Case Study: Two Decades of Iranian Teachers' Struggle for Decent Pay and (Some) Benefits

For decades, Iranian teachers’ unions have been demanding fair pay and benefits commensurate with other government employees, including retirement pay and better terms for contract teachers. They have called for free education for students, as well as for the right to organize gatherings, and to take part in civil society actions, including writing letters, liaising with authorities, and creating online campaigns.

According to Iranian media, the former education minister, Mohammad Bathaei, met with union leaders on at least four occasions. In those meetings, teachers complained about the high number of students in classrooms and a lack of budget to make it possible for teachers’ pay to be standardized and in line with their qualifications and experience — as well as voicing their concerns about the wave of arrests of civic representatives and union activists.

The government regularly characterizes these meetings as friendly and casual, but this is rarely the case. In fact, the Iranian Teachers’ Union Association and other civil society organizations boycotted a meeting with the Rouhani administration spokesman Ali Rabie and former acting education minister Javad Hosseini, who was temporarily appointed in June 2019 after Bathaei resigned. A new minister, Mohsen Haji-Mirzaei, has since been appointed.

When concerns about their imprisoned friends and colleagues were not addressed and none of their demands were met, activists decided to take the next step and organize the protests and strikes that Iran has witnessed over the last year.

Forgotten Promises

Teachers’ unions raised the issue of pay during the tenth (current) parliament. By establishing a system of ranking teachers, they hoped to close the pay gap between teachers at different levels. Under the Fundamental Educational Reform Bill, teachers would be categorized into four ranks based on their qualifications. It also stipulated that 80 percent of university professors’ salary would be taken as the base salary for teachers. Despite the bill getting parliament’s approval, and despite extensive preparations to bring it into law, it was abandoned this year.

A severe budget deficit was given as the reason for the bill’s failure. Although the Rouhani administration did not allocate any budget for the plan, parliament adjusted the proposed overall budget to accommodate it, making it possible for some funds to be allocated, but this move, even though it provided what was described as a “considerable budget,” did not lead to the plan being implemented. 

The severe budget deficit of the government on one hand and a skyrocketing inflation rate on the other led teachers to believe that there would be no short-term solution to their demands  — and also drove some of them toward a more radical stance in a bid to find a solution for their problems without help from the government. 

After teachers held a national strike earlier this year, instead of negotiating with or addressing the issue with teachers, former education minister Mohammad Bathaei chose to undermine and intimidate them. At a press conference, he told a reporter who asked about the strike: “There were some protests in a limited number of schools across the country. I should mention that taking part in these types of actions, even in a single school in the country, is an act against educational principles.”

Prior to the national strike, teachers formed various campaigns to protest against their situation. One of the protests took place just two months before the national strike in January 2019, with activists voicing criticism about the ineffective complementary insurance they had received to help them with extra health costs outside what had been provided by the state. A few months before, teachers tore up their paychecks in symbolic protest, an action that was not covered by the media. 

Even earlier than this, in 2016, teachers collected online signatures to protest against their unfair salaries and the low quality of education in schools across the country, but that campaign was also largely ignored and unsuccessful.   

Legal Routes Open to Individuals

However, according to a legal expert IranWire consulted, who did not want to be named for security reasons, teachers were most likely to have their demands met by using legal means to achieve their goals — and that such a move is also the safest course of action. The expert said teachers should go to the courts with their complaints and follow the cases up regularly and with diligence. In fact, Iranian law does not stipulate that individuals or groups can be arrested for filing lawsuits. So legal experts advise people appeal to the Administrative Justice Court to revise or remove an unfair governmental policy or action, and to the State Employees Court to complain about managers’ misconduct or negligence. Finally, they advise teachers to appeal to the parliamentary committee that deals with Principle 90 of the Iranian Constitution, which states that citizens can present complaints against the parliament or the judiciary to parliamentarians, who are then obligated to find a remedy or solution to the issue and make this information public. Overall, legal cases initiated by individual teachers were more successful in these cases when compared with lawsuits brought by teachers’ unions.

Teachers’ Activism: Victories and Dead Ends

The Rouhani administration, and the education ministry in particular, has always given the budget deficit as the reason for not implementing the plan to rank teachers and thereby systematize the way they are paid. Then the government’s incapability to implement the plan led it to work with the security agencies in order to suppress national protests staged by teachers’ union associations.

Last year, a teacher activist told IranWire: “The education ministry has turned into a partner for security agencies.” However, he also said that despite all the suppression and violence that made meeting some of their demands impossible, “once in a while teachers’ protests during the last years has turned into a universal civil movement.” And recently, there has been a change of attitude among educators. “Teachers are not afraid of the regime’s ideological approach anymore and bravely voice their concerns about the injustice they endure. The new teachers’ approach has intimidated the government and they’re afraid that this bold movement might spread across other groups. Therefore, they’re trying to suppress teachers’ activists even harder.”