Iranian Teachers Demand Rights in New Government Budget

Barbad Kaveh, Rooz Online:

Iranian teachers have long suffered from two major personal and professional challenges. Part of the problem is rooted in their minimum salary which has never been adjusted with the country’s rising inflation trends. This pressure alone has deprived teachers from meeting their ends meet. READ MORE

The other problem is the complexity in Iran’s educational system in which there is discrimination between teachers, who are government employees, and other government employees.

The long struggle and repeated protests of Iranian teachers to acquire their rights and to convince the government to remove the discriminations and to provide them with better living conditions have not been satisfactorily fulfilled.

Even the reform government of former president Khatami was unsuccessful to provide teachers with their deserving rights while president Ahmadinejad’s government and his election promises to provide such justice are still only talk.

At the moment, Ahmadinejad’s cabinet is reviewing the country’s budget bill for the new fiscal year (2006) which is expected to be presented to the Majlis (Iran’s parliament) whose largest professional faction comprises 105 with educational backgrounds. Iran’s Management and Planning Organization announced that it was calculating teachers salaries based on last year’s inflation rate, which means there will be no pay increases for them. This has obviously angered them.

The former president had promised to improve the lot of teachers, but the new government has ignored such goals as if they belonged to the government with no demand from the teachers themselves. A number of non-governmental teachers’ associations have recently decided to hold peaceful protest gatherings in front of the Majlis and the Ministry of Education to highlight their demands. Some time ago, there were even speculations that the country’s teachers were planning to stage nation-wide protests regarding their salaries. Such calls, however but not surprisingly, were silenced in a similar fashion that demands by other groups had been neutralized.

One of the principal demands of teachers is their desire to reduce their weekly working hours from 24 to 22 hours. Another is similar salaries that are paid to other government employees. Some time ago a teachers’ union organization sent two letters to Majlis’ article 90 committee and Iran’s Inspection Organization, calling for a thorough investigation of the practices of the Ministry of Education and the Management and Planning Organization. Shargh newspaper reports that what prompted calls for an official investigation was the discovery of a number of documents indicating the difference in teacher’s salaries and those of other government employees.

Ahmadinejad has publicly honoured teachers by saying they are the true builders of Iran’s future. But when the government does not take any measures to address the problems that are expressly raised by the teaching community, then perhaps the government is simply paying lip service to the largest professional community in the country. Teachers have been said to be the most oppressed class in Iranian society because of the relatively low salaries they receive.