to inspection departments and Islamic labor councils—not only fail to protect workers’ lives and rights but actively side with capital and power. They help suppress organizing, erase real oversight, and absolve employers of responsibility. The laws themselves, riddled with loopholes and repressive measures, are deliberately designed to leave workers defenseless.

The missing link is independent labor unions. In other countries, such organizations—backed by ILO conventions, including Convention No. 155 on occupational safety and health (ratified by Iran)—play a key role as monitors and advocates. In Iran, however, such unions either do not exist or are fake, state-controlled bodies. When workers are denied the right to protest and organize independently, their safety has no place on the list of priorities.

Protecting workers’ lives requires structural change:

• Active and independent labor unions.
• Legal accountability of the state, industry owners, employers, and contractors for workplace deaths.
• Mandatory implementation of international safety standards in construction and industrial projects.

Until then, workplace deaths will continue silently, on the margins, with no one to say: these deaths are not accidents; they are the direct result of structural denial of rights.

We must understand: the repeated deaths of workers stem from a corrupt, anti-human political order that prioritizes profit over human life. Without a fundamental transformation of power relations, and without a system built on the will and independent organization of the working class, this cycle of death and injustice will continue.

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